Chapter Three: A Declaration of Friendship and a Quidditch Match
It's not always rainbows and butterflies
It's compromise that moves us along
My heart is full and my door's always open
You can come anytime you want
-- She Will Be Loved, Maroon 5
Pansy really would have been able to hold to it, that conviction of not accepting Draco's apology. It was the look on his face that broke her of course, as it always had been. The look of utter shock that had been on his face was replaced with one of sadness. And Pansy had never been able to resist one of Draco's sad, pouty faces.
"Good god Malfoy, you're impossible!" Pansy said.
Suddenly, Draco was up and out of his seat, had launched himself across the room, and was now standing next to Pansy's chair. She swiveled her neck so she could look at him, and she had a feeling that this was going to be one hell of a speech, and one whose like she would never hear again. That second bit was not true, but the first one was.
"Pansy, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for what I said to you yesterday, and I'm sorry for what I've said to you in the past. I did not realize that you cared at all what I said to you, and I did not realize that I had made you cry. I feel entirely ashamed at having made another member of my house who was nothing but kind to me suffer from my..." And there he stopped, for he had run out of words. Pansy smiled, happy to finish his speech for him.
"Stupidity?" Pansy asked playfully, patting Draco's shoulder lightly. A smile immediately spread across his features, the first real, genuine smile Pansy had ever seen on his face.
"Yes, I believe you could call it that." A look of complete seriousness crossed Draco's face then, before he continued speaking. "Friends then?"
"Why certainly," Pansy said, and now she was smiling too. "Now get out of my house Malfoy, before I throw you out!"
"Oh, too bad, I thought I might be able to join you in the shower," Draco said with a smirk, backing away from Pansy and into a corner of the room. Pansy stuck out her tongue at him, and he repeated the gesture.
"I've already taken a shower Malfoy, but if you'd like I could always take another one. You certainly need one, with the smell that's coming off you right now," Pansy retorted, just as Malfoy Apparated out of her house. With a huge sigh, Pansy returned to her normal, daily routine.
Quidditch practice was insanely hard for Draco, possibly because a certain someone currently occupied all of his thoughts. Pansy Parkinson, and what she had said to him that morning, had turned his whole world upside down. He had felt like the nastiness person on the planet when she had told him how she cried, and had felt like the luckiest when she had agreed to be his friend. During his stay at Hogwarts his feelings would most likely have been quite different, but the Second War and its final battle had changed many things about how Draco saw the world.
"Are you going to nod off through the whole practice, or should I expect you back some time today?" Vincent Vole, the captain and Keeper of his Quidditch team, asked. Draco spun his broom around, snatched the Snitch from the air above him, and smirked at the older man.
"Some time today I should think," Draco replied, handing the squirming golden ball to the captain. A similar smirk was thrown back at him, as was the Golden Snitch. Draco quickly spun his broom around and waited, searching the air for any flashes of gold he might be able to glimpse.
Practice was not over soon enough for Draco, and when it was over he was quite happy to return home to Malfoy Manor. The day had been long, interesting, and altogether satisfying, but he was quite tired from it all. Soon he was fast asleep in his bed, dreaming of the Quidditch match that would be taking place a short month later.
The day of the Quidditch match dawned bright and early, and, as cliché as that may sound, it actually did. Pansy was up at 5:50 am, and in a right fit she was. Every little detail surrounding her, from the color of the ribbon in her hair to how many wrinkles there were in her blouse, had to be perfect, and that was a cause of great distress for the decidedly non-perfectionist tastes of the young woman.
Finally, wearing a decidedly Muggle outfit (Muggle clothes were all the rage in the Wizarding world now) of a light pink, baggy sweatshirt and a pair of comfortable denim jeans and sporting a matching light pink ribbon keeping her hair in a loose bun as well as a fashionable scarf of the same color, she threw some floo powder into the fire and jumped in, going to Millicent's house.
Once there, Pansy met up with her two friends, Daphne and Millicent, and they Apparated to the Quidditch pitch where the game would be played. It was only once they had taken their seats (and very good seats they were) that they realized what team Draco would be playing against; the team that Harry Potter played for. The other thing that they realized at about the same time was that the seats they had acquired were right next to the seats that the Weasley family (which now including, unsurprisingly, Hermione). And they realized it quite at the same moment that the rather gargantuan Weasley brood took their seats.
"Why hello there Hermione," Daphne said politely when Hermione took the seat next to her. "Lovely day for a Quidditch match, isn't it?" Hermione nodded and began talking to Daphne in rapid, quiet words. They had obviously become something akin to friends during Daphne's short stint on the side of "good" during the 2nd war.
"Pansy, Millicent, it's nice to see you," Hermione finally acknowledged them coldly. Pansy shook her head, rolled her eyes, and replied just as coldly.
"Honestly Weasley, I would think that with your superior intellect you would be able to come up with something a little more interesting than that," Pansy taunted, leaning back nonchalantly in her seat. Hermione scowled at her but said nothing. Ron Weasley (her husband), however, did not respond in kind.
"Why you slimy little Death Eater, how dare you speak to Hermione like that?" Ron asked nastily, clearly having a bad day.
"Oh for the love of god Ron, I think Hermione can take care of herself. And how was I speaking to her badly, hmm? I was actually complimenting her, if you didn't notice," Pansy responded quickly.
"Speaking to Hermione at all is speaking to her badly. We all know that you are Draco Malfoy's b..." Ron began, but was stopped by something long, thin, and brown pointed right between his eyes.
"It would do you no good to continue that sentence Mr. Weasley," Pansy remarked coldly, as it was her hand that clutched the wand between Ron's eyes. "I would also advise you not to say anything untoward about Mr. Malfoy while around me. He and I are friends, and I do not take kindly to having one of my friends insulted." And with that, Pansy's wand was removed, and Weasley fell back into his chair with a thud.
"That slimy git," Millicent hissed when Pansy too sat down.
"Let's just forget about it, okay? I really don't want to get any more thoughts about Malfoy stuck in my head right now," Pansy whispered into Millicent's ears. She was obviously not quiet enough, because both Daphne and Hermione smirked unkindly at her.
"So, I guess Ron's statement isn't so far from the truth, is it?" Hermione asked, turning her attention from Daphne to Pansy. A look of unbridled horror crossed Hermione's face when she felt the end of Pansy's wand poking sharply into her neck. Then, Pansy's face was right up close to hers, so close that the unwelcome sensation of Pansy's breath caused tears to prick her eyes.
"If you ever, ever," she said, particularly venomously, "say anything like that again, you have no idea how quickly I will use Avadra Kevadra on your sorry ass!" With a look of pure and utter hatred plastered on her face, Pansy returned to her seat.
The match began shortly, which was good, because otherwise Pansy might have had a few more choice encounters with the Weasley family. "For purebloods they sure are fucking horrid," Pansy thought as she watched Harry Potter's team emerge from their side of the field, hands clutched tightly around their shiny Fireblots. "Courtesy of Harry's overly large bank account," Pansy thought smugly as she noted the length, width, and make of the brooms the Quidditch team held. They were good, but not quite as good as the brooms Draco had purchased for his team.
And then he emerged, and all of her thoughts turned to him. Draco Malfoy in all of his glory, looking splendid as ever in his Quidditch robes. "Honestly, could that man be any more perfect?" Pansy wondered. She didn't realize that she had whispered it aloud until she heard Millicent snickering in the seat next to her. Thankfully, her words had been spoken softly, and no one but Millicent had heard them.
Finally, the match truly began, and there was something for Pansy to concentrate on. She actually found it quite hard to follow Draco's movements, seeing as he wasn't doing much of anything. Seekers never did, really. All they had to do was sit there and wait for the snitch to come into view, and then catch it before the other seeker did. Not much to see, not really anyway.
The Chasers were much more interesting, Pansy soon found out. Within minutes of the start of the game, Pansy was completely engrossed. Of course, she had attended every one of the Slytherin Quidditch matches back at Hogwarts, so she knew what was going on. But, she had never really felt any satisfaction, had never really cared about what happened. Then, she had just gone to show support for the black & green of her house.
Suddenly, something small and golden caught Pansy's eye. She had always had a good eye for things that needed to be found, which was one of the reasons why she was so good at creating spells for Voldemort. "Look there, it's the Snitch," Pansy whispered in Millicent's ear, pointing towards the golden blur. Millicent nodded with disinterest, her eyes still trained on the Chasers and Keepers.
She knew it the instant that Draco saw the Snitch. She could see the feral, competitive gleam in his eyes, and knew that he was moving in for the kill. With a speed she hadn't known he possessed, he zoomed towards it. Luckily for him, Potter was quite a bit farther from the Snitch than Draco was, and it took Harry quite a bit of time before he realized that Draco was after the Snitch.
By the time Potter got near Draco, it was all over. The Snitch was in his hand, it's golden wings spread wide out the sides of his tight fist. He held it up over his head in triumph, a vibrant smile plastered on his face. Potter's winning streak was over, and all thanks to his old Hogwarts rival, Draco Malfoy. Pansy couldn't have been more proud.