This is a fan fiction. The characters and world featured in this work are the creations and property of J.K. Rowling, and the author of this story makes no profit from the work.
Pansy Parkinson felt a gentle touch and heard someone softly calling her name as she fought her way out of sleep.
"Pansy? Pansy, you need to get up. The Dark Lord wants you," the voice said. The words sent a tremor of uncertainty through Pansy and she started up off her thin straw mat and looked blearily around the tiny low-ceilinged stone room- cell, really- where she spent most of her nights. Her roommate, Daphne Greengrass, was squatting beside her palette.
"It's my rest night," Pansy protested feebly, but Daphne shook her head.
"He asked for you specifically," the blonde girl explained, her voice almost apologetic. Pansy flinched; being asked for specifically was never a good thing, but only more pain could come from arguing.
"How much time do I have?" she managed, crawling over to the self-replenishing basin in the corner to begin washing herself.
"He didn't say anything about coming quickly," Daphne replied. "You probably have a bit of time." Pansy nodded and reached for the rough bar of soap that sat beside the basin- a dear, hoarded treasure, painfully bought and more valuable to her than any of the expensive perfumes and cosmetics that she had once owned. It was impossible to predict what he would want- sometimes he merely wished to assign one of his slaves a new task, other times he had devised new and elaborate torments for them, and other times- anyway, it was always best to be as presentable as possible for him.
Pansy prepared herself quickly and exited her cell, standing upright for the first time in the hallway and tugging her simple cotton shift into place across her body. In contrast to the rough stone of their cell, the floors of the hallway were a polished black marble, icy cold to her bare feet. Torches lit the walls at regular intervals, providing pools of orange light in the long tunnels of black stone that made up so much of Pansy's world. The castle had once looked very different, had once, in fact, been a school called Hogwarts. The Dark Lord had remodeled it for his own purposes after he had...dealt... with Dumbledore and overthrown the Ministry. It was at times haunting to be imprisoned in the place that had once been her own school.
As Pansy hurried towards her destination, she passed a sight that made her pause for a moment: Granger. The bushy-headed girl was on her hands and knees in one of the side corridors, scrubbing the marble floor with a thick sponge. Her eyes focused on the floor in front of her, she gave no sign that she saw Pansy standing over her as she went about her task. Like Pansy, Granger wore a thin cotton shift. Under it, her body was a lacework of white scars, words and lines traced all over her body. Pansy had heard that the Dark Lord liked to set Granger to writing lines with a blood quill, sometimes even putting her in a mock-up classroom and forcing her to take notes during a lecture, with dire consequences if she failed the test at the end. Pansy had never liked the Griffindor know-it-all, but even she felt horrified to see the wreck that Granger had become. She was tempted to speak, to try to give the broken witch a word of comfort, of hope...But Pansy did not linger. Expressing sympathy for Granger was dangerous- that loony blonde Ravenclaw girl had discovered that for all of them-and Pansy could learn from the mistakes of others.
It was only a few minutes after her encounter with Granger that Pansy found herself kneeling in front of the doorway to the Dark Lord's private quarters. After a moment the door opened and a voice beckoned her inside.
"Parkinson," he said. "Only a little late. I don't think I'll even deduct points." There was a wry tone to his voice, a touch of humor. Pansy cringed. The time in Azkaban had changed him, had warped his humor. She had learned not to like it when he was in a... jocular... mood.
Hours later he told her that she could go and she shuffled to the door. This...session... had not been as bad as many of the others, and she seems to have entertained him, even making him smile once, a smile like the smile that he had when they were at school rather than his usual smile, so cold and heartless. Suddenly feeling emboldened, knowing that she might never get such a chance again, Pansy hesitated at the door.
"You wish to speak?" he said from his seat beside the fireplace. She turned towards him, keeping her eyes respectfully lowered.
"I... I have a question, my lord," she said hesitantly. There was a long pause before he laughed.
"A question? I haven't had one of those in a while," he said. "For tonight, dear Parkinson, I will let you have a question. What will it be? How I escaped Azkaban? How I bested Dumbledore? What happened to dear Draco?" She shuddered slightly, almost loosing her nerve, but plunged on.
"No, my lord. I just... I... you treat us better," she managed to blurt out. He raised an eyebrow in genuine surprise. "The Slytherins, I mean. It hasn't been as bad for us. Why is it worse... worse for the Griffindors?"
The silence stretched between them and Pansy grew more and more fearful, terrified that she had crossed some horrible line and that his answer would be to show her what he had done to Draco (Pansy had always hoped, for his sake, that Draco was dead), or to Ron Weasley (Pansy was fairly certain that he was alive and the source of the screams that she heard when she was in the eastern corridor on the third floor), or to Dumbledore... she risked a quick look at his face and saw, to her surprise, that instead of the rage she expected, he was staring thoughtfully into the fire.
"You were never my friends," he finally said, so softly that Pansy almost didn't hear it. "You were never on my side. I never expected anything from you. I never... never trusted you. That's why you couldn't betray me." He reached up, rubbing his thumb against the lightning-bolt scar on his forehead in a weary gesture. "You Slytherins were completely honest with me all along." He continued to stare into the fire and Pansy held her breath. He seemed to have almost forgotten her, and she did not want to remind him of her presence. Finally he looked back up.
"Go back to your cell," he said shortly. "Find Ms. Granger in the hallway on your way back. Tell her that I have a new book that I'm reading... and I want to see it transcribed." He gestured at a small writing desk in the corner, where a thick, dusty book hundreds of pages long sat next to a stack of blank parchment and a blood quill. Pansy shuddered.
"Yes, my lord," she said, and retreated back towards the safety of her prison, hoping that tonight she would not dream of her childhood, or of Hogwarts, or of that brief happy time just before graduation when the whole world seemed hers for the taking, hoping that tonight she could simply sleep without dreams in her cell and wake up to another day of life in the Dark Lord's castle.