AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hola! So... A few prep-talks and lovely people later, I'm over that rotten incident of the racist review, and am happily leading my life as an INDIAN. Alright. So, I received a review in Hindi - dear Guest, you made my day, really! Dhanyawad, back at ya! :D
This one's short, I'm sorry. And - the story isn't winding up in eight chapters, either. It's gonna go up to fifteen, I'm guessing.
Anyways. Thank you, dear reviewers, and all the people who've added this in their favorites, or have followed it, or have, even, merely been a silent reader! I love you all, till you're not out to offend.
[PS. If you're wondering where have I been hibernating, this past month, then come down to my tumblr: i-heart-hogwarts . tumblr . com. That is one place that I can't stay away from, regardless of the mood I've been in.]
5: Nobody Knows The Truth
Draco blinks, feeling awfully nauseated, as bright, blinding light envelops his entire frame. The door has been opened. Then he hears a hushed 'Nox', and breathes out a sigh of relief. She's being considerate - that much, at least, is good sign.
Assured of the wand-light having been put out, his eyelids flutter open. He blinks again.
Pansy's hair is a tousled - something he deems quite natural, given that she's probably just left her bed because of him - and sleepiness is easily distinguishable in her narrowed eyes. He does a quick, visual exploration, and an uncertain frown twists his brow. She's wearing a male vest. A male, Quidditch vest. And of some bulky male, too, looking at how the broad straps of the sleeveless garment are threatening to dangle off her narrow shoulders. Or, even, how the comfortable looking vest is reaching beyond her knees.
"What the fuck, Draco?" she grits out, wand forgotten as her arms cross against her chest. Her voice is groggy. "Have you even… Did you - do you know what time it is?"
Draco shrugs, deftly shoving her to a side with his elbow, and forces his way into her apartment. He can hear her indignant sputters echoing after him as he finds his way to her kitchen.
He hasn't even dragged himself a chair at her kitchen-table before Pansy enters the room.
"Are you - fuck - are you out of your mind?" she almost screeches in utter incredulity.
"I've had a bad day. Awful day," he mutters, finally slumping into one of the bar-stools lining the kitchen counter.
Pansy walks over, furiously, and towers his deranged form. "I have company, tonight, Draco," she hisses, viciously, because - Draco presumes - she's trying to keep her voice low.
Draco shrugs. "Kick him out, then," he suggests, earning a hard smack over his head.
"I'm kicking out no one," Pansy hisses, rearranging the strap of the vest on her shoulder.
Draco nods. "That is good. That means I'm staying, too, aren't I?"
She purses her lips, looking at him from under fissured eyebrows. "You're really drunk," she whispers, eyes widening, as if she's just realized how very much drunk he is.
And he is. Drunk, that is. Heavily so.
"Why're you - Draco!" She yanks at his arm, steadying him as he swivels the barstool and lands in a precarious position that is dangerous enough to give him amnesia if he falls off. "Stop - just… get off that stool!" Pansy commands, tackling an arm of his around her shoulders as she pulls him to his feet.
Draco, however, shoved her away. "I'm okay, Pans," he growls, straightening his crumpled shirt. "Living room?" He doesn't wait for her answer before walking into said room and settling over the table kept adjacent to a comfortable looking couch.
Pansy follows, arms crossed and an expression of deep apprehension on her face. He doesn't miss the repetitive, wary glances she keeps throwing at the staircase that he knows leads to her bedroom. For some reason, that makes him snicker.
Her sharp, earth-green eyes narrow at him. "Something funny?" she snarls.
He pulls her to him, abruptly, and gives her a sloppy kiss on the cheek. "It's been ages since such a thing's happened," he declares. "You having a guy over and hiding it from me. It's cute." It's not, but he smacks a kiss on her other cheek. She grimaces and immediately shoves him away. But she's smiling, and that is enough to raise his spirits.
"Who is it, anyway? Your company?" he asks, snickering again when her cheeks redden.
"You're completely shit-faced. I'd rather talk about it later, when you are sober enough to understand the gravity of… of his identity."
Draco has no idea what 'shit-faced' means, but guesses that she's talking about his drunkenness. Then he cocks an eyebrow. "Deeper than a night-stand, is it?"
She rolls her eyes, walking back into the kitchen, which isn't exactly hidden from where he's seated, and tosses a, "Later, Draco," over her shoulder.
Draco gazes at the blotchy, worn out fabric of the jersey she's wearing while she fumbles around for… for what, exactly? He frowns. "Past three of the morning," he mumbles, rubbing a fist into his right eye and squinting at her stilled form with his left. "What're you doing?"
"You - you look like you could use - uh, some… tea?" she murmurs, looking at him with a crooked, nervous half-smile from under the fringe of her black hair.
Is she lying?
Draco scowls. Had he been a bottle less drunk, right now, the question wouldn't have taken him more than half a glance at Pansy to answer.
"No, I don't," he retorts, watching closely as her gaze worriedly flickers between him and the staircase directly opposite to the kitchen, again, and -
Shit, is she that worried about him finding about her fling?
He's just about to make another remark when she beats him to it. "What's wrong with you, Drake?"
He blinks. "Me? Nothing. I'm completely fine," he smugly states, stretching his arms above his head. "Drunk, but okay."
Pansy rolls her eyes. "What are you here for? Is there anything you wanted to talk about? And - " She pauses, frowning suddenly as concern spreads over her features. "Why did you drink, Drake? What's happened?"
And that, actually, is precisely the wrong thing to say, Draco realizes, as the telltale prickling resurfaces behind his shut eyes.
Shut eyes?
When did that -
"Draco? Draco, are you listening - "
Hermione's laughing face is the last thing he's conscious of - but, what is she doing, here, at Pansy's house? - and then he let's go.
Hermione Granger was adorably out of breath when she stepped in through the door. And, interestingly, she went from looking tired to self-conscious, in a split-second, when her eyes found him. Draco held back a smirk.
"How considerate of you to have finally joined us, Miss Granger," Lucius drawled, rolling his neck in an exaggerated gesture of stretching his stiff limbs.
Granger sputtered for ten seconds, eyes widened, before she scoffed. "I have a job to handle, Mister Malfoy."
Draco smirked openly, this time, giving his father a 'you-brought-it-on' look. Lucius simply got up from his recliner and slipped out of the Library.
"Hello, Granger," Draco purred, cherishing the sight of her pinked cheeks.
"Why's your – ah, why isn't Lucius a part of our meeting today?" The pitch of her voice was really very slightly raised, and Draco probably won't have noticed, in fact, if her heaving chest – encased in a modest, pale blue, chambray shirt – won't have caught his attention.
Mother of Merlin, but her nipples were poking through the material! Whoever came to official meetings looking aroused? This wench was gonna ruin him!
Draco's mouth went dry. Fuck, but he knew what those globes of flesh looked like! He'd seen them – properly put on display, too; he didn't even have to sneak, honestly – and he wasn't even at fault for having recollections of what they'd felt like against his palm, and what all he'd had fantasized about doing to them, for endless nights, and –
"Malfoy!" she was hissing by the time Draco'd managed to shake himself out of his musings. And –
Uh, oh. He was caught.
Tucking his lower lip between his pearlescent, shapely row of teeth, Draco let his eyes drop back to her – damn, Salazar, still bloody heaving! – breasts. "You skipped the bra, today, or what, Granger?" he remarked, then, his voice embarrassingly hoarse.
Granger's gasp echoed through the gigantic, almost empty Library, and Draco had a mere second to blink before a swarm of angry looking birds had been conjured by the fuming, blushing witch - wand-lessly and wordlessly - and -
"Protego Totalum!" Draco screeched, jumping to his feet and flicking out his wand, just in time to stop the Oppugno spelled birds from attacking him.
"I could have invaded that spell if I had my wand at ready," Granger hissed, eyes narrowed.
He gaped at her, wide-eyed. "Fucking hell, Granger, I was just teasing, dammit! I mean, look at your breasts! They're - "
He was cut off by a Harpy-like scream from the accompanying witch. Horrified, he flinched as she twisted on her heels to march up to the door to the Library.
Then he panicked. "Granger! Wait! Come on," he called after her, "I'm - I'm sorry, okay? I was just… I don't know… teasing you?"
But she'd already left.
The first, coherent thought entering Draco's mind is that he's not as hungover as he'd predicted he would be, when he had been busy downing pints after pints of Ogden's finest, last night. The second thought, more shocking than the first, is that he's not in a bed.
He peels his eyelids open, blinking and squinting in the well-lit room.
"Rise and shine, Mister Dork."
He groans, then, scowling at an immaculately dressed, tea-sipping Pansy as he sits up in -
"The couch?" he bleats, incredulously, looking about the living room in shock. "Really, Pansy? You've got, like, two spare, fucking bedrooms, and you gave - "
"You didn't deserve them," she cuts in, cocking an eyebrow, her demeanour not fazed in the least.
Draco frowns. "Excuse me?"
"You dropped here at three in the morning, Draco, absolutely pissed." She keeps her cup away, her expressions hardening by the second. "I had my guesses about that show."
Draco gulps. A sudden, misplaced weight is pressing against his sternum.
Only, it isn't misplaced, at all.
The events from yesterday flood his brain, then.
He lets out a breath, sinking into the cushions kept against the back of the couch as his eyes slide shut in defeat. "How much do you know?" he mumbles.
"About as much as the rest of the world, probably," she snarls, taking Draco by surprise. "I know that something's happened between you and Granger, and that that something has made you break it off with her and get into an impromptu - relationship with your father's secretary," she finishes, tossing the day's Daily Prophet in his lap.
With trembling hands and baited breath, Draco unrolls the newspaper - and let's out a string of swears under his breath as he reads the headline.
"Breakup of the Millennia," Pansy mimics the words, rolling her eyes. "Never thought that the Prophet would turn into a gossip machine. Does anyone even require Parvati Patil's Witch Weekly, these days?" she grumbles, mostly to herself, massaging her temples.
Meanwhile, Draco tries to calm his thudding heart.
The newspaper in his hands has printed the awfully disgusting article about his private life with a four-square-inches picture of his and Hermione's. He remembers spending the night with the - supposed - love of his live, at the Ministry's Yuletide Ball that the photograph belongs to.
Lead is settling into his stomach…
…and bile is grazing the back of his throat.
"Pansy," he grunts, thanking Salazar Slytherin when the girl immediately takes the newspaper away from his hands. At least she's paying attention.
"You're gonna be sick, aren't you?" she rushes out, patting his back with fumbling hands. "Do - do you - "
"No, I - " He swallows, and sags in relief when the feeling of nausea subsides. He swallows again and his breathing pattern begins to even out. "I'm fine."
Pansy's lets out a whooshing breath. "Thank Merlin," she mutters, plopping down on the couch, next to him. "Do you wanna rest for some time before we talk?"
Draco thinks it over. He decides. "No. I'd rather have the discussion first," he says, reclining back against the cushions. "After all, that is what I'd come for."
Draco marched into his father's Study, without knocking - which was an unsaid sign of showing ire, in his family - and cleared his throat as an address to the older blond hunching over his desk.
"What."
Draco blinked at the flatness of Lucius' tone. It was so flat that it didn't even sound like a question.
"Why wasn't I informed about this afternoon's meeting with Granger?" Draco asked, trying to rival his father's nonchalance.
But he blinked again, when Lucius' irritated, angry grey eyes rose to meet his. "Miss Granger," he corrected, causing Draco to flinch. "And you have been kicked out of the secret campaign that Felicis Potions has been carrying out with Miss Granger, congratulations."
Draco's jaw fell open in shock. "What?" he bleated.
Lucius sighed. "I'm quite busy, Draco. Why don't you - "
"No," Draco interrupted, at which his father raised his eyebrows. "I'm not moving from here until you tell me - "
"Lucius."
Draco twisted on his heels to look at his mother frowning in the doorway. She hadn't knocked either. He scowled. This was the worst time for her to be interrupting. "Mother, I'm - " He broke off, gasping, as Narcissa raised a hand to stop him.
"I need to have a word with your father," she said, calmly, her frown slowly dissipating. "Would you, please, excuse us for a while, Draco?"
Draco let out a pained groan. "Not now, Mother, I was having a discussion - "
"A quarrel is what you were having, son," Narcissa cut in, an eyebrow tweaked. "But we will see to that later. Right now, leave."
Aghast, Draco backed away, and slid out of the Study, barely resisting the urge to curse. But he was well aware of the fact that Narcissa Malfoy was as sharp with her ears as she was with her wand, and nobody needed a proof of how much the youngest Black daughter was efficient with her wand. And, right now, a combination the two could render Draco's body quite useless for quite some time.
Draco sighed, sauntering down the corridor as he brooded.
His father had kicked him out of the campaigning that had been his idea, in the first place. And for whatever reason?
Draco let out a drawn out moan of 'fuck me' when he remembered. He'd been quite out of league, the previous time he'd been left alone with Granger. And she'd left, furious. Draco frowned. That had been merely a week ago. Was he so much overworked that he forgot?
Apparently.
Draco clicked his tongue, mentally bidding goodbye to his private - really, really secret - fantasies of getting acquainted, and nicely so, with one Hermione Granger's round, shapely, luscious breasts. And those perky, dark pink, gold-tipped nipples, too.
He sighed, gazing out at the snow covered grounds of the Malfoy Manor.
I have absolutely no idea when the next update will be. Not this month, at least, because I've participated in two more fests, and one them has its deadline as the 26th of this month. So - scheduled packed, sorry!
Talking of fests, come down to HP-DRIZZLE, on LiveJournal, the reveals have been made just this 7th. There've been 9 Dramione stories, this time. Mine, though, is a Harry x Pansy piece, sorry to disappoint. I'm Hansy trash, too, I couldn't help it! I'll probably post the oneshot, here, as well. But, not right now. Sometime later.
So... Visit that, yeah? And review this!
xAishwarya!