the queen dethroned
by s i l v e r a u r o r a
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Slytherin is politics. Slytherin is studying the play of power and currying favour and being both subservient and outrageous when the situation demands it. Slytherin is knowing that the world owes you something. Slytherin is like a Tudor court – all pretty (and not so pretty) girls and the powerful and the obsequious and the charming men.
And it's a well-established fact that Draco Malfoy is the Slytherin prince – he's got those hawklike good-looks and the utterly polished uncaring veneer, and his princess in Pansy Parkinson.
But Daphne Greengrass is the fucking queen, and don't let anything convince you otherwise.
She's got the whole act down to perfection. She's the one who does her duty by her house and by her friends, and in her opinion, duty largely consists of pretending that the trivial is critical.
So those new shoes and new dresses and new hairstyles? Yeah they're pointless, but image is like currency in Slytherin and Daphne Greengrass is the richest of them all.
"Hey Greengrass," a voice says, and she turns her elegant head to one side to see Theodore Nott jogging after her down the halls, hair falling over his forehead and his blue eyes bright with exercising. "How's life?"
"Oh, piss off," she responds quickly, glaring at him prettily, her blonde hair pulled neatly back into a bun, curling tendrils escaping to frame her face. "Can't you go shower or something?"
"You mean to say you're not enjoying my company?" he teases, falling into step beside her easily and nudging her in the side.
"Not exactly."
"Well that's a shame," he replies with a large grin, pushing his hair out of his eyes. "Because I rather enjoy yours."
Daphne narrows her eyes and retreats into stony silence.
The dangerous thing about Theo Nott is that he's like the charming rogue that appears out of nowhere and sweeps the queen off her feet and invariably gets her killed for infidelity. Daphne refuses to ignore the possibility that he's the king to her queen, the … something to her whatever. It's all irrelevant anyway because nothing is going to happen.
"Can't you go annoy someone else?" she inquires with a refined air of boredom, trying to ignore the fact that he's just stripped off his shirt and is now displaying a torso more perfectly defined than a noun in a dictionary. "And put your clothes back on."
"I've been for a run," he protests with a practised, innocent air – and it is this exact act that has her wondering whether he pretends just as much as she does. "I'm hot."
She resists the slavish comment her brain wants her to make and instead crosses her arms and forces her mouth to make a little moue of disapproval.
"It's not very polite to go wandering around the corridors of Hogwarts with no shirt on," she points out, trying to control her smile. "Someone might get offended."
"It's seven-thirty on a Sunday morning," he responds with an indolent grin. "Only someone as keen to see the sunrise as you would be out."
"How do you know I'm out to see the sunrise?" she asks in astonishment, her act falling away as she stares at him in sincere disbelief. He glances sidelong down at her with those wonderful blue eyes that sparkle in the dawnlight.
"Because, Daphne," he replies, his voice caressing her name like velvet, "I see right through your damn pretending."
And then he's suddenly pinning her against the wall, his hands clutching her to him as though she will slip right away through his fingers, his mouth on hers hungry and needy and too controlled for too long. She finds herself moaning into the kiss, her body arching up into his, and she feels his smile against her lips.
"You're such a fraud," he murmurs as they part, and then he leaves her hot and dishevelled against the wall, her act of dutifulness shattered, the queen dethroned and the girl released.
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