I realised I have forgotten to thank a whole host of people for their lovely comments on the last few chapters: NewSlove, JessebelleSilver, Rurippe, & Kokotheevilone (a wise summation- but it's ok, he's working on it). Hearing your views is always exciting- and serves as an especially good distraction from revision. Ugh.
Also, I may start posting an Alice in Wonderland AU soon, if anyone is interested. Though of course my attentions will remain with Pansy, Charlie and their dragons, until one or both of them is a) happy, or b) dead. I haven't quite decided yet.
The moon rose high and bright, casting an almost violet brilliance to the snow below her. It would have been beautiful, if it hadn't been so fucking cold and she so fuelled by anger and fear that her thoughts seemed to scatter before her. The old Cleansweep was slow, and buckled every time the wind blasted. Yet still she leaned on, pushing it further and faster, afraid that her eyes would miss the red gleam of his hair or the twisting, treacherous air would drown his shouts.
His forgotten wand was clenched tight in her fist. It felt foreign. The wood was cool, almost distainful. Her faithful eleven-inch cedar with dragon-heart string always spread warmth through her fingertips. Despite this, she trusted it. Edgar Parkinson had told her horror story after horror story of wizards attempting to use the wands of others and having disastrous effects; spells back-blasting, self-combusting, or just failing to work. He may have told her this to stop her stealing her brothers' wands, but the message had stuck rather well. Charlie's wand wouldn't pull that kind of crap, she was sure, but Pansy wasn't going to test it either way.
That blasted Weasley, with his blasted short-sightedness and idiot hair and damned ideals.
Pansy let her anger rise and rise within her. It masked her worry and fear. She needed to shout down all the uncertainties and inner pleas to run back and hide. She was reasonably certain she'd be useless in a fight. All she was good for was lies and deception. If she was going to hit some one with a successful curse or left hook, it would probably only be if she could surprise them with it. All her talk and threats were just words and wasted air. The impression that she was a powerful adversary was an act maintained by strutting, shouting orders and making sure she had a following of friends and minions to back her up. The threat of her was enough to avoid any actual confrontation. She could spring a good curse and hex with the best of them, but face to face with nowhere to run? She had no idea.
Pansy did not stick around long enough to find out at the Battle of Hogwarts. She would have, had she known that so many of her friends had stayed; Daphne Greengrass, Miles Bletchley, Hestia and Flora… Perhaps if she'd stayed they would be here now instead of her. Perhaps all that time protecting them throughout that year; training everyone to fake curses, hiding from Fenrir's "visits," bribing and blackmailing the Carrows, falsifying papers for all those whose blood wasn't as pure as it should have been… perhaps that would have meant something.
Draco, Theo, Blaise, Goyle, herself… out of all the Slytherins, they least deserved to survive. Assassins, sons of murderers, bullies, cowards and general dirty workers. Why did Daphne, who liked to read weepy romance novels and sing off key, have to die? Miles was a menace but he giggled like a child if anyone said a dirty word, and he could have been a professional Keeper had Fenrir not… not… The twins were about as unpleasant a pair as you could find, but they were prodigies in Arithmancy, and turned against their family –the Carrows themselves- to fight for bloody Potter and his gang. Dead, the both of them.
Pansy swore to herself, swore on every fiber of her incensed being, that she was going to save Charlie from whatever jape he'd inevitably got himself in and tell him of their sacrifice. She was a coward, ambitious, and ingratiated with liars and murderers, but she was going to show him that not all of her people are like that. Some of them were strong-willed and brave. Some of them turned on their own blood to fight for a boy who never even knew their name.
The last of her fears had burned up on the coals of her anger, and yet as suddenly as the rage had risen- it sank. An unnatural cold swept through her. Even on that winter night, high in the icy air, a spear of hoarfrost entered her. Beneath her woolen jumpers and thick coat, her very bones felt like they were imbued with a despair so hard and so heavy that she was drowning.
Charlie's disgusted face swam before her, full of righteous hate and overwhelming her with guilt.
Draco wasting away in his mansion. I can't be with you. I won't be with you.
Millicent abandoning her for bigger and better things.
Talitha's coldness. Pellinore's absence.
Pellinore.
Death after death, funeral after funeral.
She just wasn't good enough, she'd never be good enough. Not poised enough for the Malfoys. Not pretty enough for her Mother. Not virtuous enough for Charlie.
The creeping sadness was familiar. It echoed back to the time, six years ago on the Hogwarts express, when the Dementors had drifted onto the train bringing a fog of gloom so thick that Pansy believed she would never recover.
With dread, she looked down.
There, on the untouched snow, was an army of them. Dementors drifting like silent death up the mountain, cloaks curiously still in the wind. A sickening feeling rose up like bile. Dementors could sense happiness and warmth a mile off, and the only figure out here at this time would be…
Pansy redirected the broom up the mountain, racing the demonic figures below. The gates of the Longhorn pen crowned with their ominous words loomed ahead.
She almost didn't see him.
She almost didn't notice the slight undulation of darkness at the foot of the gate. The darkness that wrinkled like a cloak in the breeze.
"Inferno," yelled Pansy, descending like a bat out of hell. (In other words; irate, confused and terrifying for a thing so small).
A tongue of flame disappeared into the Dementor, leaving no sign of harm or spoil. Yet it was distraction enough- the thing rose from where it had been crouched over it's victim, and turned to face Pansy.
For a wonderful moment, she did not think it too late.
Charlie's body was collapsed upon the floor, his upturned face pale and broken in the moonlight. There was no sign of life on his face; only the glint of ice where the Dementor's breathe had frozen his tears.
The deadened face stared blankly into the distance. Pansy was sure that no soul lived behind the cold, blue gaze.
He moved, reluctantly.
The coldness filled Charlie's bones with lead. It seeped into him, unlocking every bad memory, every bad thought in one huge, unending rush. Bill, scarred and scared. Ginny admitting her fears about Harry, and he unable to comfort her. His parents risking life and limb for some ragged orphan on their doorstep.
His loneliness.
Fred. Fred.
The lack of laughter in the house.
George's isolation.
The bodies of friends, lining door ways and old familiar corridors. Blood and guts staining the Charms room where he had spent so many hours snoring through classes. Fires burning on the Quidditch pitch where he had caught his first snitch.
Men in masks murdering children.
Fred.
Friends becoming killers.
Pansy's absence. Her accusing stares. Her lips absent of laughter. Her.
Fred.
His lips were so ready to accept the kiss.
But she was there. She was stopping it. Her face cut a sharp shape in the light, hair windswept and dismantled, disappearing behind the Dementor. Her lips moved slowly, snarling, angry- as always. It was like hearing her from under water. Behind him were growls. The longhorns, small and young as they were, prowled the edge of their enclosure. Tongues of flame licked their mouths. They were unafraid, and unaffected by the Dementor. All they desired was to protect their territory. Sound returned to Charlie as the old sentinel retreated.
It was withdrawing toward Pansy. Her face flashed orange, teeth bared, as fireball after fireball left her wand. Still the Dementor made it's slow, inexorable path toward her.
"GET UP, WEASLEY. Inferno. Sectum Sempra. Crucio. CRUCIO!" Still the Dementor approached, unharmed and hungry.
"Avada Kadavra. Oh fucks sake, Locomotor wibbly!"
A pain spread from his forehead. It felt dulled by the cold and his distance. He looked to see where the sting had come from. A stick was in front of him. His stick. His wand.
"Damn you, damn you both. Fumunculus. Oh… Oh Merlin. Expecto Patronum!"
Nothing happened.
She reversed down the hill. Charlie saw her turn her back to check behind her. Her face looked ill when it returned to gaze at him.
Pansy's jaw, which jutted out determined and impetuous against the world- that chin, his favorite chin- wobbled. Her heavy brow sunk into her dark eyes. Those eyes which shone like tortoise shell in the sunlight.
"Happy thoughts," his voice croaked as if coming from very far off. He eased himself from the floor. Everything felt numb. "You need a happy thought for that spell to work."
A flicker of hope interrupted the fear on her face. "Got it. Let's Peter Pan this bastard."
He thought of his first encounter with a dragon. His first flight on a broom. "Expecto Patronum."
Nothing.
She thought of stroking a unicorn's nose. Pellinore's wit. Getting into Hogwarts. "Expecto Patronum."
Nothing.
Winning the Quidditch cup. Dad's promotion. "Expecto Patronum."
Nothing.
Firewhisky kisses, and the inevitable loss that followed. "Expecto Patronum."
Nothing
He thought of Fred and George laughing in their shop. And then of Fred's body, dead and broken. "Expecto Patronum."
Nothing.
Pansy and Charlie caught each other's eye. It was a strange moment to share. Their mutual dread, but also mutual comfort that they weren't alone. The fear for the other, but not themselves. Each memory, every happy memory they had was tainted by another. It's depression marring the spell. Nothing was purely perfect, neither in the angry girl nor confused boy.
Charlie gave a half-hearted smile, and whispered: "Sausages. Arguments in the library. Coffee. House elf brat. Poker games in the dark."
Pansy, understanding, grinned in response. "Looking after the Longhorns. An accurate impression of someone dying from boredom. Cups of tea. Poverty-stricken red heads… Sausages."
"Expecto Patronum." They both yelled.
A silvery mist surrounded the Dementor. Angered and surprised it escaped down the mountain, like mercury slipping from touch. Upright, Charlie staggered forward and saw what had made Pansy's face turn ill with fear. A dozen dark shaped were drifting up towards them.
He took her hand, feeling it's smallness beneath his calloused fingers.
She squeezed back. "Again. And you better think of something bloody happy, Weasley, or I'll give you the Dementor's kiss myself."
And strangely, her threat was enough. He laughed.
"You're amazing," he said, numb and drunk and ill with the sadness. "Luna's right. I'm an idiot. I'm so sorry, Pans."
Her bold eyes softened. "I know. But let's think perky thoughts, Mr Gryffindor. I expect you to step up to the mark to save the day, you know. Then I can use my Slytherin scheming to take the credit."
Beneath them, the ghouls of despair rose up the mountain. What could two fragile humans whose lives were filled with death, war and self-doubt do against a dozen, dozen Dementors?
"I won't let you down."
Together they screamed the spell, laughing in the face of death and hopelessness.
If (and only if) these two were going to have a Patronus, any ideas what it would be? Bear, eagle, platypus? Better ideas? I don't feel like they're allowed to be magical animals...