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Pansy Parkinson was on her way to class—twenty minutes late, though who was counting—when she first saw the dead body.
It was a cold, rainy morning in January, and, from across the empty courtyard, it could have easily been mistaken for a bush. It was perfectly aligned with the bushes. It was the size and shape of a bush. It was even lumpy and unkempt like a bush. But Pansy had seen enough dead bodies in her life to know one when she saw one.
She sighed.
Being Head Girl under Headmaster Snape at a Hogwarts finally free of Mudbloods and sanctimonious simpletons had been, truly, the best year of her life. It had been a dream. And she was not about to ruin it by dipping one single toe into the trouble and responsibility that came with dead bodies. Dead bodies were not her problem, not this year.
Putting one foot in front of the other, she made her way across the pavement, with her wand up, wrapping her in charms that kept her warm and dry. The lump was not so fortunate. Out of the corner of her eye, Pansy could see the rain was making quite a mess of its abundant hair and wicking its blood across the mulch. Not that she was looking.
Step. Step. Step.
Well, alright, maybe she would look, but just for a second.
Damn.
She shouldn’t have looked.
Pansy Parkinson, the nosiest witch of her age, had a talent for people-watching. Her eyes saw everything, even in the quickest blink. And, on that cold January morning, she noticed three things that all added up to one steaming shit-pile of trouble.
One. The handle of a goblin-made blade, which was so ornate, it could only belong to a small handful of pureblood families.
Two. The misty translucence of the body, which implied it was a traveler, visiting from another time.
Three. The curly hair, which undoubtedly belonged to Gryffindor’s champion of lost causes and victor of none: Hermione Granger.
Shitting shit.
Feeling personally victimized by life in general and by Granger in particular, Pansy stomped off to class.
Over the next three days, Pansy watched and waited for any word of strange goings-on, but, to her relief, business carried on as usual at Hogwarts. It would seem she was the only one who had seen The Lump in the courtyard before it disappeared. (She refused to call it ‘Granger,’ and she wasn’t snobbish enough to call it a ‘putrescence’ like her mother would.)
Pansy had foolishly allowed herself to grow complacent. She should have known it would return. Heading to the Great Hall for lunch after double Potions, there it was: a girl-shaped sack of remains, propped up against the newel post of the main staircase. Its legs were in the way of every student walking up and down the stairs, and Pansy watched as a single-file row of third-year ducklings all tripped over her, one after the next.
“Peeves!”
“Where is he?”
“What was that?”
“Just a trick step, I think.”
Well, if they couldn’t see The Lump, Pansy certainly wasn’t going to tell them. She left to find another staircase.
But, when she got to the Western corridor, The Lump was resting in an alcove, legs crossed and head lolled against the wall like…like a person. Up close, its hair was matted like a scarecrow, and its mouth was stretched open by taut, drying skin, but otherwise…. Pansy shuddered. It otherwise looked like a not-very-old-at-all, very-recently-young-and-alive Granger.
And when she tried the Eastern staircase, there it was again: the same annoying, hazy, time-traveling corpse, flopped on its stomach across the hallway, tripping every witch and wizard on their way to—
No.
Pansy had the sudden realization that she was being herded like a sheep, because every blocked route had corralled her closer and closer to the most Granger-y place in the castle.
The library.
“So bossy,” she grumbled under her breath, swinging the heavy wood door open and walking into the musty cavern where books went to die.
She had no clue what Granger—The Lump—wanted her to see in here, but she wandered up and down the stacks, waiting for a zombie arm to pop out of the shelves with a book. After an hour (or maybe fifteen long minutes), she’d found nothing but Draco, sitting at a table by himself. He had the audacity to look confused when she pulled out a chair and joined him.
“What? I’ve been in libraries before,” she said.
“Aren’t you supposed to be at lunch?” He not-so-subtly tried to slide the book he’d been reading under another book. Pansy slapped it with her hand and dragged it out.
“I lost my appetite,” she said. “Feigning and Feinting: The Art of Misdirecting Magic? Hoping to fool someone? Better not be me.”
Draco plucked the book from her hand and added it back to his pile. With a meaningful look, he tipped his head toward the red-eyed, shaky first-years at the table behind her, who were hopelessly trying to avoid the Head Boy and Girl’s attention.
“If you want them to leave, just say so,” she said.
“No, I mean, look at them,” he clarified. “Their wrists. They can hardly hold a quill anymore.”
Oh, not this again.
It would seem the Granger Lump wasn’t the only thing sulking about the castle. Draco and Pansy had always been two sides of the same galleon, but recently he’d grown soft, almost remorseful.
“If you’re talking about the Cruciatus Curse, relax. We won’t get in trouble,” she said. “The Carrows are just having a bit of fun. At least someone’s finally doing something about the rampant insubordination around here. And there’s no permanent damage.”
“They’re called ‘unforgivable’ for a reason.” He kept his voice down, his eyes wandering from his books to the firsties, but never to her. “Maybe there’s a way to mimic curses without actually doing them. So the Carrows won’t know. I’ve been thinking about Longbottom, and—”
Longbottom? Right, she’d heard enough. She’d rather risk a Granger sighting. Pansy stood, stretched, and said her goodbyes, leaving Draco and his spiraling guilty conscience behind.
Throughout the month of February, rumors of Potter, Granger, and Weasley sightings seemed to be whispered around every corner. Pansy couldn’t escape the gossip about the Golden Goons, no more than she could escape the constant presence of the Granger Lump.
She went to classes. It followed.
On Head Girl patrols. It shadowed her.
It even stalked her at mealtimes, propped on the floor at the end of the table with its chin on the wood and its mouth open wide, as always. Some days, she half-expected it would materialize over her head and whomp her to the ground in a Granger-sized corpse pile.
Pansy was finding it increasingly hard to keep the secret from Draco, mostly because he shared the other half of the Heads’ Suite. But also because, more often than not, the Granger Lump seemed to herd Pansy in his direction, like a macabre matchmaker.
“What I want to know,” she said, one night, drawing back the curtains around her poster bed, “is why did you travel back in time? Budge up, bitch.”
The Granger Lump, lying in the middle of Pansy’s bed, flickered in and out of view, until it had fully moved to the edge. Pansy climbed into bed beside Granger and tucked the covers under her chin. She stared absently at the goblin-made dagger in Granger’s chest, which had long since stopped bleeding. It was a Black family dagger, she’d sleuthed out that much.
“Every spirit I’ve helped before has been easy. It’s a snip of the wand or a rite in the moonlight, and they’re gone. But you…you’ve come to the right witch, but you came to me at the wrong time. I can’t do anything until you’ve actually died. Go disappear into the ether and find me when I’m older.”
The Granger Lump went nowhere.
What was she missing? Pansy and her mother had helped all sorts of spirits cross the veil, even hazy, misty, silent ghouls in old-fashioned clothes who had mistakenly jumped far forward in time while attempting to move beyond. She’d never met a ghoul who jumped backwards. And never once had she come across a spirit so…manipulative. So responsive. Almost like she still had a mind.
Pansy fell into a fitful sleep. In her dream, she hugged Granger, and Granger—the real, living one—hugged her back.
The Heads’ bathroom was similar to the prefects’ bathroom, only better in every way, because Pansy didn’t have to share it with anyone. Well, she shared it with Draco, but he took two-minute showers, so he hardly counted. He mostly stayed in their common room, brooding.
After a long night of strange, restless dreams, all Pansy wanted was a nice, long, fragrant bath. The last thing she wanted to think about was—
“Are you serious? Do you have to be in here, too?”
The Granger Lump was in the tub.
“Just enjoying a bit of quiet, thanks,” Draco said from behind her. He was sat on the floor of the toilet room, reading. A pile of books—clearly contraband—were stacked on the commode lid and tumbling out of a hidden niche in the stone wall.
“What’s so secret that you’re reading it in here?” she asked.
He held up a copy of Breaking Cursed Bonds for Aspiring Cursebreakers, then gestured to his left forearm.
“So, are you seeing them again, Pans? Spirits?”
She sat on the floor of the shower stall, opposite him. “I see you. You’re practically a ghost these days.”
“I’m serious. Who is it? Dumbledore?” He looked nervous, like he didn’t want to hear the answer. Meanwhile, the Granger Lump reformed next to him, curled up on the mat in a narrow beam of sunshine like a dead cat. They looked weirdly sweet together.
Pansy couldn’t take it anymore. She needed his help. “Not that it’s any of your business,” she said. “But it’s Granger. Got herself killed, and now I’m supposed to guide her spirit, and I’m not smart enough for this.”
“What?!” Draco tossed his book and it bounced off Granger, who didn’t react, because she couldn’t, because she was 18 and desiccating. It was completely unfair.
“She’s dead, and you just thwacked her with that book.”
“Oh, sorry.” Draco felt around for Granger, and uncomfortably patted her head twice before flexing his hand. “She feels cold.”
“Well, obviously.”
“And your job is to what? Solve who killed her? Help her spirit rest?”
“I don’t know! This one time-hopped from the future. I've never dealt with that before. The real Granger hasn’t even died yet.”
Draco looked optimistic about that. “How soon will it…happen?”
“Well, luckily they stamped a date on her forehead. Tuesday, the 5th of who-the-hell-knows.”
Draco flung a book at Pansy and it bounced off the mosaic seashells behind her.
“Oh, fuck off with your books. She dies soon, is that good enough? She looks young. She’s got a Black family dagger in her chest. That’s all I know.”
“Probably Aunt Bellatrix. She likes knives.” Draco stood up and paced the length of the bathroom. He seemed surprisingly concerned about Granger. “It’s not really fair, is it? Dying young. Someone should warn her, so she can say goodbye to…whoever. So she can…I don’t know, have one last happy day.”
Pansy shrugged. “Not really my job.”
“Can we prevent it?” he asked.
“Probably not.”
“Then what in the nine fucking hells is your job?”
Pansy crossed her arms in annoyance. Unlike Granger, Pansy was not a know-it-all, but she was a know-it-some, and the some she knew had largely to do with style, gossip, and laying an undead spirit to rest. She explained it to Draco in terms a baby could understand, the way her mother had first explained it to her.
“Imagine your spirit is a deer,” she said. “Death is a fence. For most people, their spirit just…hops the fence, into the great beyond. But some people are stubborn, self-righteous, big-haired attention-seekers who refuse to die properly, and get caught on the fence. From what I can tell, Granger’s mostly on our side, with a hoof over the veil, and it will be an annoying amount of work on my part to heft her over, and…I just don’t know how to do it.”
“So don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t heft her over. Leave her on this side. Lop off her hoof and maybe she won’t die at all.” He crouched by his book stack again and started spreading them out on the floor. “Maybe she’s hopped back in time so she could warn us in advance. So we can be prepared to save her.”
Pansy had no idea what he was talking about. He was flipping through books, muttering about soul-bonds and tethering. Offering himself as a better anchor than Weasley. Maybe this was why Granger’s spirit was so focused on Draco—he’d been studying soul bonds and how to cheat at magic all year.
As if finally satisfied, Granger’s spirit flickered away, at least for now.
“I think…I think we should probably find her,” Draco said. “The living her, not her spirit. I could work with her on this. I’ll have to talk with Longbottom and maybe girl Weasley, whatever her name is. Genessa?”
“Draco?”
“Hm?”
“I want my bath.”
Lost in thought, he nodded and sealed his books back into the hidden niche. For once, he seemed to have purpose—more purpose than he’d had all year.
“Why do you care so much about Granger?” she wondered aloud.
It was a simple question, but Draco was caught off guard. “Well… I… How the hell is Potter supposed to win this thing without Granger?”
As he left the room, Pansy felt that wasn’t the whole answer.
It was a sunny morning in April, and Pansy Parkinson was gloriously bored.
The Carrows and Snape had been fired. A small part of her missed them.
Draco had saved Hermione’s life, and he was off being a hero. A much bigger part of her missed him.
Homework and exams were cancelled. She didn’t miss that at all.
And, to top it off, she had the Heads’ Suite all to herself—no spirits allowed. She planned on taking a nice, long, pruney bath every day until graduation.
After soaking for ages that morning, she eventually wrapped up in a towel and opened the door to her room, where she was greeted by the most unwelcome sight on her carpet: the shriveled up remains of a recently deposed Dark Lord.
“Oh, you can fuck right off.”
And, with a single snip of her wand, what was left of his ugly, little spirit cleared the fence.