Draco isn't with the other Slytherins, Pansy notices. He hasn't gone to safety like the others. He's back at the castle, the idiot. Honestly, she makes a point that none of them must die, and he goes off and fights anyway! Of course, he's probably helping the Dark Lord, unlike those other students who think it's clever to help Potter. At least he has a chance of living.
Maybe Draco won't be hurt, she thinks, not if he's on the winning side. But there's a part of Pansy that can't help but worry.
In those hours without him, time seems to be moving especially slowly, like someone had been messing with time-turners. There is near silence as she waits for it to end, interrupted by distant screams and far-off explosions. She can see it in her head as clearly as though she was there. And she doesn't like it, not at all.
Pansy's head keeps painting pictures, all illuminated by the same electric green light, of fire and destruction and death…and Draco.
But she knows she isn't really seeing anything. That Divination rubbish has always been complete fiction. She knows it can't be real, because Draco is okay.
She wants him to be, of course. But let's face it; he's never been the best duelist. Better than those Mudbloods fighting, of course, and definitely better than Longbottom—how he's a pureblood is still a mystery to Pansy—but she's not silly enough to believe in childish dreams like Loony Lovegood does. He could be dead, and she knows perfectly well that there's nothing she can do about it.
She shouldn't care. She's a Slytherin, and it only matters that she's alive. That's how it's supposed to be. But there's this traitorous wish burning inside her that begs her to join the battle now and help him, whatever the consequences may be.
She doesn't.
They discover the outcome from McGonagall—however she managed to live—after what seems like years. By some miracle, the Dark Lord is killed, and Potter lives. She thinks at first that it isn't possible, that this last battle has driven old McGonagall mad. And then, it becomes oh so very unimportant, because if he's dead, Draco must be.
"Can we see them, the others, the ones who fought?" Pansy asks her, without caring about the answer; even if McGonagall says no, she's going to find Draco.
She spots him in the Great Hall almost immediately. While the rest of its occupants are grouped tightly together, the Malfoys seem to be distancing themselves from the others, the mourners, the heroes. It is immediately clear that they don't belong there, with the victorious.
She walks over to them. "You're alive."
"I didn't notice," he says coolly.
"You haven't been sent off to Azkaban either," she continues.
"Your knowledge really does astound me."
Pansy is still looking at him, trying to find something alive in his cold eyes. "So you aren't going to be—sent to Azkaban, I mean. They'll have taken care of everything by now, won't they? You don't have to worry. How'd you get out of it, anyway?"
He mutters something she cannot hear, and Pansy does not pursue the subject further and pretends just for a moment that none of this ever happened, and they were still those fourth-year Slytherins who went to the Yule Ball together. Sure then they were just naïve little fourteen-year-olds, but they were happy. They were content in making fun of Potter, and placing bets on how long his luck would last, and making fun of him some more…
And then the Dark Lord rose, and everything was lovely. Potter and Dumbledore were thought by most to be positively insane. She and Draco were prefects. The Malfoys were still favorites at the Ministry.
Then, gradually, it crumbled. The Spellotape of the word seemed to be losing its ability to work, and everything was falling apart right before their eyes.
But now what? Now what are they to do? They don't belong here, here with the others. They're meant to be isolated from now on, she knows. Slytherins have no place now, not in this world of heroes.
"What are we going to do? They don't want us here," Pansy whispers. It's true, but she knows that someone would lie and deny it.
"Live," says Draco simply. "Try to establish a thoroughly non-Death-Eater image, like usual."
"Oh." She hesitates for a moment, and then adds, "And what're we going to do?"
"You don't want to be associated with the Malfoys. We're the Death Eaters who got off easy. And I don't want to be associated with the girl who tried to give Harry Potter to the Dark Lord."
It is all perfectly factual, of course. Pansy can't blame him. She'd been thinking the same thing… Both of them had to erase anything that might put them in a bad light. Hanging around one another wouldn't help matters. "Well," she says at last, "good luck with that."
"I'll need more than that, you know."
"I'm not stupid. It's just all you're getting from me. Good luck. Take it or leave it."
She walks away from him, not looking back, and it strikes her that this is exactly the goodbye everyone would expect from two Slytherins, cold and businesslike.
Well, thinks Pansy harshly, they are the winners.
She surely isn't one.
AN: Ooh, look, something that was requested in July. Draco/Pansy for Arshmeen. Anyway, I was sort of putting off editing Apparation, because I hate chapter seven and I don't want to reread the horrid thing. So I edited this instead. Can you even tell it was edited? Because my endings are terrible, and this is just rather short in general. Well, I did work hard on it, and I hope that you enjoyed. Thanks for reading.