Chapter 13
Fighter

She was determined not to let this beat her.

She couldn't let it beat her, she had to be strong like she normally was. She didn't care about what Dean and Padma said when she bit her lip and didn't cry in front of them and they told her that it was okay to cry and that she had been through enough for it to be acceptable to cry at a random time. She was going to face her fears and confront the memories; there was no way she was going to go on like this, a scared replica of her former self.

She knew that if she tried hard enough that she would be able to fight through it. She couldn't stay like this for the rest of her life, especially now that she was going to have to raise a child what was the result of her being like this.

She knew as soon as the Healer refused her request for an abortion that she had two options. Option one was to give the baby up for adoption, option two was to keep it. For a few hours after the first ultrasound she had at five months, she had been hell bent on getting the baby away from her as soon as it was out of her body. She didn't know what had made her change her mind but as far as she was concerned, adoption was now out of the question.

Sitting up in the darkness, she looked at the sleeping silhouettes of her nephew and sister on two blow up mattresses on the ground. She envied them, their sleep was undisturbed by nightmares, but she appreciated the fact that they were there. She enjoyed Dean's company but there was a security that Padma gave her that Dean could never give. Padma made this place feel like home.

She was thankful for the slither of moonlight that seeped through the curtains, alleviating some of the darkness that Parvati hated so much. She could just make out Dean's expression on the couch next to her. He was wearing that same strained, worried expression that he had worn when she had refused her sleeping potion. She appreciated the fact that he was concerned with her health but she really didn't want him to worry about her as much as he did. She was better now, well almost, but she had no injuries that would hinder her anymore and really, Dean could only help her fix the outside, he couldn't help her now. This was purely up to her. She had to fight through it.

A quick glance at the clock on the mantelpiece told her that it was almost three in the morning. Almost four hours she had been lying there, psyching herself up for her first sleep without the sleeping potion in weeks. She lay back down, knowing that if she didn't sleep now, she would sleep for far longer than she normally did and it would prolong the dreams that she knew were inevitable.

Pulling the blankets up over her shoulders, she shut her eyes, plunging herself into darkness. Almost immediately she started to see a dark shape advancing on her. It was the same dark shape she saw every time she shut her eyes for an extended period of time. It became larger and larger the longer she kept her eyes shut. Fighting the urge to open her eyes and reassure herself that she was indeed safe, she pulled the covers tighter around her and kept her eyes shut.

It's not real, it's not real, it's not real. She repeated over and over again, whispering the words quietly through her lips, It's just a memory, it's not real.

But it was real once, a sly voice said in the back of her head, It's a memory because it was real once. Parvati ignored it, driving the thought out of her mind by thinking of happy things; her years at Hogwarts, the Yule Ball with Harry and how bad he was at dancing, the memory made her smile and she had to bite her lip to stop herself from laughing. She remembered when Padma and Terry got married, and when Isaac was born. And for the first time in months, Parvati Patil fell asleep with a smile on her face.

The sun shining through a gap in the curtains pried Dean's eyes open early that morning. In a way, he was glad that it was finally the weekend, but after finding out what he had found out about Theodore last night, he was eager to go back to Azkaban and question him some more. That and he wanted to get his hands on Theodore's parents' files.

As Dean sat up, a thought crossed his mind. It was only his day off, there would still be people in the office and it wasn't like it was illegal for him to come in on his day off to do some extra research.

As quietly as possible, he slipped into the bathroom, showered and got dressed as if he were just going down to the shops. On his way out of the door, he grabbed one of the Museli Bars that Padma had bought yesterday and put it in his briefcase.

He was about to shut the door behind him when he realised that something was missing. Backtracking quickly into his flat he looked around to see Parvati sleeping soundly on her couch with the ghost of a smile on her face. Confused, he straightened up and walked into the kitchen, wondering if she'd gotten up in the night and taken the potion that he had mixed for her before she had declined it, but it was still where he left it in the cupboard, completely untouched. Dean walked back around to where she was sleeping and made sure that she was actually breathing. She was. He could see her chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm. There was no other way Dean could see it other than the fact that she had simply fallen asleep.

But how was that possible? There had only been two times that Dean had seen Parvati sleep without a sleeping potion, and both times he had had to force her to wake up as she thrashed around, screaming terrified screams that Dean would never forget. Yet here she was, sleeping soundly with a slight smile of all things, on her face.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Isaac start to stir and knew that Padma would be up any second now. If he was going into work today he would have to go now, and solve the mystery of Parvati sleeping soundly without the sleeping potion later.

Picking up his briefcase, he walked quickly towards the door. He had just placed his hand on the doorknob however, when he heard a voice from behind him.

"And where do you think you're going?"

Dean turned to see Padma sitting up in bed, pushing her hair out of her face.

"Work," he said, feigning nonchalance.

"What? Dressed like that?"

"What's wrong with this?" Dean said indignantly.

"You're an auror Dean."

"I always wear this to work. It's more comfortable when I do filing. I've got changes of clothes in my locker." Dean said in exasperation, turning to exit the flat.

"Why are you going to work anyway? Parvati said that it was your day off today." Padma asked curiously.

Damn, Dean thought, as he quickly tried to pull something out of the air as an excuse to go into work today, "I just need to check over some of the stuff on Parvati's case."

Padma looked confused, "What case?"

Dean sighed, now he would have to explain all of the paperwork that had to be done following an arrest, "It's too complicated to explain right now. I have to go."

"No," Padma said firmly, "I'm sure that I can understand, sit down and we'll have a chat about this case."

Dean was becoming more and more irritated with Padma by the second. If only she knew what he had heard from Theodore the previous day, she wouldn't be protesting like this, "Look, Padma," Dean said, walking back across the room to look at her, "This is about Theodore. I uncovered something about him yesterday and I have to go into the office to do some more research. I'll let you know about everything when I get back."

The look in Padma's eyes changed from defiance to concern as she nodded her head quickly, "Alright," she said, "see you when you get back."

Sighing in relief, Dean rose to his feet just as Parvati started to stir. For some reason, he didn't want her to know that he was at work today. Maybe it was because of the nature of what he was going in for or maybe it was because he liked being around her too much and didn't want to disappoint when he was actually able to spend time with her, but he had to do this. He needed to know more about the monster that had put Parvati in this situation in order to properly judge him fairly.

Hurrying quickly down the street to the safe apparition spot, he found himself wondering what he would do with the information if Theodore had been telling the truth about his mother and father he found files on it. Surely it would be enough to have him released from prison if it was shown to the authorities, but did Dean want to have Theodore released from prison? He had almost killed Parvati, did he really want someone like that loose in the world? Sure, they'd probably take him to St Mungo's to recover in the mental ward but that was a place that could be escaped from, and Azkaban was unescapable, except in the rare occasion that you were an Animagus, which Theodore wasn't, they had checked with a simple revealing spell before sending him to the dementors.

He reached the piece of corrugated iron that marked the apparition safety zone and quickly turned on the spot. After a few brief moments of the uncomfortable squeezing sensation, Dean appeared in the Auror office at the ministry.

He didn't hesitate to make sure that he hadn't splinched himself like he normally did, but walked straight to the door across the room that was marked with the word 'FILES'

"Thomas!" he heard as he walked very deliberately over to it and turned around abruptly to see his boss, Mr. Darzky walking towards him.

"Yes sir?" he said.

"You're not supposed to be in today," Darzky said, "I gave you weekend's off for the next year to look after your little friend that was kidnapped."

"I know," Dean said as politely as was possible in the rushed state he was in, "I just have to find a couple of files on some people for research."

Darzky sighed and put a hand on Dean's shoulder, "Thomas, the reason I gave you weekends off for the rest of the year was so that you could have two days to be with your lady friend without having to think about work. Go home and be with her Thomas, she needs you."

Dean shrugged him off, "Her sister is with her, I have to do this research."

"Dean," Darzky said softly, "I know how it feels to have a loved one in pain, I really do, and my boss wasn't kind enough to give me time off when my wife needed it most and I don't want you to suffer the same."

"Oh, you think that Parvati and I are together?" Dean said in confusion, his brow creasing.

"Well, I could only assume seeing as you were so passionate about finding her and so upset when you found her like she was," Darzky said.

"No, no, no, no, no, no, no, we're just friends," Dean assured him, "We've been friends for over ten years, that's why I was worried about her when she was taken hostage by her ex-husband, not because of… that." Dean knew in his heart that he was lying through his teeth, he did still fancy her but he knew that she didn't fancy him back, therefore he was trying to convince himself that they were still just friends.

"Oh," Darzky said, a blush starting to crawl up his cheeks, "I thought she was staying at your house?"

"She is," Dean said exasperatedly, "Because her parents live in India and her sister's husband is having family issues in Wales, so she and her sister are staying with me until everything gets sorted out."

"Okay then," Darzky said, drawing himself up to his full height as he attempted to retain some of his dignity, "Well, if you don't mind me asking, Thomas, what are you researching on your day off?"

Dean hesitated for a moment before realising that it couldn't hurt to tell Darzky what he was up to, he was his boss after all, "I went to visit Theodore Nott in Azkaban yesterday, I wanted to ask him why he did what he did to Parvati and it wasn't easy to make out, most of his speech is garbled anyway because of the mental stress that the Dementors have on him, but I managed to decipher it after a while and he had told me that his father used to do it to his mother and he thought it was normal, so that's why I'm here, to research his childhood and his parents."

Darzky seemed to stiffen slightly, "Well," he said awkwardly, "Go right ahead, I'll leave you to it."

"Thank you, sir." Dean said as Darzky dismissed him with a nod. Dean turned towards the filing room, a flush rising in his cheeks as he realised what Darzky must've thought when Dean had burst into the office, demanding that the Aurors help him find where Theodore Nott lived and then staging a rescue mission for Parvati. Dean had thought that the way that Darzky had looked at him during the whole ordeal had been weird and now he realised why. He had displayed every symptom of a worried boyfriend; the demands for help, the way he had tried to revive her at the scene, the way he had carried her out and taken her to St Mungo's and not left until he was allowed to see her, coming back every day until after she was out of the hospital. Dean wanted to be a worried boyfriend, but unfortunately, he was a worried ex-boyfriend that had just been friend zoned.

Shaking his head of the thoughts of when he and Parvati were together at the end of their sixth year and the start of their seventh, he lit his wand and walked into the filing room.

As he cast his wand light over the many draws marked with names, he realised that this room was most definitely bigger on the inside. It expanded for miles up into the ceiling and the room was so cavernous that he felt like if he yelled, it would echo back to him.

He shone his wand at the top of the nearest filing cabinet, finding the draw marked with the name 'AALI',

"Oh god," Dean said, shining the light down on the next surname to see that it was, 'AARON', "This is going to be fun," he said sarcastically, seizing the nearest ladder and starting to climb quickly, knowing that it would take him a while to even get out of the 'A' section of the room.

Dean had just passed 'ATALA' when he noticed a large 'A' shining about five metres above him. He sighed in frustration as he shone his wand light out over the room to see large letters hung at his height in the middle of every shelf around the room.

"Bollocks," Dean said as he looked down only to see darkness below him, he was not going to find Theodore Nott's file in the 'A' section.

"It's Dean's day off," Parvati said, "Why's he gone into work?"

"Because he has to file some paperwork on the things he's working on," Padma replied as she fed Isaac some breakfast, "He told me before he went this morning, you weren't awake."

"What paperwork?" Parvati asked, "Did he say?"

"Just something about an exploding cauldron that took out three aurors last week," Padma shrugged as she wiped Isaac's chin.

"Oh," Parvati said, looking down at her cereal.

"Why? Did you want to talk to him?" Padma asked.

"Sort of, yeah," Parvati said, "I had a lot of time to think about stuff last night and I want to ask him something."

"What do you mean by 'a lot of time'?" Padma asked warily.

"About three hours," Parvati shrugged, "Give or take."

"Three hours?" Padma said in surprise, "You didn't take your potion last night, how did you even sleep at all?"

"I just thought of happy things," Parvati said, "You can have bad things happen to you but the bad things can never take away all of the happy memories that you've had. I just picked out the happy ones and used them to battle the bad ones."

Padma smiled, "That's great Par," she said, "What do you want to ask Dean? Maybe you could ask me?"

"No," Parvati said, spooning a spoonful of cereal into her mouth, "It's a guy thing that I need to ask."

"I'm married," Padma said indignantly.

"No," Parvati said, "I mean something that only a guy could answer."

"Oh," Padma said slowly, "Okay then what do you want to do today?" she asked quickly, changing the subject.

"I don't know," Parvati said, "I was all for staying here and just reading all day, I'm a little bit tired."

"I can do that," Padma said, "I can also tidy up Dean's flat as well, it's a freaking mess in here, I can't stand it."

Parvati laughed slightly as she drained the dregs of milk from the bottom of her bowl and set it down on the table. As she leaned back she felt something move abruptly inside her and gasped, a hand flying to her tummy, which was now starting to swell slightly.

"What's wrong?" Padma asked immediately, moving from the other side of the room to Parvati's side so quickly she could've apparated.

"Nothing," Parvati said, rubbing her abdomen, "It's just moving is all."

The concerned look on Padma's face vanished to be replaced with that of happiness, "I remember when –" but she cut herself off, evidently realising that she had been about to enter into painful territory on Parvati's part.

"No," Parvati said with a smile, "it's okay, you can keep talking. How else am I supposed to move on if people keep skirting around the subject?"

"You sure?" Padma said.

"Of course," Parvati said, "You were saying?"

Padma beamed at her and started to rattle on about her pregnancy with Isaac and how she had felt at the different stages. The whole time, Parvati felt her vision start to go dark around the edges, like she was about to black out, but she kept bringing up the happy memories of her childhood to fight them and it was working. She had tuned out what Padma was saying long ago to focus on this. She wasn't okay when people talked about pregnancy, or when people mentioned Theodore, or when people called her 'Mrs. Nott' as that was what was on the paperwork, but she could pretend to be okay until she actually was. And if that was what it took for people to start treating her like an adult and not like a child, that was what she was going to do.

AN: Warning! Long Author's note ahead!

I wrote this at 2am and I was scaring the absolute crap out of myself because I was forced into watching 'Orphan' yesterday and it was the freaking creepiest thing I've ever seen in my life. It was so gross! I mean I was prepared for gore but not that freaking much gore! They showed the stabbing! They showed the freaking knife going into people! They showed people being beat up with hammers! I was not prepared for that! So I think it's safe to say that I'm scarred for life and the name Esther has been ruined for me and now whenever I watch the Hunger Games, Clove's character is going to be even more creepy because she's the freaking Orphan just grown up a bit and thrown into the Hunger Games (headcanon right there) But yeah, It wasn't scary per-se, the scene at the end didn't phase me at all (but Jesus the makeup is good on Isabelle Fuhrman) but it was the scenes where people were getting hurt or dying that just makes me freaked out. But it was actually a really good movie, the acting was brilliant! (Right now I'm just rambling so I'm just gonna try and not have nightmares by listening to some happy songs :)

Also, before I go, every week this year, I'll be gifting someone a fic of their choice. All you have to do is PM me before all the spots are taken! What to do is on my profile under "GIVING BACK IN 2013" I'd love it if some of you could help me fill up my spots!

DFTBA,
Best Wishes

~The Original Horcrux~