If she hadn't been with him when the patronus arrived, Harry might have gotten away with her not knowing where he was going. But over the weeks that they'd been sleeping together, she'd learned to come to at least partial wakefulness whenever she felt Harry stir in the hopes that she could wake him enough to ward off a bad dream....or in the event that it was a really bad one and she needed to watch out for flailing limbs.
So Pansy had been only half asleep when the sound of Cass's voice jolted her completely awake. She'd raised her head to see the shape of a small terrier, all silvery like a patronus, only it spoke with Cass's voice. She hadn't known a patronus could do that, but apparently they could and Harry knew how because a series of silvery stags erupted from his wand even as he was leaping from the bed and grabbing clothes.
It had been all Pansy could do to keep from trying to stop him, to keep quiet and let him go, go to face....she had no idea what he might be going to face but what she was imagining was ripping her up inside. She couldn't even tell him she loved him because she worried that that thought might be enough to distract him at just the moment she needed him focused so he could protect himself. She couldn't do anything to help, couldn't get anything for him, couldn't help in any way. All she could do was follow him to the garden door and look at him and hope it wasn't the last time she saw him
And tell him she would keep Polly safe and they'd be there when he got back.
She raised the wards as soon as he was gone, stumbling up to Polly's room with tears in her eyes. She sat in the rocker watching over her daughter and trying not to cry until Polly woke.
She went through the motions, taking care of Polly but with her mind and her heart somewhere else. Hilly and Wicksy tried to help, but Pansy finally set them to watching for Harry.
Or an owl.
When Hilly let in Madame Pomphrey's owl, Pansy's heart leapt into her throat, pounding painfully, and had to let Hilly take the letter, her hands were shaking so badly. There were tears rolling down her face before she knew what it said, before she even took the parchment, she was so worried. When she saw Harry’s handwriting, she had to stop because she was crying too hard to go on, knowing only that he was safe at Hogwarts and well enough to write.
She finally composed herself enough to read the owl, a terse message that said merely, ‘Safe. Patched up. Home soon. No sooner had she finished reading it than she heard him downstairs, and she flew down, stopping short of throwing herself at him for fear that she might hurt him.
Telling Wicksy to stay with Polly, she took Harry to the bedroom and made him show her all his injuries, helping him take a quick shower and into clean clothes before settling him in the bed. She was watching him eat some stew and fresh, crusty bread when Hilly told her there was another owl.
She didn’t recognize the owl that flew into the room, but it obediently let her take the letter, flying to the window without waiting for a reply. She read the message aloud and looked up at Harry, knowing that Percy wouldn’t have written her at all if it hadn’t been serious. That Percy had owled was unusual enough that it even worried Harry, and he was all for getting up and going to the Shack himself, but Pansy wouldn’t let him, reasoning that it wouldn’t be at all odd for her to go as her relationship with Cass was well-known.
Pansy promised to send word as soon as she knew something, telling Hilly to wait for her call because it would be fastest. She hurried all the way to the Shack, arriving a little overheated and far too worried to care. She saw Antonin’s red-headed Scot moving among the wounded waiting for care, and later Antonin himself, but she didn’t stop for more than a nod. Everyone was busy, too busy to direct her, and she took it upon herself to wander the halls until she found him, finally overhearing a medi-witch use his name.
She stepped into the room and gasped, ‘Cass? Oh, gods, Cass???’