Homework Assignment 004
The enchanted ceiling of the Great Hall held a dark emptiness, the scattering of pinpoint stars too distant to share their light with the four long House tables lined beneath. More disheveled than she had ever let anyone see her in public, Pansy Parkinson sat huddled in her dressing gown among her similarly-attired peers, warily watching McGonagall who was addressing the room from the raised dais. They were to be evacuated.
Everyone knew that this was bigger than anyone was saying. The Dark Lord had ruled Hogwarts through proxy for nearly a year, but never had he tried to actually take it. Pansy had grown accustomed to the haunted eyes of her classmates throughout the year. Now they were petrified. The fear ran like a chill through the room.
Movement at the edge of the Hall caught her attention, and she watched apprehensively as the long unseen face of Potter sidled around the Gryffindor Table.
A scattered applause caught Pansy off guard. Her gaze jumped back to McGonagall who was replying to something a Hufflepuff had asked. “If you are of age, you may stay.”
Stay and fight, no doubt. It was but a fanciful dream to believe that any of them could stand up to the immense force of the Dark Lord’s army. They were all going to die.
“Where’s Professor Snape?” asked a Slytherin girl.
“He has, to use the common phrase, done a bunk,” replied McGonagall.
A jarring cheer of delight rose through the hall, from all but the Slytherin students. Pansy looked down the table to see others of her house exchanging glances at the uproar, as if to say that no one outside of their house understood the gravity of the situation they were in.
It was true when people said that most Slytherins were related to the Dark Lord’s followers. When the choice was given between doing the right thing or staying alive, any true Slytherin would give up every shred of dignity to keep living. The undercurrent of fear could drive a lot of people to do a lot of things they didn’t want to. All Pansy could do was survive.
A chilling voice broke through her thoughts.
“I know that you are preparing to fight.”
The screams of students around her meant that they had to hear it too. They had to hear Him.
“Your efforts are futile. You cannot fight me. I do not want to kill you. I have great respect for the teachers of Hogwarts. I do not want to spill magical blood.”
The voice seemed to seep from the very walls themselves, a low hiss worming into their ears, invading their minds.
Silence hung heavy in the air.
“Give me Harry Potter, and they shall not be harmed. Give me Harry Potter and I shall leave the school untouched. Give me Harry Potter and you will be rewarded.
You have until midnight.”
A deep tremble had settled in Pansy’s bones, spreading out to the ends of her fingers and the quiver of her lips. She’d only ever been a survivor; no leader, no courageous crier against injustice. She was the waters that flowed with the strongest current, never resisting, only accepting the forces that ruled the tides of war.
Pansy found her feet and weakened knees, and in the silence she lifted a shaking arm.
“But he’s there! Potter’s there. Someone grab him!”
All eyes turned from Potter to her.
Then in mass the Gryffindors rose, facing her defiantly. The Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws too, wands emerging from pockets and sleeves.
Pansy’s arm fell to her side, a look of shock upon her face.
She’d spent her years at Hogwarts pointing fingers and making enemies. Never before had she felt so hated. She’d been thinking only of the threat that lay outside Hogwarts’ walls. Now she feared that the danger to her life lay inside its walls too.
“Thank you, Miss Parkinson,” said McGonagall shortly. “You will leave the Hall first with Mr. Filch. If the rest of your House could follow.”
Benches scraped the floor as her House rose to its feet, and once again she was buffeted by the current. Her shocked state head spread through her core, leaving her mind in a frozen place while her feet swept her along with the crowd leaving the Hall.
~*~*~*~*~
The stone brick walls, ceiling, and floor did nothing to dampen the chill that leached into the room. The windowless and featureless walls echoed the screams and explosions that originated from far too near. Shivering, whether from cold or fear, Pansy sat huddled tight in the corner, beside dripping sinks and across from desolate toilet cubicles. Worse than Moaning Myrtle hiding in her own bathroom elsewhere in the castle, Pansy thought. Perhaps she’d die here.
Violent trembles through the castle send cascades of dust and debris falling from the ceiling, where stone cracked and cement failed to cling to the gaps. Pansy imagined giant boulders being hurdled at the castle walls, though the stone-trembling shakes came in the beat of footsteps, like drums pulsing ever rapidly towards death.
There were people fighting nearby. Pansy wasn’t sure which side won that duel. She was only certain that both sides wanted her dead.
Pansy wasn’t entirely sure how she had gotten to the bathroom. Her memories were disjointed. Slytherin students started breaking away from Filch as soon as they left the hall. Scattered, no one knew what side each other was on. They’d find out soon enough.
Footsteps came near, and for a moment Pansy thought the Dark Lord himself had entered the bathroom to kill her.
“You have fought valiantly.”
The high voice hissed like ice through her ears.
“Lord Voldemort knows how to value bravery.
“Yet you have sustained heavy losses. If you continue to resist me, you will all die, one by one. I do not wish this to happen. Every drop of magical blood spilled is a loss and a waste.
“Lord Voldemort is merciful. I command my forces to retreat immediately.
“You have one hour. Dispose of your dead with dignity. Treat your injured.
“I speak now, Harry Potter, directly to you. You have permitted your friends to die for you rather than face me yourself. I shall wait for one hour in the Forbidden Forest. If, at the end of that hour, you have no come to me, have not given yourself up, then battle recommences. This time, I shall enter the fray myself, Harry Potter, and I shall find you, and I shall punish every last man, woman, and child who has tried to conceal you from me. One hour.”
The pause that followed was without so much as a breath. Silence, after so much destruction, sounding bare.
There were footsteps again nearby. Whoever it had been, they too had paused when the Dark Lord spoke. Their footsteps now grew distant.
Pansy let out a shuddering breath.
The quiet brought no comfort. She had no idea what was going on, and didn’t dare peek out of the bathroom to find out if the way was clear.
She had to have left the group of Slytherins too, at some point. Only flashes came to her of running frantically down a corridor, alongside empty portraits and abandoned pedestals were armor once stood.
She’d paused at a window at one point. Flashes of fiery light bombarded the school’s wards. She kept running.
Time was a hard thing to keep track of. Pansy could keep count of her breaths, and the drips of the leaky sinks beside her, but the minutes fell out of her grasp. She wasn’t sure if it had been ten minutes or an hour when she heard people carrying a body past.
It could have been as long as a day by the time that jarring voice returned.
“Harry Potter is dead. He was killed as he ran away, trying to save himself while you lay down your lives for him. We bring you his body as proof that your hero is gone.”
Pansy felt as though she would throw up. Sure, she’d never liked Potter, but somewhere in her lines of thought lost to abstraction she had realized that he had to win if she was going to survive.
“The battle is won. You have lost half of your fighters. My Death Eaters outnumber you, and the Boy Who Lived is finished. There must be no more war. Anyone who continues to resist, man, woman or child, will be slaughtered, as will every member of their family. Come out of the castle now, kneel before me, and you shall be spared. Your parents and children, your brothers and sisters will live and be forgiven, and you will join me in the new world we shall build together.”
Pansy heaved over the sink, her weight rested on the rim as her legs struggled to carry her. Only bile came out. She brushed hair and sweat from her forehead and looked into the cracked mirror.
She looked dead.
That pale thing stared back at her with eyes set deep in dark bags atop colorless cheeks. She could leave the castle as He had said to and hope that He would spare her, but no doubt just one look into her mind would reveal her cowardice.
Pansy managed one step towards the bathroom door before her knees buckled.
At least if Potter had won she could have run into hiding. There was no hiding from the Dark Lord.
A loud rumbling made her jump. The battle sounds had resumed, with bangs and screams returning as if they had never stopped. There was no sense in continuing to fight when Potter was gone. Any sane person had to know that.
Then as soon as it started it ended.
Pansy took only shallow breaths, listening. Something had to be going on, but as much as she strained her ears she could not hear the battle, nor the outcome.
For too long the quiet stretched. Perhaps there had been some resistance. Perhaps they had been quashed.
It was impossible to tell from her little bathroom.
Then in the distance she heard a joyful tune, drawing closer to define the cackling voice of peeves.
“We did it, we bashed them, wee Potter’s the one,
And Voldy’s gone moldy, so now let’s have fun!”
Pansy teared up in relief.
