Sharpness, everywhere.
Charlie was there, a line of silver in his hand. Pinning the red, red beast before going down under a swarm of stabbing spines.
The Manticore let out a knife sound of death. It's many teeth crying as it's tail failed to stab, convulsing and contorting into unnatural violent shapes.
An explosion of sound filled the room. Dimly Pansy couldn't work out if the sound was inside or outside her. Her body filled with sharp. All she could see were people running. People with familiar, unwelcome faces.
She choked, feeling liquid in her throat. The spines intruded too deep into her, scratching the bone, scratching stupor…
There was a blond face above her, female, but she couldn't hear the words. The pain was making itself known too loudly.
A potion was brought to her lips and a warm, quicksilver sensation melted down her tongue, through her throat and along her spine. It felt like falling up a cliff face, a reverse and relieving vertigo. The pain gradually receded to a distant, worrying throb.
"Pansy, I've given you a pain draught. It'll keep you conscious and comfortable for the next couple of hours, but I need to get the spines out," the woman said, her voice calm and professional.
Pansy's vision blurred. Luna? A professional Luna?
Blinking, she became aware the figure was casting spells along her right arm, left rib cage, upper hip. Despite the calmness of the figure's voice, her hands shook.
Pansy reached for one of her wrists.
"Thank you, Astoria," Pansy looked into her grey eyes. "Thank you for looking after me. Don't… ugh, worry about getting it wrong. I might not need my intestines - how's Charlie?"
"Someone else is looking after him," Astoria's eyes flicked to the red mess of beast and blood. "Now, be quiet. Let me seal these charms."
Pansy tried to fathom what that look was in Astoria's eyes. Was she lying about someone being with Charlie? She couldn't hear him. She couldn't move - she daren't look down as she had the horrifying suspicion she was pinned to the ground, struck through like a voodoo doll.
All she could see was the high vaulted ceiling and sense people running, shifting, shouting. Charlie?
"Pansy," Draco knelt on the other side of her and took her hand. He was taking immense care to not look anywhere but her face. Dimly, she felt Astoria's hand shake one more, then still and continue with a precise diligence.
"Hell," Pansy tried to say before her voice caught with pain. "You look awful."
Draco didn't bother smiling. "It's been a trying day."
He didn't mock her, just held her hand tightly. That was a bad sign.
"Well, you're obviously not very good at throwing parties. Inviting the wrong people - and species - AAAAAAHHH!"
Astoria was holding a six inch spine in her hand. Something liquid and belonging to Pansy dripped from it's tip. Calmly, Astoria knocked on Pansy's stomach where the spine must have been buried. It gave a hollow sound.
"By species, I didn't mean you," Pansy said, trying to stop the room spinning as her stomach sunk with nausea.
"Quite. The seal will hold, but we need to get you to St Mungo's. I'm glad your alright Pansy, but please scream less loudly. Draco, could you keep her quiet? I need to keep my hands steady as I do this…"
Draco looked like what he really wanted to do was be sick. "No."
"Give me more of that bloody pain draft if you need me to be so quiet, you god-awful butchering succubus!"
"I can do it," a brisk voice said. Before Pansy could clock who it was, Hermione had point her wand at her throat and efficiently enunciated "Silencio."
Screaming where no one can hear you, but when they know you're in pain was a prison. Pansy wasn't quite sure which she hated most: Manticore spines being plucked out of her intestines or how uncomfortably on the nose she found the metaphor for her short, awful existence.
Six spines lay beside her. Sickeningly long.
Pansy's hands felt down her body, through the tears in her clothes. Where there should be skin was a cool metal. A delicate tap of her finger showed it to be hollow, stopping her body filling the space with blood. She tried not to think too much about it. Astoria said it would hold until they got to St Mungo's. She was a first year medic, so Pansy had to trust her. That wasn't especially one of her skills.
"Let me help you," Draco said, taking her arm and guiding her back upwards.
Blaise, thank Merlin, appeared on her other side and looked very put out that Draco got there first. With a twitch of his wand he knitted the tears in her clothes, ensuring her privacy, as always.
The room lurched, but at least suddenly she could see. Her voice still felt like a whisper from Hermione's spell, which was okay. She felt too tired to use it and too tired to understand what was going on around her. Where on earth was Charlie?
A ginger figure came into view, grouped closely by a bushy haired annoyance and a tall figure who looked cold with annoyance.
"Bloody hell. That - that can't be the other wardrobe? Why on earth wasn't this clocked after the Battle of Hogwarts?" Blundered the wrong and least favourite Weasley.
"Hmm," replied the person in charge - an inevitable Potter. He was looking dishevelled, but not injured, and he couldn't take his eyes from Draco. She could feel the pale traitor tense next to her, realising she was basically attached to him.
Well, Pansy wasn't going to wander into that mess.
"Draco, go greet your guests and give them the run down," she whispered, leaning her weight onto Blaise. "They need to know what happened. That someone is trying to kill us."
Without waiting for an answer or bothering to look at his traumatised and annoyed face, Pansy weakly dragged Blaise as her human crutch and limped towards the fallen beast. It was the place Charlie lay.
His hand rested on the flank of the Manticore, which was giving a laboured breath. It's human face looked drawn and innocent, her eyes closed.
Blood soaked Charlie's trousers, and for a second Pansy thought she was looking at two dying beasts, both too fantastic for this world.
He looked up at her with a sad smile.
"It's okay. Hermione sewed my leg up with inhuman efficiency. It had torn open for the briefest moment, though it's still a bit wobbly to lean on." Charlie said with his usual casualness, as if his injury was happenstance and nothing to do with the beast he was tending to as it died.
Blaise, despite his carefully emotionless demeanour, had a telling look of worry at the amount of blood awash on the walls, floor and them. He held her arm for a moment. "I'll sit you by him to rest. But be careful. With all of them" he whispered before leaving her, his eyes dark with warning.
She was exhausted, deadened. She couldn't protect herself from Charlie if she tried.
Charlie opened his arms and Pansy all but collapsed into them.
"It's okay, everyone is safe. It's okay."
For a moment, that was enough. It was comfort like no other. His shoulders seemed to take her burden as if neither of them was covered in blood. But all Pansy could see what the scarlet thread connecting all the attacks, all the weird threats and awful creatures, and she knew another beast must lay at the end of it.
"It's not. The Dementors, the death threats, the Manticore. These people will have their kill and be glad of it. And who know's, maybe we deserve it…" A moment of weakness and exhaustion came over her and she could feel herself filling again with upset and despair. Nothing could fix this. Pell in prison didn't fix this. Losing friends didn't fix this. They wouldn't stop until every single one of her friends was annihilated.
Charlie took her face in his hands. "You may deserve many things, Pansy Parkinson, but you don't deserve this."
She spluttered for a second, tears and panicked laughter.
"Debatable, Weasley. But I appreciate the sentiment."
Harry and Draco stood staring awkwardly at each other, trying to look gracious, professional and furious. It was as if they were in competition to seem like the most important and in charge person, while also trying to ignore the other.
Harry had even taken out a notebook, but looked like he was less taking notes and more destroying his quill. Ron and Hermione whispered angrily by the door, and Blaise and Astoria looked tall and imposing, as was their way when strange Gryffindors were around. Some junior Auror took photos of the mayhem, as friend and enemy stood shocked.
It was a strange scene. Pansy looked at the broken tables and magical miscellaneous. There was a high strung promise of action building, without being answered. There was something not right with the picture, something not right beyond what had happened in this room.
Who was missing? Pansy did a mental register of everyone she came past, everyone who got out, who hadn't they seen. A name hit her and she was almost too scared to utter it.
"Millicent? Where is Millie?"
The carpet was a sea of cream, endless until it ended.
And the creamless parts…
It was the death colour. The love colour. The danger colour.
Pansy felt like she had seen a lot of nightmares. It was strange to walk into someone else's and then share it as your own.
The room, like all the rooms in this miserable place, was opulent. It was designed to be the Viewing room, opening out onto the wide endless acres of Malfoy Manor. Window seats and deep leather cushion, sitting nooks for secret, intimate conversations. The whole place was built to gaze at the broad, high windows, that divided them from the Malfoy lands. The windows were crystal and glorious, split into elegant diamond shapes which jigsawed the gardens into small, perfect squares. Carving up their kingdom.
Everything outside was white. The clouds and snow were blinding, the trees mere clawing shapes. Instead of the expanse being viewed, it illuminated the room into an unreal limbo.
It had been Pansy's favourite room, and dimly she couldn't work out why now. It was an awful place. It would only ever be an awful place.
Blood lay like an island amongst all of the light. In it rocked an animal, a low and keening sound coming from her.
Misery makes us beasts, she remembered Pellinore once telling her.
Millicent Bulstrode gripped her fiancé like she was trying to cradle and hold him together. Her curled hair was matted with the red of him.
It couldn't be Theo. No way could it be Theo.
Theo smiled quietly, his dark cheeks bright with wit or worry. Theo, brilliant at charms, hunching over as if ashamed of his own twiggy height, terrified of his father, expert knowledge of the Goblin Wars and Weird Sisters. Lovely loving Theo who made Millie so happy.
Now, he was drained of himself, a pencil drawing. Theo couldn't hold all of this red.
They had entered the workshop at a run - it was a scene of an emergency.
They entered the viewing room as they would approach a wake.
"Oh, Millie," Pansy whispered, holding back her hand to keep everyone else back. Only Draco walked forward with her, holding Astoria's hand.
It felt private. This grief and horror. Their presence was going to make it all the more real, was going to interrupt their last moment.
Millie let out another grizzled sound. Pansy approached her prone figure and wrapped her arms around her, enveloping her, wanting to take it all away as she took her friend into her arms. She felt the cold metal bandages react as they touched the frightening heat of her friend.
Blood seeped from Millie to Pansy and the two rocked in tandem.
"Millie, I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry. We're going to look after you. You're going to be okay. I'm going to make sure you're okay."
Millie lay like a rock in Pansy's arms. Petrified with her pain.
Slowly, she pressed her palm into the centre of Pansy's chest and pushed her back.
They had been friends for over half of their lives. They had seen tears and horror, and laughed at it. Millicent was generous with her love and chatter and Pansy didn't think she could have chosen a better best friend if she had tried.
Her blue eyes had never held coldness, but now they looked into Pansy's like they were strangers.
"Theo's dead," she explained dully, her voice flat. Pansy wanted to disagree, wanted to say sweet lies to make it not true for even a little bit - until they had distance from this room, from the poppy-red island they inhabited.
"That thing gutted him. Gutted the only thing I love. Killed the only person who would ever love me."
"I love you," Pansy said, selfishly.
"You weren't here," Millicent screamed. "You always leave. Yet you promised! You promised we wouldn't be hurt anymore. You weren't here."
Millicent threw her arm at Pansy like a club. Nails tore Pansy's cheek and she held her arms up to hold Millicent as the hurt came again and again.
But she wouldn't let go of her. She tried to hold Millicent to her as she screamed and writhed and spat. She tried to hold her as more arms tried to peel them apart. Pansy was full of pain for her friend. She held.
"Get off me, get off me you bit-"
"Pansy, love, come," a voice that felt from a different world said into her ear. A calm force lifted her from Millie and Pansy could see Harry and Draco holding her friend's arms back and the chimera of their bodies getting smaller and smaller.
