Chapter Text
A month before Christmas, Draco Malfoy wakes up to Pansy’s spawn crawling over him with horrifying flexibility and something sticky dried on his cheek. He squeezes Draco’s face with equally disgusting hands, and all his body weight sinks down as he forces a smile from Draco, interrupting the tequila somersaults of his stomach.
“Breakfast,” Will explains. Draco does not reply, too focused on swallowing back bile. His face is squished into a different shape; the smile must have been unsavory to witness.
“Stop torturing Mummy’s friend and finish your food,” Pansy calls from the small dining table in her otherwise ridiculously expensive flat.
The five-year-old drops onto the floor and takes off into a full run, which earns him a disregarded, “No running inside, Will!” Drums in Draco’s skull pound harder with increased noise and brighter light, but ignoring a summons will only make everything worse. If he wants to know how he got there, he will need to grovel. Anything else, and he isn’t sure his pride would survive it.
Pansy watches his sad limp from the very comfortable sofa to the gorgeous but deeply uncomfortable dining chair across from her. Her makeup means it’s far later in the day than he thought, but her hair is still pulled back, unstyled, and she’s in one of Blaise’s shirts. Mid-morning. Probably a weekend. Maybe it isn’t as bad as all that.
Dropping her chin into her palm, Pansy tracks how gingerly Draco sits. “What can we do for you on this busy Tuesday morning?”
Tuesday. “Fuck.”
Will glances between him and Pansy, a small devilish smile growing on his face. “That’s a bad word.”
“It is,” agrees Pansy.
“Indeed,” Draco says, wincing when he sounds exactly like his father. Rubbing his temples doesn’t help his headache, but if he is doing his best Lucius impression, he may as well commit. “Tuesday. That is… not ideal.”
Pansy raises an eyebrow. “Work?”
“Oh, probably not anymore. I was beginning to like that job.”
“That’s the third one this year, isn’t it?”
“The fourth.” Draco groans, but the sound shakes his sinuses. “Fuck, Pans, I really can’t keep doing this.”
The clink of Pansy’s mug being placed back on the table is loaded with judgmental agreement.
Heat spreads up his neck, and Draco lifts his head. “I think I’m embarrassed. Is this shame? Is this how normal people feel all the time?”
“I certainly wouldn’t know, but Apparating to my flat in the middle of the night piss drunk should make you feel something, maybe.” But Pansy takes his hand, dragging him into a hunch over the table. Loose material of his shirt— whose shirt? Blaise’s, maybe, if the size is enough to go off of— drags through a jam-covered slice of toast. Her dark brown eyes catch his, a motherly, sympathetic disapproval on her mouth. “It’s almost been a full week since he ended things, Draco. Pull yourself the fuck together.”
“Mummy, bad words,” Will reminds them from the other side of the table.
“Go play with your new car set your godfather brought you, dear.” Her thumb runs over the bumps of Draco’s knuckles. “You and Theo have broken up thousands of times. He always comes crawling back.”
“I don’t want him crawling. I want him walking down the aisle, the way we were planning on him doing before he decided he wanted to give women one last hurrah.” One tug, and he is free to sit back in his chair, slumping when too much sun stings his eyes. “That was supposed to be his Christmas present.”
“You shouldn’t have shown up screeching about how much he was going to love it and asking him to open it in the middle of the night then.”
A cheerful squeal echoes off the high ceilings, unsoftened by the thousands of garlands Pansy has hung up in an attempt to give her child a festive Christmas without sacrificing the majority of her designer decor. Will crashes two cars into each other so viciously that one loses its cargo, and the tiny pipe cleaner Christmas tree flies through the air.
“Look, darling. If Theo can’t figure out what he wants, it’s better you know now,” Pansy says as they both watch her bundle of joy create a seven car pile up in the middle of town. Behind her head, there are several doodles from Will using his newest art kit to decorate her chic white walls. Not for the first time, Draco tries to puzzle out how Pansy of nine years ago would react to this Pansy now. Before marriage, before her son. Draco’s Pansy.
Will gives Draco a too familiar grin, similar to the one Pansy used to give him before ordering shots. “They should be flying cars.”
“No.”
“You know, I think he has a point.”
“Absolutely not. Last time you nearly broke my vase and my wedding photo.”
“Blaise looks better in it than you do anyway.”
Pansy whips her attention to him so quickly that hair drops from her messy up-do. “I paid more money than you can imagine on that dress.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Draco says and sips from her abandoned mug. “I’ve never had to plan a wedding. Good lord, Pansy, how much sugar did you put in this?”
“Not yet doesn’t mean not ever. So you aren’t marrying Theo—”
“I love him.” The mug goes back onto the table, and his shaking hands fall into his lap. His body hurts. He can smell the liquor he is sweating out.
Pansy ignores his miniature breakdown. “So it won’t be Theo, who isn’t good enough for you in the first place. You will meet someone else, as long as you don’t drown yourself before you manage.”
“I love him. I don’t want to meet anyone else.”
“You love the idea of who you think he could be. You can’t be in love with the real Theo,” Pansy snaps. “Why would you? He breaks your heart every few months. There’s too much scar tissue to feel anything real.”
Sneering, Draco says, “What do you know? You’ve been with the same person for almost a decade. Everyone is on-again-off-again these days.”
“I know you.”
“Do you?”
She doesn’t answer with words, or with a glare, or with any one of the several things Draco expects. The longer she continues watching Will crash cars together, the more Draco’s alcohol-induced nausea begins to taste like guilt. He taps the table, one-two-three, holding air in his lungs for the duration.
“My parents are going to think I’ll follow in Theo’s footsteps, regardless of if I tell them we were engaged before this shit show of an arranged marriage,” Draco says as both an explanation and a change of the subject.
Pansy scoffs, her hands twitching at her side. She quit smoking years ago, but sometimes when she speaks with Draco for too long, her muscle memory takes over, putting them years back, into their chain-smoking days. “You never told them who you were engaged to?”
“Why would I? All they care about is that he’s a man.”
“And because some part of you knew he might do something like this.”
Of course he hadn’t known. The idea is absurd. Theo may have spent four months out of their two years together trying to straighten himself out, but when he’d said, Let’s get fucking married, Draco had thought he meant it. Not telling his parents who he’d gotten engaged to was less a choice and more a survival tactic; the fight they’d had when Draco told them he was going to marry a man nearly brought the manor down around their ears.
Not that Pansy needs to know. He owes her for the little dig about how much of a shit friend she’s been since reproducing. He clears his throat. “Let’s stay focused on the present issue, Pans. My parents are going to be abysmal, and I’m expected to have dinner with them alone for twelve nights.”
Rolling her eyes, Pansy gives him another disapproving mum frown. “You’ve just drank your way into losing a fourth job, but yes, the twelve days of Christmas tradition your parents insist on keeping alive is your biggest problem.”
Draco sips again at the mug they have been sharing, wincing again at the cut of sugar on his tongue. His head feels like piled rubble. Pansy’s words sit heavier in his stomach than the liquid he barely manages to swallow.
But then. “What if I find another fiancé?”
Pansy takes a second to follow. “I am not lending out my husband to you again.”
“No, not Blaise. Someone really horrible. Or perfect.” Draco’s hair stays stuck on the side of his head when he tries to comb it back. “Whoever would agree to something like that, I suppose, if beggars can’t be choosers.”
“A fake date for the holidays is your grand plan?” Pansy pinches the bridge of her nose.
Around them, debris from Pansy’s day-to-day life she goes through without Draco litters every flat surface. Photos of Will, of her and Blaise, of their families together sit in stylish frames amongst massive lush green garlands she insists are Christmas-related. There are four stockings, the smallest being for their partially invisible cat Draco has never seen in person, and Draco is at a well-used table for three, sweating through her husband’s shirt he must have snatched off the floor before their cleaning services collected it.
When Draco leaves, he will go back to the flat his father bought for him and search through job adverts in the Daily Prophet while choking down hair of the dog, and after that becomes early day drinking-cum-outright regular drinking, he might get enough motivation to burn the rest of Theo’s things still cluttering up the little space he ever dared to use in Draco’s flat. Draco will have to resort to burning his own things that Theo borrowed too often, just to have some catharsis.
Back when it had been just Pansy-and-Draco, she once made herself gag while thinking about creating a nuclear family; Draco had held her hair while she puked vodka-cran into a dirty toilet in the Men’s, and in between sweaty forehead touching, she’d made him promise they would never let the other settle for less than they deserved.
There is no grand plan, not one they can make. If there were, would either of them be living as they do?
Draco, obviously, decides this is an inside thought. “Do you think I could find someone who would do it for money?”
“Draco, you cannot hire a gigolo to pretend to be your fiancé.” Pansy checks the black spot of a clock on her otherwise white wall. “Will has school soon. You need a shower if you’re coming to drop off.”
“No, no, I won’t go. His teachers will talk,” he says, but Will’s head pops up over the edge of the expensive sofa, eyes bright and very much his father’s, and within the hour, he is showered, dressed in more of Blaise’s clothes, and waiting with his hand held while Will attempts to use both him and Pansy as a swing.
Pansy has fixed her hair into a light curl, perfected her makeup, and the wind carries her new perfume to the sour-faced mothers in line around them. Their fussing smogs in the air around them, noticing Draco in Blaise’s ill-fitting shirt and pants.
“They’re going to think you’re stepping out,” mutters Draco.
Pansy seems unbothered. “I think I know someone who might do it, if you’re serious.”
“Do what? Let you cheat on your husband?”
“Be your fake date. Fiancé.” She rolls her eyes. “Do you realize how ridiculous you are?”
“Who?”
“You won’t like it.”
“I don’t like much of anything,” Draco admits. “Try me.”
The teachers line up to take tiny child hands and lead them back inside the skinny school building trapped between where Olivander’s used to be and a new shoe store. A plethora of new businesses came about in the flush at the end of the war, and the tiny mixed muggle and magical curriculum private school had grown in the two years since its start. Maybe Draco can get a job here, if he mentions Will is technically his godson.
The pink-haired wizard looks Draco over from head-to-toe, holding Will’s hand. “Who’s your friend, Mrs. Zabini?”
“Don’t worry, John. I’m not leaving Blaise,” Pansy purrs, and Draco gives up on that dream. What would he do in a building full of school children anyway? Scream? Pull out his hair?
Will waves at them one last time before no longer being in sight. Not all children are terrible every second of the day, he supposes.
Pansy tucks a curl behind her ear, smiling up at him in her best impression of a long lost starlet in the sunshine. “I’ll set up a meeting, if he agrees. If you’re sure you want this.”
“I don’t have any better ideas. Do you?”
“Don’t go to the dinners at all,” Pansy suggests, but she sees Draco’s face and shrugs. “I’ve got nothing then. Besides the obvious.”
“Set it up. What’s the worst that could happen?”
