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“Do you remember the first night you snuck into my room?” Pansy asked.
He did. He also remembered the countless nights afterward. They were merely amateur explorers then, charting territory over the hills and valleys of each other’s bodies.
“We could pretend you came back for me. You could take me away again for another adventure,” she said.
As they lay side by side on the bed, Pansy pulled him close, wrapping her legs around him. They kissed like they were fifteen again, tangled in sticky sheets.
* * * * *
Not long before, Draco had been acquitted.
He was a wreck.
“Who could ever love me?” he asked.
Pansy could have been mean, but she wasn’t. Not to him.
She pulled his head tight to her chest. “Hush, love.”
They were hidden at a Muggle hotel in London. The kind with marble floors, silk sheets, and twenty-four-hour room service. They were not hiding, per se, but Draco was not welcome at the Manor, and Pansy knew he needed a safe space. Safe and away from the negative reactions to his verdict. Away from the darkness.
Pansy’s sweater was saturated by a sea of tears. She stroked the back of Draco’s hair with soft sweeps. Like a black and white goose protecting the lone egg in her nest, she kept him close.
Draco inhaled deeply, and his nervous system relaxed at Pansy’s touch. He thought back to when he was much younger when he would play make believe. It was there in those fantasies that he got to be the honorable characters — the Auror pursuing the criminal underbelly of the wizarding world or the dragon hunter that tamed cruel beasts into submission. None of it had been real though. Instead, in the perpetual battle between good and evil, Draco had been groomed for ill pursuits.
Just now, however, all the specifics of his real life had escaped his mind.
As Pansy held him, the horrors were erased. He was not denying the abominations he witnessed and even perpetrated, but his mind could not bear the real story right now. So, he wrote a new one (or Pansy wrote one for him). One that he could accept without breaking into a million pieces. What was left was an indefinite memory of his childhood, before he became the villain. He had been a good boy. He was kind to his mother, particularly whenever his father had been rough with her or humiliated her. Maybe he was a bit mischievous, but what boy wasn’t? The elves loved him, caring for him like he was their own kin. He had friends — a gang of pureblood misfits. And he had Pansy.
For all one might think he deserved, he was still just a boy. Not even eighteen years old when it all went down. A psychiatrist had testified at his trial that Draco had suffered significant trauma in his household, which meant he was predisposed to commit crime. According to the expert, his childhood traumas were mitigating factors, and the powers that be thought these were reasons enough to give him a second chance. In the end, when Lucius showed no remorse and continued down a path of further destruction, it had been Draco who told the authorities where he had been hiding. The betrayal was one more weakness his father would add to the list of Draco’s disappointments, but Pansy had told him he had been brave.
Maybe all was not lost for him yet. Maybe he would be the one to take down the monster next time.
Pansy wrapped her wings tighter around Draco, keeping him warm.
He could stay here for a while.
* * * * *
In that beautiful hotel, Draco and Pansy forgot what it was like to be hurt and on the losing side of a war. The longer they stayed there, the more the nostalgia rooted itself in their minds.
Every day, Pansy would tell Draco stories. Some were fantastical. Others were moral. And in return, Draco would take care of her. Sometimes he drew her a bath filled with fragrant lavender oils and washed her cropped inky-colored hair. Other times, he would order her favorite champagne and find ways to make her laugh. He counted her laughs like a miser counts his coins, and he felt wealthy.
Valentine’s Day came and went. When they realized they had missed the holiday, Pansy gave him a heart-shaped chocolate the size of a quaffle with DRACO written in red icing. She had not forgotten his affinity for desserts, his milk teeth having nearly rotted away by the time he first met her. The chewy caramel filling coated their teeth before he tasted the sweet parts of her.
That room was the stage where they escaped harsh realities. One day Pansy was a siren, her golden scales glinting in the sunlight as she bathed in warm azure waters. The hotel bathroom, of course, was her grotto. Her enchanting song raptured him away from his sea voyage and into her grasp, where she promised him he was loved. It was in the lagoon that he finally explored the furthest depths of her. The scent of lavender and musk flooded his senses as she carried on with her serene melody.
They usually ended up back in the warm bed, the mattress their boat as they set out into uncharted waters, surrounded by waves of silk. Pansy looked like a goddess ornamenting the ship’s bow when she joined her body with his in the captain’s quarters. There was something about the sea that stirred their primal nature as they let themselves succumb to its powerful rolling waves. Their sweat tasted like sea salt coating their skin from the misty air. On one voyage, Draco finally tied up every rotten feeling that ever weighed him down like an anchor and made them walk the plank, no longer willing to hold his miseries hostage.
Sometimes they just stretched their wings wide and took flight, circling lazily around the earth in the cloudy skies. It was all a bit hazy, but the heights were spectacular. And, no one told them to come down just yet. They could do whatever they pleased when they were in the four corners of that room.
After several weeks, Pansy said he didn’t look like a boy anymore and didn’t feel like one either. All wizards grow up eventually, but he was not ready yet. He supposed by now he had transformed from that unlovable Great Grey Shrike to a singular Grey Heron, but he was still a bird all the same. At least for now.
One late afternoon after a lengthy expedition, Pansy had drifted asleep with her head on a white cumulus pillow. Warm light swept through the hotel room, casting a glow across her face. He watched her, tucking her hair behind her ear, and whispered, “Thank you.”
He could stay here for a while longer.