Disclaimer: Parvati Patil and Co are characters of the Harry Potter Universe, Properties of JK Rowling.

Summary: Lavender Brown is dead, and the investigation goes to a box in the basement marked X, later to be glossed over by Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. But for now, Parvati Patil is facing her greatest challenge: Horace Slughorn, ex horrible boss.

10. Kimmy Haley and the disappearing father act

When Cho left to say her goodbyes to her daughter I was left alone with the Slug. Well dressed in a tweed checkered suit, manicured and unassailably proper, he looked in good health as he pointedly stared at his tea, as though the leaves were speaking to him. I found it amusing to be on the inquisitional end of the conversation as I stared at him across my desk with mixed feelings of revulsion, fear and respect. Slughorn's suit looked was impeccable in its style, not too flamboyant, tempered and intellectual, never shabby. His haughty nose refused to dip even as his eyes drooped below, in its own way refusing to meet my glance.

Tick- tock- tick- tick, my unnatural clock chimes the most unnerving rhythms. It's something of an invention of mine to keep people from becoming too comfortable when I wish them to hurry on with their business. The clock senses my mood of impatience. I see it growing on the Slug as he finally lets out a sigh.

"No," he says, finally, "despite what you may have concluded, Cho is not being entirely irrational."

"I was worried for a moment that you were becoming ... ", (as delusional from boredom as our former Queen of Ravenclaw), "sentimental."

"Don't patronize me, Girl," Slug snaps, and allows me a small victory of irritating him. "You may not have noticed, but someone's tampered with Miss Chang's memories. It's her singular will and excellence of her mind that at least allowed her to preserve the sense that something was wrong with what she recollected."

Memory charms were not quite well regulated. In the old days, Magic was rarely regulated beyond the taboo of the unspeakable curses. Ancient wizards enjoyed freedom beyond anything imaginable by present day descendants. Great Merlin was reknown for twisting the history of nations, putting sovereigns into endless sleep, tampering with the lifeblood of civilizations. Old great ones fought death, controlled time and rained disease down on whole cities. Come to think of it, You-Know-Who was paltry in comparison to some evils Merlin let pass. But Memory, memory charms were barely regulated even now.

There's a magical theory about Karma. No one's quite proven it, but Sybil believes that Karma is the great equalizer. Sybil once told me that divination and destiny all teetered on the ultimate quid-pro-quo of life. If destiny befalls someone with great injustice, then there is something to eventually even it out, and that one shouldn't push their luck too far. For some magics, Karma acted less, while in other instances Karma was as irritable as a girl in her period. Like all theories from Sybil that ended up in the waste bin, she never got around to complete her magnum opus of cataloguing magical success and failure rates based on 'Karma', since she could never prove its existence. But she did tell me that she believed Memory charms were one of the most fickle. Look at Gillderoy Lockheart. There are no Great memory charm practitioners. Mostly because memory charms eventually backfire with a vengeance.

"Girl," Slughorn snaps his finger in my face, irritably. "I was saying that someone's tampered with Miss Chang's memory."

"Mrs Haley, Professor," I correct him irritably. He returns a knowing sneer, as though he supposes that my correction stems from my state of remaining single. "Besides, how would you know this?"

"I'm particularly adept in memory charms, Girl," he replies. I wait patiently but he refuses to supply substance. He maintains this smug condescending smile that makes me want to punch him.

"There were irregularities in her memories retrieved to a Pensieve?" I ask, dryly. I am a professor of Charms, you know. "Share."

Slughorn reluctantly draws the gossamer strands of memory with his wand, hesitantly wavering it before me.

"You have to have a repository, Girl."

"Don't patronize me, Professor," I push forward a rather large Quaffle sized crystal ball. It's my prized possession.

"I see you've been somewhat successful in creating a crystalline repository," he scowls but his eyes betray interest.

It hasn't been able to predict the future, like I hoped, but at least it shows clear quality image that a Pensieve would have done while soaking your hair in water which could have been anywhere. Crystal balls were cleaner, prettier, and kept your hair from being messed up.

I watch Cho's memory unfold. And frankly it's boring. I can sense her anxiety grow as the day sets to darkness and Cho anxiously passing about. She finally picks up the telephone and starts talking to people. And the memory ends.

I look up at Slughorn incredulously. "What am I missing?"

Slughorn sighs, shaking his head. "At first I thought like you. Here is a girl, once pampered at Hogwarts, ran away from the Wizarding world unable to cope with tragedies in her life, and then wants to return with a flair and fanfare."

"What am I missing? Do I have to compare this with Kimmy's memory?"

"Everything's there in plain sight," he replies in his sing-song voice.

I watch the event unfold again. There are stuttering of Cho's movements but nothing beyond the usual of what one would expect from a recalled memory. Unlike what we are led to believe about memory, memory is mostly impression and reconstructions. We can never actually "see" what had progressed before. Only what the mind perceived and retold into a narrative. But despite the fact that memory acts like a retelling through the eyes of a fictional writer, some things it can't quite confabulate. Small details. These things remain hidden in the registry of the mind, unrecalled yet noted. When consciousness does touch upon it, it then becomes distorted. But before then, especially memories reconstructed through the Pensieve, details that weren't tampered with remains clear. I begin to focus on the objects that Cho would not have paid much attention to. That ruled out Kimmy, the Clock, the Phone, pictures of their family.

What would Cho have not concentrated on, yet would be telling enough to make the memory a fabrication?

Nothing obvious. No magic would be able to selectively erase a person from a view. A better way would be to selectively erase a whole frame and splice them together. I would be looking for altercations in the details. Something touched but wouldn't usually be touched.

Then I saw it. The food on the table. Once set up in preparation for a family of three. It had been cleaned and set away by nightfall. Had Cho been so worried about her husband, the food would have gone untouched. I move the memory forward and backward and forward again.

There is a moment where Kimmy is in her school clothes and then in her play clothes. People's clothing could change, but not without her school clothes being neatly packed into a corner. A few more details begin to surface. And a few more later, I am convinced that the memory has been altered.

"Her husband was home." I conclude, staring up into Slughorn's content and smug smile.

"I was beginning to worry," Slughorn drawls, "that you have become too soft in your tenured position."

"I've spoken with Madame Sprout," Slughorn states bluntly, "to keep Kimmy in your care under the Gryffindor roof."

"I am not the Head of Gryffindor House, Professor," I remind him as we walk down the revolving staircases to the main entrance of the Castle.

"Yes, but Mister Longbottom is away, and you would act as his deputy in the time being."

"Is that all you require of me?" I ask, somewhat impatient.

The stairs are in mid transit from its swinging position as we wait for it to reconnect with another set of stairs. Slughorn turns to me, looking at me up and down for a moment. "Girl, you think too highly of yourself from time to time. I tire of reminding you of your place in the matter of things. I have taken this matter up with Harry Potter himself. All you have to do is look after the girl. I had divulged this utmost of secrets to you since I feared that you might be negligent with the child if you lacked the motivation. Don't imagine yourself to do greater things."

I suppress an urge to push him off the ledge.

"And what about Cho?"

"Miss Chang," Slughorn giggles like a school girl. "Miss Chang will be off stirring up a nuisance. She can't be helped. I do hope she attracts enough attention. There is nothing like a loose canon to rile things up. With her husband's life and child's safety at stake, I am certain she would be a great decoy as I conduct my own investigation into these matters."

I suppress an urge to push him off the ledge, but the staircase has already reconnected and, despite my impulses, I see him safely to the door.

"You suspect our... villain... to strike again?"

"So far," Slughorn pauses, "Lavender Brown has died under curious circumstances, and Cho Chang has lost her husband. Curious, don't you think? If you could show the least of initiative, I would ask you to try and get in touch with as many of your old friends from Harry Potter's Army as you can. I have a hunch that the next blow will strike someone more important than either of the two. We must stop this train of events from progressing before it reaches Potter and the Weasleys."

I open the door for him, lest he should forget he was just about to leave.

A long trail, thin heavy white wisp of smoke coils from my lips as I remove the cigarette to exhale.

It's not my usual brand of poison, but something I fished out from Blaise's drawer. It's thick and heavier than my taste, but I like it. I'm drunk. A little bit drunk from whiskey, a little bit drunk from wine, and a little bit drunk from being an unprepared mother without having been pregnant.

Blaise's office is dark and I kept it that way. I let myself sink into melancholy better that way. It's a fine line between becoming regretfully drunk and soberly sorrowful. Blaise had said he was busy tonight and couldn't humor me, and it was a full three hours until Hannah and Dennis closed shop. The other available friend would be Fay, and I didn't have the stamina to listen to Fay gush about the new teenage boy band.

Blaise and I used to live in a one-room. We had a small bathroom that only house a shower and a toilet, but no faucet. We had to shower on the toilet seat, but sometimes that ended up being a really ticklish affair. It was a small apartment and we were messy as hell. We would make puppets dance to our tunes in a small makeshift theater we set up, playacting the hellish day we spent. The memory surfaces now, I think, because Blaise did the best Slughorn impressions.

Kimmy was not a darling child as she seemed to be.

As soon as her mother left, she suddenly turned thirty.

"Now we have the stuffy old man and my freakishly flakey mother out of the way," Kimmy states dryly - are kids seven years old allowed to be dry? - when we're alone. "let me set some ground rules, lady. I do simple magic when mother and father aren't looking. I don't need adults to bully me around. I'll go sleep with the big girls, but I don't want you to tell me when to go to bed and what I'm supposed to do. As long as I keep out of trouble, you keep out of my hair, okay?"

When asked if she was surprised about Hogwarts, Kimmy said, "Mother wouldn't shut up about it. She said she was supposed to keep it a secret, but she's so flakey I had to remind her that she's told me the same story about the Three-Wizard Bowl and how she went kissy kissy with Cedric Diggory who sparkled in the moonlight a million times. Ugh! As if!"

Did she want to learn Charms? "Get out of my hair, Lady."

Was she worried about her Father? "Father has a girl friend. He's probably with Cecilia. I figured he'd abandon us as soon as mother lost her marbles. It was only a matter of time."

I hate her already.

I shouldn't hate little girls, but I really really do. Especially this crazy little Scot who swears like a sailor.

I hear giggling.

My heart pounds faster as I hear footsteps leading up to the hallway. There are two of them. I quickly extinguish my cigarette and jump behind Blaise's desk. I thought Blaise was out of town. He said he was busy tonight. There's a voice of a girl with that of a man, and they both sound as though they're drunk on laughter. Did Blaise let other people into his office? Did he rent it out to a friend? Was someone breaking in?

I hear the key slip into the lock. No. It's Blaise. I think it's Blaise.

It's Blaise's voice I hear as the door opens.

"Welcome," It's Blaise, in his most deep and seductive tones. "to my humble abode."

"Someone's been here Blaise," I hear a woman's voice.

Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. My heart has jumped to my mouth. Blaise has no way of not finding me. Should I apparate? Should I just bolt for the door?

"What.. the..." Blaise stammers. "someone must have broken in."

I can sense that he's wanting it to not be me. I can hear it in his voice that he wants me not to be here so he could be with his new girlfriend. Bastard. He didn't have to lie to me. We were 'ex's. We didn't have to skirt around. I didn't have to hide from him. What am I doing hiding from him. He's probably noticed my cigarette stub by now.

"Someone's been smoking, Blaise," the woman. Who is she? She sounds familiar.

I hear her footsteps approach the desk.

"Maybe we should go," Blais is a dummy.

"No, Blaise," the woman snaps. "Someone's been here. Smoking. In your office. Does someone else have the keys? I thought this was just our little place."

Whoever she was, she was here often as well. Just not when I was around. Shit.

I decide to salvage some dignity. Besides, curiosity has gotten the better of me. I steel myself for a confrontation and stand up from my hiding spot.

Tracey Davis's deep green eyes star back at me coldly.

"Shit, Parvati," Blaise groans, covering his face. I can see he's annoyed. Not as annoyed as I am at him.

Why am I annoyed? I don't care. I don't want to think. And Why are these damned tear streaming down my face?

"Parvati Patil," Tracey frowns, as she stares at me with a smug look on her face. "I thought you two were finished, Blaise."

"Yeah, yeah, of course we are," Blaise stammers. "Shit, Parvati. You could have told me you were crashing here."

"She 'crashes' here?" Tracey asks, incredulously.

"Just once in a while. She needs a place to smoke." Blaise blabbers, trying to make excuses, spilling all my secrets as though it were spare change he wanted to assemble into a Galleon. "I had no idea she still had a key."

"I was just leaving," I am barely about to say that. I try not to look at Tracey, I try not to look at Blaise. My face is flushed and I feel nauseous.

I try walking past Tracey, but Tracey suddenly grabs my arm.

I dare not look her in the face. I am crying like a little girl and I dare not look at her.

"I know you had a thing with Blaise in the past, Patil," Tracey states firmly. "But, if he hasn't made it clear, yet, Blaise is with me."

"Take him," I reply, frigidly. "I don't care."

But Tracey's grip is strong and vicelike as she strangles my arm. "Keys."

I shake her arm off, furiously, stumbling and hitting the desk. But Blaise is rooted to the spot, arm crossed, trying to make it clear to Tracey where his loyalties lie. I fish about my pockets, but my tears are covering my view. I fumble about before remembering that I left the keys on the desk. I snatch it up and toss it squarely at Blaise's face.

"Hey!" Blaise spats. "It's not like we're seeing each other, Parvati. I don't know why you should be upset."

I am already past him, and my feet take me down stairs. Oh, Merlin, I hear them giggling behind me. I stumble on a few steps, the last few on the way down. I think I sprained my ankle, and I am sprawled on the foot of the stairs. Behind me they are making a joke of me. I hear Blaise toss our old memories about like a useless rag, only fit for making amusement to Tracey. I hear the joke and the punchline and the punchline is me.