When Harry Met Susan
(And Peter and Edmund and Lucy and Mr. Tumnus and so on and so forth, you know the rest…)
Summery: Back in Hogwarts. Back to reality.
Epilogue – Wicked Monday
When we walked through the mirror I closed my eyes and felt the darkness pressing against my lids like an almost physical presence. The silence was throbbing in my ears.
I suddenly felt something cold pressed against my back, noise was starting to fill all the corners the silence occupied before and dark colours started playing in front of my closed lids.
I opened my eyes gingerly and glanced around. The first thing I noticed was that we were back in the Potion dungeon. My eyes met Pansy's and we both smiled at each other. We were home.
A crush was heard from somewhere and we lifter our heads from our lying position on the floor, and saw professor Snape rushing towards us. We exchanged another look and gingerly got to our feet. I took a deep breath and cried out,
"You idiot! Look what you've done!" Pansy didn't even blink before returning a nasty look and shouting,
"You Gryffindor! This is all your fault!" We both tried hard not to laugh, when professor Snape bellowed,
"Enough!" he reached to us and looked at us with narrowed eyes, contempt oozing from every feature, "Ten points from both Gryffindor and Slytherin for a performance befitting Longbottom!" I shot a quick glace at Neville who shrank visibly and bit his lip to hold back tears. "The two of you are going straight to see Madame Pomfrey and then you are both coming back here to clean all this mess." We looked at him blankly and he lost the last remnants of his patience, "GO! NOW!!"
We didn't needed telling twice before we hurried out of the classroom. Once the door closed behind us we looked at each other and started to laugh. We began making our way to the Hospital Wing slowly.
"This is so weird, we spent about three weeks in Narnia and yet when we came back it was like only moments have passed." Said Pansy and I nodded, that was weird. While we had the most incredible adventures, fighting evil and helping saving Narnia, we are still in the same Monday- in fact in the same spot in time as we left.
"Are you thinking of Peter?" The voice of Pansy shook me out of my thoughts, and I shook my head.
"I'm trying not to."
"You really care about him, don't you?" I nodded. Pansy knew pretty much everything about Peter and mine relationship, she was probably responsible for a large portion of it, I think. And yet I really didn't feel like talking to her about it.
"Are you going to tell people about Narnia?" She shrugged and looked away from me, I think she was a little offended that I didn't trust her enough to share my feelings about Peter with her, but even those past three weeks in Narnia couldn't really make up for the hatred and disbelief of six previous years.
"I'm not sure, probably not," she was right, people would probably think we are mad. "I mean, for them it looks like we were just out cold for a couple of seconds or something."
I had a feeling that even Ron and Hermione wouldn't believe me if I tell them, they would say that they do, they would never make me feel like a crazy idiot on purpose but behind my back they would discuss mental health spells for me. I almost smiled at the thought.
"So I guess this will be our little secret then." I said and Pansy laughed a little. She turned to me and held out her hand,
"Our little secret." I shook her hand and we smiled at each other. We continued our way down the halls and I started thinking what "our secret" meant. Are we going to secretly meet from now on and reminisce about Narnia and the Pevensies? Are we even going to acknowledge each other without hate from now on? Does that mean we are 'friends'? this whole situation was very perplexing and vexing. In Narnia we were just Pansy and Harry, two foreigners that got there by accident and had to relay on each other to survive and make it safely back home, but here we were back to being a Slytherin and a Gryffindor. Enemies.
"I wish we were back in Narnia," Pansy's voice was throwing me back to reality; "Everything was so much simpler there." I nodded; she just summed up what I was thinking.
"Me too." I saw Pansy smirking from the corner of my eye,
"I'd love to see Susan and everyone again, don't you?"
"Not Susan!" I said before I could stop myself and she sniggered softly. I felt the heat rising to my cheeks and cursed inside for falling into her little trap so easily.
"I think you'd like her, if you spend more time with her. She's actually really nice." I doubted that Susan would ever be nice to me, but I didn't really want to argue a moot point. There wasn't much chance that I would ever have to face Susan again and find out if she could really like me, in spite the fact she believes I stole her brother's innocence. Thinking this obviously made me think about Peter, and that wasn't a very happy thought. I never thought I could love anyone, not like that.
Ever since I remember myself I thought I could never love, I was never really loved myself and I felt like I was tainted, incapable of deep human emotions- well, maybe capable of deep hate and sorrow but not really capable of the "fun" emotion. I never thought I'd be truly happy, but that was proven wrong when I got here, to Hogwarts.
I never thought I could be attracted to someone, until I met Cho Chang. I never thought I could love until I started dating Hannah. But neither Cho nor Hannah prepared me for "the real thing". I've never felt such intense, such pure, and such all-consuming love and attraction and affection to someone before meeting Peter. And the fact that I was standing here in the corridor in Hogwarts, alone, made my loss feel even worse. I sighed deeply.
The fact that Pansy was in Narnia with me was probably the best thing that could have happened to me, because if I had to face things alone I might have passed it all to a strange dream induced by the messed up potion, but the fact she could confirm that Aslan and Peter and Susan and Ed and Lucy are real and that what happened in Narnia was real was comforting. As well as hurting, if it wasn't a dream than that means everything was real and that made leaving Peter even harder. This is one vicious cycle.
Pansy suddenly grabbed my hand and forced me to look at her, her eyes were shining in a dangerous way,
"Do you really miss him?" I didn't really have to ask her who she meant before nodding slowly, I still wasn't sure what she was trying to convey, when her face broke in a huge smile,
"Then we are going to see Dumbledore and we are going to ask him to send us back!" I just stared at her wide-eyed and speechless, "Come on Harry! We can say that… I don't know, we… forgot something there or something." She was really excited, I haven't seen in that state since we went to get our swords fitted. And just like back then her enthusiasm was catching.
A slow smile spread on my face and hers grew wide at its sight.
I grabbed her hand and we both turned and started to race our way to Dumbledor's office.
A/N: This is really the end. Thank you for bearing with me thus far. It's been a pleasure having you.
BTW- I'm not sure that Dumbledore can actually send them back to Narnia but I didn't really want to crush their hopes...
For more of Harry/Peter check out the sequel "Running with Love".
