The velvet-lined drawer held the truth of her life, a secret version of herself that was far too honest for the professors or her father. Draconia knew that the version in the drawer was the only one that mattered, but the version currently sitting on the desk was the one that would be graded. She sat in the common room, her fingers tracing the edge of a heavy, gold-trimmed parchment. It was a beautiful thing, but it felt hollow. Pansy sat across from her, leaning back in a high-backed chair with a bored-looking expression. The fire in the hearth crackled, casting a flickering light across the dark wood of the table.
"It is far too long," Pansy said, her voice cutting through the quiet of the evening. She reached out to tap the edge of Draconia's essay with a manicured nail. "You spend three paragraphs discussing the Malfoy lineage's contribution to the Wizengamot. It is dry. It is repetitive. It is almost as if you are trying to prove something you already know."
Draconia pulled the parchment closer to her chest, feeling a sudden, irrational urge to protect it. "It is not meant to be a story, Pansy. It is an essay on family contribution. It requires a certain level of formality to ensure the professor understands the weight of the name."
"The weight of the name is heavy enough without you adding all these adjectives," Pansy replied with a smirk. She leaned forward, her eyes bright with a mischief that Draconia often found exhausting. "You should just tell him that the Malfoy have always been there, providing the backbone of the social structure, and leave it at that."
"That is a joke, and you know it," Draconia said, though she felt a small smile tugging at her lips. She looked down at her handwriting, the elegant, sloping script that she had spent years perfecting. It looked perfect on the page, but it felt like a mask.
Pansy watched her for a moment, her expression softening into something more observant than usual. "You are overthinking the phrasing. You are trying to hide behind the words, Draconia. If you use too many big words, the reader looks at the vocabulary instead of the person writing it."
"I am not hiding," Draconia countered, though she knew Pansy was right. She had spent the last week trying to find the exact right way to say that a Malfoy is offered things, without sounding like she was begging or boasting. "I am simply being precise."
"Precision is just a polite way of saying you are afraid of being misunderstood," Pansy said. She reached for a small plate of biscuits on the table and took a bite. "It is a bit of a joke, really. You are the most precise person in this entire castle, and yet you can't decide if you want to be a daughter or a statue."
Draconia felt a prickle of annoyance, but she did not let it show on her face. "A statue is predictable. A daughter is a target. I would rather be a statue for a few more months."
"Is that why you keep rewriting the introduction?" Pansy asked, her voice dropping a notch in volume. She leaned in closer, her eyes scanning the essay with a sharp, critical gaze. "You have changed the first sentence five times since we sat down. It is a waste of good ink."
Draconia sighed, leaning back in her chair. "Perhaps the ink is the only thing that is not being wasted. I want the last line to be perfect. If the last line is not perfect, the whole essay feels like a lie."
"It is a lie anyway," Pansy said, her tone turning slightly more serious. She tapped the table, the sound sharp in the quiet room. "The whole thing is a lie of omission. You tell them what happened, but you do not tell them how it felt. That is the problem with your writing. It is very professional, but it is entirely empty."
"Empty is safe," Draconia said, her voice firm. "If it is empty, no one can find the cracks. If I write exactly what is expected, they leave me alone. If I write what is true, they start asking questions."
"And what questions?" Pansy asked, a wry smile returning to her lips. "They will ask why you are so quiet. They will ask why you look like you are constantly calculating the cost of the air you breathe. You do not need to give them a reason."
"I do not need to give them anything," Draconia insisted. She picked up her quill, twirling it between her fingers. The feeling of the feather was familiar and grounding. "The essay is a contribution to the record. It is not a diary."
Pansy laughed, a short, sharp sound that echoed against the stone walls. "It is a diary in disguise, and you know it. You are trying to write a history, but you are really just writing a defense of yourself."
"You are being unhelpful," Draconia said, though there was no real heat in her voice. She watched Pansy reach for a fresh sheet of parchment and a quill of her own.
"I am being helpful," Pansy corrected, dipping her quill into a small pot of ink. "I am telling you that you are hiding. You can write as much as you want about the Malfoy contribution to the magical economy, but you won't mention the part where you actually felt the pressure of it."
Draconia watched her friend work. Pansy’s movements were quick and decisive, unlike her own slow, careful deliberations. Pansy was not interested in the perfect word; she was interested in the word that felt most alive.
"You think you can do better?" Draconia asked, a challenge in her voice.
"I think anyone can do better than a statue," Pansy replied, her eyes focused on her parchment. She began to write, the scratching of the quill the only sound in the room for a few long moments.
Draconia watched her, wondering what Pansy was actually writing. Pansy rarely wrote for herself, and she certainly never wrote for the professors. She mostly wrote notes or short, sharp observations. But tonight, there was a different look in her eyes, a sort of intense focus that made Draconia feel as though she were intruding on a private moment.
"What are you doing?" Draconia asked after a few minutes.
Pansy did not look up. She continued to move the quill across the page with a rhythmic, steady motion. "I am practicing. Or perhaps I am just bored. It is hard to tell the difference at this hour."
"You are writing something very long," Drac once observed.
"It is a long thought," Pansy said. She paused, her quill hovering just above the parchment, a small blot of ink forming at the tip. She looked up, her gaze meeting Draconia's. "Do you ever feel like you are just a collection of things people expect you to be? Like you are a pile of things someone else gathered together?"
Draconia felt a sudden, sharp pang in her chest. "That is a very dramatic way to put it."
"It is the truth," Pansy said, her voice steady. "Most of us are. We just pretend we aren't. But sometimes, the pretending gets tired."
Pansy enough to let the silence sit between them, but it was not a heavy silence. It was a comfortable one, born of a long friendship and a shared understanding of the weight of expectations. Draconia looked back down at her essay, the words suddenly looking even more hollow than they had a moment ago. She thought of the third version, the one she had locked away in the drawer. That version was not a statue. It was a person.
"You should finish your essay," Pansy said, her eyes dropping