Chapter Four: Straight up villain

They called it her house of horrors, or if they were feeling particularly cheeky, her parliament of pain, but they were fucking idiots, and Pansy had absolutely no idea why she was still friends with any of them.

Besides, it was never anything other than exactly what someone wanted it to be.

Which really, if anyone ever cared enough to take a moment to think about it, was a pretty damn admirable thing for someone like her to do.

Pansy was a demon with a penchant for making even the most gruesome of suffering pleasurable. She was a sommelier of sorts – a self-taught scholar, if you will, who was exceptionally skilled at not only identifying a person's deepest and darkest (and dirtiest) carnal desires but also giving the same people things that they never would have thought they wanted. And she enjoyed every single delicious minute of it.

It was a very particularly naughty skill set, one which garnered her a substantial amount of celebrity in both the mortal and immortal worlds. But her notoriety as a sexual deviant didn't come from a place of obsessive control as so many assumed – instead, it grew from an innate aptitude for perception, something she refined during the first few hundred years of her above ground existence, and a patience that few of her kind possessed. And when that notoriety exploded into the kind of legend that not even her contemporaries couldn't ignore, she harnessed it, officially carving her place in the world by building her so-called little house of horrors and throwing open the front doors for business.

Her clients came from far and wide, most mortal but some very much so not, each with some made-up story or excuse as to why her services were required. Of course, their whys were never all that important – as soon as the papers were signed, every single one of them willingly allowed her to tear them apart.

So yes, Pansy was a wonderfully gifted demonic being, and not even Draco, Hell's precious crown jewel, could defeat her where it really mattered. More souls carried her brand into Hell than that of any of her annoyingly unimaginative compatriots, and as far as she was concerned, that kind of success was enough of a distraction to hide behind.

Because despite everything she was and was supposed to be, she didn't actually get off on the screams of her conquests. She didn't salivate at the mere thought of trapping a mortal soul in some horribly wonderful and twisted way. For her, it had always been and always would be about the power that came from turning someone's horribly vanilla existence into something a bit more flavorful.

Which wasn't even remotely what she had been sent above to accomplish.

The truth was that Pansy was a lot more than she sold herself to be. Her icy yet alluring facade, like the beautiful dark-haired female form that she donned, was nothing more than a ruse – a mask that she hadn't properly taken off in over three thousand years. And she wore it so well that no one really knew her as well as they thought they did.

And to uncover that mystery, one has to go back to the very beginning.

Pansy was sent above ground, like so many before her, with the sole instruction of collecting as many mortal souls as she could for her lord and master until the bitter end. It was an immortal's game, one in which, if you believed all the incessant chatter, was initiated for the sole purpose of plotting the purist of good versus most inherent of evil, and initially, she had no real reason to question it – bad was quite literally stitched into her bones.

The end game was all that mattered, or so she'd been told, but there was no ignoring the immense difficulty of her task. She quickly realized that human souls were more complex than she had been led to believe, and while some were more easily corrupted than others, there was no rule book to follow, no guidelines to help her along the way. Rather frustratingly, the how had never been explicitly laid out for her, and so for a while, she resorted to doing things exactly like rest of the demonic idiots surrounding her – she acted like a complete and utter buffoon.

One by one, and often after months of painstaking work, she lured people in with her human form, tricking them into revealing all of their secrets before finding some way to get them to act on them in horribly delightful ways. She certainly didn't walk around with a beacon on her head advertising the things she was really capable of, at least not in the beginning, and it was torturous, slow going. She fucked because it was fun and because there really was nothing like the internal explosion that happened when it was done right, but she never used her body as the main vessel for her Hell-ish deeds.

That is until she realized just how incredibly powerful her female form was.

It wasn't a secret, not even when Pansy was first sent above, that men were savages of the worst kind. Their unceasing desire to stick their pricks into the nearest, warm hole no matter the consequences had always and would always be their undoing, and it didn't take her long to deduce just how backwards it all was.

The world was vastly different place than it was when she had first arrived, and yet at least in this regard, it was still very much the same.

While men raged war, freely bloodying their hands at the smallest hint of offense, women watched, patiently waiting as they plotted their revenge and attacking only when the time was ripe for victory. Where men had an eye-rolling ability to always make things worse than they needed to be, women had a kind of prowess that could only be born from a place of centuries of objectification and being told no. And Pansy saw what so many before her had not – women had an understanding of the world that men would never be able to grasp.

The history of the world may have been written by men, but if one simply had the patience to dig a bit deeper into men's stories of literally anything (and Pansy did), a vastly different narrative appeared. Because in actuality, women knew exactly what they were doing. They weren't as meek and powerless as all those horrid books made them out to be. They were calculating and cunning, biding their time until they finally had the opportunity to strike. They did what they had to survive, even when it meant leaving some of their own behind, but they never, ever forgot.

And there was really nothing Pansy loved more than watching a man pay for his sins under one of her stiletto-heeled feet.

It was a rare, kind of power, and she lusted for it in a way that would threaten her very existence if someone found out. She had found a purpose – one that wasn't dictated or controlled by some existential battle of the two sides of the same coin – and she didn't care how dangerous it was because it was hers.

Plus, she figured if someone ever caught on to her game, she'd at least be able to say that she found a way to live on her own terms. It was certainly more than the rest of them could claim.


Hermione hadn't realized how much she missed the taste of him until it was too late to undo what she had just done.

And honestly, once she felt his lips against her own, it was far too easy for her to ignore the warning bells going off in the back of her head.

Draco hesitated against her lips for only a split second before giving in, and when she felt his tongue trace along her bottom lip, almost as if he was testing how far she was willing to take it, she eagerly deepened their kiss. Unfortunately for the remaining bits of her sanity, he growled – fucking growled – when their tongues met, and she knew she had lost whatever game they were still playing because in that moment, she would give him absolutely anything he wanted.

Without even realizing what she was doing, her hands found their way to the front of his jacket. She was clinging to the silky fabric so tightly as she clumsily tried to pull him closer that she could hear the unmistakable sound of fabric ripping, but she just didn't care enough to pull away. Draco seemed to sense her impatience and moved his hands from where he had braced himself at the edge of the desk to the small of her back which, of course, made her shiver in anticipation for whatever he was going to do next.

It was so perfect she almost forgot why she had even left in the first place.

But then he had to go and ruin the whole gloriously stupid moment by moving his hands to her shoulders and roughly pushing her away.

Hermione stared at him bewildered, her lips still burning from the kiss she should never have initiated but hadn't wanted to end.

"You can't–" Draco began, looking at her indignantly – a look, she realized, she wasn't terribly fond of. "You can't just fucking come here and–" He stopped again, and although she still felt a twinge of pain at his rejection, she suddenly recognized that the look on his face wasn't exactly what she thought it was.

It was actually something a bit closer to pain, which was, not unsurprisingly for an angel whose duty it was to fight to rid the world of that very emotion, much harder for her to swallow.

Hermione opened her mouth to apologize, because after everything, she knew she at least owed him that, but then he turned his back to her, and the words left her mouth in a rapid, breathy exhale.

Even from her position, she could see Draco struggling to get the tangled mess of his emotions under control. He was breathing heavily, and after a near growl-like sigh, he dropped his head in some kind of resignation. His hands, which were hanging helplessly at his sides, were alternating between clenching into fists and relaxing, giving the indication that he was fighting an internal battle to calm himself down, and she simply watched it unfold with a near treacherous level of curiosity.

Eventually he lifted his head, releasing a slow breath, and Hermione swallowed heavily, mentally bracing herself for whatever he was going to say to her next.

"You can't just come here and act like things are the same," Draco told her as he ran a hand through his not-quite platinum, practically silver hair. "You can't just expect me to–"

"To still care?" she offered, reaching out to touch his shoulder before she could stop herself.

Draco recoiled from her touch, and Hermione couldn't help it – his continued rejection stung.

"But that's precisely the problem, isn't it?" he replied, chuckling maniacally as he finally turned to face her again. "I'll always care about you, and you–" He nearly spat the word at her, and God, she wanted nothing more than to shove him back on the desk to shut him up but knew it would only infuriate him further, so she dropped her still outstretched arm and waited impatiently for him to continue.

"You came here knowing exactly how I feel about you," he nearly whispered, dropping his gaze as if he couldn't say the words and look at her at the same time.

Umm… what?

It was surprising to hear him talk this way, to have him toeing the line of honesty in a way he had never done when they were together (and not), and she wasn't quite sure what to do with this version of the demon she had dangerously bedded for centuries. More surprising perhaps, was the fact that he had managed to tear himself away from her to say any of this at all. It was clearly more than she had been capable of doing, and she couldn't help but hate herself a little more for it.

"So, what exactly is the problem then?" she asked, both confused and angry that he had somehow managed to best her in an avenue that was supposed to be hers to navigate. "Isn't this what you've wanted? Me, back right where I belong?"

He looked up, and Hermione saw something flash across his eyes, something far too similar to the very things she was feeling being this close to him again. She half-expected him to start shouting at her, telling her all the ways she was wrong, and he was right, but instead, he once again averted his gaze to the ground.

"You're not the only covert operative in the room, Hermione," he said after a few low but audible breaths. When his eyes latched onto hers again, she could see the storm brewing behind them, and her heart skipped a beat. "I know a ruse when I see one."

So, he really did think the worst of her then.

But the more gut-wrenching realization was that he wasn't wrong. She really hadn't come here for him, and there was certainly no way around that.

"You already got the information you came for," Draco continued coolly, turning his back to her again. "Go find another toy to play with," he added before slamming his fists into the desk in front of him.

Even though she had been expecting something like this to happen, his words hit her like a ton of bricks. In all the years they'd known each other, he'd never once rejected her, not like this, and this – being shoved away and scolded after she had just quite literally thrown herself at him – was more painful than leaving him had ever been.

"Draco," she pleaded, taking an unsure step toward him. "That's not– I didn't mean–"

He whipped around so quickly the whoosh of air caused by his movement was enough to startle her, but somehow she managed to stand her ground as he proceeded to close the distance between them with a single, purposeful step.

"Then, why did you leave?" Draco asked, towering over her with his fists clenched firmly at his sides. "Why, until now, have you been doing everything in your power to hide – to pretend this–" he gestured between the two of them "–never happened?"

"You know why I left," she said quietly, trembling slightly as he continued to hover over her. He was invading her space in a way that was both familiar and foreign, and she could feel her will-power slipping.

"Do I?"

He was looking at her so intently that Hermione couldn't take it. He was furious with her, and she knew she deserved it, but that didn't keep her from wanting to find a way to make it all stop, to finally admit that she was wrong for ever leaving. It's just that, being honest about them, especially with him, wasn't exactly what she had come here to do.

"I'm not a mind reader, Hermione," Draco added harshly.

She knew that he was goading her, that he was pushing her buttons so that he could catch her saying something she shouldn't, but she still took the bait without even a moment's hesitation.

"We fight for opposing sides," she told him, only stalling the inevitable confession.

Because while it was true, it wasn't actually the truth.

Draco growled – angrier this time but the effect on her was still annoyingly the same – and moved a hand to her hair, tugging on it roughly.

"And you knew that before you took me to bed," Draco retorted, his eyes flickering between her eyes and her mouth as if he were searching for something. "It certainly didn't stop you the hundreds of times after that."

The position he had forced her into was vulnerable but not quite threatening enough for her to jerk away from his hold, and there was some sick part of her that wanted him to take it even further.

"It should have," she whimpered in between ragged, agonizing breaths. The effect he was having on her was alarming, and she needed to be careful. She couldn't give in, couldn't tell him everything or it would ruin both of them. She certainly couldn't let her mind wander to all the wonderfully dirty things that tended to happen when he got riled up. "We're enemies," she explained (as if he didn't already know that). "We're sworn to fight each other until the end times."

Draco snorted. "That's a child's excuse," he said, rolling his eyes and tightening his hold on her hair. "Who the fuck actually cares that we weren't bred for the same purpose?"

"I do!" she shouted, finally shoving him away. She barely noticed the sting in her scalp as her curls were ripped from his hands.

He didn't appear to be disappointed with the change in their positions – in fact, he looked far too giddy for someone who had moments ago been on the verge of an apparent meltdown. He cocked his head and smirked at her, making it clear her reaction was one he had been hoping to coax out of her, and she found that she liked this look a lot less than the pained one decorating his features moments before. And then, she couldn't think of anything better to do, she balled her hand into a fist, took a small step toward him, and swung.

"No," Draco said, easily catching her fist before it could collide with her intended target. "That's not it at all."

He was still smiling, and it was sexy and infuriating, and she literally saw red.

Oh, if he wants a fight, I'll give him a fight.

"It would never work," she told him, twisting her body as she took aim at him with her other arm.

He caught her second fist as easily as he did the first, and she tried to yank herself free, but he tightened his hold on her arms and pulled her back against his chest.

"It was working," he countered, bending his head so that his lips were hovering over her ear.

They had avoided this conversation for a thousand years, skirting the edge of the proverbial black hole rather than acknowledging its presence, but if they were ever going to move passed it, now was certainly as good a time as any.

"They'd take my wings away," Hermione explained, still struggling, albeit not terribly hard, to free herself from his hold. "And you – they'd probably do a lot worse to you."

Draco laughed, his breath tickling her ear. "Probably, and you have no idea," he replied as he wiggled his body even closer so that they were pressed together in a much too intimate way. "But none of that matters because you're still only giving me half-truths."

Hermione nearly shrieked. The demon was still as maddening as he'd always been, and even though he was right, she couldn't let it slide. Before he had a chance to tempt her further, she used one of her legs to kick at his shin, and when she felt the tell-tale shift in his body indicating that he was off-balance, she bent over, using the weight of her body to send them both tumbling to the floor.

For a moment, she thought she had succeeded in freeing herself from his grasp, and she reached out with her arms to try to scramble away, but one of his arms collapsed around her before she could get away and pulled her back toward him. In a near effortless move, he flipped their respective positions and pinned her to the floor.

Fuck.

This wasn't supposed to happen. She wasn't supposed to let him win, and yet, every inch of her body was screaming at her to just give him what he wanted.

And because she was still very much so an idiot when it came to him, her attempts to fight it were annoyingly futile.

"I don't know what you want me to say," she muttered, shifting underneath him but making no real effort to move.

"I told you – I want the fucking the truth," he replied, his lips inches away from her own. "I want you to be the honest little angel you've always sold yourself to be and just tell me why you ran."

She could escape from her position easily enough – they both knew she had the strength and skill to do it – but for some foolish and misguided reason, she didn't even try.

"We can't change who we are, Draco," she admitted, although she could sense that her line of reasoning wasn't all that surprising to the demon above her. "No matter how hard you might want to subvert the rules of your existence, in the end, you can't – just as I can't with my own." She paused, letting her eyes close (because if she kept looking at him, she would implode). "It doesn't matter how much I lo–"

Her eyes snapped open.

Oh, shit.

She was saying too much. This was a mistake, and she was actually going to kill Harry for making her come here in the first place.

"How much you what?" Draco prompted with a grin and fuck him because she knew he knew what she had almost said.

His mouth was too close, and when he shifted his hips suggestively, it was all over.

"Draco," she pleaded, hoping rather helplessly that he'd just let her go – let her get up and regain what remained of her dignity before forcing her to continue.

Of course, he was a demon, so he didn't, and she knew she had no other choice but to finally tell him.

"How much you want, Hermione?" he repeated huskily, and fuck, the sound of his voice unraveled her.

Still, her lips trembled as she prepared to finally say the words.

"I–"

But the door to the room suddenly swung open, and she was, at least momentarily, spared the ensuing embarrassment of being the first one to say those three blasted words.

"Oi, Draco!" a voice shouted into the room. "We have a problem."

Hermione could hear the urgency in the words, but Draco didn't move, instead growling audibly in annoyance and frustration.

"Not now, Blaise!" he shouted back, not taking his eyes off her.

"As much as we'd all love to see what happens next," came a second voice – Theo's, Hermione recognized without having to look up, "your father is here. And unless you'd like–"

Draco froze. "Fuck."

He jumped up onto his feet so quickly that it took her a moment to register that she was now alone on the floor. "Fuck," he swore again, quickly glancing down at Hermione before turning toward his friend. "She can't be seen."

"No shit, Sherlock," Theo said as he moved to quickly shut the door behind him.

Hermione had never once heard Draco mention his father, and so as she pushed herself onto her feet, she looked around at the three demons surrounding her trying to get a read on just how bad the situation was.

And from the looks on all of their faces, it wasn't just bad, it was borderline catastrophic.

"Father?" she asked, and although Draco turned to look at her again, he only offered her a pained nod of his head before turning back to face his friends.

Hermione didn't hear him speak, but judging from the other two demon's terse nods, he had silently communicated what needed to happen next.

"I'll take her out the back way," Blaise offered, his eyes flickering between her and Draco nervously. "I doubt your father will be offended that the owner of his least favorite establishment doesn't greet him at the front door. Just tell him that I'm… disposing of someone."

Draco nodded quickly. "Hopefully his goons stay out front."

"I can handle it if they don't," Blaise assured him, although Hermione caught a flicker of something in his eyes that seemed to indicate he wasn't so sure he could.

"What is going–?" she began, trying to catch Draco's attention again.

"She needs to fucking go," Theo interrupted, shooting her an impatient glare.

"But, we're not–" she tried again.

"Now!" Theo ordered, gesturing to something behind her.

It took her a moment to realize that there were now only two demons standing in front of her, but before she could react, an arm wrapped around her and began pulling her toward the back of the room. The arm didn't belong to Draco, and when she looked up at the dark-skinned demon now moving her roughly across the floor, she tried to wrestle her way out of his arms, but a whisper stopped her.

"This will not end well for him if you are caught." Blaise's voice was so quiet it was barely audible, but there was no mistaking the fear he was trying to hide from her.

And it was enough for her to push aside her growing protests – at least for this particular moment in time. She nodded quickly and let him lead her to the space behind his desk toward a door she hadn't noticed before. Blaise pulled it open and tugged at her arm, indicating that they were to go inside, but Hermione hesitated, glancing over her shoulder one last time. She was hoping to get Draco's attention before he disappeared to deal with whatever it was that he needed to deal with, but he was already gone.

When she turned back around, Blaise was studying her curiously, but before she could open her mouth to bombard him with questions, he turned to face the seemingly blank wall on the other side of the small room. He waved a hand in the air, and as soon as his movement ceased, an open doorway appeared in front of them. Hermione squinted into the void beyond, but quickly realized it wasn't a void at all – behind the wall was a staircase leading down onto what she could only assume would be a dark, dangerous alleyway perfect for all kinds of demonic deeds.

"I can take it from here, thank you very much," she said, shooting her companion an icy glare as she finally yanked her arm away.

The demon chuckled. "Maybe," he told her, seemingly unbothered by her blatant irritation with the whole situation. "But if there are more demons posted out back, ones that have absolutely no qualms about murdering an angelic being like yourself, do you really think you'll be able to escape unscathed without a friendly neighborhood immortal to help?"

She hated to admit it, but he was right, and judging from everyone's visceral reaction to the appearance of Draco's father, these weren't the kind of immortals that Hermione had the firepower to deal with on her own.

"Fine," she told him, and she moved through the open doorway, pausing when she was through to gesture for him to show her the way.

Blaise chucked again and quickly followed her, waving his hand behind him once he was on the other side of the doorway to return the wall to its original state.

The ensuing darkness was unsettling, but it only lasted a few, short moments before a line of elaborately adorned and clearly ancient torches sprang to fiery life, lighting their way.

"How very original," Hermione noted, lifting an eyebrow at her companion.

Next to her, Blaise merely shrugged. "Nostalgia," he muttered before beginning his descent.

Hermione rolled her eyes to herself but quickly followed.

They moved quietly down the stairs, but she didn't miss the fact that Blaise stayed in front of her with his hands raised slightly in an almost protective stance.

The whole thing was strange, and arguably offensive considering she wasn't some silly damsel in distress, but she knew better than to argue at this particular moment in time. Because despite the inexplicability of what was happening, the demon in front of her was still willingly escorting her away from whatever trouble was waiting for Draco back inside the club.

And it wasn't exactly something she could understand.

When they reached the bottom of the stairs, Blaise paused in front of another seemingly blank wall and muttered a word Hermione couldn't hear. For a moment nothing happened, but then, almost as if the wall had been testing her patience (or lack thereof), a large, metal door appeared, and she sighed softly in relief.

Hermione watched as Blaise pressed an ear up against the dark metal, muttering another inaudible word. The demon moved a finger over his mouth, silently shushing her, and winked before closing his eyes. She rolled her eyes again (because honestly, she wasn't born yesterday) and waited, drumming her fingers impatiently against the top of her thigh, until he opened his eyes and nodded, indicating the coast was clear.

"I wouldn't linger," he instructed as he turned the handle and pushed the door open, the metal squeaking as the edge of the door separated from its frame. He stopped, peeking around the side of the door before stepping aside.

Hermione stepped outside, a hand already raised in preparation to transport herself away, but she hesitated and turned around before the demon behind her could disappear. "Will he be–?"

"Oh, don't start caring about him now, darling," Blaise said, and then he was gone (along with the door), leaving her alone in a dark, deserted alley.

"Fuck," she swore, throwing her head back in frustration before similarly disappearing into the night.


Song - VILLAIN by K/DA

a/n: Took a little unexpected break over the holidays and into the new year, but I'm back! I don't think I can promise weekly postings yet, but I can promise that I won't leave you hanging quite this long again. I hope you enjoyed Pansy's short intro (saving the rest of her story for later) and a bit more unresolved sexual tension between our favorite duo. Oh, and of course, can't wait to dig more into the appearance of my second favorite Malfoy.