At the End of the World

At The End Of The World

And lastly, you're all alone
With nothing left but sleep.
But sleep never comes to you,
It's just the guilt
And forever wakefulness of the weak.
It's just you and me...

The execution of all things.

The execution of all things.

The execution of all things.

When Pansy had envisioned the final battle between Dumbledore's followers and the Dark Lord's, she had always imagined something a bit more grand scale than what actually occurred.

Perhaps she thought that it would have occurred on top of a world monument, or maybe at Stonehenge. It should have been in front of the Ministry, so that statues could be put up later of the victors in the exact spots where they had performed their heroic deeds.

It should have been at Hogwarts. That was where it had all started. The founders' feud, the chamber of secrets, the basilisk, Tom Riddle, Slytherin house... It was only appropriate that it should end there, as well.

But when the final battle came, it was, oddly enough, in a field behind a Muggle farmer's house.

Pansy had to admit that the location was a bit of a disappointment.

But no one could have known that this would be the finale.

At least, Pansy hadn't.

It was only after Dumbledore's army had sprung their surprise attack, and the bodies had started to drop like flies that Pansy had begun to realize exactly what was taking place here.

The end.

*********************

The world was on fire.

It was smoking... Merlin, there was smoke everywhere. Someone must have gone insane with an Incendio or something...

Pansy's heart was pounding in her ears, and she couldn't breathe.

She ripped off her mask in desperation. Her throat was closing in on itself, choking her. She couldn't breathe. The bloody smoke was everywhere! Engulfing her.

Pansy choked on a sob and forced her trembling legs forward through the haze. She hated being out here. Hated it. Oh, curse Dumbledore for this... Why did this have to happen out here? Here, in this vast, wide, open field...

The nausea came on so thick and fast that Pansy had to drop to her knees, and the vomit was burning, choking poison as it rose in her throat and spilled forth from her mouth. She compulsively clutched the grass beneath her fingers as she choked and hacked, wishing with all her might that the final battle could have occurred inside of Hogwarts. Somewhere safe...

A hysterical giggle bubbled up in her. What was she thinking? Hogwarts wasn't safe. Not for her. Not for anyone, anymore. But never for her. How could you ever really feel safe in a place where everything you did was met with scrutiny and suspicion? Every little move analyzed... Dissected...

Dissected... Surgeons... Knives... A thin memory of those men...

NO!

Pansy sniveled pitifully and struggled to her feet, feeling dizzy and lightheaded.

She was going insane. Everything was getting all mixed up in her head... She was having another one of those flashbacks... No! She just couldn't think out here. That was all. She was finally in control of those.

Pansy was just wiping some of the sweat from her brow when she abruptly tripped over something large and solid. She fell hard against the ground.

Panicking, Pansy immediately rolled away from the shape, frantically gripping her wand with slick fingers. She was halfway through a killing curse when she realized that her attacker was already dead.

Sagging with relief, she weakly extinguished some flames that were too near for comfort, and then lay prostrate on the ground and focused on breathing. Her pulse was aiming for escape from her neck due to the abrupt adrenaline rush.

She was lucky that she hadn't been hit with anything, yet. What with her just lying here like this and all... Most of the fighters were on the other side of the unfortunate farmhouse, which stood in the middle of this horrendous mêlée. She had to get over there.

She rolled onto her side and started to rise. However, Pansy hesitated when something about the corpse caught her eye. She leaned closer for a better look, and then she drew back with a hiss.

Snape.

It was Professor Snape. He was lying facedown, but Pansy would know him anywhere.

A fresh nausea immediately rose up, but then another hysterical giggle escaped her, and she clapped a hand over her mouth. Well, damn. This was unexpected.

Forgetting her fear for a moment, Pansy scooted closer and shoved him over so that he was on his back. She leaned over him and took his face between her hands, turning it toward her. His skin was cold and clammy against her fingers. He must have been hit hours ago.

"Well, who was it?" she asked the corpse. "Who had the supreme honor of taking you down, Professor?"

Pansy felt a static anger buzz between her ears when she realized that his empty gaze was trained on the sky, and that she couldn't make him look at her, no matter how she turned his head.

She sneered at him. "This is familiar, isn't it?"

When the corpse declined to answer, she leaned close to his face and whispered, "Did you even visit me, Professor? Great, glorious turncoat that you were? Could you spare the time?" Her grip on his face tightened so that her nails were digging into the cold flesh, and she snorted disdainfully. "No, I'll bet that you let them talk you out of it. Let them infect you with their self-righteousness. I'll bet you even drank champagne at a victory party to celebrate the capture of another Death Eater while I was rotting away in that cell, screaming for you. Am I close, my fucking hero?"

Pansy's hands moved up and grabbed at clumps of greasy hair, her breathing irregular again. Her fingers clenched and released the hairs as her voice rose shrilly, then finally just pulling harshly at the strands. "I blame you for Draco, you know. You helped them bring me in-- You fucking sold me out, and then you wouldn't even look me in the fucking eye! Didn't you want to see your handy work? No pride in presentation, Professor? Didn't you know what they did to me in there?"

A sharp blast of noise off in the distance drove down Pansy's spine like an electric shock, and she instinctively dropped onto her stomach to avoid any curses. She remained still, breathing halted entirely, until she heard the far off screams, telling her that she wasn't in harm's way.

Pansy buried her face in Snape's robes, wheezing odd little laughs. "It's so funny," she gasped, clutching the fabric. "You knew that it was going to be like this, didn't you? I'm going to die here. Die, Professor. We're all going to die, aren't we? Everyone will be dead, and then there won't even be a winning side. Isn't that funny?"

And so, so appropriate.

She shoved herself away from the body, suddenly feeling sick all over again. She was tired, and she was dizzy. This needed to be over.

"It needs to be over now, Professor," she whispered. It should have been over before any of this ever happened. Harry Potter should have died that night, or else he should have killed the Dark Lord when he'd had the chance. She didn't care about mudbloods or morals, anymore. What did any of it matter out here? It wasn't supposed to be like this.

There was a sudden movement at the edge of her vision, and the wand was already in her hand before Pansy's head whipped around. Primal fear had a grip on her heart as she met a familiar pair of gray eyes, and then the world stopped.

It ground to a shrieking, neck-bracing stop.

********************

Whenever Pansy tried to remember her time spent in Azkaban, she would get a nervous twitch in the right side of her face. The muscles would clamp up, and she wouldn't be able to speak properly until it had passed. Her hands would begin to shake, and if she didn't make a concentrated effort to stop it, then she would start to dig her nails into her own wrists. There was already a myriad of messy white scars that twisted and crossed all over her body from the time that she couldn't--wouldn't-- remember.

Alone in that cell... with those things... Those figments of her imagination that had felt so real as they clawed at her... Figments with faces, but eyes and limbs missing... Covered in blood... Blood too thick to be real, but there, nonetheless...

Alone, except for the distant sound of a baby crying.

Pansy spent hours searching for that baby in her cramped little cell. Her nails scratched at stone in an attempt to overturn, and the stained mattress was ripped to shreds by her efforts. The dementors ignored her deranged shrieking, and she usually ended up pulling at her own hair, begging-- pleading with the invisible baby to be quiet.

When she finally got out, after the Death Eaters had stormed the prison, rescuing their own and mercifully killing the rest, Pansy had been forced to wear thick, conservative clothes with long sleeves and high necks.

She didn't like to look at herself anymore, anyway. Azkaban and time hadn't been kind to her. She'd cut off all of the lice-ridden, dirty--bloody--hair that used to be her pride and joy in another life, and that sparkle people used to tease her about had long since disappeared from her eyes.

After the rescue, no one ever asked her why she insisted on wearing thick veils whenever she wasn't wearing the Death Eater mask. Maybe they were as grateful as she was that they didn't have to see the scars that Pansy couldn't cover up with clothes or make-up.

They should have been really grateful that they couldn't see the other kinds of scars. The ones that were on the inside. Not the metaphorical inside, but the literal tissues and muscles inside of her. She obviously couldn't have gone to a mediwizard to find out for sure, but Pansy was almost positive that something had happened to her in that prison that wasn't of the self-inflicted variety.

If she clamped her teeth really hard and focused, ignoring her spastic face, then she could almost remember those guards sending the dementors away and...

No. She couldn't--wouldn't--remember.

It was possible that she had done something to herself that could explain the strange pains which she sometimes got below her abdomen, or the random fits of anxiety she felt whenever someone got too close to her...

Maybe.

It didn't matter anymore. It hadn't even mattered then, really. The only thing that had kept her from hanging herself in her cell like Theodore had done was the constant memory of a promise.

The only memory.

*********************

There was a steady heartbeat in her ears as she slowly-- carefully-- rose to her feet.

She held her wand with clenched fingers as her sensory perceptions sharpened like knives. Everything else around them became like watercolor, draining away all shapes and sounds, and leaving them alone. She could see the thin lines of sweat dripping down his face, could almost hear Draco's heart-- thump, thump-- beating, too.

Traitor. TraitorTraitorTraitor.

Draco didn't raise his wand. He just stood there, staring at her. He looked so sad, and Pansy abruptly realized that he hadn't seen her in years. There was no veil or mask to hide behind, and no hat to cover the hack-job done to her hair.

A dark wave suddenly came over her, blocking out all other emotions but hate. She wanted him to look-- to see what they'd done to her. What she'd done to herself.

"Put up your wand," she hissed in a voice that wasn't her own.

Draco blinked, and he seemed to realize for the first time that she was pointing a wand at him. He visibly tensed, but he still didn't raise his wand. "No."

She hadn't heard his voice in years except in memories and dreams, and now the sound grated on her. Her brain gave a sudden jerk, and there were small snippets of memories of that voice calling to her through the bars of her cell, of a hand reaching out toward her through bars covered in snakes... Snakes that burrowed under her skin and stayed there no matter how much she tore at her own flesh, trying to get them out-- blood and skin staining the walls... Screaming... Snakes laughing...

Pansy shuddered and gritted her teeth to the point of pain in an effort to get her mind back into place. She refocused on Draco, and the hate was black and thick in her throat. Visited her, did he? She didn't remember, with her mind in the state that it was, but how absolutely charitable.

Did he come with justifications and apologies? Did she forgive him? Were there sweet nothings whispered through rotting bars? Or had she tried to rip his eyes from their sockets before he had a chance to pull away? There was a memory of... No, it was gone.

She felt her lips draw back against her teeth. Everything about him was suddenly repulsive. She had waited so long for this moment of reckoning, but now she just wanted him gone. She wanted to kill him.

"I'm glad you made it this far," she said thickly. "I wanted to be the one to do this."

"Put it down, Pansy," Draco said gently. "You know you couldn't."

He barely had time to dodge as she screamed, "Crucio!" He threw himself sideways and landed roughly on his side, grunting at the impact.

As Pansy stocked toward him, a single thought echoed throughout her fizzing brain.

I hate you. Hateyouhateyouhateyouhateyou.

She aimed her wand for another go at the pain-inducing curse, but Draco abruptly threw himself at her. His body slammed into hers, and she felt the air whoosh out of her as she fell to the ground with his weight atop her. Her wand fell out of her grip.

Pansy brought her knee up quickly, ramming it into Draco's stomach. He coughed in surprise and pain, and she was able to shove him off of herself. She rolled and was in the process of reaching for her wand when Draco was abruptly above her, again. He fell against her shoulders and gripped her arms to prevent her from crawling forward. Pansy grunted against the weight and used all of her body strength to twist sideways, pulling him over her and flinging him onto his back.

Forgetting her wand, Pansy threw herself upon him, striking at him like a woman possessed. Her fist connected with his nose and there was a satisfying crunch. She got in another hit at his mouth that sliced his lip against his teeth and resulted in a stream of blood. Draco couldn't seem to decide if he should use his arms to defend his face or to throw her off. Her blows fell everywhere, and she was shrieking.

"Where is she?" she screamed. "Where is she?"

Draco finally caught hold of her wrists and pulled. His grip was secure, even though she struggled like a wet cat. She was so furious that she could rip his eyes out. If he would only let go! Draco was still below her, so his hold brought her face close to his. "Where is she?" she hissed, spit hitting his face.

"Stop it!" he snapped, blood smacking her cheeks. "Get a hold of yourself!"

Pansy barely heard him. The hate was so thick that it was leaking out of their eyes in thick rivulets. She could practically see the snake of her own loathing swirling in through Draco's ear. She wanted to rip it out.

Pansy brought her mouth down to his and bit harshly into his bleeding lip. Draco hissed in pain, and a second later, he lunged his head brutally forward into hers. She released his lip with a gasp of surprise, momentarily immobile as the world shifted back into place and the stars cleared from her vision.

Draco took advantage, and he reasserted his hold on her arms and then rolled them over again. Pansy struggled against his body weight, and his grip on her wrists tightened until she finally came back to herself with a cry of pain.

"Are you sane, yet?" he asked in a tight voice. He was breathing harshly from the physical effort of restraining her.

The dark clouds had parted from her vision, but Pansy still felt stiff with a choking fury. She glared up at him. "There was a baby, wasn't there?" she damaged savagely.

Draco blinked, shock written all over his face. "What?"

"Before I went into the cell-- There was a baby! I know there was. What did you do with her?"

He was so surprised that his grip loosened by just a fraction, and it was enough for Pansy to twist one of her wrists out of his hold. She used her free hand to deliver a punch to the side of his head. The blow caused Draco to lose his grip entirely, and Pansy shoved him off.

She got up onto her knees before Draco caught her wrists, again, and struggled to keep her from thrashing against him. "There was no baby!" he cried. "You're mad!"

"You're lying!" she screamed, frustrated tears rising up. "I heard her! You stole her from me--"

"There was no baby!" he repeated, shaking her harshly. "You weren't pregnant!" But Pansy could see the sudden doubt that was taking root in his eyes.

"LIAR!"

She was struggling again when someone from behind her suddenly shouted, "Malfoy!"

There was a flash of light, and Pansy's body jerked in an abrupt spasm. She froze in surprise as Draco's horrified eyes stared into hers.

He released her arms just as Pansy doubled over in pain. It was like someone had just drawn a knife down her side. Her skin burned and shrieked in protest. Pansy gasped as her entire body jerked again with pain, as if the knife had just been turned inside her flesh. She curled into herself, her limbs folding in like burning scraps of paper. Oh, this was bad.

"Finnigan!" Draco yelled from somewhere above her. "Get to the West Front!"

There were white spots in her vision, but when Pansy squinted through the pain, she saw a familiar slab of wood.

A voice. Finnigan's? "But--"

Draco's voice was restrained fury. "Don't touch her, damn you! Just get to the goddamn West Front, Finnigan!"

Rustling noises. Finnigan running? Then, Draco dropped beside her. His hand was in mid-air as it reached for her when Pansy rolled over and pointed her wand straight at his heart. He froze.

"I suggest," she said through clenched teeth, "that you back up."

Draco rose slowly back to his feet, his hands at his sides. Pansy grit her teeth against the pain as she struggled back to her feet. She kept her wand steadily aimed. A quick glance behind him proved that Finnigan was indeed running in the opposite direction, too far away to hear or be of any help.

"What did he get me with?" she asked calmly.

Draco looked so sad. "Crudus Viscus."

Pansy didn't know it. She quickly scanned through her limited knowledge of Latin. Okay, something about internal bleeding? Right.

Finnigan? It was Finnigan? She couldn't have been taken down by someone more... Notable? Ah, well. No time for this.

"This is the end, you know," she told him. There was something cold in her chest now, and she didn't know if it was the result of the curse or of her own fear.

The look Draco gave her was pleading. "It doesn't have to be," he said desperately. "It doesn't have to be, Pansy. If you'll just let me get my wand, then I can perform the counter-curse. You don't know it, but I do." He held his free hand out to her. "Please. We can both walk away from this."

She stared at his hand, and suddenly, she was behind those bars again. For the first time, she could clearly see his face on the other side, and she could feel the bugs crawling along her arms and in her hair. She was cold and bruised, and--

The pain in her side abruptly became so unbearable that it wiped away the mirage, and Pansy had to fight to keep her eyes open and focused on him. With her free hand, she reached down to her side. She felt wetness. She spared a long enough glance down to her hand to see that it was covered in blood. "Too late," she gasped.

"No!" he yelled. There was sweat and blood dripping off of his face, but he didn't try to wipe it off. "It doesn't have to be this way. We can leave. We can leave this rock and start over somewhere else. You and me."

"No, we can't," Pansy whispered, gripping her wand so tightly that her knuckles were white. "I have a promise to keep. Now, pick up your wand and let's get on with it." Her vision was clouding over, and she could only assume that was on account of the blood flowing freely down her side.

He shook his head. "I'm not going to fight you anymore."

"Then you'll die by me," she snarled, her anger returning.

"No," he said sternly.

"Pick up your fucking wand!" she screamed.

When Draco didn't move, Pansy shot out the most powerful curse she could think of.

He barely managed to divert it in time toward a nearby tree. The force behind the spell was so powerful that the entire trunk exploded immediately on impact. A flaming branch crashed into the house and the ground was rained upon by glass and debris.

Pansy didn't even notice the sharp glass falling around her. The effort of the spell had cost her dearly. Every muscle had simultaneously cramped up inside her, causing a desperate pain to engulf her entire body. She doubled back over onto the ground, crying out in agony. It was as if her entrails had suddenly burst into flame along with the tree.

The torture lasted for what felt like an eternity before the pain finally subsided into a dull ache.

Before she could even release a relieved breath, Pansy began to gag and cough so hard that she was reduced to a trembling mess afterward.

The guy couldn't have just given her a simple Avada Kedavra, could he?

It was almost funny. Apparently, even Dumbledore's protégées couldn't be counted on to remain noble in times like these. This had to be a marvelous piece of dark magic, especially if she didn't even know it. Bravo, Finnigan.

From her angle on the ground, the emblazed remains of the tree stood tall and furious before her. With her glazed vision it almost looked like an avenging angel, angry at the spectacle before it. Bits of flaming debris were still floating in the air.

"The sky's on fire," she murmured aloud.

Pansy stared at it as her eyelids started to become increasingly heavy. She was about to succumb to the darkness when Draco suddenly appeared at her side.

"All right?" he gasped.

"Just peachy," she croaked out, smiling slightly.

"Good," he said, before falling into silence.

Pansy allowed her eyes to slide shut as she focused on merely breathing. The pain had faded into nothingness, leaving her body drained and numb. Whatever was left of the battle must have moved off, because the noise was faint to her ears. All that she was able to focus on was Draco breathing next to her.

"I never wanted to see you again," he said quietly. "Because I knew that it would be like this."

"Then why didn't you pick up your bloody wand?" she teased, her voice reduced to a whisper. She could almost feel herself melting away into the watercolor. She never knew it would feel like this.

"I could never kill you." She could vaguely feel the touch of his hand on her cheek.

Well, apparently the time for blunt truth had arrived. The threshold of revelation. How appropriate for an ending such as theirs.

"You did, though," she said. "By leaving me behind."

"Pansy," he said, voice breaking. "You never would have come with me."

"No, but I would have convinced you to stay," she said sadly.

"I know, love. That's why I couldn't bear to say goodbye to you. It was hard enough making the decision to go in the first place."

"Your father's dead," she said bluntly, coughing slightly afterward.

"I know."

"I think Potter got him."

Draco didn't say anything.

"I got married."

It had been an ironic twist of fate that Pansy ended up marrying Blaise. Tall, willowy Zabini, who had always been lost in Draco's shadow. Always in the background... In her peripheral vision, but never a shining demigod in her eyes. Not like...

Poor Blaise. He'd never been just as good or better than Draco. There was no good enough in Slytherin house, and that left him with very little to work with. But he'd always been Draco's confidant, and that had been something. In Draco's shadow he'd at least been able to flourish in his own way.

When he asked her to marry him, there was fresh blood on his cloak and the wild look had yet to diminish from his eyes. It happened underneath Voldemort's shimmering mark, exactly two months after Draco had left them.

The end of the world had been at the back of her throat, and at that crazy moment in time, with that blood-- dirty blood-- burning her fingers, it hadn't seemed likely that either of them would ever see another sunrise. She had been half out of her mind, and after the danger had passed, Pansy barely even remembered accepting.

"Leave it to you to find the time during a war," Draco teased.

Time. Pansy could have choked on the word.

There hadn't been the time or the resources to put together anything fancy for her wedding. There couldn't be any grand event without the risk of alerting the enemy. So, it was a simple matter of a binding spell, deep in the woods, with only their parents as witnesses.

One could almost find humor in the fact that Pansy had spent the majority of her life listening to other people plan her a grandiose ceremony at Malfoy Manor, only to have it over-and-done-with in a backwater swamp two months after the dream wedding dissolved into a very different reality.

Almost.

"You killed him," she said solemnly.

She felt Draco tense beside her. "Blaise."

Blaise. It was such a short marriage. He had loved Draco so much. It was all such a shame.

"Do you know what it feels like when someone dies after a binding spell? After someone's loved you that much?"

Pansy heard a scuffling noise. She assumed that Draco must have moved closer to her, because when he spoke it was done intimately into her ear.

"Pansy, I've always loved you. No matter where I was. Every second of every day since that first day we met. Do you remember that day?"

She couldn't feel them, but tears were gliding down her cheeks and onto the soft grass. She didn't want to remember.

"You were wearing ribbons in your hair, and you walked straight up to me and said, 'If we're to get married someday, then you'll have to stop using that god-awful gel in your hair.'" Draco laughed. "I didn't even know that we were promised to each other yet."

That assertive little girl was a distant memory from another life. Here, at the end, Pansy wished that she could have warned her. Maybe if somebody had bothered to then things could have been different.

"There really wasn't a baby?" she sobbed.

"I don't know," he whispered back. "I don't think so."

She felt something inside her break, a hope she hadn't even realized she'd been harboring. Pansy sobbed again. She never would have known who the father was, anyway.

"Pansy?" Draco suddenly cried in alarm.

It took a great deal of effort, but she forced her eyes to open and look at him. Her energy was sapping away just as quickly as the blood from her side.

"Oh, don't scare me like that," his voice trembled. "I thought that you had..."

Not yet. But soon.

She was so close to that dark abyss that she could feel herself sinking back into the misty shroud... The world was slipping away. Her fractured brain was separated from her.

But not yet. She still had one last obligation to the world of men.

Draco was so close to her that Pansy barely had to move to place a soft kiss on his mouth. He kissed her back and gently stroked her cheek. It was something so ultimately familiar, that it was almost like being back in the Slytherin dorms, curled up together on Pansy's bed. She didn't even taste the blood. A wave of unexpected tenderness engulfed her. She had loved him then, and despite all that had happened, she still loved him.

Poor Blaise.

Pansy pulled back slightly and smiled sadly at him. "I'll see you on the other side, my love."

Whatever Draco opened his mouth to say next was never heard, because Pansy had summoned up the remainder of her strength to grip a fallen shard of glass. Without warning, she drove it up as hard as she could into his throat.

Startled gray eyes bore into hers, shock and confusion so evident that the emotions were almost tangible.

Pansy held the gaze and stroked his hair with bloodstained fingers while Draco made weird gurgling noises in his throat. Crimson blood soon erupted from his mouth, and it mixed together with her tears in an unholy river that flowed between them.

She continued to stare into his eyes until Draco's became vacant and his body went entirely still.

Satisfied that he was dead, Pansy made sure that his eyes were closed before she finally allowed her own to slide shut.

Unlike Draco, she kept her promises.

Dear Blaise. As he'd lain dying on that cold pavement in Surrey, struck down by Draco, himself, he'd begged Pansy to avenge him. Well, not in so many melodramatic words, but his wish had been clear enough. Dear, dear Blaise...

Lost his hero but gained a martyrdom.

She couldn't love him like he deserved, but she could give him this.

She had.

Now, Pansy was ready to go.

Someone had once told her that a minute on earth was actually a century in hell. If that was true, then Draco already had a pretty decent head start on her.

Pansy smiled.

Hell wouldn't be big enough to hold them both.

**********************

Finis.