Despite the familiar surroundings, Pandora felt like she was somewhere she had never been before. Waves of nostalgia hit her harder than ever before as she walked through the halls of Hogwarts, telling herself not to look for him but finding herself gazing at every person who walked by. She prayed the rumors weren't true; he couldn't have been expelled. When she saw the bushy hair of Hermione Granger, she nearly cursed aloud as she realized she had never been happier to see her.

Yet as her eyes traced the outline of the red, wild hair that belonged to Harry's best friend, she saw no Harry. Her pounding, throbbing heart ached within her as her steps grew slower, heavier. Beads of perspiration dotted on her brow. He really was gone.

She shuffled along and throughout her day mechanically, because as long as she dulled the emotions, she could not feel them wrenching into her very being. She went through her classes with a blank stare, her focus on the cracks in the walls, the whip of others' wands, anything and everything but the feeling that threatened to crush her at any moment. As she settled into her Defense Against the Dark Arts class, she seriously considered skipping, something she had never done before in her entire career at Hogwarts. But nothing seemed better to her in that moment than cuddling into bed, tears sliding down her face and succumbing to the pain that was filling her like a rising bathtub.

She heard him before she saw him. She was so engrossed in her blankness, in her emptiness that she hadn't noticed him slip in, hadn't notice him scribbling away, his disdain at the book he received, his eyes flitting across the room at the ridiculous professor adorned in pink. She hadn't noticed until she heard him speak up, heard him address the professor directly and ask about how they would learn without using magic. Pandora's eyes reached him and absorbed him hungrily, a perfect image that immediately made her perk up, catch her breath and widen her eyes all in one breath. The professor, a short plump woman with a vicious smirk, began to argue with Harry. The words were trivial, Pandora just wanted to stare at Harry and willed him to look at her. His gaze was leveled at Dolores Umbridge, however, whether because he was too focused on the conversation or avoiding her, though, she couldn't tell.

"Lord Voldemort perhaps?" the last part of his statement caught her off guard, similarly to her fellow peers. Everyone collectively gasped. A more furious argument ensued. Pandora felt herself chewing on her lip. She had heard the rumors, heard what people had said about Harry and his claims. In all her heart, she begged to tell him what she knew, how she knew. But she couldn't. This fact alone cut into her deeper than any pain, and as she drew blood from biting on her lip too hard, she felt nothing. All she could feel was the shame that made her shoulders cave in, her breathing shallow; despite wanting nothing more than to see Harry for all those months, she found herself looking away from him.

When she heard Umbridge pronounce his detention sentence, she quivered. When class ended and he stood up, huffing and angry, she couldn't move. She watched as others passed her, no one stopping to see the paralyzed girl who couldn't look up. As he walked past her, he kept his eyes on the floor as well, though she saw his glance flicker ever so faintly. She reached out before she knew she was doing it; her hand grazed his shoulder, barely reaching his skin beneath his robe. She touched him for merely a second and let her hand linger for a second too long, as though she had forgotten its purpose. He looked up and met her unsure eyes with a cruel, neutral stare. He shook her from his shoulder and sauntered out.

Harry hadn't heard from Pandora the entire summer. He had done his fair share of questioning, practically sending Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia into a fierce rage as he checked and rechecked his mail, even stopping to ask Dobby if he had interfered or "tried to save his life" yet again. But alas, all signs pointed to the fact that Pandora had made no effort to correspond. He had written her at least dozens of times, always filling the pages with his scraggly writings of daily activities, daily thoughts and musings, always ending each letter with the same words, I miss you. Yours, Harry. But she hadn't responded once. Even through the craziness, the nightmares, the secret meetings, he had heard nothing. Was she not aware of the pain he was in, the constant heaviness that had permanently settled onto his weak shoulders? He was so close to cracking he could feel it in his core, and with a simple touch on his shoulder he felt a shiver. She hadn't forgotten about him, so it seemed. She had simply chose to ignore him. Somehow, that hurt even worse.