A/N: Short interval type chapter. Serves a purpose. Bone apple tea. I'm sorry I've been slacking with replies at the moment! It's been a hectic month, but I read and am very grateful for them all!


Pansy Parkinson's seventh year at Hogwarts was not shaping out how she'd expected - nor how she'd have liked it to. At all.

A lot of her disappointment stemmed from how fantastic it was supposed to be. Dumbledore, the old blithering idiot, was dead. Snape was in charge of Hogwarts - and, more than that, their kind were in charge of everything. Not only did they rule Hogwarts, the ruled the Wizarding World, and the Wizarding World was the only one that mattered. So why wasn't Draco here to revel in it?

He'd mentioned here and there last year that he wouldn't be returning, but she hadn't completely believed him. The year had all of the makings of being perfect, what with the hierarchy in its proper order, the Dark Lord on the rise, and now Mr Malfoy out of Azkaban, too - so it wasn't like he had to stick around for Mrs Malfoy. Even if Draco himself had been resolved not to return for the final year, she never expected his parents to allow it. Certainly not his father, at least. Maybe Azkaban had softened Lucius up a bit.

That didn't have to be an entirely bad thing. She was from the same circles as Draco, she knew what parental pressure did to the children of families such as theirs, and she knew how Draco strove to meet those expectations. She'd always admired how gracefully he'd managed to do so – never whining about it or anything boring like that. But it would probably be a relief to him to have a few months without his father scrutinising his every move.

She just wished he was here. Seeing the likes of Longbottom and Finnigan get theirs, after years of being the most moronic idiots known to Wizarding-kind. No doubt he'd find it as hysterical as she did, watching what the Carrows inflicted on the fools who had once been ignorant enough to think themselves their equals. Or even their betters. No, they were being firmly put in their place now. And Draco was missing it.

"I don't understand," Pansy griped. "He barely even answers my letters. For every three or four I send, I get one back, and they're so cold. Trying to get a conversation from him is like trying to pass one of Snape's exams. He answers all of the direct questions I ask, and that's it. Doesn't ask me anything, doesn't try to further the conversation, nothing."

Millicent Bulstrode sat beside her at the shore of the lake. Autumn had well and truly taken over from summer, and this would likely be one of the last half-decent afternoons they got out here – evidenced by how many students had filtered out here to enjoy it. Pansy had long since discovered that Millicent listened to her venting far more actively than Crabbe, Goyle, or Zabini had ever been inclined to, and Pansy had taken full advantage of that fact. Sometimes it just took a fellow girl's ear. One who, most importantly, had no chance with Draco and wouldn't try to take advantage of the rough patch Pansy had hit with him – who wouldn't see it as an opportunity, as plenty of other girls in their circles would the moment they caught the scent of blood in the water.

"You n' Draco have always been hot and cold, though, haven't you? I wouldn't worry about it too much," she shrugged a little.

"You're not listening – this is just cold, cold, cold, cold, cold," Pansy replied – and hated the despair that threatened to creep into her voice, because it was pathetic. "I don't even know what I did wrong, or when it all flipped, and if I knew that I could at least fix it or stop doing whatever it is that pissed him off, but the one time I asked, he treated me like I was mental!"

"People just grow apart sometimes, don't they?"

"Not Draco and I. That's not an option. It was all supposed to be perfect. Do you know that when I last visited the manor with my mother – months ago, mind you – he couldn't even make the effort to be home at the time?"

Mrs Malfoy had made some excuse about his having a tailoring appointment, but surely something like that could be rescheduled. Pansy's mother had even suggested, after the fact, that he'd purposely avoided her – but Pansy would not be repeating that. Not to Millicent, not to anybody. It was too embarrassing. And it wasn't bloody well true. Circumstances had just...just conspired against them. For now. But that could be fixed.

"Well, anyway, as my mother and his caught up, I had the opportunity to slip off to his room. To wait for him, you understand."

There was no need for Millicent to know that she'd used the excuse of using the restroom to do so.

"And while I was there, I found something strange on his desk."

There was also no need for Millicent to know that it hadn't been on his desk at all. Well, not in plain sight just sitting there, but rather wedged firmly into the screw-top lid of his inkwell. It was a hiding spot she knew to check, because he often hid test answers there for the meaningless classes like Muggle Studies, when Burbage had been daft enough to announce that failure meant coming back at lunchtime to resit.

Pansy had managed to pry it out, and she'd even remembered the spell he'd used back then to get any ink remnants off of the parchment so she could read what it said. Only two words – a name, in neat looping handwriting that was not Draco's. Meryl Monroe.

"What sort of name is Meryl Monroe, anyway?" she scoffed after offering her amended version of events to the girl at her side "It's the sort of name a grandmother has. Like Beryl, or Ethel. Meryl Monroe. She's certainly not one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, I can tell you that right now."

"Maybe he-"

"Meryl Monroe. Meryl. Monroe. Sodding Meryl Monroe, give me a break, it's ridiculous, I don't know what he'd possibly want with some daft cow called Meryl Monr-"

"Oh my god," a Ravenclaw a few feet down the shore groaned, turning her glare to Pansy "It's Marilyn Monroe. The name is Marilyn Monroe. She was some famous Muggle actress who went nuts and died young or something. Now whatever your vendetta against her is, please shut up about it, stop shouting loud enough for the whole castle to hear, and let me enjoy the last ten minutes of my free period. Merlin's beard."

Millicent turned to Pansy, eyes wide as she waited for her to unleash pure fury upon the Ravenclaw for her disrespect. Pansy could not – for she could not form words, and her attention was eaten up by how quickly she felt all of the blood rushing away from her face.


A/N: I have a very complicated relationship with Pansy Parkinson. Well, when it comes to writing her at least. I purposely did not have her as the villain in Little By Little because I didn't want to just write a typical fic where she's the OC's "competition" and relegated to being a one-note pain in the arse to show what a Cool Girl the OC is. And then I wrote this and strayed a bit too close to that territory for my liking (even if Marilyn calls out Draco for trying to play both sides early on/acting like he wasn't encouraging Pansy).

But, she's also generally awful, and if we were at Hogwarts together she'd have made my life hell. So. We're not done with her yet, but I'm trying to be nuanced in the way I portray her as awful rather than one-note cartoon villain. Every shitty person thinks they're good, n' all that.