Heartstrings

The ghost above her head is inspecting her scrupulously. Her ghostly lips pressed in a thin, curved line. From time to time she would change positions, carefully, by sliding across the wall Pansy was leaning against. Each time the ghost moved she felt a cool shiver waving past her body. She stayed unfettered, though, imagining the ghost’s grey, translucent eyes straining from the effort. 

“Hey,” a voice, soft and unsure, cuts through her thoughts.

Pansy refuses to look up.

“Are you… you trying to make new friends?”

Her mouth twitches, she’s afraid she’ll cry if he speaks another word.

But Draco doesn’t say another word. She can hear his movements as he walks over to her, the low crunch of his shoes over the linoleum floor. The stone walls echo every additional sound into a hum. She can hear his hesitance, too, when he shifts his weight from one leg to another before sitting beside her on the floor. Their shoulders nudge, she feels the wool of his sweater against her elbow.

“Hey,” Draco tries again.

Pansy unscrews herself from her slouch and looks at her best friend. He has his hair tousled, the light shining from overhead gleams a pale silver on his hair. It makes his eyes paler, too. Molten, transparent. They’ve sat like this a thousand times before. She knows what he’s about to say before he says it.

“I’m sorry.” It comes out soft, because he’s still ashamed. 

She nods.

“I was a cunt.”

She nods.

“You weren’t being irrational.”

“I know.”

He nods.

They’ve set like this a thousand times before. And Pansy doesn’t really like introspection. It comes more like a defective instinct anyway. Draco shuffles a little before divulging into his reasoning of whatever that’s wrong with him, and Pansy inches closer. She can still see Myrtle hovering at the edge of their eyesight, a grey, depressing shadow.

“I use the mask to… I need the mask to remind myself. I contemplate the moment in that room, when they branded me, and every moment that came after. It’s a routine, a fucking play, Pansy. It doesn’t mean… what you think it means. I’m not self-flagellating.”

“Then what are you doing?”

“I’m differentiating. I put on the damned thing and think about how different things have turned out. I think of everything I didn’t do. And the things I did. It helps me to make sense of the world now. To make sense of myself.” 

“It won’t make sense to anyone else.”

“I don’t care,” he says sharply, before adding, almost hesitantly, “Not that I am saying that you and Blaise are just anyone. But every time you stared at the mask you looked so fucking terrified, I… I didn’t know what to say.”

“I’m always terrified.”

“Yeah.” He scoots closer. “Yeah, I know. Now more than ever actually.”

Pansy finds herself gripping his hand as Myrtle gilds in and out of their view. Draco shoots the ghost a smile and she shrieks, retreating back into one of the empty chambers. He sighs and looks away, a numbing silence settles as Pansy thinks over what he said.

“I’m not the only one who stares, you know,” she says finally, half because she doesn’t want to talk about the mask, half because it’s time. It’s fucking time enough. 

Draco’s soft laugh breaks into the quiet. “I know. I’ve watched him, too. Unlike you, he doesn’t know how to hide it. He stares at you like a—”

A jolt runs up her spine. “I don’t want to know.”

“’Course you do.” He shrugs, flitting his hand over hers. A moment passes like molasses. Pansy almost thinks he won’t answer. But then he does. “He stares at you like you’re this sparkling thing. Beaming. Like the light at the end of the tunnel.”

“Yeah.” Her lips press into a thin line. “Thanks.”

“Always.”

“How did you notice? The first time?”

“Honestly?” He chuckles. “You were wearing those really amazing bras to classes. You know, those Paris ones Cynthia bought when...”

Pansy puffs her cheeks. “Oh shut up.”

He chuckles in answer.

“I don’t know if that’s gross or endearing that you noticed.”

“Go with endearing.”

“I think I feel more comfortable with gross.”

“You always did, you slut.”

The laughter comes easily, now, to her. And before they know, they’re nudging each other, the crips sound of their banter echoing on the walls. 

“It’s all shit, though,” he says breathlessly, laughter chafing off. “All of it just… you and Potter. Me and—” his voice catches, he stops abruptly. Before—

“It would be so… embarrassing. More embarrassing than being turned into a ferret, or pissing in my pants in front of Greyback after watching him bite someone’s throat off… more than trying to convince myself that I could murder the greatest wizard who ever lived when actually I was the trussed up lamb… Merlin.” He hisses out a curse. Pansy finds herself offering him a hand. He grabs it, before adding, “It’s embarrassing if I fall in love with her, it’s embarrassing if she doesn't. It’s mortifying if she does. It’ll be embarrassing if we break up a week from now, or five years or even a decade—can you imagine the tabloids? Or what if we don't break-up? What if we find out it's just a shit coping mechanism—these… these fucking feelings? Or …” He shudders at the thought, Pansy almost thinks that he’s on the edge of cracking into a depressive, maniacal laugh. “ What if we live happily ever after? How can I make myself look into her eyes every morning knowing I’m the reason she has trouble sleeping at night?”

“I think you’re over-estimating yourself. You were the pompous cunt, an insufferable bully, okay, but hardly the stuff of nightmare—”

“I’m in her worst nightmare,” he hisses. “I’m in there and I do nothing. That doesn't make it better, Pans.”

She blinks. “I… yes. Sorry. I’m… sorry.”

“Yeah.” He shrugs. “Yeah, I know. And… just, let this get out of the way, I guess. I’m sorry for taking you for granted. I just… Just.”

“I get it.” She smiles. “Just.”

“You’re Pansy. You’re the designated driver of my life.”

She remembers Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings at the manor, her and him running after the peacocks at the garden, sunlight on their faces. Long before Blaise came around, they were the terror of the house elves and governesses. I’d marry you in that chapel, he’d promise. I have to have cakes… and pearls, she’d reply, imitating her mother. Pansy found out she loved him when she was five… and the feelings haven’t dissipated, only transformed.

“You know, you’re actually the reason mother hasn’t shipped me off to some old moneybag like Daphne’s… husband.”

He nods in answer.

“I love you, I do. But sometimes… I just don’t think we’re right for each other.”

“I know.”

“I think we’ll still get married.” Once they shoot a few shots at falling in love. Once they go around fucking up some more, being consumed by the profane, inane uselessness some times. Once time has its way and they find out that legacy is a tragedy but also a blessing.

“Of course. My mother has the ring chosen.”

She snorts. Something light cracks in her chest, and before she knows, they’re both laughing. Draco pulls her in an one armed hug, pushing his chin on the crown of her head. Pansy lets herself be coddled, she lets herself smell the familiar scent of ink and parchment. And mint. And home.

“I know what you're gonna do,” Draco says after a while.

The words are soft and careful. She nods and nods. Her nose nuzzles at the dip of his collar, she feels weightless, hopeless, and aimless. But fine. Fucking fine. “I know what you're gonna do, too.”

“Do you believe in free will, Parkinson?” Harry had asked. He was hunched over the wooden table. Their books and parchments strewn over along with half-written notes and coloured quills Pansy liked to embellish her assignments with. Even though the room is closed off, there’s a crisp breeze wafting from an indecipherable corner of the Room of Requirement, Harry Potter’s place in this big old castle.

 “What?”

“Free will. You know… that—that you’re in control of your life?”

She giggled, she doesn’t know why. The air inside the room was crisp and fresh as if it was autumn. It smelled of apples and orchids, for some reason. And in the slant of light, golden, bright and unnatural in the closed room, made everything feel a little more preposterous. Did she believe in free will? Did she believe in something so fantastical?

“I don’t know.” She pushed the open textbook towards him. “What about you?”

He shrugged. “It should be real, right? But then—then nothing ever happens as we plan. Or think. Or dream. So.”

“So.”

He shrugged again. His lips quirked in the half-smile. Crescent-like, slant of moon in a dark night. It would be the death of her, all the little things she noticed. That she couldn’t seem to be able to ignore. Small, imperceptible folds between his eyes, the rush of pink of his cheeks when she smiled back. The way his eyes seemed to change colours like a chameleon. The more she looked, more details emerged like quicksand traps, like puzzle pieces begging to be fit into a box.

But Harry Potter can’t be fixed into a box. Boy Who Lived. Boy Who Died and Came Alive Again. Boy Sleepless. Boy Defeated. He becomes something new every day. She admires him every day.

Free Will. It seemed nothing more than a fever dream. What a load of crock that it’s up to them. It's never up to one person the course of their lives. There are crude mothers and proud fathers and mirror-like friends, classmates and mentors and rivals. All of them stick their little needles and you might think you’re running away, when you’re actually running back, tripping into the house you came from. Walking backwards into the same old misery and happiness—sometimes not being able to tell which is which.

Pansy smoothes out her gown for the ball. It’s an elegant piece of garment, a nifty lavender silk, pearly sheen tracing every curve of her body. The colour is the same as Draco’s tie. It complements his grey eyes, her complexion, their pair. It’s her mother’s dress from when she was a student.

She sighes as she hugs the dress against her body and stares into the mirror. Her reflection stares down at the dress passively. It’s elegant, timeless (or stopped in time), and beautiful in its own way.