Fiddlesticks
Title: Fiddlesticks
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Hermione/Pansy
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 8,700
Summary: Getting lost in a good book is easy. It’s getting out that’s a bit more of a challenge.
Author's Notes: Reveals are up at femmefest, so now I can post this! Originally posted here. Yes, there's a bit of doodling to accompany the fic.
If you were to pick any day of the week at random, the first thing Pansy Parkinson would expect to see on that day as she stepped into the library was Hermione Granger with her nose stuck in a book. Not that Pansy frequented the library enough to call it habitual, or anything; but whenever she was there, so was Granger. So by conclusion, Granger was a permanent fixture, like a boulder growing out of the carpet, or a parchment-frenzied parasite. That was old news now.
But if you were to pick that same day-or any other day, for that matter-the last thing Pansy would expect to see was, in fact, rather like the first: Hermione Granger with red cheeks, a frantic expression, and her nose stuck in a book. Literally.
Pansy blinked, pausing beside a shelf of outdated Herbology texts. She shook her head. She rubbed her eyes. She even considered pinching herself, but she wasn’t fond of pain or the little white fingerprints that would be left on her skin.
After all this, however, the book was definitely still eating Granger’s face.
Pansy glanced about her to see if anybody else had noticed. The library wasn’t teeming with students, but the surrounding tables certainly weren’t unoccupied, either. Somebody ought to have figured out that something fascinatingly bizarre was happening in their midst right then.
She waited, but nobody looked at Granger, not even by accident; and Granger continued to scrabble at The Puzzling Book of Puzzles (1958 Edition) with increasing viciousness. Perhaps people were simply ignoring her to be polite.
Pansy wasn’t polite. She was a Slytherin, and this was Granger-not to mention an opportunity that didn’t come up all too often (as in, never). Fixing a smug expression into place, she skipped over to Granger’s table and grasped the edge of it to support her weight as she leaned forward.
“You’ve got something on your face, Granger,” she sang, kicking one of her legs out behind her and pointing her toes.
Granger stopped scrabbling to glare at her; the book hung from her nose limply so that only her eyes and forehead were visible beneath the tent of her frizzy brown hair. She looked like a deformed Christmas tree.
“Go away,” Granger said.
Pansy didn’t.
“Ooh, but it’s definitely an improvement, you know.” She continued to kick and point and bounce her foot with glee. Kick, point, bounce. Kick, point, bounce. Kick, point…
Granger stood and began to come around the table toward her. “I mean it. I’ve no patience for you today.”
Pansy flinched, but held her ground. “You don’t have to talk.”
Kick, point, bounce.
Granger made what Pansy supposed was a very ugly look behind the book, though what she could see of her expression changed remarkably a half-moment later. “I suppose that’s what you say to all of the boys, isn’t it?” Granger asked sweetly.
Kick, kick, kick.
Pansy attempted to appear unfazed, but was having little success of it. She wasn’t a slag, despite what anyone thought, and she was tired of having the rumors that said so rubbed in her face like dirt. Still, she wasn’t about to run off in shame like Granger seemed to want.
“How very rude,” she simpered instead, clicking her tongue. “And here I was, thinking perhaps I’d offer to help you with your little problem-”
She didn’t get any farther than that, though, because apparently, it was as much as Granger could take, and she lunged at Pansy. Or at least, Pansy thought Granger was lunging at her; Granger’s eyes suddenly widened and got a manic sort of look to them, focusing just over Pansy’s shoulder, and she darted forward hurriedly. Pansy gave a shrill squeak and, when her attacker was just close enough for physical contact, she shoved her hands roughly up at the book and, by proxy, Granger’s face.
Granger gasped a quiet, “What are you doing?” coupled with a soft, “Oh!” a moment later.
And then quite abruptly, everything started spinning.
Pansy couldn’t remember falling asleep, nor could she recall being so very uncomfortable when she had done so; and wherever she had been last, it hadn’t felt as cold, either. She sat up and shivered, her palm flat against a stone floor.
Stone?
She cast a quick look about her. To her horror, the stone stretched in all directions, unbroken by wood or carpets or furnishings, and climbed up to form walls and a low, rounded ceiling. In fact, she seemed to be in the center of a circular room that contained nothing at all except a narrow window to her left. There was no door in sight.
Pansy threw back her head and screamed until the sound filled the empty space like air. But even when it started to hurt her own ears, she didn’t stop.
At least, not until someone released an annoyed groan and clamped a hand over her mouth. That was enough to sufficiently shock the noise right out of her for the rest of her life.
“What’s wrong with you?” a hushed voice demanded as soon as Pansy quieted. Granger revealed herself a beat later, and she removed her hand.
“Me? Me?” Pansy cried hysterically the second she was free. “What about you? Where have you been? And what the hell are you playing at by attacking me? Twice!”
Granger frowned, annoyed. “Don’t be dramatic. I’ve been behind you for the entire time.”
“That doesn’t explain why you attacked me!”
“When on earth did I attack you?”
“Just now!” Pansy scooted along the floor until she reached the curve of the wall opposite Granger. “And then in the library! You charged at me!”
Granger’s mouth fell open in a very undignified manner. “What?”
Pansy primly dusted off her knees. “You charged at me like some sort of freak, or something, and I was forced to defend myself.”
“I wasn’t even looking at you!” Granger sputtered.
“Yes you were! You were coming right toward me!”
“I was going past you!”
“Well that’s not exactly effective, is it?”
Granger slapped her hand against her forehead in exasperation. “Honestly! As if I cared enough about you to bother attacking you. I’d just seen Harry and Ron come into the library, and I was about to ask them to help me. If you’ll recall, I had far more pressing matters than your silly insults with which to concern myself.”
Pansy crossed her arms defiantly. So perhaps she had overreacted by a miniscule fraction; but really, how could she have known otherwise? Gryffindors were prone to doing insane and illogical things without a moment’s notice or hesitation. She’d had to be prepared for anything because she hadn’t known what to expect. Obviously.
“Nice story, Granger,” she sneered. “But I know how much you dislike me, and you know you’d take any chance you could to harm me.”
“You mean,” Granger began, her voice suddenly tentative and soft, “I’ve been waiting all this time for an opportunity that’s only just come along?”
So she had come to her senses, then.
“Exactly.”
“Because you’ve hurt me so truly and deeply over the years that I simply had to exact my revenge or die trying, since nothing else in my life was worthwhile anymore?”
Well, admittedly, that was a bit extreme, but…
“Of course.”
Whatever kept Granger’s boat afloat.
“So then…” But here Granger’s tone returned to normal, “I suppose I’m correct in assuming that everything is about you?”
Pansy caught herself just before she nodded. Granger had been mocking her without missing a single beat, whereas Pansy had missed all of them, one by one by one. She opened her mouth to retaliate.
Granger held up her hand. “Don’t,” she said wearily.
“I’ll do what I like,” Pansy snapped.
Granger tilted her head condescendingly to one side and stared at her, waiting.
“Well?” she asked after a pause.
“Well what?”
“Aren’t you going to continue chattering on inanely about yourself?”
Pansy sniffed delicately. “I never specified what it was I’d like to do. I just said that I’d do it.”
Which was true. She couldn’t stand to argue much longer, anyway, since Granger was much cleverer than her, and she didn’t like being bested at things, especially quick thinking-though of course, it wasn’t as if she did much of that, anyway. She preferred to taunt stupid people, since stupid people never knew what to say back, and therefore she never had to get much farther than the first insult or two.
“Fine,” Granger sighed at length, “if you’ll at least keep quiet… We’re currently trapped in this place, and one would think you’d have more of a concern for that than whatever self-centered thoughts happen to be braving themselves across your mind.” She took a breath, and then continued. “The book released me as soon as we got here, so-”
Pansy blinked. “The book’s here?”
Granger blinked back, unimpressed by the interruption. But at least Pansy hadn’t said something really idiotic like, “The book’s not on your face anymore!”-which had only just occurred to her when Granger pointed it out.
“Yeeees,” the Gryffindor answered slowly, as if speaking momentarily to a child. Pansy hated being patronized; Draco always did it, though not just to her, of course. “As I was attempting to say, the book obviously must have something to do with us being here. When you-defended yourself-you must have triggered an enchantment in it. And that’s… unfortunate.” Granger shook her bushy head.
“Yeah, I hadn’t noticed.”
Granger’s eyes snapped onto her. “Don’t you understand? I wasn’t just reading that book on a whim: it’s from the Restricted Section. I had to get special permission to even consider looking at it.” She said ‘Restricted’ reverently, as if the word were forbidden to mention aloud.
Freak.
“So?” Pansy shrugged. “What’s so dangerous about a puzzle book?”
“Clearly, you saw what it did. It hardly required any provocation before-”
“Oh, well, that.” She waved her hand, noncommittal. “I didn’t mind that.”
“Pansy.” Granger looked about to reach over and strangle her. “If I’m correct, then we are in that book, or a part of it, at least. We are in a puzzle book-a riddle book.”
Pansy didn’t get it. Why was Granger so panicked about the stupid book? Who cared about puzzles or riddles? Shouldn’t she have been more bothered by the lack of a door? And more importantly, what was a book-worshipping psychopath like Granger doing not in Ravenclaw with all of the other socially unacceptable people?
“A book of riddles, Pansy,” Granger tried again, this time with hand motions. “How do you suppose we’re going to get out?”
…Oh.
Got it.
“It’s too far to climb down, even if the window were wide enough to get through.”
Pansy didn’t turn around as Granger came up behind her, continuing instead to gaze out through the narrow slit in the wall. Shades of orange and pink stained what she could see of the sky; she must have been there a while if the sun had already begun to set. It was difficult to look downward beyond that, or at least to find the proper angle at which to do so, but she could find nothing much else outside. There might have been the shadows of a few hills or even mountains, or even the top of a cluster of particularly tall trees; she couldn’t decide this exactly, though, because each time she looked, she saw something different in that solitary dark patch in the distance. And she couldn’t see the ground at all, nor the traces of the rest of the structure that contained the reluctant pair.
They were trapped, it seemed, inside an impenetrable and inescapable tower that loomed over nothing.
“How would you know that?” Pansy asked snippily in response to Granger’s statement. “I’m the one at the window.”
Granger sighed. “I’ve already looked. You were unconscious far longer than I was.”
“So what now?” Pansy mocked, and inwardly cringed. The echo in the room made her voice sound too nasally.
Granger didn’t notice. “Now we look at the book.”
“For answers?”
“For riddles.”
“Aren’t we trying to avoid riddles?”
Why did Granger always contradict everything she said?
Granger shook her head. “I don’t think we can anymore. Not if we actually want to escape.” She retrieved the book from the center of the room, and then brought it over to where Pansy stood in the slowly-dimming light. “I don’t suppose you have your wand? Mine is still in the library.”
Pansy whipped her hand around to her back pocket, feeling foolish that she hadn’t thought to look for it before, but to her astonishment, she found the pocket empty.
“It’s gone!” she exclaimed.
“I thought as much. We’re meant to do this without magic.”
Right, Pansy thought. They were meant to do this, like it was some kind of horrid quest.
She didn’t bother voicing this, though, as she didn’t want to spend the night in that terribly small, terribly cold, and terribly dark room with nothing more than an obnoxious Mudblood for comfort.
Granger propped the book against the decaying wooden sill, and Pansy stepped closer until their shoulders were nearly touching. There was a pleasant smell to the air, suddenly, like a mixture of cinnamon, old ink, and perhaps cedar, but Pansy didn’t know-or care-where it was coming from. With a steady hand, Granger turned to the first page, where the title should have been, except, instead of a title, there were two lines in the middle of the page:
“That’s certainly a comfort,” Granger muttered under her breath.
“What?” Pansy heard herself asking. She hadn’t meant to ask it; she’d meant to figure out the meaning on her own soon enough. Stupid rhymes.
“It means that once we start, we can’t stop.”
Or what?
The question hung between them, though neither dared to venture an answer. Granger glanced at Pansy, meeting her gaze momentarily until their eyes darted away like a ricochet.
“Well, go on, then,” Pansy pressed in a shaky voice. “Turn the page.”
She listened for once; and there was the first riddle:
“Where are the other riddles?” Pansy asked-and this time, she meant to. How were they supposed to solve three riddles when the book had only provided one? She frowned. “Turn the page again.”
Granger tried, but the pages were stuck together as if they had never been apart; the remainder of the book had been sealed from them. Pansy grabbed it and pulled at the corners, hoping to peel them back, at least, but with no result. The parchment had hardened into a solid, immovable block.
“I don’t know.” Granger bit her lip. “Perhaps they’re somewhere else in the room, or perhaps we’ve got to solve one riddle first before we receive the next.”
“You mean, like a trail?” Pansy was beginning to catch on.
“Yes… Or…” Granger hesitated. “Or a trap.”
A shiver washed down Pansy’s back, and she tried to ignore the sensation.
“But, I mean… It’s not… That is, I wasn’t under the impression that The Puzzling Book of Puzzles was full of dark magic. Even if it’s brought us here, the book is all about games, and I suppose a perverse version of… ‘fun.’” They both grimaced at the word. “It’s simply meant to be a challenge.”
“A challenge that could kill us.”
“Yes, well, that’s why it was in the Restricted Section, isn’t it?”
“Bends and bows and tests… Bends and bows and tests…”
Granger had been repeating the second line of the riddle like a chant for almost fifteen minutes, and the light had grown so faint that Pansy could only just barely distinguish her reluctant companion’s silhouette. Yet still they had thought of nothing.
Or rather, Granger had thought of nothing. Pansy had allowed her mind to wander, as much as she knew that she should be contributing to their escape if she wanted it to happen sooner rather than later-rather than never. She wouldn’t be much help, that was true; she’d never even attempted to read a riddle, much less to solve one, and she was quite certain that the talent for doing so didn’t come easily. Or if it did, it was innate, and if it was innate, the answer surely would have occurred to her by now. Obviously it hadn’t, because all she could understand was the concept of the solution coming in halves, though even then, Granger had had to explain it to her. That was how riddles worked, apparently; the answers were just big words broken down into little words and then strung together. It seemed a daft way of doing things to her. Wouldn’t it be simpler to leave clues that hinted at the big word straightaway?
“You could help, you know,” Granger snapped, pausing mid-pace to glare at her.
“I am. I’m thinking. Quietly.”
Granger snorted in disbelief.
It wasn’t a lie; she was thinking. But her preeminent thought was not about what bends and bows and tests, but rather whether anyone was missing her now that she was… missing. Had anyone even noticed her disappearance? Potter, Weasel, and half of Wizarding Britain were probably all scrambling around frantically searching for their precious, golden Granger. Draco, however, probably wasn’t thinking anything of her absence. He probably assumed she was sulking in her dormitory or off doing whatever she pleased without him.
As if she was ever without him if she could help it.
As if he’d ever appreciated this, or even realized that it had become her habit at all.
Oh, he had never been cruel to her-at least, no more than he was to anybody else. She sometimes even thought he was particularly kind to her, and went out of his way to hold her in a special regard. But most often, he all but ignored her.
Rather, he ignored her in the way that mattered.
She occupied herself so heavily in trying to change this, in trying to make herself matter in that way, that she didn’t have many other friends anymore. There was Daphne, and sometimes Millie when she wasn’t being moody, but the others had drifted. Pansy had drifted.
Vince and Greg might’ve cared for her, but sometimes she couldn’t even tell whether they were still breathing, much less what went on inside their heads.
“I keep thinking of trees,” Granger said. She had finally stopped pacing, and had come to sit beside Pansy-a good distance away, but technically still next to her. Pansy could see her twisting her hands together worriedly in her lap as they leaned their backs against the wall beneath the window. Soon enough, they would be entirely enveloped in darkness; there was no telling when the moon would rise to meet the tower-or if it would even do so at all. The little rectangle of light on the opposite wall had almost entirely melted into the stones.
“Trees don’t test, though,” Pansy said.
“And it doesn’t make for a good first half of a word, either,” Granger agreed.
“And trees don’t bend. Branches do.”
“Little trees bend; but why would the riddle refer to little trees? The connotations that present themselves with the word ‘tree’ always make one think of giant, ancient things.”
“Doesn’t ‘bowing’ mean bending?”
“Curving, really. But it does remind me of really bowing, as in someone bending forward after a performance.”
Weariness had reduced their arguments almost to conversation-and almost intelligent conversation, at that.
“Trees can’t bend in half.”
Almost.
“Well, there is… one that can. A real tree, I mean.”
Pansy looked at her.
“I doubt it’s what the riddle means-it can’t be alluding to it specifically, but-”
“Spit it out, Granger.”
She huffed. “The Whomping Willow. I can’t stop picturing the Whomping Willow. It bends and bows and tests and breaks-and not only itself, but other things as well. It’s an absolute, violent force, all on its own. It doesn’t even need a storm, or-”
Granger froze.
“Or what?” Pansy pressed. Civil, intelligent conversation or no, she was beyond starting to lose what little patience she had.
“Wind,” Granger whispered. “Wind. That’s what bends and bows and tests the trees!”
She leapt to her feet, excitement seeping into her voice, and as she did so, her hand accidentally clipped the side of Pansy’s head.
“Ow!” Pansy cried furiously, instantly rising as well. “Watch it, you stupid Mudblood! That hurt!”
But Granger didn’t apologize. She simply stood completely still for the second time that minute until a broad, nearly wicked smile slowly spread across her lips. “Ow,” she repeated. “Wind-ow.”
“Wind-ow?”
“Window,” Granger said triumphantly, correcting the pronunciation. “It’s not phonetic, but that must be it! And remember, it says, ‘something that always looks west.’ We saw the sunset out the window. The sun always sets in the west! It’s so obvious, I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before!”
“Window,” Pansy blinked in awe. It did seem a bit obvious, when she considered it; it was, after all, the only thing in the room apart from themselves and the stones.
Granger turned to her, eyes still wide. Her breath seemed to catch in her throat. “What do we do now, do you think?”
Pansy’s own breath hitched in puzzlement. Granger was asking her opinion?
The exact second the words I don’t know left the tip of her tongue, the room suddenly began to shake.
“What’s happening?” Pansy shrieked in terror, but she couldn’t hear Granger’s reply over the roar that was rising in the tower. Dust and dead moss rained upon their heads, unearthed from the stones of the ceiling. In the apocalyptic confusion, Pansy reached out frantically and grasped the nearest sturdy object; it was warm and soft, and immediately curled safely around her hand, but she didn’t bother to figure out what it was.
She crouched down, neither knowing nor caring where Granger was. All the dirt seemed to have been shaken free, and now stones fell heavily and steadily, crashing down in a deadly rain. An enormous crack cut into the floor between her feet.
Merlin, Pansy thought. I’m going to die after all. She remembered only belatedly to think of Draco.
The moment Pansy had resigned herself to her death, three things happened: the shaking stopped, the roar ceased, and an earsplitting clatter resounded from opposite sides of the room.
And then silence.
Tentatively, Pansy looked up. The room was perfectly intact; the floor was free of cracks and dust and stones. Bright moonlight streamed calmly in through the window.
“The window!” she exclaimed at the same time that Granger, from somewhere very near to her, shouted, “A door!”
Somehow, they both flew to the window first. It was the only aspect of the room that had changed, for it had crumbled slightly, and fresh moss and weeds grew from it as if it were excruciatingly old.
“What on earth?” Granger breathed.
Out of a mysterious compulsion that suddenly overcame her, Pansy reached out to clear the growth away from the sill. Yet even though her touch was light, the wood gave way beneath her fingertips. It caved toward the ground, the entirety of the window seeming to slope inward and then downward in a miniature landslide.
Just before it came in contact with the floor, however, the debris melted away like snowflakes on warm skin. The two girls watched in stunned silence as the window, the weeds, and everything around them disappeared. The window itself, though already small, began to shrink, pinched slightly at the bottom, until it too fell completely away.
After that there was only blank wall and the sound of something metallic clattering to their feet as the last of the moss vanished. Moonlight still illuminated the room, though the space was now entirely enclosed.
Granger was the first to recover. She reached down, groping about until her hand closed around something, and she brought it up to show Pansy.
A silver skeleton key glittered in her palm.
“A key?” Pansy murmured.
“For the door.”
Pansy looked. Directly across from where the window had been, a door now stood, unimposing and ordinary in appearance, but like the key, it seemed an unearthly fixture.
Without saying anything, but continuing to hold whatever she had clutched onto in fear just minutes ago, Pansy proceeded across the room with Granger still strangely close beside her. She tried the doorknob first out of habit, though she knew it wouldn’t work. Then Granger slid the key into the tarnished lock just below it, and turned it. She drew in a deep breath as she did so, but Pansy held hers.
Miracle of miracles, the lock clicked with a little tinny sound reminiscent of glass and gold.
The key was a perfect fit.
Shaking for once out of anticipation, and not fright, Pansy pulled open the door.
They were standing in sunlight, pure, bright, and warm. In just those first several seconds, the place felt such a contrast to where they had spent the past however many hours that something pricked at the inner corners of Pansy’s eyes.
Tears. Mortifying, salty, unstoppable tears. Pansy Parkinson was not dead, but she was crying, and so she might as well be.
When she released a strangled half-gasp, half-scream, Granger whirled her head round to look at her bemusedly.
“Are you all right?” she asked softly once she discovered the reasoning behind the odd noise. She sounded genuinely concerned, and her eyes echoed the feeling. Pansy couldn’t understand why she wasn’t poking fun at her and generally attempting to drive her into misery; it was what Pansy would’ve done, had she the chance. But Granger wasn’t crying, her eyes weren’t even remotely damp-and she appeared nearly as if she cared.
Pansy turned away sharply, but was prevented by-something-from going too far. She blinked, and looked down, and then she realized that all this time, what she had been holding onto for dear life was Granger’s hand.
“Oh,” she said, and hastily dropped it as if it had scorched her flesh. Her cheeks burned with (what she imagined as) a deep, horrible red.
Today was the day that Pansy’s dignity committed suicide.
Rest in peace, you filthy traitor.
It was not a room, exactly, that held them this time. Pansy thought she saw walls far, far away, but it was like looking out that tower window again, so she couldn’t be sure. What she did see, though, and quite assuredly, was green. An explosion of it.
Absolutely everywhere.
Lush, green grass rippled beneath her feet, each blade soft yet distinct with morning dew still resting in droplets upon it. It stretched as far as she could see, flat where she stood staring, but eventually sloping up and down into small hills. Nearer than the hills, however, were the trees. Solid trees with light brown trunks covered almost entirely in that familiar green moss stood just a few paces away from her. In an uneven row, their branches were swept over to one side like windblown hair, creating a tunnel of green leaves that led to a more thickly-grown forest. The sky, though thankfully not green, was a more intense shade of blue than she had ever seen; below it, a thin river wended its way through the ocean of grass, all that remained on the ground to break up the solidness of the color. The water passed under a low bridge, and then around the curve of a hill, where it finally vanished from sight.
Pansy had seen green before; she was a Slytherin, after all. But this green and Slytherin Green were different, nearly opposite. This green made Slytherin Green seem dingy and cold. This green hurt her eyes considerably.
She wasn’t sure whether that was a bad thing. Odd.
She looked behind her, abruptly realizing that she had forgotten to close the door, but it was no longer there, not even a splinter from its frame remaining.
So this was where they would find the second riddle-and hopefully, its answer. There was no going back now.
To her right, the same thought appeared to have occurred to Granger.
“We should rest before we start on the next one,” the latter said hurriedly, yawning as if to prove her point.
“What if we’ve got some kind of time limit?” Pansy blurted.
How uncharacteristically logical of her.
But Granger shot her logic down. “I don’t think we do. As long as we don’t read the second riddle, we should be in a sort of limbo. We’ll be safe, and we’ll have the time we need to rest.”
Pansy put her hands on her hips-also uncharacteristic. “Well, maybe you’re wrong. What then?”
But Granger wasn’t having that, either. “I’m exhausted, Pansy. I don’t have any energy left to worry about that, much less to trot around trying to piece together clues. I don’t know how long this next riddle is going to require, and so I’m going to take advantage of this time, right now, when I haven’t got to do anything, so that I can reach a point of functionality for when I have got something pressing to do. Whether you want to do the same is entirely your choice.”
Pansy narrowed her eyes. “But what if you’re wrong?”
It wasn’t completely out of the question.
“Then kill me,” Granger snarled as she tossed her hands into the air. “If I’m not already dead, that is. You’re welcome to have a go at the second riddle yourself, but I am not going to help you.” She began to march off in the direction of the river, and without looking back, and in the same annoyed tone, added, “I’m. Sorry.”
Well then.
Pansy followed her in her own time. Nervous as she was about losing an hour or two or three, her legs ached, and her back ached, and her head ached, and her eyelids felt heavier than boulders, and she wanted nothing more than to sleep. She had just been through an ordeal; she was still in the middle of that ordeal, in fact.
She probably looked awful.
She didn’t go on adventures. She didn’t have ordeals waltzing in and out of her life whenever they pleased. She didn’t have to save the world every June and try to come out of that still breathing.
Granger did, but currently she didn’t look any worse than if she’d stayed up all night studying for a History of Magic exam. Which was to say, she wasn’t at her best, but she didn’t look like she’d been trampled to death in a pit of Hippogriff shit, either.
Pansy felt pathetic. It wasn’t as if they were saving the world, after all. They were simply saving themselves.
And that was more or less Pansy’s own fault.
Granger was asleep when Pansy at last ambled over to the spot in which she’d settled, and she hesitated only briefly before settling next to her in turn-though still a foot or two away, of course. She expected the grass to feel disgusting and slimy, even if it was soft, but she was pleasantly surprised to discover that it didn’t. Granger had managed to find the only dry patch of grass possibly for miles. After checking for bugs and other undesirable creatures, and finding none, Pansy lay back and closed her eyes.
She couldn’t sleep.
She rolled onto her sides, first her right and then her left, but drowsiness did not overtake her. She rolled onto her stomach, but all that resulted was a flower petal up her nose.
So she rolled back onto her right side, and she stared at Granger.
Of course, Granger took no notice of this, as she was practically snoring by then, so Pansy didn’t feel any shame in it. Not that normally she would’ve been ashamed of staring, since she made a point to stare at people if she was sure it would intimidate them or at least make them uncomfortable; but it was different, staring at Granger, because if Granger had been awake, she’d have been staring straight back.
If they’d made a contest of it, Pansy would have lost.
That was just the way it was. Granger was better than her at most things, and at least equal to her in most of the others. Pansy had always thought herself to be the more attractive of the two, but that didn’t make Granger hideous. She was almost pretty, with the sunlight making a soft halo of her frizzy hair and revealing the near-imperceptible freckles upon her nose. Her eyelashes were long and dark, and her lips were still wet from when she’d drank river water from her cupped palms.
Yes, Granger was pretty when she wasn’t talking or intent on proving how brainless you were (and the two most often coincided).
An odd sensation stirred somewhere within the pit of Pansy’s stomach. If she hadn’t known any better, she’d have called it attraction.
But she did know better, so she rolled onto her back and squeezed her eyes shut.
The rain came later, perhaps only an hour after Pansy’s resistance against slumber had weakened and then failed. It was light at first, a cool, faint tickle upon the skin, yet it gradually grew, and soon heavy, icy droplets careened down at the unsuspecting pair.
“Bloody hell!” Pansy screeched, scrambling to her feet when, after breathing in particularly deeply, she ended up with a lungful of water.
“Bglarrgh!” was all Granger seemed capable of expressing. Still sleep-ridden, she was slow in standing. Impatiently, Pansy grabbed Granger’s arm and yanked her up, pulling her in the direction of the tree branch tunnel they had spotted before.
“Come on!”
“Wha?” Granger inquired sleepily, bumbling along after Pansy.
“The trees, stupid!” Pansy snapped. “Unless you’re keen on drowning!”
What was this called? A moment of clarity? Because only a miraculous moment of clarity certainly would have made Pansy the more sensible of the two.
A few staggering steps in, Granger increased her pace until it was nearly in time with Pansy’s, the chill of the rain beginning to take effect.
“Where are we going?”
Pansy pointed. “Over there!”
They both had to shout to be heard above the torrent.
The trees were farther away than they had appeared at first, but Pansy continued toward them without slowing, still gripping Granger’s arm. Granger either didn’t notice, or didn’t care just then, until Pansy slipped and fell in a slick mixture of mud and grass and landed on her back, jerking Granger down halfway with her.
Pansy swore. Mud squelched under her head when she moved, and she could feel it sliding down her hair and shirt when she sat up.
Disgusting.
Granger spent a few moments wincing, then proffered her hand.
Pansy took it, and on they went; and then at last, they reached the shelter of the trees. She almost couldn’t hear the sound of the rain against the leaves over her own and Granger’s heavy panting.
“Thank-you,” Granger wheezed, her palms flat against her thighs as she doubled over.
“Oh. Yeah. Thanks… too.”
Pansy had never run this fast before in her life, and for what, really? To escape the rain? Rain was a lot less life-threatening than a room intent upon collapsing around you. A smile twitched at the corner of her lips, until it spread into a hint of a giggle, and then a laugh. She’d always hated her laugh-her real one, not the one she used for laughing at people, because the effects of each were quite different-but she was laughing anyway.
Granger chuckled a bit, but managed to contain herself. There was an odd look in her eye, though, as she glanced at Pansy, but it was gone as quick as it had come.
Hysterical tears dripped from Pansy’s chin.
She’d never actually sincerely thanked anyone before, much less Granger.
Come to think of it, she and Granger hadn’t ever even talked, even on this nightmarish quest-slash-adventure-type thing. They’d discussed riddles and survival tactics, but never the day-to-day things that you’d find in a normal conversation. Interests. Hobbies. Boys… Had that ginger oaf managed to weaken her knees yet?
Pansy quieted abruptly. “We’ve never talked,” she said.
“What?”
“Um, talking. We… haven’t.”
“Do you want to?” Granger sounded surprised.
“Oh. No,” she lied quickly. “I was just pointing it out.”
She scuffed at the ground with her toe, and the pair fell into a heavy silence.
“You’ve been sunburned a bit,” Granger said at length. “Just there.”
Pansy’s hands flew up to cover her nose. “I have not-OUCH!”
Granger was right, of course, and the skin was raw. Pansy glared. She’d often made a point of avoiding the sun for this precise reason.
“Have I been, as well?” Granger asked hesitantly.
Pansy squinted. “I can’t tell.”
So Granger stepped closer, until she was directly before Pansy, their toes perhaps a foot away from touching. Pansy attempted to concentrate, but an odd feeling overwhelmed her, and she couldn’t, somehow. Her mind and eyes weren’t focusing-at least, on what they were supposed to. Her breath hitched slightly, her stomach churning. Granger was wearing Muggle clothes, having discarding her sodden Hogwarts robe, but the water had still seeped through; her shirt clung to her like an extra layer of skin, and Pansy watched as her chest rose and fell to the cadence of her breaths.
When Pansy glanced up, she caught the warm brown of Granger’s eyes, and she smelled cinnamon, old ink, and cedar; and the freckles were more pronounced now, even though they were moored in a red sunburn.
A sunburn. That was what she was supposed to be looking for.
“Granger…”
Granger shook her head almost imperceptibly. “Please… I’m so tired of that. Just… call me…” She broke off, waving her hand meekly.
Hermione?
Pansy unconsciously licked her lips, Hermione swaying forward so minutely that neither of them seemed to know whether it was accidental.
But then Hermione swayed back, and glanced downward hastily. “I suppose we really should start on the next riddle,” she said.
Pansy blinked. Her stomach continued to churn, but now it was beginning to make her sick.
“Right,” she muttered. “Of course.”
That was what they were supposed to be doing.
This time, the book opened only to the middle, despite any attempts to flip forward or back.
Hermione was frowning. “It’s too simple,” she muttered.
For once, Pansy nearly understood her meaning; the riddle read more like instructions than anything else. But if they were instructions that got them out of the book, she was more than happy to follow them.
When she relayed this rather snippily to Hermione, the latter’s frown deepened. “It’s too simple,” she repeated, as if Pansy hadn’t heard her the first time. “There must be something less obvious that it’s referring to.”
“Like what? Maybe that’s why it’s supposed to be a challenge; you only think it isn’t obvious.”
“It’s a riddle. It’s not supposed to be obvious.”
“Which is why you’ll bugger it up when it is!”
“That isn’t how it works!”
Pansy gave a little scream and snatched the book from Hermione’s hands. “You think you know everything, don’t you? It’s just like you to think too much!”
“Give that back! You’ve no idea-”
“No!” Pansy turned her back and stamped her foot.
That was when the words flashed.
“What did you do?” Hermione snapped, taking the book back from a stunned Pansy.
“I didn’t do anything!” she protested feebly. What had she done? She’d only taken a little step…
“Six steps ahead,” Hermione marveled.
“It’s seven.”
“Six. Look.” Hermione shoved the book under Pansy’s nose; and the riddle had indeed changed from seven steps ahead to six. She took a step. “And now it’s five. It’s counting down the steps. It’s…”
“Obvious?” Pansy suggested sweetly, now feeling very smug.
“Straightforward.”
Pansy rolled her eyes as Hermione took the remaining five steps. Weren’t Slytherins supposed to be the proud and stubborn ones of the lot? (Though they were much more discreet about it, of course.)
The rain had abated into a gentle mist that caught on their hair in minute droplets like frost; and the temperature wasn’t certain, neither too warm nor too cold. Nor was the rain comfortable or uncomfortable. It just was.
On the seventh step, Hermione began walking to the left. As it had done before, the words of the riddle flashed, and the numbers began to change. Sixty-six, sixty-five, sixty-four…
…Forty-nine, forty-eight, forty-seven…
…Sixteen, fifteen, fourteen…
…Three, two one…
Hermione stopped. Directly in their path lay a rotting log, covered completely in the moss that Pansy had begun to hate.
On that log sat a toad.
Pansy also hated toads. She did her best not to simply shriek and scurry behind Hermione, but as it was, she flinched violently and pulled an alarmingly pained face.
“Toooaaad,” she all but gurgled.
“Yes, I’d quite noticed,” Hermione said dryly.
But she shut up well enough when the toad started talking.
“Fiddlesticks,” the toad croaked. “Fiddlesticks. Fiddlesticks.”
So perhaps not talking, exactly.
It was still weird.
“Sooo,” Pansy ventured, “is that the password? Fiddlesticks?”
“Fiddlesticks,” the toad said.
“Fiddlesticks?” Hermione asked dubiously.
“Fiddlesticks,” the toad replied.
And then it hopped away. Just like that. All well-that’s-that-now-I’ll-just-be-off-thank-you.
“What the hell?”
Pansy really, really wanted to go home.
The second half of the riddle was easy enough, and the exchange about it went something like this:
“What closes gaps with glee?”
“A bridge.”
“Why glee?”
“It rhymes, I suppose.”
“What about teeth? Teeth close gaps.”
“It’s a bridge.”
“Or what about talking?”
“Have you happened to see a Talking anywhere?”
“A what? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Precisely. Let’s go find a bridge.”
Which was unfair, Pansy thought sulkily as she and Hermione followed the river, because talking certainly did bridge gaps. Gaps in silence, rather. And here she was, shot down for finally being clever.
At least Hermione had let her carry the key.
When they arrived at the bridge, the first thing Pansy attempted to do was cross it, because that was what you did with bridges. However, as soon as she began to put her right foot forward, she encountered an extremely hard, extremely solid, and extremely invisible wall, which sent her bouncing backward a short ways with a throbbing toe and knee.
“That’s odd,” Hermione remarked lightly.
Pansy scowled. “You think?”
Hermione shot her an annoyed frown, and once more opened the book. They were at the place that closed gaps with glee, with no steps ahead, no steps left, and a password and a key.
What were they supposed to do now?
“Fiddlesticks?” Pansy offered.
“What are you doing?” Hermione hissed.
“I’m saying the password, obviously.”
They both waited.
Nothing happened.
“Wonderful.”
“Maybe that wasn’t the password.”
“The toad said-” But Pansy didn’t continue any farther. The toad shouldn’t have said anything, and they both knew that full well. Anybody who was just short of being dead did.
Pursing her lips, Hermione tapped curiously at the invisible wall, Pansy watching her out of the corner of her eye. The Gryffindor had this certain air about her when she was thinking, and it wasn’t infuriating or annoying to witness-which was how it was with most people more intelligent than you. It was like…
Well.
It was captivating, to an extent.
Pansy shook her head rather violently in hope of erasing this opinion, but with little luck. Hermione furrowed her brows, and chewed at her lip, and tap-tap-tapped upon that unseen barrier, and Pansy couldn’t bear to gaze anywhere else.
“It could be… But no, that wouldn’t work at all, would it?”
“Uh huh...”
“And one would think… Oh, but that couldn’t possibly do anything but contradict… Of course, one could always…”
“Yeah…”
“No, no, one couldn’t, not at all, you’re not considering… If only it were…”
“Mmmm…”
“But it isn’t, is it? Right?”
“What?”
Hermione huffed. “Try and listen, please. What I said was: it’s not very complex at all, is it?”
“Er… what is? Isn’t.”
Another huff; more impatient this time. “The riddle said, ‘This shall but bring the password in sight.’ In sight. It shouldn’t matter at all what we were told, because we can’t literally see what we’re told-at least, usually.”
“You’re babbling,” Pansy murmured distractedly. She had no idea what the girl was talking about, but she did know that, whatever she was saying, Hermione Granger was brilliant. Amazingly, freakishly brilliant. Uh huh.
Hermione tucked a wild strand of hair behind her ear. “That is, the password isn’t ‘fiddlesticks,’” she said. “That was just to confuse us, as with the simplicity of the riddle itself. The password is ‘toad!’”
Wonderfully-and surprisingly-the world did not collapse at the word ‘toad.’ The sky did not fall. The earth did not shake. The ground did not open up and swallow everything within reach. Nothing crumbled and faded away.
Another lock simply appeared out of thin air, and when that lock had been unlocked, the invisible wall melted away. Or at least, Pansy thought it was melting; she could feel something cold trickling past her feet, and then when she extended her hand, it met no resistance. The key, however, had disappeared.
Hermione marched over the bridge, pausing at its peak to look inquiringly back at Pansy, who then followed and smoothly pushed her way ahead.
“What do you think the next-” the latter began to ask.
But then she slammed once again into a wall, and thank you very much, but she had really had enough of that.
Something was squishing her. Squish, squash. Something warm and soft, pressing her up against the wall and possibly jamming something sharp into her shoulder blade. Something much less warm and much less soft-cold and hard-dug into her shin. Her hand had found something prickly. Her eyes saw stars.
“Sorry,” she heard Hermione say, and then suddenly, she wasn’t being squished anymore. She could breathe.
“Guh,” Pansy choked, looking down at her hand. The prickly thing appeared to be the twiggy end of a broom, another glance down revealing the cold and hard thing to be a metal bucket. The thing in her shoulder blade had presumably been Hermione or Hermione’s elbow, or foot, or something.
Broom plus bucket equaled cupboard, generally. Pansy and Hermione and a cramped little broom cupboard and-
“No door,” Pansy whispered, her eyes wide. “There! Is! No! Door!”
“Pansy-”
“Thereisnodoorthereisnodoorthereisnodoorthereisno-”
And, SMACK!
“Get a hold of yourself,” Hermione snapped, grasping Pansy by the shoulders. “You’re leaning on it.”
“Oh.” Score one for Stupid.
This was the first door they encountered that wasn’t locked, much to their relief; neither fancied searching the dingy, chaotic contents of the cupboard to find one, and they fancied even less considering what would happen if they couldn’t. Hermione held The Puzzling Book of Puzzles close to her chest as the knob turned.
The library opened up before them. Dusty shelves, dusty air, dusty lights; everything was there, right as they had left it. Even the same students clustered around the same tables, as if no time at all had passed.
“What on earth?” Hermione muttered. Pansy was beginning to find the phrase endearing, though she’d never admit it out loud.
“Does that mean we’re free?”
But something was wrong. Nothing moved, no one spoke. A wadded up piece of parchment hung in mid-arc behind someone’s head. It was as if the entire scene which they had left behind had frozen in their absence, and now that they had returned, it wouldn’t budge.
What would happen, if Pansy was stuck here forever with Hermione?
For a fleeting moment, she wondered if she would actually mind. But of course she minded.
Of course.
“Check the book,” she commanded half-heartedly.
Still unnerved by the scene before them, Granger complied, and opened the book to the very last page.
There is a trick the mind plays when it looks at and processes words. Pansy wasn’t particularly fond of words-obviously-and she never delighted in games involving them, but this trick she knew, because her own mind had played it on her the few times she had bothered staying up late to do homework that involved reading. For the trick was this: as long as the first and last letters of a word remained the same, the letters in between could be rearranged any which way, and it wouldn’t matter at all; you would still read the word the same way. This wasn’t a problem, or much of a trick, except when the rearranged word made another word, and your mind tried to rearrange it back, until the meaning of the sentence you’d just spent the last two minutes attempting to comprehend was entirely lost.
When Pansy read the third line of the final riddle, her mind played out the trick, sending a lump of dread to her throat and a tingle of excitement through her body all at once.
Pansy understood perfectly. It was simple, and it was clever, and it was a bit horrible and manipulative, but she had a feeling-a feeling-that it was a test, and something more. All at once.
“Snog,” she said, trying to sound casual and matter-of-fact. “Song rearranged is snog.”
Hermione peered at her sharply. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that to get out of here, Granger, we’re going to have to snog. It’s in your stupid riddle.”
“N-no,” Hermione stammered, aghast. Her cheeks turned red. “That’s… preposterous.”
“Yeah.”
“Perverse-manipulative-trite.”
“Quite.”
“I don’t want to-to…”
Deep in the pit of Pansy’s stomach, something sank like a ship.
“Well, it’s not like I want to, either,” she snapped.
Except that she completely and utterly did. The revelation rang out like dull metal. It was mortifying, and it was wrong, and probably the most unrequited feeling she’d ever felt, but it was the truth, and it was there, and it wouldn’t go away. She wanted to snog the hell out of Know-it-all, Mudblood, Golden Gryffindor Granger, and she wanted Know-it-all, Mudblood, Golden Gryffindor Granger to like it.
Even if it was just for the sake of getting the nagging idea out of her head.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
But who gave a shit about a boy who always ignored her when there was somebody else who maybe did? Or possibly could? Possibly.
Pansy set her lips into a determined pout, drew herself up to her full height, and stamped her foot petulantly. “Are you scared, Granger?” she mocked. “Because if you are, why don’t you just stop being such a coward and try it anyway?”
Hermione wheeled around.
If you were to pick any day of the week at random, the last thing Pansy Parkinson would expect to happen was exactly what did happen:
Hermione clenched her fists, shot Pansy a very peculiar look, and stormed over to her.
And then she closed the gap between them and snogged her.
And the library returned to life.
And nobody seemed to figure out that something fascinatingly bizarre was happening in their midst right then.
But Pansy Parkinson, for the first time in her life, found that she couldn’t have cared less.
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Hermione/Pansy
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 8,700
Summary: Getting lost in a good book is easy. It’s getting out that’s a bit more of a challenge.
Author's Notes: Reveals are up at femmefest, so now I can post this! Originally posted here. Yes, there's a bit of doodling to accompany the fic.
If you were to pick any day of the week at random, the first thing Pansy Parkinson would expect to see on that day as she stepped into the library was Hermione Granger with her nose stuck in a book. Not that Pansy frequented the library enough to call it habitual, or anything; but whenever she was there, so was Granger. So by conclusion, Granger was a permanent fixture, like a boulder growing out of the carpet, or a parchment-frenzied parasite. That was old news now.
But if you were to pick that same day-or any other day, for that matter-the last thing Pansy would expect to see was, in fact, rather like the first: Hermione Granger with red cheeks, a frantic expression, and her nose stuck in a book. Literally.
Pansy blinked, pausing beside a shelf of outdated Herbology texts. She shook her head. She rubbed her eyes. She even considered pinching herself, but she wasn’t fond of pain or the little white fingerprints that would be left on her skin.
After all this, however, the book was definitely still eating Granger’s face.
Pansy glanced about her to see if anybody else had noticed. The library wasn’t teeming with students, but the surrounding tables certainly weren’t unoccupied, either. Somebody ought to have figured out that something fascinatingly bizarre was happening in their midst right then.
She waited, but nobody looked at Granger, not even by accident; and Granger continued to scrabble at The Puzzling Book of Puzzles (1958 Edition) with increasing viciousness. Perhaps people were simply ignoring her to be polite.
Pansy wasn’t polite. She was a Slytherin, and this was Granger-not to mention an opportunity that didn’t come up all too often (as in, never). Fixing a smug expression into place, she skipped over to Granger’s table and grasped the edge of it to support her weight as she leaned forward.
“You’ve got something on your face, Granger,” she sang, kicking one of her legs out behind her and pointing her toes.
Granger stopped scrabbling to glare at her; the book hung from her nose limply so that only her eyes and forehead were visible beneath the tent of her frizzy brown hair. She looked like a deformed Christmas tree.
“Go away,” Granger said.
Pansy didn’t.
“Ooh, but it’s definitely an improvement, you know.” She continued to kick and point and bounce her foot with glee. Kick, point, bounce. Kick, point, bounce. Kick, point…
Granger stood and began to come around the table toward her. “I mean it. I’ve no patience for you today.”
Pansy flinched, but held her ground. “You don’t have to talk.”
Kick, point, bounce.
Granger made what Pansy supposed was a very ugly look behind the book, though what she could see of her expression changed remarkably a half-moment later. “I suppose that’s what you say to all of the boys, isn’t it?” Granger asked sweetly.
Kick, kick, kick.
Pansy attempted to appear unfazed, but was having little success of it. She wasn’t a slag, despite what anyone thought, and she was tired of having the rumors that said so rubbed in her face like dirt. Still, she wasn’t about to run off in shame like Granger seemed to want.
“How very rude,” she simpered instead, clicking her tongue. “And here I was, thinking perhaps I’d offer to help you with your little problem-”
She didn’t get any farther than that, though, because apparently, it was as much as Granger could take, and she lunged at Pansy. Or at least, Pansy thought Granger was lunging at her; Granger’s eyes suddenly widened and got a manic sort of look to them, focusing just over Pansy’s shoulder, and she darted forward hurriedly. Pansy gave a shrill squeak and, when her attacker was just close enough for physical contact, she shoved her hands roughly up at the book and, by proxy, Granger’s face.
Granger gasped a quiet, “What are you doing?” coupled with a soft, “Oh!” a moment later.
And then quite abruptly, everything started spinning.
Pansy couldn’t remember falling asleep, nor could she recall being so very uncomfortable when she had done so; and wherever she had been last, it hadn’t felt as cold, either. She sat up and shivered, her palm flat against a stone floor.
Stone?
She cast a quick look about her. To her horror, the stone stretched in all directions, unbroken by wood or carpets or furnishings, and climbed up to form walls and a low, rounded ceiling. In fact, she seemed to be in the center of a circular room that contained nothing at all except a narrow window to her left. There was no door in sight.
Pansy threw back her head and screamed until the sound filled the empty space like air. But even when it started to hurt her own ears, she didn’t stop.
At least, not until someone released an annoyed groan and clamped a hand over her mouth. That was enough to sufficiently shock the noise right out of her for the rest of her life.
“What’s wrong with you?” a hushed voice demanded as soon as Pansy quieted. Granger revealed herself a beat later, and she removed her hand.
“Me? Me?” Pansy cried hysterically the second she was free. “What about you? Where have you been? And what the hell are you playing at by attacking me? Twice!”
Granger frowned, annoyed. “Don’t be dramatic. I’ve been behind you for the entire time.”
“That doesn’t explain why you attacked me!”
“When on earth did I attack you?”
“Just now!” Pansy scooted along the floor until she reached the curve of the wall opposite Granger. “And then in the library! You charged at me!”
Granger’s mouth fell open in a very undignified manner. “What?”
Pansy primly dusted off her knees. “You charged at me like some sort of freak, or something, and I was forced to defend myself.”
“I wasn’t even looking at you!” Granger sputtered.
“Yes you were! You were coming right toward me!”
“I was going past you!”
“Well that’s not exactly effective, is it?”
Granger slapped her hand against her forehead in exasperation. “Honestly! As if I cared enough about you to bother attacking you. I’d just seen Harry and Ron come into the library, and I was about to ask them to help me. If you’ll recall, I had far more pressing matters than your silly insults with which to concern myself.”
Pansy crossed her arms defiantly. So perhaps she had overreacted by a miniscule fraction; but really, how could she have known otherwise? Gryffindors were prone to doing insane and illogical things without a moment’s notice or hesitation. She’d had to be prepared for anything because she hadn’t known what to expect. Obviously.
“Nice story, Granger,” she sneered. “But I know how much you dislike me, and you know you’d take any chance you could to harm me.”
“You mean,” Granger began, her voice suddenly tentative and soft, “I’ve been waiting all this time for an opportunity that’s only just come along?”
So she had come to her senses, then.
“Exactly.”
“Because you’ve hurt me so truly and deeply over the years that I simply had to exact my revenge or die trying, since nothing else in my life was worthwhile anymore?”
Well, admittedly, that was a bit extreme, but…
“Of course.”
Whatever kept Granger’s boat afloat.
“So then…” But here Granger’s tone returned to normal, “I suppose I’m correct in assuming that everything is about you?”
Pansy caught herself just before she nodded. Granger had been mocking her without missing a single beat, whereas Pansy had missed all of them, one by one by one. She opened her mouth to retaliate.
Granger held up her hand. “Don’t,” she said wearily.
“I’ll do what I like,” Pansy snapped.
Granger tilted her head condescendingly to one side and stared at her, waiting.
“Well?” she asked after a pause.
“Well what?”
“Aren’t you going to continue chattering on inanely about yourself?”
Pansy sniffed delicately. “I never specified what it was I’d like to do. I just said that I’d do it.”
Which was true. She couldn’t stand to argue much longer, anyway, since Granger was much cleverer than her, and she didn’t like being bested at things, especially quick thinking-though of course, it wasn’t as if she did much of that, anyway. She preferred to taunt stupid people, since stupid people never knew what to say back, and therefore she never had to get much farther than the first insult or two.
“Fine,” Granger sighed at length, “if you’ll at least keep quiet… We’re currently trapped in this place, and one would think you’d have more of a concern for that than whatever self-centered thoughts happen to be braving themselves across your mind.” She took a breath, and then continued. “The book released me as soon as we got here, so-”
Pansy blinked. “The book’s here?”
Granger blinked back, unimpressed by the interruption. But at least Pansy hadn’t said something really idiotic like, “The book’s not on your face anymore!”-which had only just occurred to her when Granger pointed it out.
“Yeeees,” the Gryffindor answered slowly, as if speaking momentarily to a child. Pansy hated being patronized; Draco always did it, though not just to her, of course. “As I was attempting to say, the book obviously must have something to do with us being here. When you-defended yourself-you must have triggered an enchantment in it. And that’s… unfortunate.” Granger shook her bushy head.
“Yeah, I hadn’t noticed.”
Granger’s eyes snapped onto her. “Don’t you understand? I wasn’t just reading that book on a whim: it’s from the Restricted Section. I had to get special permission to even consider looking at it.” She said ‘Restricted’ reverently, as if the word were forbidden to mention aloud.
Freak.
“So?” Pansy shrugged. “What’s so dangerous about a puzzle book?”
“Clearly, you saw what it did. It hardly required any provocation before-”
“Oh, well, that.” She waved her hand, noncommittal. “I didn’t mind that.”
“Pansy.” Granger looked about to reach over and strangle her. “If I’m correct, then we are in that book, or a part of it, at least. We are in a puzzle book-a riddle book.”
Pansy didn’t get it. Why was Granger so panicked about the stupid book? Who cared about puzzles or riddles? Shouldn’t she have been more bothered by the lack of a door? And more importantly, what was a book-worshipping psychopath like Granger doing not in Ravenclaw with all of the other socially unacceptable people?
“A book of riddles, Pansy,” Granger tried again, this time with hand motions. “How do you suppose we’re going to get out?”
…Oh.
Got it.
“It’s too far to climb down, even if the window were wide enough to get through.”
Pansy didn’t turn around as Granger came up behind her, continuing instead to gaze out through the narrow slit in the wall. Shades of orange and pink stained what she could see of the sky; she must have been there a while if the sun had already begun to set. It was difficult to look downward beyond that, or at least to find the proper angle at which to do so, but she could find nothing much else outside. There might have been the shadows of a few hills or even mountains, or even the top of a cluster of particularly tall trees; she couldn’t decide this exactly, though, because each time she looked, she saw something different in that solitary dark patch in the distance. And she couldn’t see the ground at all, nor the traces of the rest of the structure that contained the reluctant pair.
They were trapped, it seemed, inside an impenetrable and inescapable tower that loomed over nothing.
“How would you know that?” Pansy asked snippily in response to Granger’s statement. “I’m the one at the window.”
Granger sighed. “I’ve already looked. You were unconscious far longer than I was.”
“So what now?” Pansy mocked, and inwardly cringed. The echo in the room made her voice sound too nasally.
Granger didn’t notice. “Now we look at the book.”
“For answers?”
“For riddles.”
“Aren’t we trying to avoid riddles?”
Why did Granger always contradict everything she said?
Granger shook her head. “I don’t think we can anymore. Not if we actually want to escape.” She retrieved the book from the center of the room, and then brought it over to where Pansy stood in the slowly-dimming light. “I don’t suppose you have your wand? Mine is still in the library.”
Pansy whipped her hand around to her back pocket, feeling foolish that she hadn’t thought to look for it before, but to her astonishment, she found the pocket empty.
“It’s gone!” she exclaimed.
“I thought as much. We’re meant to do this without magic.”
Right, Pansy thought. They were meant to do this, like it was some kind of horrid quest.
She didn’t bother voicing this, though, as she didn’t want to spend the night in that terribly small, terribly cold, and terribly dark room with nothing more than an obnoxious Mudblood for comfort.
Granger propped the book against the decaying wooden sill, and Pansy stepped closer until their shoulders were nearly touching. There was a pleasant smell to the air, suddenly, like a mixture of cinnamon, old ink, and perhaps cedar, but Pansy didn’t know-or care-where it was coming from. With a steady hand, Granger turned to the first page, where the title should have been, except, instead of a title, there were two lines in the middle of the page:
“That’s certainly a comfort,” Granger muttered under her breath.
“What?” Pansy heard herself asking. She hadn’t meant to ask it; she’d meant to figure out the meaning on her own soon enough. Stupid rhymes.
“It means that once we start, we can’t stop.”
Or what?
The question hung between them, though neither dared to venture an answer. Granger glanced at Pansy, meeting her gaze momentarily until their eyes darted away like a ricochet.
“Well, go on, then,” Pansy pressed in a shaky voice. “Turn the page.”
She listened for once; and there was the first riddle:
“Where are the other riddles?” Pansy asked-and this time, she meant to. How were they supposed to solve three riddles when the book had only provided one? She frowned. “Turn the page again.”
Granger tried, but the pages were stuck together as if they had never been apart; the remainder of the book had been sealed from them. Pansy grabbed it and pulled at the corners, hoping to peel them back, at least, but with no result. The parchment had hardened into a solid, immovable block.
“I don’t know.” Granger bit her lip. “Perhaps they’re somewhere else in the room, or perhaps we’ve got to solve one riddle first before we receive the next.”
“You mean, like a trail?” Pansy was beginning to catch on.
“Yes… Or…” Granger hesitated. “Or a trap.”
A shiver washed down Pansy’s back, and she tried to ignore the sensation.
“But, I mean… It’s not… That is, I wasn’t under the impression that The Puzzling Book of Puzzles was full of dark magic. Even if it’s brought us here, the book is all about games, and I suppose a perverse version of… ‘fun.’” They both grimaced at the word. “It’s simply meant to be a challenge.”
“A challenge that could kill us.”
“Yes, well, that’s why it was in the Restricted Section, isn’t it?”
“Bends and bows and tests… Bends and bows and tests…”
Granger had been repeating the second line of the riddle like a chant for almost fifteen minutes, and the light had grown so faint that Pansy could only just barely distinguish her reluctant companion’s silhouette. Yet still they had thought of nothing.
Or rather, Granger had thought of nothing. Pansy had allowed her mind to wander, as much as she knew that she should be contributing to their escape if she wanted it to happen sooner rather than later-rather than never. She wouldn’t be much help, that was true; she’d never even attempted to read a riddle, much less to solve one, and she was quite certain that the talent for doing so didn’t come easily. Or if it did, it was innate, and if it was innate, the answer surely would have occurred to her by now. Obviously it hadn’t, because all she could understand was the concept of the solution coming in halves, though even then, Granger had had to explain it to her. That was how riddles worked, apparently; the answers were just big words broken down into little words and then strung together. It seemed a daft way of doing things to her. Wouldn’t it be simpler to leave clues that hinted at the big word straightaway?
“You could help, you know,” Granger snapped, pausing mid-pace to glare at her.
“I am. I’m thinking. Quietly.”
Granger snorted in disbelief.
It wasn’t a lie; she was thinking. But her preeminent thought was not about what bends and bows and tests, but rather whether anyone was missing her now that she was… missing. Had anyone even noticed her disappearance? Potter, Weasel, and half of Wizarding Britain were probably all scrambling around frantically searching for their precious, golden Granger. Draco, however, probably wasn’t thinking anything of her absence. He probably assumed she was sulking in her dormitory or off doing whatever she pleased without him.
As if she was ever without him if she could help it.
As if he’d ever appreciated this, or even realized that it had become her habit at all.
Oh, he had never been cruel to her-at least, no more than he was to anybody else. She sometimes even thought he was particularly kind to her, and went out of his way to hold her in a special regard. But most often, he all but ignored her.
Rather, he ignored her in the way that mattered.
She occupied herself so heavily in trying to change this, in trying to make herself matter in that way, that she didn’t have many other friends anymore. There was Daphne, and sometimes Millie when she wasn’t being moody, but the others had drifted. Pansy had drifted.
Vince and Greg might’ve cared for her, but sometimes she couldn’t even tell whether they were still breathing, much less what went on inside their heads.
“I keep thinking of trees,” Granger said. She had finally stopped pacing, and had come to sit beside Pansy-a good distance away, but technically still next to her. Pansy could see her twisting her hands together worriedly in her lap as they leaned their backs against the wall beneath the window. Soon enough, they would be entirely enveloped in darkness; there was no telling when the moon would rise to meet the tower-or if it would even do so at all. The little rectangle of light on the opposite wall had almost entirely melted into the stones.
“Trees don’t test, though,” Pansy said.
“And it doesn’t make for a good first half of a word, either,” Granger agreed.
“And trees don’t bend. Branches do.”
“Little trees bend; but why would the riddle refer to little trees? The connotations that present themselves with the word ‘tree’ always make one think of giant, ancient things.”
“Doesn’t ‘bowing’ mean bending?”
“Curving, really. But it does remind me of really bowing, as in someone bending forward after a performance.”
Weariness had reduced their arguments almost to conversation-and almost intelligent conversation, at that.
“Trees can’t bend in half.”
Almost.
“Well, there is… one that can. A real tree, I mean.”
Pansy looked at her.
“I doubt it’s what the riddle means-it can’t be alluding to it specifically, but-”
“Spit it out, Granger.”
She huffed. “The Whomping Willow. I can’t stop picturing the Whomping Willow. It bends and bows and tests and breaks-and not only itself, but other things as well. It’s an absolute, violent force, all on its own. It doesn’t even need a storm, or-”
Granger froze.
“Or what?” Pansy pressed. Civil, intelligent conversation or no, she was beyond starting to lose what little patience she had.
“Wind,” Granger whispered. “Wind. That’s what bends and bows and tests the trees!”
She leapt to her feet, excitement seeping into her voice, and as she did so, her hand accidentally clipped the side of Pansy’s head.
“Ow!” Pansy cried furiously, instantly rising as well. “Watch it, you stupid Mudblood! That hurt!”
But Granger didn’t apologize. She simply stood completely still for the second time that minute until a broad, nearly wicked smile slowly spread across her lips. “Ow,” she repeated. “Wind-ow.”
“Wind-ow?”
“Window,” Granger said triumphantly, correcting the pronunciation. “It’s not phonetic, but that must be it! And remember, it says, ‘something that always looks west.’ We saw the sunset out the window. The sun always sets in the west! It’s so obvious, I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before!”
“Window,” Pansy blinked in awe. It did seem a bit obvious, when she considered it; it was, after all, the only thing in the room apart from themselves and the stones.
Granger turned to her, eyes still wide. Her breath seemed to catch in her throat. “What do we do now, do you think?”
Pansy’s own breath hitched in puzzlement. Granger was asking her opinion?
The exact second the words I don’t know left the tip of her tongue, the room suddenly began to shake.
“What’s happening?” Pansy shrieked in terror, but she couldn’t hear Granger’s reply over the roar that was rising in the tower. Dust and dead moss rained upon their heads, unearthed from the stones of the ceiling. In the apocalyptic confusion, Pansy reached out frantically and grasped the nearest sturdy object; it was warm and soft, and immediately curled safely around her hand, but she didn’t bother to figure out what it was.
She crouched down, neither knowing nor caring where Granger was. All the dirt seemed to have been shaken free, and now stones fell heavily and steadily, crashing down in a deadly rain. An enormous crack cut into the floor between her feet.
Merlin, Pansy thought. I’m going to die after all. She remembered only belatedly to think of Draco.
The moment Pansy had resigned herself to her death, three things happened: the shaking stopped, the roar ceased, and an earsplitting clatter resounded from opposite sides of the room.
And then silence.
Tentatively, Pansy looked up. The room was perfectly intact; the floor was free of cracks and dust and stones. Bright moonlight streamed calmly in through the window.
“The window!” she exclaimed at the same time that Granger, from somewhere very near to her, shouted, “A door!”
Somehow, they both flew to the window first. It was the only aspect of the room that had changed, for it had crumbled slightly, and fresh moss and weeds grew from it as if it were excruciatingly old.
“What on earth?” Granger breathed.
Out of a mysterious compulsion that suddenly overcame her, Pansy reached out to clear the growth away from the sill. Yet even though her touch was light, the wood gave way beneath her fingertips. It caved toward the ground, the entirety of the window seeming to slope inward and then downward in a miniature landslide.
Just before it came in contact with the floor, however, the debris melted away like snowflakes on warm skin. The two girls watched in stunned silence as the window, the weeds, and everything around them disappeared. The window itself, though already small, began to shrink, pinched slightly at the bottom, until it too fell completely away.
After that there was only blank wall and the sound of something metallic clattering to their feet as the last of the moss vanished. Moonlight still illuminated the room, though the space was now entirely enclosed.
Granger was the first to recover. She reached down, groping about until her hand closed around something, and she brought it up to show Pansy.
A silver skeleton key glittered in her palm.
“A key?” Pansy murmured.
“For the door.”
Pansy looked. Directly across from where the window had been, a door now stood, unimposing and ordinary in appearance, but like the key, it seemed an unearthly fixture.
Without saying anything, but continuing to hold whatever she had clutched onto in fear just minutes ago, Pansy proceeded across the room with Granger still strangely close beside her. She tried the doorknob first out of habit, though she knew it wouldn’t work. Then Granger slid the key into the tarnished lock just below it, and turned it. She drew in a deep breath as she did so, but Pansy held hers.
Miracle of miracles, the lock clicked with a little tinny sound reminiscent of glass and gold.
The key was a perfect fit.
Shaking for once out of anticipation, and not fright, Pansy pulled open the door.
They were standing in sunlight, pure, bright, and warm. In just those first several seconds, the place felt such a contrast to where they had spent the past however many hours that something pricked at the inner corners of Pansy’s eyes.
Tears. Mortifying, salty, unstoppable tears. Pansy Parkinson was not dead, but she was crying, and so she might as well be.
When she released a strangled half-gasp, half-scream, Granger whirled her head round to look at her bemusedly.
“Are you all right?” she asked softly once she discovered the reasoning behind the odd noise. She sounded genuinely concerned, and her eyes echoed the feeling. Pansy couldn’t understand why she wasn’t poking fun at her and generally attempting to drive her into misery; it was what Pansy would’ve done, had she the chance. But Granger wasn’t crying, her eyes weren’t even remotely damp-and she appeared nearly as if she cared.
Pansy turned away sharply, but was prevented by-something-from going too far. She blinked, and looked down, and then she realized that all this time, what she had been holding onto for dear life was Granger’s hand.
“Oh,” she said, and hastily dropped it as if it had scorched her flesh. Her cheeks burned with (what she imagined as) a deep, horrible red.
Today was the day that Pansy’s dignity committed suicide.
Rest in peace, you filthy traitor.
It was not a room, exactly, that held them this time. Pansy thought she saw walls far, far away, but it was like looking out that tower window again, so she couldn’t be sure. What she did see, though, and quite assuredly, was green. An explosion of it.
Absolutely everywhere.
Lush, green grass rippled beneath her feet, each blade soft yet distinct with morning dew still resting in droplets upon it. It stretched as far as she could see, flat where she stood staring, but eventually sloping up and down into small hills. Nearer than the hills, however, were the trees. Solid trees with light brown trunks covered almost entirely in that familiar green moss stood just a few paces away from her. In an uneven row, their branches were swept over to one side like windblown hair, creating a tunnel of green leaves that led to a more thickly-grown forest. The sky, though thankfully not green, was a more intense shade of blue than she had ever seen; below it, a thin river wended its way through the ocean of grass, all that remained on the ground to break up the solidness of the color. The water passed under a low bridge, and then around the curve of a hill, where it finally vanished from sight.
Pansy had seen green before; she was a Slytherin, after all. But this green and Slytherin Green were different, nearly opposite. This green made Slytherin Green seem dingy and cold. This green hurt her eyes considerably.
She wasn’t sure whether that was a bad thing. Odd.
She looked behind her, abruptly realizing that she had forgotten to close the door, but it was no longer there, not even a splinter from its frame remaining.
So this was where they would find the second riddle-and hopefully, its answer. There was no going back now.
To her right, the same thought appeared to have occurred to Granger.
“We should rest before we start on the next one,” the latter said hurriedly, yawning as if to prove her point.
“What if we’ve got some kind of time limit?” Pansy blurted.
How uncharacteristically logical of her.
But Granger shot her logic down. “I don’t think we do. As long as we don’t read the second riddle, we should be in a sort of limbo. We’ll be safe, and we’ll have the time we need to rest.”
Pansy put her hands on her hips-also uncharacteristic. “Well, maybe you’re wrong. What then?”
But Granger wasn’t having that, either. “I’m exhausted, Pansy. I don’t have any energy left to worry about that, much less to trot around trying to piece together clues. I don’t know how long this next riddle is going to require, and so I’m going to take advantage of this time, right now, when I haven’t got to do anything, so that I can reach a point of functionality for when I have got something pressing to do. Whether you want to do the same is entirely your choice.”
Pansy narrowed her eyes. “But what if you’re wrong?”
It wasn’t completely out of the question.
“Then kill me,” Granger snarled as she tossed her hands into the air. “If I’m not already dead, that is. You’re welcome to have a go at the second riddle yourself, but I am not going to help you.” She began to march off in the direction of the river, and without looking back, and in the same annoyed tone, added, “I’m. Sorry.”
Well then.
Pansy followed her in her own time. Nervous as she was about losing an hour or two or three, her legs ached, and her back ached, and her head ached, and her eyelids felt heavier than boulders, and she wanted nothing more than to sleep. She had just been through an ordeal; she was still in the middle of that ordeal, in fact.
She probably looked awful.
She didn’t go on adventures. She didn’t have ordeals waltzing in and out of her life whenever they pleased. She didn’t have to save the world every June and try to come out of that still breathing.
Granger did, but currently she didn’t look any worse than if she’d stayed up all night studying for a History of Magic exam. Which was to say, she wasn’t at her best, but she didn’t look like she’d been trampled to death in a pit of Hippogriff shit, either.
Pansy felt pathetic. It wasn’t as if they were saving the world, after all. They were simply saving themselves.
And that was more or less Pansy’s own fault.
Granger was asleep when Pansy at last ambled over to the spot in which she’d settled, and she hesitated only briefly before settling next to her in turn-though still a foot or two away, of course. She expected the grass to feel disgusting and slimy, even if it was soft, but she was pleasantly surprised to discover that it didn’t. Granger had managed to find the only dry patch of grass possibly for miles. After checking for bugs and other undesirable creatures, and finding none, Pansy lay back and closed her eyes.
She couldn’t sleep.
She rolled onto her sides, first her right and then her left, but drowsiness did not overtake her. She rolled onto her stomach, but all that resulted was a flower petal up her nose.
So she rolled back onto her right side, and she stared at Granger.
Of course, Granger took no notice of this, as she was practically snoring by then, so Pansy didn’t feel any shame in it. Not that normally she would’ve been ashamed of staring, since she made a point to stare at people if she was sure it would intimidate them or at least make them uncomfortable; but it was different, staring at Granger, because if Granger had been awake, she’d have been staring straight back.
If they’d made a contest of it, Pansy would have lost.
That was just the way it was. Granger was better than her at most things, and at least equal to her in most of the others. Pansy had always thought herself to be the more attractive of the two, but that didn’t make Granger hideous. She was almost pretty, with the sunlight making a soft halo of her frizzy hair and revealing the near-imperceptible freckles upon her nose. Her eyelashes were long and dark, and her lips were still wet from when she’d drank river water from her cupped palms.
Yes, Granger was pretty when she wasn’t talking or intent on proving how brainless you were (and the two most often coincided).
An odd sensation stirred somewhere within the pit of Pansy’s stomach. If she hadn’t known any better, she’d have called it attraction.
But she did know better, so she rolled onto her back and squeezed her eyes shut.
The rain came later, perhaps only an hour after Pansy’s resistance against slumber had weakened and then failed. It was light at first, a cool, faint tickle upon the skin, yet it gradually grew, and soon heavy, icy droplets careened down at the unsuspecting pair.
“Bloody hell!” Pansy screeched, scrambling to her feet when, after breathing in particularly deeply, she ended up with a lungful of water.
“Bglarrgh!” was all Granger seemed capable of expressing. Still sleep-ridden, she was slow in standing. Impatiently, Pansy grabbed Granger’s arm and yanked her up, pulling her in the direction of the tree branch tunnel they had spotted before.
“Come on!”
“Wha?” Granger inquired sleepily, bumbling along after Pansy.
“The trees, stupid!” Pansy snapped. “Unless you’re keen on drowning!”
What was this called? A moment of clarity? Because only a miraculous moment of clarity certainly would have made Pansy the more sensible of the two.
A few staggering steps in, Granger increased her pace until it was nearly in time with Pansy’s, the chill of the rain beginning to take effect.
“Where are we going?”
Pansy pointed. “Over there!”
They both had to shout to be heard above the torrent.
The trees were farther away than they had appeared at first, but Pansy continued toward them without slowing, still gripping Granger’s arm. Granger either didn’t notice, or didn’t care just then, until Pansy slipped and fell in a slick mixture of mud and grass and landed on her back, jerking Granger down halfway with her.
Pansy swore. Mud squelched under her head when she moved, and she could feel it sliding down her hair and shirt when she sat up.
Disgusting.
Granger spent a few moments wincing, then proffered her hand.
Pansy took it, and on they went; and then at last, they reached the shelter of the trees. She almost couldn’t hear the sound of the rain against the leaves over her own and Granger’s heavy panting.
“Thank-you,” Granger wheezed, her palms flat against her thighs as she doubled over.
“Oh. Yeah. Thanks… too.”
Pansy had never run this fast before in her life, and for what, really? To escape the rain? Rain was a lot less life-threatening than a room intent upon collapsing around you. A smile twitched at the corner of her lips, until it spread into a hint of a giggle, and then a laugh. She’d always hated her laugh-her real one, not the one she used for laughing at people, because the effects of each were quite different-but she was laughing anyway.
Granger chuckled a bit, but managed to contain herself. There was an odd look in her eye, though, as she glanced at Pansy, but it was gone as quick as it had come.
Hysterical tears dripped from Pansy’s chin.
She’d never actually sincerely thanked anyone before, much less Granger.
Come to think of it, she and Granger hadn’t ever even talked, even on this nightmarish quest-slash-adventure-type thing. They’d discussed riddles and survival tactics, but never the day-to-day things that you’d find in a normal conversation. Interests. Hobbies. Boys… Had that ginger oaf managed to weaken her knees yet?
Pansy quieted abruptly. “We’ve never talked,” she said.
“What?”
“Um, talking. We… haven’t.”
“Do you want to?” Granger sounded surprised.
“Oh. No,” she lied quickly. “I was just pointing it out.”
She scuffed at the ground with her toe, and the pair fell into a heavy silence.
“You’ve been sunburned a bit,” Granger said at length. “Just there.”
Pansy’s hands flew up to cover her nose. “I have not-OUCH!”
Granger was right, of course, and the skin was raw. Pansy glared. She’d often made a point of avoiding the sun for this precise reason.
“Have I been, as well?” Granger asked hesitantly.
Pansy squinted. “I can’t tell.”
So Granger stepped closer, until she was directly before Pansy, their toes perhaps a foot away from touching. Pansy attempted to concentrate, but an odd feeling overwhelmed her, and she couldn’t, somehow. Her mind and eyes weren’t focusing-at least, on what they were supposed to. Her breath hitched slightly, her stomach churning. Granger was wearing Muggle clothes, having discarding her sodden Hogwarts robe, but the water had still seeped through; her shirt clung to her like an extra layer of skin, and Pansy watched as her chest rose and fell to the cadence of her breaths.
When Pansy glanced up, she caught the warm brown of Granger’s eyes, and she smelled cinnamon, old ink, and cedar; and the freckles were more pronounced now, even though they were moored in a red sunburn.
A sunburn. That was what she was supposed to be looking for.
“Granger…”
Granger shook her head almost imperceptibly. “Please… I’m so tired of that. Just… call me…” She broke off, waving her hand meekly.
Hermione?
Pansy unconsciously licked her lips, Hermione swaying forward so minutely that neither of them seemed to know whether it was accidental.
But then Hermione swayed back, and glanced downward hastily. “I suppose we really should start on the next riddle,” she said.
Pansy blinked. Her stomach continued to churn, but now it was beginning to make her sick.
“Right,” she muttered. “Of course.”
That was what they were supposed to be doing.
This time, the book opened only to the middle, despite any attempts to flip forward or back.
Hermione was frowning. “It’s too simple,” she muttered.
For once, Pansy nearly understood her meaning; the riddle read more like instructions than anything else. But if they were instructions that got them out of the book, she was more than happy to follow them.
When she relayed this rather snippily to Hermione, the latter’s frown deepened. “It’s too simple,” she repeated, as if Pansy hadn’t heard her the first time. “There must be something less obvious that it’s referring to.”
“Like what? Maybe that’s why it’s supposed to be a challenge; you only think it isn’t obvious.”
“It’s a riddle. It’s not supposed to be obvious.”
“Which is why you’ll bugger it up when it is!”
“That isn’t how it works!”
Pansy gave a little scream and snatched the book from Hermione’s hands. “You think you know everything, don’t you? It’s just like you to think too much!”
“Give that back! You’ve no idea-”
“No!” Pansy turned her back and stamped her foot.
That was when the words flashed.
“What did you do?” Hermione snapped, taking the book back from a stunned Pansy.
“I didn’t do anything!” she protested feebly. What had she done? She’d only taken a little step…
“Six steps ahead,” Hermione marveled.
“It’s seven.”
“Six. Look.” Hermione shoved the book under Pansy’s nose; and the riddle had indeed changed from seven steps ahead to six. She took a step. “And now it’s five. It’s counting down the steps. It’s…”
“Obvious?” Pansy suggested sweetly, now feeling very smug.
“Straightforward.”
Pansy rolled her eyes as Hermione took the remaining five steps. Weren’t Slytherins supposed to be the proud and stubborn ones of the lot? (Though they were much more discreet about it, of course.)
The rain had abated into a gentle mist that caught on their hair in minute droplets like frost; and the temperature wasn’t certain, neither too warm nor too cold. Nor was the rain comfortable or uncomfortable. It just was.
On the seventh step, Hermione began walking to the left. As it had done before, the words of the riddle flashed, and the numbers began to change. Sixty-six, sixty-five, sixty-four…
…Forty-nine, forty-eight, forty-seven…
…Sixteen, fifteen, fourteen…
…Three, two one…
Hermione stopped. Directly in their path lay a rotting log, covered completely in the moss that Pansy had begun to hate.
On that log sat a toad.
Pansy also hated toads. She did her best not to simply shriek and scurry behind Hermione, but as it was, she flinched violently and pulled an alarmingly pained face.
“Toooaaad,” she all but gurgled.
“Yes, I’d quite noticed,” Hermione said dryly.
But she shut up well enough when the toad started talking.
“Fiddlesticks,” the toad croaked. “Fiddlesticks. Fiddlesticks.”
So perhaps not talking, exactly.
It was still weird.
“Sooo,” Pansy ventured, “is that the password? Fiddlesticks?”
“Fiddlesticks,” the toad said.
“Fiddlesticks?” Hermione asked dubiously.
“Fiddlesticks,” the toad replied.
And then it hopped away. Just like that. All well-that’s-that-now-I’ll-just-be-off-thank-you.
“What the hell?”
Pansy really, really wanted to go home.
The second half of the riddle was easy enough, and the exchange about it went something like this:
“What closes gaps with glee?”
“A bridge.”
“Why glee?”
“It rhymes, I suppose.”
“What about teeth? Teeth close gaps.”
“It’s a bridge.”
“Or what about talking?”
“Have you happened to see a Talking anywhere?”
“A what? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Precisely. Let’s go find a bridge.”
Which was unfair, Pansy thought sulkily as she and Hermione followed the river, because talking certainly did bridge gaps. Gaps in silence, rather. And here she was, shot down for finally being clever.
At least Hermione had let her carry the key.
When they arrived at the bridge, the first thing Pansy attempted to do was cross it, because that was what you did with bridges. However, as soon as she began to put her right foot forward, she encountered an extremely hard, extremely solid, and extremely invisible wall, which sent her bouncing backward a short ways with a throbbing toe and knee.
“That’s odd,” Hermione remarked lightly.
Pansy scowled. “You think?”
Hermione shot her an annoyed frown, and once more opened the book. They were at the place that closed gaps with glee, with no steps ahead, no steps left, and a password and a key.
What were they supposed to do now?
“Fiddlesticks?” Pansy offered.
“What are you doing?” Hermione hissed.
“I’m saying the password, obviously.”
They both waited.
Nothing happened.
“Wonderful.”
“Maybe that wasn’t the password.”
“The toad said-” But Pansy didn’t continue any farther. The toad shouldn’t have said anything, and they both knew that full well. Anybody who was just short of being dead did.
Pursing her lips, Hermione tapped curiously at the invisible wall, Pansy watching her out of the corner of her eye. The Gryffindor had this certain air about her when she was thinking, and it wasn’t infuriating or annoying to witness-which was how it was with most people more intelligent than you. It was like…
Well.
It was captivating, to an extent.
Pansy shook her head rather violently in hope of erasing this opinion, but with little luck. Hermione furrowed her brows, and chewed at her lip, and tap-tap-tapped upon that unseen barrier, and Pansy couldn’t bear to gaze anywhere else.
“It could be… But no, that wouldn’t work at all, would it?”
“Uh huh...”
“And one would think… Oh, but that couldn’t possibly do anything but contradict… Of course, one could always…”
“Yeah…”
“No, no, one couldn’t, not at all, you’re not considering… If only it were…”
“Mmmm…”
“But it isn’t, is it? Right?”
“What?”
Hermione huffed. “Try and listen, please. What I said was: it’s not very complex at all, is it?”
“Er… what is? Isn’t.”
Another huff; more impatient this time. “The riddle said, ‘This shall but bring the password in sight.’ In sight. It shouldn’t matter at all what we were told, because we can’t literally see what we’re told-at least, usually.”
“You’re babbling,” Pansy murmured distractedly. She had no idea what the girl was talking about, but she did know that, whatever she was saying, Hermione Granger was brilliant. Amazingly, freakishly brilliant. Uh huh.
Hermione tucked a wild strand of hair behind her ear. “That is, the password isn’t ‘fiddlesticks,’” she said. “That was just to confuse us, as with the simplicity of the riddle itself. The password is ‘toad!’”
Wonderfully-and surprisingly-the world did not collapse at the word ‘toad.’ The sky did not fall. The earth did not shake. The ground did not open up and swallow everything within reach. Nothing crumbled and faded away.
Another lock simply appeared out of thin air, and when that lock had been unlocked, the invisible wall melted away. Or at least, Pansy thought it was melting; she could feel something cold trickling past her feet, and then when she extended her hand, it met no resistance. The key, however, had disappeared.
Hermione marched over the bridge, pausing at its peak to look inquiringly back at Pansy, who then followed and smoothly pushed her way ahead.
“What do you think the next-” the latter began to ask.
But then she slammed once again into a wall, and thank you very much, but she had really had enough of that.
Something was squishing her. Squish, squash. Something warm and soft, pressing her up against the wall and possibly jamming something sharp into her shoulder blade. Something much less warm and much less soft-cold and hard-dug into her shin. Her hand had found something prickly. Her eyes saw stars.
“Sorry,” she heard Hermione say, and then suddenly, she wasn’t being squished anymore. She could breathe.
“Guh,” Pansy choked, looking down at her hand. The prickly thing appeared to be the twiggy end of a broom, another glance down revealing the cold and hard thing to be a metal bucket. The thing in her shoulder blade had presumably been Hermione or Hermione’s elbow, or foot, or something.
Broom plus bucket equaled cupboard, generally. Pansy and Hermione and a cramped little broom cupboard and-
“No door,” Pansy whispered, her eyes wide. “There! Is! No! Door!”
“Pansy-”
“Thereisnodoorthereisnodoorthereisnodoorthereisno-”
And, SMACK!
“Get a hold of yourself,” Hermione snapped, grasping Pansy by the shoulders. “You’re leaning on it.”
“Oh.” Score one for Stupid.
This was the first door they encountered that wasn’t locked, much to their relief; neither fancied searching the dingy, chaotic contents of the cupboard to find one, and they fancied even less considering what would happen if they couldn’t. Hermione held The Puzzling Book of Puzzles close to her chest as the knob turned.
The library opened up before them. Dusty shelves, dusty air, dusty lights; everything was there, right as they had left it. Even the same students clustered around the same tables, as if no time at all had passed.
“What on earth?” Hermione muttered. Pansy was beginning to find the phrase endearing, though she’d never admit it out loud.
“Does that mean we’re free?”
But something was wrong. Nothing moved, no one spoke. A wadded up piece of parchment hung in mid-arc behind someone’s head. It was as if the entire scene which they had left behind had frozen in their absence, and now that they had returned, it wouldn’t budge.
What would happen, if Pansy was stuck here forever with Hermione?
For a fleeting moment, she wondered if she would actually mind. But of course she minded.
Of course.
“Check the book,” she commanded half-heartedly.
Still unnerved by the scene before them, Granger complied, and opened the book to the very last page.
There is a trick the mind plays when it looks at and processes words. Pansy wasn’t particularly fond of words-obviously-and she never delighted in games involving them, but this trick she knew, because her own mind had played it on her the few times she had bothered staying up late to do homework that involved reading. For the trick was this: as long as the first and last letters of a word remained the same, the letters in between could be rearranged any which way, and it wouldn’t matter at all; you would still read the word the same way. This wasn’t a problem, or much of a trick, except when the rearranged word made another word, and your mind tried to rearrange it back, until the meaning of the sentence you’d just spent the last two minutes attempting to comprehend was entirely lost.
When Pansy read the third line of the final riddle, her mind played out the trick, sending a lump of dread to her throat and a tingle of excitement through her body all at once.
Pansy understood perfectly. It was simple, and it was clever, and it was a bit horrible and manipulative, but she had a feeling-a feeling-that it was a test, and something more. All at once.
“Snog,” she said, trying to sound casual and matter-of-fact. “Song rearranged is snog.”
Hermione peered at her sharply. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that to get out of here, Granger, we’re going to have to snog. It’s in your stupid riddle.”
“N-no,” Hermione stammered, aghast. Her cheeks turned red. “That’s… preposterous.”
“Yeah.”
“Perverse-manipulative-trite.”
“Quite.”
“I don’t want to-to…”
Deep in the pit of Pansy’s stomach, something sank like a ship.
“Well, it’s not like I want to, either,” she snapped.
Except that she completely and utterly did. The revelation rang out like dull metal. It was mortifying, and it was wrong, and probably the most unrequited feeling she’d ever felt, but it was the truth, and it was there, and it wouldn’t go away. She wanted to snog the hell out of Know-it-all, Mudblood, Golden Gryffindor Granger, and she wanted Know-it-all, Mudblood, Golden Gryffindor Granger to like it.
Even if it was just for the sake of getting the nagging idea out of her head.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
But who gave a shit about a boy who always ignored her when there was somebody else who maybe did? Or possibly could? Possibly.
Pansy set her lips into a determined pout, drew herself up to her full height, and stamped her foot petulantly. “Are you scared, Granger?” she mocked. “Because if you are, why don’t you just stop being such a coward and try it anyway?”
Hermione wheeled around.
If you were to pick any day of the week at random, the last thing Pansy Parkinson would expect to happen was exactly what did happen:
Hermione clenched her fists, shot Pansy a very peculiar look, and stormed over to her.
And then she closed the gap between them and snogged her.
And the library returned to life.
And nobody seemed to figure out that something fascinatingly bizarre was happening in their midst right then.
But Pansy Parkinson, for the first time in her life, found that she couldn’t have cared less.