A/n- Written for The Dinner Table Challenge with the prompt- "This time his/her boss had gone too far." ,and the character Pansy Parkinson
This is the first time I've written about Pansy, and since we don't know a lot about her, I made up my own story for her.
Hope you like it!
Disclaimer- I don't own Harry Potter. Damn it!
The Beginning.
If looks could kill, she was pretty sure Blaise would be dead by now.
Pansy glared at her boss and old friend and wondered if those long forgotten almost-death eater murder skills might come in handy today.
She didn't how she got stuck here; she didn't even know how he'd gotten her to agree to come out with him tonight.
Well, she knew how.
He knew her too well and hadn't felt even a bit of remorse in using his knowledge of her against her. He knew she hadn't been going out a lot, not since everyone in the world assumed that she was a monster, and he'd coaxed her using his supreme powers of charm.
He'd told her that she needed to go out, to meet new people, even go on a date or two, in fact he had the perfect solution, he was going to a party at his new girlfriend's house, and she had a really great and really single brother.
Turns out his new girlfriend was Ginny Weasley, and the brother he'd been talking about? Ronald Weasley.
This time her boss had gone too far.
She sipped her butterbeer and thought of the different way she could get revenge without having to use methods of force or violence. Maybe she could mess up his filing system, maybe even his calendar, or she might add some laxatives in his morning coffee, that would serve him right for doing this to her.
"You're still here?" An angry and slightly amazed voice asked from behind her and she rolled her eyes.
"Yes, Weasley, despite your constant attempts to drive me out of here with your manner less behaviour, I'm still here," She replied without turning around from her spot on the bar, and felt him come sit next to her.
"Well, you do have a hard head and a harder heart to know when you're not wanted," he said, and Pansy told herself to not believe a single word he said, to not take it to heart, because hey, it was just him.
But some part of her also wondered if he was right, and that she wasn't wanted here.
"Yeah well, that's the only you've managed to teach me in all the years we've known each other, how to be hard headed and oblivious," she replied, not ready to let him to have an upper hand or the last word.
"So, why are you still here, anyway?" he asked, "Aren't there some people out there who need to be made fun of or bullied?"
The guilt that was always present in a closed up corner of her heart suddenly sprang free of the bars it was locked in and tears rose up her eyes as she thought of everything she'd done in the past. She turned away from him and tried to hide the sheen in her eyes from him.
But he saw them anyway.
"What, the ice-queen has emotions now?" He said, sounding amused as he continued, "Can't handle a little truth about who you are, can you?"
She forced herself to not cry, to not let him see how much his words had affected her because like he said, she was the ice-queen, as she preferred to be.
She walked away towards the balcony before any tears could escape for people to see. Before they could realise that the mean-Pansy-Parkinson couldn't handle someone else being harsh to her.
She gripped the railing hard, letting the tears escape now because there was no way that she could stop them now.
"You are such a piece of work," A harsh voice called out from behind her, "After all those things you say to everyone, bullying everyone who didn't worship you, you can't handle the truth?"
She turned around to see Ron Weasley standing behind her, anger spread all over his face, but this time she was angry herself, and she couldn't hold it in anymore.
"Yes, I'm a bully, Weasley," she sneered, "And I know it's pretty hypocritical of me to cry here after you only told me the truth, and I'm pretty sure I've said things much worse than that. But you know what Weasley? You get to hate me, you get to be angry, and you get to kill me in your head every day, but what you don't get to do, is tell me how to feel. If I want to cry, I will cry, because it's my life."
"Yeah, Weasley," she almost screamed, "I'm a mean old bully who can't handle the truth, so why are you here? Why are you spending your time with me? Why don't you go speak with people who aren't bullies or assumed death eaters or mean, why waste your precious seconds on a despicable human being like me?"
"Wait, you said- assumed death eater? What does that even mean, Parkinson?" He asked, confused.
"Why do you think I'm not rotting in Azkaban, Weasley?" She said with a humourless smile, "I was never one of them, but just because I wasn't a good person and I was a Slytherin, everyone just assumed I was. My parents wanted me to be one, so did all my friends, but I couldn't, I couldn't stand there and kill people just because of their heritage. I don't have that mark, Weasley, but no one ever noticed that. Nobody noticed that all during my seventh year Alecto Carrow locked me in her office at night without a wand and let lose a boggart. I spent months facing my biggest fear every night, just because I didn't want to hurt innocent people."
More tears slipped down her face as she spoke, her voice cracked with every word and her heart broke with every second that passed.
"I didn't have brothers or sisters like you, Weasley, nor did I have a reputation like Potter, or a brain like Granger, or even friends who cared like Longbottom. There were a lot of things expected of me Weasley, I was expected to be popular, smart, pretty, and in the end I was expected to be the perfect pureblood by being a death eater. But I couldn't do any of those things, so in the end I was just a mean girl, who wasn't smart and only got by because of her looks, and I couldn't even be a death eater."
She stopped, no longer able to speak as tears flew down her face harder than ever, and she saw him standing there frozen with an expression of guilt, surprise and worse of all, pity.
She didn't need his pity, so she turned around, forcing herself to calm down, to stop crying, to stop letting all those memories control her.
"Why did you want to give Harry up?" He abruptly asked, and she looked up to find him staring at her.
"I didn't," she said, looking away, "I just said that so the Slytherins could be taken away, so that they don't intermingle with your forces and kill more people, I knew it as what they wanted, and I decided that me wanting to give Potter up will force McGonagall to take Slytherins away, it was all I could think off at that moment."
"I'm-," she heard him try to speak, "I'm sorry, I didn't know."
"Yeah, you didn't, you just assumed," she said, smiling a smile that held no humour, "But don't worry about it, everyone does."
"Then why don't you tell them?" he asked, coming to stand next to her, close enough that she could feel his beating heart, and she was sure he could feel hers.
"Because it doesn't matter, Ron," she said, using his name for the first time, "Because I may not have been a death eater, but I still deserve every bit of their hatred, because I will always be the person who bullied them."
"No you don't Pansy," he said softly, "You don't deserve the hatred because you did everything you could to save us, no one knows what could've happened if slytherins had intermingled with us, I don't know how many more would've been killed. You made mistakes, a lot of them, but I think you more than made up for all of them."
Then he smiled and said, "And the whole giving up Harry charade, it was very clever, I don't think even Hermione could've orchestrated that."
Pansy laughed, and wondered how Ron Weasley, who had hated her with a vengeance just a few minutes ago, was now trying to make her feel better. Pansy realized that maybe he was right; maybe it was time to stop punishing herself, and time to start apologizing.
And her first target was right there in front of her.
"Ron," she began, "I'm extremely sorry for everything I did to you, it was pathetic and stupid but I was jealous of you. I know that nothing can change the past, but I'm extremely sorry."
He smiled softly, a smile that reached his eyes and lit up his entire face, a smile Pansy had never received before, "Apology accepted."
Pansy smiled at him, and then looked inside the party to see a bushy haired witch dancing with a raven haired wizard, two more people she needed to apologize to.
"Come on," Ron said, holding out his hand, as if he knew exactly what she needed to do.
She took his hand and walked inside.
"So, I taught you how to apologize tonight, what should I teach you next time?" he asked, as they walked, and Pansy's heart lit up at the thought of a next time.
"Maybe Quidditch," she said, after some thought.
As they walked down towards the room, they both didn't know anything about the future, but they knew this- This wasn't the ending, it was a beginning.
A/n-Reviews will be appreciated!