Ensnared

Later, stumbling out of the dungeon, head spinning, body aching, I found the rest of the school about to begin the most sumptuous feast I’d ever seen. It seemed Potter had finally rid the world of Voldemort once and for all.

It meant nothing to me. I had my own dark lord, and I was his, his servant, his slave. I could think of nothing but him. And how, in the morning, I would ride the wretched red train back to a life that I knew was not what I wanted.

I stirred the food around my plate with a fork, and said nothing. Draco was too busy cursing Potter to notice that anything was wrong with me, though Millicent did manage to poke me with one fat finger and mutter:

“You had enough of Draco or something? ‘Coz if you have, I wouldn’t mind a turn myself.”

“Draco wouldn’t touch you with a broomstick!” I managed to sneer back. Which was of course true enough. The problem was that I didn’t want Draco to touch me either; the thought of him fumbling at me, in comparison with Snape’s smooth expertise, made me feel ill.

Too soon, the thought became reality. “Come on,” he said. “I bet there’s one thing I can do better than Saint Potter. Bet him and Granger are really going for it tonight. Or him and Weasley. Bet he’s got Dumbledore and Fudge queuing up to give him one up the bum.” He sniggered. “Come on, Pans.” He took my hand and tugged it towards the stairs.

“Draco, I don’t…”

“I said, come on. What’s the matter with you?”

“I just don’t feel like it tonight.”

“What d’you mean, you don’t feel like it? Do you want to make me look like a complete fool in front of the whole common room? Get upstairs!”

I half-expected him to stamp his foot; certainly there was the beginning of a pout on his face. It was difficult not to laugh, Draco attempting to order me about, after Snape’s cultivated delicacy.

“Stop trying to drag me upstairs, Draco, because I’m not going. I told you, I don’t feel like it.”

“Yeah? You wait until we’re married. You’ll have to do what you’re told then.”

Then I knew. What had been at the back of my mind for the past two days. “I’m not going to marry you, Draco.”

“You what?”

“You heard me,” I hissed. “I’m not going to marry you. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with a spoilt little child who’s terrified of his daddy but cries if he doesn’t get everything his own way. And – no, don’t bother.” He had opened his mouth to yell back at me. “Don’t bother to say anything, because I’ve decided. And I’m going to bed. Alone.”

I managed to walk to the stairs rather than running, away from the shattered pieces of the rest of my life. I managed to close the door, not slam it. I managed to breathe normally as I went up the stairs. And, to give them their credit, the rest of Slytherin managed not to break into noisy amazement until I was almost out of earshot.

***

My last night sleeping in Hogwarts Castle, and I slept badly. As a drowning man has all his life flash before him, so it seemed my dreams wanted to recapitulate everything that I’d seen over the last seven years. My first impression of Draco, appearing like a pale angel on the Express; my delight, the first time he’d kissed me; my terror when that horrible hippogriff attacked him; my fury, when Granger had transfigured herself into a beautiful woman at our first Yule Ball. It seemed like my whole life at school had revolved around Draco. Thank the gods I’d had the sense to wake up now, before it was too late, wake up to what he was, a spoilt, selfish brat, wake up, wake up…

“Wake up. Wake up, Miss Parkinson.”

His soft, compelling voice, in my dreams. Unsurprising. He was in my head, in my heart too.

No, he was in my room.

I opened my eyes, realising, as I did so, that this was what I wanted, to open my eyes and see Snape’s, glittering darkly before me. I pulled back the curtains around my bed.

He wasn’t there.

Well, of course he wasn’t there, my new realism said. Teachers could hardly go wandering into female students bedrooms, could they.

“Miss Parkinson!” Snape’s head was floating in my fireplace. “You really are exasperatingly difficult to wake!”

How had I ever thought those tones to be cold? They set me on fire.

“I suggest you come down here immediately. You know how to open the wards.”

My feet were already running when they hit the floor.

***

He was waiting, when I got there, a goblet full of something warm and steaming in his hand, something that tasted sharp, spicy and exotic when he pulled me to him, hand twisting in my hair, and kissed me.

Then he kissed me. Words that are staple of romances read by witches and muggles alike. I’d never known why, until now. The strength in his arms, crushing and bruising my lips against his, body hard against mine, pushing me backwards until my knees hit the edge of the bed, tongue strong in my mouth, then pulling back to bite at my neck. I moaned, spreading my legs around him to pull him closer to me, my breasts pressed up tight against his chest, my hips involuntarily rising to meet his, twisting up so that my lower belly stroked the length of his hardness beneath his robes…

“Minx,” he growled, and pushed my skirts up around my waist.

He entered me in one long, hard thrust that seemed to go right to my very centre. I loved the way he filled me, stretched me, his hands now on the inside of my thighs, pushing them further apart, his body reaching into mine. Watching his face, the control, the self-possession of the man, even now, when he should be melting with passion and lust, the black eyes sparkling but the mouth set firm. I arched my back, throwing my hips towards him, trying to pull him even further into me, to take me completely, oh Merlin, I wanted him, the ache growing stronger every second, with every hard thrust into me, I was burning, throbbing, begging, oh love, oh please, oh love…

“Yessss….” Which of us hissed the word? I no longer knew. I didn’t know my own name or which planet I was on, only that the world was exploding around me, a white hot fire filling me and the stars falling from the sky, and as I came, I heard him whisper, “Pansy…” and then felt him swell and bulge inside me and flood me with heat.

A chink in the armour, then, as he laid his head on my breasts, eyes closed, his slowing breath stirring the soft hairs on my skin as my heart throbbed against him. So rare, I thought, to feel him so at peace.

I could have lain there like that forever, so inevitably, he pushed me away.

“Look at me.” He took my chin between his fingers and forced my face round towards him. “I understand you have called off your arrangement with Malfoy.”

I nodded. Then suddenly, he let go of me, and climbed off the bed.

“I must ask you, Miss Parkinson, whether this is because of what has occurred between us these last few days.”

How could I tell him he was breaking my heart?

“Yes,” I whispered, honest with myself at last, “and no. It was all wrong between me and Draco. We were just doing what we were expected to do. Draco’s family, the rest of Slytherin, everyone just assumed we should be together. I can see, now, exactly how the rest of my life would have been. I’d have been another expensively dressed ornament, just like Narcissa.” He nodded at that. “And even if I don’t know what I want yet, I know I don’t want that. But I don’t know if I’d have seen it, if I’d have known there was anything else, any other way to feel, if it hadn’t been for you.”

“I see. And how exactly do you feel?”

“Excited. When I’m with you. I don’t know what’s coming next. I don’t feel… safe… like I did, not predictable. But I don’t care.”

“And tomorrow you will be on the Hogwart’s Express, returning to London. You have plans, I assume?”

“No,” I whispered. “No plans.”

His eyes glittered, and my heart leapt.

“I have been asked by the Ministry to undertake an interesting project over the summer,” he said. “To assist their spies. As you know, torture is a constant threat. We have lost some of our best people to Crucio. They require me to develop a potion which will render them impervious to pain. A difficult task, but not one that I will find impossible. And of course, during the course of my research, I will require an assistant upon whom to test my results.”

I was speechless.

“You do realise, Miss Parkinson, Pansy, that I am not offering you a happy ever after here, but simply a job?”

I nodded.

“And besides, I think it will serve us both with a very interesting summer.”