Pansy wonders if it's an universal feeling, that only when you envision losing something is when you realize that you love them. The first time she realized that she liked her face, even with her catastrophic nose, that she found something comforting about it, she saw someone throwing lye at her, or being trapped in a burning elevator, the corrosive melting off her skin. She'd wake up sweating, and trying to make a mental preparation for how she would live if it ever happened.
It hadn't.
But it could, right?
It's just sensible to have information ready on her mind. The remedies, the healing movement of the wand, the countercurses if the acid was magically tampered. She just accustomed herself, mentally, to a world where her face was gone, and how she'd walk in it.
Because what if you love what you love, and you wrap yourself so tightly around that thing that the day it vanishes you just coil in on yourself, alone, empty and pathetic.
So here it goes: She loves him. Like crazy. Like wildfire. Like something she should be afraid of. It burns her throat, love melts her insides until she doesn't have anything solid to weigh her down. Until she's just a bundle of nerves and tissues and blood. And heart. Heart, because that's where these things happen, right? Metaphorically, of course. Because Pansy knows it's your brain that sends signals to your other important organs. Brain decides flight or flight at the threat of some danger and your heart rate increases, your pupils dilate, blood is pumped faster, instinctivity kicks in, you do something very very daring or very very stupid. Or both. Both.
She looks at Harry Potter and her brain cannot decide whether to fight or flight. What is there to fight for? Everything. She can fight for the way his eyes light up when he sees her. Chaos and magic and him him him. She can go feral for his soft protectiveness that she was so rarely shown.
So it's not her fault that she can't help it. She wants him. The Chosen One. The sacrificial lamb, the relentless hero, the lovely boy. Him with his tired eyes and bright smile, with his ridiculous bravery and recklessness and the terror it caused him. It cuts something open in her, wanting him, like cutting out a tumor in one's body, she feels raw and vulnerable and relieved . She feels as though she is pouring all her inhibitions into the hollow of his chest, and she is free. Well, mostly. There's still the terrible itch that all the best times of her life have been lost to a phantom, and all she has left that is bearable and even good is only starting to end. But if the Boy Who Lived can admire her and what's left of the body she inhabits, things just get a tidy bit better. She takes care of him, she gives him massages to rid his joints of stiffness when he comes back from his training, in the quiet of her home. She brews potions to sooth his terrible shiverings, the aftereffects of using dark curses, the result of years and years of nightmares.
Some think trauma makes people strong. Pansy does not.
He takes her out to cafes and movie theaters and parks in the muggle world. Teaches her names of the streets and the detours they have, where they lead. They go on dates the muggle way and hold hands in public and Pansy feels restless. Every moment seems as though something taken out of a cliche rom com. Every moment she feels as though she's holding an organic daisy. Freshly picked for her. She crushes the flower a bit, and the smell stirs her soul, and it also reminds her that it won't last much long. That every time she feels the petals move in her palm they're decaying. That the smell will go soon, and rot will set in. Pansy doesn't want to be the one clutching the dead flower. Doesn't want to see that burn in his eyes to burn out.
Pansy can't help that she's this way, that she's always been like this. Wondering when a good thing is going to end. Looking for dead ends in every route he takes her. Trying to find ways to live without him when she will have to live without him.
He tells her stories about his childhood of which he should absolutely have no recollection of. Pansy is afraid to ask just how time he has devoted to this.
She looks at Harry Potter and she thinks she should know what to run away from. There should be something. If there weren't then she wouldn't have had to look away from him in hallways filled with other people. She wants to love him out in the open, hold his hand and his heart for the world to see. But then she breaks out of her oplacent, idiotic daydream and looks around her. She is in her secret chamber, the part of the Mungo's very few tread. She sees discrepancies. She feels restless.
She tries to list the things she'd do when he finally decides that this is it, she's not good for him, that the newspapers are right. She is only trying to stave off her bad reputation. That they are from other parts of life, their futures are already set and it's too foolish to think otherwise. And maybe he'll realize that he really never could forgive her for the time she tried to sell his skin to save hers.
Perhaps she'll go to Greece, she makes a note of it to herself when Harriet bids her farewell. She has taken a position as head supervisor at one of the most prestigious institutions that specializes in treating aftereffects of dark curses.
"I'm happy for you," Harriet tells her. "Really. You've been lonely for enough time. He's a nice boy."
Pansy blushes. She blushes a lot these days. "Almost too nice."
"No such thing as that."
In a rare gesture of openness, Pansy touches her hand. "I will miss you."
Harriet smiles, returning the pressure. "And I you, you've been a great help. You're a good healer, Parkinson. And if you ever feel that this place isn't giving you enough opportunity, you can always call on me. This place… it's stagnant. Doesn't recognize change. Perhaps in Greece…"
"Of course." Pansy nods, blushing still. "I'll let you know."
She had heard from Harriet before that a team there had been trying to concoct new potions that could prevent the two unforgivables. That's a bold step, but Pansy wants to be there if something this revolutionary happens. She had been meaning to go for quite some time and something was always holding her off. Her mother, her own crippling sense of doubt... She doesn't want to name Harry in the list of things preventing her from doing anything. Because he only makes her feel reckless, uninhibited. She knows if she tells him what she wants to do, he'd jump off the wagon and send her application himself. He trusts her, she learned that. Not just in her ability as a healer, but her ability to actually do something that would matter.
It melts her useless heart and makes her love him more.She was already walking on a minefield. She could feel the shift of earth beneath her feet, something that wasn't supposed to be there, quivering and very much alive.
She picks on the corner of the note she's holding, creasing the edges, thinking of shredding it, or keeping it safely hidden. Pansy purses her lips. She should definitely shred it. Even though it wouldn't matter, the message was already burned in her mind. It contains, in his messy scrawl -
Free tonight? Eight o'clock? My place?
His hands on her hair as she moved on top of him, her hands circling his neck. He had that half-crazed, half-desperate look in his eyes. He'd buried his face in the crook of her neck at the last moment, and just before reaching the high, his teeth grazed the soft skin on her neck. She'd held on to him tighter with a choking sob.
Pansy plays with her quil, unsure, her mind making and unmaking itself with each twirl of the pen. She eyes the shaky scrawl at the last question mark, wondering if it's because he had doubt at the last moment, wondering if he didn't want to send this at all.
Useless thoughts , she scolds herself. It's here, isn't it? She takes a deep breath. This is all so unimportant. She can sleep with him if she wants to, she's an adult for fuck's sake. She can have a relationship with him. Or she can tell him to take his messy, broken, beautiful mind some elsewhere and bother someone else's sanity. She can do either of them. It's not something she should worry about. She has a choice in the matter. She can say no. She can say, it's going too fast, my heart races too unnaturally when I see you. Come into my house. Stay away. Hold me close. Let me breathe.
She just doesn't want to.
She also doesn't want to love him too much too soon. She doesn't want to seem clingy, or too needy, or vulnerable.
He'd taken a moment before loosening the grip and leaning back to look at her, almost dopey. She felt herself blush, the shade an unnatural thing in her face. He gently pushed her hair out of her forehead, stuck with sweat, before placing a chaste kiss on her temple.
Free tonight? Eight o'clock? My place?
Pansy writes, Yes, yes and yes.
Pansy sits behind him, draped only in her nightdress. The man in front of her is someone she's only starting to know. Every day they spend together and Pansy sees herself dropping her eggs in his bags, she finds her own bag weighted with unwarranted, unchecked information. Speaking of which, as she gently places her hand on his bare back to relax him, she realizes that she has learned three things about him today.
He likes his coffee sweetened beyond reason.
He likes muggle amusement parks.
He craves physical affirmation above all.
Of course he does , she thinks. Harry lets her put a relaxing charm on him, moves to the center of the bed when she leads him. She sits behind him, propped up on her pillow to have better access and starts massaging the taut skin of back, working her way up to his scalp. Then down to his chest. He lets out a shaky breath when she touches one of his acupuncture spots. He doesn't talk, but Pansy knows it's working.
Of course he has nightmares. But is it really past? Here he is, writhing in her bed, struggling to get up, to stop watching, clogged in the past, his own horror. It is very much present. Even Pansy can feel it by touching him. He is not relaxed, he has his hands stretched. His fingers flex with spasms and Pansy knows he is wondering where his wand is. He wonders if he would need it right then, if he should flee.
Pansy wonders if he should flee. If by staying with her, one of the elements of the opposite side of the war, he is bringing fresher nightmares to himself.
"Your wand is on the bedside table," she says, unsure of how else to calm him. "But you won't need it. It's safe now. He's gone. You're actually the reason that he's gone."
She has his shoulder blades in her hands, softly kneading the taut skin with her practiced hands. He flexes his shoulders a little to adjust, then leans back in her body. The next words he says make a tight knot in her chest. The room is suddenly too small, the world is suddenly constricted to its minimum capacity.
"I didn't mind it." His voice quivers. Pansy grips him a little tighter than she'd intended to.
"I understand," she says.
"I don't - fuck, I didn't want to be the saviour… But if I had to, I wouldn't have said no."
"I understand."
"It's just that -" He rolls his head to look at her. "No one ever asked me. You know? No one asked me if I was up for slaughter. They just - they just decided that I was. And I just… did what everyone wanted. I'm not a real person. I'm not - not who everyone thinks I am."
His body shakes and for a moment Pansy thinks he is going to cry, but he steels himself a little before he pulls himself down to rest his head on her lap. He takes her arms and wraps himself around them. Pansy bends down to kiss his forehead.
"Do you want to tell me about this?" She whispers. "All this?"
He nods, burying his face in her palms. "I'm not supposed to be here, Pansy. I wasn't supposed to survive him."
"What do you mean?"
He tells her. It cuts something in the middle of her. She sees this man, a wonderful, brilliant man who is fighting long dead monsters. She hears about the prophecy and sees a child inside him, still scared, still angry, bitter, with nothing to aim this wretched bitterness at. Albus Dumbledore is dead, Severus Snape is dead, Tom Riddle is dead - where can he put the blame? What can he do with the prying noise in his head that chants this wasn't supposed to have happened? He was supposed to have a father and mother and a godfather. He wasn't supposed to have a muggle house, the one he could hate. The one he now has an indecipherable connection with. A house made of matchsticks and invisible sparks where he lived like an unwanted oddity in a cupboard under the stairs. He wasn't supposed to roam there every other day just so he could feel his mother.
Pansy doesn't know the answers. She doesn't have anything to say. She puts her arm around his sweaty, shivering body and tells him about their first day at school, that she thought he was cute, that he did look like he belonged in that place, and no one could take that away from him. His place in this world is his own. She tells him about cosmic miracles. About stardust. Celestial particles floating in space since the dawn of time. Still can be seen. It's inside us too, ashes from burnt out stars creating elements for our body. She tells him that every life in this world is a cosmic miracle. Or a wondrous mistake. A thousand mistakes had to happen exactly the right way for them two people to be there. And maybe it means nothing. Maybe it means everything.
She looks him in the eye and says, "I wish you didn't have to go through it. But Harry, your life never belonged to a prophecy."
He lifts his hand to rest on her cheek. They are lying entirely entwined. She rests her head on his other hand as he brushes off her tears, his own eyes glistening. "God, I want to believe you."
"Someday you will."
The first time she sees his bare body, meaning, really sees him, without the rush of blood in her ears, without the thumping beat of his heart as loud as hers, but in silence, the kind that you only share with a few people, that she realized how many scars there were. He has his back to her as she smears soap over his skin in the giant tub in his house. The shower room is like the rest of the Grimmauld Place, large and shadowy gray, almost foreboding, looking like something out of a gothic picture book. But he's there, and the water coming from the tap is scented and warm, so it seems almost comfortable. She has him between her legs, her thighs pressing on his hips. With them both naked and the soft light of the bulb, the things on her mind were supposed to be pure carnal. But she ends up peeling open another layer of his life. She sees a jagged scar on his back and he tells her it's from a fall from his broomstick at training. She doesn't say anything. Her hand rinses off the soap. Before they both know, she's inspecting the rest of his body, and he's letting her.
He has too many scars. The lighting bolt was quintessential, it is after all the first thing people even see, the first thing she saw. But there are others, more outrageous ones, on the back of his hand, the ugly scrawl of I must not tell lies , on his chest, when Voldemort cursed him the second time, on his stomach, the back of his thigh, the hollow of his shoulder blade. It's so unfair, they're not even thirty. An anger bubble in her throat, like bile, like corrosive. He recognizes it in her face, and holds her, warm hands capturing her face, fingers digging into her wet hair.
"It's alright."
She rolls her eyes. "You Gryffindors always have more brawn than brain. It's not alright. It never was."
His thumb makes small circles along her scalp. "We do, don't we?"
"It's infuriating."
"I thought you liked it."
A retort comes to her mind, an egregious lie, but it's shoved back as soon as it arrives with the violent rush of adoration she feels. She takes his face in her hands and kisses him and kisses him.
"Harry - you are unreasonably strong." She breaths. "And good. You are so good. So so good."
He has the same desperate look on his face, as if he's afraid she would vanish, so she moves up on his lap, the water around them rippling, and presses her body against him to let him know she's real. And his. She leans in so there's barely an idea of a gap between their faces.
"I know he asked you for things no one should ever ask that from a boy, and I know that even though you should not, you have already forgiven him. And, Harry, I don't think you understand how - how strong you have to be able to do that. Those newspapers and victory marches don't know a thing about you. Yes, you're the Chosen One, but that's not the first truth anyone should ever say about you. You are brave and kind and good and have such a big heart that I think I -" her voice catches up in her throat, and she swallows the rest of the sentence. I love you, she wanted to say. She should say. But instead, she kisses him again.
"Dumbledore might have calculated the course of your life. But you made yourself strong and kind. He had nothing to do with it."
He nods, even though she can say he doesn't believe her. Not entirely. But she sees softness around his eyes, in the almost bashful smile he offers her. She can tell he wants to believe.
That's enough for now.
It isn't as if every part of their relationship is laced with tragedy, with them unrolling newer scars. It's almost always comforting, even fun. Like when she was trying to read and he was braiding her hair, and he asked how come she was interested in sleep paralysis.
"I mean, I get that they teach some stuff at Mungo's," he said, twirling her hair, "but the thing you did that night… I've been to healers, Pans, and this was new stuff. This was top-notch, high quality cocaine."
"I swear I can hear Blaise Zabini speaking through you."
He chuckled. "Shut up. You did something new, didn't you? On me?"
She hmmed, turning a page of the book. She felt him lift his hand from her head and softly pressing on her shoulders, one of his hand slipped beneath the shirt (his) she was wearing and started kneading the muscles of her back. She hummed again, softer.
"I was… uhm, interested in dreams and - oh, paralysis for some time."
"I guessed." His voice was thicker, it seemed. She knew that tone. She leaned against him. "Why this though?"
"Uh well, Draco had them too. I helped him with some of it."
His hands stopped. When Pansy tilted her head inquisitively, she saw his eyes going wide.
"Not… like that, you big moron!" She laughed. "I - platonically helped him."
She couldn't help the breathy chuckle when he sighed in relief, for fuck's self. She couldn't help taunting him a little either. She leaned further in. His hands, unmoved, still under her (his) shirt, making her shiver.
"But. We did have sex at some point in our lives. Copious amounts of it, if you were wondering."
He made a face. "I was wondering. And now I'm picturing. Thanks."
"You're welcome. Just letting you know. We were so young. It was like experimenting on foreign territory. We -"
" Pansy -"
"We lost our virginity to each other."
"Ugh."
She laughed, straightening up and turning back to the book.
"Well…" he said with restraint expect.
"What?"
"Come on."
" What ?"
"You already came this far. Finish what you were saying!"
She narrowed her eyes at him. "I finished what I was saying. Draco and I -"
"Ugh. Not again!"
"Then what?"
"Was he -" He made a face like someone who had to swallow bogey flavored beans. "Good?"
Pansy smirked. "He was… a fast learner."
His face contorted hilariously. "Was he better?"
"That is a ridiculous question, Potter."
"You're avoiding it!"
"No. I'm questioning your question's merit."
"It's a normal question. As your boyfriend, it's a perfectly normal concern."
She tried not to smile affectionately at the word boyfriend. It was still new.
"Was Ginny Weasley good? Better?"
He made another face.
She laughed. "Right. There's your answer."
Pansy turned to her book, slightly aware of his disgruntled huff. Not before long, his hands started moving, downward. Her breath hitched embarrassingly when one of his hands ghosted over her breasts.
His voice was definitely thicker, filled with some fire that never failed to blister her.
"Fast learner, huh?"
She shivered when his finger moved to undo the first button. "Well, uhm, he did his best."
"His best ?"
The second one.
"Just like Ginny Weasley -"
"Forget Ginny Weasley. I'm much more interested in this girl Parkinson right now."
The fourth one.
"Well, I'm - well - very flattered, Potter, but my point -"
"The one who keeps me up at night."
She stilled. "I thought I helped you sleep."
"That too. You do everything, you know."
"That's good or -"
"Good. It's the best thing." All buttons undone. She tossed the book before tossing off the shirt and facing him.
Fight or flight?
Harry Potter's insanely kissable lips lifted in his signature smile.
She would fight another day. Just for that smile.
Even with her shirt off and the stiff air of the room making her shiver, she felt she was going to be far more naked when she said, "Draco… whatever he was - I don't think about him when I'm with you. Not even for a moment."
He touched her cheek. "I don't think about anything else when I'm with you."