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Pansy wasn't attracted to Hermione Granger. At least, she didn't think she was. Hermione was pretty, she supposed, only it wasn't what you noticed about her first. First you noticed how she held her mouth in a determined line, and how she constantly shifted the enormous pile of books under her arm without noticing, as though she wasn't even conscious of the weight anymore. You noticed the ink-stains on her cuffs, and you didn't notice how small she was at first because of the fluffy snarls of hair that were all over the place, and that determined line to her mouth.
Pansy didn't think she was attracted to Hermione. She didn't have that kind of crush.
What she had, mortifyingly, was a huge, girlish, crippling friendcrush. She wanted... she wanted to talk to Hermione. She wanted to study with her. She wanted to whisper secrets to her at night under the covers in the dormitory, and that was embarrassing and beyond stupid because they didn't even sleep in the same dormitory. Pansy couldn't imagine Hermione in the Slytherin fifth year girls' dormitory. Queenie would eat her alive. Not in the good way.
Pansy was in the dormitory now, pretending to study in the free period between Lunch and Potions. She was curled up against the pink curtains her mother had owled to her specially. She had her Transfigurations textbook open on her lap, but she hadn't read a word in fifteen minutes. She chewed on her quill - which Millicent had enchanted to taste like grass last week, and Pansy hadn't fixed because she quite liked the taste - and tred to work out exactly when the embarrassing not-quite-crush had started. At some point jealousy and dislike and... well, yes, pureblooded disdain, because Pansy was good at that... had morphed into fascination and schoolgirl-ish admiration.
Part of her suspected that maybe - on some level, maybe it had been deliberate. Pansy was a Slytherin to her bones. The other Houses assumed being a Slytherin was all about scrambling to be on top, and if it came to it, a lot of Slytherins thought that too. Draco, bless his little angora socks, had been determinedly clawing his way to the top of the commonroom since his Sorting. But Pansy knew there was more enduring power to be found in staying on the sidelines, in maneuvering other people's powerplays until they worked to your advantage. And she knew when something wasn't working to her advantage. Obsessive jealousy of Hermione Granger wasn't advantageous, she was never going to beat Hermione in school, she was never even going to come close. And if you can't beat them... Pansy wondered if her subconscious had pulled something sneaky on her and come up with a way to twist the situation into something marginally better.
Except that it wasn't better. It was worse, a thousand times worse, and a thousand thousand times worse since yesterday. With the floo door. And the beach.
Pansy scrambled off her bed and wandered over to the mirror on the far wall. She stood back a bit, examining herself. Her dark hair had fallen forwards over her face again - it always did that - and her eyes looked huge in the dim light. Her nose was a snub, which she secretly thought made her look like a pug. She'd mentioned that to Draco once, hoping he'd laugh and tell her not to be idiot. He'd just looked at her blankly for a moment, and said, "Well. Yeah." She'd remembered why she didn't like Draco at all.
She put her head to the side now, letting the hair slide off her face, and tried to imagine what she had looked like when she was splinched on the beach.
Ugh.
Only... well, alright, splinching herself in front of Hermione and Potter and the others hadn't been the highlight of her day, but it had been... okay. Hermione had unsplinched her (of course she'd know how to do that, the girl was a house elf of efficiency.) And they'd... talked. It had been surprisingly good. Hermione had offered to tutor her in Transfiguration, to keep her from failing her OWLs, and she really wished that wasn't a possibility, but still... Hermione had offered to tutor her.
And then Luna Lovegood walked up and snogged Pansy till her toes curled.
Pansy was fairly sure she wasn't attracted to Hermione. She wasn't equally confident that she wasn't attracted to girls at all.
Not that she wanted Lovegood. Despite the toe-curling kiss, but honestly, that was part of being fifteen, right? Hormones, and all those things parents talked about in that horribly tolerant tone of voice. The Hermione Granger thing wasn't hormones, and she almost wished it was, that she had an ordinary crush, because she could dismiss it then. Just hormones. Can't help it, Mother. Pass the sugar?
There was a dull thump from somewhere below, and then the sound of someone swearing. Pansy smiled suddenly.
She hadn't been the only one embarrassing herself at the beach yesterday.
*
Draco felt his scalp prickling. He looked around to see Pansy coming down the stairs from the girls' dormitories. The commonroom was empty at this time of day - everybody else was sitting out on the grass in the half-hour left before classes started again. Pansy draped herself over one of the green couches near the unlit fire, and crooked a finger at him. He gritted his teeth and stalked over to her, limping slightly. Malcolm Baddock liked to move the furniture around on nights he couldn't sleep.
"Finished kissing up to Whiskers already?" he asked, and she widened her eyes.
"Do you even know what kind of opening you're giving me there?" she demanded. "Kissing up to Gryffindors? But if you mean, did I finish my detention, then yes."
Draco scowled.
Pansy gave him a considering look. "I can understand your feeling a little peeved with McGonagall, though," she conceded. "After all, she did break up your terribly promising little romance yesterday, didn't she?"
"What do you want?" he demanded, speaking fast. "What do you want not to tell?"
She stared at him for a moment, and then rolled her eyes. "You really don't have a single idea how to behave as a human being, do you?" she said. "I'm not going to tell anyone, you idiot."
Draco stared at her.
"Doesn't mean I'm not going to give you hell about it, of course." She stretched her foot out against the arm of the couch, examining her bare toes. "Or that Weasley won't tell. Or Potter. Or Lovegood."
Draco let out a breath and slumped down onto the couch next to her. Pansy lifted her feet and plunked them down again across his lap. "Right, or the Mudblood," he finished for her.
"Probably not Granger," Pansy said. He raised his eyebrows at her and she coloured. "I don't think it's her style," she said.
"Granger has no style," Draco said. "Please don't tell me you're falling for that But-ink-stains-are-so-sexy look."
Pansy raised her eyebrows and didn't laugh. Draco sat up a bit straighter.
"Oh god, you were watching her at the beach, when we were waiting at the palm trees," he said. "You two didn't bond or something while I wasn't there to watch you, did you?"
"While you were trying to taste Weasley's tonsils, you mean?"
He scowled at her, and Pansy smiled. "Did you wake up with sand in your bed this morning?" she asked. And it was such a very obvious attempt to distract him but Draco didn't really care. He glared at his fingernails, which still harboured fugitive grains of sand despite all the charms he'd used.
"There is sand everywhere," he said darkly. "I don't think it's ever going to come out of my hair. Bloody Weasley."
"Weasley put sand in your hair?"
"Weasley jumped on me."
Pansy smirked. "Yuh huh, it looked like you were really hurting."
"Look, it was only... the beach, or something, alright? It didn't mean anything. You would have done the same thing."
Pansy widened her eyes at him in outrage. "I would not. My god, a Weasley. Really, Draco."
Draco let his head fall back. "I took you to the ball last year because you were a Pureblood," he said. "I don't actually like you, you know."
*
"Look, it was just hormones, okay, he practically jumped me, it's never going to happen again - Harry, would you quit laughing?"
Harry was collapsed weakly on the grass. "You - Malfoy on the beach, so you thought -" he managed. "You, Ron, of all the - and we came around the b-boulder and - and Malfoy's tongue in your mouth and his hands..."
Ron slumped back onto his back on the grass. "God, I did not plan on you guys walking around that rock."
Hermione choked over her book. "R-really?" she asked innocently, and Ron glared at her.
"Don't you start laughing, too," he warned.
"Honestly, though, Ron." She bit her lip and determinedly ignored Harry's helpless snickering. "Why him? Surely there are... nicer people you could be snogging? Almost anybody would be a nicer person, really."
"For the last time, I did not plan it. I didn't wake up yesterday morning and think, 'Huh, what'll I do today? I know, I'll get hot in the sand with Draco My-Daddy-is-a-Death-Eater Malfoy.'"
Harry choked in the middle of his laughter, and started coughing.
Ron looked down, fiddling with the messy laces of his shoes. "I just... it just happened, alright? Because I'm fifteen and... there was this beach, and... he had sand in his collar, you know? And he was wearing his robes over his head to keep the sun off and he looked like a complete dork, only... kind of a sexy dork."
"You... um. You were kind of... holding his hand, afterwards," Hermione remembered, speaking quietly.
"Yeah," Ron agreed. He flushed, glancing across at Harry, who was still coughing a bit but had stopped laughing. Now he was looking at Ron with that 'You're my best friend but I'm going to have to lock you away for your own good because you're completely insane' expression. "I was confused," Ron said shortly. And he didn't think about what Malfoy's hand had felt like, and the way Malfoy hadn't pulled away.
Well, he hadn't pulled away until they stepped back through the floo door and into the suddenly unbelievably chilly castle and McGonagall's stare had hit them like a bucketful of extra cold water, and they'd both pulled away then.
"Well, come on, we'll be late for Potions," Hermione said, gathering her books.
Potions was painful.
Potions was always painful, of course. Ron had long ago come to the conclusion that Professor Snape considered a day wasted if he hadn't leeched a little more joy out of the lives of his students, and particularly out of anybody remotely connected to the Boy Who Lived. Such as, for example, any best friends whose surnames might happen to start with W. Friendship was a curse, sometimes.
This lesson was particularly unbearable, however. Malfoy was already there when they came in, sitting with a group of Slytherins. But this time instead of the snide jab at Harry or the insult about Ron's family, he gave Ron a startled look. Why he should be startled Ron didn't know, since it wasn't as though he hadn't known they had Potions together. Ron only knew that he felt Malfoy's gaze like an uncomfortable jolt in his stomach, and that he should not be flashing back to Malfoy's tongue sliding over the roof of his mouth and his back bare under Ron's hands and his fingers slipping under the waistband of Ron's jeans. He really shouldn't be doing that, because he was blushing and he was in Potions and everybody knew Snape could read minds.
The cold voice sliced into his thoughts. "If you could stop staring at Mr Malfoy, Mr Weasley, perhaps we could commence."
Ron's head snapped up, the full force of Snape's gaze weighing him down.
"Sorry," he said. "Sir."
He could feel Malfoy's smugness now.
"Very well." The Potions Master's mouth curled unpleasantly. "Five points from Gryffindor for delaying the start of class."
He looked at the class at large. "This lesson you will be making a potion known as the Foe Charmer. Can anybody tell me what it does?"
Ron didn't know why Hermione still bothered to put her hand up in Potions. Snape's eyes skated over her with the ease of long practice. "Mr Malfoy, perhaps?" he asked. There was no answer, and Ron twisted around to see Malfoy staring across at him.
"Mr Malfoy, do you have an answer?" Snape's voice took on a sharp edge he didn't usually use on Slytherins, and Malfoy's head jerked up.
"Ex-excuse me, sir?"
Lavender and Parvati giggled audibly. Snape gave them a look. "Ten points from Gryffindor for disrupting class," he said. "And Mr Malfoy, five points for inattention. I am disappointed in you."
Malfoy flushed, faintly. Ron felt decidedly off-balance.
Hermione's hand was still waving in the air, but Snape didn't even glance at her this time. "Very well. I see that none of you have had even the pitiful degree of foresight required to look ahead in the textbook. If you turn to page 427, you will find that the Foe Charmer is a particularly powerful potion, with, however, an unfortunately very limited efficacy period; generally about ten minutes. For those ten minutes it will make the drinker irresistibly charming and charismatic to his enemies. You will make the potion in pairs. Unless you are more than unusually dull," his eyes rested for a moment on Neville, "the preparation ought to take no more than forty minutes."
Ron kept his eyes down for the remainder of the lesson. He didn't want to catch Malfoy staring at him again, and he especially didn't want to catch himself watching the way Malfoy's cheeks gained bright patches of colour when he was flushed. Because Ron had seen Malfoy flushed at the beach, and...
He came alarmingly close to cutting off his own finger. Harry gave him a sideways look and took the knife and the Laeticia pods away from him, and began cutting them up himself.
Ron accepted the Ebony Fire Harry gave him to shred in their place, almost without noticing the change. He didn't realise they'd finished the potion until Harry nudged him and asked whether he thought the colour could be called primrose. Ron glanced down.
"Harry. It's green," he said. He wondered how he hadn't noticed up until then that it had been green.
"One member of each partner will drink the potion upon completion," Snape called from the front of the class, and Ron blanched. He wasn't sure what drinking green Foe Charmer would do, but he doubted it would be pleasant. Then he noticed Harry staring over his shoulder, a beaker of their green potion suspended halfway to his lips. He turned, and saw Malfoy putting down a beaker of his own, perfect primrose yellow potion.
Harry's eyes were wide and amazed. "Wow," he breathed. "You really kissed him, Ron? Wow."
"What?"
Harry's voice was wistful and breathy. "He's so... wow, he's beautiful, Ron. Do you think I should talk to him?"
"What? No! Harry, don't go near him."
He glanced fearfully over at Malfoy, to find him smirking madly. He tugged on Pansy Parkinson's arm as Ron watched, directing her attention to Harry's adoring gaze, and they both snickered. Ron wanted to hit him.
"How does he get his hair so sleek, do you think?" Harry asked beside him, and tried to pat at his own impossible hair. He still had their beaker in his hand, however, and he frowned at it distractedly, and drank it down.
"Harry, that's...!" Ron broke off. ...green, he thought. For a moment Harry stared straight ahead, his face frozen, and then he choked, doubling over and coughing out a small emerald-green frog. Snape glanced over. He smiled.
"Class, if you will direct your attention to Mr Potter, you will see a textbook illustration of what happens if you add the shredded Ebony Fire before your Foe Charmer has completely cooled."
Harry was still coughing, his shoulders shaking desperately. "Professor -" Hermione cried, and Snape nodded, bored.
"Yes, yes," he said. "Take him to the Infirmary. I should move fast if I were you, the frogs will come rather quickly at first."
Ron and Hermione each grabbed a shoulder and pulled him out into the hallway. On the way out Ron caught sight of Malfoy's face. That smirk was still playing around his mouth.
*
Draco was leaning against the stairwell opposite the Library, most definitely not waiting for Weasley to get bored and desert Granger in there, when Ron came trailing out. He spotted Draco and crossed over to him.
"Were you waiting for me?" he demanded.
"Of course not," Draco said haughtily. The tone was perfect, and it was a shame about the slight blush he could feel heating his cheeks. He spotted something tangled in Weasley's hair and took the opportunity to change the subject.
"You've got a frog in your hair," he said.
Weasley's hand leapt up to his neck, and located the tiny wriggling body there. He carefully disentangled it and then looked at it in his hand rather helplessly. "Harry coughed them all the way to the Infirmary," he said. Then he looked up, his eyes narrowed. "I saw you laughing at Harry," he added.
Draco blinked. This was worth mentioning, why?
"Of course I was laughing," he said.
Weasley coloured. "It wasn't funny," he said, the copper red hair falling over his eyes and making him blink angrily.
Draco leaned back against the stone. Weasley hadn't called him on the Not waiting for you thing. "Weasley," he said, "You did see what happened to Potter before he drank that ghastly cock-up of a potion, didn't you?"
Ron blinked, apparently trying suspiciously to see where this was going. He lowered his hand a little, and the tiny frog jumped from his palm to the flagstones. It hopped into a corner, the green shape lost in shadows.
"He fell for the glamour of my potion, Weasley," Draco said, ignoring the cuteness of the frog moment. "Because he's my enemy. Which means I laugh when he makes a total prat of himself which, lucky for me, he does with such fantastic regularity."
Weasley opened his mouth angrily, and Draco quickly forestalled him. "Imagine Gregory Goyle spitting frogs, would you?"
"What? Oh, right." His mouth tugged into a grin.
"Right. Well, as it happens you would have seen it if you'd stuck around in Potions for another five minutes. Crabbe had to take him to the Infirmary, he and Potter are probably keeping each other company as we speak. I didn't laugh, of course - although it was kind of funny - but you would have. My point being," he finished, "That it's funny when it's happening to a total prat like Potter. For example."
Weasley frowned at him. "You talk an awful lot, Malfoy," he said. "I think I like it better when you're not talking."
Draco's breathing hitched for a second, because the last time he and Weasley had been not talking he'd had his tongue in the other boy's mouth and his hands tangled in that bright hair. Not thinking about it not thinking about it.
He did his best to sound completely unconcerned as he asked, "So, were you affected by my Foe Charmer?"
Weasley immediately looked down at his feet. "I wouldn't know, would I?" he asked in a quiet voice. He looked up and met Draco's eyes, and flushed. "How would I tell the difference?"
Draco nearly fainted with relief. It wasn't just a hiccup at the beach. He likes me.
That was so unbelievably pathetic that Draco wanted to cut the thought out of his brain as soon as he realised he'd thought it.
*
Gregory really didn't want to think about the fact that he was sitting in the Infirmary with only Harry Potter for company.
He sneaked a glance sideways. Potter was leaning over his bucket of frogs, looking decidedly unhappy.
Probably Potter wouldn't talk to him. He never had before. Gryffindors mostly didn't talk to him anyway, and if they did, Malfoy could be relied on to field it.
Except that Malfoy wasn't here.
Even Vince wasn't here. Gregory had given him an anguished look to try to stop him from leaving, but he hadn't asked - he wouldn't ask in front of Potter, even if Potter was loudly expelling frogs at the time and probably wouldn't have heard.
Vince had gone back to the Potions dungeons to get his and Gregory's books and take them to the Slytherin commonroom.
He felt another frog kicking up in his throat and leaned over the bucket.
When he looked up again Potter was looking at him. He seemed to have got over his latest bout of frogs.
"Malfoy didn't think it was worth making sure his friends didn't get their potions wrong, then?" he asked.
Gregory grunted. Malfoy did usually keep an eye on his and Vince's potions, even if he was working with Pansy or Blaise or someone, but he'd been distracted this class. Gregory wasn't going to tell Potter that.
Potter flopped back onto his bed. "Sorry, I forgot," he said. "Malfoy doesn't have friends, does he? He has people who grunt."
Then he lifted his head suddenly, looking guilty. "Um. I didn't mean that," he said.
Gregory nearly fell off his bed. He bent over his bucket pretending that there were more frogs.
When he cautiously raised his head again Potter was scowling up at the ceiling. He must have felt Gregory's eyes on him because he twisted his head around to face him. His eyes narrowed.
"Why do you and Crabbe trail around after him, anyway?" he asked. "It's not as though he's brilliant company."
Gregory took a breath. "Don't talk about Malfoy like that," he said in a low voice.
He was stunned at his own daring.
Potter's eyes widened.
"Um. OK," he said after a moment. Gregory breathed out. Easy. That had been easy after all.
Potter was still looking at him, that messy black hair falling over onto his glasses. "So are you going to try to rough me up?" he asked after a moment.
Gregory stared at him.
"It's just that... I assumed that would be what you'd do."
Before he could explain why he'd thought that - it sounded mental to Gregory - the door pushed open and Pansy came in, a sheaf of parchment under her arm. She glanced once over at Potter, and then looked at Gregory and his bucket of frogs. Her nose wrinkled in distaste.
"God, Gregory, did it have to be frogs?" she asked. He shrugged, and she looked resigned. "I've brought my Herbology notes, anyway, since you missed class. I don't know whether you'll be able to do anything with them, but here."
"Thanks," he murmured. Pansy didn't think very much of him, so it was nice of her to have brought the notes.
She glanced over at Potter. "Your fanclub deserted you, Potter?" she asked. Draco would have said it venomously, but Pansy didn't seem conscious that what she was saying could be insulting.
Potter looked confused. Pansy sighed. "Weasley and Granger, Potter."
"I think they're in the library," he said, finally.
Gregory caught sight of her smile, behind the usual curtain of hair.
"The library won out over your fascinating company?" she murmured. She'd wandered over to the edge of his bed, ostensibly to look at Potter's bucket of frogs. As she glanced down into it, her nose wrinkling into that Ick expression again, Gregory heard her murmur, very low, "Don't you dare do anything to Gregory while he's here, Potter."
Gregory wasn't sure whether to feel a warm glow or to be offended that she thought he needed help.
"What?" Potter said, flabbergasted. Pansy frowned at him and moved towards the door.
"I think Vincent grabbed your stuff from the Potions dungeon, Gregory," she said on her way out. "It should be back in the commonroom, assuming he didn't get lost."
"What did she mean, 'Don't dare do anything to you'?" Potter demanded the instant she was out of the room. "What would I do to you?"
"Um," Gregory said.
"She doesn't..." Potter looked horrified. "She doesn't think I'd hex you while you were coughing up frogs, does she? Because she has to know if we got into an ordinary fight you'd wipe the floor with me."
Gregory shrugged.
Potter leaned back again. "This is weird," he said. "And also, I wouldn't hex you. Not unless you attacked me first."
Gregory shrugged again. "It's only that... Pansy thinks I'm a bit of an idiot," he explained. "She thinks you'll trick me or something."
He gave Potter a slightly worried look, suddenly afraid that he was giving him ideas.
Potter looked indignant. "I'm a Gryffindor," he said. Then he blushed. Gregory suspected he was thinking of the Weasley twins, known throughout Slytherin as My God Why Did Nobody Drown Them At Birth Or At Least Brain Them With Their Own Bludger Bats? Queenie Greengrass could say it practically as a single word, it was kind of impressive.
Potter suddenly choked and bent over his bucket of frogs again. Gregory noticed that a few of his own frogs had escaped over the rim of the bucket and were hopping about the room. He thought they looked quite cute.
He glanced quickly across at Potter again, suddenly irrationally afraid he might have heard his thought. Potter had raised his head again, and was looking at the runaway frogs too.
"They're kind of cute, actually, aren't they?" he said. "When they're not jumping around your throat."
Gregory grinned suddenly, and Potter gave him a startled look.
"Yeah," he said. "I actually like frogs," he confided.
Potter smiled, hesitantly. "I like them better outside my mouth," he said.
Madame Pomfrey came bustling back in, and looked at them both. Gregory immediately sat up straighter. He wasn't sure why the school nurse always made him feel guilty.
"Mr Goyle, have you ejected any frogs in the last ten minutes?" she asked. He shook his head.
"I thought so," she said, looking satisfied. "The green around your mouth is gone. You're free to go. Mr Potter, I think you'll need another few minutes."
Gregory got up and made his way over to the door.
"Um, Goyle?" Potter said, and he turned. Potter frowned, as though he wasn't sure what he was doing, and then shrugged and smiled. "Good luck with the Herbology notes, okay?"
*
Weasley looked awkward, took a step closer and then looked even more awkward.
"Um. Malfoy. About yesterday. With the..."
"Snogging," Draco supplied helpfully.
"Yeah. Did you... were you...?" He looked at Draco appealingly, but Draco honestly had no idea where he was going with this. He raised his eyebrows.
"Um." Weasley was still flushed, and it clashed with his hair and really should not have looked endearing. "I'm a bit confused," he admitted. "About all... this."
Draco tried out an idea. "Would it... do you think it would help if we kissed again?" he asked cautiously. "With the confusion?"
Weasley looked at him, and then grinned, and he looked far too happy and Draco couldn't quite look away. He stepped closer quickly and tilted Weasley's face down, and he could still feel the other boy's grin against his mouth, and then it shifted so his mouth was opening warm. Draco relaxed into the kiss, and into Weasley too, turning him until his back was to the stone side of the stairwell. Weasley's tongue was licking against his lips and he made a noise against Draco's mouth, something that wasn't really a moan but was still a noise he hadn't quite meant to make. And Draco tightened his fingers in the mussed, bright-red hair and thought hazily that non-verbal was, really, really a good look for him.
*
Luna Lovegood came into the Infirmary just as Harry was being released, and he waited while Madame Pomfrey unstuck the glass from her temple.
"What were you doing?" he asked as they set off down the hallways. She was holding the unstuck glass in her hand; it had traces of pumpkin juice in it, and there was a smear of orange at her temple.
"It was an accident," she said, her eyes wide and clear. "I was anointing my temples with pumpkin juice, you see."
Harry ran that through his head again, just to see if it sounded more sensible a second time.
"Um?" he said. And then, because he had to ask, "Why were you anointing your temples with pumpkin juice, Luna?"
"It's a protection against potion fumes," she said. "Everybody knows that. The fumes from different potions brewed over a period of time can accumulate to produce new effects on people who are exposed to them for dangerous lengths of time. Professor Snape has structured the Fourth Year potions schedule to create an Imperio effect by the end of the year. It's like the Imperius curse, but it's slower and more permanent. He plans to sell the Fourth Years to You-Know-Who."
Maybe Luna's conspiracy theories weren't all that dumb after all. That one sounded pretty good. He'd known Snape was evil. He grinned and decided he liked Luna a lot.
They got to the bottom of the stairs and paused. "I arranged to meet Ron and Hermione in the library after I got out," Harry said. "Do you want to come?"
*
Pansy hadn't been sure, when she came out of the Infirmary, exactly what she was going to do with the information that Hermione was with Ron Weasley in the library. She hung around near the Great Hall for a little while, glaring at her fingernails and staring down the group of Slytherin fourth year girls who started to approach her. She finally pushed off and started walking through the corridors. She didn't realise she was heading for the library until she was turning into the corridor outside it.
She stopped when she saw the two boys making out against the side of the stairwell opposite. Her first thought was to turn around and leave, because honestly this was getting ridiculous; but she found she was fascinated in spite of herself.
Weasley had a kind of boyish good looks, especially when he was mussed up and flushed, his cheeks too bright and his body held too awkwardly against the slighter boy. Draco looked every bit the arrogant Pureblood's son, his hair sleek and smooth, but his tie was half-undone, and the mocking expression on his face was arrested, and his fingers were threaded tightly through Weasley's bright hair and when they pulled back for a second they were both gasping. Then Weasley leaned in again and Draco met him eagerly.
Pansy was surprised at how good they looked together. She'd always supposed that Draco needed to be with somebody dark, to balance his fair hair and skin. She suspected Draco had thought so too, and that that had had something to do with them going to the Yule Ball together last year, in addition to the Pureblood Slytherin thing. Watching them now, the gleaming blond head against the messy red-gold one, Weasley's fingers clenching at Draco's shirtfront and pulling the Slytherin tie even further askew, she realised she'd been wrong. Draco looked good with Ron Weasley.
They looked, in fact, incredibly hot, and Pansy was really starting to wonder about her sexuality.
She became aware of Hermione coming out of the library at about the same time as she became aware of Harry Potter and Luna Lovegood coming up behind her, their voices trailing off as they took in the scene.
"Oh, for heaven's..." Hermione said, shifting the books on her arm, and Weasley lifted his head. He stared at her, and then round at Pansy, Potter and Lovegood, and then he dropped his head down onto Draco's shoulder.
"Why does this keep happening?" he mumbled.
Draco dislodged the head, carefully, and set about determinedly straightening his robes and his hair, not looking at anyone.
"You couldn't have prevented this turning into a mass audience performance, Parkinson?" he asked levelly, still not looking at her, and she rolled her eyes.
"Oh, nobody saw who didn't already know," she said. "You idiot."
*
Harry sat with Luna on the steps of Ravenclaw Tower. He frowned at the stone under his hand.
"You know, I was bewitched for ten minutes," he said. "I thought Malfoy had shiny hair. I wanted to talk to him. I thought he was wonderful. But..." he shook his head, mystified. "I still can't understand why Ron would want to kiss him. Twice. My god."
"He's quite pretty," Luna said innocently. "It could have been worse, you know."
"How?" Harry demanded. "And don't say things like that, I don't want to look at Malfoy and remember people saying he's pretty. God, I don't want to look at Malfoy and remember Ron's tongue in his mouth. Oh - gah."
"Well," Luna said. "It could have been... Crabbe, maybe? Or Goyle? That would have been worse."
Harry shook his head vehemently. "It wouldn't," he said definitely. "And Goyle's not that bad."
She looked at him questioningly, and he shrugged. "I was Goyle for an hour once, you know, in second year."
She looked interested. "Was that part of the Polish Body Swap cover-up?" she asked.
Harry paused. "Um, no," he said. "Polyjuice, actually."
Luna looked disappointed.
"Why did you kiss Pansy Parkinson at the beach?" he asked suddenly. "I mean... you said just... because you wanted to. But why did you want to, Luna?" Then he flushed. "I mean, not that she isn't attractive, but..."
"Oh, that." Luna frowned, as though she was trying to remember, and Harry wondered with a sense of unreality whether other people really found kissing so ordinary that they could forget they'd done it the next day. Maybe he was just - sort of super pathetic?
"She looked bad-tempered," Luna said. "And forlorn. And like she wanted to be kissed. And she was biting her lip."
Harry thought about that. He stole a sideways glance at Luna, and then leaned in and kissed her. It lasted about three seconds and then she pulled back and smiled at him vaguely.
"That didn't work," she said. Harry sighed.
"No," he agreed. It was just the way she'd said it, as though it was so easy. And everybody was kissing lately, he'd thought maybe there might be something in the air, making kissing... good. Somehow.
"Tell me more about Snape's plan to Imperio the fourth years," he said.
*
Pansy had caught Hermione's arm and asked to talk to her, after the corridor incident. Hermione had glanced at her and said that she needed to take her books back to her dormitory, but Pansy could come if she wanted. Assorted Gryffindors had looked vaguely appalled when she walked through the bright red and gold commonroom, but Hermione hadn't appeared to notice.
She was now seeing a Gryffindor dormitory.
She would have known Hermione's bed immediately, even if she hadn't seen her go to it and put her books down. The other two beds had glittery hairclips and discarded robes thrown over them, but Hermione's was scrupulously neat, with a precarious pile of books sitting at the end where other people sometimes kept their slippers.
"I'm sorry, I need to change my robe," Hermione said as they came in. "I spilled ink all down the sleeve."
Pansy was nodding as the other girl turned to pull her robe off, her mouth opening to say 'That's fine', but she never said it because Hermione was only wearing a long white schoolshirt and tie under her robes and Pansy's brain had frozen up. Oh god, did she walk around with her legs bare under her robes all the time? Pansy wasn't supposed to be affected by that, since she wasn't attracted to Hermione Granger, but she was starting to think she might be the most sexually confused person at Hogwarts, because for a second she simply could not look away. Then she gulped, her face flaming, and spun around.
She'd gotten her expression back under control by the time she turned around again, although she suspected she was still a little red-faced. Hermione was dressed again, and she was pushing her hair back into a black clip. It was apparently having difficulty holding out against the challenge, since several fluffy brown snarls immediately floated back down, falling into her eyes again. She pushed them back behind her ears, too accustomed to her own hair to be bothered by it.
"That's pretty," Pansy said, for something to say. Hermione followed her eyes to the pink and silver shawl thrown over a chair.
"Oh, I think it's Parvati's," she said vaguely. "You like pink, don't you?"
Pansy nodded. She wasn't sure what she could say to that; of course she liked pink, she was always wearing pink socks and hair-things.
"I never have," Hermione said, frowning, and distracted with making space on her bedside table for the books she'd put on her bed. "I mean - some people look good in pink, you and Parvati look good in pink, but... My aunt gave me a pink jacket once, and I tried wearing it a few times, but I never feel like myself in it, somehow."
She finished with the books and looked up. "What did you want to talk about? Did you - did you want to talk about Transfiguration tutoring?" She sounded eager, and Pansy relaxed, in a rush.
"Yes," she said, and she smiled, carefully. "Yes, please."
*
Malfoy had muttered something and stalked off, after the corridor. Ron found him sitting on the Quidditch stands, picking at the bristles of his Nimbus 2001. He dropped down a step above him and to the right, and waited for him to look up.
When he finally did, he was almost completely expressionless.
"Weasley."
"Um. Yeah. Hi."
Malfoy bit his lip and stared out over the Quidditch pitch, his fingers still picking nervously at his broom.
"She was right, you know," he said suddenly. "Pansy. Nobody knows who didn't already know. Nothing's... changed, actually."
"Right," Ron said. His fingernails had become intensely interesting. "So... if other people knew. Say... if other people had seen. That would change things."
Malfoy didn't answer, and after a moment Ron looked up to find the other boy watching him, narrow-eyed. "What are you saying?" he asked. "That you want things to be - to change?"
There was uneven colour in his cheeks, and he was still biting his lip quite hard, and that was what made Ron relax enough to slide down onto the step next to him and lean in closer.
He grinned, a little. "I think I'm saying... Malfoy, do you want to snog in the Great Hall at breakfast tomorrow?"
*
When Pansy followed Hermione down the stairs to the Gryffindor commonroom she knew she really had to do something about this sexual identity confusion thing. Harry Potter had apparently come in a second before they came down, and a second year girl was asking him to get down one of the cushions stacked in high alcoves around the room. He smiled at her and reached up, and his shirt rode up a little, exposing the skin above the waistband of his jeans. Pansy felt a flicker of lust slide through her, and the only response she could find for that at this stage was a despairing sort of disbelief.
But maybe she could deal with it. She thought, actually, she could deal with just about anything right now. Because Hermione had smiled at her with the joy of study in her eyes, and suggested that they meet tomorrow after Lunch to go over their Transfiguration homework.