A.N. Thank You for reviews:D They made me so HAPPY:D
Pansy looked at the toy she was holding in her hands, the colorful drum she had seen so many times in Greg's hands.
"He truly enjoyed your toys," she said, looking straight into Fred Weasley's eyes.
"I've always had a talent for it," the wizard smiled. "It was one of the newer projects, I gave it to Serena at the beginning of our adventure, and then, well, it slipped my mind. Such a small mistake."
The adventure, that was really an interesting description of the atrocity and chaos they had unleashed together.
"You're not going to ask me why?" puzzled he asked leaning his head. "Don't you want to find out what turned me into what I became? No cries, no disbelief?"
Pansy glared at him with spitefulness. He could have been a war hero, he could have been a murderer, but yet he was still an ordinary man expecting applause, like a big child.
"No, I know all sorts of things about you, I have known a lot of maniacs like you with an exaggerated ego, bloodlust and a new vision of the world." Pansy lifted the corner of her mouth in a taunting smile. "You all have two things in common: you're absolutely fucking nuts and you end up in a shitty place!"
"Well, it's not exactly true, I don't have an exaggerated ego!" Fred smiled, and in a humorous gesture he threatened her with a knife in his hands. " Nevertheless, we shouldn't delay it, don't you think? I didn't come here to talk to you, did I?"
Pansy tightened her fingers harder around the toy. She didn't have a chance to reach for the wand, she wouldn't have had time. And so she had to play dirty, like a real Slytherin.
"No, no, no, it's not Fred!" Ron kept saying, shaking his head
" It fits, everything fits," Hermione whispered with her pale lips. "After the war, Fred was being treated in St. Mungo's for years. He visited the psychiatric block almost every week and could easily meet Serena. His presence there wouldn't surprise anyone, wouldn't arouse any suspicion."
Ron looked at her so helpless.
"But why? Why would he do that?"
He dropped his eyes on the photograph of the massacred victims spread out on the table trying to find anything to prove the ridiculously of their conclusions, but he saw nothing but the dreadfully massacred bodies and his brother's name on the damn list, he felt his stomach seize up in a massive cold ball.
"George, since his death Fred has changed, you've said it many times." Harry stopped the discussion. "Ron, we need to find him as soon as possible, you have no idea where he might be?"
Ron, still dazed, shrugged his shoulders, "I don't know, maybe at my parents', maybe at St. Mungo's he works there sometimes as a volunteer."
Hermione dropped a cup she was holding in her hands, and it broke down into a myriad of pieces.
"Oh no Pansy!"
Harry felt the earth moving from under his feet.
She hurled the drum at him and leaped forward at the same time. When Fred saw an object coming towards him, he instinctively dodged, giving her a few precious seconds, but he instantly straightened up ready to strike a blow. He just didn't expect Pansy to throw herself at his legs instead of attacking him from above, and with the wrestling moves that Vince and Greg had taught her a long time ago, grabbed onto his legs and unbalance him. Fred fell forward, loosing a knife from his hand that dropped to the ground with a faint bang.
Pansy was slowly losing her breath in a struggle. Theoretically, her move should have put him on his back, but it seemed like she overestimated her skills. Driven by ferocious fury, she fought with a fierceness she never expected from herself. That bastard, that beast killed Greg and Blaise! Fucking asshole!
"You fucking bitch!" Fred snored reaching with his hands to her throat. He hated her so much at the moment, that he didn't need a knife, he was ready to rip her to shreds with his bare hands. In a desperate gesture, remembering the lessons from the old days, she slammed her knee between his legs and reached with her hands up to his face sticking her fingers into his eyeballs.
"Ah!" he shouted, loosening his grip and punching her face with a strong blow, sending her in the opposite direction.
"Pansy!" they overheard the calling and thumping of the feet coming from down the hallway. "Pansy!"
They both instantly reminded themselves who they were and reached for their wands.
"Stupefy!"
"Crucio!"
"Pansy!"
The shouts were almost simultaneous.
Harry Ron and Draco breathlessly burst into the room and froze looking at the bodies that were lying on the floor. No, no, no, they could not be too late again, it could not end like this!
Pansy groaned, slowly rising up and looking at them before reproachfully asking, "What the hell took you so long?!"
Harry and Draco both moved towards her, but it was Harry who was the first one to grab her in his arms and hold her close to him with all his might.
"Why?" It was the first thing that Harry was able to choke out of himself after he sat opposite Fred Weasley in the interrogation room and looked into his familiar, freckled face and honest eyes. There were no indications that he was sitting right there in front of the murderer. "Why?"
Fred took a glance around, sighed deeply and said, "Why? Hmmm, does it matter? Yeah, I guess it does to you. Why? You know, Harry, everybody keeps saying that time heals the wounds, that everything fades away gradually, but that's not true, time heals nothing, nothing ever heals!"
Fred went silent for a while to catch his breath. "I wished to bring him back, so I went looking in a slightly less legal book and scrolls."
"George?" Harry asked to be sure. "You wanted to resurrect your brother?"
The disbelief in his voice was very obvious because Fred only laughed arrogantly. "Oh, I know it's unthinkable, but hope goes last" he shrugged his shoulders. "I went through all these books and found out about the sphere. At first, I thought I would use it to find a way to bring him back to life, but then in the hospital I met all those miserable people wronged by those monsters and I met Serena. So young and so damaged, do you have any indication what they did to her, Harry?" he asked rhetorically. "Those beasts!"
"All right, so you decided to help them, you got Neville to find Theo and then what? You could have just taken that sphere away from him!"
Fred just looked at him strangely "That wouldn't be enough. You don't comprehend it, Harry, he's been living there, far away in America, calm, worry-free, without care, while my brother has been rotting in the ground for years! That's not fair!"
"You could have brought this to us! We would have apprehended him! He would have been prosecuted!" Harry opposed it, but Fred just giggled maniacally.
"Prosecuted?! By what court?! The same one that acquitted Millicent, Pansy and many others?" Fred snorted disrespectfully.
"They were innocent Fred."
"No! They were guilty! Rather than fighting against evil they joined in or stood by while watching others fight and die! All those damned Slytherins who decided not to fight that day during the battle, they are as guilty of my brother's death as the bastard who killed him."
"So you killed Theo, you got a sphere and then what?"
"You already know, Harry, I have found a house in which Serena has lived through hell, there have been elves of those bastards. They gladly embraced the new Lord they could serve- and they served me well, hideous little monsters. And then I started looking for others."
"Others?"
"Yes, the others who escaped justice, who fled, hid like rats while my brother was dying, and now they went out to live a full life. You know how many I found? Hundreds!" Fred said with a distracted look, his face rattled. There was no resemblance to the boy that Harry had known for years. "Hundreds of filthy cowards! And I wanted to kill them all!"
"Why did you start with Milly, Blaise, Daphne? And why did you wear a mask?"
"I had to start out somewhere, and since I started with Nott, I decided to continue with one yearbook list to keep some order. Those cowards could have fought alongside my brother and instead they let him die, they deserved it, maybe even more than the others and besides, " he laughed bitterly and licked his chapped lips with a tongue "it was so amusing to see the horror of all those bastards who were spinning around with fear and you all, the mighty Aurors, who couldn't find me even when I was right under your nose!"
Harry ignored the jam and listened to him in silence even though he was beginning to feel nauseous.
"Daphne, Daphne was Serena's choice, we should kill Astoria, she would fit the list, but I couldn't refuse Serena this little pleasure to honor her sister."
"Whom you killed anyway" Harry pointed out sharply.
"I've freed her from pain and suffering," Fred corrected him, " exactly as Serena wanted. And the mask, well, the mask was my little private joke, you know how much I like to prank others."
"And Hermione and Pansy?"
"I wouldn't hurt Hermione! I just wanted to get rid of this kid so Malfoy could feel the pain of loss before I got to him, he was so annoying with his constant joy. As if it's entirely fair that the man has everything: a wife, a child on the way, a wealthy fortune! And as for your little whore, well, I'd take care of her one day in the future."
Harry clenched his hands in fist to keep them from reaching into and clenching them around the neck of the man sitting in front of him.
"She was one of them, and you just followed her like a cat in heat, disgusting!"
Harry had enough, he couldn't even imagine what Arthur and Ron were feeling when they overheard the statement in the next room. He had to leave before he would suffocate.
"You're insane," he simply stated when he got up. "Totally and completely incurably mad."
Fred grinned widely as if he was happy. " Perhaps, Harry, possibly, maybe."
"He will be convicted, right? " Pansy questioned Harry while sitting in his office once they had concluded all interrogations and obvious acts of arrest.
"Yes, he will."
"Poor Weasleys" Pansy shook her head. "It must have been a tremendous blow for them."
"Pansy" Harry began getting up from the chair and coming closer to her. The words he intended to say had been gnawing at him for a long time, but she held him back with a single word:
"No, Harry, please, no, not now."
He halted halfway through a move, not sure what to do. He wanted to hold her again so much.
"Hospital offered me a leave of absence, so I could recuperate and get over all this." Pansy said while staring at her hands. " I was thinking about it and I think I'm gonna take it and just leave fo a while, I have to change my surroundings."
"How long?" he was stunned.
She raised her head and looked at him intently.
"I don't know, for a while, I have to become myself again. I was married to Greg for so long, I can't remember how to be Pansy. And then all that happened, I have to find myself again," she looked at him and pleaded with him, " just please don't be mad at me."
"Not of course not, you have all the time you need," he assured quickly feeling his heartbreaking. "I'll be here when you come back," he vowed softly.
She smiled and reached for his hand.
"Thank you, Harry, " she smiled while standing up. "Thank you for everything."
She was already at the door when he called out:
"Pansy!"
She turned to him with a question in her eyes.
"Just don't be a stranger, okay?" he asked, knowing how pathetic that sounded.
She nodded her head and walked out. All that was remaining in the office was her scent: vanilla and oriental spices.
Hope You're not disappointed:)