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the bottom!draco emporium-- 3 x 5
Title: 3 x 5
Rating: R
Author: Ehh...Danya? Danya Kahtra? No?
Genre: Dark fic with mild reference to slash - very Angsty.
Summary: Pansy talks about her relationship with Draco after the war ends
A/Ns: Um... yeah. I think it's creepy and I've been told very, very angsty. Just one of those fics that wouldn't stop bothering me until it got written. Blame the Pansy muse.
His nails would have made a far more annoying sound against the polished surface if he hadn’t taken to biting them. I suppose smoking seemed too obvious of a habit and he never was one to blatantly expose his own neurotic behavior. Come to think of it, I had never once seen him with his fingers in his mouth – never saw the bleeding cuticles in action.
I remember asking him next if he would do it – although we both knew it wasn’t a question of courage, or lack there of. I remember he watched me carefully for a few silent minutes; his lips pursed plainly as if to move them would cause him great agony. Their normally fleshy pink hue had evaporated to a dry paleness, and I imagined that to touch his mouth would feel like sifting gravel between my fingertips.
He turned away from me without a verbal answer, rising from the desk to walk the short distance to our bed. I watched him ease into it, rolling over to fuss with the mattress, pawing at it for a moment like a graying puppy to his doggy blankets, willing the comfort to surround him and lull him to sleep. He never did sleep all that well in our last few months together – it was rare that I opened my morning eyes to his resting form.
I found him once. He was standing in the middle of our room facing away from me, a hand hanging limply at his side. The other must’ve been crossed in front of him, I couldn’t tell. The chandelier lingered directly above him and I found myself smiling at how serene he appeared – standing there apparently oblivious to his beauty. Shards of light dripped down the length of his still radiant locks, fading across the longer tips to be absorbed within the darkness of his cloak. He didn’t seem to notice his good looks anymore and much less any sort of human presence, but I didn’t mind. I never questioned his solitude.
He must’ve recognized my footsteps since he turned around to watch my entrance, eyes raised to mine. I smiled as the picture frame glinted in his hand and it hurt to stretch my lips like that, but I continued to smile anyway. I didn’t mind so much, really I didn’t, and when he smiled at me in return I momentarily forgot about the picture he kept at his bedside nightstand.
“Care to tell me your thoughts?”
“I don’t care much for this room anymore,” he snapped, startling me as I never knew when he would choose to speak. “It seems a bit crowded for some reason.”
“…Do you wish it to be painted again?”
“Perhaps… do what you will. Although Pansy, anything but - ”
“- Crimson… I know.”
He despised that color. He said it reminded him of things he wanted to forget.
“Mmm,” he replied, nodding approvingly and I continued to smile as I recognized that light in his eyes. It only ever returned when he remembered what it was that he lived to mull over. “Mmm,” he hummed again, cracked lips folding over into a thin line that matched the lines forming across his features. The tightly stretched skin across his forehead fell to that pattern of contours and crosshatches, crinkling fans of flesh pinching together at the outer corners of his eyelids. In times like this his true age seeped further into his blood as if for safe keeping, overseeing the healthy pump of a pulse throughout his veins, contradicting the deathly sag of his broad shoulders.
In times like this I never knew how to react, but I knew not to startle him with the reality of the present.
Next he would chuckle mirthlessly, tonelessly.
He always chuckled.
“Do you remember what he said to me, Pansy? The cheeky bastard,” he laughed, a certain fondness leaking through the insult that I never heard when he spoke my name. Apparently though, he found the thought truly funny as he fought to catch his breath. He clapped a scarred hand to his chest, heaving oddly, mumbling and pausing to breathe. It was as if he needed to prove just how comical it was, but couldn’t quite deliver the punch line right. A personal, private joke that no one besides himself could possibly understand.
He looked at me – straight into my eyes – his own quivering and blurred behind the appearance of moisture that distorted his vision. “… he said – he said… ‘Take a picture, Malfoy. It’ll last longer!’ ”
I laughed, and heartily at that, for the third time that week. To him though, the constant repetition only heightened the humor in his statement.
“I mean… take a bloody picture!…Merlin, what a prat…”
“Oh yes, what a pathetic thing to say… that Potter…”
He sighed heavily, sounding sated. Those shaking fingers of his rose to wipe the tears from his eyes as he shook his head, settling back within himself after the last bits of sporadic laughter had ceased. I clenched my hands tightly together as I watched him fall once more into his normal mute form, pressing my nails harder into my skin. It was a more obvious habit I had adopted, although Draco never said anything about the red, crescent moons that stood out across my pallid knuckles.
That was the last thing he said to me for three more days. He disappeared that night and didn’t return for seventy-two more hours.
When I found him within our manor that day he was seated at the head of the dining room table, enjoying the stilled chatter of nonexistent visitors while he sipped nothing from a frosted wine glass.
“Oh hello, dear,” he smiled cheerfully, slamming his empty glass down atop the crisp emerald table cloth. His movements were excited, yet tense… subtly restrained although I just knew he could have leapt into a wild erratic fit if he wanted to. I felt it deep within my skin that something was out of place. The potential for him to cross the line into frantic illusion lingered in the air about him. I have to admit, I was terrified.
Behind his dilated eyes I saw nothing. One time when we were younger I had explained to him how if you looked hard enough into his eyes you could spot flecks of the purest cerulean blue. They truly were silver, although the blue weaved within the gray was what made them so breathtakingly beautiful.
Draco Malfoy had always been beautiful to me, even in his rat-faced phase.
And he was even beautiful then - terribly beautiful and beautifully terrible.
“Hello darling. Is there anything I might - ”
“OH no no! Do sit down! I was simply entertaining the LeStranges with my latest tale of my conquests!”
I swallowed thickly and cautiously approached, my own gaze following his darting one.
“Well… that sounds wonderful, dear. Although… you seem to have run out of your Port Noir-”
“Ah haha! Silly woman,” he oozed, breathless with animation as he scolded me with a twitching pointer finger, dark brow arched high. “Nevermind the wine!! Sit down – sit down!!”
I promptly sat down across from the chair he had been talking to, folding my hands within my lap, chest pounding as I felt the shock of worry pumping adrenaline through my body.
“Now,” he began, turning to address the empty seat to the left of him with a furious ecstasy that I hadn’t seen in him in many years. I suspected it was in anticipation of his own war story, one of which I knew I had never heard. “As I was saying, no one could match my abilities!! My wand tossed wizards and witches easily onto their backs and oh the blood! You won’t believe the blood…”
“Draco… love… I-”
“SILENCE WOMAN! Do not interrupt me!” he roared, throwing his raging face at mine. I shrank back and shuddered, inhaling sharply at being addressed in such a manner. He had never spoken to me that way before. My mind could not assess it, although my instinctive senses didn’t need a capable mind to pull in random details that I still remember to this day… such as the spittle that flecked his quivering chin, and the pungent, herbal smell that leaked from his disgruntled robes.
“My deepest apologies,” I muttered, shoulders rising and falling as I told myself to remain relaxed. “Continue as you please.”
He flared his nostrils at me and I couldn’t help but be reminded of the dragon amulet he wore around his neck. It depicted such a creature, mouth open, baring fangs and tongues of fire.
“Now, as I was saying,” he snorted, tossing a disgusted look my way before turning on the charm for his invisible guests. I sucked in a sharp breath, swallowing the urge to lash out at this poor, confused figure and wrung my hands in my lap, squeezing the feeling from them. “The bloodshed was horrendous Everywhere! Everyone… Finnigan, Thomas, Weasley…although that blasted Granger got away for a short while! Filthy Mudblood – I found her though – and to think! The nerve of her to try to lock me within myself – clever little hex but not clever enough!! I licked her blood from my hands just to see if it really was that filthy - ”
My mind reeled, threatening to shut down as the rhythmic beating of my heart throbbed sickly loud in my ears. Draco had never told me the full details of the battles he fought in, simply that they were too frightening to speak of. He had told me that there were no words to describe what he had seen and what he had done, but he pleaded every night for a month to me after it all ended for me to forgive him.
He needed someone…anyone to forgive him for what he had done.
And now this…the truth instigated by his poor mental health; brutality I covered my ears to keep from hearing.
I wasn’t foolish. I knew what my life would grow into if I allowed it to. Draco and I had promised to remain loyal to each other and no one else, and that we would save each other from spilling blood.
That Potter… that fool of a boy, Potter. He was the source of our troubles, giving Draco a conscience and keeping us from fulfilling the expectations of our parents. I only followed Draco and his choices, never Potter… but who am I fooling… all of this was for Potter. In the end Draco, my only true friend in the world had given himself to death and destruction for the sake of Potter and everything that he loved.
The potions Severus Snape brewed for him were painful as they forced him to spend our last two years at Hogwarts straddling the line between fiercely evil urges to blindly follow the mark and its whispered intentions, and idealistic promises of equality and tolerance that he wasn’t even sure he believed in. They forced him to remain conscious of the skull’s commandments and to recognize that he still had free will to resist them. They forced him to fight the spell he willingly succumbed to in order to appease his father while secretly working against him. They forced so much frustration and confusion on him that on some nights when it would seem that Voldemort would win him over, turning him into a mindless follower… he experienced physical pain at having to resist the dark, magical venom the Dark Mark regularly pumped into his veins.
I lie in bed with him many nights, sometimes binding him to the canopy to control his trembling and convulsions. Dabbing at the sweat gathering at his temples, constantly reminding him of why he needed to deal with the two parts of his brain, playing tug-of-war with his sanity.
And on the nights when he could control himself and recognize that he was fighting for the good side, he left me…
And the next morning he never told me where he went, but as I said, I wasn’t foolish.
And now he…
“OH! And here’s the good part! Now I get to tell you of how I murdered the Boy Who Lived! Isn’t that exciting?”
I blinked and all lingering warmth drained from my body, hands having fallen from my ears in shaking rage. I didn’t realize I had been gripping the edge of the table, nearly clawing at it until his one, quiet sob broke through my daze and brought me back to his one-sided conversation.
“Yes! Yes it was me!! I killed him with a kiss! A kiss! Isn’t that hilarious? I bled him and kissed his bloody life away-”
“DRACO MALFOY STOP IT!”
It took me the few moments of pregnant silence to realize it was my own, shrill voice that had filled the room. I vaguely thought it sounded like a dying kitty, my own fingers scratching mechanically at the elegant wooden table. I retracted my claws and sat there, mouth open slightly.
He looked to me, left eye twitching and I watched as his face crumbled into a wet, twisting mess. A single sob gurgled up from his throat and I reached my arms out to drag him across the corner of the table, pulling him into my arms, inhaling the grime imbedded in his robes and the smell of his salty, postponed tears.
Why did he haunt him? Why didn’t he let him go? We just wanted to survive, just to get on with our lives. Was that so much to ask?
Apparently it was as I found him that same night sprawled out across the floor of our bedroom… that haunting picture left upon the nightstand at his bedside.
I still remember asking him if he would really do it – and I still remember the faint, barely there thump of his fingertips drumming across the top of his desk.
~O~
“Draco… it is such a complex spell…even if you could find it, it may not work.”
…
“Draco…it is far too dangerous…”
…
“…Draco! You can’t just lock your life away!! I need you here with me, you promised. You promised you would be there for me and you promised that after the war ended we would live a normal life together!”
…
“…Draco… please. You promised me, you can’t break this promise!! You can break all of the other ones… but you can’t break this one!! You owe it to me!! You fucking owe it to me!! I don’t care about you sleeping with Potter… I don’t care about you loving Potter… I don’t care about you killing Potter either…but you cannot leave me for a half-life! You cannot do this to me!”
…
“Draco…you cannot lock your soul…”
…
“Draco… please… please talk to me…”
…
~O~
I remember stepping into the room, that same, pungent smell of herbs I had smelled on him earlier that day battering my senses full force. The place stunk of it… it was as if he’d drowned himself in the stink that I have now been cursed to never forget. I don’t know where he went… or how he found what he needed to find, but he did. He found that spell – the spell that I had been so horribly scared he would someday own as I knew he would leave me once he got a hold of it. I didn’t know it would be so soon, as he’d left me many times before for sets of days at a time without contact… returning with a small wave of the hand to acknowledge my presence in his life.
After the war officially ended with Voldemort’s demise, Draco rightfully inherited Malfoy Manor from his dead parents. I took care of the legal work while Draco slept all day, every day, only to wake up at night and beg my forgiveness. As I would lay my head to the pillow, he would lift his and creep barefoot across the floor, haunting in his careful steps as if he didn’t wish to wake me, despite my still being conscious. I used to follow him around the Manor, unsure if he even knew I was beside him as he never said a thing to me while he examined the house.
I understood the shock of it all – to have so many people be taken from you. My own parents were murdered, but I was able to take my grieving days and overcome the mourning stage, whereas he sank further within his own self-loathing and despair. His mind had been ruined from endless torture and I suspect he simply snapped when he killed Potter and his friends. I never asked how it happened, I never needed to know. All I needed was my best friend and the only one I loved in my life, and to work with him to move on.
So when I sank to my knees to roll Draco over and onto his back, reaching for his hands to touch them and feel their warmth, I slapped him. I slapped him hard across his unfeeling face and watched as he merely stared lifeless up at me. He had given in and fallen. He had betrayed me.
I clutched at his clothes, ripping them from his body, buttons flying everywhere as I tore his shirt open to run my hands across his still defined chest. My fingers ran along the design he had acquired… feeling the newly scabbing crust over the deep cuts within his skin. It was fresh…recent… an element needed for such a complex spell.
I remember crawling around on my hands and knees, hands scratching and clawing at the carpet like the dying kitty I was…searching for the evidence.
And I found it. A vial and a bit of parchment with lines and lines of ancient Native American runes inscribed across the gritty sheet. I wasn’t even aware of the moisture coating my cheeks as I continued to crawl across the floor, uttering guttural groans of hysteria, sniffing at the vial in disbelief like a beast to a shiny object.
I crawled atop Draco Malfoy, my supposed partner for life and pressed my wet hands to his cheeks, feeling their warmth. Still alive, but not quite – as if in a coma he would never wake up from. Those blue-flecked grays of his seemed to ask if I was angry with him – if I thought him a coward – and I did.
I did.
Sniffing snot back into my sinuses and struggling to breathe, I crawled over to the parchment, smoothing it out on the floor as I hovered, knees digging into the aged wood below me. Draco had always been the Runes expert, but I was good as well. His father thought it impressive to be able to decode dead languages and anything of the sort as most often the best Ancient Magic lurked within them. I had picked up on things here and there as I studied with him after classes.
Never let someone take your picture, for ancient myth says that a camera can steal your soul.
I stumbled through the directions of the incantation and I knew what to expect. When Draco did speak to me, he only spoke of the spell and how it would work. How he would lock himself away within this other world and there he could be with Potter.
Take a picture, Malfoy. It’ll last longer!
How his body would remain alive, with only his soul missing.
Take a picture, Malfoy.
How he would leave me once more for him. How he would spend an eternity with Potter in a picture frame.
I remember that I was sobbing loudly, shoulders shaking and I remember feeling a burn deep within my chest, as if I couldn’t get enough oxygen in my lungs. I sat back on my haunches, recognizing for the first time that I was truly alone in the world. He had been selfish… so selfish to leave me. So selfish…
I remember looking up to the picture of Potter on his bedside nightstand.
I remember seeing Draco standing next to Potter, arm around him within the picture and smiling - even waving down at me brightly, locked safely away from me and the world he had lived and basically died in.
And I remember smiling awkwardly at the picture like I always did on the rare occasions when Draco Malfoy chose to smile at me.
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