Life as I Knew It

Chapter 4--Meeting Harry Potter

On the train, Pansy settled in uncomfortably next to Hermione. It was exactly as she had feared. Ginny sat on the other side of Hermione, next to the window, and Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Neville Longbottom sat across from the girls. They might not have known who she was, but Pansy had spent the last six years hating all these people, so it was a little awkward for her.

Harry did not much look like Harry as Pansy had known him. He had done something to his hair that made it stick straight up in spikes, and he no longer wore glasses. Also, he was wearing a shirt that said "Tommy Hilfiger" across it in large letters. Pansy wondered who Tommy was.

"So, Pansy, what brings you to Hogwarts so suddenly?" asked Ron, who looked the same as always, only stupider.

Pansy knew that she would hear this question many times, so she tried to form a reasonable answer. "Well, I know that it must seem odd, transferring schools for just my last year--"

"Oh, it's not odd at all," interrupted Neville. "We had a lot of transfer students last year." He paused. "I guess before that it would have seemed odd."

Pansy looked directly at Neville. "What changed last year?"

Neville just shrugged, so Harry answered the question. "It was the first school year after Voldemort was defeated. There were a whole bunch of foreign wizards... Actually they were mostly witches. Anyway, there were a lot of them who would have gone to Hogwarts if not for the looming threat of Voldemort. With him gone, they were free to transfer in. But you sound British, and that makes you different than them."

For the first time in a long time, the last thing Pansy wanted to do was talk about herself. "I am, but I was out of the country for a while. And actually, I never really heard how You-Know-Who was defeated."

"Do you want the long version or the short one?" asked Ginny, leaning forward.

"The long one, I guess."

Ginny sat back. "Then Harry better tell it."

Harry stretched out his arms and cracked his knuckles. "It was in our fifth year. I was summoned to the Department of Mysteries; actually, we were all there. I'd had a vision, and I told Moonshyne about it. She's really in tune with Voldemort because she's his daughter. So she knew it was a trap, but she thought we should go anyway, because that would give us a chance to take a stab at killing Voldemort. And that seemed like a good enough plan.

"So, we all got to the Ministry and found the Prophesy Room. And we saw that there was a prophesy with my name on it, mine and Voldemort's. So we picked it up to see what was in it. Moonshyne thought that would be best. Then Death Eaters showed up out of nowhere. Ron and Ginny revealed themselves to be Death Eater spies."

At this, Ron smiled sheepishly and Ginny snorted.

"And we all fought, and Voldemort showed up eventually. He and Moonshyne were dueling in the Death Room, and he got arrogant. She got a spell in and he fell into the veil, which apparently means you die."

Pansy was fairly familiar with the broad facts of what happened in the Department of Mysteries that night because Draco's father had been arrested then. Over that subsequent summer, Pansy had actually heard his aunt Bellatrix recount the story of how she killed Sirius Black. It sounded a lot like the story of how Moonshyne killed Voldemort, but Pansy didn't say anything about that. "So, everyone really believes he's gone for good this time?"

"Yep," said Harry.

Pansy did not know how to feel about that. Technically, she had always supported the Dark Lord because that was what her parents and Draco did, yet she did not feel the least bit upset at the thought that he might be gone. "What makes you all so sure this time?"

For some reason, Pansy directed this question at Neville, who again shrugged and allowed Harry to answer for him. Pansy did not listen too closely to Harry's explanation, but she caught enough to know that he did not really give any concrete facts to back up this belief.

Pansy asked many more questions about the details of the Dark Lord's defeat, but most of the time the answers did not quite make sense. One thing that did ring loud and true was that Moonshyne, who was a year younger than Harry, had broken his heart. As Hermione had said when Pansy first met her, Harry was bitter about the fact that his girlfriend had stolen his thunder and become the wizarding world's new saviour.

Except for that one time early in the conversation, Neville did not utter a word. The conversation moved on to other topics, although thankfully not to Pansy's past, but Neville stayed silent. Several times Pansy made a point of addressing him and asking direct questions. He always just shrugged his shoulders and waited for someone else to speak. Pansy really could not speak as to whether this was normal for Neville, but she doubted very much that it was.

The entire length of the trip Pansy had waited for Ron and Hermione to excuse themselves and go to the prefects' cabin, but they never did. Pansy did not bother to remind them to do so because she did not want to be left alone in a compartment with Harry, Neville, and Ginny. She realized that was selfish, but she had never been accused of selflessness. Once they were in sight of the Hogsmeade station, Pansy finally brought it up.

"Oh, yeah," Hermione giggled.

The only reason Pansy mentioned it at all was because she wanted to know who had taken her place as Slytherin prefect. She decided to ask Ron who the other seventh year prefects were. She was afraid that Hermione would give her the life story of each person, and Ron did well, listing the names in quick succession. Pansy discovered that she had been replaced by Daphne Greengrass, which annoyed her to no end.

After getting off the train, the boys took one carriage up to the castle, and the girls rode in another one. Pansy decided that she much preferred spending time with Hermione and Ginny alone. She did not realize until he was gone how much Harry Potter had monopolized the conversation.