These Strange Familiar Things

Chapter 6

No Way to Fix This

Draco stumbled slightly as he exited the fireplace into a dim sitting room, his mind fraught with countless scenarios involving Pansy and increasingly awful situations. Pansy was not given to dramatics or attention-seeking, unlike Draco; if she was worried enough to send him a letter, something very serious was wrong.

He glanced down at his robes, belatedly realizing he was still in his pyjamas. Luckily the room was empty and dark as a tomb. This Floo connection was a secret to all but a few close associates of the Parkinsons (prominent Death Eater families didn't have "family friends"), and provided a discreet form of transportation that was all but impossible in their foyer fireplace. He padded over the soft carpet to a cloakroom and grabbed out a plain black cloak that likely belonged to Thaddeus Parkinson. Opening the door a sliver, he peered into the hall to make sure it was clear before darting out and silently making his way to Pansy's room.

She was waiting for him, sitting on her canopied bed facing away from the door, her small frame tense. He locked the door quietly behind him and knelt at her feet, taking her clenched white fists in his hands. She looked up at him unseeingly, her face pale and hard but her eyes holes in the mask, their brown dull and shallow with despair. She looked cornered and extremely breakable.

She looked as if she had given up.

Draco felt a tightening in his chest, almost not wanting to know what had happened to turn his tough, sassy best friend into a fragile shell. He awkwardly pried her clamped fingers apart, lending his warmth to her frigid hands.

"Pansy?" He asked hesitantly. "What...what happened?"

Her eyes flickered and he felt the bottom drop out of his stomach when he saw the flash of utter devastation that was gone in an instant, losing focus into the other, relatively blank expression of resignation. She didn't speak for a moment, then a deep shudder racked her body from her shoulders down through to her legs. She dropped her head, her straight brown hair falling in a limp curtain that hid her face.

"My father is offering me to the Dark Lord as a virgin sacrifice," she said in a rush of breathy words.

Draco gasped and stood up dizzily, thunderstruck.

"Wha...but I don't...how can...what?" He staggered a couple of uncertain steps and fell on the bed next to her. "I thought virgin sacrifices were a centuries-old African myth...and you're not even--I mean--"

She laughed bitterly, her voice like shattering glass. "I'm not a virgin, no. Apparently since it wasn't a voluntary loss of innocence, I'm still pure." She spat the last word with venom.

Thick silence choked the air for a few moments. Then Pansy spoke again. "The virgin sacrifice myth has been a joke practically forever, a Muggle stereotype of isolated native jungle tribes. Almost no one knows that there's powerful Earth Magic in the voluntary giving of a virgin's...l-life." Her ever-steady voice wavered a bit on the last word, and through the suffocating layers of shock, anger and pain, Draco felt a frisson of pride in her composure. Any other girl would have been in hysterics by now.

"What exactly does it do?" he asked her gently.

"That's all I was able to get from my father. He's being awfully tight with information. I imagine it's to strengthen the Dark Lord somehow." Her voice was a monotone now, weary and grey.

"Couldn't you--voluntarily lose your innocence?" he suggested desperately.

She shrank into herself, making her already small frame look almost childlike, "No," she choked out. "I can't stand the idea of a man touching me again. I'd really rather die." Her voice trembled, the trauma she usually buried deep seeping out and staining the atmosphere darkly, and Draco took a sharp breath, wishing...wishing so many impossible things.

"Not even me?" he asked in close to a whisper, knowing her answer before she parted her lips.

"Not even you, Draco." Her voice was a pale ghost of a thing.

Draco felt a burning anger burst into flame inside him. "How can your father just offer you up like that?" he ground out. "I'd like to kill him with my bare hands, the fucking coward. Giving his own daughter up to be disposed of by evil incarnate..." he shook with fury, blood boiling.

"Wouldn't your father do the same, if it helped him gain rank in the Inner Circle?"

Draco was silent. She knew the answer to that question as well as he did. "So what now?" he asked finally. "Any ideas? Just tell me, I'll do anything." He turned to her and looked in her eyes, eyes charcoal with sincerity.

She looked back at him without expression for a split second before her veneer cracked and her face caved in on itself. "I know, Draco," she said with aching sorrow.

He grabbed her and hugged her tightly, so tight it hurt. They had never talked about their friendship; never talked about anything remotely personal. Which was not to say they weren't privy to that side of each other. It was just something that needed no articulation. Now though, Draco spoke as his chest constricted painfully. "You know that you're the sister I never had, Pans," he said in a low voice. "I know you like to take care of everything yourself, but please. Please let me help you with this."

The whisper came after a minute or two of silence, just a breath on the air. "It doesn't matter now. There isn't any way to fix this."

He loosened his grip slightly, realizing he must have been hurting her, though she said nothing. They sat in silent despair, heads leaning together, neither speaking nor crying.

Waiting.

-:-:-:-:-:-

Draco stayed with Pansy throughout the afternoon and evening, keeping her company and sometimes offering awkward words of comfort. She barely spoke, answering only in monosyllabic answers, and he eventually gave up trying to draw her into conversation.

When the sky was painted in crimson and purple with the waning day, Draco stirred, stretching his stiff limbs.

"Pans?" he said, a steel undercurrent in his calm voice.

She lifted her head and he saw something like a smile in her tired eyes. "I know that tone of voice. You're going to tell me something for my own good that I probably don't want to hear," she said ironically.

He made a self-conscious motion with his shoulders and dropped his eyes. "Well, I had an idea." He gazed at her through his pale lashes. Lashes she always teased him about, longer than a boy had any right to have, longer and thicker than hers, certainly. "It's ridiculous, but at this point--"

She sighed dramatically and gave in to the smile fighting to get out, raising her eyebrows mockingly. "I know you're going to say it anyway, you prat. Spit it out."

He looked at her with a mix of trepidation and embarrassment. "Right. Just, please, hear me out." At her concise, impatient nod, he sighed. "Why don't we ask Dumbledore to help us?"

A crackling anger spiked in her eyes, her slouched form straightening immediately. "Us? Us. Are you mental? Firstly, I'm being chucked on a silver platter to the fucking Dark Lord. Not you." Draco jerked. She took no notice. "Secondly, ...are you mental?" Her mouth opened and closed like a factory door. She shook her head in disbelieving disgust at her best friend.

Her only friend. She bit her lip at her cruel rejection of his help, echoing silently between them. Some help, she thought derisively. Still, an uncomfortable guilt gnawed at her gizzard.

He sat in stiff-shouldered silence, assuming a subconsciously defensive pose. "Well, I suppose you're right. I'll just remove my lunatic tendencies from your presence, shall I?" His voice was a flat monotone. He stood and moved to the door, faint pink smudges on the sides of his cheeks.

Pansy huffed in regret and frustration. "Oh, come on Draco, don't be that way. Sit. I'm under a fair amount of stress here, you know." He came back, and they sat for a moment, the silence thick with mutual apology.

He stirred. "Look, I know...I'm not keen on telling old Grandfather Twinkle either, but what choice do we have? Whatever Gryffindoric folly he comes up with, it has to be better than...the alternative."

She glared at him. "Oh, and he'll just believe us, will he? The only heirs of two prominent suspected Death Eaters? I wouldn't trust us, and besides, he hates you." This wasn't gospel; Dumbledore had never shown any evidence of hatred per se, but there was always a decided lack of warmth in his unavoidable encounters with Draco, translating to blatant disapproval for one with such a benevolent nature.

"I know that, and he knows I know. He's a sanctimonious bastard, but he's...brilliant. He knows we would never go to him except in dire, crazy circumstances." She looked anxiously back at him, forehead crinkly with indecision. "He'll help us Pans. Not for us, but for his own ego. And because indirectly, he'd be helping Potter." He grimaced around the name.

She closed her eyes a minute, fingers pressing her temples with bruising pressure, then looked up at him. "My father has made all the exits impermeable to me. I can't leave," she said flatly.

Draco let out a whooshing breath, surprised that he had been holding it in. he grinned fleetingly and hugged her roughly, mussing her fine dark hair. "Don't worry, I'll take care of it." He drew back a bit. "I promise, little sis," he murmured, sounding impossibly young. She gave him a sharp smile.

He turned right before he reached the door. "I'll be back soon. Get some sleep, I've a feeling you'll be needing it."