I would just like to thank the optimistic cynic and Tsumomo for their lovely comments and for sharing my love of post-war Slytherin! It was my first time posting my writing anywhere, and it was so askdljaskldajaksjdsalkjd* just to know people liked/acknowledged/skimmed the initial chapter.
(*articulating my feelings is not a good skill of mine. I was happy. Very happy.)
Hopefully this chapter isn't too angsty. Next time there will be Charlie and adorableness and cuddly/deadly dragons to make up for it.
Pansy felt the train move beneath her. No longer north to Hogwarts, but south to cross the channel to Europe. A stop in Paris, a stop Serbia, then a division between those lucky enough to go to Greece and those unlucky enough to pull the short straw for Romania.
She sighed, hating herself for hoping. The chances looked good. Horribly good. Two places for equine, and just one small, life-threatening placement for dragons.
The hot cloud her breath left on the window evaporated leaving a pale, strong-featured face with an unfortunate upturned nose looking back at her. Her eyes and hair were so dark that they barely left a reflection. God, even her blank expression looked unconvinced at the odds. Despairingly, Pansy turned away from the depressing sight.
Luna, her long hair hanging like a pale waterfall, was humming absently to herself seemingly content. In one hand she was using her wand to knit a long, multi-coloured and rather wonky scarf, while nibbling at a chocolate frog with the other. Wordlessly, she proffered a chocolate frog box towards Pansy.
Huh?
If this had been a different time, Pansy may have ignored this strange act of sharing or even departed with a sharp comment. Having said that, she was rather hungry, no one else was around to see this, and it was perhaps the first kind act someone had directed towards her for… a disheartening amount of time.
"Thank you," Pansy said quietly, quickly nipping at a frog's head. She hated the way they moved around, and found the whole act of eating them much less guilt-inducing with a swift decapitation. "You do realize that many… in fact, most of the public and your friends see both my house and I as traitors, murderers and utterly beneath contempt?"
"Oh yes," replied Luna brightly. "My friend Ronald says all the Slytherins should be rounded up and turned into house elves. Or thrown into a volcano. Or be set upon by giant spiders. He keeps changing his mind. "
Pansy felt suddenly quite queasy. Ron Weasely had a say now. His voice mattered as one of the over-achieving heroes of the war. Perhaps worse, his voice reflected popular sentiment. Two years after the war and people still wanted retribution. They still wanted blood. They were just working out how to get it.
"And you do realize that I am the one who spoke up to say we should give Harry over to… him?"
"Of course. I was there. You said it very clearly."
"But instead of making me into a house elf you'd rather feed me sweets?"
Luna let out a tinkling cackle, continuing to wave her wand to a jaunty beat in front of the lengthening woolen monstrosity. "Well, I did poison them first."
Pansy, who had just swallowed the frog's arm, turned a strange shade of green-white.
"Oh Pansy! You should see your face. I was joking," said Luna, still giggling dreamily. Realising Pansy looked unconvinced and likely to shove her fingers down her throat, Luna plucked the half-eaten amphibian from her palm and bit of a leg. "See?"
Pansy's gob-smacked look of confusion and fear did not quite manage to leave her features for some time.
"O-okay. But um…. Still, it's not exactly behaviour I've become used to," she responded stiltingly. Nor behaviour I deserve, she thought, hating herself more. Spinning off into guilt because some weirdo who puts her shoes on the wrong feet gave you a sweet. Pathetic.
"People often think I'm strange. According to Harry, I'm an eccentric. Ronald just thinks I'm a weirdo. He's not the nicest person sometimes, but he's still nice."
"Right," responded Pansy, not quite sure what the correct response to this was.
At that moment, the door to their compartment opened to allow two girls to spill in, giggling in an ungodly cacophony. Pansy recalled them vaguely, both were in Luna's year –one in Ravenclaw and the other in Hufflepuff. The Ravenclaw girl (Delilah Something?) saw Luna and her face went through a strange metamorphosis of emotion. Initially shock, worry… and then a strangely bright look of happiness, rather akin to a chipmunk on sugar and illegally imported substances. The Hufflepuff (and Pansy wasn't even ashamed to admit she didn't recall her name) saw Pansy and froze with a look of abject terror.
"Luna!" squealed Delilah, her ponytail bouncing in a disconcertingly chirpy manner. Pansy recognized the distinctly fake tones of a girl about to suck up as if her life depended on it. "It's so good to see you! And…" Her voice trailed off just as she was about to greet Pansy.
Pansy turned her head to the window just in time. Snub before you can be snubbed, her mother often said.
"Hello, Delilah," greeted Luna absently. "Gertrude, you look like you're possessed by a Splicklewright. Congratulations, it's supposed to be very lucky. Or a symptom for hairloss, but I wouldn't worry though- what's a little hairloss to being the vessel for a protected species?"
Gertrude, her mouth hanging unattractively open, let out a strange gargle as she was caught between her terror at seeing Pansy and her confusion of Luna. Pansy almost let out a snort of laughter. Luna was either just as insane as everyone said, or she had the world's sharpest wit when it came to insulting people. Parkinson was beginning to feel slightly fond of the girl.
Delilah coughed, and elbowed Gertrude to sit down. The pair practically squashed themselves in the furthest corner away from Pansy. It seemed that no one was going to enquire what on earth a Spicklewart was, probably from previous experience with dealing with Luna.
The three managed to thaw the strange tension in the compartment, with Delilah asking incessant question of Luna and Luna reply in the lax way of hers. Many of the questions seemed to involve trying to stimulate gossip about Harry and Neville- but Luna's answers were too vague to be truly titillating. Gertrude eventually managed to re-hinge her jaw and join in with pathetic enthusiasm. By some sort of mutual agreement it seemed that Pansy was both being excluded and excluding herself. Dismally, she watched the British countryside pass by and half-heartedly daydreamed how truly awful it would be if one of the dragons got out and chewed off Delilah and Gertrude's gossiping heads.
"So…" Delilah began, leaning forward. "How is Neville Longbottom anyway? I heard that you two are rather close nowadays. Gert and I have taken to calling him the Frog Prince, because… well, you remember what he was like at school (and he did have that ridiculous toad!) but he has really blossomed since then, hasn't he? So brave, and incredibly good looking- don't you think?"
Pansy, her curiosity peaked, turned an ear to the coven in the corner. Her main memory of Neville Longbottom was that time he put his elbow into a beaker of Assiduous Acid… and of course, the time when he cut of the head of that giant snake thus helping save humanity in some strange roundabout way. Pansy herself was not quite convinced that killing someone's pet was entirely heroic, but everyone else deemed it to be quite necessary. Then again, 'everyone else' always tended to be rather moronic.
Luna shrugged, her hand still guiding the magic knitting needles. The scarf must now have reached roughly thirteen feet and was making a rather awkward pile on the floor. No one commented on it. "Neville's the person he always has been."
"Of course," responded Delilah smoothly. "It's just so brave everything he did in seventh year. Unlike some."
The withering looks being shot at her now continued without any shame. Pansy could feel her cheeks start to burn, and her teeth clench. Three years ago and she would have cursed Delilah for just breathing in her direction, but right now all she wanted to do was close her eyes and disappear.
"And Harry," Gertrude crooned, her bravery returned now she realized that they vastly outnumbered the lone Slytherin traitor. "An Auror soon. Still attempting to protect us now, even after all this time."
Bad habits die hard, apparently.
Luna nodded agreeably. "And he assures me that the Rotfang Conspiracy is a total lie- which I'm very relieved about, especially as I would hate for Harry to inflict gum disease on anyone."
"…Yes. That would be… bad?" said Gertrude, blankly.
At this point the pair seemed to have realized that conversation with Luna was not going to reap the gossip and logic that they were hoping for, so swiftly changed to the subject of the placements, namely the ones involving winged horses. They nattered about Abraxans near Beauxbatons, Granions in Greece… Pansy almost crumbled. She desperately desired to join in and talk about her time at her Uncle Acheron's Aethonan stables, how she packed her jodhpurs just in case, and how hopelessly wonderful it would be to study them.
Her nails left tiny half-moons on the palm of her hands. The hateful glances being shot at her let her know they knew exactly who she was, and how unwelcome she should feel.
Fame. It had always appealed to Pansy. Perhaps it had rubbed off from Draco, or it had been instilled in her even before then… but the glitz and attention had always attracted her. Recalling how the famous received smiles and praise and deliveries of racing brooms at breakfast, it didn't seem to have a downside.
At school, lacking Cho's looks and Granger's talent, she decided to settle for infamy. The only way to stop being kicked was to kick harder and faster. She ruled Slytherin from the top-down, and beware any of the younger snakes who didn't stay in line. Slytherin was not going to be known as the stupid, losing house- and if she had to hang them upside-down for twenty minutes until they got that idea, then fine.
She recalled the Triwizard competitors and their partners swirling delicately across the ballroom at the Yule dance. All eyes upon them as they careened in their power, beauty and popularity. She had not felt a drop of jealousy. She had Draco. She had been chosen. And those stolen drops of Firewhisky between stolen kisses and secret smiles tasted exactly like happiness should- sweet and hot and mine.
Fame was never really achieved, but infamy she continued to get spot on. It left an unpleasant taste, the hangover of a mistake that would never quite go away. Who knew that speaking up to give Harry Potter to the Dark Lord was a bad idea? One life in exchange for them all. It seemed fair.
"Luna, which placement are you hoping for?" enquired Tweedle-dum or Tweedle-dee.
"Oh, I didn't put down a preference. Any one of them sounds interesting. Though horses do make me break out in a rash… What about you, Pansy?"
Pansy could not help narrowing her eyes slightly. Luna was obviously an expert in hidden insults, and she could not help but be suspicious that the topsy-turvy girl was trying to lull her into a false sense of security… There was the possibility that Luna was just trying to include her, ignorant to the social currents that opposed this. But Pansy's experience of kindness, cliques and humanity did not quite hold up to this theory.
"Greece- the Granians are the fastest of the equus volaticus, and most fascinating" she forced herself not to stumble, and to look each girl in the eye in turn as she spoke. She may not deserve civility, but she deserved a place here and she'd be damned if anyone thought otherwise. "As you know, the ancient greek wizards oft depended on them as a mode of transport amongst the many islands and mountains of the region. This makes them evolutionally unique as Greece is a Magizoology hotspot, and they were often were used to control the many beast attacks of the time. Therefore unlike most equines, they're pretty much unflappable-"
"And did you learn this while you were torturing first years during Defense Against the Dark Arts, or after?" interrupted Delilah, her eyes burning curiously bright.
"If my memory is correct, Slytherin wasn't the only house who followed the instructions of the Carrows," replied Pansy sweetly, hand subtly reaching for her wand. The Slytherins, however, were the only ones smart enough to work out a way around it.
"No one else enjoyed it," Delilah spat. "What was that oaf called? Crabbe? He almost killed half of the students he was called to 'practice' on."
Oh yes. Vincent. She remembered dealing with him. Always a bad student, always told that pureblood magic and pureblood minds were superior to mudblood… and yet that was never the case, was it? Outstripped and outclassed by everyone, and Troll-level grades despite Draco's occasional efforts. (Mostly these involved removing all of his half-arsed attempts at cheating before going into an exam. "When will you dunderheads get it? We have Anti-Cheating Quills! The only thing worse than failing is being caught! Imbeciles!"). Yet he had one skill, one thing that his years of tempering a vile malevolence against the rest of the school had won him- a talent for torture.
She had asked, begged, threatened, cajoled, bribed, blackmailed and wept to get Vincent to stop. Nothing, not money nor pain nor pleas, would stop him. He was a boy with a talent, a boy with a dream, a boy to whom praise was suddenly given. After the first Defense Against the Dark Arts Class, Pansy had rounded up the pale-looking students, and the weeping first years and told them what was going to happen.
"Today is not going to happen again," she said to the quiet room, as the emerald light of the lake played across the ceiling. "Today… we had no choice. But tomorrow we do. Next time one of us is told to Cruciatus another student, we fake it. Mispronounce the spell, wave the wand wrongly, make sure you don't have that malevolent feeling they're so desperately keen for us to develop."
All the faces looked on at her stonily, some hopeful, most impassive. She took a breath. "And you lot-" she gestured to the quaking first years. "You know how the Cruciatus feels, you know what it looks like when some one is under it. So you better act your socks off when one of us throws a bogus one to you or I will make sure you feel a proficient Cruciatus and not the half-arsed attempts we did today. Agreed?"
And the system some how worked. In fact, some of the first years turned out to be rather heroic little actors, and the elders managed to misuse the dark magic so imperceptibly with just a slight slur and drop of the wrist that even Pansy could not tell who was truly performing the curse and who was not.
She made them all sign a cursed piece of paper to seal the promise (the idea stolen from Dumbledore's Army after seeing the rather too efficient effect it had on Marietta Edgecombe's face). Everyone, even those who looked like they may have enjoyed that day's monstrosities, signed. All except Crabbe. Pansy tried to get around this by telling him the promise only applied to those within the house, and he could terrorize the other houses to his demented, psychopathic heart's content. This was not an idea she was pleased with- but the more students in on the secret, the less likely it would be kept. It wasn't like Slytherin were ever included in Dumbledore's Army, or Neville Longbottom's guerrilla war. Other houses excluded Slytherin to their own detriment, so let them survive on their own.
And Slytherin was her responsibility now. Snape was distant and no longer looking out for them. Slughorn was almost useless. Draco was gone. The world was uncertain and no one was going to help them. The only people they could trust were each other.
"Crabbe got what was coming to him," was all the reply she would give. The promise on the enchanted parchment was dissolved, but she would never admit to these harpies how they got around the Carrows' "teaching."
"A pity not everyone did. You and Draco deserve each other," Delilha hissed.
Pansy gritted her teeth. No way she would be getting into a Whose Scar is Bigger match. The losing side always failed those bouts, even if their wounds were more fatal.
"How kind of you," Pansy replied instead, forcing a laugh. "I think I deserve someone rich and handsome as well." Rich, handsome, and broken.
Delilah scoffed, and muttered a single, ill-thought out word. "Deatheater."
Before she could stop herself Pansy's fist had closed around Delilah's throat, and gave a threatening squeeze.
"Those are dangerous words, Delilah. I thought Ravenclaws were supposed to be intelligent." Pansy whispered, her left hand pointing her wand two inches above the Ravenclaw's eye. Then again it's Gryffindors who are meant to be brash and idiotic, and look what I'm doing… "It is... ah, unwise to throw such accusations around in these perilous times. So if you would be so generous as to direct your gaze from my wand to the wrist beneath it, I think you'll find no evidence of a Dark Mark. Just as the Aurors found no evidence of my Mother or I having involvement with any cell or movement linked with He Who Must Not Be Named. And I think that if months of Ministry Officials interrogating me, threatening my mother and ransacking my home didn't deliver evidence of either of us being Deatheaters, then maybe it wasn't the case now- was it? I may be a Class A bitch, a Slytherin and completely willing to pummel you to smithereens- BUT I AM NOT A DEATHEATER!"
Pansy, with heartbreaking dread, became aware that the door had opened and three wands were being directed at her.
"Hello, Professor Scamander," said Luna. "It's so good to meet you."