---

Ginny Weasley doesn’t like me.

I consider this while she scowls at me from across the couch, where she sits in an awkwardly knitted jumper with a G on the front, and her hair done up in bows and ribbons.

The fact that I think she dislikes me more for having brought her to Bill, than for having kidnapped her and beaten her with my Stick doesn’t elude me either. Bill comes bustling in with a tray of tea and sets it down on the coffee table, a bright smile on his face. It’s disgusting.

“Tea, Harry? If I remember right you like it with a bit of milk, enough sugar to kill, and equal parts tea and whiskey?” He pulls a flask out and shakes it, the insufferable grin seeming to grow on his face. The sight of the flask makes me want to take it from him and drink the entire thing. My nerves haven’t settled, and I’m breathing through my mouth considering Pansy did quite a number on my nose. Considering everything, Bill’s cheer is more grating than normal, and his presence makes my desire to take my unhappiness out on the littlest Weasley unlikely to come to fruition.

“No tea. No whiskey.” His eyes falter, but his smile returns as he places the pot and the flask on the table. Bill dotes on his sister, who sits stoically by as he pokes at her hair, pinches on her cheeks and smiles in apparent pride. The nausea lances through my gut again, and I decide that William Weasley has overstayed his welcome for the moment. “Bill?”

He looks up inquisitively toward me, his hand still adjusting one of the pink bows in his sister’s hair. “Harry?” His smile is still etched to his face, the sickening one he wears as he gazes toward his youngest sibling, a fondness there that makes me feel deeply uncomfortable.

“Get out, Bill.” His smile slides away, but he stands and goes to walk out. “Leave the flask.” He places it down on the table next to me before walking out. Ginny’s eyes go from a sallow, dead blankness to a rage that would shock me, had I not become completely desensitized to any emotion Ginny Weasley showed. There was something not right going on, and a part of me was aware that it went much deeper than a simple unhappiness with being dolled up, dressed up, and paraded out for company. Maybe it was wrong of me to leave her here, but honestly, I really am unconcerned with what was right and wrong concerning Ginny Weasley.

“So…Ginny.”

“Get me out of here, Potter.”

“I don’t take orders from redheads, Ginevra.” She hates me calling her that, and she hates the fact that I don’t seem to be conforming to her demands even more.

“No, you always preferred blondes.”

“You’re pushing it, Weasley. This is how your lot asks for help?”

“It’s your bloody fault I’m here! I shouldn’t need to…”She looks like she’s swallowed something disgusting as she likely swallows her pride as she realizes I’m her only hope. “Please. I’m begging you. I would get down on my knees if I wouldn’t end up sprawled out on the floor. But if that’s how I need to be to get you to save me from this place, I will fall down on this floor and kiss your feet. Anything, please.”

Ginny Weasley begging in desperation is probably the most unattractive thing I have ever had to see. She’s not an ugly girl, per se, but the feverish, fanatical need in her eyes drives a shudder up my spine. “Please, Harry. Please, save me.” The shaking of her hands as she reaches across the table starts to bring bile up my throat. “He…he…”

I stand quickly and step back from the table before she can reach out to me. Her pleading eyes look up to me as she holds her arms out for me to pick her up and hopefully take her away from this place. I turn away from her, her gaze burning into the side of my face to intently I can almost feel it. “I’m sorry for bringing you here, Ginny. I truly am.” I feel something on my hand, and look over to see she has grabbed onto the table and pulled herself onto it, her lame legs dangling off the side as she grabs at my fingers as if I was her last lifeline. “I’m sorry I brought you here. I’m sorry for whatever it is he does. If I could go back and undo it, I would have taken you back to Mungo’s.” I pull my hand away from hers and take a step out of her reach. “But I can’t go back. And I’m not in the business of saving people anymore.”

Her sobs follow me from the room as I walk up the stairs and push open the door to what was once my childhood room. I hear Bill rush into the room and scoop her up, gently reprimanding her for having crawled off of the couch as he sits her up. Something about her cries seems to die in her throat and the most horrid sound or resignation raced up the stairs and rushed toward the open door and bowled into me before I could secure the door behind me. My hands shake and my knees collapse.

“Hello Harry.”

---

“Fred.”

“George, actually. Fred’s asleep. Which is why I am glad you’re here right now.” The calm tone of voice in which “George” spoke unnerved me. He still had yet to heal, and speaking at all must have been amazingly painful given the stretching and pulling on the scar-tissue on his cheek that I could see as his mouth moved. Bill never was especially good at first-aid, and the stitching job was sloppy.

“…George?” My face must read what I think, as he laughs, which makes me wince as some of the stitching pops and blood begins to inch down the side of his face. And yet he still laughs heartily. “It’s better if you don’t ask, Harry. I know it’s crazy. But I do need to ask you to do something else.”

“What can I do to help you…Fred…whatever, what exactly can I do?”

“I want you to kill us.”

---

I left with a lot of answers, a good amount of information that I needed, and a tremor lancing up my arms into my chest. The smiling face of the man looking up at me as I choked him to death was so morbidly cheerful that I am sure it’s scarred me for the rest of my life. He mouthed “Thank you” to me, which made it worse. So much worse.

“Harry! Would you like to stay for dinner? I’m planning to make…”

“I just strangled your brother to death, William. So no, I don’t think I’ll be staying for dinner.” His voice caught and I could see the color draining from his face. He goes pale and then suddenly the color snaps back and his entire face went red, as well as his nearly hairless head.

He races up the stairs as I head toward the door, glancing down at Ginny one last time. “I’m sorry, Ginny. Goodbye.”

It begins to worry me that, the further I get away from the property, the more I begin to realize that I’m not nearly as sorry as I should be right now. The tragedy of Ginny Weasley has begun to deteriorate in my mind, and all I can see is a literal personification of Wizarding England. A crippled, broken, scared little girl who is at the same time too scared and too prideful to get herself help.

A part of me still aches to help those who need help. Longs to find those who lay, beaten by life, dust them off and pull them to their feet. But in a country filled with as many people who are battered and broken as people who have left them that way, I simply can’t find the time.

“Potter.” I stop in the middle of walking as I hear a voice call out to me. A voice I should not be hearing, because no one should be anywhere near me right now. Someone followed me. This is bad, very bad.

Turning around, I see a face I haven’t seen in ages. “…Cormac?”

“Yes, Potter. And I have come to take you in.”

“On who’s authority, exactly? As far as I know, Susan won’t be having anyone coming anywhere near me, and especially wouldn’t allow anyone to be tailing me, here of all places. Narcissa isn’t this fucking stupid, and Zabini and those damned Unspeakables would know to leave me to what I have to do.”

“Would we? Are you sure? Because as far as I know, I was sent here to make sure that you weren’t shirking out on our little deal.” …McLaggen is a fucking Unspeakable? Wow, these groups really are just recruiting anyone. “Now, I’d like to know exactly what you have been up to, Potter. Hiding in the shadows is pretty tiring, I must say. No idea how the others do this all the time, it’s just not for me. As such, I’ve decided that; wherever you go to next, I’ll just go with you.

“No.”

“Yes, Potter. Because I will be damned if you decide to flee on my watch.”

“What would I be fleeing from, exactly?” Cormac was never that bright. He stares at me for a long moment, before blinking several times and looking away from me, clearly flustered.

“Just…Just stop asking questions, Harry. Easier if you don’t fight so much and just come along. I’ve had a long day already, and the higher ups will have my in front of a discharging committee sooner than I can blink if there’s any sign of you running off.” I almost feel bad for the man, as he gazes down at the street in what I can only guess is some form of fear. “My career is on the line with you, Potter.”

“Wow…that’s really bad luck for you.”

“Yes, yes it is. But I’ve had enough of your talking. You know, I’ve been in charge of tracking you for over a year now. Low-rung work that no one else wanted, because no one else cared. I was made to try and chase after your, getting any information I could. Do you know how fucking annoyingly random you are? How bloody infuriating it is that any schedule you have is deviated from the minute I get the rhythm to it?

“It was all I could to to get my superiors to not terminate me after over nine months of having little more information than “He seems to beat the hell out of people in the middle of the street after they come hunting for him. And then he leaves.” His wand raises and points directly at my heart, as it takes several paces toward me. “I will not be held responsible for more failure because of you, Potter. I have had quite enough of that. Now, get your things, and get yourself-” There is a dull pulse sound, like someone kicking the bottom of a bass drum, and just like that, Cormac McLaggen no longer stood in front of me. No, instead, Cormac McLaggen laid in pieces down the street, his head rolling to a stop against the curb of a house almost a block down.

Hazel eyes watch me intently from the shadows nearby when I look to where the spell had come from. “…Romilda?” A bright, wicked smile becomes visible along with those eyes, and I can’t help but become decidedly disturbed by it. But no more disturbed than the fact that I am apparently being followed by Romilda Vane. Again. But this time, not because it’s her. But because she appears to be indiscriminately blowing people the fuck up.

At least it was only McLaggen. If she hadn’t, I might have. And, if anything, the world’s a better place without him.

---

I can’t suppress the sigh as I stand in front of one place I had vowed to not return to. Bad memories flood the surface as I walk toward the door, and my hand is shaking as I reach for the door knocker. However, before I can even knock, the door is opened, and a woman with dark hair, an olive complexion, and the most striking jade eyes I have ever seen in my life stands before me. Her eyes are alert but her gaze is warm as she greets me, wrapping her arms around me in a friendly embrace, likely to conceal her shock. “Harry!”

“Hey Tonks.”

---

Sitting on the back steps of this place again brings back terrible memories. I remember my childhood here, and hating it so much. First, dreaming of running away and never coming back. Hording pocket money behind the rose bush, storing it in a plastic package from one of Dudley’s old toys, dreaming of the day I could leave and never come back.

Then, getting my wish and disappearing off into a whole different world. The days Privet Drive grew larger from the backseat of Vernon’s regularly changing company car seemed to be worse than any I could remember. And every summer, as I was driven away from them, I was thankful.

I remember feeling drunk when I wandered into the backyard of a lifeless Number 4 after the Ambient Loss. Digging through the limp, grayed stems of the wilted, dark flowers, and finding that plastic container and tearing into it like a dying man who has just found water. The money I found there, I lived on for the hardest week of my life to that point. Sleeping under the awning in the back of the house, shaking, confused and sick with myself for being so thankful to be back in a place I hated so much. The day I left, I never wanted to return, because I could not stand the idea that I was coming to appreciate the place, if nothing more than the basic beauty in the silence of it all.

And here I sit.

The backyard is…nice. Tonks has been working at it, trimming the overgrowth and cleaning the area around the large tree the stands in the center of the backyard. It’s a nice enough tree, but propped against the trunk, facing where I sit, is what I came for.

Digging her grave almost killed the tree. Considering the hole was created from a few overpowered Blasting Charms, I’m surprised more damage wasn’t done. But the tree, like many things in life, recovered from the trauma I did to it. I envy that tree, in a lot of ways.

When she died, I brought her here, probably out of the same instinct that led me here the night I came to, with the world around me changed. Something about Number 4 seems to act as a lighthouse, a beacon to me when things don’t make sense. I sat outside of the back door, painted with her blood, trying to see through the tears clouding my eyes and her hair in my face. I clutched her to me for what I suspect was hours before laying her down and attempting to dig her grave by hand. After the roots of the tree impeded me almost mockingly, I began to fire spells, and I didn’t stop until there was a hole big enough to place her in.

I covered her in the sheets from the bed I slept in when I lived at Number 4. It only seemed fitting. And I slept on the grave I had made for her that night, rain and cold be damned. Even now, I know I shouldn’t have. Luna would have hated my reaction to it all, had she seen it. But I think, after this long, she’d be proud of me.

“Least…I hope you’d be, Lu.” I hear Tonks coming before I see her, and I can feel her, even before I can hear her footsteps. “Over here, Tonks, it’s ok.”

“I’m…I’m sorry to interrupt you, Harry, I didn’t mean to, I just heard you talking.”

“It’s alright. I could…I think I could use the company.” She comes and sits next to me, and I can’t help but be reminded of the last time we sat next to each other, outside of Gringotts. It feels like so much has changed since then. Seems like it’s been years.

The silence drags on, before I look over to her. She’s fiddling with her hands, dragging her right index finger and thumb down her left hand, finger by finger, the skin lightening back to her normal complexion. She held her hand up, much paler than the rest of her skin, and seemed to marvel for a moment at her own ability, before she repeated the process and her hand once more darkened to match the appearance she had greeted me with.

She carried on back and forth, sometimes designs of pale skin along her arms before tracing them back. It was really enthralling to watch, and as such, her voice caught me somewhat by surprise. “Harry, are you alright?”

Wow…that’s a loaded question. “As alright as I think I can be.” She looks at me and raises her eyebrow, and I can tell she won’t let that be the end of what I say. “There’s something both distressing and calming about being here. Calming because…it’s Luna. That was what she is…was to me. Calming. Distressing because…she’s down there, buried, dead. I…I won’t get to see her again. Won’t get to see those abnormally large eyes of hers as they take in the world around her. Won’t get to have her sit and listen, and then speak something so profound and so stupid.

“Sometimes I miss her most in situations she’s not at all involved in. I think I have memories that I tie her to just so, when I think back on them, I have an excuse to think about her. Hell, she’s buried here, of all places, so now even my childhood memories have her attached. And it’s crazy because, by the end of it all, I could barely stand her.” Tonks’ hand reaches out toward my arm, and I shift away from it. She pulls back as if burned, and a pang of regret hits me, but it’s lost in the sea of emotions crashing through me as I realize that I am still talking.

“Fuck, I feel like scum because I’m sat here, acknowledging the fact that, at some point, the thought that I hated her actually entered my brain! I feel like a fucking hypocrite. And the part that makes me feel worse is, I never got to apologize to her. I know she never knew, but I…” I don’t realize I’m moving until I’m kneeling atop her grave again, after such a long time. The dirt is tough and compacted, and it doesn’t feel like it’s been long enough since I pushed the dirt over her body by hand. Not long enough at all.

“I don’t know how to help you, Harry. If there was something I could do, I would, but…frankly, I’ve never seen you like this. I can’t help but assume in the middle of me trying to comfort you, you’ll pull your wand and blow up the entire yard.” She has a point, considering that’s about what I did the last time I felt like this. “In truth, I’d feel better if you did. You’re…unnerving me. So… stop bawling already, Potter. You’re scaring the dying girl.”

I look over to Tonks and see this disturbed look on her face. Her hair is lighter than it was before, and her eyes a blue that they hadn’t been. She’s fighting it, but her body’s natural inclination at this point is toward attempting to comfort me by doing exactly what I was praying she wouldn’t do. I’m thankful she doesn’t. I couldn’t handle seeing Luna’s face right now. As much as I want to…need to see her one more time, I can’t.

“I shouldn’t stay much longer, Tonks. I have way too many people following me lately, and if there’s one place I don’t want to lead them, it’s here.”

“Oh, I don’t think that will be much of a problem.”

“Why’s that?”

“Well, you appear to have picked up a tail that is going out of her way to keep other people from following you.”

I can’t prevent the sigh, and I turn and sit down, leaning my back against the tree and picking at the ground between my feet. The earth feels the same as it did when I was younger, ignoring the fact that there is a person buried within. “Let me guess. Thin, hazel eyes, utterly batshit insane?” Tonks nods, a smile on her lips. “Then that’d be Romilda.”

“So that’s her name? Always known you to travel alone, Harry. Didn’t realize you had picked up your own attack dog.”

“Not really by choice. She just showed up today. Blew McLaggen’s body down the fucking street in pieces. I really think she has some problems.”

“Then either ditch her or kill her. Not like you want someone unrepentantly violent with no morals wandering around with you. I mean, why would you want to travel with another version of yourself?” The light tone she makes her jab at me takes any sting out of her words, but I am still aware of the fact that she isn’t lying when she says that.

“Yeah, damn those kind of people…never know when they might turn on you, eh?”

“Harry, that’s not what I meant, I-” I cut her off before she can get a full head of steam attempting to backpedal. I know what she said, and I know what she meant, and that they aren’t exactly the same. But I don’t blame her for it, and I don’t mind, much.

“It’s fine, Tonks, really.” She doesn’t look reassured, and she shouldn’t, but she’s at least not so defensive. “I…I don’t say this much, but I trust Romilda. I think I trust her because I don’t have unreal expectations for her. I don’t expect her to keep her hands clean, and I don’t expect her to be sane. I don’t really expect anything from her, really. But if there’s anything I can trust her to do, its protect me. If there is one thing I could say I expected from Romilda, it’s her willingness to keep me safe…well, relatively safe, given the potential for her definition of safe not exactly meshing with mine. Her devotion to me seems so all-encompassing, she would do anything to protect me. In a way, she’s obsessive. And that’s what makes me not worried.”

“So…sounds like someone has their own Lestrange.”

“…You know, it does sound like that. Creepy.” There’s a less…heavy silence that falls between us for a while, before I begin to pull myself up to standing. “If there was a time for her to show up, I am glad it’s now.”

“Why’s that? What could possibly be going on in Harry’s World that is more dangerous than every other day involving people out to kill him and him constantly ducking the law?”

“You mean besides your old colleagues being out after me?” The jovial look that had been on her face during her little ribbing of me and over the idea of me having a person Bellatrix was wiped away immediately. If there’s something that could be said about Nymphadora Tonks, its that she’s always lived her life connected to the action.

“…which group?”

“The ones you were working for when you met me in that bar.”

“Oh shit.” Leave it to Tonks to always be so eloquent.

“Indeed. And considering everything, they’ll soon be after me about as intently as Narcissa’s precious little sanctioned Murder Squad, so if there was a time where I could use Miss Crazy out there, it’d be now.”

“Narcissa’s Murder Squad?”

Oops. “Oh…I guess I didn’t mention the fact that I pissed her off also, did I?” Tonks’ eyes narrow, and I become suddenly aware of the time that has passed since I arrived. “I should go. It was good to see you, Tonks, and thank you for the company…and letting me come see her.”

She gives me a funny look, before standing up and brushing her pants off. “It’s your house, Harry. Not like I could keep you out.” She smiles at me as I walk toward her and hug her. It’s an odd feeling, hugging another person with no motive, but there’s something more comforting to it than anything else Tonks could have done, at the moment. “Hell, even if it wasn’t your house, I don’t think I could keep you out. Though, I think you might want to get out of here. I know the Unspeakables, and they don’t really make it a business to give up.” I nod and go to step away to have her stay holding on, squeezing tightly. “And take Romitrix out there with you. She creeps me out.”

“But…she creeps me out too.”

---

Romilda is leaning against the wall outside of the door I walked into when I come around the side. She has a mug in her hand that she seems to be peering into warily between sips, and her wand is held in her other hand, sweeping back and forth as if scanning the perimeter on its own accord. “She makes good coffee.”

“Does she? I wouldn’t know, I never got offered a cup.”

“It’s good enough.” She turns her eyes toward me, and I’m hit by how…piercing her eyes can be. “Are we killing her? If we are, I’d like to get the recipe for this.” She tilts her head to the side and looks me up and down, her eyes lingering on the dirt that has to be all over my pants. “Unless you killed her already…Without me Harry? That’s not very nice of you.”

Romilda Vane is pouting.

Pouting over potentially not being included in killing someone she doesn’t even know.

Tonks was right, she is fucking creepy.

“She’s fine, Romilda, we won’t be killing her. Come on, we have places to go and time is of the essence.”

“I get to go?” There’s a childish joy in this that only serves to make me very much rethink my decision to take her along. Instead of going with my first - and second - instinct, I just nod.

This is going to come back to bite me in the ass.

---

Blaise Zabini is not someone I trust. In fact, I really don’t like him as a person. There’s a sliminess to him that rubs me the wrong way, and I can’t help but be under the impression that he is hiding a lot from me. But, everyone is hiding something these days. It’s the only way to survive anymore.

“Ah, Harry! Good of you to show up only…three hours late!” He stands before me dressed crisply and looking quite pleased with himself. The smile on his face is eating at me the longer I’m forced to look at it. “Well, I’m sure something came up in that exciting life of yours, so, no harm – no foul.”

“Zabini, I’d-”

“Please, Harry, call me Blaise! We’ll be working together for quite some time, and I think it only fitting that we establish something of a working friendship, if you will-”

“Zabini.” He finally stops his speaking and looks at me. “Let me make a few things clear. I do not like you. I will not call you by your first name. I will most certainly not be establishing some ‘working friendship’ with you, because I will not be working with you.” The smile on his face slides away to a look of confusion that I can’t help but find pleasure in. For a member of an organization that does everything it can to know anything of importance, his lack of understanding is a rare treat for me.

“I don’t understand, Harry.”

I can’t stop the laughter that wells up in my chest, and if I could, I wouldn’t have wanted to. “Of course you don’t.” Footsteps echo behind me, and I glance back to see Romilda holding a smaller woman at wand-point. I don’t recognize her from the glimpse I have under her hood, but given the look on Zabini’s face, he does. “Friend of yours?”

“What is the meaning of this, Harry? Who is this woman, and why is she holding a wand to my partner?”

“Whoever this was,” Romilda began, kicking the shorter woman in the back of her knees and sending her sprawling onto the ground, “She was standing in the shadows over there, keeping her wand trained on Harry. Now, I don’t blame her, considering I had my wand trained on you. But…no one aims their wand at my Harry. No one.” I’m no one’s Harry, but I knew having her around would pay off. I didn’t even notice whoever this woman is, watching me, and probably wouldn’t have until she decided to attempt to fire some kind of spell at me.

“She’s my partner. Here, put your wand on me, not on her.” The desperation in Blaise’s voice isn’t that of someone protecting a partner or a friend. It’s that of someone scared for someone close to them. A sibling or...

“Not just your partner though, is it?” Seems Romilda picked up on it as well, maybe before I did given the sly look she’s had on her face since she brought the woman out. “But if you want my wand on you, and not on her, so be it.” And just like that, Blaise was staring down the end of Romilda’s wand. Romilda, for her part, put her foot on the back of the woman on the ground before her, and held her there.

It’s nice to not have to be my own enforcer for once.

“Well Zabini…here’s what’s going to happen. I will not be going with you. I won’t be saying goodbye to everyone I know, and letting your all spirit me off to whatever facility you’re using this week, to do whatever it is you intend to do with me. Whether or not I am the solution to the Hogwarts ‘problem’, I don’t think I have any desire to see it resolved.”

“But what about all the people you could save, Potter! You can’t just walk away from it!”

“I can, and I will. I’ve done it before. I don’t think I have any desire to let you all use me as some kind of guinea pig to test you theories on. No thank you.”

“You don’t have that right!” Blaise is getting angry. Despite the fact that he has Romilda’s wand trained on him, and mine as well, though he doesn’t realize it, he has begun to get irate. The fact that his partner, and possibly lover, is currently face-down on the street with Romilda taking odd joy in grinding her heel into the woman’s back, probably isn’t helping his calmness, either.

“Calm down, Zabini. I’m warning you…”

“Who the fuck are you to warn me about anything, you selfish bastard? You could hold the key to fixing our entire society, and you won’t do anything about it. Who the hell do you think you are to deny our people a second chance?”

“Who am I? I’m the one you need for your little supposed solution, Zabini. Consider this: you say I’m the hope for a second chance, right? Fuck the notion of a second chance for any of you. What have you done to deserve one?” His eyes are enraged, and he’s all but shaking. People do stupid things when they are this angry, and given Romilda’s feelings on killing people, this won’t end well for him unless he’s calmed down. “Romilda, let her up.

“If either of you try anything, you both die. As it is, run along. I won’t be working with, or for, you. If you go after anyone I was previously associated with, you won’t like the outcome. As it is, I have distanced myself from them, so don’t think to go to any of them for my whereabouts.” Romilda lifts her foot from the woman, who’s first order of business is adjusting her hood and then scampering toward Blaise. She makes it about a step before Romilda kicks her squarely in the ass. She stumbles, but he rushes forward and catches her before she can fall. She all but sinks into his chest as they walk away, her face buried in his shoulder.

Something about her reminds me of someone I know, but I can’t place it. They shuffle away, Blaise constantly looking back and glancing between me and Romilda. Said woman has walked to stand just behind and to the side of me. It hasn’t even been a day, and I’m already glad I decided to bring her along.

…

“Romilda?”

“Hmm?”

“Please stop…nuzzling me.”

“Was I? Sorry. Tense situations do that to me.”

She steps around me, brushing against my arm before walking forward, her stride purposeful and without a hint of the odd, almost childishness she’d just displayed. Shaking my head, I follow her, and find her gait slowed just enough that I’ve soon fallen in stride with her. “So, back home I take it?”

“As good a place as any, I guess.” And as we walk, I can’t help but try and rack my brain for why that woman Romilda had roughed up seems so familiar to me, and why the thought of home seems to make something itch in the back of my mind, as if I should be remembering something I’m not.

“Romilda?”

“Harry?”

“Please stop playing with my hair.”

“…Sorry. Habit.”

I don’t even bother wondering how something she’s done for the first time is considered a habit. I’ve already found that, when dealing with Romilda, it’s better to just not ask questions.

---

There are some things I never actually expect to see when I come back home to Gringotts. One of those things is Pansy Parkinson.

I have made it a point to not actually expressly say where I live when I talk to her. She’s never actually asked me straight up, and I’ve never felt the desire to tell her. So seeing her sitting on the stairs outside of the marble goliath that I had called my place of residence was a bit of a shock. The fact that she skipped passed looking at me and her eyes locked right on Romilda was something else entirely.

Oh shit.

“Harry…who the hell is this?”

“This is…”

“I, Parkinson, am Romilda Vane. Simply a pleasure.” The saccharinely sweet tone to Romilda’s voice almost makes her greeting of Pansy seem threatening. Pansy’s visibly taken aback, and I’m relieved of the awkward feeling of the meeting, as a more…dangerous tone settles over it. I have no doubt in my mind that Romilda can and would kill Pansy. But that’s not what I want. And because that’s not what I want, I really should make sure that boundaries are established.

“Ladies…”

“Sorry, Harry. I didn’t mean to frighten her.” Romilda’s sudden shift into being what could only be called docile knocks me off-balance this time. “Let’s start over. It really is nice to meet you, Pansy. Harry talks about you all the time.”

What the fuck. I do? …When?

I glance over to Pansy to see that she has turned away from us, presenting her profile to us both as she tried to hide as much of the blush spread across her face as possible.

Romilda leans into me, her warm breath across my neck. “Um…Harry?”

“Yeah?”

“You know her better than I, and I don’t want to like…make you mad or anything, but…” Her tentativeness is almost cute, if it wasn’t for the fact that it clashed with everything I knew about her up to this point. Seems like some kind of game, but I can’t be sure.

“Out with it, then.”

“…Is she ok? She looks like she has a rash.”

Funny how one sentence can completely change how you think about someone.

After a few moments of both of us staring at Pansy, the latter gains her composure and gives me this pleading look, basically begging me to go back to her house. She doesn’t feel comfortable outside of it, and has been sat outside of the bank-turned-fortress for an indeterminate amount of time. She looks fidgety, but I can’t help but realize how terrible an idea it is, to have Romilda and Pansy in an enclosed space together.

On the same note, Pansy has made it clear that she has no intention of going into the bank, and will sit out here in the open until I come with her, or someone stumbles on us. Someone’s in quite a mood.

So all I can do is follow, and expect the worst, as Romilda glares holes in Pansy’s back, and Pansy does her best to sway her hips on relatively unsteady legs as she walks in front of me. Given the effort she is going through, I think it only polite to look, lest she have done it for naught.

---

At some point, I lost control of this situation.

Pansy has been sitting in the kitchen glaring angrily at the oven for the last 20 minutes, while Romilda nurses a cup of tea while staring at me over the top of it. She hasn’t said a word, and has sat there, looking intently at me as if waiting for me to say something. Only…I don’t have anything to say.

“When do you plan on fixing everything, Harry?” Her voice startles me. There’s no judgment in it, and no eccentric or hyper; borderline psychotic, tone to her voice. She’s just asking.

“I don’t know if I plan to at all, Romilda.” She locks her eyes on me and tilts her head to the side. Her dark hair shifts and tumbles down her shoulder, and I can feel her eyes burning into me as I watch her. It’s amazing to consider the insanity that her eyes…

“You will, Harry.” Her words aren’t a command. They’re simply stating a fact. Like she’s aware of my intention to do something when I myself am not. “You don’t want to, and I don’t want you to…but it’s who you are. You fix things. Even when you destroy something, you still have this natural affinity toward fixing things.” Her words hit me hard, and I’m ready to argue with her when she stands and crosses the distance between her. Her knees dig into the cushion of the overstuffed chair that I sit on, and I find her all but straddling me, sitting on my knees and looking down at me with an amused look on her face.

“Whether it’s you returning the ambient magic to the UK, or you finding some way to get every bitchy, sobbing witch and wizard off of this island, you’ll find your solution. And I’ll be right there with you. I just ask one thing of you.” Her hazel eyes seem to be burning, and I can’t help but try and force my mind to create the urge to throw her off of me. This is a woman I saw actually remove the top of someone’s head with a curse, and then kick the severed portion of the skull down a hallway like a ball. I watched her kill a man today for no actual reason, albeit I saw little fault in it. I shouldn’t feel safe around her. And yet, I do. “Promise you’ll at least try for me, Harry?”

“What should I promise you, Romilda?”

Something seemed to shift in her eyes as she slides her body down, going from sitting on my knees to sitting in my lap. “Try not to fix me too much, Harry. I like being broken, even just a little bit.” And before I can stop her, Romilda once again, licks my face. I push her away part way through, and she grins down at me, wickedly. I hold her just a bit away from me, and she stares at me. Her eyes are intense, a hazel color that I have seen dance with the light of insanity, glare intently as someone attempted to threatened me, and seem utterly – almost childishly – joyful. But her look right now is something else entirely.

Her eyes dart above my head quickly, and before I can even attempt to follow them, I feel her lips on mine. Her kiss is insistent, almost demanding. But at the same time, it feels like her lips are always just a bit further away than they needed to be. The slight distance practically demanded that I attempt to close it, and even as I move more into her, she pulls back more. By the time I catch her, I become very aware of a feeling I had been ignoring in my attempts to reach her.

I would pull away, but the moment I caught her, Romilda had all but grabbed the back of my head. As such, I am forced to come to terms with a fact of life. Talking while your lips are still against another person’s is an odd feeling. “Pansy?” I grow worried immediately when the girl’s silence is almost deafening.

“Dinner will be ready in an hour.” Pansy says, her voice making it clear that she had her teeth clenched tightly and probably had her jaw set, as she tends to do when she is put out about something. Needless to say, I see that face more often than not.

Romilda pulls her head back and looks up at Pansy with a sickeningly sweet smile on her face, still holding my head tightly. “What are we having?”

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re having, whore, but Harry and I are having dinner in an hour. Don’t be here.” I can honestly say I have never heard Pansy’s voice so cold before. Today just keeps getting fucking worse.

Pansy trudges off and moments later, Romilda gets up. Sighing, I close my eyes and try to clear my head. The silence and calm I force on myself lasts all of a few lingering seconds before I hear Pansy screech in shock, and the sound of what could only be a body hitting the ground.

Worse, and worse.

---