( A/N - Chapter 3, here you go! Please read and review! JK Rowling owns Harry Potter )
They managed to elude the fighting on their way out of the castle but they were still moving cautiously until they reached open space. The evening sky was full of smoke and traces of light, and as Astoria led Daphne to sit behind a rosebush, Pansy set up temporary wards to encase them. She needed to see how bad her best friend's injury was, and she could not risk being intruded upon by blood-lust crazy alumi while she was at it.
"How bad is it?" Daphne asked with a grimace as Pansy examined her wound.
"Not so bad, but it's bleeding a lot."
"I can't believe that bloody git was aiming for my face!" Daphne shrieked, causing Astoria to jump.
Pansy looked around them, suddenly alarmed. "Ssshhh! Will you keep it down? And he was what?!"
"Aiming for my face!" Daphne answered, obviously ticked. Pansy shrugged.
"Well, I used to think he was a good-looking lad, but now I think he's just a sick bastard."
"Goodness, Pansy. I know, right? Who aims at a girl's face? That's just sadistic."
"I'm just glad you're alive." Astoria said, speaking for the first time.
"Of course, I am. I'm a Greengrass, and a Greengrass is never an easy kill." Daphne smirked at her sister through her pain, and Pansy felt a twinge in her heart.
"We need Dittany. I'm going to go in and try to worm my way into the hosp –"
"No, Parkinson." Daphne ground out, her hand clutching Pansy's sleeves tightly. "I'm not going to die. It's just a wound and it's far from my guts. You stay here and I goddamn mean it."
"Okay, okay. But we need to move, like, now."
Pansy wrapped her handkerchief around her best friend's wound to stifle the bleeding. Daphne was able to stay on her feet as they trudged their way out, without even knowing where "out" really was. But it felt good to move, although she and Astoria had had to get rid of certain people who stumbled into their path. For the second time, she saw Neville Longbottom who looked frantic and deadly, but unlike the others he made no violent move towards them and let them pass. She didn't deserve his kindness and consideration but she accepted it anyway.
In the end, Pansy didn't know if it was luck or because they really weren't relevant, but they made it to a part of the forbidden forest that had recent signs of battle but was otherwise empty. There was a sudden silence, but Pansy had a feeling that the battle was far from over. And then the Dark Lord's voice shook the entire Hogsmeade.
"You have fought valiantly. Lord Voldemort knows how to value bravery. Yet you have sustained heavy losses. If you continue to resist me, you will all die, one by one. I do not wish this to happen. Every drop of magical blood spilled is a loss and a waste. Lord Voldemort is merciful. I command my forces to retreat immediately. "You have one hour. Dispose of your dead with dignity. Treat your injured."
There was a pause, and then:
"I speak now, Harry Potter, directly to you. You have permitted your friends to die for you rather than face me yourself. I shall wait for one hour in the Forbidden Forest. If, at the end of that hour, you have not come to me, have not given yourself up, then battle recommences. This time, I shall enter the fray myself, Harry Potter, and I shall find you, and I shall punish every last man, woman, and child who has tried to conceal you from me. One hour."
The three girls looked at each other, horror etched in all of their faces. It was Daphne who spoke first.
"I don't know about you two, but I'm pretty sure that all this time we've been serving the wrong cause." She looked Pansy dead in the eye when she said this, and she knew that she was thinking the same things she was. All those years they tormented Potter and his gang, all those times they fawned over Umbridge. They had been wrong all along. Not that Pansy thinks they should have upheld justice and preserved righteousness, although the idea is great and all that. She wasn't sure about Daphne, but if she could do things over again, she would have stayed on the outskirts of it all. She wouldn't have picked a side.
But then again, it wasn't even logic or family tradition that made her pick. It was love. Love for Draco and eagerness for his approval. Draco, who she hadn't seen since he left during their sixth year. Her heart ached at the thought of him but she kept her mouth shut. One look at Daphne told her that her best friend understood, and that was all she had to hold on to for now.
Astoria looked from Pansy to her sister, but said nothing. She had always been a good girl and Pansy was sure that if she had been in their place, she wouldn't make the same mistakes. She loved the Greengrasses like she loved her own family, and now more than ever, she needs to prove that. They had to get out of this place, and they had to get out alive. All three of them.
Pansy ripped out a long shred of her skirt and gave it to Astoria so she could press it to Daphne's wound. The handkerchief had long been soaked and discarded. Hopefully, it would stifle the bleeding until it stopped completely. She then set out to look for a hollowed out tree where they could stay when the battle starts again. Deep down, she wondered what it would feel like to fight against Voldemort, but she knew that her battle was here, in keeping her friends and herself alive. If there was one thing she was good at, better at than Hermione Granger could only ever dream to be, it was self preservation.
After a few minutes, she found a perfect hiding spot and she marked it with her wand. She ran towards Astoria and Daphne and together they made their way to the tree that she'd found. It only fit two people inside, which means one should stand outside on guard duty. At first Astoria insisted it should be her, but Pansy argued and won out. So she parked herself on one of the lower branches, hiding behind the tree's thick green leaves.
Not long after that, the battle recommenced. Deep into the forest she saw a flash of green light and she shuddered. Did Potter give himself up to the Dark Lord? What would happen to all of them now? What about the people in the castle? She found her hands shaking and she squeezed her fists shut to stop them. Fear was making her body alert and she was straining all her senses to make sense of all the sounds that was reaching her ears, even if they were muffled. A cry here and there, a shriek of pain, a hysterical laughter that could only be Bellatrix's, echoing fainter and fainter until it was all but a tormenting piece of memory. For Pansy, it wasn't the sounds of pain that made her want to hide and rock herself back and forth. It was that laughter from Bellatrix, the pure, undiluted evil of it.
She folded in on herself and rested her head on her knees, no longer interested in the battle since it was apparent whose side would win. She was steadying her breathing, in and out, in and out, like how her nanny told her when she was having her freak out episodes. It keep you calm, she said in her broken English. It keep you okay. Pansy needed to be both calm and okay right now, and the only way she knew how was to breathe steadily, and so, for what felt like a few hours, she did.
And then suddenly there was silence, and it shook Pansy out of her reverie. I hope it's over, she thought, but she wasn't quite sure. And then a scream pierced the air, tortured, wild, and guttural. And that was when she knew without knowing how she knew it, that she had been wrong. It was Potter's side who won after all, though she can't figure out how. And that scream, it belonged to the creature who was Lord Voldemort. And he was dead. Gone forever. Vanquished.
Astoria came out of the hollowed tree then, a smile teasing the corners of her mouth.
"Is it over?" She asked in what could only be described as a hopeful voice.
"Yes, yes I think it is." Pansy said, and as she uttered the words she realized that she was glad. Really, really glad.
"THANK MERLIN!" yelled Daphne from inside the three. And despite the direness of their situation in the middle of that dark forest, the three of them managed to laugh.
When they came out of the forest it was already light, the sun hanging low in the east and casting an inescapable spotlight on all the ruins of the battle. They saw people checking bodies, yelling when some are still alive. Hiding in the shadows of the trees, the three of them had been hesitant to come out. There was no Luna Lovegood in sight, which nagged at Pansy more than she ever thought it would. What if the girl died? But Pansy won't dwell on those kinds of thoughts. She saw Ginny Weasley, who hated her with a passion, and unconsciously she moved farther into the shadows, almost bumping into Astoria in the process. What if their presence would spark another bout of animosity? What if someone killed them on the spot? They can't just pop into existence very casually because they were notorious. She was notorious. Daphne and Astoria might stand a chance on their own.
But no, she wasn't going to chicken out. Not when they were this close to surviving intact. So she held Daphne's hand and looked her in the eyes. "Ready?" Astoria nodded absently, staring ahead, and Daphne echoed her question with a word. "Ready." With that, they plunged into the day and Pansy noted, almost in slow motion, how several heads swiveled in their direction, and upon seeing her, most if not all of those head's owners raised their wands.
"We're not here to fight." Astoria's voice broke the tension, louder and calmer than you'd expect from a soot-covered fourteen year old blonde girl wearing Slytherin uniforms. "My sister is injured and she needs immediate help." It was only then that Pansy noticed that Oliver Wood was among the crowd that had gathered around them because his head dipped to the side. "And since it was you who caused her injury," continued Astoria in a steady and crisp-clear voice, looking directly at the former Quidditch captain, "I think it would only be fair if you help her." Oliver nodded once and walked briskly towards them. With an easy grace, she lifted Daphne and carried her away. "Go with them." Pansy told Astoria. "Will you be okay?" She smiled to ease the worry on the younger girl's face. "Of course."
Pansy watched them walk away for a minute, and then she turned to look at the people who're still looking at her as if she's a particularly dangerous wild animal. She folded her arms across her chest and scanned their faces. Finally, she settled on Cho Chang. "Do what you have to do." she told her. Cho stepped forward and smacked her in the face. "That's for ridiculing Cedric's memory." Pansy looked back at her and said nothing. Another set of hands, Seamus Finnigan's, searched her and found her wand. He pocketed it while looking at her smugly. Pansy felt faintly relieved, because for a while there, she actually expected him to break it in two.
She was grasped from behind and was led to the castle.
"We found Parkinson!" A voice she doesn't recognize yelled from her side and Pansy winced away from the noise. The hands tightened its grip like a vice. They were, she realized, in the Great Hall, or what had become of it after a few hundred wizards ran amok with their wands. There was rubble scattered all over the floor and all that remained of the walls were half or less of their original height. There were also pieces of clear and colored glass, and as she looked up she saw that the enchanted ceiling that was the Great Hall's pride was now gone, its pieces crunching and breaking under the soles of her shoes. The windows were broken as well, and heat was infiltrating the entire space through every single gap it could find. Pansy felt the urge to vomit. The heat never suited her well.
Looking ahead, she noticed that very few people had been paying attention to her dramatic entrance, which caused an echo of slight disappointment on her part. She dismissed it as irrelevant and scanned the activities around her. She saw Hannah Abott bent over Lavender Brown, who was looking at her with a tightness around her eyes. Pansy's gaze travelled to her throat and fought the urge to cry out. There was a huge, gaping wound in there, and it looked absolutely hideous. Daphne's cut was a scratch compared to the thing on Lavender's neck. She looked away but her eyes landed on yet another sight. Near what used to be the teachers' long table she saw a cluster of red heads that she automatically recognized as the Weasleys. They weren't paying attention to her, but Ginny craned her neck to look. Pansy expected her to run forward and smack her like Cho had done, but the other girl merely assessed her with furrowed eyebrows, as if Pansy's survival confused her to an extent. In the end it was Neville Longbottom who spoke.
"Let her go." He said, weariness coloring his voice a dull grey.
There was a collective murmuring but it was Seamus Finnigan's voice that cut through and above it all. "What?" he said aghast, eyes bulging like a bullfrog's might. It wasn't supposed to be funny but Pansy found that she was shaking with suppressed laughter. She fought it down, thinking that if she let it out they'd think she was crazy like Bellatrix was, and the idea struck her as repulsive. "She was on their side, Nev!" He said 'their' like it was a filthy word, which, given the circumstance, it probably is. "She almost killed Luna, we saw it!"
Neville was about to say something that Pansy hoped, is a contradiction of the previous statement, but he was unceremoniously interrupted.
"Did someone mention my name?" Luna's head bobbed up from a hole on the floor. Her eyes looked swollen, like she was sleeping and had just woken up, which she probably had. There was a short gash on her left cheek and a red mass of swelling lump protruded from her head. A brief moment of silence was afforded while her eyes, that were as big and bright and blue as ever, searched the scene in front of her. They landed on Pansy, and if possible, grew wider.
"Oh!" she uttered in her pleasant, dreamy voice. "Thank Merlin, thank Merlin!" she was scrambling out of the hole despite Neville's protests ("Don't move too much, Luna, you're head – ") but the girl wasn't paying attention and had eyes for only one. "You're alive! I thought, I thought…"
In the end, Pansy never knew what she thought because Luna reached out for her with her arms outstretched and gave her a hug. If her limbs were free, she might have just hugged her back. Luna noticed the state of her and pulled away with her wide eyes stretched to the limit. She looked from face to face, and Seamus had the good grace to shuffle on his feet with an embarrassed and confused look on his face.
"Why is she being held like a prisoner? Didn't you know she –"
"Luna, we saw her threaten you with the Greengrasses. We thought –"
"What?" Lovegood asked, confusion apparent on her face. "No! They were helping me fend off some Death Eaters. If not for her I might as well be dead! He would have killed me, Atchley, I think. But she got him in time."
It was in this precise moment when Lee Jordan came lumbering into the Great Hall with a Death Eater in his grasp. "This one's still alive," he called, "but his behind is badly burned!" And Pansy thought she could smell a faint trace of burning meat in the humid air. She had the sense to blanch. When she lifted her face to get a good look, the Death Eater, who she doesn't recognize, met her eyes and screamed.
"YOU FOUL, WRETCHED, TRAITOR! YOU DID THIS TO ME! YOU BURNED ME ALIVE! I'M GOING TO DRAG YOU TO HELL WITH ME, YOU UNGRATEFUL LITTLE WENCH!"
And the Death Eater fought Jordan's grasp like a maniac, all the while keeping her feral gaze at Pansy, but the former commentator was too strong for him to make any such progress. Lee Jordan's eyes appraised her with sad amusement as the man continued to yell. With a spell from Dean Thomas, the man was shut up. Zacharias Smith patted Thomas on the back. The others just seemed too shock to make any sound at all. But Luna was a different case entirely. She was smiling from ear to ear like all was right in the world and she doesn't have a second pair of head threatening to burst out from the lump that hid within the territory of her dirty blonde hair.
"How'd you get that?" Pansy ventured, trying to break the ice.
"Oh, this?" She patted her lump gingerly and winced in pain. I fell down the stairs. Greyback was chasing me. Us, actually." She glanced sympathetically at Lavender who was now being carried off in a stretcher by some people out of the Great Hall. Probably to the hospital wing, or what remained of it.
"They thought she was dead," Neville added, following her gaze. "but Hannah checked on her while we were going through the bodies. Turns out, she was just unconscious. Pretty fine with us, too. Merlin knows we have enough dead to burry, and a deduction would certainly be welcome."
"Y'all good, huh? Talking to this bitch like she's one of us? She's one of them! She would have sold Harry if she had the chance and you're giving her a hero's welcome?" That was Seamus, his face contorted in disgust, looking at Neville and Luna with a sort of blind hate. Pansy kept her face blank as an unpainted canvass until he spat on her shoe. She felt heat rising to her cheeks and barely registered the hands that were on her arms now.
"Seamus, stop." It was Cho, much to Pansy's surprise. She whispered something to Seamus and whatever it was, it seemed to calm him down. With one more hateful look, he stalked away to where the Weasleys were.
"Come on, Pansy. They're just upset because they weren't there when you saved me. They just have to get used to the idea that you're not so bad."
Luna led her away from the crowd while Neville fought to keep a certain degree of control over the angry and confused mob. Faintly, she wondered where Harry Potter is, and what would he say about the whole fiasco. Knowing Gryffindors, they tend to be just and righteous and all that, but maybe the effects of the battle would change him. He'd probably order for her execution in the account that she wanted to hand him over to the Dark Lord like some second hand cardigan. Or maybe she's just over thinking.
She and Luna ended up in a classroom, and finally Pansy gathered the nerve to ask the question that had been bugging her since, well, since the battle began.
"I just wanna ask," she ventured cautiously, "about the younger kids." She swallowed. "Did they fight in the battle? I mean, did some of them…" The word 'die', she decided, was way too overused in the scenario. "…perish?" She finally finished.
"Some of them fought. The first years and the second years were taken out to the secret exit in The Room of Requirement. Most of them, anyway. Some of the third years and fourth years went, too. The other years, well, I think most of them stayed."
Except those students from the Slytherin House. It was unsaid, but it hung in the air between them anyway, like a dead weight.
But even then, relief like nothing she had ever felt washed through Pansy like a tide. Most of them were safe, and even if they didn't know her or if they do, they probably hate her guts, but that was okay for as long as they were alive. She didn't really understand why she cared too much, she never really understood much of the things that she feels, but she did care. Even if no one could ever know about it.
"Did w – you" Pansy coughed as she corrected herself, then continued, "lose many people?"
"We did." Luna said solemnly, and Pansy felt a massive block of ice settle in her gut.
"You won, though. The worst is over." She felt compelled to say.
"Maybe. Some of the unrounded Death Eaters escaped, though. They might pose a threat and no one's decided how to fix that problem yet."
Pansy nodded because she could think of nothing more to say.
( A/N - AAAAH. I'm so nervous about this chapter. Please read and review! )