Those Wrong, Yet it's Right, Things

Chapter 2

I'd rather be hated for who I am, then loved for who I'm not.

~Rudy Ray Moore

Pansy threw the roots into the cauldron perhaps a bit more harshly then she should of. "Why don't you just sit back and look pretty or something, Potter. I can handle this by myself."

"I highly doubt you do anything by yourself," Harry responded as he cut more roots at a dangerous pace.

"You make an awful lot of presumptions for someone so worshiped." Pansy took a step back from their station and swiped her cloak sleeve across her slightly damp forehead. "Neither of us like working together, obviously, but let's at least try to make it less painful and refrain from speaking, agreed?"

"I've heard you talk more in the past minute then in the past six years, Parkinson. I'm very interested to hear what you have to say." Harry glanced back at the reddened girl and bit back a smile.

"Shut it, Potter." A moment of silence followed and Pansy assumed it safe to return to work. She stepped up, took another look at the directions of the board, and started adding pinches of rookworm at timely intervals.

"Why do you do it?" Harry asked suddenly. Startled, Pansy jumped, then regaining her pride, finished the rookworm up before turning fully to look at Potter.

"What?" she asked politely.

"You're actually doing a decent job at this potion. Better then Hermione probably. Definitely better then me. So why have you always pretended as though you couldn't?"

Pansy thought a moment. She'd always been partnered with Draco. Hands down he was excellent at potions. She had contributed from time to time when he didn't understand something, but he took all the credit. Pansy had sat back for years, never realizing she might actually be good at potions herself, never wandering from the stereotype people had about her. Now, however, working next to Potter, she had slipped up when he had lacked and their potion, indeed, looked to be well on the right track.

"Like I said earlier, Potter. You make a lot of hasty generalizations. It's just a bought of good luck. I've done this potion before." Pansy was taken aback by how easily the lie came out. Sure, she'd always been good at lying, but for once she felt the need to protect the truth more then ever, and was surprised at how truthful she sounded. "To tell you the truth," Pansy spat out another lie, "we're both going to have a helluva year with Snape yelling at us all the time."

Harry watched as she started stirring the potion, her eyes not meeting his. She didn't sound as though she was lying, but yet Harry knew she was. "Slytherins are all the same," Harry replied trying to find some truth in her. He had downcast his eyes by the time her angered eyes snapped up.

"You and your stupid stereotypes! Don't think for one minute you know anything about my life or about a Slytherin. You lock yourself up in your own little world. Maybe for once you should take a look at the world through someone else's eyes, huh? Through a different perspective? You think we're so stupid, but at least we see what's really there. You call us afraid, yet you are the one running." Pansy stopped suddenly, though whether it was from Snape yelling at her and Potter or from the shock of what she'd just said would remain unknown.

"Potter, Parkinson, is there a problem?" Snape's eyes floated dangerously between the pair, his attitude already soured by Neville and Millicent's horrible attempt at the potion.

"None, Sir," Harry nearly spat, being careful to keep a politeness in his tone.

"Good." Snape whipped back around to a terrified Neville.

"Don't assume we are all the same," Pansy said quietly, pouring their potion into the two vials.

"Why not?" Harry asked, but not in a condescending tone, an openly curious one. He hoped she would answer sincerely and he would see a flicker of what she actually wanted to say instead of what she'd been trained to like he had a moment ago. You're kidding yourself with this one, Harry. She's Malfoy's girl, not your potential saved soul.

"Say whatever you like, Potter," she said, quickly reverting back to her fifteen-year-old self, "but we'll see who is the last one laughing."

"It'll be me then obviously," Harry said a bit too loud, his words laced with the guilt of letting the fragile moment disappear. "Slytherins don't laugh."

Pansy didn't even have a chance to round on him before Snape launched the word 'detention' in their direction with a clear intent of it's meaning. Harry just rolled his eyes and took their vials to the front of the room, detentions a regular weekly activity for him. Pansy, however, was livid. Harry Potter had just landed her her first detention ever.