𝐒𝐭𝐨𝐩𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐑𝐢𝐝𝐝𝐥𝐞 || 𝐓𝐨𝐦 𝐑𝐢𝐝𝐝𝐥𝐞

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐎𝐧𝐞 - 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐅𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐎𝐟 𝐇𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐲 𝐏𝐨𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫

Screams and shouts echoed throughout the castle of Hogwarts as students attempted to flee from the curses being shot at them by the death eaters. By luck and a bit of skill, most of the students had managed to avoid them and ran up the stairs, heading to the Room of Requirements or any empty room they could find for safety.

However, a female student in her seventh year, was one of the unlucky students who had gotten caught in one of the death eaters' curses. Pansy Parkinson let out a loud cry when she felt a jolt of pain all of a sudden in her stomach. Pansy felt warm liquid gushing out of her abdomen and she staggered back, the pain of the wound was clouding her mind for her to think clearly. With all her strength, she weakly continued to reach for the stairs, careful not to trip on the dead bodies of other students and Hogwarts staffs. She clutched her stomach, pressing the wound against her uniform, while using her other hand to dig into the pockets of her skirt in search for her wand. However, after attempting to reach for her wand in the pockets of her school robes, a look of horror appeared on her face when she realized that it wasn't there.

A feeling of dread started to spread throughout Pansy's entire body as a shiver ran down her spine, thoughts rushing through her mind but there was one question that caught her attention the most.

How did it come to this?

That question managed to snap Pansy's attention away from the pain she was feeling and she forced herself to continue walking to the staircase, moaning quietly from the increasing pain but tried her best to ignore it and started to focus more on the question to distract herself from it.

Just ten minutes ago, Pansy was hiding in the dungeons to try to avoid the death eaters and other students who might want to hurt her. She was one of the only Slytherins there who were wise enough to hide there, not wanting to intervene in the battle occurring in Hogwarts, and she knew at that moment that she was stupid enough to not have stayed there longer.

What exactly made her leave the safety of the cold dungeons? Well, it wasn't because she was worried about her own safety there, but she was worried about her friends' safety.

While she was hiding in the dungeons, Pansy couldn't stop the urge to go after Draco, Blaise, Daphne, Astoria, Avery, and Theodore— to go after her friends.

Pansy wanted to find them. She wanted to know if they were hurt or even still alive. Her mind was running through the possibilities of not ever seeing them again and that caused a great fear to appear in her. That fear would eventually be the push she needed to come out of the dungeons. However, she didn't think things through when she made the decision to go after them. Her mind was too focused on the fear of her friends getting hurt to the point that she didn't come across the possibility that she would be the one getting hurt.

Pansy was going to have to pay the consequences for not taking action with her brain. She soon came to that realization when she noticed a wicked grin forming on a death eater's face, having spotted her and making her his new target.

Her face turned pale and she quickly looked around the dead bodies of students and staffs as she tried to look for a wand she could use to defend herself. When Pansy could find none, she tried to run away from Augustus Rookwood but because of her wound that was still bleeding profusely and the unimaginable pain it was causing her, she was unable to get far from him.

Augustus Rookwood smirked at his injured prey and pointed his wand at her. Much to his shock and almost to his dismay, instead of crying and begging for her life like his previous victims, Pansy shot him a death glare. "You want to kill me? Then get on with it, you bastard. I'm not afraid of you!" She snarled as she threw broken items that she found around her at him.