"Ellie, why are all these losers at our table?"
Lily had absolutely no idea except that maybe Lenin Rabbitson had been a bad idea. She hadn't counted on Wizard Lenin's brooding adolescent charm combined with his tragic backstory. Suddenly, Default was the most popular table in the whole school and consistently surrounded by adolescent girls of all shapes and sizes, including the now dearly devoted Pansy Parkinson who had bestowed upon Wizard Lenin the lovely name of Lenny-poo.
Lenny-poo, for his own part, looked very close to lighting everything on fire.
Weeks in and there was no sign yet of Wizard Lenin's other mysterious half, just like before the play he'd gone and disappeared into thin air somewhere, like maybe he really had been Ginny the whole time.
So instead of actually getting things done, Wizard Lenin had been sucked into the inertia of Hogwarts, trapped in the surreal monotony along with Lily. Though, Lily supposed, it was nice that he was at least suffering with her.
Still, there was something even more surreal about how normal it all was, she thought. Like she could imagine him hiding somewhere out in this mob, as some other unfortunate Ginny Weasley, wearing yet another paper face in the unwitting masquerade.
"Seriously, Ellie, do something," Blaise insisted, nodding his head towards the swooning crowd all trying to shove their gifts onto the unfortunate Wizard Lenin.
"Not my problem," Lily said after a slight pause, wondering why everyone insisted on making her clean up everyone's mess. Especially, since she had decided, that Wizard Lenin's adolescent girl troubles were definitively not her problem.
Soon though, she thought, she and Wizard Lenin would be out of this place and she didn't care if Wizard Lenin thought it was disadvantageous or bought Dumbledore too much ammunition she was gone. Just like that, and there would even be an Eleanor Lily Potter anymore, she would finally be free…
"Lily," a voice said from behind her, voice curling about the words almost like a caress, and Lily turned, and frowned as she spotted Pansy Parkinson eerily smiling, looking directly at Lily rather than her beloved Lenny-poo. In fact, Lily thought as she straightened, Pansy Parkinson wasn't acting like Pansy Parkinson at all, was not even putting on a charade of Pansy Parkinson.
And just like that, Lily was sitting in the quidditch bleachers again, and travelling down and down and down into the forgotten chamber beneath the castle.
"Now, now, Lily, don't give me that face, I told you she was temporary," Pansy said chidingly, and there wasn't a doubt in Lily's mind that he, Wizard Trotsky behind the mask, meant Ginny Weasley.
Ginny Weasley now dead and buried in the ground, for the crime of having been seen.
"You…" Lily started and at her words the other Default members began to look at Pansy, but the thing wearing Pansy's face didn't seem to care in the slightest, no, in fact, Wizard Trotsky seemed delighted by the attention as if he wouldn't ask for anything less.
"I know, a bit gauche for the occasion, gaudier than Ginevra, certainly," Pansy said, frowning down at herself in dissatisfaction, "But beggars can't be choosers, and she made it so very easy."
Pansy then turned on her heel, nodded once towards Lenin with a cruel smile, then made her way to the front of the great hall and the staff table. The hall, with each deliberate step, grew quieter until her footsteps were as loud as drums, and, finally, as Pansy reached the staff table she lingered in front of Lockhart.
"Why so silent, good messieurs? Did you think that I had left you for good?" Pansy asked, a cruel edge to her lips, and then with her a wand a bundle of papers appearing out of nowhere which she slammed down on the table before the shaking Lockhart, "Have you missed me, good messieurs? I have written you an opera!"
Slamming Pansy's hand onto the score of the opera he leaned forward, leering down at Lockhart with Pansy's face, ignoring the wands now trained on her body, "I so enjoyed your last musical endeavor, you see, that I could not help but write one of my own. Here I bring the finished score, Total Recall Triumphant!"
Pansy stepped back from Lockhart with a truly unnerving smile, putting her wand away, "I advise you to comply, my instructions should be clear," Pansy's eyes moved to Ginny's brothers, all sitting stock still at the Gryffindor table as Pansy waived down at them, "Remember, that there are always Ginevera Weasleys to be found."
Pansy's eyes then drifted to Lily's, met hers across the sea of people, "And remember, Lily, your chains will always be mine."
Pansy collapsed forward, twitching on the floor as the spell, whatever it was that had kept them all shocked and immobile, lifted and Dumbledore and the staff dashed forward to cart her off to the hospital wing.
While Lily, with wide eyes and drums pounding inside of her head, could only see that small piece of paper and that single, stark, instruction in black ink, "Write."