Shortly after midnight, after a few hours of surprisingly deep, still sleep, Harry awoke screaming. Pansy hadn't trusted that the first massage would be enough to soothe him into sleeping through the night and had opted to doze in the single floral wingback chair in the corner of Harry's room until he awoke.
When he did her eyes shuttered open at the utter agony of the moaning coming from his bed. The thrashing of his arms and legs, caught up in the blankets, started soon after, and Harry's moans became screams. The transition had taken less than a minute.
Pansy sprung from her chair and quickly cast a warming charm on Harry's mattress, then lit the lamp on the table beside his bed, using the wand that had been resting in her lap as she dozed. She began to shush Harry, as one soothes a crying baby, as she reached his bedside, magically flicking away the twisted blankets from his body.
Harry's thrashing only increased with the freedom of his limbs, so Pansy began talking to him as she attempted to roll him to his stomach.
"Harry, I'm here. You're not alone. Roll over now and I can help you," she crooned as she tried another way to shift him with her hands.
Harry thrashing continued but he opened his eyes to seethe at her. "GET. ME. MY. POTION. NOW," he yelled. "I. CANNOT. TAKE. THIS. GET. MY. POTION. NOW!"
"Shhh, Harry. I'm here and I can help you," she said, moving her hands firmly down his arms, even as they flung around. "Roll over and it will get better."
"NO, YOU FUCKING BITCH, MY POTION. I DON'T WANT TO BE HERE. I DON'T WANT THIS IN MY HEAD," Harry roared.
"No, Harry," Pansy said, as she grabbed her wand to turn him over using a spell Healers used to subdue unruly patients. She grabbed a jar from the bedside, a different one this time, and climbed onto Harry's bed, straddling him arse to arse. "Shhhh, it will be okay. I'm here, Harry. I've got you."
"Fuck you."
"Shhh," she soothed, as the weight of her pressed him into the mattress. Her hands working, kneading at his neck, then down his arms. His skin was smooth, though marred by war and Auroring in places by nicks and scars, and adorned by several tattoos which seemed muggle in origin to Pansy as the ink did not move across his skin.
"Just give me the damn potion. Or some fucking firewhiskey. Fucking hell. Please," he moaned.
"No. I'm here, Harry. You don't need it."
"I do, I really do," he moaned, but Pansy could tell the effects of her touch and the warming charms and the sound of the rain on the windows that had fortuitously started to fall, were getting to Harry.
"I don't want to sleep. I don't want this in my head. It's so real, so real…" he mumbled.
"Shhhh…" Pansy resumed shushing, and her inspection of his back, the drape of long, unruly black hair across his neck, and the contrast of black ink to skin, until she felt his muscles give way and his body relax back into sleep.
Harry was slightly more cooperative for Pansy the second night of her treatments, but still frequently barbed her with sarcastic or suggestive comments. After she assured herself he was settled into sleep, she joined Hermione at Grimmauld's worn kitchen table. Hermione sat straight backed, again drowning in what Pansy suspected was one of Theo's knit jumpers, midnight blue this time, primly reading from a thick book with pages Pansy judged as delicate from the gentle way Hermione turned them.
"You don't have to come every night, Granger. You are paying an obscene amount of money for me to handle this. So, I'm handling it." Pansy joined Hermione at the table.
"I know you are. I was impressed at how quickly the massage worked last night," Hermione said as she gave Pansy yet another appreciative look, her brown skin almost glowing in the low light of the lamp in the middle of the table.
"It didn't take long for the nightmares to return. But I handled them," Pansy told her.
"Thank you again, so much, for being here, doing this," Hermione said as she pushed back from the table to set the kettle to boil.
Pansy scoffed as she watched Hermione move around the kitchen. "Your excessive gratitude is exhausting. It's the second day. Hold your thanks until we've made actual progress."
Hermione made an annoyed, dismissive sound as she placed a heavy mug in front of Pansy. "I'll be grateful to you if I want, Pansy. And he's actually upstairs, sleeping, without potions, which is wonderful in itself. Peppermint tea okay?"
"It's fine," Pansy said, her eyes taking in the darkened kitchen, with its dark cabinets and rustic fixtures. "His sleep will last how long it lasts, Granger. I'm sure it won't be long until I'm calming down a thrashing, angry man."
Hermione rested her back against the counter, with arms crossed against her front. "I suspect the nightmares are so violent because they've been suppressed for so long. He just...hasn't ever dealt with the war, with everything that happened. And this world is doing a terrible job of letting him grow past it or forget. His brain is dealing with the trauma as it can, by interrupting his sleep, by my best guess." Her fingers trailed over the cables knit into her left sleeve.
"It's likely…" Pansy trailed off in thought. "Your notes mentioned that Harry had nightmares during and before the war, stemming from a connection he had with Voldemort. Is it possible he's got some kind of link to some other being? A curse, maybe?"
"No," Hermione began as the kettle whistled in the background. "No...those dreams were different. He would get glimpses of places or conversations or emotions, and his scar would hurt." She set the teapot in front of Pansy. "From when I've seen his nightmares recently, and from the little he's admitted, they aren't like that at all."
"Good to know," Pansy said, pouring tea into Hermione's cup, then her own. "How did you get him to agree to this?"
Hermione joined her again at the table. "It...it wasn't easy. Ron and I have been trying to make him agree to this for a long time. He's been using dreamless sleep since the war, in increasing amounts, and Ron and I noticed how much he's changed. How little he does, how much he sleeps. How withdrawn he's become, even from us."
Pansy studied Hermione, nearly unblinking, eyes dark in the lamplight, as she listened. The warm, minty tea wasn't enough to flush the cool worry settling further into her stomach with every detail Hermione shared.
"Ron's job with the Ministry has him so busy now," Hermione said as Pansy scoffed lightly at the mention of Ron. "But I think we knew, deep down, it was time. It was now or never. Now, or something irrevocable would happen."
"And he finally listened to you?" Pansy prompted.
"Well, no," Hermione said, threading a loose curl behind her ear. "Not exactly."
"What worked? Bribes? Threats? Promises of more fame and glory? Or did you finally nag his arse off?" Pansy speculated.
"Ha," Hermione replied. "No. I told him a secret." Hermione obscured her eyes by studying her cooling tea. "And we told him this was the only time we'd ever ask him to do anything like this, that this was the last time we'd try to make him stop him from taking whatever potions he wanted. If this didn't work, we'd leave him to live how he wanted to."
Pansy's stomach churned. "And you meant it?"
Hermione looked up at Pansy. "I don't know," she said, and sighed. "At this point, I don't care, because it worked. And he already seems..."
Pansy met Hermione's gaze. "We'll see. But I'm here. And I'll do what I can."
The quiet from the rest of the house seeped into the kitchen, both women falling into their own thoughts. Pansy refilled her tea, and then pushed herself back from the table. "I'm going to take this upstairs, get some rest while I can. See you later, Granger."
"Thank you, Pansy," Hermione said with a sleepy grin.
"Gah," Pansy returned as she walked out the swinging kitchen door. "Go home to Theo, you frustrating bint," she said loudly as she headed for the stairs.
A/N: Thank you all for reading and reviewing!