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Pansy had been five the first time she had heard the sky calling out her name, whispering for her to join it. Begging her to spread her wings and explore.
She could remember the feel of the grass under her feet and the damp mud stains on her knees as she leapt after Draco’s broom and fell to the ground. Grasping for blue and her fists left with nothing but weeds.
“Real ladies don’t fly brooms,” her mother had cooed, her hands running through Pansy’s long, black hair, swift fingers plaiting it. “You need to learn that.”
So, Pansy tried to learn that. She tried not to resent her heavy robes as she pasted on the smile she had been taught. She tried not to resent her long robes as Draco, Theo, and Blaise larked about. Boys will be boys , everyone cooed.
No one giggled and stroked her head fondly when she appeared back with her dress robes ripped, twigs woven into her hair and mud staining her arms. There was no cooing of girls will be girls .
There was just Narcissa’s apologies for Draco allowing Pansy onto his broom, and Pansy’s mother reassuring Narcissa that it was Pansy’s fault. Pansy was foxy and wily and had convinced Draco to do something that would get them both in trouble.
There was just Pansy should have known better .
There was just her mother’s palm smacking Pansy’s cheek when they were in private, furious whispers about embarrassment and Pansy needing to learn her place. Her place was here on the ground in the pretty little box they had prepared for her. It was the box she had been born into, the box she was supposed to live in, to die in.
The sky is no place for girls. Dreamers do not make good wives.
Pansy disagreed but she never said so. She kept convincing Draco to let her have a go on his spare broom and he kept letting her. Draco didn’t care if she got in trouble, Draco liked teaching her all his tricks. He stopped liking it so much when Pansy began to be able to out-fly him.
Pansy was a quick learner; he was sharp angles and a harsh tongue. She knew that Draco wouldn’t let her keep flying with him if she were better. So, she slowed herself down, pretended to need his help.
Draco smiled at that—he liked being better than people. Pansy had been taught it was important to make Draco smile.
“If you’re going to be his wife one day, then you must learn to make him happy,” her mother whispered as she pinched Pansy’s cheeks to make them pink. To bring colour into her otherwise sallow face.
Pansy knew she wasn’t beautiful, but Pansy didn’t care.
“And how will he make me happy?” Pansy asked back as her mother zipped up her dress robes. “Will he give me the sky?”
“If you ask nicely, one day I’m sure he’ll give you the world,” her mother had laughed.
Her mother was wrong. Draco never would have been able to give Pansy the world, because Pansy was going to take it for herself.
Pansy would never forget that day the Malfoys took her to watch that Quidditch game. She would never forget the sight of the Harpies in their green joggers that called to Pansy.
“They’re like Slytherin,” Pansy had said, turning to the Malfoys with her face alight. Here they were, a team of ladies who were fearless and bold and they flew .
Lucius Malfoy had laughed, but it hadn’t been a sound of real amusement. “They’re just a team of dykes,” he sniffed, sharing a knowing smile with Narcissa. “Look they’re even wearing Muggle clothes.”
Draco had laughed then, an obnoxious sound that had pierced Pansy’s heart, and when he had turned to her, she had laughed too. She had laughed too at the wonderful witches who flew like the wind was part of them and wore green Muggle joggers without shame.
As the years passed, Pansy learnt to keep her dreams inside. She learnt that no matter how good a flyer she was, she would never be quite enough.
The Slytherin Quidditch captains had laughed and told her to go boss around the house-elves, something a real lady should be doing. Pansy had laughed and smiled. They liked her when she smiled.
The first time she snuck out to go flying at school had been an accident. She hadn’t meant to do it. She had been in the common room alone, wishing for more and watching the fire crackle and pop. She loved Slytherin, she belonged there, but she hated the dungeons. She hated the cold and the damp and heavy ground resting just above her head. She wanted to be in one of the towers, leaning out and screaming out into the night sky. Saluting the stars and smiling as they saluted back.
Her gaze had fallen on the communal broomstick cupboard. Longing and envy bubbled up inside her, threatening to spill out of the walls she had been forced to build. And then the cupboard opened. The door had swung open, silent as anything, to reveal the brooms. All of them sat there, calling out for Pansy to take them.
“We can take you to the sky,” they had whispered.
“Okay,” Pansy had responded, one hand already around the handle of Draco’s broom.
He’d kill her if he found out, but Pansy thought it would be worth it for one touch of the sky. One sip of the starlight. Draco Malfoy didn’t scare her.
Pansy loved her nighttime flights but she would never stop feeling that bitter jealousy that came from watching Ginny Weasley soar through the air as crowds roared in approval. Pansy knew her role by then. She was not meant to be a hero.
After that night Pansy became better and better at wandless unlocking charms. They became useful in seventh year when the Carrows began their punishment regime. Pansy did the best she could to help without getting her own neck caught. They all did their best, under the circumstances.
Pansy didn’t get to fly at all that year. All Quidditch was cancelled and Draco had left his broom at home. The closest Pansy could get was sneaking away and staring out of the window, her hands grasping for something that had always been out of reach.
“Please,” she whispered as the storms raged around Hogwarts, and she didn’t know to whom or for what she was pleading. Was she asking to be saved or was she asking to be set free? Were they one and the same?
But the stars didn’t salute her back anymore and the breeze didn’t call. Had she gone too far? Had she finally become the mask she wore?
The ground seemed so far away as she peered out of the window. Would it hurt if she fell? Or would she be too wrapped up in the euphoria of flying again that she wouldn’t care? Would the darkness that came after finally reaching the sky be worth it?
“Help me,” Pansy whispered, but the sky said nothing back.
So Pansy found comfort in Daphne Greengrass, a small private comfort that no one could know about. She was still going to have to marry Draco, but when it was just her and Daphne, Pansy could finally have a moment to herself.
Pansy tried to think of the Harpies in their green joggers. They didn’t try to hide themselves away, they were proud. What did Pansy have to be proud of?
It wasn’t until the day the Dark Lord fell that Pansy flew again.
The words she had screamed heavy in her heart, chasing her as she ran out of the room after the announcement on the radio. Her mother and father too shocked to stop her.
They hadn’t planned on this. They hadn’t bet on Potter.
“Potter’s there ! Someone grab him!”
Pansy hadn’t really wanted Potter to die. She had just so desperately wanted to live.
Pansy found the broom that Draco had given her fourth year, she kept it hidden away from prying eyes. It made her feel real again, it reminded her the mask was only a mask.
She leapt out of her window, just as she had contemplated that dark stormy night, and she flew. Her guilt at what she had done felt like chains tightening around her heart, but she flew until the chains eased, until she could forget.
It was hours before Pansy came down, before she settled on the ground. Her hands raw from gripping onto the broom, her hair wild, and her lips chapped. She felt alive, for just a few moments she felt blissfully alive.
The taste of the sky had been like an elixir, addicting and marvellous and so beautifully dangerous that Pansy thought her heart would burst from the joy.
And then the chains tightened again, and Pansy remembered what she had done. She remembered Potter’s face and the whole school staring at her. It wouldn’t stay private.
People wouldn’t stop and ask her why she had done it. Who she had been thinking of in that moment.
She had been thinking of her parents. She had been thinking of Draco and his sallow eyes and haggard face. She had been thinking of Greg and Vince and the way they didn’t understand what they were doing. They had been taught all their lives to follow and obey. She had been thinking of Blaise and his worries that none of this was right. Of Daphne and her soft mouth and warm hands. Of Millicent and Tracy and Theo. Of all of Slytherin. Of the Ravenclaw Rachel who had taught Pansy how to french plait her hair. Of the Hufflepuff Freddie with the kind smile. Of Ginny Weasley and the way she looked when she flew. Pansy thought Ginny Weasley looked like the kind of person who heard the sky calling too.
Pansy had been thinking of everyone and the logic had made sense to her. One for the lives of all. Was that really such a hard deal to make?
She had been right though. No one cared for her maths.
After the day that Potter beat the Dark Lord, Pansy’s old mask shattered and she built a new one. She rebuilt herself from the bottom up, with steel in her bones and iron in her blood. She cut her hair short and replaced her teeth with fangs and her nails with claws. Then she had reclaimed the sky.
No one wanted to marry her now, anyway, and that suited Pansy just fine. Pansy had had always known she wasn’t the right kind of wife for them. She was a dreamer.
She had tried out for the Holyhead Harpies, their green joggers still on her mind. And the captain of the Holyhead Harpies offered her the sky every day for as long as she could have it.
“They won’t like you putting me in your team,” Pansy had told the Captain. No one had ever been happy about her flying.
The Captain had smiled, and Pansy caught sight of the stars in her eyes. “I’m counting on it.”
Pansy had thought for years that she was the only girl who had longed for the sky, but she now understood better. They all longed for it in their own way.
All girls longed to break free.
Ginny Weasley flew like fire, burning and blazing across the sky. Her lips curled into a vicious smile and her eyes wild. Pansy felt something in her heart as she watched Ginny fly, at the euphoria etched onto her face.
It didn’t matter that Ginny scowled and sneered at Pansy, because she pushed Pansy in a way she had never been pushed before. Ginny made Pansy understand there was more to reaching the sky than just flying a broom. You had to own it, you had to be fearless.
Pansy watched Ginny each training session, taking to the sky in her Harpies joggers, her thighs strong and her face focused. Pansy followed Ginny’s methods and when Pansy disagreed with Ginny’s tactics, she went left when Ginny went right. Slytherin and Gryffindor could only ever agree so much.
“You’re watching me again,” Ginny snapped one day, spinning around and pointing her wand in Pansy’s face. “Don’t think I don’t know you’re always watching me.” Ginny was wearing nothing but a sports bra and those Harpies joggers. She wore them like a battle uniform.
“Do you have a problem with that?” Pansy asked, shifting her stance. She had her own Harpies joggers now, after all these years. She belonged to this team. She put in more hours than anyone.
Ginny’s nose wrinkled as she stepped closer to Pansy. “Why? Why do you watch me?”
Pansy thought about lying—she had been trained to live with a lie on the tip of her tongue—but when she opened her mouth it wasn’t a lie that trickled out. “Because you fly like the broom is an extension of your body and like the sky is part of your heart.”
Ginny said nothing and then she nodded.
Pansy had been taught all her life that the best way to live was by pretty little lies. She had been taught to ignore the beauty and authenticity that came with the truth, until Ginny Weasley held her hand out, those golden eyes warm, and said:
“Let’s start over?”
Roll. Tuck. Dive. Soar.
Ginny continued to push Pansy to fly in a way she had never flown before. Ginny began to push Pansy to accept a lot of things about herself that she had kept locked away. To accept that perhaps she didn’t only watch Ginny for her grace and skill, but for her beauty and the way she made Pansy’s heart sing a song she had never known before. To accept that there was more to Pansy than the mask she had built and a desire to fly.
Ginny cut Pansy open and demanded that Pansy show her all or nothing, and for the first time in her life Pansy didn’t hide.
Pansy opened herself up to Ginny Weasley in a way she never had before, and when Ginny told Pansy that somewhere along the way she’d fallen in love with her, Pansy finally understood.
She was sitting on her broom, one hand curled into Ginny’s top and the other brushing the waistband of her joggers, when Ginny Weasley kissed her. They both wore Harpies joggers like battle uniforms now, and Pansy understood that there was more than one way to touch the sky.