CHAPTER TEN - Paying Visits
Shower. Shower, shower, shower.
That was what she wanted more than anything else in the world. Ginny thought, considering the last evening's activities, she'd probably promise her soul for a shower. It didn't matter that she'd taken one immediately after he'd gone, she wanted another one.
But if she waited one more second to send a reply to her mother's Howler, she knew she would later regret it. Ginny padded her way into the kitchen, wracking her brains for the location of her parchments and quills. If she recalled correctly, she had one properly functioning quill in the house, and her parchment…
Where in Merlin's dungeons were her parchments? She rooted through the kitchen cupboard, the tip of her tongue peeking at the corner of her lips as she tried to concentrate, to remember. This was why she hated tidying, she thought. It seemed every time she tidied for company, she was never able to find anything for days and weeks on end.
With a small exclamation of triumph, Ginny pulled a battered parchment out of the bottom of the cupboard, wondering if she'd originally meant it as a liner, or if it had just ended up there. A quill followed shortly, operable if a bit straggly, and she plopped the parchment on the first flat surface available to pen her answer.
Dear Mum,
I'm not ill, nor am I doing anything with Draco Malfoy.
"Not at the moment, at least," Ginny said, a frown flitting across her features.
I'm simply taking a day as a holiday, for me. I think, considering everything, a day to myself was just the trick.
"Among other things," she added, wondering what else to write. She had nothing else to write, couldn't think of another thing she could safely tell her mother without lying or without spilling everything. So she rolled up the parchment, whistling for the vagabond owl that frequented the flats along her row. At a total loss as to where her sealing wax was-and where was her wand, for that matter?-Ginny took the hair band from her messy ponytail and bound up the parchment with it.
Only then, after clearing away, did she realize where she'd written a parchment to her mother.
Right on the kitchen table. Up until the evening before, the most tawdry thing that table had experienced was a little leaning here and there when Harry had wanted to sneak a snog.
The color draining from her face, Ginny stared at the table as though she'd never seen it before. All thoughts of a shower drained from her mind, and she thought of the table, of eating there, of carrying on meals by herself there. The lonely meals she hadn't so much minded, hadn't even thought of, until now.
While her parents had sat around their own kitchen table with her brother and the man she'd loved and the woman who was truly worth the man she'd loved, Ginny had sat atop her own kitchen table and gave herself over to something she didn't even understand.
She wanted to gag but stifled it, swallowing hard to try and still her upset stomach as she dashed for the tap, running cool water to splash on her face. She didn't pause to pat her face dry with the dishtowel, didn't even think of it. Even as her freckled nose dripped water back to the drain, Ginny blinked water from her eyelashes and jerked open the drawer next to her, digging for the first thing she found. It was an apron, but it didn't matter, not now.
She soaked it in water, holding it under the flow with one hand, the other busy pushing her hair from her wet face. She left the faucet running, dripping water all the way across the floor to the table before slapping the sopping apron to the tabletop, scrubbing at the table, leaving wide, wet, messy trails that would undoubtedly leave spots as it dried.
What have I done? Her mind made the four words a mantra, a panicked tattoo, and she didn't know how long she scrubbed before her fingers were sore and puckered, the nausea long past.
She'd done just what she'd out to do, she thought, no longer feeling like a shower but needing to do something.
She'd become, at least in her own eyes, completely unworthy of Harry.
~~~
With the she-devil sent home for the day, Draco ruminated, it was much easier to concentrate on the important things.
Like the fact that Ginny had not appeared at work.
He rather detested that foreign little flash of worry he felt upon that particular announcement. Not only was it absurdly misplaced, it was completely ridiculous. She was a grown woman-he'd certainly seen that for himself-and perfectly capable of taking care of herself. If she wanted to skive off work, that was her business. Lazy little tart.
And then, horror of all horrors, he felt bad for thinking that. Perhaps conscience was contagious.
He opened his mouth to roar for Octavia, to command her to send the owl to Miss Weasley's house, be damned her unscheduled little holiday. He had something to prove, damn it, and her stubbornness wasn't going to get in his way. She thought she had him pegged? He would certainly prove her wrong. If she thought he was going to gad it about town that he'd shagged a Weasley, she was all wrong. And if she thought she'd seen the last of him, she was all wrong.
But…
It was an attractive idea, just to let it go, just to let her have her three-day weekend, her time to hide, and when Monday rolled around, they'd both have forgotten about it.
And he wouldn't have to worry about her, or propriety, and he could chalk it up to his own confidential triumph. Talking the worshipped Weasley into bed, figuratively speaking, after only one date.
Draco refused to dwell too much on the verbiage, the term "date."
He'd simply keep it as his own private "notch," as it were.
It was enough to know he'd gotten what Potter could no longer have.
It would simply have to be.
~~~
The door was broken.
Pansy raised an eyebrow and 'tsked' at that particular observation, part of her thrilling at the intimation that bare strip of wood gave. Then again, she might be attributing the wrong things to it. She'd been known to put a bit of a prurient spin on things a time or two.
Only one way to find out.
She knocked, three short, sharp knocks, and waited expectantly for an answer. There was none, which didn't surprise her in the least. If you played sick, you'd be a fool to answer the door. It could be your boss, after all. Of course, Pansy thought, she'd never really experienced anything like that herself. She'd always been nothing short of painfully honest with her boss.
Mostly because hearing the truth seemed to anger him even more than hearing a soft little lie every now and again.
"All right, my lovely," Pansy said, looking over her shoulder before taking out her wand, "I know you're in there somewhere." As she magically unlocked the door, she wondered why Draco hadn't thought to do the same. Assuming, of course, it had been Draco who had broken the lock.
She really loved assuming that.
She didn't bother sneaking into the house, she simply sailed in and slammed the door. "You've company, love, but I don't come toting a boss, so all's clear." She heard a thud, a startled curse, and Pansy ran her tongue over her teeth.
It seemed the woman still had spunk, and no shortage on blue words to spout now and again. Pansy filed this away as considerably useful knowledge.
It helped to know Ginny could talk dirty.
"Take your time, honey, I've the day off," Pansy called loudly, looking for a place to sit. Accustomed to sitting on all the inappropriate furniture, Pansy strode into the kitchen and slid onto the table, crossing her legs and swinging one foot back and forth, the heavy wedge of a heel lending her foot momentum.
Ginny came out of the bathroom and immediately regretted her choice of clothing. She'd figured her tatty little terrycloth robe wouldn't offend another woman-through the muffle of a bathroom door, she'd rather thought it might have been Hermione letting herself in. But this was another matter entirely. Wearing a robe that barely came to mid-thigh was acceptable in front of a friend. It was not acceptable in front of a total predator.
"What in blast are you doing in my flat?!" Ginny exclaimed, her voice running into a shrieking register Ron had mocked her for more than once. "You most certainly can not be here." She noted, altogether too belatedly, exactly where Pansy had her plump rump perched. "You most certainly can not be there!"
Pansy raised an eyebrow and looked at the table. "Honey, trust me. It takes a lot more than a girl like me to break down a table like this. I'd at least need another girl like me and a man." She wrapped her hands around the edge of the table and gave a little bounce. "Solid as a rock."
Ginny didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
Or hide. She thought hiding was a perfectly valid option.
"I just came by for a little girl-on-girl…" Pansy paused quite deliberately and leaned forward, her breasts swelling dangerously over the top of her eggplant-hued dress. "Talk," she finally said, one corner of her mouth turning up insouciantly.
Ginny could not discern whether Pansy was making a pass at her or threatening her. She decided she preferred the latter. "If this is about Draco, you've nothing to worry about." Ginny considered herself a scrapper, but if Pansy wanted to fight, she wasn't so sure she could take her. Her thighs could probably break bones, for Merlin's sake-
And then Ginny realized she was actually getting caught staring at Pansy's thighs.
She wished she'd gone to work.
Remarkably, Pansy started to laugh, and Ginny was stricken by how nice it sounded. It wasn't at all the harsh, degrading caw she remembered from school. No, this was the laugh of a woman who knew how to have fun on her own terms, without making it at someone else's expense.
It seemed Parkinson had changes more than her sexual preferences over the years.
"If there's a single man on this earth I don't want," Pansy said between laughs, "It's Draco
Malfoy. He's like my brother." When Ginny simply raised an eyebrow, Pansy's giggles dried up, albeit
reluctantly. "Oh, come off it, Weasley. I'm legendarily unscrupulous but I'm not likely to fuck
family." She gave a wolfish grin, determined to make the redhead uncomfortable enough to spill details.
"Unless you want to play
pretend."
"No!" Ginny said, edging back farther into her kitchen. "You… are very, very… bad." She was simply at a loss for words. The former Slytherin was just unstoppable. "You've no manners."
"They get in the way," Pansy said. "Though I had enough manners not to dismantle your door."
Ginny felt her fair skin flush even as Pansy mentally ticked off a point. Score one for me, she thought. Or rather, score one for Draco.
Pansy boosted herself off the table and took a step toward Ginny, both loving and being exasperated by the way Ginny cringed. So naïve. So paranoid.
"Relax, inamorata, I don't bite unless asked. I brought you something." Pansy reached into the small purse she carried, looking up through long black lashes at Ginny. "Other than me, of course." She withdrew a parchment and held it out. "Hand-delivered. The service doesn't get much better than that."
"Somehow I doubt that," Ginny muttered, cracking the smallest of smiles.
Pansy pressed one hand to her chest, widening her eyes. "My goodness, did La Weasley make a joke? One with the tiniest bit of innuendo?"
"Don't act shocked, Parkinson. An orgy of Hufflepuffs wouldn't even shock you." Ginny cracked the seal on the parchment and grew distinctly uncomfortable for two reasons.
One was that she was being watched, and she hated reading while being watched.
The other was that Pansy didn't seem to find the Hufflepuff orgy so unlikely, and Ginny was somewhat fearing Pansy may have orchestrated something along those lines.
"Oh," she said, her voice suddenly small. Lunch or dinner with Draco. She flipped the parchment over, saw it had been addressed to her office, and looked up at Pansy. "How did you get this?"
Pansy shrugged expansively, pushing the topmost button of her blouse to its limits. "A girl's gotta have a secret here or there, Ginevra. Merlin knows I don't have many left." She glanced at the clock on the wall. "He'll be in the office for a while yet, you know."
Ginny placed the parchment on the counter, not feeling a whit like joking anymore. "I'll not see him again."
"First impressions are important," Pansy said as though that's what they'd been discussing. "But no one is as they seem on a first impression, you know?"
Ginny frowned as Pansy sauntered back toward the front door, and she moved to catch up with her, to put a hand on her arm and turn her around. "What does it matter to you?" she asked. "Why would you come here, bring this to me?"
Pansy looked down at the hand on her shoulder, smiling coyly up at Ginny until she jerked her hand back as though it had been scalded. "Because," she said lightly, "If he's never going to be getting sex from me, he ought to be getting it from you."
She put a hand on the front door, shaking her head in pure admiration at the mess he'd made of it, and then she added an afterthought to the shocked young woman standing in the middle of the room. "And gorgeous, if I'm not showing you a good time, you really ought to learn one from him."