Small specks of snow cover her window as she turns over the pages in the eary afternoon. It's Christmas in a week. Her mother hasn't sent her a letter bidding for her attendance like she always does and Pansy gets the message. It surprised her when the absence of her mother's cursives didn't hurt her, didn't tie a knot around her throat anyway. She figures she will take up Draco's offer and spend the eve with Granger and him in his apartment.
She is reading case histories on muscle spasms when a rumble breaks into her room. She looks up from the pages to find Ronald Weasley, sweaty and loud. He is with another guy who is also disheveled. Together they are balancing Harry Potter on their shoulders. An agitated Harriet follows them in.
"Just there. Just there," she says hurriedly as she beckons them to one of the empty beds.
Ron Weasley's face is almost as red as his hair. "Bloody hell."
Pansy stands up, peeking over his shoulder with her heart in a tight knot to see Potter unconscious, but still shaking, his hands twisted unnaturally. They spasm vigorously.
"What happened?" she asks, hurrying over as Harriet beckons to her to steady him.
"Bloody idiot jabbed his hands -" he stops, and the silence is taut for a few seconds till Pansy finally moves her eyes from the writhing body and stares at the tall guy.
"You?" His eyes are narrowed before he blinks a few times, as if adjusting her in his view.
Pansy feels her back involuntarily straighten. The familiar derealization. She holds her breath. Waits for him to grab his friend and take him somewhere else to be treated.
But he doesn't. His cheeks go redder, it seems, almost beyond capacity as Harriet shunts them both.
" Grab him, Parkinson!"
So she does. She pushes her hands along his shoulder and adds strength as Harriet mutters unintelligibly, waving her wand over and over his hands. Pansy feels his hands burning with fever, but his face is cold when she checks momentarily. She eyes his purple lips and her mind involuntarily goes through a list of poisons.
She hears Weasley speak in a more restrained voice from behind them.
"He uh - jabbed his hand in a Lobalug hole."
Pansy shivers. "Why? How many were there?"
"At least a dozen. We were on a field day to find this impersonator and he had all these traps set over. And Harry he - fuck, he just went rouge."
Pansy is near speechless. She blinks at the dumbfounded Weasley before she finds her voice enough to stutter, "But why… why would he shove his - and even if he did... don't you people have protective gloves?"
Weasley makes a disgruntled noise. "We're supposed to."
She purses her lips. Of course. Stupid bastard can't be bothered with protections.
Potter tries to wrench free from her hold. His body is so wet with sweat, it nearly slips her hand against him as she struggles. Ron Weasley and the other guy purse their lips as she mutters a charm to make him docile. It barely works. His entire hand from fingertips to elbow shake in violent seizure. Even when Harriet finishes her part, he twitches.
There is a certain type of unmasking that is hard to forget. After almost a year in this brutal field of occupation where life is regarded as fleeting as a mayfly's first flight, Pansy is yet to get used to the unnerving shiver she gets when someone close to death is brought to her. Poison of Lobalug spreads as easily as it is transited. The creatures are almost inconspicuous in their small, dirty yellow body. Easily conceals itself in mud holes big enough to fit a kneazle. Each one of it's dozen sharp teeth have a separate toxic gland under its gum. When it senses threat, a sensory current reaches from the tiny ganglions in its inconspicuous brain to those glands, and the secretion that comes out is said to be one of the most painful poisons of all. Inflammaging the skin as it goes. It's Potter good luck that some people paid attention to their briefing, and that they had the common sense to bind his hands to stop the poison spreading through the rest of his body. The pain from his hands was enough to knock him cold, had it spread to other parts of the body -
"There's still so much we don't know about it," Harriet says in a rush as Pansy takes notes from Weasley. Routine questions she ticks in boxes. His previous injuries, just how much time he was exposed to sunlight after being bitten, if he had eaten anything since last night.
When Weasley says that he hasn't, she doesn't mention that she made sure he ate at least one of the ridiculously tasty burritos a man sells at the station. She didn't tell him how his friend smiled coyly when the middle aged man assumed they were on a date.
"But it's good that you brought him here straight," her instructor says. "He has to stay the week, I think, we have to make sure of so many things -"
"But he'll be alright, yeah?" Weasley's voice trembles. He looks at his friend with frozen desperation for a few seconds before turning to Harriet. "Nothing long term?"
"Most likely not." It's Pansy that answers. Maybe it's Potter looking so utterly broken, maybe it's the threat of tears in his friend's eyes, but her voice is softer than normal. "He'll probably gain consciousness in a few hours. It's just that he was exposed to so much venom it's - critical for that reason only."
He still looks a bit disconcerted to find her there, but there is a sincere relief in his eyes as he nods. "Alright. I'll just… wait here."
She nods before hurrying back to Potter, to cast a diagnostic charm on him with her shaking hands. To see the course of the detoxification liquid Harriet made him swallow. She lets out a relieved sigh when the soft turquoise light glowing past his hand shows signs of good immunity on his part, as well as positive feedback on her potion. When she turns to tell this to the tall guy, he's already gone.
Probably for the better. Ancient grudges could only be held at bay for so long. She cannot recall the number of times she ridiculed his family and their fortune, or lack thereof.
Potter looks almost serene. To someone who isn't well versed on toxicology he might look like someone who is sleeping, just at the juncture between dreams and reality. But the tautness at his forehead makes her worried if he is having another bad dream. He is so heavily drugged that whatever may happen in his dream, he might not be able to wake up even beyond the breaking point.
Without thinking much, or too much, she grabs a chair and sits beside him, taking a deep breath before waving her wand over him in an intricate movement similar to what she did almost a year ago.
"What are you doing?"
Pansy answers her instructor without looking up. "I'm ensuring he doesn't have any dreams."
"Why would he -?"
"Weasley told me he often has them."
He didn't. But he should have.
Harriet slides beside her to watch her work. "Where did you learn to do that?"
She is using her one hand to rub circles on his forehead, unbothered. The other one is pointing the wand at his temple with soft pink light illuminating from the tip. "I did some research on dreams and sleep paralysis. Months ago."
The way Harriet says okay makes her wonder if it was a different situation, she would've been bombarded with questions. Instead, she feels a small pat on her back as a keep going gesture before she hears her getting out.
"One thing," she says before leaving, "don't let anyone know he's here. The auror who brought him was very specific about not letting the word out."
Pansy nods tersely, only focused on his expression that borders on serenity one moment and chaos the next.
It's quiet in her room, except for the squeaky gasp of Peony who rarely gets to treat any real patients, let alone the most famous wizard in Britain. She looks at the unconscious Potter with quiet zeal as Pansy asks her to let Weasley know that it's probably going to take another few hours for him to wake up. Pansy isn't surprised he comes himself to let her know he is staying.
There is a quiet chaos in her chest, but she keeps doing what she does best; she heals. She changes his dark auror robes into a hospital gown. She takes his temperature. She does all the routine jobs while ignoring the buzzing of her mind.
The thing about healing that makes it so personal is how intimate it is. How if she presses her fingers on his wrist, at the pulsepoint she can clearly feel his coarse beats, all the way from his heart, pulsating along the flow with which his heart works. She pushes her fingers over his and feels the spasms that springs with pain. She works in silent determination but in her mind, her voice is as loud as Ron Weasley's, saying: You idiot, you bloody reckless idiot.
She isn't sure if it adds on or takes something from her credibility as his healer when her heart pushes against her chest uncomfortably at his pain. Isn't sure if she should call Harriet and hand him off to her, to someone whose hand isn't shaking. Instead she tells herself to buckle up and he is just some guy you share a ride with, you blundering idiot.
But when she applies a fresh batch of ointments on his arm every thirty three minutes as softly as it is possible, and wipes the sweat off his forehead and kneads the tautness of his shoulder, she also tells herself that someone else wouldn't have done this and this and this.
Well, it's true. Someone wouldn't have done all of these. And someone definitely wouldn't pour their mind into the case files and weasel out a massage that was proven to be effective on a muscle spasm patient twenty months ago. Someone wouldn't sit at an hour stretch and work on convulsions that may or may not be phantom nerves. They would not make a careful selection of ingredients they would need for the ointments. They wouldn't have started right then to prepare it.
It's late afternoon when he regains consciousness. Just after Harriet gets out of the room after her hourly visit. Pansy is busy muttering charms with one her wand and pressing pressure on certain points of his hand when he wakes up. His fingers twitch between hers. It takes her a moment to understand. When Pansy looks up, she finds him awake.
"Hey," he says softly, his eyes squinting to adjust the view. Pansy blinks in surprise before she reaches over to the table and picks up his glasses. She hesitates only a moment before leaning over his face, and putting it on. His eyes suddenly become more focused, clearer.
He smiles.
"How are you feeling?" she asks, straightening up. She feels a queer mix of feelings, partly exasperated, partly relieved, partly aware of the warm ache in her chest that his smile leaves. The world should never ever know that she almost smiled back.
"Pleasantly surprised," he replies as she takes her seat beside him. "What are you doing here?"
It really takes an effort now, not to smile at his bedraggled softness. Pansy manages though, and instead rolls her eyes.
"I meant about your hand."
"Oh?" He squints again, attempting to elevate his hands. "I forgot."
"Why am I not surprised?" She tentatively reaches over to hold his hand, as softly as she had done before, softer than she needs to be. Her palm encloses around his wrist, she feels the boisterous beat of his pulse, and lifts up his hand. He has an expression she can't quite pinpoint. "Here," she says. "You can't move them now, you're quite heavily drugged. If you weren't you'd probably feel the stings of a hundred angry hornets."
Pansy swipes her thumb over the veins of his wrist, before carefully placing his hand on the bed again.
"Oh," he says hoarsely. Then clears his throat, his cheeks turning red. "Nasty little minions, those Lobalugs. Never try to grab them before stupefying them."
"I wouldn't dream of it." She snorts. "I don't understand how anyone can possibly think it would be a good idea to shove their hand right into their fucking nest."
"I wasn't thinking!" He rolls his head back to his pillow. "I was - fuck, I don't know. I felt so useless sitting there and waiting when it - when the sounds went so goddamn loud and -" He closes his eyes. "I just followed instincts, I guess. That's what I do . Anyway, I honestly figured I had to do some reckless stunt to up my numbers." He snorts. "They can't inflate my training status if I score zero."
It's the first time he's mentioned this. She's long been wondering about just how good his performance is if he has to tour the St. Mungo's every other day. If at the end of the day his body seems at breaking point without any visible scars.
"I - uh, I didn't know."
"It's OK." He shrugs, leaning back on his pillow. "Whatever."
She can feel the heat in her cheeks blooming with discomfort. "Weasley came to see you twice" -she hears herself say animatedly "-while you were unconscious. Do you want me to call for him?"
"He's still here?"
"Yeah." Pansy gets up hurriedly. "Just wait. I - uh, I'm sending him."
Ron Weasley has something boisterous about him. It's not just his hair that screams loud but there is a raucousness even in his awkward moments. When they were young, this seemed like perpetual flustering. Now it has a more refined touch, like all of them, he grew into his body enough to own it. Now his boisterousness seems to hold a purpose in a room. Even with it's gawkiness. When Pansy finds him in a waiting room and lets him know about Potter, he lets out a relieved sigh, somehow awkwardly, and thanks her with a clumsy jerk of his hand that seems like a last minute decision to shake hers.
He withdraws the hand before she can react with anything but a terse smile, and proceeds to thank her again.
"It's just my job," she says.
He coughs and mentions that she shouldn't probably tell this to anyone. That it might be worse for Potter than the stings. She says she doubts it, but understands. He can go see his friend now.
"Don't mention it to Hermione as well," he adds. "I know you meet with her so - just don't."
She doesn't know how sensitive it is to mention either Draco or Granger in front of this guy, so she just nods.
When he goes to see Potter, she runs to another chamber and drenches her aching hand in cold water to loosen her stringent fingers. Healing is most intimate, she realizes as the icy water hits her pulsating hand, the cold biting enough to make her sneeze, mostly because it is physically draining. It creates a bond when you induce hurt from their pain. Her mind trails to the question if it happens with other hurts as well. Intangible, invisible ones.
She and Hermione Granger aren't actually friends, but she meets with her more than she ever would have guessed. But even if Weasley hadn't forbidden her, the topic wouldn't have been raised. At least not by her. Both the paisley schoolgirl and the dutiful healer in her mind agree on that. Talk about Potter as little as possible. They both fear if the flood gates open, the things she would confess would make everything a mess. All the compartmentalizing and denying. All the time she rolls her eyes at him and doesn't smile.
Pansy's social life is already at its breaking point, much to her mother's chagrin. But every once in a few months, Draco or Blaise pries her away from her lonely shell to have drinks, for old times sake.
New and surprising addition to the ritual was Hermione Granger, who was currently in a relationship with Draco. Gryffindor's golden girl was in shambles when she and Draco crossed paths in the ministry. And, maybe a small, infinitesimal apocalypse occurred, maybe stars were just aligning some special way they do once in a decade, but they fell in love the way people fall from rooftops.
Hermione had dark circles under her eyes when Draco first introduced them, formally, as his girlfriend. But still Pansy couldn't help but notice how absolutely ethereal they looked, Hermione and Draco. Like a supernova dancing around its axis. All careful movements and the crippling fear of absolute chaos if anything ever goes wrong.
But somehow it doesn't. Hermione always knows when Draco is close to fading, an aftereffect of years of repressed traumas from his father and the Dark Lord, along with the crippling shame of his own guilt stemming from a certain tower of their old school. Hurt found hurt, it seems, and there is a magical intensity in the way his hands flexes when he touches her. It warms Pansy's heart. It breaks it too.
They both smile at Draco's terrible attempts to break the ice. Even with his easy confidence, there is just something odd about their meetups. It makes her wonder if it's worth anything. The constant trial and error to cross some boundaries. If they ever cross on the other side she wonders if Granger will know what to do with her hands that are always anxious, always shaking.
The lantern in the room is lit dimly when she finally goes in for the checkup and hourly massage. It's shadows play across the walls of the mostly empty room. She hears the low scurrying of the house elves, sweeping the floor and emptying the contents of the bins.
Potter is awake. Sitting on the bed and squinting his eyes at the Daily Prophet. When he hears her come in, he looks up to flash her a smile.
"The drugs should be wearing off," Pansy tells him as she reaches his bed. "How's the pain?"
"Bearable."
She reaches over to pick up his hand and he winches. "Really?"
"Well, barely bearable."
"Have you finished the soup Peony brought?"
"Did so," he stops for a moment before his eyes lit again mischievously, " ma'am. "
"Potter, you have gone through enough venom to effectively kill a baby centaure, and right now you are under pain and a debilitating drug to knock out an elephant. This is not the time to flirt with me." She pauses. "Or anyone else for that matter."
"But when is the time to flirt with you?" He tilts his head. "I can make an appointment, you know, or a formal letter for some minutes of your - ouch! "
Pansy doesn't budge. She pushes her thumb to further open his eyes as she takes out her wand and mutters lumos. His pupils dilate as she places the wand closer to his eyes and watches the gold flecks flutter. She makes a point not to breathe at all, not with his face mere inches away from hers. His eyes are clear, sharp and green. She feels him taking a short breath as she tilts his face to make sure. Nothing. She takes a step away quickly, with a fist of air in her throat.
"Had to check," she mutters as she turns to her medicine cabinet. "If you were intoxicated or not."
He doesn't say anything for a while. But when he does, his voice sounds a little on edge as he says, stutters really, "I - God, Pansy. The first time we - you thought that - Is that what you think? I flirt with you when I'm high?"
She shuffles through her medicines, determined not to look at him. "You are very heavily drugged. We gave you -"
"Yes, I know. You said that already."
She ignores the stiffness in his voice. "So I wondered if -"
"I have a high tolerance for medication."
"I'm starting to suspect that." She hesitates for a moment. "I don't think you're high when you flirt with me. It's just a healer instinct, I guess. And the night we - well, you weren't flirting then. I was just worried."
A cough. No answer.
She finds what she was looking for. It's a small vial of valerian sap. She carefully puts a drop of it to the ointment she's making and begins to mix in silence.
He talks after what it seems like hours of frozen silence. His voice is softer now. "You know I've come here maybe seven - eight times this month… How come you're never here?"
The lotus roots she is chopping are degraded to tiniest granules at this point. She turns her head to find him, obviously, staring. "I was here. I work in this wing of the hospital."
He looks around, clearly thinking the obvious. "This was empty the whole day."
"Yes."
"You don't look after the patients?"
Pansy feels a glob of hot embarrassment rise in her throat. Her next words sound a little more defensive than she intended. "I help with making remedies, newer and fresher batches, and ointments. I'm not needed at the regular wards… I - I work alone. I prefer to work alone."
He makes a quiet hmph and nods. Pansy feels the same embarrassment again. This is like admitting that she wasn't invited to a party because she was too shabby. Or too unlikable. Something that didn't belong there, that ruined the scene. Admittedly some girls did act like this. Precious flowers of moral superiority, believing redemption only belongs to people who they think deserve it.
Surely the girl who tried to sell the Chosen One to the Dark Lord didn't deserve it.
It feels weird to think these things in his presence. She tries to push the thoughts aside as she goes over to his bed, takes his hand and starts massaging the junctures between his fingers, the tautness of the hypothenar muscles. He lets her do her work unbothered. When she looks up at him, he is watching her with a quiet smile. Pansy doesn't know why the Mungo's do not resort to muggle electronic light. Why do they have to light the soft, shadowy flames? Because the golden light of the lamp makes the gold flecks of his eyes light up. It's almost as if they're burning on their own. A soft burn. It matches the way he looks at her. It makes her look away.
It takes another hour of work for her to finish. It goes away mostly in silence, with time being distinctly dense, making the air tighter. She asks if the pain is worse, if something she does eases it or not, if she should stop. He says no to all of these. She smiles tightly as stands up. "Peony can do the rest. She'll be here all night. Call her if you need anything. Tell her to call me if anything happens."
"Pansy." He tries to move his hands, but they're still immobile. Did he want to shake hands? Hold hers again? "Thank you."
"It's alright."
"You'll come back tomorrow?"
"Yes." She picks up her bag, her whole body aches with tiredness. Still, she can appreciate the sight of him conscious and in less pain he was in a few hours ago. "Eight am tomorrow."
He gives her a smile. "I'll count the minutes."
So will she.
She meets with Draco and Hermione for Christmas Eve. She watches them being domestic and wonders what Potter's doing at the Weasley residence. She feels as if she should tell them about Harry Potter and what a massive tosser he is. What an endearing, reckless, fool. But every time she starts to talk, she feels something stuck to her throat, something solid and hard, like a piece of a poisoned apple. What is happening between her and Potter seems at once too irrelevant and important at the same time. She doesn't mention about his injury, doesn't mention about the fact that for the entire week, she spent more times talking to him than she did with anyone in a month. That he pries something out of her. Something lighter, more and more unlike herself. That they flirt and joke and she allows him to touch her hand while trying to ignore the longing intensity he has in his eyes. That it burns her throat. That it makes her want to kiss him and leave the country.
In the quiet of her home, in the midst of loud, boisterous people, Pansy wonders about the nature of time, sometimes. Why it stretches certain moments into forever, or constricts some to blinking seconds. Why her days seem to go so painstakingly slow, why, when she looks back, a week ago seems years away.
Why something she has done eons ago still haunts her mind like yesterday.
She feels like she's still the girl in the darkened great hall, prim and meanfaced, rotten and cowardly. She can still remember his voice, hissing and cold and demanding. She can recall the pitiful beating of her scared, small heart. Give me Harry Potter, he had said, and she wanted to do just that. So she screamed, a scared, piercing sound that swells into a cacophony and rings in her ear till now. In her mind her voice keeps getting distorted until she doesn't remember what it sounded like. Only hears the aching close-fisted beating of her heart.
Pansy runs away from that girl for as long as she can. But she can't go very far. She tells herself that she was young, and scared, and a coward and it's different now, and anyway, Potter doesn't seem to care about any of that. He doesn't seem to have that suspicion around the edges of his eyes when he looks at her. And she wouldn't have sold him out, not really. But nothing sticks.
Give me Harry Potter, the Dark Lord had ordered.
Take him. Take him. He's there! Someone grab him! she had screamed.