Low-Cut Teasing
"Put them away, Cleavage McGee!"
"You are going to poke someone's eye out!"
"Pop them back in!"
"Cover those up!"
They were all comments that Pansy Parkinson often aimed at Hermione Granger since their fifth year when Hermione had blossomed and started wearing low cut shirts.
Little did Hermione know, but Pansy noticed and commented because she had been harboring a secret crush on Hermione. To admit she loved a mud blood, though? The Slytherins wouldn't talk to her! So, Pansy showed she cared through teasing and she liked to pretend that Hermione knew that and played along.
The beginning of their seventh year, however, was full of cloaks pulled very tight, sweaters, and hoodies (an odd sweatshirt with a hood attached that Hermione had brought from the muggle world). Pansy found herself immediately missing Granger's old shirts.
Everyone noticed this drastic change, though. All of Hermione's friends knew what had happened and knew not to ask.
No one, however, had informed Pansy Parkinson to tactfully avoid the subject.
"Hermione, what's going on with the sudden lack of cleavage? I'm not used to not having avert my gaze while you fall out of your shirts?" Pansy asked, walking up to Hermione and her Gryffindor classmates and a few underclassman congregated in front of the Transfiguration classroom after class as they had done for several years.
Pansy's question caused the other students' eyes to widen and at least half of the students assembled gasped. Pansy looked around at her classmates, confused.
Hermione's smile left her face and she looked down, subdued and sullen. Everyone could see that tears had welled up in her eyes. "Thank you, Pansy," Hermione said in a voice that showed she was trying to laugh. Then Hermione waved before turning around and briskly walking toward the door.
Pansy was shocked. Was Granger really crying?
"Hermione, are you okay?" Ron asked instinctively.
Hermione turned, "I'm fine, really." Hermione attempted a smile. "I'll meet you at diner. I'm fine!"
Then Hermione waved again and left as quickly as she could without leaving in a dead run.
"That was real nice," Lavander commented sarcastically.
"Way to go," Harry said, shaking his head.
"… below the belt." Parvati whispered to Lavander.
"I don't understand," Pansy confessed. "What's wrong with her? Why did she react that way? She always laughs when I tease her. She knows I'm only kidding."
"Well, Pansy Parkinson, if you had bothered to ask before you had talked, you would have known that Hermione's doctors detected breast cancer," Ron informed his head of house. "She couldn't get in touch with a healer since they were all being used for the fight against Voldemort's aftermath. She had to have surgery. The muggles messed up, real bad. There is horrible scarring that the healers still haven't even looked at. They told her not to let anyone else heal it and that they would get around to it. She can't wear anything low-cut. Hoodies and sweaters are all she wears now. She's too embarrassed to wear anything else."
Ron signaled the other students and they all began to mill out, leaving Pansy at the front of the room.
"What have I done?" Pansy asked herself. "I didn't mean to! I didn't know! I never would have… I love her! It wasn't supposed to happen this way!"
Pansy was left defending herself to an silent, empty room