Disclaimer: The world and characters of Harry Potter are not mine.
Written for HedwigBlack for the Christmas Fic Exchange with prompts "accusation", "time", and "regret".
Merry Christmas, dear! I know we often get paired together in exchanges. Hopefully you like this! It's kind of different, so let me know what you think, and if you want something different I'd be happy to do it.
"That's enough," the Grey Lady says sharply.
"It's not," the Baron says. "We've never talked about this, and we have forever, so why wait?"
Helena crosses her transparent arms and taps her foot on the stone floor. There is no sound, of course, but the gesture's meaning is plain.
"Why?" he persists.
"Because I don't want to talk about it!" she says, losing her cold demeanor for a moment in favor of anger. "I'm done. You killed me, and I'm done."
He freezes in place. "You - I - it's been a long time since then, and a lot of things have happened."
"So what?" she says, her voice still fairly calm and cold and cutting. "I'm still a ghost, Baron. Nothing has changed."
"Voldemort's dead," he says. "That must count for something. And from what I hear, you helped!"
The Grey Lady just gets colder at this. "Some people should keep information to themselves."
He leans closer to her, resting his hand near the wall but not too close. He doesn't want to slip through it, away from her. Not now.
"Please, Helena," he says. She stiffens unbearably at his use of her real name. "It's been so long. All I'm asking is we sit down and talk about this."
She glares at him, but relents.
So they do.
-:-
"Time changes things," Helena says.
"I know that. Merlin, I know that! I just want..." The Baron tugs at his chains.
"Yes?"
The Baron sighs. "I want you to be happy, Helena. I was selfish before-"
"Yes, you were."
"And I don't want to be selfish anymore."
"That's a first, from a Slytherin," the Grey Lady says. He glares at her but she is unfazed and her own gaze as piercing as ever.
"I'm not always a Slytherin," he says. "And you're not always a Ravenclaw, not always thinking first, are you?"
She slaps him, but her hand sweeps through his head.
With a scornful look, she leaves the room.
-:-
He knows he has messed it up again, but what is he to do? He is only a ghost and she is so very stubborn and has so much raw pride.
He scrubs at his face with his pale hand.
"Something the matter, Baron?"
He looks up when he hears the concerned voice. It's the Hufflepuff Ghost.
"No," the Baron says. "I'm fine."
The Fat Friar gives him a look.
The Baron sighs. "It's Helena. I just want her to be happy and stop brooding. Is that so much to ask?"
"Perhaps," the Friar says. "Perhaps, for her."
The Baron floats away without a good-bye.
-:-
"Everything is so complicated, with you," he tells her bluntly when he's found her, hidden high up in a tower.
She sits on the windowsill, as best she can without sinking down, and she doesn't run away again when she sees him. She turns back to the view.
"I know," Helena says, but even though he waits, she doesn't say anything else.
"I'm sorry about what I said before," he says. "I didn't mean to accuse you of anything."
"How could you, when you were nothing but right?" she says, a touch of bitterness entering her voice. She stares out at the grey, dull sky and taps her fingers on the stone beside her. There is no sound.
"It still wasn't polite," he says. "And I shouldn't have done it, it's too personal an attack, and I'm sorry."
She acknowledges this with a nod.
He stands behind her and stares at the sky, too, but he sees nothing but emptiness and the slow passing of clouds, like time.
-:-
"I want to put everything behind me," she tells him one night when he's ventured up to the Ravenclaw Tower. "But I'm dead, you know? I'm dead. I've been dead for centuries and centuries and I'm not likely to stop anytime soon. Ghosts are made by tragedy, and for tragedy, and all their lives and deaths they are doomed."
She sits down on the stone stairs suddenly, and he's struck by how vulnerable and weary she looks. He doesn't think of it often, because they are immortal, but she did die young. They both did.
And their deaths were his fault, too, try as he does not to think about it.
"You can't be," he says. "It wouldn't be just. What was your crime, Helena, beyond theft? That isn't irredeemable."
"But I have sinned," she says.
"But you have repented," he says stubbornly. "And you have suffered a thousand times over for sins a thousand times worse."
She tilts her transparent head in thought.
"Perhaps," she says. "But nothing will change, because it cannot. We are stagnant, unchanging. Isn't that a rule of ghosthood?"
"It doesn't have to be," he says. The Baron slowly lowers himself to the stair beside Helena, concentrating to avoid sinking straight through.
"Doesn't it?" she says.
He kisses her.
It's not easy, not when he has to maintain rigid control so he doesn't fall through her, but she doesn't seem to notice or care. He puts his hands up and holds them near her head, because he can't twist them in her hair, and more than ever he aches that they are dead.
She pulls away - well, not exactly pulls, but she leans away from him.
"Thank you," she says softly.
"Why thank me when everything is my fault?" he says, echoing what she told him before.
She shrugs. "Not everything. Oh, I've been stupid-!"
And she wraps herself around him, their pale edges bleeding together, and he looks down at her outline.
Maybe they're dead, and maybe they're doomed, but he's determined to make the best of it.