CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - Other People
If he'd been just a little angrier, he'd have gone to her flat naked.
After all, in the small corner of his mind he could actually manage to clear, Draco Malfoy was becoming concretely certain his barrister was the cause of all of his problems. Every… last… one of them.
Even if he couldn't blame her for the entire shambles of his life, or the way he couldn't concentrate on anything at all other than the thought of Ginny wrapped around him, of her hair trailing over his chest, of the sounds she made as she neared climax, he could blame her for many things.
It was easier to put two and two together when there weren't distractions, when that redheaded minx wasn't around to cry on his floor or crawl all over his body.
And what two and two added up to was a very duplicitous Pansy Parkinson, and while that brassed him off a great deal, he wasn't about to give her the satisfaction of seeing his bits after all her years of trying.
So he barely got dressed, throwing on a pair of cotton warm-ups he'd nearly worn out at Quidditch practices and a short-sleeved shirt. He could care less if she thought he looked like bloody hell, because bloody fucking hell was what he felt like, and he was about to share some of the joy.
KnockknockknockknockKNOCK!
He gave her exactly two seconds to answer the door.
"Alohomora," he said, jabbing his wand at the door testily. The lock gave way easily and he stepped inside, sneering with disdain at how dark the place was.
It was half nine, for Merlin's sake, how late did she plan to sleep?
"Pansy!" he yelled, and a less charitable soul might have noted how much he bellowed a bit like he'd been poked with something hot. "Get your arse out here, Parkinson, I'm not digging you out of that bedroom!"
He'd never actually been inside her flat before, preferring always to stand outside the door and wait for her. He considered himself a sensible man-or he had been, until lately-and a sensible man did not want to know what went on in Pansy Parkinson's flat.
"For the love of all things magical, lower your voice."
He wheeled around at the voice and felt his misery triple. She was wearing a very poor excuse for a robe that was belted so tightly it had cinched the skirt up and yanked the satiny material so close to her breasts she looked ready to burst out of it. She clearly hadn't removed her war paint from the evening before, and black mascara smudges stood out around her eyes like stamps of her debauchery. "You," he growled, pointing a finger at her face, more than careful not to point it at her chest.
She was trying to ruin his life. He wasn't going to help her do it.
"Very good, sweetheart, this is me!" Pansy said brightly, peering at him as she leaned forward to pat his cheek. She grinned when he jerked away. "Oh, honey, did last night not go well?" She clucked her tongue. "I had rather high hopes you'd enjoy yourselves." Her tone was chiding, but her eyes were sharp.
She really had had high hopes. Looking at him and those horrid, slummy clothes he was wearing and his obviously jolly attitude, Pansy thought the evening before had either gone swimmingly well or hellishly poorly.
Knowing him, he'd done something to make it go hellishly poorly.
How he could waste a perfectly willing woman was beyond her.
Draco shoved his hands through his hair and thought he might scream. Being verbally slapped down by La Weasley had been his idea of an absolute shite of a start to his day. Following it up with caramelized condescension wasn't his idea of a good way to improve things.
"You called that reporter!" he burst out. "You had to have, and here's why-"
"I'm not denying it, love, please don't be tedious and try to prove to me what I already know or prove to yourself what I've already admitted." Pansy raised an eyebrow and wondered if she had any biscuits about. She enjoyed eating while she watched a show.
He could feel his eyes widening and forced himself to stop. A Malfoy didn't do something so plebian as letting his eyes bulge unattractively.
He was going to fucking kill her. Ginny had driven him halfway mad, and this bint was going to finish it off for her.
"She went dotty last night!" he shouted, apropos of nothing. "And when I tried to listen to her-because I thought that's what a bloke was expected to do-"
"Perhaps a Hufflepuff bloke," Pansy inserted, ducking as he picked a jade-toned pillow off of an overstuffed purple chair and threw it at her.
"Bitch!" he interjected in a growl, but took a deep breath and continued, "And then, after I tried to talk to her, she attacked me! She decided-she decided!!-we should shag!" He winged another pillow, just to make himself feel better.
He was obstinately satisfied by the eyebrow raise his statement earned him, but he could feel his ears ringing and a peculiar, hot sensation on his neck, his scalp, needling through his stomach. He felt nervous, as though he'd forgotten something or done something wrong.
He'd identify it later. His stomach had been buggered since last night, anyway.
Probably that fucking candied ham.
"She decided you should shag?" Pansy asked slowly.
"Crazy, isn't she? Absolutely off her bloody skull!" He just wanted someone to agree with him, damn it.
The night had been complete insanity. If he could write it off as such, things would be fine.
"She decided you should shag and you're over here complaining at me?" Pansy slid onto the seat he'd kindly vacated of pillows and snorted. "Perhaps Blaise was right. Maybe you really are a complete pooft-"
He drew his wand on her, effectively silencing her. He figured the peace would last all of fifteen seconds. "She brushed me off this morning," he said in a low tone. He'd meant it to sound dangerous, but instead he simply sounded dangerously close to melancholy. He really was getting ill. "What Weasley brushes off a Malfoy, I ask you? And what… what woman runs off after a night in bed as though it's absolutely nothing?!"
Pansy regarded Draco silently, her eyes growing rounder with each word he said. "Oh," she finally breathed, completely unmindful of his drawn wand as she giggled. "Oh, my. She didn't want to cuddle and talk, and you're upset. Oh, love." Her face grew suddenly serious. "Got quite the case, haven't you?"
"It's none of your fucking business!" Draco snapped. "Which is exactly what I came here to say. You've enough sex life of your own to tend to! Stay out of mine!"
He took a few steps toward the door, paused, and turned back to look at her, desperate to regain some dignity. "And lose some of the pillows. It looks like a bordello in here."
Pansy kissed the tip of her index finger and blew him a kiss, smirking as he all but ran from her flat.
She noticed he hadn't simply answered her question with a simple "No."
That pleased her immensely.
She heard a noise behind her and turned her head. With a roll of her eyes, she regarded the wide-eyed young man in the doorway as he stood, clutching his clothes-and his camera-in front of his more pertinent parts.
"Don't look so frightened, lamb," she purred to the less-than-intrepid reporter. "He'll forget you were even there. He's bigger things on his mind."
~~~
She was torn between feeling furious and feeling fabulous.
She'd started off the morning feeling fabulous, sated and sleepy and just a bit sore. It had even been amusing, in its own manner, to get out of bed and see the shock on Draco's face that a woman would want to leave before he'd given her permission to go.
It wasn't hard to suspect he had women who waited for his command before they did anything.
Ginny muddled over that as she walked around the corner and toward her flat, wondering why that should make her feel a bit angry.
Just misplaced fury, that was all. Some free-floating anger making its way into the good part of the day.
And from where had that anger stemmed, exactly? From being treated as though she were some empty-headed, gold-digging, pureblood-sniffing Slytherin groupie who expected love, devotion, or at the very least, gifts, from a night spent with the inimitable Draco Malfoy.
Well, Ginny thought, forgive me if I don't grovel, oooh, and aaah.
After all, she thought proudly, flicking her wand at the door and muttering the series of advanced charms her father had insisted she ply upon the locks, she had been the one to initiate things. For once in her miserably out-of-control life, she'd had control over something.
She'd had control over him.
It sent a shiver through her, one she was letting drain out through her toes as she shut the door behind her.
Perhaps she really was feeling more fabulous than furious.
"Hello, Ginny." She screamed and jumped, the once-familiar voice now nearly foreign to her, his quiet, uncertain way of speaking a mystery to her, his presence in her flat something she'd long since given up, and something she'd just started learning to live without.
Remarkably, no matter what tears she'd shed, or what wishes she'd wished, she didn't want him here now. But ties were ties, and she couldn't be rude.
"Hello, Harry."