I Am Fading

나는 퇴색하고 있다

Disclaimer: Character not mine story is.


Duvet played in the back of the room coming from the low hung speakers in the back of the bar accompanied by the whispering hush of college students and university teachers that precariously sat in their soft old fashioned cushioned chairs. It was supposed to be old fashioned, being from back in those days but Harry always thought of the pieces as homey and familiar. Then again, he was alive back in the times that people often used these sorts of pieces in their homes, sofas and lazy boy chairs that did not connect to the Nets at all.

But to people here that must seem so strange. Look at them they are uncomfortable!

He sipped at the murky concoction in his hands warm soup soothing his freezing innards. In his lap the orange tabby that looked so much line Crookshanks purred for his attention.

"Aren't you just spoiled Crooks?" He said lovingly. He placed the soup cup on the counter of the bar in which he sat ignoring the patron's annoyance as he lifted the cat its face close enough to his that if Crooks decided to lick his nose he could. "Well then I shall grant you the full attention that you so desire when the rain has ceased."

Purrr....!

"Don't look so indignant either. I am taking you home am I not?"

Purrr....

"That is what I thought." He said hugging Crooks to himself. He scratched the cat behind the ears earning a loud purr, he laughed. He reached for his soup cup and drank down the rest before he stood. He half bowed to the small Asian man behind the counter. "Oh how do I say...? Um... 本当にありがとう。" (Thank you very much.)

"次の時間は猫を持って来ない。" (Next time do not bring the cat.)

He walked out into the rain ignoring the stares he received from the girls inside. He'd realized quite a bit ago that he was exotic in these times. He wasn't covered in tattoos like the majority of the young people nor were his eyes decorated in tiny micro plates giving them a glowing appeal like the adults of this time. He was normal and being normal in this day and age made him odd.

Young men and women wore their hair in long plates decorated with glittering wire that blinked fluorescent lights that came attached to their heads and to his horror he found that beneath their scalps there was a tiny power grid directly linking them to the Nets. Clothes varied from tight leather in different shades to red velvet and their shoes were always heeled and buckled. Gothic and punk attire ruled supreme in the times of technology he was always fascinated by this because in the times that he came from looking different in that respect was odd.

Some wore large connections in their ears where they would hook up to the Nets in the InterWeb Café's while others merely used their wired plated hair. The most shocking he'd ever seen was a connection going directly in the back of the neck. It had been explained that this connection had been inspired by an old series of books Ghost in the something...he couldn't remember the name.

This day and age is insane. They do not merely communicate like normal people. No one sits and talks anymore. They connect themselves in the Nets and leave their bodies.

He tucked Crooks into his jumper allowing the cat's head to stick out just beneath his chin as he walked towards the busy streets. This part of Neo Tokyo was always busy, he mused that no matter what day and age it was Shibuya would always be heralded as the busiest intersection.

Not counting the Mercury Colony, those people where always going somewhere...and Jupiter? Forget about it. You can't even breathe in Jupiter while on those streets.

He hugged himself and Crooks a little tighter as they eased into the busy streets of Shibuya where men wore the suits of old that only slightly shimmered and women wore regal dresses. He couldn't understand how the older fashions mixed well with the new but he surmised that it was the age old rule that fashion always comes back. So what if women wore regal powdered wigs amongst the punk rock leather wearing youth?

He cut through a giggling group of Martian girls speaking Russian and taking pictures with their Mobile Phones which were merely tiny ear pieces and holographic images just to make it through the gap of business men to his destination.

Hachiko statue.

He leaned against the old iron statue and stared at the walking mass of strangers, everything looked entirely too congested! He wondered how he was able to walk amongst them without being trampled but figured that Shibuya was one of the IT places even in this day and age of dying mother earth. People still came here just to see the shops go to the shrines.

It was hours before he moved from that spot, still raining and frightfully cold that Crooks burrowed in Harry's jumper for warmth. There were change disks all around him shinning in the bright fluorescent lights all around him. He'd been sitting there since morning just people watching like usual but he'd actually fallen asleep this time. He never fell asleep outside.

"It's time to get home, Crooks." He said to Crooks who had popped his head out to stare at his crazy new owner licking his chin. Harry laughed as he walked towards the congested crowd. The intermingled perfume from various women and men made him dizzy and a few people stepped on his feet but it was something that he was used to so he continued in the direction he'd earlier come from.

So many people all collected into one place.

He made it out of the crowd only to bump into a woman falling backward so that she would land on him. Her dark head rested on Crooks who mewed pathetically and squirmed.

"Miss?" He asked but she said nothing.

Maybe she doesn't speak English?

"申し分なくあるか。" (Are you alright?)

"Oh um... 私はうまくある。 私をつかまえるためにありがとう。" (I am fine. Thank you for catching me.)

She lifted her head, dark blue eyes bearing into green as she lifted herself half way. She paused for a long moment looking at him in a shock he could not understand. Her lips were glossed and her hair was threaded with green and silver. Her thick brown coat was lined with fur and soaking wet. Her suitcase that had fallen precariously beside Harry's head had opened revealing mostly underwear and socks.

She looks familiar.

"Harry Potter?"

"Who are you?" He asked pushing her slightly off. He stood not giving her a hand to stand and watched her dark head slightly bow. "How do you know my name?"

"You don't remember me?" She said her pert little nose scrunching up. "Parkinson, if you must know. My name is Pansy Parkinson."

"Parkinson? Malfoy's girlfriend?" He asked. Now he remembered her only slightly. "How are you here?"

"How could I not be when all this is entirely your fault? Do you not remember the day you arrived in this place?"

He could not really recall anything. He remembered that there was an omnipotent weight on his chest trying to push him away from the sheer blast of red light that emitted from the broken time turner, someone shouting "Run!" and then he was there. In that abandoned ally in Germany lying in the filth of ash and snow.

"You." He said as she crouched down to collect her things. "It was you. You were trying to push me out of the way. You tried to save me."

"Yes." Pansy said as the suitcase clicked shut. She stood, staring at him with her familiar cold eyes. "But it did no good and now I am here."

"Where are you staying?"

"No where. I was with my former employer Mejiro in a love hotel just down that way," She pointed towards the right. "But it seems that I over stayed any welcome I had with him."

"He left you?"

"No he wanted me to become his fourth wife and I simply refused. I wouldn't, how do the youth say in this day and age...? Put out? Yes, I would not 'put out' and he figured that if I became another wife that I would." She looked down at her feet embarrassed. "As if I would ever give him something that I reserved for only Draco to have."

The rain continued to fall in fat drops only a bit quicker now chilling them to the bone. Harry felt an immense bit of guilt. She was there because she had tried to save him. "Why did you try to save me?"

"Oh, you mean, why would the person who tried to sell you out save your life?" She laughed hollowly. "Because he wanted to save you but he would not have gotten to you in time."

"Who?"

"Draco. Draco wanted to save you but if you remember he was quite far down the hall, he yelled for you to run from the light and I had tried to push you out of it. I thought that I would die but I didn't."

"Where did you end up?"

"America or rather the dead continent. Seattle...I was alone but thankfully with my wand and apparated easily to Hogwarts where shockingly a very elderly William Weasley was head master if you could believe it."

"Bill?"

"Yes," She shook in her soaking coat. "He recognized me I assume."

He grasped her by the elbow and pulled her to follow him. "Lets go to my place. It isn't so far."


"Are you cold?"

"No." Pansy said as she closed the comforter tighter around her body, if someone had told her that she would be in Harry Potter's flat wearing Harry Potter's much too large t-shirt while her sopping wet clothes dried she would have called you crazy. But here she sat on a plush sofa while the savior of her time discarded his glasses and roamed about in only sweat pants.

"So," He said sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of her, looking up at her as though he were a very small child with his bottle green eyes shinning. "Tell me everything."

"Well," She began, petting Crooks at the base of his tail. "when I awoke I was in a fog, as you know how it feels I was disoriented and everything seemed so surreal and dream like. There was a man standing above me, no a boy. Syaoran...I don't quite remember how long I was in his company but I recall that there was something about a feather in my wand that he wanted."

"A feather?"

"Yes." She said loosening the blanket she let it pool around her as she lifted the cat and hugged it her eyes misting as she recalled the best of her ability her story. "He broke my wand and took the feather after we had reached the school. I think it was to protect his loved one but merely it made me mad that he would do such a thing. Your precious Bill knew him well.

"I remember that when we reached the courtyard Mrs. Norris was there hissing at us, there was a group of Hufflepuffs there and I was half startled out my mind when I saw two twin boys that looked just like my Draco. They were of course Malfoy's but enough about that, it makes me too angry. When we reached the headmasters office I was surprised to see Bill there already waiting out arrival. He had a wand for me waiting though I never used it much mind you I love my old one. Anyway there were two others from Syaoran's group a tall blond mercurial man and a dark skinned warrior with harsh eyes. They simply said that to find my way home that I go east and disappeared.

"I was there for a long time and as you know, the school has always existed in one timeline. None of the electronic modernistic lifestyle existed there merely a haunting familiar chill of the old days. I half expected to see your precious friends and half heartedly I waited for any sigh that I would be found by my friends. I was not. The teachers had all but changed of course and the only familiarity to it was the headmaster who talked endlessly about the years in which he lived and his family that seemed to triple in size. I was disconcerted of course after all with my departure from our timeline there was not to be anyone of Parkinson blood in the future. My family had died out."

He nodded listening quietly as chill from the opened window flooded the room. He didn't make move to close it already too spellbound by the story.

"This Syaoran found you. Do you know anything about him?"

"No," She said. "Nothing only that it was by coincidence that we found one another, he said that I fell on him."

"And Bill couldn't help you find a way back."

"He would not." She said. "He said that there was nothing he could do for me, said that I was trapped in time forever and that I should enjoy eternal youth."

Well, that made everything a little more depressing. If what Parkinson said was true then that meant that they would be trapped forever seventeen in a place far from home. He wanted to break something, to cry out and lash out. He had hopped to go home to find Ginny and to stop her from marrying him...Malfoy...the tricky bastard. There was no hope now.

"So we are stuck here?" He asked.

"Maybe..."Pansy said as Crooks loudly purred. Later that night as Potter slept peacefully on the sofa Pansy riffled quietly through her belongings in a near erratic fashion. She had to find it. It had to be here it was in her hands when she had bumped into Potter on the street. Maybe she had dropped it but she doubted it.

It had my latest job described on that stupid disk I can't go back to the shop without completing my mission! Oh Merlin where is it?

"Looking for this?"

From the opened window stood a man half casted in shadow, in his left hand held the disk between two fingers. Pansy stared at the purple eyed man as he smiled boyishly almost innocently but she wasn't fooled. She knew him. Met him in the shop quite a few times and had even encountered him on the Nets with Lain.

"Kujaku..."

"You remembered my name." He said off handed, he looked at Harry who still slept soundly with Crooks lying atop his back. "You're a liar. You could have told him that Billy Boy offered to send you both home, could have told him that Syaoran was looking for him and that Watanuki sensed his presence here in this world. Using the old magics to keep them away from each other...tsk tsk...what will Yuko think?"

"What care do I have for her? I was sent out on a mission I was not told to tell Potter anything specific. If I told him the truth it would still mean nothing."

"You're a liar." Kujaku said still with his teasing voice, he sat now on the sill of the opened window still toying with the disk and laughed as Pansy's eyes were still trained on it. "Hahaha...you're frightened by me which is just as well. I could kill you if I wanted to you know, since I'm giving you borrowed time it would be easy to take it away."

"Then why don't you."

"Because it's so much fun watching from my perch and I am so bored in the new world. Nothing of interest happens here, the last fun thing I came across was that Lain girl and even then I wasn't fully involved. I find it endlessly fascinating that you would lie to that boy on the off chance that destiny won't find him anyway. You know Pansy, that this was written in the stars and like every other hero he will find his way." He tossed the disk to her easily and giggled as she caught it. He was mercilessly amused by her predicament. "And Hero-Boy finding his way means that it's the end for you doesn't it?"

She didn't answer.

"Well then, Pansy Parkinson...what a laugh...I should be off. Try to find it in that pureblooded heart of yours to tell him the truth one day...it would save him a lot of grief..."

He was gone in the blink of an eye.


This chapter was Co-Written by Sera (LovingTheOgre) and Kale Henderson here on this site. Both sort of friends of mine from the site in general. Anyway just to clarify that in the next chapter the story will jump into the past on that fateful day where Harry and Pansy were transported.

If you liked it review if not then whatever just don't flame the story. What would be the point?

Also in the next chapter my sister who goes by the name Lawliet and shares this profile with me will be writing a big bulk of the next chapter so be prepared for lots of introspective scenes.

Also the song Duvet is significant in this story.