Death Beds, Love Songs, and Ancestors

The sun poured through the banked windows of Hogwarts great hall, filling the vast space with honey golden glow that kissed each student good morning. Four long tables were arranged side by side, each one assigned to a different house. Sitting at the end of the table second from the left, all by herself, was a girl so dark that she seemed to wear her shadow instead of casting one. Her name was Pansy Parkinson and she was known by sight and reputation, and for most, that was enough.

The favorite story from Hufflepuff was the one where she exchanged Hannah Abbot's digitalis with catnip for making a disparaging comment about Slytherin's head of house, Severus Snape. Poor Hannah got a week's detention and failed the assignment when she blew up half of Snape's Potions dungeon. Ravenclaw students always told the one where she disarmed Maeve Burlington and used the girl's own wand to hold her aloft thirty feet over the Quidditch pitch for stepping on Pansy's broom. Those in Gryffindor would climb over each other to trade horror stories about the dark, yet rather lovely, girl. If confronted, she would never deny any of the charges, she couldn't, for each event had been witnessed, usually by several people. Some weave themselves armor from good works, others by good graces or exquisite patience. Pansy's armor came from being as nasty as she could, though she wasn't naturally inclined to be nasty at all.

The parchment that dropped into her lap at mail call wasn't even in an envelope, it had simply been folded in half and held with spell-o-tape. She glanced around, sure it was intended for someone else - her mother was too far gone to remember she had a daughter, let alone know where she was. Her father had moved to the United States just after she was born. She had no siblings and her extended family was dead. But sure enough, it was her name painstakingly inscribed on the front in capital letters.

Midnight, Friday.

Trelawney's Tower.

Come Alone.

Cryptic. At least it didn't concern itself with formalities. Pansy glanced around, lifting her cape of black hair and twisting it over her shoulder. What manner of set up would this one be? She regarded her housemates suspiciously from under a thick fringe of lashes. No one was gauging her reaction; in fact, the letter seemed to go unnoticed as the horde around Draco burst into laughter as he finished his newest imitation of Harry Potter with his usual giddy flamboyance.

Millicent sat gracelessly down next to her, still chuckling, her fat pigtails knocking into Pansy's face. "Whatcha got there?"

Without a second thought, Pansy pocketed the parchment. Millicent, an old, though not necessarily close, friend was not exactly a secret keeper. "Oy, you hear we're having a test in DA this week?"

"That's the word," Millicent watched Pansy tuck the paper away with narrowed eyes. "What, Pansy, not in a sharing mood?"

"Come on, it's just another love letter from one of my many secret admirers." She gave a half hearted shrug, playing up the sly smile, the twinkle in her eye.

"Oh, you have all the luck, who's it this week?"

"Who do you want it to be?"

Erica Cain slid down the bench towards them. Pansy didn't even try to conceal her involuntary eye roll. Once the pixie-like blonde had been her best and nearly only mate, but Erica had become boy crazy and conniving in the last two years and her once round and cheerful face had become hungry. Careful to control the snark in her voice she leaned towards them, "Did you hear about Julia?"

"Julia? The fourth year?" Millicent managed through a mouth of unfortunately dry toast.

"And Draco," she added, icy blue eyes on Pansy's face, searching her mouth, nose, eyes, ears for a clue. Any indication of however this news affected her could be ammunition, banked on for a later date.

"Tell us!" Millicent actually put her toast down with interest.

"Well, do you remember the night before last when Julia was caught out of bed, I dunno, maybe a hour after lights out? Guess where she'd been!" Erica had placed her small hands, complete with bitten nails, on the table and leaned in to continue, still more interested in Pansy's face than in the only person listening.

The girl had become so awful and the worst part was the transparence. She had none of the Slytherin natural aptitude towards artful deceit or even deceit through transmission or omission, her wiles were purely physical and even then her motions were a mockery of the exceptionally beautiful and truly beguiling. Black as she was, there was nothing in Erica to suggest a threat. She was only amusing and never for very long. Pansy glanced down at her watch and then jumped up with as much seriousness as she could muster. "Bugger, I'm late!"

Erica watched her former best friend flee, the eyes of half the fifth, sixth, and seventh year boys following as she bounced from the room, long legs undulating under her shrinking skirt. Pansy was just a few inches short of six feet tall and most of it was leg; no matter where on her hips it sat, her school uniform almost always managed to appear obscene.

"She doesn't have anywhere to be," coming from Millicent, it sounded more like a question than a statement.

"I know," Erica muttered, "what I don't understand is why she thinks she's fooling us."

Out from under the prying eyes of her peers, she unfolded the note, regarding the handwriting carefully. She like to think of herself as deft at rudimentary local forensics. It was thick, clumsy, though carefully written, the writer was left handed. Sinister, she chuckled to herself, thinking of the old English word for lefty. So then, it hadn't come from Malfoy, intent on disguising his handwriting. She lived, literally, in daily fear of retaliation. As soon as he came up with something to mitigate the photos and an air tight alibi, she was good as socially dead.

Bitter, lonely Malfoy - that had come to a rather abrupt end after Christmas. She closed her eyes briefly, boy was that a mistake. To think she could actually find some bit of positive stimulation - well - she thought to herself - just because someone is passionate doesn't mean that they know what they're talking about. Just because one wants to see your tits doesn't make them heterosexual either.

A silly little grin came over her face as she dawdled down the hall, sun on her shoulders, warmth on her back. It might not be an adventure of Harry Potter caliber, but it was exciting nonetheless. Pansy was not watching the hall in front of her as she rounded the next corner.

She dove for it, landing on her stomach and catching it at the last moment. The already cracked bottle exploded in her frantic grip, spilling ink as red as Ron Weasley's ears as he stood, still as a dummy, watching this transpire.

"Crap." Her word echoed in the chamber of the hall.

Ron removed the hand clamped over his mouth and didn't know where to begin. He'd just involuntarily taken down the Head Snake Charmer and for lack of a better phrase, fucked her up. Pansy lay sprawled amid her school work and implements, robes tangled over an arm and leg, one side of her shirt pulled from her waist band, skirt flipped up on her back and revealing her lucky red undies. To Ron, she looked almost human and he tried not to say something mean.

"I can't replace that in Hogsmeade and it'll be summer before I can get back to Knockaturn Alley." Pansy was still a moment, watching the red run over her fingers and pool on the floor. Already the ink, which contained a number of ingredients not fit for skin contact, began to burn.

"I'll bet you were," she snapped, finding her constitution and snatching her bag out of his hands only to drop it all over again with a short, breathless shriek. Grimacing, she lifted her stained palm and spit on her fingers to wipe away the ink. Ron immediately saw what was wrong.

"Lookit," she was inexplicably subdued, having seen her own blood on very rare occasions. "You can't hardly tell under the ink." She lifted her gaze, now oddly innocent, to meet Ron's, which had gone very pale indeed.

"That looks nasty," he swallowed audibly, a waxy shade of green.

"Madam Pomfrey might need to knit that up." Ron stooped to gather Pansy's things a second time. Pansy prodded the glass, the sensation of something foreign inside her body captivating.

"Don't play with that!" Ron admonished, clasping her ink and blood covered bag to his chest like a shield. He looked positively queasy.

"That's manageable," Pansy said softly, her voice still dumb. She grasped the shard between her thumb and forefinger and with a short quick yank, removed it herself. Ron squeaked, jumping back as blood gushed freely, filling her slightly cupped palm and spilling between her fingers. She didn't notice this, preoccupied with the size of the glass.

"Big sucker, innit?" She held it out for him to see, glittering in the morning light, covered in wet gore, half an inch long and curved half the width of the bottle so that it had spiraled, screw-like, into her lower palm, into the thick of her radial artery. She noticed his legs were shaking. Her eyes narrowed maliciously, "not a big fan of blood, huh?"

Ron could barely muter the will to shake his head, 'no'.

"You have to carry my bag for me," she said matter-of-factly, waving the injured hand at her things and splattering them, the wall, and Ron's robes with sizable drops of blood.

With a sigh, he looked longingly towards the great hall where the small of sausages, eggs, and cinnamon drifted towards them still. Pansy thrust her bloody hand into his face and grinned wickedly, enjoying his slight swoon. "Still hungry?"

"You're twisted," he muttered gruffly, heaving her exceptionally large bag onto his shoulder and nodding towards the staircase. He noticed the note as he turned, "Is this yours too?"

"Drop that!" she barked, forgetting her injury and racing over to retrieve it from under his do-right Gryffindor gaze.

Ron stepped back and let the note drift out of his fingers, his free hand lifted as though to protect himself from the mess. His voice was weakly nasty, "…as you wish…"

She kept her eyes on him as she backed towards the paper, face scarlet and dotting the hall with blood. She bent to snatch it up and hesitated when the paper bloomed crimson as she reached with her injured hand. Thoroughly flustered, she jammed it into her robe, ignoring the shimmering smear her haste had left behind on the satiny black fabric.

A throbbing had begun in her elbow, there were three kinds of venom in that red ink and she hoped now that none of them were fatal. Damn lack of foresight. She knew she was going to catch hell for this, especially since such things as VooDoo Ink were forbidden by the ministry, let alone by Hogwarts and Filch's list. She swept by him, blushing furiously; he was glad her voice had regained some of her usual haughty timbre as she tossed back a, "Well, c'mon then!"

"Must be some love letter," Ron said, presently catching up with her.

"It's not a love letter," Pansy quickened her step, inwardly cursing the delicate constitution on her skin. At least everyone was preoccupied by breakfast and did not have to witness her being escorted to the infirmary by Ron Weasley.

"Sure, of course." He squinted in the dim gray of the hall with a vague half smile, then looked over at her, hoisting and repositioning her bag. "Good load you got here."

"Too much for you Weasley?" She still did not look at him, wondering if the lightness in her head had anything to do with the pounding in her arm and shoulders and the tightness in her chest.

"This is serious, I mean, Hermione serious, carpal tunnel serious," he continued, looping his other arm through the second strap with considerable effort. "You don't happen to have a time-turner by any chance?"

"Don't be ridiculous, they're forbidden." She sounded preoccupied, voice distracted and serious. It was not a lengthy walk from the Great Hall to the hospital wing, but now Pansy stopped and took a deep breath, leaning heavily on the wall.

"Boy, that's a lot of blood," she's dead white, Ron realized and saw, with some degree of alarm, that they had left a trail behind them - every foot or so there was a paw shaped splatter, roughly the size of a pebble. With begrudging concern, he peered closely at her. "Do you think you can make it?"

"What are my options?" She asked, smiling with false brightness and stepping away from the wall, "You carry me?"

He rubbed the back of his neck, eyebrows knitted together and cast a furtive glance towards the end of the hall. "I mean, if I didn't have a choice-"

And suddenly, he didn't. Pansy, still smiling oddly, crumpled to the floor, her head cracking against the stones as she slipped narrowly through Ron's lunging arms. He tried to stop her fall but was barely able to stop from collapsing on top of her as the momentum of her enormous backpack shifted, pitching him sharply forward.

And the hospital still a floor away, he eyed the leggy brunette and sucked air through his teeth. She was almost as tall as he was though of a more slender build, but he wasn't known for his strength or stamina. Blood still pooled in her hand, dripping over the sides and running in rivulets down her wrist. He could see the angry mouth where her 'extraction' had lengthened the wound. Looking down at her, hair fanned gracelessly about her shoulders, limbs limp and pale skin whiter by the second, she resembled a terribly broken doll. Her face was without it's usual pretense, without the anger that sharpened her features. She looked very young, vulnerably even, he bit his lip hard, no, even peaceful.

Ron's heart began to pound, then raced up his throat. Oh but not Parkinson, he wetted his lips, glancing up and down the hall. As far as he could tell it was empty: pick her up or chance it? He ran the back of his hand across his forehead, mopping up nervous sweat. There was a spell, something they used to take injured player off the Pitch, but he couldn't remember and time was ticking by as he tried to think. He took a deep breath, squeezed his eyes shut and wished himself the best of luck.

He focused his attention on the prostrate girl, bleeding profusely and sprawled across the stone floor. Awkwardly, he hoisted her against the wall, propping her on unsteady feet and then, threading his arm through hers, swung her around so that her head lulled heavily against his face and neck. With a deep breath, he started down the hall, thinking Harry woulda done it. Harry woulda done it, too.

Ron burst through the door, spilling Pansy onto the nearest bed and letting her huge bag flop to the floor. He hollered for Madam Pomfrey and in a blink she had Pansy flat, arm elevated. "Bless you Ronald, but I'll take it from here." She peered at him from over the rims of her round spectacles, giving him the jerk of her chin that most students recognize as the universal sign for 'get lost'. Obligingly, he did.

It wasn't as hard as he thought it would be. Besides, she smelled like apples.

II

Please, please, let there still be food! Ron was desperately racing down the dead empty passage. He crashed into the hall, throwing himself at the large door. Locked. Furiously, he kicked at the cobbled floor. That, he chastised himself, is what you get for worrying about a shifty bitch like Pansy Parkinson.

The image of her sprawled on the floor, no, even better the one where she juked like a rugby player diving for the ball - maybe it was worth it to miss breakfast. Besides, this made her in his debt now, right? This wasn't like rescuing an incidental Hufflepuff first year, this was one of the Snake Charmers, a member of the high clique of hot Slytherin girls. She could even be called their reigning Queen. Maybe he'd even saved her life, after all, he'd never seen ink smoke like that on paper, he could only wonder what it felt like on her skin.

Ron thought about her sprawled on the floor again. He thought about all the other times he'd interacted with her since he was eleven and drew a conclusion that reversed one he'd made years before - Pansy wasn't so bad. He had just helped her to the hospital, but then, he'd also helped put her there. Without him, there would have been no one to crash into. And she hadn't hexed him, she hadn't called for Snape, she didn't do anything, even though a bottle of expensive and hard to get ink was destroyed in the fray. She'd almost been friendly - for a Slytherin to a Gryffindor. Besides, sprawled on the floor, the entire length of her long, lean leg exposed fully exposed the perfect crescent of her posterior partially clad in devil red panties - Ron actually shivered and relished the goofy smile it brought to his face.

Breakfast was over, class had begun. He knew better than to detour to his room and change - if he wasn't wearing the evidence no one would believe his story, with or without Pansy to corroborate. Besides, if he'd learned anything by being Harry's sidekick for the last five years, it was that the best damage control is done immediately with statements and no appearance of impropriety. He knew what kind of stories could evolve from their co-absence from Potions.

But he didn't get sick, as he had when confronted with blood so many times before, either by passing out or actually vomiting. Now he praised himself a little too long and found his stomach rolling viciously within seconds. If he puked on himself on his way to class, his whole plan would be blown.

Professor Snape had become unusually quiet. He had, by all appearances, abandoned his class entirely to their own devices. At first he had gone about his lessons, eyes sliding over Ron's empty seat with obvious relish, delightfully compounded with the passing time and increasing severity of punishment. As the second hand slipped lower on the dial, his glances had become more infrequent and his words too, accordingly. Now he sat, eyes glazed but instinctively surveying the students, cocked on a hair trigger. Even Draco Malfoy kept his mouth shut - and he could normally get away with saying, even doing, anything he pleased in this particular class.

Harry sucked air in through his teeth, glanced first at his watch, then as the dungeon door, then to Hermione's worried face. They didn't dare speak. Harry caught some motion out of the corner of his eye, Neville, two tables away, sporting the same expression as Hermione. In fact, all his housemates wore that same terse look. All of them knew that Snape was waiting for Ron, stalking and crouched like a crippled and starving tiger with the advantage of anticipation.

-I could cause a distraction- Hermione's face said clearly.

-Not unless you want to spend the rest of the term in Hospital- Harry shot back silently.

She shook her head, looked at her watch, then dropped her chin heavily into her hands. Whatever the hold up, Ron was, most assuredly, fucked.

Neville's head poked back into Harry's peripheral vision. He was trying to mouth something discreetly and it took Harry a second to focus. The instant he did, he knew what the commotion was about. The space, that fifth table next to the wall where the Snake Charmers sat, why, Livia Rookwood, Millicent Bulstrode, Erica Cain and Sadie McMurtry were on their own today. Pansy Parkinson had also failed to show up to class! HE elbowed Hermione hard enough to make her gasp and her pain was evident in the pinch she planted on his arm before she bother to respond. HE only had to stare and she understood.

This explained why the Slytherin's had been so quiet on their own right. It was no longer Ron with whom Professor Snape was preoccupied, but his missing prized pupil. As the nudges and stares moved down the line of silent Gryffindors, Snape turned his back on the class, his coal eyes lazily combing the horizon beyond the window of his dungeon.

Pansy had never missed a class, not in five years. Potions might not be her best subject, but she was definitely his best student, even next to the ordinary but precocious Granger and the young Malfoy. She hadn't missed one of his classes and he could not remember having heard of her missing anyone else's either. HE was certain something was amiss, not wrong, and certainly not fatal, but there was an electricity in the air. A vibe, perhaps, a precognition. He squeezed his shadowed chin deep in thought.

Snape turned again to his students, their shiny little faces exploding and peeling, hairs popping out in weird places, make-up erroneously applied, piggy eyes watching him like a hawk. He shuddered, how he hated the greasy sheen of mid-adolescence, without the adorable meekness of the first and second years and without the polish and humility of the sixth and seventh years, those in their third, fourth and fifth year could expect extra hostility based solely on the visual intensity of their appearance. He told himself that it was not out of concern that he'd lapsed into an uncharacteristic silence, but also because there were only a few students he genuinely enjoyed observing in this class and currently, neither were present.

The dungeon door opened with a heavy click, the class practically popped muscles straining against their natural urge to spin in their seats. Snape watched them for a second, scoring their acne, bad haircuts, and faulty self-control, then, eyes narrowed in suspicion, gathered himself to swoop down on the late comer.

Ron paused with obvious trepidation, eyes downcast and smeared, the students noticed instantly and with a collective gasp, with brownish patches of drying blood. HE swallowed with difficulty, he could feel the gaze of his peers on his shoulders like a pile of wet down blankets. It was a very long walk to Snape's front alcove. The professor looked somehow angry but deflated, shocked and befuddled; his arms hung at angles from his sides, giving him the appearance of a developmentally disabled crow about to take flight. Ron was greeted at the front of the room by being swept behind Snape's robes, cold and bony fingers clutching at the tender spot between the neck and shoulder.

"What is the meaning of this?" Snape hissed through clenched teeth, wrenching Ron closer and shoving fists full of soiled robe into his face.

"I want to apologize for being late," Ron's voice was a tight whisper. "There was an accident in the hall, Pansy and I," he inhaled sharply as Snape prompted him with an especially hard squeeze. "Pansy and I collided at breakfast and she cut up her arm pretty severe."

"She's not still in the hallway, I assume." Snape's voice was silky but deadly.

"No sir, I carried her to the hospital." Now Ron, feeling the ironic power of his words and inability of Snape to hand him for this, mustered the courage to look into his professors eyes. "Right heavy too, that one."

Snape stared into Ron's face for a long moment. Then, with burning eyes and a reluctant nod, sent him over to his seat with a shove, then, after a pause, "…wait…"

The relief that began to pour through Ron's body like cool water suddenly froze, expanding within his veins. He half turned, face drained of color.

"Unless of course, you would like to go change?" Snape said with a roll of his eyes, motioning to Ron's gruesomely stained robes and slacks.

"No." Against his better judgment, Ron lifted his blood stained sleeve and smiled. "Bit of a badge of honor, eh?"

He slid into his seat at the table with Harry and Hermione, both of who looked ready to burst. Ron felt the eyes of everyone in the room, for one reason or another. For the first time, he was acutely aware of Harry's presence next to him and shifted to the far side of his seat with guilty wariness.