Where The Sun Drops | drarry post-war

six | pansy

Pansy's place was empty when Draco arrived.

He hadn't got much of a sense of time these days, but somehow he realised as he drew closer that it must have grown much later into the night in the time he had spent drifting aimlessly through the clouds to get here - the air around him felt much darker than it had before, and no more lamps flickered in the neighbouring homes.

He decided to wait it out till Pansy got back from wherever she was. There was no rush; even if it took a week, he could stay there. It wasn't like he had anything better to do.

He let his mind wander, drift back onto his memories of the girl he had spent so much of his life with. His Pansy. Irritating, witty, exasperating, beautiful Pansy.

How many times he had tried, and failed, to love her in the way that he knew he should.

"We'll elope, Dray," she used to say to him, her legs draped over his lap and her hands thrown back above her head. "Let's run away together, get away from all this. You don't want to marry some stuffy Sacred Twenty-Eight Pureblood-"

"Pansy, we're Sacred Twenty-Eight Purebloods!" he'd laugh, and she'd roll those dramatic lustrous dark eyes and sigh theatrically, and he'd laugh again.

"The point is, Draco, it's our lives," she'd huff. "And one can make us do anything we don't want to do."

And he'd laugh again, and tell her no, and lecture her about The Cause and their Death Eater duties, and their loyalties to their families...

How stupid that all seemed now, how trivial that that was his life. Why the fuck did he always refuse her?

Now, for the first time, Draco wondered what it was that she was running away from. And what she'd seen in him, to make her think he ought to run too.

Was it simply that she wasn't cut out for the life of Dark Magic that had been designed for her? Or was it something more than that?

He wished he'd thought to ask, paid a little more attention to her while he still could. And now... now, it was far too late.

I should've fucking run away with her when she asked me to, he thought, angry and frustrated with himself. She must have asked me a hundred times.

I couldn't have loved her the way she needed me to, but we would've been safe and free, and she could have had anything she wanted except for my heart. It would've been alright.

A flurry of laughter and squealing broke Draco out of his mind once more, and his head snapped up to find the lights all suddenly flashing on in Pansy's apartment.

And there she was, an enchanting silhouette of black silk and a shock of dark hair in the doorway of her front room, looking as beautiful as the day Draco died. In her left hand was a large bottle, the label of which was obscured by shadows, and in her right was a Muggle cigarette which she allowed carelessly to drip its ash onto the rug by her feet.

As Draco watched, she took a large drag from the cig which made the end glow marigold, then threw back her head and laughed uproariously in the direction of the other room, offering the bottle to someone in an outstretched hand, and in that moment Draco realised she wasn't alone.

Swaying slightly and still laughing, Pansy slid off her heels and kicked them away from her with more roughness than necessary, and then arched her back against the doorframe seductively.

With that, another girl skipped into view, and gladly filled the space around Pansy. She took the bottle from Pansy's hand, swigged hard, and then was only when her lips met Pansy's neck that the penny dropped for Draco.

So that was what Pansy was running from, why she wanted a convenient marriage to her best friend.

She's gay. Of course.

Sure, it was a surprise, but also it made a lot of sense to Draco. It explained a lot of things about their past, when he really thought about it. In fact, he felt ridiculously oblivious not to have seen it before.

He watched as Pansy swiped the bottle playfully back from the girl's hand, and kept it to her own lips for quite some time.

As she cast it aside and began to spin round in her fishnets, Draco realised with a jolt that the girl was absolutely out of her mind. Her eyes were wide and dizzy-looking with the effects of the alcohol, her mascara was smudged into a dark gloom beneath the sockets, her black dress was more than a little rucked up at the sides, and the fishnets were torn in several places.

Draco was overcome by a wave of protective sadness for his best friend at the sight.

Flirty, wilful, obnoxious little treasure of a girl.

She was lucky she had such a huge trust fund, because the way she looked, he could tell she'd been squandering it since the war. Parties, drinks, drugs, entry to exclusive clubs - that was Pansy's way of coping with hard feelings.

We can't all be as well adjusted as darling Theo, Pansy's singsong voice teased in Draco's memory, making him shiver.

Don't destroy yourself, he willed her back silently. I can't intervene, I won't be able to save you.

Draco cursed his immortal body then, in all its vague fragmentations. Months, it had been since his death, and what mortal acts had he learned to do in that time? Move the occasional leaf from its branch to the floor without touching it. And even that could be a fluke.

Useless, changeless spiritual being.

***

Draco stayed at Pansy's for several days, reluctant to leave in case something happened to her (And what would you do if something did? he asked himself sarcastically, call the Healers for her? Help her up? With what body?).

Leaving Theo had been easy - some signs of sadness were evident around his place when Draco snooped, of course; mostly pictures of him and Draco with Pansy and Blaise on his nightstand, but lately he seemed to be getting on with life as well as could be expected after a major war and the loss of his best friend. But Pansy... Pansy was a far different story.

Every night that Draco was there, she brought home a different girl from some party or another (two, on one occasion!) and barely left her bed before sunset the following day, when it was time to grab a bowl of cereal - her one meal of the day - and get ready to start the whole sequence all over again.

On the last night before Draco was planning to head off again, unable to watch any more self destruction, Pansy had a visitor that he recognised by voice before even seeing him.

Blaise. Sweet, even-tempered Blaise, the perfect balance for Pansy's chaotic impulsiveness and Theo's perpetual inability to take anything seriously. Draco was glad he'd come by for their friend.

"Are you up, Pans?" the other boy called as soon as he got inside the apartment (he had a key for himself, Draco noticed with a warm glow, very smart.)

"Yeah," came the groggy reply. Draco slipped through the walls, butter soft as ever, to confirm for himself that this wasn't the case.

Blaise only chuckled when he reached the doorway of her room, unsurprised by the scene. Pansy was under the covers, dark hair sticking up like a black dandelion, a mostly-empty glass of water on her bedside table and the previous night's dress discarded on the floor beside her.

"What are we going to do with you this time?" he asked, and in his voice was so much tenderness.

There was no reply, so he leant down and scooped the girl up, duvet and all.

"Come on, little bee," he said, "We'll go to mine again."

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a/n: thanks so much if you read this, i hope you're enjoying !! lmk what you think and please remember to vote💗💗💗

~ paradisedraco