So all of your patroni suggestions are genius. But... the reveal is going to be in the next chapter (which is all written and completed and should be up here soon!)
Thank you to sesshoumaru4me, Alyss, Debate4life, arellowyn, Kokotheevilone, DreamOfInk, NewSlove, & MandibleBones (I especially liked your suggestion) for the lovely comments. Your ideas kept me thinking about the characters, and I'm looking forward to the future chapters. Something tells me the wranglers may have a reckless night out partying in Romania. There's a few stressful, mildly-to-completely life-threatening chapters ahead... so they may deserve tequila and hijinks before shit hits the fan.
Before them, the darkness fled.
Two shapes, large and glowing white, sped down the hill scattering the darkness before them. Their fearsome forms raced nose to nose toward the Dementors. Two beasts of power and protection. Two Patroni keeping them from despair. The Dementors flew back at their approach, slipping away like black mercury.
Pansy let out an unwilled gasp.
They weren't dead. They were cold and hurt and alive.
She looked at Charlie, and saw the same tired relief spread over his features. He was safe, thank Merlin. It was all okay. For once, it was all okay. The solidness and surety of his palm in hers promised this.
The frozen air sang in her lungs though her body felt near to collapse. The chill of living ran through her, and a surge of pride rose up. She'd made something beautiful. A happy, strong magic that ran towards danger and repelled it.
Charlie let go of her hand, and placed it on the crook of where her neck and shoulder met. She felt his weight go, and slid her arm up his back to support him. Her palm met the space between his shoulder blades, fingers reading the spine and muscle. Beneath the layers of clothes she could feel him shiver. Yet he smiled down at her, red curls burning despite the grey hue of his face.
"I guess I should be the one they call Damsel from now on."
There was a strange absence in Pansy. The anger that constantly burned in her, which lit up like oil on an open flame with the ease of a word or unspoken thought, was drowned with relief. She felt it's calmness and pleasure soak up through her bones and smooth her face.
She leapt, arms over shoulders and head into neck, breathing in the living smell of him. Charlie braced back as the unannounced weight of Pansy fell into his arms.
"Something bad happened. And no one died. No one died."
He paused, unsure of what to do, then gathered her more into his grasp. Charlie leant his nose into the line of her collarbone, and let out a sigh of empathy. His right hand stroked her back, as his left kept her tight to him.
"I know," he said, feeling empty and not. "I know. It's okay. You made it okay."
That moment of tight security was almost perfect. She did not feel the need to shout or scream, and his arms holding her finally felt like acceptance. An acknowledgement of the sly Slytherin bitch she was, and of the fact her friends were murderers- but that this did not mean she was.
The shame about moments is, of course, their transience.
There was a broom lying by the gate of the dragon pen. It lay abandoned, like a loose exclamation mark. The one Pansy had used had been flung abandoned down the hill during her race to get to him.
But there was Charlie's broom, leaning safe and within reach.
Realization dawned. He could have flown away. He could have taken that broom and come back at any time. He could have gotten help, but instead he stayed to protect dragons.
"Pansy…"
Dragons, though a protected species, probably need the least protection of any near extinct animal.
"Pans-"
And he decided to stay, wandless and vulnerable and almost close to death-
"Pansy! Not to complain, but…you're hugging me a little too tightly," he gasped.
"I'm not hugging you," she growled. "This is strangling, you absolute twit."
She dropped from his arms like a stone, and hit him roughly. Charlie winced, and she quickly trampled the fast rising feelings of sympathy for his weakened state.
"You could have died! And I could have died saving you. Think of that! Thought you'd play the hero? Thought you'd bare handedly fight the Dementors? You wanted to protect the precious fire-breathing monsters that are so VERY vulnerable; what with their sharp claws, fiery breath and bad attitude? Wanted to be the goddamn hero!?"
Pansy spent most of her time in states of irate fury or gently boiling annoyance. This was different. She was incandescent, almost inhuman, with rage.
"What did you think you were doing? What were you honestly trying to do?"
Then she understood.
It may have been the strange, controlled blankness that came over his face. Or the realization that Charlie was not a complete moron… The broom was so close to hand. So close. He could have left at any time. He just chose not to.
Charlie loved dragons. He would always choose dragons, always, always. Pansy tried desperately to reassure herself with this. His dracomania had finally driven him mad with heroism.
The guilty shadow in his eye said otherwise.
He chose not to, because he didn't want to come back.
Like a sharp intake of breath, Pansy stumbled back. She could not comprehend this new, dark element with how she saw Charlie. He was happy, outgoing, healthy. He laughed like a train and had an endless family who loved him enough to write libraries of letters. He was sensible, simple and sure. He sung loud and tunefully, and could identify a dragon from it's mere silhouette in the sky. When he told rude jokes a bashful blush would steal shamefully up his neck. He was handsome but didn't realize it. Proud and naive, but also funny. It was the naivety that came from being sheltered and happy, of not thinking dark thoughts and enacting dark deeds. His kindness was never surprising, because it was always there. Everyone liked him. He always expected the best in people, and because of that you became the best. And despite his dragon scars, vast shoulders and aggressive hair, there was a gentleness to him. A gentleman beneath the unpolished exterior.
He wasn't a consumptive, drama queen whose guilt led him to waste away in a mansion.
He was Charlie.
And Charlie had wanted, in that moment, to die.
The truth resounded between them, unspoken.
He looked at her, guilt-ridden. Unsure of what to say, he let the silence draw on. The metamorphosis of emotions was subtle across her face. Yet he was so used to studying it in those long stretches in the library, that those foreign shapes of controlled emotion and forgetful sentiment were almost familiar to him. Shock struck her face with rigid realization, before morphing swiftly to sadness, and worse- understanding. Only half-fluent in her, he read pity and disgust when all she felt was an echo of what sped through him.
"You didn't leave because you didn't want to…" She couldn't get the last words out, just as he couldn't find the words to respond. All he wanted was for this moment to end.
"I'm not going to tell anyone," she said after some time, with great force. "I should, but I won't. I know how it feels to… want to stop. And it seems worse having people know that you can't handle it. But I want you to promise me," she sort out his hand, and grasped it tight, her nails punctuating her point. "Promise me. You won't do this again. And if you do… feel this way, you'll come to me. And we'll talk. Or only one of us will talk. I could tell you all of the awful things that run through my head a hundred times a day –far darker and more twisted than I would admit to anyone else- or I can be quiet, and listen. But, please, please, Charlie, don't put yourself in this situation. I couldn't bare it."
He could hardly dare look her in the eye. This awfulness inside him, suddenly made aware to another, was terrible. He felt as if his skin had been peeled back, leaving him twisted and bare; an utter monstrosity of twisting organs and weak, desperate thoughts. All his horror was reflected in the black mirror of her gaze.
Once again, the Slytherin girl stepped close to the Gryffindor boy. Her mind thought quick and cunning. She was a true Slytherin- a girl of ambitions and wants and manipulation. What was hers was going to stay that way no matter what.
"Please," she said, letting the sadness she felt creep into her voice. "I can't lose another friend. I just can't, Charlie." She saw it work. The cogs fell into place on his face. He was in the palm of her hand, and she would manipulated him well again- and if not well, at least not self-destructive. If she could make him safe now, perhaps later she could work on the happiness.
"Let me be selfish in this," she continued, and the desperate fear made her bark laughter. That strange mania you get when truly on the brink. "I know I'm an over-privileged house elf brat, and a Slytherin bitch-"
"And terribly demanding," Charlie tried to joke, voice raw.
"And rightfully demanding, but let me have my friend back. I've missed you. And damaging yourself would really get in the way of my revenge for the past few weeks of cold shoulder."
He shrank back, shoulders juxtaposed to the horizon. A noise came from his throat that was half-laugh, half-sob. What do you say to that? What do you say when someone holds up the dark mirror of yourself?
"Pansy," he uttered her name like a plea. "I d-don't want to die." It was easy to say when she was looking at him with such concern, with such will. If anyone could do the impossible just by willing it true, Pansy Parkinson could. "Really, I don't. That's not to say I'm happy all the time. Far from it." His throat moved with force, straining out the words. "The Dementors- They make you remember the worst times. The very worst. The times when those you love die, and the only way out of the misery is to join them."
His profile was obscured in the night. Pansy was unsure of the words that would fix this. Words that would raise the dead, and rewrite time, and stop anything bad happening ever again. Magic was meant to make the impossible possible, but in her experience it was limited to the mundane. If you can't fix the big problems, what was even the point of being a witch? They were no better off than Muggles when it cam to death and heartache.
"So no, I don't want to die. I just want to see my little brother. I want him to tell me a joke, set fire to my hair again, and be alive to terrorize the world like he was meant to. Fred was a much better son and brother than I'll ever be. He made people laugh, he distracted them from… everything. He stayed. He built a business that made our parents proud. He stuck around to be a brother. He didn't run off to hide in the mountains where social interaction was easier because dragons aren't the complex monstrosities that people are. I don't want to die, I just want Fred to be alive more than I want to be alive."
Pansy swallowed. The silence a weak offering.
"This may be an unpopular opinion given present company, but I'm happy you're here." She didn't mention that she thought Fred was a psychopath. She lacked tact, but she wasn't stupid. "And… I know how you feel. If it helps. It probably doesn't. But there are people I miss who would be contributing much more to the world than I am."
She stopped there. Matching misery for misery was a dangerous game. It could show that she empathized, and that the terrible emotion was not one felt in isolation. Such things brought people together- sometimes. But she did not want to detract from his pain. By attempting to match his hurt it may seem that she was trying to belittle it and justify her right to be upset and traumatized.
Charlie was not a boy who thought like that. He reached for her hand, and drew her a few steps closer. "Who?"
"I have a dead brother, too. But he was a nasty piece of work, who I refuse to miss… My Father, Edgar, he died when I was young." In a time where the death of a parent was not common place, at an age where the mere words were too large and horrifying to utter. "At his funeral he was described as being pathologically sensible and even-headed. Righteous and honorable too, if you can believe it. Qualities much more needed in the world than having the personality of an angry rhino."
They shared a sad smile. "I see those qualities in you."
You couldn't possibly.
"You're a bad liar, Weasley. He was a good man, terribly stern though… For kindness and company, I wish I had Daphne back. She was the sweetest girl in the common room- no Slytherin jokes about it all being relative, I mean it. She sang like a bird, studied like a demon, and looked like a princess. Naturally, I absolutely detested her. But despite that she was my best friend… Mostly though, I wish I had Pell back. I wish that more than anything."
"Who's he?" Charlie asked, his voice low. Pansy had never said so much about her life. Part of him was afraid he'd spook her away.
"My other brother. My favorite- I know you're not supposed to have favorite siblings, but if you were related to a demon and Pellinore, he'd be your favorite too. He's not dead… just incarcerated."
She said this slowly, with meaning, waiting for him to freak out and curse her. "He's very kind. And witty. He deals with our mother much better than I do- hence why she's organized for them to have a private Christmas without me. Sometimes I fantasize breaking him out. Or worse, committing some heinous crime so we could be cell buddies- which probably means I'm delusional. Once during a particularly bad period at home, it got so bad that I almost fired myself up to rob Gringotts just to get chucked in. You wouldn't believe the number of fancy quills I've nicked from the place in the deluded hope they'd catch me and chuck me in jail."
At the foot of the mountain staring down the twin figures of their Patroni, the Dementors lurked in the forest. The bare skeletal hands of the trees gestured up to her, a malevolent calling. The tug on her heart- was it them or the memories?
Before Charlie could respond, there was a shout from below.
Bangs, yells and blasts of colour echoed up toward them. An army of ghostly shadows sprang from the night courting Dementors that slipped away like quicksilver. Pale shapes galloped across their mountain, intruding on their sorrow; a boar, a swallow, a beaver, a seal, and a stag.
Behind the new Patroni, five figures appeared each shouting instruction and wielding spells with clinical skill. They wore dark robes, smart but practical, and ran with the cool efficiency of those trained for dangerous situations. One of them ruined the image by falling flat on his face. Pansy was too conflicted to laugh.
"Oh look, a perfectly timed distraction," she muttered sardonically, and Charlie almost smiled.
"And thank Merlin for it," Charlie replied, with a wonderful realization that he could flee this conversation and avoid her and these horrid events for as long as possible. She promised she wouldn't tell. He could forget his weakness, and continue.
But he didn't. He didn't want to forget what she had told him, and a strange tension had released from his chest from talking about Fred. She looked at him with patience, wanting more of him and willing to wait. He wanted to reassure her, and himself.
"I would steal a Hippogriff's worth of quills to see Fred for merely a moment. But I won't do something like this again. I promise. It's selfish, and I've been selfish enough already. The Dementor was too much. All the bad thoughts, infinite and inconquorable. For a little while, Pansy, it seemed like drowning was the only option."
She smiled. She was almost convinced. The main thing was that he looked sincere- so perhaps he did believe it. Perhaps.
"Good. Because if you force me to endanger my life again, Charles Idiot Von Weasley, I will get D'Artagnan the Dragon to pee on everything you love."
"You have such a way with words… especially threatening ones."
"Years of practice." She took his hand. "Now let's watch the wizard cops do what they do best- turn up late, steal the glory, and fall flat on their face."
The Auror in question was being helped up by a tall wizard with dark hair who had the unmistakably demeanor of someone in charge. For a moment, Pansy admired the clean line of the wizard's jaw, and the lithe way he moved (definitely a Quidditch player)… before swiftly realizing whom it was she was perving on.
The face turned towards them, outlined by the same round glasses that she had spent seven years of her life tolerating.
"Can't a man have a mental break down in peace," Charlie cursed, and not for the first time that night she was reminded of Draco.
Harry Potter, cruelly, waved at them.