Summary:Hermione would like to think that she was old enough and mature enough to have a handle on her temper, only clearly she didn't, because it was 1991 and she was eleven. Again. Over a stupid slur and Pansy Parkinson being her predictably spiteful self.
Notes:For KittyAugust (KittyAug).Written for kittyaugust, for the Harry Potter Threesomes Gift Exchange.
This was my first time writing femslash and my first time writing a threesome, and it was certainly an interesting challenge! I hope you enjoy the story, kitty :) It was good fun to write.
Thank you Savannah for all your hard work and for all the patience.
Thank you also to my beta Cali, for kicking my ass over my first draft and making me start over. Any remaining mistakes are my own.
Chapter 1: The ClubChapter TextPansy Parkinson and Hermione Granger had never got along. Not as little girls at Hogwarts, not as young women in a world gone up in flames, and not even after the war, when the whole wizarding community had collectively decided to just pretend the past few years had never happened and that they all lived in a brave new world in which old prejudices were gone and old enmities forgotten. One did not remark on people's blood status (not where one could be overhead, at any rate), one did not look down on the lower classes (or not openly, if one could help it), and one never, ever mentioned the war.
But even the new status quo — which had produced such strange visions as Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter being civil, even friendly, to one another — had not been enough to bring about anything but icy, barely-civil civility between Pansy Parkinson and Hermione Granger. It was all very well for Draco to play nice after the whole Death Mark debacle, but Pansy had not been that much of a fool and she saw no profit in sucking up to the aggravating, pretentious, know-it-all Muggle-born who fancied herself a war hero.
Had Hermione been asked for her opinion on Pansy, it was unlikely to have been any more flattering, so it was fortunate that they did not tend to run in the same circles.
When Pansy saw her in the crowded club, it was more than a little unexpected — and not just because it was a Muggle club (surely the odds of finding a Muggle-born in a Muggle club had to be higher than those of finding a pure-blood, let alone two), but also because it was not the sort of place where one would expect to find someone who until very recently had been very publicly involved with Ronald Weasley.
Pansy had pushed her way to the bar, flushed and out of breath. She tried to get the bartender's attention, grinning when Daphne pressed her body against hers and kissed the side of her neck. She turned towards her, the need for water forgotten as she kissed the other woman, letting her hands follow the curves of her body and around her back, pulling her closer against her.
The world was made of flashing lights and loud music and Daphne's warm lips and soft body and clever hands, and just then Pansy needed nothing else. A tap on her shoulder got her attention and she pulled back, turning towards the impatient bartender and yelling her request for two bottles of water, just managing to make herself heard. When the sound dimmed around her, she didn't need to see Daphne discreetly putting her wand away.
"Let's get out of here," Daphne whispered in her ear before nibbling on it, letting her hands do the job of persuading Pansy. And Pansy, who didn't need much in the way of persuasion, was about to agree when her gaze fell on the woman leaning against the bar a few feet away. Feeling her girlfriend tense up, Daphne pulled back and followed the direction of her gaze, immediately spotting Hermione.
"What is she doing here?"
Pansy chuckled. "What do you think?" The Gryffindor looked awkward and ill at ease, making stilted conversation over the loud music with a woman whose only redeeming quality seemed to be her immunity to Granger's pathetic lack of game. Pansy's smile widened as an idea crossed her mind. "Daph," she started.
"Don't even think about it."
She pouted, her hands on Daphne's hips, her fingers trailing the skin just above the waist of her jeans. "It's my turn to choose," she pointed out.
"Yes, but I have veto power."
"But why not?" She let just the hint of a whine into her voice, leaning forward and kissing Daphne's neck, feeling more than hearing her laugh. "It would be fun."
"Because you're bent on mischief."
That's why it would be fun.
She turned Daphne so they were both looking at Granger and wrapped her arms around her waist, hooking her head over her shoulder. "Just think about it," she said, her voice soft and low, almost a purr. "How many people can say they've slept with a war hero?" Far too many, really. War heroes were a dime a dozen these days.
"There's a special kind of hell for people who pick on baby lesbians."
She huffed a laugh. "Who's picking on anyone? I'm the very soul of charity. That girl is wound so tight she might just sprain something. It would be a kindness, really."
"Panse…"
"Come on. Aren't you a little tempted?" And it wastempting. Hermione had certainly filled out in all the right places, and Pansy was not so much a snob that she was blind, but that was nothing to the dark glee she felt at the thought of stripping away the carefully-kept control of that insufferable, self-important upstart, make her come apart under her, get her to moan her name…
Not the noblest of reasons to sleep with someone, perhaps, but it wasn't as if Hermione Granger would ever have suspected her of anything resembling nobility.
Daphne cocked her head back and pressed a soft kiss to her lips. "Even if you can convince me," she said, and Pansy took it as tacit agreement, "you'll never convince her."
"You give me too little credit."
A quick wave of her wand was all it took for Granger's friend to find herself with a sudden urge to depart without so much as another word or glance at her companion. Hermione looked after her with a stricken expression that suddenly turned to alarm when Pansy and Daphne got close enough for her to be in the radius of Daphne's sound-dampening spell.
The witch — who had hardly been relaxed before — visibly stiffened, and while Pansy could not see it, she had no doubt Hermione's hand was hovering just above the place where she kept her wand. What did the little fool think? That they'd attack her in a place packed with Muggles? Gryffindors were always so melodramatic.
"Small world, Granger." Pansy leaned against the bar, next to the witch, standing just a little too close.
"What are you doing here?"
Daphne's smirk spoke volumes about what she thought Pansy's chances were, which was almost insulting. Daphne should know by now that what Pansy wanted, Pansy got.
"Same thing you are, really," she said. Daphne nestled against her, and Pansy draped an arm around her shoulders. "Dancing, drinking…" She reached out to Hermione and tucked a curl behind her hair, adding, "Looking for company." The woman started slightly, turning three different shades of red. In anyone else it would have been endearing.
"You have company," she pointed out, trying to cover her embarrassment with a frown.
"The more the merrier," Daphne said, and then, because despite popular opinion she really was the evil one in their relationship, she turned Pansy's face towards her and kissed her — a languid, hot, utterly shameless kiss. When Daphne pulled back, her grin had a wicked edge to it and Hermione was looking even more flustered, something Pansy wouldn't have thought possible. She also looked ready to bolt, which meant she wouldn't. Gryffindors were nothing if not predictable.
Pansy got the attention of one of the bartenders, a short brunette with a nose ring, and ordered three shots of tequila, which made Hermione go from embarrassed to suspicious in two seconds flat.
"What in Merlin's name are you doing, Parkinson?"
"Buying you a drink."
"Why are you buying me a drink?"
"Peace offering." She did no try for contrition — it had never been a good look on her. She smiled instead, a smile that was all sharp edges and barely-disguised amusement. It was a challenge poorly-disguised as a smile, and Hermione reacted exactly as Pansy expected her to, by reaching for the shot glass closest to her without breaking eye contact and throwing it back, making a face at the taste. Daphne chuckled next to her, and Pansy smirked. Gryffindors.
Hermione was really smart. She was really smart and she knew when she was being played. She knew and it should have mattered, only clearly it didn't, because she was in the middle of the crowded dance floor, dancing with Pansy Parkinson and Daphne Greengrass, and if someone had told fifteen-year-old Hermione that that was something that was going to happen, that that was something in her future, she would have called them an idiot. Only now it seemed that she was the idiot, because she was the one dancing with Pansy Parkinson and Daphne Greengrass.
And she'd love to blame it on the three shots of tequila, or the however-many beers she'd had before that, but while she was drunk enough that she was dancing with Pansy-Pure-Bloods-Should-Rule-The-World-Parkinson and Daphne-What-Is-A-Muggle-Born-Greengrass, she was also drunk enough to be painfully honest with herself. And she honest-to-god wasn't hating this turn of events. She should be — she was painfully aware of that — but she wasn't. She didn't hate the way their bodies brushed against hers; she didn't hate the small, casual touches. When Pansy buried a hand in her hair and pulled her in for a kiss, she certainly did not hate that.
The whole world was moving just at the edge of her vision, moving bodies flashing in and out of the existence with the strobe lights, and Hermione felt light-headed and slightly adrift, grounded only by the solid pressure of the women on either side of her.
Daphne pressed against her back, a soft, stable presence, her lips warm where they followed the curve of her neck, sending shivers down her spine, and when she nibbled on the soft skin where her neck met her shoulder, Hermione practically purred into Pansy's mouth, and it was a good thing everything around them was so incredibly loud, because that certainly would have been embarrassing. And then Daphne tugged on her hair, and Hermione tilted her head back, finding her mouth with hers, and she was lost to what was or wasn't embarrassing, neither knowing nor caring to find out.
And there was a part of her who bristled at the very notion of being there, in the middle of that dance floor, making out with Pansy Parkinson and Daphne Greengrass — a part of her who remembered only too well the sneers and the scorn and the snide remarks, who did not forget the little girl who'd shed angry tears over the cutting words thrown at her by them and people like them. But a different part of her remembered too the woman who'd stood by herself earlier in the evening — unsure, uncertain and lost — and who'd been only too glad to reach out to someone familiar, even if that happened to be them.
And then, of course, there was the part of her who could barely string two coherent thoughts together anymore, whose whole world had dwarfed to the way their bodies felt against hers, to the way their lips and tongues and hands felt on her, and to the realisation that giving in was as easy as breathing.
When Pansy tugged on her arm and led the way back to the bar, Hermione looked over her shoulder and reached back to grab Daphne's hand. She was faintly aware of the noise dimming around them — the result of either Pansy's or Daphne's magic — and wondered briefly whether the Muggle bartender was also aware of it when Pansy leaned in to order three B-52s.
Letting go of Hermione's hand, Daphne looped her arms around Pansy's waist and yelled at the bartender to forget about the shots and just bring them three waters. Pansy pouted, turning to face Daphne, who laughed at her despondent expression before kissing her. The kiss started out soft and teasing before growing increasingly heated, and Hermione felt a sharp pang of something she refused to identify as jealousy, because she wasn't that much of a fool. Not yet. Not ever.
But maybe it was as good a time as any to make a hasty retreat. She'd come, she'd seen, she'd made ill-advised, alcohol-fuelled decisions. Veni, vidi… What was Latin for ill-advised?
Hermione glanced around and took an hesitant step in the general direction of what might or might not be the exit, but there was no time like the present to find out, because her presence had clearly become superfluous, and it was just as well, really. She had made plenty of bad life choices for one evening so the smart thing to do was clearly to—
A hand on her arm halted her half-hearted escape attempt, and Hermione forgot to be smart as Pansy pulled her back towards them. She sighed contently as she kissed her, all thoughts of exits and common sense and better life choices gone. And after all, it hadn't been her smarts landing her in Gryffindor House so much as her ability to make reckless, misguided decisions at the slightest provocation. Fred and George would be proud.
Just as the thought crossed her mind, she was hit by the realisation that Fred and George couldn't be anything at all. Not anymore. Not ever again. Hermione froze as the club disappeared around her, replaced by stone walls and bouncing curses, and the smell of smoke and charred flesh. Grotesque figures flashed in and out of the existence, and people were screaming and running and dying in hallways and stairwells and classrooms — broken bodies that would never be put back together again.
A warm hand cupped her face, bringing her back to the present. "You still with us, Granger?" Pansy was frowning slightly, her thumb brushing over her skin.
Hermione forced herself to smile, forced her body to relax. "Sorry, just spaced out for a second there." She was fine. It was fine. The war was over. It was all over. And she was fine. She was absolutely fine.
A mischievous smile spread across Pansy's face. "How about we move this party elsewhere?"
But Daphne was still frowning, a troubled expression on her face as she ran a hand over Hermione's hair.
"How about we call it a night instead?" she said. "We all had a lot to drink."
Part of Hermione warmed at the tone of concern, and part of her couldn't help but feel a sharp sting of rejection, something she wasn't even going to analyse, because what the hell. She made herself smile, the sort of smile that came so naturally to Pansy — easy and charming, a little cocky, a little sharp — and wrapped her free arm around Daphne's waist.
"Are you protecting my virtue, Greengrass?"
Daphne's smile was soft and friendly and a little amused. "You're extremely drunk, Granger."
Slytherins looking out for Gryffindors. It really was a brave new world.
"I'm not that drunk," she said, closing the space between them and kissing her, soft and sweet and enticing. And part of her knew she wasn't enough to tempt Daphne Greengrass, and part of her thought Daphne Greengrass should be so lucky, because she was Hermione Granger, and Muggle-born or not, she was totally a catch. And part of her recognised that she really was that drunk. Drunk enough to think this was a good idea, and sober enough to know it wasn't, and enough of a fool not to care either way.
When Daphne kissed her back, all the loud voices vying for Hermione's attention inside her head went quiet.
Chapter 2: The MinistryChapter TextHermione was an idiot. Smartest witch of her age, sure. But an idiot, nonetheless. She was an idiot who made poor life choices and shouldn't be allowed out in the world where bad life choices could be made. And dating Ron had been bad enough. There was no conceivable reason why she should have felt the need to top that by sleeping with Pansy Parkinson and Daphne Greengrass.
And yet.
And if she was going to sleep with two (!) pure-bloods who had never said a civil word to her in six years at Hogwarts or in any of the time since, or whose loyalties had been sketchy at best during the war, couldn't she at least have picked someone she didn't have to see on a daily basis?
All three of them worked at the Ministry (because every other wizard seemed to. Someone should really look into that), but Hermione hadn't really noticed them much before. The Ministry was a big place, and they all worked in different departments: Hermione was a curse-breaker with the Auror Office, Pansy worked as a special assistant to the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, and Daphne worked in the Department of Mysteries, doing… Actually, Hermione wasn't sure what Daphne did. The Department of Mysteries lived up to its name, and no one seemed to be entirely sure what Unspeakables did, except that it was probably best not to ask too many questions. Something about jars full of brains.
They all worked there, and Hermione had never had much cause to notice them beyond a brief, "I wonder who Parkinson is terrorising these days." Daphne hadn't even merited that much thought, mostly because she hadn't spent nearly as much time as Pansy during their formative years being a complete nightmare to anyone she deemed inferior to herself — and on Pansy's Scale of Social Solecisms, being a middle-class, Muggle-born Gryffindor was probably pretty close to the bottom. Hell, it probably was the bottom.
Hermione did notice them now, however, and she really wish she didn't. It was difficult to say what rankled most. Daphne's complete indifference or Pansy's knowing smirk. Whatever. Hermione didn't care. She could do casual sex as well as the next idiot who went around sleeping with completely inappropriate people. Really.
And if Parkinson gave her one more smug grin, she was going to find herself on the receiving end of an Unforgivable.
Because they worked in different departments, they normally only saw each other in passing in the lobby or in the lifts, but the universe hated Hermione, so it only took a few days for her to find herself in a conference room with both of them. Because of course she did.
A team of Aurors had located what had once been a Death Eater stronghold. It was empty now, save for a ridiculously and needlessly intricate web of curses, hexes and jinxes that protected what the Auror Office could only speculate was a large — and no doubt dangerous — collection of dark artifacts. The whole thing was a death trap — both too dangerous to dismantle and too dangerous to let be — and had it been up to Hermione, she would have set the whole thing on fire. It was not up to her, however.
The Ministry was only too happy to employ the Golden Trio, but it was one thing to parade them where important people could see them and a very different one to take seriously the opinions of "kids barely out of school". Never mind the fact that they had fought a four-year war and orchestrated the downfall of the most dangerous wizard that had ever lived. It was peace time now, and war symbols were meant to be seen and not heard.
No, she wasn't bitter.
The conference room was packed. Sitting around the table were the heads of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, of the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes and of the Department of Mysteries, as well as the Minister for Magic himself and the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot. Standing behind them were numerous Aurors, Unspeakables, curse-breakers, clerks and all manner of specialists — a solid ninety per cent of which were "kids barely out of school" who were expected to put their neck on the line for whatever crackpot plan the Ministry came up with in their quest to add to their precious collection of dangerous magical artifacts. (No other Magical Ministry had such a great collection. Theirs was the best collection. Suck on that, Hungary.)
Nope. Not bitter at all.
One day Hermione was going to be Minister for Magic and there would be a charming little bonfire with the contents of the Ministry vaults. She could wait. She had a ten-year plan. A ten-year plan she was currently focusing on right now, because it was either that or hexing the crap out of Parkinson, whose amused smirk was getting really old and who really needed to stop looking at Hermione as if she'd seen her naked. Which she had, but that was entirely besides the point. And if she thought for a moment that she could get under her skin, she was sorely mistaken. The day was yet to come when Hermione Granger could be rattled by the likes of—
"Granger, are we boring you?"
The harsh tone of Arnold Peasegood, Head of the Auror Office, startled her out of her musings. "Sir, no, sir. Sorry, sir."
"The list, girl." He snapped his fingers and held out a hand expectantly. Hermione handed him the scroll, keeping her face carefully blank.
Peasegood opened the scroll on the table. "These are the people on the task force. If your name is on the list, you are to report to the Auror Office at zero nine-hundred tomorrow. Abbott, Granger, Hopkins, McDougal, Mcmillan, Potter, Thomas, Turpin and Weasley."
Pansy was no longer smiling.
"Arnie, I can't help but notice that's not the list we agreed on." Sarah Croaker was a plump witch in her forties, who looked more like someone's favourite aunt than the head of a department that kept a collection of pickled brains.
"The Auror Office made some changes, Sally."
"The Auror Office does not pick and choose within my department," she said pleasantly. "No offence to Turpin, here. She's smart as a whip and a credit to the department, but I want Greengrass on this."
"Unspeakable Greengrass does not have the security clearance." There were no former Slytherins on the list, nor any pure-bloods who hadn't fought in the war — and on the right side of it. No one whose loyalties could be considered suspect.
Daphne met Hermione's gaze — something like hurt flashing across her face — and then looked away, her expression a blank mask that gave away nothing.
Pansy was openly fuming.
"Everyone who works for me has been thoroughly vetted, and I resent—"
"Unspeakable Croaker," the Minister interrupted. "The Auror Office has final say on any security-related matters."
Sarah Croaker looked thoughtfully at Kingsley Shacklebolt for a few seconds, and then smiled — an open, charming, utterly terrifying smile. The smile of someone who had access to an army of disembodied brains.
"As you say, Minister," she agreed cheerfully, and if Hermione were Kingsley, she'd sleep with an eye open from now on.
The meeting wrapped up not long after that. They had their instructions; there was little else to be said. As people filed out of the conference room, Hermione glanced after Daphne's receding form, something like guilt churning in her stomach. And it was ridiculous to feel guilty. She followed orders, like everyone there. And she didn't owe Daphne a thing. And what's more, if more members of the ruling pure-blood families had bothered to take a stand against the tyrant bent on wiping out half the wizarding population and ruling over the other half, maybe they'd be looked at with less suspicion now. She really couldn't be blamed for—
Pansy walked out of the room behind her, knocking into her in passing and giving her a murderous look before following after Daphne.
"Hermione, you coming?" Harry looked at her, expectantly. "We need to go over the protocols."
"Yeah, I'll just—" Hermione glanced from Harry back to the the other end of the corridor, where Pansy had just disappeared, and back to Harry. "I'll meet you guys there. There's something I need to take care of."
And without giving him time to object, she took off after Pansy and Daphne, because she was just as capable of making bad decisions sober as she was drunk.
She had lost sight of both of them, but it didn't take a genius to know where Daphne would have headed, and it wasn't long before Hermione caught sight of Pansy's purple robes. When the witch ducked into one of the side entrances to the Department of Mysteries, Hermione followed, not once thinking that was a bad idea. She had been friends with Harry and Ron for so long that her perception of good and bad ideas was a little skewed.
She had only been in the Department of Mysteries the one time — a night she had tried very hard to forget — but she didn't recognise most of the rooms and corridors she walked through. The place was like a maze — an eerily silent and deserted maze — and Hermione would have lost her way if it weren't for the occasional glimpse of Pansy or the sound of the odd door being open.
When she finally caught up with them, it was in a large, brightly-lit room filled with hundreds upon hundreds of clocks — big clocks, small clocks, hourglasses, sundials, even the odd digital clock. They were scattered across desks, displayed in locked cabinets, hanging from the walls, and there were even some hanging from the ceiling. There were also time-turners — more than Hermione had noticed the first time she had been in the room, and certainly more than she expected to see now, considering the whole Ministry stock had officially been destroyed during the Battle of the Department of Mysteries.
Daphne crossed her arms over her chest, her eyes red and puffy. "You can't be here," she said to Pansy, her voice a little off. When she spotted Hermione, her expression hardened. "Neither can you."
Pansy spun around, drawing her wand. "Did you lose your way, Granger?" It was Pansy as she remembered her from Hogwarts — haughty and disdainful, a little catty, a little vicious. "How safe do you figure you are, all alone down here with the likes of us?"
Hermione was fairly confident Parkinson wouldn't hex her. Not on Ministry property, anyway. Too many awkward questions.
Daphne sniffled once before looking away, the very picture of misery.
Hermione was fairly confident that if Parkinson didtry to hex her, she could probably draw fast enough to shield it.
"You don't scare me, Pansy," she said, because it was mostly true. To Daphne, she added, "It's not a reflection on your work."
Daphne laughed, a bitter, humourless chuckle, and looked up at Hermione.
"No. It's just a reflection on me."
And there was something about the way she said it that tugged at all the parts of Hermione that wanted to reach out to her and make it better, which was a ridiculous impulse that Hermione was not going to examine too closely, because that way lay madness.
"If it were up to me—"
"Oh, do tell, Granger." Pansy's smile did not reach her eyes. "How hard did you argue that particular point? How hard did the sanctimonious Hermione Granger try to keep a pure-blood on that list?"
Hermione could feel herself blush and she hated that she was. She had done nothing to be ashamed of. "Fuck you, Parkinson. There are pure-bloods on that list."
"Sure. The right kind of pure-bloods. Dutiful little soldiers who grovelled enough or bled enough for saint Potter."
"The bar isn't as high as that. Though we did try to weed out any who tried to hand him over to Lord Voldemort."
The words were out before she could bite them back. Daphne flinched at the name, but Pansy only blanched, looking for a second as if Hermione had slapped her. And then she smiled, slow and dangerous, a picture of natural grace and easy poise.
"Ah, but you should know I'm a reformed character now." The sharp edge to her voice was at odds with her relaxed appearance. "I even pity fuck the occasional Mudblood for cookie points."
Hermione did not even register drawing her wand. "Stupefy!" she yelled, anger overriding common sense.
"Protego!"
Time slowed down and it was almost as if Hermione could see it all happening in slow motion. Daphne yelled a warning right before Hermione's spell hit Pansy's shield. It bounced off it and hit the closest table, smashing it and everything on it and sending glass and wood flying in all directions. Hermione turned her face away instinctively, and barely had time to feel the sharp sting of glass embedding itself on her skin before the whole world changed.
The Great Hall exploded to life around her, bright and loud and impossible, decked in the House colours, packed full of boisterous students. She stared at the dais, where Albus Dumbledore stood next to the Sorting Hat, and it was all Hermione could do not to start hyperventilating.
Chapter 3: The SchoolChapter TextNo, no, no, no. This was bad. This was really, really bad. Daphne stared around her in horror, but her mind refused to even process what she was seeing except to recoil at the utter wrongness of it. She was faintly aware of the fact that she was breathing too fast, but there was nothing she could do about it, nothing she could do except freak out, because this was really, extremely, overwhelmingly bad.
A warm hand squeezed hers and she forced herself to focus on Pansy, except that was a mistake, because Pansy was also wrong. The whole world was wrong, and she didn't know what to do. She didn't know what to do, she didn't know how to fix it, and this was just really, really bad.
"Shhhh," Pansy said, moving a little closer, shielding Daphne from the other students around them. "It's okay, baby. Just breathe. Everything's fine."
Everything was not fine. Everything was very much not fine. And Pansy's voice — so much higher, so much younger than it should have been — was doing nothing to help Daphne's growing anxiety. She bit back a sob, closing her eyes for a second, trying and failing to think of something, anything to fix what had just happened.
McGonagall's voice cut through the haze of panic. "Granger, Hermione," she called.
Daphne looked frantically around until she found Hermione, who looked so much different from the Hermione who'd stood in the Time Room only a few seconds ago. This Hermione — small and scared and far too young — was staring back at her with the same horror Daphne felt. Except there was no time — there was no time for panic or to freak out, which was kind of funny, all things considered, their problem being a lack of time. Daphne nodded in the direction of the dais, trying to convey to Hermione that she really needed to start moving.
"Granger, Hermione," McGonagall repeated, which hadn't happened the first time around, and they really couldn't be messing with this. Daphne frowned and nodded towards the dais again, and Hermione seemed to finally get it, because she moved at long last, walking up to the stool over which McGonagall was holding the Sorting Hat.
"Pansy, listen to me," Daphne said under her breath, knowing she didn't have very long. "Change nothing. Everything has to happen exactly like it did the first time around."
"But—"
"Greengrass, Daphne."
Daphne did not wait to be called again. She let go of Pansy, squared her shoulders and forced herself to smile as she walked up to the front. The Sorting Hat barely touched her head before it yelled, "SLYTHERIN!"
The only light in the otherwise empty classroom came from the moon outside and from the three wands that moved every now and as if to punctuate their owners' hushed discussion.
"This is not how time travel works!"
In a perfect world, Daphne would hex Hermione all the way to the other side of the castle, but the world wasn't perfect and careless spell-casting had landed them in enough trouble as it was.
"Well," she said, trying and failing to keep her voice even, "if this is not how time travel works, then clearly we have nothing to worry about." Pansy reached for her hand, but Daphne shook her off. She couldn't deal with Pansy right now. She couldn't deal with either one of them right now — it was all she could do to keep it together as it was.
Hermione glared at her for a moment — hers the round, doll-like face of an angry, pouty eleven-year-old Daphne barely remembered — before looking away.
"Fine," she said sheepishly. "What do we do?"
"We don't do anything. You have done enough. I'll take care of it."
"But—"
"I will deal with it, Granger. All I need you and Pansy to do is not to fuck it up anymore than you already have. Listen to me, and listen carefully, because this is important. You can't change anything that happened. The smallest change could have unpredictable consequences. Disastrous ones. Do you understand?"
"Yes."
"Do you?"
"I understand, Greengrass. Everything like it happened before. I get it."
"See that you do." Daphne took a deep breath, trying to shake some of the nervous tension pressing against her chest. "Don't get caught getting back to Gryffindor Tower."
Hermione snorted at that. "Don't worry," she said with a small smile. "Got lots of practice." She tapped her wand once against her side, extinguishing the light, and listened carefully at the door for a second, before slipping out.
Daphne gave her a few minutes to get away, already fretting about their own trip back to the dungeon. They couldn't get caught. They absolutely could not get caught.
"Daph—"
"Let's go," she said, hoping that Filch was patrolling elsewhere, praying that Peeves was causing mischief somewhere else.
Against all expectations, their luck held until they were safely in the deserted Slytherin common room. Only then did Daphne allow herself to breathe properly, feeling light-headed from sheer relief.
Pansy's hand was warm and familiar on her arm. "It's going to be fine, baby."
Daphne slapped Pansy's hand away, suddenly unconscionably angry.
"Go to sleep, Pansy," she said only, not trusting herself to say anything else. Sleep sounded like a good idea. If she were really lucky, her pillow would become sentient and choke her to death.
"Will you please stop being mad at me? It was not my stupid spell."
Daphne knew Pansy well enough to know that the petulance in her tone hid the hurt underneath, but just then she didn't care.
"You were baiting her," she said, too mad to care that her voice was too loud. "You wanted to rile her up. Well, congratulations, you did."
"That's not—"
"Do you understand in how much trouble we are?"
"Daphne—"
"Do you? In fact, forget about us. Do you realise how much we can screw up just by being here? The Dark Lord didn't do as much damage as we stand to do. All because you wanted to provoke Hermione Granger. Well done, Pansy. You've really outdone yourself this time."
And with that she turned and fled to the dormitories, before she could say anything else. It wasn't fair. She knew it wasn't fair even as she said it, but just then she didn't care. It was easier to be angry than to be scared, and Daphne was terrified. She knew enough to be. One did not mess with time. It was the first rule. It was the only rule. It was the first thing they taught any of the Unspeakables working in the Time Room.
Time magic was dangerous. It was unpredictable. Any one small change could and often did snowball into something that could not be predicted or controlled. A word out of place here and suddenly they were faced with a future in which He Who Must Not Be Named had won the war, or they were dead, or any other number of horrible things had come to pass. That, of course, along with the ever-present worry that they would simply tear the fabric of time, and Merlin only knew what would happen then. There was a reason why the use of time-turners was carefully controlled, why time-turners themselves were crafted so that their scope was limited.
And Daphne did not know exactly what had landed them here, what had landed them now. She didn't know how to get them back to their own time. She didn't know how to fix it and she had to fix it, because the alternative did not bear thinking about. She needed… She needed things she could never get here — access to the Department of Mysteries, to its library, to the artifacts kept there, to the cumulative knowledge gathered by generations of Unspeakables. She had none of that, and she could get none of that, so it was on her to figure it out, it was on her to fix it, and the weight of that was crushing.
She was already in bed by the time Pansy walked into the room. Daphne's back was turned, but she could still feel her walk around, could still tell when the other girl came to a stop by her bed.
"I'm sorry," Pansy said, her voice low and contrite.
Daphne made no reply. She shut her eyes and pretended to be asleep. And if the tension in her shoulders or the tears falling down her face gave away the fact that she was still awake, Pansy did not call her out on it.
Hermione would like to think that she was old enough and mature enough to have a handle on her temper, only clearly she didn't, because it was 1991 and she was eleven. Again. Over a stupid slur and Pansy Parkinson being her predictably spiteful self. And it's not as if she hadn't been called that and worse before. Merlin, it's not as if Pansy hadn't called her that and worse before. A smarter woman would have kept her temper, but then a smarter woman would not have been in the Department of Mysteries to begin with. A smarter woman wouldn't have gone home with Pansy Parkinson and Daphne Greengrass, either.
For someone supposedly so smart, she certainly did a lot of dumb crap.
"You're saying it wrong," she told Ron, because that's what she had said all those years ago, and she didn't need to have been trained as an Unspeakable to understand the implications of their little predicament. "It's Win-gar-dium Levi-o-sa, make the 'gar' nice and long."
"You do it, then, if you're so clever," Ron snapped, and if one of them was going to lose it and accidentally break time, her money would have been on him, which only went to show that pride did always go before the fall.
Rolling her eyes, Hermione — who could produce a corporeal Patronus, and had duelled Alecto Carrow, and Antonin Dolohov, and Bellatrix-Freaking-Lestrange, and who knew ten different ways to break ancient Egyptian curses — waved her wand and levitated a feather four feet up, to Professor Flitwick's delight and everyone else's utter disgust.
Yeah, she'd been really popular those first few weeks.
It was before the troll attack in the dungeons, before she, Harry and Ron had become friends, and Hermione had almost forgotten how lonely she had been back then, how she had struggled to fit in, to make friends — too blunt, and bookish, and far too fond of following rules and making sure everyone else did too to be seen as anything but a bloody nuisance in Gryffindor Tower.
And it was exhausting. The whole thing was exhausting. Having to watch her every word and her every move, trying to make sure she did everything exactly as she'd done it the first time around — every last blunder, every last misstep — was exhausting. And who could remember everything that far back in time? The only thing she could do was try to get it right and hope that she didn't screw up more than she already had.
And if she were to be perfectly honest, that grated almost more than everything else. Smartest witch of her age and she hadn't thought twice about trying to stun someone in a room filled with unstable magical objects. Really, well done, Hermione. Ten points to Gryffindor.
She deserved what she got and worse.
When the class ended, she made sure not to linger inside the classroom. Everything exactly as it had been. There were things she couldn't remember, things that hadn't survived a decade and a war and all the things that had followed it, but she remembered this well enough.
She remembered the students filling the corridor. She remembered the noise and the chatter and the quiet pride at having done well in class. When Ron's words came, barbed and harsh and stinging, she remembered those too.
"It's no wonder no one can stand her," he said to Harry. "She's a nightmare, honestly."
She had been expecting it, she knew it was coming, but it still hit her like a brick wall. There was nothing staged about the way she sucked in her breath, nothing fabricated about the tears she wasn't quick enough to conceal as she hurried past them, knocking into Harry in her haste to be anywhere but there, and studiously avoiding looking at Pansy, who had chosen that exact moment to walk by, because of course she had. In the exciting life of Hermione Granger it never rained but it poured, and if her best friends were going to comment on what an insufferable shrew she was, it was bound to be within earshot of the person most likely to enjoy it.
A loud crash behind her was followed by a number of loud thuds and Ron's startled, "What the bloody hell?", but Hermione did not stop to look. She hurried down the corridor and did not slow down until she found herself in an empty classroom, the door banging shut behind her.
She closed her eyes, trying to get a grip. She wasn't eleven years old anymore. She wasn't going to fall to pieces over a stupid comment made by Ron over ten years ago. She wasn't. She refused to. The strangled sob sounded too loud in the quiet room, and Hermione hid her face in her hands, wretched and inconsolable and furious at herself. She didn't look up when someone walked in. No one had followed her the first time around.
When Hermione finally managed to get her outburst under control, Pansy was standing a few feet away, watching her with a guarded expression.
"Done with the pity party?" she asked, handing her a pack of tissues.
And there was something absolutely bizarre about eleven-year-old Pansy Parkinson — or any-age Pansy Parkinson, really — checking up on her, but Hermione knew better than to point it out.
"You shouldn't have done that," she said instead, drying her eyes.
Pansy smirked, not needing to ask what that was. No one had Flipendoed Harry and Ron the first time around, and there were only so many people in the school who could have pulled off a non-verbal spell. Certainly only so many students.
"My wand slipped," she said with a shrug, leaning up against the desk, next to Hermione, their shoulders just touching.
"Why are you here, Pansy?"
Their eyes met and for a moment the only sound was that of students walking and chatting and laughing outside. Pansy was the first one to look away.
"I'm sorry about what I said."
Hermione did not think Pansy had ever apologised for a thing in her life.
"I'm sorry I tried to stun you."
And if either thought the other's apology was lacking, neither thought to point it out. Pansy leaned her head on Hermione's shoulder, and Hermione let her, looping her arm around the other girl's and leaning her head on hers. It shouldn't be that easy — it wasn't that easy — but they were none of them so proud nor any of them so foolish that they didn't know that any port would do in a storm.
Chapter 4: The Room of RequirementChapter TextIt was the middle of the day when everything changed. One second Pansy was half paying attention to Quirrell's stuttering his way through a lesson on the Knockback Jinx — and she had that one covered, thank you very much — and the next Moody was torturing a giant spider not three feet from her, causing her to almost jump out of her skin.
"Squeamish, Miss Parkinson?" he said with a smirk, causing a number of students — those not bothered by the casual use of Unforgivables and not as properly terrified of Pansy as they should have been by this point — to snigger.
"Not at all, Professor," she said, forcing herself to smile. Draco raised an inquisitive eyebrow at her, but Pansy ignored him, turning back in her seat to look at Daphne, who was sitting where she had sat all through their fourth year DADA classes — one row back and to the side, next to Millie. Back then Daphne had been one of the few Slytherins openly bothered by Moody's little demonstration, but she looked positively ashen now.
Pansy caught up with her outside of class, saying under the general commotion, "I take it this is not good?"
"What? Being tossed around by the vagaries of an unknown time spell? Whatever gave you that impression?"
Finally out of patience, Pansy grabbed Daphne's arm, bringing them both to a halt in the middle of the crowded corridor. "Enough with the attitude," she hissed.
Daphne glared, shaking her arm free. Before she could say anything, however, Draco chose that precise moment to interrupt.
"Parkinson," he called, sauntering up to them. "I need a date for the Yule Ball."
The smile Pansy gave him was a little flirty, a little cocky, partly designed to charm him and entirely designed to bother Daphne, because she was perfectly capable of multitasking and she really wasn't above being that petty.
"And what am I supposed to do about that, Malfoy?" she asked as he wrapped his arms around her, this boy she still adored even after everything that had happened — the Dark Mark, and the war, and the realisation that she'd really much rather be sleeping with women.
"Oh, I thought I'd grant you the honour to show up on my arm."
Pansy chuckled at that, her smile growing a little wider as he pressed against her. "Honour, is it?"
"Great honour," he repeated before kissing her. Pansy smiled against his lips and kissed him back. And if she put in a little more enthusiasm than she had the first time around, that was neither here nor there.
When she pulled back, Daphne was gone.
Daphne was gone, but Hermione was standing at the end of the now almost-deserted corridor, eyeing her with barely-concealed disapproval.
Suppressing a sigh, Pansy pushed Draco away and told him she had an errand to run and would see him in class. Thus dismissed, he took off to find Crabbe and Goyle, and Pansy — making sure there was no one around to notice or care — followed Hermione into an empty classroom.
"That was very mature," the other witch pointed out the minute the door was closed.
"Shut up," was Pansy's less than sophisticated reply. Everything exactly as it had been was one thing, but Pansy knew perfectly well when she was being a bitch. It's just that most of the time she didn't care.
"You need to talk to Daphne."
"Thank you for the relationship advice, Granger, but I've got it covered."
"Yeah, you're doing a brilliant job, Parkinson. Absolutely splendid."
Pansy sighed, closing her eyes for a second. "She's mad," she finally said, because if you couldn't share your relationship woes with your former school nemesis whom you had slept with the one time and were now stuck back in time with, who could you share it with?
"Yeah," Hermione agreed — far too promptly and entirely too unhelpfully. "You still need to talk to her."
Yeah, she did, and what's more, she would, but first she was going to sulk some more, because honestly, it's not as if she'd meant for any of this to happen. It wasn't unreasonable to shield an attack — an attack that might not have been entirely unprovoked, but if Gryffindors lacked impulse control, that was hardly her fault.
And a case could be made that Hermione would never have been in the Department of Mysteries to begin with if Pansy hadn't decided to pick her up at that stupid club, but Pansy did not remember Daphne shooting down the idea, and she certainly did not remember her complaining about it while moaning Hermione's name later that night.
Pansy was still going over the many ways in which this was all really Daphne's fault when she walked into her next class — Transfiguration, because that was just what she needed out of her day: two hours stuck in a classroom with Minerva McGonagall.
Her indignation lasted only until she realised Daphne wasn't in class. And Pansy couldn't be sure, she couldn't swear it — it had been so long ago — but she didn't remember Daphne not being in class that day. She didn't remember McGonagall's pursed lips, nor her pointed comment about how money and status would not take them far in life if they did not apply themselves to their studies. She certainly did not remember McGonagall docking ten Slytherin points. Daphne had never cost them points in her life.
When the class was finally dismissed — after what seemed like years — Pansy ran all the way to the dungeons, but Daphne was nowhere to be found. She tried the library next, and the Great Hall, and then the Hospital Wing, because if Daphne was changing things — after all the warnings, after everything she had said — there had to be a good reason, there had to be an excellent reason, and Pansy did not even realise how scared she'd been of what that reason might be until she confirmed that all the beds in the Hospital Wing were empty.
She was late for Charms, but she only made it as far as the door. One look was enough to inform her that Daphne was not in her seat, and for a moment Pansy did not know what to do. She couldn't change anything — that's what Daphne had said, that's what Daphne had been at pains to stress — but Daphne wasn't there, and that was different, she was absolutely sure that was different, and she didn't know what to do.
Before Professor Flitwick could notice her hovering in the doorway, Pansy quietly took off, heading to the other side of the castle. She'd seen a Weasley close to the Arithmancy classroom, and while one Weasley looked much like another, she was pretty sure this was the right one. No one could be unlucky all the time, not even her, and when she got there, the door was slightly ajar — enough that she could see Hermione sitting next to Longbottom. Making sure no one was around, Pansy waved her wand and Hermione's quill sprang to life under its owner's startled look, quickly scribbling a message that had Hermione frowning at the parchment before stealing a glance towards the door. Their eyes met and Hermione shook her head, almost imperceptibly, but Pansy was not to be deterred by Granger's scruples.
The quill moved again, and Hermione's frown deepened. She raised a hand and told Professor Vector she was feeling unwell, and could she please be excused. Not a minute later she was out in the corridor.
"What part of change nothing are you having trouble with?" she hissed, moving away from the door.
"Daphne is missing. I can't find her. This didn't happen the last time."
Hermione cursed under her breath and hurried her step. "Come on," she said, and Pansy followed. The Slytherin ended up outside Gryffindor Tower, waiting awkwardly by the entrance while the other girl went in search of something. When she came back, she was carrying a piece of parchment. Without pausing to explain, Hermione led the way to a broom cupboard. Once inside, she opened the blank parchment on top of an upside down bucket and tapped it with her wand. "I solemnly swear that I'm up to no good."
An intricate map of the castle spread across the parchment, complete with markers for all its denizens — every student, every teacher, every god-damned ghost. Even the house-elves merited small, moving identifiers.
"How in Merlin's name—"
"Not important," Hermione said, carefully examining the map. "See if you can find Daphne."
They looked, and looked, and looked some more, but Pansy could not see her. Everyone was there, but she couldn't find Daphne. She could see Snape down in the dungeons, and Dumbledore in the Headmaster's office, and Viktor Krum doing Merlin only knew what in the library. She could even see the Bloody Baron, who had been dead for ten centuries, but she could not find Daphne. She wasn't there. She wasn't there and Pansy did not know what to do, except freak out because Daphne was missing and she could be in trouble and Pansy did not know what to do about it, and the last time she'd seen her she'd kissed Draco — partly because that's what had happened the first time, sure, but mostly out of spite, and what sort of person did that make her?
"She's not here," she said, her voice strange to her own ears. "She's not in the castle. How is it even possible? Where the hell—"
"Easy, Pansy. She's in the castle." Hermione's calm tone only served to aggravate her further.
"She's not in the bloody castle. She's nowhere in this damn thing." She could hear the slightly hysterical tone in her voice, but there was absolutely nothing she could do about it. "I've looked it over ten times. She's not here."
"It doesn't show Unplottable locations." Hermione tapped the map with her wand and the parchment became blank again. "If we can't see her— The Room of Requirement. Let's go."
They ran all the way up to the seventh floor, coming to a stop in the middle of a deserted corridor. The wall ran uninterrupted from one end of the corridor to the other, but Pansy did not question Hermione. She remembered the room. She remembered helping break into it in their fifth year. She remembered Dumbledore's Army, trying to get away, none of them making it very far. All of it for a golden star from a pink bat who'd not make it to the end of the school year. Not Pansy's smartest move.
"What would she turn it into it?" Hermione muttered, not really a question. "Somewhere she could work. The Room can't replicate the Time Room, but maybe some of the research material… Some of the instruments…"
It took almost fifteen minutes and three tries, but the door finally appeared. Pansy did not wait to see if Hermione followed. The second there was a doorknob, she rushed in, only to stop dead in her tracks.
Daphne did not acknowledge their presence, did not even seem to notice them. She sat cross-legged on a magic circle in the middle of the room, her eyes blind and unblinking, her face made alien and unfamiliar by the deep shadows cast by the ethereal blue light of the runes that made up the circle. Magic was crackling all around them, heavy and dense, with a taste like metal, and Daphne's voice was strained and unnaturally deep as it chanted unfamiliar words that made all the hairs on Pansy's arms stand up.
Hermione moved a little closer, looking down at the sheets of parchment scattered on the floor, but Pansy did not move from where she was rooted in place. It had never occurred to her to wonder exactly what it was Unspeakables did in the deep confines of the Department of Mysteries, but she wondered now, staring at this Daphne who looked so remote and unreachable — not quite human, not quite flesh and blood.
Daphne gasped and for a split second she looked like herself again — young and human and breakable. The light of the circle flickered and a grimace of pain flashed across her expression as dark, red stains spread across her shirt sleeves. Her voice wavered for a second and then the chanting grew in intensity and the light of the circle flared up. When invisible hands cut deep gashes on her face and neck, she did not so much as flinch. She didn't, but Pansy lunged forward, a startled shout on her lips. Hermione caught her before she could reach the circle.
"Don't," she said, struggling to stop Pansy. "You can't break the circle."
"It's hurting her."
"You break it and it's going to hurt us. It's keeping the magic contained."
"Granger, if you don't let go of me this instant—"
A loud crash drowned her words and they watched in horror as Daphne was tossed across the room like a rag doll, hitting the opposite wall and falling to the ground unresponsive. Pansy pushed Hermione off and ran to her girlfriend, not bothering to sidestep the fading runes.