Pariah

Pariah, Chapter Thirteen

To Hunt and to be Hunted

What's this whole world coming to
Things just ain't the same
Any time the hunter gets captured by the game

From "The Hunter Gets Captured By the Game" by Blondie

On the first day of February, it started to rain.

And it wasn't fresh spring rain or hot summer rain; it was hard, cold, driving rain, winter's last blowout. The kind of rain that hadn't lessened in intensity even three days later, as Ron watched it coming down in sheets across the Quidditch pitch from his seat in Defense Against the Dark Arts. The kind of rain that he knew, if he were out in it, would soak through his clothes and freeze him to the bone in a matter of seconds. Even so, he'd much rather be out on the grounds swimming in it than out in the corridor asking Pansy for her help with the Marauder's Map, which he was supposed to do after class. He was supposed to have done it last week, actually, but had been putting it off, and now he was out of time. He'd just have to suck it up and be a man about it, he guessed.

But Ron couldn't help cringe at the thought. He really couldn't. Ever since that night in Dumbledore's office, every time he thought about Pansy, he thought about Pansy with Malfoy. And what was worse, every time he saw either of them, he imagined them together, which made his skin crawl and his stomach tighten. He just couldn't get it out of his mind. Sure, people changed, but Malfoy had always been an arsehole. And what was more, he couldn't quite sort out if this new knowledge of Pansy's previous relationship with Malfoy made him feel jealous, angry, or just plain sick. And the fact that Malfoy could still get under his skin didn't help any at all.

Ron groaned and turned his distracted attention back to Professor Tonks, who was detailing for the class the theoretical groundwork of a stealth tactic that was to be their weekend project. A detailed report was due in two weeks, and Ron hadn't even bothered to read the section yet.

"To hunt and to be hunted," she said as she walked among the student tables. "It is survival. At its most basic level, to be the hunter is to be the one with the power: power over another life, power over circumstance, power to prevail and to live. The need to hunt has been manifested in a civilized society as the need to have, the need to seize and to make something one's own." She paused dramatically as she circled the back of the class.

Ron scribbled away in his notebook and thought about the garden gnomes at the Burrow. He had hunting experience, of a sort.

"The other, to be hunted. It is again a mechanism for survival, but it is defensive. You do not want to be hunted. To be prey makes you feel powerless and afraid. The knowledge that something is out there and wants to make a meal out of you, whether literally or metaphorically, is a startling prospect. To survive being hunted means that you must be smarter than your predator: you have to know how to protect yourself, how to hide, and also how to battle, should it come to that."

Harry shifted his weight in his chair and bent further over his non-existent notes as Professor Tonks walked past their table.

"Now, we've all heard the adage that knowledge is power. In this assignment, this is especially true, as power lies not only in hunting a truth that seeks to remain hidden, but also in maintaining the upper hand by not compromising one's own position. Knowledge is what you will be hunting and what you will be defending. Information is your life, and you will be guarding it as such." Professor Tonks finished at the front of the classroom, standing behind her desk with that look on her face she often had right before she began the ritualistic terrorizing of her students.

Ron paused with his quill on his parchment and looked around quickly at his other classmates. It was a comfort to him that almost everyone looked as afraid as he felt. Being in Professor Tonks' class was a bi-weekly exercise in being hunted, and although Ron had been prey his entire life to five older brothers and a borderline tyrannical mother, he still quaked in his trainers when Tonks had that look in her eye.

"Mr. Finnegan, an example of a predator/prey relationship."

Seamus sat up a little straighter and appeared deep in thought for a moment. "Er, fox and hare?"

Professor Tonks nodded. "Good. The fox chases the hare, and the hare runs, afraid for his life. But there is another dynamic affecting this relationship. Mr. Boot?"

"The fox's natural instinct is to chase the hare. He doesn't know not to chase it. The hare is intrinsically weaker. The hare is intrinsically prey, and as such, instinctively eludes. It is the law of nature."

Professor Tonks nodded and Terry looked supremely pleased with himself. "That is correct, Mr. Boot. The dynamic in effect is instinct, not desire."

Harry's hand shot up into the air.

"Yes, Mr. Potter?" Tonks asked with an air of amusement as she took a sip of coffee from her "#1 Mum" mug.

"The hunted aren't always the weaker ones, are they? Sometimes," Harry paused, shifting his weight in his seat again, "the prey is weaker, like with the fox and the hare, but don't you think that sometimes the person being hunted is the one with the most power, the biggest threat?"

Tonks sipped from her mug. "Please continue, Mr. Potter."

"Okay, take the hare for example. The hare can run fast, yeah, but the fox is sly. The fox also has a pack of guys on horses with big shiny guns following it, doesn't it? Clearly, the fox has the upper hand, and it's not really a fair fight, is it? The hare is just trying to have a good time in the forest, or whatever, just minding it's own business, when along comes this fox and all these guys on horses, and the hare thinks, 'I better run from this fox that clearly wants me dead and all these psychos following it.' So the hare takes off running, but the hare does have some advantage, mainly because he doesn't have a boatload of sycophants slowing him down and mucking up his plans at every turn." Harry's tone had taken on an edge of sarcasm, and Ron was quite sure he wasn't talking about the average fox and hare anymore. "And the fox has its predators, too, like big dogs and, and wolves, and, you know, bigger, stronger animals who don't want the fox and all those guys on horses stomping through their forest. But the fox chases the hare because he's not smart enough to figure out he shouldn't be in the forest with a bunch of guys on horses to begin with, but the hare is faster and can, you know, dart between trees and stuff, and the fox didn't think of that. And I'm sure that if you were to statistically look at the results, you'd find that more times than not, the hare gets away in the end."

"Interesting viewpoint, Mr. Potter," Tonks said with a nod before she pointed out at the class. "Another example, Mr. Nott."

Ron and Harry briefly exchanged looks. Harry shrugged slightly.

The only sign of discomfort exhibited by the stringy-haired Slytherin was a moment's pause and a blink. "Man and woman."

"A fascinating example, Mr. Nott. Would you care to explain for the class?"

"A man seeks out a woman. In his nature is the need to conquer and to further his bloodline."

"Would you like to add to that, Ms. Turpin?"

Lisa, with a very annoyed look on her face, looked intensely at Professor Tonks while she answered. "In a patriarchal society, a man's traditional gender roles dictate such a need. A man perhaps feels that in order to be masculine, he must streamline his desires in accordance with his gender roles. What Mr. Nott fails to realize, is that it is not a rule, but a decision. In modernized, mechanized society, traditional gender roles, based on outdated historical models, are obsolete, bordering on gratuitous and ironic. A man does not need to conquer a woman in order to satisfy an urge to conquest. There are many other forms of conquest that are not gender specific, such as winning at sports, achieving high marks, or accomplishing tasks. Gender roles seek only to perpetuate the system for which they were created, at the risk of undermining any sort of true social progress."

Ron and Seamus exchanged bewildered looks while Lisa continued.

"Furthermore, to say that a man needs to conquer a woman in order to fulfill his natural instinct to mate is purely bunk. In an age such as this one, with the advances Healers have made in obstetrics and genetics, not to mention the technological advances of Muggles in these areas, it is a wonder that man and woman need mate at all, for life can be created without copulation or coupling. Delegating the task of the survival of the human race to the realm of the male is simply absurd."

Ravenclaws, Ron thought.

"Gender politics aside, however," Lisa went on, "Mr. Nott's notion that the relationship between a man and a woman is by nature one of predator and prey, respectively, dismisses entirely the important notion of self-determination and autonomy, mainly that a man or a woman can and often does exert free will over his or her instincts and intuition, so that he or she can effectively suppress and alter urges, turning needs into wants and urges into desires, and vice versa. Nothing is absolute when the variables of psychological and sociological effects are taken into account. Mr. Nott's example clearly speaks to his ignorance of humanity."

A silence settled over the class while Lisa and Theodore exchanged glares. Ron had understood maybe every third word of that, but it was clear that somehow, Lisa had managed to insult Nott, and Ron thought that was all right.

"A rebuttal for your gender, Mr. Goldstein?"

Anthony looked highly uncomfortable. "Purely for the sake of argument, let us reverse the gender dynamic. The woman, as a hunter, seeks in a mate strength, character, intelligence, and physical beauty, perhaps fortune. As Lisa pointed out earlier, though, these desires are the products of years of enforced gender stereotypes and social conditioning. But there is no denying that women can be wily, manipulative, and often conniving in order to exact their will in a society which seeks to suppress them. The prey becomes the predator... hypothetically, of course."

Seamus snickered, and Ron felt a smirk tug at the corner of his mouth, which he quickly worked to restrain. Wily, manipulative, and conniving sounded a lot like some people.

"Hypothetically, then, you are suggesting that the hunted can adapt, Mr. Goldstein?" Tonks asked curiously.

"Exactly. Hypothetically, speaking. No one wants to be prey. Everyone wants to have power and the security that comes along with having that power. It's in our nature."

Hermione slowly raised her hand.

"A counterpoint, Ms. Granger?"

"I think a very important point has been missed. It also a basic human need to feel loved. Everyone wants to feel loved, regardless of gender. But to find love is an act of hunting, as well. It is borne of need, but ultimately it is brought about by desire. We seek out lovers with the intention of gaining from them comfort and satisfaction, to conquer our loneliness and feelings of displacement or longing. I am not one to argue that femininity and masculinity are independent of this act, but I do believe that to love and to be loved is not dissimilar to hunting and being hunted."

Professor Tonks smiled. "In loving, then, a person is both the hunter and the hunted, is that what you are implying, Ms. Granger?"

"Yes, Professor."

"Would you care to add to that, Ms. Parkinson?"

Ron's head snapped to look from Hermione to Pansy so fast, he saw motion blurs long after his gaze had settled on Pansy's face. She was wearing a very queer expression.

"Well," she began, shifting in her seat and fidgeting for a moment with her quill before her eyes snapped up, focused and determined. For a moment, just a split-second, she looked at Ron, before turning to Hermione. "Love is a messy and peculiar business. No one even agrees what it is. But in love, even, power comes into play. Love can be used as a weapon. Love involves secrets, vulnerability, and sometimes outright defenselessness. When we give to someone in the act of loving, we give him or her ammunition. We allow ourselves to be hurt. We open ourselves up to pain and pleasure, simultaneously. A lover is a predator who wants the heart of its prey, among other things. But sometimes, that is also sought without love. Sometimes, pain is executed without the intention of pleasure, and that is purely an act of predation. In that sort of situation, it is not love which is sought, but solely power."

Ron kept his eyes locked on her, but she wouldn't look at him. He wondered if she was referring to himself or to Draco, and he thought if he could just see the look on her face, he would know. He was willing her, in his mind. Look at me. Look at me. His stomach felt momentarily like it was closing in on itself. Did she love him? Had she loved Draco like that? Had he hurt her? Had he loved her in return? And why was he feeling jealous?

Draco coughed and kicked his chair, and Pansy looked at him like she was skinning him with the powers of her mind.

Ron fucking hated Draco Malfoy.

Professor Tonks' eyes snapped to the pale Slytherin at the other side of the classroom. "Your thoughts, Mr. Malfoy?"

"I have nothing to add," Draco said coldly.

Professor Tonks stood for a moment, looking at him crossly. Ron considered this a small victory. "You mentioned secrets, Ms. Parkinson, which brings us back to this week's exercise. The first part of this week's assignment is the hunt. You will seek out knowledge by laying traps, developing tactics, and observing one of your classmates in order to discover a secret. In turn, you will each also take on the role of the hunted; as you will each have a secret to hide. You will know only the name of the classmate, your own personal secret, and the secret that you will be trying to discover, but not the name of the person trying to discover yours. You will refer to your text and classroom notes for guidelines to develop a plan of action. Two weeks from now, you will hand in a journal which will delineate your plan of action, provide a daily record of how you carried out this plan, and also illustrate how you protected your secret. While it is not required of this assignment, I should hope that you also make efforts to discover who is hunting you, as it will aid in keeping your secrets.

"As I call your name, you will come to the front of the class and pick up your assignment, which will consist of the three pieces of information previously outlined. Ms. Abbot, your assignment." Professor Tonks held up an envelope, and Hannah went forward a bit shakily to retrieve it.

When Ron received his assignment, he considered tearing it open straightaway, but then decided better of it, following Harry's example and slipping the envelope, unopened, into the back pocket of his trousers. "This is a nightmare," Ron whispered to Harry, who only turned his green, distracted gaze to Ron, and nodded mutely.

When class was dismissed, Ron turned to Seamus. "As if we don't have enough to be getting on with, now I have to worry about someone watching my every move. And how are we supposed to know what to look for? She couldn't have made this any harder on us, could she?"

Seamus shrugged. "I think it's tops. We've been given license to spy on our classmates. It sure beats three rolls of parchment on transmogrification in relation to the space/time continuum," he said, alluding to the Transfiguration assignment that had the entire seventh year class fighting over library books. "I had to bribe Ernie Macmillan with manual labor just to have a look at Adam Douglas's chapter on metamorphosis and egg timers. I'm telling you, I think that boy is a bit high-strung, if not totally off his nut."

"I'm writing mine on nightmare realities," Ron told him. "Most of my research involves sleeping."

"Why didn't I think of that?" Neville asked suddenly from beside him.

"I thought you were doing yours on hallucinations?" Ron asked.

Neville smiled. "Yeah, it's going to have old McG's head spinning. I figure I'll get marks just for being excessively strange."

"Does it work like that?" Seamus asked. "Maybe I'll change my title to Cross-Dressing in the Age of Glamours."

"I'm not sure that putting on lipstick and silky knickers is entirely considered transmogrification," Dean added by way of joining the conversation. "Although, it definitely does constitute a shift in reality."

"Fair point," Seamus said. "Maybe I should stick to temporal disturbances and conjuring teapots. Mum always said a watched pot never boils."

"Well, it's an interesting concept," Dean said. "But if you're watching from the future, you are still watching."

"What if you're watching from the past? Does that make any difference?" Neville asked.

"With any luck, I'll figure it out. I'm just glad she gave us plenty of time to revise. I'll need all of spring break for this one," Seamus said darkly. "Oh, balls. I left my quill on my table. I'll be right back."

While Seamus ran back to the Defense classroom, the Gryffindor boys stopped in the corridor. Dean and Neville continued their discussions of McGonagall's essay, Harry further ignored all of them, and Ron took the opportunity to fall into step beside Pansy as she walked past.

"Hey," Ron said, nervously toying with the strap of his bag. He had been practicing how to introduce the topic of the Marauder's Map into the conversation, but whatever he had planned had flown out of his head the moment he saw her. "Can I talk to you?"

"Huh?" Pansy said, looking up suddenly from the parchment she had been reading.

"Is that Tonks's assignment?" Ron asked, gesturing to the parchment Pansy quickly folded and was now stuffing into her bag. "Did you get anything good?"

"Not really," Pansy said quickly, glancing down the hallway.

Ron swallowed the lump in his throat. "Do you have somewhere to be right now?"

Pansy shrugged. "I was going to have lunch, actually. Why?"

"I need to talk to you. It's important," Ron said, almost harshly in an attempt to cover his nerves, meanwhile in his head reciting the mantra, For Harry. For Harry. For Harry.

Pansy quirked an eyebrow.

He nodded towards the door of an unused classroom. "Let's go in here for a minute."

"I'm not entirely sure I should trust you, Weasley," Pansy said, smirking but staying put. "I've heard what seventh year boys do to girls in empty classrooms when they should be having lunch."

"Just come on," Ron said, growing frustrated and more and more nervous by the second. He took her arm and steered her into the dusty classroom. Since none of the torches were lit, it was pretty dark inside, but nonetheless, Ron shut the door behind them, plunging them into the otherworldly light of the rainy afternoon. He could hear the rain outside, driving down in heavy sheets.

"So, here we are. Two kids, alone in a dark classroom. Nowhere to be, nothing to do," Pansy cooed. "Now I'm sure I don't trust you."

Ron ran a hand over his eyes. "Look, this is important. Will you just listen to me for a sodding minute?"

"Fine," Pansy said, affronted. She threw her bag down onto one of the tables and sat down heavily in a chair. "What do you want?"

"Okay," Ron said, beginning to pace. "Okay. So, you know how you've been spending all of that time with Ginny down in the dungeons looking for that secret passageway?"

Pansy's eyes grew big. "I knew it! I knew it! You were up to something, the lot of you!"

Bugger. "Ginny didn't tell you?"

"No, but you just did. She said it was too dangerous."

"Fuck. Well, anyway. That's what you've been doing down there." Ron began pacing faster. "And the reason you've been doing that is because we're trying to find an evacuation route out of Hogwarts, just in case."

"Just in case what?" Pansy said skeptically, eyes narrowed.

"Just in case Hogwarts comes under attack."

Pansy's eyebrows shot up almost into her hairline.

"Look, it's not as crazy as it sounds," Ron said heatedly. "After that thing in Diagon Alley, it became pretty obvious that they're up to something, showing off their power like that. Just plain stupid, if you ask me. But we think they plan on making a move on Hogwarts."

"And why, pray tell, would they want to do that?"

"Harry."

Pansy rolled her eyes. "It's always him, isn't it?"

"Most of the time, yeah, actually, it is," Ron said, annoyed. "Anyway, that's only part of it." He paced back and forth in front of the windows, looking out at the rain and thinking about how in the hell he was going to explain this to Pansy. She didn't even know a thing about the Marauder's Map. He'd maybe just have to start at the beginning.

"Would you sit down already? You're giving me a headache," Pansy said petulantly.

"Right. Sorry," Ron sat down swiftly in a chair by the window. "Anyway, about twenty years ago, some people who went to school here made this map, right? And on this map are the different ways in and out of Hogwarts, except only that dungeon passage isn't on there, which is why Ginny is trying to find it."

"You lost me."

"Can I finish?" Ron snapped. Pansy rolled her eyes. "So, anyway. The map also shows where people are in the castle, like Filch and Snape and Dumbledore and everyone. Well, Hermione thinks--actually, we all kind of think--that we can use the map if the school ever comes under attack, only we have to make some changes to it."

"Changes?"

"Yeah, changes. But in order to make the changes, we have to re-open the original spells, which is kind of a big pain in the arse to explain, but basically, we need to use the blood of people who have bonds with the people who made the map to begin with. And for that, we need you." Ron, having finished, took a deep breath and sat back in his chair, waiting for Pansy to say yes.

Pansy, however, just sat there, looking at Ron curiously. Finally, she said, "Is that it?"

"What?"

"Are you done?"

"Well, yeah, I guess." Ron blinked.

Pansy crossed her arms over her chest and looked at him crossly. "Let me get this straight. I've been spending my free time down in the dungeons with your sister because you all think there is some sort of secret passageway out of the castle down there, only you don't know for sure, and it's not on any maps?"

Ron nodded.

"And now you need my blood for some spell on some map because I share a bond with someone who made it?"

Ron nodded again.

"This is the craziest thing I have ever heard," Pansy snapped. "Who is it?"

"Who is what?"

"Who is this person with whom I supposedly share a bond?"

"Oh," Ron said, forehead crinkling. He wondered if he had to tell her. Maybe he could work around it. "Well, it's someone who was related to Malfoy."

"Why don't you just get him to prick his finger then?" Pansy asked.

"Well, it's a little more complicated than that, isn't it?" Ron said, beginning again to get angry. "Believe me, if this was just about blood, I would have no problem cutting the little ferret. But I don't trust him, and in order for this to work, the person needs to be trustworthy."

"And you trust me?"

Ron shrugged. "Yeah, I guess I do. It won't even hurt and it will only take about twenty minutes to do the spell."

Pansy continued to look at him skeptically.

"What?"

"I need to think about this."

"What's to think about? It's a little poke and a few incantations."

"It's blood magic. Do you know how dangerous it could be? Unless I know exactly what you are doing, I don't want any part of it. And even then, I'll still need to think about it. Blood magic is serious business. I'm not just going to let you guys--and besides, how do I constitute a bond with Draco's ancestors?"

Ron was getting very red, he could feel it. Why did she always have to be so bloody difficult? He didn't even want to think about it, let alone say it aloud. "Because you and Draco bonded, that's why. Blood spilt or shared or something."

Pansy looked at him like she was going to rip his head off. Through clenched teeth, she said, "What are you talking about?"

Exasperated, Ron stood and began to pace again. "Look, I know that you and Malfoy--that, you know, you you know. And as sick as it makes me to think about it-- Malfoy of all people? I can't even-- what were you thinking? He's disgusting. You couldn't have possibly been that desperate. Plus, you were, like, young-- and what were you doing that kind of thing for? I bet he said that he loved you just to get in your knickers. Sounds like something Malfoy would-- you weren't any older than Ginny! If Ginny ever-- ugh, I can't even think about it. It makes me want to throw up. It's been in my head all week, and it just makes me-- Malfoy? That's so pathetic! -- But I suppose it doesn't matter, because it all works out in the end, doesn't it?" He stopped rambling when he caught sight of the look of deadly malice that had suddenly come over Pansy's face. "We just need your help, all right? So are you in or are you out?"

Pansy stood. She appeared to be shaking, and Ron thought it was probably with anger. Typical. "Well, as flattering as it is that you would think to use me for such a noble task, considering how sick I make you feel, I'm afraid I'll have to pass." She sneered at him and picked up her bag.

"You're just going to say no?" Ron said advancing on her, voice rising. "You can't just say no. We need you, Pansy!"

"You know, I don't really fucking care," Pansy said in a cold, off-handed voice. "You Gryffindors think that you can just go about using people for your little good deeds, well guess what? Not this time. Not me."

"Oh, come off it!" Ron screamed back. "You care just as much about keeping the castle safe as anyone."

"Because I'm in your stupid defense club? Because we kissed a couple of times? Because you think I'm your girlfriend?" Pansy roared, crossing the distance between them in a few quick steps. "I was only ever in the stupid DA because Dumbledore made me, remember? And as for this thing between you and me, that was clearly a mistake. I see that now."

"What is wrong with you?" Ron yelled. "Don't you see how important this is?" This close, he could smell her, smelling like she always did, something exotic and arousing and entirely Pansy, but he was too irate to let it get to him. "Christ, Parkinson!"

"If it's so bloody important to you, why don't you get someone else to sleep with Malfoy? And then you can use their blood in your little spell and you'd never have to even see me again, since you apparently find me so repulsive." Pansy had both hands on hips now, looking up at Ron with her chin jutted out and her eyes hard and sharp as diamonds.

"HA!" Ron scoffed. "Like anyone I know would want to sleep with that arsehole. And for the record, I never thought you were my girlfriend."

"No, apparently just your whore," Pansy spat.

Shocked into silence, Ron just looked at her, feeling sick and angry and hurt. "How could you even say something like that?"

But Pansy had turned her back on him, and, picking her bag up off the table, said, "You make me sick. You and all your fucking idiot friends." Then she was walking out the door.

"Pansy, wait!" Ron said, following her out of the room, but she was already gone. Out in the hallway, Seamus, Dean, Neville, and Harry were at the very end of the corridor, still talking in a little clump. He turned to watch as Pansy walked swiftly in the other direction, her robes swaying as her footsteps echoed out in the nearly abandoned corridor.

He considered going after her, but it was clear she didn't want anything to do with him just then. He had learned some things about Pansy since the beginning of the year, and one of them was that once she had made up her mind, it was hell to get her to change it.

As he gathered his bag from where he had thrown it on the classroom floor, it seemed to him like there were two Pansy Parkinsons: the little pug-faced Parkinson who did unnamable things with Draco Malfoy and hated everything Gryffindor and Weasley, and then the person whom he had come to think of as his Pansy, the Pansy who demanded to be petted when she was drunk in his bed and then refused to give him back his favorite Chudley Cannons shirt. The Pansy that smelled like trouble and talked like trouble, who probably was trouble, but the kind of trouble that Ron liked. He had never considered that that Pansy, his Pansy, wasn't the real Pansy. It was perhaps what she would snidely call the Gryffindor in Ron that had made it so easy to assume that it was. But now, as Ron walked out of the unused classroom, alone and having failed to convince Pansy to help them with the Marauder's Map, he wondered if there were really two sides of her, the Parkinson side and the Pansy side. He knew which one he preferred, and which one he had probably just seen the last of.

She made him sodding barmy, is what she did.

And then it occurred to him that the ache in his belly, the gut-wrenching, painful hurt inside him, wasn't just disappointment or jealousy or even hate, but it was something else. He liked Pansy, maybe even more than liked her, or at least part of her. And she seemed, despite his efforts or perhaps because of them, to now be gone, leaving him standing in the corridor, alone, just like she used to do.

"Oy, Ron!" Seamus called from down the hall. "Are you coming or what?"

Ron glanced up at his classmates, and then back down the hall just in time to see the hems of Pansy's robes whip around the corner. "Yeah," he said miserably. "I'm coming."

* * *

Pansy's anger had propelled her up three flights of stairs, banging into countless younger students in her haste, and had taken her to the door of the library before she finally quieted her mind enough to let the realization hit her that she had just broken up with Ron.

Well, not really broken up, Pansy rationalized, since we weren't even really dating to begin with. Fucking pillock.

At any rate, she couldn't possibly eat in this state, let alone face all of those people without killing a fair share of them, so she went to the one place she least expected Ron to follow, but at the library door, she decided she was much too livid to study right then, so she turned (knocking straight into three fifth year Hufflepuff girls), and continued walking. At the end of the corridor, she turned up the stairs that took her to the sixth floor, and then down the dark hallway to the little disused staircase where she and Ron often sat out the better part of their prefect rounds, and stomped about halfway up before she collapsed.

Collapsed maybe wasn't the right word. She threw her bag down on the steps and threw herself down beside it, not in a lovesick way, she assured herself, but in a way fully expressing her bone-deep anger. She raked her fingers through her hair, from the nape of her neck forward, hiding her face in a veil of dark hair. Pressing hard with her fingertips, she clawed her cheeks.

Her mind was going a mile a minute, and her blood felt like it was surging through her body, pushing at her skin and her organs, compressing her heart and lungs and stomach. She hadn't felt this way since--no, this was entirely new. When Draco--well, that was different. That was love.

This? This was something else. And that Ron, that Weasley, had the nerve! Weasley, judging her!

What had she been thinking? Did she honestly think that he could be anything other than an arrogant, self-righteous, judgmental fool? He came from a family of fools, and was brought up in a house of fools, his whole existence only meaningful by proxy and in relation to those fools. He didn't even matter. In the scheme of things, he was completely irrelevant. He was just the ruddy sidekick.

It was just hormones. Hormones and bad timing and nothing more than that. She was rebounding, and he had just been convenient. She didn't need his fucking approval. He had no right! And that he could possibly think that her relationship with Draco had been somehow perverse, when he was the one who had spent the last three years desperately trying to shag that Mudblood!

Who was the pathetic one?

She was incredibly hacked off.

He made her sodding barmy, is what he did.

"Fucking hell, I'm thinking like him again," she muttered to herself, pulling at her hair.

She had spent months with the lot of them, doing her stupid rounds, helping them, even attending all of those ridiculous DA meetings. And for what? Because the Headmaster had told her to, and because she thought she would be helping Professor Snape. She realized now that the Headmaster, that mad old fool who had never proven himself better than an enemy of her house, had no real authority to compel her to go to those fucking meetings. She realized now that if she had really wanted to help Professor Snape, there were surely better ways. And by better, she meant less-Gryffindor ways. She meant Slytherin ways.

She had been tricked. She had been manipulated. They had caught her in a moment of weakness, when she had been shocked half-witless with fright and would have probably numbly acquiesced to anything they asked of her. They had preyed on her. They had cornered her and trapped her. But that was over now. She saw them for what they were.

The thing about Gryffindors and their lot was that they always acted like they had all the answers, but in reality, they weren't even asking the right questions, let alone looking at the damned question right to begin with. They always made things so simple. Problem, solution. Slytherin, Gryffindor. Bad, good. Boy, girl. Black, white.

A light cough echoed up the stairwell from the floor below. She lifted her head, immediately recognizing the shadowed form leaning against the arch of the stairwell below her.

She sighed heavily and blew her fringe out of her eyes.

On the sixth floor landing, the form pushed itself off of the wall and began languidly climbing the stairs. He seemed a shadow, a slip, an apparition, with eyes built to see right through things. Eyes that had seen right through her and the charade of that Weasley. And now, looking into those clear blue endless eyes, she found she knew him. For the first time, she saw in him a certain amount of greatness. She saw in him a certain amount of herself, the reflection of their house.

Over the past few months, she had been seeing the brown, green, and blue of Gryffindor in the gazes she met and held, and now, to be seeing in him the mark of someone so similar, it was like coming home for summer holidays and finding her bedroom exactly as she had left it. Quantifiable. Familiar. Inviting.

"Tell me," she muttered ruthlessly. "Tell me everything."

"Everything?" he whispered as he sat beside her on the cold stone steps.

"Everything," Pansy repeated, smoothing her hair and fixing him with a look. Draco had told her once her eyes were murky mud puddles, but she knew better. Her eyes were deep when lit with fire, fathomless and flecked with sparks like a landscape tapestry picked with gold, the eyes of her mother and a long line of strong women, and they met the calm blue of her companion with an intensity she hoped conveyed how very serious she was.

Blaise smirked as he lightly grazed her cheek with the backs of his fingers. "Welcome back to Slytherin, Pansy."

* * *

In Transfiguration that afternoon, Ron broke the news to Harry and Hermione.

"She said no," Ron muttered as he sat down in his seat.

Harry and Hermione exchanged a knowing look. "What happened, Ron?" Hermione asked in an exasperated tone.

"Why do you think something happened?" Ron said testily, taking out his Transfiguration book and slamming it down on the table harder than he meant to. "I asked her and she said no. End of story."

"Did you two have a fight?" Hermione whispered.

"No," Ron lied.

"Oh, Ron, you picked a fight with her over Malfoy, didn't you?"

"No!" Ron said, and then added, "And for your information, she started it. At least I think she did. It was all very confusing."

Hermione made that noise in her throat that she made when she was in extreme disapproval of something, often Ron. "I wondered why she wasn't at lunch."

"Did Pansy break up with you? That's a shame," Terry said, taking the vacant seat next to Hermione.

Ron fixed him with a malevolent glare. Terry Boot didn't need to nose into Ron's personal life if he wanted Ron to hate him, because Ron already did. And mightily, at that. He'd been willing Terry to give him a reason to hex him ever since the start of the year. "We were never officially together. Makes it a touch hard to break up."

"I thought you two were going to Hogsmeade together for Valentine's," Neville said from the seat across the aisle. "Or is that the part she said no about?"

Ron felt like banging his head against his table. And so he did. Several times.

Harry reached over and grabbed his hair, mid-bang. "Ron, stop."

"Okay," Ron said miserably just as Professor McGonagall took her place in front of the class and cleared her throat. "Er... Harry?"

"What?" Harry asked absently. "Oh, yeah. Sorry." He released his grasp, and his fingers slid softly out of Ron's hair, trailing slightly down his neck before they were quite gone. He patted Ron on the back twice, and said, "We'll work it out. Don't worry."

* * *

"Padma?" Pansy asked softly, approaching her childhood friend in the library after dinner.

"Hmm?" the Ravenclaw said without looking up from the thick book she was reading.

"I was wondering if you might be able to do me a favor," Pansy said, carefully folding her arms over her stomach and clasping her Transfiguration book to her chest.

"If you want to see Douglas's Dimensional Distensions, you'll have to get in line. I have it after Ernie, Zacharias has it after me, and then I think it goes to Corner. Sorry," Padma said, eyes never leaving the text.

"Actually, this has nothing to do with McGonagall's essay," Pansy said softly.

Surprised, Padma finally lifted her head. Expression changing instantly upon seeing Pansy, she asked, "Are you all right?"

Eyes brimming with tears, Pansy shakily took a seat across from Padma. "I know this is really short notice, and you probably have loads of revising to do, but I was hoping you could cover my prefect shift tonight."

Padma cocked her head to one side and looked intently at Pansy. "Is there something wrong?"

Pansy sighed heavily and dramatically, dabbing at her eyes with the hem of her sleeve. "Well, you know how Ron and I were sort of seeing each other..."

Padma's expression dramatically changed from one of worry to one of knowing annoyance. "What did he do now?"

"I really just can't do rounds with him tonight. Or possibly ever again," Pansy said, filling her voice with desperation. "Please? I would ask Hannah, but she's with Draco, and that isn't really any better, and as far as Hermione is concerned..." Pansy's shoulders started shaking. She raised her hands to her face and began crying little sobs choked out between shuddering breaths.

"Pansy?" Padma asked, concerned. She got out of her seat and crouched down beside Pansy's chair. "Pansy, what is it?"

"Oh, Padma!" Pansy sobbed. "It's horrible!"

Padma rubbed small circles between Pansy's shoulder blades as she hunched over the table, sobbing. "I'm sure it's not that bad. Ron's a real moron, don't get me wrong, but he's nothing to cry over, surely."

Pansy took that as her cue to cry a little harder. "I gave him everything. And then he repays me by doing this?"

"Shhh," Padma whispered warningly. "Madam Pince will come over here, and you know how she gets."

"I caught them!" Pansy said, snapping her head up and looking at Padma through her tears. "I caught them! He said it was over between them, but I knew it wasn't true. I just knew it."

Padma's hand on Pansy's back stilled, and her eyes grew very, very wide. "Caught... who?" she said carefully.

"Him and... and... her!" Pansy threw her hands back over her face and started sobbing violently.

"Ron and Hermione?" Padma said, her voice edged in panic. "But she's with Terry. Hermione wouldn't cheat on Terry, would she? And especially not with Ron, of all people."

"You should've seen them," Pansy whispered fiercely from between her fingers. "Going at it like... like two... two... two Gryffindors in heat."

"Oh. My. God." Padma started rubbing Pansy's back again more fervently.

"You see why I can't go on rounds with him again, don't you? How am I supposed to face him, after he's made such a fool out of me?" Pansy pleaded, sniffling loudly and trying to control her sobs. "I thought he loved me."

Padma caught Pansy's eye and looked at her with the most sympathy Pansy had ever seen on another human being's face. "I am so sorry, Pansy. Anything I can do, just ask."

"So, we'll switch prefect partners, then?" Pansy swiped at her cheeks with the back of her hands and sniffed some more, but really thought that the worst of her crying was well past.

"Of course," Padma said, smiling gently at Pansy. "Oh, no," she said suddenly. "Do you think Terry knows?"

"I don't know," Pansy said seriously, looking across the library. "Do you think someone should tell him?"

Padma followed Pansy's gaze across the library to where Terry was mostly buried beneath books at one of the corner tables. "Well, if I was him, I would certainly want to know." Padma worried her lip between her teeth.

"I'm sure he'd want to hear it from a friend, though" Pansy whispered gently. "Instead of walking in on them like I did." She sniffed loudly again.

Padma returned her attention to Pansy. "That must have been very terrible for you."

Pansy nodded and began gathering her books again. "I really just can't be here right now," she said.

"Are you all right?" Padma asked again, concerned.

Pansy shrugged. "I will be. I just need to process this, I think. It just hurts so much."

Padma looked at her sympathetically, then stood. "You'll be all right."

Pansy smiled weakly as she pushed her chair back from the table. "Thanks for everything Padma. I really appreciate it."

Padma returned her smile, glancing over her shoulder at Terry once more. "Sure. No problem."

Pansy smiled at her again, and then quickly left the library.

Out in the hall, Blaise stepped out of a shadowed doorway. "So, how'd it go?"

"You were right," Pansy said. "Sharing my pain really does make me feel better."

Blaise smiled at her like a cat and led the way down to the Slytherin common room, even offering to carry her books as she went.

* * *

Ron paced the Entrance Hall, waiting for Pansy to come up the steps from the dungeons so that they could begin their rounds. He was dreading it, dreading the look on her face, dreading the words that were sure to come out of her mouth, dreading the possibility of her not saying anything at all, dreading that he'd say something else that would hack her off even more, dreading that he'd somehow never be able to fix this, make it right again.

And besides, he needed her. For the map.

Ron sighed heavily and finally sat down on the steps.

"Are you ready, Weasley?"

Ron turned around and looked up at Padma. "Ready for what?"

"For rounds," Padma said, rolling her eyes.

"I'm waiting for Pansy," Ron said, turning back around.

"No, you're not."

"Yes, I am."

"No, really, you're not."

"Listen, Padma, I know you're in Ravenclaw and that makes you think you're all-knowing or something, but trust me when I say that I'm waiting for Pansy. We're to do rounds together at nine."

Padma sighed. "Pansy's not coming."

"Sure she is. She's just late."

"No, I mean, she told me. She's not coming. I'm to go in her place."

Ron slowly turned around and looked at her through narrowed eyes. "Since when?"

"Since this afternoon."

Ron continued to look at her.

"Well, don't just sit there! Get up!"

Ron slowly got to his feet. Just his bloody brilliant luck. Stuck with Padma, who already hated him. Pansy had probably run off to tell her what a horrible person he was, and how he was such a moron, and wouldn't it be great if he was made to suffer? "Today is just not my day," he muttered ruefully.

Padma laughed shortly. "From what I've heard tell, you've had quite the day."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Ron asked.

"Oh, really, Ron. Did you really think you could get away with it?" Padma asked. "She was going to find out, you know."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Ron asked.

"If you don't know, I'm not going to tell you," Padma snapped, hands rested firmly on hips. "She told me everything."

"Oh, did she?" Ron said, growing angry.

Padma nodded, a self-satisfied smirk on her face.

"You girls and your conspiracies!" Ron said angrily, stomping off down the corridor. "I swear! I just don't believe it! One minute, everything is sunshine and daisies, and the next, you're kicking a man when he's down!" he yelled, opening and shutting classroom doors as they worked their way down the hallway.

"You're giving yourself too much credit," Padma said.

"You girls and your... your evil, vicious plots!" he continued, wand held aloft as he poked his head inside a dusty classroom. "You have to work in groups, don't you? All working together, like, like a pack of evil, vicious wolves, that's what you are!"

Padma stopped, mid-corridor, and gave him a withering look.

"Evil, vicious wolves with your evil, vicious, hairy ways, going about, mucking up boys' lives, with your evil, and your treachery, and your pack mentality!"

"It's interesting you should mention that. I was just thinking about natural selection."

Ron groaned and put his face in his palms. "Would you just--GAH! NO MORE TALKING!"

Padma raised an eyebrow. "Fine. Whatever you say, King Weasley."

Ron shook his wand at her. "Zippy the lippy, missy."

Padma scoffed and went back to checking the classrooms on her side of the corridor.

"King Weasley... I'll show her... evil, vicious... thinks she can just do whatever she pleases... evil... standing me up for rounds? Well..." Ron muttered.

Who the hell did Pansy Parkinson think she was, anyway? Well, he certainly wasn't going to just take whatever she decided to dish out. If she thought he was just going to hang about and wait for her to make her move, she had another thing coming. Even though he didn't really know how yet, or when... or even what he'd do to get his revenge... but he'd think of something. Oh, yes.

Ron chuckled malevolently in the middle of the fifth floor corridor, and Padma gave him a strange look. "All right?" she asked.

"Ravenclaws," Ron muttered, matching her look, evil eye to evil eye, as he opened the door to a small closet, and Seamus tumbled out.

"Oh, Ron, hey! How are you doing, mate? Enjoying rounds? Wonder if you've seen Hermione? She was supposed to meet me for, er, studying tonight," Seamus said, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

"Library," Ron replied gruffly. "Always in the damn library."

"Good, good. I'll just be off, then. Enjoy your, you know," he said before scampering off down the hallway in the opposite direction from the library steps.

"Gryffindors," Padma sighed.

* * *

Late in the dungeons that night, Blaise and Pansy waited.

"So this is what Filch is always going on about," Pansy said as she inspected the room in the wan light from her wand. "I bet he would have just loved to get the Weasley twins down here. We could have declared it a holiday. There really aren't enough occasions for torturing Weasleys, yeah?"

Blaise smiled slowly. "It's pretty amazing, isn't it?"

Pansy nodded, prodding a rusting pile of chains with the toe of her boot. "Romantic."

"Romance isn't really the point," Blaise said coolly.

"Zabini?" The whisper echoed through the corridor, and Pansy reminded herself that the next time she was going to ask Blaise to arrange a secret meeting in the dungeons, he was going to have to attach some sort of life threat clause, as in: you make any noise, and you're dead.

"Here," Blaise hissed. "Surely, I'm not the only person in the world that can find my way around the dark dungeons in the middle of the night. It isn't that difficult, just a grid work of passages with a few turns and trap doors. Nothing to worry about." He grinned at Pansy.

A head poked inside the dark dungeon room, quickly followed by the rest of a body.

"You're late," Pansy said plainly, flicking her wand so that the door softly shut.

"I know," the boy said. "Lumos!" he whispered softly, and the end of his wand flared. "What is this place, anyway?"

Blaise looked around the room smugly. "It's one of the chaining rooms," he said unworriedly. "They used to keep prisoners here when the castle had working dungeons."

"Ah," the boy said unconcernedly. "That would explain the iron rings in the walls then, wouldn't it?"

"Could we perhaps skip the chit-chat and get down to business?" Pansy said.

Blaise inclined his head toward the Ravenclaw. "Michael, you know Pansy, I presume?"

Michael Corner nodded at Pansy and Pansy nodded back at Michael. "We have Arithmancy together."

"Pansy asked me to arrange this meeting."

Michael looked from Pansy to Blaise and back again. "Oh, really? And what would the subject of this meeting be?"

Pansy and Blaise exchanged sly glances. "Information."

Michael rolled his eyes, and fished a silver cigarette case out from a deep pocket inside his cloak. Pansy caught sight of striped pajamas as he plucked a Muggle cigarette from the case and lit it with his wand. "What makes you think I'll tell you anything?"

Pansy waved a plume of smoke out of her face. "I've heard those things will kill you."

Michael shrugged. "We all have to go sometime, sweetheart."

"Can't we just torture it out of him?" Pansy asked suddenly, turning to Blaise.

Blaise smiled slowly and took a step forward, closer to Michael. He leaned forward and whispered, "You'll tell us whatever we need to know, Mikey."

Michael went ashen for a second. "That was just an experiment."

"Really? Because from what Zacharias said, it seems you've been collecting quite a lot of data," Blaise said, stepping away from Michael.

"Look," Michael said, taking a short puff off his cigarette and blowing the stream of smoke above his head, "we meet up in the West Tower every now and again. It's just a thing. Nothing to get all excited about. Nothing anyone needs to know about. Certainly nothing worthy of blackmail or torture. That's what this is, isn't it?"

"What do you know? Ravenclaws are clever," Pansy said, smiling. "Can we torture him now?"

Blaise was smiling, too. "Let's see what he has to say, first."

Looking down at the floor, Michael took another long drag from his cigarette before throwing it down on the ground, putting it out with the heel of his shoe, and pocketing the butt. "Fine. What do you want to know?"

"Let's start with Boot," Pansy said.

Michael sighed. "Terry is about as clean as they come. Totally harmless. Fanatic about tea. You bend a page in one of his books, and the boy sulks for a week."

"What about him and Granger?" Blaise pressed.

"Terry and Hermione?" Michael said, brows furrowing. "Not much to tell there, either. I know he's serious about her. Gave her that big gem for her birthday, was his grandmum's, he said."

"So they're close then?" Pansy asked.

Michael shrugged. "Sure, I guess."

"How close, do you reckon?"

"What are you getting at?" Michael asked suspiciously. "Because if you want to know about Hermione, you'd have better luck asking someone else. I don't want to mess with that bird, thanks."

"We're Slytherins. We laugh in the face of blatancy. Ha, ha," Pansy said dryly. "Humor me."

Sighing, Michael rubbed the bridge of his nose and shifted his weight from one foot to another. "Beyond what I see in public, I don't know much else about Hermione. Except..."

"Except what?" Pansy asked.

Michael looked up at them and dropped his voice. "Right before Christmas break, they got into this row right outside Ravenclaw tower. I heard them through the common room door. Not that I was eavesdropping, of course."

"Of course," Pansy agreed. "What were they fighting about, do you know?"

"As near as I can tell, it was something about a book. Some rare volume Hermione had found in the Restricted Section. Terry said it was dangerous, Hermione said it was very valuable, Terry said something about messing with the future, Hermione told him she wasn't a little girl and she knew perfectly well the consequences involved with messing with time. Very vague stuff. Doubt it would be worthwhile information."

Blaise and Pansy exchanged a meaningful look.

"Or not..." Michael said. "What did you say you needed to know about Granger for, anyway?"

"We didn't," Blaise said.

"Thanks ever so," Pansy said, opening the door that led back into the pitch-black corridor. "You've been a world of help."

"Right," Michael said, still eying them suspiciously as he walked out of the room. "Look, here's some free advice. Don't mess with Hermione. She's tough, and besides, if you mess with her, you're likely to bring down a whole world of hurt upon yourselves. She's got protection."

"Thanks! We'll keep that in mind!" Pansy said sarcastically as she shut the door. "Fucking Ravenclaws."

"I'm really quite amazed they don't get randomly hexed more often," Blaise said thoughtfully. "Do you think he'll be useful?"

"Well, it's a place to start. After all, there can only be so many books in the Restricted Section that foretell the future, right?" Pansy sighed heavily.

"Fucking Ravenclaws," Blaise repeated. "Hey, want to go to Hogsmeade with me on Valentine's?"

That's unexpected, Pansy thought, turning to look at Blaise. "What about Daphne?"

"Oh, I've been meaning to break things off with her," Blaise said flippantly.

"Yeah? Why's that?" Pansy said.

"You know how she eats? She makes that noise inside her mouth, that slurping-smacking noise, like the pressure of her tongue on the roof of her mouth is audible when she chews. I realized this morning at breakfast that it really creeps me out."

Pansy laughed. "You're breaking up with Daphne because of the way she chews?"

"Yeah," Blaise said, straight-faced. "It's more tangible than anything else I could think of. She's just so... Daphne. You know?"

Pansy sighed. Unfortunately, she knew exactly what he meant. "If you think the noises she makes when she chews are creepy, you should hear the noises she makes when she sleeps. It's like being in the room with a Lethifold or something. She always sounds like she's suffocating. First year, I checked on her nearly every night to make sure she was still breathing. Then I suppose I just began to tune it out."

"So, Valentine's then?" Blaise asked.

"That depends. Where are you taking me and what are we doing once we get there?" she asked, cocking her head slightly to one side and looking at him with a measured amount of indifference.

"Wherever and whatever you want," Blaise said with a shrug.

Pansy looked at him for a moment, wondering how he knew the right answer to her trick question. "Fine. We'll go to Hogsmeade together. But it's not a date. It's just a friend thing. And you'd better be nice to Daphne when you break up with her. She thinks you're The One."

Blaise sighed. "I know. She's already picked out the names for our first eight children. She's rapacious."

Pansy shuddered. "No, she's just in love, is all."

"Exactly," Blaise said as they began making their way back to the common room.

* * *

It all slowly unfolded over the next couple of days. The dirty looks, the whispered conversations, the way all of the Ravenclaws sidestepped him in the corridors. It wasn't until he went up to Hermione in the common room after dinner one night and asked her if he had some horrible sort of something growing out the back of his head that she finally told him.

"Oh. Everyone thinks we slept together," she said without even looking up from her rune dictionary.

"What? That's absurd! And what should it matter, anyway? We broke up months ago!" Ron fumed.

"I agree. Rumor has it someone caught us shagging in the Charms wing several nights ago." Hermione flipped the page.

Ron sputtered. "Shagging? Us? Well, that's just... who would even believe such a thing?"

Hermione shrugged. "Could you hand me that big green book sitting on the edge of the table?"

Ron handed over the lexicon. "Who would say such a thing?"

Hermione gave him a look. "Think about it, Ron. Who would ever want to start an ugly rumor about one or the two of us?"

It took Ron about three seconds to come up with a name. "Malfoy."

"Right house, wrong gender," Hermione said, opening to a page in the large green book with a handsome illustration of a village.

"Pansy?" Ron asked, a little less sure of himself this time.

Hermione nodded. "Don't worry. I'm sure everyone will forget about it in a few days. Some new gossip will come along and it will just fly right out of everyone's pusillanimous little brains."

"Terry doesn't believe it, does he? He's not going to want a fight, eh?" Ron said, perhaps a little too merrily.

Hermione looked up at him. "Terry is the one that told me. His housemates are quite put off by the whole thing, to tell the truth. Of course he knows it's not true, Ron." She laughed before returning to her book.

"It really is quite silly," he admitted, laughing nervously. "To think that I would ever shag you."

"Or that I would ever shag you," she added, face bent down to the page.

Ron mocked her while she wasn't looking, screwing up his face and mouthing her words. "Yes. Well and good. Aren't you going to, you know?"

"What?"

"Defend your honor, maybe. Turn Pansy into a toadstool or something. Princess Toadstool has an awfully nice ring to it. And you know, I hear antlers are back in style for spring," he said hopefully.

"I might actually pay to see a showdown between Granger and Parkinson," Seamus said from behind Ron. "Could you imagine? We could charge admission and make a killing."

"No," Hermione said firmly.

"Oh, Hermione," Ron said. "Where's your sense of fun?"

"My sense of fun is on holiday in Majorca while I am left alone to toil my time away with you morons," Hermione said wryly.

"My God!" Seamus exclaimed. "She made another joke! What is that? Two today, Granger? I don't know what that Boot does to lighten you up, but now I'm thinking I should be asking for advice!"

"Shut up, Seamus," Ron and Hermione said in unison.

"Don't you have something to do somewhere else?" Ron asked Seamus.

Taking the hint, Seamus shrugged his shoulders. "Fine. But if she says something else funny, you'll have to write it down as a record of the event. I'm keeping count."

"Sure, Seamus, whatever," Ron said, pushing him away. Once Seamus was off on his merry way to annoy someone else, Ron sat down heavily in the chair opposite Hermione.

"There's something very off about him lately. I caught him trying to use temporary sticking charms to walk up the walls earlier," Hermione mused, then shrugged and returned to her books.

"So, I guess this means that she hates me now, huh?" Ron said suddenly.

"Looks like it," Hermione said, making a mark on her parchment. "You know, after a certain point, they all start to look the same," she said absently.

Ron scoffed. "Tell me about it. All eyelashes and legs and little noses..."

"I was talking about the runes, Ron," Hermione said, pushing away the book and rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands. "What time is it?"

"Near eight, I reckon."

"Shouldn't Harry and Ginny be back by now?" Hermione said.

"They stayed behind to show Sloper and MacDonald some flying trick or something," Ron said off-handedly.

"Jack's over there, and I saw Natalie head up the steps some time ago," Hermione said pointedly.

Hermione and Ron looked at each other for a moment.

"Wait. You don't think they're...?" Ron began, but couldn't finish.

Hermione cleared her throat. "Well, I've got rounds in an hour. If they're not back by then, maybe I'll run into them."

Ron nodded, cleared his throat, and changed the subject. "Parkinson's not going to help us with the map, you know."

"It was a long shot anyway," Hermione said, leaning back in her chair and looking at Ron. "She won't be helping Ginny in the dungeons anymore, either."

"I don't think she was much help to start," he said, looking down at his hands folded on the table. "She won't even go on rounds with me."

"She's angry, Ron. I hate to admit that I can't blame her."

Ron looked at Hermione quizzically. "Don't tell me you're taking her side in this."

"No one likes to be reminded of his or her mistakes," she said. "Think about how you would feel if I went to you for help and then reminded you about fourth year when you and Harry weren't on speaking terms?"

"I was operating under some misguided notions," Ron said heatedly.

"Exactly," Hermione said. "It's hard enough to forgive ourselves for our mistakes without someone else calling attention to them."

"So you reckon I shouldn't have told her that the thought of her and Malfoy together made me sick?"

"Probably not," Hermione conceded. "However true it might be."

They both shuddered and sat in silence for a minute, and then Hermione hit herself in the head.

"Tonks!" she said. "I can't believe I didn't think of it before!"

"Hermione, I worry about you," Ron said, scooting his chair back subtly.

"No! Listen!" she whispered. "Tonks--Nymphadora--she's of our generation and just as related to Sirius as Malfoy is! Why didn't I think of it sooner? It's the natural choice, of course."

"Oh, of course," Ron said sarcastically. "If only you would have thought of this sooner, like before my girlfriend decided to hate me."

"So, she's your girlfriend now?" Harry asked suddenly at his elbow.

"No! Why does everyone keep thinking that?"

"You just said--" Ginny started.

"Well, do you know what Miss Smarty Pants here just figured out? We didn't need Parkinson at all. We could have made all of our lives easier if we would have just asked Tonks."

"Tonks!" Harry said, taking a seat next to Ron.

"Of course!" Ginny said, taking a seat next to Hermione.

Ron groaned and banged his forehead on the table.

"I should have thought about this weeks ago," Hermione crowed.

"Oh, I agree!" Ron said nastily. "Could have saved some of us quite a lot of hassle."

"I'm not the only one here with a brain, you know," Hermione said. "Oh, wait. Maybe I am."

"You want to go, Granger?" Ron said, standing up abruptly, causing his chair to crash.

"Don't think I can't take you, Weasley," Hermione said, eying him dangerously.

"Do we have to keep the two of you separated?" Ginny asked.

"Yes," Ron and Hermione answered.

"I can't believe everyone thinks you two were shagging days ago," Harry said, looking at them curiously.

Ron huffed and righted his chair. "She started it."

"I know. She always starts it," Harry said, patting Ron gingerly on the back.

"I so did not," Hermione said, tossing her hair over her shoulders.

"Did."

"Did not."

"Did."

"Guys?" Ginny interrupted.

"We should be focusing on this map thing, don't you think? Now that Parkinson's out of the loop, we're also going to need to figure out the dungeon thing," Harry said levelly.

"Did not," Hermione whispered.

"You just have to have the last word, don't you?" Ron muttered.

"I don't have a problem being down there by myself. If I have the map and the cloak, I should be all right."

"And I suppose you're going to do something about it, then?" Hermione muttered.

"I don't want anyone taking any unnecessary risks."

"Maybe I will, little Miss Last Word-y."

"Harry, I'm sixteen. I think I can roam the dungeons for an hour by myself."

"Why do you have to be such a child?"

"You don't know what could be down there, Ginny."

Ron stuck out his tongue at Hermione.

"That's why I'll be invisible with a map that tells me what's around every bend."

Hermione stuck out her tongue at Ron.

"Would you two just stop?" Harry said, annoyed.

Ron and Hermione glared at each other.

"I'm under a lot of stress," Hermione explained.

"I'm... You know how they are. The lot of them. Women." Ron crossed his arms over his chest and tilted back in the chair.

"You'll break the chair doing that," Hermione warned.

"And fall flat on your arse," Ginny added.

"Will not." Ron tipped as far back as he could while still leaving the balls of his feet on the ground, and then he opened out his arms wide. "See?"

Hermione rolled her eyes and pulled out her wand. "Evanesco!"

The chair beneath him disappeared, and Ron went down, hard. Harry and Ginny laughed, and Hermione was wearing a smug grin when Ron finally stood up, wincing and rubbing his sore arse. "You..."

"Told you so."

Ginny was laughing so hard she was crying. Harry's head was tossed back as he roared. Most of the common room, in fact, seemed to find the entire thing quite hilarious.

Ron grabbed a chair from another table and set it down roughly in front of him. Keeping his hands on it, he sat down gently and scooted it forward. "I'm telling Seamus," he said, bending toward Hermione.

"Bully for you," Hermione said, eyes narrowed, leaning forward, too. There was a spark in her eye that Ron recognized.

Ron's lip twitched, and soon they were both laughing.

* * *

By Saturday morning, the rain hadn't let up a bit. The grounds were under nearly an inch of standing water, and the only place in the entire castle where Pansy could get away from the incessant pounding of the rain was in the dungeons, and so in the dungeons she stayed, in her appropriated Chudley Cannons shirt and flannel drawstring pajama bottoms, staring right through her schoolbooks, dismissing her homework, and having such soothing thoughts as: If he was a decent guy to begin with, he'd let me just keep the shirt, and if he wasn't a decent guy, then he doesn't deserve it, anyway.

She thought she might be going mad from the rain. It was permeating everything. Its smell seeped through the stones. Its sound echoed in the corridors. The very sight of it-- no blue sky to be found, gray as far as they eye could see-- was all Pansy saw when she looked out any window in the castle. It was everywhere, all encompassing, and it was beginning to make Pansy feel trapped. The nervous energy was welling up inside her like the lake, water rising more everyday.

Morag had the wireless on and Millicent was singing along while they were each at their desks, revising. Daphne had gone out sometime after breakfast, and hadn't come back yet. Pansy was fueling her "studying" with her last bag of Cockroach Clusters and her last stash of chocolate.

"You know, it's a good thing we have another Hogsmeade weekend coming up," she mused to herself.

"I was just thinking that," Morag said suddenly, lifting her head and turning to look at Pansy.

"All of this work is wearing me out," Millicent said, looking at Pansy, too.

Pansy looked from Morag to Millicent. "I said that out loud, didn't I?"

They both nodded, the beginning of grins on their faces.

"So," Pansy said slowly, "How've you been?"

"You didn't actually touch him, did you?" Morag asked, a look on her face the hybrid offspring of disgust and concern commingling.

"Daphne said that Teeny said that Draco said that Pomfrey said you can catch things from Weasleys. They're not clean, Pansy," Millicent pointed out.

Pansy looked up at the ceiling, as if to gather strength, and sighed softly. "It was just a rebound thing. I'm over it. Totally."

Millicent and Morag continued to look at her.

"Besides, he had the biggest--"

The door flew open, and Daphne ran in, wailing. Throwing herself down on the bed, her entire body was wracked with sobs. The whole thing looked rather painful.

"--family," Pansy finished lamely.

"Daphne?" Millicent asked, concerned.

Morag got up from her desk, closest to Daphne's bed, and sat down gently. "Daphne, what's wrong? What happened?"

"I... he..." She tried to talk, but kept choking on sobs.

Tentatively, Morag reached out to pat Daphne's back. "Shh, it's all right."

Daphne sat up quickly, shaking her head, and then lunged at Morag and clung to her fiercely as her body shook with the force of crying. Millicent crossed the room and sat down next to them on the bed.

"Daphne, babe," Morag cooed, brushing Daphne's mussed hair out of her face. "You've got to calm down, this isn't good for you."

After a moment, when Daphne made a lot of strange noises that reminded Pansy of a fish out of water, Daphne finally managed to say, "I just want to die!"

Millicent and Pansy exchanged looks. "It's Blaise, isn't it?" Millicent said. "What did he say? Did he hurt you? What did he do to you?"

"He broke up with me!" Daphne wailed. "He said things were--" she sobbed loudly "--moving too fast! Right in front of half the year in the library!"

Pansy felt a slight sting of guilt, then quickly pushed it away. Daphne walked right into this. She had to learn some time.

"That bastard!" Morag said. "Want us to take care of him for you, Daphne? Anything you'd like."

Daphne shook her head and recovered still more of her breath. "I thought we were forever."

Millicent rubbed Daphne's back in little circles. "Oh, Daph."

Morag looked up at Pansy. "Just once, I'd like a boy to see his still-beating heart ripped from his chest and thrown on the ground. We'd play Quidditch with it, and then have it for breakfast."

Pansy made a face. "Or, we could not eat it to much the same result."

"The point is," Millicent said, "Daphne's been wronged. And Blaise thinks that he can just get away with it."

Pansy scoffed. "Oh, so now you're the supportive type."

"Pansy, Daphne's really hurt here!" Morag said.

"Like I wasn't? Draco tries to ruin my life, and I was abandoned. Blaise breaks up with Daphne, for a perfectly good reason, I might add, and suddenly, it's all blood lust and revenge strategies?"

Daphne howled anew with sorrow.

"You quit talking to us," Millicent said.

"You totally sided with Draco!" Pansy yelled. "Did everyone take a selective memory pill this morning?"

"You flashed the entire school!" Morag said. "And then we had to go to all of our classes in our pajamas. It was mortifying! You can't just do stuff like that and get away with it, Pansy."

"Oh, one little rough patch, and it's all over? We've been friends since we were firsties!"

"You were acting a right stupid bint, Pansy, in case you've forgotten. You started hanging out with those Gryffindors and totally pushed us away!" Morag roared.

Daphne gulped and gave Pansy the most hateful look in the history of Daphne's many hateful looks. "You thought you were too good for us."

"I never!" Pansy screamed. "You all shut me out! You started listening to Draco, the boy who broke my heart I'd have you remember. You made me sit at the end of the lunch table!"

"You became an entirely different person," Millicent said.

"That's what happens to a girl when all of her friends turn on her! That's what happens when the boy you planned to marry turns out to be an even bigger shit than you had hoped for! What the hell else was I supposed to do?"

All four of them were on their feet now, in the middle of their dormitory room in a tight circle, pointing fingers and yelling.

"You should have stuck with us. Through thick and thin!" Morag countered.

"You left us, Pansy. You turned your back on your friends, your house, your entire life, just so you could what? Snog a Weasley? Win some points with the Headmaster?" Daphne said, her tear tracks quickly drying.

"You have NO IDEA what I've been through! You can't even begin to imagine the shite that's going on in this school. If I had told you what was going on, you never would have believed me, assuming your tiny little self-absorbed heads didn't explode in the process," Pansy said.

"You should have trusted us enough to give us a chance," Millicent said.

Pansy shook her head. "I can't. You wouldn't understand."

"Try us," Morag said.

Pansy scoffed and snagged her cloak from where it hung over the back of her desk chair. "You know what? Just... forget it." She pulled on her cloak and stepped into her boots, not bothering to lace them up. "I don't have to explain myself to you. FRIENDSHIP IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN PAJAMAS!"

She slammed the door to the dormitory to find the entire common room staring at her, Draco's sneer especially pronounced, and Teeny beside him, her lips quirked, perched on the edge of laughter.

"Oh, fuck you all," Pansy grumbled as she stomped through a half-dozen study groups to the door. "You can all just suck it dry."

She wandered around the castle for most of the afternoon, thinking about what Millicent had said. The more she walked and the more distance she put between herself and the dungeons, the more she began to realize that maybe Millicent was right. She had quit talking to them. Sure, they had snubbed her, but ultimately, she was the one that turned tail, wasn't she? That was her problem in a nutshell, wasn't it? Following the path of least resistance, doing whatever came easiest. That explained the entire Weasley situation from beginning to end. He had been there, and she had been bored. That explained Draco at Halloween. He had been there, and she had thought, "Why not?" That explained Christmas at the Weasel's house, getting sloshed and going home with him. It was easier to be weak. It was easier to give in to stupid plans than to come up with better ones.

All this time, she had thought she'd been so strong, but it was easier to react than to make things happen. She'd become--even as she thought it, she choked on the word--passive.

Ultimately, this was all Draco's doing. Operating under the duress of a broken heart, she had been weaker. None of this ever would have happened to her fourteen-year-old self. That girl was ruthless. She smiled, fondly remembering the four of them--Daphne, Millicent, Morag, and herself--feeding Rita Skeeter some of the best bogus gossip they had ever come up with. Back then, she'd never let a Weasley get under her skin. Even third year, she was stronger than this.

She was in the Charms corridor now, idly walking about with her arm stretched out, palm running over the worn surface of the stone walls as she went.

Girls were generally much smarter than they were given credit for, it was true. And then boys come along and muck it all up. At least that's how it had happened with her. She used to have the ruthless edge of childhood on her side, but somewhere along the line, she had softened.

Pansy stopped suddenly to lace her boots, thinking maybe she'd venture out to the greenhouses for a look in on her Herbology project. Behind her, she heard what sounded like footsteps halting abruptly. She looked over her shoulder, but saw no one there.

Gripping her wand, she quickly tied her boots and went along her way. Once she got outside, it would be easy enough to see who was trailing her. It was more than likely some sloppy person from her Defense Against the Dark Arts class. Over the past few days, she'd begun to feel it more and more, that sense of being watched and followed. It was almost thrilling, knowing there was someone out to get her while she herself was out to get another someone.

She rounded the corner of the stairs that led to the Entrance Hall when she ran smack into Seamus Finnegan, who was standing in the middle of the top step, a rope in one hand and a large harness in the other.

"OY!" Pansy yelled as the harness banged into her front where it was sure to leave a very funny-looking bruise on her breast.

Seamus held tight to the rope in his right hand as he tried to regain his balance and keep from falling down the steps to what would ultimately be his squashed destruction. "Lend a fellow a hand, eh?" he said, flailing.

Pansy crossed her arms over her smarting chest and looked at him through narrowed eyes. "What the devil are you up to, Finnegan?"

"Oh, nothing," Seamus said between pants as he finally steadied himself. "Just, you know. Messing about."

She looked up, following the rope with her eyes to where it was seemingly connected to some sort of pulley system. "I'm not entirely sure this is all on the up-and-up."

"Oh, well," Seamus said, coloring slightly and tugging on the rope, thereby lifting the harness in his left hand unsteadily into the air. "It's, er, for a friend."

Pansy nodded, unconvinced. "Yeah, whatever. I don't really care. Just do me a favor. If you're going to take a tip down the stairs, do it on Weasley's watch, all right?"

"Certainly," Seamus said off-handedly, tongue poked out as he stepped into the harness and began to tighten the straps around his thighs.

"Ruddy Gryffindors," Pansy said to herself as she tromped down the stairs, leading her stalker to his or her unknowing doom.

* * *

Ron whistled softly as he walked past the small square table near the Transfiguration shelves. When he had read his assignment for DADA, he had totally panicked, and then he had just happened to see Teeny sitting with Malfoy, and Teeny had just happened to be using a quill that looked like certain quills that have certain truth-telling powers, and, although his full plan wasn't entirely fleshed out yet, Ron was expecting top marks on this assignment.

He could hear them talking on the other side of the bookcase. Draco's drawl was easy to identify, and Teeny's tinny voice punctuated any silence.

Ron stopped briefly to examine the quill to make sure it was the right one. Sure that it was, he swiftly exchanged Teeny's Truth Quill with Draco's black eagle quill. They both looked the same except for the way the tip of the Truth Quill took on a brownish hue at the point. Ron didn't know why he remembered this detail, but he supposed he had angsted over giving that quill to Hermione enough that he had just internalized it, or something.

"Well, well, Weasel, what have we here?" Draco asked, stepping out from around the end of the bookcase, Teeny practically molded to his side.

"Oh, nothing," Ron said, surreptitiously examining the notes Draco had been taking from his Transfiguration text. "You've got that one wrong, by the way. You've misspelled the incantation."

Draco scoffed. "Bugger off, Weasel King."

Ron shrugged. "Fine. McGonagall takes off points for spelling, you know. Better switch that 'a' and 'e' before you hand it in." He stuck his hands in his pockets and strolled down the aisle, resuming his whistle. He paused on the other side of the bookcase and listened as Draco did exactly what Ron thought he would.

"I haven't spelled it wrong. See? Weasel's such a moron. It's poor breeding, is what it is. So many children, and hardly a brain between them," Draco said.

Ron smiled and made his way back to his table in the Charms section.

"What was that all about?" Harry asked, looking up from the Quidditch magazine he had tucked inside the huge text Hermione had handed to him when they had first arrived some odd hours ago.

"Oh, nothing," Ron said. "Just a little experiment."

Harry cocked an eyebrow. "Let me know how that turns out, all right?"

Ron nodded, and then pointed at Ginny. "What's with her?"

"Oh," Harry said, turning to Ginny, who had apparently collapsed facedown in an avalanche of dusty texts. "She's decided that the dust in the books Hermione keeps giving her contains mold spores that, once inhaled, enter her bloodstream, thereby rendering her completely brain dead."

"That's a good one," Ron said approvingly, picking up his book.

"Thanks," Ginny said, her voice muffled. "Luna came up with that theory last year. Never made it past Pomfrey, though."

"Course not," Ron said. "That bat's as sharp as a stick."

"A stick?" Harry asked.

"A very pointy, evil stick," Ron clarified. "Possibly with barbs."

"Speaking of evil, I can't possibly make it through another one of these books. Who even prints books on scullery masonry, let alone reads them?" Ginny said mutinously, raising her head fractionally to look left and right through her hair. "Where did she go, anyway?"

Harry and Ron quickly glanced around the library. "Dark Arts," Ron said.

Harry squinted. "How can you tell?"

"See that fifth year there? The one with the terrified look on her face? That's a look only caused when experiencing the full-on wrath of Hermione in the library. Poor kid probably put a book back out of order or something. You know how she is," Ron explained, pointing toward the far end of the library. Sure enough, a moment later, Hermione emerged from the stacks.

"Here she comes," Harry muttered, barely moving his lips. "Look lively."

Hermione marched over to their table and set down a huge pile of new books. "I've got everything on defensive architecture and domicile protection charms. There might be something in one of these," she said, tossing three books to Ron.

"Hermione?" Ron asked. "What happened with that fifth year?"

"Which fifth year? What are you talking about?" Hermione asked, divvying up the books and handing each of them several more volumes.

"That one in the Dark Arts section that ran screaming for her life a few minutes ago," Ron said, nodding in the direction from which Hermione had just come.

Hermione glanced over her shoulder. "Oh, her. She was taking notes on the back of a rare copy of Harmon's Hurled Hexes."

"You didn't have to throw her out of the stacks, though, did you?" Ron asked.

"It was a first edition," Hermione said briskly. "Really, Ron. You make it sound like I was overreacting."

Harry and Ron exchanged skeptical looks.

"You'd get more research done if you'd put away Quidditch Quarterly, Harry," she said as she sat down.

"How did she know that?" Harry whispered.

"Would you believe me if I said it was my inner aura twitching?" Hermione said, looking at Harry over the top of a huge book.

"No," Harry said flatly.

"Oh well, then." Hermione shrugged and went back to reading.

Harry put away his magazine, Ginny sneezed as she was attacked by yet more dust, and Ron made his way through the books Hermione had given him, sitting back in his chair and trying, yet failing, to tune out all other thoughts.

If he could somehow get Draco to write him a letter, or even a note on a scrap of parchment, he might be able to get the answer he needed for the assignment. Although, as long as he had Draco cornered, he might as well ask some other things, too. Maybe he could kidnap and gag him, and keep him hostage until the ferret bastard confessed. Ron couldn't remember if that was in the text Tonks had instructed the class to reference for methods, but maybe he'd get extra points for ingenuity. What he really needed was someone on the inside, someone Draco wouldn't suspect. It was just his luck that he should burn his one and only bridge to Slytherin at a time like this. Not that it was really a bridge, more like a precarious rope ladder strung loosely across a shallow ditch filled with flesh-eating merpeople and randy manticores.

Ron thought about this while the wind blew the rain against the castle in thick sheets, the water ran down the stained-glass windows in black waves, and slowly, the library emptied. Soon they were the only ones left. Eyes sore, brain tired, and legs long since fallen asleep, Ron was keeping his head up by bracing his forearm against a towering stack of books. Harry was bouncing his knee at a frenzied pace, but hadn't turned a page in his book for perhaps hours. Ginny was slack-jawed, staring off into space, a thin line of drool running down her chin. Hermione was the only one even still remotely functioning, scribbling faster and faster as Madam Pince made her long walk towards them.

"Library is closing, Hermione," Madam Pince said, setting her hand down briefly on Hermione's shoulder, causing her to jump.

"What? Oh, yes, of course," Hermione said. "Just a minute to get our things in order."

It took all of Ron's might to move, his limbs seemingly petrified. Finally, he managed to move his wrist, and his head snapped forward, freed from its support. He pushed back his chair slowly as Harry and Ginny came back to life. Stretching upwards, he groaned loudly. His body was tired; his blood seemed congealed in his veins. He yawned widely.

"Bed now?" Ginny asked softly, picking up her book bag.

"I'm exhausted," Harry said.

"Me, too," Ron said. "What time is it?"

"Half of one," Hermione said.

"Damn," Ginny said, rolling her neck.

"I thought the library closed at ten?" Harry asked, picking up his own bag.

"Madam Pince lets me stay on after hours on Saturdays. We have a deal worked out," Hermione explained.

"What kind of deal?" Ginny asked.

"Shh," Ron said, speech slurred. "I don't really want to know. Just tell me it's not sexual favors, and if it is, let's hope I don't remember this in the morning."

"No, Ron," Hermione said scornfully. "What would ever give you that idea?"

"Something Seamus said," Ron said.

"I thought it was Neville," Harry said, turning to Ron.

"Don't remember. Don't care," Ron said.

Hermione herded them to the library door. "I help her clean on Sunday afternoons, for your information."

"And here I thought you hung out in the library so much 'cause you liked to read," Ginny said, yawning again.

"You are all delirious with lack of sleep," Hermione stated as she led them back to Gryffindor Tower. "You know, one only physically needs four hours of sleep a night to rest the brain and the body."

Ron snorted. "Four hours? Neville can barely get a wank off in that time."

"Ron--" Harry started.

"No, it's true!" Ron insisted. "Poor blighter. Told me all about it last bender he went on."

"It's probably all of that medication he's on," Ginny reasoned.

"Ron--"

"Well, obviously, that can't be normal," Hermione mused.

Ron snorted again. "Neville and normal? Two things that do not go together."

"Ron--" Harry said again, tugging on Ron's sleeve.

They were at the entrance to Gryffindor Tower now, and Hermione poked the Fat Lady with her wand to get her to wake up.

"I stepped in something squishy," Ginny said, looking down at her feet.

"Well, we can probably rule out Neville," Ron muttered.

"Gross, Ron," Hermione said, jabbing her wand at the Fat Lady. "Oh, wake up, won't you?"

"It's like..." Ginny trailed off, bending to feel whatever she had stepped in.

"Ew, Ginny," Ron said. "Remember how we found Trevor?"

"Ron!" Harry said loudly this time.

"What!" Ron yelled back.

Harry pointed behind Ron. "Erm, I think there's someone here to see you."

"Huh?" Ron said, confused. He turned, slowly, to see the person to whom Harry was referring, standing off to one side of the corridor, looking hacked off as all hell. "Oh, big fuck."

"There!" Hermione said triumphantly, finally having awoken the Fat Lady.

"We'll just, er, be inside," Harry said quickly. "You know, if you need us, or anything."

"Ron! I think it's your Chudley Cannons shirt!" Ginny said as the light from the common room spilled out into the corridor. "Only, it seems rather burnt in spots..."

Ron looked incredulously from the shirt Ginny held in her hands to Pansy, whose face was partly shrouded by the hood of her cloak. "You BURNT my Chudley Cannons shirt?"

* * *

"Just repaying a favor," she said, stepping forward out of the shadows, wand clenched tight in her hand. The nerve of him!

"I never burned any of your clothes!" Ron hugged the ragged and singed orange cotton tee to his chest.

Pansy rolled her eyes heavenward. "Why do I even bother? It's always like this with you! I can't even fucking talk to you!"

"You can't talk to me? You. Can't talk. To me." Ron said incredulously, shirt still clenched in one hand as he pointed at Pansy with the other. "You don't speak English! You speak evil girl language, with your metaphors and your secret girl code and all of that stuff that I don't understand."

"That doesn't even make sense," Pansy growled, stomping her foot in frustration. "I can't believe the things that come out of your mouth. Do you just think of the stupidest, most idiotic thing possible, and then say it? Do you do this just to hack me off? Because it's working."

"And I can't believe you burned my Cannons shirt! Do you have any idea how important this was to me? I loaned this to you because I trusted you, and because you were drunk and in need of decent clothing, and this was clean and on the top of the pile." Ron shook the shirt, still clenched in his fist, at her, its singed orange edges flapping in her face.

"OH! You drive me absolutely INSANE, Ronald Weasley!" Pansy snatched at the shirt. "Give that to me. Give it to me!"

"Why, so you can BURN IT again?" Ron hugged the shirt to his chest.

"Give it to me!" Pansy said, trying to grab at the shirt.

"Like hell!" He began stuffing the Cannons shirt down the front of his trousers.

"Don't think I won't go in after it!" She fumed, throwing herself at Ron to get the shirt.

"Over my dead body," Ron spat, and then sat heavily down on the ground, knocking Pansy over in the process. "You'll have to rip it from my cold, dead hands."

"Oomph!" Pansy landed square on her tailbone, which hurt like fuck in addition to making her even more livid. She winced as she moved her legs. That was the second funny bruise she'd have in the morning.

"So, how does it feel to want?" Ron asked triumphantly.

"Why are you asking me? You're the expert on the subject," Pansy said furiously. "And I don't want the damn shirt. I just don't want you to have it. You're a fucking penis, Weasley."

"I'm a fucking penis? I'm not the one burning other people's shirts and starting vicious rumors about me shagging Hermione."

"You had spies following me around the damn castle," Pansy said. She pulled her legs in so that she was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the corridor, somewhat facing Ron, who was crouched in front of the entrance to the Gryffindor common room.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Ron said loftily, adjusting his jumper and avoiding her eye. "And who would even believe for a second--"

"I caught them. With my own two hands."

Ron crossed his arms over his chest and looked past Pansy. "Don't know what you mean."

"Oh, for fuck's sake. Three little Hufflepuff girls? About yea big?" Pansy raised her hand high above her head. "Go by Madley, Branstone, and Dobbs?"

Ron shook his head. "You're delusional. First, you tell everyone I'm shagging Hermione, and then you think I'm paying people to spy on you? Grow up, Parkinson."

"A-ha!" Pansy crowed, getting gingerly to her feet. "I never said you were paying them!"

Ron scoffed. "You're paranoid."

"They told me that you hired them way back at the beginning of autumn term. They've been tracking me for months, Weasley. Months! And you complain about not being able to trust me?" She guffawed. "You've a lot of nerve."

"I've a lot of nerve?" Ron repeated. "One minute, you're snogging me in the hallway, and the next minute, you're setting my clothing on fire and starting filthy rumors! It's too much to handle. When I just want to stay away from you, you turn up everywhere. Right when I need you the most, you storm out. What the hell is the matter with you?"

"I'm not the one paying people to spy on you!" Pansy argued. "Not only is it economically improbable, but the thought alone makes me sick. So don't make this about me."

Ron laughed. "Oh, that's real rich! Everything's about you Parkinson, isn't it? You think the whole fucking world revolves around you. Well this isn't about you!"

"I know this isn't about me!" Pansy said maliciously, stepping up to him. "This is about you, you worthless, pathetic, hack of a sidekick. This is about you and your stupid fucking house and how you think you can just do whatever the fuck you want, to whomever the fuck you want, whenever the fuck you want."

"I'm worthless and pathetic? At least I believe in something!" Ron roared, getting to his feet. "At least I know who I am! I might be a sidekick, but at least people care about me. When I walk through those doors," he said, gesturing at the Fat Lady, "I know there are people in there that would die for me, and I would die for them. That's not pathetic, that's friendship. That's love."

"That's moronic," Pansy countered. "You're just a puppet! Potter, Granger, and Dumbledore have all got you by the short hairs, leading you around. Do this, Ron. Do that, Ron. Kiss my arse, Ron. Blah blah blah," Pansy mocked. "That's disgusting. You're disgusting."

"No. You know what's disgusting?" Ron said, advancing on her until her back was against the balustrade overlooking the moving staircases below. "It's disgusting that I actually cared enough to try to learn anything about you. It's disgusting that I thought we had a chance. It's disgusting that I let you sleep in my bed, let you wear my clothes, let you get anywhere near my family and friends."

Back against the balustrade, Pansy kept her piercing eyes on Ron, towering above her, face gone white. He wasn't going to win this one. No one talked to her like that. She was the wronged party! "You know what I don't understand?"

"I don't even know how to begin to answer that," he said dryly.

"If you love Harry fucking Potter so damn much, why aren't you snogging him in stairwells?" she said in a soft voice. "Is my hair not black enough, Ronnie? Are my eyes just not the right shade of green?"

"Don't talk about Harry like that," he said, grinding his teeth so that Pansy could see his jaw flexing.

"That's it, isn't it?" she mocked. "I just don't do it for you the way the Boy Who Sodding Lived does, do I?"

"Shut up." Ron clenched and unclenched his fists at his sides. "You don't know a damn thing about Harry. Of course, how could you? Harry's a fucking hero. You're just some frosty bint who's spent so much time in the dungeons that her brain's gone to rot."

Pansy's heart was racing. A line had been crossed, and now there was no going back. "You're not as prim and proper as you'd like to think," she said. "You're not all braveness and goodness, not deep inside where it counts. Potter's too good for you, and you know it. Even Granger knew it, that's why she left you, isn't it? You'll never be anything, Weasley, but a poor boy with a famous friend who got dumped by a swotty bint once upon a time."

"Better than being the dog-faced bitch that Draco Malfoy used like a rag doll and threw away when he got tired of playing," Ron muttered mercilessly. "I know who I am. I know where I stand. I'm too good for you."

Pansy quirked an eyebrow, wondering why his words pierced her so deeply. "You wish, Weasley."

Ron laughed shortly. "You know what I wish right now?" he asked. "More than anything in the world?"

"I can only imagine," Pansy said, a smirk half-formed on her lips.

"I wish you'd get the fuck out of my sight," Ron said, turning. "Just stay the fuck away from me and my friends."

"Where are you going?" Pansy asked indignantly. She'd started this fight on her terms, and it was going to end that way, damn it!

"I'm tired. Therefore, I am going to bed," he said calmly.

"I'm not through with you yet!" she insisted.

"Well, I'm sure as hell through with you, Parkinson," Ron said as he muttered the password to the Fat Lady and the portrait swung forward, revealing the interior of the Gryffindor common room.

Pansy glimpsed firelight and lots of plush-looking furniture inside. She strained her neck to see in, but Ron blocked her view. He glanced quickly over his shoulder just as the portrait swung closed, his expression blank.

Pansy was considering pounding on the portrait and demanding that Weasley come back out, or that they let her in, and had just raised her hand to knock when Seamus Finnegan fell from the sky.

"Sodding hell, Finnegan!" Pansy said, jumping back.

Seamus, dangling upside down from what appeared to be several long ropes, gave her the finger and then quickly unhooked a series of straps on his legs, tumbling to the ground in a little Seamus-shaped pile. "Piss off, Parkinson. Go back to fucking Slytherin where you belong," he said before he too disappeared inside the common room.

"You know, he's right love," the Fat Lady said as she stifled a yawn. "You should be in bed. You need your beauty sleep."

Pansy sneered at the portrait and used both hands to make some very crude gestures meant for the inhabitants of Gryffindor tower.

"Well, I never!" the Fat Lady huffed before leaving her frame.

Feeling somewhat triumphant, Pansy made her way back down to the dungeons, using several of the shortcuts she had learned from the DA.

* * *

In bed, Ron stared up at the canopy and listened to the incessant rain at the window as he tried to fall asleep.

After some time, Harry tentatively said, "Ron?"

"Hmm," Ron replied.

"All right?"

Ron shrugged, though he knew Harry didn't see it.

"You just shrugged, didn't you?" Harry asked.

"Yup," Ron responded.

"That Parkinson is a nightmare," Dean whispered from across the room.

Ron snorted. "The girl's barmy. The things she said. It would have made Fred faint, mate. It was real ugly."

Harry sighed a heavy, tortured sigh. "Maybe she's just not--"

"Sane?" Ron offered.

"Yeah," Harry said. In the dark, Ron could see him reaching over to put on his glasses.

"She just thinks that she can have everything her way." Ron fumed. "Where does she get off, anyway? Who does she think she is?"

"Something has to be done about her, mate," Seamus agreed. "Someone needs to bring her down a peg or two."

"I'd like to get the lot of them," Ron mused. "Get them real good. Let them know who they're dealing with."

"Hang on. Are we switching over to mob mentality now?" Dean asked.

"I think I know just the thing," Neville said suddenly. "It will take some preparation, of course."

Ron grinned. "What do you have in mind?"

Neville chuckled. "Oh, I have a few tricks up my sleeve."

"This hasn't anything to do with McGonagall's knickers, does it? Because I have limits," Seamus said. "You might not think it to look at me, but there are lines I will not cross."

"No knickers of any sort, actually," Neville said. "Just plain, old-fashioned Herbology. Safe as houses."

"Thanks for that," Seamus said with obvious relief, which made Ron wonder what exactly his dorm mates had been getting up to as of late.

"Anyone have plans for Valentine's Day?" Neville asked.

"No," Dean and Seamus responded in unison.

Ron snorted again. "Not anymore."

"No," Harry finally said. "It's February already?"

Seamus chuckled. "Been February for as long as it's rained."

"Rain?" Harry asked somewhat confusingly.

"You all right?" Ron asked.

"Yeah, just, you know, preoccupied and stuff. NEWTs and whatnot," Harry mumbled, though Ron thought he probably knew what was really on his mind.

"Well, the Slytherins will have much more to worry about than the cocked weather once we're through with them," Neville said, and then he laid out his Big Plan to the rest of them.