Love Story

[Although you sit in a room that is grey,

except for the silver

of the straw-paper,

And pick

At your pale white gown;

Or lift one of the green beads

Of your necklace,

To let it fall;

Or gaze at your green fan

Printed with the red branches of a red willow;

Or, with one finger,

Move the leaf in the bowl--

The leaf that has fallen from the branches of the forsythia

Beside you...

What is all this?

I know how furiously your heart is beating.]

Later that day, Draco corners Pansy in the common room. "I heard you were getting chummy with the Mudblood during Transfiguration today," he snarls.

Pansy shrugs. "Yeah, but you didn't bother to turn up and try to stop me." She turns, is about to walk away, but Draco grabs her arm.

"You're in love with her, aren't you?" he asks, voice softer.

Pansy looks anywhere but at his face. "Harry Potter wasn't in Transfiguration either," she says blandly.

Draco's lips twist and he flushes sickly. Then he takes a deep breath. "I think we're beginning to understand each other better, now, Pansy," he says hesitantly, and then nods decisively. "You know I'll never judge you, don't you?"

"Really?" Pansy asks incredulously. "Everyone's going to judge me. I'm a bisexual fool who's in love with a girl, a Mudblood girl, and when she looks at me I feel as if I could fly," she recites dully.

Draco looks mildly alarmed.

"See?" Pansy begins to walk away, hopelessly, feeling as if she's trekking through waist-deep mud.

"I'm bisexual too, and I use baby shampoo, and I'm in love with the Boy Who Lived, a halfblood fucking breeder, and when he looks at me I'm scared that I'm going to cry because his eyes are so gorgeous," Draco calls suddenly and impetuously after her, and Pansy feels herself smile and turn around back to him.

"Thank god my parents are making me marry you and not Millicent," Draco mutters with a delicate little shudder - how did she not realise he wasn't quite straight before? - "She's straight as the day's long."

"Will we be happy?" Pansy asks.

"Not quite," Draco says, "but we'd be happier than we would be with anyone else."

Back to the issue of Hermione. Everything is terrifying and tentative as Pansy begins to build up a fragile friendship with her. They meet in the library to study, and actually do so. They eat their meals together with the Ravenclaws. They walk in on Harry and Draco arguing heatedly and then plunging towards each other like fish out of water and kissing furiously. Hermione merely raises her eyebrows and says "Maybe we should try the other dungeon."

"Did you know?" Pansy asks, and Hermione nods.

"It wasn't hard. Harry can be a lovesick fool when he wants to be." Hermione smiles, a closed off, vague sort of smile. "Then again, so can I."

And Pansy has obviously gone completely loopy because she could have sworn that she saw Hermione glance quickly at her and then look away again.

About two weeks later they're huddled together at a corner table in the library where the lighting is dim and where they can barely be seen.

"I..." Hermione says slowly.

"You what?" Pansy murmurs, intent on her Charms diagram.

"Harry says that you're in love with me," Hermione says tentatively, eyes still on her parchment, and Pansy can tell that all her muscles are tensed.

"Why would he say that?" Pansy replies, deceptively calmly, her hands clenched beneath the table.

Hermione looks slightly shocked. "I don't know..."

"Because he's a fucking liar, that's why," Pansy says vindictively, and pulls her scissors out of her pencilcase. Slowly, she begins to chop up her Charms homework.

Hermione eyes her cautiously. "I - call me mad if you want, but - I sort of thought you were, as well."

Her heart pounding, Pansy's hands begin to sweat. The scissors fall from her fingers. "You're mad, Mudblood."

Hermione actually flinches backwards, eyes wide and hurt, glittering with tears welling up, and trickling over her eyelashes. It's horrible and terrible for Pansy to realise that she did this, that she made Hermione hurt this much, and she feels herself gasp and stand up so quickly that her chair is flung backwards into a bookcase.

She doesn't know how, but she finds herself curled up on her bed five minutes later, crying as if her heart's about to burst.