Part Three - Combat
February 14, 1993
From a reluctant Harry Potter, who knew when he had lost—
Draco spotted the traffic clogging the corridor as he made his way to Transfiguration and frowned in irritation. He didn’t particularly care that he’d be late for class—except for not wanting to give Gryffindor’s Head of House the satisfaction of deducting points—only that his path was blocked. He didn’t have much sway in the castle, or the crowd would have parted for him immediately, but he aimed to be a Prefect and Head Boy one day. Then he would have influence in the school, just like his father had influence over Hogwarts’ board of directors.
No one stood aside for him, so Draco had to shove people out of his way to see what caused the commotion.
“What’s going on here?” he asked the crowd in general. Percy Weasley showed up then with a similar question. Draco scowled at him, at his red hair and abundance of freckles. He didn’t like Weasleys. Well, he wasn’t supposed to.
The sight of Harry Potter standing up, only to be tackled to the ground by a grim dwarf wearing a nappy and a pair of wings, caught his eye. Draco watched gleefully as the dwarf sat on Potter’s knees and began to sing.
As the little man sang about how divine Potter’s fresh-pickled-toad-colored eyes were, a flash of bright, shining red that wasn’t Percy grabbed his attention and held it. It didn’t matter that Potter’s face had turned a bright shade of mortified red, or that people were laughing at him, because she was there. Her eyes were focused on Potter with a strange intensity that could have been anxiety. It dawned on him that she had sent the valentine, and, for some reason, that made him angry.
Draco had to pull his eyes away from her. Her vivacity alone was enough to enchant him; he enjoyed it far too much. The first thing his eyes landed on was a black diary he was sure he had seen Ginny carrying around the school, but when he picked it up, Potter was the one demanding to have it back. As if he’d do what Potter wanted. Really.
Ginny’s brother Percy stepped into the confrontation he didn’t belong in, but Draco refused to give the diary back because he said so too. He never expected the spell Potter shouted, causing it to fly right out of Draco’s hand and into Ron Weasley’s.
At first, Draco was dumbfounded. He looked at Ginny to see a smug expression on her face that said exactly what he never wanted to hear out loud: Ha! Harry Potter is better than you! The words rang in his head combined with Ginny’s valentine song for Potter. It infuriated him that her attention had turned onto his enemy. She couldn’t be in love with Potter, could she? That song had been too terrible for her to be serious. She had to have sent it to make Draco angry. Well, it had worked! Besides, what did Potter have that Draco didn’t? What could she possibly see in Scarhead?
Ginny purposefully walked past him as she left, and Draco yelled after her with all of his fury and hatred, “I don’t think Potter liked your valentine much!” It sounded like jealousy, even to his own ears.
She stared at him in shock for two seconds before he saw her eyes fill with tears, and then she ran off, her face in her hands.
Draco ignored Potter and the youngest Weasley boy, the latter of which pulled out his wand and aimed it at Draco, while the former held him back. Draco’s mind was too full of his own to thoughts to pay much attention.
His father had told him what despicable wizards the Weasleys were, and Draco despised them for their lack of pride as wizards and their poverty, but Ginny Weasley he could not hate. From the first moment he had met her he'd been intrigued, and their second meeting had cinched the deal for him. He liked to make fun of her family and watch her face turn red. He liked the way her hair shimmered in the summer sun, coming to life in the appearance of fire. He liked her brown eyes and the way they looked at him with amusement and with hurt.
He hated that she had shifted her attention to Potter, but he didn’t hate her. Twelve-year-old Draco wanted Ginny for himself.
* * * * *
December 24, 1994
A Hufflepuff boy and a Ravenclaw girl cozied together on a bench hidden between conveniently placed hedges in the fairy garden, oblivious to everything except each other. Their lips couldn’t be more attached than if someone had jinxed them with a Permanent Sticking Charm, but that was fine. It was perfect, in fact, because while the couple was lost in all their senseless snogging, they could not see Draco leaning against a statue with his arms crossed impatiently, and they could not hear Ginny’s approach. Even if these facts had registered in their minds, they would have ignored them. They were not important.
Draco saw Ginny before she noticed him. He had followed her outside, anticipated where she was heading, and gotten there before she could to wait for her. For a few moments, he took in her appearance. The not-quite-new, or possibly hand-sewn, pink dress robes she wore clashed horrifically with her hair. She should have worn navy blue or emerald green, he thought. A nice russet would have brought out her eyes. Her body was shapeless and awkward, on the verge of growing into a woman’s body, but, for now, her arms and legs were long and skinny, her chest not quite flat. Her skin could have been perfect, peach-colored and smooth, without a single blemish—it would have been, if not for the freckles that dusted lightly over her shoulders, arms, and nose.
Her garish orange hair glittered like sparks from a flame under the fairy lights. She looked splendid. Awkward and ungainly, poor and unsophisticated though she was, he could not take his eyes off her.
He hated her for it.
“So you came with Longbottom,” he hissed. The dim lighting and the shadow of the sculpture had sheltered him from her view. She gasped and spun around, her eyes searching, one hand at her chest; then she registered who had spoken and her eyes hardened.
“He was sweet to ask me to come with him!” she replied defensively. He smirked at her reaction.
“Potter wouldn’t take you? His number one fan?”
Ginny turned away and tried to ignore him by walking off, but he would not let her. Before he knew it, his hand had snatched her arm and grasped it in a firm grip.
“Let me go!”
“You know he originally wanted to take Cho Chang, right? But he didn’t do too badly, did he? Parvati Patil is the prettiest girl in fourth year, and he took her instead of you!”
“I don’t care!” she cried, finally managing to snatch her arm back. “You’re an idiot if you can’t see what I’ve been doing!”
“What have you been doing?” he asked. “Something befitting of a Weasley, I’m sure.”
“You are an idiot.” She did something unexpected, then. She smiled at him—strangely, fiercely. It was a smile full of smugness. It was a smirk. “I don’t care about Harry. Believe me, I’ve tried to make myself fall in love with him, but I can’t. He’s nice, but I don’t want nice. I’ve only acted the way I have about him to annoy the hell out of you.”
Draco was startled, but he refused to let her see that. Unfortunately, the way she eyed him told him that she saw right through him. Her eyes were like that, he thought. They saw through people. She could see a person’s intentions. When she looked at him, he felt foolish and exposed.
He hated her for that too.
“What do I care what you do? I despise you. I despise your whole family,” he retorted, feigning casualness.
“The fact is, whether you despise me or not, that you do care. A lot. In the same exact way that I loathe you but can’t stop trying to catch your attention. Do you know how that makes me feel?”
“I don’t care how you feel!” His voice had risen in exasperation and anger. She wasn’t listening to him. He did not like her. He didn’t care about what she thought or how she felt. Ginny turned to look at the couple seated in one of the garden’s corners and then moved closer to Draco so she wouldn’t be overheard.
“I’ve felt guilty for years because I like you and I don't know why. When you put down my family, I can’t help but think that your insults are clever and funny, even if they make me angry. You try so hard to act as if you are all grown up, but you’re not. You’re only fourteen. You’ve been acting this way since I met you. I liked that in you back then—I thought you were something special—but now I see it’s because you want so much to be like your father that you can’t even be yourself.”
“You think I’m not being myself?” he hissed, unsure if he was angry or not. Her accusations incensed him, but he couldn't fathom what she was talking about.
“No. I think there’s more to you than the foul cockroach people think you are.” She had the audacity to smile at him. Fondly! He would have been more annoyed by what she’d said if he hadn’t been distracted by that smile.
“This is me, Ginny! I will always be this way! You think I’m going to realize that my father is evil and suddenly start worshiping Potter like the rest of sodding Europe does? It is not going to happen, no matter how much you want it to!”
“Don’t you get it? I don’t want you to do that! And that’s why I hate you! You make me feel like I have a dirty little secret—as if I’m betraying my family. For some reason, I like you, even though you aren’t a nice person at all. I loathe you. Do you understand that? Loathe. But I still look for you when I sit down to meals, and my eyes are always watching for you when I’m walking down corridors, and I act like an idiot in front of Harry to make you angry, and I hate Pansy Parkinson because I’m jealous that you brought her to the Yule Ball! I hate you for making me feel this way!”
Draco knew better than she did not to spill all of his secrets to his worst enemy, for that she was. He felt exactly, exactly the same way. He hated her because he liked her, and his liking her was a betrayal to his own family. She had absolutely nothing to offer him—not money, not connections, not even good looks—but he wanted her all the same. Powerfully. Irrationally. He didn’t even know what he would do with her if she were his.
“I know I’m irresistible….” he preened, once again feigning nonchalance to cover his uncertainty about what to do next.
“You are!” Ginny cried furiously.
“I don’t know what you want me to say after that nice little speech. I don’t like you at all. As I’ve said, I despise you and your family!” he said, a part of him wanting to grab her and shake her until she made sense.
“Well, good! I don’t want anything to do with you! Just stay away from me!” she said, and before he could get out the words describing just how much he hated her, she stormed away, deliberately disrupting the snogging couple hidden in the corner of the hedges on her way out. She left Draco staring at the spot where she had stood and hating her more than ever because she lacked the respect to listen when a Malfoy was speaking.
However, contradictory to his hate, that was also exactly why he liked her.
* * * * *
May 8, 1997
Pansy Parkinson floated on metaphorical cloud nine. Things were going her way—their way. The Dark Lord’s presence could be felt permeating the whole country in the Dementors’ breeding mist. It could be felt opening a newspaper and reading about the deaths and disappearances of those foolish enough to cross him. It could be felt in wizarding, as well as Muggle, Britain. He was everywhere. Their side was winning.
On top of that, Draco Malfoy was almost hers. He’d been given a special mission by the Dark Lord—and he only sixteen years old!—that, once completed, would restore his family to its former glory. Mr. Malfoy had nearly lost them everything in the Department of Mysteries that summer, allowing Potter and his disgusting gang to get away, never retrieving the weapon that the Dark Lord had sought, but Draco would solve everything. He’d be number one in the Dark Lord’s eyes, and once Draco finally made her his, she’d be number one with him. Draco couldn’t fail, and all year he had continued to show interest in her. He’d allowed her to touch him, to sit with him, to talk to him as he never had before. He didn't even need to say the words; she would give herself to him willingly. Anything for him. Anything for the Dark Lord.
Pansy heard his voice in the second floor corridor and automatically stopped. She would miss curfew if she didn’t hurry, but Draco was a Prefect; she knew he wouldn’t take points from her. He never took points from Slytherin.
She thought about sneaking around the corner to surprise him, but she heard another voice as well, this one female. Her smile falling off her face, Pansy flattened herself against the wall, trying to listen to the conversation.
“Potter tried to kill me!”
“You tried to use an Unforgivable on him! It was self-defense!”
“That’s right, take his side.”
“Am I supposed to take your side over my boyfriend’s? Don’t be ridiculous, Malfoy!”
Pansy peered carefully around the corner to see their faces. The sight of Ginny Weasley disgusted her. Her ugly red hair, the freckles that covered her skin like a disease, the scowl on her face as she looked at Draco… Pansy hated all of it. All of her. Why was Draco talking to her so familiarly?
“I can’t believe you are dating Potter,” Draco spat hatefully.
Weasley’s face contorted in anger. “Someone was finally showing some interest, so I laid it on thick. Does it rub you the wrong way to see us together?”
“Of course it does! You’re—” He stopped talking, his eyes shooting down to look at her face.
“I’m what?” that boyfriend-stealer challenged.
“You’re both stupid! I hate seeing stupid people together.” It looked as if that wasn’t what he had originally intended to say; Weasley noticed it as well.
“You’re insufferable!” she hissed as if restraining a shout. “You know very well I would not be dating Harry if…”
"If what?" Draco asked mockingly.
“If you had asked me out first!”
“I don’t want you,” he responded with a tone of disbelief.
Her voice lowered; Pansy had to strain her ears to hear her.
“Then why do your eyes follow me everywhere I go? I see you staring at me. Don’t pretend you don’t do it!”
Draco stared at her now, at a loss for words. Pansy wanted him to deny it all, hex her, and walk away, preferably with a disgusted sneer in place. Afterward, she could comfort him any way he wanted to be comforted. If only he’d give her the chance!
“I stare because you told me two years ago that you liked me, but now you are dating Potter!”
“I also said I hated you, remember? I’m sorry that Harry got there first, that you were so determined to despise me that you let the opportunity pass you by!”
“You told me to stay away from you! Dammit, I don’t know what you want!”
“I don’t know what I want, either.” Her voice had fallen along with her head, unable to look anywhere else except at the floor. Pansy watched Draco as emotions flitted across his face too quickly for her to identify. He probably couldn’t identify them himself.
Suddenly grabbing Weasley’s shoulders and pinning them against the wall, Draco said, “You’re mine, do you hear? You always have been and always will be. Dump Potter. Be with me.”
Pansy’s heart pounded achingly with longing. How she wanted to hear him say those words to her!
“It’s too late for that. You’ve chosen a path I can’t follow you down.” Weasley eyed his left arm, where Pansy knew the Dark Mark was burned onto his skin, just underneath his sleeve.
One of his hands darted up to her face and grabbed her jaw, jerking it up so that his lips could crash down on hers in an explosion of emotion. All the feelings that they had bottled up over the years poured out, like a potion turned toxic by the addition of a wrong ingredient that spilled all over the brewers. Draco and Ginny could only name a few of those feelings. Pansy could see them all.
There was hate in the way she bit his lips, anger as he pulled her hair. Love drove their bodies so closely together it looked as if they couldn't breathe. Jealousy saturated the frantic nature of the kiss, every touch, every nip. His hand clutched her waist possessively, fingers digging into her skin as she caressed his face. It was the definition of love and hate, an amalgamated mess of confusion and uncertainty.
The kiss seemed endless, and finally, Pansy had to look away. She stared at the ceiling as tears of hurt and betrayal pooled in her eyes, her fists clenched at her sides. She heard when they pulled apart, Weasley speaking first.
“I’m sorry. It’s just too late.” It sounded as if she was close to tears, though Pansy felt absolutely no sympathy for her. She had stolen Pansy’s kiss with Draco, stolen something precious and perfect to her. Now she understood why he was so cold to her, though he let her stroke his hair while his head rested in her lap. He wanted Ginny Weasley. He would never want Pansy as long as Weasley existed, even though Pansy’s blood was pure and her allegiance would always be to the Dark Lord.
“Have I told you how much I hate you?” Pansy heard Draco murmur in a resigned voice. He sounded exhausted and angry, much like Pansy felt just then.
“I… hate you too,” Weasley replied, choking on a sob, and then she fled around the corner, right past Pansy, though she didn’t notice the Slytherin girl lurking there.
The dull thud of a fist hitting stone sounded, and then Draco turned the corner as well and saw her there, with stupid tears in her eyes and her jaw clenched in fury. Things had changed. Pansy would never have that spot next to Draco, now or in the future. Even if he completed his mission as planned and restored the Malfoys back into the Dark Lord’s esteem, Draco would never be hers. He belonged to Ginny Weasley.
* * * * *
October 22, 1997
At the beginning of her seventh year, Pansy could still remember the unfortunate conversation she had overheard a few months earlier as she walked down the same corridor, with Draco by her side. As they headed to their next class, she could see the Weasley girl, the only Weasley left in the school, walking in the opposite direction, moving towards them. When Pansy glanced up at him, she noticed Draco’s eyes widen for only a moment as he saw Weasley’s approach, and then he looked down and away.
Pansy could see the change in Draco this year. He ate less, smiled less, was less of a presence than he used to be. She used to think the lack of an antagonist when Potter, Granger, and Ron Weasley did not return to Hogwarts that year had caused the difference, but time had passed, and Pansy no longer thought that that was the cause. She didn’t know why his face had become paler, his attitude darker, gloomier. She wanted to remove the purple bags from beneath his eyes, but that took magic she wasn’t capable of performing.
She remembered the fire he had had in him when arguing with Weasley the year before, all of the emotion in their kiss. None of it remained. Something had happened to him that had zapped all his energy away and not even Ginny Weasley herself could return it to him.
Weasley wasn’t walking towards them; she was walking past. Pansy couldn’t help but rub it in her face that her side had lost, that she no longer had any reason to be so self-righteous when her hero, her savior, had saved nothing but his own hide. She wanted to rub it in Draco’s face, as well. He knew she had witnessed their confrontation last term; she spitefully held it over his head as often as she could. She wanted him to see that Weasley wasn’t worthy of him, that she shouldn’t even be a contender for his heart. She was dirty, poor, and tainted by Potter’s touch. She took cruel delight in reminding him of that often.
“Where’s Potter, Weasley? Has he abandoned you? Grown tired of your filth and poverty?” Pansy crossed her arms and smirked, something she’d learned to do from Draco. It did not escape her notice that Weasley’s hands clenched into fists or that her eyes had hardened, slight as both reactions were.
“I can’t wait until you get yours, Parkinson,” she said, and though her words sounded angry, her expression was devoid of emotion.
“Get mine?” Pansy laughed. “I’ve already got mine!” She grabbed Draco’s hand and tangled her fingers with his. Draco snatched his hand away immediately, and when she looked up at him, his face had turned away from both girls.
“I hope you’re happy with what you got, then,” Weasley said. “It’s everything that you deserve.” Then she walked away, right around Draco and Pansy, without once sparing him a glance.
His face never lifted. He couldn’t even look at her.
February 14, 1993
From a reluctant Harry Potter, who knew when he had lost—
Draco spotted the traffic clogging the corridor as he made his way to Transfiguration and frowned in irritation. He didn’t particularly care that he’d be late for class—except for not wanting to give Gryffindor’s Head of House the satisfaction of deducting points—only that his path was blocked. He didn’t have much sway in the castle, or the crowd would have parted for him immediately, but he aimed to be a Prefect and Head Boy one day. Then he would have influence in the school, just like his father had influence over Hogwarts’ board of directors.
No one stood aside for him, so Draco had to shove people out of his way to see what caused the commotion.
“What’s going on here?” he asked the crowd in general. Percy Weasley showed up then with a similar question. Draco scowled at him, at his red hair and abundance of freckles. He didn’t like Weasleys. Well, he wasn’t supposed to.
The sight of Harry Potter standing up, only to be tackled to the ground by a grim dwarf wearing a nappy and a pair of wings, caught his eye. Draco watched gleefully as the dwarf sat on Potter’s knees and began to sing.
As the little man sang about how divine Potter’s fresh-pickled-toad-colored eyes were, a flash of bright, shining red that wasn’t Percy grabbed his attention and held it. It didn’t matter that Potter’s face had turned a bright shade of mortified red, or that people were laughing at him, because she was there. Her eyes were focused on Potter with a strange intensity that could have been anxiety. It dawned on him that she had sent the valentine, and, for some reason, that made him angry.
Draco had to pull his eyes away from her. Her vivacity alone was enough to enchant him; he enjoyed it far too much. The first thing his eyes landed on was a black diary he was sure he had seen Ginny carrying around the school, but when he picked it up, Potter was the one demanding to have it back. As if he’d do what Potter wanted. Really.
Ginny’s brother Percy stepped into the confrontation he didn’t belong in, but Draco refused to give the diary back because he said so too. He never expected the spell Potter shouted, causing it to fly right out of Draco’s hand and into Ron Weasley’s.
At first, Draco was dumbfounded. He looked at Ginny to see a smug expression on her face that said exactly what he never wanted to hear out loud: Ha! Harry Potter is better than you! The words rang in his head combined with Ginny’s valentine song for Potter. It infuriated him that her attention had turned onto his enemy. She couldn’t be in love with Potter, could she? That song had been too terrible for her to be serious. She had to have sent it to make Draco angry. Well, it had worked! Besides, what did Potter have that Draco didn’t? What could she possibly see in Scarhead?
Ginny purposefully walked past him as she left, and Draco yelled after her with all of his fury and hatred, “I don’t think Potter liked your valentine much!” It sounded like jealousy, even to his own ears.
She stared at him in shock for two seconds before he saw her eyes fill with tears, and then she ran off, her face in her hands.
Draco ignored Potter and the youngest Weasley boy, the latter of which pulled out his wand and aimed it at Draco, while the former held him back. Draco’s mind was too full of his own to thoughts to pay much attention.
His father had told him what despicable wizards the Weasleys were, and Draco despised them for their lack of pride as wizards and their poverty, but Ginny Weasley he could not hate. From the first moment he had met her he'd been intrigued, and their second meeting had cinched the deal for him. He liked to make fun of her family and watch her face turn red. He liked the way her hair shimmered in the summer sun, coming to life in the appearance of fire. He liked her brown eyes and the way they looked at him with amusement and with hurt.
He hated that she had shifted her attention to Potter, but he didn’t hate her. Twelve-year-old Draco wanted Ginny for himself.
* * * * *
December 24, 1994
A Hufflepuff boy and a Ravenclaw girl cozied together on a bench hidden between conveniently placed hedges in the fairy garden, oblivious to everything except each other. Their lips couldn’t be more attached than if someone had jinxed them with a Permanent Sticking Charm, but that was fine. It was perfect, in fact, because while the couple was lost in all their senseless snogging, they could not see Draco leaning against a statue with his arms crossed impatiently, and they could not hear Ginny’s approach. Even if these facts had registered in their minds, they would have ignored them. They were not important.
Draco saw Ginny before she noticed him. He had followed her outside, anticipated where she was heading, and gotten there before she could to wait for her. For a few moments, he took in her appearance. The not-quite-new, or possibly hand-sewn, pink dress robes she wore clashed horrifically with her hair. She should have worn navy blue or emerald green, he thought. A nice russet would have brought out her eyes. Her body was shapeless and awkward, on the verge of growing into a woman’s body, but, for now, her arms and legs were long and skinny, her chest not quite flat. Her skin could have been perfect, peach-colored and smooth, without a single blemish—it would have been, if not for the freckles that dusted lightly over her shoulders, arms, and nose.
Her garish orange hair glittered like sparks from a flame under the fairy lights. She looked splendid. Awkward and ungainly, poor and unsophisticated though she was, he could not take his eyes off her.
He hated her for it.
“So you came with Longbottom,” he hissed. The dim lighting and the shadow of the sculpture had sheltered him from her view. She gasped and spun around, her eyes searching, one hand at her chest; then she registered who had spoken and her eyes hardened.
“He was sweet to ask me to come with him!” she replied defensively. He smirked at her reaction.
“Potter wouldn’t take you? His number one fan?”
Ginny turned away and tried to ignore him by walking off, but he would not let her. Before he knew it, his hand had snatched her arm and grasped it in a firm grip.
“Let me go!”
“You know he originally wanted to take Cho Chang, right? But he didn’t do too badly, did he? Parvati Patil is the prettiest girl in fourth year, and he took her instead of you!”
“I don’t care!” she cried, finally managing to snatch her arm back. “You’re an idiot if you can’t see what I’ve been doing!”
“What have you been doing?” he asked. “Something befitting of a Weasley, I’m sure.”
“You are an idiot.” She did something unexpected, then. She smiled at him—strangely, fiercely. It was a smile full of smugness. It was a smirk. “I don’t care about Harry. Believe me, I’ve tried to make myself fall in love with him, but I can’t. He’s nice, but I don’t want nice. I’ve only acted the way I have about him to annoy the hell out of you.”
Draco was startled, but he refused to let her see that. Unfortunately, the way she eyed him told him that she saw right through him. Her eyes were like that, he thought. They saw through people. She could see a person’s intentions. When she looked at him, he felt foolish and exposed.
He hated her for that too.
“What do I care what you do? I despise you. I despise your whole family,” he retorted, feigning casualness.
“The fact is, whether you despise me or not, that you do care. A lot. In the same exact way that I loathe you but can’t stop trying to catch your attention. Do you know how that makes me feel?”
“I don’t care how you feel!” His voice had risen in exasperation and anger. She wasn’t listening to him. He did not like her. He didn’t care about what she thought or how she felt. Ginny turned to look at the couple seated in one of the garden’s corners and then moved closer to Draco so she wouldn’t be overheard.
“I’ve felt guilty for years because I like you and I don't know why. When you put down my family, I can’t help but think that your insults are clever and funny, even if they make me angry. You try so hard to act as if you are all grown up, but you’re not. You’re only fourteen. You’ve been acting this way since I met you. I liked that in you back then—I thought you were something special—but now I see it’s because you want so much to be like your father that you can’t even be yourself.”
“You think I’m not being myself?” he hissed, unsure if he was angry or not. Her accusations incensed him, but he couldn't fathom what she was talking about.
“No. I think there’s more to you than the foul cockroach people think you are.” She had the audacity to smile at him. Fondly! He would have been more annoyed by what she’d said if he hadn’t been distracted by that smile.
“This is me, Ginny! I will always be this way! You think I’m going to realize that my father is evil and suddenly start worshiping Potter like the rest of sodding Europe does? It is not going to happen, no matter how much you want it to!”
“Don’t you get it? I don’t want you to do that! And that’s why I hate you! You make me feel like I have a dirty little secret—as if I’m betraying my family. For some reason, I like you, even though you aren’t a nice person at all. I loathe you. Do you understand that? Loathe. But I still look for you when I sit down to meals, and my eyes are always watching for you when I’m walking down corridors, and I act like an idiot in front of Harry to make you angry, and I hate Pansy Parkinson because I’m jealous that you brought her to the Yule Ball! I hate you for making me feel this way!”
Draco knew better than she did not to spill all of his secrets to his worst enemy, for that she was. He felt exactly, exactly the same way. He hated her because he liked her, and his liking her was a betrayal to his own family. She had absolutely nothing to offer him—not money, not connections, not even good looks—but he wanted her all the same. Powerfully. Irrationally. He didn’t even know what he would do with her if she were his.
“I know I’m irresistible….” he preened, once again feigning nonchalance to cover his uncertainty about what to do next.
“You are!” Ginny cried furiously.
“I don’t know what you want me to say after that nice little speech. I don’t like you at all. As I’ve said, I despise you and your family!” he said, a part of him wanting to grab her and shake her until she made sense.
“Well, good! I don’t want anything to do with you! Just stay away from me!” she said, and before he could get out the words describing just how much he hated her, she stormed away, deliberately disrupting the snogging couple hidden in the corner of the hedges on her way out. She left Draco staring at the spot where she had stood and hating her more than ever because she lacked the respect to listen when a Malfoy was speaking.
However, contradictory to his hate, that was also exactly why he liked her.
* * * * *
May 8, 1997
Pansy Parkinson floated on metaphorical cloud nine. Things were going her way—their way. The Dark Lord’s presence could be felt permeating the whole country in the Dementors’ breeding mist. It could be felt opening a newspaper and reading about the deaths and disappearances of those foolish enough to cross him. It could be felt in wizarding, as well as Muggle, Britain. He was everywhere. Their side was winning.
On top of that, Draco Malfoy was almost hers. He’d been given a special mission by the Dark Lord—and he only sixteen years old!—that, once completed, would restore his family to its former glory. Mr. Malfoy had nearly lost them everything in the Department of Mysteries that summer, allowing Potter and his disgusting gang to get away, never retrieving the weapon that the Dark Lord had sought, but Draco would solve everything. He’d be number one in the Dark Lord’s eyes, and once Draco finally made her his, she’d be number one with him. Draco couldn’t fail, and all year he had continued to show interest in her. He’d allowed her to touch him, to sit with him, to talk to him as he never had before. He didn't even need to say the words; she would give herself to him willingly. Anything for him. Anything for the Dark Lord.
Pansy heard his voice in the second floor corridor and automatically stopped. She would miss curfew if she didn’t hurry, but Draco was a Prefect; she knew he wouldn’t take points from her. He never took points from Slytherin.
She thought about sneaking around the corner to surprise him, but she heard another voice as well, this one female. Her smile falling off her face, Pansy flattened herself against the wall, trying to listen to the conversation.
“Potter tried to kill me!”
“You tried to use an Unforgivable on him! It was self-defense!”
“That’s right, take his side.”
“Am I supposed to take your side over my boyfriend’s? Don’t be ridiculous, Malfoy!”
Pansy peered carefully around the corner to see their faces. The sight of Ginny Weasley disgusted her. Her ugly red hair, the freckles that covered her skin like a disease, the scowl on her face as she looked at Draco… Pansy hated all of it. All of her. Why was Draco talking to her so familiarly?
“I can’t believe you are dating Potter,” Draco spat hatefully.
Weasley’s face contorted in anger. “Someone was finally showing some interest, so I laid it on thick. Does it rub you the wrong way to see us together?”
“Of course it does! You’re—” He stopped talking, his eyes shooting down to look at her face.
“I’m what?” that boyfriend-stealer challenged.
“You’re both stupid! I hate seeing stupid people together.” It looked as if that wasn’t what he had originally intended to say; Weasley noticed it as well.
“You’re insufferable!” she hissed as if restraining a shout. “You know very well I would not be dating Harry if…”
"If what?" Draco asked mockingly.
“If you had asked me out first!”
“I don’t want you,” he responded with a tone of disbelief.
Her voice lowered; Pansy had to strain her ears to hear her.
“Then why do your eyes follow me everywhere I go? I see you staring at me. Don’t pretend you don’t do it!”
Draco stared at her now, at a loss for words. Pansy wanted him to deny it all, hex her, and walk away, preferably with a disgusted sneer in place. Afterward, she could comfort him any way he wanted to be comforted. If only he’d give her the chance!
“I stare because you told me two years ago that you liked me, but now you are dating Potter!”
“I also said I hated you, remember? I’m sorry that Harry got there first, that you were so determined to despise me that you let the opportunity pass you by!”
“You told me to stay away from you! Dammit, I don’t know what you want!”
“I don’t know what I want, either.” Her voice had fallen along with her head, unable to look anywhere else except at the floor. Pansy watched Draco as emotions flitted across his face too quickly for her to identify. He probably couldn’t identify them himself.
Suddenly grabbing Weasley’s shoulders and pinning them against the wall, Draco said, “You’re mine, do you hear? You always have been and always will be. Dump Potter. Be with me.”
Pansy’s heart pounded achingly with longing. How she wanted to hear him say those words to her!
“It’s too late for that. You’ve chosen a path I can’t follow you down.” Weasley eyed his left arm, where Pansy knew the Dark Mark was burned onto his skin, just underneath his sleeve.
One of his hands darted up to her face and grabbed her jaw, jerking it up so that his lips could crash down on hers in an explosion of emotion. All the feelings that they had bottled up over the years poured out, like a potion turned toxic by the addition of a wrong ingredient that spilled all over the brewers. Draco and Ginny could only name a few of those feelings. Pansy could see them all.
There was hate in the way she bit his lips, anger as he pulled her hair. Love drove their bodies so closely together it looked as if they couldn't breathe. Jealousy saturated the frantic nature of the kiss, every touch, every nip. His hand clutched her waist possessively, fingers digging into her skin as she caressed his face. It was the definition of love and hate, an amalgamated mess of confusion and uncertainty.
The kiss seemed endless, and finally, Pansy had to look away. She stared at the ceiling as tears of hurt and betrayal pooled in her eyes, her fists clenched at her sides. She heard when they pulled apart, Weasley speaking first.
“I’m sorry. It’s just too late.” It sounded as if she was close to tears, though Pansy felt absolutely no sympathy for her. She had stolen Pansy’s kiss with Draco, stolen something precious and perfect to her. Now she understood why he was so cold to her, though he let her stroke his hair while his head rested in her lap. He wanted Ginny Weasley. He would never want Pansy as long as Weasley existed, even though Pansy’s blood was pure and her allegiance would always be to the Dark Lord.
“Have I told you how much I hate you?” Pansy heard Draco murmur in a resigned voice. He sounded exhausted and angry, much like Pansy felt just then.
“I… hate you too,” Weasley replied, choking on a sob, and then she fled around the corner, right past Pansy, though she didn’t notice the Slytherin girl lurking there.
The dull thud of a fist hitting stone sounded, and then Draco turned the corner as well and saw her there, with stupid tears in her eyes and her jaw clenched in fury. Things had changed. Pansy would never have that spot next to Draco, now or in the future. Even if he completed his mission as planned and restored the Malfoys back into the Dark Lord’s esteem, Draco would never be hers. He belonged to Ginny Weasley.
* * * * *
October 22, 1997
At the beginning of her seventh year, Pansy could still remember the unfortunate conversation she had overheard a few months earlier as she walked down the same corridor, with Draco by her side. As they headed to their next class, she could see the Weasley girl, the only Weasley left in the school, walking in the opposite direction, moving towards them. When Pansy glanced up at him, she noticed Draco’s eyes widen for only a moment as he saw Weasley’s approach, and then he looked down and away.
Pansy could see the change in Draco this year. He ate less, smiled less, was less of a presence than he used to be. She used to think the lack of an antagonist when Potter, Granger, and Ron Weasley did not return to Hogwarts that year had caused the difference, but time had passed, and Pansy no longer thought that that was the cause. She didn’t know why his face had become paler, his attitude darker, gloomier. She wanted to remove the purple bags from beneath his eyes, but that took magic she wasn’t capable of performing.
She remembered the fire he had had in him when arguing with Weasley the year before, all of the emotion in their kiss. None of it remained. Something had happened to him that had zapped all his energy away and not even Ginny Weasley herself could return it to him.
Weasley wasn’t walking towards them; she was walking past. Pansy couldn’t help but rub it in her face that her side had lost, that she no longer had any reason to be so self-righteous when her hero, her savior, had saved nothing but his own hide. She wanted to rub it in Draco’s face, as well. He knew she had witnessed their confrontation last term; she spitefully held it over his head as often as she could. She wanted him to see that Weasley wasn’t worthy of him, that she shouldn’t even be a contender for his heart. She was dirty, poor, and tainted by Potter’s touch. She took cruel delight in reminding him of that often.
“Where’s Potter, Weasley? Has he abandoned you? Grown tired of your filth and poverty?” Pansy crossed her arms and smirked, something she’d learned to do from Draco. It did not escape her notice that Weasley’s hands clenched into fists or that her eyes had hardened, slight as both reactions were.
“I can’t wait until you get yours, Parkinson,” she said, and though her words sounded angry, her expression was devoid of emotion.
“Get mine?” Pansy laughed. “I’ve already got mine!” She grabbed Draco’s hand and tangled her fingers with his. Draco snatched his hand away immediately, and when she looked up at him, his face had turned away from both girls.
“I hope you’re happy with what you got, then,” Weasley said. “It’s everything that you deserve.” Then she walked away, right around Draco and Pansy, without once sparing him a glance.
His face never lifted. He couldn’t even look at her.
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