Hell Tastes Sweet

Chapter Twenty

The day before the students would leave to start of the Christmas break Pansy woke up feeling a lot sadder she had been ever since the trip to Hogsmeade. The reason being that, complying with the school tradition, there was going to be a ball celebrated that same day just after dinner and, naturally Pansy still had no partner.

This was partially Draco's fault. Pansy recalled the morning after her meeting with Draco and what the blond young man had done to Blaise. It was rumoured that the boy had only managed to make it back to the school at four o'clock in the morning and, naturally, he had got caught by Flinch in one of the caretaker's usual rounds.

Blaise had got a whole week of detention and forty points were taken from Slytherin. This, of course, got Professor Snape thoroughly infuriated and Blaise had not had a happy moment ever since. Even Pansy felt kind of sympathetic towards the poor guy.

In any case, whatever Blaise had told everyone of the boys from Slytherin, no one was brave enough to ask Pansy to go to the ball with him. Consequently, Pansy found herself having to go alone to the Great Hall for every one of her friends had actually found a partner.

She went to have breakfast knowing that everyone would be very much engaged in all sorts of conversations regarding that night's event. Even knowing that, she tried to put on a façade of nonchalance as if the whole thing didn't really interest her.

In fact, she didn't have to make too much of an effort for she was a lot more worried about the lack of feedback from Draco. Even though she wrote to him at least once a week to let him know about her progress with the D.A. and the information she had gathered so far, her boyfriend had not written to her at all and, for this once, no news didn't necessarily mean good news.

She had found out many interesting things through Harry's and Professor Dumbledore's lessons. For instance, she knew that the latter was just a very well staged coverage of the former.

Dumbledore and his so called assistants, were just teaching them all the stuff they would have learnt through the Defence Against the Dark Arts lessons, not that it wasn't interesting or useful, on the contrary, she found many of those things to be quite practical and did pay a lot of attention to them but, in reality, it was only during Harry's lessons during the D.A. meetings where they learnt, not only loads of new things but, Harry also discussed with the group the news regarding the fight they were actually training for. Naturally, the D.A. gatherings were still kept a secret from the rest of students.

Pansy could easily guess the reason of the existence of both groups: although Professor Dumbledore's lessons aimed to instruct the pupils for a possible attack, he was merely preparing them to defend themselves in the event of an attack to Hogwarts. The D.A. however, was a completely different business, they were training to fight, even offensively if needed.

At some point, Harry had even revealed to the group the contents of the prophecy they had tried to save the night they had gone to the Department of Mysteries.

Pansy was so shocked to hear that Harry himself had to kill Voldemort that she had forgotten to inform Draco about it. She had started to feel some sort of respect for the Gryffindor bespectacled boy. Pansy had learnt many things about him and about his disastrous life and, instead of feeling pity for him, she could not help feeling admiration for the guy. Especially seeing how he carried himself around without a single ounce of selfishness always trying to help everybody no matter who they were.

She was even starting to feel really friendly towards Hermoine, even considering the fact that she was a mudblood, 'no, muggle-born', Pansy corrected herself for she was making every effort to appear as civilised as possible, taking in consideration the amount of muggle-borns that actually formed the D.A.

A clear example of how polite she had become, was the fact that every morning, when she passed by the Gryffindor table, she actually greeted everyone she knew in the house of the lion.

That morning, of course, was no different and, as usual, she saw Harry talking animatedly to Ginny and Hermoine practicing her favourite sport: telling Ron off.

After bidding good morning to them, she went to her table and sat down next to Sonia who, predictably enough, was actually talking to one of the other girls about which shoes to wear with their brand new dress robes.

Pansy felt instantly depressed about it but, as her tight upbringing had taught her, didn't show it in the slightest. In fact, she soon got involved in the conversation and was soon giving her opinion about how a nice pair of black shoes actually matched everything.

Later on, they were walking to their last Double Potions of the term when she felt something burning in her pocket. It was the coin the D.A. used to summon its members to the meetings. She made a mental note to look at the time marked on it right after the lesson not being able to do so now.

She was so distracted thinking about the whole thing that she didn't notice that someone was waiting for her right next to the entrance of the Potions' classroom.

"Parkinson…I'd like a word, please…."

Pansy lifted her head and had to fight very hard to hide her surprise.

"Nott…why…of course…what can I do for you?" Pansy asked Theodore Nott, the loner of the sixth year.

"Not here…after the lesson, please…."

"Sure…I'll see you then…" Pansy said feeling utterly shocked. This was the first time in six years that Theodore Nott had actually spoken to her. Whatever he needed to tell her was incredibly important, and that, made Pansy very worried indeed.

The Double potions lesson was even slower than usual…they were sharing it with the Gryffindors and, naturally, Professor Snape was just making fun of them at every single occasion. Pansy didn't really understand why he behaved this way, not after finding out the truth about the Potions master and his true affiliation. She just thought that maybe Snape had spent so long making fun of Harry and his friends and the habit was hard to die. Either that or, more likely, Snape was just pretending to hate Harry in an attempt to appear as unsuspicious as possible.

In any case, Pansy was just very happy to hear the two words students liked the most: class dismissed.

She found herself almost running towards the door, eager as she was to check the time of the next D.A. meeting, when she heard Nott's voice from behind her.

"Parkinson…do you have time now?"

Turning round not actually believing she had forgot about it, she replied:

"Sure…where do you want to go?"

"Not far…let's just head quickly outside…I've got to go to Transfiguration in a minute…" Nott replied starting to walk.

They reached an empty corridor and Pansy started feeling quite afraid, suddenly remembering the last time she had been alone with a boy other than Draco. Just in case, she put her hand inside her pocket and clenched her wand as firmly as possible ready to attack if needed.

She was about to pull it out seeing Nott as quiet as a tomb looking around himself as if waiting for something.

Finally, getting nervous and inpatient, Pansy asked, trying to sound as pleasant a possible:

"What are we doing here?"

"Ah…yes…sorry…I wanted to know if…well…if…" Nott stuttered.

"What?" Pansy almost shouted already starting to panic and seriously considering to through a stunning curse at him.

"Are you going with anyone to the ball?" Nott finally managed to ask.

Pansy would have either cried or laughed just for the relief she was feeling. Thinking she would scare the poor boy if she did the former, she started giggling almost hysterically puzzling Theodore.

"Alright…I realise this is a stupid idea…after all, everyone knows you're Draco's girlfriend…" Nott said looking abash and turning round to leave.

Pansy, seeing this, stopped laughing and while still smiling, she said:

"I'm sorry, I wasn't laughing at you…and although you're right regarding the fact that I am Draco's girlfriend, I will be more than happy to go with you to the ball…."

Pansy thought Theodore could have fainted and that made her smile grow wider.

To be continued…

A/N: Since I've been such a bad girl and I haven't updated in all the weekend, I have chosen a very nice end of chapter without any cliffie…I hope you're happy with it…as you can see this is a pretty positive chapter because soon, things will get a bit nastier…(oops spoiler alert!!)

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