I wrote this for the two line challenge over on musesfool's Livejournal.

Title: The Futon Problem
Author: J. Faw
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Pansy/Zacharias
Summary: Italian food, heirs, and meeting the parents.



The lines:

She'll tell you she's an orphan
After you meet her family
"She Talks to Angels" - The Black Crowes

The fic:

"I borrowed it." Three years ago, Zacharias Smith thinks, in Russia. He takes the book anyway.

"I felt like it." You hate Dumbledore, Zacharias thinks, and your family has been loyal since the forties. He lets her into Number Twelve anyway.

"I think we suit each other." We have screaming arguments about how to fold towels, Zacharias thinks, and once you called me Draco. He leaves his toothbrush at her apartment anyway.

Then: "I'm an orphan," Pansy says.

"Like fuck," Zacharias explodes, and pushes her against the wall. "I believed you about your change of heart, and I ignored how upset you were when I dyed my hair, but I have seen your bloody parents and they are plenty alive."

Pansy is small and dark and defiant in Zacharias's little Muggle kitchen, a lithe little fae creature with crossed arms under a Felix-Cat clock. Her eyes are black and blank as metal rivets.

The impression is somewhat ruined by the alfredo sauce on her upper lip; Pansy's secret weakness is Italian food, and there is nothing serious about a former aristocrat slurping angel hair from a paper plate. Zacharias suspects she only eats it because it makes her feel like a mobster. "They died in the war," Pansy says, pushing her chin up and daring Zacharias to challenge her.

Zacharias, martyr in blue oven mitts, leaps headlong-eyes-wide-open into the breech.

"You met my parents," he says accusingly. "Why can't I meet yours?" Another boyfriend (Zacharias nearly died laughing when he heard her first say boyfriend) would have smiled at this point, said something about after-all-didn't-they-make-you, but Zacharias is not that boy.

"My parents are dead," Pansy informs him.

"Of course they are. And Millicent really went on holiday in France, and Draco was really under Imperius, and the stork could take my motherfucking place in this equation," Zacharias says. "And did you hear the one about Hermione Granger going straight?"

Pansy's mouth is pressed so tight it's turned white. "Don't swear," she says. "It's low class."

"Pot and kettle, Princess," Zacharias says. "You were new money then, and you're no money now, and you spend your nights underneath a Muggleborn. Low class would be step up."

"No wonder Draco thought you were gay," she says, slinking around him to prod at the noodles on the stove. "Princess? Who says that?"

Zacharias grabs her with his unmitted hand and pushes her back against the wall, suddenly understanding why his ancestors started burning witches. "I want to meet your parents." No, I never ask you for anything, no please, and no be fair.

"You're so masterful," Pansy says, and the tease she usually says things like that with isn't there. "They're dead, Zacharias. Let it go."

"Pansy," Zacharias says. "I want to meet them."

"Jesus, could you be more obsessive?" The stove burner hisses as water bubbles over the rim of the noodle pan. Pansy casts longing looks over Zacharias' shoulder at the pan. "Zacharias, there's no need to take this out on the shells."

"Say I can see them and I'll let you go," Zacharias says, resolutely not looking into her eyes.

"No."

"I bet the alfredo sauce's burning," Zacharias muses.

"Look, I'll see if I can find a gravestone or something, alright?" she says, and Zacharias figures that's close enough to yes, and lets her go. Pansy flouces past him (and how she manages that in old jeans and a hooded sweatshirt he can't imagine) and snatches the pot off the burner, shooting him indignant glances.

Zacharias, who has just realized he won an argument with Pansy, doesn't notice them.

The next day Pansy comes home with a handprint on her face and Zacharias slams a carving knife two inches into the counter.

Pansy says it was a patient having a relapse. Zacharias decides there is something to this barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen idea, but all he says is, "Do you want me to kill him?"

Pansy laughs, and they make lasagna for dinner.

Two weeks after that, she comes home early and screeches for him to be ready in five minutes, because her parents are coming over.

* * *

The apartment needs a new decorator, although that's only to be expected.

The cook should be fired, because no one serves ravioli to adults.

Pansy should stop eating pasta, she'll get fat.

Zacharias shouldn't talk like that in front of Mrs. Parkinson, because Helena, at least, is still a lady.

Draco asked about Pansy, and they liked that boy so much.

There really isn't anything so amusing about keeping a knife out like that, and it's unsafe even when the point is stuck in the counter.

Pansy hasn't spoken to her mother since the war ended, she needs to stop being so selfish.

All in all, Zacharias thinks, it isn't such a bad start, although Cicero Parkinson seems to be hinting that it's time his little girl had a Talk about the differences between boys and girls. He finishes putting the dishes in the sink, and heads back out of the kitchen.

At the door, though, he hesitates. Zacharias had once been Professor Trelawney's favourite Hufflepuff. Whether or not that had any sort of signifigance beyond affirming his superiority to the rest of the human race, he feels compelled to lean down and put her ear against the door, like he used to when he was a tiny Welsh Muggle trying to figure out what an organism had to do with mummy and daddy fighting all the time.

"-probably a Catholic," Pansy's saying. No, not Pansy, Pansy can't sound that morally outraged without bursting out laughing. Unless it's Quidditch, of course. That must be the wonderful Helena, like Queen Mum only less funny. Chubby and distressingly prone to wearing pink. And a hat.

"He's not religious, mum," that's Pansy, although, why does she sound like she's drinking helium cocktails? Hmm. Perhaps it's time to check the date on those tomatoes.

Zacharias reviews the sequence of thought he just had, and wonders how much red wine is in red wine sauce anyway.

"And if he was he'd probably be Muslim."

"We wish you'd settle down, Pansy," Helena says, deciding that for the past few sentences Pansy had lapsed into Greek. "Have children. Get married."

"We've discussed it."

* * *

Zacharias remembers the conversation because it was the first night they went to Paola's. They'd just gotten their salad's when Pansy asked, "Do you need heirs?"

"What?"

"Heirs," Pansy repeated, stabbing an oil soaked leaf. "Do you need them?" She looked up at him, expression faintly curious, as though every Slytherin girl had been taught to ask their Mudblood paramours this question. (After, of course, "Do you like almonds?")

"Why would I need heirs?" he asked, watching her eat romaine with indecent enthusiasm. So long as she never, ever spoke, mother would love her sheerly on basis of her greens. (He turned out to be completely, utterly, awe-inspiringly wrong about that.)

"Well," she said, blotting her lips free of oil with a napkin so starched it moved like cardboard. "If I was dating a boy from one of the Families-"

Zacharias said, "You're never watching Godfather ever again."

"-He'd have land and maybe even a title he'd need to pass on to his son. However, I'm dating a Hufflepuff Muggleborn, not Terence Higgs or Blaise Zabini or anyone else my family'd like," Pansy said, with the air of bestowing a wonderful favour on Zacharias. "And do Hufflepuff Muggleborns need heirs?"

"Thank you for that, Pansy, I'd begun to forget I'm your teenage rebellion stunt," Zacharias said, resting his chin on one fist. "And no, broadly speaking, we don't need heirs." He paused, struck by a wayward thought. "Do you?"

"No," Pansy said. "One, I have an older brother. Two, I'm probably being disowned as we speak. Three, bastards can't inherit."

She took a roll from the center basket and smiled prettily at the bellboy at the next booth over. The starstruck youth smiled back. Zacharias said, a little more sharply than usual, "Just can't give up alliteration, even after all it's done to you?"

"If all I wanted was matching names, I could marry Potter," Pansy said serenely, dipping her roll into ranch dressing, while Zacharias did his damndest to choke to death on a baby corn. "The man I marry will take my name, of course."

"That," Zacharias said reproachfully. "Was utterly disgusting and I cannot believe you callously sat there and let me think you were serious."

Pansy said speculatively, "I saw him without his shirt on once."

"I think my brain is melting," Zacharias said, and signaled the water with his wineglass. "Waiter! Second verse, same as the first."

"Calm down," Pansy advised. "I have no desire for the disfigured one. He has knobby knees."

"When did you see his knees?" Zacharias demanded, as the waiter refilling his glass smiled at Pansy's chest.

"Did I says 'shirt'?" Pansy asked, watching the waiter leave. "Silly me." The conversation, believe it or not, did not get any better from there.

* * *

"Pansy, darling," Helena says in the present, "Don't you think you're taking this a bit too far?"

"Taking what a bit too far?"

"I understand you needed to...rebell," Helena says, tone clearly conveying she isn't even sure how one spells the word. "Every teenager needs to feel they're independent of their parents-"

"Which bit was the rebellion, changing sides or shacking up with a Mudblood?"

"There isn't any need to be crass," Helena says, voice losing it's talking-to-the-housecat overtone for the first time since she oozed in. "Really, Pansy."

Cicero Parkinson, a portly, florid man, finally deigns to speak. "Come home, Pansy. We forgive you."

"Forgive me."

"Only...Pansy, understand, I wouldn't even ask, but...well, there was that thing with the Malfoy boy back in school..."

"You want to know if he's been fucking me," Pansy states. "And the answer is yes."

Helena: "Oh- honey- it's not your fault-"

Cicero: the famous sound of one hand clapping.

Zacharias: "I think you ought to leave now."

Helena is leaning across the ugly floral couch, her arms wrapped around an unmoving Pansy, and Cicero is shaking his smarting hand. Pansy's head has snapped around to face the now open kitchen door, and the bruises on both cheeks match exactly, down to the little turn under her eyes where the fingers bent over her cheekbone.

The scene has the disgusting reek of familiarity.

"Young man-" Cicero begins. Zacharias doesn't look at him.

"After the war," he says, staring at Pansy. "A resurgent Death Eater's group killed my father and my stepmother. We never found the ones responsible." He looks away from Pansy's completely blank face. "Get out."

Cicero takes a step foreward, face greasy with sweat. "If you think you can-"

Zacharias raises his wand and says, "Earthfast." The man's feet stick to the floor. When he discovers he can't move, he draws in breath to bellow.

Zacharias says, "Inimica."

Cicero Parkinson's lower lip quivers. There's quite a lot of it to quiver; it's like a great big cold cut under his mustache. In a minute, he will begin to cry.

Helena shrieks and flies at Zacharias. Her fists are like pebbles thrown up by a car, and Zacharias pushes her off him with an expression of disgust. He opens his mouth to cast Inimicus on her as well, when a small, cool hand grabs his elbow.

"Zacharias."

"It's for their own good," he says, rage in his stomach better than anything Pansy's ever cooked.

"So is this," Pansy says, and hits him with a lamp.

* * *

When he wakes up, Zacharias is in their bed, and Pansy isn't. There is no noise from the apartment.

Come home, Pansy. We forgive you.

Draco asked about you.

Of course, Zacharias thinks, feeling sick. Why would-

"You look like you need a drink," Pansy says agreeably, sliding through the bedroom door, still in what she called her Parent Exihibit clothes.

"Pansy!" he says.

She looks annoyed. "Sissy."

"Not like that," he says, struggling to a sitting position despite feeling as though he just caught a bludger with his temple. "What-?"

"I field sedated you with the lamp," she says, sitting down on the other side of the bed. "They went home."

And then it's The Silence. Silence means guilt, and guilt means yelling, and yelling means one of them is going to get up and..."I should go."

Zacharias stares at her.

"I'll stay with Susan tonight," she says, twisting her fingers together so hard the look like they'll shatter. She doesn't stand up.

Zacharias- moving slowly due to raging chorus line of pain- untangles himself from the slippery silk sheets Pansy insisted they buy and wraps his fingers around her wrists. She looks at him. Her face has no expression but her eyes are shiny as coins. "If you try it," he says, "I will cry. Don't think that I won't."

"I-"

"And if you cry," he continues, "Then I will hunt your parents down and serve them to you with cheese sauce."

"You say the sweetest things," Pansy murmurs, letting herself be pulled down into Zacharias' arms. Zacharias doesn't understand it, himself, how she seems to melt and reform just to fit him, so that they rest together like nesting cups. It's probably because she has practice with this; but Zacharias does not like to think that way.

He buries his nose in her hair. She smells like tomatoes and wine. Her shoulders shake, but just a little, and they both pretend that the wet on his chest comes from the chardonnay on her lips.

"So... you're an orphan," he says presently, after she's stopped moving.

Pansy sighs, warm breath against his chest. "Yeah."