Authors' note: Chapter three is nigh! Please don't forget to leave comments with constructive criticism because this is my first long form and I'm really really trying here, people.
Disclaimer: While I doubt anyone of importance would ever stumble across this trash, all rights to JK Rowling and Warner Bros. I'm not making any profit off of this and if I were, it would probably be a lot better written.
Enjoy!
q w e r
Chapter Three: Fucking Public Servants
Harry had been waiting next to the doorman outside of Parkinson's building for the better part of twenty minutes before he gave in. He had called the number Moody provided from him several times to no avail but the attentive man at the door refused to let him in without the clear permission of a tenant from the building. That alone was enough to irritate him to no end but especially after waiting by her door like an insignificant delivery man, Harry decided he had had enough of this for one day and was in the middle of sending a message to Hermione to meet him for coffee when a group of loud, laughing voices caught his attention.
Pansy Parkinson walked as if she was art in the making. In fact, they all strolled along as if they were walking straight off of a magazine spread. Parkison and five other equally wealthy looking 20-somethings turned the corner and began walking towards her building and she looked exactly as she did in the gossip rags - wearing strappy heels that looks far too uncomfortable compared to the relative ease she was walking with, a long skirt that just showed off her ankle, though it was oddly paired with a top that showed off an awful lot of cleavage and her midriff was being shown off in a way that rose up above her navel when she ran her hand to run through her long, black hair in mid-laugh. The tall young blonde next to her, who wasn't wearing heels but was still taller than Parkinson by a centimeter or two, looked familiar and Harry assumed it was because they graced a magazine cover or two together. Harry immediately recognized Marcus Flint, who stuck out like a muscular multi-million euro sore thumb, and Draco Malfoy, who stood slightly to the side of the group but looked just as pompous as he did standing next to his father in the papers. The other two, a smaller brown-haired boy and a tall, lean black man with the darkest, smoothest skin he had ever seen, looked unfamiliar, but strode with a similar kind of self-confident wealth.
"Miss Parkinson, I'm-"
Harry began walking towards the group, his hand extended but Parkinson abruptly stopped short, her hands held up as if the last thing she wanted to do was shake his hand. Harry's jaw tightened.
"This is my home. Can I get a fucking moment of rest?" she spat, pushing her large sunglasses into her hair and giving Harry one of the most disgusted looking glares he had ever seen on a person, though it looked so flawlessly practiced on her face that it made him wonder how often Parkinson interacted with normal people who weren't solely serving her food or opening her doors.
"DI Harry Potter," he finished bitterly, his green eyes shining behind his glasses.
Parkinson dropped her hands to her hips and gave him a curious look, one that made Harry feel like she was literally sizing him up - taking in every single detail of his wrinkled, coffee stained button up, his scuffed work boots, ruffled hair and scratched up glasses - and formulating her assessment on the spot. In the two or three seconds of silence, Harry felt completely and totally under her scrutiny and he instinctively straightened his spine and hardened his own glare because Pansy Parkinson was accustomed to people feeling less than her and feeling uncomfortable under her analyzing stare, but Harry refused to give her the fucking satisfaction. He had spent his life under scrutiny and one stare from an overly privileged socialite was not nearly enough to make him buckle. "I've been assigned to your case."
"Of course," she answered swiftly, glancing at her friends over her shoulders. "Daphne and the boys were just joining me for breakfast-"
"But it's four pm-"
"- but they wouldn't mind just holding tight for a bit. This won't take more than ten minutes, I'm assuming?"
"Well, I have quite a few questions-"
"Great!" Pansy clapped her hands together and gestured at the doorman as she walked past Harry and into the building. "I'm on the 7th floor."
The wait for the elevator and the subsequent ride up was awkward enough. Harry tried not to notice the faces Draco Malfoy made towards the short, brunette boy - various iterations of crossing his eyes and sticking out his tongue - while the black guy rolled his eyes and nudged at the blonde girl every so often. Pansy ignored the entire ordeal and merely stared at Harry, her arms crossed over her chest and her eyebrows slightly knitted together. Harry responded in kind, his hands hidden in his pockets but his eyes remained steadily locked with hers because he knew she was playing some kind of game, some kind of intimidation game and he wouldn't give in because a rich girl was the least troubling thing he had ever come in contact with.
The elevator finally dinged at her floor and Harry tried to seem unsurprised at the fact that the doors opened directly into her flat - if such a meager word could describe what Pansy Parkinson called home. It was more or less the grandest studio flat he had ever stepped into. After a short corridor lined in classic and abstract looking statues, three of the tall white-peachy walls were covered tastefully in avant-garde or art deco - Harry never did know the difference - paintings and the fourth wall was simply floor-to-ceiling windows which led to a decently-sized balcony that looked over the clean Chelsea streets. He could partly see Pansy's four-poster bed, draped from above in a sheer white linen, undone and covered with discarded clothing but it, along with an antique looking bureau, were largely covered by folding screen and directly across from it was essentially a kitchenette and a counter top island.
Harry stopped just short of dropping to the living area, which seemed as if it was dug into the very floor of her flat and he needed to take three steps down to sit on the three-sided couch that lined part of the embedded square.
"Miss Parkinson-" Harry cleared his throat.
"Can I get you anything? Sparking water? Tea? Vodka?"
"Er- no. I just want to get to the questions-"
"Pansy playing the hostess," Draco drawled. "Very cute."
"Fuck off," Pansy said in the same tone most people inquire about the weather with. As her friends piled into the sofa across the Harry, Pansy stood at the edge and looked down at the group, one hand gripping a side table while the other worked on the straps of her heel. "Questions, then. What is this, an interrogation? The real perv's out there you know."
"No, I need some information to start the investigation on the right foot-"
"Oh, sounds real legit, Pans," the blonde girl, who Harry was becoming increasing certain was more or less 15 years old, clapped her hands twice and grinned at Harry. Parkinson smirked and when she finally kicked both heels off, he was surprised to see her feet looked relatively pink and normal and not deformed the slightest bit considering the death traps she pranced around in, she leapt down into the seating area. She was quite a bit… smaller than he imagined.
"It's a fairly open and close case, to be honest," Harry pushed up his glasses and began flipping through his short notebook. "Stalker cases like these - just have to wait for him to turn up where you usually are."
"Open and shut case," Pansy repeated.
"Exactly."
She remained silent opened a false book in the coffee table between them, pulled out a silver case of pre-rolled cigarettes and took one out while throwing the case across the space to Malfoy, who caught it with ease.
"Go on then," she said through a muffled voice as she lit her cigarette. "With the questions."
Harry spared one more glance to the five others staring at him but then he turned his attention to his notebook. "When is the first time you noticed him following you?"
"This morning? I don't know," Pansy blew smoke through her nose and shrugged. "His face was just so familiar. Like he's always fucking been there, you know?"
"Anything more specific than that?"
"I'm 21, rich and famous, Potter. I don't bother to keep track of my fucking fanatics."
Harry tried not to roll his eyes as crossed that question off of his list, her answer being completely useless for him. He ignored Malfoy's snigger as he continued, "Right. Did he come across as dangerous to you at all?"
"Besides stalking me, you mean?"
"Well you have so many of them - what's the point of calling us about one fucking bloke?"
Pansy opened her mouth and immediately closed it again, electing to take a long drag from her cigarette rather than giving Potter the satisfaction of seeing her growing annoyance. She didn't know how to explain the feeling of sheer fear at seeing the man's face throughout a whole day of moving around London, only to realize how utterly fucking familiar it was. Just thinking about it made her feel like she was going insane, like she was describing fucking witchcraft and there was no other way to explain it - the way her skin crawled when she noticed him, her innards contracting on themselves, her skin erupting into goose bumps, she simply felt in danger.
"Does it matter? You have to do your fucking job anyway."
"Alright," Harry felt anger simmer beneath the surface but he wouldn't be a good detective if he let his emotions get in the way of a case - even a bullshit one like this. "Does it seem like he's working with any-"
"How the fuck would I-"
"Miss Parkinson, I'm trying to help you-"
"Well, a damn executioner would do a better job, thanks."
"Jesus fucking-"
"What, not used to live victims?"
"Oh, I've dealt with plenty of lives ones, I just wouldn't call you a victim- more like a publicity stunt-"
"I get the feeling this isn't really how policing is done."
Theo's low voice cut through their bickering like a knife slicing through butter and Pansy's next retort immediately died in her throat. Her focus fell on her friends again, then the three inches of ash delicately hanging onto to the end of her dead cigarette, then back at Potter, whose faced was flushed because she could only assume he had never been called out for lack of professionalism before. Good. Serves him right for treating her case like it was beneath him.
"Right, Miss Parkins-"
"Just," Pansy held out a hand, closing her eyes and taking a breath because fuck this, "next question."
She heard Potter flipping through his stupid little detective notebook then the unmistakable sound of a lighter being flicked on and burning the end of a cigarette. When she opened her eyes, Draco tossed her the silver case.
"Any angry customers of your father's lately?"
"I wouldn't know," she exhaled a thin line of smoke.
"Any weird messages or packages?"
"No."
"Do you frequent the same places?"
Pansy hummed before answered, her lips tightening around the thin cigarette as she took a breath in. "Just around with these prats," she gestured dismissively at the other couch. "Marcus, Daph and I live in Chelsea. Blaise lives in Camden Town because he likes to pretend to be poor-"
"Fuck off-"
"Draco lives near campus at Oxford but when he graces us commoners with his presence every weekend, he lives near Theo in Kensington."
Harry nodded and scribbled the neighborhoods into his notebook but he could fucking believe the lives these people lived. While he was more then happy in Greenwich, and the concept of wealth never truly bothered him, he had seen and experiences both sides up rather up close and personal, he was astonished at how oblivious they were to their own wealth.
"So you stay more or less to the West-"
"Unless we're traveling - Paris, Berlin, Barcelona, whatever. But traveling is a hassle and I like being home."
"Have you angered anyone lately, Miss Parkinson?"
"I have a twitter account, Detective Potter," she rolled her eyes and stamped her cigarette out in the ashtray in front of her before swiftly lighting another. "I piss off thousands of arseholes every single day."
Harry didn't bother to stifle his snort this time, resulting in a tense silence from the dark haired socialite sitting across from him.
"Jealous?"
"Yeah, I'm obviously jealous of a-"
"A what?"
"Miss Parkinson-"
"A what?"
"A vapid, bored, oblivious socialite-"
"Okay, I think we're finished," Pansy slammed her hands down on her thighs and looked straight ahead, her eyes locking with Daphne, who looked guilty, as she should be, and purposefully ignoring the look of pure fucking delight on Draco.
Harry massaged the bridge of his nose. He had crossed the line of professionalism and he knew it, but there was no stepping back now. "Parkinson," he sighed though she still didn't look at him. "This is just an amateur stalker. It's an open and shut case and I'll have it done by the end of the week."
"I'll hold you to that," she whipped her head around just as Harry stood to look for the door in which he came which could fucking hit in on the way out for all she was concerned - the pretentious, self-righteous prick couldn't care less about her safety and she couldn't care less about his concern and he could actually shove it because some part of her expected exactly this. Fucking public servants.
Pansy stood abruptly, though it came a few seconds too late to have any effect, and walked towards her small kitchenette with the dying cigarette between her lips.
Harry dug around in his breast pocket and placed a small white card on her island as he passed her. "Give me a call if you have any more information about your case," and she sneered at his back as he left.
Yeah, fucking public servants.
q w e r
Sneak peak:
"Wait, wait, wait - god, Theo - Blaise, say that again," Pansy dropped her arms suddenly and walked around the coffee table, the empty bottle of rum being kicked aside as she did so.
"He's got a fucking Wikipedia page. 'Harry Potter, twenty-five, was orphaned at the age of six when a serial killer who preyed on the poor gypsy communities murdered his parents one night while they were in their beds.
