Written for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry (Challenges & Assignments)

Assignment #3 - First Aid
Task #1 - Write about someone trying to stop someone else from being harmed.
Warnings: implied/referenced character death, forced fighting, experimentation on humans, immorality

Further prompts are at the end.

Word Count: 2,537

Disclaimer: Harry Potter and its associated universe belongs to J.K. Rowling, and not me.


And her eyes-

It's the eyes that break Ginny, because they're Pansy's, that pale taupe that looks dull, stupid, at first glance, just how Pansy likes it; that pretty grey-brown that's so familiar, except not, because where there once was a hidden fire, there's now nothing.

There's no hint of humanity left in them.

"Pansy?" Ginny can't keep herself from whispering, from hoping-

There's a low growl that sends chills down her spine, before the demon pounces.

-oOo-

Demon-fighting seems so much more fun on TV.

That's not the reason why Ginny signed up for the operations, of course, unlike a surprising percent of the others - who she can't help but envy because they signed up for the fun of it, because they were born into the kind of life that let them do things like this for fun, instead of the kind of life where you had to, had to sneak away to put your application in the mail so your family can get the money so your brother can go to an actual hospital and survive.

And, she's scowling again - quickly, Ginny forces her face back into a neutral smile so Susan won't bore her to death after the match, explaining why it's bad for her image and popularity, and thus allowance, battle time, and salary, if she makes ugly faces. Even if she's not actually on the battlefield, and thus shouldn't be on display yet, as Susan's always reminding her, you can never be too careful.

Who knew there'd be so much more than battling demons, to being a genetically modified angel?

"Attention, attention, ladies, gentlemen, and non-binary daisies!" the announcer proclaims, and the hum of the crowd not quite blocked by the noise-canceling devices around the backstage area dims. "We have quite the schedule for you tonight - oh, yes we do! The angels you all know and love, plus! Some newcomers! We'll see how they'll do in the arena tonight, shall we?

"Our first match is a spicy one, a rivalry I'm sure you're all aware of! We've certainly seen some of the most surprising battles from both angel and demon, not to mention, with them against each other! Give it up, for… the Half Blood Prince… versus… the Boy Who Lived!"

Harry wins the battle of course - it's a rare sight for a demon to win, simply because they don't have the intelligence of the humans-turned-angels, though not so rare that the audience knows at the start of every battle who'll win - as does Angelina, Seamus, Katie. Cormac loses to the 'Poison Pen', and Ginny can't help her resulting smirk - serves him right for being such a jerk. There's another two battles, which she sits through tensely, before-

"Weasley! You're up next!"

She stands, makes her way to the angels' entrance, and takes a deep breath, as the announcer shouts, "Miss Conception…versus… the Seventh!

"I'm sure you've all heard the story of our darling redheaded angel, but in case you've been living under a rock somewhere: the Seventh is, as you probably learned from her name, the seventh child of her family, and the only girl of the lot. One of her older brothers, though, became ill with the infamous Demon Pox that's ravishing our society - to save him, the Seventh volunteered for the operations, as the only child in her family younger than that crucial age of seventeen. And aren't we all glad she did so?" Ginny smiles a little at the applause and coos that come with the words, then tries not to cringe as the video panels across the arena immediately display feed of a close-up of her face. "But enough of that! Tonight, we're here to see her compete! Battle begins in three! Two! One! Fight!"

Ginny launches herself towards the demon immediately, aiming for the spot they'll meet in mid-air- except the demon doesn't attack her first, and she finds herself stumbling to the ground past the demon, barely balancing herself by spreading her wings out- and ow! It ripped some of her feathers out!

The demon's hovering, now, near the top of the arena, which puts Ginny at a disadvantage, with the source of the light from the top, plus the easier time the demon will have defending itself, if she wants to attack, unless… the arena floor is made of packed dirt, for an 'authentic' feel, but it's the eighth battle of tonight, which means some of it's loose.

When the demon dives to attack, she hurls a palmful of dirt into its eyes, then smiles as it screeches and lands clumsily on the ground, rubbing instinctively at its eyes, which is when Ginny attacks again, claws extended fully as she rakes them across the demon's chest, drawing that thick black blood, then swoops away.

The score's one-to-one, as she vaguely hears the announcer say. First to three wins.

The demon's hutched over on itself, clutching its chest, but Ginny gets the feeling it's a trap, and is proved right when, after several seconds, it glares at her and stops the act - which is when Ginny attacks again, feinting right before swerving above and left to-

It dodges, and she barely twists out of the way so she doesn't crash land, hand grasping out even as her leg's caught by scaly skin - great. Two all.

"You're going down, Miss Conception," she mutters.

"It's Pansy," the demon snarls - and Ginny can't help but stare, because- "That's who you'll be going down to."

"You can talk?" Ginny blurts- just as the demon lunges again, and she was not paying close enough attention, too distracted by the fact that the demon just talked, that she doesn't dodge fast enough and-

"Third blood goes to the demon!" the announcer declares, stunned. "Miss Conception wins!"

-oOo-

Demons can talk? Ginny can't get over that realization, because she's always though, always heard, that demons are genetically modified, like angels, sure, but also without human intelligence. That's why they're disposable, that's why the geneticists do their studies on the demons first, that's why angels win more often in the battles. Except if they can talk… then what does that mean? Is Miss Conception- Pansy- Miss Conception - just a fluke? Can all demons talk? But if they can… then what does that mean?

They can't possibly be other genetically modified humans, can they?

Susan's usually her first source of information, as her handler, except when Ginny mentions the demon's words to her, she only blinks, then suggests that, maybe, Ginny'd been hallucinating? Because demons can't talk. They're not smart enough. She gets the same response from the other angels, other handlers, she asks, before she stops because maybe, maybe she had imagined those words. She…

The next demon she fights, the Pyromaniac, says nothing when she talks to it (and loses because its brutish attacks lead to it hurting itself, more often than hurting her), which should support the hallucinating theory. Except Ginny can't manage to push that memory of Miss Conception's voice, out of her mind. Because why would she have been hallucinating, just from a few torn feathers and flesh wounds? And why would she have imagined the demon correcting her, saying that her - its - name was Pansy?

Well, there's only one way for Ginny to find out for sure, one way or another.

Her next battle against Miss Conception is two weeks later.

"Now, I'm sure we all remember the surprising end to the last time these two fought - they were neck to neck until Miss Conception seemed to take the Seventh by surprise! But perhaps we'll be seeing a very different result today, in this battle between Miss Conception and… the Seventh! Beginning in three! Two! One! Fight!"

Ginny feints twice, this time, as the match begins, pretending to attack but really trying to get closer enough to Miss Conception that she can hiss-

"You can talk?"

"No, obviously I can't," Miss Conception snarks. "Of course I can - of course we all can! We're human, aren't we?"

"You… are?"

Miss Conception huffs a laugh. "What else do you think we are? Sure, we're 'demons' now, but where do you think they got the raw material from?"

"I- They told us-"

"What's going on here?" the announcer says, and Ginny jumps back. "It looks like the Seventh is trying to communicate with the demon?"

Ginny doesn't know why or how, but suddenly she's filled with the feeling that she can't let them know that she's talking to a demon, that if she does…

If she does, what?

Pansy swoops upwards, spreading her wings to create a small whirlwind of dust before attacking. Ginny barely dodges, catches a claw to the side for her trouble, but manages to draw the demon's blood as well, which makes them one to one, until Pansy lunges again, swerves, and attacks her from behind, and… In the end Ginny wins, though she's sure that the battle really could've gone either way. But that's not even near the forefront of her mind, because here- here is proof, that she hadn't been hallucinating, that demons - Pansy - can talk.

Except what does that mean? And all of the things she's heard that they do to demons, experiments that end with the demons dead, dying, or insane - that's not right, then, right? And where do the people who are turned into demons come from - are they volunteers, like with the angels? Or…

She has to talk to Pansy again. But not during a battle, for sure - she's had the time to think things out, since the battle, and the fact that everyone thinks that demons aren't human means that someone's actively trying to keep people from knowing the truth, maybe even because what they're doing with the demons is wrong, legally or morally. And she doesn't know the lengths to which someone might go, to keep the demons' humanity a secret. So she can't talk to Pansy when there's an audience, so…

She has to figure out where the demons live, outside of battle. Which doesn't end up being that difficult - all she has to do is borrow one of Susan's uniforms, retract her wings, and ask. The man she asks assumes she's new, sympathizes that she's there for the 'feeding' (whatever that means), and points her to the basement.

And it's- it's a horrifying sight - row upon row of identical cell-like rooms with transparent ceilings, the size of the bathroom in Ginny's suite. The rooms are empty, for the most part, the majority of the demons in the small courtyard at the end of the rows, and it's so obvious that they are communicating, can talk, are as smart as humans. It takes several moments for Ginny to find Pansy, in the center of a group of demons, some of which Ginny can vaguely remember fighting before.

She's hesitating at the fringes of the courtyard when Pansy glances up, gaze seeming to pierce through the crowd as she meets Ginny's eyes, seems to sigh, and holds a finger up, before saying something to her companions and making her way towards- towards Ginny.

"Oh, lovely. It's you. The Seventh," she says sourly. "Finally convinced that I can talk?"

"First of all, my name's Ginny," Ginny says. "And I really didn't know. Everyone says that demons aren't- aren't human. I had no idea."

"Fine. You said that, so now I know, so now your conscious is clear. Buh-bye."

"Wait!" Ginny blurts. "That's not the only reason why I came! Before, I thought- all of the things I'd heard- I thought it was fine, because I'd learned that you weren't human. But not anymore. So… I want to learn more, so I can figure out how to fix this."

Pansy laughs bitterly. "So you'll be our savior, our hero? Is that how you see yourself? Because I - we - don't want your pity - you can take that pity and shove it. You'll just give up the moment things get really hard."

"I won't!" Ginny protests.

"You will," Pansy counters. "Or are you saying you'll stay with this, when they threaten your life? When they say they'll make you one of us? When they say they'll kill your family?"

"They-"

"Where do you think all of us came from? The prison system? Yeah, some of us, but the rest of us? Political enemies. People who said that the experimentation they do isn't right. People who said that the world, right now, isn't right. People who wanted change. People who thought they would do anything, until they threw everything they had at us."

"Oh," is all Ginny can say.

"Yeah. Oh. So see ya, Seventh. Or not." She turns to leave-

"Wait. I'm not going anywhere." Pansy turns again, raising an eyebrow, and Ginny continues quickly, before she can go. "And please, you have to give me a chance. I'm sorry for how I phrased it before, I should've said, how we'll fix this. Maybe I'll go, but maybe I won't - are you willing to let that chance, of an angel helping you, go away? There's not much you, as demons, can do to change things, is there? And I have friends, who have friends, I can talk to them. We can all do something. Let the world know, let enough people know that they can't hide it more. Just give me a chance. Please."

"…Okay."

-oOo-

The first thing she realizes, when she slowly returns to consciousness, is that there are bonds around her limbs, neck, chest, enough so that she can't move, outside of wiggling her toes. The next is that she's staring at an empty white ceiling. The next is that someone's speaking-

"-an interesting effect. We're lucky to have gotten such a good pair to try this out with."

Someone snorts. "Lucky, sure, if that's what you want to call it. An angel and a demon, together, trying to change things - that's just unnatural, if you ask me."

"Well, we're the ones to speak, about unnatural. And we are lucky, but not in the way you think - lucky that we caught them soon enough."

"Yes, yes, whatever. But it's a really perfect opportunity, to test out the priming, with a pair so closely bonded. We can really see if the kill order overrides that earlier relationship as well as their status as experiments, which'll help-"

"-with using the experiments as soldiers, yes, we all know. You don't have to say that again-"

"I think the angel's awake."

Ginny cringes back instinctively, but the faces that appear in her vision don't do anything, only press some sort of button that turns the flat surface she's strapped to into a chair, forcing her upright so she can see a dark figure with jagged, scaly skin and bat-like wings, that looks more like a demon than an actual demon, chained to a post a few steps away.

And then the demon-figure looks up, meets Ginny's eyes, and she realizes. It's Pansy.

There's a low growl that sends chills down her spine, before the demon pounces.


Winter Seasonal Challenges
Days of the Year & Religious Events: February 11th - Make a Friend Day: Write about the start of a friendship.
Colours: Taupe
Flowers: Leucojum: (dialogue) "You can take that [object] and shove it."
Crystals & Gemstones: Selenite: Angel!AU
Slytherin OTPs: Pansy/Ginny
But Can You Spell It? A - (genre) Angst

Writing Club: February
Character Appreciation: Plot Point: Punching someone
Book Club: Connor: (object) money, (trait) secretive, (trait) Slytherin
Amber's Apothecary: (character) Ginny Weasley
Elizabeth's Empire: (dialogue) "I'm not going anywhere."
Liza's Loves: Monk - Word: Technique
Scamander's Case: (action) flying
Lyric Alley: Push me away, push me away
EnTitled: Hell House - Word: Vulnerable - alt - write about a legend or a story

Would You Rather? Would you rather write a Meet-Cute OR write a Meet-Ugly?

Stop! Hamper Time: Chutneys: Characters - Tomato Chutney: Susan Bones

Stickers Club: Marvolo Gaunt's ring - Plot Point: Being unaware of something

That Lovin' Feeling: Option 1 - First time you turn to them for support

Resolution Evolution: Write a fic including one of your least favorite characters (No Bashing!) Pansy Parkinson

Fantasy February: Day Eight - Chasing demons away seems to be so much more fun on TV.

365: (word) horrible
Scavenger Hunt: Trope: Wings
Fantastic Beasts: Puffskein - Character: Ginny Weasley