Standard disclaimers apply.
Chapter One: Constellations
Pansy made another careful mark on her Astronomy chart and turned back to her telescope. Beside her, Padma Patil muttered under her breath as she scratched something out on her own work. Ernie McMillan coughed.
It was Pansy's final year at Hogwarts, and the size of her year had dwindled to the point where all Houses were combined for classes. Some parents had pulled their children from Hogwarts out of concern for their safety. Some parents had pulled their children for more nefarious ends. Only three seventh-year Slytherins were left: herself, Daphne Greengrass, and Blaise Zabini. Daphne's parents weren't Dark, Blaise's mother wouldn't see her darling run off and ruin his education, and Pansy…well, she wasn't sure why she remained.
The night sky wasn't perfect. Small clouds rode along the stars, illuminated by a mid-phase harvest moon. Her quadrant was obscured. Sighing, she took a break from her instruments.
Her eyes sought out the constellation the way a pit pony goes home at the end of the day – immediately and without thinking. Draco. The Dragon. By the time her brain caught up with her, it was too late.
Mumbling an excuse about the loo, she slipped into the Tower and stumbled down the spiral stairs until she knew she couldn't be seen.
Draco was in Azkaban now. Some stupid piece of luck, an attack gone wrong, and suddenly his life was reduced to barren walls in a cell with a view. At least, she hoped he had a view. To her shame, she hadn't been to visit him. She put a hand against the cold stone wall and wondered if he knew how much she wanted to go to him.
She'd broken up with Draco halfway through her sixth year, when he was too preoccupied to spend time with her and would be mysteriously absent without giving any explanation. In hindsight, she'd left him when he needed her most, but he hadn't even trusted her enough to tell her what he had been doing. Without trust, there was no foundation for a relationship. She still missed him, though. If nothing else, they were friends, but she hadn't gone to visit him once. Yes, she was scared of Azkaban. She was too afraid of what she might find, afraid that she'd be looking into a tidepool of inexorable future. No one else spoke of being to see him, so she figured everyone felt the same way. Did he know he was being abandoned? Her eyes welled with tears.
So she was in school, and Draco, arguably her best friend, was gone. He hadn't trusted her to help him, and now she had turned her back on him in turn. She was stuck in this mouldy old school because her parents didn't think she was hard enough, smart enough, to be anything but a liability to the Dark Lord. And deep down, she knew they were right. She was an indifferent student, and while she possessed a measure of cleverness, she wasn't diabolical. Draco was diabolical. Blaise was diabolical. Millicent was doubly diabolical under her stoic exterior, which was probably why she was gone.
Millicent gone, Draco gone, Blaise protected, Pansy a disappointment to everyone….
She sagged against the wall and sobbed once, digging her nails into her palms.
"Are you alright?"
Pansy's head went up like a doe hearing gunshot. Longbottom? Longbottom. He'd forgotten his notebook and gone back for it, and now he was on the stairs below her, gaping stupidly. "What are you looking at, Longbottom?" she snarled, her fury growing by the moment. "Standing there like the useless idiotic lump you are? Say something, or are you mute when you don't have precious Potter and Weasley to think of comebacks? Kneazle got your tongue, you great pudding-faced wanker?"
It was as if someone had hit Longbottom with a Freezing Charm. He just stared at her, his mouth slightly open.
"Say something!" she screamed.
"No," he replied, looking bewildered.
"No? Why not?"
He had the unbelievable nerve to look at her with pity then, and when he finally answered, his voice was soft. "Because that's not what civilized people do, Pansy."
Pansy froze in absolute shock. Had she been in a normal mindset, she would've been outraged - how dare he speak to her that way? At the moment, however, those words could've come straight from her mother's own mouth. There were undertones of disappointment and failure to live up to expectations in his voice, and hearing her parents' intonations come out of Longbottom's mouth – dull-witted, childlike Longbottom – was too much of an incongruity for her mind to process.
He edged past her carefully and rounded the corner up the tower.