A/N: Well, to those who are reading this, here is the 2nd installment of this unusual fic lol. Enjoy, as it is quite a long chapter!
CHAPTER 2
THE agony splitting through Pansy's head was nearly unbearable. A moan left her as she stirred awake. Her sleep had been deep, she remembered enough, but not entirely peaceful. Images had flashed before her, more like fragmented thoughts than actual dreams, as if she were viewing them in the Headmistresses' Pensieve in her office.
Some were memorable and beginning–she had particularly enjoyed a late-night conversation with Peeves on how to prank Filch, back when she was in the third year–but most had passed her by too quickly for her to comprehend them, leaving nothing but a darkly unsettling presence in their wake, which she did not like at all.
Her eyes flickered open and shut, barely perceptively. Pansy was beginning to wake up now, but her already weak body had been drugged to help her combat pneumonia and Merlin only knew what else she might have suffered from the night of the Dark Lord's attempted siege on the only place she'd felt at home.
She lay there for a while in a semi-conscious haze, teetering on the brink of the darkness of her nightmares and the brilliant blinding white of the ward of whatever part of St. Mungo's she now found herself in.
It was like being submerged in the dark, murky water of the Black Lake, just beneath the surface of reality.
Pansy could see and hear Dolores Umbridge, but the older witch was distant and distorted, an indistinct ripple that could not fully penetrate the gauze that stretched over her thin perception of the world.
A thought swam towards Pansy, fully formed and dangerous like an adult Basilisk, ready to bite her.
You dreamt it, Pan. There is no hospital, you're still buried underneath that stupid pile of rubble, just waiting to die. A familiar voice, warning bell, chimed its warning from somewhere in the back of her mind.
Momentarily, it lit up the mental darkness. Pansy had always been a particularly sensitive and imaginative person–it wouldn't have been the first time she had imagined things before.
Could the hospital ward she now found herself in just be another cruel illusion?
Alarmed, she quickly swam to the surface, and whatever might be waiting for her there.
The first thing that spun into focus was Dolores Jane Umbridge's pudgy face, and it took her a few moments for the fog of confusion she found herself in to dissipate.
There was always fear. It was not an experience of suddenly remembering her situation being consumed with fear after a sense of comfortable confusion. Instead, it was the realization of the cause of a sense of impending doom that one tended to get, as she was experiencing now, whenever one happened to be around Dolores Umbridge.
Everything came back to Pansy as she struggled to sit upright against the mountain of pillows that were piled high behind her, and suddenly. No holes were missing. None that she could remember anyway. She racked her brain trying to think about what ward of St. Mungo's she found herself trapped inside and what she might be able to do to get out of this situation, what an old witch-like Umbridge wanted with the likes of her.
Her throat hurt as she considered whether or not she should speak to the Senior Undersecretary first, but as she considered whether or not she would even speak, she struggled to decide how would she go about it?
Should she beg Dolores Umbridge for her life? Should she try to talk to her, try to make herself appear more human to her? Or should she simply stay quiet and refuse to answer any questions this woman had for her?
Maybe…just maybe, her words would do her some good. Maybe Umbridge would pity her, considering back when she was the Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor for the school and High Inquisitor for the Ministry, she had been on the Inquisitorial Squad alongside Draco and his friends.
But would a woman capable of what she had seen give up and let her walk out of this ward a free witch when she was discharged? Was it not better at least to hold onto some dignity if she was to be locked away in a dark hellhole of a cell in Azkaban Prison with her name on it for whatever she'd done wrong?
Or should she try and preserve her life and her freedom by whatever means necessary? The questions raced through her brain at an unbelievable speed, her lips were parting, but nothing but a squeak came out.
"Please," she found the whispered words leaving her lips before Pansy could even decide to speak them. "What…why are you here?" she gasped out, her voice sounding reedy and hoarse from a few weeks of not using it at all. Her chest constricted and her throat hallowed, drawing her thirst for ice water.
Her stomach turned when Dolores Umbridge merely smiled that familiar simpering honeyed smile at her that made her insides revolt and a shudder go down her back, now that she knew the sort of witch Dolores was, how she did not attempt to help her parents when they had been forced a few months back to flee. Dolores Umbridge stuck out her bottom lip in a slight pout, looking almost the part of a petulant child, and shook her head to herself as she rapped a long pink-painted manicured fingernail against her clipboard, her quill poised in her hand to take notes.
Pansy furrowed her brows. Notes? Notes on what?
She parted her lips to speak, to ask the witch a follow-up question, but before Pansy could, Dolores spoke.
"I do apologize for having to come and see you at such an unreasonable hour, Miss Parkinson, much more so for being forced to greet you under your ah, unusual circumstances, shall we say, dear thing," Umbridge began in a falsely sweet voice. "The trauma you must have experienced must be…exhausting. Fear not, my dear, for I cannot stay long. I've no wish to linger and do not intend to take up too much of your time this morning, child."
A high-pitched simpering girlish giggle escaped her lips that made Pansy suddenly feel sick with dread and not at all confident about the nature of the witch's visit. A wave of debilitating cold fear washed over her as Umbridge did not bother to look behind her as she positioned her wand over her shoulder. The unmistakable sound of the door's locking bolts clicking into place had Pansy swallowing past a lump in her throat, hard, and at a loss for her words.
"Fear not, my dear," Umbridge did her best to reassure her. "You are not a prisoner here, child. I merely wish to question you in private. Such a sensitive conversation is not for other ears who would listen in, dear." She waved her wand again and conjured a small wooden chair that she took a moment to pull up closer to the younger witch's bedside, Pansy's left, and took a few seconds to get herself situated. "I am here with you this morning on official Ministry business, Miss Parkinson. There are a few important matters that I wish to discuss, Miss Parkinson. Questions that I would very much like answered. I'm sure you can understand. Questions about the Malfoy family, I believe that you were once...familiar with Lucius's son, Draco, would I be correct in surmising as much?"
Pansy dared to raise her brows at the Senior Undersecretary to the Ministry.
The fact that the older witch had just locked the door, preventing her Healer from entering and whoever else was of a mind to visit, not that she was expecting anyone these days, she had no family, no real friends to call her own anymore, did not escape her attention now that she was fully awake and cognizant.
Her throat protested at the idea of talking too much, but she knew answering the Undersecretary's questions was likely the only apt way to get her out of her room and let her be left alone. She did not want to answer any questions for Umbridge, the investigation into Draco's family be damned.
She thought she'd rather swallow poison first.
"What makes you think I'll answer them?" she asked, having the nerve to huff indignantly at Dolores.
Umbridge slowly turned her head to regard Pansy, and the vengeful glare on the older witch's face chilled the blood in Pansy's veins to ice, causing her to shiver.
"Because, child, if you don't," she began, a quite smug expression crossing her heavily-made up features. "When I find Mr. Malfoy and his family, I can make the boy suffer." She leaned forward and allowed her face to come inches within Pansy's face. "More than you could imagine. You owe them nothing, from what I heard tell of your… history with Mr. Malfoy, he has deserted you, dear. You protecting his family makes things worse for you, Luv."
Pansy immediately withdrew her face from Umbridge's and shirked as far back against her pile of pillows as she possibly could. There was no need to question who she was referring to, she knew, of course, she knew. Fear clawed at her heart threateningly as she swallowed down hard. Draco.
"Don't you dare fucking touch him," the vicious threat escaped her barely cracked lips before Pansy had a chance to bite it back.
Umbridge, for her part, even hearing the younger woman curse, did not flinch. Her lips stretched unnaturally wide as Umbridge threw back her head and offered a high-pitched squeal. Hearing her utter that single sound was worse than watching the old mental bint smile, Pansy thought. Umbridge was a terrifying old hag no matter what she did or said. Pansy felt a sense of panic burgeon within her stomach and worm its way into her heart.
This was not a good position for her to be in right now. She wildly looked towards the door in the hopes that a Healer–someone, anyone–would come in and interrupt, but as far as she could tell, there was no one.
"Oh, my dear. You seem to be delusional if you think you have a say in this. Your threats mean nothing to me, Miss Parkinson. For the moment, you can barely lift your wand. You've been kept induced in a comatose-like state for the last three weeks, unable to lift a finger," Umbridge replied smoothly, lacing her fingers together and folding her hands across her middle, but not before she gave her wand a sharp rap and the clipboard and black peacock feather quill she had been holding in her hands began to hover in mid-air, near her right earlobe and began to take notes accordingly. "And you, Miss Parkinson, are in no position to ask me for anything." The edges of Umbridge's thin lips pinched downward into a frown as she began to scowl heavily. "You've nothing left to work with. You've been robbed of your family, your friends. Draco Malfoy did not, as it so happens, care for you in the manner that you had always hoped for. You gain nothing by protecting the family's whereabouts. It would be in yours and the Ministry's best interests if you reveal where they are hiding, my dear."
Pansy felt her limbs go numb as she struggled to comprehend Dolores Umbridge's statements to her. She searched the Senior Undersecretary's face for any sign of explanation, any hint that she was lying.
The silence between the two women stretched beyond the point of comfort. The thoughts which swirled in Pansy's mind made her dizzy.
It was the ones that formed to coherence that indicted and condemned her, she realized with a sickening jolt.
Suddenly, she felt incredibly foolish for not having realized this sooner, though a part of her felt blindsided by Umbridge's visit to her hospital room. Of course, the Ministry would have kept careful records on Lucius Malfoy and his entire family.
Her name would have likely come up in Draco's file, it would have made sense they would question someone familiar with him in hopes of learning their location.
But even if she did know, she'd not tell her. There was no telling the sort of living fresh hell a witch-like Dolores Umbridge could make her life if she refused to offer up the information she needed. But nor could she betray Draco in this matter, even if they were no longer together. She breathed out steadily through her nose, her stare holding Umbridge's fearfully, for the power she knew the woman had over herself and her life, what little of it she had left.
Yet, Pansy's dark eyes also held contempt towards Dolores Umbridge's hatefulness and cruelty.
"I can't help you, Madame Umbridge. I don't know where they've gone, mum," she answered flatly, though she knew Umbridge's ears had perked up at the haunting dread in her tone.
Umbridge's cheeks flushed as her anger mounted.
"Miss Parkinson, forgive my candor, but if you protect them because you're clinging to an inkling of foolish hope Lucius's boy could still harbor feelings for you, then you are gravely mistaken. The Malfoy boy has no true understanding of the word 'love.' He, like his father, is ignorant of the word and any meaning that it holds, my dear girl."
Pansy felt just a piece of her resolve falter. In a horrible, sickening, and humiliating way, the hag did have a point, the miserable old bitch. Maybe…maybe it wouldn't be so bad to tell–no! She would not–could not–do that to him. She knew she could not blame Draco for something that he was not at all responsible for. Not anymore.
They had grown apart, and nothing could change that, as much as Pansy might wish for it. The young brunette shook her head in protest, a lock of her chin-length hair flicking the side of her face in protest. With an irritable huff, she swiped the lock back behind the shell of her ear and let out a pained grunt as she sat up straighter.
"I cannot help you, Madame Umbridge," she repeated angrily, her voice laced with steadfast determination and resolve. "I don't know where they've gone to. If I would, maybe, but…I don't. Now if you would please kindly get out, mum. I have nothing more that I could tell you that you don't already know, Madame Undersecretary," Pansy snapped curtly.
Pansy dared not revert her gaze as she continued to glower at Dolores Jane Umbridge with steely disgust, visions of her parents' faces flitting through their mind, how they had gone to the woman whom they had considered something of a family friend to them when it became apparent they had become the Dark Lord's next targets, and she'd refused to help.
Umbridge rose from her chair, the witch's pudgy cheeks flushed and pink.
She sensed that she would get no further information out of the young woman now, in her vulnerable state, but perhaps if she were to try again, perhaps in a week, the girl might be more prone to talking.
"Very well, Miss Parkinson," she sighed, her shoulders slumping forward with disappointment. "I had hoped that you would provide the information to me willingly, but I can see perhaps I made a grave mistake in coming to you so soon upon you regaining consciousness. Forgive me. If you should perhaps change your mind, my dear, you can feel free to reach me at any time. I cannot imagine what you must be going through, poor soul, following the loss of both of your parents. If there is anything you should need, anything you want to talk about, then you can always stop by my office, dear. Think of me as a friend to you. I could be a friend to you, dear, but I could also be a terrible enemy. I want to support you during this difficult time, especially given your special circumstances, Miss Parkinson," she paused, snapping her fingers and causing a business card to appear in mid-air, where the card lazily floated through the air, stopping until it reached Pansy.
Pansy hesitated, seeing no choice but to reach out and take the card. With shaking, bandaged fingers, she extended a hand and plucked the card from the air that bore Dolores Umbridge's contact information on it.
"Oh," Pansy stammered, her tongue feeling thick in her mouth, unable to form much of a coherent reply beyond that. She could feel her eyes beginning to tear up and she sniffed once as she sharply turned her head to the left and ducked her gaze, allowing a lock of her dark hair to tumble in front of her face and act as a shield, effectively hiding her emotions from the likes of Dolores Umbridge. After a moment, she found her voice. "Well, thank you, Madame Undersecretary, for your…kind words and concern. I will consider them but I am sure that I will be just fine. If I hear any word of the Malfoy family, I will let you know," she replied, perhaps a little too curtly than she really would have liked, before staring too intently at the blue clay vase of wildflowers someone had managed to bring into her room while she'd been asleep.
"Of course, dear," replied Umbridge in a honey-sweet voice, for the moment, not blaming Pansy Parkinson in the least for not knowing how to react or seeming to give off a rather cold response. She was in a state of shock, she rationalized. "I or another Ministry employee will be in touch with you in about a week or so, dear. Do get some rest while you're at it, child, your eyes are darker than my dead cousin's soul," Umbridge replied curtly before she turned on her heels and made to head to the door, though before she could twist the knob and unlock it, something gave the older woman pause, enough to turn her head over her shoulder one more time to look behind her. She fixed Pansy with a rather pointed glower. "Oh, and I do believe you have a visitor. A Mr. Weasley was here to check on you," she added in a flat, listless tone, sounding bored.
Pansy stared across the room at Dolores Umbridge, her head spinning. The entire world rolled in and out in waves beneath her. Surely, she'd heard the hag wrong.
"What?" she spluttered. "Wh–what did you say?" She spoke through a mouth gone bone dry, a tongue at once heavy and useless. Her dark brown eyes were wild, as the younger former Slytherin witch clamored to understand. Weasley was here to see her? But…why?
By the strangely smug look on Umbridge's face, she could tell that she had not misunderstood the witch.
"Mr. Weasley is outside waiting to see you, Miss Parkinson," Madame Umbridge repeated, and for a moment, Pansy thought she heard the faintest twinges of compassion seeping its way to the surface of her voice, but only for a moment as Dolores continued. "Shall I send for him, then, if you're feeling up to it?"
Still reeling, Pansy could only gape at Umbridge, not truly seeing the witch, the shock of the Senior Undersecretary's news still ringing in her ears. What on Merlin's green earth could Weasley want with her, then? Had he come to gloat, to make her feel even worse about herself? Had he come hoping to receive a thank you for being the one to pull her from the rubble, because if that was the case, then he would leave sorely disappointed. A thank you was the last thing she planned on giving George Weasley. She wished he had not plucked her from the ruins. She wished she had been left alone to die.
Nevertheless, she knew her curiosity would not be satiated as to why Weasley was here without speaking with him first and foremost. Best to get it out of the way.
"I… send him in, I–I guess. Thank you, mum," she grumbled, unable to keep the sour note from her voice.
If she was being honest with herself, she was not in the mood for polite company this evening, not with Weasley, not with anyone. She could already feel her lids beginning to grow heavy as fatigue caught up to her again.
No doubt the effects of whatever Sleeping or Calming Draught had been given to her by her Healer while she was unconscious to keep her calm and sedated when she woke was starting to take effect.
She was not sure how long she could manage to stay awake, but she thought she could at least try to stay cognizant long enough to see what Weasley wanted.
Umbridge turned on her heels to go, finally opening the door and stepping out into the hallway. Pansy swore the room warmed ten degrees just by the witch's absence, and George Weasley walked in.
The surviving Weasley twin approached her bedside slowly and reverently.
"Parkinson," George said stiffly, an odd expression on his face that Pansy wasn't entirely sure how to place and she did not like it. "Glad to see you're finally awake." He spoke softly, the lines on his face suggesting the young wizard had aged a good five years in just the last few hours alone, or however long she had happened to be asleep for.
She wasn't sure if she wanted to know how long she'd been unconscious. Pansy squeezed her eyes shut and shivered at the very notion. Pansy slowly lifted her gaze and let her eyes rest on George, the man's face registering what could only be described as dread and trepidation after the worst of her shock dissipated.
Pansy reddened with anger and humiliation, barely able to draw in a breath to her lungs through the paralyzing stunned fervor that washed over her at the fact that she had a fucking Weasley in her room, of all people, one of their family was admittedly the last person she ever expected to hold a conversation with, much less stomach be under the same roof as them. She felt Weasley's eyes on her, assessing her form.
As with any in her life who tried to wrench emotion from her, Pansy wasn't going to give George the satisfaction.
She simply regarded him contemptuously as he awkwardly moved to stand at the foot of her bed, but thank Merlin, the slightly older wizard didn't bother to come any closer to her, for which she was grateful.
Pansy Parkinson's glower as he moved through the room made George feel about the size of a Wrackspurt. He had not intended to cause the former Slytherin distress and wished the young witch would have had more of a warning for his presence in her room like this.
It seemed, despite his best efforts, he was doing everything wrong. His eyes studied her form intently. He could see the unintended quickness of her breathing. He could almost hear the racing of her heart.
"Why?" she asked him flatly in a voice devoid of all emotion, after an uncomfortable silence that lingered heavily in the air of her private room between them. "Why are you here? Are you expecting my thanks for saving my life, Weasley? If that's what you've come for, then you might as well just go because you won't get it," she huffed, the truth bursting from her lips, hot and angry and uncomfortable, in the form of an insult, and a relatively weak one at that. "You're a bastard."
He flinched at the insult. Pansy expected Weasley to be angry at her insult, flimsy though it was, George merely shrugged his shoulders, unfolding his hands and moving to grip onto the edge of the bed's railing with both his hands, his knuckles white with the effort to steady himself.
"I ought to jinx the shit out of you, Weasley. What in the bloody hell were you thinking, saving me? Maybe I didn't want to be saved, have you ever thought of that? Maybe you should have asked me first when you found me," Pansy snapped, anger and hurt manifesting themselves into her chest, rendering her chest suddenly feeling tight and very painful.
"You are in fine form tonight, Parkinson," the tall redheaded wizard remarked with exaggerated hurt, eyeing Pansy scornfully out of the corner of his lowered gaze. "This is the sort of thanks that I get for saving your life?" he asked, indignantly.
Pansy rolled her eyes. "Saving it or ruining it, Weasley?" she managed to gasp out, her voice a hoarse little rasp.
George frowned, pursing his lips. "I would say you've done a fairly good job of the latter all by yourself."
George lowered his eyes at the witch and regarded Pansy from the foot of the bed with no small amount of spite in his eyes. He walked slowly and deliberately around the foot of the bed and moved to her left.
Pansy instinctively stiffened, hoping Weasley wasn't going to get it in his right mind to stay and chat.
She wasn't in the mood to talk right now, least of all with him of all people. What would people think then, if someone they both knew were to accidentally stumble into her room had come to visit her and found George Weasley here? People would talk and then she would be ruined, forever.
"I did what I had to, Weasley," Pansy snapped, letting out a pained grunt as she struggled to sit upright, though with how fatigued she was becoming, it was growing increasingly difficult for her to do so. "I–I protected myself, my family, everyone I cared for, the only way I knew how. I stayed to fight, Weasley, just as you did. And now look at us. Sorry sacks of shit with nothing to show for it. My parents are dead and your brother is buried in the ground somewhere six feet under, not coming back." The dark words were ripped from her lips before she even knew what it was that she was saying.
She ducked her head and allowed a lock of her dark hair to fall in front of her face like a curtain, shielding the tears that were now brimming in her eyes, which were full of bitterness and hurt, from the likes of him.
He flinched at the insult. "I'll pretend you didn't say that."
"What? 'Bastard? That your brother isn't coming back, Weasley? Why not? she asked with a shrug. "It's true, isn't it?'" Pansy asked, feigning innocence, summoning the courage to face the man's brown eyes that looked as though they had seen many turmoils and bore a thousand weights in the days or weeks since the Dark Lord's attempted siege against Potter and the school. "I'm sorry. That was rude of me, Weasley. My mum once taught me to address people as they are."
"And now your mother rots in the ground somewhere, just like my brother," George snapped, his temper erupting like a solar flare of anger as he shoved his shaking hands in the pockets of his coat to hide his trembling hands.
Pansy's blood churned, so did George's. Tears burned at the edges of her vision, while wrath burned on his.
"Why are you here?" she asked in an apathetic voice. She wanted to know at least why he had come, what he wanted with her. She almost swore she could feel Weasley pause a bit. Almost succumbing to defeat, but she dared not look.
George ignored her question and brushed it away with a curt shake of his head, staring at her with an odd expression.
"You always were a lot of things, Pansy," George muttered in a dark voice that made Pansy shiver with gritted teeth as she waited for this, whatever 'this' happened to be for her, to be over, so she could return once more to the land of sweet blissful sleep and forget. "And politeness, Parkinson, was never one of them. It was the Dark Lord who killed your parents, not me, Pansy," said Geroge, narrowing his eyes which told her of his hurt. "So why don't you and I stop treating each other so badly and maybe try to put everything that happened behind us? Don't you think it's time for a truce, Pansy?"
Pansy felt the blood drain from her face as she silently considered the slightly older wizard's words.
She was not exactly sure what she had been expecting of Weasley when he'd shuffled into her hospital room looking five years older, but this was admittedly not it.
She lifted her chin to better meet the redhaired wizard's gaze, searching his eyes and face for any hint of a lie, a trick, that she could not trust George Weasley's words, but there was none there.
And she was even more alarmed at that. It sent her swallowing hard past a lump in her throat.
It seemed to take Pansy an eternity to find her voice and when she did, her voice was not as bitter-sounding as she expected, which surprised her, though she hoped her eyes did not betray the surprise that she was now feeling.
"You would grow bored, Weasley, don't you think, trying to be nice, be friends with each other? What's next, George, making friendship bracelets as soon as I get out of here?" she asked in a flat and disinterested voice after a moment. "Slinging insults at each other is all we've ever known how to do. You'd be bored if we were to try within a week. And…so would I," she murmured.
George tried to control his expression, but Weasley couldn't quite hide the upward twitch of his lips as he fought a smile.
"If you want that, Parkinson, then I guess it's your call, but I don't know about you but I'm tired of all of this. The fighting, the constantly at each other's throats. I know you don't give a damn about me or even your own life, but I couldn't just let you die back there. Not when I had the power to do something. If I...if I couldn't save my brother, then...at least I could save you from sharing the same fate." George shrugged with a nonchalant and casual shrug of his shoulders as he made to turn on his heels to go, drawing away from her.
The distance, for some reason or other, a reason she could not pinpoint, suddenly irked Pansy to no end, and she was sure her sulky expression showed it as she stuck out her bottom lip in a slight pout and bit down hard on it.
George sighed. "Then, maybe you'll consider a reprieve? I hope you don't mind, but the Senior Undersecretary told me outside that you don't have any family left, and no place to go to call home these days, Pansy."
Pansy's cheeks flushed and burned, and she kept her head sharply turned to the side, refusing to let Weasley have the satisfaction of seeing just how much the cold hard truth of his words hurt her. She would not give him that satisfaction.
"A reprieve? Are we at war, Weasley?" she asked, genuinely curious as she quirked a thin eyebrow George's way.
George scoffed. "We've been at war since the day we met, Parkinson. Don't you think it's time we put said war to rest?"
Pansy eyed George with suspicion. "That will depend on your terms, I guess," she huffed, still suspicious of the slightly older wizard's intentions towards her, why he was here. "I don't see how my personal life is any of your Merlin-damned business, Weasley. Why should you care whether or not I have a place to stay? You and I weren't friends during your time at Hogwarts, so why the bloody hell would you want to start now? Hmm? What's in it for you? Or for me," Pansy snapped in a guarded tone, but her eyes strayed towards where Weasley stood, unable to help herself as her curiosity was piqued.
She flinched, recognizing she was being especially bitchy this evening, but Weasley was admittedly the last person she expected to see has come to visit her at one of the worst moments of her life while she was stuck in St. Mungo's.
She did not want to talk about the precariousness of her new situation that she now found herself in, with her holding an apartment downtown as soon as she was discharged that she was barely able to afford with money leftover from the Galleons that remained out of her parent's life insurance policy at Gringotts, though most of the money had gone to pay for their funeral costs and to settle her parents' debts.
Only her flatmate and the income she earned from her full-time job as a new Curse Breaker for Gringotts kept them afloat, but she'd be in dire straights if her flatmate was ever of a mind to move out.
George suddenly looked uncomfortable as he shifted his weight.
"Think of this as a chance to start over, Pansy, to put it lightly. To…forget about some things you aren't too proud of. I…Umbridge told me things for you are…tough." He flinched, fearing he was going about this all wrong. "I know a thing or two about what that's like. I have got a vacancy for a full-time assistant in my shop with….with my brother dead if you need somewhere to go this summer, there's a spare room in the flat about our shop that's not currently occupied. We could work something out for a reduction of the rent if you were interested," he said, offering the stunned former Slytherin a light shrug of his shoulders. "I could use the extra help and if I'm being honest, we could use another witch in the shop with Verity moving soon. My brother Ron tends to get..., well, distracted. He's a good employee but..." His voice trailed off.
George looked as though he wanted to say something on the subject of his younger brother Ron, but thought better of it.
Pansy tried not to flinch away from his stare, going stock-still as she collapsed back against the pillows in her utter exhaustion. Once again, her mouth thought ahead of her brain as she dared to raise her thin dark eyebrows at the offer he had just spat out of his mouth, hardly daring to believe it.
Had Weasley just...offered her a job?
The words were out of her mouth before she could stop herself.
"You're joshing me. Are you...are you doing me over here, Weasley?" she scoffed and rolled her eyes, chuckling morosely. "I'd rather eat Mandrake dirt," she smiled bitterly, watching as a muscle in George Weasley's jaw clenched the more irate he became. It was almost a satisfying sight to her. "I would rather drink a vial of poison than to ever come work for you. Why even suggest this to me specifically, Weasley?"
George frowned, heaving a haggard sigh and running a hand through his fiery ginger hair in anguish as he thought for a moment.
"Just George, thanks. And why suggest it? Oh, I don't know, it could be how Umbridge told me you don't have parents anymore, and since you weren't even graduated yet, I doubt you've got a job lined up if you even plan on going back to finish your education once the...once the castle is rebuilt," George stumbled through his words a bit. "Let me...let me help you," he offered, a slight pleading lilt to his quiet and somber voice as he looked across the room.
"I don't NEED your help!" Pansy shouted, and flinched back immediately from her own words, hating herself, hating Weasley, recognizing that the surviving twin was perhaps the first person to truly be kind to her since her parents' deaths, regretting that she had turned into such a huge bitch since Draco had dumped her, even worse than she usually was.
Pansy wasn't a pleasant person, she knew this about herself.
She grimaced, watching as George drew back as if he had been stabbed in the gut. His brown eyes were wide and wounded, but anger was quickly flooding back into him again, a furious, silent cold fury she had never seen in him before.
"Fine," he murmured stiffly, turning on the heels of his dragonhide boots and making to head towards the door. "If that's how you feel, then a reprieve for our past behavior isn't necessary. Perhaps I was wrong to think of you as anything less than what you always were, Parkinson, a right mental bint." His words were cold and teeming with a horrible bitterness. "Have it your way. Be alone if that's what you want. It was a mistake coming here. I'm sorry to have bothered you."
His words were cold, though teeming with hurt, a hurt that she had caused.
Weasley's words unexpectedly struck Pansy in the heart, more painfully than she ever imagined such simple words could.
She thought of the nights ahead of her, alone in her desolate flat, the nightmares of her parents' faces that will trouble her, seeing Draco in her dreams when she did not want him, the aching loneliness that she feared would consume her.
She hated Weasley for literally stumbling into her life, and was even more terrified at the prospect of the wizard leaving.
Like it or not, Weasley was perhaps the only support system she might have left, with Mother and Father dead.
He headed towards the door and despair crashed over Pansy like a dark tidal wave.
"Don't!" she burst out, the desperation in her voice causing him to halt in his tracks. It had, at least, given Weasley pause. "I–I didn't mean….I just–"
"Just–just what, Pansy?" George snapped, interrupting her and cutting her off, keeping his back paraded to her and barely glancing over his shoulder. "Stay and keep you company? I don't think so. It's making you unhappy to be in the company of a blood-traitor Weasley like I am, and I can see when I'm not wanted. I suppose I should be sorry that I saved your life the night of the fighting, but guess what? I'm not," he spat bitterly. "I can only hope that you'll come to see that too, in time, Pansy."
"Don't…don't leave," Pansy whispered, her hoarse voice cracking, still weak from misuse. Her throat screamed for water and protested at the idea of talking too much, but something within her knew she wouldn't feel right if she didn't try to apologize, which in it was quite foreign to her. In times past, she never apologized to anyone.
She let out a pained grunt as she groped for the thick cardigan sweater that one of the Healers had draped over the back of a chair for her, throwing it around herself and scrambling to her feet.
"Please–don't–"
He turned, very suddenly, so suddenly that Pansy nearly ran into George. Gasping, she pulled up short, stumbling and nearly tripping over her bare heels as she tried to back away. She swallowed at the look of hurt now burgeoning in the Weasley twin's dark brown eyes. Just like hers, they were tinged with a sadness she thought the human soul was incapable of feeling.
"What is it you want me to say, Pansy?" George demanded, almost sounding angry with her. "What do you want?" he growled. "That I regret what happened to your parents? That I'm sorry you've had such a crappy life? Sure, I do, your parents were good people, my dad spoke highly of them when he ran into them at the Ministry. But not even they could speak out against You-Know-Who and survive, and neither could you. You almost died that night. I found you, I pulled you out, and you'd willingly just…wither and die? Is that it? You hold such a low opinion of yourself, Parkinson?" George asked her in disbelief. "The war's over now, and the cost was many that we cared about, now dead. Our friends, our family, gone. But Voldemort's dead now, Harry killed him, and you and me? We're still here. Shouldn't we try to put aside old differences and live in peace?" he asked, his face paling the more tired he became.
Pansy wasn't sure she wanted to laugh or cry listening to George and nearly rolled her eyes at the wizard.
"But you can't think this peace is going to last, Weasley, don't be so daft!" Pansy nearly shouted at George as she wildly gesticulated towards the room's window, to the outside world which was still pitch black outside, though the sound of pattering raindrops could now be heard smacking against the window's glass pane. "You're not a bloody idiot so don't start that dragon shit with me!" She cried in exasperation. "Someone, I don't know who, but someone is going to try to finish what the Dark Lord started, people are always at each other's throats, spying, scheming, plotting against one another for power. We'll all be butchered in someone else's quest to cheat death and then what's left for you or me, Weasley? What then? We'll just be cold corpses in the ground if anything's left of us, just as dead as we might have been if we'd never sacrificed our integrity or pride."
She stopped, swallowing hard, realizing with a sickening jolt in her belly she was referring to the moment when she'd balked the moment Potter had made his presence known in the Great Hall. How she'd been the only one to speak up, her terror manifesting itself as usual in the form of her mouth.
And she and the rest of Slytherin House were shunned for her mistake. For what else had she given up in this damned bloody war of the Dark Lord's, if not her integrity, and now her Merlin-damned insufferable pride. What else besides her hope of a future with Draco by her side that she has tossed aside in this war?
"I…I'm sorry," she whispered, her voice breaking.
He frowned for an instant, but then George seemed to understand Pansy's words, without the witch having to speak a single word further, or him having to say anything by way of response. Pansy squeezed her eyes shut and hated herself for the slick tears that began to spill unbidden down her cheeks and dripping onto the white tile floor.
The sight of her tears must have driven away any remaining vestiges of George's anger from him. He stared at her for a good long moment, saying nothing, before snapping his fingers and causing a business card to appear in thin air that he reached out and plucked from in front of him with a delicate thumb and forefinger.
A business card for his shop, Pansy noticed as she sniffled and furiously blinked her lids, trying to stop her tears.
George handed the card out to Pansy.
"Take it," he encouraged kindly, no hint of blame or judgment in his tone, for which she was surprisingly moved by. "In case you change your mind, Parkinson."
"If you change your mind, working for me could be a fresh start for you if you wanted. The pay's decent, our other staff member Verity was able to afford her own flat and live a comfortable enough life. Full time, Monday thru Friday. Weekends off, we have part-time hired help for the weekends," George presented. "Just think about it, will you?" he urged, chewing on the wall of his mouth as he studied the young woman's features.
Pansy's head was swimming with all that Weasley had described starting over, about working in a job that would hopefully allow her to forget some things, decisions in her life that she wasn't too proud of, and while Weasley's Wizard Wheezes wasn't exactly the glamorous first job post-Hogwarts that she had imagined getting, perhaps it might provide her greater opportunity for something else down the line.
If nothing else, a chance to put a job down on her resume until it was time to move on to something more ambitious.
Pansy was surprised that she seemed to be talking herself into accepting the open position. One of Weasley's points of persuasion hit Pansy stronger than any of the others. A fresh start.
For her, Hogwarts and even the thought of going back was no longer an option.
The school was filled with remembrances of her time there with Draco when she thought he loved her. Secluded alcoves into which Draco had pulled her in between classes and kissed her, the darkness filled with his whispers, promises into the shell of her ear that he now would never keep. They were over.
The hidden out-of-the-way places where they'd succumbed to their raging hormones and shagged until she couldn't walk straight and saw nothing but stars continued to hold Malfoy's ghost.
Perhaps it would be best to accept Weasley's offer and take the job at the wizard's joke shop. At least it might be possible there to lay low for a while and try to forget the memory of him.
Before Pansy could change her mind, almost as if in a dream, she heard her voice answering him.
"I…when could I start? George?" she asked, very very softly, with emphasis on the slightly older wizard's first name, though a slight mocking lilt to her voice, suddenly shy, and lowering her gaze to the card in her hand.
She was rewarded with a bright white smile, one that for an unexplainable reason, caused a pang in her chest to form and tighten almost uncomfortably.
"I was hoping you'd say yes. Is Monday too soon?" he asked, suddenly looking concerned as he looked around the room as if he'd forgotten where she was.
Pansy shook her head. "No, that's–that's fine," she stammered, ticking off the days until Monday.
Six days. More than enough time, as she was hopefully set to be discharged tomorrow if her chart looked good and she behaved herself, she thought she heard her Healer mumbling to her earlier when she had been in a state of semi-consciousness, teetering in between the reality of the real world and her dreams. If it was at all possible, Weasley's smile widened, and the blood in Pansy's veins went cold, just for a moment. He was a good-looking enough bloke, she guessed, for a Weasley, though the eldest son in the family, Bill, had gotten the luck of the draw in that department. But there was still a peculiar sort of broken beauty to George Weasley's face.
He was pale, his eyes the clearest darkest shade of brown she'd ever seen.
For one wild moment as his gaze locked on hers as he seemed to be searching her face for something, though what it was, Pansy didn't know, she was afraid that he saw right through her like Professor Snape had the ability to, the Legilimens that the man was. But then she breathed and reminded herself that was utterly ridiculous.
"Then I'll see you bright and early Monday morning, Parkinson. Eight," he murmured, and to her amazement, a smile tugged the edges of his lips upward, reminding her almost of a pleasant sunset, his lips curling into a soft grin that inexplicably warmed her cheeks and made her heart drop into her stomach. As Pansy turned away and shuffled back towards her bed, she heard his voice once again. "Goodnight….Pansy. I'll see you on Monday."
George did not see it for himself as he quietly slipped out of Pansy Parkinson's hospital room in St. Mungo's, how her face brightened, and a smile of her own flitted across her face for just a moment.
She felt as though her agreement to come and work for Weasley should have given her a sense of foreboding and apprehension, or at least a greater humiliation at the thought of what someone she knew from Slytherin House would say if they spotted her working there. She could not explain why, but once she had made her mind up and her decision vocalized to Weasley, all that remained within her heart was a growing sense of excitement.
She had not felt so hopeful in so long like this that it was good to have something to look forward to again, to have a challenge yet again.
"Maybe," Pansy thought out loud to herself as she clambered back into bed. "Maybe good things will happen for me this summer," she wistfully mused.
She smiled as she let her head rest against the pillow, for once feeling good about the direction that her life was headed.
It wasn't long before her eyes became heavy, and she returned once again to the dark world of sleep, though this time, with a soft little smile on her face.