Someone Grab Him
A/N: Written for the Slytherin Drabbles Competition for the character of Pansy Parkinson and for the If You Dare Challenge for the 'Not at the Cost of My Life' prompt. A massive thank you to Coco96 for beta reading this. Word count: 395.
Pansy flinches as a voice that sounds like a denizen of nightmares rings out over the crowded hall. The realisation that it belongs to the wizard whose presence has tormented Draco for the past few years sends shivers racing down her spine. She hates him. In her mind, anyone who hurts her friends deserves to die, ideally after a period of prolonged suffering. And, however just his cause might be, He Who Must Not Be Named has given her friends nothing but agony.
His words, however, stay her fury. Their honeyed tone is overdone to the point of absurdity, but his offer is undeniably tempting.
If the inhabitants of Hogwarts turn over Harry Potter, he'll let them live; if they sacrifice one person, no one else will have to die.
For the first time in her life, she doesn't know what she wants. She detests Muggle-borns; each and every one of them threatens to upset the system with their campaigns for house-elf rights and their contempt for time-honoured pureblood customs. Instead of accepting that entering the wizarding world entails accepting its culture, they seek to rip it apart like toddlers throwing a tantrum. But she doesn't want them to die. She might have claimed otherwise when she was younger, but she's never truly wanted it. And now, after almost a year of being forced to torture her classmates, she doesn't want them hurt, either. On the other hand, though, she knows that more than one of her relatives are among the small army that has been amassed outside the castle's walls. The prospect of fighting against her loved ones, never knowing when a stray curse might mutilate or slaughter them, is nauseating.
She wouldn't call herself cynical, but she certainly isn't idealistic either. Childish fancies and dreams get you nowhere in life; the only thing that sustains you is cold, hard ambition and a healthy sense of self-preservation. The idea of dying for your beliefs is a romantic but overrated concept, and she has never been one for quixotism.
Of course, she's well aware that the group of students who support Potter far outnumbers the small contingent who would be willing to publicly side with her. Still, she's used to being derided for her pragmatism, and someone has to acknowledge the fact that they have a very real way of getting out of this intact.
