Disclaimer: Everything from HP books belongs to JK Rowling
Into Nothingness
"Happy Halloween"
She hears whispered into the dying light of the fire. Whispered way too quietly to be audible to any other person and then listens as his words are washed away by the cackling of the dying fire. The fire's eerie glow slowly fades into nothingness as today faded into tomorrow and she realizes, yet again, how life in Hogwarts has slowly been drenched in darkness ever since he left the big stone castle. And she wishes she could cry, wishes she could loose her control and let her emotions fly free. But all she does is sit on the couch and stare passively into a fire that will be gone the moment she turns her head.
Where are you, she asks herself as thoughts of him fill her mind. What are you doing? Who are you…She has so many questions to ask him. So many lies she finally wants to be made into truths. She's tired of it. She's tired of wondering where he is and who he's with. She's tired of his need for adventure that has left her alone in the common room. She hears lies being told all around her. Hears his voice hissing in her ear everything she always wanted to hear no matter how hollow and broken the words are. She hears him and then screams in her mind for him to go away, for his voice to stop torturing her everyday because she's tired. She's so exhausted from missing him that she feels as if one day soon she's just going to drop dead of a broken heart. She feels this love seeping through her body like poison and knows that it will be the end of her. That her love for him is what will be her ultimate slayer.
You were warned, she hears hissed in her mind and his mother's empty beauty is displayed before her. And she was, warned years before when she was merely a child in the Malfoy nursery watching as the first sparkles of Narcissa's passion died away into nothingness. She was warned about loving a Malfoy. Warned about the mouths that suck happiness out of a room. About the men who'll grab your soul with both hands and never let you free. She was warned about the coldness seeping into her eyes and the hardness that was likely to take her over. She was warned about the consequences that came with loving a Malfoy, she just never cared.
She knew what she would become. Can even now feel the ice entering into her body freezing all the passion that once made her who she is. It's killing her, ripping her limb by limb ever so slowly as her mind feeds off her pain, feeds off every emotion she can still feel because she's just waiting for the day when she turns into a shell, an empty memory of what used to be. She's taken to pretending. Pretending to endure the war and his absence with ease while her pain creates the illusion of strength as agony reflects through her eyes. Illusion, that is what she will become in a few short years, an illusion. No longer will she be a vivacious girl, but just another empty beauty fading into the darkness she was once able to call her own.
"Buck up, Parkinson."
She sees him suddenly, sees his smirking face through her closed eyelids and sucks in deeply as his hand reaches out to touch her long blond hair. She feels his calloused hand touching her face and grazing her lips and she almost whispers to him those words he would never want to hear, those three words that are the death to any relationship she could ever have. She feels his lips, affectionately placed on her forehead, cautiously placed on her lips until the moment her eyes open and she cries of agony realizing that she was foolish to believe he was ever there. Foolish to believe she wasn't alone.
How the ghosts are walking, she thinks as the fire flickers in front of her. How different she thought seventh year would be. How different it should have been. And suddenly he's there again sitting next to her on the couch with his feet placed on the coffee table in front of him. He's there sipping his usual fire whiskey talking to her about their future, about the adventures they're going to go on when they're free of Hogwarts. Her hands become balled into a fist and her knuckles turn white at her side as she listens to him telling her that he's going to take her away one day. "We'll leave all this behind and it'll be just me and you, Pansy. Me and you against the world." And then he leans in as if to kiss her before fading away again, before tearing away at her control even more.
Where are you? She asks in her mind wondering for the thousandth time if he's alive, if he's been captured and tortured and brutally murdered. She thinks of him, lying in a ditch, blood covering his body and not even the image of her lover, death glowing on his very skin, can shatter the wall of ice surrounding her. No tears fall over the hard exterior as she wonders where he could be when he isn't there.
She never told him she despised the Death Eaters. She played her part, pretended to be awed and overly pleased as he bragged to her that first day in sixth year that he has indeed entered the ranks of the elite. She played her part and kept the impartial smile on her face, kept the faux glow in her icy eyes. Even after his well-being started deteriorating before her very eyes and he was so distraught from the task before him that he wouldn't eat or sleep for weeks at a time, the smile and sparkle never once wavered from her beautiful face. She watched him sinking slowly into a world of melancholy and she wouldn't lift a finger to save him since it would be tantamount to saying that she doesn't believe, that he failed in something that should have been a simple victory. All she could do was smile along because girls don't rescue the boys in this tale. The girls don't save their knight in distress from their overwhelming fate because their only job is to smile prettily and offer their never-ending support. And even now her façade of togetherness, though wearing thin, is still there shining brightly to all Slytherins in Hogwarts telling everyone that Draco Malfoy is still reigning over them all.
She played her part and it started eating away at her as she watched the haughty boy she loved turn into the broken man she knew he would. You don't survive the Death Eaters. You don't come out of the "elite" the way you went in it. Every one looses something in the ranks of the Dark Lord and she hates him for risking it, risking it even as his father rotted in prison and his mother pleaded for his life. Risking it because like all Death Eaters he wants glory and power not caring how he acquires it only that he does. Risking it although he's seen living proof of the poison the Death Eaters inflict on every soul that is foolish enough to allow themselves to be completely taken in by promises of power.
She hates him for it. Hates knowing that she wasn't enough for him, that she couldn't fulfill his need for adventure. She hates that her love wasn't enough to keep him satisfied, that he had to move on and experience what else is out there. She curses him sometimes. Takes out voodoo dolls or says some mocking muggle spells and curses him for being so arrogant. For her it's too much, she can't handle the pain of needing someone who'll never be there, the pain of loving someone whose only care in the world is his own well-being, his own happiness. For her it's too much, she can't handle the pain of loving someone so foolish as to believe the Death Eaters will actually bring him his desires. Foolish for believing that the Death Eaters could give him something that she herself could not. She vaguely wonders where her voodoo doll is, wonders what body part to stick the pin in because she wants to pain him, wants to pain him for this insanity he's causes her.
He's broken now though, hiding somewhere in the wilderness from an enemy she can't save him from. Broken and used going crazy as he tries to turn himself into a heartless killer, as he tries to become nothing more than a murderer and realizing that he can't, can't lift his wand to end another life.
Where did it come from, she often thinks. Where did his conscience come from to care for the lives that were once nothing more than meaningless obstacles put in his way? When did he learn to feel something more than the coldness he's lived with and breathed with since the day he was born? She shivers now as the fire flickers brightly for the last time. Flickers and closes her eyes wishing to see something besides darkness, wishing to see his face because it's been too long since the last time he manifested before her. She misses him, misses him even as she wonders if he'll ever return, if he'll ever tell her that he loves her.
Come home, she sometimes asks him as she stares into the bright stars and tries to feel some hope that he's okay. Tries to not imagine the mutilated body of her lover. Tries not to reconcile to a world where he isn't there. Come home, she thinks pleading with him in her mind to just give it up and come back to her, to just give it up and love her.
"Happy Halloween"
She hears hissed again in her ear. Happy Halloween, she hears over and over again tormenting her with her past that aches to be the present. The past that just won't fade, won't fade into nothingness as it should because it lives to torment her every which way it can. Tortures her, tortures her and tricks her into revealing feeling, into an insanity she can otherwise expertly hide. And he's there in a Dracula costume chasing her around the common room pretending to be a blood thirsty fiend. He's there grabbing her from behind and kissing her as they fall on the couch and she laughs as she breathlessly says that she loves him. He's there smiling at her before fading away and she's alone again. Alone, she realizes as tears begin to form in her eyes and she throws one of Slytherin's books into the dead fire. It torments her, feeds off every happy memory until she's withering away in her bed just wishing for God to end it, end the agony of her life because she can't survive without him any longer.
Leave me alone, she screams loudly in the common room as she hears him hissing once again. Leave me alone, she screams as her composure is lost and sparkle gone and all that's left is slightly pink cheeks and a smirk of rage as she screams as loud as she can into the night. As she suddenly just goes crazy wreaking havoc in the common room turning over chairs, throwing glass vases, tossing books, pounding on the walls as tears of hate crawl down her cheeks until all the life that was in her just seconds before leaks out and all that's left of her anger is a weak, pitiful sorrow. Leave me alone, she whispers to him in the night knowing no salvation will come.
He holds her as she cries. Holds her as he strokes her hair and lightly kisses her face calling her beautiful, telling her she's his angel and he'll always be with her. He holds her as she cries, yet all it is is another fantasy she's mixed with reality, another fantasy she creates trying to numb the pain of remembering that he's gone, gone to a place she neither knows nor cares. Gone somewhere she can't follow and wouldn't want to follow even if she could. He's just gone, away from her, away from life.
Where are you, she asks again in the dark as her tears stop and the destruction of her breakdown starts to seep in. She's destroying herself, destroying her soul as she stumbles into melancholy. Destroying her soul through love for a boy as she pines for his return, his return that will never come because Draco, her Malfoy is gone, dead and buried in her mind and that person she cries for everyday is nothing more than a ghost of a boy. A ghost of a boy because the Death Eaters destroyed him, corrupted and decayed everything she loved about him leaving a man as cold and heartless as that father who's slowly rotting away. She sees his face in her mind, frigid and distant as he stares back.
How the ghosts are walking, she thinks as Zabini comes to sit beside her and as Millicent relights the dying fire. How the dead are so ready to torment me, she thinks as she watches him sit in a velvet green chair and read one of his many philosophy books aloud. Ghosts, she thinks as his voice sounds in her ears and her eyes close in serenity even if it is only a dream she hears, a memory from some far off time when he would read to her all the mysteries of the ancient world. Ghosts, although he is far from dead, although he's living and breathing, he's dead. He's dead to her, dead in all things that made her love him. Dead to her because she woke up one night with pain burning through her heart, the pain you get when a lover is lost to you forever and she knew, just knew that the Draco she once loved died as he ran from the fates, as he thought he could beat his destiny.
She hears Millicent sweetly purring in her ear. It'll be okay, she hears. Don't be sad, Pansy, he'll come back. She hears Millicent's sweet reassurances and feels Zabini's hand close tightly against her own. They're there again, there after every breakdown she has because no one else can deal with a broken ice queen, with the fallen princess of Slytherin. No one else has the stomach to handle raw emotions. To handle the raw pain of a person who should have been invincible. How the mighty have fallen, she hears some sixth year whispering cruelly in her mind. And it was a long fall from grace she experienced, a long fall that left harsh bruises which will never disappear.
Buck up, Millicent, she whispers harshly to the sorrowful girl sitting in front of her as she takes Zabini's hand. Buck up, she whispers more to herself because weakness is seeping through her cold exterior and she is sitting all but naked in front of two fellow Slytherins who should never see her as anything but controlled. Don't cry, she says loudly to herself as she realizes she can no longer hear his words, no longer see his face, and her world begins to seep into nothingness. Don't cry, she says as Zabini holds her and she buries her head in his chest, as she cries for all the world has lost. Don't cry, she whimpers through sobs as Millicent strokes her hair and places an affectionate kiss on her cold forehead.
Never love a Malfoy, she remembers Millicent telling her in third year. Not those Malfoy boys with enchanting blue eyes and charming smiles. Those handsome Malfoys who could charm their way out of anything, put a blush on even the coldest girl's cheek. But of course she loved him. Of course she loved him because how could she do anything but with a boy who released such utter excitement, who released such enthralling darkness? How could she do anything but as the world warned of the danger that came along with that boy? And it's the same with the Death Eaters, that need for excitement that is slowly ripping her lover apart has begun tearing at her own limbs and clawing at her heart because its time she paid for snagging that boy. Never love a Malfoy, she remembers hearing because of all the pain that comes with it, all the emptiness that will fill your body once your happiness is sucked out forever. She'll become a memory, like the hauntingly beautiful Narcissa who gave her soul in order to love a Malfoy. She'll be just like Narcissa Black who seeped into nothingness without once looking back. Never love a Malfoy, she once heard, it'll be the last thing you'll do.
Come back, she whispers in Zabini's ear as her two companions pick her up and start to bring her to the dormitory. Come back, she whispers with her last ounce of strength not caring if he could hear or not because she just needs to try to reach him. She needs to try because she feels as if her life will be ripped out of her if she just gives up and comes to terms with the knowledge that he's never coming back. That Draco Malfoy is another casualty of war and the best she could do is say goodbye. But, if he's gone, who is she to want to survive?
Where are you, her mind whispers as she lies on her bed. Closed eyelids, lips forever moving and never uttering a single word as she begs and begs for him to return. It'll drive her mad from missing him. Mad from missing the one thing that kept her stable throughout her life. Mad from missing him as her mind tries to see the memories that were torturing her just seconds before. A glimpse, she needs a glimpse of his face, some evidence to show her that he's okay, that Draco will come back and that she's not holding on to nothingness as she grabs for him in the dark. She reaches and finds only air, only memories.
"Happy Halloween," she finally whispers to him as she falls into a fitful sleep.
End
A/N: DRACO AND PANSY. This is one of my odder fics but I sorta of like it for all its oddness. If you didn't guess this is Seventh Year and Draco didn't return for obvious reasons after HBP. Hope you like it!
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