Chapter 3
It had been Pansy who had asked him to the Yule Ball. Draco was all set to ask one of the Greengrass girls, probably the younger one, when Pansy cornered him at the end of Charms and dragged him into a broom cupboard and just asked him.
Draco smirked down at his lifelong friend. “Why Pans, I had no idea you felt this way.”
Parkinson rolled her dark eyes. “You’re a real prat, you know that?”
Draco shrugged his shoulders. They had gotten broader over the summer holiday and he was coming into his form as a man, or so his mother had said. “Maybe, but you’re the one begging to go to the Yule Ball with me.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and sighed. “Please Draco.”
This nearly knocked him back. Over all the years they had known each other, he could count on one hand the number of times he had even heard the word please come out of her mouth.
“Just do this for me, yeah? As friends?”
Draco swallowed the snide retort he was prepared to let fly and just nodded.
Pansy nodded with him.
They stood there for a while, in the dim light of the broom cupboard, and stared at anything except for each other.
“You know,” Draco began, “I love you Pans, I really do, but I don’t think we’d be good together.”
She slapped him on the shoulder then. “You really are a wanker.”
Draco smiled as she did and rubbed away the hurt in his arm. “I’m sure you’ll tell me why you need to go to the ball with me at some point. Until then, all the broken-hearted girls will be on your head.”
He gave her one last smile before turning and leaving the little room.
Pansy waited to listen for his footsteps to completely disappear before she allowed herself to move. Except she didn’t move toward the door. Instead, she sank to her knees and held her head in her hands. How could she tell him? He’d want to know, of course, the ponce wanted to know everything.
How could she tell him that she had never thought of him as more than a companion? Had never thought of any of her boys as more than. But if Daphne smiled at her a certain way or the Weaslette moved her hair and Pansy could see the freckles on her shoulder or even the damned mudblood with those damned golden eyes. How could she ever explain that shame? These things simply weren’t done. She was going to marry a man, a pureblood man. Looking at girls the way she did, looking at a mudblood the way she did, how could he not find her as disgusting as she found herself?