It was, very possibly, the worst day of Pansy Parkinson's entire life.
"Look, Pansy, it's not as though you hadn't expected it," Draco had said, sounding as cold and haughty and unforgiving as always, a bit of a smirk at the corner of his mouth. "Father just doesn't think you're marriage material."
Pansy had, of course, shrieked and cried and thrown things, very nearly knocking an expensive and ancient vase off the mantle of the fireplace in the Slytherin common room, and shattering a lovely living glass sculpture of a dragon across the floor in front of Draco's favorite chair, the plush velvet one near the dormitory stairs. It was then that he'd advanced on her, hand raised and face contorted in fury, and she'd turned and fled up the stairs to her dormitory for sanctuary.
She'd stayed in her bed, curtains drawn tightly shut, until dinner, when her dorm mates, Millicent Bulstrode, Tracey Davis, and Daphne Greengrass, had come into the room, bustling about and thumping around and discussing the afternoon's Quidditch match (during which, Pansy was pleased to note, Gryffindor had lost rather spectacularly to Hufflepuff) and making it generally impossible to wallow in her sorrows. She'd flung the curtains open, snatched a pack of Gauloises out of her trunk, and stormed out the door, slamming it behind her and heading for the roof of the Astronomy tower, determined to rid herself of all her bad Chi (or whatever that new-age American-hippie tree-hugging bullshit her mother practiced was called) and simply drown in self-love.
This, of course, was much easier said than done. She had chain-smoked at least twelve cigarettes in the past hour, and still could not think of a single positive aspect that would make Pansy Parkinson a desirable, fun, and intriguing person to be around.
Truth be told, she hadn't expected it. She'd thought, naively, like most young girls, that she and Draco would be together forever; they would marry straight out of school in a gigantic pureblood wedding that would be the social event of the season, and would bear lots of little blonde-haired, pointy-faced, pug-nosed babies, all of whom would grow into respectable members of the pureblooded community and would continue to build the Malfoy name into an even greater empire than it already was. She would be the perfect example of a Malfoy wife: charming, elegant, and always dressed in the latest Wizarding fashions from Paris and Milan, lounging around on plush Greek chaises during the day and directing the house elves' preparations regarding whatever gala was planned for that evening.
That was now, she realized despondently, gone forever. She was not, as the elder Malfoy had so clearly pronounced, marriage material. She was Pansy Parkinson, pureblooded but not Old Money, the kind that the Malfoys respected. Her father had made a respectable name for the family, building it up from scratch with his ties inside Gringott's, and creating a sizeable fortune to go alongside it. This was, apparently, not enough for a Malfoy. Richard Parkinson had sat at the same board meetings as Lucius Malfoy, their wives exchanged recipes and sometimes house elves, and while Draco and Pansy had known each other nearly since birth, they were still not on the same rung of the social ladder.
"I shouldn't be bitter," Pansy said aloud, though even as she voiced it her face contorted with anger and regret and, most definitely, a sizeable amount of bitterness.
Perhaps it was the way she presented herself, she mused. She was rather prone to emotional displays and fits of temper, ones rather similar to the one she'd just thrown in the common room, actually. She had never been one to box her feelings away inside for everyone else's sake, like she supposed a true pureblooded Lady would. She enjoyed the attention of misbehaving far too much—she veritably basked in it, like a fire salamander dropped in the hot coals of an inferno. She was not really graceful or poised, either, though she could fake it on occasion, as she had proved during fourth year at the Yule Ball and during the Malfoy's annual Christmas party the following year, when Draco had first kissed her.
She was dismayed to realize she was crying, and bitterly wiped the tears off her face. It was just not fair, really. It wasn't as though she had loved him, after all—in pureblood society, love was something to be frowned upon, to ignore and push away and despise. Love was, in most circumstances, a filthy word; to be properly used only whilst describing manor décor and perhaps that lovely little chateau in Switzerland that was simply divine for the holidays last year, never to be used in the context of another human being. But there had been a fondness there, the kind that comes with knowing someone from childhood, comes from play dates and dinner parties and games on the Junior Pureblood Quidditch League, team seventeen.
Pansy grimaced and ground the cigarette out on the turret next to her, leaning back against the cold stone and wiping the tears off her face. There was a time for reminiscing, she mused, but now was not the time. She was a Parkinson, and that meant dignity, pride, self-sufficiency, and above all, a bitch-slap of retribution and bloody vengeance for those foolish enough to think of using humiliation as a weapon. The time for reminiscing would come once she had utterly and completely destroyed Draco Malfoy from the ground up, when she was laughing in his face as he sobbed on the floor, begging for forgiveness and to be taken back. Then, she thought, she would have the proper memories to reminisce about.
XXXXX
Elsewhere in the castle, Ron Weasley was furious. He was livid with quivering, violent rage, the kind that made the blood flow like quicksilver and the manly testosterone (inherent in all seventeen-year-old boys) crash and thunder like the wrath of Zeus. He was, he realized, seeing red, and for some reason, he wanted very much to rip a small, furry sort of animal to shreds with his bare hands. Losing the Quidditch match had been bad enough, but that bloody row with Hermione had been the cherry on top of it all.
Stubborn, she had called him. A "pig-headed arse" (in exactly so many words) and a "stupid, ignorant, whinging sod". He had of course flown into a fit of rage, and would have properly decapitated Nearly-Headless Nick during a particularly vicious gesture with a carving knife had the ghost still been living. Hermione had then called him reckless and violent, and flounced out of the hall in a huff.
And really, he mused angrily, where does she get off calling me stubborn? Wouldn't know 'defeat' if it kicked her in the bloody teeth.
His day, in retrospect, could have been better.
As he stalked the darkened halls, his Prefect badge gleaming merrily in the scant torchlight, he realized that what he needed above and beyond anything else was some fresh air. Ron had always been an outside person, preferring to frolic around in the Burrow garden until the latest hours of the evening than inside the house, and the stuffy confines of the stone castle were making his head spin. He changed direction abruptly, heading for the East wing of the castle, and the height and freedom of the Astronomy tower.
He should have realized, he supposed, when the portrait that gave access to the tower was, for once, awake. He perhaps should have realized when he kicked the trapdoor open without having to charm the lock off. And, he thought, he definitely should have realized the moment the smell of Muggle cigarettes hit his nostrils, but Ron had never been exactly bright, and was properly shocked when, climbing onto the roof, he discovered someone else was already sitting on the ledge. His ledge, his favorite spot, where you could see all across the grounds and could keep a proper eye on the Quidditch pitch, where it was never windy and always just a little bit warm and where the sunlight always left a last golden glow over the parapets when it set.
He stood at the base of the trapdoor for a moment, gaping. How dare this intruder sit on his ledge, taking up his space, and smoke those foul Muggle things? For all that Mr. Weasley loved Muggles, there were some things Ron could do without.
And who was this intruder, anyway, this invader of privacy? Ron stood staring for a moment, still in angry shock. It was a girl, he realized after a moment. A small girl, petite and rather slender under the lines of her blouse. She had short black hair, and something about the hard angle of her jaw he could see was familiar, like waking up from a dream you can't quite remember.
He cast around, searching for something, anything, and his eyes lit upon the discarded school jumper on the floor, the crest barely peeking out from beneath the folds. A flicker of recognition crossed his face as the tiny snake's head winked up at him, and he looked up, face contorting in anger.
"You… what are you doing here!" He sputtered, coherence failing him. "You can't… you're not… Get out!"
Pansy laughed harshly, not bothering to turn around. "Righteous Gryffindor rage. Splendid."
Her voice was thick, and Ron realized she'd been crying. He felt a pang of remorse—Mrs. Weasley had always taught him crying girls were to be consoled, but she couldn't possibly have meant Pansy Parkinson and the haze of smoke that surrounded her. It smelled disgusting, and was sufficient reminder of exactly why he had such a compelling urge to push her off the edge of the tower.
"What are you doing here?" he demanded angrily, gripping the rusty handrail of the stairs.
"I could ask the same of you," she said nastily, flicking little orange sparks off the tip of her cigarette. "Don't you have some celebrating to do? Oh, wait." Her tone was mocking, and Ron bristled.
"Shut it, Parkinson," he growled, taking a menacing step towards her back. "You're still behind us for the Cup anyway."
"Oh yes, but at least we didn't lose to Hufflepuff," she said, breathing in more of the foul smoke. Ron fought back an urge to cough.
"They have a very good line-up this year," Ron defended, crossing his arms. It was actually rather windy up on the roof, and he wished he'd brought his cloak. He couldn't imagine how Pansy was feeling, sitting on the ledge in just her blouse. "Aren't you cold?" he asked, before he could stop himself.
"Why?" she asked scathingly. "Going to lend me your jumper?"
He could tell, somehow, even in the darkness, even though she was facing away, that she was rolling her eyes at him.
"Sod this," he muttered, viciously kicking an abandoned telescope aside and starting back down the stairs.
"No," she called out, as his shoulders were disappearing through the trapdoor. "I'm not cold."
She turned then, and looked at him, and he looked up at her. Her eyes were tiny and dark and there were still lines of tears on her cheeks, and he felt something, something odd, something different. It passed between them, dancing in their eyes, and he was unnerved.
"Right then," he said, blinking uneasily. "'Night."
She nodded, and turned away, holding the glowing end of the cigarette away from her face, staring off over the grounds.
He disappeared through the trapdoor, suppressing the urge to slip the padlock back on and close it tightly, instead carefully placing it on the table near the ladder as he exited the portrait hole.
Above him, unseeing, Pansy smiled into the dark, mind still set on Draco's revenge. He would get what was coming to him, that was for sure, and he would rue the day he ever even thought about breaking Pansy Parkinson's heart.