Harry Potter was waiting sitting on the stairscase to the fifth floor of the castle. He was playing with the wand and pondering what to do and whether or not the girl would come to him.
"I would understand if she didn't want to help me, I seem to have always been just a burden and a huge waste of time. Not to mention that I don't even remember what kind of relationship we had..." he thought melancholy.
His negativity was broken by the sight of a girl with short black hair and the irresistible devilish grin on her face coming up to him.
"Potter, did I keep you waiting that long?" She asked with a hint of irony, looking down at the seated boy.
"Yes, I meant no!" He answered embarrassed immediately standing up. She noticed that he was slightly taller than her.
"Don't fret Potter, girls love men who can be honest, especially on their first date." She teased in amusement.
The young Gryffindor's cheeks at that moment turned a different shade of bright red.
"Date? No! It's not a date, I mean it's not that I wouldn't go out with you in that sense, I would like too but it's not today, that is jus..." he was interrupted by the laughter of the girl, who was holding her abdomen with both hands.
"Sorry Potter, it's too easy to make fun of you."
It was a much more spontaneous and genuine laugh than the one she gave for Draco. He liked that sound and he made a mental note to make her laugh more often.
"Don't call me Potter, just call me Harry. All my friends call me Harry, or so I think. Oh and a Gringotts goblin too."
She was amazed by his request.
"Oh, sure. You can call me Pansy, though I prefer to call you Scarhead."
Harry just smiled and shook his head.
Before the girl could say anything, the staircases below them began to move. They both quickly grabbed the railing as she descended to the lower floors.
Pansy hated it when she stumbled and feared falling, while Harry seemed amazed by the event.
After a couple of minutes they finally stopped at the third floor.
"Urgh, I knew we shouldn't have stood there. Everyone knows it, keep an eye on the staircases..."
"...they like to change." He finished her sentence looking at her happily.
"You're remembering, good for you." she replied, made nervous by the journey but immediately composed herself.
"So, does this place remind you of anything?" she asked as she looked around.
"This is the third floor. I think I was there quite a few times the freshman year." He replied he looked around with a gleam in his eyes.
"Just the year it was forbidden to enter it, I didn't expected you to be so reckless Po-um Harry."
"Yeah, that was the same year the gryffindor housemates wanted me dead because I'd lost a ton of points at once."
Pansy let out a long whistle.
"Yeah, if I hadn't been the finder for the quidditch team probably Wood himself would have sold me to pick up some lost points."
The girl gave him a light pat on his shoulder.
"Luckily no plans to butcher me before leaving school never came to fruition as I managed to recover all the points in the end."
He stopped, trying to remember how.
He only remembered the party and the very emotion he felt at that moment.
He remembered being truly happy, especially when he saw Draco's disappointed. Yet his mood darkened when he saw Pansy's melancholy face peering into his soul.
That memory wasn't like that... or was it?
"...are you telling me that the story about the recovery of the stone and Professor Quirrell were true?"
"What stone?"
"The Philosopher's Stone, Nicolas Flamel's Stone."
he stopped, a series of vivid memories rushing through his mind.
He remembered a ferocious, foaming-at-the-mouth infernal being peering at him with three hairy heads. Of being stuck in a series of
spiky green tangles that were choking to kill him. A series of rusty flying wrenches chasing him. Giant chess pieces looming over him.
And finally, a man with a turban in front of a huge and magnificent mirror. His evil laugh and the horrifying and terrifying red-eyed demon face behind his head.
A slight pain struck his scar.
"Do you feel OK?"
"Sorry, I just remembered a few things..." he replied while rubbing his forehead.
"Fluffy." He smiled as he looked around.
"Fluffy?"
"Fluffy! This is Fluffy's plan, Hagrid's three-headed dog!"
He began to advance down the empty corridor looking for a particular room.
"Hagrid had a three-headed dog?! Wasn't a hippogriff enough for him?" She asked slightly scared.
"Once he even found a baby dragon that he wanted to adopt. But come on fluffy he was right, it was creepy but dogs have those weird faces that always make you laugh." he said naively.
"Oh..."
There was a few minutes of silence as he searched for the room.
"So do you think that I have a weird face?"
Harry stopped and turned to her friend who was looking at him sadly, afraid she might break down in tears at any moment.
"What? I would never say such a thing!" He replied resentful of the accusation.
"But you did. You called me Pugface."
That word brought back a memory that he would have liked to forget forever.
He'd just come out of a charms lesson, his red-haired friend on his right was still moaning and yawning, while his curly-haired friend was clinging to Harry's arm, stroking it and talking softly to him.
"Look who it is, miss i-know-it-all flirting with Scarhead. Wasn't the umpteenth praise of Professor Flitwick enough for you?" Said a sour voice behind them. She was Pansy and she looked more venomous than usual.
"Look, the only one of the two who is flirting is you with your adorable Draco. Are you nervous because you miss him?"
Hearing that name, it seemed that her face was even more disgusted.
"They think you're the smartest student since Helena Ravenclaw, yet every your sentence is just superficial idiocy, Granger."
The tension was palpable, Harry decided to intervene.
"Go see him in the infirmary and leave us alone, Pugface."
It was supposed to be just a simple response to her ridiculous nickname but he had said it with much more emphasis and nastiness than expected.
His two friends burst into laughter while Pansy remained silent. Her eyes were wet and her hands were balled into fists. She opened her mouth a couple of times to say nothing as the background laughter grew louder and louder.
"I thought you were different from the others." she said weakly in a broken voice, before running away from them.
His friends were congratulating him on the magnificent insult but at the sight of the scene a huge boulder fell into Harry's chest. It was the guilt for what he had said. she was the one who started the insults, he shouldn't have felt this way, yet he felt inside that this time he had gone too far. He didn't want to insult her and he wanted to show her that he was better than that. He left his friends in the common room and checked the map where she was to apologize.
She was in an empty classroom and with her was the name of a boy he didn't recognize.
The door was half open, he was about to enter but stopped when he heard sobs and crying coming from inside. She peeked out from outside and saw the girl with her face streaked completely with her tears and a Slytherin boy trying to comfort her.
"Y-you had to hear them, they were all laughing. My face is horrible like a dog's. Everyone thinks that, that's what he thinks too." She sobbed.
The boy put his hands on her friend's shoulders.
"Everyone doesn't think that. I don't think that about you. There's nothing wrong with your face."
Pansy hugged him, hiding her face in his chest, trying in vain to hold back her tears.
The pain in Harry's chest worsened further.
He couldn't put it off any longer, he had to go in there and apologize.
He had to be the one to comfort her.
Yet he didn't go in, he didn't have the courage.
He stood there listening to her cry for a few interminable minutes, then walked away from there.
"You're not that different from Wormtail, are you?" A voice hissed in his head that brought him back to the present
Pansy was waiting for an answer from him.
"I…" he took a deep breath.
"I should have apologized to you as soon as possible but I didn't have the courage. I really didn't mean to offend you."
The girl looked somewhat relieved.
"It's all over now and then did you really think you could offend me for so little?"
It was another lie, she had been crying with Blaise all day in that room.
"And I should apologize to you too, Scarhead may not be a nice name...sorry."
She smiled, she was up to something.
"I knew Gryffindors were slow but waiting until the end of the year to say sorry breaks records, Harry." she joked.
"Um…I guess I just wanted to surprise you." she snapped at him quickly and she laughed at her bad joke.
"Enough kidding now, we still have your memories to recover."
