"PROTEGO!" An invisible barrier leapt from Pansy's wand the moment she stumbled out of the fireplace, grabbing onto the stone wall, eyes wide as she took in the cold vista of Azkaban.

But it wasn't guards or prison cells that looked back at her.

Behind the rippling barrier stood Hermione Granger looking as pissed off as that mafia-boss cat of hers.

… Azkaban. Hermione.

Hermione. Azkaban…

What - by Merlin's dubious morals - is going on?

The room they were in looked hard and impenetrable, even from the inside. Rather than the walls being of stone locked together with stone, it was smooth. Smooth and grey and concrete. Not a chink of weakness or sunlight showing. The room they were in wasn't small, yet you could feel the claustrophobic pressure of the walls like a stranger breathing down your neck.

Pansy could feel her breath starting to choke in her throat and made the conscious effort to slow her breathe. In and out, slowly, normally, as close as natural as she could get it. Her blood and heart felt like they weren't beating right. She could feel the adrenaline in her system, but her heart didn't leap to catch up with it. It was like the Manticore poison was still slow and thick in her veins.

This was no time to show weakness.

She stood up to her full height (a good two inches over Granger) and gave her a wide, shit-eating grin.

Hermione raised a bushy eyebrow and rolled her eyes at the Protego charm in her quietest ever put down. From what Pansy remembered, Hermione usually vocalised her discontent. This was an outrageous display of self -control.

Embarrassed, but trying not to show it, Pansy flicked her wrist. The charm dropped and they both felt the pressure in the room change, the air flowing again from one side to the other. Though the heavy, pushing, trapping feeling of the walls remained.

"So… I hear I should be wishing everyone a happy new year?" She offered, uncertainly.

Granger, humourless as ever, didn't crack a smile or reference Pansy's recent waking from an almost soap opera styled coma, but proffered a long wooden box.

"Put your wand in here."

Pansy made a show of considering this question very carefully, giving Hermione the most side-eye of sideways look. She gripped her wand, her only safety, tightly in her palm as she cursed herself for lowering the shield.

Something about Hermione had changed.

This was not the gawky girl she'd been competing and cursing at school. The banshee hairstyle had been tamed, coiffed and curled, as had the rest of her.

This Hermione was wearing a power suit.

It wasn't some awkward, boxy blazer in the Muggle-style. It was all elegant warlock tailoring with interesting lapels, cinched silk and a material that shifted, ever so slightly, from pinstripes to starlight. Not flashy, but definitely expensive.

Words like assertive, agenda, and strategise flashed through Pansy's mind.

This was corporate Hermione.

I'm going to acquire, merge and destroy you Hermione.

Weaponised femininity and cool burgundy lipstick Hermione.

The brightest and most brilliant witch of the age is your CEO and will control you with paperwork Hermione.

"No?" Pansy said with an accidental question mark, not quite sure if it was self-preservation or envy fuelling those words.

Again this… person had taken Pansy by surprise with her obvious authority and unfair good looks. She found herself feeling as jealous and jolted as she had been at the Yule Ball. Pansy felt a wave of self-disgust - even in Azkaban she was the envious, covetous second best.

How could Hermione Granger - unlikeable, unempathetic, and the biggest brown-noser know to the magical world - manage this constant shapeshifting from pest to hero to this. Pansy had only just recovered from rebounding back onto her high school boyfriend, escaping murderers and picking up dragon dung. Shouldn't she be the swish one in this scenario? Demanding wands and expelling gravitas?

It wasn't fair when your nemesis did stuff like this.

Especially when they also seemed to be trapping you in an impenetrable fortress.

(Pansy didn't bother to question whether she too was Hermione's nemesis. To not be would be too embarrassing for contemplation).

"Yes," Hermione replied, lips tight. "You're going to need to hand your wand in before you go any further."

Behind her, Pansy heard the telling whoosh of Floo powder and three pairs of heavy boots step out of the fireplace, blocking her only exit.

"I haven't been charged with anything," Pansy said, alarm heightening her voice. She could feel sweat break across her chest.

Hermione's face didn't change. "Put your wand-"

"Article 42 of the Wizarding Covenant states that a witch or wizard must be formally charged, given access to legal representation and sentenced by the Wizengamot to be held by Dementors and imprisoned in Azkaban."

Except Pansy didn't say this quite as clearly as she hoped. In her panic, she repeated it in the original Old Brythonic.

Her father's insight and frequent repetition of the key paragraphs and complexities of magical law had been fascinating and boring in equal measure. But no matter how dull, she had made she she listened to it - especially the loopholes.

And wasn't there a loophole in what she had just said? To be held by Dementors…

There were no more Dementors in Azkaban.

Hermione gripped her wand in frustration, though her eyes blinked with the whisper of surprise. It wasn't enough, her limit snapped.

With a practiced twist of her wand, needing no words only fury, Hermione disarmed Pansy. Her beloved, traitorous wand swept away and landed in the box. The lid snapped shut.

Unarmed. Unprotected. Unremembered.

Pansy wasn't quite sure where they took her next. Her head felt like it was swimming - from fear or poison or the exhausted calmness of knowing everything had finally caught up with you.

She couldn't tell which Auror was gripping onto her, marching down the corridors. Whether it was the mist in her mind or the tricks of the prison, the corridors seemed to meld and mould into each other, slipping round like a labyrinth. It felt like they passed down the same way more than once and took turnings that would surely lead them to where they had just come from, but instead took them down a new aspect with a different and haunting view.

Barely, Pansy could hear whispering, though she could see no cells and no doors. Sickeningly, she realise that the prisoners on this level were hidden in the walls.

After a while, they came to a level where there were cells. Stone doors with singular circular windows looking out like cyclops. Each marked with a name.

Pansy kept her eyes averted, not wanting to remember how she knew some of them - how they dined at her fathers house, how she played in their gardens as a child, how their families were synonymous with her friends.

And then they came to the door they were after.

Writ in stone it said P. Parkinson.

The stone door opened and inside she found her own heart, beating.

On the left sat a slight dark hard wizard wearing a jumper Pansy remembered choosing as a Christmas gift. There was the shadow of Pansy in his face and his features glowed bright in her memory of him. Pellinor, her elder and best brother, sitting nonchalantly in his cell, subduing an ironic grin.

Next to him sat Charlie, his smile lighting up as warm and brilliant as the sun.