Pansy Parkinson was sick and tired of being chosen dead fucking last.
Correction: she was sick and tired of not being selected...whatsoever.
Many unsatisfactory years had transpired, leaving her to feel a little bit like a battered Slytherin House mascot. If such an abused thing ever existed, she was surely embodying the sorry symbol.
Slytherin House represented a vehement and scholarly division of Hogwarts that almost always placed first at the conclusion of the school year thanks to wit and hard work, yet inevitably ended up finishing at the bottom for no rhyme or reason.
Needless to highlight, aggressive favoritism was running a tad rampant within the institution - ensuring that Slytherin consistently ate dust due to the simple fact that they weren't the preferred bunch of the senile, biased, bearded bitch in charge of the academy.
How the rest of the comparably privileged students wondered why the Slytherins were always in a grouchy mood was holy insensible as they were noticeably mistreated; forced to live in subterranean quarters alongside resistant damp, dripping buttressing, and Peeves of all nightmarish ghouls.
On more than one occasion Pansy had woken up to discover some mortifying sea creature plastered to the porthole above her bed, watching her sleep with a rather voracious glower.
That same inflection that Dumbledore regularly applied to Slytherin House - constantly doling out extremely random points to Gryffindor when Slytherin had more than fairly won - was occurring between Draco Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson; whereas despite her undying loyalty and affection for the boy, he was more than happy to turn his back and distribute all of his ridiculously limited love to another girl instead.
It was entirely unfair, and in wake of the social sacrifice she had been forced to swallow on New Year's Eve for him, well...she was beginning to run out of reasons to preserve said loyalty towards her favorite archfiend.
In the glistening reflection of Pansy's brown eyes, Draco's image had always been one of sheer perfection. Here went the mental compendium of his features she revisited in her mind all too often:
[ 1) witty ]
[ 2) handsome ]
[ 3) arrogant ]
[ 4) stylish ]
[ 5) filthy rich ]
[ 6) and best of all, wicked to the core ]
He was unburdened by ethical restrictions that tended to zap the fun straight out of everyone else. Why he'd be perfectly happy to pitch a helpless child into a pit of quicksand for a good rile.
He might even be a bonafide psychopath at the end of the day - generally lacking remorse for his destructive actions whilst simultaneously seeking a new pathway of manipulation to bifurcate around whatever rooty stump he had run into next.
They could be a brilliant couple together - Draco and Pansy - vexatious, cunning and powerful...
BUT there was an adverse number seven to that aforementioned list, and number seven positively twisted Pansy's knickers into a complex, navy-grade knot.
It was a line item she typically left out for obvious reason:
[ 7) obsessive form of attachment ]
And you guessed it - that particular simpering belonged to just one lucky girl, and that girl was definitely not Pansy.
With 'beautiful Bellarose' alive and breathing literally anywhere in the galaxy, he was clearly never going to select plain Pansy Parkinson for a romantic twister. And while she had essentially given up on this exotic fantasy long ago, even the platonic friendship was arguably one-sided...and beginning to cost her greatly.
Taking a trip back in time - far before the commencement of their Hogwarts' enrollment - Pansy had already become inseparable friends with the pearly-haired bastard, as well as one sneaky snake Greggory Goyle, professional complainer Daphne Greengrass, and the morbidly rotund simpleton, Vincent Crabbe.
This peculiar congregation was due mainly to their pureblood, snobbish parents maintaining a tight-knit community, refusing to send their contentious children to a common primary facility.
As such the original crew of hellions were homeschooled together quite often - multiple aggravating days a week in fact - at any one of their august residences depending on a decidedly fluid schedule.
However tutor days were normally hosted at the prestigious Malfoy Manor - circumstances which seemed to inflate Draco's sense of being the alpha male.
Theodore Nott had also been in the picture, vaguely - popping up now and then darning razor sharp outfits and rainy eyes for mysterious reasons.
He was in the picture vaguely due to his choppy attendance, and the fact that he tended to anti-socially pen equations and theories in a journal for the entire duration.
Back then he cried, nearly all of the time, silently like soft rain over the ocean, dripping tears from his rectangular-frame reading spectacles onto his heavy weight notebook.
They would later discover that his mother had been poisoned by unstable, interdimensional magic she'd been researching in her laboratory, and the effect was unfortunately indelible.
As a result of her risky endeavors into the unknown expanse of black physics, Electra Nott henceforth existed in part within their realm, and in part...somewhere else...keeping in tact by a filigree of borrowed time.
She was effectively phasing ever so slowly into another dimension, one microscopic particulate at a time, and by the end, she was nothing but a gray film of incoherent energy floating about the Nott Manor.
Five torturous years later when her son reached the ripe age of sixteen, Electra would finally disappear entirely into...nothingness. No goodbye, no warning, just a total subtract of presence one random day.
Such prolonged and unprecedented emotional distress set Theo up for a lifetime of haunted anguish, leading him to ceaselessly pine after solving the puzzle that had achingly stolen away his mother in spiritual castration.
No shock that the budding prodigy wasn't incredibly favored nor understood amongst the dull delinquents at Malfoy Manor, who could not possibly begin to imagine his circumstances.
Worse, seeing as he resided in part between a rural estate in England and a vineyard villa in coastal Italy, this diacritic background caused him to speak in a funny accent that tempted unruly bullying in the musty Malfoy estate library.
Being unequivocally more intelligent than his peers, Theodore typically deemed interactions to be futile as a result. So it went.
To aggravate matters he was also more inclined than the appointed tutor witch, and tended to talk back in rigid Italian when his precious theorizing was interrupted. It was at this point that he agreed to teach Draco Italian, mainly so he might further infuriate the tutor by spreading around coded insolence.
During a rather insipid socialite event at the Malfoy Manor in mid-July, 1991, all of the children were promptly expelled outside into the manicured parterre gardens like a spray of virus beads from a sneezing patient's nose, where their petulantly bright screams could not be registered by the unfriendly aristocrats dwelling in the ground floor parlor.
All the better, because Lucius Malfoy was in a god awful mood for whatever reason.
The explosive lord of the land had already threatened Blaise Zabini, the harmless mute of the bunch who had just showed up for the very first time, by stabbing his cane down into the boy's shoe simply for staring at him "too intently."
It was here, surrounded by butterflies and bizarrely shorn hedges shaped into magical animal statues, where Pansy had first heard of the plaguing name Audette Bellarose.
Once out of earshot of their unrelenting parental figures, Draco randomly began to gush about a pretty girl that he had met in a giant glass dome the week prior, dressed just like Alice In Wonderland and sporting far too much tenacity for a young lady of her stately origin.
Of course, at that time, the Bellarose Castle Biodome wasn't quite the recognized phenomenon and tourist icon that it later became years on, and Pansy had found herself terrifically confused by Draco's description.
None of it was believable.
Erumpets living in some constructed habitat formed out of glass, in Ireland of all places where it rained day and night? No way.
Poisonous magical insects permitted to flit around visitor's heads freely? Yeah right.
Draco Malfoy was a blatant fibber and an uncloseted narcissist; a passive-aggressive class clown if anything. Ergo the conclusion amongst the others seemed to be that he was once again manifesting an elaborate tale as a cry to conserve all attention on himself.
But this provided very little in the way of consilience to a worried party. Who was this surreal girl he was describing, occupying an unthinkable dystopian castle comprised of golden spires and jungle ferns?
Jealousy exploded outwards from Pansy's heart like a mushroom blooming at hyper-velocity on the sludgy bark of a rotted tree, reminded then of just how plain she really was.
Her entombed affections for Draco had begun to feel just like a spiked concrete ball and chain latched to her ankle, weighing her down like a punished ghost straight out of an Edgar Allen Poe play.
She had dragged around a childhood crush on him long before this Irish stranger had come out of moss and stone to sweep him clean off of his broomstick with her fancy gowns and cheeky little giggles.
Pansy had watched in contempt as Draco snickered and elbowed Vincent boyishly, a sideways smirk ebbing across his pale face, "Cast her straight off a tree branch at the end - little wench took a mouthful of sand right in front of my mother."
His fond description of the girl's features - pastel pageantry, lacy mittens, long blond hair and bright green eyes - could not be any more magnetically polarized from Pansy's blackout closet selection, short dark bob and brown orbs.
Even though the seasonal weather was gorgeous and the mood was rife with playful excitement, she found herself repugnantly frowning - filled head to toe with blistering self-consciousness that was entirely foreign.
Poor Pansy Parkinson had suddenly lost the ability to see that she truly was exclusively beautiful...overwhelmed with a bout of clouding, festering stink eye.
No...no this wasn't right - Draco wasn't the type to fall for the damsel in ardent appliqué, he was meant to fall for the gothic variety who worshipped darkness and demons.
If anyone was destined to hanker after some wuthering wench, it was that quixotic Einstein perfectionist who wore waistcoats and pocket watches at a stiflingly young age.
Almost instantaneously she wished a most horrific death upon whoever Audette Bellarose was...if she was actually real.
"Sixty-five, factored by...no, no that couldn't be...ugh, porco cane..," the waistcoat wearer himself bumped once into Pansy without bothering to apologize or glance up from his toxic notebook, nor at where his loafers were landing as he then trampled a rare creeping rose bed. He was effectively waltzing around blindly as if he were personally responsible for the great invention of the light bulb and on a terrific deadline to do so.
Should the pathway suddenly terminate in a septic swamp, the determined genius stood no chance at noticing until he was ears-deep in lilypads.
With a fleeting onset of soon-to-be-Slytherin ruffians scampering about, the miniscule arboretum rapidly evolved from a serene setting into quite a chaotic atmosphere.
In the back of the wandering pack, Goyle stripped out of his mazarine sweater in order to snag what appeared to be a skittering hedgehog who had chosen the worst possible moment to dart between the immaculate shrubbery.
The spiked rodent promptly produced a series of endless short hisses in response to it's unexpected captivity, suddenly wrapped up like a burrito in tacky fabric with only it's snippety face exposed. Unfazed by the suffering of his puny victim, Goyle proceeded to point it's pulsing nose directly into Blaise's personal space, as if to egg the frightened thing on to bite the unimpressed boy.
Having just been introduced to the selection of meddlesome monsters, Blaise's primary line of concern seemed not to be with the pea-brained creature being presented as a weapon, but instead in horrified recognition of Greggory's suddenly exposed salami nipples staring at him like runny eggs on a vertically inclined skillet.
Daphne Greengrass snorted at the vagrant storytelling, "And do tell us more Malfoy - was there an invisible purple Cheshire cat that followed her around as well, singing about the mole rats in graves?"
She kept pushing her younger sister, Astoria, backwards as if embarrassed that her eight year old sibling was pestering the older kids by constantly humming lullabies at their heels. It was pointless, because just like a yo-yo Astoria returned each time in an imbecilic daydream.
Draco unbuttoned the top two points on his pristine white dress shirt and tugged off his silver tie for disposal in the cranberry brambles, all of them sweating indecently under the sweltering summer sun. The stridulation of zinging crickets was damn near deafening.
In the blinding rays his eyes mimicked a tone of white hot blue found uniquely in Antarctic ice, "The line is mome raths outgrabe...but no one was expecting you to be all that educated in cultural literature, were they Greengrass? No invisible cat, but she did claim to possess an invisible bear."
Theo huffed haughtily as he surpassed Draco in his mindless meander, flipping another sheet of thick bond paper aside, ensorcelled quill scribbling in wild scurry to record his active thoughts, "Invisible bear? Okay Malfoy, now you are...how do they say, taking the piss straight out of the pot? Taking the whole pot with you too. Give us the piss back."
He shoved Draco playfully with a rare smile, and Draco pushed him right back with a reflective grin, "Oh sod off you Italian git, go back to calculating two plus two why don't you?"
Perhaps he'd best resort to calculating one plus two, because in a few years time both boys would find themselves tied up in an unexpected love triangle over the very girl they were debating about.
Vincent Crabbe wheezed, scratching at his buzzed hairdo, "Yeah..an invisible bear...are you sure Malfoy?" His circular face was so flushed from the minute exercise of partaking in a gardenscape gander that it was only a matter of time before he started to smell horrendous.
Draco walked backwards at the front of the skeptical clan, eyebrows jumping and eyes widening, "I can't confirm the bear claim, but she can perform wandless magic. Left a handprint on my shirt, just there."
He indicated an area just above his heart on his dress shirt. They watched him apparently try to recreate it himself in a total flunk.
At this point, as everyone groaned and guffawed in roiling disbelief, Blaise spoke up for the first time, "My father tells me hardly any witches or wizards learn to perform wandless magic. You're a dirty rotten liar."
Yes, yes he certainly is, Pansy thought bitterly to herself. She thought it bitterly yet with hope that the whole account was actually a load of crock, because a certain glint in Draco's eye might suggest for once he was not stringing them along.
The asinine him-hum from Astoria only served to put the situation further on edge, as the babble gradually rose in volume at the same time that the conversation took a ninety-degree swing in the direction of increasing hostility, "La la la, laaa, la la LAA."
"I am not lying. How dare you speak to me like that on my own property!" Draco spat over the irritating singing, his voice dropping like an anchor into the darkest depths of the ocean. He glared at Blaise resentfully, rolling up his stiff sleeves as if in preparation for a physical brawl, "Who the hell are you anyways? You mute freak."
Much to Crabbe's gasping relief Draco stopped tramping backwards to defensively cross his arms in place.
So too did everyone else freeze on the sodded path, save for Theo who totally disappeared around the curve beyond, stuck in his own world of numbers altogether, "If the half-life is fifteen years, then the trajectory of destabilization..."
"La la, la la la la..."
The trapped hedgehog sneezed angrily multiple times in Greggory's sticky hands, and without warning, Crabbe turned around to violently retch from heat fatigue.
Pansy covered her ears in frustration. The perturbing cadence in that garden was enough to afford anyone a brutal headache.
Blaise rolled his eyes, also crossing his arms. He had immediately fallen into the stewardship role he would operate within forevermore; the nonpartisan mitigator and lie detector extraordinaire, "Just admit it: she's not real. No one of the sort exists, and you bare no evidence to support such claims."
"LA LA LA, LAAA."
Pansy flared her eyes at Daphne, who was now desperately hissing at Astoria to shut the fuck up.
Nearby, Crabbe released a deadly balloon of gas as he hurled, the fumes as noxious as spoiled eggs.
Surprisingly, instead of blowing up in a characteristic fit of rage due to the vile surroundings and accusation at hand, Draco grew silent, pressing his lips into a flat line. To Pansy's shock he blinked and sighed, letting his arms loose, "She is real, although I suppose it doesn't matter, I'll never see her again anyways."
There it was, a tickle of undeniable melancholy in his tone.
That tickle continued to spiral into a full blown bout of hysterical cackling in Pansy's brain for the remainder of the summer, worried that Draco fancied some unrealistic, fairytale girl that he'd invented over noticing the very real girl right in front of his eyes.
All the way home in the rickety Parkinson carriage, her nasty mother had laughed in Pansy's sullen face, inappropriately mocking her child by pointing out that any interest in a popular boy such as Draco Malfoy would only serve up a platter of disappointment time and time over.
In retrospect, her mother had not been wrong. Harsh...but not miscalculated in the slightest.
One can only envision the absolute flabbergast of the first year Slytherin class that following September, when it turned out that Draco had not been wrong either.
The second Minerva McGonagall curtly called out Audette Bellarose during the sorting hat ritual, all of their jaws had then dropped to the floor, and Draco commenced obnoxiously banging the feast laden Slytherin table in hyperactive incitement.
"The Emerald Princess" had apparently been hiding at the back of the newcomers below her droopy hood. Hiding not out of shyness, but so she might whisper to her Consciaur about which house to select without receiving judgment for the action, which would no doubt present as a form of unchecked schizophrenia to any unwitting dunderhead.
That monumental evening Draco appeared unusually dorky in his mandatory appointed dunce cap. Brandishing a set of acute buckteeth he was still in the process of outgrowing, he gestured to Audette's unanticipated appearance, "Just look who it is boys, take a good hard look. I will be accepting formal apologies in written format for the purpose of framing in the common room."
Pansy certainly took a good hard look at the wispy female prancing up to the sorting hat in sparkling new black robes.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
Yes, even more shocking than Harry Potter and a metamorphmagus boy both showing up on the train was the arrival of this creature, showing off just how lucky the Irish truly were.
Audette Bellarose was an adorable bombshell, a head-to-toe dripping cutiepie straight out of an antiquated cartoon.
Sewn into her perfect golden waves were perfect golden bows that complimented her perfectly impossible green eyes which shone like chartreuse gems in the candlelight.
Seeing her competition in concrete form, Pansy's premeditated hatred soared to a dangerous height, and they'd only been at that castle for less than thirty minutes.
Another nine bloody years to go.
Audette sat smiling upwards, eyes crisscrossed eagerly as the hat hovered over her neatly stylized hair for only a few seconds before the mangy heap of crinkled leather confidently blurted out Slytherin.
She had been waiting her entire life for the freedom to live lawlessly without the overwatch of governesses, and she had found her people.
At the mention of Audette's house assignment Pansy subconsciously crinkled the tablecloth into a furious tangle in front of her silver plate. Another nine bloody years that would feel more like one hundred now that she had to share sleeping quarters with the entitled girl.
Daphne sucked in her breath at Pansy's side, clearly of equal discontentment, "Sweet Satan. She is real, and if I didn't know any better, I'd say she makes us look like a pair of stinking trolls. We'd best dunk her head in the loo tonight so there's to be no confusion over pecking order."
Pansy nodded; and they really did do that to sweet innocent Audette, even going so far as to rip out all of her ribbons and force them down her choking throat. She had blubbered about the incident for at least three days afterwards, begging the Headmaster to change her House with no avail.
Oddly enough though her escapades with Draco turned out to be a downright delightful disaster to witness unfold, the exact opposite of what Pansy had expected.
Apparently number seven was not an exclusive trait to possess.
The moment she recognized that sui generis platinum hair at the dinner table Audette quickly latched on with fierce enthusiasm, squirming her way between abutting vultures to steal a spot directly next to Draco Malfoy.
No girls dared to act like that around him, none - it was the ideal conditions for having one's skirt pulled over their head before a prompt flip upside down into a garbage bin. It was this sort of childish pizazz that had already gotten her tossed from a tree branch.
Yet he seemed to be in a strangely pleasant mood towards the bubbly little brat at the beginning...until of course her resolute clinginess very rapidly got on his last nerve, like a lightning strike to the spinal cord.
He wasn't exactly the cuddly sort as most boys at eleven naturally aren't - let alone this particular demonic specimen - yet she insisted on hugging him nearly every chance they met, and this embaressed Draco deeply in front of his jeering friends.
Not to mention her inarticulate stunts masterfully interrupted his favorite course; broomstick flight training. Thankfully she was booted from the program by Madame Hootch shortly into the semester, even though from Pansy's perspective it had been hilarious surveying Seamus Finnigan get gutted horrendously by a broom end.
Draco tended to act slick and suave in class settings by snickering covertly under his breath, whilst Audette spoiled any private whispering sessions by giggling drunkenly loud. One could see Draco's ears flattening backwards like a dog in response to a painful, high-pitched whistle.
Soon enough Malfoy was certifiably irate and overwhelmed, resorting to jinxing her with petty spells as if it might drive some healthy distance between them, but no such luck was reached.
Audette was like a case of cancer that once metastasized was damn near impossible to eradicate without serious surgical intervention and a round of sickening medications. She kept returning with doggedness and brutal determination to be near to him, driving the already impatient boy clean up the wall.
She was so...so...SO annoying, frequently leaving Draco with wide, angry eyes in disbelief that no matter how nasty he was she remained superbly unfazed.
Pansy took this opportunity to analyze Draco's sour reactions to certain types of behaviors and wisely employed the opposite. She went even further, meticulously attempting to emulate his own callous and cool demeanor, hoping that now was her moment to shine as a plausible safety net from all of the crazy he was receiving elsewhere.
And although he clearly appreciated her calming company, she sadly was firmly planted in the friendship gardenbed alongside those perennial weeds Crabbe and Goyle.
She was doing everything right under the sun and that ridiculous thing in the ribbons and corsets was acting a complete nutter, yet still Draco spoke of Audette as if she were a "girl" and Pansy were a "buddy," providing some uncomfortable discernment.
Pansy felt wholeheartedly that she was in the wrong category, and that Audette should be placed in a vastly different category altogether; parasite.
Ten points to the Gryffindors for spelling their names correctly, fifty points to Audette Bellarose for being the village menace...
Things took a turn for the worst in second year when Audette upped the ante by pecking his cheeks, sitting in his lap uninvited, and boldly robbing Draco of his sweaters should he carelessly remove one in a public setting for even a split second.
"Oh no you don't. Give that back to me this instant, you relentless lunatic!" he once shouted so hoarsely upon spotting her in his Quidditch jumper that it was a miracle the common room fire did not blow out as he raced from the couches to chase her down.
"You need a fucking alienist!" he had rasped when she dragged him into a brawl on the carpet that she stood no chance of winning, giggling like a mad hatter all the same as Draco fiercely recuperated his precious new sports gear by tearing it clean off petite her frame.
However it was not the predictably unwarranted and seemingly innocuous advances of Audette that escalated Pansy's jealous pain to rage, it was that Draco continued to allow it all to occur, even participated in it.
Perhaps something might be true about that old adage that girls tend to mature earlier than boys, because a spark existed between them and Audette had already figured that out in some way, shape or form, and now she could not help but tease him mercilessly.
Draco on the other hand was not aware of any such spark plaguing his day to day business.
He grew increasingly flustered and worked up, playing it off as being a nuisance to him when, without explanation, he was doing very little to deter the messy interactions. The truth was he was addicted to the chaos, and everyone with a pair of eyes could see rightly so.
At the end of their tumultuous second year in which multiple students, ghosts, and even the flea-ridden Ms. Norris had been attacked by a megalithic snake living in the plumbing, everyone was exhausted and grateful to be departing for summer break.
It was no wonder all of the water had tasted ghastly for months.
The thought was rather violating to Pansy, who was waiting with Blaise on the train platform deep in the evergreen woods.
"He writes about her in his journal, all the time," Blaise whispered smoothly to Pansy, drawing her away from curious thoughts about the recently unveiled Chamber of Secrets. If it was anywhere in the vicinity of the already cursed Slytherin common room, then a second lawsuit was surely hovering over Dumbledore's purple floppy hat from the many outraged pureblood parents.
Blaise nodded down the way to where Draco was slapping Audette's teacup mittens away from his tie. They were quarrelling in lethal proximity to the open air tracks, and she was once again sniggering like a menace, tying hectic knot after knot in the firm green and silver fabric hanging from his neck.
"I'd love to read that. I'm sure it's brutal; he clearly despises that potty princess," Pansy raised her chin haughtily, although the statement might have been one rooted in the insecure need for that to actually be true.
"You're always such a grumpabottomis, I simply can't resist setting you off," satisfied after bungling his tie into a clusterfuck of twists, Audette threw her arms around his neck, tears streaming down her cheeks in hysteria as Draco hung his head back and shut his eyes in frustration.
Then a devilish smirk crept across his lips, and while she was distracted in a giggle fit he began tying brutal knots into her long hair as a meek form of revenge.
But this only caused her to laugh even harder, and finally he'd had it, shoving her backwards towards the tracks only to catch her pink petticoat last second in an effort to truly terrify her, dangling her there at a sharp angle over the pit of linear metal.
This drew the attention of the ever-policing Hermione Granger, who bravely approached to involve herself and sort out what she assumed to be violent bullying.
"I wouldn't be so sure of that. I've been reading it when he's off at Quidditch, quite humorous really. It's going to be a catastrophe when he realizes," Blaise smirked insidiously, watching an exacerbated Audette bang Draco sharply in his shoulder once her feet were planted firmly back on the ground. The wild tears were no longer a result of happiness, rather offence that he'd risked her life.
"Realizes what?" Pansy asked weakly, dread swirling in her tummy. The cackle had returned in derisive totality.
"I believe you know...but perhaps you wish not to..." Blaise's wise brown eyes evaluated her sideways with a concentrated stare of psychological nature.
Third year came around and Draco did indeed reconcile his true feelings for Audette when she began to calm down and mature at the hands of the newly instated Trunchbull. That, and she had transformed into an attractive young lady in other areas, and by fourth year he had transformed into some unrecognizable, drooling oaf with leaden eyes that Pansy could hardly stand to be around.
She'd had enough. Panic was settling in with these latest upgrades, and the cackling was so vociferous by then that she'd surely gone deaf as a doorknob.
Plainnnnn Panssssy Parkinssonnnn the ceaseless cackle began to distort itself into a rather vehement and chastising warble.
"What is she to you?" she had furiously blurted at him in the library one day in September of 1994, shocking Draco out of his finely steamed robes when all he'd been doing was working silently across the way from her.
His nose crinkled instantly at the sight of his spilt inkwell, dabbing at the mess by tearing out sheets from a rather priceless textbook abandoned in the workspace, "Hats off to you Parkinson for that fine terrorist attack [https://img.wattpad.com/bb4c9e51467dddfe5de8e1152b555240ca0c0d79/68747470733a2f2f73332e616d617a6f6e6177732e636f6d2f776174747061642d6d656469612d736572766963652f53746f7279496d6167652f3441337647776d743435303232773d3d2d313331343130373435352e313739616137303866383163323765353532363034393530373436372e6a7067?s=fit&w=1280&h=1280]
His nose crinkled instantly at the sight of his spilt inkwell, dabbing at the mess by tearing out sheets from a rather priceless textbook abandoned in the workspace, "Hats off to you Parkinson for that fine terrorist attack. This is bigfin squid ink - have you any clue how much my father pays for this caliber of school supplies?"
"Well out with it, what is she to you? What am I to you?" she shifted direction.
Heated and emotional, it hadn't occurred to her to mention a second specific name. In fact Pansy felt preposterously dizzy and light headed then, as what she had been trembling to inquire about finally tumbled from her lips.
Draco scoffed as he boyishly hucked sludgy masses of blackened paper at the back of Cedrick Diggory's head for no reason other to act an imp, "I'm confused - are you speaking about yourself in the third person or the first? Have I ever given you reason to doubt our amicable accord?"
"Bellarose - what is she to you? You've been acting...odd around her lately," Pansy confrontationally barred her teeth at Draco, prepared to dump the rare ink straight over his pearly locks if he dodged the question again.
He paused, icy eyes darting up to her face in awkward squiggles, "She's...just a girl. I don't know what you're on about, acting odd."
Normally Draco would prance at the mildest of opportunity to complain about Audette's badgering conduct, but lately it had transformed into some bizarre, staged act of cluelessness.
ust a girl.
Just a girl. Just a-
And youuuu're just a buddddyy the cackle reminded her cruelly.
Pansy panted in heightened anticipation, suddenly sweating like a stuffed goose in a convectional oven. She needed to know, she simply had to know for sure, "So you're friends with her too, just like that in a hairpin? The mental patient that never stops tittering and pestering you?"
"Not friends exactly. I mean, yeah...but it's different with her," Draco shrugged, but his cheeks had started to blossom with a warm, telling pink. The look on his face suggested that climbing below the table to avoid Pansy's grumpy tone had become a rather appealing concept, "I suppose she's less pestering as of late, compelling perhaps. If you really must know I'm debating asking her to the Yule ball. Why are you all jumped up over this?"
He put his quill down and narrowed his frosty orbs across the derelict workspace, waiting with a defensive glower.
The fact that he could not possibly comprehend why Pansy was jumped up felt like a hard slap to the face.
Friend, friend, forever a friend, friend until the very end, the cackling jeered into her ear, crippling her resolve much like a demon with it's claws digging into her shoulder blades.
That was all Pansy needed to hear, standing to knock over his precious ink a second time with the tip of her wand, "No, it's only different with her because she came back with a bouncy rack last year that you can't stop drooling at! You've lost your damn mind if you ask that-that-that menacing prude to the ball!"
Draco's jaw dropped open at the bold accusation and the out of character angst, running his piercing eyes judgmentally up and down Pansy's form.
To inflame the artlessness, Pansy had shouted it at the top of her lungs in a silent athenaeum, and now he was put on the spot to respond in front of dozens of curious onlookers.
Even Cedric Diggory had taken a break from searching for clues on the first Triwizard challenge to peer slyly at Draco, the back of his bare neck stained with ink. The daft boy had apparently not put two and two together as to whom had been flinging the ink bombs.
Draco didn't seem to bare any shame under the blistering spotlight, snorting below his breath with a curious sneer forming on his lips, "I never envisioned myself talking tits with you, but here we are."
"So you admit to fancying her tits?" Pansy gasped desperately, sensing critical arteries attached to her pulsing heart snapping off one by one. The topic was absurd and rapidly derailing, yet it was monumental to her nonetheless.
Draco's eyes drooped in irritation, cocking his head to the side as his arms disappeared into a tight fold before his Slytherin sweater, "They are pretty lush as far as tits go. Maybe I do fancy myself a good rubberneck, what's it to you? Jealousy I presume, although I suppose those sorry ant hills below your sweater aren't exactly up for you to decide."
His penetrating stare was dead and heartless, inspecting her in a way that squashed any lingering confidence.
[ 6) wicked to the core ]
This unsuspecting comparison had been ultra excruciating, and far too eye opening.
As is female tradition when scorned by an idiotic male specimen, she charged off with the force of one-thousand erumpents - storming away in a bout of heartbreak that Draco would never grow the wiser to, probably sitting there perplexed over the altercation.
He apparently couldn't contain his wicked streak, calling out to her, "Yeahhhh why don't you run off instead of stomping - wouldn't have to worry about any distracting bouncing, would we now Parkinson?"
As it was, Pansy was an unfortunate expert at masking her sentiments due to having parents who had historically utilized her feelings as weapons against her, and this failed vulnerability drove her straight back into her shell - stuck in that cramped space with the evil cackle for sole company.
She had long acknowledged that the cackling in her mind was only going to keep getting louder and all the more mocking, unless she too reconciled with his true feelings...but the contriving Slytherin urge to shut down his actualizing romance with Bellarose and fast remained all too intoxicating.
As luck would have it, the issue sorted itself out once again, when Pansy noticed Theodore Nott sneakily wooing Audette in Care of Magical Creatures - a class Draco could not bother to attend.
At this point, as one of Draco's closest friends, Pansy was placed between a rock and a hard place. She had a difficult decision to make; warn Draco of the traitorous robbery occurring behind his back, or...or don't.
Knowing precisely the selfish little monster that Pansy Parkinson was, it isn't hard to guess what choice she ultimately made, smirking vindictively the night of the Yule ball as Theodore swirled Audette around on the dance floor like a dream in blue silk.
For weeks the newly appointed diamond of the court had been sitting in Theodore's lap - reading books with him, discussing the universe, kissing with extreme grace and tepidness, and any storyline involving Draco had been shockingly erased and rewritten to eliminate him from her life altogether.
The moron had apparently drastically insulted her all on his own and the deed was done, carved in granite, game over...
Left strung up like a gutted, decapitated chicken, Malfoy had begrudgingly asked Pansy instead to go with him to the ball instead. Cue a round of nervous and unenthusiastic applause.
It hadn't been right from the get-go, and she knew it, deep down.
And for about a solid hour it had all felt surreal, the pair dressed in dripping obsidian as they were always meant to be, Draco even bothering to entertain the odd slow dance albeit enviously staring over Pansy's shoulder the entire time...until he'd predictably vanished like smoke in the wind, sour and frustrated with the circumstances.
He'd rather dress up like a Ken doll with Audette then dress in gothic precision with Pansy.
It turns out you really can't get blood from a stone no matter how you crush it, and Pansy had put her rock in a mortar and pestle and ground that bitch down to fine dust just to be certain. Nope, not a drop to be found.
Then the guilt settled in like black mold when Draco began to sob to her in private for the remainder of the year, uncontrollably and to no foreseeable end. In the beginning it was Audette who had been obsessed, however he had waited far too long to acknowledge that fancy little spark, now left with the burden of being the one rejected over and over.
And unbeknownst to him it was Pansy who had mercilessly allowed his time to run thin.
The guilt was out of this world, having to sit there in the abandoned female lavatory and listen to all of his heart wrench. She had never had the opportunity to hug him so often, except it was solely so he could weep into her hair...
Ergo when she had spotted the pair of them flirting drunkenly at his fifteenth birthday, Pansy had been moments away from tapping Theodore Nott on the shoulder to inform him of the infidelity when remorse struck her in the face.
With her black nails hovering but an inch from the boy's expensive summerwear she froze in place, some portion of her Grinch-sized heart shriveling in discomfort.
She was stuck between a rock and a hard place yet again, observing a shocking shift in Draco's energy. He hadn't smiled like that in ages - who was she to steal away this fleeting opportunity with the girl he craved, on his birthday of all days?
Perhaps had come time to finally muffle that cackling in her brain for good, and love him in the only way he desired her to; as a friend.
It was defeating, dropping her nails back into her lap, doe brown eyes filling with water whilst watching as he began kissing Audette along her perfect swan neck in the moonlight over the deck. He'd put her willingly in his hoodie and had the girl pinned up against the railing, his hands groping her everywhere greedily.
This biting acceptance was met with a blissful quietude in her brain that had not been there for years, and that was the last evening Pansy Parkinson heard that wretched cackling. Or so she thought...
Ah yes...silence...
She had let him go, and surprisingly it was the most liberating experience of her life thus far.
Then came the favors, trickling in like water through a crack on the Titanic's compromised hull, pushing her patience to the absolute brink with him and threatening to flood boiler room five.
It was 1995. Pansy and Draco were walking briskly through a second floor corridor on their way to the 'High Inquisitor's nauseating, pussy-themed office for a special meeting in which Umbridge - the latest and greatest blight of the school - would select a squad of carefully crafted, bulldozing browbeaters to do her ugly bidding by oppressing the student body when her tacky hunchback was turned.
It was the ideal role for any neglected Slytherin, all of which were seeking to get back at Dumbledore after so many years cooped up in the stinky dungeons.
"So Parkinson, I have another favor to ask," Draco slung an arm around her shoulders playfully, unaware that his scent alone drove her into an angry tizzy.
She shoved him off for the sake of her own sanity, holding her nose high. It would be a long time yet until Pansy could bare to hug him without growing overwhelmed by emotions, "Well if it's for any more pictures of that silly old cow you'll have to hold your breath. I've told you, she keeps ripping them up when she catches me."
Draco laughed heartily, "Yeah cause she's such a cow. Look, it's not for photos. I'm willing to pay you one hundred galleons for it, would that convince you?"
He had taken up a dirty habit of treating his relationships as purely transactional, now that Lucius had opened up access to his monstrous trust fund.
[ 5) filthy rich ]
He raised a notably squeamish eyebrow in Pansy's direction, which caused her eyes to slit instantly in suspicion of whatever foul scheme he was up to now, "For a hundred galleons I assume it constitutes a murder. Perhaps you aught to stuff Crabbe full of cruciferous vegetables and point his backside at your victim."
Draco chewed on his lip and shook his head, tisking awkwardly as he glanced away, "It constitutes a lie. A lie that you and I have been...involved."
Stunned, Pansy's boot scraped the natural stone paving as she halted in place. A giggle she had not heard in quite a few months was ever so softly creeping around the darkest corners of her brain, daring to return in full cackling volume.
Draco turned to her, hands jammed into his deep robe pockets, those enchanting silvery orbs looming down at her.
[ 2) handsome ]
Oh no...the cackle and it's compendium were sharply reinstating. Dangerous hope was rising, rising like bubbles from the bottom of the sea.
His mouth proceeded to contort into a very odd set of alternating shapes as he struggled to explain, "You see I'm convinced it will...imbue jealousy, in Bellarose, if she believes I've slept with another girl. You're the most believable option. I also happen to trust you with this secret."
Oh god...he was a hopeless addict.
[ 7) obsessive form of attachment ]
It might've been viewed as an ugly honor, yet Pansy found herself maddeningly twisting the sleeve of her robe in consideration, her heart pinching and pounding anxiously. She looked up at him with her whole entire body tingling and it just slipped out like word vomit, "Instead of paying me, wouldn't you rather...find out what's it really like?"
He froze, unblinkingly meeting her gaze for a few off-putting seconds in morbid comprehension of what Pansy had just suggested.
Yes, she had done it, she had come onto him without so much as a blink of forethought.
"You're serious?" his eyebrows shot through his hairline when she coyly retained silence. For a brief moment it appeared he might cave to the proposition before his expression tightened in humour, and Pansy's mouth drooped in a frown.
He snorted, shaking out his long straight hair with a rather sarcastic and strained laugh, refusing to look her in the eye as he let her down less than gracefully, "Oh please, don't be barbaric. I'm not soliciting you for prostitution, Parkinson, it's a simple fabrication for coin. I'm obviously saving myself for Bellarose, and I can't risk that prick spoiling her first."
She could just about shatter into a million pieces at his feet.
The math was definitely not mathing; Audette was not going to be jealous, she was going to be disgusted. He would be much better off telling the girl bluntly that he in fact planned on being decent and honorable, but that tidbit was not for Pansy to relay.
She bolted around him in fury, pleading with herself not to weep as he followed in hot pursuit. The inside of Umbridge's toxically pink office had never seemed like such a desirable destination to reach, "And does her boyfriend know that you're saving yourself for her? You're more deplorable than I thought you were."
"Say you'll do it - I'm not interested in your opinion of me," Draco barked impatiently at her side, striding at breakneck speed with half the effort it was costing Pansy. "Just go back to the living quarters tonight and brag about it in front of her, and make it sound satisfying."
"You're really quite the drama llama, Malfoy - Nott's a piteous aristocrat, he wouldn't have the guts to plant a pinky on that girl until they're wed, especially seeing as she's now the diamond," Pansy gagged, dismissing him coolly.
He aggressively grabbed her arm and spun her roughly, blinding Pansy for a moment as her sleek bob whipped across her vision. His nails digging into her skin were akin to a set of freshly sharpened steak knives, "Say you'll do it Parkinson, I need this. I can't wait another year. They're already snogging repellently, and if you think Nott's suffering from some lack of male hormones you're sorely deluded because he rants in his fucking sleep. I'll exhaust all possible avenues to claim her for myself, this one included."
She spat bitterly through her rich dark hair, teary eyed up at the boy who would forever treat her as a means to an end, "Three hundred galleons, not a coin less...then you'll have your hideous wish."
As was mentioned, she was beginning to run out of reasons to preserve said loyalty towards her favorite archfiend, and this was only fifth year.
Those services would later extend to selflessly assisting him in finally reaching his goal of acquiring the girl in eighth year, and Pansy, albeit much more willing to aide by then, did not hold total confidence that Draco wouldn't blow his second chance.
On a personal and private level she was partial to the woeful fact that Draco was certainly not the same boy he had been in fourth year. The boy Audette had known and adored in the past was effectively modified forever.
And Audette had already slept with Teddy Nott, telling all of the girls and Cosmos one giddy night in their bunks that he had taken her whilst on his boat at a family wedding, so there was that problem too.
It was sufficed to say - prickly - for Pansy when they began dating, because believe it or not Audette had grown on her, and the whole scenario was a cauldron of slime just waiting to explode. Well they would soon find out it was a cauldron of veritaserum about to explode on New Years Eve...
Even Guy, who supported the pairing eagerly, had held his breath in constant fear that Audette's gooey heart would get slaughtered.
She was in for the shock of her life when she not only discovered Excetra and Draco's key role as it's guild master, but also the nefarious slew of disgusting falsity he'd spread about his personal affairs in such a frighteningly short period of time.
In order to survive the high-voltage horrors of his life Draco's brain chemistry had transformed drastically - resulting in a character who was callous and resourcefully manipulative, with myoclonic jerk reflexes in hostility, lying and cheating. Whether or not they were still compatible was up for discovering.
And while Cosmos' might have gone purple in the face holding his breath, Pansy had simply sat back with popcorn - because she had killed off the ceaseless cackle once and for all, and now there was nothing left to do but watch.