Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter nor do make money.

68. Letters

Just as Ron feared the letters started arriving as soon as he woke. Most were addressed to both him and Pansy which he just gave her to read but Charlie had sent one to each of them as well as the Malfoys sending one to just Pansy. And one she said casually was from her aunt, before putting it in her bag without reading it.

Yet the letter he was most interested in arrived at lunch when Pansy and him were sitting at the Slytherin table. A black eagle owl had swooped in and landed in front of Pansy. The rest of the Slytherin eighth years went silent as Pansy just stared at the owl.

Ron looked toward the others but they were just as fixated on the owl as Pansy. After a few minutes, which felt like hours, she took the letter from the owl's leg and stuffed into her bag. The owl though stayed where he was.

Finally, he heard her whisper, "Go Abelard. Just go." And the black eagle owl took off.

He went to ask Pansy about it but got sidetracked by Draco.

And when he went to ask about it as they were leaving, Theo distracted him.

He tried to ask her as they were leaving DADA, but Blaise wanted to ask him a question.

And that continued the rest of the day. People interrupting him, every time he went to ask Pansy about the mysterious letter. Until he had almost forgotten about the letter.

Almost.

While at Quidditch practice, he thought about all the ways to approach her about the letter. He had become so used to her telling him everything that her hiding the letter as well as her friends distracting him from asking, frankly bothered him. If she didn't want to talk about it, that was fine -- all she had to do was tell him. But to avoid the topic with him, that bothered him more.

Walking into their room after quidditch practice to grab a quick shower before dinner, he stopped at the sight of her curled up in the window seat, looking out over the grounds of Hogwarts. The mysterious letter crinkled in her hands as she fiddled with it: rolling it up, and then unrolling it; wadding it up, only to smooth it out again. She was so lost in her thoughts, that she never even turned her head when he closed the door.

Every approach, comment, thought, he had come up with during practice went out the window. That letter went deeper than he thought but the look on her face.

Leaving his equipment next to the door, he walked over to her. Ruffling her head, he kissed her on the head and asked, "Is everything okay?"

"I don't know," she whispered.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"I don't know," she whispered again. He pushed her to the side a bit more so he could sit by her on the window seat. Now looking at her face, he could see the remnants of tears dried on her face; though her eyes showed no signs now of tears.

"Does it have to do with that?" he asked gently, nodding to the letter that she held in her hands.

"Maybe."

"Pansy..." he whispered, thinking that a soothing tone would drawl whatever was bothering her out.

"My aunt wrote me," she whispered back. "The one I would have been sent to live with if it hadn't been for you." Ron's heart fell at the strangled tone her voice took on as she slowly said those words. "She saw the story in emThe Daily Prophet/em and she wants to know exactly what her brother had planned for me. She says that he had lied to her in the fall and that she had not been told the truth of why plans were being made to send me to her. She begged me for her forgiveness, that she would never have agreed to take me in if her brother had told her the truth; that she had to give her permission for me to even step on the island."

Ron found himself speechless. There were no right words at this moment. Only shallow ones. So he kept quite and switched his position to sit by her. She didn't say anything as he maneuvered her into his lap; the letter now tightly squashed in her hand.

"I knew my parents were throwing me away," Pansy whispered so low that Ron barely heard it. "It just hurts to hear someone tell you that. That you meant so little to them, that they lied, schemed, and plotted to make me disappear without actually killing me. My parents wanted to throw me away."

Kissing her gently on the forehead before squeezing her tight, he continued to hold her as she started to shake in his arms. Whispering, "What can I do?"

"Just hold me," she whispered back.

And that's exactly what he did as she continued to fiddle with the letter in her hands. He simply held her, squeezing her every so often and occasionally placing gentled kisses on her head, as she either clung to him, shook, or softly cried.

He didn't know how late it was when she finally broke the silence with, "The black eagle owl earlier. It belongs to my parents," as she held up the letter that had been the source of his curiosity all day. "My parents' wrote me. But I can bring myself to burn it or look at it."