The trophy room was silent, aside from the occasional rustle of Madame Hooch's papers and the squeak and clink of the trophies the girls were polishing. Pansy was uncomfortably aware of the girl beside her, uncomfortably aware of her own pounding heart. She scowled even harder. It just wasn't fair, she thought morosely. It just wasn't fair.
No one tried harder to like boys than Pansy. She had been having an on-again off-again relationship with Draco since third year, plus regular hook-ups with Blaise since fourth. Neither of these things were the result of much effort on her part, though. Those two really got around. Pansy had flirted and subsequently gone out with practically every other pureblood boy more or less her age in the school, but it was no good. She couldn't stop thinking about girls.
And a Parkinson couldn't be a dyke, a lezbo. The Parkinsons were some of the richest, purest, most influential wizarding families in Britain. Pansy was going to marry a boy of her own social standing from a family her own would benefit from a connection with. It could easily be any one of a number of boys in Hogwarts, or a foreign boy. There were a family of Norwegian wizards she know her mother had been particularly keen on creating a bond with, and she had hinted that they had a son more or less Pansy's age. Pansy knew that all that. She wanted it. She wanted to be a credit to her ancestors and a benefit to her descendents. But in her heart of hearts, deep down, she didn't want it, not at all.
It had been fine before. There had been minor infatuations- a Slytherin girl two years older than her, a Ravenclaw girl a year younger, but this year was worse. Ginny Weasley had returned to Hogwarts after the summer with her slender freckled body toned and strong from flying, a confidence in her step and a marked maturity in her wicked green eyes.
Pansy hadn't been able to take her eyes off her lithe athletic body and mane of fiery hair. Much less off the gaggle of admiring boys of various houses and ages that pursued her, asking to carry her books, lend her their notes, run errands for her. Even Blaise, connoisseur of girls, had been caught eyeing her once or twice. At first, Pansy had ducked her head and gritted her teeth and resolved to avoid the Gryffindor whenever possible. She has taken to staying in the common room between classes and sitting with her back to the Gryffindor table in the great hall. That hadn't worked. She had started having lurid and terrifyingly frequent dreams about the Weasley girl, and waking up depressed and aroused. So Pansy hadn't had a very good start to the year, afraid to go out, afraid to go to sleep, and determinedly seducing Theodore Nott, a remarkably boring boy who was terrible company but who wanted to make out almost enough to keep her mind off things.