Disclaimer: I'm not J.K. Rowling; I'm only visiting her universe for nonprofit fun and edification. (No profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended).

ooo

At the end of the day, Mary looks up to see if everyone has cleared out of the waiting room, and begins the work to put the files in order.

There's always quite a bit to do at the end of a day. This last crowd was exhausting, if nothing else for the palpable atmosphere of apprehension and the doubled—or is that tripled?—guard. It would appear that Addie may be a patient, but nonetheless she is in reserve if there is an emergency.

She's putting the last of the files into place when the oddest thing happens. Through the open window, a missile appears… not seen since her own school days: a paper airplane, only this one seems to have scant respect for the laws of aerodynamics. It swoops in through the window and does a rather showy loop-the-loop before landing on her desk.

She stares at it gingerly. Plainly it came from the other world. She isn't sure if she should touch it. While she's pondering the question, it unfolds itself into a square of parchment on which the words are written in vibrant red ink:

Mary,

I'm on duty until seven o'clock. Would you care to meet me at the Muggle café down the corner? It would be good to see you unofficially, and it would be my pleasure to buy you dinner.

Many thanks for the advice. Dr. Rosencrantz is a very skillful Healer.

Yours,

Addie

PS: Reply below, and it will find its way back to me.

So they are on first names, it would appear, at least from Addie's side of the transaction.

She'll be finishing the last of the files around six o'clock, so there's no point in going home first, and her work clothes aren't too conspicuous.

And as always in her post-war, post-Jackie life… Until recently, she hadn't known that there was a war, nor that Jackie was a casualty of it. She has a book in her shoulder bag. It's always good to have occupation, a specific against despair, an escape to some other world: something to while away the time while waiting.

She writes at the bottom of the letter, I'll see you there at seven, and I'll see if I can get a booth. As she half expected, as soon as she finishes, it folds itself back into an airplane and cruises lazily down the length of the desk, rising as it reaches the edge, then glides serenely out the window into the summer evening.

ooo

It's a curious place, the cafe around the corner; it's decorated in rather too precious Olde Englishe Quaint but the atmosphere is more in the style of a Parisian café than a London pub or restaurant. She's not the only patron sitting alone in a booth or at a table, reading a book or consulting spread-out papers as if the cafe were a study or library away from home. She sits in the booth (the second-to-last empty one), reading and sipping a mug of tea, for it's an hour at least until Addie arrives.

She's reading about the Great War… a distant sorrow, one would think, but she realizes that all of her reading has had to do with war, or loss, and it's only distant because the great river of Time has borne away those moments of horror into the blued-out distance: the irreparable wounds beyond the hope of the surgeon's knife; the hideous stench of a field hospital on the Western Front; the cut-off horizon of the future, that follows the Telegram. Brought back to life in a story, wrapped once more in living lineaments, their shock is fresh and undiminished.

Then a voice cuts through the pleasant hubbub of overlapping conversations, a voice familiar from brief acquaintance, though what pulls her back to wakefulness through the layers of lucid dream, through the veil of print, is the note of pain.

It's voice of the Widow's son, on the other side of the partition, in the next booth.

"But you never wrote," he says, as if defending himself against unjust accusation.

The girl's voice that answers him is just as scornful as her looks—ah yes, the pale and witchy Pansy of the jet-black hair and the jewelry to match—and her accent quite as patrician as his. "Oh, I wrote, Draco. I wrote. Your mother must have hidden the letters, or burned them."

He says, "But I never knew…"

"Well, you might have thought to suspect." There's a very distinct chink of cup against saucer, not as soundless and ladylike as she would have expected. "You didn't think to cast a contraceptive charm, did you? After all, you were only seeking comfort, and it was all right because we were practically betrothed, and they'd told us …"

"They'd told us rather a lot of lies," he says, with more heat than she's yet heard in his voice, which is usually languid and drawling. "I would have… if I'd known."

"Oh, that's a fat lot of use to me now," she says.

"If it's mine…"

"Oh, 'if it's yours'… how dare you, Draco. Do you suppose I had time, let alone inclination, to have been with anyone but you?"

"You won't let me finish anything. I was going to say, I would marry you. For the sake of our child…"

"Well, that's rather too late to know."

"You didn't-"

"I didn't do anything." She's near tears but still bearing up, as Mary can tell from the strain in her voice. "I was in hiding. Most anyone wanted nothing to do with the girl who'd been ready to sell out Potter, no matter any number of them would have done the same." She adds with some venom, "At least you've got a mother, and she looks out for you, too, so you don't get letters from contaminating influences while you're trying to look helpless and innocent on the witness stand: 'Oh I was only a Death Eater because they held me at wand-point'… when I remember you bragging on it. You make me sick, Draco Malfoy. I wouldn't marry you if you were the last wizard on earth."

"Pansy." No answer. "Pansy, what happened to our child?"

"It's dead." She added, "And the Healer was quite nasty about it. It only lived three days." The tension in that voice is dry-eyed, the desert heat having long ago mummified the sorrow in question. "She said that the Muggles had a name for it. 'Fatal genetic defect.'" She pronounces the phrase as if it were foreign, which to her no doubt it is.

She continues, "She said that if I wanted to have children who weren't freaks or Squibs, I'd best try my luck with a Muggle-born, or given what we've made of our blood-lines, a full Muggle." Her voice shakes with indignation. "She said it wouldn't do to be having to do with my cousin; our ancestors already did for us in that regard."

There's nothing from his side but a soft, wet, strangled sound, as if he were choking on something. For a moment she wonders if she should abandon her inadvertent eavesdropping and attend to him, for seconds count when the airways are blocked…

His voice recovers itself. "If you want, I'll complain…"

She laughs, a short cold bark with sneer in it. "I don't think so. Your father's name doesn't carry a lot of weight at St. Mungo's these days. She never would have dared, before the war."

"Pansy, I would marry you…"

"Much good it would do me to be Pansy Malfoy. It would only change one ruined name for another." She says, "Your bitch of a mother wouldn't allow it in any case."

"Don't bring my mother into this."

"Oh, I didn't bring her into it. She was in it from the start. And if she thinks everything's going to be just jolly and fine, because she's hiding out at the Manor, … well, she can think again. Some of us remember. The 'bloody unsinkable Malfoys,' that's what Millie calls your lot. I heard her talking to Tracey Davis in the Leaky Cauldron." She pauses, and the silence is angry, nearly as much as her voice when she speaks again. "Half-blood cows. They're doing just fine. Tracey's engaged to Theo Nott, and he's pitifully grateful. It's clear enough who'll have the whip hand going forward."

She adds, "Do you know what that Healer had the cheek to tell me? That there had been a rumor for years that your mother was Abraxas Malfoy's natural daughter, and anyone with a jot of common sense would have reason to suspect that, given the lack of blondes in the Black line. She said a Muggle would have suspected that."

"I'll kill her." For the first time, Mary thinks about the emblem on his arm, because that cold hiss of fury sounds like the voice of a would-be assassin.

"You'll do no such thing, unless you want to be sharing a cell with your dear pater in Azkaban. I asked that Muggle healer was it true, about cousins marrying, and she said yes." She takes a breath and continues, "Even if I wanted to marry you, we're not fit." Her voice breaks, and with it the rhythm of her breathing, and then there's a sob in her voice as she says, "I did want to have children, and now there's no hope."

He replies, so low that Mary barely hears him, "I did too, Pansy. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

There's a chink of crockery, as the plates and cups in the next booth are moved aside, and then quick, discreet nose-blowing. Even the gentry must attend to that, Mary thinks sardonically, and then realizes it's one of Jackie's thoughts. Jackie's gone, but with her, and always will be, as long as she hears Jackie's voice in her head, commenting on the passing scene.

She looks up in time to see them leave. The girl slides gracefully out of the booth, black-lace draperies settling around her, to stand with her head held high; the boy offers his arm with old-fashioned courtesy, and after the pause of a breath or two, she takes it. As they leave together, more than one head turns to watch them pass. For all that neither is particularly beautiful, they're a striking couple: nearly the same height, jet-black hair and pale-blond, her black lace sleeve against his crisp white cotton one.

It's just as well, Mary thinks, because she wouldn't like to see them crossing paths with Addie in the wide world, neither for their sakes nor for Addie's.

ooo

Addie McConnell is a woman of her word, for at precisely five minutes after seven, she appears in the doorway of the café, looking discreet and ordinary and utterly in place; Mary seeks her eyes to find Addie already looking at her.

She slides into the booth across from Mary, and looks at the book she's put to one side.

"About one of our wars," Mary says. "The one that ended in 1918."

"Within living memory," Addie says, "not so long ago." She smiles, but it's both sad and mordant. "They never do end, anyway." She looks at Mary, and adds with some determination, "Unless we make an effort."

Mary smiles back, and hands her the menu.

ooo

Author's note: Did I mention Silver Sailor Ganymede, queen of the Slytherin vignette? If you love Pansy and Blaise and Theo and Tracey and Millie and Greg and the rest, see my Favorites for a link both to her page and to my favorites among her work. Her Blaise is perfection itself, and I keenly regret that he will have a briefer role here than in her oeuvre.