Sex, Lies and Gryffindors

Chapter 1, in which Draco is caught unawares, Pansy is upset, and a Serious Discussion is had.

Looking back on it now, it was only by chance that I stumbled on them at all. Fed up with trying to work in the library with Granger glaring at me over her stack of books, I'd ventured up to the seventh floor in the hope that the Room of Requirement might provide me with an armchair and a heap of Arithmancy texts. The room was about the only positive thing to come out of that whole debacle with Umbrage last year, and we certainly made the most of it. Fortunately, being chased out of the room by a frothing Umbrage had evidently had a lasting effect on the Gryffindors, as they'd entirely stopped using it, leaving us to make use of the room as a private study room, illicit drinking den, and useful alternative to the Prefects' Bathroom as a late-night meeting place. I found the right corridor, walked quickly back and forth in front of that awful tapestry three times, then turned the door knob that appeared in the wall.

I opened the door, and was greeted by the mingled scents of sweat, sex and aftershave, and the sight of my best friend arched over Harry Potter as he sprawled across a bed in the middle of the room. Draco looked up as he heard the door open. Potter groaned a complaint as Draco's erratic movement ground to a halt, then raised his head as his lover gasped my name in surprise. I stared at them in amazement, tried to speak but choked on the words. Draco looked back at me, and I saw in his eyes not shame or regret, but irritation at being found out - and at being interrupted. I turned around and walked back down the corridor. I reached the end of the passage; only when I heard a faint thud as the door of the Room of Requirement closed again did I realise that I'd been waiting for Draco to come after me.

I made my way back down to the dungeons, brushed off Millicent as I slipped through the common room and up to my empty dormitory. Climbing up on to my bed, I pulled the curtains shut and warded them carefully, before pulling my knees up to my chin and wrapping my arms around them. I shut my eyes, wondering quite what had just happened. Draco and I had been friends since birth: our mothers had occupied adjoining rooms in the private wing of the St Mungo's maternity ward, and we'd rarely spent more than a week apart since. Years of the unfairness routinely directed at our house by most of the Hogwarts staff had brought us even closer together. Ever since that memorable occasion in our first year when Dumbledore reduced the younger Slytherins to tears of misery and frustration by snatching away the House Cup at the last possible moment, I'd listened to Draco rant through the night about the bigotry and prejudice we saw during each day at school. In return, he dragged me through my occasional melancholy fits with a combination of quiet sympathy and relentless teasing, and had hexed the living daylights out of anyone who'd mocked the unfortunate liking for pink frills I'd nurtured during my first few years at the school. We told each other everything. It was utterly unthinkable that he could have been having any kind of a relationship with someone without telling me about it, utterly unthinkable.

The misery that had gathered around me as I fled the room settled firmly on my shoulders; I breathed deeply for a moment, trying to calm myself down. I wanted to cry, to release some of the tension building in me, but couldn't. I ran through the events of the last ten minutes in my head, trying to force myself to break down, but knew as I did so what I'd have to do to make myself feel a little better. I reached under my bed and withdrew a small case. From it, I took a small flick-knife and a wad of tissues. Methodically, I took off my robes and threw them to the end of the bed, then removed my shoes, skirt and tights. Wearing only my school shirt and a pair of pants, I opened up the knife before sliding my pants down a bit. I'd learned from experience that cuts on one's arms didn't go unnoticed for long, and the other Slytherin girls saw me undress often enough to see most other parts of my body, but, contrary to school gossip, not too many people got into my pants. I slid the blade across the thin skin above my pubic hair, pressing down harder and harder as I moved it across. Thoughtfully, I cut myself again just above the first incision, already beading with scarlet. Still nothing. I cursed, then cut again, and again, until my lower belly was a bloody criss-cross of sliced flesh. Finally, I began to sob as the burden of suppressed melancholy dissolved into the blood trickling down the pale skin of my belly.

*****

I'd drunk myself to sleep after that, of course, almost emptying the bottle of firewhisky stashed under my bed, and woke the next morning stuck to my sheets with dried blood, sick with hangover and more than a little embarrassed by my extreme reaction. I've never been proud of my occasional knife parties - I'm not one of those girls who parades her scars and expects everyone to feel sorry for her - but I find it hard to deal with excessive emotions and it helps quite a lot. Not many people know that I cut myself, and I wish I didn't have to, but causing myself physical pain seems to make it easier to deal with the emotional sort.

It didn't take very long for Draco's conscience to catch up with him. I caught his eye at breakfast as we sat over our respective cups of black coffee, and he looked away, his irritation only half-masking his guilt, and started muttering to Vincent. During Arithmancy, he made a last ditch attempt to carry on as if nothing had happened. When I raised a well-timed eyebrow at him, he gave up. We had a free period before lunch, and I was somewhat unsurprised when Draco flopped down beside me in the common room.

'Should've said something, I suppose,' he said uncomfortably.

I realised that this was as close as I was likely to get to an apology, and was obscurely annoyed by it. 'So say something now. How long have you been fucking Potter?'

Draco shuffled awkwardly.

'Actually, you usually refer to him as 'fucking Potter', don't you? Perhaps I should have guessed something was going on.'

'Pans,' Draco responded in a pleading tone.

'Don't 'Pans' me, you Gryffindor-fucker.'

'About six months,' he mumbled.

'Six months!' My shriek rebounded off the walls. Several people turned round to stare; as one, Draco and I growled, swiftly dispelling our audience.

'Six months?' I repeated at reduced volume. 'You've been shagging him for six months? So, what, are you going out now? Is he your boyfriend? Fucking hell.'

'I wanted to tell you,' he said, making puppy-dog eyes at me, 'but we sort of agreed to keep it a secret, and I didn't like to go behind his back.'

'My god,' I said. 'You didn't like to go behind his back. I had no idea that being a sodding Gryffindor was sexually transmitted. You utter knob. Apart from anything else, do you seriously think that Potter hasn't told Weasley and Granger? For fuck's sake, he plainly reports back to them whenever he's had a particularly interesting crap, let alone when he's been shagging someone for half a year.'

'Oh, come on,' Draco said, rather feebly.

'No, you come on, Malfoy. Last night I found you buggering Potter; this morning I hear that you've been doing it for six months. Are you surprised I'm a bit miffed about it?'

'Look, it just sort of happened one day. We were having an argument, and it turned into a fight, and the fight turned into something else. Then it... I don't know, it kept happening. We stopped fighting after Quidditch matches and lessons and started, well-'

'Yes, all right. Spare me the details of your secret leurve.'

'Yes. And, I don't know, once you get beyond that whole messiah complex thing, he's all right. The Hat wanted to put him in Slytherin, you know.'

I snorted. Trust Draco to paint him green and silver and expect me to like him.

'I wish I had told you, but to begin with it wasn't really anything much, and by the time it was... I don't know. There was never a right time to say something to you.'

It wasn't an apology, and it wasn't really much of an explanation. But Draco had never been much good at either, and I had no desire to make myself seem even more pathetic by carping on about how he should have told me what was happening. If he'd wanted to, he would have done. Perhaps we weren't as close as I'd thought. Either way, there didn't seem to be much point in flouncing off and missing even more of whatever was going on. 'Well,' I said, 'is this going to stay a deadly secret?'

Draco pulled a face. 'I suppose I'll ask Harry whether he's told anyone, and work out what we're going to do next.' He pulled a wry face, his grey eyes on mine, and I was suddenly and sharply reminded of why I'd made friends with him in the first place.

I smiled reluctantly. 'You'd better sort it out pretty quickly. Keeping gossip this good to myself could well kill me.'