And now the last
Summary: After the end of the war Pansy Parkinson is left lost and alone but she is not the only one feeling this way. Harry Potter/Pansy Parkinson, Rating: T, EWE, Post-war.
A/N: This is a gift for my friend ladiefury for getting me completely obsessed with this couple.
I need to thank Ashenrenee who has been a huge help in looking over this story in its early stages. Eternal gratitude also to Colubrina, the constant word of reason in my crazy, my friend and my writing supporter. There are not enough words to thank you for what you do for me.
Note of caution: I am incapable of writing a story set in the hp universe in which Snape isn't a major character. I'm working on a sevmione fic next to this one and as I rewrote this one I found Sev creeping in where he doesn't belong because that's how my head works. I understand that that's not everyone's cup of tea so here, you are warned.
Disclaimer: I am not J.K. Rowling I make no money off of this fanfiction the characters from the Harry Potter universe do not belong to me.
At day, she circled over us – a swallow;
A smile – she blossomed on our scarlet lips…
At night, she choked both us, the hollow,
With her cold hand – in different cities' deeps.
Днем перед нами ласточкой кружила,
Улыбкой расцветала на губах,
А ночью ледяной рукой душила
Обоих разом. В разных городах.
- Anna Achmatova
Chapter 1
Snow covered the sound of Harry Potter's footfalls as he carefully chose his way through the maze of graves. He could see his breath on the air making small puffs of mist like a confirmation of his every step.
Congratulations you are still alive it still hurts.
He walked faster until he saw the neat lane divide, leaving one final resting place, a small row of gravestones haphazardly placed sticking from the earth as if some child god had fancied a game of dominoes but abandoned his efforts mid set up. The old graveyard swallowed up the earth that still looked moist on some of the newer graves, as if they had been freshly dug.
They had to dig graves at an alarming pace last summer.
Harry walked straight on. His shoes were covered in mud and dirt, his eyes fixed on a lonely black gravestone standing at the end of this new row and sticking out in the middle of the grey ones like a gem.
Severus Snape
09- 01 - 1960 02- 05- 1998
Nothing else. No inscription to frighten him or make his heart beat faster. Nothing to lessen the shame chewing into his insides. Harry took in a shaking breath and stood unable to get closer, unable to move. The air smelled of rain. The sound of crunching snow behind him told Harry he was not alone. He tensed for a minute but the presence did not seem hostile.
Behind the gravestone stood an old statue of an angel covering his face with his hands. Harry glanced at the statue feeling his stomach clench. His eyes travelled restlessly between the dark stone with it's simple inscription and the white angel behind it, bright and crying. He swallowed hard, feeling his body shake with suppressed fury. He could not undo this death, he could not take back the things he had thought of Severus Snape while the man had still been alive.
Images, memories of memories, most not his own filled his mind, and he gave into them.
He wouldn't leave.
Pansy Parkinson stood in the shadows her eyes on the young man in front of her. He was trembling, his dark hair a mess, his fists clenched tight at his sides. He seemed on the verge of something, some inner storm barely kept in check was about to spill from him. She couldn't see his face but she didn't have to, to guess that she didn't want to be here whenever Harry Potter decided to explode.
Pansy frowned.
She had simply wanted to come to this grave and think. Everybody came here. Draco came here. Somewhere inside herself she could detect a faint hope. A fluttering thing inside her chest, buried in the anger. Some hope that Draco would be her that he would stand up from his knees beside the grave, turn to her and smile that stupid, surprised half smile. He would say her name and then…and then. But Pansy couldn't think of an 'and then'. What would they do?
Kiss like they used to?
Here in this place? Heroine Princess finds her Prince and they kiss as we fade to black.
The End. Applause.
Pansy rolled her eyes. She wouldn't get that happy end. Instead of love she had her anger and instead of finding Draco at this grave, perhaps an angry, hurt resentful Draco but still a Draco that could be made her own, she found Harry Potter. The chosen savior looking as if he was about to burst with the effort it took to stand. What in the hell was he doing here?
This place was theirs. A Slytherin place in a world that still divided into houses long after Hogwarts was done it was important to have a place for those who had worn silver and green at the school. Harry Potter didn't belong in their place. He had already claimed the rest of the world.
Pansy shook her head once, hard as if trying to rid herself of an annoying fly. It started to rain. She pulled her hand through her hair hard enough to bring tears to her eyes.
She should just walk up there hang her scarf among the dozen or so Slytherin scarves that hung from that angel's wings and be done with it. Pay her respects and be done. She didn't even know what she was doing here anyway. The dead man in the ground meant nothing to her, the alive one above it was wrong. She took in a breath stood straight and started walking.
Harry's eyes flicked away from the gravestone when a figure suddenly walked past him with swift strides. There was something in the way she walked that made him register 'woman' before the rest of his brain caught up to his eyes. The woman stretched out trying to reach the angel's left wing and swing a scarf on it. When that didn't work she picked up a wand (Harry felt his hand twitch and had to contain the urge to go for his own) from the side pocket of her jacket and stared at the angel, her face scrunched up in concentration.
'Parkinson?'
'What?' she said without turning.
She flicked her wand and the scarf in her hand joined the ones draped around the angel's shoulders melting with them into a blur of silver and green. Harry pulled off his glasses wanting to clean them, then decided against it and placed them back again to stare at Pansy Parkinson once more.
'You're….you survived the battle' he said. It came out more surprised than he'd wanted to sound. Pansy turned towards him, her raised eyebrows made her face look elongated. She was also somehow blond, Harry didn't remember her ever being blond before.
He had not thought about Pansy Parkinson in a long time. Not since that night of the final battle when she had attempted to get the students to give him up to Voldemort. That memory was hazy, he had been so angry and tired and she was a Slytherin. He had barely registered her outburst back then. And after Voldemort fell so much had happened, he could barely keep up with what was happening in the lives of the people he did care about to spare time thinking about people like Pansy.
She glanced at him then turned away again to examine the angel, her head cocked to the side a hand on her hip. Harry again faintly felt a touch of that same feeling, the knowledge of seeing a woman. It was confusing and comforting at the same time and he suddenly wanted to hear her voice again.
'So what's with the scarfs?' he asked.
He needed to know that he wasn't alone standing here at this grave tonight. That there was another person, another human being, who made the trip by that crooked lane, who knew how the rusty cemetery gates had felt when he had pushed them open. Another person who felt the same rain falling on his face.
Pansy turned to the gravestone.
'He was hardly a man for flowers' she said placing a hand to the dark stone 'Theo Nott started the scarfs I think. Now we all do it.'
Her fingers thrummed on the grave and she smiled. ' He gave us a common room. Funny how unfunny that is.'
Harry nodded. He didn't really understand what she meant. The rain fell harder now. He reached for his wand to cast a spell against it then thought about the trouble of getting the wand out, getting the spell out and decided against it. Pansy screwed up her face against the rain and pulled her jacket tighter around her. He tried to find a way to make her stay longer, he should say something, do something. Perhaps he should have brought a scarf of his own.
'Do you come here often?' he asked pulling a hand through his hair.
Pansy raised her eyebrows and said nothing.
'I….I mean-' he blinked and stared at the stone. Smooth.
'No Potter I don't come here often' she said stiffly.
'I didn't mean it like that.'
Pansy shrugged.
'I'm- I am glad you are ok' he said 'I mean that you, you know survived. I really am.'
She smirked and stared at him the expression on her face one of disbelief.
'Well Potter seeing as how I did indeed survive, I guess I'll see you around.' she said turning, suddenly all motion. A wet chunk of blond hair clung to her cheek, she brushed it off impatiently and walked off with those same sure strides.
Harry stared after her for a long time ignoring the sudden chills running up his arms.
Pansy walked into the hall of her apartment kicking off her shoes as she went.
There she had done it. She had gone to the grave and added her worthless scarf to the pile of others. The tradition, if one could call it that, was questionable at best. Severus Snape deserved more...or nothing. She had not made her mind up on that regard yet.
She tossed old copies of The Prophet (Harry Potter the Boy who lived accepted to the Auror traineeship with honours!) and Witch Weekly ('It's just love' Ginny Weasley: How did she ensnare the Chosen one?) to the floor to make room at the living room table and sat in her favorite chair flicking her wand to start a fire in the small fireplace in the corner.
So what if she had seen Potter. He didn't even know she had survived the war. The chosen one was too busy to notice, unsurprisingly.
The apartment was cold, she usually needed to wear an extra sweater on top of two warming charms, the fireplace was more of a communication device. She glanced at it trying to bury the want inside her. She wanted the flames to turn bright green and show her Tracey's face or Draco's or Blaise's. But Blaise was abroad and Draco was probably out with Astoria Greengrass like he was almost every night these days.
She could call Tracey herself but that would mean enduring her pitying looks. Tracey Davis had a handsome suitor and parents who still talked to her. Pansy had an apartment that she could barely afford and parents who treated her as they would treat a squib. She couldn't exactly blame them. The match they had been working so hard on for years had fallen through suddenly and completely as soon as Astoria Greengrass had entered the scene. Astoria with her knowledge of muggle things and her accepting ways. Astoria and her speeches at Hogwarts her kindness. She couldn't compete with that. Not when she wanted to throw punches at every living thing near her.
Pansy turned her head to look at the wall opposite her and sank further into the chair. The wall was filled with pictures of her and Draco laughing, his father's ridiculous peacocks walking around them in a disapproving manner, of her and her girls sitting at the Three Broomsticks, Butterbeer in hand smiling and waving at the camera.
Pansy smiled, she loved those pictures she had put them up herself the Muggle way no magic.
They reminded her of what was god in her life.
The apartment was quiet as no silencing spell was able to make it. The quiet came to her, seeped in from the others around her. Or the knowledge that there were others. Her neighbors upstairs, breathing, sleeping. The old woman who walked her dogs in the middle of the night and who crossed to the other side of the road shooting Pansy a weary glance when they crossed path on the street. The quiet of people living their lives apart from her.
In the photographs a twelve year old Draco Malfoy made a spectacular dive on his broomstick making her clasp her arms around his back.
She had tried hadn't she? With Draco? She knew her parents had high hopes for the match and as much as Harry Potter might have destroyed the Dark Lord, the Old Ways, the Right Ways were still very much alive and with them her mother's lecturing voice and her father's reproach.
No, she had not managed to grab up Draco Malfoy. All she had managed to do was fall into helpless needy love with him. And that was no guarantee for a marriage proposal. Quite the opposite as her mother would say. But she couldn't help what she felt. She didn't want to help it either. She wondered what would happen to her love now that Draco had so blatantly chosen another. Would she continue to feel the flutter in her stomach every time he came near her at the few parties she still saw him at? Or would the love inside her rot like everything else?
Pansy could see the sun setting outside her window casting glorious red highlights, dark like blood. It would be a cold day tomorrow.
She stretched her legs and watched the hole in her tights run all the way up her knee. Pansy wriggled her free toe - the chilly apartment air was already doing a number freezing it off- and thought of dinner. There were probably some left overs in the freezer. She would eat them in bed staring at the tv. She stood and turned her back to the dirty dishes on her dining room table.
No, Pansy Parkinson was no one's heroine princess.