Beginning of the Year
Pansy, he mused, had the prettiest smile in the world.
Actually, she probably did not; but it did not really matter. To him, Pansy had the prettiest smile in the world.
Currently, Pansy was quarrelling with Blaise Zabini. "You know how he is about Potter!" she was saying, "If it were you or me – or Draco – he would ignore us. Or even rebuke us for disregarding the task completely!"
"But you have to admit," Zabini argued, "that it was ingenious. I mean, Snape mentioned bezoars on the first lesson ever – and how many of us thought of one?"
"And what if one of those poisons couldn't be cured with a bezoar?" Pansy replied fervently, "You only defend Slughorn because you are in that club of his–"
He couldn't take more.
He circled Pansy's waist and scooped her delicately towards himself. "Pansy, m'dear," he murmured into her ear, "Excuse me to Flitwick, will you?"
Pansy looked at him with suddenly serious eyes. "Of course, Draco," she said; and he felt thankful and relieved that she did not ask any questions of the kind which he could not answer.
She gave him a peck on the cheek, and commanded Zabini, "Let's go."
Draco slid through the half-open door into the bathroom.
---
He watched his face in the mirror, trying to force himself into calm; to Occlude his mind as he had been taught by Aunt Bellatrix those several months ago, when he had been foolish enough to think that he was equal to the task assigned to him.
Later that day, after the lessons were over, he would slip out, and go to another bathroom, the dark bathroom which was the opening to the Chamber of Secrets; and he would talk to her. He didn't know yet what he would talk about; so, perhaps it would be she who would talk; but talk they would, because talk to her he must, he simply must. He hadn't met her since before Christmas, when he had been so sure that he had finally come across a failsafe plan for disposing of Dumbledore.
Of course, he hadn't taken Slughorn into consideration.
Rosmerta did inform him almost immediately that she had sold the... enhanced bottle of her finest oak-matured mead of which Dumbledore was so fond; but she did not say to whom. It was only after Christmas passed, and nothing happened, that Draco though to ask her the question – and received the answer.
Instead of presenting the bottle to Dumbledore, the old glutton must have retained it for his own use; that meant that once again, his plans had been foiled; and that he was back to repairing the Cabinet.
And, of course, there was no way he could take the bottle from Slughorn without attracting attention to himself. Ah, well; after today's lesson, he felt that he would almost be relieved when the Potter-worshipping fool–
Let him mix his antidote to the poison – all the while keeping in mind Golpalott's Third Law, of course! That; or search for a bezoar.
The only vaguely amusing outcome of the lesson was that Granger, apparently, had also resented Potter the undeserved praise he had garnered from Slughorn. Between that and her recent estrangement from the Weasel, something was clearly rotten in the state of Gryffindor–
He blinked. "What are you doing here?" he asked, mustering as carefully neutral a tone as possible. Reflected in the mirror, Myrtle was hovering directly behind him, glaring at him like a Basilisk through her thick, round glasses.
---
Draco turned around and repeated, "Myrtle, what are you doing here?"
As if he did not know, she thought resentfully. Aloud, she said: "What am I doing here? I came to see you! And I did see you. With her," she finished in an accusatory tone. It smarted. Again he had promised to come, and again he had not; and now, she knew why.
He probably wouldn't have come again, wouldn't have come again at all–
The boy lowered his head and slowly raked his hand through his sleek blond hair, upsetting the careful arrangement completely. "Pansy?" he asked eventually, in a tired, worn-out voice.
Myrtle blinked; she had not been expecting such an easy victory. "Yes, her. That pug-faced–"
The cold voice cut through the air like a knife. "I would be grateful if you obliged me by refraining from speaking of my girlfriend in such derogatory terms."
Myrtle could not decide if she wanted to scream or cry; in the end, she settled for something in between. "Your girlfriend?!"
Draco winced. "Shh. Someone might hear."
"Why, of course they might! That's why I'm screaming!"
A pained look crossed the boy's face. "I really don't want to have to use a Silencing Charm," he said, and then added weakly, "–please?"
Myrtle studied the boy for a moment in silence.
This was the first time she had seen Draco clearly– Well, no: this was the first time she had seen him at all in quite some time; but the previous time they had met, it had been dark, so she hadn't seen him clearly for an even longer time–
In any case, there was no trace of the mask-like face which Draco had almost automatically assumed the first few times they had met, and this was a good thing; but it was almost the only good thing. Because apart from that, Draco's skin had become almost grey, and he had dark shadows under his eyes; between that and his pale hair and grey eyes, the poor thing was almost halfway to becoming a ghost himself.
"All right," she decided, lowering her voice, "Now, what was it about a girlfriend?"
---
Draco sighed. After the reprimand he had received from Snape before Christmas, he had taken good care to read forward his Defence textbook. As it turned out, ghosts were in it, defined as 'the imprints of departed souls'. Currently, he was about to discuss his girlfriend with an imprint of a departed soul. It did not sound too promising.
Of course, he was also about to discuss Pansy with Myrtle.
That didn't sound very promising, either.
"Pansy and I..." he began hesitantly, "We have been together for some two years now–"
"Two years?!" the ghost screamed out, instantly forgetting her promise; Draco felt himself wince again. "Two... years...?" she repeated much more quietly, apparently remembering the promise again.
There was a moment of silence on both sides as Myrtle considered the revelation and Draco considered Myrtle. She did not leave him; why didn't she leave him? She ought to have left him; she ought to have taken offence, and screamed, and cried, and floated to another bathroom, instead of simply hovering there, biting her lip, considering...
"B-but she can't be a very good girlfriend, can she?" Myrtle asked at last, half-triumphantly, half-pleadingly; and he felt even worse, "She can't be a very good girlfriend; otherwise you wouldn't have come to me."
"She is a very good girlfriend," Draco replied resignedly, and the instant look of betrayal on Myrtle's face immediately made him regret his words; but he did not have the strength, he simply did not have the strength to maintain yet another act in his life; not any longer, not now. He was cunning; he was ambitious; he was very good at Occlumency; but right now, he only wanted a bit of truth and sincerity in his life.
Of course, the truth would destroy what an act would maintain.
(It is an act that is crucial to success, Draco!)
---
Myrtle was not, by her own admittance, the most patient of creatures. She simply did not see any reason to be: no one had ever been patient with her, so she reciprocated in kind. With Draco, she felt, she had been exceptionally tolerant. She had endured him calling her a Mudblood; she had endured his obnoxiousness and his taunts and his long absences and that vague feeling that all too often, he did not pay her enough attention, the attention that she deserved. This, however – this was the last nail to the coffin of their friendship; if friendship it could have ever been called. She would leave him here; let this girlfriend of his comfort him!
Myrtle, however, was also a Ravenclaw – or, at least, had been a Ravenclaw in life. And so, she was curious; curious, indeed. She wanted to know; even if the knowledge would hurt, in the end. She had already endured much, in life and in death, after all; and yet, she still survived! She could endure one betrayal more–
"Then – why?" she asked, not caring especially to hide her resentment. "Why were you crying in the bathroom, instead of crying in your girlfriend's lap? Can't let her see her crying, can you? Can't let her see that you're less of a boy than–"
"She must not know," Draco interrupted, speaking in that cold, calm drawl of his that she so detested. He slid down under the sink and sat on the floor, hiding his face in his hands. "She must not know," he repeated.
He looked up to Myrtle, and started to speak rapidly, "Do you remember the first time we met? When we talked about those people who–" He interrupted, and, after a moment, fluidly resumed, "bully me? If I tell her anything, they might start bullying her, too. They might hurt her."
"And, of course, it is impossible to hurt a ghost," she said, mustering as much sarcasm as she could. That memory of Nearly Headless Nick, motionless and opaque, was extremely vivid in her mind.
Draco cast her another pained look. "No. It's not that," he said, squirming under the judgmental gaze of the one-ghost tribunal. "It's just..."
---
"...It's just that no one knows that we know each other," he said, and Myrtle's gaze suddenly softened for a moment. "Unless you told someone..."
"I did not!" Myrtle exclaimed in self-righteous indignation. She floated down to him, and sat next to him on the floor. "I did not. I promised."
Draco took this as a peace offering. "Then if I did not tell anyone, and you did not tell anyone, we should be safe," he said. "For the moment, at least," he added darkly.
Of course, his traitorous mind insinuated, nothing of this would matter the slightest in the long term if he did not manage to repair the Cabinet. If he did not manage to repair the Cabinet, then Father would die... and the Malfoy standing would be forfeit...
...and he would kill me.
It was not perhaps a particularly unexpected thought. Draco had known, intellectually, that the Dark Lord was in the habit of destroying those that stood in his way, or those that dared betray him; or those that he simply found of no use to him. But it was one thing to know it all, and a completely different one to be sitting on the floor of a bathroom next to the ghost of a girl who might well have been the Dark Lord's first victim, and knowing that it was very likely that soon, he would himself be counted among those failures–
The tears started to flow of their own accord.