Paint It Black
Pansy's got a passion for black hair dye. She's got kohl eyeliner that smudges before she even leaves the dorm, and lipsticks with names like Ironic and Clairvoyance. She's got ten clean finger nails and she paints them blood red with long, broad. She knows a spell that'll put bugs under a man's skin, and she's promised to teach it to Draco. And for these reasons Draco loves her, or at least wants her more than he wants other people.
Pansy's got black lace undergarments and a secret flare for sexual sadism.
Ginny bumps into her on the way to lunch one day and says, "I'm so sorry." Pansy just narrows her eyes and takes off in the direction of the Slytherin table. But Ginny remembers, long afterwards, the brush of soft black hair against her arm as the older girl pushed past her. She isn't sure why. It doesn't leave her till she's scrubbed the skin twice the next morning.
Pansy eats only green apples, drinks only white wine, and will not suffer meat to pass her purple lips. She uses words like "deconstructionist" and "histrionic" and "slather." Ginny catches her outside green house number four before lunch smoking Clove cigarettes, and the scent of the smoke saturates her red hair but doesn't seem to stick to Pansy, who smells like soap and harsh perfume the next time Ginny passes close enough to tell. Draco smells like Pansy's skin and cigarettes, and Ginny wonders if he smokes too.
Ginny wants to dye her hair blonde over Christmas break. White blonde and shimmering, like foam on the tips of waves. But the potion is tricky, and the Valerian isn't cut quite right, so what she gets is a strawberry colour that's almost pink. Hermione finds her crying and they buy a box of red Muggle hair dye and do her hair in the girl's lavatory, with Ginny's neck leaning against the cold porcelain of the sink and Hermione's hands careful and timid and so un-Pansy-like against her scalp. Afterwards her hair looks burnt and tortured and drier than usual, but she says thank you to Hermione's sad smile.
Pansy knows Yiddish and she uses Hebrew magic to bring a three foot doll she's made out of mud to life. It stalks around the castle grounds making a low moaning noise on Valentine's day, and Ginny almost trips over it on her way to Herbology. Later Hagrid hunts it down and releases it into the forest, but Ginny feels sad for it at night, and wonder if it misses Pansy, or remembers the way she shaped it before it had life. She wonders if the golem remembers being created, and if Pansy is its mother. She doesn't seem like the mothering type.
Ginny has always wanted kids. She's wanted two girls and a boy, with blonde hair and green eyes and big pale smiles. When she was little they were imaginary company. Now she thinks she maybe doesn't like blondes.
Pansy has a tattoo that's not the dark mark on her ankle. When Draco sees it he laughs, and then stops, and then walks away. And Pansy winks at Ginny as she brushes by with her crosses and circles and her permanent ink painted black on the white of her skin. Pansy has a passion for stilettos and the colour mauve. Ginny has a passion for black.