Disclaimer: Harry Potter is not and has never been the property of R S Slagondrayer who has not and has never claimed any right to its copyright. All characters are copyright to their respective creators.

Synopsis: In love's fading hour, the knowledge of what might have been is still present in last goodbyes.

Warnings: Themes. Imagery. spoilers, possible British spelling, deliberate abuse of grammar, possibility of disappointed expectations etc., Dransy and soul-suckingly soppy sap, and absolute denial of out-of-characterness. Oh, and the title.

Read Responsibly.

I Love You

by

R S Slagondrayer

"There can be no more us."

It was Pansy who said it, finished it in the dim-lit Thursday morning of the Malfoy Manor drawing room, while outside the sun broke through the overhanging rainclouds for the first time in almost two weeks. She and Draco had been engaged in a silent denial of all that now lay between them in that vernal spring. It was Pansy who broke the silence, broke taboo, and lay open the breach between them. Draco, when she said what she said, let out a soft, sharp sound, a hiss of pain and a sigh of resignation married in one breath, past his lips. Her words crumbled any illusions that might have dwelled in their seventeen-year-old hearts about their future. This was no longer about what they wanted, though their eyes still yearned greedily for the other's regard. It was now about what was needed.

For Draco, he knew this was the end. The future lay before them - bleak, uncharted, and this... this was one more thing that the war continued to drain from them. He could say nothing. There was nothing to say. She had spoken rushed, fearful, mis-chosen words in a hall full of witnesses. His parents were Death Eaters. He was a Death Eater. Now the Light had won, there could be nothing between them, the whole of their crimes greater than the sum.

"I love you," he said softly into the breach. Their eyes met, both knowing it didn't count. Still they yearned to be selfish. Only the underlying childishness of such an act stopped them. They would destroy each other if they didn't part now. Their respective sins could only compound each other's if they dared. She would be condemned for his Death Eater past, he for her tragically fateful outburst.

Perhaps if it were only they, if this, now, him, her, was all there was to it, they could have traded the distance between them for lips locked in passionate, devouring kisses and their hands, roaming, clinging, holding, never letting go, but he could see Lucius and Narcissa coming in view in the garden beyond the gloomy room, and she, Pansy, his Pansy, would return home to her widowed mother's side, the precious comfort of a woman who had lost much in life and didn't deserve, couldn't bear, to lose more. So instead their hands remained in their laps, subtly wringing in with unexpressed bereavement. So instead their hands moved to their sides, subtly aching with unexpressed bereavement. It was not enough; nothing could ever be enough to make up for this, now, what they were losing.

He looked over her shoulder, unseeingly, at his parents in the garden

"I won't ever forgive him," Draco snapped suddenly, angry; images of Harry Potter and Voldemort flashing in his mind. "Both of them! Not this!'

Pansy gave him a watery smile, wiping her tears at the parting. "Don't be daft, Draco." Her voice brought his focus to the now, and his parents still visible outside the window.

He watched them now, Lucius and Narcissa, eyes only for each other, more tender and careful to treasure each other in light of their fragile future. He thought of them as that now, Lucius and Narcissa, - not just Mother and Father, and unconditional love, but Lucius and Narcissa and practical, ruthless devotion. They loved each other and they loved him.

"That would have been us one day," Draco said hollowly. "We would have been like that."

Pansy watched the elder Malfoys with unreadable eyes. Already she was storing away these moments, taking the last seconds they'd ever have, turning them over in her mind; the present even now becoming a memory to treasure or put away.

"I would have loved you like that!" Draco hissed sharply, hotly, fiercely, his hand tightening onto the edge of the desk. "And more!"

Pansy nodded slowly, and stood, straightening her skirt as she did. "I know, Draco." She paused, seeming to be seeking her words. "We're not going to be... there is no more us," she repeated, her mouth moving as though she were rolling the words over in her mouth, trying to learn the strange bittersweetness of them. Her eyes suddenly met his. "But we are going to be happy. We won't let them take that from us!" As she said it, she knew they understood each other, were complicit one last time in this final act. Draco choked on a broken, despairing sob.

"I love you", he said. Broken, petulant, desperate it fell like a petal on the pond of their parting - rippling the surface but never breaking what lay beneath. Even as she pulled him to her, and let him cry into the belly that would never carry his children, she did not say anything, did not have to. She was letting him go, and that was a more eloquent an 'I love you' to his heart than words could ever be. Her hands ran lightly through sunlight-blond hair that should have been hers to caress for all the years that it would take to turn it snow-pristine and beyond. Her soul drank in the scent that should have been hers to breathe morning after morning for the next hundred dream-years and more. All that should have been hers was in her arms and before her eyes: spats held in the parlour, gray eyes turned chilling ice, brown turned deep amber with fury; reconciliations in the drawing room, eyes that didn't meet, apologies said and accepted by the brushing of hands in the exchange of flowers, waltzes in the ballroom - through it all Draco's eyes, saying 'I love you, I love you, I love you' and her bold kisses dared onto his lips at every opportune turn in return. Body language, not words. Every touch, every glance, every pause, every sly smirk, every shy, wondering smile; every knowing, tolerant smile of the parents - hers. Hers. Hers. Hers. It should have been hers! And finally, she broke, 'Draco' a cracked sound wrenched from her heart, into her throat, into the air, startling the birds outside into flight, and causing the two Malfoys in the garden to stop and stare at the drawing room with plummeting hearts. They saw in the window their Draco and his Pansy, grief in how their clung to one another, the white knuckled holds of children who now loved and now lost, while around them their dreams whirled one last time, dying swans in the dim-lit Thursday morning of the Malfoy Manor drawing room, before coming to their final rest. They could have been, would have been, should have been... eternal.

Fin.

A/N:

To all who have a Dransy for their ship and OTP, and those who just popped in, this has been a presentation of R.S. Slagondrayer's:

Draco & Pansy = Romeo + Juliet x Whitney Houston [I will always love you] to the power of ::heart::

Because it's young love and we feel immortal. Because it's years of friendship and love. Because how do we write the end when the only answer the canon affords is that the author didn't like Pansy? How does one write that all that is over? Because it could have been anything. Because it could be this. Because it is okay to have d(cr)ied just a little.

With Love,

R S Slagondrayer

The Summer We Bathed in the River Styx (Trilogy)

1. The Secret Keeper (Severus/Petunia) - The Summer itself.

2. I Love You (Draco/Pansy) – The Summer followed Spring's end.

3. Onomatopoeia (OC/Salazar Slytherin) – There were many summers before the last.