Author's Note: Written for 24 Hour Pairing Challenge. Pairing: Padma/Pansy.
"I treated you like you were the last molecule of oxygen inside of a gas chamber."
-Rudy Francisco
Forbidden. The word hangs like a sweet, poisonous miasma over everything you do, everything you say. Even as your mouth brushes hers, your fingers dig into the hollows of her shoulder blades, and your breath loses itself in the candy-soft recesses of her lips.
Her tie drapes across your wrist, and the blue and bronze stripes make you cringe. You're a Slytherin. Like goes with like, but oh, how can you stop yourself? She is brilliant, a shining star, and her eyes capture yours across the Great Hall every night, until you can't help but turn away, pressing your thighs together to stop that incessant ache.
"Padma," you whisper into the dark, wisteria-scented cloud of her hair, and her lips up-turn in a smile that resembles freedom. You know you can't-the silver-and-green chains that bind you are too tight-but for a moment, you wish and for a moment, you dream.
It starts by chance in an empty classroom. You are slumped against the far wall, idly pretending to do homework, but in reality, trying to catch a break from blasted Malfoy, who likes to preen and likes to smirk and is far too tiresome to be a proper Slytherin, no matter how he prattles of his father.
Then the doorknob turns and your mask of disdain settles, and it's Padma standing there, mouth slack in surprise that she is not alone.
You tell her to get out, but the words ring hollow. You've had your eyes on Padma for quite a while, though you've never admitted it even to yourself, and the vision of her standing in the doorway, one foot propped against the other, her hips slanted and her robes half-undone, makes your mouth dry.
She sits at a table next to you. If you want, you can reach out and touch her, brush your fingers along her leg and down to the edge of her school boot. You can't quite dare, though, and your hand folds, useless, at your side.
"Could you help me with this bit of Arithmancy?" she asks, handing you a sheaf of parchment, and before you quite realise what you're doing, you're explaining, talking in the huskiest voice you can manage about this equation and that ancient rune, and when she leaves for dinner, you know you're going to meet her again.
It starts slowly. Painfully slowly, really. Chatting in low tones, shoulders touching as you perch on the same window sill or share the same table. Your eyes linger a little too long on the depths of her cleavage. When you correct her grip on her quill, your touch is a caress, and your cheeks stain red. You know better than to show emotion in public, but this isn't public, this is Padma, and when your lips brush against hers, oh so hesitantly, she doesn't pull away.
What are you doing? But you push the thoughts away. They don't matter. You don't think of what Malfoy would say, or what Professor Snape would think. You don't think of your parents, or even the Dark Lord (and how foolish is that, oh Pansy, what are you doing, what are you thinking). The Dark Lord is gone, anyway, you sometimes think, in the early hours of the night, and though your body flushes with cold at the traitorous thought, you don't care. You can't.
Blue and bronze, silver and green, and when your fingers interlace with hers, it's as natural as breathing. You tiptoe behind everyone else's backs, stealing a kiss in a deserted hallway, a caress in an abandoned classroom. You become more adept at silencing and locking spells than you ever thought possible.
The Tournament makes this easier and harder by turns, you think, running down yet another corridor, hand-in-hand with Padma, breathless from exertion and the restless edge of laughter. So many strangers, so many foreigners, they don't bat an eyelash at you and Padma, ties tucked into your robes and cloaks draped in suffocating folds.
"I love you," Padma whispers, her breath stirring the hairs at the back of your neck, but you can't answer her back. The words pile up in your throat, choking you, suffocating you.
"I understand," she whispers, and you hate yourself. She is more to you than breathing, she means more to you than family ties and the green-and-silver snakes pinned to your cloaks, why can't you say it.
She cheers on Cedric from the other side of the stands, and you do as well, in the stoic-faced Slytherin way, waving a pennant that flashes his name in glittering colours and thinking of what it might be like to be cozied up next to her, sharing her warmth and stealing kisses in between gleeful speculation. Then Malfoy elbows you, and without thinking, you hex him off his seat, the flash of your wand so brief it might be a mirage. Everyone stares at you, but you refuse to show a thing. It's nothing, that's all, and anyone would have done it, you think, but your back won't stop prickling, and soon after, you start reading up on protection and defense spells.
Malfoy watches you. Everyone watches you. But you can't stop, you can't quit the intoxicating pull of her lips, the raven-soft brush of her hair against your throat. She is everything, she is yours, and when the end of the year comes, and you discover the truth, you discover what's behind the gleaming Triwizard cup, you feel like everything's smashed to pieces around you.
How could you forget? She is Light and you are Dark, and you can never, ever escape. The Mark pulls you as inexorably as any Death Eater, and you can't say I want to get off, I want no part. There is no balance, not for you.
"I can't," you say to her, your eyes haunted, as you pace the cramped confines of a minor tower. The air is so cold up here, and you can't stop shivering. "I can't do this, I can't."
"I love you," Padma replies, and holds you, her warmth chasing out the cold, the darkness that flutters in shredded silver-and-green everywhere you go. "I'm not leaving you."
"I'm dangerous," you whisper, and tears spill down your face. Your cheeks are so raw, they sting, but you are helpless to stop them.
"No," Padma contradicts softly.
"I love you," you finally croak out, and maybe for a moment, that can be enough.