Chapter Text
Harry was exhausted. He'd apparated more than five times already and the freaking Ministry was still miles away. His magic was running out but he couldn’t even think about stopping. He had to get there—soon.
Circumstances made taking an emergency international portkey impossible and he hated himself for at least not taking his broom with him. At least that would have helped for the first part of the trip.
Fuck!
He took another breath and pushed himself through time and space as far as he could; this time actually making it to the apparition point nearest to the Ministry. Without at least taking a second to stop the dizziness creeping up on him, he ran into the building, pushing everyone out of his way. He skipped the group in line for the lifts and won a couple of curses before the doors closed on their own; in less than a minute, he made it to the DMLE floor. His steps got slower and uneven, shoulders carrying every feeling in the world; and when he saw her, his breath stopped.
“Harry…” the black haired girl whispered, shaking her head. Tears pouring down her cheeks, eyes angrily shut and hands trembling. “They are gone.”
Harry stepped closer and took the tiny frame of Pansy in his arms. For the first time since they met, they held to each other. The embrace felt like their lives were at stake if they let go sooner rather than later.
“They said a car—accident—” she mumbled between sobs, nose deep into his chest. “It exploded—and—I told him not to—I had told him not to use that thing! But Granger, she was—she was relentless—Salazar! I hate her—I hate her so much! I hate…”
“I know,” said Harry with a small kiss on the top of her head, hands rubbing her back and arms as if soothing her would help with his own pain.
He was also at the edge of breaking down right then and there. He was hurt and angry and upset and—God, he hated Malfoy too! He hated him for taking his best friend on a first date and then on a second. Hated how he proposed after barely a year of dating and how beautifully joyful Hermione looked on their wedding day. How they had found happiness in each other and started a life together, a bloody amazing and full life that led them to this...
“Scorpius!” Pansy jumped out of his arms but didn’t let go of his left hand. “I don’t know… I—I need to… I should ask if—”
“I’ll do it,” Harry interrupted with a short nod and went straight to Adrian Pucey’s desk, the only auror on call that night.
The former Slytherin looked up to meet his gaze. “I’m sorry, Potter.”
“Where is he? Scorpius. I mean, was he…” He tried to ask directly but something in his chest didn’t let him finish the sentence.
“No,” Pucey replied with understanding, and got up to face Harry with a soft frown. He might have started feeling Harry’s magic lingering around them—after all, his hair was spiking up as if static was forming in between the strands. “He was with the Weasleys when—it happened”.
“Okay, so? What is going to happen to him? Will Magical Child Services take him for the night? Will he go to Andromeda or something? Who will take him?”
“I don’t know yet, Potter. I’m sorry.” The auror did look sorry, and that only fueled Harry’s anger. It was not about feeling sorry, this was about doing something. Anything! “He will stay where he is until tomorrow but there’s only so much we know or can do about him right now, you know? The situation is kind of… difficult with Gran—”
“Fuck yeah it’s difficult!” Harry raised his voice and instantly felt Malfoy’s lady sidekick approach them. “My best friend, his mother, is fucking dead!”
“Potter, you need to calm down,” Pucey warned with a stern look just when his bottle of ink exploded.
“How can I, huh?! He is six months old! He is a fucking baby and y-you don’t bloody know what will happen to him?! You are useless, you stupid piece of—”
“Potter!” Pansy pulled him hard by the hand, making him stumble aside so she could face the older wizard. “I’m sorry, Adrian. We’ll contact you tomorrow, okay?”
After a soft nod from Pucey, the witch got him out of the department while ignoring his little outbursts on the way—papers flying out from desks, sparks coming off drawers and doors slamming shut loudly. Still, she kept pulling at his arm until they reached the atrium. The long hall was as busy as it should have been on any other Saturday night. Polished dark wood floors reminding them both of how the world kept on going normally while two of the most important people in the wizardry world had died in a matter of moments. Harry’s blood started boiling again.
“Hey, look at me,” the witch called for his attention, probably feeling his ire starting to mess with his surroundings again. “Look at me!”
Harry turned and found her puffy eyes still watery, but a sneer took place on her lips with the usual strength that only Pansy possessed.
Was she annoyed by him?
“What, Parkinson?”
“You are not the only one who lost his best friend tonight, okay? You are not the only one pissed about it all. So fucking stop making things worse! If you want Adrian or any other auror to help us figure out the future of our godson, then stop acting like a fucking child yourself!” Her voice was pitchy and loud, making a few heads turn their way. Thick tears began rolling down her face again. “Hell, Potter! Do you have any idea of how bloody hard I am trying not to hex you right now?! I fucking hate you for making it all worse! I’m fucking dying here and you—FUCK!”
“Pansy…” he started, feeling her name slipping from his lips with a bittersweet taste. “Listen, I—”
“No! You listen! I just lost the only person in the entire bloody world who trusted me and got my back; he was my best friend and my only family! I fucking lost him—the only man who has ever loved me for who I am! I just lost my person and you are just making it hurt worse!”
“I-I didn’t—I’m sor—”
“Shut the fuck up, Potter!” She stumped a foot on the floor and her fist pulled out her wand from her robes. “You being bloody sorry now means nothing! So take that fucking chimney and meet me at the Manor in ten. We need to set some things right for them.”
Without another word, Harry downed his head and stepped into the green flames.
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Malfoy Manor changed so much over the years after the war, that Pansy could hardly tell it belonged to the Malfoy’s anymore.
Narcissa’s elegant touch was lost a fair bit when she passed—due to her magic fading out—, but it was Lucius that had requested the new Malfoy-Granger family to renovate most rooms for his sake. His late wife was everywhere and nowhere at the same time—his heart couldn’t handle it. He was slowly going mad by the persisting but hazy memory of the love of his life in the same spaces that had heard her laugh not so long before. He grew more tired and bitter every excruciating day before following her barely a year after.
Pansy finally understood what he meant when he told her about it.
“These old marble floors seem to get duller and duller each minute. They’re missing her soft steps. Just like the rose garden is missing her careful touch. And I… I miss her all.”
Another tear rolled down her cheek as her fingers caressed Draco’s desk, the ebony wood scarcely smooth under her hand. She could feel his little writing quirks marked along the surface—the way he used to linger over the dots a bit longer than necessary when punctuating his sentences, how he embellished his capitals letters with a short curve at the beginning, and the countless lines he probably traced over and over by signing important documents.
The sorceress pulled her hand off the wooden surface and her eyes caught the moving photograph at the left side of the desk. The look of a giggling baby Scorpius being kissed on each of his cheeks by his father and a smiley Hermione Granger faced the leathered chair behind the table. It seemed like the camera focused on the little boy’s eyes all the while but for a single second—a second in which the lens would let the observer know their background was no other than Hogwarts Quidditch Pitch.
“At least the very first time you see that magic castle won’t be when you are eleven, excited and intimidated, but all by yourself…”
“Like most of us were." Potter’s comment from the studio’s entrance frame made her jump; if he noticed, he didn’t say.
Her eyes followed his cautious steps as he approached her. The witch rubbed the water blurring his silhouette with her robe’s sleeve. She hated to cry in front of other people, and she felt like she had already done enough of that while being in Granger’s friend’s presence.
When Potter settled at the other side of the chair, his gaze landed on the exact same spot Pansy’s were a moment before. A faint smirk appeared on his lips. “Malfoy convinced Hermione to go watch the first game of the year a few months ago. He said if he could make Scorp’s first word be ‘quidditch’, he would die a happy father.”
“It does sound like Draco.” she scoffed, a faint smile lingering on her lips.
They let the silence speak for a long moment. The heaviness of loss stared back at them just as the happy couple on the frame hovered over their son. The pain was not going to recede any time soon, they were sure of it. If anything, it would probably become nastier with time.
What was Pansy going to do for Yule now? They were supposed to spend the holidays at her place in Godric’s Hollow. She had even promised to take Granger with them when shopping for Scorpius' first little set of robes at the kid’s store around the corner from her cottage.
Maybe she could still do it, just not with—
“Pookie,” the witch called out almost in a whisper.
A small elf materialized at the other side of the wooden working table. She was wearing a long bright green t-shirt as a dress and her big ears were adorned with long, shiny ruby earrings. The creature bowed before her big eyes settled on the pair standing by the leathered chair. “Miss Pansy called for Pookie?”
“Yes. I’m sorry about the late hour Pookie, but as you may already know…” Pansy paused to swallow. She crossed her arms at her front, nausea creeping up. “They hav—They are no longer with us and I just wanted to let you know that we will figure it all out tomorrow, okay? No need to worry, don’t be scared.”
“Pookie is grateful, Miss. Very, very grateful.” Although the elf’s voice was high pitched, her volume was low and light.
“You can go now,” the witch dismissed her and the creature disappeared after another short bow.
“What will we figure out tomorrow besides who Scorp’s guardians will be?” Potter asked with a confused frown invading his features.
“You know the elves depend on their master’s magic, right?”
“I mean, yes, but they were all freed. Right before their wedding—”
“Yes, they were,” the sorceress interrupted with a roll of her eyes. She opened a drawer and reached for a closed envelope marked as ‘important’. “Still, that doesn’t mean they let go of the family’s magiks. They would die before leaving the Malfoy heir and their state.”
“I don’t understand,” he replied, not looking away from the file in Pansy’s hands.
“Clearly,” she sighed with a very exhausted and irritated tone. “The elves, Potter, are very powerful magical beings. But they still depend on their master’s magic as much as their master depends on them. Even if freed, they rather have someone, a magical someone, to rely on. Why do you think Dobby was not strong enough to survive that knife?”
He met her hazel irises and his frown deepened. She turned to avoid his face and finally opened the envelope in her hands.
“Yes, I know about that... For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I know Dobby was your friend,” she continued while reading through sheets of paper out of the thick file. “Anyways. The elves at Malfoy state now depend on Scorpius’ magic, but since he’s still a baby they can only rely so much on him. I’m hoping Scorp’s guardian will agree to let the elves serve them until he’s become of age.”
“What is that?” Potter finally asked, nodding towards the yellow envelope.
“This is a copy of Granger’s muggle will,” The witch stated as if it were obvious. “I’m surprised she didn’t tell you about it.”
“Actually… I am not,” he said.
“This is useless though,” Pansy said, putting everything back into the envelope and summoning her handbag from the sofa by the floor-to-ceiling window. “It’s just a bunch of rubbish about her muggle bank accounts and her parent’s house.”
“She left it all to charity, didn’t she?”
“Of course she did. Except for her parent’s house.” the former Slytherin approached Harry again. He could still see the swollen redness around her eyes, but didn’t speak about it. “I’ll go talk to Blaise tomorrow morning. I’m sure he knows something about muggles’ ways too.”
“I can do muggle.”
“Yes, I know. But are you all-savvy about law’s technical language? No. So just leave that shite to me.”
“Okay, so… What can I do?”
“Let’s start by gathering some things for Scorpius. No matter who he goes to next, I’m sure they’ll need nappies and fresh clothes. While you’re at it, I’ll look for Draco’s journal.”
“Like, his diary?”
“No, you daft! His planner and appointments book,” Pansy pointed out with another sneer. “We need to know who to tell about—this. And we need to know how to contact them.”
The witch’s tiredness didn’t help with her miniscule patience running thin—all she wanted to do was crawl into bed and cry her eyes out until she fell asleep. Nevertheless, she knew she was not the only one in that condition. Potter was probably just as exhausted; she didn’t even ask how he got to the Ministry so fast without a scheduled portkey.
“It’s late, so just do as I asked and take the guest room next to the nursery. I’ll sleep in Draco’s old bedroom.”
“But—”
“Please, Potter,” Pansy half begged, half whined. “It’s been a long night.”
The wizard frowned, but nodded, turning to the office’s door.
When Pansy finally saw him leave, the witch let herself drop into the chair, defeated.