She had been relieved when it was all over, when they said all was well. But in the months following the war she had come to find that only half of her relief was rightfully felt. The muggles had a saying; history is written only by the victors and in Pansy's case she had come to find herself living those words despite her prior thinking it was impossible to trust in a muggle statement. It wasn't that Pansy was a loser per say in the war, she hadn't even fought, hadn't taken a side, just spoken two words which seemed to condemn her to an eternity of words being spoken about her. But more than that, more than her own actions, there were the colors that she had worn the day of the great battle. The muggles were right but they had left out a crucial detail; history in her case had been written by those in red, silver, and gold, not any of those in green. Pansy glanced down at those colors now, brightly splayed across her black robes. She remembered the first time she came home with those colors, the snake emblem pressed onto her chest, her mother had touched her heart and her father had stood from the table to applaud her shouting "theres my girl!" Then came the following years when she was so proud of those robes, her house, her colors. But now she sat alone in a train compartment with her book bag pressed firmly against her breasts just in case. Just in case someone walked by her window and caught a flash of green, looked in closer and saw the girl, that bitch as she had been called time and again, that bitch who tried to turn in The Chosen One to the Dark Lord.

Not that Pansy had raised particular objection to any of the words or judgements. She was that girl and she had always been. She had mercilessly taunted her classmates, threatened Potter, supported Umbridge, and thrown around racial slurs especially at Granger. The mentioned girl had been consistently on her mind since Pansy had discovered she too would be returning for her seventh year at Hogwarts. Pansy had attended Hogwarts her seventh year but under the Carrows she had done more brute work as opposed to take classes. Unsurprisingly most Slytherins failed out that year due to lack of credits but Pansy was one of the few who had decided to return. Some of her friends had told her they would come when things were settled, when the memories dissipated and the world didn't want to burn Slytherin wizards and witches at the stake. But Pansy had suspected that none of them would be over the trauma, she doubted even their children would really be able to evade it. Terror doesn't just fade, not like hope does. Pansy thought to a degree all her generation had lived with hope, and for that they had died with certainty. Maybe if the world had less hope, maybe if people were as quick to raise their wands to the defense of their fellow students as opposed to a boy no one had ever quite trusted they would all still be alive. Life, hope, thats all Pansy wanted, now she had just one of those things.

That wasn't to say Pansy didn't regret what she had done. There wasn't a day that wasn't possessed by a what if. What if she hadn't yelled to grab Potter? What if she hadn't pointed in his direction? But in order for that what if to exist there would have to have been a series of what ifs preceding it. What if Pansy hadn't demeaned Hermione? What if she hadn't taunted classmates? What if she hadn't joined the Inquisitors? What if she hadn't been in love with Draco? What if she had never been sorted into Slytherin? The last one though was a dream, and the scenario before it...well she wasn't even sure she ever had been in love with Draco. But what if she hadn't thought she was? But then again, thought Pansy, regretting the outcome of an action and regretting the action itself were two different things completely and she wasn't sure which side of the line she came down on. She had of course, allowed herself to wander into the future with her what if game. What if this year she could be resorted? What if this year she made friends, real friends? What if Hermione forgave her?

Out of all the things that she had done, it was her actions and words to Hermione which she had regretted the most. She read once that the name Hermione meant well-born, or a stone, immovable. It was fairly obvious to her what Pansy meant - coward. Hermione was what Pansy thought she could be have been had she been given a different name or born into a different family or just been a different person all together. In other words, Hermione was what Pansy everything she wanted to be and was simultaneously everything she couldn't be. For that she had hated her all throughout their years of school.

She had practiced an apology. She had practiced re-introducing herself. She had practiced just acting casual. But what she hadn't practiced for was Hermione walking straight past her on the train, followed by a group of adoring sixth years, without recognition. She didn't even falter in her saunter to her cabin, it was as if Pansy didn't exist and consequently all her mistakes hadn't existed either. So Pansy slumped to the cabin at the end of the carriage alone. She hadn't expected to make a friend out of Granger, but an acquaintance would have been nice. Someone she knew, someone she could stand next to, someone she hadn't tortured, someone who had one day in fifth year helped her find a book in the library.

But Granger seemed not to need Pansy as much as Pansy needed her.

Once they exited the train Pansy looked around again for Hermione but failed to see her.

"Hey!" A girl shouted behind her. Pansy felt fingers brush the back of her robes and she spun to see two students facing her. Judging by their appearance Pansy thought they looked like seventh years. They had that familiar confidence she had felt at the end of sixth year and expected to again feel once seventh year started, but instead when she walked into the great hall she had just felt afraid.

"Hello?" The same girl speaks again and snaps her fingers in front of her face.

"What do you want?"

Fuck she was supposed to be making friends not being rude.

The girl in front of her smirks. "You're Pansy Parkinson right?"

Pansy glanced cautiously at the girls blue and silver tie. Ravenclaw.

"I'm Phae." The girl says before Pansy can speak again. "And this is Rowena." She motions to the shorter girl next to her. Pansy notices the snake emblem on her chest. "Do you want to ride with us to the castle?"

Pansy sucks in air. Normally she would have laughed and twirled on her feet to go find Draco. Normally she would have hexed the girls later in the year or thrown food at them in the great hall. But this year wasn't normal.

"Sure." She smiles.

The two girls climb into a carriage and Pansy follows behind them. A third year Slytherin attempts to follow them up the steps of the carriage but Phae reaches past Pansy and pushes him off the steps. His back hits the mud with a sick thump and the carriage pulls off.

"Shit is he okay?" Pansy watches the boy on the ground disappear as they ride.

Rowena laughs. "Funny."

Pansy lifts her eyebrows. "That's an odd thing to say."

Phae glances at Pansy with the familiar smirk again. "I didn't really want to be friends with you but Rowena convinced me you're like the symbol of slytherin or something."

"I don't know what that means." Pansy rolls her eyes. Two weird girls obsessed with the battle, no doubt. "But anyways I don't know anything about that night if that's what you want..."

"We were there too." Rowena states in a monotone voice. "We know what happened."

"I thought none of the Slytherins went back to fight."

"Phae did though."

Rowena smiles at this and it's the first time Pansy has seen her teeth fully. It strikes Pansy that Rowena is exceptionally pretty when she smiles, though oddly enough when she doesn't it's like there's something too...off about her for her to be pretty.

Pansy looks at Rowena. "What the fuck is this?" She demands. "If this is some prank because of what I said that night..."

"Prank. Why would we be pranking you?" Asks Phae

"I'm a slytherin too." Rowena speaks.

"Well you two seem awfully intent on talking about that night."

"You're the one who brought it up." Phae interrupts.

Pansy opens her mouth hoping for some snarky reply to grace her lips but the carriage stops abruptly.

"We're here!" Phae shouts leaping up. "See you around Pansy."

"Yeah." Pansy mumbles under her breath.

She watches the two girls disappear into the crowd, following from behind.

There's something to her, Pansy thinks to herself. Not, Phae, that girl just seems blatantly weird. But Rowena, the one who barely spoke. There's something far too off about her. But before she can think about the encounter further she is being ushered into the great hall by professors.

Of course, she had people to sit with in the great hall. That was always one of the worst and the best things about Hogwarts. You never sat alone. Terrible, if you wanted some fucking peace as she had said to Goyle one day, but relieving on those days when Draco seemingly disappeared and Crabbe and Goyle were completely uninterested in sitting anywhere near her. The three only tolerated each other as a group with Draco as their head, but once he was gone they had no bond. On those days Pansy quite liked the great hall. She always had someone at dinner to talk to. She always had her house, her family. Pansy folded her arms and stared at the food on her plate. Now she wasn't sure she wanted any of it, the food or the family. Across the hall she spotted Granger who seemed to be in the exact opposite position as herself. She was desperately trying to steal bites of food during the multiple conversations people were attempting to have with her, bombarding her with questions. A fifth year had even pulled out a small black rectangular sort of box thing which Hermione seemed to operate with ease, smiling into the back of it's leather case. Must be muggle tech. The rest of the dinner went rather quickly. Pansy didn't hear much of Mcgonagall's speech about how honored she was to be the new headmaster and how it was going to be the best year ever or she assumed it had gone something like that. She had no interest in listening to Mcgonagall drone on and on. Anytime she spoke she just heard her words directed straight at her, take her to the dungeons. Take all of them to the dungeons. Pansy screwed with the food on her plate, how could someone like that be the new headmaster?

Pansy found out that the other slytherin students were worried as well. In the dorms that night Pansy heard whispers of whether or not Slytherin as a house would be disbanded. Were they really thinking of that? What about all the past students? Whether the professors and students would decide it was Slytherin's turn to be tortured or even worse killed.

"Calm the hell down." Pansy pressed a pillow into her face at the last one. "You're going way over the top. No one is killing anyone. That's all been done last year or did you miss all the bodies scattered around the great hall?"

The younger students stared at her incredulously.

"You're not worried?" A seventh year with blonde hair cut short spoke.

"Why should I be?" Pansy shrugged and her shoulders moved against the mattress. She was worried though.

"I dunno." The girl next to the short haired one spoke. Her voice was high pitched and squeaky. "Out of all of us you should be the most worried."

Pansy jolted up in her bed. "Is that what you all think?"

The girls just looked at each other.

"Well they let me back into this school didn't they?" Pansy sneered. "I didn't go fight with the Dark Lord like, for example, your brother did Aria." She glared at the short haired girl.

Aria blushed and looked down at her hands. "Least he stood for something."

"Yeah well what's worse? Standing against the right or standing for wrong?"

"And which one of those did you do?" Arias voice is measured. Her eyes trail across Pansy's bed, who remains silent. "I guess we'll see Parkinson. We'll see what happens."

"They do what they do to me." She retorts. And then just to herself, just to the darkness she whispers, "deservedly."