Life as I Knew It

Chapter 18--The Mystery Man

In theory, Pansy understood that it was through coming in contact with her that Professor Dumbledore became himself again. She also understood that she might have a similar effect on other people with whom she came in contact. That did not lessen the shock when she saw Blaise.

When she left Dumbledore's office, Daphne and Blaise were walking down the hallway. Back when things were normal, Blaise had been intrigued by Daphne. That was always how he put it. He did not like her, and it was not a crush; he was just intrigued, or occasionally, fascinated. Daphne was an outcast, and he refused to admit to anything more than that. Pansy, seeing right through him, had always teased Blaise about Daphne. She wondered if here, where Daphne was more popular and more attractive than "intriguing," Blaise had acted on those feelings.

As they got closer, Pansy noticed that something about Blaise had changed. It had only been two hours, probably less, since she talked to him in the common room, but his skin was visibly darker than it had been then. It still was not the same color it had been for all the years Pansy had known him, but it was about halfway there. No tanning charm in the world worked that quickly. Pansy, who had quite a bit of experience with tanning charms, estimated that it would have taken two days to obtain results like that. No, this had happened naturally, through exposure to Pansy. To see such a dramatic physical change disoriented her, and Pansy stood at the gargoyle, staring at Blaise.

When Blaise saw her, he smiled broadly. "Pansy! Can we talk?"

He walked closer to her, but Pansy inched away from him. She did not really think that he was dangerous or contagious; she was just overwhelmed. "About what?" she asked warily.

"About... I don't know, the weather, anything. Let's just talk."

Pansy met eyes with Daphne, whose face did not give away any emotion. "I don't think I can. I'm, uh- I'm a little busy. But we'll talk later, about anything you want."

Pansy did not bother to listen for Blaise's response. She walked away quickly. When she had spoken with Blaise in the Slytherin common room, she had wanted to tell him that she was going to fix everything, and she still intended to help him and all the others; she just had not been expecting this. She felt bad for leaving him hanging, but she just needed some time to breathe. It had, after all, been less than 36 hours since she stepped onto Platform 9 and ¾ to find her world torn apart.

It was not until Pansy got back to her room and stared at her drab walls that she saw the positives. It was all happening very quickly and that was a good thing. The quicker it happened, the quicker she could get back to her normal life, where she had no responsibilities beyond prefect duties.

All right, the world she came from was far from perfect. It was much darker than this one. The threat of the Dark Lord hung over everything. Professor Dumbledore was dead, and a Death Eater, the Dumbledore-killing Snape, had been named headmaster. Pansy had no idea what this school year should have held for her. As a Slytherin, it would not have been too terrible in the school itself. However, she had learned over her sixth year that being isolated from the true war was as terrifying as anything. She had not seen or heard from Draco since the night Dumbledore was killed, and she was prepared to spend seventh year worrying about him even more than she had during their sixth year.

In the world she was in now, on the other hand, everything was basically sweetness and light. Millicent and a few others were unhappy with their lot in life, but there would always be people who are unhappy, whose lives are unfair. There seemed to be a disproportionate amount of happy people here. Draco was happy. She did not have to worry about him at all. The Dark Lord was gone, and who knew if this dark presence was really anything to worry about? There would always be evil in the world, too. It was all so artificial, though. There was something sinister under the surface, and Pansy did not think it had anything to do with any dark presence. It was just wrong.

A knock at the door pulled Pansy out of her thoughts. She opened it to find Daphne in the hall. "I was hoping I could talk to you." After a second, she added, "About something specific."

Without saying a word, Pansy opened the door wider, and Daphne came in. She looked around the room. "Wow, and I was jealous that you had a private room."

Pansy's first instinct was to get defensive, but then she remembered that Daphne was the most normal person here and that she might be the one person who always remembered things as they had been. "Yeah, it's not so great."

Daphne sat on the bed, which was the only place there was to sit. "This isn't easy for me Pansy. I kinda know what happened here." There was a long pause, during which Pansy sat next to her. Then Daphne continued, "I know who did it."

Up until then, Pansy had not thought of this all being the fault of any one person. "Was it Moonshyne?" she asked.

Daphne shook her head. Pansy had not really thought so, even though Moonshyne was the most likely suspect. The way Daphne had treated her could have been a product of "I know your secret," but it had seemed more as if Daphne were truly ahead of Moonshyne in some hierarchy. After Moonshyne, the most logical people would be Zahara or Melpomene, but Zahara was being so helpful and Melpomene would have to be smarter than she was to pull off something like this. Besides, Pansy also had a Moonshyne/Melpomene interaction to refer back to, and Melpomene had definitely come across as lower than Moonshyne in this hierarchy.

"Who did it, then?"

"That's not important. It wasn't..." Daphne stopped. She looked Pansy in the eye. "He didn't mean for it to turn out like this. He had a plan; I don't know what it was. He won't tell me too many of the specifics, but it didn't work out the way he intended anyway. Through knowing him, I've come to remember much of what it was like before."

Pansy thought about what Daphne was saying. "So, did he create Moonshyne?"

"It is impossible to create a person out of nothing, but with a great deal of skill you can create a person out of very little. And that's what he did with Moonshyne."

The idea that a person cannot be created out of nothing made sense to Pansy, but she had no idea how a wizard could create a person out of very little either. Who could Daphne know with power like that? "So if he did all that, even to the point of fooling Dumbledore, he must be a genius or something."

"Oh, he is," Daphne gushed. "He is so much smarter than people give him credit for."

Pansy was starting to get the distinct impression that Daphne was in love with this mystery man. She tried to think about whom she had seen Daphne with, but the only males who came to mind were Blaise and Theodore. Both of them were actually smarter than most people knew, but Pansy rejected Blaise right away. Of all the changes she had seen in people, Blaise was one of the few who looked worse than before. Pansy supposed the mastermind could be Theodore, but was he really that much smarter than everyone else? A professor was more likely, but none of the male faculty members had done much to instill confidence in their intelligence. On top of that, Pansy realized that she was assuming the mystery man was at Hogwarts, which was not a given.

Pansy decided to put all of that aside for the time being. "So, your connection with this guy, is that why you are among the few who do not kowtow to Moonshyne?"

Daphne barked with laughter. "I think that's a great test of character. Anyone who doesn't kowtow to her is worth hanging out with."

Pansy found it interesting that Daphne had not answered her question. "I heard rumors about a new dark presence. Could this guy and his plan have anything to do with that?"

"Yeah it was another nasty side effect. You know, nature abhors a vacuum, a power vacuum most of all."

Pansy noted that Daphne had not mentioned what any of the first side effect was. She was not sure that she should really think of Daphne as an adversary, but she could not help it. She did not know if it was due to the years of antagonism between the two, but she found herself analyzing every word Daphne was saying and looking for hidden meanings or slip-ups. "Does he know that you're talking to me?"

Daphne hesitated. "No, but I am going to tell him."

"Why are you talking to me?"

Daphne took a deep breath. "I saw what happened to Blaise. I saw Draco's indecision last night. Because I'm the only other person who remembers, I'm the only one who knows what you did, that you did that. I don't think that other people even noticed Blaise's skin. Maybe it's because their minds have been implanted with these false memories and they just believe things instinctively. But I know that you noticed it. What did you say to him to cause that?"

Pansy shrugged. "I didn't really say anything to him. I just introduced myself."

"Well, then, whether you want to or not--and I'm sure you do--you are changing things back just by existing."

Pansy was confused. "So why would you want to help me if you're so close with the guy who did this?"

Daphne smirked. "Who says I'm helping you? I'm just explaining the situation, because I know it must be really confusing for you. I don't think there's anything you can do to help or hurt your cause. It just happens."

"Well, shouldn't you have talked to your mystery man beforehand, anyway? He might know a little bit more than you. And speaking of this guy, why did he get rid of me?"

Daphne shook her head. "I've never asked him."

"Not even when I showed up at the platform?"

The smirk returned to Daphne's face. "Not even then," she said, emphasizing every word.

Pansy realized that there was a big piece of information she was missing. The transfer students had shown up in the equivalent of her sixth year, but there had been changes to the timeline even before then. If Daphne could remember, and if this was all caused by one man, then this could not be a parallel universe that had always existed side by side with her own. That did not make any sense to her. There were two sixth years and two fifth years. How was that possible? "Let me ask you this--"

Daphne stood. "Sorry, Pansy, I'm done answering questions for tonight."

"Afraid you've revealed too much already?"

Daphne paused at the door, still smirking. "Did it ever occur to you that maybe you've revealed too much?"

She left before Pansy could respond. Pansy knew what Daphne had been trying to do at the end there. It was a classic mind game to create doubt in a person's mind. The thing was, even though Pansy knew that, it was effective. She could only be sure of one thing: Daphne knew exactly what had happened to turn the world upside down and she had some stake in protecting that secret.