All the Ghosts are Screaming

10

Draco

She's waiting for him in the alley bar.

Draco isn't really sure what the name of it is, only that the doorway is in the very back of Knockturn alley. You have to fight through street vendors to even get near it, and then you have to know exactly where the doorway is at to find it, considering how dark it is back there. It is where you go when you don't want people to know what you are doing, or who you are meeting.

It is the perfect place for them.

She's tucked in a back corner, a hood drawn up around her face so all he can see of her is the dark hair spilling out of it and the pale hands peeking out from lace sleeves. Her nails are long and painted blood red, as much for a weapon as for beauty. Every inch of her is poised to run, and he can tell that she sat on the side that she did so she can keep an eye on the shop at all times.

It makes him uncomfortable, that she saw him before Draco saw her.

"Pansy." She does not stand when he greets her, so he takes the cue from her and sits without another word. The chair screeches on the stone floor when he pulls it back, and when he looks at the table, it is clear that they are not here for a social visit. "Beautiful as always."

She scoffs at him. Draco doesn't get to use the word often, but she embodied it at that moment, the way the sound came from the back of her throat and landed on the table between them, dripping with derision. It should have bothered him, but he also thinks that sharp edges will be easier to deal with today than sharp words. Anger was always easier to take than hurt.

"Save it." She looks him up and down, and like always, Draco wonders what she sees there. This is not like school, when she would hang onto every word he said just because his father made money and his mother came from the right family. She did not have to be nice in order to get help with homework, or make sure that she smiled for pictures that might end up in the prophet. Despite being friends for as long as he can remember (even longer than Crabbe and Goyle, but then the fire for one and Azkaban for another, wait, don't think like that, stop it), this might be the first time they were ever real with each other. "Heard you've been running around with Potter."

He winces, tightens his fingers around a cup with no tea in it just to have something to hold. He knows Pansy did not miss the movement. "I have."

"And Granger."

He doesn't flinch this time, because he knows that this is the price he must pay if he wants to become friends with her again. But he won't apologize for this, either. "Her too." Then, thinking it might be better to be completely honest, he admits to the rest of it. "We're friends, actually. I'm running around with a lot of people we wouldn't have talked to, back at Hogwarts."

"A friend of mudbloods and traitors now, are we?" He must have made a face, or flinched, or something, because she laughed, the sound loud enough to draw stares from the table around them. It wasn't a good idea, to draw stares in a place like this. "Relax." She slumps in her chair, and he can't help but notice how pretty she was, even though he hadn't thought about her like that for a while.

(He's not sure he ever thought about her like that. Maybe, he just thought of it as an inevitable thing, that they would get together in the end. Start dating after Hogwarts, get engaged, have kids to carry on the family legacy. Even if it wouldn't have been love, they would have been happy. Happier than they deserved.)

"We were wrong about that stuff." This was a crucial tipping point for the afternoon, deciding if he would stay or leave. He would not, could not, stay with her if she continued to preach the old ways. If she was still full of hate. He knows now that there is too much pain in this world to add more on purpose, just because you are afraid or like others to be small just so you can be big. He won't be part of that anymore. "It didn't make sense, what our parents were telling us."

"I know." She raised her cup of tea to her lips, but he could tell she wasn't drinking. Draco had heard that a lot of the Slytherins couldn't dare go out in public anymore, what with their parents faces plastered all over the papers and their names being shouted from every news station. It wasn't us, he wanted to scream at them all, when he got a tripping jinx shot at him or when his fresh bought groceries were spoiled when he got home. You can't blame us for what our parents did, it's not fair, it's not fair, didn't you just fight for freedom? "Too little, too late, right?"

The rim was lined with dark lipstick when she brought it away from her mouth, and she frowned at it, wiping it away with a napkin before he could stare at it for too long. It made him smile. That had always bothered her back in school, too.

"Maybe not." Some things are always going to be the same. Pansy's always going to wear dark lipstick, and she's always going to dress like she's ready for a photo shoot at any moment. He's always going to love her, both as an old friend and as someone he thought he could love, once, if things were different. They're both going to be tainted by things that weren't their choice, and they would always occupy places in the wizarding world that people like Harry would never considered stepping foot in. But maybe some things, the important things, could change. And that's what matters now. "Maybe we've got enough time."

He reached across the table to take her hand, and she doesn't swat him away like he thought she would. Instead, she smiles, and there are tears filling her eyes, ones that she wiped away before they could spill down her cheeks. Pansy always had hated for people to see her cry.

"I hope so." Pansy stood and threw a pile of galleons down on the table, extravagantly over tipping. "Merlin do I hope so."