Title: Angels Don't Live Here 2/2

Rating: PG-13

— — — — — —

"Where are we going?"

They are standing on a corner, in a moment, allowing French-speaking Muggles to pass them by and continue with their lives. He is amazed by the fact that life goes on for these people while it is war-stalled in Britain.

Harry does not know his way around Lyon. He has never been outside of the UK in all his life, save a trip to Denmark three years back to bury Tonks near her father, because Ted Tonks was Danish and dead and Andromeda wanted them to be buried together.

Remus, who was alone because Tonks was dead, had said the trip to France would be good for him, a holiday away from the shadows creeping behind him in Britain. Harry had thought the shadows would follow him wherever he went. To his surprise, they haven't. The only part of the war that he's brought with him are his memories, certain moments in time that are painful to remember because it will kill his soul if he forgets.

Voldemort is too absorbed with his operation in England to extend it to France, and its people have carefree spirits that shine on their very skin. Harry wishes that he can touch them—grasp them within his own hands so he can claim it for himself. It isn't so easy. However, the more time he spends with Pansy Parkinson, the more he feels something within him begin to release. Her conversation is easy; it is awkward in its invasiveness. Like a Legilimens trying to probe his mind, but fluid like the Saône River, always there and flowing as if it didn't know how to do anything else. It is nearing evening; he's been walking with her for hours, and still nothing.

They have passed many streets and pushed through many crowds and stopped once, twice to admire a view. She knows where they are because of the rivers. The Saône is beautiful, and Pansy describes it as an easy woman—a good wife—far more tranquil and welcoming than her sister, the River Rhône to the east.

"I came to France on a holiday," she has told him. "It was June and we'd just graduated and my mum was driving me mad with all this talk of Theodore Nott. It was 'Theo darling' this and 'Theo darling' that—every sodding moment of every sodding day was filled with Theodore, how fantastic he was, and why I should marry him."

Harry doesn't know if he should be surprised by this. Everyone knew of how Theodore Nott had pawed at the hem of Pansy's robes while they were in Hogwarts, yearning to get a taste of what Draco Malfoy seemed to own despite the cool distance he kept between Pansy and himself. "He asked you to marry him?" he asks.

"I'm not sure," she says, and she sounds tired in the way Harry feels when he thinks about girls and women. "I'm inclined to believe my father told him to ask me to marry him, though Theo did the talking all on his own."

He holds back a chuckle, not knowing if he should laugh when she looks so perturbed by the remembrance.

"I'm going to tell you a story," she says then.

He wonders if he should believe her. She never begins her lies with the pretense of them being a story.

"When I was twelve or thirteen and home for the summer months, my father invited the Notts over for dinner. My mother does not like Hortense Nott; thinks she is a ninny. Though Mum is hardly one to judge anyone, for she surely isn't the brightest candle of the bunch, but that's not important. What's important is that my father knows my mother does not like Hortense Nott, but he invites the entire family over anyway because he does business with Nott Senior and likes to annoy my mother." She glances at him meaningfully. "They've that sort of relationship.

"So the Notts are over. The men are in a meeting in my father's study—Death Eater business and all that. My mother and Hortense are in the sunroom. Hortense is talking and my mother is drinking, because that is what my mother does when Hortense talks. I am charged with keeping young Theodore and his older brother, Barnabas, company. Theodore is awkward, tall, and pimply then. Barnabas is seventeen and has just been expelled from Durmstrang. You see, Barnabas has a penchant for trouble when it comes to the female variety, and even the rowdy lot in Bulgaria cannot take his schemes."

Harry feels uneasy; his skin is beginning to prick with awareness of where this may be going, and he doesn't like it one bit.

She continues, "Needless to say, I've no interest in the Nott boys. They are far too dark for my taste, and back then, I am so in love with Draco that I hardly notice anyone else. But my father demands that I entertain them, and I do not disobey my father—not then. So we sit in the library together. I've never been alone in a room with two boys, and even though Barnabas makes me nervous, I have been in class with Theo for a long time. I know that he is harmless, and I try to be calm. I pen a letter to Millicent. Theodore pretends to read. But Barnabas… Barnabas looks bored, and you should know, Harry: it is never good when Barnabas is bored."

He is wrapped in her story once again, stuck in a moment watching young Pansy and the Nott brothers in a dark library room, a sense of foreboding clawing at the pit of his gut.

"He decides that the three of us are in need of some activities to liven the mood in the room. Theo is intrigued, of course, because he is intrigued by anything his brother says. I am contemplating leaving the room. But as soon as I approach the door, Barnabas blocks it with his stupid, hulking body, and says I must participate in his game before I am allowed to leave."

"It is less of a game and more of a demeaning demand for me to give his younger brother his first kiss. I protest, of course. I still have virgin lips then, and I've been saving my first kiss for Draco—not pimple-faced Theodore Nott. But I am a twelve, thirteen-year-old girl stuck in a room with two boys who are quite obviously capable of overpowering me. I know what my chances are."

He can feel magic burn beneath his skin, anger at Barnabas and Theodore and the lifestyle she once lived for subjecting her to this sort of physical and emotional distress.

He does not realize that the air has begin to crackle with his escaping emotion until she takes his hand, holding it between her own as she smiles at him sadly.

"Easy there, duckie," she tells him. "No need to start with that."

"You kissed him," he says, almost accusingly.

She rolls her eyes. "You're missing it again, Harry. He kissed me." She looks at him, and it is as if she's trying to impart her meaning onto him by the sheer intensity in her eyes. "Barnabas tells his brother—quite plainly—to go at it, and the next thing I know, I am on the floor and Theo is on top of me, trying to plant a wet one on me for all he is worth."

"His brother watched?" he asks in outrage.

"His brother tells him to, Harry. What do you think he is going to do? Grow a conscious midway through his little game?"

"Why didn't you scream?"

"No one would've heard. I hardly live in a cupboard."

He ignores the jib, still unconvinced by her words. "You could've done something," he says.

She shrugs. "I suppose I could have. Though I must say, I wasn't too keen on interfering with Barnabas Nott and his schemes. I didn't want to be kissed by Theo, but I knew a kiss would be better than something else."

His heart drops. "No."

"It was only a rumor, but I was inclined to believe it. That's why Nott Senior couldn't buy Barnabas' way back into Durmstrang. And Dumbledore certainly wasn't going to allow him to attend Hogwarts with a rape charge on his record."

He cannot believe this. It is the most horrible story she's told him yet. "He raped someone?"

"Of course not," she says. "He didn't have to. Barnabas coerced the boy into believing that it was what he wanted to do."

"Imperius?" he ventures. "It had to be the Imperius. No one would ever—"

He stops when he sees her looking at him, thoughtful and sad.

"Does it really matter?"

He sighs. No, it didn't. How it happened didn't change anything.

She's playing with his hand now, tracing the lines on his palms as if she's telling his fortune, diving his future with a glance at the lines on his battle-worn palms. "I get kissed a few times," she says. "It's not so bad, just quick with some slob, and when my father comes in—"

"Your father?"

"—he believes Barnabas when the lying cad tells him that he walked in on us like this, wrapped up in some childish lover's embrace and completely unsuspecting of what we were doing at all." She pauses. Her eyes are distant, vacant—lost in that moment and that story and the pain from so many years before. "I am crying, but my father thinks this is because I have been caught. He scolds me, tells me that I am worth nothing to him tainted, and that if I'd changed my mind about the union with Draco, then I should have come to him so he could've severed his ties with Lucius Malfoy and have a new agreement drawn up with Theo's father."

The fact that her father accepted Barnabas' lies—after his history with girls was plainly known—echoes in Harry's mind. That she is not bothered by this upsets him even more. "Agreement?" he echoes dully, numbly.

She squeezes his hand and nods. "Marriage. I'm his only child and a girl at that. Do you know what that means when you're born into a family like mine? He'd been trying to auction me off to the highest bidder since I was born. The Malfoys were certainly the most well-connected of my options, and Lucius Malfoy agreed to the union between Draco and I right away. But my father cares little for the elder Malfoy, and the Notts are pretty well-off themselves. He probably thought he was being kind by suggesting he break the contract between himself and Malfoy and start anew with Theodore's dad. He thought I was in love with the snot. Silly him."

"Your father agreed to the union, then?"

She gives him a sidelong glance. "Well, they are in the same kind of business: murder and pillaging and all sorts of unsavory activity." She sighs. "After Draco, Theodore was my father's first choice. Barnabas would've been, but he was already betrothed to Daphne Greengrass."

He is more than intrigued by this, as any mention of the younger Malfoy immediately puts him on alert for any new information about his questionable behavior. "What happened to Draco?"

She looks at him, an eyebrow quirked. "Draco?" she says. "Getting chummy with the enemy, are we?"

Harry blushes, feeling silly and caught. "Malfoy," he says forcefully, correcting himself. "What happened to Malfoy?"

Her smile recedes, her lips pulling into something wan and sad. "What indeed?" she says.

"You were friends." Harry is prying. He knows he is prying. Pansy need only give him any information she has collected for the Order as of late, not answer any personal questions he has about an old schoolyard rival. "Don't you know?"

She shrugs a little then. The movement is jerky and unnatural, and she looks small, so small—almost as if she's about to break. She looks at him. "I'm afraid he may be lost."

— — — — — —

Pansy lives in a ritzy Muggle hotel right on the banks of the Saône. She doesn't say "live," and she tells him to stop saying it, too, because she's only in Lyon on a holiday and she's just staying there. It's just been two years.

She found the place after she stumbled out of a pub—quite drunk—on her first night in the city. She'd prepared for something like this before the drinking had begun, and when she'd happened upon the expensive Muggle hotel, she'd tripped up to the counter, handed the concierge some bills, and was escorted up to her room.

"Only a holiday," she keeps saying. "I only paid for two nights, Harry."

She is smoking again, uncomfortable like a lone butterfly somehow stuck in the late autumn chill. Butterflies die in the fall.

"Short trip," he says. He doesn't know what she wants from him. He doesn't know what he has to give anymore.

"A holiday, Harry, a holiday. Mum was driving me crazy, and I just wanted to get away."

She taps her fag to shake off the loose ash that has accumulated on its tip, then brings it bag to her lips and takes a long drag. She has nearly finished her pack in the short hours they've been together. The smell—among other things—has begun to bother him.

But she has not answered his question. She has spent the past half-hour avoiding it as she led him through the city to this church. "A cathedral, Harry," she says, "Don't you know your churches?"

He doesn't answer. He says, "Where are we going?"

She looks up back at him, annoyed. "Must you ask so many questions?"

He rejoins, "I only ask because you won't answer me."

She huffs and rolls her eyes. "You don't take many holidays, do you?" she asks dryly, stopping against a low, stone wall.

He blinks, confused. "What's that to do with anything?"

She moves then, and his attention is drawn to what she's been hiding. However, he's been looking at her the entire time, so she hasn't been keeping the sight from him, at all; he simply hadn't noticed.

Now his mouth opens in a silent exclamation of awe, his breath very nearly taken away at the sight of the vista before him.

"Lyon is a beautiful city, Harry," she says softly, pulling him gently to the wall. "Far more beautiful than London." She smiles, a mother imparting wisdom on her young, stupid child. "Appreciate the views, the moments."

He is struck by that word: moment. Though he wonders how she is able to sit here, unbothered by the world passing her by, as he stares over the ancient city, he thinks he's starting to understand. Still, she's almost too calm, too relaxed and at ease. He asks her, "What is your secret?"

"To what, pray tell?" She doesn't look at him, instead smiling serenely at something far below.

"Serenity."

She laughs and Harry frowns. He'd thought he was spot on.

"How do you sit and appreciate your moments, let the world completely pass you by?"

She is looking up at the sky, watching powdery cumulus clouds drift along. "There's something beautiful about inactivity, Harry," she says after a moment. "It takes a lot to sit and watch."

He looks at her, feeling as if there is much that was said with her simple words. He doesn't know what.

"I'm at a loss," he says cautiously. "Even looking at this … I don't know how to sit still."

She looks at him then, smiling. "Of course you don't. You're fighting a war."

"We're all fighting, Pansy."

She shakes her head. "We're not. Some of us are here in the moment, watching the blood pass us by." She closes her eyes and inhales, long and deep. "I don't know where we're going."

— — — — — —

The end up at Place Bellecour, because it is big and beautiful at night, and she says that Harry can't say he's been to Lyon without visiting Bellecour. The statement doesn't hold her usual verve and light. Instead, it is sad, heavy with all the things they want to ask and won't say. The sun is sinking low on the west horizon. There aren't many moments left in this day.

"Did you love Malfoy?"

"Yes." She looks at him, frowns. "Not in the way you're thinking."

Children rush around them, giggling in the twilight as their parents chase them through the crowded square. It makes him think of Ginny and Dean, of their family and the happy nights they can spend in the lively square of Place Bellecour, being whole. He cannot have this happiness. He realizes then that Pansy can—that she can marry Malfoy or Theodore Nott and start a family, spend a happy evening in Place Bellecour just as Ginny can. But Ginny doesn't matter; he is more disturbed by Pansy having that experience with those men. They have only been here for twenty minutes, but Bellecour is already theirs; she cannot share it with anyone else. The thought that she might makes his hands shake.

"I don't believe you."

She sighs. "You shouldn't. You shouldn't believe anything I say."

He is quiet for a moment, unsure of what that means. Despite her stories, her supposed lies, she is still his weapon, his informant. She is the solitary firefly blinking in an empty jelly jar at Privet Drive, his only companion in the darkness of the cupboard beneath the stairs. He believes everything. "Do you still love him?"

Someone is singing, a sultry rendition of "La Vie En Rose." Harry knows this because Remus plays it every night, putting the old record on the dusty player in his room as he ignores the rest of the people in the house and pretends his wife is still alive.

Her eyes remain focused on the statue of Louis XIV, almost as if she can see her face reflected off its dark surface.

"I don't know. When I think of Draco, I think of Hogwarts and the war and all of my dead friends."

She flicks her cigarette in the direction of the traffic. Someone steps on it immediately, and it's almost as if the fag never existed at all. "I miss him."

He thinks that is not an answer at all. He thinks that she still loves him. He wants to quietly retch.

"He isn't what you think he is," she says suddenly, and her words bounce off the water and the sides of his head, creating a deafening echo he fears will make his ears begin to bleed.

"Don't," he says. He cannot take the redemption of Draco Malfoy. Not now. Not from her.

"He isn't killing Aurors and members of the Order," she says. She is facing him, and he imagines the insistency in her round baby blues, begging him to believe her. Someone is still singing, words he can only make out because he's heard them night after night in his room at Grimmauld Place. And Remus' voice, whispering the English translation in the silence of the night:

"And from the things that I sense, now I can feel within me, my heart that beats."

Harry doesn't want his heart to beat. He doesn't want Pansy to talk.

"He's saving them."

— — — — — —

The sun has set. Place Bellecour is alight with light and souls.

Harry's heart is heavy. She has just attempted to redeem Draco Malfoy right in front of his eyes, and something pulses dangerously within him at the prospect. He doesn't tell her this. There are many things he doesn't tell her and many things she doesn't say as well. He finds that he wants to scream, but his words are choked behind the gag that the thought of her and Draco Malfoy pulls over his lips. He cannot think of it.

Instead, he asks her, "Why didn't you want to marry Nott?"

"I don't love Theodore Nott."

"Who needs love when you have notoriety?" he mocks.

She looks at him, angry and spurned. "Fuck off, Harry. Why didn't you charge into that cupboard and knock Thomas' lights out and call your girl a slag when you heard them shagging that night?"

"Who says I didn't?" he says defensively. He has not told her that he didn't confront Ginny and Dean. He hates that she infers this.

"Come off it. You're too much of a lily-livered milksop to so much as look at anyone in the wrong way, let alone actually confront the girl you thought you were going to bleeding marry for having a go with another man."

"It's been a whole year," he tells her. "I'm over that."

She sneers at him. "You'll never be over it."

Harry can feel something within him twist painfully at her words, and he doesn't know if it's because she's right, or because she said them at all. He's thinking of Ginny and Dean and Pansy and everything all at once now, and the static in his head is so bloody loud that he's afraid it just may make his ears begin to bleed. She is too right and too raw and too real for him to stand with her in another of her moments and pretend there isn't something that they're supposed to be doing.

"Give it to me," he says then.

She glares at him. "I have nothing for you, Harry."

He hasn't any patience for Pansy and her trips around Lyon and her words that make no sense. "I'm done," he tells her. "You're a bloody mess and I'm done."

"Shut up," she snaps.

"That's why Malfoy left you," he tells her, almost cruelly. "You're a mess and he couldn't take you holding him down."

She shakes her head vehemently, and he is happy—so happy—that she is as upset as he is. "He left me for Granger."

"I don't care," he says. "Give it to me."

"What do you want?"

"Whatever you have," he says. "Whatever you've collected. Anything. Remus said you may not have much information for us, but he doesn't care. Just tell me what you have so I can go."

She is staring at him, looking at him as if he is something wild and dangerous that should be caged and locked in a dark room. Realization flashes in her eyes. "You idiot," she says and he can't decide if she's talking to him or to herself.

He stares at her stonily, unwilling to respond to her retorts until she gives him what he came for.

But she is crying then, fat, wet tears dripping from her blue eyes and down the sides of her face, a testament to some unfounded belief she once held in him that he has now betrayed. "Is that what you thought?" she asks. "You idiot, is that what you thought?"

"Look," he starts.

"You're looking for a spy, not me!"

He wavers, flustered by her tears and confused by her words.

"I'm not like him!" she screeches, red with rage. "I won't turn my back on everything I've known. I've run away but I—I—" She breaks off then, her bottom lip trembling with the need to release a sob. "He says I am weak and maybe I am, but I'd rather be weak than sign the death warrants of my own family and everyone I have ever known!"

She's going through her bag then, her movements jerky and uncoordinated as she searches for another fag. Somehow, he knows that he has fucked up.

"Pansy," he says.

"Shut up, Harry. Potter." She cannot find her cigarettes. She does not remember that she has smoked them all. She runs a trembling hand through her hair instead, breathing huffily as she looks at him. Tears continue to fall from her eyes. "You're so stupid. Just because I was there—because you saw me and you know me you assumed—" She breaks off then, her face crumpling in an expression of pain. "I can't believe I thought so much of you. That you would want to… want to—"

She breaks off then, turns away from him and heads into the crowd. He follows her. Her words have slowly filled him with a late understanding of her role in the war and his life and the reason why she is in Lyon.

"No," she responds. "I don't interfere."

She's hiding. From Voldemort and her parents and Theodore Nott. She has been telling him this all along, explaining why she couldn't be strong and take a stand.

She is no spy for the Order.

"There's something beautiful about inactivity, Harry," she says after a moment. "It takes a lot to sit and watch."

She thought she knew. She thought he only wanted to spend the day together, have a go at what they were never able to do while at Hogwarts and under the watchful eyes of everyone who ever meant anything in their lives.

Her stories—everything—suddenly make sense.

"We're all fighting, Pansy."

She shakes her head. "We're not. Some of us are here in the moment, watching the blood pass us by."

She is a ghost.

— — — — — —

It is after midnight and the streets of Lyon have settled into an empty silence that chills Harry's very soul. He has wandered the city for hours, retracing their steps and losing himself amongst the labyrinth of streets as he searches for what he has lost. He has been back to the amphitheater, the Saone, and the Metro, but Pansy is nowhere to be found. She's lost in a haze of lies, tears, and misconceptions that will haunt Harry in the months to come.

He has unknowingly gained an understanding of this city and the woman who makes it her corner to hide in, learned its streets and this woman in the moments they have stood together and let the world drift by them.

He sees the cats at the amphitheater and her cigarette butts at the Saone and the same ghost of a man on the C line of the Metro. But there is no Pansy, no snark and no perfume, and Harry finds himself wandering dismally as he wonders what he is to do.

How does one find a person who does not wish to be found? Both the Muggle and magical means to do so are painfully limited. Despite his Auror training and everything he's been through in this war, he cannot think of a way.

A part of his mind tells him that he doesn't need to find her, that she wishes to be lost and it's best to leave things as is. After all, he came to Lyon with a job to do, and a pang of guilt rushes through him at the realization that he hasn't met with the Order informant at all. He has spent all of his time on Pansy and her words and her moments and this day, and has lost sight of reality. Pansy makes her home some place on the blurred line that separates truth from the pretend world where black cats sit on Harry's lap and purr all afternoon as he talks nonsense and Hogwarts with a girl he hasn't seen in two long years. He has not thought of her in those two years, has not thought she mattered.

But Pansy is too big and beautiful when she is directly before you to not think about her, to write her off as a Death Eater daughter and bride and all the other words Harry has heard so many label her when they spoke of her disappearance. She has words and eyes and a voice and says his name. She is not like Ginny or any of the other girls he has ever known, and he wishes he had Ron, or Hermione, to be here and keep him safe from Pansy Parkinson and all that she is. His day with her has left him raw and bleeding, and Harry slumps down against the side of a brick wall, closing his eyes and breathing as he tells himself to just let go.

He doesn't know how long he stands here. Ten minutes or an eternity; it doesn't matter. He hears a baby cry in the distance and moves, because he knows he must get back to his room and tell Remus how he has fucked up. Remus won't be happy, but Harry cannot bring himself to fear Remus and his disappointment. He is too numb to care.

He starts down an alleyway, unaware and uncaring of where it leads. The streetlight gives off very little light here, and Harry wonders if he will run into a dead end, or if the alley leads to another street. He wonders if that street will lead to his hotel, to Pansy's hotel.

His chest constricts, and he tells himself to stop thinking about Pansy because she's left and he's lost her forever because she isn't coming back.

He does not know why he wants her back. He only knows that it is so much easier to breathe when she and her cigarettes and sweet-smelling perfume are near. She eases his tired, awkward soul with her gentle teasing and her ability to simply stand still, gives peace to his heart with the feathery touch of her wings against his skin and the conviction that she believes. He wants her faith and conviction—wants her by his side. He wants to go back to that first moment in the café early this afternoon and tell her that he doesn't care that she isn't who he's supposed to be looking for because he knows that she has so much more to give to him.

And he is selfish—so selfish—for wanting something for himself more than something for the Order—for the greater good. But in his world of blood and death—in England—Harry Potter has nothing to hold on to. There are no thoughts—no body—to keep him warm and fight away the villains in his dreams. He has fought all his life, only to have everything that has ever given him any sort of reprieve from the sorrow in his heart snatched away from him. Only Voldemort has not stolen Pansy away from him. Harry has pushed her away himself, hiding under the cloak of responsibility Voldemort gives him to demand things from her that she could not give, when she was willing to give so much more.

His heart aches, and right now, he's willing to give anything—his life, the war—to have only one more moment with her to make things right.

But Harry knows better than to believe that things are that easy to fix. He tells himself that he is stupid and selfish, and that he has a purpose in this world and this war and there is no room for selfish wants until he completes it.

He wants to retch.

There are footsteps behind him, quiet at first, though increasing in volume as the person following him increases his pace. A Muggle street urchin, he thinks, come to rob him for whatever he has. He looks at the darkness in his periphery, sighing. He pushes Pansy from his mind and keeps his pace even, his right hand tightly wrapped around his wand as he waits for the attack. It never comes. Instead, there is a voice, quiet and cracked:

"Potter."

Harry turns around then, and his eyes, already alight with suspicion, widen in shock. Before him stands Draco Malfoy, bloody and beaten. His hair is a rumpled, dirty mess and there's a gash spanning the entire right side of his face, with smaller scratches on the left.

"Potter," he says again.

He looks woozy, weary, as if he wants to collapse and never get up again.

"Malfoy," he says, awestruck.

"We have to hurry," he tells him tiredly, already turning back the way he came. "I know I'm late, but you're a bitch to find and I couldn't carry her all this way."

Harry follows him. He thinks that he should be more apprehensive, more distrustful of this being who has haunted him in some way, shape, or form for as long as he can remember. But Pansy's conviction of the young Malfoy's innate goodness was infectious, and before he knows it, he is following Malfoy down this alleyway and the next, realization slowly dawning on him that it is Malfoy who Snape had always travelled so far to see. Malfoy has been working all these years for the Order. Remus' instructions to wait at the café for as long as it took haunt him, and he knows that he has fucked up in that respect as well. He wonders if he is the reason for Malfoy's injuries, the lack of backup preventing him from properly protecting himself against the onslaught of Death Eater rage.

He cannot believe he feels bad about Malfoy's pain. He cannot believe that he is the informant.

When they stop, they are near Bellecour, where Harry's day and moments ended only a few hours before. He looks at the square, noting how different it looks without people and Pansy to liven its environs.

But there is no time to think about this or Pansy, because Harry's heart has just stopped and he thinks he will die, because Malfoy has just walked over to a bench and picked up Hermione Granger.

She is wild-haired and unconscious, malnourished and black and blue, but she is breathing and alive, and Harry's hands shake as Malfoy places her in his arms.

"I can't carry her anymore," he says quietly. Harry looks at him, noting the tired bags beneath his eyes and how utterly broken and defeated he looks. It's as if he's put everything he's had and more into this—into delivering Hermione Granger—and now there is nothing left. Now, he can die, or something.

And it makes no sense, because Malfoy is supposed to be all bad and a Death Eater, not working undercover for the Order of the Phoenix and saving the girl Harry had been so sure he'd betrayed to the Dark Lord.

He realizes then that it doesn't have to make sense. Some things just are—inexplicable and all that. Draco Malfoy does not need an explanation for his behavior, for Hermione Granger.

It's like St. Blandine and the lions, the bulls. Only Hermione has been saved before the Roman soldiers—the Death Eaters—could finish her off.

"I'll hold her," Harry replies, realizing how much it takes for Malfoy to place Hermione in his arms. "I'll protect her."

Malfoy nods slowly. He looks down into Hermione's face, so peaceful one might even think she is sleeping, not comatose. He moves a piece of hair from her cheek, a gesture so painfully tender and intimate that Harry looks away. And then, just like that, he is gone, the crack of Apparition signaling his departure from the scene.

Harry is still for a moment, completely at a loss for what has just transpired and what he is to do now. A pigeon flies away from its roost atop Louie XIV. A car passes by the nearby street. Harry sighs, looking down at the sleeping girl he has not seen in so long, now laying in his arms.

And he hears her voice in his head again, telling him all the things he was too blind to see as she sat right next to him the entire daylong.

"That's where God comes from, Harry. That's what I believe in."

There is another crack, and just as Malfoy had before him, Harry disappears, too.

— — — — — —

"That is too much."

A late November breeze blows through the area, ruffling her skirt and her scarf and her hair—so much longer now than he remembers. She is tapping her foot impatiently, staring down the fish merchant with a stubborn expression that clearly says he's going to give her what she wants or she's going to give him hell. The merchant does not know this. He begins to argue in French. Harry still does not speak French, but he knows what 'non' and its many variations mean, and it's all he hears coming from the merchants mouth.

She responds, outraged, in the Queen's English, vilifying the merchant as a misogynistic poof with repressed homosexual urges and a thoroughly unlikeable demeanor. He seems not to understand what she says, for he merely shoos her away as if she were an annoying bug rather than expressing any sort of indignation over her disrespectful words. She humps and stomps away. Harry smiles.

He watches as she makes her way through the crowd, travelling down the narrow walkways of the market to another vendor. He moves away from his spot by a cart displaying overpriced exotic beads to get a better view. She's at another fish stand. This vendor is older, nicer, and Pansy speaks to the older woman with a kinder inflection to her voice. The woman responds kindly in turn, and Harry can see Pansy point to a couple of fish the woman has on display. The vendor nods and places the specified pieces into a clear plastic bag, then wraps them in another.

He wonders what she needs it for, if she's cooking. He has never imagines her to be type of woman who cooks, but he also knows for a fact that she has a penchant for picking up strange habits and quirks. So maybe she cooks; he wouldn't expect it, but it wouldn't surprise him either.

His encounter with this strange, sad woman this past winter has shown him quite forcefully that expectations mean nothing, and that he'll do better to have none when she's involved.

He inhales, deep and long, noting how good it feels to breathe in the crisp Lyonnaise fall air. It is filled with a multitude of scents—bread and cooking meat and cigarettes. The smoke reminds him of her, and he takes another deep breath, hoping to catch a hint of her perfume on the wind. He can't. He finds it unfair that he thought he could smell her six hundred miles away in Grimmauld Place but not here, when he is a mere ten feet away.

It is different being back in Lyon. The trees are brown and bare, the barren branches sprouting upward into the sky as if they were offering a gift to the gods, or extending their arms in silent prayer for the swift return of spring and their leaves.

He is not weighed down by the baggage the war and the despair it brought during this trip, and he finds that he stands taller as he travels down the walkways of the Marché de la Croix Rousse, the biggest market in Lyon. However, there is symmetry between this visit and the last in the sense that he is watching her again, unsure as he waits for the moment to approach her and searches for the words to say when he does.

It shouldn't be so hard. He knows her scent and her secrets and her blatant lies, and even though it was only one day, they'd shared a thousand and one moments in that short expanse of time. It should be far easier for him to say 'hello' now when only eight months have passed.

But it is that thing with time again. Many things have happened in the past months, and though it only feels like yesterday since he was in this city with a girl who confused him so, the scars on his aged body tell him otherwise.

It is funny that he thinks of himself in this way now, because he had never viewed himself as old until the words left her lips in the café when they first met. He counts it as one of the first things she said to him that was actually true.

Pansy leaves the female fish vendor's table with a smile, waving over her shoulder at the woman who'd given her a deal. He wonders at her smiles and her pleasantries, wondering where they were eight months before when the war was still going on and she was trying to teach him to be still and enjoy a moment. She walks back in the direction from whence she came, passing by the man she'd so beautifully slandered a few moments before. She shakes her fist at him in indignation before skipping away.

She doesn't go very far. She is taken with the gaudy beads on display at the cart where Harry had previously stood, picking up a miniscule pearl and holding it in front of her face for closer examination.

She is directly across from him now, so close he can see the rosy tint to her cheeks. He swallows. If she turns around, she will see him, and he wonders if he should move away and hide amongst the shopping crowd until he is better prepared for the encounter the will have.

He has run away from awards ceremonies and Rita Skeeter and Grimmauld Place to come back to Lyon. He put the trip off for days, weeks, but when he saw Rita Skeeter knocking on his door yesterday afternoon, he'd Apparated right out of his flat and to Diagon Alley to exchange some galleons for Muggle notes. He'd told Remus and Hermione that he was going iback/i, and the two knew enough of his experience with Pansy Parkinson to know he was going to Lyon.

He'd then gone to Heathrow and waited six hours for the first flight to Saint Exupery Airport in France. All the high-powered newspapers and magazines had bought off Ministry officials so they'd be informed straightaway if Harry Potter ever asked for a portkey. He was looking to avoid a confrontation, and Muggle transportation was far too low-key and Muggle for any of the reporters after interviews and his personal pearls of wisdom to suspect that he'd ever take that route.

The plane ride brought a sense of parallelism to his life. It was how he'd travelled to Lyon when he'd visited in the late winter. And even though Remus had sent him there to meet with Draco Malfoy, it had been written in the stars that he and Pansy would come together that day. He has had months to think about this, and this is the only way he can explain why they met. Because, of all the cafes in the world—in Lyon—it had to be predetermined for Pansy to walk into the one where he sat, waiting for Pansy's former future betrothed to give him information and betray everything he'd ever known—just as Pansy had said she wouldn't do.

He knows now that Pansy knew about Draco, about what he was doing. It is why she was able to make such a defining statement about his actions to Harry as they walked around Place Bellecour, telling him so sincerely, "He's not what you think." He'd been too blinded by prejudice and a childish schoolyard grudge to factor her words into what he already knew about Draco Malfoy from the conversations he'd overheard between Remus and Snape. He knows better now. He no longer allows himself to be blind.

Though, in that respect, he couldn't ignore Malfoy's double-agent status even if he'd wanted too. With Hermione rescued and moved into a room in Grimmauld Place, there had been no keeping Malfoy away. They are getting married now, in Prague. They will not return to England.

He has come to Lyon because he knows that Pansy will not come to England. If they are in these distant countries, he will never have a chance to tell her the words that have been tickling his tongue since he returned home. It is like a bad dream, a haunting melody of her voice and her tears that torments him every time he lays down to sleep. He has spent every night for the last eight months half-awake, murmuring a silent mantra that he would return to Lyon the moment he struck Voldemort down. He would not leave the war for her; he was too bound by his duty to vanquish the Dark Lord. However, they were on equal footing, because he knew she would not leave Lyon for him, either. She was too stubborn and paralyzed by her nerves and her cigarettes.

But the war is over and he must thank Rita Skeeter for knocking on his door, for if she hadn't he wouldn't have come to Lyon and be this close to this girl.

She is buying beads.

He has been very fortuitous in finding this woman, spying her walking along Quai Saint-Vincent after leaving the dingy hostel where he'd spent the night. Her hotel is on this street, and he has followed her ever since, his heart lurching to painful halts whenever she's looked in his direction and he has falsely feared that he has been caught.

He has not. He has followed her for an hour, watching her traverse the city she has made her refuge in the storm and carry on with her daily life. Watching her, he has realized that she has spent the past two years—almost three—like the rest of the people in France, untouched by the war in the UK. But he knows Pansy is affected by the war and the death that it has brought. He knows that she's realized someone is following her as well, as she has taken to looking around her far more frequently as the time has passed. He will have to face her soon.

She pays the man at the bead cart and is about to move away when something at the other end of the car catches her eye, causing her to turn back to the display. He can see her profile at this angle, and he thinks that she looks older, too. Her face has aged beyond her years, little lines of stress and sorrow marring the corners of her eyes and her mouth. It is neither flattering nor unflattering. Harry is used to the look. Britain has an entire generation of people who have aged prematurely. He thinks it is better than being dead.

She wears a simple skirt and top, and the dark tips of her long hair brush against the wool of her scarlet cardigan. She has the same bag, big and black with heavy gold hardware, and it is when he notices this that he sees the head poking out from the open zipper.

There is a cat in her bag. It is black.

He pauses at this, puzzling what the presence of the feline means in Pansy's life and lies. It is from the amphitheater, a domesticated member of the sentinel tribe that watches over the place where St. Blandine's was murdered. It looks at Pansy expectantly, and she turns and talks to it as if it were a human being, French words that Harry does not comprehend directed at an animal he is quite sure understands.

"One moment, one moment, mon petit chaton," she is saying, a mix of French and English now. "Just you wait."

She picks up another bead and discusses it with the seller. She frowns.

"That is too much," she says again.

"Magnifique!" the seller is saying. "C'est magnifique!"

"What do you think?" she says, looking over her shoulder—at the cat, perhaps. There is no response from her feline companion, and her frown deepens. "Harry, I'm talking to you."

She glances at him, briefly, and his heart does not beat for one, two moments.

"What do you think?"

His mouth is dry, and he has to swallow a few times before he is able to speak. "I think," he says slowly, taking a few steps closer, "that it's too much."

She clucks her tongue, giving him an exasperated look. "Are you looking?" She turns to him completely and holds the bead before his eyes. "Are you really looking?"

He has not seen the bead and he never will. His eyes remain focused on hers. He wonders if they were always so blue and intense. He wonders why he does not remember looking at her being like this.

Harry raises his hand, placing it over her outstretched palm without breaking her gaze. He encases the bead and her dainty hand with his own and says, "I don't need to look."

She laughs then, a fluid melody that makes him exhale when he hears it. "Oh, Harry Potter, the games you play!" She continues to laugh at her joke; however, Harry is silent and unmoved, for once needing her to understand what he means. She sighs at his stony demeanor. "Fine," she tells him, "I won't buy it."

She makes to turn around, pulling the bead away to put it back on the display, however Harry's hand is a vice over hers, and he will not let her go. "Buy it," he says.

She looks at him, perplexed. "I don't want it."

"I don't care."

And then, in the boldest move of his life, he pulls her to him, sandwiching their joined hands between their bodies as he stares down into her face. She is startled and confused, and her breath leaves her lips in rapid little gasps. He has imagined this moment a thousand and one times in his head, though he has never thought that it would be so painful to say the words that have been hammering against his chest in rhythm with his heart for eight long months.

"I'm sorry."

They lose another thousand and one moments in the time it takes for her to respond. He wonders if he should say more however there isn't anymore. Anything else that he says will be useless words to fill the silence where she has no wisdom or lies to give to him. She is speechless and he is done. He doesn't know what to do.

He says again, "Pansy, I'm sorry."

It is then that the tears come, salty liquid filling her eyes and making them look like glassy, crystalline stones.

"You idiot." Her words are weak and meaningless—placeholders for her lack of anything real.

"I know," he replies. "I don't know what else to—"

Her kiss is swift and unexpected, like a curse fired at your back in the heat of war. It is warm like fire and wet like tears, and he can taste coffee and cigarettes, croissants and sweetness on her lips. He wraps his other arm around her waist, pulling her fully to him as he snogs her senseless, giving her back the emotion behind all the sleepless nights she has caused him since she ran away from him in Place Bellecour. Her hand finds its place at his neck, her nails digging into his skin as she presents him with unspoken words and emotions Harry doesn't understand but is willing to spend all the moments in the world learning. He will speak French and smoke cigarettes and kill another Dark Lord for this woman. He will stand in moments for all eternity for her. He will live and breathe and die a million times—as long as he can be by her side. He will never stop kissing her.

She stops kissing him. She is gasping, breathless. He kisses her nose and her eyes and her cheeks.

"I'm sorry," he says. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

She is smiling and laughing and giggling like a girl. He has never seen her show this many teeth or turn this shade of pink.

"I looked for you," he tells her.

Her hands are at the nape of his neck, tangled in his hair. "I figured."

"But then Malfoy found me and—"

"It's okay."

He looks at her, vulnerable and raw. "Don't leave," he says desperately.

"Oh, Harry, I have to. But you're welcome to come, of course." She smiles. "I'm merely going to make a delivery." She holds up the bag of fish she purchased from the vendor a few tables over.

Harry's nose wrinkles at the smell. "Fish?" he asks.

"It's what kitty likes. Don't you kitty?" They both look down at the cat, whose nose is in the air as it tries to escape from Pansy bag. "We've got to go feed the kitties," she says.

For once, he knows what she means. "To the amphitheater, then?"

She grins. "I'm interfering, Harry Potter. Aren't you proud?"

He looks at her seriously. "I'm very proud."

He is a buzzing fly, and she shrugs off the emotion in his gaze as easy as swatting a bug away. This is how she is. "We all must fight, yeah?"

He shakes his head. "No, we don't. It's a choice," he tells her. "Everything's a matter of choice."

"Well," she says, kissing his chin, his cheeks, "I choose you." She kisses his lips, distracting him enough to pull away from his hold. She places the bead back on the display and looks at him expectantly. "St. Blandine won't wait all day, Harry. Let's go."

— — — — — —

i-fin/i