Disclaimer as usual.
Pansy was in a temple. Tall pillars surrounded her, receding into the distance. Far above her, the stars sparkled against the night sky. She began walking, following the straight path through the hypostyle hall.
The night air was sweet, laced with the fresh scent of water lilies. Pansy's linen tunic brushed lightly against her legs as she walked past the columns, and wound her way through a smaller temple. She emerged onto the terrace overlooking the sacred lake, and descended to the edge. She knelt, studying the water…
"Pansy."
Pansy stood, and turned. The bright colours of the temple walls stood out, but nobody was there. She looked up.
"Pansy, wake up."
The priest walked around the corner, holding out his hand to Pansy. She reached out, and took it…
Pansy opened her eyes. Two grey eyes stared back at her. Pansy rubbed her eyes, and turned over, burying her face in her pillow.
Draco chuckled. "Good morning. You slept in."
Pansy sat up straight, horrified. "What time is it?!"
"Calm down. It's only 8:00. I brought you breakfast." Draco gestured at the plate on Pansy's bedside table, which held a croissant and a cup of some sort of juice.
Pansy slid out of bed. "You know I don't eat breakfast. Turn around." When Draco complied, she stripped off her nightgown and picked up her uniform from where it was lying, neatly folded, on a chair.
"It's only a croissant. Eat it," Draco said, watching the opposite wall.
"I'll eat half." Pansy pulled her skirt on.
"Three-quarters," Draco bargained, lying back on Pansy's bed.
"Fine," Pansy said. She reached for her shirt and tie.
"Nice body," Draco said. He lay on the bed, looking back at her with a mischievous grin on his face. Pansy threw a sock at him. "No peeking," she said, and pulled her shirt on. Draco heaved a disappointed sigh.
Pansy buttoned her shirt up, knotted her tie quickly, and pulled her sweater on over her head. Draco sat up and picked up the juice. Pansy took the cup from his hands and drank it quickly, while turning to the mirror. "I look terrible. Why didn't you wake me sooner?"
Draco shrugged. "You looked like you were dreaming something nice."
About to fix her hair up, Pansy paused, and smiled. She leaned over and kissed Draco's cheek. "Thank you."
Draco grinned, and stole a quarter of her croissant. "You're welcome."
Pansy sat cross-legged on her bed, neatly writing out her Arithmancy assignment, which would later be copied by Draco. Draco would have done it on his own, but he was out with Blaise, learning an assortment of nasty (and illegal) curses.
She tucked her hair behind her ear, and drew a chart. The numbers fit easily inside it, making so much logical sense. Pansy didn't understand those people who didn't understand Arithmancy.
Her door creaked open, and she looked up. "I thought you were with Blaise."
Draco closed the door behind him and sat down on the bed, brushing her papers aside to make room for himself. Pansy carefully placed the sheets in a pile and set down her pen.
"Blaise got summoned," Draco said, lying back. "Ah, well. Doing the Arithmancy homework?"
"Yes, and now that you're not busy, you can do yours." Pansy giggled as Draco groaned. He waved a hand at her. "You enjoy it so much. You do it."
"You'll fail your exam, you know," Pansy warned. She returned to the chart she was working on.
"No I won't. Malfoys never fail, and I'm a Malfoy. Hadn't you noticed?" Draco drawled.
"Of course. Nobody else has hair like that," Pansy reached over and nudged a strand of Draco's hair out of place. He yelped, and reached up to smooth it back.
"You can contribute at least, if you're too lazy to do your own work." Pansy slid over to sit next to Draco. He sighed, nudged her arms out of the way, and rested his head on her stomach. He studied the chart that she held, and pointed to a number in the third column. "That's wrong," he stated.
Pansy looked at it. She looked back at her calculations and sighed. Draco took her quill and scratched it out, writing the correct answer in its place.
"What were you going to be doing with Blaise tonight?" Pansy asked. Draco corrected a few more numbers before answering her. "He just wanted to have me try Imperio on a few larger animals, to make sure I could do it on humans if needed."
Pansy nodded, and stole her quill back. "How much more do you have to learn?"
"I've learned everything I need to know," Draco said. The tone of his voice was casual and relaxed, but his eyes gleamed with pride.
"Really?" Pansy put down her work. "So what next, then?"
"Next, I write to father and tell him that I'm ready." Draco toyed with a piece of parchment.
"Your father won't make you attend too many meetings, right? You have to graduate with good marks," Pansy said.
"Of course," Draco said. He took the quill and parchment, and continued doing the problems.
Blaise wasn't in Transfiguration the next morning.
"He must have had a late night. I didn't hear him come back," Draco said offhandedly as he cornered his rabbit. The animal twitched its ears at him and backed into the wall.
"Good of you to let him sleep in," Pansy remarked. Nearby, Crabbe roared in amusement when Goyle accidentally stepped on his rabbit. Lavender Brown screamed, staring blankly at the dead animal. Parvati Patil fainted dead away.
"Gryffindors," Draco said contemptuously. Pansy looked a bit pale herself, and wasn't feeling wholly well, but she nodded in agreement anyway. She glanced at Tracey, and they both grimaced.
She returned to her own rabbit when Professor McGonagall stormed over to lecture Goyle. "Ooh, aren't you beautiful," Pansy cooed. The rabbit looked up at her with big, trusting eyes, which became the headlights when Pansy turned it into a toy train.
"Excellent work, Parkinson," Professor McGonagall said. She picked up the miniature replica of the Hogwarts Express and showed it to the rest of the class. Hermione, whose own train was much less decorative, looked green with envy.
Poof, and Draco's rabbit was a gleaming black train. Not to be outdone by Pansy's train, he muttered a few words, and the Malfoy crest appeared on the side of the locomotive.
McGonagall reluctantly praised his work, and hurriedly crossed the classroom to help Seamus Finnigan catch his train; it was running amok, the rabbit's head was still in place on the front of the train, and the whistle appeared to really work.
"Does this lesson have any practical applications?" Pansy wondered aloud. Tracey shrugged. "Probably not. Does anything they teach us here have practical applications?"
"Not much," Draco said. He made slight adjustments to his train.
Blaise wasn't present at lunch, nor was he in any of the afternoon classes.
"He's probably just tired," Draco explained. "Been asleep all day, I bet. Lazy git."
Pansy nodded. "I suppose. Look in on him after class, will you?"
Class ended. Draco left to go to the boys' dorms, and Pansy went outside. It was a foggy day, and the mist hovered over the lake, obscuring it from sight. She picked her way down the path, remembering the way Draco had carried her down.
Mist rolled out of the Forbidden Forest, making it look even eerier than usual. Pansy kept her distance from it, following the path around the lake.
She spent an hour there, only surfacing from her thoughts when she began to shiver. The chill in the air, combined with the moisture, was definitely not good for her.
She returned to the Slytherin common room, and began to look around for her year-mates. Tracey lay on her bed in her room, writing in her journal, and Millicent was staring intently at a bug in a jar.
"Has anyone seen Draco?" she asked, directing the question at the whole common room. As per usual Slytherin habits, everyone ignored her, until she took out her wand and threatened to turn them into dung beetles. A fourth-year reluctantly spoke up. "He left to find Professor Snape."
Pansy frowned, thinking. She left the common room without replying to the fourth-year, and wandered down the hall. She paused outside Draco's door, which stood open slightly.
Pansy had never been in Draco's room. Curiously, she opened the door and entered.
It was all dark green. The hangings on the double bed – only one bed? There were usually two – were dark green, the covers were dark green, even the carpet on the stone floor was dark green patterned with lighter green and silver. Draco's uniform sweater lay in a crumpled pile at the foot of his bed.
Across the room from the bed was a closet. Its doors stood open, and Pansy could see the various identical Slytherin robes that were hanging inside it.
Pansy walked further into the room, and raised an eyebrow. A pair of dark green boxers was slung over the back of a chair.
"Like them?"
Startled, Pansy turned around quickly. Draco stood in the doorway, looking amused.
"I'm glad they don't have hearts on them," Pansy said, recovering her poise. Draco laughed, and walked into the room. He shut the door behind him. "I'm a Malfoy. We don't do hearts. How did you get in? The door was locked."
"It was open," Pansy said. She sat down on his bed, bouncing experimentally. "Where were you? Some kid told me that you went to look for Snape."
Draco frowned. He nodded and sat down on the couch – couch? Nobody had couches in their room. Pansy wondered briefly how much pressure Lucius had put on the school to get his son a room like this.
"Blaise wasn't in his room," Draco said. "Snape hasn't seen him either, but he says not to worry for now."
Pansy nodded. She fluffed Draco's pillows (which were also dark green) up, and lay back on them. Draco loosened his tie and tugged it off, tossing it onto the sweater. He stretched out on the couch, cat-like, and relaxed.
"Have you had a private room your whole time here?" Pansy asked. She rolled over onto her stomach and looked at Draco.
"I shared with Zabini in my first year, because I refused to sleep in the same room as the two apes, but Zabini is one of the most irritating people on the planet." He grimaced. "Father got me the private room for second year. I've had it ever since."
"What, the same one every year?" Pansy sat up.
Draco nodded. "It's nice having a stable room. I can leave things here over the summer, and the house elves don't touch them."
"Because of your father?" Pansy asked.
"Very useful having a father on the board of governors." Draco smirked.
"If he gets you privileges like these, I wish my father was on the board." Pansy studied a tapestry across from her, which depicted some awfully gruesome scenes of murder with the Malfoy crest at the bottom left-hand corner. "How did he get on?"
"I assume it's mostly because of his name and his many, very generous contributions to this rat's-nest of a school." Draco snorted. "He would have done better contributing to Durmstrang."
"You don't attend Durmstrang," Pansy pointed out. "Beautiful tapestry, by the way."
"Isn't it? Handed down through generations of Malfoys." Draco rose from the couch and pointed at a rail-thin man brandishing a bloody rapier, who resided at the top, near the center. "That's my great-great-grandfather." He looked at the tapestry for a moment longer, and tapped the area right above the Malfoy crest. "That's where Father's going to have himself put, as soon as he gets around to it. Probably this summer, when I bring the tapestry back home."
Pansy wrinkled her nose. "It's very…bloody."
"We're a bit of a violent family," Draco said smugly. "The tapestry reflects our centuries of oppressing Muggles and upholding Pureblood standards."
"Very noble of you," Pansy said, her tone mock-sincere.
Draco threw a cushion at her. "You mock my family?"
"Did your great-grandfather gel his hair back like you?" Pansy asked innocently. "Or is it a new thing?"
Draco threw his other cushion. "Mocking my family is barely forgivable. Mocking my hair is unforgivable. You die, Parkinson."
"Oh, woe is me," Pansy said. "I am slain in the most brutal manner possible: pillow cushions."
Draco growled and lunged at her. Before he reached her, there was a knock on the door, and they looked up. Without waiting for an answer, Tracey burst in, looking distraught.
Pansy scrambled off the bed and went to her friend. "Tracey? What is it?"
"Blaise! They – his body he –" she broke off, holding a hand over her mouth, her eyes wide.
Pansy looked at Draco, alarmed. Draco shrugged and looked quizzically at Tracey.
"Tracey. Calm down and tell me what's wrong," Pansy said, tugging Tracey over to the couch and pushing her down. Tracey sat. She removed the hand from her mouth and took a few deep breaths. Pansy sat down beside her, and motioned for Draco to sit down or get out or do something that wasn't stand there blankly.
"Tom just went into his room, and –," Tracey said, clasping her hands tightly together.
Thomas Nott was the boy who shared a room with Blaise. He was Blaise's opposite, being very quiet and artistic, but had a really nasty temper. A third-year Hufflepuff had accidentally knocked one of his jars of paint over and Thomas had hexed the kid seven times before being restrained by a prefect.
Pansy glanced at Draco, who sat on his bed, looking impatient. "Yes?" he asked, his tone irritable. "What happened after that?"
Tracey glared at him. "He…oh, Pansy, he found Blaise's body lying on the floor."
"Blaise's body?" Pansy said in disbelief.
"Zabini's dead? When did that happen?" Draco asked.
Tracey glared at him harder. "You insensitive bastard!"
"I'll thank you not to insult my parents," Draco began, before ducking as Tracey threw a novel at his head.
"Have you fetched Professor Snape yet?" Pansy asked. She rose from the couch and began to pace in circles. Tracey nodded. "Tom went to get him right after he found Blaise. I bumped into him in the hall on the way."
Through the door, they could hear the low murmur of people talking. A few words were discernible, mostly things like 'Blaise' and 'body'. Tracey put her face in her hands, then raised her head and looked at the door. "Oh God," she said faintly. "It's like something that happens to Gryffindors. They're the ones who find their students dead, not us."
"Settle down!" Professor Snape's voice boomed from the Common Room. Silence fell. Pansy heard him walking towards the dormitories, past the door, opening the door to the next room.
Another long pause, terrible in its silence.
Snape's voice came again, much louder and harsh. "Fetch the headmaster – someone go get Professor Dumbledore!"
Pansy walked out into the hall. Nobody else was making a move for the door. Most were sitting quietly, looking shocked or scared, some staring at the wall and others staring at the floor. She left, slipping past the statue, and breaking into a run.
Up the stairs, out of the dungeon. Through the halls, not packed with students as they normally were, past a small group of Ravenclaws.
It dawned on Pansy that she had no idea where Professor Dumbledore's office was. She looked around aimlessly.
"What's wrong, Parkinson? Someone chasing you?"
Pansy spun around, glaring at Ron Weasley, who was flanked by his usual crowd. She composed herself. "Weasley, do you know where the Headmaster's office is? Please say you know."
Ron looked confused. He opened his mouth to say something, and closed it.
"Go to the statue of the gargoyle on the second floor," Harry said quietly. "I don't know the password, but it's usually some kind of candy."
Pansy stared at Harry for a moment. "I could kiss you, Potter," she said, "but I won't, because I have better taste than that. Thank you anyway." She brushed past them and ran towards the staircase.
"Better taste? And I suppose she means Malfoy!" Ron sounded indignant.
Pansy fairly flew up the stairs and down the hall, looking for a gargoyle. Students stepped out of her way, looking strangely at her. She ran down corridors, up halls, through passageways, and finally found something that resembled a gargoyle.
"Um, fudge. Chocolate, cockroach clusters, fizzing whizbees, jelly slugs, pepper imps, um," Pansy said quickly. The gargoyle stared impassively back at her. "Bertie Bott's, peppermint creams, just open already!"
The gargoyle sat there.
"Peppermint creams, honey peanuts –" she continued, but stopped when the gargoyle heaved itself to one side. A staircase stood behind it. Pansy immediately ran up to it, and started climbing. She shrieked when the stairs began to move upward, carrying her with them.
The door at the top of the stairs opened, and Dumbledore peered out. "Ah, Ms. Parkinson. So good to see you."
Pansy hung onto the railing, staring at the headmaster. Finally, she managed to nod. "Likewise."
The stairs reached the top, and ceased moving. Pansy stepped off them shakily. Dumbledore beamed at her, holding his office door open. "Come in, come in."
Pansy walked in. "Professor, you have to come to the dungeons quickly," she said. "Blaise – his body appeared and Snape wants you to –"
"Slow down. Calm down. Mint?" Dumbledore held a small bowl of mints out to her.
"Blaise is dead! I'm not going to eat mints!" Pansy cried. She was beginning to feel more than slightly hysterical.
"All right." Dumbledore put the mints down. He left the office and made his way down the stairs with Pansy at his heels.
By the time they reached the dungeons, Pansy was ready to strangle Dumbledore, headmaster or not. He had stopped to chat with a painting on the way, and had been diverted by an offer of Butterbeer. Pansy hurried to the statue, glanced around, and gave the password.
"Hexing Gryffindors," she said quickly. Dumbledore raised an eyebrow as the statue lumbered aside. Pansy ducked through the passage and hurried into the common room.
Graham was standing in the corner, trying to explain the situation to Crabbe and Goyle. A few students looked puzzled. Pansy heard one of them ask quietly, "Who's Blaise?"
Pansy led Dumbledore down the hall. "Severus?" he called, his voice raised.
"In here, Albus," Snape said, looking out of Blaise and Thomas' room. Dumbledore hurried inside and shut the door behind him.
Pansy looked at the closed door, feeling exhausted all of a sudden. She turned to Draco's room and tried the door. It was open, so she slipped in.
Draco was sitting on the bed, resting against his pillows, reading the novel that Tracey had chucked at him. He looked up.
"Hi," Pansy whispered. She shut the door quietly behind her and leaned against it, her eyes closed. Cloth and paper rustled, and a hand pressed against her cheek. She opened her eyes.
"Are you all right?" Draco asked quietly. She nodded mutely, and leaned forward, wrapping her arms around his neck, burying her face in his shoulder. His arms encircled her, holding her tight.
"It's not so much that it was Blaise," Pansy said, her voice muffled by Draco's shirt. "I just don't like death."
Draco rubbed her back soothingly. "I know. Zabini was an idiot anyway."
Pansy smiled a bit. "But he was a nice idiot."
"Bet he couldn't dance," Draco said with a grin. Pansy shook her head and looked up, smiling wanly. "He stepped on my toes."
"I can dance," Draco said.
"I know," Pansy replied. She stood on her tiptoes and pressed her lips against Draco's. He responded, opening his mouth slightly, and moved his hands to her waist.
Pansy pressed closer to him. Closer was better, for if she was close enough, she could keep him from becoming a lifeless body like Blaise. He pressed back, so that she was trapped between his body and the door. The wood was cold against her back.
Draco intensified the kiss, and Pansy melted into it. She ran her fingers through his hair, barely registering the way that he was untucking her shirt, flattening his hands against her stomach.
He pulled back briefly. Pansy opened her eyes, staring into warm grey, and then he was kissing her again, and one hand was undoing the buttons on her shirt.
Just as suddenly, Draco's warmth was gone. Pansy gasped, returned to her senses.
"Draco? Are you in there?" Tracey's voice sounded through the door. She knocked again.
Hastily, Pansy buttoned up her shirt and tucked it in. She stepped aside, allowing Draco to open the door.
"Yes?" he said curtly. Tracey looked at him curiously; his hair was askew, falling into his eyes, and his face was flushed. "Um, Professor Snape says that you need to come to dinner now because Professor Dumbledore has an announcement to make –" She faltered and trailed off as Pansy stepped around the door. "Um. Hi, Pansy."
Pansy attempted a smile.
"I'll just, um, go to dinner now." Tracey pointed down the hall and followed her finger.
Draco groaned as soon as she got out of hearing range. Pansy stepped up to him and began to fix his hair. "You look like a complete mess," she said softly. He caught her around the waist and kissed her, chastely. "And whose fault is that?"
Pansy smiled, and tugged him out of the room, heading towards the Great Hall. Dinner would be magnificent, as usual. Pity that she wasn't planning on eating. As usual.