Viola Wittrockiana

Gregory Goyle is almost fifteen the first and only time he falls in love: with Pansy, who sits beside him at breakfast, sometimes. Sometimes at dinner she's near. At lunch, too - she's always somewhere close by because she's in love with Draco, and Gregory always sits at Draco's left side at meals.

Pansy is beautiful, even though her nose looks kind of funny; her hair smells like some sort of flower. It reminds Gregory of his mother, who died when he was six years old. Also Pansy has a nice set of knockers. "Like melons," Vincent says, and Gregory laughs for a minute before he catches on and hits Vincent for looking at Pansy that way.

Gregory is a dim, creeping sort of creature, and he knows it, in a dim sort of way. His father is a hanger-on with the Death Eaters: a thrower of dinner parties at which he understands none of the conversation, a deliverer of messages he can never figure out how to enchant open. Gregory will be the same way. He's already got a head start at it, following Draco Malfoy around and doing his bidding, a good little minion. Gregory likes Draco because Draco always has a plan. Gregory isn't very good at coming up with plans. Also he doesn't like the Gryffindors, and Draco is good at humiliating the Gryffindors.

The summer after their fifth year, Gregory sees Pansy at a Death Eater gathering, in someone's anonymous, imposing mansion. The Death Eater mansions are all pretty much the same, and after a while they blur together, a mass of moldering drapes and furniture that bites if you sit back in it the wrong way. Gregory is eyeing an armchair nervously when he spots Pansy, looking lovely in green robes. Her hair is pulled out of her face and knotted on top of her head. She's talking to several people Gregory doesn't recognize. He disregards them, marches up to Pansy and asks her if she'd like to dance with him.

"Oh," Pansy says, a look of vague recognition in her eyes, "hello, Goyle. Really, dear, I would, but Marcus and I were just about to step out onto the balcony for a breath of fresh air." Gregory looks at the man standing beside Pansy, his arm linked possessively through hers. Marcus Flint bares his teeth at Gregory. The gesture passes as a smile, but just barely. Gregory glowers. He can't do anything, of course; Marcus is already a Death Eater, and Gregory is still in school, still a child, his hands still clean of blood. He amuses himself for the rest of the evening by catching rats and releasing them into the ballroom, snickering behind his hand whenever an elaborately-dressed woman shrieks and drops her champagne flute. He pretends not to notice when Pansy and Marcus come in from the balcony, looking decidedly more flushed than the summer air would warrant.

"I saw Pansy with Marcus," Gregory says to Draco the next time they meet.

Draco raises an eyebrow. "Is that so? Well, that's good for her, I'm sure, but I really couldn't care either way. Go find a house-elf for me. This salmon is unacceptably undercooked."

Gregory is confused. Pansy doesn't love Gregory, and that's okay, but she's not supposed to love Marcus. She's supposed to love Draco. That's simply how things are. Why isn't Draco upset? Doesn't he know that Pansy belongs to him? He decides to ask Draco. Draco has answers, just like he has plans.

"Goyle, you're an irredeemable moron," Draco says. "Pansy's going to marry me regardless; why should it matter who she plays with in her free time? It's not my concern if she likes her men stupid and gap-toothed."

Love doesn't make any sense. Gregory decides that he doesn't want to have anything else to do with it. He loses his virginity to a prostitute in Knockturn Alley. He asks her if he can call her Pansy. She charges him extra for the privilege. Gregory doesn't mind. His pockets are full of the Galleons his father's given him. "You're almost a man, now, Gregory," his father said, and Gregory swelled up with pleasure. A man. Soon he'll be like Marcus Flint and wear the dark skull proudly on his arm. Maybe then Pansy will look up at him adoringly, her eyes huge and ringed with makeup.

Gregory thinks about Pansy when he pulls off. He thinks about her lipsticked mouth, her long hair, her pale skin. Pansy. In the morning his sheets are stiff and crusted in places. He shoves them in the hamper and lets the house-elves deal with them.

Maybe he's still in love with Pansy after all. He keeps thinking about her. When he sees her at parties he can't take his eyes off her. His heart beats faster. Sometimes he gets a hard-on. That's love, right? It must be. Gregory strengthens his resolve. He'll have her yet. Draco won't mind too much - he said it himself.

He chases Pansy unsuccessfully all summer, and all the next year at Hogwarts. The most he gets from her is one drunken kiss in the closet during a game of spin-the-bottle that takes place after a particularly exciting visit to Hogsmeade. He cops a brief feel but Pansy only laughs and opens the closet door. He thinks about her breasts for the rest of the term: soft and round, the perfect size for him to cup in his palms.

Gregory is made a Death Eater two days after he finishes at Hogwarts. It hurts, but it's worth it to see the Dark Mark on his arm when he wakes up every morning. He's a man now.

Pansy marries Draco a week later. Gregory is best man. He fought Vincent for the honor; Gregory emerged with a split lip, and Vincent with a concussion. Gregory won. He stands by Draco's side during the ceremony and watches Pansy the entire time. She's so pretty in her white dress, holding a bouquet of flowers. She kisses Draco carefully, without passion. They honeymoon somewhere nice. Gregory saw it in the announcement in the paper: "After the wedding, the couple will spend their honeymoon in Nice."

Much later, after the war's over, and Gregory's locked up in a cell in Azkaban, he's startled to find himself thinking about Pansy. She died over a year ago, hit by a nasty curse. Gregory was at her funeral. He saw her laid out in her coffin, all decorated and dressed up. She looked like she was sleeping. Gregory wanted to kiss her, like in the fairy tales. Maybe she would wake up and finally see him. He'd take her hand. They'd live happily ever after.

This is the after, now, but there's no happily about it. The Dementors pretty much leave him alone. His cell is at the end of a long echoing hallway. Twice a day a guard brings him food. It's slid through a slot in his door. The food's okay, but Azkaban is remarkably boring. Gregory has a lot of spare time, and he thinks about Pansy. He wishes she had loved him. But she loved Marcus, and where did that get her? Both of them dead.

Mostly, though, Goyle doesn't spend much time thinking. He hears footsteps in the corridor and waits for his food to be pushed through the slot.