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Part Two | Pain & Fire
Thirty-Eight. It's Only Me
There was very little in her world that would have made Pansy leave Neville in that moment. However, finding and possibly committing first-degree murder after learning the contents of the note, was one of them.
Thundering through the halls of Hogwarts, Pansy didn't know if she were knocking students aside, or teachers. She held little notice, or care, to find out which as she rushed towards the dungeons.
The part of stone wall that seperated the Slytherin common room from the rest of the school didn't even wait for her to speak the password, instead the large blocks of stone simply slid apart, granting her entry. Perhaps the jolt in adrenaline that was coursing through her, and by extension, her magic, was all that had been needed. Pansy didn't know.
Pansy didn't care.
She reached the other side of the common room in record time, ignoring the scattering of Slytherin students that eyed her approach nervously, and followed the path that led to the dormitories, and in particular, the one she'd slept in for six years of her life. The one she'd slept in alongside Daphne, and…
"MILLICENT!" Pansy's cry was deafening even to herself as she slammed her palm against the locked dormitory door.
"GO AWAY, PANSY!" a voice answered her, though not the one she was expecting. "YOU'RE NOT COMING IN!"
Pansy ignored him, still opting to shout directly at Millicent. "REALLY, MILLS? BEST PALS WITH FUCKING CRABBE NOW, ARE YOU?!"
This time, it was Goyle that shouted back through the door. "WE DIDN'T WANT TO DO THIS, PANSY, BUT IF YOU CONTINUE THIS, WE'LL HAVE TO DISARM YOU!"
Oh, for fuck's sake.
Pansy didn't care to tell either of Draco's old aspiring bodyguards to move out of the way of the door, and subsequent explosion. "BOMBARDA!"
The door itself shattered entirely, but the structural damage seemed a lot more limited than she would have expected, the stones that held the door in place directly had fallen from the doorway, but all in all, the destruction was minimal. Both Crabbe and Goyle had been hit in some form by exploding debris, and were lying on the floor, unconscious. Good.
Millicent, however, did not see it as minimal, it transpired. "PANSY, WHAT THE HELL? ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME?!"
Pansy raised her wand higher, holding the thin magical instrument at chest height. "Give me one reason why I shouldn't?"
"Y-you're scared-"
"You're damn right I'm scared."
"I get it...I was too!" Millicent's tone was pleading. "You don't know what it was like, th-they hauled me in and questioned me...about Theo and Blaise, and Daphne...and you!"
Pansy felt something akin to lava rise up her esophagus. It halted in the back of her throat, threatening to force her onto all fours, retching.
Millicent's tone was now hysterical. "I had to tell them something!"
"And Neville was the easiest one to throw under the bus?!"
"I'm not proud of it," at the look of derision Pansy threw at the Slytherin, Millicent hastily continued. "I'm not, you can believe what you want, but i'm not. But, if it comes to giving anything away about you, or Theo, or Daphne….then yes, I'm going to ch-choose...Neville."
"How very...loyal."
"It is! I know you can't see that, and I get why, but yes, my loyalty is to you, and our friends that we've spent years with...not to your boyfriend of a few months. I'm sorry, Pans, but can you honestly say you wouldn't have done the same?"
She couldn't, and she didn't as she glared at Millicent, knowing that she was not in any way prepared to admit that much.
"I know why you hate me," the other witch continued. "I'd hate me too, but they would have killed my parents! They still might...if I do anything, they still...might. I'm not proud of it Pansy, I swear I'm not, but it was between him or one of us. And I wanted you to be okay."
"You thought you were saving...me?"
"Yes," Millicent's voice was a desperate whisper. "Yes, I-I wanted-"
"Well you were wrong!" Pansy willed herself to not cry with her friend? Ex-friend? Enemy? No...no, even now, she wouldn't use that term...that term was reserved for others. Ones far worse than Millicent.
"What do you mean?"
The letter was still balled in Pansy's left fist, she hadn't shown another soul, not even Draco, before she had made the split-second decision to track Millicent down. Thrusting the parchment towards, Millicent, Pansy, not content with standing still as the other witch read, began to pace back and forth, striking Crabbe and Goyle with a number of stinging hexes as she did, hoping that when they awoke, they did so in pain.
"I don't understand," Pansy heard Millicent's voice, as low as it was, clear as day.
"No?" she whirled around. "Because it looks pretty clear from where I'm standing. Should've practiced closing your mind with me and Draco, Mills.
"No, they didn't...I'd have felt-"
"Not by someone experienced enough in occlumency, you wouldn't have felt shit."
"But this doesn't make any sense, I-I didn't even mention you."
"Save it," Pansy turned to leave, not entirely sure what her visit had achieved, if anything. "You didn't just give him reason to look for Neville, you gave him enough to connect him to me from your thoughts, and now I need to work out what the fuck I'm going to do."
"Y-you can still go, though, you and Neville, and Draco...you could still-"
The truth flew from her mouth quicker than she were able to stop them. "There's no way Neville is strong enough to travel."
"But, but you can't...Pansy you-"
"Thanks to you," Pansy hissed, "I don't know if I have a choice." Pausing, Pansy turned her face to once more face Millicent. It was a low blow, Pansy knew that before the words left her lips, and perhaps she really ought to not have uttered them. "But hey, at least your parents are fine, right?"
Neville's condition hadn't improved when Pansy returned, not that she had expected it to, though she couldn't help but hope, and prey to every deity she'd ever heard of that he'd be awake, smiling at her as her name passed from his lips. Her only saving grace when her prayers hadn't granted her the outcome she'd desired was that whilst he hadn't improved, he hadn't worsened either. He's not worse. It was all she had to cling to as she wearily looked down on the one she loved with her everything.
A knock on her bedroom door drew her attention, expecting Draco, Pansy replied, somewhat begrudgingly, "Yeah?"
The door opened, and in stepped a very battered, but mostly bemused looking Seamus Finnegan. "I'm, err, sorry if this is a bad time," he began, purposefully looking anywhere but Pansy. "I was hoping I could see him," Finnegan's head bowed towards the bed, and Neville, "and your House Elf said to put these by the bed," he raised one hand, and Pansy noticed the small crate-like box he was holding.
"Right," Pansy replied, not entirely sure how on Earth she was supposed to address the Gryffindor. "Yeah, of course."
In any other circumstance, the look of absolute confusion present on Seamus's face at Pansy's words would have been laughable. "I'm not as evil as you think," Pansy said sadly.
"I hope you'll pardon me for the judgement, but i'd never have believed it before today."
Pansy snorted a breath through her nose. "You're pardoned."
"Do you mind if I," Seamus nodded towards Pansy's dressing table chair, "my ribs, you know, hurts to stand."
"No, I don't mind."
"Appreciate it."
She nodded in reply, once again not knowing what to say to him.
Ultimately, it was Seamus who spoke again. "I knew it was a girl."
Pansy blinked. "Sorry?"
Inclining his head in the direction of Neville's unconscious form, Seamus elaborated. "Had to be. He's been acting funny for weeks, months, really. It was obvious it was someone, but no one could work out who."
"Oh."
"Didn't quite have it penned as you, though."
"No, I can't imagine you did."
"I trust him, though," Seamus said, "Neville, I mean. I trust his judgement, he's not led us wrong so far, and as much as it goes against all of my first instincts, I believe you, and Malfoy, are on our side."
Pansy simply nodded, slowly, never having felt quite so lost for words than she did in this particular conversation, her mind half-drifting away from Seamus. "Crabbe and Goyle are definitely not on your side, but the others, in our year, anyway, are...not that it really matters, now." A scared and lost looking Blaise, Theo and Daphne caught Pansy's mind eye.
"Greengrass never seemed the type, I suppose," Seamus replied with the smallest hint of a laugh.
Daphne, with her immaculate blonde head of hair and far friendlier than Pansy could ever muster demeanor certain didn't seem the type. "No, she doesn't."
"They've gone?"
"They have."
"But you're still here?"
"It...it's complicated."
"He was planning to leave with you, wasn't he?"
Both Pansy and Seamus' eyes were drawn to the familiar senseless lying figure next to Pansy. Now seeing very little reason to lie, Pansy replied. "Yeah."
"It makes sense why he kept banging on about what to do if he wasn't able to be there."
Pansy barely heard him, her mind on something else entirely, something crumpled and innocent enough looking situated in her pocket. She rubbed it warily between a finger and her thumb. She daren't even take it back out to glance at it. Its contents were far from innocent, and the reality of those contents twisted her insides into a knot of fear and of the very real reality of their words that she would need to face...in only a few short hours.
It was still crumpled, still in the same imperfect state a small while later, after Seamus's presence had been replaced with Winky's. Now it sat atop her bedside table as casually as if it were a stray piece of homework still to be completed, and not, in fact, the very reason her life, and the life of what she held dearest, might end.
Fuck.
"Is Miss needing a sleeping draft?" Winky squeaked, from Neville's bedside, where the elf was busying herself checking a gash on Neville's shoulder.
"No, Winky, I definitely don't need a sleeping draft, but I will need you to promise me something."
"Miss is capable of simply commanding Winky whatever Miss desires-"
"No, I know," Pansy interjected. "I-I, oh God."
"What pains Miss?"
"Neville's injuries...they're bad, aren't they?"
Winky's head immediately bowed. "The injuries, Miss Pansy, they are numerous, and bad, and unlike anything Winky believes those two wicked ones have inflicted on students this far. This time, Miss Pansy, was different."
"It was."
"I don't think this was..." Winky continued, her high pitched voice strained as she gestured vaguely over Neville's body, "...unplanned."
Pansy's head shook, her thoughts spinning between Neville, the Carrows, Millicent, and Rabastan as though on a constant loop. "No, it wasn't."
Pansy knew Winky didn't miss Pansy's eyes dart back and forth to the crumpled note. "The bad man?" Winky queried, her voice hushed.
Pansy nodded, her eyes full of tears. "Winky, I…" Pansy began, where her thoughts were screaming her words remained stammered, "...I need to leave, for a while, and I need you to keep him safe."
"Miss Pansy, where is it you are going?"
"I can't say."
"Winky will not let Miss Pansy go to the bad man, no she will not."
"I have to."
"Why?" Winky asked, a definite snap to her tone.
She didn't need to uncrumple the parchment to see the words scrawled upon it, they were ingrained in the forefront of Pansy's mind, and probably always would be.
Unless you wish to see myself, and my brother - perhaps his lovely wife, too, march into that cesspit of a school and tear the place apart to finish the noble work we started years ago to end the Longbottom lineage - and that of any other blood traitor that takes our fancy, I suggest you get that tight arse of yours to the address below - by seven. Tonight.
Rabastan Lestrange
Ps hope his bloodied up face doesn't turn you off too much.
Below the words was a scrawled address and a visual description of the pub, to aid her apparition.
"But," Winky squeaked, "Mr Draco can-"
"Draco can't help me, not with this. It's only me." Pansy stated. "It's only me that can do this."