The knock on the door came precisely at nine o'clock.
Harley was all a tingle at the sound, her best-laid plans soon to be coming to fruition, and she placed the automatic under the nearest couch cushion. It had been so long since she had seen Ivy – months since her fellow femme fatale had ruined her wedding to the Joker at City Hall after her Puddin' had broken her out of Blackgate in order to make her his bride. Of course, Joker thought Harley had inherited fifty million from a rich old aunt who had just kicked off, and he was all set to make Harley join her dearly departed relative until Ivy came crashing through the window, ruining the civil ceremony and nearly killing the Clown Prince of Crime himself with a crushing creeper vine.
And of course, the Bat family had intervened, saving Joker and ousting Ivy, who had continued to display greater and greater plant-like abilities the last several months. She had survived a seemingly fatal stab wound without a scratch, and later had physically manifested thorns from her skin. She had even begun breathing carbon dioxide while exhaling oxygen, just like a real plant. Batman later revealed that Harley had played the Joker much like he had played her, making up the whole inheritance story just to scam her boyfriend into finally proposing. In the end, the wedding didn't happen, and Harley, furious that Ivy's jealously had ruined what should have been the happiest day of her life, not only formally dissolved the Harley & Ivy pairing, but also vowed to murder Ivy next time she saw her.
A few months time had done nothing to dispel Harley's fury, and now she was just minutes away from executing both Ivy and her revenge. She made it halfway to the door, all homicidal smiles, when memory intervened and Harley remembered all the good times she and Ivy had had together, how far they had come since a chance pairing at the museum years ago had turned them into Gotham's criminal dynamic duo. They had been through so much together ... Now it was all going to end with a single well-placed shot, a splash of blood, and Ivy's lifeless body, and these thoughts made Harley feel cold inside, and warm tears spring up in her eyes.
Screw her, Harley thought angrily. Her affectionate thoughts of companionship were quickly brushed aside by an icy desire for revenge. Ivy was always jealous of me and Joker, she growled, always envious of what we shared. If she really had been my friend, she would have told me about the changes she had been going through, and she woulda let me get hitched to Mistah J - but instead she killed my wedding day, and now I'm gonna finally kill her.
"That you, Red?" she queried, though Harley usually didn't answer the door that way in Gotham – it could get you killed. This was a special occasion, though, and she was sure it had to be Ivy.
"Yes, Harls, it's me," came the nervous voice from the other side of the heavy oaken door, thick enough to stop most small-caliber firearms.
"Coming, bay-bee!" voiced Harley cheerfully, with a slight touch of malevolence. Time to spring the trap, you emerald witch, thought Harley. She closed her hand on the brass doorknob, paused for a second as she beamed her biggest, fakest smile, and then threw open the door to see ...
... not a bewitching, green-skinned siren, as Harley had anticipated, but plain old scientist Pamela Lillian Isley, looking much as she did when she and Harley had first met, with white skin, neat auburn hair, and even silver-rimmed eyeglasses. Ivy blinked behind her lenses as she sighted Harley, the botanist standing there in a tweed jacket, knee-length brown skirt, and low cream-colored heels, before a smile broke out over her face.
"Harley!" she blurted out merrily, and then shot forward to seize her old friend in her arms and squeeze Harley tightly.
Harley Quinn just stood there dumbfounded, even more so then usual.