Undeniable

Undeniable

I'm not sure when I had the idea first. It was born out of a longing to prove myself, to re-establish my waning self-confidence. I guess I chose him because it would be the ultimate accomplishment and because he represents everything I abhor, everything that disgusts me and everything, deep down in my anonymous soul, I would like to be.

That doesn't mean I admire him. I don't admire him in any way other than aesthetically. In fact, I don't even admire him for that. He isn't good looking: his hair is untameable, his glasses are too big and his smile is lopsided. He's all messy. If I look across at him in a lesson he usually has ink stains on his hands and a black smudge on his nose where he has pushed those ridiculous frames back up onto the bridge of his nose. Why he doesn't have his vision magically corrected I don't know. Perhaps it is an emulation of that old fool who runs this place, who peers out at us over his half moon spectacles from the high table.

I don't value Harry. It isn't for who he is that I want to draw his attention. It is for what he represents. Goodness, sincerity, purity and, above all, honesty. If I can make him look at me as a woman, me, someone he so hates, I will know beyond a doubt that I am attractive purely on my own merit.

Draco tells me I'm beautiful all the time, but I gave up listening to him a long time ago. In me he sees power, success and his father's approval. Yes, Pansy is a suitable girl. It was probably decided before we could talk: not that they told us. Oh no, this isn't an arranged marriage. After all, we figured it out for ourselves and got on with it, each recognising in the other perfect compatibility. It's just that it would never have been any different. I even feel affection for Draco sometimes, dear boy, and he can and will give me everything I want. My one insecurity is that it is so convenient. Does it matter to him what I look like?

I know it's stupid. Of course it matters. Draco Malfoy would never be seen with an ugly girl. So in one sense his acceptance and his approval are reassuring. But I want to know if my attractiveness is tainted by my family, my power, my suitability. If I can make Harry want me, Harry, to whom all of those things would be deterrents not incentives, then I can shelve my insecurities once and for all. I could then put this behind me and move on, pass my NEWTs and officially become Mrs Draco Malfoy. I won't need Harry then. I'll have Draco. I don't delude myself that I will have a faithful husband - but then that means I needn't be faithful either. But we will always have each other, to talk to, conspire with, confide in and trust. Oh yes, it might seem a paradox but Draco Malfoy is infinitely trustworthy. His family name and rank are everything and, as he stands by his father through everything, so he will stand by his wife. I have no fears on that front. Draco knows everything about me: my little hopes and dreams; what haunts my nightmares. He knows that I had an affair with Lucius last summer, he knows that my first kiss was with a girl, he knows that I'm paranoid about my stupid, little nose, and that he is the one person in the world who can get away with insulting me about it. He knows I lost my virginity to Blaise Zabini when I was fifteen, he knows where I am in my menstrual cycle, he knows that I bruise easily, that I have a birthmark between my breast and a double jointed toe on my left foot. He knows so much about me that I almost fear the power he has over me sometimes. He knows everything except this.

I keep a diary and Draco knows the combination charm. I don't think he reads it, but he could if he wanted. That's why this is scrawled on a piece of parchment that I will fold inside my bra. Draco's ill today, I'll get away with it.

I had to write this out, had to see it in words: black ink against brown parchment in my familiar looping hand. If I can see it then it will be real. I can burn it afterwards and no one will know but me. By then it will be written in my head.

Professor McGonagall is handing out exam slips today. We have to go to her and pick them up. But I haven't gone because I know that if I don't she will send her minion Potter to find me. I know it will be Potter because Miss Head Girl Granger is too busy organising the leaving ball to be troubled by one student who happens to be uselessly forgetful. Draco moans about her all the time (Hermione that is). She harasses him to get his part of the organising done properly. As if he would do anything in a half-arsed manner. He may ooze nonchalance, but Draco does everything with every fibre of his being, or not at all. Since he became my lover my grades have improved considerable: it wouldn't do for the future Mrs Malfoy to barely scrape a pass, would it? He dedicates hours to teaching me now. At first I was flattered, until I realised that it was as much for his benefit as for my own. Today I have these hours alone because Draco is in the hospital wing. I don't think that there is anything seriously wrong with him, but he wasn't eating at breakfast and he's a bit paler than usual. It didn't take much persuasion (it never does) to get him to go the hospital wing: he loves the attention. And it gets him out of the way.

So here I am, all alone, and any minute now the illustrious Mr Potter will come to me with a message. I've been trying to decide how and where to receive him. I don't want to seduce him exactly - Draco would instantly be able to tell that when he returned. He can deal with my affairs with other boys - he's hardly celibate when we're apart. Hell, he was only slightly annoyed when he found out I'd been fucking his father. But I think Harry Potter would just be pushing his tolerance a bit too far. And, as I said, I don't want Harry. I want the confidence that he can give me. I want the chance to turn him down.

So, in that case, the bedroom is out. The common room is too public. I want to be able to flirt with Harry and draw him to me. In fact, wouldn't anywhere in Slytherin Dungeons be a problem? On the other hand - he's the Boy Who Fucking Lived! I'm going to give him a challenge. He's so damn dutiful about tasks that he is assigned that I'm sure he will get in here somehow. He'll find me wherever I am with that mysterious ability of his.

Where would be the hardest place for him to get to me?

Slytherin Seventh-Year Girls Bathroom. That'll really flush his cute little cheeks with embarrassment. And not much chance of being caught: there are only four of us and who bathes in the middle of the day?

But... what if he doesn't come himself? What if it's too daunting? Oh, it's too good an idea to give up - I'll take the risk.

Right. I'd better get ready.

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I did it! I actually did it! Now I'm standing in the corridor scribbling this down, because if I can see it in words then I know that it's real. Draco must never know! God! He would kill me! Wow, the exhilaration. And I got the exam slip too, so McGonagall can't blow her top.

Okay. This is how it happened: I need to get my thoughts straight. I tried to make it as difficult as possible, tried to get to the place that would be hardest to find, hardest to gain access to. I locked myself in the Slytherin Seventh Year Girls Bathroom. I figured that he would find me anyway - he has an amazing ability to do so. I thought that he might not come: I used to think that he was a goody-goody. Maybe he was when we were younger and maybe he's changed. He doesn't mind breaking rules now.

He did find me, as I hoped he would, with that strange and amazing ability of his. He must know some kind of powerful locating spell. And I didn't know that he had an invisibility cloak before. I know Draco has one, the one I used to steal when I left him to see Lucius. But Harry has one too. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. He has everything, damn him.

I'm running out of time. Draco could be back soon. There's nothing seriously wrong with him and yet he's been in the hospital wing for almost two hours. I have to hurry, and then burn this. He would hate this. It might ruin everything. The Former Expected Mrs Draco Malfoy. Oh how I would hate to be that!

It was about twenty minutes before the knock came on the door. It felt like much longer and all the old worries surfaced. Maybe I was pushing this too far, maybe the common room would have been better. I ignored it at first. I wanted to shout out, to let him know that he had found me, that I was here. To tell him not to go away, not to give up. But I didn't want to look too eager. So I ignored him until the third knock, insistent, purposeful and, I expected, irritated.

What do you want? I called out. Or something similar. It's Harry he replied, shouting to be heard through the door. You didn't pick up your exam slip. McGonagall sent me to give it to you. I was surprised at that. I had expected a message telling me to go to her, not for her to send the Boy Wonder with the slip himself. She obviously really trusted him to get to me, and for a minute I felt guilty. But only briefly.

Well then, you'd better come in, I shouted in reply and I waved my wand, whispering an incantation to unlock the door. It sprung open and he came in. He saw me and he averted his eyes, bright red spots appearing on his cheeks.

I was in the bath, the purple bubbles thick on the surface, and I imagined myself as he must see me, my narrow white shoulders disappearing into the coloured water, my dark hair piled on the top of my head, my wand still in my hand which was resting lazily on the rim of the sunken pool. It wasn't a big bathroom, not considering that he was used to the swimming pool-sized tub in the prefects bathroom. I've seen that when Draco smuggled me in for some post Quidditch sport. This is simpler, less grand, only four taps and no paintings. But then I doubt that Harry is the type for mixed bathing - he probably washes at midnight so that nobody will walk in on his naked body, so his embarrassment was understandable - and exactly what I had aimed for. I have to admit that I almost flushed at the thought of him bare, and the invitation to him to join me hovered on my lips. But I know that if I said that he would fly, leaving the slip on the floor for me to retrieve.

Instead I smiled, as if receiving guests in the bathtub was completely normal. I suppose that this didn't raise his low estimation of us, but really, why should I care? That's very kind of you, I said to him, watching his eyes. They flicked up to my face briefly, then focussed back on the floor. He was scarlet now and I almost felt sorry for him. But inside I was seething; how dare a hormonal seventeen-year-old boy not even make any attempt to look at my body. Okay, this is Harry Potter, but surely I merit some kind of look? I can assure you this was doing nothing for my self-esteem.

Um, shall I put it on here? He asked, indicating the counter and eyeing the door as if he might bolt out of it and pretend that nothing had happened. No, no. Didn't McGonagall tell you to give it to me? His ears were purple with mortification and I know that he heard the innuendo. She said, Bring this to Pansy... he began, then finished in a hurry, Put it in her hand yourself.

Well there we go. Hang on a second and I will get out and dry myself. If you give it to me now it will get a bit wet. I moved and the bubbles shifted and my breasts were briefly exposed above the scented water. He shut his eyes. Um.. I'll wait outside.

No, no. Just pass me that towel, I instructed him, and so he did, holding it out to me, his arm rigid, his eyes still shut. I couldn't help admiring his long, tapered, tanned hands. A musician's hands - does Harry play music? - a wizard's hands, and I felt an unfamiliar jolt of lust course through me. I suppressed it. This wasn't about that, I didn't want, couldn't want Harry. I just wanted to make him want me.

Thanks, I murmured, tucking the fleecy material around me, leaving my arms, shoulders and neck bare and glistening with moisture. You can open your eyes now. He did, and ceremoniously laid the paper in my hand. His eyes widened as I moved closer to him, with a predatory smile on my face, but he didn't move away.

Gryffindor courage? I taunted him.

I'm not afraid of you, Pansy, he said.

Maybe you should be, I breathed to his neck, and I saw the hair standing on ends and his tense breathing and I felt a thrill running through me. Maybe it was just his hormones and the fact that the poor, innocent Gryffindor had probably never been so close to a semi-naked girl, but at that moment he wanted me and the knowledge filled me with an unbelievable power.

Thanks, I murmured again, then swept past him and out the door, glancing back for a fraction of a second over my shoulder, just for long enough to check, to resolve my doubt once and for all. His face had fallen minutely and I could have yelled aloud with glee.

I hurried to my dorm and changed into robes and I'm flying to the hall now for supper. But I had to stop in the corridor between my room and the common room, had to scribble these words down. I can fling this paper in the fire as I pass and go out the portrait, before Draco finds me, before anyone says anything. I know Harry will never reveal what happened. He'd be too embarrassed. And it's not like it would matter to anyone anyway. No one except me. And Draco.

Draco would laugh at the idea that I had tried to pull the Boy Who Lived, and almost succeeded. What Draco must never know is the rush of feelings, the feelings that I've never felt for him. I don't like Harry, but I know that the next time Draco takes me to his bed it will be another Seeker's narrow, elegant hands that I fantasise are touching me; another Seeker's long, thin thighs twisted between mine.

But now I must put that from my mind, because Draco will be back any minute. I may have tarried too long with my account. Everyone else has gone to the Great Hall and I can hear someb-