Disclaimer: Not mine and however much I ask Father Christmas, I don't think it ever will be.
AN: This is a response to the 'Sell me your ship' challenge. The pairing I chose was Harry/Parvati, not so much because I particularly care for this pairing, but it's an interesting one. This is of course an AU story.
"Ah, you must be the reporter from the Wizarding Times, here to record how Harry and I ended up married." the old woman asked and the young reporter nodded. "Come in and take a seat and I'll make us some tea. It's been almost one hundred years since I married Harry and anyone who could be hurt by this is long gone. I will be joining them soon enough, if the Healers at St Mungo's are to be believed."
As the old woman made herself busy in the kitchen, the young man sat down on the comfortable red sofa in the living room. Fiddling nervously with his pen, his eyes swept the room in mild nervousness. Family photographs of her children, sister and of course her famous husband all looked out of their frames, all smiling and waving. He fiddled about with his quill and opened up a fresh ink bottle. As she came back into the room with two cups of steaming hot tea and sat down.
"I suppose you want to know how it started." she asked and the young man nodded. "What's your name?"
"Brian Simms ma'am." he said nervously, his blue eyes sparking with worry.
"I don't bite you know. Well I suppose it all started at the Tri-wizard Tournament Yule Ball." The woman pulled out an old photograph of a young Indian girl in fine dress robes of shocking pink and her hair was braided with gold. "Back then, I was Parvati Patil, not Parvati Potter."
"You look very pretty in those robes. No wonder he was attracted to you." Brian commented and the woman laughed.
"He asked me because the girl he was crushing on had turned him down." she chuckled. "Apparently, I left him sitting at a table as I stormed out in a huff." She paused. "My sister did better out of the ball, she was asked to dance by one of the Beaubatons.
"Don't you remember anything about that night?" Brian asked curiously and she laughed, this time slightly bitterly.
"I don't remember anything anything in my life before the morning after the ball." At this, Brian almost upset his ink bottle over his notes and Parvati gave another bitter little laugh. "My first memory is waking up on cold, hard floor of one of the hallways of Hogwarts. My body was bloodied and bruised and hurting all over. My robes were torn and ripped and I felt scared, even thought I didn't know what I was scared of." Parvati paused and swallowed a mouthful of tea.
"It was Harry who found me. Apparently, my twin sister Padma had kicked him out of bed because she was worried about me. When he saw me, his face creased up with concern. He asked me what happened and whether I was ok." Parvati took another sip of her tea. "But he soon discovered that not only could I not tell him, I couldn't even remember my own name. Delicately, he helped me hobble to the hospital wing."
"What happened to you?" Brian asked, his curiousity aroused. Parvati grimaced.
"According to Madame Pomfrey, I'd been repeatedly raped by at least two boys." she said with a bitter expression on her face. "Then they'd placed a memory charm on me to make sure that I couldn't tell anyone what had happened. Except that whoever cast it, had cast it far too strong, or miscast it. I spent the next three months re-learning the names and faces of people I had known for years. And for the rest of that school year, I had to relearn the stuff that had been taught to me over the years. I'm just glad that I still remembered how to read and write. And through all of this, Harry stayed by my side. He felt guilty for what had happened to me." Parvati paused and looked Brian in the eye.
"It wasn't his fault of course. Harry has always had something of a hero-slash-martyr complex and would take the blame for anything and everything. It was kind of sexy, to be honest." Parvati gazed off into the distance for about thirty seconds, before Brian decided to cut in.
"So what happened next?" he asked.
"Well, I think that's why I fell in love with him." Parvati said in a slightly dreamy voice. "He was so damn noble, I fell for him, hard." She let out a sigh. "Which is probably why it was so hard watching him with Cho Chang."
At this, Brian almost choked. "Cho Chang? As in THE Cho Chang of the Harpies?"
"The very same." Parvati replied with a small smile. "It was something of a messed up relationship though. She was still grieving over Cedric and Harry was busy with the DA and Umbitch. To be honest, I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did."
"So after Cho, THEN you started your romantic relationship with Harry?"
"No, but I was there for him to talk to when it all went wrong." She looked Brian in the eyes. "He didn't see me that way. No I was just a friend, a fellow DA member. No, he ended up with Ginny Weasley in our sixth year and those two were seriously in love. And to make things worse, my best friend Lavender started dating Ron Weasley, but although she loved him, he was just using her to make Hermione jealous." Parvati smiled. "We argued about him after Lavender and Ron broke up. Which is funny, because I've seen it happen with my own children when THEY'VE fallen in love. No, I think our relationship began in earnest after Ginny Weasley was killed in the battle of Hogwarts. Ron was too devestated to be much help and Hermione tried to be there for Harry, but she had her hands full with Ron. So Harry ended up crying on my shoulder. I had to comfort him, help him through the hard times and simply talk him into understanding that it wasn't his fault." She paused and took a sip of her tea.
"I suspect that had Ginny not died, he would have married her. But I can't hate her. The two of them fit together so well, I couldn't resent her." Parvati chuckled again. "After the war, there were so many people trying to fix Harry up with someone else, people who had their own political agendas, or were simply concerned friends and family hoping to help him move on. So, in an amusing sense of irony, Harry ended up asking me to accompany him to a dance. It was supposed to be as just friends, nothing romantic. He said that he wanted to distract the people who kept trying to play matchmaker. It was meant to be just a convenient arrangement. But after our fifth such dance, he kissed me for the first time."
"What happened then? Did the two of you properly become an item then?"
"No." Parvati chuckled. "Harry might have been the saviour of the wizarding world, but he was hopeless as a romantic. It took him three weeks to finally face me and actually talk."
"That must have been an awkward conversation."
"It was. But it was worth it. Two years later, he proposed to me and the rest, is history as they say. It wasn't always smooth sailing, we had our rough times as well as good ones." Parvati's eyes misted over with reminiscence. "But I never regretted marrying him."
Postscript from the Wizarding Times article: Parvati Potter, one of the last surviving members of Dumledore's Army, passed away in her sleep two days after this interview was given. She is survived by her two daughters Lily and Ginny and her one son James.