No Regrets
I'll call this one a hard R but more for the angst than the sex. If you don't recognize them, I own them, if you do, I don't.
This may eventually fuse into the Snakepit storyline. Right now it's just its own thing that happened when I thought about Pansy.
I slide back through the halls, trusting in the fact that Filch doesn't patrol the dungeons much if ever to keep me from getting caught. At times I have felt rather bad about the fact that my boyfriend's not much in terms of showing affection, but considering that my thighs hurt, my back is sore, I desperately need a wash, and have a bite mark rising on one breast...I can feel it...it's a good thing, tonight. The thought of cuddling and sweet words after...that...is kind of revolting, anyway. Hard sex up against a hard stone wall. And he was colder than the bloody wall.
In, and upstairs, and into the girls side. I shower quickly, feeling like I'm washing his hands off my body, and thinking that maybe I'll be able to sleep tonight after all. It's late. The floor is cold under my feet, and the picture on the wall is glaring at me. Thank Merlin that I know my way around this place in the dark. I should by now, it's my sixth year here, after all.
I hurried into my room, with my robe over my body for modesty, and was just pulling on my nightgown when a whispered Lumos spell aimed at the torch on the wall revealed that my roommate wasn't asleep at all.
She didn't ask where I'd been. I pulled the nightgown on over my head, and met Vinca's amused eyes with mine.
"Have fun?" she asked. Her long blond hair was loose, fat ringlets I would have died for falling around her shoulders, framing a long oval face with great violet eyes.
"What do you think?" I said, throwing the covers back with a frustrated huff.
"I think he woke you up just enough to know what you're missing," said Vinca, and smiled. It wasn't a nice smile.
"I might as well get used to it, " I said with a sigh as I got into bed. "It's been set up since we were ten."
"I know," she said. I looked at her in surprise.
"Blanche's husband," she said, and I nodded. Edmund Bletchley was a cousin of mine, and had married Blanche Morpeth, Vinca's older sister, three years ago. He was training in wizard law, and was apprenticed to a solicitor already.
"I take it the door happened to be left open a crack," I said, a bit of sarcasm tinging my voice.
"Well, a Parkinson-Malfoy marriage is an important alliance, politically," she said, in a practical tone of voice.
"Makes me wish I had a sister he could take instead of me," I grumbled.
"Having an older sister isn't all good, you know," she said quietly.
"What?" I asked. There had been something else in her tones.
"At least you showered his stink off you before you came to bed, Pansy...I appreciate it," she said, changing the subject and trying plainly to distract me. "Nothing like the reek of sex to seep into everything, go stale, and stink for weeks."
I wasn't going to be distracted. Vinca had....changed, in the last year, coming back to school after the summer holiday with a hard, bitter edge that she used on anyone who tried to get close. Thomas Nott had tried hard to date her...so had Ambrose Thiess, who had punched a wall and broken his hand rather than hit her when she turned him down with a cruel remark that had sent his hot Italian temper straight up to boiling. I had heard her weeping with small strangled sobs at night, but she insisted she was fine, and displayed a truly magnificent vocabulary of obscenities if anyone tried to get close.
"Can the crap, Vinca," I said. She raised one brow.
"Fuck off, Parkinson," she said. "Go to sleep so you can be all rested for your boyfriend tomorrow." Her voice imbued the words with a deep contempt.
"Who rubbed you the wrong way? Do all guys, even mentioned, piss you off? Cause I've about had enough of it. It's not like your parents don't have someone chosen for you too."
"Oh, they do," she said. "He's a year ahead of us. Beaumont."
I raised a brow. "The Bletchleys and now the Beaumonts. They're marrying you two off well."
She simply came out with a long obscene phrase that impressed even me. I arched one brow and she continued, "Like I was fucking asked. And Bletchley's SUCH a bloody prize, oh, yes. Bloody great pervert."
Now, I don't claim to be a great brain like the Ravenclaws. But in matters of interpersonal relationships and where people are vulnerable...well, I'm just good at knowing. And that statement was like a great big lit-up sign.
"He came on to you, huh?"
She exhaled and closed her eyes. A big shudder passed over her, and I felt bad. She was the best friend I had, after all. "Shove over," I said, slid out of my bed, over to hers, and got in beside her, giving her a hug. She hung on to me and shivered again.
"More...more than that, Pansy. You know I was there to visit my sister. Well, the reason I was there was that she wasn't allowed to Apparate. Doctor's orders. And she wasn't much wanting to go by portkey, what with the nausea and all."
"Ohhh...." I nodded. Many doctors were very careful with pregnant witches, and not Apparating was a common precaution.
"She was four months in, and, well, my family doesn't do pregnancy well. Big healthy babies, we don't lose any, but we spend the entire nine months being sick and having all kinds of miseries. Blanche had been throwing up every time she swallowed her own spit for the last two months, and couldn't stand to be touched. And.....I look like she did at sixteen." Her voice was soft.
"It's all right," I said, and patted her back. She kept speaking, head on my shoulder, as if hearing my heart comforted her.
"And one night he was drunk, just a little way, you know, and he came down to my room, and, he..." she broke off and started crying, deep, racking sobs. "And....and it wasn't just the once, either...he...he made me....learn things. To make him happy."
"Oh, Merlin, Vinca...." I breathed.
"And....Gods, this is what makes it worse....he taught me...to like it. To need him. By the end of the visit, I was going to him. I hated it. Hated myself." Her eyes looked like rainsoaked violets as she pulled free and looked at me. "I tried to do it right...I let Vincent Drax take me up to the astronomy tower, but, he started kissing me and it was awful, but I needed it, but I didn't want it from him!" She pressed her knuckle to her mouth, and bit until she had herself under control. "And it's like....I don't know. I hate him. I want him. I lie in bed and sit in class and think of his hands on my body and I can't handle it."
"So you push all the boys away," I said, sympathetically, reaching over and holding one hand, for comfort.
"I never liked boys much anyway," she said softly, staring off into space. And then she realized what she had said, darted one agonized glance at me, and rolled into a ball, beginning to keen softly.
"Vinca, Vinca, hey, no, don't, it's all right, it's fine. I don't hate you for liking girls too. Shh, I won't tell, I do too...shh..."
Her head came up slowly. "You...do...too?" She looked poleaxed. I shrugged.
"It's not like it matters...I mean, I'll get married when I'm eighteen. I can stand Draco. That's all that's necessary." I said, not looking at her. "But I look at girls more than guys."
"If....you could decide," she said quietly, "which would it be?"
I didn't have to think long. "Girls. Guys are...well, they aren't like us, are they?"
"No," she said quietly. There was a strange tension between us now, and she wouldn't look at me.
"Vinca?" I said after a long moment, and rolled over toward her. She shut her eyes when she saw me, pulled her arms in and shivered.
"Don't touch me, Pansy, please...I don't want...I mean, I want..." She bit her lip, a flush spreading over her face. And then she spoke rapidly, "Pansy, if you don't go get in your own bed, our friendship won't be the same tomorrow, okay? My self-control isn't great right now. "
"Maybe I don't care," I said, quietly. I felt like I'd stepped over a cliff, but, damn it, I knew I didn't have too long, and I didn't want any regrets....
She literally stopped breathing.
"Open your eyes, Vinca," I said, sliding closer. And when she opened them, I smiled at her. And then I kissed her.
At least, I thought I started out kissing her. Really. But it was as if I'd unleashed a tiger. She gave a little surprised cry, and then she started kissing me, and had her arms wound around me, as if she could drink something lost back into her out of my mouth. And now I knew what it was Draco was trying to do to me. My skin felt tight and hot, and she tasted wonderful, soft and with a strange undertone like sea salt and saffron and lavender. And there were differences to her tastes, to the thousand and one softnesses of the skin of her jaw, the curve of her ear, and she was all undulating flame and teeth beneath me. We managed to get our nightgowns off, and she paused, staring at the bite mark on my breast, eyes flashing.
"Did you enjoy getting it?" she asked, looking at my eyes.
"No. He made a nasty comment about marking his property."
Her eyes got hotter, if it was possible. "He's got his head up his polished pureblood ass," she said. "You belong to no one but yourself, lovely one." She bent her head, brushed a kiss over the mark, and looked at me again. "Remember that."
And I had to kiss her again, deep and full, and one of us was crying because there were tears on our cheeks and salt in our mouths, and I never did figure out who. Her hair was satin against my cheek, and she was soft and warm to my hands. Her cool fingers, slender as a child's, traced over my skin, weaving a spell that cannot be spoken, grabbing onto me with the desperation of someone drowning. We writhed together, and she whispered between kisses, "They don't own this....don't own you...don't own me..." and it felt like the thrill of eluding the tutor as a child to run in the spring sunshine, thrill heightened by the knowledge that there would be an end, that I had to go in sometime.
But for now there was only her body mirroring mine, touching me with a tender ferocity that I reflected back, just us, doing what we willed, as we willed. I was glad of the stone walls of the dungeon when she slid down my body, and woke and sated something that I had only dimly sensed before. And then she taught me what she knew, and finally she screamed aloud, like a hawk screaming defiance. I moved to hold her while she cried afterward, and holding her I wished it could be forever, and then I cried too.
And now I'm thinking about it, and brushing my hair. He came up behind me, took the brush from my hand. He is silver and pearl in the candlelight, reflected in my mirror, a young Apollo contrasted with my darker coloring. He is beautiful. The sight leaves me unmoved.
"Come to bed, Pansy," he says. There is no child yet, and he's making sure it's not for lack of opportunity. I let him lead me to the bed, and we begin the nightly routine. He is more practiced now, and he has learned the right buttons to press, so it is not entirely unpleasant. But his body is not soft, and there is no dancing sheet of flame, and when he finishes, I simply roll aside and hope I concieve, and remember dancing purple eyes, and a soft voice saying, "You belong to no one but yourself." And I want to weep, and I want to rage, and I want to run. Instead, once he leaves, I rise from the bed, and wash, and pace long silent corridors. It is not the first time.
It is late that night when I write a letter inviting my dear friend from school, Vinca Beaumont, to visit for a few days. I don't know if Draco will be angry. I don't care. The portraits look at me curiously as I walk back to my room from the green study where I sent the letter. But then, they have never seen me smile before.
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