Life as I Knew It

Pansy excused herself from Hermione and Ginny's company. The world had clearly gone mad. Even if one were to ignore all the insanity, Pansy liked to think that in six years, Hermione had at least become aware of her existence. So, as she went off in search of a friend, Pansy had no illusions that it was possible no one else would remember her either.

Pansy did not want to start by walking up to Draco, especially not while he was with that Moonshyne person. It would be painful for her to see no spark of recognition on Draco's face, and Pansy thought it best to ease herself into that. She searched the crowd for a friendly Slytherin face. That was when she caught Daphne Greengrass staring at her. Pansy thought that might just be a good sign, so she walked up to Daphne.

Despite sharing a dorm for six years, Pansy and Daphne had never been particularly close. Right from the beginning of their first year, Pansy had been the de facto leader of that year's Slytherin girls, and Daphne had been resistant to the idea of being led. She had spent the years in silent rebellion and slowly ostracized herself from the rest of the Slytherin girls. Pansy truly believed that Daphne had only herself to blame for all of it. It was not as though Daphne had shown that she had any leadership ability of her own. She was just blindly rebellious, and how was anyone supposed to respect that?

So, of all her dormmates, Daphne was her least favorite, but she was the only one Pansy saw. She would do in a pinch anyway, as Pansy had no doubt that if she was a part of this crazy world, Daphne would know who she was. She was at least relieved to see that Daphne seemed to be fairly normal. Daphne looked alarmed as Pansy approached her, and that dim hope that this would all turn out to be a mistake or elaborate joke faded.

Pansy took a defensive stance. "Why are you staring at me?"

Daphne looked around as if she hoped that Pansy was talking to someone else. "Who are you?" she whispered.

Pansy's heart sank. "I'm Pansy Parkinson. Are you saying that you've never heard of me?"

Something that looked like amusement flickered on Daphne's face. "I really haven't. And yet, you're too young to be a teacher and too old to be a new student."

Pansy shrugged. "We'll see."

They both stood there awkwardly for a few seconds, neither saying anything. Pansy caught sight of Ron Weasley, which in turn made her think of Ginny and the "evil" Weasleys. Pansy then realized that the only people here that she had even partially befriended were Ginny and Hermione, who were absolutely the last two people with whom she had ever wanted to be friends. However, since saying "Do you want to be my friend?" to Daphne or any of her old friends seemed unbelievably pathetic, she was sort of stuck with them. Pansy felt only slightly less pathetic as she realized what she needed to do. There was, after all, no way she was going to ride to Hogwarts alone.

Pansy walked up to Hermione, who was stupid but nice. Even before she asked the question, she knew how the girl would respond. "Hermione, since you're really the only person I know, I was wondering if I could ride with you on the train."

"Oh my god." Hermione looked elated. "I love making new friends! This is going to be, like, the best year ever!"

Ginny was still standing nearby, and Hermione turned to her. "Did you hear? Pansy's going to ride with us on the train!"

Ginny rolled her eyes. "Yay," she said without emotion.

Up to that point, Pansy had not stopped to consider that Hermione had other friends who would also be sharing a compartment with them. Pansy actually thought there was a chance she would like Ginny a lot, despite the crazy hair and clothes, but she was not sure how she felt about spending the entire trip with Harry Potter and Ron Weasley. She realized she was so close to becoming a Gryffindork.