Bathwater

Truces

While the Gryffindors thought her to only possess a sharp tongue, venomous and sharp like the true snake that she was, Pansy had studied up on her wandwork and arsenal of spells the past year. Was she expecting the Dark Lord to win and her parents to give her to the highest, Pureblood bidder? Of course. That was everything she had known since she was a little girl, carefully bred and molded to follow all the Pureblood witches before her who had the honor of being members of The Sacred Twenty-Eight. Duty above all: to the Dark Lord, to her blood, and to her future husband. She did not need to know how to defend herself with magic—the Dark Lord was going to do that for her, he was meant to create a world where she would reign supreme, untouchable, unbreakable to the world around her.

But that was a lie. 

Long before Potter won and the defeat of the Dark Lord came, Pansy had discovered that no one was indestructible in a world run by the devil. So, days after the end of the war, Pansy tied her long, black hair up, wiped her face clean from any trace of makeup, picked up her wand and practiced until she was breathing disarming spells and curses. 

It was how she was going to finally kill Ron Weasley. 

The door to her chamber flew up with just a glare from Pansy's dark eyes, almost flying off the bolted hinges by the force of her magic. She could hear her bones rattle from the rage, Slytherin to the day she died; she scanned the sitting area, no redhead mongrel in sight. 

It was one thing to destroy something of hers, but to aim a curse in her direction? She would not allow the disrespect. Hell hath no fury like a Parkinson scorned, after all. She would be tearing off his head, making a rug out of his ugly, red hair, and sending what was left to his mummy wrapped in a bright, green bow. 

With a stomp of her right foot, Pansy's magic burst out of her, making the door of the forced, shared bedroom to swing open. She raised her wand, her tongue touching the roof of her mouth, forming the sweet, agonizing jinx she was going to conjure, when his blue eyes forced her to halt.

Weasley was rolled up into a fetal position at the foot of her bed, his arms holding his knees up to his heaving chest, eyes forming an ocean around him. 

The way she said his name, low and careful, scared and nervous, sounded foreign to even her own ears that she turned to look behind her shoulder to see if anyone else was there. 

"Go," he murmured, body shaking. "Just go."

Salazar, Pansy wanted to, she truly did—she was not good with this feelings thing seeing as she had never comforted anyone in her life, not even Daphne Greengrass after her horrible breakup with Zabini, and Daphne was the closest thing to a real girl friend she had. 

But the fury simmering just below her skin recognized the agony he was spilling splashing against her ankles. 

Weasley looked like how Pansy felt inside.

"Fucking hell," she hissed to herself, putting her arm down and shoving her wand inside the waistband of her skirt. She was trying to convince herself to just turn around, leaving the sacrificing of a Gryffindor for another full moon, but instead she found herself walking in his direction, slowly kneeling in front of him.

"Your life's a lie, right?" Her voice did that thing again, the careful murmur when speaking to him. His blue eyes blinked skeptically at her like he was unsure about the sound she was making, too, but they were both far more surprised at her hands reaching for his, gently pulling them from around his knees. "They said you won, but instead it feels like you've lost. Good people aren't supposed to die when fighting for what's right. They're supposed to be here with you, but instead you're this—you're what they left behind and you don't want any of it because this life doesn't fit right when they're gone."