The spoon rested lightly between her thumb and forefinger, gently spinning as her fingers moved swiftly in their own beautiful rhythm. Every so often the cool surface of the spoon hit the candles glow and a brilliant flash of light radiated off its cold surface. The light reflected itself was as cold and rigid as the twisted spoon and yet it seemed to not only magnify its beauty, but warm it.
Pansy Parkinson was sitting in the great hall, slowly entwining a soup spoon between her long thin fingers and swaying her delicate head to the rhythm of the metallic tunes it played. There were many things you could note about Pansy, whether it be her slim frame or her jagged tousled black hair, but the first thing that I ever noticed about her were her fingers.
They were really quite beautiful, and just like the rest of her. Long, slender and paper white pale. They had a unique way of holding things, never quite a grasp or a clutch. She practically touched the object in hand and yet it seemed to magnetise to her and never let go. She barely ever had contact, as she held things ever so gently, softly. Like she was holding a dragons egg in hand.
There was a certain magic about her, an aura as such. She radiated a power, a charm that one couldn't quite place or understand. It either drew you in or repelled you; it was ever such a beautiful thing.
I suppose in many ways she should have been ugly. You could see the ridges of her spine when she bent over, I used to run my hands down her back and watch my hand vibrate over the bumps. The thin material of her school shirt would cling to her back and stretch flat as she bent, and you'd be able to see that beautiful rollercoaster spinning its way down. Her collarbone also jutted out like a shelf across her torso, when the light caught it deep shadows would appear and you could get lost in the darkness of it all. She was almost too thin, hardly any breasts to show and long tragic arms but she had something. Something that cried 'look at me' and you couldn't help but stare. She was beautiful.
I'd grown up with her, always seen her thin dangly arms thrown high into the air with a twinkle of a laugh hanging in the room. She had been a rather odd looking child, I suppose in retrospect she still is. A smooth rounded face, broken up with high protruding cheekbones and a full set of lips framing her face. I can't tell you how many times I've watched those lips, as it would be countless. They had a very peculiar way of going about things, never quite fully opened yet not slightly agar. Every so often they'd part and a twinkle of a forgotten, irreplaceable melody would flow out, hang in the air for a second, and fade slowly out. Leaving the room emptier than it had been before she had spoken.
Once, deep in a British summer I went into the woods with her. Being still young and innocent the air seemed crisper and more alive than it would ever feel again. We ran through the woods and ignored the deep cuts that came about from running through the thistles, her high chirping laugh matching the birds. I can still vividly remember the dribble of blood that ran down her knees into her white socks. The way it spread and tainted the purity of something so simple. The way that she threw her beautiful dark head back and sucked the cut on her finger. The way her full lips darkened and tinted red. Dark eyes meeting mine, a forest of eyelashes and a bottomless pit stared at me whilst she sat on that log, bleeding beauty.
For me Hogwarts came too soon. I was still a young boy at heart and my scraped knees and ripped trousers proved that. I went though, I had to. Pansy was so excited, she had grown taller still and her body seemed to elongate, her face grew thinner, wiser. She wanted to 'start again' but I couldn't understand why. She said that this would be her chance to leave the past behind and her eyes, her beautiful, tragic eyes sparkled dark mysteries. The day we left my father rested his wide heavy palm onto my small shoulders, and since that moment I've never been able to rid myself of that weight. I knew what he was telling me through that small tiny gesture. I was no longer a boy, not yet a man. In my years at Hogwarts I would be nothing, but trying to achieve the dream of finally growing up and becoming him.
Out of everything at Hogwarts I loved the candles most. The way they radiated themselves around Pansy and made her glow, made her sparkle in ways I hadn't realised were possible. She used to joke about it, 'They only come around me because I'm ever so dark, bad.' She would smile, her pale white teeth glinting from the candles glow. When I first got to Hogwarts I thought they wanted to bring her into the light to show her off, to make her sparkle in the beautiful ways that she could. But as I grew older I realised something completely different. They wanted to save her from the Darkness, because my beautiful pansy didn't belong in the dark. Flowers can only live in the light.
Pansy cried a lot before she came to Hogwarts. The memories have never left me, the way she looked when she cried. When she was younger her eyelashes would matt together and her nose would run ever so slightly. She use to wail back then as well, deep dark moans, pulling at her hair, scratching at her face. I could never stop her from crying, and I think that's how I lost her. Before Hogwarts no one could ever make her stop, make her feel complete in the way that Draco Malfoy could.
We met him together onboard the Hogwarts express, in the queue for chocolate frogs. He came swaggering over, a cocky bastard even back then, trying to push in front of us in the queue. He had wonderful hair even when he was younger, wild and tousled and very very blond. That's the first thing that I noticed about him, the second was the way he was looking at Pansy. It was a strange sort of glance, a mix of awe and contempt that was plastered all over his face. A brittle laugh escaped his thin lips and he gave a nod in our direction, then he turned on his heels and stormed back up the carriage. I still don't know to this day why he laughed, and I don't think Pansy does either.
They grew close, no one could deny it. Years passed lazily as a dreamy cacophony of Harry Potter, pointless lessons and watching Pansy over my textbook. She sat opposite me in most lessons so I could stare greedily into her closed off face, watch the way those lips chirped out small giggles, the way her eyes creased ever so gently at the corners. The way she held her quill ever so softly between her long thin fingers. I watched her change with age, as most girls began to fill out their school blouses she seemed to withdraw into it. Her face never changed though, even if her body did. Not to me. She still had the same beautiful big eyes and dark lashes, high pointed cheekbones and dark full lips. Whenever I saw her lips I saw her sucking the blood off her finger. I saw her lips dark and tainted with blood. I saw my tragic Pansy.
They say you always remember your first kiss, I do. It was 4th year under the willow by the lake, my legs entwined with Celine Milichap from Ravenclaw. I had her head in my hands, her dark hair billowing in the wind and twisting around my fingers. I could taste her chapstick, her full lips working with mine. I supposed that she could be my new Pansy, seeing as the old one no longer loved me like I thought she once had. Celine could even be seen as an upgrade. She was well fed and had curves like no girl I had ever seen before. She was a woman compared to the girl that I had loved. But even then, with my hands sliding up the back of her top I knew it wasn't love. I knew that the only girl that I could ever see myself loving was upstairs in the Slytherin common room resting her beautiful face on Draco Malfoys cold shoulder.
School had ended for another year and people started to celebrate there long deserved summers. Celine had invited me to go yachting, and seeing as my yearly invite to the Parkinson's seemed to have never been delivered, I went with her. I'm not quite sure who used who, maybe we just used each other, but after a week at sea I stepped onto dry land again, in many respects, a man. For some dark twisted reason I felt I had won, I beat Pansy to something, and I no longer belonged to her. But yet when school started again and I heard about how Pansy had spent the summer at Malfoy Manor, a deep gut wrenching hate filled me, and I lost it.
Watching Pansy cry as a child was bad enough, making her cry at 15 years old was horrendous. She seemed to have changed in every way that a person can change, she even cried differently. No longer the child who screamed and tore at herself, no longer wanting to bleed the pain out. Instead she sat back across her bed, slim knees up to her pointed chin, whimpering out small gusts of air, lips and cheeks flushed red, the image of the finger came back to me. Flooding me, draining me. I realised with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that Draco had somehow fixed her, and as I sobbed at her I was breaking her up again. The more I tried to remind her of what we had the more of the old Pansy came back. Her eyes flashing unknown colours, deep moans rising up her throat. She may not have been a Ravenclaw, but she was smart enough to know what 4 words would kill me inside and out, and I still believe that she must have loved me, at least a little bit. Whether she loved the memory of what we were, or the promise of what we could've been, because she refused to say the words that would ultimately break me down.
I told her I loved her, and she listened, tears pouring down her cheeks and in a furious gasp for air her whole body shook, bordering hysterics I suppose. She didn't say it back of course, not like she once might've for she had already given away her love to someone far greater and far darker than me. Over the whole 3 years that had once stretched out as a blank expanse of nothing but a deep hidden love for Pansy suddenly seemed utterly pointless. She didn't love me, or if she did, she didn't have it in her to say it. She never had.
We never mentioned that incident again; she refused to show any recollection of what had happened, or what I had told her. And in that small defiant action Pansy Parkinson stabbed me through the heart with nothing more than a tragic look across a desk, her crazy jagged hair as wild as her emotions.
Celine had joined my potions class in 6th year, so instead I chose to sit next to her, occasionally running my earthy hands up her thighs whilst intently watching the girl on the opposite desk to mine. I'm not entirely sure if Celine loved me. She probably did, and the only thing I can regret from what I took from her is the love that I didn't deserve. She no longer fit my ideal of a replacement, as I wanted even more of an opposite to the girl that had broken me. Whenever I looked at Celine I saw little broken fragments of Pansy. The dark hair, the full set of lips, pointed elfin nose. I couldn't stand it; all I had ever wanted was her to be my own, and the shoddy second best replacement I had chosen brought my fears to everyone's knowledge. I had used her.
When we were five we use to eat berries, dark juicy red ones, me and Pansy. She use to colour in her lips and pretend she was a grown up, strutting about in the forest near the thistles on an imaginary pair of high heels. She'd wobble on her thin ankles, twisting them side-to-side and roaring with laughter at her efforts. 'Oh, do watch me Theo,' she'd twinkle as she threw her dark mane of hair back, 'watch me if you love me...watch me like a daddies friends watch my mummy'. Her doe eyes flashed at the last sentence, a cruel grimace playing at her stained lips. I could never look at her when she pulled that face; she looked painfully beautiful, almost like death. 'Theo! Look at me...please, please love me,' she'd cry, her face twisted in agony. I could never think of a reply quick enough, could never wrap my small chubby arms around her and tell her that I would always be here for her. I suppose that's what Draco gave her, a chance to feel love because no one else could.
Pansy started to fall apart halfway through 6th year, I knew straight away. I knew pansy better than I knew myself. She started to shrink into herself, ever so thin, so brittle. The candles that congregated around her began to dim and her beautiful fingers curled in on themselves, holding objects so faintly that they simply fell out of her hands. Strangely enough so did Draco. He had always been scrawny, all collarbones and empty cheeks, small shoulders and a mass of wild blond hair, but even he looked thinner. His pale eyes darkened, and rings began to appear underneath them, his chapped lips brushed along Pansys thin cheeks, their thin fingers intertwined. Empty plates and full goblets of firewhisky is all they consumed. Apart from each other that is. I watched in awe as they began to disappear into each other, and eventually Draco did disappear all together, and even if Pansy hadn't physically gone...she might as well have.
None of our circle returned for seventh year, and if they did, it was only for a couple of months at a time. Pansy returned back home, a thin suitcase full of tiny bits of material that could only fit her slim frame slipped into the palm of her hand, only ever so slightly touching her fingers. She walked like bird, bandy legged and dainty. She was so use to flying that when she began to walk; it came as something new to her. Her hair had grown, I noted to myself, as had her legs. If there was any way to break Pansy it would be as simple as blowing on her. She looked so fragile that she might just snap. And for the first time in my life I acknowledged the fact that she needed Draco, she needed him so badly, she needed him like she needed food and water. She was him and he was her.
As she stumbled forward down the station she lost her footing, tripping ever so slightly but it was enough to make me call out her name in fear of her getting hurt. With a slender movement of her neck she turned to face me, eyes damp and lips so chapped they bled. i saw nothing but my Pansy in there, my dear tragic little Pansy, the girl who use to smear berry juice on her lips and suck the blood out of her cuts, the girl whose beautiful eyes made me lose myself in a deep and irrevocable love. A small twinkle of a smile escaped her tainted lips, and I swear to Merlin, I've never loved anyone as much.