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"Pans!" Daphne threw her arms around Pansy as she opened the front door.
She had been expecting her best friend to come over but she hadn't been expecting that level of excitement from her, especially when Daphne was more than aware of the fact that Pansy wasn't an overly affectionate person. She did however hug Daphne back before pulling back to look the girl up and down, a frown on her face.
"When were you going to tell me about…?" Pansy asked slowly as she gestured to Daphne's stomach which was quite a bit rounder than it had been before the usually slim girl had left for her trip.
"Now?" Daphne smiled sheepishly. "I couldn't write home about this one. As it is, I'm already in deep shit. I'll tell you everything over a cup of tea."
Pansy gave a short nod and tried not to let a rising sense of panic take over. Daphne was a grown woman, she probably knew what she was doing, or at least Pansy hoped that she knew what she was doing as the pair of them headed through to the kitchen where she made them both a cup of tea while Daphne sat down at the table in silence.
Neither of them said anything until Pansy was sat down opoosite Daphne, her hands wrapped around her cup. There was a lot that need to be said though. Pansy needed to catch Daphne up on the situation at home before she assumed that Pansy was just simply marrying Theo, and Daphne… Daphne had a whole baby bump to explain away.
"Whose is it?" Pansy managed to ask after a few moments of just letting her cup of tea warm her and ground her.
"I… I don't actually know the answer to that." Daphne chewed on her lip slightly before she gave a sharp shake of her head. "It doesn't matter anyway. I had to come home, now that it's noticeable.. My mum… I've never seen her so angry. When I got home yesterday, and she saw me… She wouldn't stop going on and on about how I've brought shame on myself and the whole family. On Tori."
"Does she know yet?" Pansy had to ask. The sisters were pretty close and as far as she was aware there wasn't anything that they didn't share, but as Daphne had pointed out this wasn't something that she had been able to write home about.
"No, she doesn't. And Mum's told me I shouldn't tell her, but you know what it's like growing up in this society - it won't be long til I'm seen because there's no way in hell that I'm spending the next five months cooped up in my parent's house. And as I point out to them, I've still got six months before I was meant to come home anyway." Daphne had laced her fingers together and set her hands on the table in front of her. "It's still my life to do with what I want."
"And what you want is to have a baby…?" Pansy was desperately trying to wrap her head around the situation, but it just didn't seem to want to make sense to her. How could her best friend - who was never even interested in boys when they were in school - be pregnant before a marriage had even been arranged properly for her.
"I want this baby, yes. It wasn't my plan to have a baby, but I'm not going to… My mum wants me to give them up so that I can draw a line under all of this. Do you know who she wanted me to marry?" Daphne's voice rose to a laugh at the very end of her question.
"No, I.. I don't." The only thing she knew was that it was not Theo, which she was sure that Daphne wasn't happy about but fortunately the girl had yet to even mention Pansy's engagement as she had been so wrapped up in her own problems.
"Draco Fucking Malfoy." She paused to shake her head and Pansy gave an involuntary sound that would probably have been considered a laugh in a less dire situation. "But that won't happen now. The Malfoy name is far too damaged to take on an illegitimate child and a broken woman. So there is a silver lining after all." She paused to glance at Pansy who only knew how it felt to be told that you were no longer destined to be Draco Malfoy's bride. "This baby is already doing great things for me."
Pansy gave a slight nod as she let the whole situation sink in. Her best friend. How could her best friend be pregnant? How could her best friend be unsure who she was going to marry when her own future was now cemented? It didn't make sense. But then she was starting to come to the conclusion that nothing in life made any sense anymore.
"Who have they got lined up instead?" Pansy asked against her better judgement. She was all too aware that Daphne hadn't been back long enough for her parents to have made alternate arrangements, or at least she didn't think that there would have been enough time but the Greengrasses could be almost as efficient as her own mother when they put their minds to it and the fact that they weren't technically part of the Sacred Twenty-Eight meant that they were probably desperate to get at least one of their daughters married to someone who was. It was all that their mothers talked about when they got together, after all.
"No-one yet. I guess they didn't expect me to be the problem child - that's always been Tori's role." Daphne paused for a moment before she pulled a face. "It just better not be Zabini. He's about as loathsome as Malfoy."
Pansy's face betrayed her in the moment, her face creasing up as she wondered what that meant. As far as she was aware, Blaise had always kept himself to himself. In school he had kept his head down and focused on his studies, and while he had been friends, or at least acquaintances with Draco, he had never been one of his henchmen, at least not really.
"Don't worry about it." Daphne said with a smile and a slight wave of her hand, as if dismissing the subject was going to be that easy, as if Pansy wasn't going to spend the next day obsessing over what Blaise could possibly have done to make himself stoop to the level of Draco. "I'm sure it's not him anyway. They'll be lucky if they manage to find me anyone before this kid makes an appearance."
"Well, you did leave it pretty late in the day to come home…' Pansy didn't mean to be accusatory, it just sort of came out that way. She chewed on her lip slightly as she glanced down at Daphne's bump and then back up at the girl's face.
"Yeah, I'm fully aware of that." Daphne gave a short laugh, though it was entirely humourless. "I'm fully aware that I have hexed myself in the foot."
Pansy reached across the table to take Daphne's hand into her own again. "I'm here, okay? Just remember that."
Daphne gave a small nod and leaned forward to press a kiss to Pansy's cheek. "And for that I'm forever going to be grateful." She paused for a moment before continuing, "And I'm sure that because you're going to be there for me, you won't mind if I occasionally steal your fiancé?"
"I mean, that's fine with me but I'm not sure his boyfriend will approve."
"I'm sorry, his what?" Daphne's eyes shot wide and Pansy realised that there was a chance that Daphne didn't know that her other supposed best friend was gay. A twinge of guilt squirmed in the pit of her stomach as she realised that she had possibly just outed him.
"I should - uh - I should let him talk to you about that one." Pansy stuttered out. She'd already said far too much and it was now a case of keeping her mouth shut. "Why don't you come with me to see him tomorrow?" She suggested. She was meant to have a public appearance with Theo in the evening, but earlier in the day they were going to be doing more wedding planning (translation: they were going to listen to her mother tell them about the plans that she had made for their wedding). There was a lot of formality to dating in the pureblood world, especially fake dating in the pureblood world, and Pansy was keen to make the day better in any way that she possibly could - and having Daphne by her side was sure to do that.
"Sure, I'd like that. I don't really want to be alone just now anyway." Daphne at least looked pleased to hear that she was invited somewhere other than her own house for the second day in a row. "In fact, could I stay here tonight? It'll give us a chance to catch up a bit more. I'm dying to hear all about what you've been up to; your engagement to Theo sounds like it's only just the tip of the iceberg."
It was Pansy's turn to laugh. "You have no idea. A sleepover is definitely needed."