Get a Backbone Harry
Pansy and Blaise had just approached Harry, Hermione, and Ron’s car when everything went dark. Not just dark, but cold. Dark cold, just like a washing machine setting. Cold dark, like a bad name for a paint color. Pansy needed to stop sneaking out to muggle cafes. She couldn’t think straight.
It didn’t matter what weird things were running through her brain when she saw it. That horrible, soul-sucking monster. Dementors didn’t scare her. She was rather into true crime and horror. Her mother gave her a set of dementor dolls as a gift when she turned three. The entities may terrify others, but to Pansy they were nothing but puppets, incapable of causing harm unless their master ordered them to.
Pansy was certain that they were not here for her, and so she had no reason to be scared. She looked at Blaise and was shocked back into reality. She may not be scared but he was terrified. His body quivered with such a vigor he almost shook the floor. Despite her somewhat cold exterior, Pansy was a caring person. She would let you cry on her shoulder or put holes in your ex-boyfriend’s cauldron. At this moment she wasn’t sure what to do though. In a way she really wasn’t that worried. Blaise was innocent. His mother definitely wasn’t, but Blaise was. He only needed to survive long enough for the dementors to leave.
Would she say it was wrong that she left Blaise frozen in fear and kept walking down the train? Probably not, because she is never wrong. Morally speaking, she is never wrong either because she doesn’t have morals.
Pansy believed that she is simply a confident person. When she continued down the train, the dementor merely moved out of her way. Any other person would say she has the audacity of a white man. Either way, she kept her cool and approached the Gryffindors’ compartment.
Peering in through the frosted windows, she saw them glancing around nervously. Amateurs. Granted, both Harry and Hermione were raised in muggle houses. She cracked the door open slightly and Hermione shot her a startled glance.
“God the last thing I need is an uptight Slytherin right now,” she sneered.
“Shut up, I’m trying to help you,” Pansy said, rolling her eyes.
She slipped into the compartment and shut the door behind her.
“Who’s the old guy in tweed?” she asked.
“Honestly, I don’t know. He’s been asleep since we boarded. I’m assuming a new teacher based on the briefcase, but who’s to say. A lot of unforeseeable things are happening today,” Hermione replied. She darted her eyes at the window, still visibly afraid of the eerie cold.
“Let’s call that a secondary problem,” Pansy said. “The most important thing is that none of you committed any felonies recently. Right?”
“Felonies?”
“Yes, the crimes that are really bad.”
“I know what a felony is, Parkinson,” Hermione replied snarkily.
“So you haven’t committed any felonies?”
“Why, or honestly how, would I have committed a felony?”
“That’s not the question. Did you?”
“No, obviously not!”
Absorbed in her conversation with Hermione, Pansy missed the comedy of Ron and Harry’s eyes bouncing between the two of them like they were watching a tennis match. They both sat bewildered and solidly confused.
Eventually, Pansy confirmed for certain that Hermione didn’t commit a felony. Even if she had to hear about the legal classification for a felony in muggle law to get her answer. She turned to Harry and Ron and cocked her head, asking them the same question.
“Oh god no! I wouldn’t- not that I- but I- no god no- I’d never-” Ron rambled.
“Weasley shut up. That’s a perfectly adequate answer,” Pansy cut in. “Harry?”
“Umm I don’t believe so,” he said unconvincingly.
Pansy could see in his eyes that he was lying. Also, because she knew for a fact that he was lying.
“You do know that inflating a muggle and causing her to float is a crime, right?” she said somewhat mockingly.
“How do you- I didn’t do it on purpose!” he said defensively.
“Cool it, I’m joking. That’s a crime but not worthy of a dementor.” she said laughing.
Somehow that laugh made the trio a little more comfortable with the Slytherin. It also made them significantly less comfortable when a dementor showed up outside their compartment door as if on cue.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Pansy said, rolling her eyes. “Just let it pass, you didn’t do anything worthy of it interacting with you.”
Naturally, Harry did not just let it pass. He jumped out of his seat only to immediately faint. The whole scene would be comical if there wasn’t an air of death and torture.
Pansy sighed, if only Potter could grow a backbone and have common sense. How Draco liked him made no sense to her but that wasn’t terribly relevant to anything right now.
Pansy looked over to see the man in tweed had woken up and raised his wand. She had to duck as he started his spell’s swish and flick. The compartment was small and apparently her head space was free real estate for his wand.
“Expecto patronum!” he shouted, as a white wolf emerged from his wand and charged at the dementor.
He rushed over to Harry as the dementor flew away and the world thawed.
“Have some chocolate, it will make you feel better,” he explained, pulling a bar out of his briefcase.
“It wouldn’t have done anything.”
“Excuse me?”
“It wouldn’t have done anything,” Pansy repeated.
“And how, young lady, do you know that? How could you personally know anything about what that dementor would do? You are being so naive,” he said almost condescendingly.
“Naive? You are a bit naive to have so little knowledge on a well known magical creature. Especially being ancient. It looks like the gray hair you have left is having a midlife crisis and falling out to escape your ignorant, shriveled brain. You could’ve killed all of us by provoking it, instead of using the remaining observation skills in your two flimsy, ailing brain cells to realize that Potter is a fainting wallflower with an iron deficiency. For all we know, he stood up too fast and you nearly decapitated me with your show-off patronus for no reason! Get your act together or I will personally pick up your ugly decaying briefcase, fill it with rocks, tie it to your stupid wool tie, and chuck you into the ocean!”
“Pansy!” Hermione scolded.
“I’m not done yet, Granger. I haven’t even started on his trashy tweed suit that is such a crime against fashion that HE should have been taken by the dementor. Or the fact that his chocolate isn’t ethically sourced so he essentially is promoting deforestation and child labor like a total-”
Pansy shot back into a seat and nearly knocked out from the rebound.
“Pansy! Shut up!” Hermione almost yelled. “Your ability to insult is well established so can you just shut up for one moment so I can figure out what is going on!”
Pansy had never seen Hermione yell before. She couldn’t quite figure out what happened, but in that moment Hermione seemed more like a real human being. Not just a goody-two shoes or a class pet, but a fully formed person with multi-dimensional character traits. Wild stuff, really.
“One minute, Granger. You get one minute of silence from me and then I will keep dragging this man, unless I am convinced he doesn’t deserve it.”