Sweet

April stumbles into May the way a child stumbles into a room it shouldn’t. Softly, footsteps unsure and anxious. May falls into June and it’s warm and sticky, days filled with work and social events and helping Theo to deconstruct his legacy piece by piece like lego blocks. And drinking with Blaise at his office, once in a while, marveling at the new lives her friends have made. Almost a respectable person, Blaise sniggers and Draco smirks and Theo smiles and it’s—treacherously, surreptitiously—all like before. There is nothing to remind her of someone else, someone she barely knows, but—

Small things.

A jacket.

A smile.

A peach.

Then it goes away just as it came. In a blip.

In May, Blaise proposes to Daphne after a long and winding breakup. In June Pansy assists in picking out wedding venues with Daphne and all through it—through the inane simplicity of her life—an unnatural longing crisscrosses in her logbook. Between operations and lunch dates and cooking and cleaning, it hangs there like a worn down artifact from the Notts’ cellar. There is no name for it, only a slight, contemptible ache in her chest. A blip. Then gone. There should be nothing to remind her about him, but—

“It’s Harry Potter,” Jenna hisses beside her at work, running headfirst into her view. “They’re bringing Harry Potter.”

Pansy’s hands shake—a reflex—as she looks up from the file in her hand, staring blankly into the flushed face of her colleague. “What?”

“He’s injured.”

“What? How?”

“I don’t know, do I? I just saw them carrying him here.” She looks around, her narrow face pinched in excitement. In the middle of the night, the pediatric ward is deep in sleep. With the candles burning in a mellow light, the entire room seems smaller than it is—than it was a minute ago.

“Oh.” She stares back into the page, but the words shake, too. “I’m sure he’s alright.”

“Yeah, of course,” Jenna says, excited. “I just applied my makeup. Do you think it looks natural enough?”

Before Pansy can either sigh in private and let her know it was au naturale, or tell her to sod off—she hadn’t decided which—Ms. Antigone saunters into the room. Pansy can feel Jenna snapping straight beside her as their mentor looks around the room, a curiously bland expression on her face. Behind her, out into the corridor, Pansy can hear the muffled curses of several people.

“All is well here?” Harriet asks pensively after she’s done looking.

“Yes,” Jenna says, preening forward. “They’re all asleep.”

Harriet nods, Pansy can see the single line of crease on her forehead. Then she stares straight at her and Pansy feels a nervous chill shooting down her spine. It’s nonsensical, it’s childish, it’s— “Jenna can stay here and keep check. Parkinson, come with me.”

She can feel Jenna sigh in defeat. Her hands brush against Pansy’s as she hands over the files. Pansy only offers a smile, timid and tinged with apology before Harriet taps her shoes and she follows suit, with her thoughts fractioning off before they can make sense. Contradictory, confusing thoughts, alternating between it doesn’t matter and it’s all just coincidence, and—

“Is he going to be alright?” she blurts out before she can stop herself. The long and winding corridor seems wider with the shadows from other rooms closing in on them.

Harriet huffs in annoyance. “He let some young witch practice spells on him. I think some days in a hospital would do him good.”

“You don’t think—?”

“Oh, he will be alright, alright…” She trails off, before picking up her pace and reciting the details of his hand, what she suspects and which treatment is expected from an intern such as Pansy. They finally stop at the door. On the other side, Pansy could hear muffled groans, a low hiss, a curse. His voice, vivid still, but brittle. She can already guess how much pain he is in. Her heart thuds embarrassingly loud as she twitches her fingers to mimic the wand movement she needs to perform.

She stands still, half expecting Harriet to take the lead, half expecting to fall down. Her head is buzzing so loud it’s ridiculous and inane and she hasn’t eaten anything since noon, she really can’t expected to saunter into the room and face him, let alone fix him and —

Harriet clears her throat. Pansy slides through the door like a drunk, and the room drops dead in silence. She stares at him, Harry Potter, lean and weary and vivid and brittle. He’s sitting up, slightly hunched, with his feet falling flat before him. The white hospital robe slacks from his shoulder. He’s thinner, more rigid. His face is littered with stubbles and his jaw is taut with tension, but his eyes soften when he sees her.

“Hey,” he says, the words breathed out, whispery and soft. She can hear the curve of a smile in them.

“Hey,” her voice breaks in answer, just as brittle.

“I’ll leave you to it,” Harriet says sternly, closing the door behind her and leaving them alone. 

His left arm is propped up by a gauze hanging from the ceiling, spasming irregularly, littered with dark green, perniciously moving mushroom clouds that seem to be inflating by the second. Pansy gives herself five more seconds to prepare herself. Him, his eyes, the beads of sweat on his forehead, the tips of her fingers alight with anxiety, the smile that finally settles on his lips. Simple, simple happenings, all understandable, all excusable, she tells herself as she steps forward, pushes herself into the scene and raises her hands to perform the diagnostic charm to check his vitals.

“It’s good to see you,” he says, as she skims over the symbols on the translucent cloud of the charm.

“I wish I could say the same thing. Tell me, was this a healing charm done wrong?”

He chuckles, then cringes in pain. “Well… not wrong. The cut I had before was healed. It was fine for two days before… this.”

“And I’m supposed to think that it’s normal that you couldn’t come to us to fix the initial cut, right?”

“Hey, I’m not against Mungo’s…” His voice drops like it’s a secret. “I just promised Luna that I’d let her try her new spell on me.”

Pansy shakes her dead in dismay. “So brave of you.” 

“I am a gryffindor.”

“And I’m sure you’ve made this point to justify plenty of stupid things you’ve done.”

“Only the ones I didn’t regret.”

Regret, the word sounds thick as he says it. Intense. Purposeful somehow. She flicks out the diagnostic cloud and turns at him and he’s not smiling, not like a moment ago. Now he’s staring again, in that god-awful penetrating way he always did. She clears her throat.

“So… it’s a bit tricky, it would take some time for the spell to acclimatise with you.” She positions her wand at his arm, the mushrooms pulsate at the contact— “But it’ll work.”

“Is it going to hurt?”

She blinks, surprised. It hadn’t appeared to her that it would be a concern to him. “Well… a little. I’m sure you’ve had worse.”

“Can I hold your hand?”

Suddenly, preposterously, it feels as if their faces are closer now. And despite the itching, buzzing timbre of his voice and his inane request, she only notices the slightly upturned skin on his upper lip, paler than the rest. She swallows to stop herself from asking how that happened. She leans back just a notch and offers her hand.

He claims it instantly, and a heavy warmth slithers into her entire arm.

Pansy can’t remember the rest of it very well. How she managed to perform the spell correctly, if he sighed in relief as the spreading stopped or chuckled, as he had a habit of, at extremely inappropriate situations. Whether his hand really shifted to her wrist as she performed the magic, had he really mapped the lines on her palm with a peculiar, childlike confusion? His fingers were grating, rough and dry. And she’d joked that he needed a larger dose of morphling. Did all that happen actually?

What she recalls juxtaposes with her memory from before. That other night. Hadn’t he gripped her hand on the roof, too? Childlike confusion, desperation. If she thinks too much she remembers that for that one breathtaking moment, love was a possibility. Not merely a knife-shaped tool, but something soft and sweet and sticky like cherry pie. He had kissed her and afterwards cupped her cheek and smiled. In that moment, love was so easy, it was blameless. The candle burns with a mellow light. She could taste the innocence. Still, in the stuffy and medicinal chamber, she can smell the past.

A blip then it’s over.

“Keep it steady for a week,” she tells him afterwards, “I trust you to do that.”

“Do you really?”

“No.”

And he smiled, that full and bright one. The one that takes over his face, softens that rugged, precise handsomeness and makes it something more. Transcendental, boyish, beautiful.

It’s not really her fault that she always smiles back.

“He’s staring,” Theo says.

Pansy hums, eyes narrowed in concentration as she clasps the red cross neatly over his pocket. The bright red looks too vivid over his dark, mahogany silk robe. She brushes out the non-existent creases over his shoulder before sloping down and fixing his necktie. Theo has let her fuss and huff and fix and ruin his appearance all through the evening. I get it, babe, I’m the best boyfriend of the best intern here—I have to look the part. And even as she reaches up again, muttering the charm under her breath to smooth his unruly hair—with his hands propped up like a scarecrow as he holds their drinks—she sees the shadow of that warm, appreciative smile all over his face.

The blue in his eyes gleam. He leans forward to peck her on the lips.

Pansy rolls her eyes to stop herself from smiling too hard. She smoothes out the happy wrinkles beside his eyes, and asks, “Who’s staring?”

“Harry Potter.”

Her heart drums against her ribcage, suddenly scalding, electrified. She blinks to stop herself from wheeling around. There’s a room full of formally dressed, eloquently professional people. She is supposed to be one of them. Steadily, softly, Pansy tilts her head.

And there he is. Real. Standing. Staring. He has his left arm on a sling, the right one holding an empty glass of champagne. He looks taller, somehow. Brittle, too, with his tilted specs and unruly hair and his face wide open with that look of wonder. Pansy can swear that the world has shifted focus because can’t she see his eyes even from the distance? Bewildered and bewitching, somehow fixed on her?

Wordlessly, she raises her hand and waves at him. He doesn’t disappear, doesn’t melt into the beige wallpaper behind him. 

“He’s been staring at you ever since he came,” Theo says quietly. So quiet, she almost doesn’t hear the jealousy slithering behind the words.

Harry Potter looks back at her, still, unblinking as he raises his champagne to her.

“I don’t blame him,” Theo says, leaning to whisper the next words in her ear. “You look divine.”

Pansy flushes as she turns back to him. She takes the drink from his hand to have something to do, something to hold onto.

“I don’t… he’s not staring for that,” she says, her words thrum in her ear, her stomach and throat. She takes a sip of the champagne. “Is he… still…?”

Theo shakes his head. “He walked away.”

She takes another gulp. Leans back to stand on her own as Theo stares at her. His unasked question rings in her ear and she finds herself explaining, dissociatively, “Okay. Okay. Uhm. We kissed. Once. A lifetime ago. He was lonely and I was… I guess I was in love with him.”

His smile drops. The painful, almost jagged silence lasts for a moment before Pansy blurts out the rest of it. “He didn’t, of course. He doesn’t even know. I didn’t know it just then, but I was. And nothing else happened.”

His expression is inscrutable, his eyes are steady. “Why?”

“We have this history of… No.” It doesn’t sound right. “Uhm. You know the last battle in the war was at Hogwarts, right? He, uh, he came pretty early, some hours before everything and—and when the Dark Lord realised he was there. He offered us to give him up, and he’d leave the place, that everyone would be safe. So I…” Pansy cringes at the memory. “I offered to give him up. I screamed at everyone to grab him and… yes.”

The corner of his mouth twitches. “That wouldn’t have been a bad deal, babe.”

Pansy stares in half exasperation, half in terrible relief, as a smile lightens his face. “It was the worst moment of my life as a human being, Theo.”

“You were young and scared… Besides, you really think he’s holding a grudge for that?”

There’s a heavy mass of tar in her chest, scorched at the sight of him. It’s ridiculous. She knew he would be here. Logic said he would be here, paying homage to Mungo’s. He has a speech, after all. She knew, at some inevitable and irreversible point, he’d see her with Theodore Nott and assume everything true. And yet.

Everything feels silly, all of a sudden. The drinks, the smiles, the exact shade of blue of her evening dress with a wide neck and flared hemline and the lacing matching Theo’s cuffs. The colour she chose for this party because it contrasts with Theo’s eyes feels like an overt indulgence. Her heels feel wobbly instead of dependable. She leans in to the only person holding her steady, and feels the anxiety melt a little as he kisses her forehead.

She whispers, “Not at all.”

*****

The sun gleams in fresh, golden rays and it reminds her of honey—the way she can’t let go, sweat pools into her armpit, the curve of her neck and chest and Pansy worries about her future, the uncertainty jutting out like a misshapen tooth. And underneath it all, like some great, inimitable spell, was a gumshocking sweetness tracing back to the boy who lived. She studies names of drugs and potions and ingredients that would make the said drugs and potions, strains her hand to perfect her wand movements and mumbles the spells before sleeping and still sometimes, unconsciously, mistakenly, she dreams about him.

Thinking about him, about his careless, almost baseless confidence in her, makes the world real, sometimes. Makes her feel as if her life is just out there, waiting for her. All she has to do is grab it.

You’ll be wasted in that life.

How can you tell?

I just can.

A blip and it’s gone.

At present, Pansy pushes her body up, balancing herself meticulously on the tips of her toes. Her body adjusts at the new weight as she leans forward, arms outstretched and knees bent like a bird just about to take a flight. The symphony rings around the room as she moves herself, slithers and swings with the music. The ballroom is still open and wide, stretching across from her with decaying, frail flowers dotting its walls. The once rich silks and satins and pearl furnishings are now dull and torn. The silvers of the silk are yellowing on sides reflected dully by the chandelier above them twinkling uneventfully, more crystal beads missing than not.

Still, it has an air of comfort. Something soft and wasteful that wasn’t all gone. It smells of dusts and mould and peculiarly of the rose scented powder Theo’s mother used to wear when she gave Pansy her ballet lessons.

On the other end of the room, Theo is sitting on the floor, knees bent, arms hanging back as he looks over at her, mouth slant with a lit cigarette between his lips. His posture equally composed and graceful, but unlike Pansy he never had to practice for it. He was often, amidst everyone, deep in thoughts that sprung like branches, Pansy used to have a recurring fantasy that he was a statue made of marble, waiting for her to touch him to make him real.

The thought stirs up another rush of memories lurking above the soft cloud in her head. With the marijuana working on her system, she shivers at the sensation, hanging back. Her meticulous posture falters before she catches herself.

Across the room, Theo is watching her in quiet desperation. “And?” he asks softly. The walls effortlessly float the question back to her.

“Why would you want to know?” Her voice ricochets around the ghostly space. She twirls along with her voice, her annoyance masked by the lazy drawl of the drug. “It’s so useless. What would you do with it?”

“Pansy—” 

“What would you do if you knew that we made so many plans to escape, Draco and the rest of us? We planned to make it seem like an accident so we wouldn’t get traced back? After the third failed attempt, Bellatrix had Alecto Carrow watch over us at school?”

He doesn’t answer. “Blaise was the first one to cast the crucio on those little kids, and after a week we found him in the bathroom on the sixth floor. Overdosed. Muggle heroine. He swore it had nothing to do with that, why should it? But…” She glides across the room, her mind heavy as if she caught a cold. “Draco tried to cut off his arm, the dark mark didn’t quite fit into him. The curse has to enter the blood without a fight, you see. And Draco fought against it. The idiot couldn’t sleep for days.”

Finally closer to him, she stops for a moment. Ponders on her next words as she takes the steps one, two, three—reaching him. The tip of her toe touches his jeans, and Theo raises his hand to brush against her calves. The silky slip of a dress she has on was found by him as he decluttered one of the more lavish rooms. The silver laces on the hemline tickles her thigh as Theo’s hand move up. She feels more naked than not.

Pansy crouches before him to meet his desperate eyes. The weekend stubble makes him more vulnerable. Scared. “I was supposed to get one, too. We all were. Father was talking about it. Just to show the spirit. I considered —I considered running away, but… Voldemort had his henchmen parading at all our houses from time to time. Fenrir Greyback was at guard in our house. So I thought… if I could just make him… Well, I know he liked raw meat more than anything, but the way he looked at me sometimes it felt—”

She stops, partly because she’s out of breath, partly to shutter off the image of that man—half man, half wolf—cloistering greedily in her home, leaving smudged bloody footprints trailing behind him. Scratches on the walls, coverlets torn in the middle, a splash of blood on their dinner table. That predatory look in his wolfy eyes every time she came into his view.

“None of it matters,” she hisses, and Theo touches her hair. Carefully. As if he too is unsure where she is now, here or somewhere else, sometime else. “We’re here now. We’re happy, and perfect and nothing is hurting us anymore. We should be grateful for what it is, Theo. I don’t want to tell you all this. We’re fine without it. We’re perfect.”

“Yes, we are. I’m sorry, Pans—”

“I don’t need your apology. I’m not asking for it.”

Theo touches her chin with his index, blue eyes softened with guilt. But there’s this exhaustive, almost performative bit of scrutiny glinting there, too.

“I just wanted to know something else. Just.” His finger slopes down, traces her collarbones, the winged bones sloping down into a V, and then stops at the middle of her chest. Stays there. “There’s something missing here,” he says softly. “This place exactly.”

“What?”

He purses his lips and part of her shrinks in fear. He knows, is her first, inane thought. A deep, endless hole corroding her insides. An incurious, dull ache. She doesn’t know what it is. And it’s ridiculous to think he’d know what happened that morning, what had transpired that sent a shockwave of butterflies in her stomach.

How could Theo know that sunlight had burst into her chamber this morning? Wearing a faded Auror robe in messed up hair. The full moon specs and the forest green eyes blinking behind them. Theo doesn’t know that Harry Potter had come to change his bandages, that he wouldn’t stop boring into her face as she worked. 

He said, You looked good. With him. Happy. I’m glad that you’re happy.

Thank you, is what she replied, avoiding his eyes.

I wanted to greet you and all… just. Er—didn’t get the chance, really.

It’s alright.

It was. Because she is happy. Theodore Nott rearranged the furniture of his mansion just as he reorganised her life. It’s a tedious process, sometimes, being with him again. Trying to satiate his need for guilt-tripping himself for not saving her, trying to peek into the nothing past to find something they might share. But most days it’s fine, it’s lovely. When they meet their friends and reminiscence things that happened and stuff that never did. When he remembers the exact shade of the dress she wore for her fourteenth birthday and she knows the name of the book he was reading when his mother died. The familiar pang their homes bring, the identical scars they have on the back of their knee. It all paints a picture too definite and surefooted to be anything but the right kind of love.

Instead of answering her, Theo pulls her into him, the hard line of his body, and kisses her. She clings to him, already soft and wet and desperate for him. The record ends, and a heavy, stilted silence drops over them, thickly veiled by the sound of their bodies. Rushed and slicked and sloppy as she pulls over his sweatshirt and he falls on top of her, kissing her neck, her shoulder and jaw, every stretch of her skin. And somehow, despite the rush of it, the heedy sense of fear and inadequacy, over the smell of old memories and moulds and dusts, the room reeks of love. Imperfect and needy, yes, but love nonetheless.

A blip. It’s gone.