Varying Degrees of Ordinary

A thirty-six-year-old Padma Patil stood before a large group of Sixth and Seventh Years, from all four Houses. They were all crowded in a double-sized classroom. She cleared her throat, and most of the conversation faded out.

"I am here to tell you a story," she said slowly. "Headmistress McGonagall has ordered me to, you see, so as to show you something we must not repeat. I am taking my usual time off being your Charms professor to do this, though my usual audience is comprised of First Years.

"I'm going to take you inside a Penseive to show you the memories of myself, and several others from my very own Seventh Year. A few of you may see your parents in the memories, twenty-some years younger than they are today. One of you will see your parents in a new light and you will hopefully go home and appreciate them. One of you will see a side of your parents you may not know exists, and you may find yourself furious at this, which they have hidden, from you. I hope all of you see the problem with pride, and how it can keep you from listening to who you love just because all the evidence points against their trustworthiness. I beg you all to pay rapt attention.

"Anyway, please remember, a Pensieve is a device to view a memory with. You cannot communicate with those in the memories, for you will be mere specters, nor can you influence or change what will and must come with time.

"To take this trip, you must each take one of these strands of thread, for they are connected to the swirls of white in the Pensieve. Once you all hold a thread, I will activate our transportation to twenty-eight October, nineteen hundred and ninety-seven."

As Professor Patil spoke in her eloquent voice, Sixer Daphne Weasley leaned over to one of her Slytherin friends, a pretty girl named Blythe Crabbe, and said, "You know, she talks like a freak."

"Shut up, Daph," Blythe hissed back. "Our parents might be in it."

"If it's ninety-seven, then it involves Harry Potter, and if it involves him, my dad's definitely in it. He was Potter's sidekick, you know," said Daphne in a voice Blythe personally thought was condescending.

The Head Girl, a Seventh Year Ravenclaw with long, honey blonde hair and cinnamon eyes named Glory Granger turned around. "Oh, shut up, Weasley," she said. "Or Slytherin'll lose more points then I've already taken today."

"Ooh, Glory, I'm scared," Daphne replied leisurely. "Your mum might be there, though," she said to the Head Girl. "She was Potter's other sidekick."

"A fact I'm painfully aware of. Now shut up or so help me I will give you detention."

"As interesting as your conversation is, I really must ask you to take a strand of thread so we can get on with this," said Padma, her waif-like voice permeating the and overtaking the conversation. The three girls turned around, Daphne rolled her eyes while the other two looked varying degrees of abashed. Padma continued. "Without further ado, let us continue on." *

They found themselves standing, suddenly, in an empty classroom, which they recognized all too well. Most were terribly disoriented, and all of them still clutched their threads like lifelines to their home time.

Padma still stood before them, in the same place she had been in their own time. It was the same classroom, and she was standing in the same place, as were all of them. "Welcome to 1997," she said with a smile. "In a few moments, a Slytherin girl will come into this room and drape herself over that table right there," she said, pointing at a table near the far right wall. "Don't blush, but she won't be wearing too much, and her posture will be notably suggestive. A few minutes behind her will follow another Slytherin, this one a tall, blonde Prefect from a privileged family without a patriarch."

True to Padma's word, the door opened to admit one Pansy Parkinson, her stiff blonde pincurls framing her face in a way that may have made another girl without pug dog features pretty. It made Pansy look like a little girl's dress-up doll in frilly, skimpy clothes. Padma had also not been kidding when she'd said Pansy wouldn't be wearing much, because she wasn't. Her black school robes were not to be found, replaced by a thin silk bathrobe, tied at her waist, but revealed her lack of a top underneath. She crossed the room, her heels clicking on the wooden floor, and draped herself predictably across the previously indicated table. She took care to position various body parts in ways that ranged from strategic to sexual to downright indecent. The boys watched her in trance, but mostly at her obliviousness to her voyeurs. The door opened that moment, soundlessly where hers had been like a crash and swish. In the doorway stood Draco Malfoy, his polished silver Prefect badge reflecting the faint torchlight in the room. He looked round for Pansy, and raised his eyebrows, unimpressed, when he spotted her on the table.

"Suggestive much?" he asked, shutting the door soundlessly as he approached her.

She looked up at him, then narrowed her eyes. "Only for you," she said. Padma chewed on her lips, still angry she had had to undergo this scene for the third time. She was also annoyed that Pansy's lack of proper attire had many of her boys salivating.

He stopped in front of her, and bent to kiss her on the lips. Padma averted her eyes. Several of her students gasped as Pansy moved to wrap her legs around him and put her hands on his shoulders, drawing him deepen into the kiss.

Then he pulled back, gazing down at her in business-like amusement. "Surely you didn't call me here to snog, because you know we can do that in my dormitory. So, in the essence of saving time, why don't you just tell me what you really want."

She looked up at him seductively, her lips parted slightly. "I was thinking," she said, her hair flopping down across her right eye in a very Marilyn Monroe fashion.

"There's a first," he said. "Shall I owl the Prophet?"

She pouted. "You won't mock me when you hear my proposition."

"Then out with it," he said. "I have an tutoring session in twenty minutes."

"I wager a hundred Galleons you can't seduce Hermione Granger," she said, her voice ringing through the classroom. Even Daphne Weasley gasped.

Malfoy snorted. "You have got to be kidding me."

"I shit you not," Pansy cooed, her voice like poisoned chocolate. "If you succeed, then we hurt her, badly. Then you gain a hundred Galleons and I'll even fuck Vince in the Common Room in front of everyone."

He cocked an eyebrow at her. "That's underhanded," he mused. "But I'm not stupid. What's in it for you?"

Pansy smiled like a serpent. "The knowledge that Mudblood's been shattered. That her holier-than-thou facade can be penetrated and that she's reduced to a nothing, groveling idiot. Plus, if you lose, which you probably will, you have to sleep with Millicent while I watch, and you owe me a hundred Galleons, and the summer in your family's house in Nice."

He leered down at her. "What makes you think I'll lose if I accept?"

She drew him down for a steamy kiss. "The day the Mudblood ever loves you will be the day I wrap my legs around Snape."

Draco pulled back from her and his lips curved up into a slow, lazy smile. "Why don't we raise the stakes then," he said. "If I lose, I will sleep with Millicent while you exercise your voyeuristic fantasy, and you can stay at the Nice house. However, if I win, you have to seduce and sleep with Snape, and bring me proof that you did."

Pansy sputtered, sitting up fully and actually crossing her legs. "That's—"

"That or no wager," he said with finality.

Then a smile snaked its way across her features, her blue eyes agreeing. "I can accept that, since I'm definitely going to win. If even Ron Weasley can't break through the Mudblood's chastity belt, you haven't an icicle's chance in hell of accomplishing the task."

"Good," said Malfoy. "I accept your bet. Prepare to seduce Snape before the end of the year."

"Don't be so sure," she said. "So, still fifteen minutes until your tutoring session. Up for a quick screw till then?"

"When am I not?" he said hungrily, climbing onto the table over her, his lips making a trail up over her throat. *

The scene faded around them, the color of the room melting away first and then the outlines. The class stood in a blank whiteness.

Padma smiled. "So, are you ready for the rest of the story?"

Everyone nodded.

"Well, then on we go. . ."