The Ex-Files

There were some things, Pansy decided one Thursday mid-morning, that girls should never see on the day they turn sixteen, if only because those things can only begin the supposedly sweetest year of a young girl's life with a decidedly sour note, and the beginning of things usually signaled how the rest would follow. Pansy knew there were only very few events sour enough in nature to offset the rest of the year, so up until that mid-morning on the Thursday she turned sixteen, she felt relatively pleasant and sweet for a Slytherin.

Then she walked in on her ex-boyfriend kissing another boy.

~*~

To be fair, Draco, Pansy's ex-boyfriend, and Harry, the boy Draco was kissing, had no intentions of ruining Pansy's sixteenth birthday, or of starting her sixteenth year with a decidedly sour note. They never even wanted to let her know about them at all, wanting to keep the whole affair very hush-hush and secret, which was why they chose a dark, secluded part of the corridor by the Slytherin dungeons to kiss in private. They even used Harry's Invisibility Cloak, loathe as Harry was to admit to Draco that he indeed did have a cloak in the first place.

Unfortunately, they had been so caught up in each other, as usually happens when two people are kissing in dark secluded areas and under Invisibility Cloaks, that they didn't notice the cloak fall and Pansy walk into clear view of them. They would have gone on kissing if Pansy hadn't gaped at them in shock and horror, then shrieked a banshee's shriek. They attempted to cover up with the cloak, of course, but it was too late. The damage had been done, and before they could even attempt to explain--not that they could, really--Pansy had run off.

~*~

Pansy was mad. No, scratch that. Pansy was furious. The famous words of Millicent Bulstrode ("I want to hurt something. NOW.") kept running through her head. She couldn't believe what she'd just seen: Draco Former-Love-of-Her-Life Malfoy, with Harry bloody Potter! Harry! Golden Boy of Gryffin-bloody-dor, Bloody Savior of the Bloody Wizarding World, the Boy Who Bloody Lived himself. A boy! A Gryffindor! A Potter! The very idea was outrageous, but there it was. Draco and Harry, kissing in full view.

In her anger, Pansy ended up stalking through the corridors of Hogwarts, an epitome of a fury greater than Hell had ever known. Students leapt out of the way to avoid her, each wary of the murderous rage in her eyes and the way her pug nose seemed to flare slightly.

Pansy was furious, alright. She got mad, and all of Hogwarts can see that. But more than getting mad, and a plan was slightly forming in her head, she was getting even.

~*~

Cho would have stepped out of Pansy's way like all the other students did, except she was facing the wrong direction and her thoughts were on the Arithmancy class she was going to. (Professor Vector had assigned them to apply Fortescue's Postulate on the seventh problem in page 71 of their book, and she couldn't wait to show the professor how she had also been able to apply Pythagoras' Accidental Law of Arithmantic Order.)

She didn't notice Pansy stalking down the hall, thus she was not able to step away in time, and if it weren't for Pansy colliding into her so suddenly ("Oh no! My homework!"), she wouldn't have noticed anything at all. But Pansy did bump into her, her work flew all over the place, thus Cho finally noticed. And she cowered; Pansy looked ready to kill, and she was glaring at her.

Then Pansy smiled.

Upon colliding into Cho, Pansy had had a rapid succession of thoughts. The first that came to her was the primal instinct to hurt. Then she saw the books and parchment, thought it was that Gryffindor Mudblood, and she wanted to kill. Then she saw the blue and yellow of the Ravenclaw uniform, and the instinct returned to wanting to hurt. Then she recognized Cho, and something registered at the back of her head, expanding her idea into a beautiful new direction, and she smiled.

"If it isn't Cho Chang herself." Pansy beamed. "Have I got a proposition for you."

Cho didn't like the glint of evil in Pansy's eyes. She backed away slowly, nervously, trying to find a way out with all discretion. "Uh, maybe we could talk later. I've got Arithmancy, and--"

"You need to pass your homework?" Pansy smiled, holding up Cho's Arithmancy homework. "Arithmancy can wait, Chang. This concerns Harry."

Cho's attention on the piece of homework shifted almost immediately. "What about Harry? We're not dating anymore, and--"

"Exactly. And I know why." Pansy seemed to loom closer. Cho took another step back.

"Did he tell you something? Don't try to fool me, Pansy. I know you're not friends with Harry." Cho frowned. Pansy was still coming closer, and Cho had run out of space to back into. She felt the wall behind her.

Pansy leaned forward and whispered everything she saw that morning into Cho's ear.

Cho gasped. Her jaw dropped, her eyes widened, and she tried to shake her head no. Pansy looked her in the eye, and slowly nodded. Cho saw red.

That's when Pansy knew she had succeeded in the first step of her plan: Get a Partner.

~*~

In the empty Charms classroom that afternoon, Harry made out with Draco minus his usual amount of enthusiasm. Draco noticed this a minute later.

"What's wrong with you, Potter?" he demanded.

"Huh? What?"

"Don't play dumb with me. You aren't you today. Why?"

"Well, I was thinking about this morning..."

"Oh, that? Wicked, wasn't it? I've never been so much more in the mood to shag then. I suppose it's the added thrill of being caught." Draco smirked.

"But that's it, Draco. We did get caught. By Pansy."

"Oh, that." Draco looked thoughtful. "Nothing to worry about, Harry. Pansy will only deny it for as long as she can. If she doesn't see us at it anymore, she'll be likely to think it was only her imagination. Or that she didn't really see us kissing, or if she saw two boys kissing, they only looked like us."

"How can you be so sure?" Harry challenged. The look on Pansy's face that morning didn't seem like she was on the verge of denying anything.

"Harry, I know Pansy. She spent a whole year believing I was her boyfriend, remember?"

"You mean, you weren't?"

"Of course not! She was a convenient date, that's all."

"But you made out with her a couple of times then!"

"Making out doesn't mean anything," Draco immediately replied, but the look on Harry's face made him realize he had made a very bad mistake. "I mean, Harry, she was a GIRL! And I was confused and experimenting! And, and--"

"Ah, I see."

But Harry still had that Look, and there was no more making out in the Charms classroom that day.

~*~

Saturday morning found Cho and Pansy by the lake. They had agreed to meet secretly, so as not to be suspected of plotting something and thus keeping the element of surprise should they need it, and Cho had suggested to use the space by the lake, behind a few trees, that they were currently in.

"We need a goal," Cho declared, after some thought.

"We do have a goal: sweet revenge," Pansy pointed out. She was opening up a wrapped sweet. "Sugar quill?"

"No thanks. No, I mean something to give us direction. Something real specific that we can work for."

"Suit yourself." Pansy shrugged, devoting her attention to her sugar quill. "We can make them pay."

"How?"

"What do you mean, how?"

"Well." Cho scrunched up her face, looking for the right words to explain her point. "We have to know what we want to do to them, exactly."

Pansy shrugged. "That is Step One: We Plot."

Cho tried hard to suppress an exasperated sigh. "We're already doing that, but what exactly are we plotting for? Do we break them up? Get them back? Hurt them? Humiliate them? What can we do to get our revenge? What were you planning when you first came to me, anyway?"

"I hadn't actually thought that far ahead... I was slightly relying on your being a Ravenclaw to figure things out," Pansy admitted, giving Cho her most winning smile, to which Cho groaned.

For a long time, both girls were silent. Cho didn't especially want Harry back, and Pansy derived no pleasure in breaking them up either, and hurting and humiliating just didn't seem to logically connect to why they'd want to get revenge in the first place. So they each pondered, and searched their heads for an answer.

It was Pansy who finally broke the silence.

"I have it!"

Cho looked up expectantly.

"We want to make them sorry they ever messed around with us," Pansy declared.

"Perfect!" Cho cried, and they both laughed and clapped their hands and Cho was secretly impressed with how clever Pansy actually was.

After the cheer and celebration died down, Pansy spoke again. "How?"

"..."

"..."

"Back to square one, then?"

~*~

Hannah Abbott liked watching people. It always let her figure secret things out, and she loved knowing things that other students knew nothing about. A week after what has been dubbed around Hogwarts as "The Fury of Pansy"--no one still knew what made Pansy furious--Hannah noticed a couple of things:

Pansy no longer seemed mad.

Nobody had been bodily hurt.

Harry went around school in a twitchy, ferrety kind of manner, and jumped ten feet up in the air every time someone called out his name, which happened quite often, ever since his classmates figured out he could jump ten feet high whenever they called him out.

And just now, Cho, who Pansy had spoken to just after "The Fury of Pansy", walked into the Great Hall with the Cheshire cat's grin.

Oh yes. Something was up.

"Hannah, what are you looking at?" Susan asked, sidling closer and resting her hand on top of Hannah's thigh.

"Nothing," Hannah mumbled, returning her attention to breakfast. Susan moved away suddenly, sighing softly. Sometimes Hannah was just so dense!

~*~

"I was thinking," Pansy said one afternoon. They were out by the Lake again, nine days after their first meeting. Between hastily scribbled notes that were discreetly passed in between classes and short, abrupt conversations along dark corridors, they hadn't come up with anything substantial so far. "Do you think we could make them jealous?"

"Tried that already with Michael Corner. Didn't work." Cho shook her head, then scrutinized the text of a book she was holding. She was sitting on the ground with some other books spread out before her, and her quill was poised on top of a half-filled roll of parchment.

Pansy sighed and sat down beside Cho. "Me too. Draco didn't even notice I got together with Blaise at all."

"I guess you can't make them jealous unless there's something to be jealous about, huh?"

"It won't even get us revenge, because even if Draco got jealous, I'll take him back anyway, so he doesn't even suffer at all."

"You would?"

"Well, maybe. I've liked him since I was seven," Pansy admitted. "Also since my parents told me I had to marry him or die trying."

"At seven?" Cho looked incredulous.

"Well, yes, of course. He's one of the very few pureblooded wizards we aren't related to somehow." Pansy narrowed her eyes at Cho. "You aren't a Halfblood or Muggleborn, are you?"

"I don't think so." Cho frowned. "But my parents have never told me something that absurd!"

"Yes, well, turns out I'm not ever going to end up marrying him now. I'm not even the right gender anymore!"

"There, there." Cho patted Pansy on the back. "They'll get what's coming to them.

"Which is what again, exactly?"

"Er, right. We haven't gotten around to that yet, have we?"

~*~

"Harry!"

Harry jumped, drawing out his wand on reflex. "Expe--"

"It's only me, you git. Put that wand down now." Draco stepped up from the shadows. "We need to talk."

"Huh? Talk? What's there to talk about?" Harry stammered. He kept darting nervous looks everywhere, unable to keep the look on Pansy's face when she saw them out of his mind. Then there was that smug grin she wore every single time she saw him, as if the world was going to give her something marvelous if only she waited long enough, and...

"That is what we need to talk about." Draco looked at Harry pointedly. "You've been like this since that day. Are you still worried about Pansy?"

"It isn't that!" Harry protested, but the alarm in his eyes answered Draco's question for him.

"She isn't You Know Who, Harry. She's only just a girl."

"But that's it! She's here, and nobody would suspect her, and she's sneaky and cunning and that smile of hers is terrifying!" Harry exclaimed, all in one rush of breath, eyes wild and terrified.

"The Boy Who Lived To Be Scared Of His Female Classmate. Fascinating, Harry. I'm sure The Daily Prophet would have a field day." Draco smirked. "Now pull yourself together and come to the Potions classroom with me. I haven't had a proper shag in days, and Snape let me have a spare set of keys."

~*~

As it turns out, Harry didn't really have anything to worry about, as the next few weeks found Pansy and Cho, who Harry didn't suspect of anything, not any closer to devising an Evil Scheme To Get Revenge than they were when they first began plotting. Their trips to the Lake usually turned out nothing.

"How are you doing?" Pansy peered up at Cho, who was sitting on one of the tree branches.

"Still nothing, and I'm not even bringing schoolwork here anymore. You?"

"Flat out." Pansy sat down with her back to the tree, putting a newly unwrapped sugar quill in her mouth. "Who knew being evil was this hard?"

"Yes, well... Listen, I was thinking..." Cho began, her voice tinged with slight hesitation. "Was I a bad kisser?"

"Eh? Of course you're not." Pansy scrunched up her face to look up at Cho. "Why'd you think that anyway?"

"How would you know if I were a good kisser or a bad one? Anyway, I thought maybe Harry got turned off by girls because I couldn't kiss properly."

"Oh, I don't mean I know literally, of course. It's a basic instinct to make you feel better." Pansy sucked on her sugar quill, brows furrowed. "But what are you saying? If Harry dumped you because you were a bad kisser, then why would Draco dump me, unless--Cho! You can't be saying what I think you're saying!"

"No, really. What if I was a horrid kisser?" Cho repeated, and a thought struck her. "How good a kisser is Draco?"

"Mmm..." Pansy closed her eyes and smiled, sucking lazily on her sugar quill. "He did things with his tongue I've never seen before."

"See?" Cho cried. "What if he was better than me, and he kissed Harry just for the heck of it, and that's why Harry became gay? Because girls are bad kissers, thanks to me, while boys are incredible therefore he should stick to them, thanks to Draco."

"Then why did Draco feel that he had to dump me for Harry, then?"

"Harry was a pretty good kisser." Cho shrugged. "What he lacked for in technical skill, he made up for in enthusiasm."

"Cho! I can't doubt myself like this! Don't you dare suggest that Potter outkisses me!"

"Oh, Pansy, I'm pretty sure he doesn't," Cho added, a little too quickly.

"Oh is that so? How would you know?"

"I said I'm pretty sure. You could ask Draco... He's kissed you and Harry. I'm certain he'll be happy to compare."

Pansy almost fell over. "Are you mad?"

Cho blushed, realizing what she'd just suggested. "Sorry. You're right. I don't think I can ask Harry either... But I'm terribly curious. I mean, is it because I'm a bad kisser?"

"That can't be it," Pansy reassured, but even as she uttered those words, doubt began to creep in. She needed to be sure, somehow. "Kiss me."

"What?" This time around, Cho really fell over. She sat up with a start and, forgetting to balance herself on the branch she was sitting on, tipped over sideways. Her bum connected painfully to the ground. "Owww..."

"Sorry, shouldn't have put it like that." Pansy stuck the sugar quill in her mouth and leaned over to help Cho up. "I just thought that, well, you've kissed Harry and I've kissed Draco and you want to know how you compare to Draco and I want to know how I compare to Harry. If we kiss each other, then we can know without having to ask either Harry or Draco."

"You know what disturbs me about your proposal?" Cho asked, rubbing her backside and looking at Pansy with brows furrowed and head tilted to the side.

"What?" Pansy smacked off the last of her sugar quill and licked her lips.

"It makes perfect sense."

~*~

Both girls came up for air a few minutes later, cheeks flushed and lips slightly parted for panting.

"Well?" Pansy asked finally.

"I'm not sure if the sugar quill did it, but you're better than Harry. No, it wasn't the sugar quill. You are better than Harry. Me?"

"You couldn't have turned Harry gay, and I'm not just saying that to make you feel better, either. Are you?"

"No." Cho shook her head. "I'm telling the truth."

Deep down, though, both knew they didn't really have to ask.

~*~

Hogsmeade weekend came up two weeks later. Harry and Draco have agreed to rendezvous secretly then, at the Shrieking Shack, as per Harry's suggestion. It was the only thing on Harry's mind since they first planned it, and on that Saturday, Ron and Hermione couldn't help noticing how he almost bounced off the walls in excitement.

"Ready to go, Harry?" Hermione asked from the bottom of the stairs leading up to the boys' dorm.

"In a minute!"

"He seems excited," Ron observed, murmuring gently into Hermione's ear.

Hermione shivered pleasantly. "Well, Hogsmeade will be good for him. He needs to keep his attention on something other than You Know What, after all."

The two prefects broke off their contact when Harry bounded down the stairs. "Shall we?"

The trio left their common room and descended into the Great Hall, where students milled about and attendance was being checked. Finally, the students were led out of the school grounds. Ron and Hermione walked on ahead of Harry, as prefects were required to check on students, and it was at that moment that Harry chose to pull on his Invisibility Cloak. Ron and Hermione didn't notice until they were already in Hogsmeade, and by that time, Harry was long gone.

Draco had an easier time getting rid of Crabbe and Goyle. He simply told them to meet him at The Three Broomsticks, have all the Butterbeer they could afford, and wait. Sooner or later he knew they'd both forget what they came to The Three Broomsticks for.

~*~

Cho and Pansy planned to use the Hogsmeade weekend as cover for their own secret rendezvous, except the rendezvous would be for plotting instead. Really.

It was easy for Cho to get away. Marietta hadn't been allowed out of Hogwarts that year, due to possible dangers, and all Cho had to say for Marietta to let her go was that she'd bring back a little something for her friend.

Pansy, when not going to Hogsmeade with Draco or Blaise, often went with Daphne Greengrass and Millicent Bulstrode. That day, she simply told them that she was going on a blind date before heading on her own way. Daphne and Millicent both smiled indulgently and waited for her to be out of sight before they both burst out laughing.

Pansy had been going on numerous blind dates after her break up with Draco back in fifth year, with no real results, and Daphne and Millicent both knew why. They had followed her once, out of sheer curiosity, and found her sneaking into an obscure booth in The Hog's Head and looking generally as if she were wallowing in self-pity.

~*~

Pansy sat at an obscure booth (with a nice window view) in The Hog's Head with a mug of Butterbeer, but she wasn't wallowing in self-pity, and neither was she really on a blind date. She knew who she was meeting, after all, and besides, it wasn't a date. Oh no, not at all.

Cho finally walked into the pub a few minutes later, hair slightly blown out of place by the wind. Her cheeks were a bit red, and she looked slightly out of breath. Adorable, really, if Pansy were to think about it, except she wasn't thinking about it.

"Got you something," Cho mumbled, fishing out a couple of sugar quills from her pockets and putting them on the table before taking the seat opposite Pansy's. "They were having a sale at Honeyduke's, and I didn't know if you knew."

"Aw, Cho, you shouldn't have." Pansy raised an eyebrow. "But sugar quills?"

Cho's cheeks turned redder, from the exertion of hurrying all the way to The Hog's Head, of course. "I, erm, well, you always seemed to be eating them."

"I've been gaining weight, haven't I?" Pansy sighed, adding a touch of melodrama to her tone. "Come on, you can tell me."

"No, you haven't. Not that I noticed, that is." Cho looked Pansy over from head to foot in mock scrutiny. "Sugar quills have done nothing to your figure, don't worry."

"Oh, good. That means I can get more." Pansy reached out for the sugar quills on the table and stuffed them in her pocket. She took one out and unwrapped it. "Are you certain you don't want one?"

"I'm certain. I picked up a bag of Every Flavour Beans for myself, anyway. And Chocolate Frogs for Marietta."

"What does she need Chocolate Frogs for? And really, Every Flavour Beans?" Pansy wrinkled her nose. "Aren't you treading on dangerous eating ground with those?"

"Well, Chocolate Frogs are her favorite, and since she couldn't come to Hogsmeade, I promised her I'd get her some." Cho shrugged. "And I happen to like Every Flavour Beans. They let me pick out the colors I like anyway, and I know which colors are sour, so I choose those."

"You like sour sweets? But that absolutely goes against the principle of sweets being called sweets to begin with!"

"Hey, mind your own." Cho frowned playfully, picking up a bean from her bag and popping it into her mouth. "Sour cream. Mmm."

"I must let you know that watching you eat sour cream-flavored beans and enjoying it is going against everything I've ever believed in about Life and Sweets." Pansy shook her head, putting the whole of the sugar quill in her mouth and slowly sucking on it. "I must reaffirm that which I stand for."

"You're being silly." Cho giggled, popping another sour bean into her mouth. "It's just sweets, you know."

"Being silly! Well, if that's what you think I'm being..." Pansy began to say, but was cut short by something that caught her eye.

Harry and Draco were outside their window, staring at the two of them with looks of wonder.

~*~

Harry and Draco were really planning on going to the Shrieking Shack, except Ron and Hermione had beaten them to it. It was a good thing Harry and Draco had been under the Invisibility Cloak, more for the proximity it provided them rather than the protection from others' watchful eyes, because otherwise Ron and Hermione would have been pretty surprised indeed to have Harry and Draco walk in on them. And in the Shrieking Shack, too.

They decided to walk down back to Hogsmeade then, plans of any rendezvous unintentionally ruined by two naughty prefects. It was while they were going to the main street in Hogsmeade that they happened to walk past The Hog's Head, and that Draco happened to see what he thought was Pansy Parkinson giggling with Cho Chang. A second look, however, confirmed what he thought was only his mind playing tricks on him.

It was Pansy, and it was Cho. Draco stopped cold in his tracks, and stared at the two girls from outside the window.

Harry noticed this, and stopped to stare too. "Are those... Are they who I think they are?"

"Looks like," Draco murmured. "What do you suppose they're up to?"

Then Pansy looked up and saw them both.

She wasted no real time in thinking. She knew that if Harry and Draco had seen them, then they would likely suspect something was going on, and if they did, then their primary advantage of having the element of surprise would be lost, and if that were the case, then what else do they have left? She had to cover up, and fast.

Without asking or waiting for an answer, Pansy grabbed Cho and kissed her full in the face.

Harry blinked once.

Draco blinked twice.

They were both silent for a really, really long time.

"Well," Harry finally managed to say, "Grief can drive people together."