There was nothing in sight but memories left abandoned ...

[harry_caliga]

[Was supposed to go up late last night.]

Hadrian Parkinson’s old office was a disaster. Piles of books sat on the floor instead of their homes in the wood paneled, shelf-lined walls, and parchments, files and journals were strewn everywhere.

Pansy had unearthed every possible record she could find - the obvious, and the magically hidden. There were scorch marks on the ancient wooden desk in areas where she’d had a particularly difficult time trying to find the trick in Hadrian’s warding spells, but Pansy was fairly confident that she’d found everything. She may hate her father, hate everything he made of her and their family, but she had not lived under his thumb for seventeen years and learned nothing. She’d learned how he thought, how he moved, why he made the decisions he did. It’d served her at times, if only that she was able to outmaneuver him and his intentions for her. She shuddered just thinking back on those days. She’d avoided her father’s office as much as possible since his death; it was where Hadrian had spent the most time, where he had sat her down and told her what she was, what she would do, and how much she would like it. It was where he’d punished her for her insolence and stubbornness.

The room was empty now - empty of the man who had been the dictator of her life, in any case. What remained was his legacy, and from what little she had read of his personal journals, it was stomach turning. When she’d told Potter that she suspected Clint Osbourne of human sex trafficking, she’d not been sure - she’d only even alluded to the possibility. Reading through some of her father’s things though, it was obvious that he, too, had indulged in a pretty girl - or boy - on occasion. Just thinking on it made Pansy’s stomach turn and had anger sluicing through her like a living thing unto itself. She might not have ever been a slave, but she’d been the subject of unwanted attention and forced to do things she didn’t want to do. No one should ever be treated like that - as if they were a thing to be bought and sold, traded for goods or favors.

As angry as it made her, as much as she wanted to strangle the life out of Clint Osborne and men like him with her bare hands, there was nothing she could do - and there didn’t seem to be anything that might help Miles in finding his Reese Ashley. It didn’t help that she wasn’t sure exactly what she was looking for. Though many of her father’s records were littered with names, prices, and other bits of information, she didn’t recognize all of it. Some of the names were of prominent men in British pureblood society, but others were foreign names, German and Russian, and some even sounded Arabic. She had bunches of dots, but no way to connect them.

She rubbed her temple as a headache had long since taken up residence, and grudgingly admitted to herself that she had to get in contact with Potter. It was highly likely that he knew more about Reese Ashley’s case than Miles did - the law always knew more than they ever shared. And she needed to know more, if only to be alleviated of the task of continuing on through her father’s things. Perhaps the man who’d taken Miles’ friend was just a man. Not every fault could be laid at the door of the evil men her father had affiliated himself with.

Pansy glanced at the large clock. It was just past midnight. An unseemly hour to pop over to Potter’s residence, but she didn’t much care. If she recalled from her last attempt at contacting him, he didn’t keep regular hours anyway. And if he had a problem with it, he could just stuff it. She was trying to do a good deed.

Collecting her wand from beneath a parchment on the desk and slipping back into the ballet flats she’d taken off hours ago now, Pansy apparated - and appeared on the stoop of a dilapidated rowhouse. She’d never tried the coordinates Harry had given her, only memorized them and burned the parchment as he’d requested.

It seemed he lived on a Muggle street. And it was cold outside. Tucking her wand away, Pansy pulled the sleeves of her sweater over her hands and knocked.

It had been quite some time since Dobby had needed to answer the front door. Harry Potter’s friends usually used the floo, or apparated directly into the house. But it had been months since anyone but Harry Potter had been to Grimmauld Place, and it was with barely contained excitement that Dobby opened the front door to greet the late night visitor.

His large eyes blinked up at the dark-haired woman. Dobby knew her, though it had been years since he had seen her. The last time had been under his service to his previous masters, the one who Harry Potter had freed him from. This woman had been a friend of Draco, the young master. Dobby couldn’t help but tense a bit at her arrival. “Yes?”

Pansy scowled at the elf. It was about as welcoming as Potter. “I’d like to come in, and I’d like to speak to your master.”

“Does Harry Potter know you were coming?” Harry Potter had always stressed that he wasn’t Dobby’s master, but his friend. Dobby needed to protect his friends.

“Given that this place is unplottable, do you think I would be here if I hadn’t been expected?” She hated uppity elves.

Dobby opened his mouth to respond but stopped when Harry came around the corner, pulling a while t-shirt over his head. “Dobby, who is it?”

“Harry Potter is having a guest at a late hour who says she is expected,” Dobby answered, still standing in the doorway and the dark-haired witch’s way.

It was late, and Harry hadn’t been expecting anyone, but very few people knew about Grimmauld Place, and even fewer would use the front door instead of just coming in. His eyes widened as his gaze landed on Pansy.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, body instantly tense, scanning the street just beyond her for any threats. He’d given Pansy his address months ago, the assumption that it would be used in the case of an emergency. He could only surmise that she’d come so late and without notice because something had happened.

“Except for the fact that it’s frigid out here and your elf won’t let me inside, nothing,” Pansy said. The words were biting, but as Harry scanned the area behind her, she tensed and glanced back as well. Was his home watched?

Harry ushered Pansy into the cramped foyer with a hand on her arm, giving the darkened street one last cursory glance before he shut the door. “It’s fine, Dobby,” he told the elf, who was still looking at Pansy with slight apprehension.

“If Harry Potter needs anything, Dobby will know.” The lanky elf gave Pansy a pointed look before popping away.

Running a hand through his hair, still damp from the shower he’d just taken, Harry gave Pansy a shrug. “He’s a bit protective,” he explained. She didn’t appear in any danger so he let himself relax a bit. Grimmauld Place was one of the only places he truly felt safe, and if he couldn’t be comfortable in his own home, then he couldn’t be comfortable anywhere.

“Good gods, that was Draco’s elf wasn’t it?” She barely remembered Draco whining about it to her, how angry his father had been and how much more he hated Harry now that he’d ‘stolen’ from their family.

Shaking her head, and the memory, away, Pansy finally looked at Harry. Her mouth turned down. He was more unkempt than he was normally wont to be. “I need to ask you about Reese Ashley.” She shifted her eyes up to meet his - and found it quite disconcerting that he didn’t have his glasses on.

Harry frowned. It was public knowledge that Reese Ashley had been taken, but he hadn’t come across any information in the file that indicated Pansy knew the blonde. Plus, it was an ongoing and open MLE case, something he shouldn’t be discussing with anyone but MLE personnel in the first place.

“Come on,” he said, starting down the hall and toward the stairs. The house was dark, but he’d been in the study before his shower and he’d left the fire in the grate. She’d said she was cold, and there was no reason to have a conversation by the front door.

“So forthcoming,” she grumbled, though she followed him. She kept fairly close on his heel, in fact. The place was dark, musty and fit all her ideas of what a haunted house might look like with the peeling wallpaper, and the creak of the floorboards beneath their feet.

He led her into a drawing room of sorts, or at least Pansy suspected it had once been a drawing room. The fire crackled merrily, but it only cast enough light to see the worn cushioned chair that had been pushed near it - the one that Harry unceremoniously dropped himself into. He rubbed his face and ran his hands through his hair before he looked up at her, and she frowned. She wasn’t supposed to note such things as Harry looking exhausted, but watching the firelight flicker over his features revealed shadows beneath his eyes.

“Do you sleep?”

“When I can. Do you? It’s pretty late,” he said, raising an eyebrow in her direction as he summoned another chair for her.

“It can’t be too terribly late if you’ve yet to make it to bed, and the night is still quite young for me,” she said to answer both his questions as she eyed the chair that slid over to face his. It looked clean enough and she sat on the very edge on the side closest to the flame. Dark eyes slid back to Harry and again she said, “I need to know about Reese Ashley.”

Again, Harry frowned at her question. “What do you want to know about her? I’m sure you have people who’d be able to get that kind of information for you.”

“Miles has care of her child,” she said as if that explained why she was asking at all. And in a way, it was exactly why she was asking. She could count the people she trusted on one hand and still have fingers left over, and Miles was one of those people. He was in love with the missing Reese Ashley and she had promised she would try. “He said she was abducted by some man from her past, someone who apparently had the means to track her down after years of her being a little nomad. Someone who was able to make her absolutely disappear.”

Pansy’s gaze shifted to the fire. “She isn’t dead. If he went through all the trouble to find her, to have her, then it’s about the obsession, about having her. Possession.” Pansy would know. “I promised Miles I would search through my fathers things because men like that …” she glanced back toward Harry “... those men, they’re like my father. They’re like the men my father used to bring around our home.” Her hands were in a knot in her lap, and her shoulders were tense, but Pansy continued. “I’ve never bothered to look through his things, but I’ve ransacked every damn record he has and … I just don’t know what I’m looking for. You’ll probably want to have a look yourself. Clint Osbourne’s name was recorded several times, and my father’s journals were” she suppressed a shudder, “quite revealing.”

This wasn’t personal. It was business. It was that thought that enabled her to continue speaking these things to Harry, to a man she didn’t like. She trusted him though. Honor ran straight down his spine. “I just want to know if you’ve something you’ve not shared with Miles, if there’s something about Miss Ashley that could perhaps help me narrow my search, or,” she forced her hands to unclasp and smoothed her palms over her legs, “if it’s just as random as it appears, then I might stop looking and tell Miles there’s nothing I can do to help.”

Harry stilled and listened to Pansy carefully. He wasn’t sure what made him freeze, except that he could tell she was revealing things that made her uncomfortable, vulnerable if her posture said anything, and something urged him not to make any sudden movements and to keep his face impassive.

He’d been trained to read between the words that people said, to search for the hidden meanings and messages, and what Pansy was telling him made it clear that she understood the machinations of Ashley’s kidnapping in an intimate way.

He'd worked on her case when Vincent Crabbe had kidnapped her, and he was aware of what the werewolf had desired from her, but the way she spoke of being wanted as a possession... Being taken by Crabbe was not the first time she'd experienced the like.

These men she'd said. Men like her father. Men she knew through associations with her father. Men that shared her father’s fetishes for young girls and boys. Men who probably saw Pansy as nothing more than another possession, like the way they viewed the entire world. Harry knew Pansy hated her father, had made it clear she was very happy he was dead, but it was as if the reasons for her loathing were becoming less murky.

It was an assumption, one he’d never ask for clarification on, but he knew better than to convey the growing sympathy he had for what she’d gone through under her father’s rule. There was very little that would make someone like Pansy more angry than showing any sort of compassion or pity.

“Your father kept journals detailing the illegal activities he carried out with men like Osbourne?” he asked after a moment. He was avoiding her true question, but he was still struggling with the idea of revealing the information he held because of his training as an Auror. You don’t expose aspects of an open case unless it was with other enforcement officials. It was privileged information for a reason.

“Yes.” The word was bitten out and her nails dug into her legs. “I may have hinted at a sex trade the last we spoke, but apparently it was right under my nose all along.” And she should have known, really, considering the way he had used and treated her those last years before he’d died. No, Hadrian hadn’t ever stooped to using her himself or selling her away - he would never; she was Parkinson blood - but he had treated her as a piece to be paraded, a favor to his associates. She would be bid to smile - though they had liked when she fought back too, and that only ever made it worse in the end.

“My father apparently favored young girls. The occasional boy.” Pansy’s jaw clenched. She knew Harry would want to see it all anyway. Read everything. “Ashley,” she prodded again.

“I’m not sure what you expect me to be able to tell you,” he said, hand reflexively skimming through his hair again. It was still maddeningly frustrating that they knew where Reese was but could do nothing to bring her home. The man who’d kidnapped her was nefarious and vile - all signs pointed to him being a main column in the trafficking ring - and the fact that they couldn’t touch him... It was maddening, but he had no idea what else they could do.

Irritation pricked at her at his evasiveness. She’d been forthright, had even offered him access to her father’s things, and he still hadn’t really answered her initial question. “Tell me that you haven’t a clue who took her, that me trying to find a connection to my father’s old associates and the networks he travelled in is fruitless endeavor. Tell me that you have no leads, that everything Miles told me is everything you know.” She met Harry’s gaze and her own were blazing. “I want to be able to tell him I did everything I could.”

“I know you want to help your friend, Pansy. Trust me, I’m trying to do everything I can to bring Reese back. It’s not as easy as you’d like it to be. This is an ongoing, open case. I took an oath as an Auror to do whatever it takes to uphold the law, and part of that is keeping confidences and information from the public.” Harry sat up a little straighter in his chair, though his shoulders still sagged in exhaustion.

His words were true, and there was strength behind them, but the more he spoke about the justness of law, the more he became disillusioned. As it was, he should be able to point to Klaus, tell the Dutch Ministry that he was involved in the human trafficking trade, and be able to arrest the man. However, he was being barred from taking the criminal off the street because of bureaucracy and red tape. It did not take a large leap to assume that Klaus may have several friends in the Ministry making sure he was kept out of harm’s way.

It was getting increasingly difficult to be honest to the law when the law was not being honest to those loyally trying to enforce it.

“Your father’s journals and you revealing what they entail is not a fruitless endeavor.” He sat forward in his chair, closing a bit of the distance between them as he peered at her seriously. “If those books contain names and dates, it’s possible for us to find additional evidence corroborating the information. Once we gather that evidence, we can charge them for their crimes. Those journals, and your help, is invaluable to the cause. And to me.”

He was being earnest. It was the bit about him that she grudgingly respected, but it was also the bit about Harry Potter that drove her absolutely batty and always had. “You’ve got your causes, and I’ve got mine. Uphold the law. Use the damn journals to take them all down. I don’t bloody care. All I care about is whether one of those men is involved with Miles’ friend.”

Pansy leaned toward him, voice and gaze heated. “I know you’re not being forthright. You haven’t outright told me that what I’m doing is a futile undertaking. Just tell me his bloody name.” Dark eyes blazed. “It’s not as if I’d break your confidence. To do so would be injurious to me in the end anyway. Hell, Harry, what I’m doing - what I’m offering to you - is probably going to bite me in the arse, but I promised Miles I would try, and if you know something, be a bloody human and tell me. You’re not the law right now.”

“Be a bloody human?” Harry repeated, the thoughts tumbling through his head forcing him to his feet in an effort to calm them. “What do you think will happen if I were to tell you? I have an idea how it might go. I tell you the name. You tell Bletchley, who won’t care how you got the name, just that you did. Bletchley makes sure Reese gets home. Do you honestly believe that will be the end of it? That if I tell you this man’s name, that Reese will be saved and everything will return back to normal? Can you tell me that once Reese is safely home that Bletchley will not do everything in his power to punish the man who took her?”

Harry wasn’t naive. He’d been told, in no uncertain terms, that going after Klaus through legal or political means would not happen. Unless they were able to find some solid evidence that Klaus was behind the kidnapping of Reese, there was no way to arrest him through sanctioned methods.

If this man had been parading Reese in front of groups of people like Savage said he was, there would be no evidence to find.

Without legal means of getting to Klaus, it left the alternative of illegal action. Were he to give Pansy what she wanted, he would essentially be signing this man’s death warrant. Harry wouldn’t be the one to watch the light fade from Klaus’ eyes, but he’d have been the one to make sure that was how it ended.

He felt helpless. If he did nothing with the information Savage had given him and continued to pursue legal avenues, it was possible Reese would never be free. Her daughter would grow up without a mother. If he gave Pansy what she was asking for, he would be responsible for a man’s death. A man who might deserve it, yes, but the blood would be on his hands.

Had Dumbledore struggled with these moral ambiguities? Had he ever had to make the choice on who lived and who died? He knew the wizard had been flawed, and that he’d been human, but he couldn’t imagine those twinkling blue eyes behind tiny glasses and the brilliant mind behind them deciding that it was fine to condemn a man to death to save another.

Maybe he was naive. Maybe he was still holding onto a shred of hope that decency would win out in the end and that morality might need to bend, but not break altogether.

Harry turned from where he’d been staring into the fire, deep thoughts swirling, and looked back to Pansy. “If I give you his name, he’s as good as dead. Tell me I’m wrong.”

She was standing now, watching him pace, but when he met her gaze she held his. “It is likely that whomever it is will come to a tragic end,” she told him evenly.

It didn’t phase Pansy a whit that she was speaking to an Auror in such a way. Harry Potter was deeper in the true heart of things than he had ever imagined to be. Part of Pansy wanted to laugh, though she knew it would be a manic sound. He’d seen horrible things, she knew - gods, he was the bloody Boy Who Lived - but he’d never been subject to sadistic machinations. He didn’t know what it was to suffer the the loss of freedom and self.

That she was having this conversation with him was the joke of the century.

Pansy closed the distance between them and peered up at Harry. He was haunted, angry, conflicted. She’d known he knew something. “Whoever it is, you know he deserves whatever happens to him, and that Reese Ashley doesn’t deserve whatever horrors she’s enduring. Anyone who steals the freedom of others doesn’t deserve the courtesy of having their own freedom respected.”

“It’s that easy for you to condemn another to death?” Harry asked, voice quiet as he blinked down at her.

“Reese is not mine, but she belongs to one of the only people on this godforsaken planet that cares a damn about me. I would do anything for the few I love,” she told him. “Would you not make the same decision if the bastard had taken Granger? Or what of Ginny? Would you stand idly by and let the law decide in its own time what should be done? What if it’s too late? The moment this man knows he’s suspected or in danger of being exposed, it’s likely he’ll kill her. If she doesn’t exist, there’s no evidence.”

Harry brushed by her, dropping back into his seat. Twenty-minutes prior he’d been in the shower, looking forward to falling into bed for a few hours before heading back to the Ministry. Now he was weighing the moral implications of knowingly assigning a man to death and taking law out of the equation.

He was tired, more tired than he’d ever been in his life, and he saw no real rest on the horizon.

Tension clung to her, from the taut line of her shoulders to the clench of her hands. She’d dredged up many of the demons of her past the last several weeks as she’d ransacked her father’s things. Talking to Harry had only made it all more tangible, especially as it was obvious that her hunch had been correct. Reese Ashely was in the hands of a man just like her father, probably worse. She didn’t know Miles’ little friend, but even sparing a thought for what she was enduring made Pansy’s stomach turn.

Harry was always maddening, but watching him slump in the chair with the seeming weight of the world on his shoulders only made her tired. If she’d had any less self-preservation than she did, she would have just have ended it all years ago.

“I fail to see how you can blame yourself for this,” she said, exasperated. She wanted to be mad, but she just couldn’t summon the energy for it that particular moment. “Every man is the navigator of his own destiny. Whatever choices this bastard has made has brought him to where he is. His fate is his own, and if stealing a woman from her home and abusing her, body and soul, are some of his choices,” she said, voice quiet, “then he deserves whatever comes his way.”

He couldn’t help the self-deprecating snort, looking up at her a second later. “You say his fate and destiny are his own, yet you’re asking me to seal them. He deserves what’s coming to him, but you ask me for directions. Blame and guilt might be easy for you to ignore, but it’s not the same for me.”

Pansy’s face hardened and anger came to her in a rush. “You’re a bloody piece of work, Potter. Every damn second you sit here and indulge yourself an existential crisis, Reese Ashley suffers that much longer under the hand of a man who obviously thinks of her as nothing more than a possession to be had whenever he damn well pleases. Guilt is a luxury,” she said as she stomped toward him, “but you just go on ahead and continue thinking real hard about how difficult a decision this is. I’m sure Miss Ashley has all the time in the world and is pleased to let you work out your moral dilemmas. I’m sure if Granger and Weasley were in her situation, they would love taking the back of some one’s hand for one more day, or see to his every pleasure just a smidge longer so you can ease your conscience.”

Harry’s gaze narrowed as he rose silently from the chair, anger slowly building in his chest.

“Are you so self-righteous? Did you ever attempt to save someone who was in Ashley’s position, seeing as you knew about the trafficking? No. You knew what these men were doing, but waited until the target was on your head to come forward with any information that might save them. Don’t stand there and tell me that I’m wasting time with this decision when you were too weak to help anyone in this exact same position less than three months ago, and only now do so because these people have decided to set their sights on you as well.”

He’d taken slow steps towards her as he spoke, voice low and even and held back only by very careful control. “You may not struggle with your morality because you have none. I do, and it is not so easy for me to overlook it. Remember that my morality and sense of justice is the reason why you trust me to keep you safe were anything to happen to you, and tell me again that I waste time with my conscience.”

The longer he spoke, the harsher her breathing became, and before Pansy could think on it, she slapped him hard enough to whip his head to the side. “I saved me,” she hissed. “Don’t you ever dare presume, you fucking bastard. I might have tried to save the little girls and boys my father had, but I never knew about them. He kept me much to busy with his associates to ever have a chance,” she sneered, anger laced in every word.

She clung to her anger; it was the only thing holding back all the other emotions. “You are the first damn person I came to when I found what was going on. I offered you free access to everything. You can do what I can’t. If my motivations aren’t clean enough for you, then so be it. I’ll gladly go to hell for trying to spare one person the horror I know all too intimately.”

His cheek stung where her hand had landed but he kept the hurt off his face. As he’d looked back to Pansy, Harry had seen Dobby in the doorway to the study, hand poised in the air. He’d given an imperceptible shake of his head, warming the elf not to react.

It had only been an assumption before, but it was shared knowledge now that Pansy’s father had used her as a reward for the men he knew. Her reaction to Reese’s situation was understandable, as was her anger, and Harry knew that more than concern for a friend’s friend was what fueled her emotions. He hadn’t expected her to become physical, he wouldn’t have pushed her as he had if he’d known, but mixed with the boil of feelings within he’d been unable to stop himself.

Pansy’s eyes were nearly black in the dim light cast by the flames in the grate, but Harry kept his gaze steady on hers as he spoke. “No one deserves to have done to them what was done to you in the past, and what is being done to Reese Ashley right now, but I refuse to condemn someone to death so lightly. If it were so easy for me to accept this man’s life as righteous payment for the wrongs he’s committed, then I cross a line that makes me little better than the man himself. It is the value that I place on life that makes me a better man than him, and if his death meant absolutely nothing and caused me no hesitation than I would not be worthy of the trust you’ve placed in me.”

He took a deep breath, eyes closing for a split second before continuing. “Lukas Klaus,” he bit out the name, giving her what she’d come to him for, “has done incomprehensible and detestable things for which he should be punished. If I could see any other way for him to pay for his crimes and to see Reese Ashley come home safely, then I would do it, but as you said, he’s chosen this as the only course of action.”

Harry could feel the heat in his cheek, as well as from the flames to his right, but at that moment he was cold inside. “I said I would help you and I meant it. Despite the risks involved.”

He turned from her, grabbing his glasses from a side table before slipping them on. “Was his name all you needed, or were we settled here?”

Pansy wanted to hate him. She wanted to direct every bit of anger into hating him for the things he’d said to her, for calling her weak. She wanted to hate him for being reasonable and logical about all the reasons she trusted him. If he hadn’t given up the name, the name she recalled from some of her father’s records, even, Pansy might have let herself hate him. Hate and anger were simple emotions for her, and Harry had always been an easy target for such with his noble intentions and narrow worldview.

But she couldn’t hate Harry. Perhaps even if he hadn’t given up Lukas Klaus, she might not have been able to hate him. She loathed what was happening to Miles’ friend, the woman he was in love with, but she could not deny that the very reasons Harry infuriated her and made her so tempted to despise his very existence, were the very reasons she had chosen him as her champion of sorts. She heard things. Saw things. Knew people. In exchange for any information she might come across, Harry would keep her safe - and she knew he would.

“The name was all. I recall seeing it in some of my father’s things,” she told him. Her anger was gone now, but without it she felt hollowed out. Empty. “If you come to investigate his papers and journals, Pepper will show you to his office if I am not in.”

She did not say thank you. Pansy couldn’t make herself. “May I apparate from here without being caught in the wards?”

Harry nodded as he grabbed a file and sat in his chair, certain that he would be unable to sleep if he tried. “You were added to the wards when we invited you in. You’ll be able to apparate in and out without problem now.”

She nodded, though didn’t directly move to leave. She was cursed with insomnia; she knew when she was seeing it in others. “Blaise makes an excellent sleeping draught. It can be addictive, so it must be used sparingly, but I’m sure Ginny could get you some.” With that, she disappeared with a crack.

A soft laugh escaped him after she was gone. It was ridiculous that one minute Pansy would all but blame him for every passing minute that Reese was under Klaus’ lack of care, and then try to help him get to sleep in the next.

“Is Harry Potter alright?” Dobby asked as he eased into the room. Now that the woman was gone - the woman who had hurt Harry Potter - the elf couldn’t keep himself from checking to see how his friend was.

Still shaking his head, Harry looked up at Dobby with a tired, sad smile on his face. “I’m fine, Dobby. Just tired.”

“Harry Potter is not sleeping enough,” the elf replied, large eyes filled with worry and concern. He’d been able to force a full meal on his friend earlier, happy to hear that Harry Potter was planning on a shower and sleep before he would be leaving again. Now Dobby had a feeling that Harry Potter would not be seeing his bed at all.

“It’s alright, Dobby. I’ll try tomorrow.”

The house-elf’s hand reached up to pull on an ear as he watched Harry turn his attention to the papers he held. It was hard watching his friend as he was. Filling with steely determination, Dobby turned and headed toward the kitchen. Even though Harry Potter had not asked for it, Dobby was making Harry Potter tea.

Summary: Pansy comes to Harry looking for information about Reese. It is not as easy for him to give as she’d like it to be.