"A Certain Private Conversation"
So, it's been a while. I definitely recommend trying a new ship if you're locked in writer's block. During my unofficial hiatus, I have watched Munich and liked it and have discovered deep wells of sarcasm in me in response to possibly the most idiotic teacher I have had and hopefully will ever have.
Title: A Certain Private Conversation
Ship: Harry/Pansy
Rating: R
Summary: A hero, a journalist, two beers and a story on the table.
A/N: Written per bk11’s request, and I hope this is satisfactory. Thank you to bubbleforest for taking the first look. And oh, thanks to streetscribbles for “sharing the joy,” I suppose :D
A Certain Private Conversation
I fear I have nothing to give.
~ Fear, Sarah McLachlan
“Do you want your story or not?” he demands, knowing the answer.
The color is high in her cheeks, and her eyes are clear and hard. She’s pissed off, and he really doesn’t give a shit.
“Well, do you?” he presses, goading her, backing her into a corner. He wants to hear the words; he wants this victory even if he has to force it from her.
“Yes,” she bites out. She pauses and admits baldly, “You know I do.”
He draws a shaky breath and wishes he hadn’t started this little battle with her. He wishes she would be a bigger, more blatant bitch, and to be vicious as he knows she can be. He doesn’t want her to confess anything to him; he doesn’t want her to give in. Even if it’s to him. He just wants a little give. He just wants to hear her how badly she really wants this, to see that she cares because he can’t stand the coldness, the blankness. It’s something leftover from Voldemort, another instinctive reaction that he can’t quite help or stifle, something else Tom Riddle gave him. It’s not the unfeeling that bothers him, it’s the uncaring that he hates. Everyone should care. He hates indifference and apathy with everything that is the opposite of indifference.
“How are you going to take notes?” he questions, bringing himself back to the table and their drinks, to the bar with all its people dripping rainwater onto the floor, to her sitting across from him.
“What do you care,” she shoots back.
He shook his head. “Not how it works. A little less attitude, you’ll get a lot more answers from me.” She doesn’t respond, so he explains, “I don’t want you to get this story wrong.”
“I won’t.”
He nods slowly at her level look. “Okay.”
***
Pansy Parkinson, intrepid reporter, worked a weekly column in the Daily Prophet. It was widely read. She ranted every Saturday in the opinions section for 2000 words on an array of subjects: purebloods, the importance of knowing one’s lineage, the running of the Ministry and its various departments, why the war took so long, and the like. She rarely had anything good to say of any topic, but for some reason it proved to be a popular read.
Harry suspected this was because people liked having someone to hate, and conversations often followed the vein of denouncing her latest article, followed by a vindictive listing of why “the dumb bint needs a reeducation and hey, didn’t she graduate Hogwarts with you, Harry? What was that like?”
He wasn’t in any way inclined to feel sympathetic for her. A good portion of her word count was spent rejecting Auror Harry Potter as a hero. Adjectives she had used to describe him included “egomaniac,” “political poster boy,” “stunted maturity growth,” “relic of the days of Voldemort,” and his personal favorite, “Ministry’s boy toy.”
***
The engagement party for Ginny Weasley and her coworker, Dougray Shelley, was held at The Golden Pumpkin, the restaurant of the five star Savoy hotel, where the happy couple had rented out a section of the restaurant. Harry found himself at a table with a few of his former Hogwarts Quidditch teammates, and the refilling of alcohol was well-matched by the speed at which the stories were blurted out and reminisced.
Two witches and a wizard came in. Harry recognized two of the newcomers-Blaise Zabini, owner of the premier pharmaceutical company that specialized in beauty products and self-made billionaire-beauty was expensive, and it made money. Standing by his side, looking haughtily around the inside, was Pansy Parkinson.
Her hair was still trimmed short, cut in a stylish bob that ended above the nape of her neck. She didn’t look so flat anymore-the nose didn’t look as squashed, her hair wasn’t cut as sternly, and her robes didn’t fall straight down. She was still short, though, and frankly, Harry thought, she still looked like a bitch.
He stood, intending to seek Ginny so as to thank her and tell her he was leaving. A loud, drunken roar of protest rose from his dinner companions, most loud of all and most sloshed a pair of Weasley twins.
“Where d’you think you’re going?” George demanded loudly. “No no no no no, we’re not done yet! Lee’s going to pen our Quidditch memoirs! We’ve got to make sure he gets it all right!” he declared, and banged his fist on the table.
“We hardly see enough of you as it is,” Katie Bell protested, and Angelina nodded reprovingly, “You’re always working, Harry…”
“I really have to go,” he muttered, face red from both wine and embarrassment at the attention. Several other patrons of the restaurant, apart from their ensemble, were looking over as well.
Ginny came to his rescue. “Leaving already, Harry?”
“Yeah, I have-stuff to do,” he finished lamely. “Thanks for dinner, Gin, this was fun. And er, congratulations to the two of you.”
“Thanks,” Ginny beamed. “Get some rest, won’t you? You look awful. You’d better not show up like that at Mum’s next week or she’ll smother you.”
“Thanks,” Harry grinned back. “Just work, I guess. Cheers, Ginny.”
As he walked through the restaurant, winding his way to the door, Blaise and Pansy took a seat at the hotel bar. Neither of them looked at him, and Pansy’s voice drifted over to him: “Everyone wants to know whether Zabini will expand into other products, but before we get to that, what is the institution that the proceeds of your new charity line will be going to?”
Harry snatched at his cloak that someone had held out to him and burst out onto the street. Winter was blowing in, and he drew on his cloak, pulling it around him and hunching his shoulders. The chill wind was strong, and a page of a newspaper blew past, the block headline visible: A decade of peace.
He hadn’t been sleeping well lately. Ten years was a milestone, a marker to be noted and remembered. So everyone remembered-candles magically lit, burning long into the night, pictures and lists of names reprinted, old testimonies and accounts recalled. Everyone was seeing ghosts.
It didn’t help that Pansy Parkinson was in her element. She had plenty of material to work with, and seeing her pissed him off. He’d really prefer to never see her again.
***
“Your last article touch a few nerves, Miss Parkinson?”
“Why do you say that, Tumus?” She called back to the aging doorman in her apartment building as she unlocked her mailbox.
“The Ministry sent a search crew over, Miss Parkinson.”
“Of course they did.”
This was the third time this year that her apartment had been searched. Everyone was subject to Ministry searches that were sanctioned to root out the remaining Voldemort supporters. This branch of the Ministry was its own feature in her column, criticized scathingly and without mercy.
She took the stairs up to the third floor. The door to her apartment was already open, and a Ministry signed and stamped notice of approved search was charmed to her door. Ministry officials crowded her apartment, wands out, low voices murmuring complex spells of revealing and breaking concealment charms.
A wizard stood to the side, just inside the front door, arms crossed over his chest, observing the proceedings. Pansy’s lip curled unconsciously in a sneer: Harry Potter. He was watching without comment, an utterly bored expression on his face.
“Typical,” she remarked, announcing her presence to the room. The Aurors stopped their wand movements, and Harry turned. “Harry Potter, standing around and doing absolutely nothing…and getting the credit. Let me guess, you’re supervising?”
He clenched his teeth visibly before responding. “I’m here only to log and document the process.”
“Right,” she drawled, dumping her purse on the couch as she brushed past him. “Take your time. It’s not like I haven’t anything better to do than wait around for you to finish searching fruitlessly.”
Harry made a continuing gesture, the wizards all continued their search, and said irritably, “You and I both know this is a pointless exercise. It’s a waste of Ministry resources and time. But it’s protocol. So here we are.” He shrugged, the frustration evident in the movement.
“It’s not like I enjoy it either,” she pointed out, rolling her eyes.
“Yeah, well.” He shrugged again, eyes on a wizard lifting her grandmother’s vase and peering cautiously down the center. “Stop using Death Eater watchwords and phrases.”
“And what words would that be?” She flicked her wand at the stove. Water began to simmer and boil.
“‘Death Eaters reunite,’ ‘enemies of the Ministry,’ ‘judgment day,’ ‘Death Eaters are liberators,’ ‘abolish established institutions,’ ‘anti-Muggle,’ ‘Harry Potter should have died,’” he said expressionlessly. “Taking out your ongoing campaign and its ‘Muggles for slave labor’ slogan would be a good start.”
“Well, I’m flattered. Harry Potter reads my columns!” She opened a cabinet and shook some salt into the pot. Precisely chopped carrots, lettuce, and onions followed, while a large spoon stirred. Her voice lowered and became meaningful, heavy with implication. “Could I get that in writing? It’s just so hard to know what really happens around Harry Potter…”
His face went, if possible, even more removed and shuttered.
She laughed. “Oh, come on, Potter! Ten years later, and still mum? My, my. Perhaps there’s something you don’t want to disillusion your adoring public about? The hero Potter, perhaps not quite so heroic and great? Little children everywhere would lose a precious bedtime story. No, you must think of the masses, mustn’t you? What’s the matter? A little nervous? Am I too close to the truth?”
He finally looked at her, turning strangely barren eyes her way. She froze, her follow-up retort dying on her tongue. The vacant green eyes were too empty, shining and blank, but then he narrowed his eyes in barely suppressed anger. Her pulse quickened, and she lost her breath. Had she finally goaded him to forgetting himself, would he finally let something slip? She had seen pictures of him surrounded by other reporters, and she had seen firsthand herself when he faced journalists. He was always carefully guarded, so wary that he was succinct and curt. What was he so afraid of that made him so close-mouthed, that he’d rather take abuse than risk retaliating and revealing what he knew?
“Thanks for your cooperation,” he snarled. “I think we’re finished.”
No. He had contained his emotions again. At school, he used to be lousy at it, and it had been easier then to pick him apart. Pansy barely hid her disappointment.
The Aurors swept out of the room without a word. The stirring spoon fell onto the countertop; the soup was done.
The aroma swam through the entire room, and he flicked his eyes over at the soup. It was near dinnertime. He would be off work soon. Pansy smiled. “I’d ask you to stay for dinner…but I really don’t care to have your company.”
“Don’t kid yourself,” Harry said shortly, turning to leave. “The feeling’s mutual.”
***
“Has the Ministry assigned me my own personal watchdog?”
Harry’s face was stoic. “Not everything is conspiracy. Consider this an unpleasant coincidence.”
“An Auror, telling me that everything isn’t conspiracy. You’ve turned my world upside down, Potter.”
Harry gripped his umbrella tighter and blinked through the sheet of rain at her. It just figured that he would meet Pansy Parkinson in Diagon Alley on a weather-terrible day when everyone else had stayed at home. “Fanatical supporters are still a very real threat, and you should take it seriously.”
“You said it yourself. ‘It’s been ten years.’ I’d say the threat is extinct.”
“You know it’s not,” he said.
“Is that how the Ministry trains Aurors to get a confession?” She laughed. “Listen, Potter, you and I both know that the only reason why I keep getting these charming little searches is because my parents were Death Eaters. And if that isn’t prejudice, well…” She smiled mockingly at him. At his sharp, angry indrawn breath, she cut him off. “Let me guess. You want to ask me what my problem is.”
“Don’t have to,” Harry muttered. “You’re a fucking bint.”
Pansy’s eyes widened. “How dare you! You don’t know what my problems are.”
“No?” Harry seethes. “I know enough.”
“You don’t know anything-”
“You’re still stuck in the past,” he snarled. “And everyone else has moved on. You just write about what happened a decade ago. You called me a ‘thing of the past,’ but really, it’s you, isn’t it? You’re the one who’s obsessed with everything back then. What’s so great about it back then? When the war was happening and people were dying and what is so great about that? What’s the view look like from back there, Parkinson?”
“You don’t know a goddamned thing,” said Pansy. “You don’t know a goddamned thing.”
“Shut up,” he snapped. “We’re living a reality. What the bloody fuck are you doing?”
“Everyone else wants to forget,” she said. “That’s not moving on. They just want to forget it. They want to pretend it never happened.”
“No, they just don’t want to live with the deaths of their family and friends every single day! It makes me sick,” he said, infusing his words with disdain, “what you do.”
She blinked at him and his hostility and said coolly, “Potter, I don’t care what you think. But let me set the record straight. You don’t know anything about me,” she reiterated slowly. “And where the hell do you come off telling me your prejudiced assumptions? You don’t know where I was in the war, or how I was, and you have no idea how I’ve-” She gave him a cold look that conveyed her opinion that he was beneath her.
“Look,” Harry broke in, just wishing fervently to get out of the rain and to get away from her, “I shouldn’t have called you a bint.” He would be damned before he apologized for anything else.
Pansy stared back at him silently.
“What do you want?” Harry exclaimed. “I apolo-”
“I want to know what happened at the end of the war,” she said evenly, speaking over him and the rain. “You’ve never told anyone, Potter, and I want to be the one to break the story. It’ll make my career. I want a private interview, with you recounting the events at the end. How you were able to kill Voldemort, not how you did.”
“You’re looking for a story that’s not there,” he muttered.
“Do you think I’m stupid?” she asked pleasantly. “I don’t buy that story the Ministry cooked up and fed to everyone. I don’t believe it, and I want to know the truth.”
Harry tried to go around her, but she moved to block him again and he fell back with a heavy, exasperated sigh. “Parkinson, you need a new job. You’re shite at this one. There isn’t anything here, dammit.”
“I don’t believe you,” she said evenly. “You’re lying. Meet me,” she said quickly, because she sensed he was about to make another break for freedom. “Anywhere. Name the time and the place. We’ll have that on-off the record nonsense.”
“You’re telling me I can okay what you print?” Harry asked suspiciously.
“If you have a valid reason that I should withhold some information, I’ll hear you out,” Pansy confirmed.
“Fine.”
“What?”
“Fine. I choose the time and location. Right now.” He jerked his head over at an dingy establishment with a swinging sign: Jack’s Pot. “Over there.” When she started to speak, he backed away, shaking his head in frustration. “Let’s just get this over with.” He sloshed his way through the puddles to the bar without waiting for her.
***
The bar was dimly lit by floating torches. It reeked of old wood and tobacco and fireplace smoke. The bartender, a burly man levitating two foamy glasses, nodded at Harry, who waved at him.
She followed him to a table away from the bar. A torch came over and hovered to the side, rotating slowly in the air. Firelight flickered and shadows shifted on the table, their faces, their corner of Jack’s Pot.
“Typical,” she sneered at him.
He looked at her blankly in return. “What is?”
“This place. Couldn’t afford to take a girl someplace better?”
He gave her a dirty look and retorted, “I didn’t see any point. There isn’t anyone I want to impress.”
A barmaid came over. “Can I get you anything? Hi, Harry.”
“Hi, Fran,” Harry said tiredly, and gave her a smile. “Um. I’ll have a beer.”
“Nothing for me. Not unless you have chardonnay or merlot,” Pansy declined. “Thank you.”
Fran said, “We’ve got a good jug wine.”
“No thank you-oh, I’ll have a beer as well. The same as him.”
***
Fran brought their drinks around a moment later, and Harry promptly drank deeply.
“Now what about your story would drive you to the cups, Potter?” she mused aloud, just barely wetting her lips on the beer.
Pansy couldn’t stop needling him, and she sensed rather than saw him lose a bit of his temper.
His green eyes angry and glaring at her, Harry demanded, “Do you want your story or not?”
***
She feels her face burning, and she manages to say yes you know I do you bastard and hates him for making him say it. She wonders if he can hear her desperation.
She wishes she could just let this go, but she can’t, so here they are.
He asks how she’s going to take notes, and her anger speaks for her.
“I don’t want you to get this story wrong,” he says.
Pansy clenches her fingers tightly and then flexes them out again. “I won’t.”
He assesses her, nods, and acknowledges her answer neutrally, “Okay.”
***
They’re finally sitting in silence, and Harry is agonizing over the dark bottle of his beer. Pansy quietly retrieves a slim, tall notepad and produces a quill to go with it. She arranges an ink bottle and blotter on the table.
He peels at the corner of the label on the bottle, scraping at it with a short fingernail. It pulls apart easily, wet from the condensation, and it turns into a soggy mess.
Phantom pain lances through his scar, and he resists the urge to touch it, to feel for it and ascertain that there really isn’t any pain, that he’s just imagining the sharpness against his forehead, that it’s just another ghost. Harry Potter doesn’t vanquish ghosts. He kills people.
“Potter?”
He lifts his stare from the bottle to her. “What?” he asks cagily.
“Nothing,” Pansy says quietly, and looks back down at her reporter’s notepad.
He hadn’t had to inform families of their losses. He hadn’t had to go around identifying the dead either. He’d try to go along, but Hermione had locked him in Sirius’ house. Afterwards, when they came back, he was still angry. The house showed the signs: chairs flung or kicked halfway across the room, portraits dragged down and stomped on, mirrors broken, and the sofa had been on fire. He had tried to do the most damage to the Black family tree, but the tapestry had repelled all magic. He nearly hexed Hermione, and he didn’t calm down until she said, “Why would you want to do that, Harry? You’ve already-haven’t you-you shouldn’t have had to do that, Harry. Just…let’s leave it at that.”
This, Harry imagined, this farce of an interview was the searching for and putting names to the bodies he hadn’t had a chance to do.
He can remember the rush of it, the frenzy, the panic from the overwhelming numbers of bodies, people blocking him and getting in his way, everyone looking for him. He can remember smashing into Ron, momentarily hidden by a block of members of the Order, and remembering holding onto the little bottle, yanking the stopper out. Are you sure you want to do this, he had wanted to ask Ron, but he hadn’t. Ron had clinked their little bottles together grimly, and said, “Time to be Harry Potter.” And promptly drank. He had quickly followed his example and shook as the change took hold. He had gripped Ron by the shoulder and he had said, looking down at himself, “Five minutes.”
The line of the Order had splintered, and Harry Potter had hurried forward. Ron Weasley dropped back.
He could remember that it was like being caught in an undertow. He stopped fighting against the current and let it sweep him away to someplace else.
***
Five minutes was barely enough time for Harry to make his way to the edge of the fighting. He felt the change back rippling through him; his strides shortened. And unfortunately, he hadn’t gotten further away. Antonin Dolohov saw him.
He ducked a curse thrown by Dolohov, and he saw Hermione weave around a pair of bodies, locked together, to intercede.
Harry came to a stop, remembering the last time Dolohov and Hermione had faced each other.
Dolohov’s mask had one long tear that had ripped through it and it hung around his neck; he pulled it off with one careless hand. From the smile on his face, Harry knew that the Death Eater remembered Hermione, too, and Dolohov raised his wand and made the rapid slashing movement.
Hermione was silent also, but she made a similar gesture. Dolohov staggered back.
“After you used that one on me, did you really think I wouldn’t have learned to block it?” asked Hermione coolly, her eyes hard and triumphant. Her wand arm did not tremble. She threw a glance at Harry. “Harry, go!”
He veered away, pride beating in his chest. When he was a distance away from the crush of the fighting, he whispered the locating spell. His wand emitted a small green speck of light that bobbed in front of him like it was saying, come on, come on, join in the hunt! Before racing away. Harry followed after it, tracking the faint green light.
He dodged another wayward curse, tore around the corner of a hedge, and came face to face with Draco Malfoy.
They both halted, surprised.
Malfoy raised his wand, but he had always had faster reflexes than the Slytherin Seeker. Draco’s movement was a fruitless gesture.
Harry pointed his wand at him, looking furiously around for the locator light, it was just like Malfoy to get in his way, there wasn’t any time to waste, his friends were buying him time with their lives and where was that goddamned light?
Malfoy raised his free hand and swatted at a tiny green pinprick of light that was fading even smaller before his face.
“Potter,” he sneered. “Running away?”
“Search and destroy,” Harry snarled, and snapped, “Don’t touch that!”
“What is it?”
Harry didn’t answer. He wasn’t about to tell Malfoy that he was tracking the last horcrux, that he was close to finding it, and that, with luck, this would all be over soon.
He caught on very suddenly.
Lucius Malfoy made his son into a horcrux. Voldemort’s absolute servant, slave to Voldemort in every way. And Lucius Malfoy’s son! Lucius Malfoy, whose ideologies and loyalties changed on the winds of fortune. It was one of the stupidest things he had ever heard of, but he supposed it must have appealed to the younger Tom Riddle, to have the son of one of his loyal servants carry an essence of Voldemort-a new generation of what he stood for and believed in.
Watching Malfoy finger the wand held limply at his side, Harry warned Malfoy sharply, “Remember that I’m faster than you are.”
Or perhaps not so stupid.
How many times had he wished Malfoy would die, just die already? Did Dumbledore suspect this? Had this been another harsh truth Harry had been protected from? Had it always had to have been this way? Could Voldemort have known what kind of person Harry would be?
He didn’t know what to do. He was trembling, his wand shaking, and he was having a hard time seeing because his eyes hurt. His scar really, really hurt.
“I can’t,” he whispered, and then hating himself, dragged up every nasty memory of Malfoy that he had. It wasn’t difficult. The insults about his parents, to the Weasleys, working alongside Umbridge, ruining so many things just to get Harry in trouble, the snobbery, the way he treated Hagrid and Hermione and Neville, his father and oh god Bellatrix was his aunt and what they did to Sirius…this strengthened him a bit, feeling the familiar rush of all-consuming hatred for Malfoy and all things Malfoy, and his wand arm steadied, resolved.
Malfoy’s face was ashen. This wasn’t school. This was war, and this was not holding back. Neither of them would withdraw, and no one would interrupt them or force them to stop. He knew it.
“Going to kill me, Potter?” he said. He didn’t sneer.
Harry remained silent.
“I can pay you,” Malfoy said in a low voice. “Whatever you want.”
Harry found himself shaking his head before he even knew he was doing it.
“If you don’t want money, I’ll get you information. I’ll tell you anything,” Malfoy said desperately. “I know where the second stronghold of Death Eaters is!”
He wanted to close off his ears. He didn’t want Malfoy to start doing him favors now. His scar twinged, Voldemort somehow sensing their confrontation, and then Harry’s scar started to really fucking hurt.
“I tell you, I know where it is!” Malfoy’s voice climbed higher. “You don’t believe me? I can show you, I can take you there-”
“Shut up!” There might be another way. He tried to think, but Malfoy was moaning, repeating promises and swearing new bribes.
“Please believe me,” Malfoy said frantically, breathing hard, “I can help you.”
“I do,” Harry gasped, “I believe you.”
***
He can’t justify himself. There’s the people who believed in him for a reason that was entirely not of his doing or choosing, and then there was the boy who only believed in his twisted, fucked up family and blood and money. But he still can’t justify himself. So after a few years Harry stopped trying to.
***
Pansy is still. She’s stopped taking notes. Harry thinks that he can’t remember when she stopped taking notes, but it must have been around the time that he ran into Draco.
He had known what this was about, of course. She had wanted to know the truth. Not about the war. About Draco. Draco Malfoy’s name had not been on the list of Death Eaters, killed or in Azkaban. Probably, Harry thinks dully, probably Pansy Parkinson had seen the published list in the Daily Prophet; probably she had pored over it once, twice, checking for Draco’s name and not finding it. Probably she had pried and dug and no one had or could tell her what happened to Draco.
She hates him. She hates him, the boy who hated Draco at school, who outdid Draco, who contributed to humiliating Draco, who had even tried to kill Draco with his own hands on a few occasions, after all that, he is the one who knows what happened to Draco. He’s the one who remembers Draco.
And probably, Harry imagines, she had clung to some small hope that Draco had been alive. That because he hadn’t named as a Death Eater, maybe he had been redeemed, at the end, that he had changed sides and that he had fled and was in hiding, living comfortably but discreetly in the countryside or France or someplace like that.
“What are you going to do?” Harry inquires wearily. “Call him the true hero of the war?”
“He is, isn’t he?” Pansy says.
Harry is silent.
“I can’t write it, anyway,” she continues.
“Why the hell not?”
“Do you want me to?” she retorts, eyes glittering. “I thought you didn’t want me reminding people of the war and the nastiness and the unfairness of it. Or maybe you’re feeling guilty? Is this your way of apologizing to Draco?” The derision is clear in her voice.
Harry clenches his jaw and says through his teeth, “I don’t have to apologize to him for anything.”
“Of course you don’t,” Pansy sneers. “Killing your peer. He was seventeen, Potter. Don’t you see? If I wrote this article, I’d just be glorifying the already great Harry Potter. The masses would rush to adore you. ‘Look how he suffered in silence all these years.’ ‘Can you imagine having to bear that burden?’ ‘No boy should have to make that decision.’ They would rush to comfort and it would be hail Harry Potter for months.”
Any sympathy he might have felt for her, as always, vanishes. He wants to scream, slap her, really hit her. The memory is still ringing in his ears, and he can taste the blood from his lip all over again, feel the sweat in his eyes, the slight fogging over of his glasses, and she is mocking all of that.
He stands abruptly and drops a Galleon to cover their drinks. He stares down at her for a long time and decides he has nothing to respond to that.
“You got your interview. Print whatever you want. Try to get the facts right,” Harry says tightly.
***
It was Seeker senses, fine-tuned by Auror training, that made him turn in time to face her. She came barreling out the side door and slammed into him before drawing back. “Don’t you dare walk out on me, Potter.”
He had staggered back from the impact and hissed at the ache in his ribs. “What is your problem?”
“You’re just like you’ve always been,” she accuses. “A bloody Gryffindor, so fucking presumptuous, thinking you know everything and everyone. You’re so full of it,” she spat. “People change. Draco changed. You slaughtered him.”
“Draco Malfoy did not change.”
“He did. You made him change, you think if you had let him go he would’ve gone back to Lucius Malfoy? You Gryffindors pigeonhole everyone into these neat little roles, and nothing and no one can ever break out of them because it upsets your entire belief system.”
“I think he would have run back home very scared and then the next time I saw him, he would have tried to kill me.”
“Don’t you ever give anyone a fucking chance, you bastard?”
“All right then,” Harry says roughly. “Convince me. Convince me that you’ve changed.”
“I don’t have to prove anything to you.”
He gives her a long look. “Right.”
“How?”
“I don’t know!” He sighs. “Just forget it.”
She kisses him.
It’s the kind of fast kiss that’s full of dares and just a taste of the beer she took one sip of. The kind of fast kiss where he’s caught off guard, completely surprised, and when he opens his mouth to demand what is going on, why is she looking at him that way, like she’d like to murder him and something else, he gets, instead of answers, a breath full of soft skin and perfume. A fast kiss like the ones where there’s just a bit of too much momentum, so there’s some force propelling him back and a brief bumping of noses, but it’s also the kind of fast where the pressure of lips is quick and fleeting and light, just a pressing of her mouth to his and then gone.
He is shocked. All the tension has left his body, and he’s just standing there, breath forming on the air.
“What-” he utters. “That-was that supposed to be some kind of proof?”
She raises her chin in that fuck you Potter way. “I wouldn’t have done that ten years ago.”
Harry can’t believe that there can be someone like Pansy Parkinson existing in the world.
He hauls her against him and it is a slide of tongues and warm breath and cold hands on his face on her waist, just beneath the hem of her shirt. Her fingers go to his face, pulling off his glasses so that they dangle from her fingers and then drop silently to the ground. He feels Pansy’s teeth graze his bottom lip, and his fingers tighten, grasping at her shirt, her skirt, the strip of skin just beneath her sweater. Her fingers are tangling in his hair, and she is pressed up against him, legs clamped around one leanly muscled thigh. He likes the soft gasp of her breath hitching as his hands slide up beneath her sweater. Pansy nips at his mouth again, and he shudders against her. He really can’t believe this. He’s got his back to a dirty wall behind a bar, a dumpster two feet away, and Pansy Parkinson-Harry shuts his eyes and forgets to think and as Pansy scrapes fingers down chest and he feels her nails through the thin material, he reaches out to the dumpster and holds on.
This is wrong in so many ways. He is bruising her lips with his, not really caring if it hurts her, and he isn’t like this, normally. He hasn’t ever lost control like he did when he was still a student at Hogwarts. When Sirius had died, he had exploded in the confined space of Dumbledore’s office, and since then he hadn’t suffered such a bad loss of control as he was experiencing now. Pansy’s fingernails dig through his shirt into his shoulders, sliding down his side to rest on the waistband of his pants and they are not going to have sex in an ally like this.
“Stop,” Harry says raggedly, distracted and determined, “Stop.”
Pansy struggles for breath and then asks through swollen red lips, “What were you trying to convince me?”
He reacts again to that inflection in her voice and kisses Pansy again, slanting his lips hard across hers.
“Believe what you want to believe,” Harry tells her.
Title: A Certain Private Conversation
Ship: Harry/Pansy
Rating: R
Summary: A hero, a journalist, two beers and a story on the table.
A/N: Written per bk11’s request, and I hope this is satisfactory. Thank you to bubbleforest for taking the first look. And oh, thanks to streetscribbles for “sharing the joy,” I suppose :D
A Certain Private Conversation
I fear I have nothing to give.
~ Fear, Sarah McLachlan
“Do you want your story or not?” he demands, knowing the answer.
The color is high in her cheeks, and her eyes are clear and hard. She’s pissed off, and he really doesn’t give a shit.
“Well, do you?” he presses, goading her, backing her into a corner. He wants to hear the words; he wants this victory even if he has to force it from her.
“Yes,” she bites out. She pauses and admits baldly, “You know I do.”
He draws a shaky breath and wishes he hadn’t started this little battle with her. He wishes she would be a bigger, more blatant bitch, and to be vicious as he knows she can be. He doesn’t want her to confess anything to him; he doesn’t want her to give in. Even if it’s to him. He just wants a little give. He just wants to hear her how badly she really wants this, to see that she cares because he can’t stand the coldness, the blankness. It’s something leftover from Voldemort, another instinctive reaction that he can’t quite help or stifle, something else Tom Riddle gave him. It’s not the unfeeling that bothers him, it’s the uncaring that he hates. Everyone should care. He hates indifference and apathy with everything that is the opposite of indifference.
“How are you going to take notes?” he questions, bringing himself back to the table and their drinks, to the bar with all its people dripping rainwater onto the floor, to her sitting across from him.
“What do you care,” she shoots back.
He shook his head. “Not how it works. A little less attitude, you’ll get a lot more answers from me.” She doesn’t respond, so he explains, “I don’t want you to get this story wrong.”
“I won’t.”
He nods slowly at her level look. “Okay.”
***
Pansy Parkinson, intrepid reporter, worked a weekly column in the Daily Prophet. It was widely read. She ranted every Saturday in the opinions section for 2000 words on an array of subjects: purebloods, the importance of knowing one’s lineage, the running of the Ministry and its various departments, why the war took so long, and the like. She rarely had anything good to say of any topic, but for some reason it proved to be a popular read.
Harry suspected this was because people liked having someone to hate, and conversations often followed the vein of denouncing her latest article, followed by a vindictive listing of why “the dumb bint needs a reeducation and hey, didn’t she graduate Hogwarts with you, Harry? What was that like?”
He wasn’t in any way inclined to feel sympathetic for her. A good portion of her word count was spent rejecting Auror Harry Potter as a hero. Adjectives she had used to describe him included “egomaniac,” “political poster boy,” “stunted maturity growth,” “relic of the days of Voldemort,” and his personal favorite, “Ministry’s boy toy.”
***
The engagement party for Ginny Weasley and her coworker, Dougray Shelley, was held at The Golden Pumpkin, the restaurant of the five star Savoy hotel, where the happy couple had rented out a section of the restaurant. Harry found himself at a table with a few of his former Hogwarts Quidditch teammates, and the refilling of alcohol was well-matched by the speed at which the stories were blurted out and reminisced.
Two witches and a wizard came in. Harry recognized two of the newcomers-Blaise Zabini, owner of the premier pharmaceutical company that specialized in beauty products and self-made billionaire-beauty was expensive, and it made money. Standing by his side, looking haughtily around the inside, was Pansy Parkinson.
Her hair was still trimmed short, cut in a stylish bob that ended above the nape of her neck. She didn’t look so flat anymore-the nose didn’t look as squashed, her hair wasn’t cut as sternly, and her robes didn’t fall straight down. She was still short, though, and frankly, Harry thought, she still looked like a bitch.
He stood, intending to seek Ginny so as to thank her and tell her he was leaving. A loud, drunken roar of protest rose from his dinner companions, most loud of all and most sloshed a pair of Weasley twins.
“Where d’you think you’re going?” George demanded loudly. “No no no no no, we’re not done yet! Lee’s going to pen our Quidditch memoirs! We’ve got to make sure he gets it all right!” he declared, and banged his fist on the table.
“We hardly see enough of you as it is,” Katie Bell protested, and Angelina nodded reprovingly, “You’re always working, Harry…”
“I really have to go,” he muttered, face red from both wine and embarrassment at the attention. Several other patrons of the restaurant, apart from their ensemble, were looking over as well.
Ginny came to his rescue. “Leaving already, Harry?”
“Yeah, I have-stuff to do,” he finished lamely. “Thanks for dinner, Gin, this was fun. And er, congratulations to the two of you.”
“Thanks,” Ginny beamed. “Get some rest, won’t you? You look awful. You’d better not show up like that at Mum’s next week or she’ll smother you.”
“Thanks,” Harry grinned back. “Just work, I guess. Cheers, Ginny.”
As he walked through the restaurant, winding his way to the door, Blaise and Pansy took a seat at the hotel bar. Neither of them looked at him, and Pansy’s voice drifted over to him: “Everyone wants to know whether Zabini will expand into other products, but before we get to that, what is the institution that the proceeds of your new charity line will be going to?”
Harry snatched at his cloak that someone had held out to him and burst out onto the street. Winter was blowing in, and he drew on his cloak, pulling it around him and hunching his shoulders. The chill wind was strong, and a page of a newspaper blew past, the block headline visible: A decade of peace.
He hadn’t been sleeping well lately. Ten years was a milestone, a marker to be noted and remembered. So everyone remembered-candles magically lit, burning long into the night, pictures and lists of names reprinted, old testimonies and accounts recalled. Everyone was seeing ghosts.
It didn’t help that Pansy Parkinson was in her element. She had plenty of material to work with, and seeing her pissed him off. He’d really prefer to never see her again.
***
“Your last article touch a few nerves, Miss Parkinson?”
“Why do you say that, Tumus?” She called back to the aging doorman in her apartment building as she unlocked her mailbox.
“The Ministry sent a search crew over, Miss Parkinson.”
“Of course they did.”
This was the third time this year that her apartment had been searched. Everyone was subject to Ministry searches that were sanctioned to root out the remaining Voldemort supporters. This branch of the Ministry was its own feature in her column, criticized scathingly and without mercy.
She took the stairs up to the third floor. The door to her apartment was already open, and a Ministry signed and stamped notice of approved search was charmed to her door. Ministry officials crowded her apartment, wands out, low voices murmuring complex spells of revealing and breaking concealment charms.
A wizard stood to the side, just inside the front door, arms crossed over his chest, observing the proceedings. Pansy’s lip curled unconsciously in a sneer: Harry Potter. He was watching without comment, an utterly bored expression on his face.
“Typical,” she remarked, announcing her presence to the room. The Aurors stopped their wand movements, and Harry turned. “Harry Potter, standing around and doing absolutely nothing…and getting the credit. Let me guess, you’re supervising?”
He clenched his teeth visibly before responding. “I’m here only to log and document the process.”
“Right,” she drawled, dumping her purse on the couch as she brushed past him. “Take your time. It’s not like I haven’t anything better to do than wait around for you to finish searching fruitlessly.”
Harry made a continuing gesture, the wizards all continued their search, and said irritably, “You and I both know this is a pointless exercise. It’s a waste of Ministry resources and time. But it’s protocol. So here we are.” He shrugged, the frustration evident in the movement.
“It’s not like I enjoy it either,” she pointed out, rolling her eyes.
“Yeah, well.” He shrugged again, eyes on a wizard lifting her grandmother’s vase and peering cautiously down the center. “Stop using Death Eater watchwords and phrases.”
“And what words would that be?” She flicked her wand at the stove. Water began to simmer and boil.
“‘Death Eaters reunite,’ ‘enemies of the Ministry,’ ‘judgment day,’ ‘Death Eaters are liberators,’ ‘abolish established institutions,’ ‘anti-Muggle,’ ‘Harry Potter should have died,’” he said expressionlessly. “Taking out your ongoing campaign and its ‘Muggles for slave labor’ slogan would be a good start.”
“Well, I’m flattered. Harry Potter reads my columns!” She opened a cabinet and shook some salt into the pot. Precisely chopped carrots, lettuce, and onions followed, while a large spoon stirred. Her voice lowered and became meaningful, heavy with implication. “Could I get that in writing? It’s just so hard to know what really happens around Harry Potter…”
His face went, if possible, even more removed and shuttered.
She laughed. “Oh, come on, Potter! Ten years later, and still mum? My, my. Perhaps there’s something you don’t want to disillusion your adoring public about? The hero Potter, perhaps not quite so heroic and great? Little children everywhere would lose a precious bedtime story. No, you must think of the masses, mustn’t you? What’s the matter? A little nervous? Am I too close to the truth?”
He finally looked at her, turning strangely barren eyes her way. She froze, her follow-up retort dying on her tongue. The vacant green eyes were too empty, shining and blank, but then he narrowed his eyes in barely suppressed anger. Her pulse quickened, and she lost her breath. Had she finally goaded him to forgetting himself, would he finally let something slip? She had seen pictures of him surrounded by other reporters, and she had seen firsthand herself when he faced journalists. He was always carefully guarded, so wary that he was succinct and curt. What was he so afraid of that made him so close-mouthed, that he’d rather take abuse than risk retaliating and revealing what he knew?
“Thanks for your cooperation,” he snarled. “I think we’re finished.”
No. He had contained his emotions again. At school, he used to be lousy at it, and it had been easier then to pick him apart. Pansy barely hid her disappointment.
The Aurors swept out of the room without a word. The stirring spoon fell onto the countertop; the soup was done.
The aroma swam through the entire room, and he flicked his eyes over at the soup. It was near dinnertime. He would be off work soon. Pansy smiled. “I’d ask you to stay for dinner…but I really don’t care to have your company.”
“Don’t kid yourself,” Harry said shortly, turning to leave. “The feeling’s mutual.”
***
“Has the Ministry assigned me my own personal watchdog?”
Harry’s face was stoic. “Not everything is conspiracy. Consider this an unpleasant coincidence.”
“An Auror, telling me that everything isn’t conspiracy. You’ve turned my world upside down, Potter.”
Harry gripped his umbrella tighter and blinked through the sheet of rain at her. It just figured that he would meet Pansy Parkinson in Diagon Alley on a weather-terrible day when everyone else had stayed at home. “Fanatical supporters are still a very real threat, and you should take it seriously.”
“You said it yourself. ‘It’s been ten years.’ I’d say the threat is extinct.”
“You know it’s not,” he said.
“Is that how the Ministry trains Aurors to get a confession?” She laughed. “Listen, Potter, you and I both know that the only reason why I keep getting these charming little searches is because my parents were Death Eaters. And if that isn’t prejudice, well…” She smiled mockingly at him. At his sharp, angry indrawn breath, she cut him off. “Let me guess. You want to ask me what my problem is.”
“Don’t have to,” Harry muttered. “You’re a fucking bint.”
Pansy’s eyes widened. “How dare you! You don’t know what my problems are.”
“No?” Harry seethes. “I know enough.”
“You don’t know anything-”
“You’re still stuck in the past,” he snarled. “And everyone else has moved on. You just write about what happened a decade ago. You called me a ‘thing of the past,’ but really, it’s you, isn’t it? You’re the one who’s obsessed with everything back then. What’s so great about it back then? When the war was happening and people were dying and what is so great about that? What’s the view look like from back there, Parkinson?”
“You don’t know a goddamned thing,” said Pansy. “You don’t know a goddamned thing.”
“Shut up,” he snapped. “We’re living a reality. What the bloody fuck are you doing?”
“Everyone else wants to forget,” she said. “That’s not moving on. They just want to forget it. They want to pretend it never happened.”
“No, they just don’t want to live with the deaths of their family and friends every single day! It makes me sick,” he said, infusing his words with disdain, “what you do.”
She blinked at him and his hostility and said coolly, “Potter, I don’t care what you think. But let me set the record straight. You don’t know anything about me,” she reiterated slowly. “And where the hell do you come off telling me your prejudiced assumptions? You don’t know where I was in the war, or how I was, and you have no idea how I’ve-” She gave him a cold look that conveyed her opinion that he was beneath her.
“Look,” Harry broke in, just wishing fervently to get out of the rain and to get away from her, “I shouldn’t have called you a bint.” He would be damned before he apologized for anything else.
Pansy stared back at him silently.
“What do you want?” Harry exclaimed. “I apolo-”
“I want to know what happened at the end of the war,” she said evenly, speaking over him and the rain. “You’ve never told anyone, Potter, and I want to be the one to break the story. It’ll make my career. I want a private interview, with you recounting the events at the end. How you were able to kill Voldemort, not how you did.”
“You’re looking for a story that’s not there,” he muttered.
“Do you think I’m stupid?” she asked pleasantly. “I don’t buy that story the Ministry cooked up and fed to everyone. I don’t believe it, and I want to know the truth.”
Harry tried to go around her, but she moved to block him again and he fell back with a heavy, exasperated sigh. “Parkinson, you need a new job. You’re shite at this one. There isn’t anything here, dammit.”
“I don’t believe you,” she said evenly. “You’re lying. Meet me,” she said quickly, because she sensed he was about to make another break for freedom. “Anywhere. Name the time and the place. We’ll have that on-off the record nonsense.”
“You’re telling me I can okay what you print?” Harry asked suspiciously.
“If you have a valid reason that I should withhold some information, I’ll hear you out,” Pansy confirmed.
“Fine.”
“What?”
“Fine. I choose the time and location. Right now.” He jerked his head over at an dingy establishment with a swinging sign: Jack’s Pot. “Over there.” When she started to speak, he backed away, shaking his head in frustration. “Let’s just get this over with.” He sloshed his way through the puddles to the bar without waiting for her.
***
The bar was dimly lit by floating torches. It reeked of old wood and tobacco and fireplace smoke. The bartender, a burly man levitating two foamy glasses, nodded at Harry, who waved at him.
She followed him to a table away from the bar. A torch came over and hovered to the side, rotating slowly in the air. Firelight flickered and shadows shifted on the table, their faces, their corner of Jack’s Pot.
“Typical,” she sneered at him.
He looked at her blankly in return. “What is?”
“This place. Couldn’t afford to take a girl someplace better?”
He gave her a dirty look and retorted, “I didn’t see any point. There isn’t anyone I want to impress.”
A barmaid came over. “Can I get you anything? Hi, Harry.”
“Hi, Fran,” Harry said tiredly, and gave her a smile. “Um. I’ll have a beer.”
“Nothing for me. Not unless you have chardonnay or merlot,” Pansy declined. “Thank you.”
Fran said, “We’ve got a good jug wine.”
“No thank you-oh, I’ll have a beer as well. The same as him.”
***
Fran brought their drinks around a moment later, and Harry promptly drank deeply.
“Now what about your story would drive you to the cups, Potter?” she mused aloud, just barely wetting her lips on the beer.
Pansy couldn’t stop needling him, and she sensed rather than saw him lose a bit of his temper.
His green eyes angry and glaring at her, Harry demanded, “Do you want your story or not?”
***
She feels her face burning, and she manages to say yes you know I do you bastard and hates him for making him say it. She wonders if he can hear her desperation.
She wishes she could just let this go, but she can’t, so here they are.
He asks how she’s going to take notes, and her anger speaks for her.
“I don’t want you to get this story wrong,” he says.
Pansy clenches her fingers tightly and then flexes them out again. “I won’t.”
He assesses her, nods, and acknowledges her answer neutrally, “Okay.”
***
They’re finally sitting in silence, and Harry is agonizing over the dark bottle of his beer. Pansy quietly retrieves a slim, tall notepad and produces a quill to go with it. She arranges an ink bottle and blotter on the table.
He peels at the corner of the label on the bottle, scraping at it with a short fingernail. It pulls apart easily, wet from the condensation, and it turns into a soggy mess.
Phantom pain lances through his scar, and he resists the urge to touch it, to feel for it and ascertain that there really isn’t any pain, that he’s just imagining the sharpness against his forehead, that it’s just another ghost. Harry Potter doesn’t vanquish ghosts. He kills people.
“Potter?”
He lifts his stare from the bottle to her. “What?” he asks cagily.
“Nothing,” Pansy says quietly, and looks back down at her reporter’s notepad.
He hadn’t had to inform families of their losses. He hadn’t had to go around identifying the dead either. He’d try to go along, but Hermione had locked him in Sirius’ house. Afterwards, when they came back, he was still angry. The house showed the signs: chairs flung or kicked halfway across the room, portraits dragged down and stomped on, mirrors broken, and the sofa had been on fire. He had tried to do the most damage to the Black family tree, but the tapestry had repelled all magic. He nearly hexed Hermione, and he didn’t calm down until she said, “Why would you want to do that, Harry? You’ve already-haven’t you-you shouldn’t have had to do that, Harry. Just…let’s leave it at that.”
This, Harry imagined, this farce of an interview was the searching for and putting names to the bodies he hadn’t had a chance to do.
He can remember the rush of it, the frenzy, the panic from the overwhelming numbers of bodies, people blocking him and getting in his way, everyone looking for him. He can remember smashing into Ron, momentarily hidden by a block of members of the Order, and remembering holding onto the little bottle, yanking the stopper out. Are you sure you want to do this, he had wanted to ask Ron, but he hadn’t. Ron had clinked their little bottles together grimly, and said, “Time to be Harry Potter.” And promptly drank. He had quickly followed his example and shook as the change took hold. He had gripped Ron by the shoulder and he had said, looking down at himself, “Five minutes.”
The line of the Order had splintered, and Harry Potter had hurried forward. Ron Weasley dropped back.
He could remember that it was like being caught in an undertow. He stopped fighting against the current and let it sweep him away to someplace else.
***
Five minutes was barely enough time for Harry to make his way to the edge of the fighting. He felt the change back rippling through him; his strides shortened. And unfortunately, he hadn’t gotten further away. Antonin Dolohov saw him.
He ducked a curse thrown by Dolohov, and he saw Hermione weave around a pair of bodies, locked together, to intercede.
Harry came to a stop, remembering the last time Dolohov and Hermione had faced each other.
Dolohov’s mask had one long tear that had ripped through it and it hung around his neck; he pulled it off with one careless hand. From the smile on his face, Harry knew that the Death Eater remembered Hermione, too, and Dolohov raised his wand and made the rapid slashing movement.
Hermione was silent also, but she made a similar gesture. Dolohov staggered back.
“After you used that one on me, did you really think I wouldn’t have learned to block it?” asked Hermione coolly, her eyes hard and triumphant. Her wand arm did not tremble. She threw a glance at Harry. “Harry, go!”
He veered away, pride beating in his chest. When he was a distance away from the crush of the fighting, he whispered the locating spell. His wand emitted a small green speck of light that bobbed in front of him like it was saying, come on, come on, join in the hunt! Before racing away. Harry followed after it, tracking the faint green light.
He dodged another wayward curse, tore around the corner of a hedge, and came face to face with Draco Malfoy.
They both halted, surprised.
Malfoy raised his wand, but he had always had faster reflexes than the Slytherin Seeker. Draco’s movement was a fruitless gesture.
Harry pointed his wand at him, looking furiously around for the locator light, it was just like Malfoy to get in his way, there wasn’t any time to waste, his friends were buying him time with their lives and where was that goddamned light?
Malfoy raised his free hand and swatted at a tiny green pinprick of light that was fading even smaller before his face.
“Potter,” he sneered. “Running away?”
“Search and destroy,” Harry snarled, and snapped, “Don’t touch that!”
“What is it?”
Harry didn’t answer. He wasn’t about to tell Malfoy that he was tracking the last horcrux, that he was close to finding it, and that, with luck, this would all be over soon.
He caught on very suddenly.
Lucius Malfoy made his son into a horcrux. Voldemort’s absolute servant, slave to Voldemort in every way. And Lucius Malfoy’s son! Lucius Malfoy, whose ideologies and loyalties changed on the winds of fortune. It was one of the stupidest things he had ever heard of, but he supposed it must have appealed to the younger Tom Riddle, to have the son of one of his loyal servants carry an essence of Voldemort-a new generation of what he stood for and believed in.
Watching Malfoy finger the wand held limply at his side, Harry warned Malfoy sharply, “Remember that I’m faster than you are.”
Or perhaps not so stupid.
How many times had he wished Malfoy would die, just die already? Did Dumbledore suspect this? Had this been another harsh truth Harry had been protected from? Had it always had to have been this way? Could Voldemort have known what kind of person Harry would be?
He didn’t know what to do. He was trembling, his wand shaking, and he was having a hard time seeing because his eyes hurt. His scar really, really hurt.
“I can’t,” he whispered, and then hating himself, dragged up every nasty memory of Malfoy that he had. It wasn’t difficult. The insults about his parents, to the Weasleys, working alongside Umbridge, ruining so many things just to get Harry in trouble, the snobbery, the way he treated Hagrid and Hermione and Neville, his father and oh god Bellatrix was his aunt and what they did to Sirius…this strengthened him a bit, feeling the familiar rush of all-consuming hatred for Malfoy and all things Malfoy, and his wand arm steadied, resolved.
Malfoy’s face was ashen. This wasn’t school. This was war, and this was not holding back. Neither of them would withdraw, and no one would interrupt them or force them to stop. He knew it.
“Going to kill me, Potter?” he said. He didn’t sneer.
Harry remained silent.
“I can pay you,” Malfoy said in a low voice. “Whatever you want.”
Harry found himself shaking his head before he even knew he was doing it.
“If you don’t want money, I’ll get you information. I’ll tell you anything,” Malfoy said desperately. “I know where the second stronghold of Death Eaters is!”
He wanted to close off his ears. He didn’t want Malfoy to start doing him favors now. His scar twinged, Voldemort somehow sensing their confrontation, and then Harry’s scar started to really fucking hurt.
“I tell you, I know where it is!” Malfoy’s voice climbed higher. “You don’t believe me? I can show you, I can take you there-”
“Shut up!” There might be another way. He tried to think, but Malfoy was moaning, repeating promises and swearing new bribes.
“Please believe me,” Malfoy said frantically, breathing hard, “I can help you.”
“I do,” Harry gasped, “I believe you.”
***
He can’t justify himself. There’s the people who believed in him for a reason that was entirely not of his doing or choosing, and then there was the boy who only believed in his twisted, fucked up family and blood and money. But he still can’t justify himself. So after a few years Harry stopped trying to.
***
Pansy is still. She’s stopped taking notes. Harry thinks that he can’t remember when she stopped taking notes, but it must have been around the time that he ran into Draco.
He had known what this was about, of course. She had wanted to know the truth. Not about the war. About Draco. Draco Malfoy’s name had not been on the list of Death Eaters, killed or in Azkaban. Probably, Harry thinks dully, probably Pansy Parkinson had seen the published list in the Daily Prophet; probably she had pored over it once, twice, checking for Draco’s name and not finding it. Probably she had pried and dug and no one had or could tell her what happened to Draco.
She hates him. She hates him, the boy who hated Draco at school, who outdid Draco, who contributed to humiliating Draco, who had even tried to kill Draco with his own hands on a few occasions, after all that, he is the one who knows what happened to Draco. He’s the one who remembers Draco.
And probably, Harry imagines, she had clung to some small hope that Draco had been alive. That because he hadn’t named as a Death Eater, maybe he had been redeemed, at the end, that he had changed sides and that he had fled and was in hiding, living comfortably but discreetly in the countryside or France or someplace like that.
“What are you going to do?” Harry inquires wearily. “Call him the true hero of the war?”
“He is, isn’t he?” Pansy says.
Harry is silent.
“I can’t write it, anyway,” she continues.
“Why the hell not?”
“Do you want me to?” she retorts, eyes glittering. “I thought you didn’t want me reminding people of the war and the nastiness and the unfairness of it. Or maybe you’re feeling guilty? Is this your way of apologizing to Draco?” The derision is clear in her voice.
Harry clenches his jaw and says through his teeth, “I don’t have to apologize to him for anything.”
“Of course you don’t,” Pansy sneers. “Killing your peer. He was seventeen, Potter. Don’t you see? If I wrote this article, I’d just be glorifying the already great Harry Potter. The masses would rush to adore you. ‘Look how he suffered in silence all these years.’ ‘Can you imagine having to bear that burden?’ ‘No boy should have to make that decision.’ They would rush to comfort and it would be hail Harry Potter for months.”
Any sympathy he might have felt for her, as always, vanishes. He wants to scream, slap her, really hit her. The memory is still ringing in his ears, and he can taste the blood from his lip all over again, feel the sweat in his eyes, the slight fogging over of his glasses, and she is mocking all of that.
He stands abruptly and drops a Galleon to cover their drinks. He stares down at her for a long time and decides he has nothing to respond to that.
“You got your interview. Print whatever you want. Try to get the facts right,” Harry says tightly.
***
It was Seeker senses, fine-tuned by Auror training, that made him turn in time to face her. She came barreling out the side door and slammed into him before drawing back. “Don’t you dare walk out on me, Potter.”
He had staggered back from the impact and hissed at the ache in his ribs. “What is your problem?”
“You’re just like you’ve always been,” she accuses. “A bloody Gryffindor, so fucking presumptuous, thinking you know everything and everyone. You’re so full of it,” she spat. “People change. Draco changed. You slaughtered him.”
“Draco Malfoy did not change.”
“He did. You made him change, you think if you had let him go he would’ve gone back to Lucius Malfoy? You Gryffindors pigeonhole everyone into these neat little roles, and nothing and no one can ever break out of them because it upsets your entire belief system.”
“I think he would have run back home very scared and then the next time I saw him, he would have tried to kill me.”
“Don’t you ever give anyone a fucking chance, you bastard?”
“All right then,” Harry says roughly. “Convince me. Convince me that you’ve changed.”
“I don’t have to prove anything to you.”
He gives her a long look. “Right.”
“How?”
“I don’t know!” He sighs. “Just forget it.”
She kisses him.
It’s the kind of fast kiss that’s full of dares and just a taste of the beer she took one sip of. The kind of fast kiss where he’s caught off guard, completely surprised, and when he opens his mouth to demand what is going on, why is she looking at him that way, like she’d like to murder him and something else, he gets, instead of answers, a breath full of soft skin and perfume. A fast kiss like the ones where there’s just a bit of too much momentum, so there’s some force propelling him back and a brief bumping of noses, but it’s also the kind of fast where the pressure of lips is quick and fleeting and light, just a pressing of her mouth to his and then gone.
He is shocked. All the tension has left his body, and he’s just standing there, breath forming on the air.
“What-” he utters. “That-was that supposed to be some kind of proof?”
She raises her chin in that fuck you Potter way. “I wouldn’t have done that ten years ago.”
Harry can’t believe that there can be someone like Pansy Parkinson existing in the world.
He hauls her against him and it is a slide of tongues and warm breath and cold hands on his face on her waist, just beneath the hem of her shirt. Her fingers go to his face, pulling off his glasses so that they dangle from her fingers and then drop silently to the ground. He feels Pansy’s teeth graze his bottom lip, and his fingers tighten, grasping at her shirt, her skirt, the strip of skin just beneath her sweater. Her fingers are tangling in his hair, and she is pressed up against him, legs clamped around one leanly muscled thigh. He likes the soft gasp of her breath hitching as his hands slide up beneath her sweater. Pansy nips at his mouth again, and he shudders against her. He really can’t believe this. He’s got his back to a dirty wall behind a bar, a dumpster two feet away, and Pansy Parkinson-Harry shuts his eyes and forgets to think and as Pansy scrapes fingers down chest and he feels her nails through the thin material, he reaches out to the dumpster and holds on.
This is wrong in so many ways. He is bruising her lips with his, not really caring if it hurts her, and he isn’t like this, normally. He hasn’t ever lost control like he did when he was still a student at Hogwarts. When Sirius had died, he had exploded in the confined space of Dumbledore’s office, and since then he hadn’t suffered such a bad loss of control as he was experiencing now. Pansy’s fingernails dig through his shirt into his shoulders, sliding down his side to rest on the waistband of his pants and they are not going to have sex in an ally like this.
“Stop,” Harry says raggedly, distracted and determined, “Stop.”
Pansy struggles for breath and then asks through swollen red lips, “What were you trying to convince me?”
He reacts again to that inflection in her voice and kisses Pansy again, slanting his lips hard across hers.
“Believe what you want to believe,” Harry tells her.