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“And now are you feeling now?” Madam Pomfrey asked, peering down at the girl in the Hospital Wing bed.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Pansy Parkinson spat out, words acidic. “It seems like something is missing,” she said, holding up her hand. Or that’s what Hermione Granger assumed she was doing. Nothing was there.
“Well as I said, that hex will just take time to reverse now that you’ve had the potion. You’re lucky your friend, Miss Granger, was around when you got attacked and brought you in immediately.” The girls looked pointedly at each other at the word friend. Hermione scoffed quietly. Friend . “If you’d let that one set, it could’ve had catastrophic consequences. Very dark magic.”
Hermione glared at Pansy even more fiercely behind Pomfrey’s back.
“Yes, I’m terribly thankful for my friend,” Pansy said in her sweetest voice, one Hermione had only ever heard her use for teachers. Hermione scrunched her nose up. “And for you Madam Pomfrey, thank you.”
“Of course dear,” she replied. “I’ll just be in my office, but I’ll be back soon.”
As soon as she was out of earshot, Hermione stepped closer to the bed and sneered down, trying to do her best impression of Pansy’s ever-present facial expression.
“Dark magic, is it?” Hermione hissed. Pansy’s fake smile dropped off her face. “That explains why I wasn’t familiar with the incantation. Where did you learn it?”
“Planning to snitch to your little boyfriend Potter?” she replied, rolling her eyes. “Or is it the Weasel king now?”
“No, actually,” Hermione said, ignoring the thoughts of the Potions book and Lavender Brown that began to bubble up, and the hurt along with it. “I just want answers for why you were in the Astronomy tower so late, alone.”
Hermione had been on Prefect rounds with Hannah Abbott earlier that night, splitting up the last section of the castle because they both had revisions to get done. Knowing Hannah didn’t like to be in the tower alone, she volunteered to cover it. She had walked in, expecting nothing, only to hear a quiet crying noise.
“Hello?” Hermione had called softly. “Anyone up here?” As she rounded the corner, she spotted the hunched over form of Pansy, her back to her, shoulders shaking.
“You’re out after hours, Parkinson,” Hermione had said harshly, fully expecting the full force of Pansy’s aggression.
“I’m a Prefect too, you know,” was all she said instead, not turning around. Even through the tears, she managed to make herself sound haughty.
“But you’re not on duty tonight.” When Pansy didn’t respond, Hermione sighed. “So you need to go back to your dorm.”
“I can’t go back there.” Pansy turned around, cheeks stained with tears, upturned nose red. “Just bugger off Granger.” It was rare to see Pansy as anything less than perfectly put together. Hermione stopped, staring for just a moment before finding her voice.
“No,” she said, though her voice was weaker. “Let’s go.”
“You’ll leave me alone if you know what’s good for you,” Pansy said, standing and grasping her wand.
“Threats? Really?” Hermione scoffed. “You can get detention for that. Or worse, expelled.”
“Do you think I care about that now?” Pansy asked, voice cracking. She grimaced, looking out into the night. “I don’t care about anything anymore.”
“Fine, then you won’t care about me going to Professor M—” Hermione said, turning on her heel and marching towards the door as she spoke, before Pansy cut her off.
“ Diviori tainortus ,” Pansy hissed and Hermione whirled back around, putting up a wordless shield. But as she did, she watched Pansy’s mystery hex backfire, a purple light shooting back at her and hitting her left arm.
Pansy yelled out in pain and dropped to the floor. Hermione, still gripping her wand, ran over to her crumpled form and watched as her arm quickly disappeared. With Pansy knocked out, Hermione magically carried her to the Hospital Wing, wondering if Harry or Ron would’ve done the same if it’d been them and Draco in this situation.
When Madam Pomfrey questioned her, Hermione thought about Pansy crying and made a snap decision. She had said that she’d been out on prefect patrol with her and that they split up and when she didn’t meet back up, she found her like this.
She’d permitted Hermione to stay as she treated Pansy, commending Hermione on her swiftness in bringing her in and explaining the mechanics of the hex. She was relieved to hear that Pansy’s arm was only invisible, not magically amputated.
“You should know better than to hex someone with a half-baked spell,” Hermione said. “Pomfrey said you could’ve lost your arm permanently, or died even.”
“I should know better about a lot of things, Granger,” Pansy sighed, rolling her eyes dramatically. “Why are you even still here? Don’t you have your little friends to go back to?”
“Why were you crying Pansy?” Hermione asked softly, studying her. Something flashed behind the witch’s eyes, before she pursed her lips.
“Why do you care?” she replied harshly. “I’m a Slytherin, remember? You hate us.”
“I don’t hate all Slytherins!” Hermione exclaimed. “Think of how illogical that would be, to write off half the school for the placement they were given. If I hate anyone, it’s based on their actions and their actions alone.”
“My actions,” Pansy huffed out a laugh before looking down at her lap. “Well, that’s a good reason for you to hate me.”
Hermione thought about their third year and the sneers from her and the Slytherin girls after Draco antagonized Buckbeak. And her fourth year and all the horrid things she’d said about Hermione to Rita Skeeter. And last year, when she’d tormented her friends as part of the Inquisitorial Squad.
But she also thought about the way Pansy looked in her pink dress robes at the Yule Ball, and her secret smiles when she got answers correct in Charms class, and the way she comforted and defended her friends. Hermione bit her lower lip, surprised she’d someone cataloged all those moments in the back corner of her brain.
“Everything is turning to shit. I don’t have to tell you what’s starting.”
“War,” Hermione whispered. She hadn’t broached this with Harry and Ron yet, not in any real detail. She cocked her head to the side at Pansy, surprised that this girl, so caught up in the superficial, would be thinking about this. Perhaps Harry’s insistence that Malfoy was up to something wasn’t nonsense; their pure-blooded classmates could be being recruited by the other side already.
“Yes,” Pansy said, any hint of acid dropped, with no false sweetness to cover it up. She sounded afraid. “War. One that we can’t escape. My family, my best friends, everyone will be caught up in this. And if they get their way…” Pansy trailed off.
“Yes?” Hermione asked, hanging on every word.
“I am going to be forced into a life I don’t fit into, one I never wanted,” Pansy said, her perfect pink lips twisting into a scowl. “Not really.” Hermione furrowed her brows, wondering what could be brewing underneath this perfect shell, the embodiment of pure-blood ideals.
“You don’t have to, you know,” Hermione said gently, slowly reaching out to place her hand on Pansy’s visible one. Pansy stared down at their hands, chestnut eyes wide in surprise. “Nothing is set yet.”
“I tried to get them to leave with me, run to the continent and hide. But they’re too afraid….even Daphne.”
“And that’s why you were up there tonight?” Hermione asked. Pansy nodded slowly, face pinched like she was trying not to cry. “You aren’t alone in this, Pansy. Not if you don’t want to be.”
Pansy opened her mouth, but before she could speak Madam Pomfrey reappeared and began doing diagnosis spells.
“Miss Granger, I’m afraid you must pop off to your dorm now,” the older witch said over her shoulder. “It’s late. You can visit your friend later.”
Pansy and Hermione stared at each other, the silence deafening as the word echoed through her mind: friend . Hermione found she didn’t mind it so much now.
“Friend,” she said with a nod. “I’ll do that. See you soon, Pansy.”
“Looking forward to it….Hermione,” Pansy replied, saying her name slowly, like it was the first time and she wanted to enjoy it. Hermione’s heart flipped at the sound, but she ignored it, sure that it was a residual side effect from excitement from the night.
“I’m looking forward to it too,” she whispered to herself as she walked down the empty hallway, surprised by how much she meant it.