After the Willow Tree | Theo Nott

CHAPTER SIX

(the midnight meeting)

Pansy remained on edge the rest of the week after her nightmare.

It was quite awkward for her to have to explain to Mrs. Greengrass that the creepy experience was only a nightmare she acted out because of the alcohol she had before bed and the distress of the war. Even though it had only been five days since the incident, she'd had to reassure Mrs. and Mr. Greengrass no less than twelve times that she didn't need to take a trip to St. Mungo's for evaluation.

As a result, Pansy hardly slept all week, trying to keep herself awake to avoid another sleepwalking incident, but she'd almost fallen asleep at breakfast twice now, and Daphne was starting to grow worried about this too.

So, to mitigate the concerns of apparently the entire Greengrass family, Pansy was doing something she hadn't done since she was a child: laying down for a bloody nap.

Her body practically vibrated from the four cups of coffee consumed at lunch and from the terror of sleeping again. If she had another nightmare like the other night, she was going to fall apart, and maybe make a potion at Hogwarts to stave off sleep forever.

Pansy didn't like any of this. Not one bit.

She wasn't a girl who got nightmares.

She wasn't a girl who evaded sleep.

And she most certainly was not a girl who took naps.

Bloody Voldemort made her into this pathetic, whimpering girl. Or maybe she was always like this, she couldn't really remember. She didn't feel like this was her, but maybe pathetic, pug-faced Pansy.

She felt the tears before she consciously processed them coming, but shame crept even further at the sadness it brought alongside it.

Slytherins don't cry.

That was something Draco Malfoy told her when they were first years, and he caught her crying in the Slytherin common room. He didn't know then, but she'd just received word by owl post that her aunt had died. Pansy was already in love or infatuation with him by then, and she'd do anything to get her to look at her approvingly.

She'd stopped eating sweets for that entire year (quite a difficult feat given her sweet tooth) and would skip lunch because she heard some of the older girls were doing it.

She started dyeing her dark brown hair black because a fifth year boy told her it'd make her pale eyes pop more.

And she refused to cry in front of another boy ever again.

After all of these changes, Draco had swept his eyes over her body with something almost approving in second year, so she cut out sweets permanently. Well, until he broke up with her for Lorelei in front of the Charms classroom in fourth year. That night, she and Daphne ate all the chocolate they could find, stealing it from some of the other girls' dorms, as they cursed Draco's name.

But Pansy knew now that she was twisted then, easily convinced by the world around her to believe that it was okay to call someone a mudblood and that anyone who said otherwise was only a filthy muggle sympathizer.

Thank god for people like Briar Black, whose strong morals seemed to rub off on her. For Theodore Nott, who picked up a scattered piece of her heart and showed her that this world that taught her to break others would ultimately break her too. And for Lorelei Jones, a touch of starlight in an otherwise lightless world, who taught her that a pure blood status meant nothing if your heart was full of filth and darkness.

Pansy flinched and quickly tried to wipe away her fallen tears when Daphne slowly settled into the makeshift bed with her. "What are you doing?" she hissed, looking over her shoulder at Daphne.