A/N: Merry Christmas!
Objects in Mirrors
In
Time stops.
When Pansy holds the small hourglass tightly in her hand and falls backwards from the balcony, she thinks that that's it.
She expected a swirl of colours, a few faces at most and thought that if it was anything like apparition that there'd be nausea for certain, but when she finally feels solid ground under her feet again and opens her eyes all she sees is a desert in black and white. Grey wisps of smoke circle dead, charcoal trees that look like bare fingers raking the stormy sky and Pansy feels dread pool in her stomach when her gaze falls to her feet, pale and bare against the dry soil that faintly emits an unsettling heat.
Who would have thought that time was a wasteland?
Afterwards (0)
The aftermath of the war is numbing devastation.
It's running through the destroyed hallways of Hogwarts with her ears deaf and her eyes wide open, silent tears running down her cheeks and mixing with the blood and snake intestines. It's screaming with a sore throat and not even feeling, let alone hearing it. It's holding on to Draco with sharp nails that pierce flesh while he collapses on top of her, shaking and crying while clawing at the mark branded into his arms and begging her to get it out, please Pansy, please, please, get it out… It's knowing that her father is somewhere under that pile of bodies in a corner of the Great Hall and trying not to examine that thought too closely.
It's watching the Golden Trio unite once more, two living bodies supporting the dead one and the crying faces, sobbing and wailing, buried in the bloodstained shirt of the dead Saviour of the Wizarding world.
Voldemort is dead, people whisper. He destroyed him.
But nobody celebrates. Nobody carters off the remaining Death Eaters into custody. They leave the Malfoys, they leave Draco alone who is still clinging to her as if he's afraid that she might leave him should he let go. Everybody has lost someone and those who are still combative, still filled with adrenaline and the promise of glory hear Granger's screams and falter in their steps.
The weeks that follow are filled with grief and the feeling of walking through honey. Pansy learns that guilt tastes like salt and it leaves her thirsty when she tries to apologize to Granger, because the dead don't talk and seldom listen. It burns her when she visits Draco in his white, furniture-less room in the manor where he sits on the floor and scratches red lines into the faded tattoo on his arm because he can't handle colour and he can't handle memories and she just wants a room like that, white numbness and a lock to put outside the door when she stands in front of her father's grave at Parkinson Manor and tries not to count how many body parts they were able to recover and how many probably belong to other people.
It's creeping madness and Pansy doesn't sleep.
Instead she sits in a non-descript garden in Muggle London, drinking tea with Hermione Granger. The rose patterned china has a chink in the rim of one pot and her eyes seem to be glued to it. It's better than looking at Granger, though. Her brown curls are messier than usual, the look in her eye is glazed and distant.
She reminds Pansy of Lovegood at her weirdest.
Both their skin looks translucent in the pale spring light and it feels like they're fading. Ghosts between still green rhododendron bushes and the first mint leaves of the year and it seems so ironic that they're not burning away at the first faint sunlight.
She smooths invisible wrinkles out of her flower patterned circle skirt, tugs the hem over her knees, Poppy's reprimanding voice about propriety still ringing in her ears. Wonders, why the tea still tastes like soot and ash, why she can still smell the blood on her lips.
"Peace," Granger says after a while out of nowhere and Pansy has played the non-sequitur game too many times in the past weeks to not understand the intention. "It was all Harry wanted and no one ever gave it to him. Not his aunt and uncle, not Dumbledore, not even we could do that for him." She swallows, nips at her tea and there are still cuts and bruises splattered all over her hands, fading and healing, but still there.
"Draco," Pansy blurts out and Granger's eyes snap up, her hand flying to the mark on her arm that's wrapped in gauze because the wound refuses to close. She's seen it once - the words flaming red against the skin – and Draco's screams in the night ring louder in her head.
"What about him?"
"He wants to apologize." Pansy presses her lips against the chink in the tea pot. Draco has said no such thing – not lucid anyway, but she cannot take another night of hearing him beg his crazy aunt for mercy and if forgiveness is what it takes to bring him even a shred of peace she's more than willing to beg Granger on her knees for it.
"Apologize…" Granger's voice is distant.
"He's not…," Pansy gulps. "He's not… he's not well."
The other girl blinks, but Pansy rushes to speak again before she can say anything. "Being at the manor is not good for him. He- that monster lived there during the War and the memories are… bad." She cringes at the word. "Horrifying," she tries to amend, but it sounds even worse that way.
Granger blinks, her eyes becoming a tad less distant. "Nightmares?" she asks and Pansy lets out the breath she hasn't realised she's been holding and her hands tremble a bit in relief when she nods.
When she sees them a few days later in the gardens of Malfoy Manor – the china without chinks and the tea serviced by tired looking house-elves – the feeling of something clicking into place when Granger touches Draco's left arm is overwhelming. He looks up – bleary eyed and unsure – and stares at her in quiet wonder as if catching a glimpse of sunlight after a long dark night and when he sobs, forehead pressed against her knees, Granger's face is alarmed, her fingers carding through his hair while he begs her for forgiveness.
It gives her a bit of hope. This shred of beauty in the midst of destruction, but the guilt – that salty taste on her tongue that stitches up her throat and eats away at her insides - won't abate, this endless circle of 'Someone grab him' ringing in her mind and it has her shaking in the night now that Draco has stopped screaming.
Forgiveness had eased his guilt, but there's no one alive to give her that kind of absolution.
The dead can't talk, right?
She starts roaming the halls of Parkinson Manor, starts cleaning up old rooms that have been cluttered for centuries and while some of what she finds there should be the cause of nightmares – still ticking clocks made of skulls and the bones of virgins, dried doxy wings and fangs, poison rings, a trunk of dresses with ominous runes stitched into the seams – it's all strangely satisfying, cathartic even.
It could have stayed that way if just…
If she just hadn't found that trunk one Thursday morning in a passageway between the dining room and the blue parlour. It's empty except for another, smaller trunk, this one made of metal and after breaking the locket, she finds another box with flowers carved into the wood and the picture of a lyre pressed into the metal plate on the top.
Twenty boxes later, she holds a small box made of ivory with a golden lock in her hands, her heart pounding, dust in hair and lungs.
And when she opens it to find a small hourglass on a delicate golden chain, she feels the world trickle like sand through her fingers once again.
Before (-1)
When Pansy arrives in Godric's Hollow on that horrible Halloween Eve in 1981 she's exactly two minutes too late.
There's a cloud of dust and smoke wafting around the house and it's only when the wind clears the way a bit that she can see the destroyed roof and hears the distant wailing of a child.
Her head's between her knees and she tries not to retch.
She knows that she cannot save his parents. That they need the time – those thirteen years of limbo to prepare, to give him enough time to grow up, happier this time, but without making too many waves to invalidate her information. So when the half-giant appears, she's ready. She hits him over the head with a few bricks and mortar from the rumble lying around the house and hopes for the best when he slumps to the ground, a bunch of conjured ropes keeping him contained before she sets off for the small cottage.
She starts when she sees the body in the entrance hall, the messy hair and skewed glasses show such a striking resemblance to that other dead body she saw months ago that she almost falters.
Almost.
The fanned out red hair of the woman on the floor of the nursery looks like spilled blood and she steps around the dead body of Lily Potter with nausea raging in her stomach, her eyes fixed on the crying baby that's sitting upright in his bed – bright, tear filled green eyes staring at her and she… she just can't think of him as Potter.
It's just a baby, she thinks.
Just a baby.
Afterwards (+1)
Waking up, there are two lifetimes crammed inside her head and Pansy feels like throwing up. She gasps for air, gulps it down because waking feels like breaking through the water's surface and she's been drowning, head pounding and her body jerks, defence mechanism, hands in front of her face. When she feels a cool hand touch her shoulder, she whirls around so fast that the sheet she's been covered with falls to the floor before she follows, wand pressed against the intruder's throat. Her sharp knees dig into the muscle of his arms and pin him to the floor when they land there with a dull thud and a groan.
They breathe heavily for a second before a wry grin splits the boy's face in two and Pansy's heart stops for a quick breath when she recognizes him.
"Easy there, Parkinson," Potter drawls, raising his hands in a show of mock surrender. "If you're so eager, you could've just said so. No need to jump me."
For a moment she thinks that she's hallucinating, quite possibly going mad. They're in a room that perhaps once was a single person's bedroom, but now houses several beds, some of which are occupied and she can hear them breathing, soft gasps and heartbeats and she knows and yet doesn't know this place at the same time.
At her evident silence, Potter's smirk widens and he moves to sit. Pansy's eyes narrow dangerously. "Over my dead body, Potter," she spits, jamming her wand even harder against his pulse point and enjoys watching him gulp.
"And yet you're sitting on top of me." His eyes fall to her thighs, left bare since apparently she's only wearing an oversized T-Shirt and boy-shorts and the cool air of the room begins to draw a chill down her skin.
"You startled me."
"I'm beginning to realise that."
"Do you have a bloody death wish?" The furious hissing keeps her voice from descending into hysterics, because she's half naked and her head threatens to split in two and she's got the boy she'd wanted to live here – alive. Alive and currently trapped under her knees.
Said boy just rolls his eyes. "Is that news to you?"
And Pansy remembers. Remembers afternoon teas and playdates in the Malfoy's gardens, remembers running after two boys – one fair, one dark – because they were stupid and they were going to get themselves killed with professional racing brooms and life-size chess pieces, oversized snakes and that bloody hippogriff – Fuck, Pansy even remembers the fucking dragons and her own bitten down nails because she'd never been able to shake the habit and he was going to get himself grilled alive and served as canapés, fuck Granger, what are we supposed to do?
She remembers seventeen years of being passive-aggressively friends with Potter and it all gets drowned in red when she remembers the cold body in the middle of the great hall.
She flinches.
"No," she whispers, pushing herself off of him and fleeing into the bathroom down the hallway.
Before (-2)
Pansy's caught off guard by how young Sirius Black looks. She's seen the Wanted-posters plastered all over wizarding London in their third year and expected the same shaggy and crazed looking wizard to appear this evening – so seeing the openness and vulnerability on that still unmarred face is…
Fuck.
How old are these people?
"Stupe-"
"Incarcerous!" she cries out and wordlessly blocks the interrupted stunning spell before adding bonds that will keep him in his human form for now. Sirius Black slumps to the floor, bound by silvery ropes and with the baby still in her arms she crouches down to look him in the eye.
"James and Lily are dead, Black," she says softly and she sees the pain in his eyes.
"Death eater –"
"No." Her eyes turn steely. "I'm not." He opens his mouth in protest. "Black, listen to me. Voldemort killed your friends this evening in a quest to kill their son." She lifts the baby in her arms. "He did not succeed."
Black's eyes widen, his breathing heavy.
"Voldemort is not dead," Pansy says. "Just gone."
"Peter –"
"- Pettigrew betrayed you. Yes." She nods. "But he's not important, Black. That mangy rat will be dealt with, but not right now."
"I have to kill –"
She pushes the tip of her wand against his throat and watches him gulp. "Think, Black. You come from a family full of Slytherins. For once in your life forget all that foolhardy Gryffindor stupidity and employ some bloody self-preservation instincts unless you indeed fancy the idea of spending the next twelve years in an Azkaban cell, because then by all means be my fucking guest!
He gulps.
"You made no plans for contingencies, did you?" She asks. "Everybody thinks you're the secret keeper, there's no one to attest to your innocence and no family behind you to save you."
"Dumbledore –"
"Will not save you."
The baby's soft wails cut through the tense silence following these words and she shushes it again until it quiets down.
"Dumbledore is a puppet player, Black. Don't tell me you never noticed his fascination with the greater good before. He will not save you because it would mean losing control over Potter."
"Why would he –"
"After this day he will be the boy who lived," she explained with a soft smile. "And you're his godfather are you not?"
"But if I'm not there then who will take care of him?" The rage in Black's eyes has dimmed to a more calculating flare that Pansy has seen many a time glint in Narcissa Malfoy's eyes.
"Muggles," she says. "Dumbledore will want to bring the boy to Lily's sister to use the blood wards as protection."
"But Petunia –"
"-hates magic?" Pansy's smile is sardonic. "They'll lock him in a cupboard," she whispers. "They'll starve him and exploit him and do pretty much everything short of hitting him to drive the magic out of him and Dumbledore will watch," she concludes as the horror spreads across his face. "He will watch and do nothing."
"Who the bloody hell are you?"
"Pansy Parkinson." She releases the ropes that incapacitate him with a wave of her wand and stretches out one hand to help him up.
"Let's make some contingency plans."
Afterwards (+2)
Her feet know the way better than she does.
When she enters the kitchen of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place she's assaulted by a range of familiar smells and for a moment her knees go weak.
"Wotcher, Parkinson." A voice belonging to an all too familiar redhead greets her when she finally regains back control over her body. Weasley she thinks, eying the boy who's half bent over what looks like a series of overlapping maps, a quill between his ink-stained fingers. "Finally got out of bed?"
"Bite me, Weasel," she snaps out of reflex and half expects him to draw his wand, but the boy just chuckles and mutters something about that being "Harry's thing" and goes back to his maps. Chang and the Weasley girl are conversing quietly in one corner of the kitchen, the redhead's hand slipping underneath the brunette's shirt.
"Here." Hermione raises a steaming cup of what seems to be at least halfway decent coffee over her wild head without even turning around from where she's sitting at the kitchen table, still sleepy and bundled up in an oversized cardigan. "Did Harry wake you?"
"Potter needs to work on being stealthy if he wants to make it through this war," Pansy snaps, settling down on the other side of the table and the familiar warmth of this breakfast is… unsettling. She remembers similar mornings, here at Grimmauld during and even before the war, remembers Hogwarts and how they'd always meet at one of the house tables, bleary eyed and not quite functioning and the thought of home makes something burn quietly within her, left to her lungs and three fingers below her heart.
"Harry's never really been one for subtlety," Hermione replies with a soft smile and she exchanges a look with Weasel that Pansy can't quite decipher.
"Are we already up and running with the Potter bashing?" a familiar drawl sounds from the kitchen entrance and Pansy's heart skips a few beats when she sees Draco standing there, bright hair longer than she's used to, his face and eyes lighter despite the weariness that comes with war. The part of her that remembers white rooms and pleas for forgiveness feels like crying for a second and it takes all she has not to jump up and throw her arms around his neck, because he's here and he's alive and sane –
"Because if so why did nobody tell me?" The blond boy smirks and bends down to press a kiss to Hermione's wild hair and – thank god this survived, too. "You know how much I love tormenting him."
"Oh you love me," yet another voice interrupts them, Potter this time, and really, all these people are giving her whiplash. The boy is shirtless and wearing pyjama pants that ride low on his hips and Pansy averts her eyes to stop herself from blushing. Fuck.
"Keep on dreaming, bastard."
Potter presses a hand to his chest in mock offence. "I'm an orphan," he proclaims dramatically and Hermione's giggles fill the room. "How could you?"
Draco snorts. "You got about two dads in addition to your dead one and do you really want to tell Mum that you have no parents?"
"Mum's fucking scary," Potter mutters sheepishly, running a hand through his messy hair and revealing the scar.
"And she'd have your mouth washed out with soap if she heard you talking like that," Hermione informs him primly, but the boy just snorts and grabs Pansy's cup of coffee with a naturalness that leaves her gaping when he settles on the chair next to her, the one she's been resting her feet on and just puts them in his lap, one hand wrapped around her bare ankles.
"Excuse me?" She rips the cup out of his hands and just glares at him when he looks offended. Somewhere in the background people are sniggering. "Don't you have any manners?"
"Are you surprised by that, Pansy?", Draco asks. "You know how much of a bloody menace he can be."
"Well, excuse me for thinking that you had him properly domesticated before letting him into the house," she retorts, unnerved by the hand still resting on her bare foot, one thumb slowly drawing patterns in the curve beneath her ankle.
"I thought that was your job?" Draco phrases it like a question, pointedly looking at the way she and Potter are tangled up in each other and she can't fault him for it – this thing, this routine, whatever it is they're doing, it unsettles Pansy, too and she can't quite place it. She can name it longing, can call it familiarity, but it doesn't fully cover the way she feels him underneath her fingertips, in the dying sensation in her throat before finally breathing in and all she can think about is that it wasn't supposed to be like this.
This wasn't supposed to happen. But here she is, remembering a lifetime entwined with Potter and Draco, remembers Hermione's addition to the mix at age eleven and the accompanying jealousy, remembers crying on Potter's shoulder when Draco asked the other girl to the Yule Ball and how they danced outside in the snow with her mascara smeared half across her face and part of his dress robes and she remembers a childhood and the first messengers of a brewing war from the other side of the conflict and she –
If Pansy had felt guilty before, she's fucking sick now and it takes all she has not to bend over and retch, because Fuck –
They're at war. They're still at war and this time guilt won't bloody cut it, hiding behind walls won't fucking cut it and she –
Pansy needs to win this.
"I suppose it is."
Before (-3)
"Why the fuck did you bring us here?"
That this is the first thing Black asks upon entering Parkinson Manor is distinctly worrisome, but Pansy ignores it for now in favour of lighting up candles on their way up the stairs.
"Because this is the safest place I could think of", she bites out tersely, still holding the baby in her arms. She can hardly think of it as Harry Potter – it's a baby for Merlin's sake. Just a fucking baby.
"This is a death-eater- "
"Will you just shut up?" Again she's faster than him and her wand presses against the outer carotid artery on his neck, but the baby is startled by the movement and lets out a tiny wail. They spring apart and Pansy tries to shush the infant boy, all the while glaring daggers at Black.
"Don't make assumptions about me or my family", she hisses under the cooing sounds she makes to rock the baby back to sleep. "This place is safe because my parents are out, but since I'm already born in this timeline the wards recognize me as family and let me in. Not even Dumbledore can access a pureblood ancestral home without a family member's permission and should the manor be turned into a fortress then we have two days or more until the wards break and that is if they even think of looking for us here."
"And that's highly unlikely", Black finishes for her, a small light in his eyes. "Considering my all too public, strained relationship with all things pureblood."
Pansy nods. "This gives us time if nothing else." She turns in the room – the blue parlour of all things – and realizes how different the house smells in this time, more lived in, more like family. Perhaps because her mother was still alive. "Poppy," she whispers and with a soft pop a house-elf appears.
"Mistress is back?", the sleepy elf asks, large blue eyes blinking in confusion.
"No, Poppy, it's me – Pansy."
"What is Miss Pansy doing- " The elf blinks rapidly back and forth between her and the ceiling where the nursery is located and looks more and more panicked by the second until Pansy pulls out the time-turner from underneath her robes and smiles a bit sheepishly. The elf's eyes narrow, but the panic is gone. "Miss Pansy is doing dangerous things", she says a bit miffed, lips pursed disapprovingly. "Playing with time like that without telling Poppy."
"It's because of the baby", Pansy says a bit desperately and shows her the infant Harry Potter. They need Poppy for this to work, need her magic because otherwise - otherwise they're screwed. "I had to save the baby, Poppy."
The elf's eyes had gone wide at the sight of the dark haired boy with the cut on his forehead. "Baby is being hurt", she announces, conjuring gauze and dittany and proceeding to clean and wrap up the still bleeding cut that would later become the most famous scar in the wizarding world.
"We should place him in my room so he can sleep in peace," she whispers when Poppy is finished and the elf nods decisively and takes the baby before snapping her fingers and disappearing into thin air.
"Where did she go?", Black demands angrily. He'd been quiet the whole time they'd tended to Harry, preferring to watch them out of sharp grey eyes as if ready to pounce at any given moment.
"In the nursery." Pansy reaches for a stack of papers as well as the crystal carafe filled with whiskey and puts both on the writing desk next to the chairs. "It has additional wards that prevent anyone who wishes harm on its inhabitants from entering the room." She casts a glance at a still fidgeting Black. "Calm down. I have a vested interest in keeping both you and Harry alive."
"Well, so far all your time travelling extravaganza has done is stand by while two of my best friends were killed, so forgive me for being not that thrilled about you sending my godson off Merlin knows where!" the dark-haired man bites out and she notices how his hands are shaking.
"Drink up." The demand is followed by a sceptic glance on Black's side and with an eye roll she gulps down the amber coloured liquid she'd poured into the crystal cut glass.
"If you want me to douse you in Veritaserum, I can do that," she quips, sitting daintily down in the arm chair closest to the fire and the writing desk with the careful ease practiced in years of dancing and riding lessons. "I'm pretty sure my father keeps a few bottles of that stuff in the library."
"Encouraging," he mutters, but reaches for the bottle with still shaking hands.
"Do you know what Lupin does tonight?" She places several sheets of parchment in front of her and starts outlining the plan she has in mind.
"He's negotiating with the wolf pack in Nottinghamshire as far as I know," Black mutters. "He'll think that I killed them, too."
"As will the rest of the Wizarding World," Pansy retorts. "I wouldn't fret over just one stupid Gryffindor. Werewolf or not."
"What are you saying?"
She closes her eyes for a second, breathes in, breathes out. "That you need a fucking lawyer, Black."
"Are you being funny again?" She looks up to see him sloshing around the liquid in his glass, a frown on his face. "Because in case you haven't noticed, we're kind of on the run right now."
"We're literally just sitting here." She grins, feeling tiredness and adrenaline fight for dominance in her bones and it makes the muscles in her legs quiver. She places the quill back into the ink well.
"So I'm just supposed to turn up in Diagon Alley and politely ask for an appointment sometime next week perhaps?"
"Sounds like a Gryffindor plan," she grins, leaning back slightly. "But no. No need to go through all that trouble. Parkinson house will provide one for you of course."
Black frowns for a second before he lets out an almost hysterical chuckle. "I highly doubt your father is one of my biggest fans, Parkinson, there's no way he'd grant me a favour. Besides, he's not even present."
"Don't call it a favour," Pansy smiles, tilting her head to the side. "What about a trade?"
"What kind of trade?"
"The boy-"
"No."
"- he'll be famous, Black."
"No."
"You're not even listening to me." She feels frustration creeping up her fingers, but hides it behind a pleasant, poisoned smile. Stupid, headstrong Gryffindors have never understood the virtue of patience.
"I don't need to," he says heatedly, his fingers reaching for his wand. "Harry will not be a bargaining chip in this madness!"
"But he already is," Pansy says quietly. "Do you really think that you of all people can prevent that from happening?"
"Then why save him? Why save me?"
"Because you can't change the chess pieces, Black. You can only change the players."
"Or add some," the dark-haired man adds quietly, understanding forming in his eyes and Pansy breathes a sigh of relief when she catches sight of it.
"People will always try to use the boy for their own gain," she says softly, the crackling fire and the sharp breathing of that almost criminal the only other sounds in the room. "He's too young and too alone to stand a fighting chance so he needs someone who acts in his best interest." She pauses. "He needs a parent, Black."
He's quiet for many breaths and Pansy almost despairs, because so much depends on this moment, so much depends on this man's decision and she can feel fear breathing down her neck like a mad dog waiting to bite.
Afterwards (+3)
Grimmauld Place Number Twelve is a fucking beehive in high summer the following weeks and it's setting Pansy on edge.
There are people constantly on the move, messengers that come and go and take up beds for the night, people who have a hundred different missions to accomplish and the only two people who have any kind of oversight seem to be Hermione and Weasley while Pansy just redirects all the intelligence she can gather out of Pureblood circles their way. They're guarding the king and moving the pawns across the playing field and if Potter's stormy expression is any kind of indication, he doesn't like having other people fight his battles for him at all.
Stupid, stupid boy.
It happens after Blaise and Theo return from a mission involving a bunch of harpies and a stolen mirror of all things and they're tired and barely conscious and Pansy's hands and silk blouse get soaked in Theo's blood when she yells at him to come back, just come back. She barely even realizes that she's crying, sobbing almost hysterically for fear of losing one of her best friends in this and the other timeline when the boy starts breathing again and Draco pulls her back, making shushing sounds that settle somewhere in the back of her brain and she only calms down when she sees Blaise press kisses of relief to his boyfriend's temple and it's a shuddering, it's a defeated relief.
How many times can they play death for a fool, she wonders, thinking about grey deserts and the heat beneath her feet, before death demands retribution?
Her hands are still tinged red even after repeated washing and her clothes are fucking ruined, but her mind is numb and controlled when she walks into the kitchen where she finds Potter, pacing and agitated.
"Is he alive?" he demands to know with gleaming eyes and a hard streak around his mouth. She knows that he's been on edge ever since Black's been gone for a mission two weeks ago and still hasn't returned, but still, Pansy's spine goes rigid.
"He's alive," she finally says, words like acid on her tongue.
Potter relaxes fractionally, but the line around his mouth is still hard and unrelenting and she wishes she could smooth out the frown, pull up the corners of his mouth until he smiled like he did that evening of the Yule Ball, just before the war began.
She doesn't.
"It should've been me," he mutters, tugging angrily at his hair and probably pulling a few strands out of this utter catastrophe of a haircut. "I should've been out there and I should be injured and-"
She grows cold. "Wow," she says and pushes past him with a shoulder check that has her almost wince in pain. "There's just no limit to your ego now, is there? Did the house elves not pay enough attention to you or what has your panties in a twist now?" She grabs a cup of cold coffee and adds enough milk to it that it may just be drinkable. "The trick is to order them, you know. Otherwise they don't know what to do."
He stares at her incredulously. "Are you seriously telling me that I'm being childish? Theo almost died today because of me and you think I'm being selfish?"
"Theo almost died because five fully grown harpies used him for target practice today and unless you've grown feathers and a beak in the last twenty-four hours, I can't possibly fathom how you're responsible for his injuries!"
"He shouldn't have been out there in the first place!" Potter yells, the air crackling around him. "This is my fight and I'm sick of people dying for no reason but for me!"
"No reason?" Pansy echoes, her voice shaking with anger. "What – do you think this a nice little vendetta just between the snake-faced bastard and you? That if you can just do a little duelling, it'll all be over?" He shakes his head, attempting to interrupt her and it infuriates her even more. "Wake the fuck up, Potter. This is war and it involves every last one of us – we don't fight just for the heck of it. So if you can stop patronizing us, fucking improve your occlumency or learn new spells or help with research, because you're the fucking king of this chess board and while you can't move fast, you're the most important piece. Without you there is no way we will this war, so step back and do your fucking job!"
She's breathing heavily when she's finally done and one look at her still red tinged hands has her on the verge of crying again.
Potter is silent.
"You're different," he finally says and it's so unexpected that she almost laughs out loud.
"Striking observation skills there, Potter."
He doesn't take her attempt at deflection very well, instead he steps closer towards her, her back pressing against the counter and yes, that boy is the walking definition of oblivious most of the time, but he's also really fucking nosy and Pansy has been through too many giant snakes, hippogriff, dragon and creepy teachers adventures to not know that once something's caught his attention he's like a dog with a bone.
Really fucking annoying.
"You're wary," he says, eyes searching her face and she meets his gaze, doesn't look away even when everything inside her tells her to. "Like you know something the rest of us don't and you're afraid."
She remembers the destroyed house, the dead bodies, remembers a crying baby and the almost madness of a man she saved from prison and she remembers everything that came before that. Hermione's agonized screams, Draco's terror in the white room and the dead body on the floor of the Great Hall.
She flinches.
"I knew." Something shutters in Potter's eyes, that last feather of hope and he grins almost sardonically when he moves to step back.
She reaches for him, a hand against his cheek and he stills, leans into the touch.
"Don't," he whispers hoarsely. "Don't look at me like that, Pansy."
"Like what?"
"Like I'm a ghost." He opens his eyes, that brilliant, brilliant green that is like the red thread of her childhood and she sees the demons and they're screaming. "Like I'm already dead."
She shatters.
"You're not," she chokes, flinging her arms around him, holding him tightly, beating heart against beating heart and the warmth of his body is the only real thing in all this wasteland. "You're not dead, you're not dead, you're not dead."
If she repeats it often enough, it might just become the truth.
Before (-4)
"So what would a deal with the Parkinsons offer us? I suppose you're not making it out of the selfless depths of your heart, Princess, right?"
Pansy smiles that poison laced smile again and leans back. "Power," she says and he scoffs loudly.
"A Slytherin's most prized possession."
She shrugs. "You'll need it once the vultures descend."
"Then what's in it for you?"
Pansy sits up, spine ramrod straight. "When I said that my parents are not home tonight, I wasn't entirely truthful."
"What a surprise."
"They're not just gone for tonight." Pansy's voice has made place for steel and she tastes it between her tongue and teeth, that salty iron tang and she wonders once again why strength always feels like blood. "They won't be back for another two or three years."
"They've run?" Disbelief and disgust war on the man's face and she almost scoffs at how obvious he's acting. "And left you behind?"
"They thought I was safer here," she says stiffly. "They ran as soon as my father's mark started fading, ran as soon as the mourning cries in the death eater circles became loud, ran as soon as madness and panic began coursing through the ranks." Pansy swallows. "They won't be back until Lucius Malfoy achieved a pardon for all those he deemed worthy."
"Then why change history?" He's playing the part of the devil's advocate now, but still, some part of Pansy wants to hit him. Hard.
"Because my mother is sick and by the time they return she will be dead due to a lack of medication." It feels like spitting out ice-cubes and the coldness burns.
"So no selflessness on your part then."
"I never claimed to be."
"No." The fire in his eyes gives way to resignation and something too close to pity to be entirely comfortable. "So what does this deal entail?"
Pansy nods, swallows down the loneliness and the longing and stores it neatly away somewhere at the pit of her stomach. "No one knows my parents are gone. The house itself is sworn to secrecy so now one will know. We will engage a lawyer from this house with Poppy's help, give them all the proofs and memories they'll need to convince the court of your innocence and for all the world and the Ministry, it'll look like the Parkinson family is and always was on the Light Side."
"Won't that put you in danger from the other side?"
Pansy's smirk grows wider. "Why would it? For all they know we're infiltrating the light side, undermining Dumbledore and putting an emotionally unstable, probably easily controlled man in charge of the most famous boy in wizarding history and the Lord's greatest enemy. They will approve with gritted teeth."
"And that's not what you're doing?"
She smiles. "Do you trust me, Black?"
"Not over my dead body."
"Good!" Pansy nods approvingly. "You'll need to be on your toes every second of every minute until that undead bastard is finally eviscerated, because we are playing a long game here."
"So… you want to save your parents from prison and ostracism by framing them as double agents and effectively helping me, correct?"
"Perfectly."
"And then – what? We just go along merrily with our lives until that bastard rises again?"
Pansy's eyes light up. "More or less. We'll be friends of course."
"Friends," he repeats, incredulously. "Are you fucking mental?"
"This is exactly the kind of affection I'm talking about," Pansy nods and clicks her glass together with his, a silent toast that the dark-haired man refuses to react to. "Come on, Black. Your child needs other children to play with."
"I hear there are a great number of Weasley children that can fit that role," he replies tersely.
"There's just no accounting for taste," Pansy huffs. "Honestly."
Black grins. "So you want us to have, what – Play dates? Picnics? Debutant balls?"
"It's a start."
"You want our families to be friends to secure your families social standing, right?"
She nods. "And yours, too."
"Anyone else I need to be friends with?"
Pansy's smile turns dangerous and Black pales dramatically at the sight of it, the almost too sharp teeth and the innocent blue eyes are unsettling in a face that looks way too young for the words she speaks.
"No."
"Well, they do have a son who is the boy's age," she grins and Black flops back in his chair with a groan.
"I can't believe I'm doing this," he mutters, eyeing the drink in his hand distastefully.
"Technically I'm the one calling Narcissa Malfoy," Pansy grins sardonically. "You just have to say hello to your new friends, Black."
Afterwards (+4)
It's the eve before the final battle and Pansy can't sleep.
She'd known it the moment Black had returned from his mission overseas, his face a brewing storm and Pansy had realized that now the last puzzle piece had fallen into place and they were ready to face the bastard in battle.
Horcruxes. Of all the awful things between heaven and hell, it had to be just that kind of atrocity and she still feels like vomiting every time she thinks about it.
Every time she thinks about what it means.
She knows that her father will arrive with the death eaters tomorrow and turn sides as soon as the fighting begins. Her mother – she breathes – her mother is buried in the family crypt in Parkinson Manor and maybe she only got two years more than originally out of the deal, a few more hazy memories and the scent of roses, but it's – it's something, right?
Something to fight for.
His bed is the one on the farthest end of the wall and it's the same bed she woke up in so many weeks ago. She slips past sleeping couples and exhausted messengers and when she reaches him, he jerks awake, fight reflex, and his fingers wrap around her wrist almost painfully, wand ready at her throat. Pansy lifts the blanket with her free hand and hushes him with a warning finger against her lips before she crawls into the bed and burrows her nose in his shoulder.
They both don't say anything, but she feels tense muscles relax with every breath she takes and then he breathes in, shuddering and slightly broken and she feels like breaking herself, feels like a sack of splintering bones and shattered organs barely held together by blood and skin and what does she know about fighting when even holding on leaves her behind with cracked nails and bloody fingers?
"Promise me," she whispers in the dark and into the soft huffs made by breathing humans and it feels eerie and at the same like the most real thing she has ever done. "Promise that if you should ever find yourself in a wasteland, broken trees and brewing ground, that you'll take my hand."
His hand moves up her spine, cool fingertips tracing the bare skin under her shirt until they reach that point just below her shoulder blades and she thinks about knives and how they could never hurt as much as this.
"Promise me that you will not go into the light," she whispers. "Promise me that you'll come with me. That you'll come home."
Home.
The word echoes in her head and Pansy remembers. She remembers running through the gardens with Potter on her heels, remembers trying out spells long before they got to Hogwarts, remembers the sorting ceremony and how alone she felt when both Potter and Draco where sorted into Gryffindor and how the former had sneaked into the dungeons under the guise of his invisibility cloak that first night to share his candy with her, remembers the warmth of their growing circle of friends, students from all houses and all backgrounds, remembers her own jealousy when he first started dating Chang and then the Weasley girl and how they both laughed when the two girls started dating each other later and the way he looked at her when she dated Warrington in sixth year –
Pansy remembers it all.
And Potter – Harry – the boy who is her almost and her always – he swallows, nods. "I promise," he says softly. "I promise, I'll come back."
And Pansy closes her eyes with the hourglass around her neck digging uncomfortably into her side, and for tonight, just for tonight she'll believe him.
Tomorrow they'll fight.
Before (-5)
When he finds her it's been a week since her arrival and she's watching her younger self sleep peacefully in her cot next to the Potter boy.
"It's done," Black says, approaching her from behind. "Narcissa just send a message that the Wizengamot is convinced of my innocence and acknowledged my guardianship. She's also contacted your parents to explain the situation and have them come back to England before morning light. We've done it, Parkinson."
Pansy feels the relief trembling through her and she takes deep gulping breaths. "Come taste the morning air," she whispers, the two baby faces blurring behind a sheath of tears.
She blinks them away.
"From here on now I can't help you anymore." Pansy turns around to face a solemn looking Sirius Black. "You're on your own now, Black."
"What, will you stop pestering me now, Parkinson?" He grins boyishly and she can't help but return it.
"You stank, you mongrel. I was just ordering you to shower."
The man just shrugs and he looks so much younger than he did the past couple of days. "I'm just naturally that charming."
"Sure you are." They laugh quietly, careful not to wake the small people up and Pansy feels almost wistful. "You'll take care of them?" she asks, voice choked.
"I'll do the best I can."
She rounds on him. "If your best is not enough," she threatens, "then I'll come back to kill you even if it means walking through hell itself, understood?"
Black looks taken aback for a split second before a grin forms on his face. "Don't make failure look like an incentive, Princess."
She laughs, despite it all. "You're fucking awful, Black."
"Quit with the compliments, darling."
"I know you're going to miss me," she teases, taking one last glance at the two sleeping children before she moves towards the adjacent balcony, Black in tow. "But rest assured, the feeling is mutual."
"Thinly veiled disdain paired with annoyance? I knew you loved me."
She's standing with her back to the balustrade, the cold stone digging into the base of her spine and she's just as terrified as she's relieved and it's a heady combination.
She feels dizzy.
"Goodbye, you overgrown crossbreed," she whispers, chin raised to face the night sky and she can already feel herself falling, can almost taste the smoke when he suddenly stops her.
"Wait," Black says and Pansy blinks, confused for a second when she sees him raise the camera the idiot has been dragging around with him for days now. "Stay like that for a second."
It clicks.
"I just needed a reminder," he says quietly. "For later. For a time when all this will seem like a feverish haze."
Pansy nods. "Do you think he'll hate me?" she asks and he doesn't even need to ask for an elaboration with the implication so clear as she looks through the windows and into the nursery.
"I don't doubt you'll kick his ass if ever does something so egregiously stupid." Black's grin is sharp in the faint light from the lanterns and Pansy is reassured that if nothing else, she saved at least one man from tragedy.
"See you in another life, Black," she whispers into the night and then – with her hands clutching the hourglass pendant - she falls backwards over the balustrade, the world doubling over and turning sideways, but even through the rush of blood to her head she still hears him answer.
"Say hello when you do, Princess."
Afterwards (+5)
He lied.
That's all that's running through Pansy's head. He lied. He lied. He fucking lied.
Yet again there's a dead body in Hogwarts, next to the other dozens of corpses that litter the grounds, but this one is being carried in the half-giant's arms as part of the death eaters' triumphal march and Pansy feels sick and she feels murderous –
She hears other people crying around her and the devastation and exhaustion is palpable in the morning air and no sound comes out of Pansy's mouth, because he's dead and he promised and he just fucking lied.
They're all standing in the courtyard, her father somewhere behind her, and Draco is trying to physically hold Hermione as well as Pansy down to keep them from doing something abnormally stupid like charging at the devil himself, but his face is pale and drawn, the fury in his eyes barely masked. This is all so oddly familiar that she feels the dread creep up her limbs, wind up her spine and it breathes down her neck, hot and heavy and she -
She should have known that he'd take the deal, that he'd give himself up in exchange for other people's lives, that he'd go into that bloody forest.
He'd done it before.
But this time – this time she didn't ask him to go, this time she asked him to stay and still, he left.
It hadn't been enough.
Perhaps time doesn't work that way, she thinks numbly while the snake-faced reptilian man does his villain tell-all speech that feels like knives taken to eardrums. Perhaps you can't fix the outcome, perhaps all you can do is change the way you get there.
Perhaps his death had never really been her fault, either.
There's movement in the crowd when the Longbottom boy slays the giant snake, a breath of oxygen for the drowning ones and Pansy grabs her wand tighter, slots her teeth together in a grimace and with a silent, inhuman scream on her lips, she throws herself back into the ensuing battle, the hourglass pendant still present in the hollow of her chest and she doesn't think and she doesn't pause and -
She won't fall this time.
Pansy's so caught up in the rush of adrenaline to her head, in the fight she, Hermione and the Weasley girl provide against Bellatrix Lestrange and the exhaustion that is barely contained in the back of her knees, that she doesn't hear the shouts, the excited yells until she looks up after Lestrange hits the ground only to see Potter –
She reaches for the pendant, for a second almost convinced that she's walked through the desert yet again.
They're duelling and Pansy can't watch this, she can't just watch this, no she won't and – she doesn't move a muscle, their words flying through her mind without any pause and she remembers scraped knees and sugary hands, pulled braids and biting -
He wins the moment she barely thought it possible anymore and the thud with which snake-face's body hits the ground reverberates through her own bones and it's done, it's done, they've made it –
"Come taste the morning air," she whispers and when she looks up there is the night sky stretching across the roof of the Great Hall. "Sweet so sweet."
She sees Hermione and Draco fall into each other's arms, sees Theo and Blaise find each other, sees the Weasley's gathered around a body, sees Black supported by Lupin limping down the hall and then there's Potter, dirty and blood covered, looking overwhelmed and he just stands there, two wands in his hand before he turns, the first faint morning light catching him from behind and he looks up and –
He smiles.
It's a grin. He's honest to Merlin grinning and Pansy marches down the hall, past heaps of rubble and pipes, mourning and celebrating students and Order Members and a fucking giant as well and his grin widens, grows cocky when he sees her walking towards him and when she's finally standing in front of him, covered in soot and ash, blood and snake intestines of all things, she stops for a second to just take him in, alive and well and –
"Well, I did promise to come back, didn't I?"
A beat passes and then Pansy absolutely fucking loses it.
"You absolute fucking bastard, Harry James Potter!", she yells, wand still ready and pointing at him and she's murderous – "You were dead – you made me think you were dead!" She's charging at him, bare fists instead of magic and she hits his chest, takes a swipe at his nose and she almost kicks him in the crotch before he catches her. " – how could you do that? How do you dare do that, you can't just-"
Instead of answering, his hands just close around the necklace she's wearing, the one with the hourglass and Pansy freezes.
"I found the photo," he says quietly, eyes searching for hers and she knows that colour, knows that green. "Sirius only wrote the date and 'Shooting Star' on the back, but I knew." His hand moves up her neck, fingers disappearing beneath her hairline and Pansy almost sobs with relief, because he's here and he's alive –
"I knew you'd come for me."
Out
Pansy doesn't know how long she's been stumbling across the deserted land. Time doesn't seem to be a concept if you're walking in time itself and the sand in the hourglass refuses to move no matter how many times she shakes it. She tries to keep a firm hand on the despair she feels waging war inside her and she manages, just barely. There are dirty tear tracks on her cheeks and she wipes them away with a shaky hand and marches on.
There's a shadowy figure on what she thinks is the horizon and she barely allows herself to hope. This place has been messing with her mind for a while now and she's seen people - Draco, her parents, Hermione, Theo, Blaise – reaching out for her, shaky figures drawn from smoke and they're not real, their words, their pleading is not real no matter how close madness' fingers are.
The figure doesn't disappear when Pansy gets closer and there's something violent in her throat that pulses and bursts when her fingers brush his. She can't see him, only smoke and ash, but she feels the scars, the words from fifth year and she squeezes.
Don't look back, Pansy thinks when she turns around to walk back through the desert, her feet tired and muscles trembling, but she marches on. She feels him behind her, a presence in her back and she just prays that he'll follow her. Prays and prays and prays.
Time starts flowing again.
A/N: I've been fiddling with this since summer and I'm glad it's finally done. Let me know if you liked it, Happy Holidays to everyone!