Whats Eating You, Sly?
Chapter One
By: Emma
Disclaimer: Nothing but "Sly" is mine.
Summary: it ran away. If you find it, call me at 1-800-isuckatsummaries
Reviews: Please! I need at least five so that I may continue. It is positive re-enforcement, otherwise known as motivation, inspiration and all of those other big, beautiful words that make you want to barf all over yourself because you just want to get to the damn story.
"Upon the corner of the moon there hangs a vaporous drop profound; I'll catch it here it come to ground, and that distilled by magic sleights shall raise such artificial sprites as by the strength of their illusion shall draw him on to his confusion...he shall spurn fate, scorn death and bear his hopes above wisdom, grace and fear! And you all know security...is mortals' chiefest enemy."
Draco Malfoy didn't even blink.
"MacBeth."
Pansy Parkinson grinned and flopped down onto the bed next to him, which was a velvet silver-green, "I'm never going to win! How do you know all of this stuff? That speech could have been from any play!"
Draco shrugged, in that cool, offhand manner of his, "I used the process of elimination, my dearest. Simple as that. I merely remember that Hecate had uttered that speech, and using my brilliant smarts, deducted that the play must be MacBeth, for no other of Shakespeare's plays are host to the actual Goddess of Witchcraft."
"Smartass." Pansy stuck out her tongue at her best friend and he smirked at her. However, it wasn't the regular Draco-Malfoy Trademark smirk. It was one that Pansy, over the summer, had come to associate with a close friendship that she had come to share with the silver-eyed masterpiece of a teenaged boy.
She and Draco had basically grown up together, parents both supporters of the Dark Lord, but they had never taken the time to -know- one another.
When she'd first come to Hogwarts, she'd begun to notice Draco in a boy-meets-girl kind of way. She was also the first person to admit that she'd had a crush on him for five years strictly because of his icy eyes, fair hair and body carved out of marble. But, in fact, once Pansy had actually talked to him - which began at the end of fifth year - her lust had been buried under a blanket of awe and admiration. Draco was not only a sight easy on the eyes, but he had a personality nearly identical to her own...if he wasn't a -slight- bit cockier.
At the start of the summer, her parents had moved to the Malfoy Manor, as well as many other Death Eater families. The place, after all, was -huge- and it had become the central meeting place for the Dark Lord's supporters over the past fourteen or fifteen years.
Over the summer, Pansy and Draco had been forced to hang out together. The only other kids their age hanging about the Manor were Crabbe and Goyle, and seeing as though they were about as vivacious as lamp posts, Pansy and Draco had often just gone off on their own. Pansy was surprised when Draco admitted to her that even though he'd lived at his Manor his entire life, he still didn't know most of the land off by heart ("Except from a bird's eye view," he'd bragged.)
One day, they were sitting out by the lake -which, miraculously, Draco actually had known about before Pansy's arrival - and he, out of nowhere, began to recite poetry. Pansy couldn't remember which poem it had been, but she had recognized the words and, halfways between astonishment and laughter, she had fallen off of the log they'd been seated on. Draco hadn't stopped speaking the verses, he only leaned over and offered her his hand. Once she was seated, and he was finished, he'd looked her way. She could see a glimmer of a twitch at the corners of his mouth.
"Don't laugh at me." she'd said, embarrassed.
"Why did you fall off of the log?" he asked bluntly, and she burst into laughter.
"I..."
"What?"
"I was surprised, thats all. You were reciting poetry. The Ice King, reciting poetry about a warm summer's day, near a lake. It was ironic and... odd, and I recognized it. Who is it by?"
He looked away from her, "Robert Frost."
Pansy nodded, "I thought so. So, you like that sort of thing? Poetry?"
Draco turned again, this time looking at her straight in the eye.
"Everything. Language. Words. Poetry, anything spoken, anything acted. My passions lay amidst the words unspoken, my passions lie naked when I've written them down. If they have only been said, there is no proof that I had ever said such words. If written, if found, I could be condemned forever to something that I may have only felt for one morsel in time."
Pansy blinked, and then found herself nodding. She felt the same way...if her parents knew how she felt about something things, she was sure that they would have no problem condemning her, in the words of Malfoy, to something that could change with experience.
Pansy remembered how she and Malfoy had begun to talk about Shakespeare, and the wonders of his words. Remembered the first day that Draco had challenged her to the Speech Game, which they had just finished playing...one person would pick a speech from a play, the other would name the play, and if they knew, the person who'd uttered the speech. Draco, of course, was absolutely unsurpassable because he'd read every play over and over and -over-. Pansy frequently teased him about the boringness of his childhood, and he always responded with the mere "You're jealous because I'm winning."
She always was, a little bit. But the rest of her was just enjoying the game, not caring how far ahead in points she lay. They'd stopped counting long ago, for sake of pity on Pansy and ego on Draco. She enjoyed spending time with him too much to bother with competition.
Pansy fidgeted on the bed, suddenly, for the first time, uncomfortable with Draco sitting beside her, crouched in a corner with his head cocked to one side, chin resting on his fist. He always looked so pensive. Like he was thinking deeply about something, but you couldn't never tell exactly what. That's one of the things that always made people a little bit intimidated by him. Intellect? Scary thought, to most teenagers.
Pansy and Draco had come back to Hogwarts in the fall as the best of friends. Knowing everything about the other. -Everything-. They'd talked about literature and theatre, sure. Also parents, friends, competitions, Quidditch, school, teachers, Harry Potter and his little gang of no-names...even the Dark Lord, which was something that their parents rarely -directly- referenced to for fear of spies or being caught.
"So," Draco said quietly, looking at Pansy like he'd just remembered she was sitting there, "Whats eating you, Sly?"
Sly was the nickname that she'd gotten from him over the summer. They had been talking about names, and she'd reflected on how much she hated hers...so he'd resorted to calling her Just General Slytherin Chick, Sly for short. She kind of liked it. It felt at home with her.
The problem was, she didn't know what was -eating- her. She felt odd, all of a sudden. The past few months had been so easy with Draco...they both got along incredibly well. Maybe it was just that they were back at Hogwarts, which was where she used to have a crush on him, and they were on a rather nicely-sized bed. With silk sheets.
"Not much, I'm just tired." she lied, "I think I'm going to go up to bed. I can't stand to be upstaged anymore tonight."
"Aw. Sorry to hear it, darlin'. I was starting to feel a little doozy myself, figured you may actually have a chance of winning."
She shot him her own personal smirk, "Thanks, but no thanks. Right now, I'm liking sleep much more than I'm liking you."
Pansy turned and was halfways finished shutting the door when she heard him chuckle. Then, his lights went out. She smiled to herself, and padded down to her own room.
What had that been about on the bed? Nah, it was just those teenage hormones kicking in again. It wouldn't have mattered if she was sitting on that bed with Neville Longbottom, she would have still felt the same way. Well, almost the same way.
She slipped into her night-dress, and grabbed her copy of MacBeth from her dresser.
Hmm. Prithee, what for the next challenge?
*A/N: What does everybody think so far? I like the fact that Pansy's actually a fairly cool person and that she and Draco are actually connecting. So far, I haven't read a single story where anybody has connected - romantic or friendship-wise. I'm not sure how this is going to turn out, so bear with me. I'm counting on at least five reviews before I continue. 'Night! - Emma