Special delivery for tbranch Title: Eleventh Hour Author: Recipient's LJ name:tbranch Pairing(s): Pansy/Blaise Rating: R Summary Where were you when Voldemort fell? Word Count: ~2500 Warnings/Content: some violence, biting, questionable motives Disclaimer: I claim no ownership and intend no infringement. Author's notes: I hope this Pansy meets your approval, tbranch! Thanks to my beta, S.
But he’s there! Potter's there! Someone grab him!
Pansy's words echoing and echoing and echoing in her head. The way they all looked at her afterwards, the tone of McGonagall's voice. Fuck you, Miss Parkinson.
Her tears are bitter, furious, filled with impotence and fear. Pansy knows that her friends are going to die, knows that her school is going to be destroyed, knows that her family is going to come apart one way or another and she has never, never been so scared.
Blaise by her side is a reassuringly normal presence – unafraid, unblinking, just silently scowling as always. He has never behaved in any way that would suggest anything that has happened affects him in other than to deepen his contempt for Wizarding kind as a whole. Blaise in his own way is quite the egalitarian; he hates everyone, absolutely everyone, it's just a question of degree. Even now his expression is haughty, almost bored, as though they aren't walking away from everything they've ever known.
Blaise is damned near the only one left. Draco was a stranger long before he was gone, before Pansy curled up in on herself watching Crabbe get better and better at hurting people and practicing all her best hexes so that it wouldn't be her. Dumb Gregory looking at her with hope and she with no idea how to discourage him. Now Gregory smiles at her softly from a few feet ahead; Crabbe's next to him, but…
"Blaise, where's…?"
Blaise shuts her up with the merest flicker of an eyebrow; the rest of her sentence dies in her throat.
The air is unpleasantly warm, and Pansy focuses on that rather than the inevitability of losing more friends tonight, or the question of where they are being shepherded away to - is it Hogsmeade, or somewhere else? Are they being taken to be used as hostages in case of the Dark Lord's victory? Pansy hopes no one is stupid enough to think the Dark Lord cares about them; he cares only about the people strong enough to succeed and that is the Slytherin way.
"In here," says Professor Vector, indicating the Three Broomsticks of all bloody places. "There's a fireplace and Floo powder and if you've any sense you'll use them and get away from here. Rosmerta?"
Rosmerta is sneering. "Where's the little Malfoy shit?"
Pansy lifts her hand to her mouth without a thought, biting down on the knuckle of her thumb.
Professor Vector says, "Rosmerta, there's no time for this, if he's run off then he's run off. Let's get them out of here."
Pansy begins to shake. "You can't send us away, you can't, you can't…"
Crabbe's voice: "Damn right. We've got a right to fight, you know?"
Rosmerta levels her wand at him. "On whose side, Slytherin? Should we just stupefy you and leave you here?"
"You can try," Crabbe snaps. Pansy feels herself curl in further, furious and wounded and with no idea what to do as she sees Rosmerta's eyes glitter and knows that something else bad is about to happen.
And then Blaise's voice, detached as ever, rings into the tension: "The hell with this." And he has his hand on Pansy's elbow and there's a crack and they are gone.
When Pansy recovers from the Apparition, she's in the foyer of a building she doesn't recognize. Blaise is already striding away from her, barking orders to a House Elf that disappears rapidly with Blaise's coat. Pansy pulls her eyes up from the dark green marble floor and forces herself to meet Blaise's eyes.
"Why did you do that?"
"You were about to do something stupid."
"What… Draco… I…"
"Stupid," Blaise repeats and then walks away, clearly expecting her to follow him.
What else can she do? Pansy has her wand, sure, but what's she going to do – Apparate back to Hogsmeade and try to get back up to Hogwarts and look for her boyfriend? That's just plain stupid, the kind of thing that only Gryffindors do. She'd get herself killed by whichever side saw her first, she's under no illusions about that.
Draco… whines some part of herself, and yes, she's terrified for him. But it had been Draco himself who'd told her in an Owl received from somewhere she couldn't trace it two days after Dumbledore died, don't look for me, don't worry about me, worry about you, look after you, take care of you because I can't right now. They love each other, and she owes him.
And in short, Pansy is fucking terrified.
"You coming?" Blaise's voice cuts into her reverie like a whip crack.
It would seem perfectly normal to anyone watching, if a little tense. Pansy checks the time – it's eleven o'clock already and here they are with a tray full of House-Elf made tea and scones as though it were afternoon tea time in the best pureblood homes.
Conversation ran dry after "Where's your family?"/"Why, where's yours?" They both know. There's really no point in going over it again.
Blaise stirs his tea, radiating nothing more than a mild awkwardness at the lack of conversation. Pansy's jaw is set so hard she's worried her teeth might crack.
The tension is rising in Pansy's body, drawing her stomach tight even as it's elongating her. It feels as though her spine is going to snap, her muscles are going to explode. She could start running now, running and screaming and she doesn't think she'd ever have to stop.
"You're crying," Blaise tells her with confusion in her voice – and finally she snaps.
"Fuck you, Blaise! Fuck you! At least if I was there I'd know what the hell was happening but here I am, miles away from everything, safe while everyone I know except you might be getting themselves killed and too damn afraid to go back to them. And I," she can't breathe, her skin is trapping her, her bones are bending and she's going to come apart, "I can't stay here," she gasps and jumps out of the chair, running our of the room though God knows where she thinks she's going.
Barely seven steps and Blaise is yanking her back. "You can't!"
Pansy jerks her arm away from him. "Why not? Why the fuck not? I'm trying to sit here and wait and play the fainting damsel like you and Draco and even my damn parents told me to and I'm not, I can't be, I have to do something, anything…"
Blaise has his hand on his arm again. "You'll get killed!"
No I won't, she wants to say, ridiculously. Or even, It doesn't matter - ha! Of course it fucking matters but that's not exactly the point right now. "I can't stay here and do nothing. I feel like I'm crawling out of my skin, I can't stand it!"
"So what?" They're really struggling now, Pansy trying to wrench herself away from Blaise who's somehow got his arm around her shoulder and is holding on as she twists away. Pansy tries to reach her wand but Blaise knocks it to the floor and kicks it away. She's not sure where his own is, she's not sure why he isn't using it except that she did practice all those hexes for a really long time so maybe he just figures brute strength is a better route to victory.
Pansy stamps on Blaise's instep and he curses, stops trying to pin her left arm and just tries to pick her up with his hands on parts of her body that shouldn't support her weight. Pansy twists and bites him like a cat, let me go!, her body travelling almost the whole length of his as Blaise drops her.
Pansy can't help it, she laughs. All the tension just ebbs away, the fight slumps out of her and she laughs, the sound full of wracking despair.
Flushed and furious Blaise snaps, "What?" at her as though he doesn't know.
"You're hard," Pansy giggles as though this is hilarious, as though she's fifteen again and holding that Hufflepuff's dick in her hand for the first time. "I wondered why you brought me here, now I know." Pansy's laughing harder now, seeing in her mind all the times Blaise said or did something that indicated he just might care about her approval, and the way she'd thought of him almost as a gay French friend, assuming that he'd always be aloof and untouchable.
And tonight everything in the whole wide world was changing and why shouldn't that include him, too.
Blaise shifts uncomfortably. "I didn't bring you here to fuck you. Though I don't see what's so fucking funny about the idea." His tone is perfectly balanced between fury and pure ice.
Pansy's giggling is settling itself. The tension in her body had almost gone, but she can feel the remnants of it now, knows it won't take long to flare back into life.
"It's not a terrible idea," Pansy allows and Blaise's lip curls in her direction.
"Fuck you, Parkinson."
Pansy smiles. "Precisely, my dear Blaise, precisely." She's hardly dressed for it wearing her school robes, not even her best underwear, but this is her field, seduction is what she does and the inevitability of the evening almost makes her relax enough to forgo the pleasure entirely. Or it might be if she didn't keep seeing them in her mind – dead Vincent, dead Greg, dead Draco, dead Draco, dead Draco.
"Fuck all of this," she says before she smashes her body into Blaise. She's so close he can't pull her closer when his arms catch her automatically; they are flush together, his hardness against her stomach, her mouth against his throat, biting. Blaise makes a sound in the back of his throat and Pansy thrills to know that she has him, he really is this easy for her, and then his mouth's on hers, biting, savage presses that are nothing like the way Draco kisses her. Pansy smashes down the thought.
Blaise kisses her like a man starved, his lips a little thicker than Pansy likes but his tongue bold against her own. Pansy's the one with the momentum though, and she's the one to push him back onto the chair he sat on to drink tea as though they were their parents. Pansy wonders briefly if Blaise's mother really did cause all those husbands to burn up for lust's sake, wonders if that's why Blaise always seems so cold, but he's not cold now with Pansy pushing him into the armchair and landing on top of him. He's not cold as his hands tug at her hand, positioning her throat so he can scrape his teeth along her clavicle.
He's not cold, but he's not the one in charge, either, Pansy reminds him as she curls her fingers in his hair, jerking his head to the side so she can catch his earlobe between her teeth even as she presses herself down on him.
Blaise's hands are tugging at her robes, trying to pull them off her shoulders, trying to open her up to his eyes and Pansy lets him, so long as he doesn't make her wait too long. That liquid feeling south of her navel has started – she can feel her pulse there, where she wants him, and she has no particular interest in slowing down or exploring his body.
Pansy has imagined what it would be like to be with Draco again, to see for the first time since those adolescent fumblings became fear-tainted desperation. She's hoped that it will be as it was before, innocent and loving, all the time knowing that the darkness isn't going to let them go so easily.
She loved him. Loves him. She does.
But Blaise has sent her into a fever and she's not sure why or how – because it's been so long? Because it's been such a long fucking day? Because this isn't even about getting off, not at all, it's about being alive and celebrating that for just… one… more… moment.
Blaise gasps as Pansy cups him through his trousers, reaches down and frees him as he pulls up the robes, pulls up her skirt, pulls aside her knickers – plain black cotton but the sight of them has him groaning as he slides his fingers under them and inside her. Pansy bites her lips and now she wishes she'd taken the time to strip – and so now she pulls the robe over her head, breaking the contact between her face and Blaise's teeth, pulling her hand away from his cock, even, so she can get her shirt out of the way, get her bra yanked off and have his teeth close on her breast, oh yes, yes, hurt me.
Pansy's skirt is still around them, Blaise's hand beneath it now. She stands for a moment and he makes a noise like a protest until he realizes that she's just pulling her underwear away. She leans forward, allowing her liberated breasts to sway softly towards his face as she pulls his trousers and shorts down to his knees; he has them in his hands in a trice.
Pansy is not thinking about how she's only done this with Draco. This will surprise her, later, that she wasn't more concerned about it. She has a reputation for being a terrible tease, that's well deserved, and an appalling slut, which is slightly less so. In either case, what she's thinking is… nothing. There is only this.
Pansy settles her weight back onto Blaise's thighs, her feet touching the ground on either side of the chair they're fucking on, her shoes still on protecting her from the cold marble. Blaise has his teeth on his nipple again, and then he's sliding all over her, a fingertip in her belly button, nails curled in her shoulder blade. Pansy's the one in the rush, the one reaching for his cock and guiding him inside her, just the head at first and then with a rush she lowers herself onto his completely.
Blaise stills and Pansy laughs a little more, imagining the sight of them in this room with the dim lighting and the beautiful floors, the china cups scant feet away and her, naked except for her skirt hitched around her waist, shielding the joined part of them from other eyes. Pansy almost laughs again when Blaise buries his face in her breasts, but then he's using his tongue on her, licking every inch of skin he can reach and it's not so funny after all. Blaise, with his tongue on her skin and his fingers pressed into the dips her collarbone makes, is lucky not to know what Pansy's thinking as she tenses her leg muscles and relaxes them, reaching back to put her hands and her weight on Blaise's knees, letting her breasts bob for him as she rides him, rides him, rides him.
Let them not be dead, she thinks with every thrust, every groan she pulls from him, every everything. Let them not be dead.