The thing about when you let someone in is this: there's no fixed point to where they would end up. It's like a muddy grave in rain, the unspoken corners of someone's life, and when you let them see one portion of it, it's almost like handing them a shovel. And if the person you're handing the shovel to is a tenacious sod like Harry Potter… well then.
She can't stop him asking about her job, every tiny detail of it. What color is her favourite? What type of tea does she drink, and with how much sugar? What is her middle name? Why does she work so much?
And she's a fool, a proper one with the red nose and top hat. She answers. She asks him questions in return. When he answers one, she finds branches stemming from them. What's his favourite color? Why does he not use protective equipment? Does he still have nightmares? Has he been practicing the muscle movements she showed him? Does he live alone? Why does he live alone?
She supposes she's holding a shovel as well. And that there are two graves.
And so one night he asks, finally, "So… where do you live?" And it sounds casual enough, because he always makes everything sound so casual. So utterly incidental, like she should have seen it coming. Like the laws of nature have been bidding them to come to this moment. But he knows. He looks out the window in his easy going easy nothing way, and Pansy almost rolls her eyes at his obvious coyness.
"Wesley Street. They have a few apartment complexes just near the beach," she answers.
He hmms. His eyes flick from the blurred lines of the world outside and her, just for a moment. And Pansy waits for him to ask more. Why, when, how.
He doesn't. And she gets it. The ball's in her court. He's letting her decide. To let him in or not. To show him her hiding place from the magical world. She can say no. She can say nothing more. Let this silence sink. Let it weigh heavy and cold.
It's raining hard in her mind. She hands him the shovel in the dark and tells him to dig right at the center.
Her stop comes. She stands up. He looks up at her.
And, well, she's damned anyway, so she might as well ask him, "Do you want to walk me home?"
He smiles. Pansy swears she has never seen anything more exultant.
Wesley Street is lit up by the glossy lights from the street lamps. Not magic, just current coursing through the tall burner, but somehow feels like it is. Pansy knows the street like the back of her palm. She can find her home in the dark, blindfolded and circled twice, but she's still counting the numbers at each detour. Still double checking the names of the department stores she has memorized. Beside her, Harry Potter walks like it is the most natural thing. Two wizards walking home from work Pansy wonders if any wizard ever did that. It's a silly thing. Of course they did. Even though floo and apparation are undoubtedly effective and time conserving, there is something intimate about this. Something of a togetherness. At one point his hand brushes against her. And, by god, she starts talking.
"Being around magic sometimes feels too much… baggage," she starts softly. From her peripheral vision, she can see him turning to watch her face, just for a moment, before looking ahead, at the same indistinguishable thing she is staring at.
She says, "I know they told us at school that every magic we do or is done around us leaves a trace. But I didn't really get what it meant then. After the war… I thought about what I did, what I used to believe in before and it just… broke something in me. I realized I was part of a family who served a blithering maniac. And, I am not trying to justify anything my father has done - but the dark lord… but Voldemort used all sorts of dark magic on us. On my father. He had blood rituals and unbreakable bonds… and a plethora of other things I would very much like to forget. He did that to make all of his followers loyal. I don't know if you've ever been to Azkaban but half of them are mad now, and it's not only the dementors. Not all of them wanted to be - didn't have the cruelty to be - death eaters, but the dark mark, once it's tattooed in, creates an obligation. Something deep in the bones. My father… I can't say that he was a good man, but he did things - horrifying things - I know it tore apart his soul. And… he was a - he - I don't know. He taught me how to play chess, how to tell if a wine is good and - then he became this - this madman I couldn't recognize."
She takes a deep breath, feels his eyes cutting into her jumbled brain. Her own eyes prick, but there are no tears there. And she figured she elucidated enough, more than she wanted to. But it feels so good. So embarrassingly good to repeat the things she said to herself so many times. His hand brushes against hers again, but this time she feels him enclosing his palms over hers. Warm against the chill of the night. She shivers inwardly.
"So at first it was being around in my house that was difficult, everywhere I looked was so drenched with what he did that I couldn't breathe. So I moved out. But then the entire magical world… it's all there. Anywhere I look I see someone I know, someone who knows me, and I feel ten again. Being around things he hadn't touched is the only way I can think clearly, or my lungs hurt less. I hadn't realized how magic affected my mind until I started walking among muggles... it's simpler with them." She lets out a shaky laugh. "I probably spilled more than I cared to… but I guess I just - fuck, I don't know. I would've forsaken the world altogether if - if anything I learned from school helped me navigate here. But - all I can do is stay here for some time, clear my head, and go back to that instrangient place."
She takes the last detour. A few blocks more and then her apartment. A few more moments to hold onto his hand. She turns to look at him, and he is already there, his eyes have an openness she hasn't been familiar with. It is darker in this place, and the only light that made anything visible was the poor muggle streetlamp, blinking with unsteady electricity. Pansy feels unsteady as well, and she wonders if he sees her as clearly as she fears.
Honestly, it's hard to lock his gaze, all steady and open, but Pansy isn't anything if not stubborn.
Then he smiles, awkwardly, as if he doesn't quite know how to go from here. As if the smile is an after-thought, or not thought-out at all. Pansy is quite scared that it will turn into a sympathetic crease on his lips, and she is already thinking of backing out, cancelling any further meetings, then fleeing the country, preferably.
But then he says, "I have a house too… on a muggle street, I mean." Pansy looks away, carefully letting out the relieved sigh.
"Really? Where?"
"In Surrey." He is smiling again. She doesn't know if it was a joke she should get.
"Where in Surrey?"
"Number four, Private Drive. I'll take you one day."
She has questions, so many questions. But they are already at the feet of her building, and asking about that would mean inviting him over, and she would have had to look at him in the sharp light of her apartment. Him in his muggle jeans and hoodie. Maybe then the sympathetic smile would finally make an appearance. Maybe he will look over at the dishes on the sink and her legs would finally give in. He probably would make himself at home, she thinks. It seems like his specialty. Like how he manages to be the only person to know her address when Draco and Blaise were pounding in her ears for a better part of a year without any result.
She thinks she could kiss him if he moves his lips even at the barest hint of that atrocious smile… and that would be no good. That would be downright humiliating. She wonders if he realized how the axis shifted in their dynamic just when she told him about the reason she stays in this muggle building. She wonders how much he cares.
"So," she says. taking a step away to her house, "this is it."
His eyes flicked between the towering height and her face. "Yeah. Er… yeah."
She would snort if she didn't think there was a chance she'd extend the invitation anyway. But she is walking on a minefield. Her knees buckle.
"Goodnight, then," is what she manages to get out.
"Goodnight." He hesitates for a moment, and then takes a step. To her. His smell and the ever-present warmth invading the sinews of her brain. She should go, to the other side of the door, to the other side of the world, but goddamn her knees, and her useless brain, and her hands.
She looks at him and already knows what's going to happen. She can see it like a moving picture. She can already taste him on her lips.
Harry Potter flicks his eyebrow, as if to ask, may I?
In answer she touches the corner of his hoodie, somewhere between her making and unmaking, he has taken another step. And she can touch his shirt, or if she wants, him.
The material is as soft as it looks. Worn out and warm, like its wearer. She knows it smells like him too. Mint and cigarettes. Magic and madness. Her hands go up to the collar and she pulls him in.
The kiss ensues softly, like an unspoken agreement, like an absentminded charm. Really what else is there, when she spewed her gut to him and he walked her home? She opens her mouth as she feels herself pushed against the door. Feels him make a soft sound from the back of his throat. He opens her up like it's the most natural thing, his hand warm on her jaw and he tilts her head. This is just like that night. This is nothing like that night. Her hands first clutch the sides of his hoodie, then his neck, her fingers quite preposterously in his hair. He has his one hand perched on her hips, his palm warm over the sliver of skin in between her jeans and her top. She inhales a shaky breath. Sweet Cercie.
"Pansy," he says her name when they break, but don't break apart. His hands still perched perniciously on her hips, his thumb even rubs a circle over her barely bare skin. She inhales sharply, smells the sweet, toxic cigarettes and shivers. "I understand," he says, kisses her just below her lips, "why you're here… that's why I am here too."
"Alright." She lets her fingers feel the smoothness of his hair before letting go. "OK."
He kisses her temple. She feels his shaky breath on her hair. "I'll see you."
"Yes, I -" She swallows the invitation. "I guess you will."
A week later, he pops the question. Or rather, answers it.
"I think you should see my house," he says suddenly, making Pansy almost drop her vial of blood. She had been brainstorming for the better part of the day, trying to create an antidote for a very specific poison which she had to first separate from the vial the mediwitch assigned her. It requires concentration and a very difficult non-verbal spell… and it certainly doesn't help that he decided to swagger in early morning in muggle jeans, declaring that this is his day off. At first he'd gasped in mock offense when Pansy accused him of pandering.
"It's strictly business, Parkinson," he said chastitingly. "I am very serious about my medical appointments."
Pansy rolled her eyes.
So kissing him was a brilliant idea. Because now her mind seems to want to upgrade to everything else. Like a flood gate she has been screwing shut has finally exploded. She picks at her brain to get rid of the thoughts that involve him and her and absolutely nothing else.
It didn't help that he was probably thinking the same thing as well.
Or at least his hands were.
Harry Potter is handsy. In a borderline invasive way. His fingertips perniciously touch hers when she guides his palms to a steady movement. She tries to ignore his careful touch, like a butterfly's flutter against the wind. Something so small and discreet. But then he upgrades as well. He spontaneously picks off an eyelash from her cheek when she instructs him to do a fine movement. His hands feel warm and soft and inviting when she tells him to pick up the quill and write something but instead he grabs her wrist, writes Pansy on the back of her palm.
Pansy would never have guessed she is the type of girl who can get shiverings from a boy touching her hands. And yet. Maybe it's been too long without an actual human contact, maybe she's always been this way and something about this pesky Gryffindor just made her hyper aware of herself. She feels the beads of sweat gathering below her hairline, she can almost hear her heart tick like an agitated clock. She takes a quick breath when he bends down to place a chaste kiss on her index. He looks up, smiling, and obviously notices her state.
His lips are pale pink and she wondered how they'd look if she kissed him, spontaneously, then, and if he would shiver if she took his lower lip between her teeth. If his heart was drumming too loud as well.
She let her hand rest at the base of his neck. He stiffened for a moment, before sliding closer. The couch they were sitting on is ancient and too small. It even had some historical significance, though she couldn't really remember it then. She moved her thumb up and found the taut muscle below his jaw, finding the pulsepoint she was looking for. An involuntary sigh left her lips as she looked back at him.
Green tumultuous eyes.
"Your heartbeat is unsteady."
He chuckled, she feels his laugh vibrate her thumb. "Don't I know."
She pursed her lips. "I'm beginning to suspect your primary concern was not your hand."
"It was… maybe the second one."
"What was the first one?"
He lifted his hand to brush his knuckles against her cheek. "Do you need to ask?"
And then they were kissing.
And god it took her a year away. He kissed her like he needed to. It was cats and dogs in her head, and there were two graves when she was pushed against the couch because it wasn't just lips anymore. It wasn't a chaste kiss goodbye. His hands roamed over her, her shoulder her hands her stomach and each part he touched left a flicker of flame. He pulled away from her just for a second to give a dopey smile and she melted . Almost. She stretched her legs and let him in further, let him press his weight on top of her when she pushed her hand beneath his shirt, his breath, smoke and mint. His body is all bones, taut muscles stretched over the skeleton. He's skinnier. He was kissing her jaw and leaving a trail of smoke. A quiet gasp teared through her throat just when his hands skimmed the inside of her robe. She took a sharp breath before looking up.
No one was there, but it was as if the white of her room was blinking at her.
He sensed the glitch and looked up. His specs were titled on his nose. His hair was messed up and so so pretty.
"All good?"
Too much.
"No." She scooted. He gets up, she realized somewhere along she was undoing the buttons on his shirts. A spark erupted on her cheeks as she looked at his somewhat bare chest. When he noticed this and smirked, she almost burst into flames.
"Get out now." She huffed softly, her cheeks blistering. "I have work to do."
He looked slightly mortified. "Did I do something wrong?"
She snorted almost. "God, no. You did - did -" More than good. She could hardly breathe. "It's just that I have work to do."
"So… can I stay?"
She was fixing her robe. "I'll just be working. It's dull work."
"Not dull to me. I'd like to stay." He pulled his legs to himself and sat almost primly. "If you don't mind."
She didn't. So he stayed. And after a few hours he was sprawled on the same couch, making smoke rings with his wands when Pansy ordered him not to smoke.
"I think you should see my house," he says suddenly.
Pansy almost drops the vial. "What?"
"My house," he says again as she turns, looking expantly at her as if that clarified it. "The muggle one. You should see it."
"Why?"
"Oh why not?" He tilts his head. Pansy struggles with the urge to roll her eyes.
"That's not a very good reason," she replies, turning back to her vial. She takes a deep breath and casts her charm for the thousandth time. The blood turns a clear pink shade. She sighed in relief.
"That looks vaguely like what she said," he chips in, suddenly beside her. If she weren't familiar with his creeping habit at the start of the day she is now. She doesn't flinch.
"That is exactly like what she said, thank you very much."
He smiles at her. "So what about it?"
Two graves. She's already shown him hers.
"Alright."
So. After her shift when she is giving instructions to Peony, he is leaning against the door and waiting for her. Peony has that quiet happy look in her and she squeaks when Harry sends her a wink as goodnight. He holds Pansy's hand. She returns the pressure.
They apparate.The sudden crisp air unnerves her for a moment. It takes her a second to comprehend that they are standing in front of a very ordinary, very bland house. Middle-class, well-off people. She blinks. She never imagined Harry Potter living anywhere in the muggle world, but if she had, it wouldn't be in a house like this. This looked homely, a house for a family. It was unlit, even though it was apparent that someone did live there, if only occasionally. The garden was almost made up, only upon following Harry to the door that she noticed uneven spikes on the grasses.
He turns to her before opening the door, with a key, and she raises her eyebrows at him in question, he smiles. "This was the house I grew up in… Well, before Hogwarts at least."
They'd heard stories about this house, of course. When they were all fresh off the boat to Hogwarts and some kid spilled out that Harry Potter is in our class . They all discussed where he had been all these years, some said he was living with Dumbledore, some said he was adopted by a wealthy family, some branched descendants of the Romanovs. Someone ingenious said that he was actually living with centaurs and learning their secret magic. But someone had said that he lived with his mom's side of people. An aunt. In a muggle house.
Eleven year old Pansy Parkinson would never have believed that one day she'd cross the threshold of the said house, holding his hand no less.
He still hasn't let go. Even though there is no reason to excuse it.
She doesn't remind him either.
"So-" She looks around at the neighbouring houses - all identical - as he fumbles with the keys. "Sentimental value."
"Not at first. Initially I bought it to piss off my uncle." A soft click is heard, and he slides the door open. They step in, the room is dark.
The house feels… odd as she steps in. It feels like being pulled gently from something innocuous, like maybe the hand of a friend, pulling her away to save her from an oncoming snowball. There is a shift in the atmosphere, almost like being apparated. Almost, not quite. There is no uncomfortable pull low in her stomach. In fact, it isn't uncomfortable at all. It's… nice. She hears the click of the switch as Harry turns on the light.
It is a living room. Neat and homely, nothing out of place… nothing to account for how she felt.
Except….
"It's magic." The smile comes involuntarily, precariously, as she turns to him. He is already looking at her, he had an expression she can't decipher.
"Yeah."
"Did you put a ward on?" She looks around. The walls are draped in beige wallpaper. There is a couch, a rocking chair beside the fireplace, and a grandfather clock. It shows her the time was just shy of nine o'clock. The night has just started.
"Not me," he says. She purses her lips, her hands twitched at her side, wanting to touch something in the room, to see if the sensation can get better. She isn't an expert, but she can tell that she has never felt such a gentle, calming presence. Like the ghost of a hand.
"Go on," he says, she still didn't know what to make of his voice. "Look around."
She swallows the hesitance lodged in her throat, and walks to the middle of the room. "Is this auror stuff?" She tries to sound nonchalant, and fails miserably. "Can you teach me?" She touches the arm of the Lawson couch. Nothing. Moving further, on the side of the room; the clock - nothing. The pictures on the mantelpiece - three in total. A red haired woman, beautiful and smiling, and a man who looked very much like him. Her hands shook a little as she held the frames, his mum and dad. Dancing in a park. Laughing in a pub surrounded by friends. And the one in the middle frame is with him, she was sure. Chubby cheeks and excited hands. No scar. No scars yet. She feels a slight jolt when she touches that one. Almost in an instinct she let it go, scared to break it. It was only for a moment but the sensation was right.
She looks back at him. He is still standing at the corner, leaning against the wall now, his hands in his jeans pocket. She purses her lips and turned south, closer to the wall, and touched it.
The response is instant.
The friendly hand doesn't just feel like a ghostly presence anymore. It is strong and tangible, stroking her cheeks. She gulps, letting go again. Her eyes prickls as she blinks. She feels like the cracks on the shell of a hard boiled egg. She takes another step back. In a moment he is beside her, holding her shoulders.
His voice is soft. "Pans? Are you alright? I didn't think you'd-"
"I'm good." She is good… she thinks. She isn't sure how she feels, but if she has to pick an adjective she wouldn't pick anything negative. Maybe nothing positive either. She fesls unmistakably ambiguous, the gray line between ecstatic and sombre, like one feels at the start of the last song in a concert.
"You said you didn't do this."
"Yeah."
"Then-?"
"It was my mom."
"Oh." She lets him steer her to the kitchen, she stands at the doorway as he turns on the lights, shuffles the chairs beside a small dining table, then sits on one of the chairs when he calls her back to reality.
Pansy stares in casual appreciation at how normal it all looked. Harry Potter turning on a muggle stove to make her tea. He looks nice, Pansy thinks, with his jeans and plaid shirt. He has nice shoulders, not muscular, really, but something she can imagine leaning her head against. Something camouflage is about him in this kitchen. A place hidden from normal life. He mixes with the house. He seems to belong there.
But , Pansy thinks, He doesn't . He is Harry Potter, the most famous wizard in the world. He cheated death. Twice. He defeated the Dark Lord before he turned eighteen. And… what was she doing there? He ought to have been doing extraordinary things. Or doing normal things, maybe, with different people. His friends like Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger who were almost equally famous and eventful. He isn't supposed to make tea for her. Pansy Parkinson, the surname like a blot of ink in her life. Like a dry fist or air in her throat. She doesn't belong there, in his muggle kitchen.
Nothing makes sense to her now. It's all conjuncture. All blurred words. All contrarian words.
But when he sits in front of her with a steaming mug of tea, her words are clear despite herself. "So," she says, "your mum."
He stays silent for a moment, the steam from the mug rise like a fawx mask before him. "Yeah," he says, his voice calm enough but she knows he is not.
"She did this for you." There is no doubt about that, even if she doesn't fully understand what the ward was supposed to do… it was, before all things, distinctly maternal.
"She did."
Pansy waits a moment, then two. "Why did you bring me here?"
His face contorts in distaste as he picks on his nail beds. She sees now that they are already raw and red, not that it stops him. Pansy hesitates a moment before placing her hand on his, stopping his movements. His fingers flexes beneath hers as she pulls out her wand and then moves them in small circles over the skin. He lets her fix the damaged skin until it is perfect. Then he starts talking.
It was his mother. It was her last bit of magic. It happened because she was brave, because she stepped before the most dangerous wizard of all time and shielded him from Voldemort. Because she loved him. So much that when she died, it tore apart from her to protect him. Her blood became his shelter.
Pansy feels like a fish out of the water, like a leaf in a storm, out of proportion. She can't help the sharp ache in her chest as she looks at him. It makes sense, then, why the ward feels so comforting, like a warm hug. Like someplace you know is yours. It occurs to her then that he'd never hugged his mother, that this is probably the only visceral way he can feel her hands and her warmth and her love.
Pansy swallows the lump in her throat.
"Your mum was a powerful witch," she hears herself say. It isn't something she wants to say. She wants to say that she's sorry, for being so ignorant, for never thinking just how he survived, for being… the way she was.
"I can feel her," she says again when he doesn't reply. But he is holding her hand by then, carefully flexing his fingers around her so they are neatly nestled between hers. Pansy's voice catches in her throat when he rubs a small circle on her thumb with his.
"I can feel her - strength. It must've been hard, she must've been so brave. Magics like these - I've read quite a lot about blood curses, how they're so intimate. You can't put them on just anyone, it has to be someone you have a strong hatred towards… I think blood wards are the same. You can't do it for everyone. She must have been concentrating all her love on this. I can feel her love, it's - it's like-" She didn't know - like what? She just knew that it made her think of the time she had that snowball fight with Draco, and she had fallen, scraping her knee. Her mother knelt beside her, kissed her on the wound, then picked her up. Perched on her mother's hips, she was crying still. That's what this magic made her feel. It felt standing in front of her mirror and hyperventilating during the last days of the war.
The ward feels like a haunted house, built in her shape. It feels like a place you go to feed your lonely. You know it's there, you know it's there to hold you when you cry.
"It's comforting. I understand why you come here. I would too." Her voice is low now, intimate by their own volition. She doesn't know why she said that, of course he already knew all of these.
"She would be happy that you're here," she says. Pansy wants to run away, she wants to take his face in her hands and make him look at her and kiss him on his forehead.
Her hands stays where they were, without explanation.
"I knew you'd understand," he says softly after a moment. "I thought - since you're so aware of magic you must feel it. I didn't know what I felt about this house before, they were never good to me. But there was always this - shift in the air when I'd come from Hogwarts. I didn't realize what it was at first, I'd forget what it was a day after. But in my fifth year Dumbledore finally came clean about why he put me here. And I guess I realized then that the connection I had here was all her."
"I get it," she says. "I'd like to know more if you don't mind."
"I don't mind."
So they dig. Two reckless people. Two graves.
They are still holding hands when they walk out of the house. It's almost morning, the pale purple sky of dawn unmasks them. He asks her if she would like to have breakfast. She says she would like that very much, hesitating only for a blink before kissing the warm smile pulling at his lips.