Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter
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The summers held more magic in them for Pansy Parkinson than a whole year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Every bird she saw was a clockwork of muscles and tissue pretending to sentience. Each flower sprouted solid greens and reds, essence of clear-water-turned-milky-plasty, face-first into the blazing sunlight. Insects, little green ones, would buzz for a few hours and fall motionless if they flew into her room. Until that point, they would look at her through narrow-minded honeycombed eyes that could not encompass more than a few inches of her at a time.
Each wind gust, the rows of magpies who hatched from the nests they took over last year, even the little stones that got caught up on her sandals...their stories were all about survival and being ripped from the bosom of creation. It was through her summers that Pansy learned about life and death. Her Ministry-minded parents were constantly busy. Her real teachers were the four elements. They taught her the morality of the soil. This she would silently take to Hogwarts. Year after year, the trials of fool-hearted Gryffindors and the crafty Slytherins canceled each other out, and she just watched. The strong survived, but no one talked about it like that.
The morality of the soil.
One day, Draco Malfoy, son of former Death Eater Lucius Malfoy and soon-to-be-member of the wizarding nobility, asked her to walk with him to the Quiddich pitch. They had been friends since childhood, having been raised by the same circle of nannies. Since the summers of Pansy's adolescence, however, they had grown apart, bit by bit. They had been engaged since their days as toddlers, and they knew it was expected of them to marry one day. Pansy supposed Draco thought that they would have a lifetime to whine and moan at each other, so why waste the time they could have apart? She agreed, inside of her, if that's what he thought. And to truly gain his admiration she'd show him what she'd gotten for him, on their wedding night. Such a mark should only be revealed to people who believed.
He met her outside of Transfiguration and led her outside. The weather was crisp, and autumn was falling. Draco turned to Pansy and seemed to quiver inside. Pansy raised both brown eyebrows.
"Pansy, I've got a secret. I think you need to know about it," Draco mumbled his words, showing uncharacteristic fear. "I haven't told anyone else, and I'm...Frankly, I'm scared to say anything at all now."
"Is this about that Granger girl who tried to kill herself in the Prefect Lavatory last week? Because if it is, I'm not sure I want to know!" Pansy smirked and looked around her at the dying life. She frowned and led Draco by the hand towards a lone tree. She could swear she saw something in the grass.
"Um, no, not really..." Draco wavered. "It's a little bit about that. But you really need to know." He followed, not seeing the object of Pansy's attention.
"I don't like Hermione Granger, you know that. She's a weak, silly girl," Pansy stated as they walked slowly. "Is she still in a coma because she didn't do it well enough to die or poorly enough to make it easy for Madame Pomfrey?"
"Yeah, it seems so." Draco stopped her for a moment and took her by the shoulders, regarding her with seriousness. "Pansy, I've been awful."
"No one denies that!" She laughed a little and smiled at him. "You are a terrible troublemaker and worse when Crabb and Goyle are with you!"
"It's worse than that," he replied, not letting go of her diminutive frame. He noticed that, over the seven years they'd spent here, she had grown into her father's chin and her mother's nose. Her hair bounced now in the places it used to lay in thin plaits. Her eyes were cold the way Professor Lupin's eyes had been cold, the way Severus Snape's eyes became cold when he slaved over a particular potion for more than a few hours. Her beauty made him sorrowful.
"Fine, fine," Pansy sighed. "What have you done now?"
"I've done some terrible things, Pansy," Draco didn't know how to start or how to move forward from there.
"You said that already."
"Pansy," he'd made a mistake coming here. "I've been a lot of things to a lot of people. I've been manipulative and just awful to more people here at school than anyone knows. I stopped for a little while last year," how could he explain, "when Hermione caught my eye as a potential catch of the day. She became more than that...so many have become more than that."
"You've taken women, then?"
Draco nodded, unblinking. " I was so mean to Hermione, Pansy. It was terrible for me when I saw that I hadn't changed her at all. She only became strong. I-I couldn't stand it, so, well, I left her."
"Is that what upset her so? Is that what's upsetting you so?"
"Yeah, it really is..." Draco was paling. "I want you to know who I am before Dad makes any final say as to what I need to do with my life. I have no more say over it than you do."
"You think you made Granger try to kill herself."
"I shouldn't have rubbed it in her face that I can have anyone."
"And because you feel guilty for the first time in your life, you think it's fine to rub it in my face that you can have anyone. Miss Perfect Granger enjoyed you. You didn't touch me."
"Are you angry?"
"No. Neither am I shocked. Did you think I'd release you from your obligations? Your father would think me mad and would ask you why. His truth spells are less effective, it seems, than the guilt of almost killing something."
"I've never killed anything...I'm not directly responsible for that girl's actions! You just...needed to know, that's all."
"I don't think I did. Let's walk." She took Draco by the hand and started towards the tree again. It was as she suspected, and they arrived to view the scene in silence.
A birdling lay dying in the grass, having tried to fly too soon. The poor thing was still fluffed with down, starving and broken. "Poor thing. Let's see, now."
Pansy took out her wand and tried to mend the bird's wings and legs. After trying several approaches, and failing with every single one, she pursed her lips. "Draco, it's a lot like this. I can't save this bird. It'll suffer and die in a few hours. Its mother won't come for it, and even if I had been able to mend it, its mother wouldn't have accepted it back anyway. It smells of human. Granger is like that. She's in Pomfrey's office right now, gathering dust and becoming a permanent fixture. She fell out of the nest, so to speak, almost disgracing herself with you. And, if someone put back in the nest, she would betray you and make a fool myself. Those are unacceptable losses, Draco. Nature works one way," Pansy held the bird until it was calm, feeling its fluttering heartbeat. She looked into its filming eyes and turned its neck so quickly Draco missed it with a blink. "And only one way."
"Pansy! You killed..."
"And what do you think your father will require you to do once you graduate, Draco? The Parkinsons are not Death Eaters, but we are Purebloods. The unsavoury way of acting is often the most...right...way."
"But I...my father's not! He's not anymore!"
"Draco, you are fooling yourself." Pansy stood. "You really are naive. Hermione couldn't be allowed to do what she would have done were she to awaken. Everyone sees that."
"But, no one knows!" Draco protested, his face turning whiter and whiter with fear and with realization.
"Everyone knew, Draco. Everyone who mattered, that is," she stood, leaving the bird beneath the tree. Draco looked at the bird and was sickened to see that it looked like a doll with its head on backwards. He held his stomach and sat backward onto his haunches. "Are you ill? Has fucking the Princess of Gryffindor House made you soft?"
"No."
"Do you have any questions?"
"Yes."
"Please, ask me anything. You have a right to know." She smiled almost mockingly, mirroring his tone when he said the same to her just minutes before.
"Are you...like my father?" Draco looked over his shoulder at her tentatively.
"Have I received the Mark? Am I a Death-Eater, serving the Dark Lord?" She laughed lightly. The strong always prevailed in nature.
"Stop laughing!" She laughed on, maddeningly. "PLEASE! Stop..." he wilted.
"Why?! Can't I laugh? You use people, Draco! It's funny to me to see how it affects you!" She kept laughing madly.
"Did you...do anything to Hermione, Pansy?" His voice became weaker.
"Oh Draco! Whether I did or not, she's not waking up and ruining your family or me. Is that not good news? Isn't that why you wanted to tell me? So that I could ward off the scandal?"
"No! I wanted you to know because..." he couldn't formulate a reason good enough. It just seemed like the thing to tell her and once he'd decided to, he couldn't stop himself.
"Because why? You knew everything too!"
"No, I swear..."
"Liar! Draco, you are a terribly good liar! Nature takes the weak."
"No! Hermione was NOT weak!" Draco looked up at her with eyes full of fire, only to meet her deep, blank expression covered with a mask of malicious laughter. He lunged at her, hands tightening around her white neck. She coughed into his fingers, trying to wriggle away. With one hand, he secured her to the ground, breathless. With the other, he searched her robes for her wand and, finding it, threw it as far from the hands and twisting robes. She clawed at him and he grabbed the hands from his eyes, his neck, nimbly. Pinning her, he watched her sputter and gasp, unable to take more than a whisper of breath as she thrashed under his weight.
The feel of her against him was new and more than he'd thought it would be. She kicked her legs against him, digging her heels into his legs...anywhere it might hit home and loosen his grip. That only angered him more. She'd done terrible things to Hermione. That made him feel...beytrayed.
He didn't love Hermione. He'd worshipped her, and therein lay the difference. His goddess was his alone to tear down. "MURDERER!" He screamed in Pansy's red and gulping face, and the scream was like a sacrament to him.
She had tried to kick him off of her and only succeeded in jabbing the edge of his fury. Her face taunted, and her new beauty rare and wilting like the autumn, laughed in the face of death. He pushed his thumb further against her pulse, knowing that it would not kill her. He'd have to find the tiniest bone in her neck for that.
"You turned her into a vegetable...can she be saved?" Now it was his voice that seemed mad. It rang with the same tone his father's did.
She had to fight through the roaring blood in her ears and the quicksilver stars in her eyes to understand him, but she nodded, hoping to gain enough breath to save herself. It burned...oh, God, it burned.
"She can? That's a good girl," Draco eased off her wrists for a moment and looked up to see if anyone was around. As his gaze flashed up past her hands, it caught his eye, and it glowed black. The Dark Mark.
"Bitch!" Draco spat and regained his grip before she could struggle away even an inch. "You and Father both! I've tried to keep Father's reach from this school, away from Potter and the other children for seven years!"
"I..." Pansy's eyes filled with hot tears that tumbled around her cheeks. His fury hurt her belly. She still tried to kick him with her legs, but the attempts were weaker, and her vision was tunneling now. Draco pushed down into her throat further and felt something slide under his weight.
Pansy's body shuddered under him as she passed into unconsciousness. Her neck distended easily now, and Draco's eyes filled with tears. Pansy...
He removed his hand from her neck, which was blossoming with blues and greens for each Draco-sized fingertip. He collapsed on top of her, and could hear her heart slow. "No...no, Pansy."
He could not move for a moment, so shocked he was. He didn't want to look into her dead face. Oh God, what had he done...
A million thoughts raced through him, but finally he settled on one: She was a Death-Eater at Hogwarts. NOT working undercover. Anyone who doubted him could take her wand and know that she was the reason Hermione wasn't waking up. They could look at her arm, couldn't they?
He stood, finally. He looked around for the wand frantically. He walked first three steps one way, then five another. It was nowhere to be found. Oh no, he thought. This cannot be. But at least her arm...! He raced back to the body and wrenched her sleeve down her arm to see the proof of her treachery.
Black was the Mark. And red, green, orange...
Pansy's Dark Mark was nothing more than a muggle tattoo of a dragon surrounded by flowers. Draco and Pansy. Forever. Such a mark could only have been revealed to people who believed. In love.
"Oh no. What have I done...?"
And the wind blew, and the flowers were still striving for sunlight around his ankles, and the strong were surviving, even though no one talked about it like that.
Pansy's eyes flickered open, but Draco was not there to see them stare up at him, emitting the same glow that had been there since the start. "Draco…" she murmured, her voice weak, but alive, and filled with shame.
He turned and collapsed next to her, the tears running down his face. "God, Pansy. Pansy, I'm sorry, so sorry, never-" She stopped him with a kiss.
"Darling. Hush, I'm alright. It takes more than one attempt on my life to kill me. It's okay, I'm alright," she straightened, and took him into her arms, "We'll always have each other, Draco. I'll always be there for you."
I love you…
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As depressing as that was, it was something that had been on my computer for a long time. Not one of my better pieces, but whatever. R&R!
-AG