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Pansy hums one of Theo’s muggle songs under her breath as she climbs the worn stone steps of the bell tower. In just a few short hours, all her weeks of hard work will finally pay off. All the late-night rehearsals, all the pricked fingers as she’d sewn tiny costumes. All of it, in service of the best Quidditch mascot performance the world has ever seen.The best performance they ever will see.Pansy allows herself a satisfied smile as she swings the heavy door open with a flick of her wand. In just a few hours—The bats are gone.Pansy does what she always does when her life falls apart around her. She brings her left wrist up to her face, neatly slides the filigree snake bracelet aside, and presses her wand to the tattooed snake’s head, rousing it from slumber.“Theodore,” she murmurs softly, and the snake swirls around her wrist.Theo and Blaise had figured out the tattoos after the war. A little ink and solidarity so that Draco’s skin wasn’t the only one graced with black ink that never washed out.Her tattoo swirls up her forearm, the warm scales brushing against Pansy’s skin as it elongates into the mirror of Theo’s tattoo, a fearsome snake that spreads across his ribs and nestles its head over his collarbone.Ostentatious, honestly. But he does so love to show it off.A rustling sound. A bleary, “Pans?”“Bite him, darling,” she murmurs, tilting her head down towards her shoulder.A hiss of pain. “Salazar’s soggy sack,” Theo grumbles through the tattoo. “What was that for?”“Theodore,” Pansy says sweetly, holding her hand out and admiring the perfect blood-red manicure she’d gotten last week. “Do you remember how you said this job would be easy and that nothing would go wrong?”Silence. Theo clearing his throat. “I remember something like that, yes,” he says slowly, hedging his words.“My bats are missing,” Pansy says, balling her hand into a fist. The pointed tips of her nails dig into the heel of her palm, and if she focuses on the tiny red pin-pricks of blood beginning to form she might be able to get through this conversation without screeching.“Your bats,” Theo repeats slowly. Blankly.Pansy sucks in a breath. “Yes, Theodore, the bats. There’s not even a feather left behind.”Not just Barny, but Barny Two through Twenty-Three. All twenty-four bats, missing. No soft nibbling against her fingers from Barny Six; no inquisitive head tilt from Barny Nineteen; no silky-soft Barny Twenty-One to rub against her cheek.It’s enough to make her want to cry. A single tear, of course, lest she disturb her flawless makeup.Another long pause. She can feel the snake undulate against her skin, shifting position around her ribs.“Pansy,” Theo says placatingly. “Bats don’t have feathers.”“Theodore Fáelán Nott, I will murder you and get away with it.” Pansy enunciates her threat clearly as she spins around the empty tower. “Drag yourself from whatever hovel you’ve fallen into and—”“I don’t think the Savoy really counts as a hovel, darling—”He’s amused. It is about to be the worst day of Pansy’s life and she can feel his smile pressing against her skin.“Theo,” Pansy snaps, digging her nails into her tender flesh.“My favourite three little words and I’m all yours, Pans.”She takes a deep breath and relaxes her fingers. “I hate you.”Theo chuckles softly. “No, not those.”She flicks her fingers and the miniscule wounds heal over. “You’re the worst.”“Not those either.” She hears his exhale, as though he’s sitting up and stretching his arms over his head, the sheet of whoever’s bed he’s sharing slipping down around his waist. The very picture of Witch Weekly’s most notorious eligible bachelor.She thinks about telling her little snake to bite him again.“No? Snake got your tongue, Pans?”She can hear the smirk in his voice. Picture it spreading slowly across his face.Pansy closes her eyes and tips her head back to the rafters. She’d sit down in sheer despair if the floor wasn’t covered in, well, guano.“Please help me,” she deadpans.“Was that so hard?” Theo teases. “Just let me get dressed.”“Bite him,” she tells her snake, but the magic between them is already starting to unravel. Her snake is shrinking, slipping over her skin to its rightful place along her wrist.Pansy sighs and twists the silver bracelet back around to cover the tattoo. She doesn’t need the scrutiny today. Not when everything's going so horribly wrong. Her heels click against the stone floor as she makes her way to the telegram office. Theo will find her, she’s not worried about that, but if she has no bats then she has no performance and her day will be ruined.And Draco’s, she supposes, though it’s not really about him, even if he is the one playing on the field today.She glares her way past an elderly gentleman, scoots past a young mother with a small and revoltingly sticky-looking child, and ends up at the front of the queue.“Do you have a Vibrato working here?” Pansy asks, narrowing her eyes at the clerk.“She doesn’t come in until about ten,” he drawls.Pansy slides a Galleon across the desk. “Call her in now.”The clerk raises an eyebrow at her offering.Pansy begrudgingly adds another Galleon.“Alright,” he says, swiping them both into his palm. “Wait over there.” He nods to the atrociously pink chairs lining the wall.Pansy stands and counts the minutes. She sends Vibes to everyone she can think of. Blaise, who groans but agrees when she promises him an early glimpse of her latest collection. Millicent almost terminates the connection before Pansy promises her a date with Draco (which need never go beyond a single coffee). Daphne agrees to bring Astoria, if only for something interesting to do, and as Pansy reaches the end of her short list of owed favours, she wishes, for a fleeting second, that she hadn’t been quite such a bitch back at Hogwarts.She clears her throat as the Vibrato establishes the last connection.“Granger. It’s Pansy Parkinson. Do you remember how in sixth year I came to your rescue and gave you a spare pad? And you started crying and almost hugged me?”A long pause. Granger’s voice distorted by the glass. “It was a very emotional year, Parkinson.”“Regardless, do you remember how you said you owed me and I said not to worry about it? Well, I lied. It’s time to worry about it.”A pause that goes for so long Pansy’s afraid Granger’s disconnected. “What do you need?”“I’m at the Quidditch World Cup. Bring your friends. If you have any.” Pansy takes a deep breath. “Please.”“Now?” Granger sounds incredulous.“No, Granger, I’m calling out of the blue because I want your help next week. Yes, now.” Pansy scoffs.Granger disconnects and the Vibrato lifts her hands to her head and slowly shakes out her hair.“I need a break,” she murmurs, her eyes glassy. “And you need to learn—”“Thank you for your expertise,” Pansy interrupts, setting a neat stack of ten Galleons on the table between them. “And for your silence.”The Vibrato glares at Pansy before surreptitiously slipping the coins into her purse. She waits until quarter-past nine, despite Theo’s increasingly obnoxious badgering, and then claps her hands to draw everyone’s attention.Everyone is somehow both less and more than Pansy hoped for. Millicent brought Gregory, which was both fascinating and frustrating, since she wasn’t sure she’d be able to find a single use for him. Daphne and Astoria had dragged Tracey along too, though she didn’t look the least excited to be there. And surprisingly, Granger had not only shown up, but dragged two Weasleys with her. Ginny, who was eying Pansy suspiciously, her arms crossed over her chest, and the earless twin. George, Pansy remembers as she sweeps her gaze over the motley lot. Blaise is lounging near the tent door, and Theo is draped beside him, looking like a forlorn cat.“As some of you know,” Pansy says, tapping her wand against her palm in a nervous habit that makes people fantastically unsettled, “I have been graced with the position of mascot coordinator for the Ballycastle Bats.”She pauses and manages not to frown at the sheer lack of interest displayed in the faces turned towards her.“It is my responsibility,” she continues, “to ensure that not only Draco’s team,” and she hears a soft ah from the Gryffindor cluster, as though something has suddenly made sense to them, “but Britain herself is well-represented by the mascot performance.”She pauses and takes a breath. Glances towards Theo, who is grinning like an Azkaban escapee, and steels herself.“Anyway, I lost the bats.” Pansy clears her throat. “So in lieu, I’m requesting—”A pause. A ripple of motion, heads tilting towards neighbours and lips twisting in whisper.“What do you mean,” Ginny says, “you lost the bats?”“I mean, Weasley,” Pansy mutters, “that when I went up to the bell tower this morning they were gone.”Another pause. Pansy tucks her hair behind one ear and decidedly does not look at Theo. “As I was saying, I will require the ten of you to replace them.”“You want us to be bats?” George exclaims. “Are you mad?”A clamour breaks out—all of them arguing at once, over the top of each other—the noise grating against Pansy’s ears.She slices her wand through the air and the resounding sharp noise, similar to her nails scraping down a crystal glass, silences the dissent.“Unless you want us to be laughed at by the Quiberon Quafflepunchers, who, obviously, are French—”“I’ll go look for the bats,” Theo offers, leaping up from the chaise longue. “Someone must’ve seen something.”“How, exactly,” Granger says, raising an eyebrow in the same polished manner that Draco does, “do you expect us to be bats, Parkinson?”Pansy tilts her chin upwards. “A little magic here, a little transfiguration there, and the rest, Granger, is all up to me.” What had seemed like a plausible idea, at the very least, unravels the instant Pansy puts it into practice. Gregory and George are absolutely graceless; the Greengrasses constantly bump into poor Millicent, Ginny is too busy snickering and sneering in equal measure, and Blaise treats the entire thing as a joke.Which Pansy will remember for the next time he needs a favour from her.The only ones putting in the effort are Granger and Tracey. Granted, Granger does have that dogged look she used to wear during class, and Tracey’s efforts are mostly in vain, but they’re trying.She doesn’t need perfect. She just needs presentable. Some swooping black robes, a bit of smoke and flair, and the nine of them darting around on brooms.Assuming she can even find nine brooms so last minute.Determinedly, Pansy transfigures robes into bat-winged cloaks, magics hair into tight braids or slicked back along skulls. There's no other choice, and Witch Weekly will be there, and Draco will be watching, and this is honestly all Theo’s fault and she’ll never forgive him for as long as he lives.Ginny, perhaps sensing Pansy’s desperation, takes over the choreography. She uses a clever charm to conjure miniature brooms, “the same kind we use for practice,” she explains over George’s shoulder to a curious Astoria, and Pansy starts to believe that she might actually pull this off.And then Gregory sweeps his arm out too wide and bashes Daphne in the face with his fist, and blood starts to drip down onto Pansy’s plush rugs, and she thinks she might scream. Or cry. Or perhaps both, at the same time, like some sort of overachiever.There are two hours until she’s due on the pitch, and Pansy considers moving to some fantasised far-off metropolis where no one knows her name.Like Paris, but without the Parisians. Granger mends Astoria’s nose. George cleans the blood from the rugs with a grin and an actually-quite-painful slap to Pansy’s shoulder that she pretends didn’t sting. Ginny sticks her head through Pansy’s fireplace and gets soot over her nose and cheeks and somehow enough brooms for them all.The tears are stinging the backs of Pansy’s eyes as Daphne helps her conjure dramatic black makeup across the faces of her begrudging human bats.It won’t be pretty. It won’t be the fantastical dance she had trained so hard for with all of her wonderful Barny bats (Two through Twenty-Three). But it will be something. And that, she supposes, will be better than the nothing she would’ve had otherwise. An hour before they’re due on-field, as Pansy eyes the costumes with a last-minute and critical eye, the flap swishes open and Theo saunters into the tent.“Pansy, darling,” he says, grabbing her by the shoulders, despite her protests, and angling her towards the sunshine. “I found your bats.”“What?” Pansy blinks at him. Blinks at the sunlight.Blinks at Luna smiling sheepishly as she steps into their tent with a wave.“Hullo, everyone. Oh, Hermione, you look lovely." She beams at them all.“Luna,” Pansy says, feeling dazed. Theo’s sturdy hands on her shoulders are probably the only thing keeping her upright. “The bats?”“Oh! They’re so lovely. I decided to take them on a walk for you.” Luna glides forward and touches her fingers to Pansy’s cheek. “You’ve been working so hard that I thought you deserved a little break.”Pansy takes a deep breath and doesn’t look at anyone else. “You didn’t say anything, Luna.”“What?” Luna scrunches up her face. “I left you a note.” She peers past Pansy and swishes her wand. “See? It’s right here.”Theo snatches the note out of the air and begins reading it aloud.“Beloved Pansy,” he starts, and she elbows him in the ribs hard enough to make him grunt and topple away.“I didn’t know,” Granger says slowly, “that you two kept in touch.”“Oh yes,” Luna says, linking her arm through Pansy’s. “I’ve actually been thinking of proposing soon, but—”“The bats,” Pansy chokes out. “We’re due on the field in an hour, Luna.”“Oh!” Luna blushes and tips her head against Pansy’s shoulder. “They’re all in the bell tower waiting for you. Barny Three is terribly excited.”Pansy swallows and glances towards the domed top of the tent. “You are all, except you, Luna, of course, going to forget this ever happened.”“I want a season pass,” Ginny says. “Last year they stomped us—”“Fine.” The words stick in Pansy’s throat. “Thank you, everyone, for coming. I—," and she groans softly, "—appreciate it.” Her bats perform perfectly, of course. A mesmerising performance talked about for years afterwards.Though, not-quite-so-secretly, Pansy prefers the raucous, ridiculous rendition from their friends, old and new alike.After all, it's Luna's favourite anniversary tradition.