Chapter Four: Draco Malfoy and the Unwanted Conquest

I know where you hide

Alone in your car

Know all of the things that make you who you are

I know that goodbye means nothing at all

Comes back and begs me to catch her every time she falls

-- "She Will Be Loved," Maroon 5

She didn't realize what she was doing until she was halfway down the steps that led to the pitch. "I'm going to him," she realized with a shock, and that revelation caused her to stop short. She scanned the close huddle of Draco's team, and finally caught sight of his familiar white-blond hair. She willed him to look up at her, and to bestow upon her the welcoming look of friendship that he had been giving her all month, every day that they had seen one another.

He did soon catch her eye, and his look was just as inviting as usual. He wanted her there, she realized, and she was happy about that. She took up her descent with a renewed passion, jumping down the steps three at a time. But, once she got to the gate that led to the pitch, something stopped her, and that thing was Harry Potter.

"Pansy," he said, his voice flat and emotionless.

"Potter," she replied in much the same tone. He swung the small gate open slowly and, shoulders hunched in defeat, made his way up the stairs that Pansy had just been running down. She shook her head and began to make her way through the open gate, until someone else stopped her.

"I'm sorry ma'am, but no one is allowed on the pitch," the man told her harshly, not sounding sorry at all. Pansy shot him a look of utter distaste, which he shot right back to her.

"You let Potter in," she informed him cooly. He nodded, but did not look fazed in the slightest.

"Yes, I let him in, not out," the man told her, voice full of triumph. Pansy squeezed her eyes shut and felt around in her mind for her "quiet place." She didn't want to get angry at anyone right now, when she should be celebrating victory with Draco.

Once her nerves were calmed, she looked up, and was rewarded with the site of Draco being pulled off towards the changing rooms by none other than Millicent Bulstrode. "I'm sure she's just taking him off to congratulate him," Pansy assured herself, turning her gaze once more to the despicable man who would not let her out.

"And why is it exactly that I can't go out on the pitch?" Pansy asked evenly, trying to think of some argument or spell that she could use. Eventually a spell came to her, but she wanted to use it as her last resort.

"Because it's against regulation for scum to be left to grow on the Quidditch pitch. I wouldn't want to be going against regulation, would I now?" the man asked with a cocky sneer. Pansy's blood boiled. How dare he say such a thing?

"A dog knows its own," she replied softly, pulling out her wand slowly and holding it behind her back. With a quick flick and a muttered word, the man was lying on the ground and she was walking onto the pitch.

Of course, no one noticed, because she had taken care of that as well.

He really hadn't wanted to go with her, he remembered quite vividly. He had caught Pansy's eye and was waiting for her, waiting for her to come down and congratulate him in the manner that he deserved. The moment he had grabbed that Snitch, he had realized that something far more important than winning a Quidditch match had happened to him. He was in love, with none other than Pansy "Cow" Parkinson. God, he would never use that nickname again, even in jest. It no longer applied.

He had been so dazed with these thoughts that he hadn't noticed Millicent's incessant tugging on his hand. Finally he did notice, but only after that toad of a woman began pulling him off. "Millicent?" he asked, shocked and confused.

"Just shut it Malfoy," Millicent purred. Draco shuddered and tried to pull his hand from the woman's grasp, but it didn't work. She has somehow cast a spell on their hands, bonding them together, and had probably done it while he was mooning over Pansy Parkinson.

"Well," he thought, "I guess I should just see what she wants and get it over with." And so he did follow her, although he hadn't much choice.

They were in the locker rooms now, the men's locker rooms. He was in the men's locker room with a woman, and that woman was not the one he would have preferred to be with.

"What do you want?" he finally asked, once they were both sitting on a secluded bench in the room.

"You," Millicent said, grabbing Draco's face and pulling it towards her own, smashing her lips up against his. And that was really what she did. It wasn't even a kiss, but in Draco's eyes. It was just a bashing of faces, a collision, one that he had never, ever wanted.

So, of course, that was the moment Pansy chose to walk in on them. "Oh my god..." she said, her voice trailing off into a whisper. Draco, having only been smashing his face against Millicent's for a few seconds and not having had time to pull away, did so then.

He wasn't ready for the tears that he saw pouring down Pansy's rosy cheeks. He wasn't ready for the look of utter horror that he saw plastered on her face. But worst of all, he wasn't prepared for the flooring sense of deep, heartbreaking sadness that he could see in her eyes.

"Wait, Pansy!" he called after her as she scurried out of the locker room. Now Millicent had done it, the old cow. How could she have done something like that to her friend? "Obviously, not all Death Eaters are quite so honorable. Well, I knew that already," Draco thought as he pulled himself up from the bench and followed Pansy out the door.

But he was too late. She was already gone.

"Fuck you, Malfoy," she hissed as she collapsed onto her bed. Within moments, her whole pillow was soaked through from the tears she hadn't wanted. She had known they were coming, but she had tried to hold them back. He had even seen them, she knew, those tears that she had tried desperately to hide. He liked that she had never cried in front of him, he had told her. "Well, too bloody fucking bad."

"What is?" a voice from behind her asked. She pulled her head out of her pillow long enough to see the object of her tears standing by her bed. With a loud sob, she collapsed back into the safety net that was her soggy pillowcase.

"Pansy..." he began, but she didn't want to her it. She wouldn't hear it, not if she had to cast Avadra Kevadra on herself to keep it from happening. She didn't want to hear his excuses, his lies.

"Don't even fucking start with me!" she shrieked, abandoning the safety of her pillow for the more even playing field of her bedroom floor. "I don't want to hear you telling me that it was nothing, that you didn't want to kiss Millicent, that you didn't know I was coming, that you didn't know that I loved you!"

The sound of his gasp could most likely have been heard in the States, and it was so convincing that Pansy believed, for a second, that Draco hadn't known of her love for him. "Don't deny it, I'm not daft. You're a bloody stupid git, you know that Draco? Maybe Potter's been right about you all along, you know? Maybe I should have joined his side of the game, and maybe I would have come out with more than just the hatred of half the Wizarding world"

Pansy knew she would cut him deeply with that one. For the most loyal Death Eaters, a class that both she and Malfoy belonged to, talking about switching sides was a heinous crime. Draco's mouth was wide open, his eyes round as saucers, and Pansy got a few moments to enjoy the rush of euphoria that she felt. She, Pansy Parkinson, had finally succeeded in really and truly pissing Malfoy off.

Of course, because of that, she had never really seen Malfoy mad. And boy, was he mad now. And when Malfoy got angry, he got violent. Perhaps not in his actions, although sometimes that too, but just in his words.

"Pansy," he said, sounding a lot calmer than she was in this situation. "I would like to ask you a very serious question. What is it that you're angry about in the first place?" Pansy gaped at him for a moment, and then reached out a hand as if to take his. When he raised his own she did not, however, take his. She slapped him actually, right across the cheek.

"What kind of question is that, Draco? You know very well that I fancy you, and yet you toy with my emotions in such a manner!" Pansy said after she had retrieved her hand from Draco's face. Now, his hand had replaced hers, and the fire in his eyes burned even brighter. If he had been angry before, he was even angrier now.

"What right do you have to blow up in my face this like this? We're just friends Pansy, and I thought that was all you wanted! If you wanted more, you're certainly going about it the wrong way!" Draco steamed, her voice dripping with venom.

"Now this is the Draco I know how to deal with," Pansy thought, a triumphant smile coming over her face. "Oh, stop making excuses. Everyone, even that Granger bitch and her husband, knows that I fancy you, so your excuses just don't cut it!"

"Granger? Weasley? When did you get a chance to talk to them?" Draco asked, all traces of anger gone from his voice.

"Oh, they had seats next to ours at the Quidditch game. Daphne and Granger are obviously friends," Pansy said, sounding just a little bit annoyed at the "betrayal" of Daphne.

"And I didn't know that you fancied me, because you don't!" Draco hissed, returning to their previous conversation. Pansy quirked an eyebrow and stared at him in disbelief.

"Malfoy, did I or did I not just tell you, in no uncertain terms, at least two times, that I fancied you?"

"But you don't fancy me Pansy," Draco replied, his voice once again taking on a too-calm tone. Something stirred in the pit of Pansy's stomach, something that she knew well to be a feeling of dread. Something was telling her that Draco was loading his gun and was about ready to fire.

"And how do you presume to know what I do and do not feel?" she asked, her heart beating a lot faster, waiting to fall into his trap, for she knew that she would. She always seemed to.

"Because, I'm not unlucky enough to be fancied by someone like you," Draco told her, voice still unreasonably gone. Pansy nearly double over with the shock of it, feeling like a knife had just been jammed into her belly. There wasn't much more Draco could have said to her that would have hurt her so, but that feeling in her stomach, that first one, did not go away.

"Someone like me?" Pansy asked, waiting for him to continue.

"I would only ever be fancied by someone wonderful, someone pretty, someone thin, someone with completely pure blood, someone who was a Death Eater, and someone who wasn't a nuisance to the Dark Lord. Someone who would be the exact opposite of you."

Pansy had been right again. The pain from his first words, that knife in the stomach, could not be compared to the knife she now felt inside her, that knife in her heart. And then, as Draco had, she got angry.