FIC: "War Crimes" for starrysummer
Title: War Crimes
Author/Artist: ???
Recipient's name: starrysummer
Characters/Pairings: Pansy/Ginny, past Pansy/Blaise and Pansy/Draco
Rating: hard R
Summary: War Crimes are any of various crimes, such as genocide or the mistreatment of prisoners of war, committed during a war and considered in violation of the conventions of warfare.
Word Count: 3,640
Warnings: slight object insertion
Notes: Thank you so much to my beta, Kate, for helping this become coherent.
Millicent Bulstrode pins a black-and-white photograph of Viktor Krum on the wall nearest her bed and stares longingly at his surly features, watching him hover and stare back at her. Pansy reclines on her own four-poster, perusing The Daily Prophet and looking for news amongst the biased articles it prints. She runs her finger down the page.
(How to Protect Your Family Against Inferi... How to Defend Your Belongings From Death Eater Riots… Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions-Sale!)
"What do you think?" Millicent asks, gesturing towards her picture of Krum. "It's autographed in the corner, my father got it for me."
"If you think he's handsome, I'm afraid your eyes are playing tricks on you. I'm certainly not impressed. And while we are on the subject, I'm not impressed with you either." She turns the page with idle carefulness. "What is this I hear about you refusing to join our Lord's ranks?" Her voice is quiet (she could be asking when Millicent thinks it will stop raining) yet possesses all of the venom that can be employed in a single statement. Millicent smiles curtly and sits beside Pansy, straightening the wrinkles in her bed sheets. Straightening the wrinkles in her skirt.
"I don't want to waste my time, thank you very much. I happen to enjoy my freedom."
"A loyal one's life is never wasted," replies Pansy, closing the Prophet and placing it neatly on her bedside table. "I am loyal to the Dark Lord, and I will be rewarded."
"Quite the loyal one, aren't we, Pansy? I know I've seen you demonstrating your loyalties to more than a few boys around school-or is that just my eyes playing tricks on me?"
Pansy bares her teeth in a jagged smile and raises her hand.
When she hits, it smarts for days.
--
curious in Parvati's tea leaves (Pansy would hear the girl screaming her distress to everyone in the Great Hall at breakfast). There are no lines in which to read between in the newspapers, not even in the Prophet. Weeks pass and classes are attended; assignments are completed and turned in late.
Leaves scatter across the Hogwarts grounds, gray clouds drifting and lingering with the promise of snow or rain or hail. The weather turns cold and Pansy's breath is still forming evanescent clouds like it always does when the air tastes like winter so early.
Ginny is looking in her direction (through the gray) from up in Gryffindor tower; she is shining with fire-warmth and letting the glow make her bright. Pansy shudders and bites down on her blue lips, rubbing her arms to keep the cold out as she turns from the orange glow.
--
Blaise looks up and down the Slytherin table before speaking, bringing a silver spoon to his lips and blowing on his cooling soup.
"Does anyone else feel it?" he asks placidly, arching an eyebrow and placing his spoon on to his napkin.
Four summers before, Blaise had stayed at the Parkinson's home when his mother was between husbands. Pansy had been studying the Chinese art of face reading when he came to visit. Blaise's eyebrows extended far past his eyes, which meant that he had many friends. Pansy had suspected he had more followers than friends. She told him this and the ghost of a smile lit up his face and he kissed her, his awkward and shaking hands fumbled under her blouse and she stared at his eyebrows and wondered who his friends were.
Dinner disappears and is replaced with dessert, but the cakes and puddings remain untouched, and the words in need of being said remain unspoken as visions shift to where Draco had sat before the war began and he went of to fight; to hide-the space is filled by Crabbe and Goyle, who have no one to flank. They look purposeless and strange without someone to protect.
The eight first-years further down the table look to investigate the sudden aphasia. The lull in conversation is noticed throughout the Great Hall, and heads turn towards the Slytherins who are all still and tense with expectancy.
"Yes," Pansy replies, taking a pumpkin pasty from a three-tiered silver tray. She realizes she is his follower as she watches normalcy return to the table.
In the mirror that night Pansy traces the skull with trembling fingers. The snake is barely visible.
--
It snows Christmas Eve, and Pansy draws circles on a library window during the idle time after dinner and before curfew. Pansy watches the floor for traces of brightness to see when she will be caught by Madam Pince and her tattletale of a lantern.
"What are you doing awake at this hour?" Pansy is asked.
"I was only looking out the window."
"It is late, Ms. Parkinson. I must ask you to return to your dormitory before I am forced to inform Professor-"
But there is no Head of House, Slughorn had retreated in fear of a surprise attack. Threats have become useless and ineffectual. Yet Pansy obeys and slips from the windowsill, slinking through dim aisles lined with bookcases heavy with secrets and knowledge.
Flash of red and books are everywhere.
"I'm sor-oh. Parkinson."
"Weasley."
They pass, and Pansy watches Ginny fall prey to the darkness of shadows and walk out of view.
--
The snake grows darker until it is black as ink and stings with warning. She dreams of hooded figures and fire (feels the Mark burn stronger).
--
(When they arrive they arrive all at once, late in the night early in the morning). Pansy doesn't know how they passed the ancient protective charms protecting the castle. Yet they did. They are here. That is the only thing that matters now in the dawn of the new day and of November. She puts on her mask, tying the silk strings around her black hair, pulling the dark hood over her head until she can no longer see herself in her reflection.
She matches the shadows as she runs (through halls, through parts of her she has lost) to the meeting-place.
When she finds the others she matches them as well, and seeing them she knows she is part of them. This is something she belongs to, that is almost hers: this masked group, this society. These are her equals.
She follows them through dark corridors and all she can hear is the rustling of cloaks and as they pass they sound like ghosts on the wind.
--
Flash of green and bodies are everywhere.
Pansy does not know who is left (is it better not to know? It is better not to know) but she sees the carnage and the bloodied masks and knows she is lucky to have survived this first attack-this marking of the second coming of war.
Minerva McGonagall is leaning against a wall, her wand destroyed but still held loosely in her limp hand, eyes unfocused and dark. The one who was so brave and strong, who was chosen to lead Hogwarts through such bleak and troubling times has been turned to nothing more than a statue. She stares into nothing. The war is reflected into her cold eyes and Pansy recalls the evening she first saw McGonagall. There had been a look of sadness in her eyes that suggested she had never been young, and it had always made part of Pansy ache for her.
The look is gone now, all feeling is gone, and the cane she used to navigate through busy corridors and narrow paths must have rolled down to the opposite end of the hall; Pansy takes it from its spot on the shaking ground. In place of a handle is an ornate lion's head with rubies for eyes. It glimmers in the torchlight and the glare is caught in McGonagall's broken glasses.
She strokes the lion, feels it cold beneath her fingers, taming it.
--
Bellatrix has a fiery one by the hair. The girl is fighting and flashing her bright teeth to bite the arm holding her. It is someone Pansy knows, or has seen, and as Bellatrix comes nearer with the girl, Pansy clutches her cane and ignores the sharp edges of the mane digging into her palm.
"Watch over the red one," Bellatrix orders, shoving the girl into Pansy's arms and helping her get a grip on the prisoner. "The Dark Lord wants her protected. There's a portkey farther down the corridor, if you run you can catch it."
Bellatrix storms back to the battle, her black robes flying behind her like night coming forth from her body. She is not one to miss a fight.
"Parkinson," sneers the prisoner, who is still fighting with strength that suggests she may never stop.
Upon inspection (a quick glance as the girls run and after Pansy is forced to bind and carry the redhead) Pansy sees who she is carrying.
"Weasley," she smirks, taking care to grip her tighter about the neck.
--
It takes days to get the wild out of her, but they do, and she stares between the bars of her cell and waits to be saved.
"What the hell are you doing?" Lucius Malfoy asks one morning after the fighting has stopped and the other Death Eaters begin arriving at Azkaban.
"I'm keeping watch," replies Pansy, indignant as ever and glowing with a dark sort of pride.
"You're in the way. You have watch over the Weasley girl, and the Weasley girl only. She is not expendable-she has power and is effective bait. If you fail to pay attention to her-" Lucius stops and smirks, aware he has said too much and just enough-the hungry look in Pansy's eyes is incentive enough for him to leave her in suspense.
Without warning, he has her by the scruff of her neck and she is shoved into a cell, scraping her knees against the cold floor.
"Dammit, Lucius!" Pansy screeches at the disappearing blond figure. "My knees are wrecked! Get me out of here!"
"You'll get used to it. You're on your knees enough." A cracked voice comes bitter and menacing from the corner of the room.
"Fuck!" cries Pansy, slamming her hands against the bars and hanging her head. She turns to Weasley, panting. "I refused to be caged-you're the only real prisoner here."
Weasley's upper lip curls but she says nothing, curling into a ball like a drowsy cat, and closing her eyes. Pansy snatches her cane and watches the morning progress to afternoon in the vacant eyes of the prisoner across the way.
--
"Out," Pettigrew commands sharply, trembling with excitement as he binds Weasley's hands together. "There's a portkey in the open cell down near the entrance. It will take you to the Ceremony. When you are there you are to change into the robes provided." He looks at Weasley and is almost chipper as he searches her with his discerning and unfocused eyes. "Wash your face."
Weasley says nothing but holds her head high, her slender neck straining to keep its weight up. She hasn't eaten in five days and hasn't spoken in just as long.
"Where will the portkey take us?" Pansy wonders aloud, but Pettigrew has already begun checking on the other prisoners.
"Yell out if you're dead, so I don't have to check you," he bellows, and Pansy swears she sees Weasley flinch.
--
Weasley takes her cloth and rubs her skin with it until she shines red. Pansy turns to her as they change into their robes, and Weasley is so pale and thin that her veins show through her skin. She watches her pull her red hair into a ribbon and slide into the robes placed out for her.
It is a curious feeling Pansy experiences when watching Weasley's veins press against her wrists as she ties her hair ribbon tighter.
She wants to wash her clean until she sees the error in her eyes and comes to the right side. She wants to wash the mud from her veins.
Pansy grips Weasley by the arm again and they head for the Great Hall.
"Where are we going?" Weasley asks, her voice weak from disuse. She has not given up on the fight, even if she is not protesting, she is too full of fire and passion, but she has become too tired to gnash her teeth and flail her arms.
"The Ceremony," Pansy replies, pulling her hood over her head. She fades to darkness and binds Ginny's arms again.
The flames shoot upwards, orange and then a vivid green, from the center of the circle the Death Eaters make. Their faces are ghostpale and hollow, their masks hanging limply from their hands. They don them all at once and identities are concealed. Pansy thinks she sees Draco fumbling with the ribbons, the way he once had on the dress she wore that snowless and barren Christmas before afternoon tea.
"I'll take her," a voice that sounds like it belongs to Lucius informs Pansy, unbinding her wrists with a strange tenderness. Weasley quakes all over with fear and seems to have succumbed to a temporary paralysis. She looks beautiful in the flame-light, her bare body as the blond Death Eater strips her. "Pettigrew gave the incorrect instructions to you both."
Weasley looks vulnerable when she is naked, the shaking of her limbs visible even in the darkness.
"Come," says Lucius, taking her arm and leading her toward the flames. Pansy watches in the same state of fright-the view is familiar, the nakedness and the chill are all dark reminders of the previous January. Her knuckles are white and her fingers aching as she grasps her cane.
"You're valuable to us," Lucius informs the unresponsive captive. "You have power. You are essential to the winning of this war."
Pansy watches her follow Lucius to the flames, transfixed by them as Pansy had been. She hears the screams and smells the stench of burned flesh.
It is all too familiar.
--
Weasley screams for hours, and Pansy must endure her shrieking along with the yelling of the other prisoners. It makes her head pound just above her eye, so she sleeps, but even in her sleep she hears yelling. The cries come from blank-faced, anonymous demons, creeping in from darkness and screaming until their voices become worn and hoarse as a dybbuk's.
Pansy wakes slowly and reluctantly, and when she pulls herself off the ground the first thing she sees is Weasley, who has taken to whimpering and stroking her Mark.
"Does it sting you, too?" she asks, looking up through her veil of red.
"Your arm hurts?" Pansy questions with a twinge of satisfaction.
"It's this fucking snake," Weasley says in a harsh whisper. Pansy grabs the brand on the freckled, pale skin and makes Weasley cry out in pain.
"Don't call it that," demands Pansy. "Don't ever call it that. You must be loyal. You belong to us now."
And she kisses her. She kisses her full on the mouth and it is a newer, softer experience than the hasty fondling received from Draco or Blaise. It reminds her of warm oceans on the south of France and the gentle touch of her mother.
They break apart and Weasley is crying, her lips trembling and eyes full-to-the-brim with tears.
Pansy feels something almost like being sorry expand in her chest and make her hands rip clothing and conquer newer, stranger lands. Weasley fights the way she fights everything, her jaw tense and fingernails clawing crescent moons into Pansy's arms.
"Stop," Pansy whispers into the soft skin of Weasley's neck.
She does.
--
"Have a cigarette," Pansy offers, lighting herself one and handing Weasley-handing Ginny-the pack.
"Where'd you get these?" Ginny asks warily, taking herself a fag and holding it out for Pansy to light.
"Stole them from Narcissa," says Pansy, forming her lips to blow a smoke ring to the stone ceiling. She watches Ginny handle the cigarette uncertainly. "Don't tell me you haven't smoked before."
"Mum told me with wasn't healthy. She told me not to mix with Slytherins, too-with your kind."
Pansy takes a long drag and smirks at the girl on the floor. Ginny places the fag between her lips, breathes in, and begins to cough, one hand on her stomach and the other still clutching her cigarette.
"You shouldn't inhale until you're used to it," Pansy instructs smugly, putting her fag out and throwing the butt at Ginny's feet.
--
Ginny protests with even more wild in her eyes when she is called to fight.
There is a look of fear in her eyes when Lucius Imperiuses her; Pansy recognizes it as if it were her own.
--
She looks at her hands as if they are stained with blood. They aren't, but Pansy's are. She pays them no mind, and they hang limply at her sides, her fingers numb from the cold.
"I've done it," Ginny says, her eyes wide and face gaunt and hollow. She shudders with fear the same way she did at her Ceremony.
"You broke the Imperius Curse," Pansy whispers, stricken with awe. She despises herself for being so impressed.
"I broke the Imperius Curse," repeats Ginny. "And then I killed a man-and they're taking me away. They're taking me away tomorrow!"
Pansy falls to her knees, her stomach sloshing with vodka and the murky water from the river near the battlefield where she killed Filius Flitwick. She takes Ginny by the neck and smears the skin under her eyes with blood. She claims her, claims Ginny and her high cheekbones that mean success and wealth; claims her as her own.
"They're not going to take you," Pans groans, her hands shaking as she begins to coat Ginny's neck with blood. "They're not going to take you from me."
She slides Ginny's skirt down her quivering legs, running her tongue along the insides of her thighs, her heart beating a painful rhythm in her throat. Pansy pulls her panties down and rips at the fastenings on her own robes. Ginny is already wet when Pansy's hand dips downwards, her fingers snakes in Ginny's lion's-mane of red curls.
She takes her cane, the cold of the handle striking to her wounded palm, and thrusts it at Ginny's cunt, moving the lion in circles. Ginny roars in pain or pleasure, Pansy replying in a hiss for her to be quiet. She thrusts the lion harder.
"They won't take you from me," she demands through gritted teeth. "You're mine."
Ginny is to be tried for war crimes.
She shouldn't have killed Lucius.
--
Pettigrew runs his silver hand along the metal bars and clanks all the way to their cell.
"Is she to be tried today?" Pansy inquired as Ginny is bound.
"Tried?" Pettigrew laughs as he locks the cell. "She isn't going to be tried. We’re doing away with this one!"
"You can't take her! You can't-"
Ginny does not respond, she only screams.
As she is taken away, the love is more of a surprise to Pansy than the loneliness.
--
She returns, but she is indifferent and dull. She does not speak or eat, but sits in the corner and stares, unblinkingly, at the walls. Pansy tries to get her to speak some nights, hoping to ignite some kind of fire in her.
"Your boyfriend's dead," she yells one morning. It isn't true, but it feels good to yell it. "We killed him yesterday. The war is over. We won. I won."
Pansy tries kissing her but her lips are unresponsive and eyes vacant. Her hands tease at Ginny's thighs and cunt but she is always dry.
She tells herself it's the summer, even if there is snow on the ground outside and Pettigrew sings Christmas carols all afternoon.
--
The war ends on a Tuesday. Among the dead are Severus Snape (found out for the traitor he was), Draco Malfoy (drank himself to death in an undisclosed city), Hermione Granger (murdered by a team of Death Eaters at the start of the battles), Theodore Nott (was careless, drowned), and the Dark Lord himself (murdered by Harry Potter on the Hogwarts lawn).
Pansy stands outside of Azkaban, rain falling noiselessly on the dock that juts out into the black water. Ministry officials have already arrived and are counting the dead. Pansy is confined to three square feet near the entrance to the prison, not bound, but deprived of all freedom.
"What's wrong with that one, then?" asks a portly wizard with a quill and parchment.
"Dementor's Kiss," replies the witch levitating Ginny in front of her.
Pansy watches Ginny be taken away again, unresisting and empty, the way Pansy's mother was taken three years before, after tea on a summer's afternoon. As she is pulled away to an unknown fate, more arrive to remove the bodies. The air is eerily calm.
Blaise walks as close as he can to Pansy, chucking a cigarette into the water and watching it float before turning around.
"Do you still feel it?" he asks her.
Pansy looks not at her arm but instead closes her eyes. She does not know what she feels, besides feeling unclean. There is dirt under her fingernails and blood caked on her face. Her lips are cracked and her left eye is swollen and sore. She wants to wash herself clean in her bath at home, but her home is surely in ruins now. She could bathe in the sea surrounding her, bathe herself and ignore the cigarette butts and bodies never exhumed from their black ocean graves. But she can't.
The water will not wash her of war crimes.
"No," she says. "I feel nothing."
Fin
Author/Artist: ???
Recipient's name: starrysummer
Characters/Pairings: Pansy/Ginny, past Pansy/Blaise and Pansy/Draco
Rating: hard R
Summary: War Crimes are any of various crimes, such as genocide or the mistreatment of prisoners of war, committed during a war and considered in violation of the conventions of warfare.
Word Count: 3,640
Warnings: slight object insertion
Notes: Thank you so much to my beta, Kate, for helping this become coherent.
Millicent Bulstrode pins a black-and-white photograph of Viktor Krum on the wall nearest her bed and stares longingly at his surly features, watching him hover and stare back at her. Pansy reclines on her own four-poster, perusing The Daily Prophet and looking for news amongst the biased articles it prints. She runs her finger down the page.
(How to Protect Your Family Against Inferi... How to Defend Your Belongings From Death Eater Riots… Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions-Sale!)
"What do you think?" Millicent asks, gesturing towards her picture of Krum. "It's autographed in the corner, my father got it for me."
"If you think he's handsome, I'm afraid your eyes are playing tricks on you. I'm certainly not impressed. And while we are on the subject, I'm not impressed with you either." She turns the page with idle carefulness. "What is this I hear about you refusing to join our Lord's ranks?" Her voice is quiet (she could be asking when Millicent thinks it will stop raining) yet possesses all of the venom that can be employed in a single statement. Millicent smiles curtly and sits beside Pansy, straightening the wrinkles in her bed sheets. Straightening the wrinkles in her skirt.
"I don't want to waste my time, thank you very much. I happen to enjoy my freedom."
"A loyal one's life is never wasted," replies Pansy, closing the Prophet and placing it neatly on her bedside table. "I am loyal to the Dark Lord, and I will be rewarded."
"Quite the loyal one, aren't we, Pansy? I know I've seen you demonstrating your loyalties to more than a few boys around school-or is that just my eyes playing tricks on me?"
Pansy bares her teeth in a jagged smile and raises her hand.
When she hits, it smarts for days.
--
curious in Parvati's tea leaves (Pansy would hear the girl screaming her distress to everyone in the Great Hall at breakfast). There are no lines in which to read between in the newspapers, not even in the Prophet. Weeks pass and classes are attended; assignments are completed and turned in late.
Leaves scatter across the Hogwarts grounds, gray clouds drifting and lingering with the promise of snow or rain or hail. The weather turns cold and Pansy's breath is still forming evanescent clouds like it always does when the air tastes like winter so early.
Ginny is looking in her direction (through the gray) from up in Gryffindor tower; she is shining with fire-warmth and letting the glow make her bright. Pansy shudders and bites down on her blue lips, rubbing her arms to keep the cold out as she turns from the orange glow.
--
Blaise looks up and down the Slytherin table before speaking, bringing a silver spoon to his lips and blowing on his cooling soup.
"Does anyone else feel it?" he asks placidly, arching an eyebrow and placing his spoon on to his napkin.
Four summers before, Blaise had stayed at the Parkinson's home when his mother was between husbands. Pansy had been studying the Chinese art of face reading when he came to visit. Blaise's eyebrows extended far past his eyes, which meant that he had many friends. Pansy had suspected he had more followers than friends. She told him this and the ghost of a smile lit up his face and he kissed her, his awkward and shaking hands fumbled under her blouse and she stared at his eyebrows and wondered who his friends were.
Dinner disappears and is replaced with dessert, but the cakes and puddings remain untouched, and the words in need of being said remain unspoken as visions shift to where Draco had sat before the war began and he went of to fight; to hide-the space is filled by Crabbe and Goyle, who have no one to flank. They look purposeless and strange without someone to protect.
The eight first-years further down the table look to investigate the sudden aphasia. The lull in conversation is noticed throughout the Great Hall, and heads turn towards the Slytherins who are all still and tense with expectancy.
"Yes," Pansy replies, taking a pumpkin pasty from a three-tiered silver tray. She realizes she is his follower as she watches normalcy return to the table.
In the mirror that night Pansy traces the skull with trembling fingers. The snake is barely visible.
--
It snows Christmas Eve, and Pansy draws circles on a library window during the idle time after dinner and before curfew. Pansy watches the floor for traces of brightness to see when she will be caught by Madam Pince and her tattletale of a lantern.
"What are you doing awake at this hour?" Pansy is asked.
"I was only looking out the window."
"It is late, Ms. Parkinson. I must ask you to return to your dormitory before I am forced to inform Professor-"
But there is no Head of House, Slughorn had retreated in fear of a surprise attack. Threats have become useless and ineffectual. Yet Pansy obeys and slips from the windowsill, slinking through dim aisles lined with bookcases heavy with secrets and knowledge.
Flash of red and books are everywhere.
"I'm sor-oh. Parkinson."
"Weasley."
They pass, and Pansy watches Ginny fall prey to the darkness of shadows and walk out of view.
--
The snake grows darker until it is black as ink and stings with warning. She dreams of hooded figures and fire (feels the Mark burn stronger).
--
(When they arrive they arrive all at once, late in the night early in the morning). Pansy doesn't know how they passed the ancient protective charms protecting the castle. Yet they did. They are here. That is the only thing that matters now in the dawn of the new day and of November. She puts on her mask, tying the silk strings around her black hair, pulling the dark hood over her head until she can no longer see herself in her reflection.
She matches the shadows as she runs (through halls, through parts of her she has lost) to the meeting-place.
When she finds the others she matches them as well, and seeing them she knows she is part of them. This is something she belongs to, that is almost hers: this masked group, this society. These are her equals.
She follows them through dark corridors and all she can hear is the rustling of cloaks and as they pass they sound like ghosts on the wind.
--
Flash of green and bodies are everywhere.
Pansy does not know who is left (is it better not to know? It is better not to know) but she sees the carnage and the bloodied masks and knows she is lucky to have survived this first attack-this marking of the second coming of war.
Minerva McGonagall is leaning against a wall, her wand destroyed but still held loosely in her limp hand, eyes unfocused and dark. The one who was so brave and strong, who was chosen to lead Hogwarts through such bleak and troubling times has been turned to nothing more than a statue. She stares into nothing. The war is reflected into her cold eyes and Pansy recalls the evening she first saw McGonagall. There had been a look of sadness in her eyes that suggested she had never been young, and it had always made part of Pansy ache for her.
The look is gone now, all feeling is gone, and the cane she used to navigate through busy corridors and narrow paths must have rolled down to the opposite end of the hall; Pansy takes it from its spot on the shaking ground. In place of a handle is an ornate lion's head with rubies for eyes. It glimmers in the torchlight and the glare is caught in McGonagall's broken glasses.
She strokes the lion, feels it cold beneath her fingers, taming it.
--
Bellatrix has a fiery one by the hair. The girl is fighting and flashing her bright teeth to bite the arm holding her. It is someone Pansy knows, or has seen, and as Bellatrix comes nearer with the girl, Pansy clutches her cane and ignores the sharp edges of the mane digging into her palm.
"Watch over the red one," Bellatrix orders, shoving the girl into Pansy's arms and helping her get a grip on the prisoner. "The Dark Lord wants her protected. There's a portkey farther down the corridor, if you run you can catch it."
Bellatrix storms back to the battle, her black robes flying behind her like night coming forth from her body. She is not one to miss a fight.
"Parkinson," sneers the prisoner, who is still fighting with strength that suggests she may never stop.
Upon inspection (a quick glance as the girls run and after Pansy is forced to bind and carry the redhead) Pansy sees who she is carrying.
"Weasley," she smirks, taking care to grip her tighter about the neck.
--
It takes days to get the wild out of her, but they do, and she stares between the bars of her cell and waits to be saved.
"What the hell are you doing?" Lucius Malfoy asks one morning after the fighting has stopped and the other Death Eaters begin arriving at Azkaban.
"I'm keeping watch," replies Pansy, indignant as ever and glowing with a dark sort of pride.
"You're in the way. You have watch over the Weasley girl, and the Weasley girl only. She is not expendable-she has power and is effective bait. If you fail to pay attention to her-" Lucius stops and smirks, aware he has said too much and just enough-the hungry look in Pansy's eyes is incentive enough for him to leave her in suspense.
Without warning, he has her by the scruff of her neck and she is shoved into a cell, scraping her knees against the cold floor.
"Dammit, Lucius!" Pansy screeches at the disappearing blond figure. "My knees are wrecked! Get me out of here!"
"You'll get used to it. You're on your knees enough." A cracked voice comes bitter and menacing from the corner of the room.
"Fuck!" cries Pansy, slamming her hands against the bars and hanging her head. She turns to Weasley, panting. "I refused to be caged-you're the only real prisoner here."
Weasley's upper lip curls but she says nothing, curling into a ball like a drowsy cat, and closing her eyes. Pansy snatches her cane and watches the morning progress to afternoon in the vacant eyes of the prisoner across the way.
--
"Out," Pettigrew commands sharply, trembling with excitement as he binds Weasley's hands together. "There's a portkey in the open cell down near the entrance. It will take you to the Ceremony. When you are there you are to change into the robes provided." He looks at Weasley and is almost chipper as he searches her with his discerning and unfocused eyes. "Wash your face."
Weasley says nothing but holds her head high, her slender neck straining to keep its weight up. She hasn't eaten in five days and hasn't spoken in just as long.
"Where will the portkey take us?" Pansy wonders aloud, but Pettigrew has already begun checking on the other prisoners.
"Yell out if you're dead, so I don't have to check you," he bellows, and Pansy swears she sees Weasley flinch.
--
Weasley takes her cloth and rubs her skin with it until she shines red. Pansy turns to her as they change into their robes, and Weasley is so pale and thin that her veins show through her skin. She watches her pull her red hair into a ribbon and slide into the robes placed out for her.
It is a curious feeling Pansy experiences when watching Weasley's veins press against her wrists as she ties her hair ribbon tighter.
She wants to wash her clean until she sees the error in her eyes and comes to the right side. She wants to wash the mud from her veins.
Pansy grips Weasley by the arm again and they head for the Great Hall.
"Where are we going?" Weasley asks, her voice weak from disuse. She has not given up on the fight, even if she is not protesting, she is too full of fire and passion, but she has become too tired to gnash her teeth and flail her arms.
"The Ceremony," Pansy replies, pulling her hood over her head. She fades to darkness and binds Ginny's arms again.
The flames shoot upwards, orange and then a vivid green, from the center of the circle the Death Eaters make. Their faces are ghostpale and hollow, their masks hanging limply from their hands. They don them all at once and identities are concealed. Pansy thinks she sees Draco fumbling with the ribbons, the way he once had on the dress she wore that snowless and barren Christmas before afternoon tea.
"I'll take her," a voice that sounds like it belongs to Lucius informs Pansy, unbinding her wrists with a strange tenderness. Weasley quakes all over with fear and seems to have succumbed to a temporary paralysis. She looks beautiful in the flame-light, her bare body as the blond Death Eater strips her. "Pettigrew gave the incorrect instructions to you both."
Weasley looks vulnerable when she is naked, the shaking of her limbs visible even in the darkness.
"Come," says Lucius, taking her arm and leading her toward the flames. Pansy watches in the same state of fright-the view is familiar, the nakedness and the chill are all dark reminders of the previous January. Her knuckles are white and her fingers aching as she grasps her cane.
"You're valuable to us," Lucius informs the unresponsive captive. "You have power. You are essential to the winning of this war."
Pansy watches her follow Lucius to the flames, transfixed by them as Pansy had been. She hears the screams and smells the stench of burned flesh.
It is all too familiar.
--
Weasley screams for hours, and Pansy must endure her shrieking along with the yelling of the other prisoners. It makes her head pound just above her eye, so she sleeps, but even in her sleep she hears yelling. The cries come from blank-faced, anonymous demons, creeping in from darkness and screaming until their voices become worn and hoarse as a dybbuk's.
Pansy wakes slowly and reluctantly, and when she pulls herself off the ground the first thing she sees is Weasley, who has taken to whimpering and stroking her Mark.
"Does it sting you, too?" she asks, looking up through her veil of red.
"Your arm hurts?" Pansy questions with a twinge of satisfaction.
"It's this fucking snake," Weasley says in a harsh whisper. Pansy grabs the brand on the freckled, pale skin and makes Weasley cry out in pain.
"Don't call it that," demands Pansy. "Don't ever call it that. You must be loyal. You belong to us now."
And she kisses her. She kisses her full on the mouth and it is a newer, softer experience than the hasty fondling received from Draco or Blaise. It reminds her of warm oceans on the south of France and the gentle touch of her mother.
They break apart and Weasley is crying, her lips trembling and eyes full-to-the-brim with tears.
Pansy feels something almost like being sorry expand in her chest and make her hands rip clothing and conquer newer, stranger lands. Weasley fights the way she fights everything, her jaw tense and fingernails clawing crescent moons into Pansy's arms.
"Stop," Pansy whispers into the soft skin of Weasley's neck.
She does.
--
"Have a cigarette," Pansy offers, lighting herself one and handing Weasley-handing Ginny-the pack.
"Where'd you get these?" Ginny asks warily, taking herself a fag and holding it out for Pansy to light.
"Stole them from Narcissa," says Pansy, forming her lips to blow a smoke ring to the stone ceiling. She watches Ginny handle the cigarette uncertainly. "Don't tell me you haven't smoked before."
"Mum told me with wasn't healthy. She told me not to mix with Slytherins, too-with your kind."
Pansy takes a long drag and smirks at the girl on the floor. Ginny places the fag between her lips, breathes in, and begins to cough, one hand on her stomach and the other still clutching her cigarette.
"You shouldn't inhale until you're used to it," Pansy instructs smugly, putting her fag out and throwing the butt at Ginny's feet.
--
Ginny protests with even more wild in her eyes when she is called to fight.
There is a look of fear in her eyes when Lucius Imperiuses her; Pansy recognizes it as if it were her own.
--
She looks at her hands as if they are stained with blood. They aren't, but Pansy's are. She pays them no mind, and they hang limply at her sides, her fingers numb from the cold.
"I've done it," Ginny says, her eyes wide and face gaunt and hollow. She shudders with fear the same way she did at her Ceremony.
"You broke the Imperius Curse," Pansy whispers, stricken with awe. She despises herself for being so impressed.
"I broke the Imperius Curse," repeats Ginny. "And then I killed a man-and they're taking me away. They're taking me away tomorrow!"
Pansy falls to her knees, her stomach sloshing with vodka and the murky water from the river near the battlefield where she killed Filius Flitwick. She takes Ginny by the neck and smears the skin under her eyes with blood. She claims her, claims Ginny and her high cheekbones that mean success and wealth; claims her as her own.
"They're not going to take you," Pans groans, her hands shaking as she begins to coat Ginny's neck with blood. "They're not going to take you from me."
She slides Ginny's skirt down her quivering legs, running her tongue along the insides of her thighs, her heart beating a painful rhythm in her throat. Pansy pulls her panties down and rips at the fastenings on her own robes. Ginny is already wet when Pansy's hand dips downwards, her fingers snakes in Ginny's lion's-mane of red curls.
She takes her cane, the cold of the handle striking to her wounded palm, and thrusts it at Ginny's cunt, moving the lion in circles. Ginny roars in pain or pleasure, Pansy replying in a hiss for her to be quiet. She thrusts the lion harder.
"They won't take you from me," she demands through gritted teeth. "You're mine."
Ginny is to be tried for war crimes.
She shouldn't have killed Lucius.
--
Pettigrew runs his silver hand along the metal bars and clanks all the way to their cell.
"Is she to be tried today?" Pansy inquired as Ginny is bound.
"Tried?" Pettigrew laughs as he locks the cell. "She isn't going to be tried. We’re doing away with this one!"
"You can't take her! You can't-"
Ginny does not respond, she only screams.
As she is taken away, the love is more of a surprise to Pansy than the loneliness.
--
She returns, but she is indifferent and dull. She does not speak or eat, but sits in the corner and stares, unblinkingly, at the walls. Pansy tries to get her to speak some nights, hoping to ignite some kind of fire in her.
"Your boyfriend's dead," she yells one morning. It isn't true, but it feels good to yell it. "We killed him yesterday. The war is over. We won. I won."
Pansy tries kissing her but her lips are unresponsive and eyes vacant. Her hands tease at Ginny's thighs and cunt but she is always dry.
She tells herself it's the summer, even if there is snow on the ground outside and Pettigrew sings Christmas carols all afternoon.
--
The war ends on a Tuesday. Among the dead are Severus Snape (found out for the traitor he was), Draco Malfoy (drank himself to death in an undisclosed city), Hermione Granger (murdered by a team of Death Eaters at the start of the battles), Theodore Nott (was careless, drowned), and the Dark Lord himself (murdered by Harry Potter on the Hogwarts lawn).
Pansy stands outside of Azkaban, rain falling noiselessly on the dock that juts out into the black water. Ministry officials have already arrived and are counting the dead. Pansy is confined to three square feet near the entrance to the prison, not bound, but deprived of all freedom.
"What's wrong with that one, then?" asks a portly wizard with a quill and parchment.
"Dementor's Kiss," replies the witch levitating Ginny in front of her.
Pansy watches Ginny be taken away again, unresisting and empty, the way Pansy's mother was taken three years before, after tea on a summer's afternoon. As she is pulled away to an unknown fate, more arrive to remove the bodies. The air is eerily calm.
Blaise walks as close as he can to Pansy, chucking a cigarette into the water and watching it float before turning around.
"Do you still feel it?" he asks her.
Pansy looks not at her arm but instead closes her eyes. She does not know what she feels, besides feeling unclean. There is dirt under her fingernails and blood caked on her face. Her lips are cracked and her left eye is swollen and sore. She wants to wash herself clean in her bath at home, but her home is surely in ruins now. She could bathe in the sea surrounding her, bathe herself and ignore the cigarette butts and bodies never exhumed from their black ocean graves. But she can't.
The water will not wash her of war crimes.
"No," she says. "I feel nothing."
Fin