Malfoy Manor

Pansy had followed Draco down to the common room and out to the carriage, holding to his arm as the portkey vanished them from Hogwarts and left them standing in front of the walk up to the Manor. "Hopefully your mother won't mind us being a little late." She laughed at him, because he was slow at packing, showering, and several other 'getting-ready' things. She was always waiting on him when they went somewhere. Reaching up, she fixed his tie a little before looking up the path at his enormous home, one she'd always admired since she was little. It had quite the presence.

Draco straightened up as they got there and took a deep breath. "Mother will be fine with it I'm sure. Okay, let's go." As they walked up to the manor, their trunks floating behind them, he knew she could feel him tensing up. This was probably the last place he wanted to be because even though it was techinally home it had so many memories with it that he would never, as long as his parents lived there, be able to walk up to it and be relaxed and excited for what was ahead. About halfway there he reached for her hand and held it for a moment, giving it a squeeze before he dropped it and walked up the last stairs to the doors. He knocked on the brass knocker once before pushing the doors open.

Pansy knew he was nervous. He always was when they went to his home, at least at first until they could escape from his parents presence. She looked at him a moment when he took her hand, squeezing it back just before he let go again. Following Draco up the stairs, she stood beside and just behind him at the door, her hand touching his arm for a moment as he pushed the doors open. She followed him inside, and as always was taken over by the awe of the home. The foyer was enormous, stretching the entire four floors high, cold marble floors that echoed when you walked, mirrors and paintings lining the walls, everything guilded rather tastefully, columns in all the right places, massive chandeliers. She could probably have stood here all day and not gotten bored of looking at it, and this was only the entryway to their home. She stayed silent, waiting to follow Draco wherever he would go from here.

Draco looked around as they walked in but didn't see either of his parents. Snapping his fingers an elf appeared. "Tell my mother that Miss Parkinson and I have arrived. First take our trunks up to our rooms." As the elf popped out of sight to do as he had ordered he turned to her, "I guess we're free until dinner. Unpack then meet in your room?" At her agreement they headed upstairs and he put his trunk in his closet and called his personal elf to unpack for him then headed over to her room to see how she was doing. Knocking on her door he waited a second then pulled it open.

Pansy nodded to him, still not speaking for whatever subconscious reason had kept her silent in the seemingly sacred foyer of his home. Disappearing upstairs to her room, she stepped inside and opened up her trunk that had been left on her bed, wishing she could just sit down and lazily use her wand to unpack. Soon enough. In fact, in about fifteen days she would finally be seventeen and allowed to use magic outside of school. But for now, she was stuck unpacking the normal way, carrying things from her trunk to the drawers. She looked over her shoulder as there was a knock on the door, glancing back at her clothes once Draco had walked in. "Hi." She pulled out a few of the dresses she'd brought along, knowing she would be expected to dress nicely for each of the dinners while she was here.

Draco walked in and went over to sit on her bed. "So do you have much stuff left here?" He watched as she pulled things out of the trunk, "I like that dress. Did you bring the one from last time when we went to your place? The black one. I think my mother would like that one." He flopped back onto her bed, relaxing into the comfort of her pillows. "You know I still think you have a better bed than me. I don't know how but your mattress is amazing."

"Which black one? We found a few, if you remember." She laughed, remembering their raids in her closet and the hidden clothes he'd managed to find. She crossed to the tall armoire, opening it and slipping the dresses in her arms onto hangers, coming back to her trunk to grab the others. "Is it really that much better? I don't remember well enough to compare it to yours. Maybe your mother just likes me better so she gave me the better bed." She laughed, picking up another dress and going to put it in the armoire with the others. Her room didn't have a closet, it was one of the smaller and not originally intended as a bedroom, but because it was a room in the Malfoy home after all, it was still probably bigger than her bedroom at her own house. And at least this bed didn't have ridiculous pink sheets on it. Nice plain white ones under the silvery quilt, for which she was quite glad.

Draco chuckled remembering that delightful leather skirt. "No the black one that your mother found, the vintage one?" He grabbed another pillow and stuffed it under his head. "I have to say that your pillows are far inferior. Too soft for me." He watched her keep unpacking and chuckled to himself. He hated going to school where he had to do things for himself so whenever he could he took the lazy way out and used an elf. "So is there anything you particularly want to do today? Anything you've missed while we've been gone?"

Pansy smiled, relieved he hadn't really meant the leather one. She wouldn't have brought that one, that's just silly. It had been shoved under her bed and forgotten until now, actually. "Oh, yeah, I've got that one actually." She pulled it from the trunk, smoothing out the wrinkles and putting it on a hanger. She grabbed a few pairs of jeans and put them in a drawer. "Well, I like my soft pillows, so you can keep your rock pillows all you want." She quickly deposited her underwear and the like into another drawer before Draco could get a look at any of it, while he was good and distracted by her squishy pillows. "I don't know. I've not been here in ages, it could have changed so much and I'd have no idea." She laughed, though it was true. She hadn't visited, not for longer than a few hours anyway, since late last winter.

Draco punched her pillows a bit then gave up and flopped back, "I should just keep better pillows in here because yours are so inadequate it's absurd." He looked back at her as she finished closing her drawer on her underwear. "Well I think the only thing that I've noticed changing is the library but then again we don't use three quarters of the house so my mother could have painted it all hot pink and I wouldn't know. Maybe we should go exploring for a bit, check out and see if anything has changed."

"Or you could sleep in your own bed and not abuse my pillows." She looked at him very seriously, but smiled a moment later. "We could go wander around if you wanted. If anything I get to stare at all the rooms in your house all over again. Seriously I could just take a month and walk through your house and just look at things and never get bored." She closed up her trunk and sat it on the floor, offering Draco her hand to tug him up off her bed and head out into the hallway, where she'd let him lead the way. They were back to acting 'normal again', the joking around and hanging out in each others rooms and offering of hands and everything. Just like always, removed from the Hogwarts environment, they were Pansy and Draco again, flawlessly friends, none of the tension or awkwardness they'd had back at school.

Draco gave her a 'that's a funny joke' look then took her hand and got off the bed. "That sounds like a good plan then. And when it's time for us to go to dinner I'm sure my parents will send an elf to find us as per usual." They walked out of the room and down the hall. "Okay so where to start..." At the top of the main stairs he paused. "I guess the south wing, haven't been down there in a while." As they took the hallway that led that way he took her hand again without thinking about it. As they got past the first few doors he saw one with a gilt doorknob. With a glance at her he opened the door and, after flicking his wand at the candles, pulled her inside.

Pansy followed him to wherever he was headed, her hand in his. Though it felt as natural as anything, she still hadn't been able to make up her mind about him, about if she was over him or if she wanted to give it another shot. She walked into the room behind him, taking a look around. "Oh, I don't remember this room. Probably because we weren't allowed in here before." She laughed, dropping his hand so she could walk around, her eyes wandering interestedly over all the furniture. "There's even guilding on the ceiling. Leave it to your parents to never overlook a single option for showing off." She smiled, because really it looked nice even though it was a little over the top.

Draco looked up as she mentioned the ceiling, "You know my mother, she's so detail oriented it scares me sometimes." As he walked around the room he touched the soft velvet of the chairs and admired the gorgeous carpet underneath because Tam is a manor house whore and she is unashamed to admit it. "I wonder if this was my mother's decorations, she's not much of a velvet person after all." He walked over to the windows and looked out over the immaculate rose gardens. He loved the opulence of the ancestral home but he often wondered why there was so much of it as it wasn't as though his parents used any more of it than their wings and the grand entertaining that occurred in the main parlor and ballroom. He had grown up with his own wing of the house and as far as he knew none of them used more than five or six of their own rooms. He had always felt more at home at the Parkinson's home where every room had its own purpose and none of them were left cold and unused. He turned away from the window to see what Pansy was doing.

Waiting on my turn for critique, so I can reply. Yay.

Pansy nodded; it was true. Narcissa noticed everything, absolutely everything, and whether that was good or bad, Pansy was never sure. "It could be from your grandparents, I suppose. Isn't the house just handed down generation to generation? I guess that means it'd be yours eventually." She watched him walking over to the window, trying to imagine what it would be like when they were older and she'd come and visit him. Turning around, she walked over to look at the chairs, clearly influenced by the French Rococo style, which was actually what we talked about in my class this morning. Granted, that entire room was very rococo, what with the white and gold and exceptional curvilinear quality of nearly everything in the room. She sat lightly into one of the chairs, tracing her fingers over the arms of it, admiring the carving in the wood and the velvety upholstery.

This was found by googling Rococo so it amuses me greatly that you recognized that <3

"Yeah, generation to generation." He couldn't imagine one day owning the manor but at the same time it felt like something that he had always seen coming. Walking over to her he smiled at her in the chair, "You look like you're the lady of the manor. Should I bow?" He pretended to tip his hat then settled into the chair across from her, "If you could decorate anyway you wanted how would you do this room?" She had never seen eye to eye with either of their mothers as far as decorating was concerned and he wondered if when she inherited it she would facelift the entire Parkinson estate.

"Of course you should." She laughed, crossing one leg lazily over the other. She watched as he sat in the seat somewhat beside and across from her, looking around as she thought about how to answer his question. Narrowing her eyes, she smirked a little. "Minimalist." She laughed, and though she preferred a simpler style, she couldn't really imagine tearing this room apart and redoing it. It was lovely and old and undoing something with as much history as this seemed to have, well, she couldn't do it. Maybe, she'd pick the most horrific ones to redo if she were allowed to, taking apart some of the baroque rooms or something equally as gaudy, replacing it with simplicity. Her house on the other hand, she couldn't wait to get her hands on her mother's rooms of the house, chuck out all that old crazy stuff and redo it completely. "Black and minimalist. Silver instead of gold." Pansy nodded, looking around as if she were imagining what it would look like redone in her style.

Draco chuckled, "So the opposite of what your mother does? I should have guessed. Black might get a little bit old but I definitely like the silver. Too much gold for me, though I can understand why they might use it." He looked down at the arms of the chair and ran a hand over the intricate carvings. After a few minutes of just sitting there he stood up, "Move on?"

"Black never gets old, not when you use it right against all the right light walls and things." She got up as he did heading over toward the door and pushing it open, laughing as even the knob was decorated, the panels of the door with floral carving all over it, covered in gold. She paused in the hallway waiting for him so he could lead the way to their next stop.

He chuckled at her as they walked out of the room. Looking around he put a hand on her back and nudged her forward. "You pick the next room." As they walked his hand was still resting on her back but it had shifted more to the side so it was almost as though he had an arm around her. He glanced around the hall as they kept going and admired the ornate tables with the intricate floral arrangements and into the large mirrors that dotted the halls. "You know I really don't recognize this part of the house."

"What, you don't recognize your own house?" Pansy looked at him, a little amused by it. She supposed it was different, since her house was smaller and they actually used all their rooms on a fairly regular basis. His arm around her side was impossible to ignore, and though she wasn't sure how to interpret the gesture, she didn't do anything to make him stop. Finally she turned toward a large set of double doors. It opened to a hall sort of room, the walls covered in massive paintings, a slightly domed ceiling coated in sculptural elements covered with more gold, enormous chandeliers with dozens upon dozens of candles, furniture and cabinets along one wall, containing smaller items of obvious wealth, rich carpets from wall to wall. It was completely overwhelming, sort of pretty, but mostly just completely too much too look at all at once. "Oh, dear."

It's huge, so I'll just post a link: http://www.wilanow-palac.art.pl/files/1_folder%20021.jpg

Draco looked around in a sort of horrified awe. On the one hand it was an incredible room with some fantastic artwork and detailed pieces but on the other the fact that it had all been put in one place together was overwhelming. "Oh dear is right." His hand slid off her back, brushing over her hip, as he stepped away, walking over to one of the cabinets to look at the treasures inside. After a moment he stopped and backed up until he was sitting on the red bench in the middle. Looking up he stared at the ceiling, "I think I'm liking the idea of sliver more and more as each moment passes."

Pansy laughed and took a seat around the corner from him. "As if your mother would let me redecorate a room in your house." Of course she wouldn't. Pansy's own mother didn't even let her redecorate her own bedroom beyond a certain point, but luckily Muffy didn't make it down to Pansy's room very often and she had taken a few more liberties than had been officially allowed. "The grotto ceiling is sort of nice. I'd paint it black and put stars on it though. And those chandeliers would definitely be moved elsewhere. Funny how you still have the little servants chairs along the wall. I wonder if the house elves actually sit in them." Pansy got up, walking over to look at one, where there were some distinct little butt prints in the dust that had accumulated there. She couldn't help but laugh at it. "Well, this one gets used at least."

He smirked at her comment about the ceiling, "Of course you would put stars up there." He got up when she did and walked over to the little chairs, "The elves come in here?" He laughed with her, "But I don't think this room gets used so do they just sit in here and admire the ceiling?" He imagined the little things sitting in here to hide from his parents and laughed again, "I'm assuming my parents don't know about this place either." He walked away from the chair to look up at the paintings.