Easy

She didn't like the word "easy." She didn't think that was how she came off, though she supposed she might have looked a little too sophisticated for the mundane halls of Hogwarts.

It wasn't her fault that she had been twelve when breasts began to blossom. At first she'd walked hunched over, protecting herself from the incredulous stares of insolent boys whose voices had only just begun to break into pieces, crossing her arms tightly over her despised chest. Now, however, she used the advantage. She wasn't pretty; she knew she wasn't pretty. But with the combined assault of knowing smile and hips thrust out and chin held high, she had the ability to take by force the things she wanted.

She couldn't get what she really wanted. He didn't...feel the same way. She put the ellipsis into her thoughts because sometimes, she felt the brush of his hands around her waist, the way he closed his eyes lazily like a cat and lay down in her lap as she stroked his white-blond hair, and she thought: He does like me. She untangled her thoughts in his hair, liking the contrast of her red nails, listening to his long diatribes and nodding sympathetically, tossing out a malicious gibe now and then, when it was needed. He's confiding in me. He needs me.

Her skirts grew shorter; even Snape raised an eyebrow at her one memorable day when her robes fluttered open to reveal a long expanse of leg dangerously close to indecent exposure. Her necklines took a dive for her knees after she'd noticed Draco casting a slim look down her bra in Charms. She grew more brazen; the day in Charms, she'd let the quill writing her name in the air flutter down, with a quick flick of her wrist to send it neatly into the V of her cleavage, and made a show of retrieving it until she was certain Draco had seen it.

She wished she were prettier. What was it her mother had called her? Striking. She knew it wasn't the same thing. She had a pug nose and a square jaw and her eyes were too close together for real beauty. The night of the Yule Ball she choked half of her punch out of her nose when she saw Granger, magically transformed into someone new and desirable and with much better teeth, seething with jealousy. The punch bowl next to her had started to bubble; she hadn't done anything like that, uncontrolled magic, since she was nine and she'd made her older sister's face erupt in spots.

She watched him, oh, all the time. She saw what other people didn't: how he took the threads of conversation into his hands and wove them all together, wove them around him, until things were around him, about him, starring Draco Malfoy. He protected Crabbe and Goyle. No one saw how that was true. He was more of a bodyguard than either of them were; he made sure they were included in conversations doubtless above their heads and gave hell to anyone other than himself who took the liberty of teasing them. She saw how his face was growing thinner and paler and more desperate, and the night he stumbled into the common room with bruised arms and knuckles and lips, she knew what had happened, because she was the only one who'd seen it happening.

After all, one watcher knows another. Harry was rather obvious about watching Malfoy. He hadn't had her practice. They wanted the same thing, though he didn't know it, not exactly.

She felt her heart clench in fear; was it what Draco wanted too? That marred and martyred boy, with the air of heroism practically leaving a slime of righteousness behind him? Surely not. Harry's knees knocked together and his head was just a bit too big for his body yet and his eyes were far too green; they gave her the creeps. He couldn't want that, not when he had her.

Draco sank into a chair and put an arm over his face. She sat on the arm, stroking his neck softly, and he groaned and pulled her down into the chair with him.

"Are you all right?" she asked him, and he took his arm from his face and fixed her with the Malfoy Look.

"Peachy. Be a dear and stop pretending you care."

She tossed her hair. "Haven't you learned by now it's not in my nature to be a dear?"

He smirked. "Be a dear and come a little closer."

She smiled in satisfaction and let him take what he wanted, even in the common room. It was deserted anyway, this late at night. He had his hand up her skirt and his robes sliding from his knobby shoulders and she was watching his mouth shape her name when she stopped moving suddenly and realized that it wasn't her name.

She pulled away and stood quickly, adjusting her skirt. Draco sat up, looking surprised. "Previous engagement?" he asked skeptically.

She bit her lip and didn't answer. Draco sighed.

"Look, what do you want?"

That was him all over, that query, knowing he could pay for whatever he wanted and not feel the brunt of it. She couldn't say what she thought: I want you, you prat, you lovely oblivious creature. She didn't have the words to tell him what it did to her when he looked like he did now, like a child let down, breakable, already damaged goods.

"My birthday's in a month," she said archly, instead, to cover her pause.

"The bracelet's already in my room," he yawned. "As many carats as you could possibly desire. Now will you come back?"

I'll come back because I want to fix you, she thought, and I don't know how to do it except to cover you with kisses and give you everything you want from me. She kissed every bruise Potter had given him and put the misplaced name behind her so she could shudder when he kissed his way down her neck.

She thought that was what she wanted, but the next day in the Great Hall she saw the look that passed between them, across their two tables, and she knew she wanted more than she could have. She caught the same hungry look in Potter's eyes that she'd seen in her mirror.

Draco's mouth was bruised and her neck had a purple mark proudly on display and everyone put two and two together and rolled their eyes knowingly, and the end of the story, for them, was that Draco had everything he wanted and she was easy.

On her birthday she thought about telling him she didn't want the bracelet, but that would have been a waste, so she slipped it on and wore it always and tried not to look at it too often. Her skirts grew longer, her necklines rose. She caught the looks between the two boys and wished that she hadn't become so adept at watching.

There were other boys, of course, always. Zabini and Nott and McLaggen. And more, always more. She kept them coming, trying to ward off those looks. She saw everything, but she wouldn't listen to the rumors about her. Pansy wasn't easy, no matter what they said.