Title: Red Roses & Cobwebs, Chapter 4: The Reasons Why
Pairings: Draco Malfoy/Pansy Parkinson, Draco Malfoy/Morag MacDougal (past), references to Serafina Zabini/Alecto Carrow, Narcissa Black/Lucius Malfoy (past), and eventual Salazar Slytherin/Rowena RavenclawRating: PG
Warnings: Angst
Summary: Draco tries to live up to expectations, but finds himself lacking.
Draco knew without a doubt that he wasn't being a good husband to Pansy, and he tried to regret it, but when he wasn't hurting he was just too numb to feel. He knew she was dissatisfied and frustrated--what woman wouldn't be, to lie next to her husband night after night and have him not bear to touch her? He tried to be a good husband. He said nothing when she spent inane amounts of money on ridiculous things, or added frills to everything.
He didn't go down to the dungeons after waking from nightmares--not after the first time he did so and she became so upset, finding him there. He knew Pansy couldn't understand what he had gone through during the war, not when she had hidden herself away. He gave her everything material that he could, because there was nothing left of him to give. What the war had fractured she couldn't understand and didn't want, and it didn't belong to her anyway.
He couldn't help but get angry with her at moments, though, and the old sadism and cruelty would creep in, especially with the little things that she would do. It seemed to him as if she was trying to erase Morag, or to become her and he didn't know what was worse. Pansy was her mother's daughter: beautiful, vain, and single-minded. Draco knew that she loved him; the him she thought he was, the ideal she had fallen in love with in childhood, but that wasn't him.
Draco had almost struck her the day he found her in his odd haven, Morag's old dressing room, where almost everything was just as she left it--save for the necklace she had been wearing that day, the necklace she wore every day--and a surge of emotion that was and wasn't his welled up in his stomach when Pansy tried to claim it.
And then, in a not-entirely unwelcome way, his past all but knocked him off his feet in the form of Brenna MacDougal-MacFusty, Morag's younger sister. He could tell from the glint in her eyes that Pansy was getting angry, and Draco was glad of it, glad of a show of emotion other than pity or love. He could deal with those no longer. Besides, even though she usually annoyed him, Brenna's visit made him feel better.
"Hello, Other Brother!" Brenna said happily. "Brenna brought Other Brother flowers for the holiday. Other Brother must have flowers for the Solstice, else the gods will be sore, and Other Brother means too much to Brenna and everyone for that."
"Thank you, Brenna." Draco said, smiling a bit bitterly as he released her, calling for Gimme, and instructing the elf that bowed low to Brenna, to put the flowers where they belonged. He remembered all-to-well the holidays that Morag--heathen through and through and proud of it--had celebrated and drawn him into as well.
"Little Bee drew Other Brother a picture for his birthday, but Big Brother would not let her use the owl, so Brenna brought that as well." She handed Draco a square of parchment, and watched in amusement as he looked at it, chuckled dryly, and folded it back up.
"I don't think you've met my wife Pansy, have you?" Draco asked, falling into civility as Pansy began tapping her shoe against the stones in a staccato rhythm that bounced off the walls and ceiling, magnifying itself until it sounded like buzzing bees, forcing away his thoughts of the past. "Pansy, this is Brenna MacDougal-MacFusty. Brenna, my wife Pansy." He hid his smirk at the look on Pansy's face, squished and sour. He even got a sort of malicious amusement out of it when Brenna called her 'Second Wife,' in the way that Brenna always nicknamed people.
He married Pansy for his mother, which was the same reason he reminded himself to get up in the morning, to keep breathing, to eat. He was all Narcissa had now, and he couldn't bear to cause his mother the pain he was feeling, not after how hard she had taken Lucius's death. If it hadn't been for her, he would have just gone to sleep next to his first wife, and not moved.
He drew Brenna into the parlour, and smirked to himself as he asked about how her life was, how things were at the land, even though it hurt him to hear it, it comforted him at the same time. Sometimes, he found, the things that could make you the happiest could make you the saddest as well.
Pansy's face remain squished, deepening to pitted as the drawing came out again, addressed in a scrawl to 'Uncle Dreugan' and a scrawled picture of a blonde stick-person brandishing a sword-stick at a green blob of a dragon, while on a broom.