Grace
"So it's all over then."
"Yes."
They stared at each other from across the cold stone table. The room was small, damp, and dimly lit, but in the shadows they could just make out the outlines of others standing at the ready, prepared to restrain them if necessary.
Pansy was cold, but she made no effort to draw her cloak more securely around herself. To do so would be to show weakness, something she could not afford to do in this unforgiving room. Whether it was for his sake or for the benefit of the menacing figures, she did not know.
She and her husband had not seen each other in months, but they did not try to touch or move closer. Pansy gazed with hooded eyes at Draco's slumped form. Try as she might, she could not recognize the man she knew in that defeated stranger.
"Has your sentence come through?" she forced herself to say, hearing the impersonal words fall about them heavily.
"Don't make pleasantries, Pans, you know as well as I do." His beautiful mouth arched slightly in his usual smirk. "Good new is that it won't be the Kiss, now the Dementors are gone."
"So just good, old-fashioned, humane execution then?"
Draco snorted. "Exactly. Some sort of painless potion. Most wanted a public beheading, but Potter insisted."
Pansy laughed, a hollow laugh that echoed off the chamber's stone walls. "He always was the bloody hero." She looked down at her frail hands, trembling slightly as they rested on the table. "It's a bit of a relief, I guess, knowing I don't have the Kiss to look forward to."
"Don't talk like that, Pansy-" the blonde haired man began, but she cut him off.
"You honestly think that they're going to let the wife of one of the Dark Lord's top Death Eaters just walk away free?" Pansy smiled cynically, the expression highlighting her hollow cheeks. "Draco, you can't be that naive. They don't have me yet, but it's not for lack of trying."
He met her eyes, his steel grey ones boring into hers. "You know, I never thought there could be a Dementor that would be able to suck out your soul, Pans. You would never let them." Draco gazed across the table at her with a fierce intensity, drinking in every aspect of her still beautiful face. "You brought honor to the Malfoy name."
Pansy swallowed hard against the tears and the laughter and the screams rising in the back of her throat. "I never thought I'd hear you say it," she choked out.
"Really?" Draco looked at her with what might have been remorse. "Look, I have something I need to tell you." He looked away. "I'm sorry, but it just happened. I was seventeen and-"
"You and Granger? I know, Draco." He glanced up sharply at her calm tone. "I knew about your affair and I knew that you still loved her." She smiled bitterly, blinking back tears. "Why do you think you were never included in attempts to assassinate her?" Pansy reached across the table and covered one of his wasted hands with a small one of hers. "I forgive you."
His flesh felt hot and dry under hers, and it still burned her skin. Even after all these months without seeing him or touching him, she still remembered the feeling of his body against hers.
Draco closed his eyes and drew in a ragged breath, clasping her hand tight in his. "Thank you." He whispered, and those two words broke Pansy's heart. It was a final act of submission from the man who used to be so proud.
They sat in silence, Pansy watching her husband. His eyes flew open and he smiled a little.
"Think we made the right choice, Pansy? Choosing the side we did?"
She had no answer for that. "I don't know," she finally said, deciding on the truth.
"I mean, I'm not even twenty yet and I'm going to die-" he broke off sharply, clutching her hand so tight that it hurt. "I don't know what it is about this place, but I hear them screaming at night. All those people…" Draco shuddered and Pansy gazed at him dumbly, unable to sooth his pain.
Her husband pulled his head up, regaining his composure, and he laughed softly. "Oh well. We made the choice and all we can do is face our destiny well, I guess."
"It is the Slytherin thing to do." Pansy smiled slightly, though she found no humor in the situation.
"Okay, wrap it up you two," a commanding, sterile voice said from the shadows. Reluctantly, Pansy withdrew her hand from his grasp and pulled her cloak around herself. She rose to leave.
"Pans-" Draco stopped, uncertain. "They allowed me time with any one person I wanted. I could even have met with Harry-fucking-Potter if I was so inclined." He glanced up, his grey eyes full of an emotion he had never directed at Pansy before. "I chose you. Not her. I only wanted to see you."
Pansy nodded, biting her lower lip between her teeth as she struggled to maintain control. "I love you," she blurted out thickly.
Draco looked at her levelly and in his expression she could once again see the proud aristocrat. "I know." He smiled simply at her as she was ushered from the room.
Holding her head high, she walked the dark corridor as regally as a queen. The guards escorted her to the front door. Suddenly, she was outside of the prison, blinking in the harsh sunlight and gasping for air, freed from the stifling walls.
Pansy resisted the urge to turn and look back, and instead moved slowly down the path, gravel crunching beneath her feet. Her mind dimly registered sounds around her, quiet whispers of a curious crowd, the cries of seagulls, and waves crashing on jagged rocks. She was being watched, she knew. Sooner or later they would come for her as well, and she would not try to run or fight.
She would meet her end with dignity and grace, just like him.