Title: Say Goodbye To Hollywood
Author: Dala
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter is mentioned, platonic (sort of) Draco Malfoy/Pansy Parkinson
Archive: Ask me if you'd like it
Feedback: Pretty pretty please. I'm like Pansy in this fic. I'm needy. Looooove me.
Disclaimer: The characters and situations of this fanfic belong to J.K. Rowling and Co, I'm making no profits from this, etc. Also the title is from the Billy Joel song, which has nothing to do with this story except that I was listening to Billy while writing and got stuck for a title.
Warning: contains discussion of slash. Male/male relationship. Deal.
Additional Author's Note: This didn't start out angsty, but it definitely ended up there. I have no idea where this particular Pansy came from; I prefer to write her as a total bitch. Oh well, on with the fic!
~~~~~~~~
Pansy Parkinson had known that Draco Malfoy was in her destiny from the age of seven. He had come to her seventh birthday party and within fifteen minutes gotten her alone in a corner of the garden, telling her proudly that *he* had a penis, what did she have under her skirt? She had smacked him and run off to eat cake, but she never forgot the definitive little shock she'd felt at the touch of his hand, like a lock clicking into place.
Nearly thirteen years later, she stood in the bathroom of their honeymoon suite, staring at her reflection in the mirror and wondering if fate had a sense of humor.
It wasn't that she didn't *want* to marry Draco -- the whole affair had just happened so suddenly that she had little time to form any thoughts at all on the subject. Frankly, she was surprised that he had gone along with it. He'd never let anyone boss him around in school . . . but then again his father, like Pansy's own, was a different story altogether.
Pansy sighed and began to tug her blond hair out of its updo. It was a fairly nice color, really, but rather straight and thin. Plain, she thought, like her face and her body. Standing next to Draco for their wedding pictures, trying a fake a glow, she'd felt like an ugly brown moth.
She rubbed her nose and fumbled in her valise for the tiny vial of amber-colored liquid she'd received from her mother the night before.
I don't like the haste of these operations, Susanna Parkinson had said, and I don't trust that Malfoy boy's vows. He's from a wonderful name, Pansy, but just to be sure . . . And then the teardrop-shaped glass container had been pressed into her palm. When Pansy asked what it was for, her mother just smiled and said to put it in his drink, and she should only need it that once.
Pansy peered down at it, wondering if it was a potion for securing his fidelity or her own fertility. Either option was likely. Her father had made it clear that she'd better provide the Malfoy family with a male heir as quickly as possible. Divorce was uncommon among respectable wizarding families, but it happened.
It was almost funny, she thought, surveying herself in her lacy black negligee. All those years at Hogwarts she'd spent trying to attract his attention, and now he was waiting outside the door. For her. For the rest of their lives.
Pansy gave herself a little shake. She emptied the contents of the vial into Draco's wineglass before she could change her mind. The tray thus prepared, she reached down between her legs for a few quick, rough strokes. Not too much, not too little: just enough. She didn't want him to think her frigid or a whore.
Then she smoothed the satiny fabric down over her stomach, lifted the tray with its decanter and glasses, and opened the bathroom drawer.
Draco was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling. His shoes and belt were off and his shirt partially unbuttoned, but otherwise he was still clothed.
Pansy swallowed a flutter of fear. She was no blushing virgin, but she hadn't seen her new husband in two years and she barely knew him.
Years of practice had made her movements as silent and unobtrusive as a cat's, so she cleared her throat delicately to alert him to her presence.
Draco looked over at her and smiled, not unkindly. She realized that it was the most open smile he'd given all day. He sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, and patted the space beside him.
Trying not to let him see her nerves, she placed the tray on the bedside table and sat where he indicated, giving him the glass with the potion. He looked down at it curiously, then at the empty glass on the tray.
"Don't you want any?"
She shook her head silently, her hair falling down on either side of her face. He seemed confused by her behavior. He was not the only one who'd changed since their schooldays together.
He sighed and she could hear the quiet thunk of crystal on wood. Shit. He'd refused the glass. He knew.
Pansy started when his hand came into her field of vision. Gentle but firm, he raised her chin to make her look at him. His beautiful gray eyes were resolute.
"Listen," he said softly, "there are certain things that have to be said about this marriage."
She couldn't nod because he was still holding her face, but Pansy lifted an eyebrow in question.
"First," Draco continued, "I'm not going to drink that wine. I know there's something in it. Probably something to make sure I get you pregnant." She felt the color rush to her cheeks and looked away. He let go of her chin.
"I don't blame you, Pansy. Your mother is much like mine." After a pause, he added, "And so's your father."
She looked at him sharply. There was compassion in his eyes now, and he said, "I can imagine that growing up in your household was very similar to growing up in mine. Which is why I want you to know that I won't ever hurt you, or make you do anything you don't want to do." He breathed out quickly, as though this promise was a difficult one to make. And Pansy knew it was, knew that he had been raised in the same patriarchal tradition as she had.
Tears came to her eyes and she brushed them away, alarmed to find her hand shaking. Draco bit his lip and said haltingly, "Please don't cry, Pansy, I didn't mean to upset you--"
She shook her head with a little gasping laugh. "It's not that," she whispered. "Only that you're -- you're being so nice." If tonight was any indication, maybe marriage would be better than she'd thought. She had expected him to be more like he was in his school days, arrogant and domineering. More like his father. This man was quieter and more thoughtful than the self-proclaimed lord of Slytherin House she had known as a child.
But his face darkened. "I'm not as nice as you'd like to think," he said.
Pansy raised her head. "What do you mean?"
Clearly emboldened by the fact that she was now speaking to him, Draco said, "There are other things that we must agree upon in order to make this work." He paused and his eyes went a little unfocused, as though he was choosing his next words very carefully.
"You don't need to be loyal to me," he said in a sudden rush, ducking his head and looking at her with reddened cheeks, "because I'm not going to be loyal to you."
Pansy blinked and repeated, more slowly this time, "What do you mean?"
Draco drew in a deep breath. "This isn't easy to say," he warned her. "If the wrong people knew, I'd probably be killed on the spot."
The ghost of a smile turned the corners of Pansy's mouth up. "I can't imagine that I'm the 'wrong people'."
He smiled in return, and Pansy felt a tight hand grip her stomach. "I truly hope you're not, Pansy.
"Anyway, what I mean to say was . . . I'm in love with someone else. With," he added with a touch of bitterness, "another man."
She could feel his eyes on her, waiting for her reaction, but Pansy looked at the wall. A man. Her husband was in love with another man. Who?
A part of her said: does it really matter who?
Yes. It did matter who. It mattered who so much that she couldn't breathe.
Her instinct and her memories took a leap before her mind could catch up. "Harry Potter," she said with utter conviction.
Draco sat up straight as though someone had just touched him with a hot iron. "Yes," he whispered, his eyes astonished. "How -- how did you know?"
Pansy stroked the bedspread with one hand and said, "I don't see how it could be anyone else." She remembered how he fairly burned with Harry Potter at Hogwarts. Fire had lit his eyes whenever Potter, or the mere thought of Potter, was near. It been hatred that ate at his soul in those days . . . or so everyone, including Potter and Draco himself, had thought. Maybe it was love all along.
Draco reached out to clasp her hands. "I'm sorry if I've hurt you, Pansy, but I didn't want -- you should know the reason why I'm not going to sleep with you, and that it has nothing to do with *you* personally."
She understood that, but it did not protect her from the stab of pain which made her squeeze his hands briefly before letting go.
He watched her anxiously. "I know this is strange. Is it strange?"
"No," Pansy heard herself say. "I guess . . ." Her voice threatened to waver, but she continued. "I mean, you've always dressed so well . . ."
Draco laughed and the sound made her feel like dropping to her knees before him.
What is this? she wondered dizzily.
He took her hand and held it like casually, like a friend. "There's more. I'm . . . well, there are things that I'm going to do, things I won't be able to tell you about."
"You're Dumbledore's spy," she said, taking another mental leap from Potter's lover to Potter's accomplice in the fight against the Dark Lord.
"Yes," Draco confirmed quietly with a nod. He picked up the empty glass and idly twirled it in his fingers. Candlelight made it throw sparks and colors around the darkened room. "I'm not quite sure how that happened," he added with a wry smile. "I'm going to need your help."
And astonishingly, it was Draco who slid off the bed to kneel on the floor, grasping her hand and looking her at with something close to pleading.
"I can't do this alone, Pansy. I could have lied to you, I could put you under all sorts of spells so you'd never suspect, but I . . . that isn't the kind of person I am. There will be enough lies as it is."
Yes, Pansy thought, staring into his face, there will be. She had never felt pulled to take one side or the other, claim good or evil as her own agenda. Whatever happened would happen, in Pansy's opinion, whether or not she was involved. But now her position would once again be defined by the man in her life.
Realizing that he was waiting for an answer, she nodded mutely. Draco grinned at her and stood up. "Good," he said. He drew her up beside him and asked, with his eyebrows raised, "Is that what you're going to sleep in?"
Pansy hadn't planned to sleep in anything at all, of course. She went to her suitcase and pulled out a long, plain cotton nightshirt. Turning her back to Draco, she began to change. Over her shoulder, she could hear him doing the same.
When she turned around Draco was already done, snuggled under the down covers. He yawned and said, "Coming to bed?"
She hesitated, biting her bottom lip. "I could sleep on the sofa if you'd prefer--"
Draco chuckled. "Don't even think of it, Pansy. Just because we're not having sex doesn't mean we can't sleep in the same bed. In fact," he said as she climbed in beside him, "I miss sharing a bed with someone." A look of deep pain crossed his features and she reached up to touch his face.
"You miss him?" Pansy whispered, hating herself for asking but wanting to comfort him.
Nodding, Draco pulled her into his arms and settled his chin on the top of her head. "Terribly." Pansy hugged him tight and shivered. Her body was like ice, though she didn't know why; there was a fire burning in the room and Draco didn't seem cold.
"My father -- he'll be upset when there are no children," she said sleepily.
Draco shrugged nonchalantly. "I'll make something up. You don't have to worry about him anymore."
And with that last statement, Pansy knew that she was cold because her heart was breaking. She was completely, irrevocably, earth-shatteringly in love with her new husband, and he would never be capable of loving her in return. The agony of it took her breath away.
She lay in Draco's platonic embrace and ruminated on how her pain would never go away. She'd do whatever he asked of her: take tea with the other Death Eater wives so she could gain information he wasn't privy to, betray the ones who had given her life, lie about so many things for every single day of what might turn out to be a very short life. And then there was Potter. She would grow to both love and hate the sight of him. Love him because Draco loved him and he made Draco happy, and simply because he was an easy man to love; hate him also because Draco loved him and he made Draco happy when she could not. If Potter ever suspected her true feelings, he would never tell Draco, because she herself would never tell him. *Ever*. It would only cause him pain, and living without his true beloved would give him enough of that. She'd help them plan clandestine meetings, she'd watch them kiss, she'd console her husband when Potter had to leave in the morning. And she would do it with a smile, and if they lived, if they won . . . surely then Draco would want to be free to live out the rest of his life with the man he loved. If that day ever came, Pansy knew she would accept it, and step into the shadows.
She also knew that she would never take another lover, neither during her marriage nor after its possible dissolution.
Draco drifted into sleep, his breathing deep and even. Pansy stroked pale hair away from his brow, her suffering pressing upon her like the weight of a thousand stones, and wished quietly, simultaneously, for his happiness and her own death.
~~~~~~~~
Author: Dala
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter is mentioned, platonic (sort of) Draco Malfoy/Pansy Parkinson
Archive: Ask me if you'd like it
Feedback: Pretty pretty please. I'm like Pansy in this fic. I'm needy. Looooove me.
Disclaimer: The characters and situations of this fanfic belong to J.K. Rowling and Co, I'm making no profits from this, etc. Also the title is from the Billy Joel song, which has nothing to do with this story except that I was listening to Billy while writing and got stuck for a title.
Warning: contains discussion of slash. Male/male relationship. Deal.
Additional Author's Note: This didn't start out angsty, but it definitely ended up there. I have no idea where this particular Pansy came from; I prefer to write her as a total bitch. Oh well, on with the fic!
~~~~~~~~
Pansy Parkinson had known that Draco Malfoy was in her destiny from the age of seven. He had come to her seventh birthday party and within fifteen minutes gotten her alone in a corner of the garden, telling her proudly that *he* had a penis, what did she have under her skirt? She had smacked him and run off to eat cake, but she never forgot the definitive little shock she'd felt at the touch of his hand, like a lock clicking into place.
Nearly thirteen years later, she stood in the bathroom of their honeymoon suite, staring at her reflection in the mirror and wondering if fate had a sense of humor.
It wasn't that she didn't *want* to marry Draco -- the whole affair had just happened so suddenly that she had little time to form any thoughts at all on the subject. Frankly, she was surprised that he had gone along with it. He'd never let anyone boss him around in school . . . but then again his father, like Pansy's own, was a different story altogether.
Pansy sighed and began to tug her blond hair out of its updo. It was a fairly nice color, really, but rather straight and thin. Plain, she thought, like her face and her body. Standing next to Draco for their wedding pictures, trying a fake a glow, she'd felt like an ugly brown moth.
She rubbed her nose and fumbled in her valise for the tiny vial of amber-colored liquid she'd received from her mother the night before.
I don't like the haste of these operations, Susanna Parkinson had said, and I don't trust that Malfoy boy's vows. He's from a wonderful name, Pansy, but just to be sure . . . And then the teardrop-shaped glass container had been pressed into her palm. When Pansy asked what it was for, her mother just smiled and said to put it in his drink, and she should only need it that once.
Pansy peered down at it, wondering if it was a potion for securing his fidelity or her own fertility. Either option was likely. Her father had made it clear that she'd better provide the Malfoy family with a male heir as quickly as possible. Divorce was uncommon among respectable wizarding families, but it happened.
It was almost funny, she thought, surveying herself in her lacy black negligee. All those years at Hogwarts she'd spent trying to attract his attention, and now he was waiting outside the door. For her. For the rest of their lives.
Pansy gave herself a little shake. She emptied the contents of the vial into Draco's wineglass before she could change her mind. The tray thus prepared, she reached down between her legs for a few quick, rough strokes. Not too much, not too little: just enough. She didn't want him to think her frigid or a whore.
Then she smoothed the satiny fabric down over her stomach, lifted the tray with its decanter and glasses, and opened the bathroom drawer.
Draco was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling. His shoes and belt were off and his shirt partially unbuttoned, but otherwise he was still clothed.
Pansy swallowed a flutter of fear. She was no blushing virgin, but she hadn't seen her new husband in two years and she barely knew him.
Years of practice had made her movements as silent and unobtrusive as a cat's, so she cleared her throat delicately to alert him to her presence.
Draco looked over at her and smiled, not unkindly. She realized that it was the most open smile he'd given all day. He sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, and patted the space beside him.
Trying not to let him see her nerves, she placed the tray on the bedside table and sat where he indicated, giving him the glass with the potion. He looked down at it curiously, then at the empty glass on the tray.
"Don't you want any?"
She shook her head silently, her hair falling down on either side of her face. He seemed confused by her behavior. He was not the only one who'd changed since their schooldays together.
He sighed and she could hear the quiet thunk of crystal on wood. Shit. He'd refused the glass. He knew.
Pansy started when his hand came into her field of vision. Gentle but firm, he raised her chin to make her look at him. His beautiful gray eyes were resolute.
"Listen," he said softly, "there are certain things that have to be said about this marriage."
She couldn't nod because he was still holding her face, but Pansy lifted an eyebrow in question.
"First," Draco continued, "I'm not going to drink that wine. I know there's something in it. Probably something to make sure I get you pregnant." She felt the color rush to her cheeks and looked away. He let go of her chin.
"I don't blame you, Pansy. Your mother is much like mine." After a pause, he added, "And so's your father."
She looked at him sharply. There was compassion in his eyes now, and he said, "I can imagine that growing up in your household was very similar to growing up in mine. Which is why I want you to know that I won't ever hurt you, or make you do anything you don't want to do." He breathed out quickly, as though this promise was a difficult one to make. And Pansy knew it was, knew that he had been raised in the same patriarchal tradition as she had.
Tears came to her eyes and she brushed them away, alarmed to find her hand shaking. Draco bit his lip and said haltingly, "Please don't cry, Pansy, I didn't mean to upset you--"
She shook her head with a little gasping laugh. "It's not that," she whispered. "Only that you're -- you're being so nice." If tonight was any indication, maybe marriage would be better than she'd thought. She had expected him to be more like he was in his school days, arrogant and domineering. More like his father. This man was quieter and more thoughtful than the self-proclaimed lord of Slytherin House she had known as a child.
But his face darkened. "I'm not as nice as you'd like to think," he said.
Pansy raised her head. "What do you mean?"
Clearly emboldened by the fact that she was now speaking to him, Draco said, "There are other things that we must agree upon in order to make this work." He paused and his eyes went a little unfocused, as though he was choosing his next words very carefully.
"You don't need to be loyal to me," he said in a sudden rush, ducking his head and looking at her with reddened cheeks, "because I'm not going to be loyal to you."
Pansy blinked and repeated, more slowly this time, "What do you mean?"
Draco drew in a deep breath. "This isn't easy to say," he warned her. "If the wrong people knew, I'd probably be killed on the spot."
The ghost of a smile turned the corners of Pansy's mouth up. "I can't imagine that I'm the 'wrong people'."
He smiled in return, and Pansy felt a tight hand grip her stomach. "I truly hope you're not, Pansy.
"Anyway, what I mean to say was . . . I'm in love with someone else. With," he added with a touch of bitterness, "another man."
She could feel his eyes on her, waiting for her reaction, but Pansy looked at the wall. A man. Her husband was in love with another man. Who?
A part of her said: does it really matter who?
Yes. It did matter who. It mattered who so much that she couldn't breathe.
Her instinct and her memories took a leap before her mind could catch up. "Harry Potter," she said with utter conviction.
Draco sat up straight as though someone had just touched him with a hot iron. "Yes," he whispered, his eyes astonished. "How -- how did you know?"
Pansy stroked the bedspread with one hand and said, "I don't see how it could be anyone else." She remembered how he fairly burned with Harry Potter at Hogwarts. Fire had lit his eyes whenever Potter, or the mere thought of Potter, was near. It been hatred that ate at his soul in those days . . . or so everyone, including Potter and Draco himself, had thought. Maybe it was love all along.
Draco reached out to clasp her hands. "I'm sorry if I've hurt you, Pansy, but I didn't want -- you should know the reason why I'm not going to sleep with you, and that it has nothing to do with *you* personally."
She understood that, but it did not protect her from the stab of pain which made her squeeze his hands briefly before letting go.
He watched her anxiously. "I know this is strange. Is it strange?"
"No," Pansy heard herself say. "I guess . . ." Her voice threatened to waver, but she continued. "I mean, you've always dressed so well . . ."
Draco laughed and the sound made her feel like dropping to her knees before him.
What is this? she wondered dizzily.
He took her hand and held it like casually, like a friend. "There's more. I'm . . . well, there are things that I'm going to do, things I won't be able to tell you about."
"You're Dumbledore's spy," she said, taking another mental leap from Potter's lover to Potter's accomplice in the fight against the Dark Lord.
"Yes," Draco confirmed quietly with a nod. He picked up the empty glass and idly twirled it in his fingers. Candlelight made it throw sparks and colors around the darkened room. "I'm not quite sure how that happened," he added with a wry smile. "I'm going to need your help."
And astonishingly, it was Draco who slid off the bed to kneel on the floor, grasping her hand and looking her at with something close to pleading.
"I can't do this alone, Pansy. I could have lied to you, I could put you under all sorts of spells so you'd never suspect, but I . . . that isn't the kind of person I am. There will be enough lies as it is."
Yes, Pansy thought, staring into his face, there will be. She had never felt pulled to take one side or the other, claim good or evil as her own agenda. Whatever happened would happen, in Pansy's opinion, whether or not she was involved. But now her position would once again be defined by the man in her life.
Realizing that he was waiting for an answer, she nodded mutely. Draco grinned at her and stood up. "Good," he said. He drew her up beside him and asked, with his eyebrows raised, "Is that what you're going to sleep in?"
Pansy hadn't planned to sleep in anything at all, of course. She went to her suitcase and pulled out a long, plain cotton nightshirt. Turning her back to Draco, she began to change. Over her shoulder, she could hear him doing the same.
When she turned around Draco was already done, snuggled under the down covers. He yawned and said, "Coming to bed?"
She hesitated, biting her bottom lip. "I could sleep on the sofa if you'd prefer--"
Draco chuckled. "Don't even think of it, Pansy. Just because we're not having sex doesn't mean we can't sleep in the same bed. In fact," he said as she climbed in beside him, "I miss sharing a bed with someone." A look of deep pain crossed his features and she reached up to touch his face.
"You miss him?" Pansy whispered, hating herself for asking but wanting to comfort him.
Nodding, Draco pulled her into his arms and settled his chin on the top of her head. "Terribly." Pansy hugged him tight and shivered. Her body was like ice, though she didn't know why; there was a fire burning in the room and Draco didn't seem cold.
"My father -- he'll be upset when there are no children," she said sleepily.
Draco shrugged nonchalantly. "I'll make something up. You don't have to worry about him anymore."
And with that last statement, Pansy knew that she was cold because her heart was breaking. She was completely, irrevocably, earth-shatteringly in love with her new husband, and he would never be capable of loving her in return. The agony of it took her breath away.
She lay in Draco's platonic embrace and ruminated on how her pain would never go away. She'd do whatever he asked of her: take tea with the other Death Eater wives so she could gain information he wasn't privy to, betray the ones who had given her life, lie about so many things for every single day of what might turn out to be a very short life. And then there was Potter. She would grow to both love and hate the sight of him. Love him because Draco loved him and he made Draco happy, and simply because he was an easy man to love; hate him also because Draco loved him and he made Draco happy when she could not. If Potter ever suspected her true feelings, he would never tell Draco, because she herself would never tell him. *Ever*. It would only cause him pain, and living without his true beloved would give him enough of that. She'd help them plan clandestine meetings, she'd watch them kiss, she'd console her husband when Potter had to leave in the morning. And she would do it with a smile, and if they lived, if they won . . . surely then Draco would want to be free to live out the rest of his life with the man he loved. If that day ever came, Pansy knew she would accept it, and step into the shadows.
She also knew that she would never take another lover, neither during her marriage nor after its possible dissolution.
Draco drifted into sleep, his breathing deep and even. Pansy stroked pale hair away from his brow, her suffering pressing upon her like the weight of a thousand stones, and wished quietly, simultaneously, for his happiness and her own death.
~~~~~~~~