BANALITY : Draco Malfoy

84

Pansy's estate becomes absolute anarchy within hours. The location is remote, and Pansy has her floo on lock down so it's difficult for most witches and wizards to get here. One person gets stuck inside the floo after deciding to try their luck on getting inside her home, and I convince Pansy to send a letter to Harry rather than kill the intruder herself. Harry takes care of the problem, a disgruntled woman who lets me know all of the terrible things that Draco did to her child as if I actually remember sleeping with the man who did them, or as if I condone them now because I had sex with him while we were fifteen, before the war happened at all.

Harry has the estate disconnected from the Floo network within an hour, and there is an anti-apparition jinx and multiple wards on the property to prevent people from getting over the fence. Pansy notes that the apparation jinx prevents her from apparating onto her own grass. The porch is fine, but not a single step further. She can still move around the inside of her estate easily. I don't know why she is complaining. It isn't like she would want to take a stroll through the hedges anyway.

I'm unbothered by the apparation. It isn't something I would ever do again, willingly. I cannot say the same for the two protestors who have to be rushed to the hospital from disastrous splinches. After that everyone else seems to decide not to try anymore.

I also spend an hour with Harry, where lets me know that I am going to be grilled by the aurors soon. They want to make sure I don't know Draco's whereabouts. No one is to use Veritaserum or legilimency on me due to the fragility of my memory as it is. It takes some time to reassure him that I'm not going to give him up before he lets me return to the drawing room with Pansy. As he apparates out, Pansy glares at me.

"Don't they have better things to do?" Pansy asks, gesturing toward the front gate. "There are nine days until Christmas. Their children will be getting off the Hogwarts express tomorrow. Certainly, the ministry needs to solve this unemployment problem."

"Well, the protestors need to make sure I don't break into their houses and torture their sleeping children," I try to be funny, but it is dry. I would be worried too if I were these parents, I guess. "Or perhaps they are worried that I'm going to seduce their husbands and sons with my wild ways."

"Please, half of these people were okay to turn the blind eye to the mass capture and execution of muggle-borns, you give them too much credit," Pansy says.

It is the first time she has called people like me muggle-borns, rather than calling us mudbloods. I'm almost startled, for a second.

"The other half?" I ask. "Who are those protestors?'

"A mix of idiots," she says. "Muggle-borns and blood traitors with misdirected anger, and people who actually helped the Death Eaters but are clever enough not to admit it."

"You're quick to judge other people, knowing you also helped to torture and kill people like me," I add, stepping closer to the window. I can see a bit of a crowd outside of the fence.

It may be close to Christmas, but without a war happening around us, people have time to fight different battles. Unfortunately, protesting my existence is their newest crusade.

"The thing is, I know I'm nasty," Pansy shrugs. "There are a lot of qualities in people I hate. Stupidity, sentimentality, lovey-dovey expressions of feeling. You should know I also hate people who lie to themselves about being a good person. You and I know that we are smart and mean. They are stupid enough to believe that they are smart and good."

"I don't know how you can be both smart and good," I admit. It's not accusatory. It's a question. I want to be both smart and good, but I don't know how.

"You can kind of do both," Pansy shrugs. She approaches the window, staring out at the same people as me. "You can pick two of the three. You can be smart, good, or alive. There are only three people who I hate to admit managed to stay smart, good, and alive, and they all have Chocolate Frogs, patting them on the back for toppling Voldemort."