AN: For my friend Rachel, who provided the opening lines. I adore Pansy will every fiber in my being and want to get more Pansy fiction out there.

Disclaimer: WITTY DISCLAIMER HERE.

She was supposed to be everything. Beautiful, bright, bubbly. Pureblooded, as a given. And she wasn't necessarily intended to be smart, but she was. Smarter than she looked.

Which is how she knew Draco was in love with that Granger witch.

Draco's front was just a facade, she muses. It's funny how the word facade reminds her of the word charade and Draco is putting up both. Draco, however, is not a blundering idiot, and it isn't as if he was obvious about liking that Hermione, not at first. Or is the proper key term here love? Pansy swallows and decides to go with like because if she admits that he's in love that's just one more welt to her heart that she can't take. One too many.

Pansy is disgusted. She's revolted. And truth be told, Pansy Parkinson is shocked, for she is the Slytherin Princess. The epitome of all that is good, evil and cool in the house. She's beautiful, obviously. Tell her she's ugly and it's an obvious lie. Maybe she doesn't turn heads every minute of the day but still, she commands attention.

Granger doesn't.

Granger has absolutely nothing going for her. Frizzy, out of control hair as if she's just rolled around in static. She's rather short and mindnumbingly annoying. She was always at the top, always gaining points for bloody Gyriffindor. Hermione Jane Granger always, always has the right answer. You'd think she'd annoy Draco rather than charm seeing as she was his biggest competitor when it came to Hogwarts and grades.

Apparently not seeing as his cold, hard stare softens when he meets her eye and his trademark sneer slightens and she can just see it in his face. Love, she decides it is as hard as it may hit her. It's a look of love.

It's the way he never looked at her.

Pansy yearned for that look of adoration, of respect. Well, actually, he respected her, of course, but in a completely platonic way.

"You're amazing, Pansy," he says.

"I love you," she says, except she doesn't really say it. Not out loud. Just in her head where all is safe and no one can pry into her thoughts unless they know Occlumency. And really, people had better things to do, such as plot the next Voldemort-destroying plan (alright, maybe just Potter).

She primps, preens and does all those wonderful girly things that muggles do simply because they don't have magic to do it for them. She practices her alluring smile in the mirror for the upteenth time and even Pansy can tell it's perfect. It's a fact. It's almost swoon-worthy, she figures. Or maybe she's just being over-confident.

Draco would rather prefer Hermione instead, though. How he manged to break into her world as the nice guy for once, is a mystery to Pansy. Obsessively, she observed and realizes that he started a semi-civil basis with Granger, which is shocking to her. He was Head Boy and she was Head Girl. Alas, they became closer and Pansy felt as if she could explode from the envy building up in her. Envy turning her insides a rather unattractive emerald shade and clouding her mind. Envy is a truly unhealthy thing but that doesn't bother Pansy. What bothers her is that it should be her that others envy. She should never, ever be the envious one.

Yet she is.

When Blaise Zabini asks her out for the fiftieth time just that month, she says yes, even though his brains were swimming with bouts of testosterone. For one utterly screwed up moment she believes Draco will be as jealous as she was if she agrees and fall in love with her.

So she says yes.

Blaise is scum who she puts up with only because when she kisses him she imagines she's kissing Draco. And it works. His image dissolves to striking blonde looks... and for a minute, Pansy is happy. Not envious, but happy. Until her eyes re-open, that is and she realizes it is Blaise and pulls away quickly before the kiss can deepen.

Popularity is a game in the Slytherin house, one that Pansy and Draco had won thousands of times. It just made perfect sense for them to get together so why did Draco have to ruin it all and lust over the pathetic Mudblood? She was Pureblood, for Merlin's sake. She was Slytherin.

She was everything that he ever-any respectable Slytherin, in fact- needed. A lady that parents would approve of, for she was just so perfect. Pansy knows this. Pansy knows a lot of things, she's just that smart. She's people smart, she's book smart, she's life smart.

Unfortunately, Pansy just isn't smart enough to figure out how to win over Draco's heart, hard as she may try.

Not smart enough to realize what exactly is so appealing about Granger.

Not smart enough to not fall in love in the first place.