Lucius Malfoy's Good Girl

A/N:. Yes, I am the Flashback Queen, and I indulged that vice fully in this fic. ;) To try to keep it all as unconfusing as possible, everything that happens at the end of the summer before Pansy and Draco's fifth year, the now of this fic, is told in present tense.

This is a... ficlet? outtake? alternate POV? from the universe of Jewel of the Harem, my epic-y epic of epicness. It's kind of a companion piece to Chapter 13. I started wondering what the backstory was to Pansy and Draco's hate/hate relationship, and this is the result. So if you've read that and get confused over the way that Ginny is shy here, and Draco doesn't seem very experienced-- yet-- this is before her flight from Hogwarts and the Marie-France Tessier episode, and definitely before he, ahem, works his way through Slytherin House. It's all explained in JotH. However, you don't need to be following it to understand this fic, not at all. If you are reading JotH, though, a lot of mysteries find light thrown on them here. Click on the link below to see StarEyes' wonderful art of Pansy in the library...

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Summer's End, 1995.

She waits for him in the library, in the small study detached from the main room. There is a small door that leads to it, one with a golden lock, opened by a silver key. Once, when she was very small, she read the Muggle book Alice in Wonderland. She has often thought that the door to the study is like the door through which Alice walked to find the cool gardens and fountains, after falling down the rabbit's hole. Like Alice's world, Malfoy Manor holds many secrets.

It is the end of a long hot night in late August, the sort of sticky heat that droops flowers in their vases and makes the horses tired and dispirited. Even the powerful Cooling charms at the manor have all they can do to keep up with this heat. But in this small, secluded room, it is quiet and cool. Pansy Parkinson sits on a leather couch and leafs through a book, waiting for Lucius Malfoy. Every now and then, she forgets, and bites her lip, nervously. Then she winces as she hits the sore spot along the inside of her mouth, the one that was nipped at by sharp teeth. Draco doesn't know she is here, of course; he thinks she is still in the third-floor best guest bedroom, the one with the pink patterned wallpaper on the walls and the fluffy white rugs, if he thinks of her at all, this night. She doubts he does. She wishes she never had to think of him again.

The book is a handsome, heavy folio, and Pansy can only lift it with both hands. But then, she's small, and lightly built. She knows that's one of the many qualities Draco doesn't like about her, although she can't bring herself to care. The book is about unicorns, and each facing page is a beautiful hand-illuminated print. She turns the page and sees a tapestry of a unicorn in a circular clearing in the midst of a gated garden, a girl sitting next to it. The unicorn's head is in her lap. Her hair is long and flowing and wavy, copper and rose and gold, moving in an invisible wind, and that eyes are the brilliant gold of a lion's. Pansy's eyes close.

She'd pretended to be unaffected by the unicorns that spring, but that was a lie. The sight of them had pierced her to the heart with something like joy and something like pain. There was a very young one with a shining horn like an amalgam of silver and mother-of-pearl, and she'd approached it almost timidly, gaining a little more courage when it didn't shy away from her. Nothing had ever been so smooth as its pearl-colored fur, and she stroked its neck gently, over and over again.

"Can't believe a unicorn would let you lay hands on it," drawled a voice from the other side, and she'd glanced up to see Draco Malfoy patting the other side of the immortal animal's neck, his strong, elegant fingers running through its thistledown mane.

"Why wouldn't it?" she replied coldly. "I'm not such a slut as most of the Slytherin girls are."

"For all of me, you're not," he said, his mouth twisting up in a sneer. "But you need to be pure of heart as well, Pansy, and that's a test I never would have thought you'd pass."

"I might say the same. Why on earth is this unicorn letting you near it? I would've thought it had better taste."

He shrugged, already looking away from her, indifferently. "I can't say. But perhaps it doesn't. It was allowing you to touch it, after all."

She turned away from him then, her pleasure in the unicorn no longer shining and whole. He'd managed to ruin it, as he ruined everything. But out of the corner of her eye she saw him glance up, and she followed that movement, wondering what he was looking at.

Ginny Weasley had been shut out of the crowd around the rest of the unicorns by a group of Ravenclaw girls, and now, seeing Pansy moving away from this one, she sidled up to it, timidly laying the very tips of her fingers on the glowing fur as if the lightest touch might mar it. She was looking at the ground, as always, and surely didn't see Draco yet. But he saw her. His face lost its sleepy, bored look and came to life, glowing with malice and cruel amusement. Pansy watched.

Ginny Weasley was a shy little mouse-- well, not so little anymore; she'd already begun to grow quite tall by then, her body taking on curves that Pansy herself was never to possess. The other girl traced her hands along the unicorn, stroking its back lightly, closing her eyes and laying her head briefly against its flank. Pansy did have to admit that Ginny looked like the sort of girl who belonged next to unicorns, far more than she herself did. All timid and frightened and innocent, the sun turning her hair to spun copper and gold, too ethereal for this world. Or that was how she seemed, at least. Pansy had caught herself more than once wondering if it were all some sort of act.

Draco waited until her arms had gone all the way around the unicorn's neck, and then spoke sharply, his mouth on the other side of its head and only a few inches from her ear. "I believe this is my unicorn, Weasley." She started, and the unicorn shied nervously, knocking her aside, as he surely must have known it would do. Watching, Pansy fully expected Ginny to burst into tears and run off, but surprisingly she did not.

"I don't see your name on it, Malfoy," she said in a stronger voice than Pansy had ever heard her use.

He reached out a hand to Ginny's chin, and she flinched back; he smirked when he saw her fear.

"Don't touch me!" Her voice was squeaky.

"Afraid?"

"No."

And Ginny was standing her ground; Pansy had to admit that she was impressed by that. If Draco ever turned that look on her, she didn't think she'd be able to keep her composure together half so well. Strange, that he never looked at Pansy herself that way, even when he was at his worst and his every word was a barb aimed to snag her skin.

Draco leaned closer to the other girl, resting his arms on the magical animal's back. It was easy to see that his physical nearness made Ginny horribly uncomfortable, and he was exploiting that advantage to its fullest. "This unicorn isn't big enough for the two of us," he drawled.

If that was really what he thought, Pansy wondered why he didn't simply leave. But he didn't.

"And I suppose you think it's yours, like everything else," said Ginny.

Draco shrugged. "Well, you said it, not me. Although now that you mention it..."

"I'm sure you've had everything handed to you on a silver platter from the day you were born," Ginny said coldly. "Have you ever had to learn that the entire world does not belong to you?"

Lazily, he shook his head. "So what were you planning to do with the unicorn anyway, Weasley? Sell it and buy some new robes?"

"Ooh!" She stamped her foot impotently on the ground, drawing herself up to her full height. Pansy thought that it was easy to forget how tall Ginny Weasley actually was. She seemed to be growing every month, too, and her robes had worn to the nap at certain places. So one couldn't have said that Draco's comment was baseless. She laid her hand on the unicorn's back as if preparing to mount it and ride Draco Malfoy down; her golden eyes were blazing, and her red-gold hair had come free from its braid, falling across her shoulders. There was a strange pain in Pansy's throat as she watched this fiery girl, glowering at Draco like a Viking, or a Valkyrie, ready to do battle. And he looked back at her with his own fire, eyes blazing silver, hands clenched across the unicorn, inches apart. It was as if each of them had thrown off a separate mask, and revealed some aspect of themselves that no-one ever saw, in daily life. Pansy could not help the feeling that she was intruding on this moment, whatever it was, but her feet felt nailed to the ground.

"Could you enchant a unicorn, Ginny Weasley?" he asked, so softly that Pansy could barely hear his words.

Ginny's eyes widened, but she did not look away. Her lips were slightly parted, and her breaths had grown short.

"I suppose you could," he continued. "I see it's letting you touch it. I would have been more surprised if you couldn't."

"Of course I could. How can you think--"

"Would you snare it with a golden bridle, and take its head upon your lap, and tame it so that in all the world it wanted only you?"

"I--I don't know," said Ginny. She stared at Draco as if she had never seen anything quite like him before.

"There's a tapestry halfway down the hall to the trophy room, on the third floor. Have you ever seen it?" Draco asked.

"The one with the maiden who took a unicorn into her secret garden, that unlocked the gate with its horn, and trampled the flowers within..." Ginny said slowly, as if hypnotized. "Yes, I've seen it."

"She looks like you. Would you invite a magical creature into your secret garden? A unicorn?"

"Yes..."

"A centaur?"

"Well, I suppose..."

And then a smirk spread across his lips, twisting up the entire left half of his face, and Pansy saw where this inexplicable line of questioning had been going. "How about... a dragon?"

Whap. Ginny had aimed for Draco's face, but he sidestepped her blow, and she hit the unicorn instead. It reared its forelegs up in the air, whinnying, and galloped off towards the forest. Ginny stood motionless and watched it go, tears glistening on hers cheeks. "You-- you filthy thing, you--" she choked at Draco.

He stared at her for a moment and then whirled in the other direction, stomping off, nearly knocking down Pansy. "What in the bloody hell are you looking at?" he snarled.

"Nothing," she mumbled. She already knew that he would never forgive her if he knew she'd been watching him with Ginny Weasley.

She hears a footfall, light as a cat, and looks up. Lucius has come into the room. He always moves so silently; in that, as in so many other things, he is like his son. But then, in so many other things, he is not. She wonders if there is anyone on the face of the earth who's in a position to know this as she does. Probably not.

"Pansy," he says, with an expression of genuine pleasure.

She inclines her head, her lips curving into a smile, and almost calls him 'sir' before remembering that he doesn't like it. He's given her leave to call him by his first name when they meet this way, as they've been doing for nearly four years now. When it first began, all those years ago, she had exclaimed, "Oh no, sir, I couldn't!" Often she still feels that way. Lucius calls her by her first name, of course, but she has almost never been able to use his. She can remember the shock she felt when he beckoned to her at Draco's eleventh birthday party, before her first year at Hogwarts, when he had pulled her aside, and, heart pounding, she had followed him down the winding corridors to the library. He'd taken her into this little room, sat down next to her on the couch, and carefully explained to her what he wanted her to do.

Their world was a dangerous place, he'd said. There were many people who threatened him, his family, his interests. Even at Hogwarts, and once his son started school there, next year, it might be difficult to protect him. He needed her to watch out for Draco, he'd told her. To observe his enemies carefully. To report back to him.

"It's a very important job," he'd said solemnly, holding her tiny hands in his as she sat facing him on the leather couch. "Do you think you can do it, Pansy?"

She nodded vigorously.

"Are you sure?" Lucius persisted. "Can I trust you?"

"Yes," she said, her voice eager. Then, to prove that she could be trusted, she told Lucius Malfoy a story she'd heard rumored among the house-elves in the manor. They weren't supposed to gossip, but some of them occasionally did anyway, especially that annoying one. Dobby or Tobby or something. Never in front of adults, though; only a child would ever have gotten to hear this. Draco had made friends with a little Muggle girl from the village, and had been seen walking through a field of flowers with her at the edge of the estate, making daisy chains. The girl had long red hair, and Draco had interwoven it with the white and yellow flowers, touching her hand to his and laughing. Lucius's eyes narrowed when he heard that.

"Very, very good. You've shown that you have the right instincts, Pansy," he said, and she blushed, tracing a wooden square on the floor with her foot. "You'll be my eyes and ears, at Hogwarts," he'd continued, and his own silvery-grey eyes were fixed on hers.

She'd nodded, her breath bubbling up and catching in her throat. "But how will I tell you the things I learn?" she'd asked.

"You'll send me owls, of course. And whenever you come to the manor... over the Yule holidays, for Draco's birthday, or perhaps during the summer... we'll meet. In this room."

She had been ready to burst with excitement, with joy, with pride. He'd chosen her for this! Nobody ever trusted her this way, or treated her this way. Nobody. Her father had wanted a son, one who could resurrect the fallen fortunes of the Parkinsons. She disappointed him by her very existence.

"Now let's take you back to Draco's party, before you're missed," Lucius had said, helping her to her feet.

Pansy wrinkled her nose, she couldn't help it.

"Don't you like Draco?" he'd asked as he led her back down the hall.

"Yes, sir," she'd said dispiritedly.

And his eyes had grown strangely hard then, for just an instant. "It'll be easier if you do, Pansy," Lucius had said, and there was perhaps a hint of steel in his voice. She had wondered what he'd meant at first. She found out soon enough.

Lucius is pouring something from a decanter on the desk into a balloon-shaped glass. It's a dark, rich brown, and a pungent complex smell rises up from it. Pansy sniffs.

"What is that?" she asks.

"Brandy. Would you like some?" Without waiting for an answer, he pours one for her. She takes it, sips, feels the pleasant burning all the way down her throat.

"It should really be warmed, but..." Lucius hesitates. Sits down next to her on the couch. There is something different about the atmosphere tonight, she realizes. Different from what it has ever been. She tries to analyze it as they exchange a few words, small talk about the weather, the visit, the upcoming year at Hogwarts. Her fifth. The closest thing she has ever experienced to the feeling in this room is when she has disappointed him, and he makes her feel the disappointment in herself, as well.

Like Draco's thirteenth birthday party, the year after she'd begun to watch and report to Lucius Malfoy. Draco had grasped her by the elbow as they were all playing blind man's bluff and she'd somehow wandered away from the rest. He kissed her, and she slapped him.

"But you're supposed to let me," Draco had said, sounding honestly bewildered.

"Who said that?" she'd asked, wiping her mouth.

"Father."

"Oh." She'd looked down at the floor then, tracing a tile with her foot.

"Didn't you like it?"

"No. Did you?"

"Well-- " Draco had paused, considering. "Perhaps it's not exactly what all the books led me to believe it would be. But let me try again. I bet I can do better this time."

"No," Pansy had repeated, hurrying away as fast as she could. She had complained to Lucius when she met with him in the study, that night.

"Make him leave me alone," she'd said. "Please, sir." But Lucius Malfoy had only shaken his head.

"I'm afraid I can't do that, Pansy," he'd said.

"I don't understand."

"The foundation is being laid for certain plans..." His words trailed off.

"Why?" she persisted. "What plans?"

But he'd only looked at her, shaking his head. She was always a small girl anyway, but at that moment she'd felt herself shrinking to the size of a blot of ink on a parchment.

When Draco tried to kiss her again, the spring of her second year, she'd let him. They were both thirteen and a half years old, and she thought that there was no point in refusing, by then. As they both grew older, he'd tried to do other things, too. Sometimes she allowed him to succeed; sometimes she didn't. She never permitted him to get very far with her. It frustrated him, and she knew it. He began to dislike her intensely, and she knew that, too. There were times when she wondered if they might at least have been friends, had it not been for the thing between them, the thing that was never discussed. But they were doomed for one another, she and Draco; shackled, one to the other, by some agreement neither of them understood.

Lucius sees the book in her hands, smiles faintly. "You do like unicorns, don't you, Pansy?" he asks, breaking off almost in the midst of a series of dreary questions about horse breeding on the Parkinson estate. He moves closer to her, turning one of the pages in the book.

"Pretty, isn't it?" Lucius asks. His hand brushes hers as he turns to the next page. Pansy is sure it's an accident. "Have you studied unicorns yet?"

"Last year, and then there was one day this spring," she says, wondering why her skin along her fingers feels hot and cold all at once. "We-- they had a chance to bring in unicorns one day, a great lot of them. All the fourth years and below had a chance to see them. They said it was rare to find so many, that the unicorns were leaving, were disappearing, and we shouldn't miss the chance. Everyone in the school was there... well, not Potter, he had to do something for the Triwizard Tournament, I think..."

"Why not the older students, Pansy?"

She felt a light, stinging blush rising in her cheeks. "Well--" she began awkwardly. "None of the Slytherin girls over fourth year could have gotten near them. I know it for a fact. Some of them in my year couldn't anyway, even as it was. They thought it was better not to-- um--" Then she nearly jumps out of her skin, because Lucius is stroking the back of one of her hands, very lightly, with one of his fingernails.

"But you could, apparently," he says in a perfectly normal tone of voice, as if that one nail weren't going skritch, skritch, skritch in the valley between her thumb and forefinger.

She can feel the deep, hot blush staining her cheeks. "Of-- of course I could," she says, as evenly as she can, although she is starting to have some trouble breathing.

He sighs, very slightly. "We'll need to speak about that a bit later, Pansy."

Startled, she looks up. "What? I-- have I done something wrong?" Maybe he'll tell her what it is, and get this part of it over with quickly. But Lucius only shakes his head slightly.

"No-- no. But..." He lets his words trail off, and a slight frown creases his perfect face. "I do wish you'd leave off biting your nails, Pansy. I'm sure Draco finds the sight as unattractive as I do."

She tucks her gnawed fingernails under her legs, self-consciously. What can he possibly be implying? That he doesn't want her to still be in a state that would permit unicorns to come up to her? And if so, that Draco ought to have been the cause? The thought makes her shudder slightly.

"Are you cold?" His lips are so near her ear that she jumps a bit; Lucius is leaning across her, picking up a green plaid throw, tucking it about her shoulders. "These late August nights can be chilly." But they aren't. Except in this room... How strange. His gesture is tender, solicitous. She is mad. The thoughts that have flashed through her head about him in the deepest part of the night, lying in her narrow bed in the Slytherin dormitory, are the deranged fantasies of a teenage girl. Conjured in her head, all of them, with no reference to anything outside herself. Pansy sits up very straight and stiff.

"I'm all right," she says. "Thank you, sir."

The first time Draco ever tried to get her to sleep with him had been almost a year before. It was at the very end of a long winter's night, at the first Yule Ball. It had proved so popular that Hogwarts had held another each year since then, although it was fussily referred to by some other name, since Yule Balls could only be held in conjunction with the Triwizard Tournament. The Annual Winter Solstice Festival and Frolic, or some such. But it didn't matter; everyone always called it the Yule Ball anyway. It was scheduled several days earlier, too, since so many of the Muggleborn students had families who threw fits about wanting them home for Christmas.

That very first one, the one that was halfway through her fourth year, had been a nightmare. Nobody ever knew that, of course. Pansy had been obliged to wear awful frilly pink robes her mother picked out for her, and to hang on Draco's arm all night long, until she wanted nothing so much as to throw him off her with a piercing shriek. But it was an important occasion, the owl from Lucius had carefully explained; the first real chance to demonstrate that she and Draco were a couple.

Something had been eating away at him that night. He was sullen and silent, deliberately stepping on her feet; Draco Malfoy, who moved like a dancer when he walked. He spoke to her in monosyllables. He spent a great deal of time staring into space and drinking spiked punch. At last, she'd lost patience with him, and walked out into the rose gardens, her pride praying he would follow her, the rest of her hoping he would not. But he hadn't, and she'd wandered through the mazelike bushes and fountains, finally turning back towards the great open doors of the hall. She'd seen him before he'd seen her.

Draco had been standing on one of the little balconies set into the wall, looking down at the dance floor, at the couples circling slowly to the music, lit by the enchanted fairy lights. Something had been in his hands; with her excellent vision, she'd clearly seen that it was a bunch of roses. Flowers that should have been given to her. Pansy was indignant enough to storm up to him by the back stairs and grab them, but something stopped her; perhaps it was the set of his shoulders, or the look on his face, brooding, smoldering. She'd slipped into the shadows and continued to watch him. Draco was a little short-sighted, she knew, and was forever renewing anti-myopia charms, since Lucius Malfoy refused to allow his son to wear anything so determinedly Muggle as eyeglasses. That was the real reason why he always looked down his nose at everybody else, or at least it had begun as the real reason. She was pretty sure he couldn't see her clearly. He turned his head then, and looked down. And she saw what he'd been looking at, saw where his eyes were focussed.

Ginny Weasley was dancing with Neville Longbottom, wincing as he stepped on her toes over and over. As he watched, Draco slowly shredded the roses between his fingers, never taking his gaze from the little redheaded girl beneath him. The petals drifted down into the vast darkness of the hall.

Pansy hadn't really believed what she'd seen, not then. Ginny Weasley wasn't pretty yet, that winter. She was wearing second-hand dusky pink robes, the worst possible color for her. She was still rather skinny and gawky; she hadn't shot up and filled out yet, as she would the following year. Her hair was a little frizzy, and her golden eyes seemed too big for her catlike face. Draco must have been looking at something else. Still, she filed the information away. One never knew when it might prove useful.

They had walked back to the Slytherin dungeon very late that night; dawn was almost streaking the sky. Pansy was so tired that she had trouble putting one foot in front of the other, and her head whirled so that she was almost glad when Draco led her into his room in the boys' dormitory, as it was closer than her own. His roommates were dead to the world; two of them hadn't even made it to their beds, and she stepped over Blaise Zabini, snoring on the floor. She hadn't minded as much as usual when Draco kissed her, and ran his hands up and down her body. Pansy was never sure how they ended up on his bed, but he had crawled on top of her and was kissing her harder and trying to yank the top of her robes down, and she pulled away.

"Pansy, Pansy," he'd murmured, his words slurring, "c'mon, Pansy."

"What are you doing, Draco?"

"You know what I'm doing," he'd smirked.

"Well, don't."

"Don't you want to?"

"No, I don't."

"You know we'll have to sometime. Why not now? You're fifteen already. I will be, in less than a week... just think, now you won't have to get me another birthday present, Pansy..." He was kissing her collarbone and his lips were moving down the smooth skin of her chest, almost to the very modest swell of breasts above her dress robes; she stiffened and shoved him away with all her strength, suddenly a little afraid of him. He hadn't grown nearly to his full height yet, then, but he was still much taller and stronger than she, and for an instant she was sure that he wouldn't stop what he was doing. But Draco pulled away from her, sitting on the edge of the bed.

"I don't know why you're afraid. I would've been gentle," he said. "You would have liked it."

"I doubt it," she said.

"You never like anything I do to you, Pansy. What the hell are you going to do when you have to sleep with me?"

"Why'd you want to do it tonight?" asked Pansy, watching him keenly.

"What?"

"You heard me. Why tonight, of all nights? Why right after the Yule Ball?"

Draco was silent for so long that Pansy thought he wasn't going to answer her question at all. "It just seemed-- time," he said at last. "This has to be, Pansy. We both know it." His face looked desperately weary as he spoke, and much, much older than almost-fifteen. She sighed, and turned her own face to the wall. He reached out a hand to her shoulder, oddly tentative, in a gesture that might have carried something other than lust, had it been permitted to do so. She pulled her arm away. After a few moments, he got up and left.

Pansy had awakened so early that nobody else was up yet, and so was able to sneak out of the boys' wing without anyone seeing her. She saw Draco curled up on the sofa in the Slytherin common room on her way out, and passed him by. He didn't come near her for a very long time after that. But when she'd come to Malfoy Manor that August to start her visit, they had begun riding together, and then there had been that afternoon in the stables, the day before. And she been avoiding him since then.

"Would you like a little more brandy, Pansy?" Lucius asks. She nods; he tips more of the crystal brown liquid into her glass, and she takes tiny sips, welcoming the burning sensation on her tongue. How she wishes that they could just get to the point of all this. She's disappointed him by something that she's done or failed to do; it's in every line of his body, the way he sits, holding himself a little aloof from her, his crossed arms, the way he leans back into the leather couch. The worst punishment couldn't as bad as walking on the tightrope of this disappointment, desperately trying to figure out its cause. Not that he ever punishes her. When he is displeased, it is punishment enough.

He is asking her ever-more-trivial questions, about how she is enjoying her visit, are her favorite foods being served, did she enjoy the trip with Draco to the seashore, does she like the horse she's been given to ride? Surely Lucius must know that her father can no longer afford to keep many of the horses. They are struggling to keep up appearances. The eyes of the neighbors are very sharp, after all.

"--so your stay here has been a pleasant one, Pansy?" Lucius is asking. She nods, cursing herself for not paying better attention. It's just that she's so afraid, and she's not even sure what she's afraid of. Pansy drinks deeply of her brandy and coughs as the burning liquid goes down the wrong way. He asks her if she's all right, his expression concerned. She nods."Yes," she manages to say. The brandy doesn't do what she'd hoped. The world around her is fuzzier, more unreal, but she's also more on edge than ever.

"You're not used to drinking, are you?" Lucius asks, a faint smile on her face. "It's not so very long ago, Pansy, that you were just a little girl. I sometimes forget that, now..." He moves next to her on the couch so that he is behind rather than facing her, and begins to massage her neck and shoulders. "Feeling better? Yes? We can't have you choking in the library. You're terribly tense," he says. "Relax." His touch is very skilled, and he seems to know how to work out each point of tension in her muscles. She does begin to relax.

"So," he finally says. "Has it?"

His voice is so smooth, she thinks dreamily. "Has it what?"

"Has it been a pleasant stay?"

"Oh! Yes. Of course." She is lulled despite herself, by his touch, his voice, the brush of his silvery hair against the side of her face. And it is then that the trap is sprung.

"Pansy," he breathes in her ear, "you surely must know that one of the few things I ask of you is honesty."

"Of course," she repeats.

"Complete honesty."

"Yes."

"Untruths are unworthy of you."

At last, his words begin to sink in. "Wh-- what? I haven't lied to you about anything."

Lucius shakes his head, sadly. "Pansy, Pansy. As much as I'd like to believe that you've had an entirely pleasant stay--" his hands move down to her upper back, and his long fingers nearly touch her waist as he continues to massage the muscles "--it doesn't appear to be the truth."

"It doesn't?" she repeats stupidly, still fixated on the exact texture of the skin on his cheekbones. He turns his head then, looking at her directly, and she sees that the silvery lines radiating out from his pupils are like the intricate locked patterns of snowflakes. Exactly like Draco's eyes.

"You must know, Pansy, that all of the house-elves report directly to me. And two of them assigned to the stables delivered a report this morning that distressed me. " Lucius's voice is gentle. Chiding. "It distressed me greatly." And her chest plummets, because she knows, now, exactly what he is talking about. She supposes that she'd known from the very beginning.

They had ridden across the open fields surrounding the estate, the day before. It was a brilliantly warm when they returned, the sunlight slanting like molten gold across the long grasses. Draco had some color in his cheeks from the ride; he was laughing and she was too, feeling the wind whip her hair into a torrent. He'd grown so much that summer, she thought. He was taller, and while he was still very thin, his shoulders were broader, and his hair a little long. His resemblance to his father was more pronounced than ever.

"You don't look so miserable and pale as usual," she said, drawing her mount up beside his. "Suppose the air's doing you some good."

Draco raked her with his eyes, and a smirk twisted up one side of his mouth. "Pansy, you give such lovely compliments," he said. "There are people who would say you're looking well today, at that."

"Don't you think I'm pretty?" she asked.

"I don't like brunettes very much," he shrugged. "And you're too short for my taste. Too small."

The words stung for some obscure reason. "What would you prefer?" she asked coldly.

He laughed again, without humor. "You seriously imagine I'm going to tell you?"

Draco rode ahead of her then, and she slowly cantered back to the stables after him. They were deserted. She was standing on the mounting block and rubbing down her horse when she heard a noise and turned to see him looking at her, slowly walking up to her, giving Ban a pat or two on the flank, never taking his eyes off her. She was nearly as tall as he, standing there, raised several inches off the ground.

Pansy stood very still as he came up behind her and started kissing her on the neck. It had been so long, since the Yule Ball, really; still, she supposed that she should have expected this sooner or later. Whatever had caused him to avoid her for months, he was over it now. She closed her eyes for an instant, and the old, shameful fantasy flashed through her head. Perhaps it would be easier to slip into it now that he looked more like Lucius Malfoy than ever before. It wasn't Draco stroking and kissing her, this boy she didn't like, didn't love, didn't want. It was... someone else. A bit of warmth stole through her; something that was almost enjoyment, or that might have become pleasure. But then his body pressed itself against hers, slowly; she felt the sinewy muscles, the lanky hands, the inexpert, fumbling touch. Unmistakably Draco. Sweaty, she thought, her nose wrinkling. His hands stole up to touch the undersides of her small breasts, stroking them firmly. "Don't," she said.

The hands went away. A few minutes later, they reappeared at the waist of her jodhpurs. She slapped them down. "Well, I'm definitely not going to let you do that," she said.

"You don't want me touching you at all, do you?" Draco asked.

"Not particularly, no." She wasn't being diplomatic enough, she supposed. She couldn't bring herself to care very much.

"Fine," he said. "Fine. If there were any other halfway decent girl around the estate this summer, I'd be with her instead of you, anyway."

Pansy started to turn towards him, to make some sort of angry retort. "Oh? Such as who--" she began.

"Don't," he said. "Don't turn around."

"Why n--"

"And don't speak. Not a word."

Pansy stood very still. His lips and teeth and tongue were becoming desperate, as if searching for something on her skin that he could not find. She knew what it was that she felt pressed up against her now. It was like that party in the Slytherin common room right before end of term that spring, when Blaise Zabini had sneaked in Muggle alcohol and she'd drunk glass after glass of punch until she couldn't tell the difference between the ceiling and the floor. She'd lain helplessly laughing on the couch and Blaise had helped her sit upright, and he'd pulled her between his thighs, stroking her sides. Pansy had felt that hardness, and in spite of herself she'd been curious. Maybe if Blaise kissed and held and touched her, she'd feel... something. But then she'd gotten up and staggered somehow to her room, because she knew she must. She was Draco's, no matter how much she despised him.

"All right, I don't mind," she said. "But that's too hard, what you're doing to my neck. You'll leave bruises. All my summer robes are too low-cut to cover them."

"Be quiet," he said. "I don't want to hear your voice." Draco was obviously trying for his father's tone of command, but his words came out rather frantic, a little high-pitched. The sucking and biting on her skin became gentler, too, and although she was glad of that she rather despised him for it. He disliked her as much as she did him, but there was something in him that could never entirely lay her feelings aside. It must be as Lucius had so often said. Draco had not yet learned how to use people properly and perhaps never would; he was weak, too soft beneath his sneering coldness, like Narcissa. Yet she could never quite grasp the weakness in him, and was constantly searching for some fingerhold in his impervious surface. I wonder if this could be it... She glanced round to look at his face, to see if his expression provided some clue.

"Don't look at me, Pansy; I don't want to see your face!" he blurted. His eyes were silvery and unfocussed. He's looking at me without seeing me, she realized. It's as if he's looking through me, and seeing someone who's not me...

"You're-- you're pretending I'm someone else," she said slowly. "That's it, isn't it."

"Shut up," he said through clenched teeth. "Shut up, shut up, shut up..."

At least he hadn't taken any clothing off either her or him; that was something. There was no need to picture what he'd look like if he did, as she supposed she'd have to see it soon enough. Maybe she could put a Dousing charm on all the lights in the room when she finally had to let him at her that way. She stifled a nervous giggle at the thought. At the slight movement of her body, he groaned and clutched onto her and she moved again, thinking, Why didn't I do this before? It'll get it all over with so much quicker. So she moved back towards him, again and again, patting the horse, who had begun to snuffle a little nervously. Almost done, Ban, she thought. Draco's movements became more erratic, and she could hear his breathing becoming harsher. She stole a sidelong look at his face, and saw that his eyes were squeezed tightly shut, as if he were afraid to even catch a glimpse of her. As if that would shatter the illusion. She thought briefly of how strange it was that neither one of them had removed a scrap of clothing, and he hadn't touched her skin except for her neck and throat, yet this was by far the most intimate thing they had ever done.

He grasped her body so tightly that she gasped. But he didn't seem to hear; her legs were spread a little and, sandwiched between them, he shuddered against her. Every one of his muscles shivered briefly and Pansy could tell that for the moment, at least, Draco had lost the control he prized so much. She filed away the sight for possible later use.

He was murmuring something, so softly that she could barely hear it. The word might have been a sigh, or the end of a long breath.

"...Ginny..."

On the way out of the stables, neither of them spoke, but a slow anger had begun to smolder in her, and she wasn't at all sure why. Pansy honestly hadn't much minded what Draco had done, one way or the other. At least he hadn't laid hands on her for the most part. She wished it was always that easy. They'd be in the house in a few minutes, and surely she could tamp down the rage she felt for that long. But he turned to her as they began walking across the stable yard with a strange little smile on his face, not quite a smirk, and tried to take her hand. It was more than she could bear. She shook it off.

"Do not touch me," she hissed.

"Fine," he said.

Pansy remembered the name he had whispered. Or what she believed she had heard. She couldn't be sure, and the fact tormented her. Should she tell Lucius? But she didn't really know, did she? And she hadn't told him about any of the other things involving Ginny Weasley so far. Yet they were all so ambiguous, a matter of sidelong glances, taunting words, and subtle nuances of speech or silence on Draco's part when the other girl was near. And the idea of telling Lucius Malfoy now frightened her for some reason she could not define. Perhaps she should save the information, to be drawn out later if necessary. "I mean it," she said. "I'm not letting you do that to me again."

Draco's face instantly settled into a smooth blankness. "No fear of that, Pansy. I'd rather wank off any day. At least then I'm doing it with someone I like."

"How sweet," she said sarcastically. "Do you cry out your own name tenderly?"

Draco's lips compressed into a thin line. "As I just finished saying," he said in measured tones, "if you don't want me near you again, that's fine with me. For now."

They kept walking, and his pace quickened until Pansy was hard put to keep up with him. It would be best for her to shut up. She knew it.

"What do you mean, for now?" she asked.

He whirled to face her. "One day," he said, "you'll have to let me do whatever I want to do to you. No matter how much you hate me. No matter how much I despise you. You'll have to lie there and-- and tolerate my touching you, and undressing you, and shagging you--" she flinched at the word, but Draco continued without a pause, and his words lowered to a snarl "-- and I'll know how much you'll hate it, and I'll be glad. Glad. At least I'll have some pleasure that way, Pansy. The gods know it's the only way I'll ever get any out of you."

"The minute fall term starts at Hogwarts," said Pansy, "I'll spread my legs for the first boy who comes through the door to the Slytherin common room. And I'll keep doing it for anything that moves, and I'll laugh the entire time I have to let you do it to me, knowing that you're taking their leavings."

A malicious smile curled Draco's mouth. "Do you honestly think I could care less? Do you think I want you to save yourself for me? If you're a complete slag all autumn long, at least you might know a few good tricks by the time we have to start--"

She lunged at him. He caught her hand in the air without the slightest effort and pulled her to him. Draco kissed her, so hard that she felt his sharp canine teeth tearing slightly at her lip, but what should have been passionate was utterly without passion. It was a claiming kiss. A sealing kiss. There was anger in it, but no desire. Pansy whimpered, a tiny sound that caught in her throat, and he stood motionless for a moment.

"You're hurting me," she whispered.

He pushed her away, scowling. "I'm not going to let you drive me to that." Draco dabbed at her lip with a handkerchief from his pocket, and the gesture was oddly gentle. She stood very still. "No, Pansy, you'll never be able to say that I've hurt you in that way. Come on-- let's get you to a healer-elf."

They walked to one of the back ways into the manor, through the rose garden. There was no friendly feeling between them, but the anger seemed to have had spent itself, leaving only an empty hollowness. "You know, I don't mind if you shag other girls," Pansy finally said.

"Generous of you," Draco replied shortly.

"I mean it. I really don't. Just be discreet about it, that's all I would ask. I don't care to be made a fool of. Other than that, amuse yourself."

The smirk returned to Draco's face. "I can't imagine why anyone would say romance is dead."

"Well, wouldn't you like to?" she asked awkwardly. "I mean--- I'm sure there are girls who would, if you wanted. It's not that you're bad-looking, or anything, Draco. It's just that I-- well, I can't seem to--"

"Mmm. Well, my self-confidence is fully restored by your oh-so-kind words, Pansy."

"Well," she persisted, "why don't you then?"

He stared straight ahead, his wintry grey eyes avoiding hers. "Because I can't."

"You can't?" asked Pansy, not understanding. "You mean, you tried, and you had some sort of problem?"

"No, that's not it. You do know how to build up the male ego, don't you, Pansy?"

"The male what?"

"Never mind." Draco sighed, suddenly sounding very tired. "I can't because I shouldn't. I can't because I mustn't. I can't because--" a shudder ran through him "-- well, never mind why, Pansy."

She ran to catch up with him; he was walking much faster now. "I don't understand."

"Don't you?" He rubbed his face. "We each have our own hells. That's one of mine. I'll be damned if-- well, I suppose I am already. But I won't share my private damnation with you." And Draco hurried even faster, until she could no longer catch up with him, leaving her standing outside a banging back door to a screened porch, staring.

As she is staring at his father now, dumbly, her lips trembling. Pansy wipes them with the back of her hand,
and feels that she has opened the little wound again. "I'm sorry," she says, and her words tumble out over
each other in a rush. "I know what the house-elves saw, what they told you, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I let
Draco do what he wanted but I couldn't, I didn't like it, I never do, and he knows, and we haven't spoken
since, and--"

"Hush," says Lucius. He touches her lip with one long elegant finger, examining it. "You're bleeding. Is that from yesterday? Did Draco do this?"

"Yes." The thought of getting Draco into trouble is very tempting, but he hates her enough as it is. "He didn't mean to, I don't think," Pansy adds.

"Probably not. His teeth are very sharp... it's a Malfoy trait.... Are you all right?" he asks softly. And that gentleness is
her undoing. She isn't a girl who cries or breaks down, but she does both now, and somehow his arms are
around her and he is patting her on the back, on her shoulders, his fingers nearly encircling her waist,
holding her against him, and she sobs into his beautiful silk robes, knowing that her tears and her
blood are staining the fabric. None of it matters, though; she feels as if she is floating through some
lovely timeless space, feeling Lucius Malfoy holding her so closely, whispering that everything will be all
right, shh,shh, and that she is his very, very good girl.

At last, her sobbing stops, and he holds her a little away from him. "Pansy, little Pansy. Not so little anymore. I remember when you were no higher than this--" and he holds his hand a metre off the floor "--but you've grown so. You're no
child, anymore."

"No," she says, wiping her face. "I'm not."

"You're capable of understanding more, now, than you were before."

"I-- I am, sir-- I mean, Lucius. I know I am."

He sighs, leaning back against the couch, and the soft witchlights in the room touch his face. His features
are so flawless, she thinks. So like Draco's, and yet so different, too. It is not only the stamp of
maturity, of an additional twenty-five years of life, but something more. Something quite other. She can never quite figure out
what it is. "The time has come, Pansy," he said, "to speak of certain things."

The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things, Pansy thought crazily. Of shoes and ships and
sealing wax, of cabbages and kings...

"There are things that one doesn't discuss with children. But you're growing up, Pansy. You need to
know them now."

She nods, scanning his face anxiously.

"You know that I've always intended you for Draco."

"Of course."

"The problem is that neither you nor he seem very entranced by the prospect." He looks at her, very
directly. "And the problem has only grown worse with time, as yesterday's events proved."

"I'm-- I'm sorry," is all she can say.

"It's up to the girl to control matters like this. A man, or a boy, can be--" He hesitates. "Very easily
led. The power is potentially yours. But you need to at least act as if you're enjoying what you do, and
what's done to you. You need to respond in a way that flatters him. Yet you also must be in control, at all
times."

Pansy stares down at the floor. "I don't know if I can."

"It's not an easy lesson to learn, my dear. Yet you must learn it. There is more at stake here than you can know."

"I don't know if I can behave the way you want with anybody," says Pansy, and her frightened heart is in her eyes. "But please, please don't give up on me, sir." She can't help calling him that now. "I-- if you do, I don't know what I'll do.
I'll do anything if you'll give me another chance. But I can't make myself like it, I can't, I've tried."

"Have you ever felt any pleasure with anyone else?"

"I kissed Blaise Zabini once. But besides that, I've never done anything with anyone else. I thought you wouldn't want me to."

He nods, clearly pleased. "You've been very good, then. No, I haven't wanted you to, not up to this point. But
considering the way things have been going between you and Draco... I've been thinking it over, and I believe
it's time for a slight change in the plans."

"You're going to get rid of me," Pansy says dully.

"How can you think that?" His words are very soft, his eyes very earnest.

The wave of relief that sweeps over her is so tremendous that she barely hears his next words.

"But a few things will be changed, Pansy... things that you may not have expected. Do you trust me?"

And at the sight of that rare smile on his face, the one that always seems to light up the entire room and
sweep away any doubts that ever could have existed in her heart, she answers him with everything that is in
her. "Absolutely."

Lucius shifts position so that he is slightly behind her. "What have the two of you done, Pansy, you and Draco?" At her
start of surprise, he adds, "I'll need to ask you several questions, and they may seem strange. But they're all necessary. You'll understand later."

"All right," she says. "Well... we kiss, and do some snogging, that's been going on for years now."

"When did that begin?"

"When we were both thirteen."

"What about this sort of thing?"

Pansy has to suppress a cry of alarm. Lucius Malfoy was nipping at her ear.

"Well, no wonder he isn't very entranced by you, Pansy," he said, "if you're not responding any better than that."

"I'm doing the best I can," she whispered. "I am."

"You're going to have to do better. What else do you let him do?"

"He, he--" Pansy can't seem to form a coherent sentence. None of this seems real; it can't be, it is her errant fantasy made flesh, and she trembles before it. "Draco touches my breasts, sometimes. I don't let him do that very often."

Lucius is pressed so closely behind her that she can feel the warmth of his body all along hers, and the heat of his breath in her ear. His hands move up along her sides, firm and warm and very sure. They cup her small breasts. Even through her blouse and undergarments, it is as if he has touched her with fire. "Like this?" he asks.

She doesn't know what to say. Yes, she could say yes, because Draco has touched her exactly like that. Or she could say no, because between that sensation and this there is a fathomless ocean of difference. Or she could say, you shouldn't. Because she really thinks that he probably should not be doing this. Of course, this thought seems very faint and far away; she's still having too much trouble believing that this is really happening. And she doesn't want to say anything that might cause him to stop, anyway. Even if she did, though, you just didn't say no to Lucius Malfoy; there is something about him that does not permit that. He has a way of making wrong seem right, Lucius does; of making you want to surrender to him, as if in a voluptuous dream. And this is something she has already dreamed, many, many times.

"And do you like it, when Draco touches you that way? Does it give you pleasure?"

"No."

"Does this?"

And before Pansy can respond, his hands have slipped beneath her green silk blouse, and his strong fingers are rolling her nipples between them, the motion deft and practised. She cannot speak. But she nods. He moves behind her and nudges her head to one side with his own; she lets it drop, resistless, and he nips at the exposed pulse in her neck, very gently, with his sharp canine teeth. A shiver runs all through her.

"There," Lucius says. "That's how you respond."

"I-- I can't," she manages to say.

One corner of his mouth curves up in a smirk. "It seems to me that you just did."

"Not to Draco, I mean. I have tried. I think he tries, too, and it makes him angry that I can't, not to him-- but I can't."

"But you respond to me, Pansy," he whispers, and she feels the moistness of his mouth against her ear, and his tongue flicks out to lazily lick the shell-like inner whorl of it.

"Yes." And the shudder is deeper this time, longer, more pronounced.

"If you want to continue to help me in this way, there's a great deal you'll need to learn," he says. He is easing her blouse off her shoulders, and the top buttons seem to come undone all by themselves. "So you need to decide if that's what you really want to do, Pansy."

"I do," she says. "I do."

"Are you sure?" His hands are like Draco's; very large, with long, strong fingers, and each fingertip leaves a separate impression along her side, between her ribs. "Perhaps some other girl would be more suitable, after all..."

She is suddenly, fiercely glad that she has never told Lucius about how Draco watches Ginny Weasley, or the way his face lights up whenever he sees her, even though the flame is made of hatred, or the part that the house-elves could not know about that afternoon in the stables when he whispered the other girl's name, eyes closed, shuddering in pleasure against Pansy herself. Later, of course, she realizes that her thoughts weren't logical, not at all. Lucius Malfoy would never have used Ginny to seduce Draco, even if she had been willing, which Pansy knew she could not possibly be. She was not to realize until much, much later, after a number of other things had happened, that Lucius, the fearless, feared this girl.

"I know I can do it." She takes a deep, deep breath, and as the air comes in she has the strange feeling that she is simultaneously falling down a long, narow shaft, like a well at the bottom of the world, beyond human hands or human help. "Please." She's not even sure that she knows what she's asking for. But Lucius apparently does.

He rises to his feet and stretches out a hand to her. She takes it. He leads her to the doorway of the little annex to the study. The one that has a bed in it. Lucius pauses and studies Pansy's face, and she understands. It is her willingness that he wants, and if she turns and flees him, he will let her go. But she doesn't want to flee. She takes a deep breath, and steps through the door, into the room.

He undresses her slowly, folding each piece of clothing with care, her green silk blouse, her black trousers, her cotton brassiere. Pansy sits on the edge of the bed, as motionless as an artist's model enchanted to perfect stillness. She doesn't really need to wear the bra, but she's glad she had it on today; maybe she won't look like such a little girl to him now. Of course, if he still thought of her as a little girl, he wouldn't be doing this, and she is almost sixteen... The randomness of her own thoughts might be almost frightening, if she could feel anything at all. But she can't, not really. There is only a tremendous tingly anticipation, and as she grows lightheaded she realizes that she is barely breathing. She sits very still and watches him looking at her naked body. The goosebumps are rising on her arms. The expression on his face in unreadable. Then he leans forward suddenly and gathers her to him and she smells the brandy on his breath, the leather trim on the collar of his robes, and more, the scent that is uniquely Lucius Malfoy, a deep heady muskiness that makes her mind spin, nothing like Draco, who smells like cut grass, and sun on a field. Pansy clutches onto him to keep from falling and he meets her halfway, he forces her lips apart with his own and she hears his breathing growing harsher. His hands and mouth demand something from her that she has kept locked within herself until this moment, something that she could never have given to his son even if she had given all of her body that she could, and she opens like a flower to Lucius and feels herself responding eagerly, incredibly, to his touch.

His hands tug at her knickers and she raises her hips to make it easier for him to get them off; he folds those, too, and then lies on the bed next to her. It isn't really big enough for two people and they are pressed together so closely that the woolen fabric of his trousers rubs against her skin in a way that is both irritating and arousing. She thinks briefly how strange it is that she is completely naked, now, and he is still almost fully clothed, only his outer robe lying on the parquet floor where he shrugged it from his shoulders.

"Lie back," he says, pushing her to the satin coverlet with one hand on the center of her chest. So she does. "Now take my shirt off. Slowly. Button by button." She reaches up to his billowy linen shirt and begins on the carved ivory buttons;when she has only gotten the first two, he stops her. "You need to look as if you're unwrapping a present, something wonderful, but you're tantalizing both your partner and yourself by the way you do it. There. That's better. Now run your hands along my chest. Don't be afraid to scratch a little. Men can take more of that than women can..." Lucius has a beautiful chest, pale and perfect as a marble statue, the muscles defined. She flicks at a male nipple with one of her fingernails, wondering if it feels anything to him like it does to her, and is rewarded by a tiny indrawn breath from him.

"Very good," he says. "Perhaps you have the right instincts after all."

He has to help her take off his trousers; her hands are trembling a little, and she can't manage the buttons. Buttoned trousers, how odd, she thinks. But she supposes that her father wears them, as well; most of the older wizards do, really. Then there are elegant dark green silk boxers underneath, and Pansy's hands seem to be stuck on Lucius's narrow hips now, because she falters; these are exactly like the ones Draco wears, and it throws her for a moment. She wonders if they order them by the dozen, or if they're manufactured by the same textile elves, or if they just have similar tastes, father and son. But then, they don't.

His hands come up, and close over hers. "You're frightened," he says.

Pansy cannot speak, but she nods.

"You've never done any of this before?"

"Never." She licks her dry lips.

"You and Draco haven't..."

"No, no.I told you-- I mean, the unicorn allowed me to touch it in the spring, and nothing's changed."

"Good. There's nothing to be afraid of," he whispers in her ear, bending down towards her. "I promise you. Trust me, Pansy."

"But--" She hesitates. What Pansy wants to ask suddenly seems like incredible presumption. She is sure, for an awful moment, that this question will cause Lucius Malfoy to remember that she is a stupid little schoolgirl who used to run about the manor over the summers with her hair in pigtails that Draco was forever pulling, and a smudge of strawberry jam on her nose. Still, she asks. "But it will hurt, won't it? Doesn't it hurt?"

Lucius is kissing down her jawline; there is one spot that makes her jump and then shiver, feeling as if she has begun to melt. He stops long enough to answer her. "Yes, since you're a virgin, I imagine it will. But the pain won't last long. Are you afraid?" She shakes her head vehemently. And then he continues down her neck, pressing a trail of kisses to her breast. She watches him as he takes one nipple into his mouth and then she can't keep her eyes open anymore; she doesn't want to talk anymore, because if he answers her he can't use his mouth to do this at the same time. He rubs the nipple back and forth with exquisite little flicks of his tongue and she is his, some formless resistless substance under his hands, utterly pliant. He can do as he likes with me, she thinks. "Do you trust me?" he asks again.

"Yessss..." she moans, because his fingers are going lower, tracing her flat stomach, dipping between her legs, and oh, there is no more room for speech.

Draco tried to do this to her once but she slapped him, hard, and he never attempted it again. She couldn't have endured the thought of his fumbling hands on her this way. But Lucius, ah, Lucius does not fumble. Lucius knows his way around a woman's body. The most incredible sensations she has ever felt are beginning to eddy through her; her breath comes in short little pants and she pushes her hips up at him. Pansy cries out, finally, and it feels like toppling off the rim of the world into some unimaginable chasm of delight. She shudders over and over; she seems bursting with pleasure now, unable to contain it, and she hazily sees him pull off the green silk boxers.

Yes, he knows what he's doing, flashed through her head. She might have been afraid, were she not so drenched with pleasure, drowning in it, uninterested in surfacing. She has never seen a naked man before and she lets him guide her hand, and show her what to do.

"Did-- I do it wrong? Did I hurt you?" she whispers when he groans intensely.

"No," Lucius says in a tight voice. "It's exactly right-- it's-- yes, do that again, Pansy--"

And she does, and she sees a look on his face that she never even dreamed could be there. His eyes are glazed with lust, his mouth slack, and it is all for her, all focussed on her. It is the most thrilling thought she has ever had.

He moves between her thighs, spreading them with one knee, and a little frisson of fear shoots through her. He wants her to get her legs apart, she knows that, and she tries to obey, but her muscles don't seem to be doing what she tells them. He lifts her hips with one hand and one leg drifts from the other; Lucius moves them exactly where he wants them, and then raises them both at the knee.

Pansy feels another body lying on top of hers for the first time in her life, and her breaths become shorter and shallower. Oh, what a time to suddenly be afraid, she thinks. Lucius looks down into her face; his full weight is supported on his elbows to spare her, but how tall he is, how strong, she can feel the long muscles of his thighs pressed into hers and the corded strength of his biceps. He traps her hands lightly in his, holding her down to the bed, and all she can think of is how utterly vulnerable she is in this position, unable to move even one muscle.

He looks down at her, his eyes grave and remote. "Are you my good girl, Pansy?" he asks.

She has to swallow before she can speak. "Yes," she says. "Yes. Your good girl."

And he kisses her throat, her jaw, the pulse at the base of her neck, the little nipples capping her small breasts, the soft skin over her collarbone, until she relaxes, just the tiniest bit.

The pain is so sudden and unexpected that for a second all she can feel is shock; it literally takes her breath away, as if she's jumped into a lake and found its surface frozen too late. It is a flaming sheet that sweeps from her belly down to her toes, and she struggles; she can't help it, but he holds her down firmly. Tears start from her eyes; she couldn't have stopped them if she'd tried. At last, after the pain seems to have gone on forever, he lies still for a moment. Pansy feels delicate little touches around her eyes. Lucius Malfoy is kissing her tears away. She looks at him. There is no remoteness in his face now; it is raw, naked, hungry. And all for her. He begins to move, and even though the pain has dulled it still feels as if someone is scraping her with a nail file. But when she looks at him, it is all worthwhile. The expression on his face is all the reward she will ever need.

"Pansy," he repeats, over and over again. "Pansy, Pansy. Pansy." It is like a soothing salve to her ears. His long, shuddering groan of pleasure is the sweetest sound she has ever heard. Feeling curiously detached, she studies him. His face, at that moment, looks so exactly like his son's that the two could not be told apart. Like Draco, he has lost control.

Lucius relaxes on top of her, and even though his weight is making her breathless, she never wants him to move. Her hands curve around his lower back in a circular motion. Mine, she thinks. She has brought him to this. She has made him feel this. This man of silence and secrets, this object of respect and no little fear, this Lucius Malfoy, has cried out in pleasure, naked in her arms. Every time she sees him, she will think of this.

Pansy lies back on the pillow and watches Lucius dress. She knows that body, now. There are marks on his lower back where she dug her fingernails into him. She hopes he doesn't have them healed right away. She wants to think about them for awhile. He pulls her head down, and kisses her forehead. "You really ought to get dressed as well, Pansy," he says.

"All right." A bit self-conscious now, she begins pulling on her knickers, her trousers, feeling around on the floor for her blouse. He picks it up and hands it to her.

"I don't need to tell you," he said, "that this will be our little secret."

"Of course," she says dutifully. "But--" and for the first time, a little stab of fear goes through her "-- it will happen again, won't it?"

"Certainly. But we must be careful. Discreet. Oh, and ask the healer-elf for a Contraceptus potion tomorrow morning." He is brisk and businesslike once again, pulling on the black leather boots he always wears, no matter how hot the weather. The little bit of fear is expanding.

"But, uh..." Pansy's voice trails off; she isn't even certain what she's asking.

He turns to her. "Yes?"

"Well, I was just wondering. Uh. What do I do now?" She looked up at him, her dark eyes enormous.

"Why, you'll continue what you've been doing, Pansy. Except that from now on, you'll be a great deal more skilled at doing it."

"You mean that you want me to, er--" Her throat closes. "With Draco?"

Lucius sits down next to her, taking her hands in his, looking at her intently. "This is very important, Pansy," he tells her, his eyes serious. She nods, her eyes anxious. "I want you to offer Draco enough to keep him interested, this autumn. Do you know what I mean?"

"Well." She blushes. "I think I have a better idea, now."

"There's still much for you to learn, that I can teach," he says, his voice low and seductive, and a warm fierce wave of feeling goes through her; oh, she was a fool to feel afraid, even for a moment. "But what I meant was this. I don't want you to allow him to do what we just did until after his sixteenth birthday. That's very important."

"But why?" Pansy is having a little trouble talking with his face so near to hers, remembering what they have just done. "I mean, if it has anything to do with the wizarding age of consent, that's fifteen, isn't it?"

"It is, and it has nothing to do with that. I can't tell you anything more than that just now. Just trust me, Pansy." Lucius strokes the pad of her thumb with his index finger, and she feels a sudden rush of heat to that part of her he has awakened. "Do you trust me?"

"Yes," she breathes. "Yes."

At last, they are both fully dressed, and he has fixed her hair and straightened her collar so that no gossiping house-elves could tell the difference from the way she looked when she entered the room. "I'll leave first," Lucius says. "It's probably better if we aren't seen exiting this room at the same time."

She nods. It seems as if there is something more she should say, or do. The lower half of her body aches dreadfully and she wants nothing so much as a good hot bath, but as he carefully explained to her, that might draw too much attention at this time of night. "Wait," she says as he is going out the door.

Lucius turns back. "Yes?"

She wants to say that he has made her so wholly his that she cannot understand how she should be apart from him anymore. She wants to beg him not to force her to carry out this carefully planned cold seduction of his son. She wants to grab him and run away to some unplottable place where there is only the two of them, forever and ever and ever. But she does none of these things. The frantic bubble of feeling dissolves without a trace. Perhaps love is a good thing, she thinks. But power is better. "Goodbye," she says.

That autumn, she tantalizes Draco as she has never been able to do before. She did indeed manage to meet Lucius several more times for lessons in lust and seduction, and she learned a great deal. So she knows, now, that she has Draco by the balls, as she often thinks of it, with a wicked pleasure in the sheer vulgarity of the expression. She allows him to do no more than he ever has with her, but the difference is that she has the whip hand now. His desire for her has shifted, become more twisted, and more mingled with hatred. She can feel it when he catches and kisses her behind the summerhouse in the garden, his mouth hard and punishing on hers, or tries to shove her up against a tree and feel her breasts as they pause on one of their walks through the fields. Sometimes it fascinates her, as it had fascinated her to watch a giant Venus fly-trap in the Hogwarts greenhouses devour a cat once, that had strayed too close to it.If possible, he hates her even more than before. She knows it, but she does not care.

There is one more time when everyone is taken out to see the unicorns, milling restlessly in the field behind Hagrid's hut. It is a couple of weeks before the Yule Ball, and end of term, and the magical animals are shivering. "Las' time we'll get to see so many in one place, an' all. Last chance for all of 'ee, most likely," the half-giant says mournfully.

"Really? Why?" Hermione Granger asks, screwing up her face in concentration. Ron Weasley reaches over and pulls her hat more firmly over her reddened ears. Harry Potter watches them both, leaning up against a fence, his eyes remote behind his owl-like glasses.

Hagrid shakes his head. "Nobody knows. But th' unicorns are leaving us, going away, an' no-one knows where they're going to." He pats the shining mane of one foal; if gold could be spun into silk, it would be rough and coarse compared to this. "Beyond the sea, some say, to some place mortal man knows nothin' about... Still they're uncommon willin' to be touched, while they are here."

When Pansy tries to approach one, it flees from her with a whinny. She tries not to let her heart sink. She expected this. There's been Lucius, of course, and Blaise Zabini, and Thomas Nott after an illegal drunken party in the Slytherin common room last week. This was a price she'd known she would pay. But then she sees Millicent Bulstrode stroking a unicorn's neck and whispering into its ear, and her mouth drops open in shock and fury. When Millicent returned to Hogwarts for the fall term, she was scarcely recognizable. As she cheerfully explained to everyone, she spent her summer holidays at Dr. Butlin's Reducing Camp for Witches and Wizards (Guaranteed Up To Thirty Kilogramme Loss in Fifteen Seconds, or Quadruple Your Money Back!) After returning to Hogwarts and finding a large number of boys newly entranced by her slender, athletic body, her goal in life apparently became to work her way through the entire Slytherin Quidditch team. Rumor has it that she's starting on the Hufflepuffs next. The other girl glances up as Pansy strides towards her.

"Don't scare my unicorn," she says, in her low growl of a voice. "If you come any nearer, it'll surely run away."

"How?" Pansy demands, too flabbergasted for social niceties.

Millicent grins widely. "You don't know, do you?"

"Know what?" Maybe it was just this unicorn. Pansy steps closer, but it shies, a nervous look in its fathomless eyes.

"You don't have to be a virgin to touch a unicorn," Millicent says frankly. "That's the fairy tale part. You just need to be pure of heart. So you, Parkinson, fail on both counts." Her hearty laugh seems to follow Pansy as she stalks away, nearly running into Draco.

"Watch where you're going," he snarls, his eyes on Millicent's unicorn. He doesn't even attempt to go up to it, but only stares. Pansy knows what she will see even before she looks in that direction again. Ginny Weasley has come up to the unicorn and is patting its side, exchanging a shy smile with Millicent. Pansy shudders reflexively at the look Draco is giving the redheaded girl. The malice and the hatred are really for Pansy herself, but the desire is not, and it is so twisted up with his frustration and fury that simply seeing it all mingled together in this way is frightening. If she gave a damn about Ginny Weasley, which of course she does not, she would be terrified for the girl, thinking of what might happen if Draco ever caught her alone and unleashed that storm of emotions on her. Pansy wonders if he will ever be able to separate all of the feelings again, ever be able to tease out passion from hatred. If he can't, she knows that at least part of the blame falls at her door. She is pleased at the thought.

"Let me," murmurs Draco as they are entwined on her bed behind a Silencing charm that night.

She shakes her head, pushing him off her. "No."

"Why not?"

"I don't have to, yet," she snaps back, realizing only too late that she has said too much.

His thick dark-blond brows knit alarmingly. "What do you mean, yet?"

Pansy tries to make her voice a bit more soothing, to allay his suspicions. "I will soon. I promise I will, Draco."

"How soon?"

"Very soon," she says vaguely, thinking of that last owl from Malfoy Manor, from Lucius. Something about its tone had seemed a little stilted, a little distant. All of his recent owls had been like that, in fact. It all made her vaguely nervous, as if seeing a cloud on the horizon that would become a storm, although she had gone over and over the phrases with a fine-toothed comb and could not figure out what it was that bothered her so.

He turns away from her with a sudden, violent movement, yanking on his shoes. "I don't need this," he mumbled. "You fucking vicious little bitch. I don't."

She stretches luxuriously. "You say that, but you keep coming back for more."

"If I had any choice in the matter, I wouldn't."

"What do you mean?"

"I'll leave you to wonder. You won't tell me-- I won't tell you." He stands up, pulling on his cloak, and then turns back to her. His lips widen in something sharp enough to slice glass, and utterly unlike a smile. "But I'll tell you this, Pansy. One day... one day... I'll make you pay for it all. For everything." Then before she can think of a reply, he is gone.

She sits staring after him for a long time. Then she dims the witchlight, and lies down to sleep. She falls into dreams at once, and all night long, she chases a herd of unicorns that are forever out of her reach. "But surely you must have expected this," Lucius Malfoy says, appearing effortlessly at her side even as she pants for breath, running. She wakes, once, in the deepest part of the night, and feels the tears streaming down her face. Impatiently, she wipes them away. It is too late for regrets. And in the morning, even dreams of the unicorns are forgotten. Draco's sixteenth birthday celebration will be in two weeks, and she must begin to lay her plans.

~end~