Pool Lessons

Pansy Parkinson knows how to seduce. It’s a skill those of her class, her breeding, learn quickly. Slytherin children play at sex like lion clubs do at stalking. Always, below the surface, the knowledge that this game will someday be deadly serious. So she learns how to dress, how to talk. She learns how to play coy, hinting at deeper, hidden passions (that she doesn’t feel or understand, and maybe never will). She watches the way her parents interact (her mother raising her fork to her lips, always empty, and smiling with eyes like barred windows as her father sneers behind his cigar smoke.) Watching, imitating, playing dress-up in her mother’s lingerie (her mother had smiled her sphinx’s smile, and urged her to try the red next, tangling her fingers in Pansy’s blond curls.)

Pansy Parkinson knows how to seduce. She knows that Draco likes the way she looks in pink, likes the contrast of little-girl frills and strawberry glossed-lips that whisper shameful, filthy things in his ear. She always remembers to gasp and put up a fight even as her body arches into his clutching fingers, her breath calculated into breathy sobs as she stares at the green tapestries around the bed and wonders how much they cost.

Pansy Parkinson knows how to seduce, but she’s always glad to pick up new techniques. So when Rita Skeeter arrives with her too-red lips and her too-tight robes, Pansy notices the corresponding tightness in Draco’s robes. She studies Rita, making sure to spend lots of time with her, whispering in her ear (although she’s not sure where beetles’ ears are, exactly). She hears his breath catch as they lean their bodies together (not touching, just close even to feel the older woman’s heat rising from her body, alarmingly intense as though something inside her burned). The next Hogsmeade weekend, she buys a tube of cheap red lipstick and charms her nails to match, growing them almost into talons. Draco grins when he sees them, and Pansy feels proud of her skill.

Pansy Parkinson knows how to seduce, and she recognizes the skill in others. Rita Skeeter is a master, and Pansy enjoys watching her work (the work of a player at the top of her game). Pansy understands the way the world works, and Rita Skeeter soars through it. So when Rita disappears, suddenly, her column empty, her wings torn and bloody, Pansy feels…lost. The world as she knows it is slipping. One day she passes the Trio of vanity and bluster that most know as the Boy Who Lived and his friend in deep conversation. Granger is laughing, and gloating over her ability to force Rita to print something wholesome. Pansy is torn for a second between amazement (almost respect, who would have thought Granger had it in her to blackmail) and resentment (the golden children always won, because the light that steals, lies and kills can still defeat the darkness and be thanked for it). Into all this she has an image, suddenly, of Rita laughing at some gossip she’d related (invented); head back, fingernails grasping the arms of the chair, calling Pansy “brilliant,” promising to quote her, saying she was glad someone would be able to take over for her in her old age (smirking through the cosmetic charms adorning her face). Before she knows it she’s sputtered out a curse she barely remember knowing, and run off down the hall (trying to curse her problems away like some kind of stupid Gryffindor).

Pansy Parkinson knows how to seduce, and she puts her best efforts into a letter, addressed to one Rita Skeeter. She watches her owl fly off to deliver it, feeling oddly conflicted. A week later she receives a response, short and to the point. “The Duchess, Muggle London, Saturday, 10 pm.” She edges into a dark bar with a barely readable sign at 10:15, feeling frustrated at her appearance at this cheap Muggle hole, and not sure if she blames Rita or herself (not sure who to blame for the way her heart was beating out of rhythm.) As her eyes adjust to the bar, she sees several women gathered around a green table, playing some kind of bizarre Muggle game with colorful balls and a stick. Rita is nowhere to be seen, so she stares for a while at the way the balls click together, trying to make some sense of it (though what sense there can be in a Pureblood girl standing in a bar watching Muggles wave sticks in the air she can’t imagine.) She jumps when she hears the familiar purring gravel of Rita’s voice, feels her nail scratching lightly down her arm. “Pool…interesting game, isn’t it? Mostly watch, but I could teach you, if you’d like.” Pansy is surprised to find herself nodding, trying to swallow around a throat that’s suddenly dry (she supposes it must be all the smoke in the air, for she finds that she’s also rather lightheaded all of a sudden, and wonders vaguely if she should sit down.)

Pansy Parkinson knows how to seduce, and she watches the woman at the end of the long oak bar trying to engage the attention of the curvy bartender (little success, she’s clearly an amateur) as Rita buys them two glasses of scotch and arranges for the next round at the table. She explains the game to Pansy, whispering in her ears over the noise and music, which is flowing out from something called a “jukebox”, overpowering everything else (and Pansy leans closer and closer until Rita’s cherry red lips are almost touching her ear, but seems to be having difficulty understanding anyway). When the table clears, Pansy tries to follow Rita’s instructions, but quickly becomes lost as Rita sinks each ball, one by one, swimming before her eyes like a kaleidoscope (lion’s red, snake green, the dull yellow of badgers), the shape of her body clearly visible beneath tight Muggle jeans and a blood red sweater. Shaking her head, she tries to focus on some instruction she’s being given (she feels like a swimmer, coming up from deep water and wonders if the drink is going to her head) involving the lone white ball that stares up at her like a watchful eye. “No, no, you’re holding it all wrong,” comes the voice of Rita Skeeter, and she’s suddenly pressing behind her, long finger joints shaping her grip on the smooth wood. Pansy is hemmed in by denim and hot breath and a smell like rotting flowers, and finds herself thinking, unaccountably, about the way that green felt might feel against her naked skin. Soon, too soon, Rita’s moved away and Pansy feels oddly abandoned, a shiver rippling across her skin (she must have gotten a chill without Rita’s warm body covering hers.) Rita laughs, saying she’d never expected to see Pansy Parkinson in a Muggle gay bar. Pansy blinks, and says that anytime she’s in a Muggle bar it’s a surprise to everyone, most of all her, but it was important that she speak to Rita, “and I don’t know what this ‘gay’ is, but it’s certainly dank, and not very pleasant.” Rita laughs again, and covers Pansy’s hand loosely, tracing patterns in her palm with red fingernails. “Don’t you notice anything odd about this bar?” Pansy stiffens, her sarcastic retort seeming to evaporate from her tongue (suddenly she feels a heat flooding her, and wonders for a panicked second if whatever makes Rita consistently smolder might be catching). “There aren’t any men.” Pansy scans the room, seeing (as if for the first time) the groups of women talking, drinking, flirting (disciples in the art of seduction, all). Her blood seems to be heating in her veins, rising to the surface of her skin, and Rita’s lips are so close she can feel the tiny hairs on the back of her neck swaying with each breath. She means to say something about her plans for vengeance, or something about Rita’s writing, about her desire to follow in her footsteps. Flattery has always worked with Rita, and Pansy feels an urge to take control, to rein in a conversation veering dangerously close to something she can’t recognize, but knows to fear (like the red haze of the sun behind closed eyelids, tempting you to stare into blindness and madness). Instead of words, she finds that she’s whimpering low in her throat (a servile body turned savage, hands gripping into the wood of the table). Rita laughs again, thrilling and low, and walks away. Without thinking, Pansy grabs her hips, forcing her back against, then up unto, the table, whose green seems to be rolling like an ocean in her vision. Rita is still laughing far back in her throat, and the room is spinning in a green haze and Pansy thinks of Avada Kedara and wonders if this is what dying feels like.

Pansy Parkinson knows how to seduce, has always known (some days she thinks she was born knowing). She lies spread-eagled on a green tabletop in a Muggle bar whose occupants have suddenly vanished, and she can’t think to ask what spell was used, or wonder what the fabric below her cost. The only thought she can manage, between wordless whimpers that might almost be pleading (but Parkinsons never beg) is that she finally understands what seduction is.