The Disappearances of Draco Malfoy

Chapter 19: Pansy's Perjury

Pansy supposed it was pain, the thing she was feeling. Yes, that was it. Her knees hurt from digging into the gravel for so long, and her sprained ankle was throbbing.

The pain couldn't quite penetrate, though. Nothing had for a while. She was barely listening to the voices swimming around her.

"... blood traitor scum, tell us where they've gone!"

Pansy looked blankly over at the figure writhing and kicking on the gravel. A redheaded woman. The Weasleys' mother. Her limbs looked so strange, disarranged that way, and there was blood all down her sleeve. Her husband and son were begging, their voices confused in the smoky air.

"Madam Lestrange," panted an ash-smeared Auror. "The courier's arrived with the Veritaserum."

Bellatrix Lestrange raised her wand to lift the curse, and Mrs. Weasley slumped, insensate and heaving, to the ground. "Good," Bellatrix spat, casting a venomous look at the seven other people still kneeling in a line on the gravel.

Well, six were kneeling. Oliver Wood was slumped unconscious to Pansy's left, blood trickling out of the corner of his mouth. Pansy wondered if he was dying. She'd limped past a dead man earlier. His skin had been burned in so many variegated shades that he'd looked as if he'd been quilted together.

Pansy looked up at Bellatrix. Her dress robes were singed and torn, her dark hair a chaos as formless as the smoke. Pansy knew she should look away; one didn't stare at Bellatrix Lestrange, the Dark Lord's right hand. Yet Pansy didn't feel afraid to do it, or even defiant. She'd felt nearly nothing since the battle.

She hadn't panicked when Rodolphus Lestrange had dragged her out of the crowd, snarling that he'd seen what she'd done, filthy little traitor, helping them escape. She hadn't felt angry or ashamed when he'd flung her to the ground between Wood and the Prewett woman. Pansy should have been appalled to be grouped in with blood traitors like these, but all that high emotion had extinguished, like a flame that had burned itself out.

The Aurors, who had started to administer Veritaserum at the other end of the line, were swearing, muttering something about Memory Charms. Pansy wasn't really listening. Her friends were ten feet away on the grass. They all looked like strangers, even Greg, tall and thick-necked, a shiny burn blistering on the side of his neck, Greg whom she'd known since the cradle... Greg, whose father had been levitated off on a stretcher, unresponsive.

Vincent was trying to say something to him. Greg wasn't looking at him, wasn't answering.

Theo, though... Theo was watching Pansy, his hair grey with ash. What do you think? he'd murmured to her before the speech had been meant to happen. Want to stay and hear about what good members of society we are? Or we could go back to mine. Dad won't get away from all this for a couple more hours.

It had been an offer of forgiveness, after the way she'd acted in Draco's room. Theo was always ready to forgive her, but Pansy never felt grateful for it. She didn't want cycles of anger and absolution. She wanted the kind of innate understanding that feels like breathing.

She'd thought, given enough time, she could find that with Theo, but maybe not. Their relationship had always been tumultuous—lash and backlash and mutual sensitivity. Nothing like... like...

For a split instant her eyes strayed to the smouldering wreck of Malfoy Manor. She felt a sharp pang like a stiletto knife between her ribs.

Two people crunched to a halt in front of Pansy: an Auror with delicate features distorted by anger, and a scribe holding quill and parchment. Before Pansy could even react, the Auror took Pansy's chin in her fingers, wrenched her mouth open, and shook three clear drops from a vial onto Pansy's tongue.