PREVIOUSLY – Pansy gets McGonagall to supervise a rat, meets (not-Alan Rickman) Snape and realises she remembers much less of the Plot than she thought. Her first day at Hogwart's goes rather unassumingly after the excitement of the previous night - Herbology with the Hufflepuffs, Charms with the Ravenclaws and History of Magic with the Gryffindors.
Pansy found herself approaching the next day's classes with a horrible sort of dread in her stomach. She picked her way through breakfast, stirring a spoon through her porridge, for once feeling like it was rather unappetizing as Blaise and Millie chatted about her.
"What's wrong with you?" Daphne appeared suddenly with a hand on her hip, as both she and Tracey dropped into the seats across from them.
Pansy sighed, "What classes have we got today?"
Tracey plonked her bag on the bench, reaching a hand into it and rummaging for a moment. "Let's see –" She produced a crumpled piece of parchment. "Transfiguration first, Herbology after and… Defence after lunch?"
Pansy resisted the urge to groan. "Exactly."
"Oh, right –" Millie said, a look of comprehension on her face, "McGonagall – do you think she still hates you?"
"It's not even been forty-eight hours since the Sorting," Blaise nodded, "It's not like she'll have forgotten."
McGonagall first period, and Voldemort after lunch. She wasn't sure her nerves would be able to take it at this rate. "Do you think I could pretend to be sick?"
"So dramatic." Daphne said with a roll of her eyes.
Next to her, Tracey looked confused, "You're not the one who broke the rules, why would she hate you?"
Pansy thought of the exhausted exasperation on the woman's face the last time she'd seen her. " – I would."
"She's a professor, and the Deputy Headmistress, it's her job," Daphne pointed out as she helped herself to some tea from a large teapot.
Tracey nodded several times. "Exactly – I'm sure it'll be fine!"
Just then, a great cacophony of sound flooded the hall from high above, as hundreds of owls dove in through the highest windows of the Great Hall, soaring above their heads with a din of screeching. The mail had arrived.
Pansy watched with amusement as letters and packages dropped into laps and landed on plates. A small dark blur dropped from above, picking up speed as it whizzed towards the table before colliding straight into Blaise's head, followed by a belated yelp of surprise.
A small brown fluffy owl, with white-speckles, poked its head out from its new perch on the boy's head and began pecking at the black curls eagerly. On one of its feet was a scroll in a leather carrying tube, which smacked against the side of his face a few times.
"Merlin! Did you have to - alright, alright, cut it out Rosa!" Blaise reached up a hand to nudge it gently, receiving an affectionate nibble on his finger as a reply. "Stay still a minute –" The bird obediently offered one foot out and Blaise went completely cross-eyed trying to untie it without dislodging her.
"She's adorable," Pansy grinned at his embarrassed look. "Her name's Rosa?"
Millie cooed and offered the fluffball a corner of her bacon, and they all watched her snap it up with relish. "Fiesty. This rose's got thorns!"
"Actually," Blaise ducked his head sheepishly, "It means pink in Italian, I got her as a birthday gift when I was six, but I wanted a flamingo instead."
"- A flamingo?" Pansy blinked, as Millie burst into cackles of laughter. "How would they even deliver mail?"
"I was six." Blaise shrugged, as the little bird hopped off, snagged a full rasher of bacon off his plate and took off immediately, "Hey!"
The bird disappeared amongst the throng of circling owls.
Pansy went back to her breakfast as the other's read their letters. Millie and Theo hadn't had anything delivered either so she and Theo found themselves listening to Millie's rant about Quidditch Trials instead.
Absent-mindedly listening, Pansy let her gaze travel to the front of the hall, where the professors were also eating. The Headmaster sat in the centre, sipping from a bright pink mug as he chattered to an unfamiliar dark-skinned woman to his left. Flitwick and Sprout were laughing at something off to the side, Flitwick's mouth moving and setting them both off again. Snape was sat right at the end, closest to the Slytherin table and appeared to be chatting to no one, frowning as his gaze travelled up and down the hall.
Surprisingly, Quirrel seemed more popular, sitting to the left of a trio of witches (none of which she recognised) and seemed to be adding to the conversation every now and then.
Voldemort - making small talk.
Pansy snorted.
McGonagall was nowhere to be seen, thankfully, meaning she would have to wait until class to gauge how the woman was feeling.
Despite her best efforts to make breakfast last as long as possible, inevitably, Pansy found herself in the second row of the Transfiguration classroom, right behind Ernie and a boy named Justin Finch-Fletchley (what a mouthful!).
McGonagall strode in with long, elegant steps and the class quietened quickly. Her dark hair had been pulled back into a tight bun, looking formidable as she surveyed the students. Pansy held her breath – as the witch's gaze passed over her and Millie's desk – before she moved on.
"Transfiguration –" The woman began, "is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will ever learn at Hogwarts." Her voice hardened, "Anyone messing about in my class will leave and not return. You have been warned."
"For those unclear, transfiguration is the art of turning one thing –" McGonagall stepped to the side so that her desk was in full view, "Into another." There was a flash of light and suddenly – the desk was gone!
Instead, where the desk had been, a rather large pink pig stared back at them.
'OINK!'
Pansy jumped, as did half the class.
There was a second flash suddenly, and the desk was back. The pig was gone.
Magic was wild.
Wild.
The entire class was suitably awed, breaking out into whispers. McGonagall watched all of this from the front of the classroom, with no visible expression on her face.
"That was inanimate to animate transfiguration, and an especially tricky piece of magic. I'm sure you can all imagine the horrors that might occur if such magic went wrong, as such it is vital you all pay close attention to my classes for your own safety." She said, after the class had quieted again. Abruptly, the image of Pansy with an outright pug-nose popped into her head and she shuddered. Transfiguration was terrifying.
"Transfiguration focuses on altering the form or appearance of an object via manipulation of it's internal structure. We shall be focusing on inanimate transfiguration – if I could have - hmm - Mr Hopkins and Miss Davis come to the front? Please hand out one matchstick to each student."
The class started off in rather high spirits, but soon it became obvious that they weren't going to be doing anything as complex as desk-to-pig anytime soon. McGonagall had them stop halfway through the lesson to talk about theory, and the differences between the structure of a match and needle, and Pansy took so many complicated notes that her hand started to cramp.
She massaged her palm and wrist as she surreptitiously glanced around the classroom. No one else seemed to be having much luck either. To her left, Millie was glaring at the offending matchstick as if she wanted to set it on fire. In front of them, Ernie and Justin seemed to be in a similar boat.
Pansy ducked her head, feigning frustration, just as McGonagall approached the table behind them. Don't notice me. Don't notice me. She stared at her own matchstick, "Is it just me or is it a tiny bit shiny?" She whispered.
Millie grunted, taking a quick glance then going back to her own work. "Just you."
"Urgh."
The first Transfiguration class was a bit of a bummer, no one had been successful in their attempts and McGonagall refused to let them practice it outside of class, threatening them with a loss of fifty house points. So, class finished with a bit of a downtrodden mood.
But – more importantly – she'd had enough time to casually scan the classroom. The rat cage, and offending rat, were nowhere to be seen. Which meant, either McGonagall was keeping it in her quarters or in her office.
She hadn't really figured out a plan of action just yet.
Initially, she'd thought she could just ask McGonagall about Animagi and just sort of wing it in the moment, and maybe Pettigrew would expose himself. Perhaps there was a sort of counterspell and she could get McGonagall to accidentally zap the rat, wow what a coincidence!
But that all hinged on a bunch of coincidences and the rat being in the classroom to be demonstrated upon. Which he obviously was not.
She could just outright confess it all, but there were too many things to consider. First of all, she was an eleven-year old girl, with no way of knowing that the Weasley family's pet rat was a wizard on the run. If a Professor of Transfiguration couldn't detect an animagi by sight (was that possible?), how could a first-year student do so plausibly? She was obviously no Transfiguration prodigy either. Who would believe her?
Setting that aside – even if they believed her, they would want to know how she knew. Who was Pansy Parkinson? A pampered, pureblood girl from an obviously dark family. While she didn't have solid confirmation that her parents had been involved with Voldemort, the justice-seeking Crouch Snr's disdain at the Ministry Ball had been obvious enough. If she outed a Death Eater like Pettigrew – what would Dumbledore's reaction be? Worse – what would Mother and Father do?
So - there wasn't exactly a plan at the moment.
But, she still needed to keep an eye on the rat. Right now, nobody but her knew how dangerous he was, and she had to be very careful not to spook him anymore than she already had. He had killed some non-magical people, he was a Death Eater and wasn't to be trifled with. She had to keep him in her sights, until she could execute a plan to either get rid of him for good or out him to other people that could keep him from escaping.
It was with this in mind that she approached McGonagall after class. The woman's eyes narrowed slightly at her approach, taking on a vaguely pained expression.
"Yes, Miss Parkinson? What is it, now?"
"Um – Professor, I was wondering –" Pansy's cheeks were already flushing, and she fought to keep her face from reacting, "I was wondering where Weasley's rat is?"
McGonagall frowned at her in clear displeasure, her face pinched. "You doubt me, Miss Parkinson?" She said coldly. Oh – oh, she thought Pansy was insinuating she'd disregard what she'd said about confiscating the rat. Oh god, she thought Pansy was calling her a liar.
"Should I be reporting it's every movement to you?" She cringed as she watched Professor McGonagall's eyebrow raise again, disapprovingly.
"N-no, Professor – I was just –"
"You would do well to shelve this grudge, young lady," The woman glared cooly from over the rim of her glasses. "Five points from Slytherin for your cheek."
"Sorry, Professor."
"Do not ask me about this again, Miss Parkinson."
"...Yes, Professor."
Pansy's gut twisted horribly in humiliation as she left the classroom, her cheeks warm. Oh god, she'd really done it now. If McGonagall hadn't hated her before, she definitely did now. She walked to Herbology in a bit of a daze, feeling even worse than she had this morning.
Why did she have to push her luck?
Millie and Blaise both wanted to know what happened when she arrived, but she brushed them off quickly and abandoned them for her seat next to Oliver Rivers, her partner for the class. Professor Sprout was having them work on actual plants this lesson, and wheeled out a locked crate of Bouncing Bulbs.
Pansy and Oliver's one was rather misshapen, the purple bulb part should have looked almost like a garlic bulb, but instead theirs was oddly lumpy on one side. The other groups' bulbs all seemed to be fond of jumping up and down on the tables as Sprout reminded them all to handle them carefully and gently, because they were still young but also could be rather aggressive if provoked.
Instead of jumping, their bulb seemed to prefer rolling.
"You're in your own lane, aren't you?" Oliver said to it, and then flushed when he realised she was looking at him. He stammered for a while and Pansy pretended she'd heard nothing as she poked the little bulb gently.
It gave a half-hearted bounce, barely leaving the table before reverting to it's rolling.
At lunch, Pansy was relieved to see Parvati and Padma together at the Ravenclaw table. Padma seemed to be introducing her housemates, gesturing to the children around them, and Parvati was grinning at them all with a pleased look on her face. Pansy waved at them as she passed them, catching Parvati's eye with a smile. The other girl smiled back.
Millie and Blaise were very well behaved during lunch, so much so that she had to resist the urge to question them for it. They didn't ask a single question about why she'd stayed behind after Transfiguration, and she was ridiculously grateful for it. She wasn't sure how she was supposed to answer them if they did, because telling them she went to talk to McGonagall about the rat again was going to make her sound completely obsessed.
Her sudden good mood lasted right up until the pong of garlic smacked her in the face as she stepped over the threshold to the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom. The group of Gryffindors behind her were murmuring excitedly, but Pansy was staring directly at Professor Quirrel smiling at them nervously behind his desk.
How could she have forgotten Voldemort?
Numbly, Pansy dropped her eyes to the ground and shuffled to the back of the classroom, following Millie, Blaise and Theo. She pulled her chair out with trembling hands and slid into it in a daze. Fuck – how was she supposed to keep her cool with this? VOLDEMORT WAS ON THE BACK OF HIS HEAD!
Right - okay - okay - okay - okay –
It's Voldemort – okay, okay, okay – so don't look at the back of Quirrel's turban, don't look near it – and – okay, okay, okay – don't make Quirrel mad.
Okay. That's fine.
"You okay, Pansy?" Millie whispered as Quirrel began to speak. "You look a bit pale."
Pansy nodded tersely, keeping her eyes on Quirrel's chin and no higher. Who knew what sort of magical powers Voldemort had given him? He was a magical terrorist. Oh god.
"He's a wreck," Millie mumbled as Quirrel stuttered for the fourteenth time, talking about Albania and the weather, even though Finnegan's question had been about the zombie he claimed to have killed for an African prince in exchange for his purple turban.
Pansy wanted to hiss at Millie to shut up. He might have been a wreck, but he was also a mass-murdering, terrorist wreck who was currently capable of handing out detentions as well as breathing garlic breath in their faces.
She honestly had no idea how she made it through the class, practically fleeing once it was over, her palms sweaty and cold. And to think she had a whole year of this still to go!
"Pansy! What is up with you today?" Daphne demanded once the other Slytherins found her in the Dungeons. "Are you sick? You've been weird all day!"
Despite everything, Pansy felt a little touched by her bossiness. "It's fine, I –" They all looked at her. Daphne was closest, her hands on her hips and an examining look on her face. Millie and Blaise were to the left, Millie's hand looping with her own and Blaise looking concerned. At the back, Draco was frowning next to Greg, Vince and Theo. What was she going to say – that the Dark Lord was on the back of Quirrel's head? That there was a Death Eater masquerading as Weasley's rat?
Pansy grimaced and rubbed her stomach, "Sorry, I think I ate something funny – maybe last night, or this morning? I've been feeling crampy and kind of nauseous all day."
There was a moment of silence as all eyes dropped to her stomach.
"Oh," Millie said, a look of understanding on her face, "Do you think it was the mushrooms last night? They did taste a bit funny."
Daphne's shoulders slumped suddenly, a blank look on her face. "Right –" Abruptly she whirled around to face the boys, "I'm taking Pansy back to our room." And with that, Pansy was corralled back to the dorm room with Tracey Davis and Millie following behind.
"Is it really uncomfortable?" Daphne asked as soon as they were all inside, shutting the door quickly. "Do you have supplies?"
Pansy blinked at her.
"You know –" Daphne gestured downwards, ears pinking, "For – your period."
"Oh - Ohhh." It was Millie that made the noise. "So it wasn't the mushrooms."
Pansy shifted uncomfortably, it hadn't been what she was going for, but it was probably more believable. Even though it was a lie, she still flushed. "Y-yeah, I've got some."
"I haven't started yet," Tracey added, smiling kindly, "But if you run out, I also brought some with me – just let me know."
"Thanks," The smile Pansy gave her in return was more of a grimace.
"You know, if it's really painful, we can probably go to the Hospital Wing," Millie suggested, ever helpful.
"No! No – um, let's just go back to the Common Room, I'm fine."
All three girls eyed her disbelievingly, but in the end, no one commented on it and they joined the boys to get a start on their homework.
There was no Defence the next day, much to Pansy's relief. Her strangeness the day before had been attributed to 'food poisoning' in the boys' eyes and 'first period' in roommates'. Both groups eyed her with some pity and didn't mention her odd behaviour again. And Pansy tried to be a little more discreet. Honestly, after having been in the same room as freaking Voldemort, even seeing McGonagall's stern face was a lot less scary.
Thursday was going surprisingly well, given that they'd had Astronomy at midnight the night before and though they had a blank slot in first period, it was Defence in second period that originally had Pansy worried. Despite this, once she got over the sheer terror of it all, she found it wasn't so bad. Quirrel, as a teacher, was fond of tangents and the class took great pleasure in trying to distract him from actually teaching them anything. Pansy found that if she stared at his chin, and listened to his ramblings with one ear and daydreamed veeeery carefully, Defence was almost tolerable.
Hermione Granger, in the centre desk of the front row, obviously disagreed with the distraction methods employed by the class. Her hand was up so frequently that her frustration was almost palpable. She almost throttled Seamus Finnegan after class, ranting about how the rest of the students were wasting so much class time.
Pansy felt a little sorry for her. Her eagerness to learn and sincerity was rather adorable but it didn't really make for a good icebreaker or overtures of friendship. The other Gryffindor girls attempted to talk her down, but she stormed off, leaving a red-faced and angry Seamus behind in the corridor.
Well, regardless - the girl would be fine once Harry Potter and Ron Weasley befriended her. There was no need for Pansy to interfere.
Pansy sat down to lunch, between Theo and Draco, with Greg sitting across from them in between Millie and Blaise for a change.
"Urgh, that Granger girl needs to get a grip," Draco complained as he ladled himself some soup. Ooh – tomato soup! And there were cheese toasties too! Pansy grabbed two triangular halves from the plate of toasties, and then grabbed the soup ladle once Draco was done.
"She's pretty uptight," Millie agreed, taking a bite of bread and cheese, "I know she wants to learn, but it's not like Quirrel is actually any good at teaching."
"True," Blaise nodded, "His stutter is one thing, but he couldn't even explain the spell for green sparks properly."
"It's not his stutter, it's a problem with his ability to teach." Theo concluded.
How embarrassing – say nothing of Voldemort or Quirrel or whatever they were, but it was pretty embarrassing when a bunch of eleven-year olds concluded someone was useless at teaching.
"I think there's a curse on the position –" Pansy said, after chasing down her mouthful of cheese toastie with some tomato soup. "Teaching Defence I mean, so who knows, maybe we'll have someone different next year."
"Really?" Millie asked, looking doubtful. Oops, was Pansy not supposed to know that? "I wonder if my brother knows."
"Probably," Pansy shrugged, "We can ask –"
"INCOMING!"
The yell made her jump, looking up instinctively past Greg's head, but before she could even see where it had come from –
Something glanced off the top of her forehead, with a bit of a sting. Reflexively, Pansy reached up to touch it just as Draco let out a shriek and dove to the right. Another smacked into her shoulder, knocking her back a little.
It was wet and sticky.
What –
Pansy's eyes widened and she ducked just as something soared past her head, splattering across the wall just behind where her head had been. A second one zoomed after it, stopping for a second in the air above the table before dropping faster than she thought possible. Pansy scrambled backwards over the bench, narrowly dodging by inches as it crashed into where she'd been sitting.
What the fuck.
…Custard… pies?
"There's still more?" Millie's voice yelled from somewhere under the table – she was right, another three were coming towards her, zooming across the hall.
Somehow, Pansy dodged the first, throwing her whole body to the left and stumbling to her feet. Abruptly, the remaining two pies changed trajectory – homing pies, they were freaking following her! She tried to run towards the other end of the table, nearly slipping on the mess on the floor.
Almost in slow motion, Pansy felt it happen – her foot caught on the edge of one of the flagstones, her weight went over her ankle, there was a bright flash of pain – and suddenly, she was crashing to the floor, landing harshly on her knees and elbows. Not a second later, something cold and wet slammed into the back of her head, sending her sprawling and then another in the shoulder, knocking her prone.
Silence reigned in the Great Hall.
Pansy stared at the mess that had followed behind her. There were clumps of custard and cream everywhere, smeared across the wall and floor across the distance she'd managed to make from the table. There were flecks of pastry and clumps of cream in people's hair, on the table, in the food.
Millie, Blaise, Theo and Draco were crawling out from under the table, like they were emerging from an air raid shelter, streaks of yellow and white across their cheeks.
Custard. Pie. Missiles.
Pansy stared at her hands, there was a small bit of skin that had peeled off, a graze that was reddening slowly. Suddenly, she was aware of raucous laughter from somewhere out of sight, so loud it seemed like the room had exploded, tripling in size so that the roar of it echoed deafeningly.
The Slytherin table sat in shocked silence.
"Pansy –" Draco reached her first, crouching down. "Are you okay?"
He stretched out his hand and swept the mess off of her shoulder.
Pansy's eyes smarted against her will, and she bit her lip, stomach swooping. "I – I think I need to see Madam Pomfrey." She'd gone over on her ankle, it was starting to feel hot and painful.
"Okay, let's go." Draco hooked one arm around her waist and Millie took the other side as they pulled her to her feet.
"It came from the Gryffindor table," Millie was hissing angrily, the arm around her tight, "I saw it, it definitely came from them!"
Ah – Pansy wobbled – Right.
What had she done recently? Confiscated Ron Weasley's pet, quasi-threatened Percy Weasley with Greg's parents' finding out about the rat biting incident. And who else was in the Weasley family?
Pansy caught the flash of ginger hair at the Gryffindor table just as Draco and Millie pulled her from the room.
The Weasley twins.
How could she have forgotten?