'This is important too.' Draco began to walk across the room, pulling Pansy with him. Harry fell into step beside him, feeling that something very strange was going on. 'Pansy here forgot to bring a wedding present.
She's in big trouble.'
'Oh, who cares about wedding presents?' Harry demanded.
Draco shot him a look. 'You know, for someone so bright you can be a blinkered idiot much of the time.' His eyes suddenly narrowed. 'You look different, Potter — did you cut your hair or something?'
Harry made a strangled sound. Pansy glanced over at him. 'You do look a bit different,' she agreed.
Harry choked, and grabbed at Draco's sleeve. 'Dammit — Malfoy, listen to me — I have to talk to you!'
'Harry, not now!' Draco hissed, stopping dead in his tracks. He still, amazingly, had hold of Pansy, who had ceased trying to get away and was staring at Harry with what looked like curiosity.
'Can't you see I need to talk to you?' Harry said desperately, abandoning all pretense.
'What I see is you doing a dead-on impression of an electric squirrel. Stop hopping up and down and just wait a second — '
'It can't wait — '
'Are you dying?'
Harry's eyes flew wide. 'No.'
'Then it can wait. WEASLEY!' Draco shouted unexpectedly, pitching his voice very loudly. Most of the room turned around and stared, and all the Weasleys, who were grouped by the punch bowl, turned as well. Draco's narrow mouth curled into a long smile, 'Ron! Oi! Over here!'
Ron, arrested mid-motion with a glass of pumpkin juice halfway to his lips, stared. Draco reached out his free hand and made a beckoning motion. Ron's eyes went to Harry; Harry stared him down, challenging him to come near, to look away. With a nervous glance at his brothers, Ron set his glass down on the table and began to make his way across the room towards Draco and his two companions.
Pansy, a stricken look on her face, began trying to get away again. Draco only held her tighter. Harry could see that his fingers were digging hard into her upper arms; it must have hurt her badly. Under other circumstances he might have been appalled at Draco's ruthlessness; now he was not. He was beginning to have an inkling of what was going on, and his heart started to beat faster against his ribs. What did Draco think he was doing?
The world seemed to narrow down to a single path of motion: Ron, walking towards them. He passed by Pansy's parents, who were close by and observing. Heads turned as he walked. Everyone was staring, with the half-embarrassed, half-fascinated expressions of people watching A Scene take place.
Ron stopped in front of Draco. Harry had not been this close to Ron in almost two weeks. He could see violet shadows under his friend's eyes.
They stirred no compassion in him. His rage consumed any compassion he might have felt and left him speechless.
'What's this about, then,' Ron said, softly, looking not at Harry but at Draco. 'If you wanted my attention, Malfoy…'
'If I wanted your attention, I'd dress up like Hermione and try to shag you in the broom closet,' Draco said with a smile like the edge of a knife.
Ron colored slightly, but didn't move. 'Say whatever you want, Malfoy,' he said. 'But don't ruin this wedding. I'm asking you.'
'It's not the wedding yet,' Draco said, the same wicked brilliant smile never leaving his face. 'It's the rehearsal dinner.'
At that, Harry looked past his friend and saw that Sirius was coming towards them. Behind him, Lupin stood frozen. Everyone was still staring.
He felt himself shrink under their gazes, knew Ron must be curdled with humiliation beside him, but Draco was at his best when everyone was watching. Draco alone among them looked as if he was enjoying himself.
'The rehearsal dinner,' Draco went on smoothly, 'is meant for family and close friends of the family. You, I think, are neither.'
'That's not for you to say,' Ron said. 'I came for Harry's sake, not yours.'
His eyes went to Harry, and they were huge and almost black with entreaty, 'Harry,' he whispered. 'Harry, I'm so sorry, I'm so so sorry — '
Harry felt each apologetic word like a knife point driven into his skin.
'Don't,' he whispered. 'Don't, I don't want to hear it — '
'Harry — ' Ron said.
'No!' Harry shouted. 'Don't you know I — '
'Shut up, Potter! Just — shut up!' It was Pansy, speaking for the first time, her squeaky little voice trembling with emotion, and Harry knew — in that moment, he knew. She had started away from Draco, who still held her arm tightly from behind, and her eyes were on Ron's face. Harry had seen that look before. Hermione looking at him, Draco looking at her, Seamus looking at Ginny, the same look on his own face, caught in photographs or mirrors — 'Leave him alone,' Pansy cried. 'Like you've never done anything wrong — '
She broke off, as if she realized she had said too much. Harry could see by the dawning look of horror on Ron's face that he, too, was beginning to understand. But it was Draco who acted. It was Draco who bent his head, and spoke into Pansy's ear. It was low enough that she didn't pull away, loud enough that they could all hear it.
'He never has done anything wrong, Pansy darling,' he whispered, and his voice was velvet soft. 'But I have.'
And he pushed her, suddenly and violently and hard, towards Ron. Who, being Ron, caught her instead of letting her fall. She stumbled and clutched at him, and Draco laughed.
'That's right, Weasley,' he said. 'Cop a decent grab, would you? See if you feel anything familiar? You should — whatever glamour spells she used, I'd think she'd still feel the same. And you ought to know that body pretty well — so many nights together in the prefects' room. You seem the type for clumsy fumblings to me, but after all that time even you ought to have
— '
With a guttural little exclamation of horror, Ron pushed Pansy away, and wrapped his arms around himself; he was shaking. Draco made no move to recapture her and she made no move to run away, just threw her hands up over her face and burst into loud, spasmodic sobbing. Ron stared at her, turning rapidly green.
'Now you know,' Draco said to Ron, and smiled.
Harry was conscious that there was movement all around them; Sirius hurrying towards them, the Parkinsons almost running to their crying daughter, the whole room bursting into whispers — but he saw, as if lit by a single spotlight, only the narrow circle that held himself and Ron, Pansy and Draco. Pansy weeping, Ron shocked and silent, and Draco — Draco looked like nothing on earth. He looked like drawings Harry had seen in his childhood of avenging angels. There was something inexorable about him and Harry knew he himself was the one who had set this in motion -
he had asked Draco to make her pay, and pay she would. Somewhere in the back of Draco's eyes, he seemed to be asking Harry a question, Is this what you wanted? Is this enough? Is this as you imagined it would be?
And some part of Harry, some cruel undreamed-of part, whispered back to Draco that he should not stop.
The smile left Draco's face. He was still looking at Ron. 'Now you know,' he said again. 'What you threw everything away for — for this, for her. For a girl you can't even stand. For a pack of stupid lies. For a fantasy that wasn't even worth having. I would have given everything to have what you had once, Weasley.' Harry looked at Draco in surprise, but he wasn't lying — he meant it. 'I would have given everything, and you threw it all away for nothing, and you'll never have it back. Nobody will. It's ruined now. One of the only truly good things I've ever seen in this rotten world, and you ruined it.' Draco looked at Ron as if he loathed him; Harry wondered how much of it
