So give me reason, prove me wrong ...
He had tried to give it as much time as he could, but after Ginny’s owl confirming that the ‘allergic reactions’ she’d seen at her clinics were related to muggleborn or half-bloods, he had no other choice. Harry needed to see Pansy and, more importantly, the journals her father had kept chronicling his sordid and disgusting life.
He could only hope that Hadrian Parkinson, in all his depravity, had gone into specific and elaborate details when it came to his dealings. Pansy had hinted that it involved the sex trafficking, but she’d mentioned other things as well. If there were details about the illegal potions trade, and possibly their end-game, then he might have a lead on what to expect next. And be able to give Ginny a heads-up on other things that she might be expecting in her clinic.
Apparating to her front foyer, Harry waited for an elf to appear. Attempting to find Pansy by wandering the hallways of her expansive home didn’t sound very appealing, and he doubted she’d appreciate it either.
A soft ‘pop’ announced the elf’s presence. “Penny is here to bring Miss Pansy’s guest to the solar,” she said softly even as the little elf beckoned. “Come.”
Harry followed the elf, green gaze taking in the paintings and tapestries on the walls as well as the carefully chosen furniture. Every older home he visited, he was reminded of how very little he had done to Grimmauld Place since he'd inherited it. The only rooms he routinely used were his bedroom, the bathroom, the study, and the kitchen. The kitchen had been used a lot less lately, something Dobby reminded him of frequently.
He was led into a room dominated by windows from floor to ceiling, the darkness on the other side of the glass impressive and deep. He'd figured a night visit would be best, assuming she'd be less likely to have visitors at that time. He'd flirted with the idea of arriving in the wee hours of the morning, much like she had, but he needed time to look at her father's journals, and he did still need to arrive at the Ministry in the morning.
Pansy felt him arrive.
When she thought on it too long and hard, it was always something of a conundrum that Harry Potter of all people was one of the very few people who she allowed to apparate directly into Beaumaris. It was even somewhat disturbing that she recognized his magical signature as he passed through the wards. Few people visited her, however, and fewer still could enter her home at their whim. It made logical sense that she knew the feel of each of those people, but it still irritated her in some irrational way that she was seemingly intimate in that way with the bloody Boy Who Lived.
Tonight it was only herbs that she tended. Mint, chamomile, lemon balm and lavender made a verdant landscape before her. She’d transplanted some of the larger plants, but soiled fingers plucked at the greenery now, building small piles of the different herbs to be dried and used for tea later. Her mother would have found it a scandal that she drank tea cultivated by her own hand, but Pansy had no such scruples.
“Penny has brought Miss Pansy’s guest,” a soft voice announced. “Would Miss Pansy like Penny to bring refreshments?”
“Ask Mr. Potter if he requires your services,” Pansy instructed without turning around.
“Mr. Potter, sir?” the tiny elf inquired.
Harry turned his attention from the windows to the elf, green eyes darting behind the small creature to the only slightly larger woman behind it. He’d thought for a second that she was someone tending to the plants, the over-sized t-shirt and jeans a far cry from the outfits he usually saw Pansy in.
He’d learned in the last few months, since he’d started gathering information from confidential sources, that this was how it was conducted; very few meetings were able to be done in his office or in public. They needed the darkness and the intimacy of private homes to conduct the business.
Still, it was off-putting to know that he was seeing someone, especially like Pansy Parkinson, so exposed. Not that he ever thought Pansy to be truly vulnerable. She’d learned how to protect herself heavily, and he doubted even in her home when she was wearing what she was and tending to her plants, that she was really unguarded.
“No,” he answered the elf with a shake of his head. “I’m fine.”
Only when the elf disappeared with a soft ‘pop’ and after Pansy was satisfied with what she’d collected from the lavender did she set her clippers on the work bench and swivel on her stool to face Harry. Dark eyes flicked over him, taking in his slightly disheveled appearance before finally meeting his gaze. “You’re here to see my father’s things.”
“They’ve become necessary,” he answered, though she hadn’t so much asked as stated. “Do you remember anything in them about the illegal potions trade? Specifically when it came to weeding out half-bloods and muggleborns?”
When she’d arrived at Grimmauld Place weeks prior, she said she’d looked through all his things. If she recalled something, it would make trying to find it easier. Harry fully intended on scouring the entire content of the journals, something he wasn’t particularly looking forward to because of the subject matter he was certain would be discussed in detail, but if she could lead him in the right direction it would be preferable.
Pansy’s brow furrowed slightly at his question, but all she did was “Hmm,” vaguely at him as she slipped from her stool to move past him.
She hadn’t been to her father’s office since she’d found the information she needed for Miles. In fact, she avoided the whole wing whenever possible as it held the rooms her father had often frequented or entertained in. Few of Pansy’s memories of many of those rooms were pleasant. She’d asked Harry to visit some unpleasantness on her behalf, however, and the least she could do was show him where he’d be spending his time.
“To be honest, I’ve tried to block out as much as possible,” she told him over her shoulder as bare feet padded softly against the marble floors. There was little light, and the darkness almost swallowed them whole once they exited the solarium, but it didn’t bother Pansy. She knew Beaumaris from top to bottom. There were many things for her to fear, but the darkness was not one of them. “But yes, I do recall bits about potions. I didn’t linger as they didn’t pertain to what I was searching for, however.”
Pansy paused and pivoted at the base of the grand staircase and felt more than saw Harry as he came to an abrupt stop before he was upon her. She peered up at him, but his face was cast in the shadows and the moonlight coming through windows did not touch him. “If you’re worried you’ll tumble to your death on the stairs, feel free to light your way,” she told him before beginning the climb herself.
“Believe it or not, despite the glasses, I have really good night vision,” he said as he followed her.
That she recalled anything about potions was reason for hope. As far as he knew, there’d been one death attributed to the illegal potions, but it was entirely possible there had been others that they didn’t know about. More muggleborns or half-bloods that had been targeted and specifically given dangerous and deadly potions for the sole purpose of murder.
She hadn’t been lying and, as they came to the second-floor landing, Harry could barely make out the hallway in front of them and the doors that lined it. His eyes adjusted quickly, but the blackness before them was thick. He took a step closer to Pansy’s back, counting on his sense of sound to keep her within reach.
Pansy could feel him just behind her. It was cool in this wing and the presence of body so close emitted a warmth that was both pleasant and disconcerting.
It wasn’t long before they came to her father’s old office and she stopped before a door.
In the darkness he hadn’t been prepared for her to stop so abruptly, and Harry reacted a split second before his body smacked into hers, stopping himself with both hands on her shoulders.
The shirt she was wearing slid slightly under his hands - it was several sizes larger than her - and he looked to their right, assuming there was a door since she’d stopped. “Is this it?” Harry asked as he drew his hands back from her person.
Tension still radiated through her body from his touch and she scowled at him, though he couldn’t see her expression. “No, I’ve led you to the dungeons to have my way with you,” she bit out before pushing through the door and lighting the room with a flick of her wrist. She’d always had an affinity for fire, and the the candles and lamps immediately bathed the room in a warm glow - and revealed the violent disarray she’d left it in.
Harry stayed in the doorway as the candles blazed to life. He let his eyes take in the room; there were papers strewn across the floor, some appearing to be in piles, some sitting off to the side as if they’d been discarded because a lack of importance.
“You’d be the first home I know of that had the dungeons anywhere but in the basement,” he said as he slowly made his way farther into the library, leaning down to pull a piece of paper from the ground in front of him. The handwriting was neat, but tight, as if there was a flow of thoughts that could barely be contained.
Excitement, Harry thought with disgust, remembering what he’d seen as he wrote.
“You’d be quite surprised what magic can make possible,” Pansy said, voice hollow. It was true that the actual dungeons were far beneath the estate in the bowels of the earth, but this manor was old enough, and riddled with enough magic, that there were places and rooms that Pansy would soon enough forget. As she’d promised Harry everything, however, she brushed past him, carefully picking her way through the journals and papers she’d flung haphazardly in frustration weeks prior.
It was already ajar from when she’d come looking before, but Pansy pulled open the hidden door further. When closed, it seamlessly fit right into the book shelves that lined the whole wall. “There’s more in there,” she told him.
Trailing after Pansy, he took a look at the place her father had hidden the journals. He was certain the estate had been scoured from top to bottom following the Second War for anything that could concretely tie Hadrian Parkinson to Death Eater activities, but this cache had never been found. It meant there had to have been some heavy warding and charms to keep it from being discovered.
“How did you find this place?” he asked, looking into the darkness just beyond the door.
“I always knew it was there,” she said, though Pansy did not offer up any further information. The journals her father kept were lined along the wall of the small passageway in shelves just as well kept as the ones in the office, but further in was a room where her father had conducted the less savory parts of his affairs. The dungeons were rather far, after all, and why not make use of the chains and manacles adjacent to one’s office if they were available? Her father had even conveniently added other niceties, such as a bed and another desk. His home away from home.
Disgust and anger sluiced through her, warming her skin. She hated her father, but he had not been the man who had put that hidden room there. Another Parkinson patriarch from another era had commissioned it. Pansy knew her family had a dark, sordid past, but the more she learned of the truth behind the veneer of her own blood, the more disillusioned she became.
Harry paused, digesting the knowledge Pansy had given him by what she hadn’t said. She’d known about the room and what it was used for when her father had been alive. As she’d made it clear, directly after she’d slapped him, he couldn’t assume to know what she’d been through, but if she’d known about this room, then it could be as bad as he imagined.
Brushing off the thoughts of what Pansy’s father had put his own daughter through, he brushed past her and focused on what Hadrian had done to others. There were countless journals, including the ones Pansy had already removed from the shelves and gone through, and Harry was slightly overwhelmed by the prospect of looking through them all.
His eyes lit on the other features of the room. A desk. A bed. Chains lining the walls that appeared to have been kept in good condition and used often. He might have not known of dungeons being anyplace other than the basement, but it was clear that with a few specific charms, you could hide a torture room anywhere.
Harry couldn’t imagine this room being used for anything but torture.
Pushing off the thoughts of possible rooms like this being hidden in Grimmauld Place, he turned back to look at Pansy. “Are there any other hidden rooms with journals? Anywhere else you can think he might have hidden things?”
“There are other rooms that the Ministry did not find, but this was the only one that belonged to him.” There were tunnels too, but Harry didn’t need to know that. There was nothing in them that would aide him.
Her gaze flicked to the bed and she swallowed. Hadrian had only ever chained her to the wall and left her there to “think about her trespasses”, but now that she’d read his private thoughts, knew what he’d been up to, it dawned on her why the bed was there at all. He did have a special affinity for bought and paid for young girls.
She forcibly turned her head away, dark eyes unseeing. “Now that I think on it, you may want to tour the dungeons after all,” she said, voice distant.
“Not tonight,” Harry said, green gaze on her as she deliberately looked away from a room her father no doubt spent a lot of time in. He wasn’t sure what information could be gleaned from a tour of the dungeons, but if she thought of anything, he’d make sure they found it.
Tonight, however, he was here for a specific reason and he had no desire to witness her relive the hell her father had put her through.
He grabbed an arm-full of journals from the shelves, noting that they were neatly lined and sorted chronologically, and returned to the light of the library. There was no way he’d make it through the journals in one night, and he wouldn’t risk taking all of them to Grimmauld Place. It might have been easier to have someone else helping him look through them, but it wasn’t possible. Letting anyone know about the journals would put Pansy at risk, and he had promised to keep her safe.
“Do you care if I take them home, or would you rather they stay here?”
“I don’t care what you do with them,” she said, tone clipped as she picked her way back toward the door. She was unsettled and it made her irritable and angry. “As long as they don’t become my death, I’m not much bothered. As it stands, I’ve contemplations of purging this whole damn room with fire.”
“As long as we chronicle any usable evidence, I don’t see why you couldn’t,” Harry said, setting the journals he’d take with him on the corner of the impressive desk. “Maybe after this is over,” he added.
Pansy looked up at him then, dark eyes searching his. “It’s never over. Shite always keeps coming to bite you in the arse, or right on down into the ground if it can, and the deeper you get into this mess, the less hope you’ve got of ever seeing the light again.”
She’d thought, once, that it was possible to leave this shite behind, but it haunted her, dogged her, and while she could pretend all she wanted that what she had was a normal life, Pansy knew that every time she stepped outside the wards of Beamuaris that she was not safe. Too much had happened in the past, too many men knew she knew too much. That the Liberi wanted her money only made things worse. Her rebuff of their advances and the fact that she was the last surviving heir of the family made her a prime target. Perhaps in a different world, she could will it all away, but she was no fool. The Ministry was corrupted and the Parkinson assets would be seized and put into untraceable accounts.
Harry could practically feel the angry heat radiating from her skin, and her words were harsh and clipped. He’d known coming in to retrieve the journals would upset her, if only because it’d remind her of her father, a man she openly loathed and hated. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but words of utter defeat was a surprise.
He sat back against her father’s desk, crossing his arms over his chest as he peered into her dark, angry eyes. “Then why fight? Why give me any of these journals? Why try to undo any of the horrors your father leaked onto others? If there is no hope... why do you fight?”
Oddly enough, his questions brought the very unfamiliar feeling of tears, though she pushed it away and was only left with a resigned sigh. She was so tired. “I don’t want to die,” she told him. “Though I’m beginning to understand my family doesn’t have much of a legacy to be proud of, I still don’t want it all to be in the hands of the Liberi. I want to be around to make sure Draco stays off the bottle, and that Miles finds the woman he loves, and I want to be able to help them if it is in my capacity to do so.” She looked back up at him. “Just because I’m aware that it’s unlikely that I’ll ever be able to live a life without wondering what form the next attack will be in, doesn’t mean that I’ve given up. It’s called being realistic, Harry.”
“There is a difference between being realistic and being defeatist,” he responded, frowning. “You list things you want to fight for, but you speak as if none of them are going to actually happen. Belief and the strength of your faith that those things will happen give you the energy to keep going.”
Running a hand over his face, Harry pushed off the desk and stood directly in front of her. “I’m going to tell you something that I know is true, but that sometimes even I don’t believe. Voldemort didn’t fall because I was a better wizard, or because I wanted to live more than he did. It wasn’t because I was a survivor, or that I was smarter than him, or even that I was lucky. He fell because I had people around me depending on me, and I cared about them and didn’t want to let them down. Voldemort had minions, but he had no one that he would die for, no one he would jump in front of a hex for. So yes, maybe you don’t want to die, but that’s not why you fight, and that is why they’ll always lose.”
Pansy didn’t say anything right away. While she never had a problem speaking her mind, it was rare that others were so open. If it wasn’t politics, it was a fear of what others thought, or simple manipulation. She knew how to play the games, of course, and did when she was called upon, but she preferred to be who she was without the filter of lies and deception. That Harry Potter of all people was here, in her home, ready to cart of some of her fathers sordid memories and telling her how he’d survived what should have been a mortal blow at Voldemort’s hand was … surreal.
It was almost laughable, really. Her lips twitched slightly, unbidden. “Life coaching from Harry Potter himself. The irony of it is staggering.”
“Like I said, I tend to ignore my own advice,” he answered with a small grin, running a hand through his hair. He’d never been good at inspirational speaking, thinking it better to stay as out of the focus as possible, but sometimes it was necessary. Harry knew he had done a lot of growing up since Voldemort fell, but he also knew he had a long way to go. Hearing Pansy talk in her defeated tone made him angry, at himself more than anything.
Voldemort was gone, and while a new group would always attempt to fill the void he had left, the words were true. Eventually they would prevail, if only because they had more just reasons for fighting. If those reasons were forgotten, then they were doomed.
Pansy might not think herself very important in the fight, but it was possible that the journals she was giving him were invaluable to the cause. If they were able to disrupt the illegal potions and human trafficking, it was possible they’d cut the Liberi from a large source of their funds. Without funds, their members would begin to doubt the group’s ability to control the Ministry and the rest of the wizarding world.
These journals could be worth more than she realized, worth more than he’d be able to tell her, and that meant something.
“These are going to help,” he said after a quiet moment, holding up one of the journals, “and the reason they’re going to help is because you offered them to me and trusted that I’d do what needed to be done with them. Thank you.”
Though the words were coming from his mouth, they still felt a bit unreal. He was thanking Pansy Parkinson for trusting him. So much had changed in the world in the past five years.
Pansy didn’t really know how to react. She was rarely generous or giving, though more because it wasn’t in her nature to think of it rather than actively shying away from such. But even so, it wasn’t often she received such a thing as gratitude.
She frowned slightly, though that wasn’t quite right and her face cleared moments later. “You’re welcome,” she said with a small nod. The words felt odd on her tongue. “Though I doubt you’ll thank me again once you begin reading. My father’s private thoughts are not for the faint of heart.”
"No, but you are not at fault for your father's taste. In fact, you should receive a reward for not taking after him," Harry answered with a snort. It wasn't too much of a stretch to imagine what could have happened if she’d taken after her classmates and adopted her father's view of the world. She could have easily become like Crabbe; sick, twisted, and sadistic. That she hadn't was almost a statistical impossibility.
Pansy wanted to be offended by Harry’s words, but she couldn’t find it in herself. He was right. It was a wonder she hadn’t taken after her father, especially as it’d become obvious to her over the last several years that he was not the exception, but what was normal and expected of a Parkinson. She’d blindly believed what her parents had told her as a child - that she was better because of her blood, because of their family and their money - but the realities and consequences of war had made it impossible for her to live in ignorance. She’d been used in the most grievous of ways to what her father had considered an advancement of their house. Perhaps if she’d not been so stubborn, so independent of spirit, she might have bent to such abuse as her contribution to the Parkinson name and legacy, but Pansy could never be anything but repulsed and angered by it.
She eyed the journals. “If I wasn’t the last one alive, I’d probably be burned from the records like your godfather was.”
"I think Sirius is rather proud of the fact that his name is nothing but a scorch mark in the Black family history. He was never one for traditional family values. Family is who you surround yourself with and who you care about. I lived for eleven years with people who were supposed to be family, but I never knew the true meaning of the word until I arrived at Hogwarts. They say blood is thicker than water, but we need water to survive."
Harry looked down at the journals in his hand. "You might need blood to live, but to survive? It's unnecessary." After a silent moment, he shrugged slightly, feeling as if he'd lost the sense in his thought. "Well, I mean, you do need blood because even if you had water you could still bleed to death, but I meant metaphorically. Or ironically."
Shaking his head at himself as he ran a hand through the fringe of hair on his forehead, he glanced back up at Pansy with a self-deprecating sigh. "You should get back to your plants and I should begin looking through these."
"Whatever suits you," she said, bemusement and bewilderment fighting for dominance of her features as she watched him.
The irony of having Harry bloody Potter in her home, her father's journals in hand, telling her that family was who you chose and not necessarily who you were given, was too much. She could only find it amusing at this point. What was puzzling, however, was not only how easily he had revealed personal bits of his past to her, but that he cared at all to try and help her. Their own past and most of their recent interactions would not lend themselves to caring. If anything, she'd expect him to be wary of her.
It was something to think on, but just that moment she only lifted her hand to indicate the door. "After you."
Harry debated whether he should grab a few more journals to take with him but decided against it, walking away from the hidden entrance and the small room beyond. He didn’t need a physical reminder of Hadrian Parkinson’s darker tastes. If Pansy was right, he’d be getting more than enough information from the books themselves. He only hoped his delve into the inner psyche of a deviant would be worth it.
“If I have any questions, I’ll owl,” he said as they descended the steps toward the first floor.
“Don’t use the white creature, if you mind,” Pansy said, more of an afterthought than anything as they traversed back through the darkness of her home toward the entry hall. “She’s quite conspicuous. Though I suppose those prone to gossip would probably assume an affair,” she said, mouth turned in distaste. There was a reason she spent as little time as possible with the bints of her age in society. Mayhap if she had been spared the horrors of war, Pansy might find petty gossip fulfilling as well, but listening to such banal conversation when she had to mix in such society was irritating at best and gave her homicidal urges at worst.
“It wouldn’t be the worst thing they’ve said about me in the papers,” Harry said. As they arrived at her front door, he realized that what he’d meant and what he’d said, like so often happened when words fell from his mouth, could be taken completely wrong. He turned to face her, journals held tightly in his hands.
“I don’t mean that if the papers said you and I were having an affair that it would be a horrible thing because you and I... I just meant that since I was eleven they’ve been saying rotten things about me, again, not that you and I would be rotten, but that it’s not the worst thing they’ve said about me.”
Realizing there wasn’t really anything to be done now, and that he would see no sleep for the next couple days because he’d be pouring over the journals, Harry ducked his head. “I’ll use a nondescript owl,” he murmured, reaching for the knob.
Her lips twitched. “Yes, please do.”
Harry stepped outside, trading one darkness for another, but before he Apparated, Pansy’s voice floated after him. “It’s not the worst thing they’ve said about me, either. Close, though.”
SUMMARY: Harry drops in on Pansy to collect some of her father’s personal journals. He ends up staying long enough to dispense advise, much to the surprise of both.
He could only hope that Hadrian Parkinson, in all his depravity, had gone into specific and elaborate details when it came to his dealings. Pansy had hinted that it involved the sex trafficking, but she’d mentioned other things as well. If there were details about the illegal potions trade, and possibly their end-game, then he might have a lead on what to expect next. And be able to give Ginny a heads-up on other things that she might be expecting in her clinic.
Apparating to her front foyer, Harry waited for an elf to appear. Attempting to find Pansy by wandering the hallways of her expansive home didn’t sound very appealing, and he doubted she’d appreciate it either.
A soft ‘pop’ announced the elf’s presence. “Penny is here to bring Miss Pansy’s guest to the solar,” she said softly even as the little elf beckoned. “Come.”
Harry followed the elf, green gaze taking in the paintings and tapestries on the walls as well as the carefully chosen furniture. Every older home he visited, he was reminded of how very little he had done to Grimmauld Place since he'd inherited it. The only rooms he routinely used were his bedroom, the bathroom, the study, and the kitchen. The kitchen had been used a lot less lately, something Dobby reminded him of frequently.
He was led into a room dominated by windows from floor to ceiling, the darkness on the other side of the glass impressive and deep. He'd figured a night visit would be best, assuming she'd be less likely to have visitors at that time. He'd flirted with the idea of arriving in the wee hours of the morning, much like she had, but he needed time to look at her father's journals, and he did still need to arrive at the Ministry in the morning.
Pansy felt him arrive.
When she thought on it too long and hard, it was always something of a conundrum that Harry Potter of all people was one of the very few people who she allowed to apparate directly into Beaumaris. It was even somewhat disturbing that she recognized his magical signature as he passed through the wards. Few people visited her, however, and fewer still could enter her home at their whim. It made logical sense that she knew the feel of each of those people, but it still irritated her in some irrational way that she was seemingly intimate in that way with the bloody Boy Who Lived.
Tonight it was only herbs that she tended. Mint, chamomile, lemon balm and lavender made a verdant landscape before her. She’d transplanted some of the larger plants, but soiled fingers plucked at the greenery now, building small piles of the different herbs to be dried and used for tea later. Her mother would have found it a scandal that she drank tea cultivated by her own hand, but Pansy had no such scruples.
“Penny has brought Miss Pansy’s guest,” a soft voice announced. “Would Miss Pansy like Penny to bring refreshments?”
“Ask Mr. Potter if he requires your services,” Pansy instructed without turning around.
“Mr. Potter, sir?” the tiny elf inquired.
Harry turned his attention from the windows to the elf, green eyes darting behind the small creature to the only slightly larger woman behind it. He’d thought for a second that she was someone tending to the plants, the over-sized t-shirt and jeans a far cry from the outfits he usually saw Pansy in.
He’d learned in the last few months, since he’d started gathering information from confidential sources, that this was how it was conducted; very few meetings were able to be done in his office or in public. They needed the darkness and the intimacy of private homes to conduct the business.
Still, it was off-putting to know that he was seeing someone, especially like Pansy Parkinson, so exposed. Not that he ever thought Pansy to be truly vulnerable. She’d learned how to protect herself heavily, and he doubted even in her home when she was wearing what she was and tending to her plants, that she was really unguarded.
“No,” he answered the elf with a shake of his head. “I’m fine.”
Only when the elf disappeared with a soft ‘pop’ and after Pansy was satisfied with what she’d collected from the lavender did she set her clippers on the work bench and swivel on her stool to face Harry. Dark eyes flicked over him, taking in his slightly disheveled appearance before finally meeting his gaze. “You’re here to see my father’s things.”
“They’ve become necessary,” he answered, though she hadn’t so much asked as stated. “Do you remember anything in them about the illegal potions trade? Specifically when it came to weeding out half-bloods and muggleborns?”
When she’d arrived at Grimmauld Place weeks prior, she said she’d looked through all his things. If she recalled something, it would make trying to find it easier. Harry fully intended on scouring the entire content of the journals, something he wasn’t particularly looking forward to because of the subject matter he was certain would be discussed in detail, but if she could lead him in the right direction it would be preferable.
Pansy’s brow furrowed slightly at his question, but all she did was “Hmm,” vaguely at him as she slipped from her stool to move past him.
She hadn’t been to her father’s office since she’d found the information she needed for Miles. In fact, she avoided the whole wing whenever possible as it held the rooms her father had often frequented or entertained in. Few of Pansy’s memories of many of those rooms were pleasant. She’d asked Harry to visit some unpleasantness on her behalf, however, and the least she could do was show him where he’d be spending his time.
“To be honest, I’ve tried to block out as much as possible,” she told him over her shoulder as bare feet padded softly against the marble floors. There was little light, and the darkness almost swallowed them whole once they exited the solarium, but it didn’t bother Pansy. She knew Beaumaris from top to bottom. There were many things for her to fear, but the darkness was not one of them. “But yes, I do recall bits about potions. I didn’t linger as they didn’t pertain to what I was searching for, however.”
Pansy paused and pivoted at the base of the grand staircase and felt more than saw Harry as he came to an abrupt stop before he was upon her. She peered up at him, but his face was cast in the shadows and the moonlight coming through windows did not touch him. “If you’re worried you’ll tumble to your death on the stairs, feel free to light your way,” she told him before beginning the climb herself.
“Believe it or not, despite the glasses, I have really good night vision,” he said as he followed her.
That she recalled anything about potions was reason for hope. As far as he knew, there’d been one death attributed to the illegal potions, but it was entirely possible there had been others that they didn’t know about. More muggleborns or half-bloods that had been targeted and specifically given dangerous and deadly potions for the sole purpose of murder.
She hadn’t been lying and, as they came to the second-floor landing, Harry could barely make out the hallway in front of them and the doors that lined it. His eyes adjusted quickly, but the blackness before them was thick. He took a step closer to Pansy’s back, counting on his sense of sound to keep her within reach.
Pansy could feel him just behind her. It was cool in this wing and the presence of body so close emitted a warmth that was both pleasant and disconcerting.
It wasn’t long before they came to her father’s old office and she stopped before a door.
In the darkness he hadn’t been prepared for her to stop so abruptly, and Harry reacted a split second before his body smacked into hers, stopping himself with both hands on her shoulders.
The shirt she was wearing slid slightly under his hands - it was several sizes larger than her - and he looked to their right, assuming there was a door since she’d stopped. “Is this it?” Harry asked as he drew his hands back from her person.
Tension still radiated through her body from his touch and she scowled at him, though he couldn’t see her expression. “No, I’ve led you to the dungeons to have my way with you,” she bit out before pushing through the door and lighting the room with a flick of her wrist. She’d always had an affinity for fire, and the the candles and lamps immediately bathed the room in a warm glow - and revealed the violent disarray she’d left it in.
Harry stayed in the doorway as the candles blazed to life. He let his eyes take in the room; there were papers strewn across the floor, some appearing to be in piles, some sitting off to the side as if they’d been discarded because a lack of importance.
“You’d be the first home I know of that had the dungeons anywhere but in the basement,” he said as he slowly made his way farther into the library, leaning down to pull a piece of paper from the ground in front of him. The handwriting was neat, but tight, as if there was a flow of thoughts that could barely be contained.
Excitement, Harry thought with disgust, remembering what he’d seen as he wrote.
“You’d be quite surprised what magic can make possible,” Pansy said, voice hollow. It was true that the actual dungeons were far beneath the estate in the bowels of the earth, but this manor was old enough, and riddled with enough magic, that there were places and rooms that Pansy would soon enough forget. As she’d promised Harry everything, however, she brushed past him, carefully picking her way through the journals and papers she’d flung haphazardly in frustration weeks prior.
It was already ajar from when she’d come looking before, but Pansy pulled open the hidden door further. When closed, it seamlessly fit right into the book shelves that lined the whole wall. “There’s more in there,” she told him.
Trailing after Pansy, he took a look at the place her father had hidden the journals. He was certain the estate had been scoured from top to bottom following the Second War for anything that could concretely tie Hadrian Parkinson to Death Eater activities, but this cache had never been found. It meant there had to have been some heavy warding and charms to keep it from being discovered.
“How did you find this place?” he asked, looking into the darkness just beyond the door.
“I always knew it was there,” she said, though Pansy did not offer up any further information. The journals her father kept were lined along the wall of the small passageway in shelves just as well kept as the ones in the office, but further in was a room where her father had conducted the less savory parts of his affairs. The dungeons were rather far, after all, and why not make use of the chains and manacles adjacent to one’s office if they were available? Her father had even conveniently added other niceties, such as a bed and another desk. His home away from home.
Disgust and anger sluiced through her, warming her skin. She hated her father, but he had not been the man who had put that hidden room there. Another Parkinson patriarch from another era had commissioned it. Pansy knew her family had a dark, sordid past, but the more she learned of the truth behind the veneer of her own blood, the more disillusioned she became.
Harry paused, digesting the knowledge Pansy had given him by what she hadn’t said. She’d known about the room and what it was used for when her father had been alive. As she’d made it clear, directly after she’d slapped him, he couldn’t assume to know what she’d been through, but if she’d known about this room, then it could be as bad as he imagined.
Brushing off the thoughts of what Pansy’s father had put his own daughter through, he brushed past her and focused on what Hadrian had done to others. There were countless journals, including the ones Pansy had already removed from the shelves and gone through, and Harry was slightly overwhelmed by the prospect of looking through them all.
His eyes lit on the other features of the room. A desk. A bed. Chains lining the walls that appeared to have been kept in good condition and used often. He might have not known of dungeons being anyplace other than the basement, but it was clear that with a few specific charms, you could hide a torture room anywhere.
Harry couldn’t imagine this room being used for anything but torture.
Pushing off the thoughts of possible rooms like this being hidden in Grimmauld Place, he turned back to look at Pansy. “Are there any other hidden rooms with journals? Anywhere else you can think he might have hidden things?”
“There are other rooms that the Ministry did not find, but this was the only one that belonged to him.” There were tunnels too, but Harry didn’t need to know that. There was nothing in them that would aide him.
Her gaze flicked to the bed and she swallowed. Hadrian had only ever chained her to the wall and left her there to “think about her trespasses”, but now that she’d read his private thoughts, knew what he’d been up to, it dawned on her why the bed was there at all. He did have a special affinity for bought and paid for young girls.
She forcibly turned her head away, dark eyes unseeing. “Now that I think on it, you may want to tour the dungeons after all,” she said, voice distant.
“Not tonight,” Harry said, green gaze on her as she deliberately looked away from a room her father no doubt spent a lot of time in. He wasn’t sure what information could be gleaned from a tour of the dungeons, but if she thought of anything, he’d make sure they found it.
Tonight, however, he was here for a specific reason and he had no desire to witness her relive the hell her father had put her through.
He grabbed an arm-full of journals from the shelves, noting that they were neatly lined and sorted chronologically, and returned to the light of the library. There was no way he’d make it through the journals in one night, and he wouldn’t risk taking all of them to Grimmauld Place. It might have been easier to have someone else helping him look through them, but it wasn’t possible. Letting anyone know about the journals would put Pansy at risk, and he had promised to keep her safe.
“Do you care if I take them home, or would you rather they stay here?”
“I don’t care what you do with them,” she said, tone clipped as she picked her way back toward the door. She was unsettled and it made her irritable and angry. “As long as they don’t become my death, I’m not much bothered. As it stands, I’ve contemplations of purging this whole damn room with fire.”
“As long as we chronicle any usable evidence, I don’t see why you couldn’t,” Harry said, setting the journals he’d take with him on the corner of the impressive desk. “Maybe after this is over,” he added.
Pansy looked up at him then, dark eyes searching his. “It’s never over. Shite always keeps coming to bite you in the arse, or right on down into the ground if it can, and the deeper you get into this mess, the less hope you’ve got of ever seeing the light again.”
She’d thought, once, that it was possible to leave this shite behind, but it haunted her, dogged her, and while she could pretend all she wanted that what she had was a normal life, Pansy knew that every time she stepped outside the wards of Beamuaris that she was not safe. Too much had happened in the past, too many men knew she knew too much. That the Liberi wanted her money only made things worse. Her rebuff of their advances and the fact that she was the last surviving heir of the family made her a prime target. Perhaps in a different world, she could will it all away, but she was no fool. The Ministry was corrupted and the Parkinson assets would be seized and put into untraceable accounts.
Harry could practically feel the angry heat radiating from her skin, and her words were harsh and clipped. He’d known coming in to retrieve the journals would upset her, if only because it’d remind her of her father, a man she openly loathed and hated. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but words of utter defeat was a surprise.
He sat back against her father’s desk, crossing his arms over his chest as he peered into her dark, angry eyes. “Then why fight? Why give me any of these journals? Why try to undo any of the horrors your father leaked onto others? If there is no hope... why do you fight?”
Oddly enough, his questions brought the very unfamiliar feeling of tears, though she pushed it away and was only left with a resigned sigh. She was so tired. “I don’t want to die,” she told him. “Though I’m beginning to understand my family doesn’t have much of a legacy to be proud of, I still don’t want it all to be in the hands of the Liberi. I want to be around to make sure Draco stays off the bottle, and that Miles finds the woman he loves, and I want to be able to help them if it is in my capacity to do so.” She looked back up at him. “Just because I’m aware that it’s unlikely that I’ll ever be able to live a life without wondering what form the next attack will be in, doesn’t mean that I’ve given up. It’s called being realistic, Harry.”
“There is a difference between being realistic and being defeatist,” he responded, frowning. “You list things you want to fight for, but you speak as if none of them are going to actually happen. Belief and the strength of your faith that those things will happen give you the energy to keep going.”
Running a hand over his face, Harry pushed off the desk and stood directly in front of her. “I’m going to tell you something that I know is true, but that sometimes even I don’t believe. Voldemort didn’t fall because I was a better wizard, or because I wanted to live more than he did. It wasn’t because I was a survivor, or that I was smarter than him, or even that I was lucky. He fell because I had people around me depending on me, and I cared about them and didn’t want to let them down. Voldemort had minions, but he had no one that he would die for, no one he would jump in front of a hex for. So yes, maybe you don’t want to die, but that’s not why you fight, and that is why they’ll always lose.”
Pansy didn’t say anything right away. While she never had a problem speaking her mind, it was rare that others were so open. If it wasn’t politics, it was a fear of what others thought, or simple manipulation. She knew how to play the games, of course, and did when she was called upon, but she preferred to be who she was without the filter of lies and deception. That Harry Potter of all people was here, in her home, ready to cart of some of her fathers sordid memories and telling her how he’d survived what should have been a mortal blow at Voldemort’s hand was … surreal.
It was almost laughable, really. Her lips twitched slightly, unbidden. “Life coaching from Harry Potter himself. The irony of it is staggering.”
“Like I said, I tend to ignore my own advice,” he answered with a small grin, running a hand through his hair. He’d never been good at inspirational speaking, thinking it better to stay as out of the focus as possible, but sometimes it was necessary. Harry knew he had done a lot of growing up since Voldemort fell, but he also knew he had a long way to go. Hearing Pansy talk in her defeated tone made him angry, at himself more than anything.
Voldemort was gone, and while a new group would always attempt to fill the void he had left, the words were true. Eventually they would prevail, if only because they had more just reasons for fighting. If those reasons were forgotten, then they were doomed.
Pansy might not think herself very important in the fight, but it was possible that the journals she was giving him were invaluable to the cause. If they were able to disrupt the illegal potions and human trafficking, it was possible they’d cut the Liberi from a large source of their funds. Without funds, their members would begin to doubt the group’s ability to control the Ministry and the rest of the wizarding world.
These journals could be worth more than she realized, worth more than he’d be able to tell her, and that meant something.
“These are going to help,” he said after a quiet moment, holding up one of the journals, “and the reason they’re going to help is because you offered them to me and trusted that I’d do what needed to be done with them. Thank you.”
Though the words were coming from his mouth, they still felt a bit unreal. He was thanking Pansy Parkinson for trusting him. So much had changed in the world in the past five years.
Pansy didn’t really know how to react. She was rarely generous or giving, though more because it wasn’t in her nature to think of it rather than actively shying away from such. But even so, it wasn’t often she received such a thing as gratitude.
She frowned slightly, though that wasn’t quite right and her face cleared moments later. “You’re welcome,” she said with a small nod. The words felt odd on her tongue. “Though I doubt you’ll thank me again once you begin reading. My father’s private thoughts are not for the faint of heart.”
"No, but you are not at fault for your father's taste. In fact, you should receive a reward for not taking after him," Harry answered with a snort. It wasn't too much of a stretch to imagine what could have happened if she’d taken after her classmates and adopted her father's view of the world. She could have easily become like Crabbe; sick, twisted, and sadistic. That she hadn't was almost a statistical impossibility.
Pansy wanted to be offended by Harry’s words, but she couldn’t find it in herself. He was right. It was a wonder she hadn’t taken after her father, especially as it’d become obvious to her over the last several years that he was not the exception, but what was normal and expected of a Parkinson. She’d blindly believed what her parents had told her as a child - that she was better because of her blood, because of their family and their money - but the realities and consequences of war had made it impossible for her to live in ignorance. She’d been used in the most grievous of ways to what her father had considered an advancement of their house. Perhaps if she’d not been so stubborn, so independent of spirit, she might have bent to such abuse as her contribution to the Parkinson name and legacy, but Pansy could never be anything but repulsed and angered by it.
She eyed the journals. “If I wasn’t the last one alive, I’d probably be burned from the records like your godfather was.”
"I think Sirius is rather proud of the fact that his name is nothing but a scorch mark in the Black family history. He was never one for traditional family values. Family is who you surround yourself with and who you care about. I lived for eleven years with people who were supposed to be family, but I never knew the true meaning of the word until I arrived at Hogwarts. They say blood is thicker than water, but we need water to survive."
Harry looked down at the journals in his hand. "You might need blood to live, but to survive? It's unnecessary." After a silent moment, he shrugged slightly, feeling as if he'd lost the sense in his thought. "Well, I mean, you do need blood because even if you had water you could still bleed to death, but I meant metaphorically. Or ironically."
Shaking his head at himself as he ran a hand through the fringe of hair on his forehead, he glanced back up at Pansy with a self-deprecating sigh. "You should get back to your plants and I should begin looking through these."
"Whatever suits you," she said, bemusement and bewilderment fighting for dominance of her features as she watched him.
The irony of having Harry bloody Potter in her home, her father's journals in hand, telling her that family was who you chose and not necessarily who you were given, was too much. She could only find it amusing at this point. What was puzzling, however, was not only how easily he had revealed personal bits of his past to her, but that he cared at all to try and help her. Their own past and most of their recent interactions would not lend themselves to caring. If anything, she'd expect him to be wary of her.
It was something to think on, but just that moment she only lifted her hand to indicate the door. "After you."
Harry debated whether he should grab a few more journals to take with him but decided against it, walking away from the hidden entrance and the small room beyond. He didn’t need a physical reminder of Hadrian Parkinson’s darker tastes. If Pansy was right, he’d be getting more than enough information from the books themselves. He only hoped his delve into the inner psyche of a deviant would be worth it.
“If I have any questions, I’ll owl,” he said as they descended the steps toward the first floor.
“Don’t use the white creature, if you mind,” Pansy said, more of an afterthought than anything as they traversed back through the darkness of her home toward the entry hall. “She’s quite conspicuous. Though I suppose those prone to gossip would probably assume an affair,” she said, mouth turned in distaste. There was a reason she spent as little time as possible with the bints of her age in society. Mayhap if she had been spared the horrors of war, Pansy might find petty gossip fulfilling as well, but listening to such banal conversation when she had to mix in such society was irritating at best and gave her homicidal urges at worst.
“It wouldn’t be the worst thing they’ve said about me in the papers,” Harry said. As they arrived at her front door, he realized that what he’d meant and what he’d said, like so often happened when words fell from his mouth, could be taken completely wrong. He turned to face her, journals held tightly in his hands.
“I don’t mean that if the papers said you and I were having an affair that it would be a horrible thing because you and I... I just meant that since I was eleven they’ve been saying rotten things about me, again, not that you and I would be rotten, but that it’s not the worst thing they’ve said about me.”
Realizing there wasn’t really anything to be done now, and that he would see no sleep for the next couple days because he’d be pouring over the journals, Harry ducked his head. “I’ll use a nondescript owl,” he murmured, reaching for the knob.
Her lips twitched. “Yes, please do.”
Harry stepped outside, trading one darkness for another, but before he Apparated, Pansy’s voice floated after him. “It’s not the worst thing they’ve said about me, either. Close, though.”
SUMMARY: Harry drops in on Pansy to collect some of her father’s personal journals. He ends up staying long enough to dispense advise, much to the surprise of both.