i.
The sun glittered on Harry's hair when Ron gave him the kitten. Ron's voice caught in his throat for just a moment, because he saw an answering sparkle in Harry's eyes, and in the joy of Harry's fingers against the short, soft fur. The moment passed, though, and after they'd both laughed, Ron gazed into the sky and asked what he would name the kitten.
A brief joyous pause, and then, "Well, I'll name him Draco, of course."
Another pause, different from the first, and Ron picked up every glittering piece of his heart, and agreed outloud that it was a wonderful name.
ii.
Draco was meant to be a morning person. It's his best kept secret, and Pansy suspects even he doesn't know it fully. Draco sleeps late, waking in the afternoon, invulnerable and stark. He stays out nights, stunning in the starlight. The innocent child who steals your soul.
Pansy only saw him in dawnlight by accident, and she's never breathes a word to anyone. His lashes were clumped and darkened by sleep, his grey eyes matching the sharp dawn sky. The sunlight brushed rose shades across sharp cheekbones and translucent skin, and Pansy mourned the thought that next year his voice would deepen and porcelain features coarsen. She slipped out of sight before he noticed her, fearing the return of the flat pale boy she knew.
It was the only time she ever saw him in color.
iii.
Neville privately thinks Ron does a piss-poor job of being a shadow. He burns too brightly, from his flaming hair to his smoldering dreams, and Neville sees the part of sidekick easier in Harry's burnt black hair and shadowed eyes. It's a nagging imbalance in Neville's world, until one day Neville's eyes are drawn to the firework flames of silver blond hair, and suddenly everything makes sense again.
Someday Ron will light off on his own, Neville thinks, and he will need his own shadow.
Neville waits.
iv.
Draco feels something break inside whenever Harry catches him being himself. Harry never says anything anymore, just looks at Draco, and then walks away. And Draco always stops, even though he feels as if he will explode, and walks in the other direction.
Later, though, Draco always finds Longbottom, with his rumpled hair and scruffy clothes and dirt under his fingers, and finds ways to spit the bitter words of futility that gather behind his teeth.
"You're just his shadow, you know, and you're just as worthless." The poison spills out, but this time it misses his mark, and Neville straightens imperceptibly and smiles just a little. So Draco settles for punching him instead, and when he sees the tears gather in the folds of chubby skin, he feels better, and leaves to find Harry.
v.
The corner is very dark, and obscures the crumpled little body huddled near the stairs, but Hermione sees him anyway, and gathers him up with a look and a raised eyebrow. When Neville shakes his head mutely to her question, she sighs, and then suggests he follow her to the library.
Once there, Hermione wanders through the stacks, inhaling the scent of old papers and older ideas, fingers trailing lightly along crumbling spines.
"This is the closest thing to a temple I have, you know." She whispers softly, as Neville follows patiently in her wake. He has to strain to hear her. "It's where I go when I'm upset, or in need of guidance. Do you know why it calms me?"
Neville shakes his head silently, still not trusting his voice, but Hermione continues anyway, without turning around. "Because Malfoy and his ilk will never write a book, but people like you and I will. And for the next hundred centuries, there will be others who read what we wrote, and we will never die. No one will remember Malfoy, and even if they did, no one will care. No one cares even now. These are ideas, distilled, and ideas are very, very hard to kill."
She turns to him then, and smiles, and Neville returns it with a watery version of his own. He glances at the spines to his side, and then peers at them, discerning something of plants, and when he looks up, she is gone. He almost thinks she has been absorbed into the shelves themselves, but shrugs away the thought, and picks the text he saw off the shelf.
vi.
Pansy stays late after class, and so catches Neville coming in early for the next one. The forlornly empty classroom houses only the two of them, and Neville hesitantly unpacks his bag at the opposite corner desk.
"You're just tracking that Potter." She sneers reflexively. "If coming to class early could help you, you'd be on par with that Mudblood Granger."
Neville looks at her blankly, but doesn't move from his seat. Angered, Pansy circles closer, looking for a reaction. Finding none, she turns to leave, and is surprised to hear a voice behind her.
"It's odd that you despise me for being a shadow. You're one yourself, after all."
She whirls on him, pink lips around a twisted mouth, but before she says a word, he continues. "It doesn't suit you, you know."
"I hate you." She snarls, and runs from the room.
vii.
Draco had wondered before why Hermione wasn't in Ravenclaw, but now he knew. He twists his hands in the tapestry at his back and listens numbly as Hermione informs him that one more attack on Neville will result in a frank talk with Harry, and possibly with Dumbledore.
Her hair is crackling with static stress, and her eyes echo the lightning tone of her voice, but all Draco can see is the look in Harry's eyes, and Harry's back walking away.
Hermione stops, and looks in Draco's eyes, and at his paleness, and nods to herself. "I won't tell. Yet." She states, and swirls away, still crackling. Draco sinks to his knees, for just a moment, but rises almost immediately and walks away.
Harry steps out from behind the tapestry, teeth gritted, and follows Draco.
viii.
Ron walks into the empty dorm, and throws his bag in a chair, only to find the chair occupied. Blinking, he moves the bag to the bed instead.
Red-rimmed eyes and pale features regard him somberly from the corner. After a moment passes, Ron asks Draco what he wants.
"I think I broke us, and I don't know how to fix it." Draco doesn't have to define 'us', but Ron can't figure out why Draco would come to him.
"Being cruel is something I'm good at." Despite the callous words, there's something broken and pleading just behind them, and Ron finds himself seated on the bed and listening to the tale before he quite knows it. After a while, he finds himself talking instead of listening, and Draco leaves with his customary arrogance and the firm belief that now he can 'fix it'.
Ron feels something twist inside, but his eyes are dry. The silence in the room is complete, and Ron wonders if the conversation actually happened.
ix.
"You're a stupid git." The words are baldfaced, unadorned, and Ron looks around him quizzically before identifying the source.
"So I've been told." He responds cautiously, but not aggressively. He looks at her curiously. Pansy glares back. Then Harry and Draco step into the room, moving seamlessly to seats beside each other, and Ron's eyes track their progress helplessly.
Pansy watches Ron watching Harry for the rest of the class period, and when the lesson ends, she grits her teeth and walks away. Draco looks puzzled, that she didn't wait for him, but shrugs it off.
She watches sunrises for the next three days, and then swears to never think of them again.
x.
Hogsmeade seems a little empty this year, but Ron and Hermione share a Butterbeer anyway, and wander through Zonko's. The air is very crisp, and the dirt is frozen dry under their feet. They turn and walk up to the Shrieking Shack anyway, without a word spoken. Parts of the village are spread out before them there, orange trees and pumpkin fields clashing against a bright dust blue sky. Sharing a glance and a breath, they speak at the exact same time.
"I miss Harry."
It echoes in an embarrassed silence, and they walk back down together. They find Neville alone at the bottom of the hill, and he walks with them for the rest of the trip.
The hardest part, which neither of them talks about, is the glimpses of burnt black hair around corners and down alleys, and the silver that is always paired with it.
xi.
Pansy admits it's a bit self-masochistic, her fondness for cornering one after another of Harry's friends. She suspects she's trying to find out why Harry? Why not...? She doesn't finish the thought. But she finds Hermione anyway, alone in the library, and it's as easy as that. She plops unnecessarily down on a chair, rocking a table covered in texts and scrolls.
"It wasn't supposed to be like this, you know." She starts out by way of conversation. Hermione gives her a puzzled look. Pansy reflects that Potter's friends must practice the puzzled look in a mirror. "You were supposed to be with Potter. And I was supposed to be with Draco. This story is all wrong."
Hermione looks intrigued for a moment, and replies, "It's not a bad thing. Stories are better when they're unpredictable." This slides right into what Pansy wanted to say (though she doesn't know why) so the Slytherin girl simply grins.
"My thought exactly. So, since they're together, maybe we should be, too." Pansy states simply, ingenuously. Hermione's eyebrows shoot into the depths of her bangs.
"I didn't know you were... like that."
"Oh, I'm not." Pansy replies airily. "But it'd be perfect, wouldn't it?" Hermione ponders this, then agrees. "You're right. Too bad it turned out the way it did."
"Yeah. Too bad."
Somehow, this helps.
xii.
Somehow, between all of the classes, and the recreations, and day-to- day life, everyone reaches some sort of conversation, and some sort of understanding, even if they can't figure out what it is. And somehow, in all of this, Pansy never actually talks to Harry himself.
Which may be why she's more aware of him than any other person in the school.
He's unaware of her, though.
It should infuriate her. But then Draco laughs.
And it doesn't.
Fin.
AN/ There are 6 characters, and if you assigned each character a point on a hexagon, and then drew each relationship, every point would connect to every other point. The title is based off of this.
The sun glittered on Harry's hair when Ron gave him the kitten. Ron's voice caught in his throat for just a moment, because he saw an answering sparkle in Harry's eyes, and in the joy of Harry's fingers against the short, soft fur. The moment passed, though, and after they'd both laughed, Ron gazed into the sky and asked what he would name the kitten.
A brief joyous pause, and then, "Well, I'll name him Draco, of course."
Another pause, different from the first, and Ron picked up every glittering piece of his heart, and agreed outloud that it was a wonderful name.
ii.
Draco was meant to be a morning person. It's his best kept secret, and Pansy suspects even he doesn't know it fully. Draco sleeps late, waking in the afternoon, invulnerable and stark. He stays out nights, stunning in the starlight. The innocent child who steals your soul.
Pansy only saw him in dawnlight by accident, and she's never breathes a word to anyone. His lashes were clumped and darkened by sleep, his grey eyes matching the sharp dawn sky. The sunlight brushed rose shades across sharp cheekbones and translucent skin, and Pansy mourned the thought that next year his voice would deepen and porcelain features coarsen. She slipped out of sight before he noticed her, fearing the return of the flat pale boy she knew.
It was the only time she ever saw him in color.
iii.
Neville privately thinks Ron does a piss-poor job of being a shadow. He burns too brightly, from his flaming hair to his smoldering dreams, and Neville sees the part of sidekick easier in Harry's burnt black hair and shadowed eyes. It's a nagging imbalance in Neville's world, until one day Neville's eyes are drawn to the firework flames of silver blond hair, and suddenly everything makes sense again.
Someday Ron will light off on his own, Neville thinks, and he will need his own shadow.
Neville waits.
iv.
Draco feels something break inside whenever Harry catches him being himself. Harry never says anything anymore, just looks at Draco, and then walks away. And Draco always stops, even though he feels as if he will explode, and walks in the other direction.
Later, though, Draco always finds Longbottom, with his rumpled hair and scruffy clothes and dirt under his fingers, and finds ways to spit the bitter words of futility that gather behind his teeth.
"You're just his shadow, you know, and you're just as worthless." The poison spills out, but this time it misses his mark, and Neville straightens imperceptibly and smiles just a little. So Draco settles for punching him instead, and when he sees the tears gather in the folds of chubby skin, he feels better, and leaves to find Harry.
v.
The corner is very dark, and obscures the crumpled little body huddled near the stairs, but Hermione sees him anyway, and gathers him up with a look and a raised eyebrow. When Neville shakes his head mutely to her question, she sighs, and then suggests he follow her to the library.
Once there, Hermione wanders through the stacks, inhaling the scent of old papers and older ideas, fingers trailing lightly along crumbling spines.
"This is the closest thing to a temple I have, you know." She whispers softly, as Neville follows patiently in her wake. He has to strain to hear her. "It's where I go when I'm upset, or in need of guidance. Do you know why it calms me?"
Neville shakes his head silently, still not trusting his voice, but Hermione continues anyway, without turning around. "Because Malfoy and his ilk will never write a book, but people like you and I will. And for the next hundred centuries, there will be others who read what we wrote, and we will never die. No one will remember Malfoy, and even if they did, no one will care. No one cares even now. These are ideas, distilled, and ideas are very, very hard to kill."
She turns to him then, and smiles, and Neville returns it with a watery version of his own. He glances at the spines to his side, and then peers at them, discerning something of plants, and when he looks up, she is gone. He almost thinks she has been absorbed into the shelves themselves, but shrugs away the thought, and picks the text he saw off the shelf.
vi.
Pansy stays late after class, and so catches Neville coming in early for the next one. The forlornly empty classroom houses only the two of them, and Neville hesitantly unpacks his bag at the opposite corner desk.
"You're just tracking that Potter." She sneers reflexively. "If coming to class early could help you, you'd be on par with that Mudblood Granger."
Neville looks at her blankly, but doesn't move from his seat. Angered, Pansy circles closer, looking for a reaction. Finding none, she turns to leave, and is surprised to hear a voice behind her.
"It's odd that you despise me for being a shadow. You're one yourself, after all."
She whirls on him, pink lips around a twisted mouth, but before she says a word, he continues. "It doesn't suit you, you know."
"I hate you." She snarls, and runs from the room.
vii.
Draco had wondered before why Hermione wasn't in Ravenclaw, but now he knew. He twists his hands in the tapestry at his back and listens numbly as Hermione informs him that one more attack on Neville will result in a frank talk with Harry, and possibly with Dumbledore.
Her hair is crackling with static stress, and her eyes echo the lightning tone of her voice, but all Draco can see is the look in Harry's eyes, and Harry's back walking away.
Hermione stops, and looks in Draco's eyes, and at his paleness, and nods to herself. "I won't tell. Yet." She states, and swirls away, still crackling. Draco sinks to his knees, for just a moment, but rises almost immediately and walks away.
Harry steps out from behind the tapestry, teeth gritted, and follows Draco.
viii.
Ron walks into the empty dorm, and throws his bag in a chair, only to find the chair occupied. Blinking, he moves the bag to the bed instead.
Red-rimmed eyes and pale features regard him somberly from the corner. After a moment passes, Ron asks Draco what he wants.
"I think I broke us, and I don't know how to fix it." Draco doesn't have to define 'us', but Ron can't figure out why Draco would come to him.
"Being cruel is something I'm good at." Despite the callous words, there's something broken and pleading just behind them, and Ron finds himself seated on the bed and listening to the tale before he quite knows it. After a while, he finds himself talking instead of listening, and Draco leaves with his customary arrogance and the firm belief that now he can 'fix it'.
Ron feels something twist inside, but his eyes are dry. The silence in the room is complete, and Ron wonders if the conversation actually happened.
ix.
"You're a stupid git." The words are baldfaced, unadorned, and Ron looks around him quizzically before identifying the source.
"So I've been told." He responds cautiously, but not aggressively. He looks at her curiously. Pansy glares back. Then Harry and Draco step into the room, moving seamlessly to seats beside each other, and Ron's eyes track their progress helplessly.
Pansy watches Ron watching Harry for the rest of the class period, and when the lesson ends, she grits her teeth and walks away. Draco looks puzzled, that she didn't wait for him, but shrugs it off.
She watches sunrises for the next three days, and then swears to never think of them again.
x.
Hogsmeade seems a little empty this year, but Ron and Hermione share a Butterbeer anyway, and wander through Zonko's. The air is very crisp, and the dirt is frozen dry under their feet. They turn and walk up to the Shrieking Shack anyway, without a word spoken. Parts of the village are spread out before them there, orange trees and pumpkin fields clashing against a bright dust blue sky. Sharing a glance and a breath, they speak at the exact same time.
"I miss Harry."
It echoes in an embarrassed silence, and they walk back down together. They find Neville alone at the bottom of the hill, and he walks with them for the rest of the trip.
The hardest part, which neither of them talks about, is the glimpses of burnt black hair around corners and down alleys, and the silver that is always paired with it.
xi.
Pansy admits it's a bit self-masochistic, her fondness for cornering one after another of Harry's friends. She suspects she's trying to find out why Harry? Why not...? She doesn't finish the thought. But she finds Hermione anyway, alone in the library, and it's as easy as that. She plops unnecessarily down on a chair, rocking a table covered in texts and scrolls.
"It wasn't supposed to be like this, you know." She starts out by way of conversation. Hermione gives her a puzzled look. Pansy reflects that Potter's friends must practice the puzzled look in a mirror. "You were supposed to be with Potter. And I was supposed to be with Draco. This story is all wrong."
Hermione looks intrigued for a moment, and replies, "It's not a bad thing. Stories are better when they're unpredictable." This slides right into what Pansy wanted to say (though she doesn't know why) so the Slytherin girl simply grins.
"My thought exactly. So, since they're together, maybe we should be, too." Pansy states simply, ingenuously. Hermione's eyebrows shoot into the depths of her bangs.
"I didn't know you were... like that."
"Oh, I'm not." Pansy replies airily. "But it'd be perfect, wouldn't it?" Hermione ponders this, then agrees. "You're right. Too bad it turned out the way it did."
"Yeah. Too bad."
Somehow, this helps.
xii.
Somehow, between all of the classes, and the recreations, and day-to- day life, everyone reaches some sort of conversation, and some sort of understanding, even if they can't figure out what it is. And somehow, in all of this, Pansy never actually talks to Harry himself.
Which may be why she's more aware of him than any other person in the school.
He's unaware of her, though.
It should infuriate her. But then Draco laughs.
And it doesn't.
Fin.
AN/ There are 6 characters, and if you assigned each character a point on a hexagon, and then drew each relationship, every point would connect to every other point. The title is based off of this.