Sweet

The second time Pansy sees Harry Potter after the war, he is unaware of it.

Not the first time, no. The first time, he was aware and bright like the fluorescent street light that kept grazing her nerves. The first time she had been half drunk and cold and pathetically, embarrassingly open. Vulnerable as he kept staring at her in the unabashed, invasive way he always did.

If she thinks too hard about it, a disjointed but stark memory plays in her head. Blocks of hard and unyielding adjectives collapse to define the meeting. It was dark and chilly and uncannily reminiscent of the year ago, when the Dark Lord’s omnipresent shadow had made everything wet and sullen. Pansy fell into Harry Potter at the backend of a bar, the area a seemingly muggle rendition of Knockturn Alley, a place where rich people go to find their fancy. Millie had apparently found a guy she fancied working at a bar. And Pansy had found nothing better to do.

The back of that said bar smelled of rain and lemon airspray, buzzing her nostrils. Leaning against the mossy wall, she could hear the song playing inside the place. Something husky and sensual vibrating off the bricks, ignited the tips of her fingers as she traced mobius strips across the coarse wall. Pansy was tempted to go back inside, she was also pretty sure she wouldn’t know what to do with herself if she did. So instead, she focused on her pattern, waited for Milicent to hurry the fuck up and the moon to collapse and her life to finally make some sense when suddenly… someone had bumped into her.

“I’m sorry,” the guy wheezed, drunk and impertinent, and—“You?”

He jerks back as Pansy holds her balance, stunned at the guy. The question he asked—hissed, really—stingin the air. And it wasn’t mean, not really, but so surprised and unbelievably, inadvertently defensive that she found herself being defensive as well.

She squared her shoulders, looked up at his tall frame and said, “Yes. Me.”

Harry Potter blinked. Something close to coherence settled in his eyes. And even in the dark, she could see the green in his eyes as the street light from the other end reflected on his glasses. “I didn’t mean—I didn’t expect to see anyone from… school.”

“Yes, well.” She inclined her eyes at the wall again. “Me neither.”

A second passed, then two. From her periphery, she could see him fidgeting the corner of his jacket. The dark leather almost obscured him from the view. Almost. She was still stunned from the buzz of seeing him. “Are you… are you okay?” 

She pursed her lips, not staring back, looking determinedly at the large, overflowing waste bin in front of her. “Of course.”

“Okay. I mean, of course. Just. You just look…” 

“What?”

“Different.”

“Different how?”

Instead of answering, he hung back. Softly, as if he wasn’t sure of what to do. Which was, to Pansy, ridiculous. He was supposed to walk out on this and pretend it never happened. He didn’t do that. No, what he did was tread over, carefully, to lean beside her, running his hand through his dark, perpetually messy hair.

Pansy stared down at herself, the knee length, exceptionally tight dress. The silk clung desperately to her skin, cinching at the hips, her arms and cleavage. Beside the obvious paleness, her skin gleamed pensively in the fluorescent light. The dress, the air, her body, his body beside her gave the feeling that this wasn’t altogether real. That she wasn’t really there, not—

“You didn’t answer me.”

“Well.” She huffed. “Does it matter? You’re drunk.”

“So are you.”

She hadn’t realised it was that obvious. Normally she would have been mortified, but the drink was still strong enough to not saddle her with embarrassment. Nothing more than a warmth permeating in her skin. “I’m fine, really,” she says.

“Okay.” A beat, then, half jokingly, he said, “Tom doesn’t know how to mix the drinks anyway.”

She snorted. “The gangly one?”

“Uh-huh. Calls himself a mixologist after he accidentally mixed whiskey with vodka. Thinks he’s a revolutionary.”

“Thanks. Suddenly I feel better about being shitfaced behind some nameless muggle bar.”

“The standard reaction to his bloody mary, I’m told.”

Pansy chuckled. It felt surreal. She had tried and succeeded in avoiding him the first five months of her final year. A brief glance of him in the east corner of the library, and she’d run off the other direction. Missing the Quidditch finale even though Slytherin had finally won. She had been careful and shameful, preserving whatever tattered remnants of delusion she could survive on. And now here she was, balancing herself on her shaky stilettos, with her breath forming mist in the air, her clamouring, shrill laughter springing off from the graveled walls beside the boy who lived. It was surreal. 

Potter didn’t say anything else, and Pansy was sure that she was grateful. And still, a pernicious itch pummels at her throat. She should say something to him. 

Thank you.

Under the sanative lime grass, the smell of musk and cigarette slithered into her senses.

You don’t have to stay here.

Her hair, slicked back in a ponytail, grazed her shoulder. She could see the outline of his worn-out leather jacket like a shadow.

She could ask him why he was being kind to her, but stopped herself, because where would it lead them anyway?

Or she could—

Pansy straightened up, her heart pummeled into her ribcage. She stood shakily on her feet and looked up to find him a step closer. Was he? Closer?

On reflection, maybe because he had just been kind to her. And maybe it was all those sugary, badly mixed drinks she’d had and the guy she talked to before running out of the bar was trying to sneak his hand under her dress with a mean sneer. Maybe because there was this invasive and uncomfortably cloying itch inside her mouth she kept trying and trying to swallow that she said, taking a step to him, as if she was running out on time, “I’m sorry.”

The second time she sees him —

He is unaware.

Blissfully.

Pansy breathes into the cool, sodden air as she stares at him. She’s far enough that she can feign ignorance if he stares back, but close enough that he’ll know it’s her. Silver ripples of the chilled water are pummeling against the rocks at the bay in the crisp Autumn morning. Despite the cold and the mud and the slime covered rocks, Pansy found herself drawn to the empty place more often than not. Sitting by the rocks, dipping her feet into the dewy grass is more than a habit, at this point. A recluse. A routine. But today—

Someone else is at her rendezvous.

He is staring at the water, or at the summer sky reflected in the water. Pansy can’t tell from this far. But the way he sits, legs drawn close to his body, his arms hugging them close, she can’t look away. It’s so unimaginably sad. Serene. Familiar. Pansy turns the peach in her hold, sweetness her mother decided to deliver along with bitter truths. Her own reason for running to that place—a letter from Azkaban her mother decided to forward her—is crumpled in the ground. 

Funny, she had almost forgotten about the war.

There was a war and she had called out his name for slaughter. The entire room was dense with her shrill and terrible demand. Suddenly, she saw herself through everyone else’s eyes. And still, he was kind to her. And still, she has nothing to offer him. Without thinking, without even meaning to, she sways her hand. The familiar incantation—Leviosa—is muttered faintly, in her head, by its own volition. She stares at her peach, the one she’d been saving till morning, to eat in her own private ceremony, floating up to him. Waiting for that gumshocking sweetness masking over her other senses for only a minute.

She doesn’t wait to see it reach him. About halfway to it, she turns back, and determinedly runs away. A lukewarm regret pulls at her stomach. What is she thinking? He’ll have no idea what it’s for. It’s just her and the stupid habit of indulging in sweets. He’s probably allergic. He doesn’t know that something about loneliness makes her crave sugar—that though it never changed anything, made her feel content for a moment. Sometimes the moment was enough.

Pansy assumes he’ll toss it away.

She remembers his expression, suddenly. 

He stared at her for a moment, dazed and out of words. As if he didn’t quite get what she was on about, as if it wasn’t within his purview to offer her absolution.

“What?”

“I’m sorry,” she breathed out, the discomfort chafing a little as she repeated the same damned thing. “For calling out your name.”

It wasn’t how she’d planned it; and she had been planning it, playing the idea in her head. It’s just like a bandaid, she told herself. I’ll say I’m sorry and I wish I could take it back and it’ll be over. Perhaps, then, finally, she could be free of the curse, stop thinking about him in that grimy, old forest, alone, ready for death at fucking seventeen like it wasn’t a remarkably preposterous idea and—

Yeah.

“It’s… okay. Apology accepted.”

There was something else under the musk. Mint, she thinks foolishly, taking a step back from the buzz of him. That static, stale electricity catching up to her. Someone called her name—Mille, she thinks, I have to go—but Pansy couldn’t take her eyes off him. Because his eyes were a bright, brilliant green—always buzzing with emotion. He was alive and he was still dazed, iridescent and… beautiful. Pansy had never let herself think that he was beautiful.

The truth was, she couldn’t stop thinking about him since that night. Brave and heroic as he was, she couldn’t help remembering that look in his eyes as she screeched his name. His eyes fluttered for a moment, scared, helpless—like a deer caught in headlight, like a child caught in something much, much bigger than himself—before contracting into something more. Brave, heroic. Stealthily determined. Pansy knew—even as Ginny Weasley pushed herself in front of him, even as scores of people crossed between them, shielding him from her selfish plea—that he would do just that. Offer himself for slaughter. There was a charged beauty in him at that moment, it only reflected the ugliness inside her. She has been trying to run from it ever since.

Suddenly, as his eyes were fixed on hers, it felt it wasn’t the first time, this interminable stretch of seconds and minutes and eternity. Somehow it felt like the only time, muted and embarrassing yes, but ineffably charged with their delicate and fragile history.