Chapter 25
Pansy woke up.
She didn't know why, maybe it was something to do with the weird girl that had only just joined the school, but she hadn't been able to sleep properly that whole night.
She sat up.
She had always know when something was happening. It was why she couldn't wait to take divination.
She got up and sliped her slippers on to muffle her footsteps as she padded down the rows of beds.
She didn't fail to notice that Ekans' bed was empty.
Tiptoeing down the common room stairs, she slipped out of the portrait hole with only a few complaints from the portraits and ghosts as she walked stealthily through the moon lit corridors.
The moon illuminated most of the corridors, meaning it was hard to keep to the shadows but she pressed on.
Suddenly, she stopped. She could hear a faint murmur; someone talking to themselves.
Flattening herself against the wall, she shuffled as quietly as she could to where the voice was coming from.
When she shuffled as far as she could to the edge of the corner that split the corridor, she gingerly poked her head around. Hoping against hope that it wasn't a teacher.
It wasn't.
Ekans was sitting on the window ledge of a window that she had flung open. She was silhouetted against the night sky but Pansy could see fairly clearly that she was holding a flower between two of her fingers.
Ekans sighed and looked up at the star lit sky, still twirling her flower between two fingers, the stars and moon reflected in her eyes.
"It's been a while, Sully," She began ,"But I still remember. I still think the same thing, every day, without even realising it. I still mourn you. And I always think the same thing; that it should've been me. That it shoud've been me lying there in the snow with my guts splattered everywhere, bleeding out my life. It should've been me. But it wasn't. It was you.
"You were so young. We all were, but you were the most innocent, the kindest. You cared. You could've made something out of your life. It was clear that we, me and Marv, were doomed. But you weren't. You could've become a healer or even, God forbid, a member of the Ministry of Magic, You could've done something. You should've lived.
"And every day, I think that...maybe it's better this way. You wouldn't like the world as it is now; all full of liars and murder. A place were no one knows that every stone and rock they step on was once red with blood. They don't care either. No one remembers, Sully, that once we were there, rotting away in the dark while they were laughing and eating till they burst. No one even knows who I am. No one was aware that I was alive. No one." Ekans sighed again and rested her head on her knees, still twirling her flower, "You wouldn't like the person I've become much either."
"And though I don't know where you are, what you're doing, I hope that you're happy. I hope that you remember me as I remember you and Marv," Ekans smiled and reached her hand out of the window. The flower balanced on it's stem on her finger, "Happy Birthday, Sully."
Ekans flipped her finger, and the flower spiralled down into the darkness.
While the flower fell, she sang a song that chilled Pansy to the bone;
"Close your eyes and go to sleep,
Down in dark and in the deep,
And when you open again your eyes,
Greeted they'll be by Heaven's skies.
Clear and clean for you they'll be,
But next to you there will be no me,
Close your eyes and go to sleep,
So all those that knew you can weep,
And when you open again your eyes,
There will be a moon and stars that shine,
Looking down at you for me,
But next to you I just can't be,
So close your eyes and go to sleep,
And with the angels you will be,
But I can't go with you so this is goodbye."
Ekans was smiling faintly as she sang it. And Pansy felt nothing but pity for her. Whatever hed happened, there was some sort of unspoken law, some sort of undeniable connection that made her promise silently to not tell anyone about what had happened here. Not Draco, not any of her friends, not even her family. She would carry this around in her heart until the day she died.
Somehow. Ekans had become her friend.
Pansy trailed back to her dorm and fell asleep in a few hours. All while Ekans stayed sat on the window ledge, singing to herself quietly until; morning came.