Sentience

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Goldensnitch18

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Rated M

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Summary: When the Room of Requirement returned to its place on the seventh floor, the Headmistress and Deputy Head were hesitant but excited. They quickly discover that something is wrong and call in Auror Potter to help them figure it out. No one knows why the Room of Requirement seems to be sentient and seeks to please, but Harry and Pansy are going to find out.

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Disclaimer: I am not profiting from this story.

Anything you recognize belongs to the great and mighty JKR.

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Chapter Three:

Harry was standing outside the room when Pansy arrived later that afternoon. She had changed into her jeans and a jumper and pulled half of her hair back from her face. It reminded him of the last time he had been alone with her when he had fucked everything up. The witch was holding several books and binders of parchments in her arms as she approached. She ignored him as she began to pace in front of the wall, and Harry waited, arms folded across his chest as he leaned against the wall. When the door appeared, Pansy pulled it open and walked through. He followed, sighing deeply as he did so.

"Are you going to ignore me all afternoon?" he asked, pushing the door shut behind him. Even though he had known to expect them this time, the runes still drew his eyes to them, sparkling against the walls.

"Are you going to be here all afternoon?" she asked in response. She deposited her materials on the table supplied for her by the room.

"McGonagall and Neville want me here," he told her, walking towards the table as well. There were two chairs, one on either side.

"Then I will be ignoring you all afternoon." She began opening books, her eyes, firmly on the text inside of them.

"Look I'm-" Harry started, he reached out a hand to touch her, and she whipped her face up quickly glaring.

"Don't," she snapped, as her hand rose into the air to stop him, "even think about apologizing."

"I just want to -" Harry tried again, she deserved this much, an explanation - or a better explanation at any rate.

"Don't," she said again, nearly growling the word through tight lips.

"Okay." Harry pulled his hand through his hair, shaking his head as he took a step back. "McGonagall wants me to check things out. I'll just go over here and do that."

"Wonderful." She was already turning her attention back to her work, back to ignoring him. McGonagall and Neville couldn't have known, no one knew, but he was probably the very worst person they could have called for this job. If he had known, he would have sent someone else, Ron or Marcus. He could have left he supposed. That would have been the decent thing to do, not that he had done much decently with Pansy. He had tried to be decent, to not take advantage or do something she would regret later, and he had buggered it right up, and now, apparently, she wasn't interested in his excuses, for that was all they would be. Firewhisky could only excuse so much.

He moved toward the door, pulling at his robes to leave himself also in trousers and a long sleeve shirt. He drew his wand from his pocket, staring at the runes directly next to the door. He hardly knew where to even begin, but he lifted the wood anyway, beginning to move his arm as he cast spell after spell. Behind him, Pansy continued to spread her work across the table silently. He glanced back periodically, watching her as she actively pretended that he wasn't just across the room.

By the time she finally moved over to one of the walls, her fingers extended, he had worked his way through nearly everything he could think of to try, with no results. The runes did not seem to have been placed there by any maleficent source that he could detect. They seemed to not be any immediate danger to him or Pansy. The room appeared to be free of any curses he had the ability to check for.

He watched her take in a small short breath, her eyes closing as she touched her fingertips to the gold runes. "Hello, beautiful," she whispered, but he could hear her clearly through the silence. She seemed to have forgotten his presence or perhaps didn't care. He nearly felt as if he was invading an intimate moment, but he watched anyway, enraptured by her reaction. Once her eyes had reopened, her finger traveled slowly over the figure before her. "What do you have to tell me today?" The rune shimmered, and Harry imagined that it was delighted at her attention for a moment before he realized that this was quite ridiculous. Runes didn't feel delight. They did not, could not, know what it felt like to have the pads of her fingers on his skin, gripping him with fervor.

He closed his own eyes, shaking his head to remove the images, but they persisted, sneaking through his mind one after the other as he pushed against them. It was Blaise's birthday party. He nearly hadn't gone. It was damn strange to celebrate the birthday of the man married to his only serious girlfriend ever, but Hermione and Ron had insisted that it would be worse if he didn't go. Mrs. Weasley had made dinner and they had celebrated outside in the garden, which had surprised Harry. It seemed odd for Blaise Zabini to enjoy a party thrown by Mrs. Weasley, but he supposed she was his mother in law. He probably tried to keep her happy to a certain extent despite the fact that everyone knew she had taken Harry and Ginny's break up harder than anyone. Harry was sure she had just wanted to be able to mother him for real, in an honest legal sense that wasn't her just being his best friend's mum. None of that mattered to Harry. Mrs. Weasley would always be a mother to him.

At the party, he had done his best to blend in. Dean and Seamus sat with him most of the night, drinking and laughing. Hermione and Ron had been at their table, but they got up to dance and mingle with other couples as well. Hermione had tried to convince Harry to dance with Luna, but that was not going to happen. He wasn't interested in getting involved, certainly not with a friend, and Hermione's dance suggestion was never just a dance suggestion these days. She seemed intent on butting into his life and finding a way to help him be less lonely. That was just who she was.

He had ended up on his way to drunk, not in any small part due to having to watch Ginny in the arms of her husband all night, their daughter between them. It wasn't that he missed her. He didn't miss her in that way. He missed their close friendship. He missed that she had understood parts of him in a way that no one else likely ever would, but he did not miss their relationship. Despite this, it was hard to see what should have been his life play out before him, knowing that everyone here had been expecting that to be him. That little girl was supposed to be his daughter. It was a truly peculiar experience, which he managed with Firewhisky.

Toward the end of the evening when all of the children and most of the older generation had vanished, Harry made his way into the house to get away from the people for just a few minutes. He wandered up the stairs, memories of his childhood floating unconsciously forward, reminding him of a time he would have given anything to be one of the kids who called this place their home. He was outside Ron's room when he smelled it, someone having a cigarette. It was such an odd scent to inhale inside of the Burrow, so he followed it, encourage by his hazy mind. Pansy was sitting on Ron's bedroom floor, her eyes closed, her lungs breathing in her cigarette. Her nails and lips were a deep red, both standing out against the white paper with stark clarity. Beside her on the carpet, a glass of Firewhisky sat nearly empty.

"What are you doing?" Harry asked her, stepping into the room before he closed the door.

Her eyes shot open, and moved to glare at him as she removed the cigarette. "Waiting for someone to come irritate me about why I'm not out at the party, obviously," she snapped back, her eyes flashing.

"So, you want to be alone." Harry reached for her hand, pulling the cigarette from it and using his wand to vanish it, as well as the residual smoke.

"You are an asshole, Potter," she told him.

"I'm saving your life. Molly will kill you." Harry fell to the ground beside her. "Why did you come in here for that anyway?"

Pansy laughed, shaking her head. "I'm avoiding Neville's fiance," she told him. "I can't believe he's marrying her."

"Hannah? Why are you …" Harry's eyes grew large. "Did you and Neville?"

"A long time ago. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement. I have a habit of making terrible decisions when I'm drunk." She laughed, lifting the glass to her lips to drain it.

"And, you have feelings for him?" Harry asked, not sure why else she would be avoiding Hannah, and feeling utterly awkward.

Pansy let out a laugh, cold laugh, and Harry was sure that he had been wrong even before she spoke. "Are you fucking kidding me? Longbottom?" She laughed again. "No. Fuck no, but the precious man told his future wife that we used to fuck occasionally, and now she hates me. It's unbearable being around her, which is a joy since he and I work together."

"Why would he tell her that?" Harry asked, startled by Neville's honesty.

"Because he's Longbottom. He isn't like the rest of us mortals. He should have been a fucking Hufflepuff like his damn fiance." Pansy set the empty glass back down on the ground and then moved to lay down on the carpet. "Are all your friends losers?" she asked as she stared up at the ceiling full of Chudley Cannons posters

"You never hung a poster?" Harry asked defensively. Even if this room had not belong to his best friend, he would have defended the posters. The Burrow was a sacred place to him, a place he had felt safe and at home at a time when his home was a terrible place. He slid down beside her as he spoke. He lay on his back, hands on his stomach.

Pansy shook her head, turning to face him. "Still oblivious as ever, Potter. My mother would have disowned me if I ruined my room by hanging a poster."

"Isn't your room supposed to be yours to do with as you please?" Harry asked. He mirrored her movement, turning his face to hers.

"You know nothing." She sighed, and Harry was sure this was some cultural divide he had escaped learning about by being too wrapped up in Quidditch and Voldemort.

"Sounds about right," he told her. His eyes moved down from hers, lingering on her cherry lips. The Firewhisky was encouraging his thoughts of closing the space between them. His hand would find her hip as his mouth tasted those lips. The last few logical parts of his brain that remained operating were reminding him that those particular lips belonged to someone very complicated, someone who went against every boundary he had set in place to avoid being taken advantage of.

"I suppose you must know some things," Pansy told him. Her teeth pulled in her bottom lip, and he was sure she had realized he had been watching them. He looked back up at her eyes. Pansy's hand came to rest on his chest. "They made you Deputy Head after all Auror Potter."

Harry reached for her hand with every intention of pushing it away, but instead his fingers intertwined with hers of their own accord. "Hardly. They just think I make them look good." This was shit. He'd worked his ass off for that promotion.

"Well, you certainly do make the uniform look good." Pansy shifted her body toward him, closing the distance between their bodies.

That logical part of Harry which hadn't been entirely damped down by the alcohol knew this was dangerous, he knew he shouldn't do this, but she smelled fucking amazing, and her eyes were already undressing him. He reached out, his fingers touching her black hair, disappearing beneath the surface. He wasn't sure if he pulled her head in or she moved, but they were kissing in the next moment. She tasted better than he could have imagined.

Her body was quickly against his, and then moving on top of him as their kiss moved quickly from gentle to intense. Her hips began to rock against him, and he slid his free hand up her body, pushing her shirt up to feel her skin. She let out a soft noise of satisfaction when he brushed her nipple through her bra and pulled back. She was smiling broadly as she sat atop him. He pushed the shirt over her head, and she reached back to pull off her bra. Before she had really even removed it, Harry was pulling her back down as he turned so that she would be underneath him on the rug.

Pansy removed his shirt then before moving to his belt as his mouth claimed her nipple, licking and sucking at her flesh. They moved quickly, with dedicated intention, both of them clearly desperate to get to the part where he would be inside of her, satisfying both of their very sudden aches for release. As she slid down the zip of his trousers, he bit down on her breast. "Potter." He heard the desire in her voice as his name slipped past her lips.

"Harry?" It took him a minute to realize the call came from outside the room and down the stairs by the sound of it. He stopped, frozen in place.

"Ignore it," Pansy insisted. Harry moved up to kiss her as she pushed on his trousers, but he sighed as he heard Hermione again.

"Harry?" She was moving closer. He was sure she would check Ron's old room for him

"Fuck." He pushed up from the floor, readjusting his pants quickly with his shirt crumpled in his hand. He pulled the shirt over his head, smoothing it down the best he could, avoiding Pansy's irritated eyes. Harry moved over to the door and pulled it open. He moved down the stairs to meet Hermione.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Just taking a break for a minute," Harry told her.

"Ron and I are going to head home. We just wanted to let you know."

"Okay." He leaned down to hug her, wrapping her in his arms. "See you later."

"See you." Hermione glanced back up the stairs, and Harry hoped Pansy had the sense to stay in the bedroom. She turned to leave, and he watched her until she disappeared.

When he returned to Ron's old room, Pansy was laying on her side on the rug holding her head up with her hand. She was clearly annoyed with him.

"I'm sorry," Harry told her, shutting the door again.

"You might give a girl a complex rushing off like that for another girl."

"She would have come in here looking for me." Harry said. He stayed by the door, taking in the sight of her, half naked and waiting for him to rejoin her on the floor. He desperately wanted to, but being pulled away by Hermione had been extremely sobering. The experience had allowed his mind time to remember exactly what was at risk here if he allowed himself to sleep with Pansy on the floor of his best friend's childhood bedroom.

"We could have given her quite the show," Pansy told him, her smirk spreading wide across her face.

Harry chuckled, trying not to imagine Hermione ever seeing him in any sort of situation like that. It was a bit horrifying. "Pansy," he said, and he watched her demeanor change.

"What?" she asked, but he was sure she already knew.

"I need to go," he said. "I shouldn't have done this in the first place."

"Are you serious?" Pansy sat up, reaching for her bra.

"It's … I make a point not to get mixed up with witches." He ran a hand uneasily through his hair, and she glared, reminding him instantaneously why he had disliked, and possibly feared, her so much in their younger years.

"What?" she snapped. She had her hands behind her back clasping her bra straps together. "I never asked you to come up here."

"It's just too much to …"

"Get the fuck out," Pansy told him, cutting him off.

"I just …"

"Out, Potter. Get the fuck out," she repeated, and he shook his head, knowing he had fucked this up beyond repair, at least for the moment. He followed her request, leaving her behind in Ron's old room, pulling her shirt over her head and looking utterly pissed.

A/N: Hope you enjoyed this peek into the past!

xoxo

Meg