Talking in Code

Talking In Code

iv.

It ends like this.

A hidden pocket and a gun. One bullet.

By the time she coerces herself past the guards and charms that surround him, he's reclining in a stately chair. A desk is all that stands between them now. A desk, and ten years of murder and betrayal. Ten years of never being smart enough, or pretty enough, or cruel enough.

His eyes are endless stretches of grey she'll never finish seeing, and he says her name quietly, as if he's been expecting her. He doesn't even ask how she's gained access to the Minister's private chambers, or why she's decided to pay him a visit, after all this time.

"I've come to fulfill my promise," she tells him anyway, cringing at the awkward and empty cadence of her voice.

He raises one pale eyebrow and asks, "Your promise to kill me?" with a calm born of ancient lineage and blood that runs deep. "That would be far more threatening if you were permitted to carry a wand."

"Do you think I moved past your wards without magic, Minister?" she says with a tilt of her head as she produces a wand from a pocket magicked into her fraying pull-over.

She wants panic and fear to mar his smooth features. She wants to see him beg for his life, so that the fantasies she has replayed over the long and desperate year will bloom to life before her. She wants his last words to be an apology while she considers using an Unforgivable on him, just to hear him scream.

His face remains impassive. The bastard doesn't even bother reaching for his wand. "Come now," he intones quietly. "You must know that even if you succeed it will all be for naught. With a flick of that wand, you'll sign your death warrant. My men won't hesitate to kill you the moment you're caught."

"I don't plan on being caught," she assures him.

He gives a quiet laugh. "Even where you stay hidden with your band of rebels -" His mouth forms the word as if it leaves a bad taste in his mouth "- you can't be unaware of the measures taken to secure my safety. Any unpermitted magic is detected immediately and the perpetrator is trapped here until he or she can be appropriately dealt with." He relaxes further back into his large chair, hands clasping casually against his stomach. "So, put your wand away," he finishes, "and I'll grant you two minutes before I dispatch my Aurors."

She hesitates for just a moment, eyes flickering between his hand and his face, before sliding her wand easily back into the pocket from which it came. Malfoy gives a satisfied nod. Her eyes narrow at him.

"I suspected you wouldn't have what it takes. I daresay, Miss Parkinson, you never will." He pauses delicately, white teeth glinting in a predatory smirk as his arm unfolds towards the button that will summon the Aurors to his office. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out something much heavier than a wand. Perhaps he is too trapped in his own twisted confidence to pay her much mind, as he continues in a kind of maliciously melodic voice, "You would never have made it as a Malfoy."

She smiles with cruel satisfaction, and aims her gun; the biting click of metal as she unlatches the safety brings his full attention back to her. She cocks her head, one eye squinting as she lines him up.

A look of surprise falls over his face, just before the shock turns to horror, and her ears echo loudly from the sharp bang. There's something decidedly rewarding about pulling the trigger and feeling the backwards jerk of the gun, the force of the bullet leaving the barrel.

His body slumps forward, and messy, oozing red begins to matte his white, white hair. The room floods with the bitter, rancid smell of smoke.

She turns to the door and doesn't look back, slipping easily into obscurity without bothering to reverse the silencing charm around the room.

i.

"It's over."

Pansy tilts her head towards the severe voice near her left side, nearly fatally turning her attention away from Macnair's vicious spells. Draco's iron hard stunning spell hits him square in the chest before he can finish the curse aimed at Pansy's side. He used to eat dinner with her family every other Wednesday and call her little Miss Parkinson with a smile aimed in her direction. His favorite meal was roast beef. Pansy watches him fall with dry eyes.

"It's over," says the voice again. The chaos surrounding Pansy tells a different story. The desperate shouts and stridently uttered curses attest that the battle is not, in fact, over. But Weasley's eyes are empty and his voice is hollow. His jaw is set.

Beside her, Draco makes a horrible noise, a jerky intake of breath, and reaches for her hand. He's trembling. She looks up at him and follows his gaze to a spot half a kilometer away. From the looks of it, there had been a nauseatingly massive explosion. Pansy can't imagine how she could have missed it, but she had. A flash of green light flies past her ear. Weasley's voice crashes out, loud and determined; whoever had aimed the curse at them goes down with a frantic shriek. Pansy continues to stare.

Where Hogwarts once stood there is now a mass of ruined and charred stones. Fire leaps cruelly from it. She can't even begin to contemplate what sort of magic allows stone to burn like that. Lucius Malfoy stands on the edge of what's left of the castle, his pure white head bent low. Pansy aims a quick glance at Draco, whose grey eyes are narrowed and directed towards his father's face. All around them the sharp tastes of smoke and death and finality fill the air.

Draco asks, "Did everyone get out on time?" never diverting his gaze from his father. Pansy looks at Weasley. He has a large gash on his freckled cheek and the blood that gushes from it makes it clear he hasn't bothered with a healing spell. She whispers an incantation and the blood clots. Weasley studies her and Draco's clasped hands with a look of sharp longing that is too difficult to watch. Pansy turns her eyes away from his face.

"No," she hears him say. A pause and then quieter, "No, they didn't."

"Granger and Potter...?" she begins to ask.

"Voldemort's gone." Weasley's croak interrupts her. "That's all that matters."

"Voldemort's gone," Draco echoes beside her. "Is he really?" He gives her hand a painful squeeze and says quietly, "Well, thank God for that," which seems the understatement of the century.

"No," Weasley bites out abruptly, "thank Harry for that."

Draco opens his mouth just as Ginny Weasley materializes beside them. Her red hair is covered in soot, and her jaw is held in the same stubborn set as Ron's. The desperation surrounding her is palpable. She holds two wands in her right hand and tugs on Ron's hand with her left. "Come on, Ron," she says, dull brown eyes looking away from the flaming vestiges of the castle. "Charlie's waiting for us."

With a look of pure loathing sent in Draco's direction, Ron turns to walk away. Only then does he start to cry.

v.

This isn't how it was supposed to end. This life, it's not the life she would have chosen for herself. Caught like a leaf in a current of unstoppable air, she'd had no choice.

She fishes her passport out of her faded red knapsack for the woman with too much blush and smudged vermillion lipstick behind the counter; the plastic badge that introduces her as Sandy is pinned crookedly on her polyester uniform. Pansy taps her jagged nails on the counter while her eyes impatiently scan the crowd. Her back aches. She squints into the overhead neon lights; coupled with the buzz of humanity in the stark, white terminal, they make her head throb sharply.

"Do you have any luggage?" Hi My Name Is Sandy asks.

Pansy runs her tongue along her top row of teeth and gives her head an abrupt shake. The blond bob she's sporting swishes irritatingly against her cheek. She pulls her knapsack more securely over one shoulder, ignoring the smug way Sandy eyes her chipped nail varnish.

The passport Sandy slides back slips easily into the side pocket of Pansy's baggy denim trousers. "You'll be at gate A27," Sandy tells her, handing over a paper ticket with a fake smile and an air of complete monotony. She has lipstick on her yellowing teeth.

Pansy pointedly ignores the smile and turns away from the counter. This is the last she'll see of England. The gun in her knapsack transfigured into a notebook, she heads over to the growing queue in front of the metal detectors.

This isn't how it was supposed to end. But it did.

ii.

The spot he chose for their meeting was, at best, difficult to find. The Portkey had transported them to northern Scotland where they were to then follow an intricate and badly drawn map to what must be the remotest location in all of Britain – magical or otherwise.

"He's being a bit dramatic, don't you think?" Draco whispers harshly against her ear. His teeth chatter incessantly and his breath heaves out in hurried puffs. The stars are blotted out by the low wash of clouds hanging from the sky. The light from Pansy's wand cuts weakly into the darkness.

Pansy's fur-lined jacket does little to stop the biting, howling Scottish wind. She presses herself further into Draco, nodding against his chest. "It's Weasley," is all she offers in reply.

"I'm being dramatic?" The voice comes from the vague direction of Pansy's right and causes her to jump and yelp. "You spent three weeks in the infirmary when Buckbeak nicked your arm." Pansy sees a flash of white teeth as Ron steps into the circle of illumination spilling from her wand, the edges of which shimmer with fractured light. "And you call me dramatic?" He flashes a humorless smile. "Paranoid maybe. But that doesn't mean I don't have a right to be."

"What's this all about, Weasley?" Draco has to incline his head slightly to meet Ron's eyes. "Wouldn't it have been a bit easier to grab a pint at the Leaky Cauldron?" His and Weasley's mutual dislike shimmers on the air between them. Not even Voldemort's demise could calm it. Draco puffs his chest out slightly, though he can't quite fool Pansy. Only an idiot would be entirely confident when facing Weasley's wrath.

"We're leaving," he says by way of explanation after a moment. "Me an' Ginny an' Charlie. Some others." He gives his shoulders a shrug. He looks ridiculous in his thick winter coat; his arms stick out at odd angles against his sides. Pansy fights the inappropriate urge to laugh. "If you want to come," Weasley finishes, "now's your chance."

"What makes you think we'd want to go anywhere with you, Weasley?"

Weasley eyes them, his red brows knotting together. "It's not safe here anymore," he says simply.

Draco's laughter is forced and harsh. "You're cracked," he starts. "The Dark Lord is finally dead and now you claim Britain isn't safe." He rolls his eyes. "We're finally free, Weasley, now's the time to celebrate."

Weasley's lips thin. Snow starts to fall, fat white flakes that cling to his pale lashes and slide down his face. He has a long scar on his left cheek. "I don't see anything particularly worth celebrating, Malfoy," he says quietly. Pansy's mind flashes back to the large memorial service held last week. Both Potter and Granger's portraits had been large and impressive. His best friend and his girlfriend, gone in one grand gesture. And he'd been left behind.

Draco deflates slightly. "I don't know what you think is going to happen, but leaving is hardly an option."

"What I think is going to happen?" Weasley spits. Pansy watches the puffs of white breath leaving his mouth with a sort of sick fascination. "You think just because the war's over the fight ends? Look around," he says, "everything we fought for, it's falling apart."

"No." Draco reacts like a stubborn child. "There's no need to run away now. Don't you get it? It's over. The fight's over. Don't bother us again." He pauses just a moment, and Pansy can see it in his eyes, his need for everything to just stop, to be alright. Perhaps because she needs it to be alright for him, Pansy can't help but agree.

"Thanks for the offer, Weasley," she says, "but we'll be fine here." She takes Draco's hand and turns away from Weasley. Be careful, she thinks, though she can't quite bring herself to say it aloud.

"Wait!" Weasley calls out from behind. Pansy stops and lets Draco's hand slip from her grasp. She watches Draco's stubborn march away, his back rigid. Weasley's feet crunch in the snow before he presses a slip of paper into her mittened hand.

"Just in case," he says, before dissolving into the night.

She glances at the paper. It gives an address, written in a messy scrawl. She studies it for a moment before setting it on fire. The ash falls to the ground, and she can't make it out in the dark, though she knows it must be there. She follows after Draco.

*

"Maybe we should have gone with Weasley." She's loath to bring it up, and every fiber in her balks at the idea of admitting Weasley might have been right, but things are rapidly unweaving, and Pansy can't figure out how to stitch them back together.

Draco swallows, his grey eyes a curious mixture of empty regret and disbelief. "No," he insists. "We did the right thing."

Pansy wants to believe it's true. But –

She holds up a copy of the Daily Prophet. Lucius Malfoy smiles out at her. She imagines she can hear him laughing.

"They let your father off," she says, and she reads from the article: "Though the conditions of his acquittal are confidential, the Prophet can say with some confidence that Mr. Lucius Malfoy, widowed during the fight against He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, has been cleared of all charges. The Ministry assures that Malfoy has been very cooperative and has done more in the aftermath of war than anyone could have expected.'"

She looks up. Draco is staring out the window of the tiny flat they share. Grey sunlight slants across his narrow features. "He's my father," he says, very quietly.

"Your father who would have killed you without giving it any thought," she points out. "And they've let him off. Draco, this can't be good."

She puts the journal down, coming to stand by Draco's elbow. The world beyond their window is grey and dull.

"He's my father," Draco repeats. He clutches Pansy's hand. It's painful, but she doesn't pull away.

*

It's too cold. Even with her heavy winter robes, and her heavy winter coat and her heavy, heavy heart, the cold seeps into her bones and sluices its way through her blood. Even with the bright morning light glinting off every surface around her, the ice doesn't melt.

The sun is shining brightly. And Draco is dead.

She ignores the crowd; heads buried deep in Sunday issues of the Daily Prophet, all whispering and pointing as she walks by, chin pointed up. She knows what they're saying. There's that Death Eater's girlfriend. Her parents were Death Eaters, too, weren't they? It's no wonder she was stripped of her wand.

She catches a glimpse of the Prophet's front page. Big letters fly off the page: Lucius Malfoy, Minister of Magic.

She knows what she'd see if she looked closer. A list of the new minister's accomplishments. Imprisoning the werewolves, sentencing Voldemort's followers to death, stripping their children of their wands. After Draco's trial, she'd promised to kill him, but all that rage had bled away to leave her numb, empty, and he'd taken one look at her, taken her wand from her, and laughed in her face.

Pansy walks right by the building she and Draco used to live in. There's nothing left for her now. She takes one step, then another, and walks away from it all.

vi.

It's ridiculously hot. She wipes the back of her hand across her forehead, brushing dark bangs and sweat out of her eyes. Jasmine blooms all around her, the smell nearly choking her. She's not dressed for this place. This is the sort of place to wear dresses that barely skim the tops of your thighs and thongs on your feet. This is sort of place meant for little white purses. This is not the sort of place for a girl just off a long plane ride, baggy denim trousers and a knapsack holding her entire life: a set of robes, four pairs of knickers, a toothbrush, trousers, a glossy photograph, a comb and three T-shirts. A gun.

It's almost too beautiful. Moon high and white in a navy sky, closer to earth than it ever is in England. She can look out over the ocean and almost imagine this is the end of it all; the ocean meets the sky, and then that's it, the world just stops. Maybe if she stands here long enough, it will.

"I was about ready to give up on you." His voice rises over the sound of waves slamming into the beach.

She doesn't turn around, not just yet. If she squints, she can make out a couple walking along the beach, hand in hand, feet tempting the surf. "It took longer than I expected."

"Do you want something to drink?" She looks over her shoulder then. Even in the slanting moonlight, he looks terribly familiar: too many freckles spreading across his cheeks, eyes wide and trusting. . He has a drink clutched in each hand. She doesn't want to be relieved at the sight of him.

"Is that what you kids are doing these days?"

He squints at her. "When we're not starting random forest fires, yeah."

She chuckles, the foreign sound catching in her throat, and reaches out to take something tall and pink from him. It has a ridiculously appropriate paper umbrella floating in it.

"I read the Daily Prophet today," he says, as if he's making small talk. He moves to stand beside her, eyes squinting into the horizon.

She turns so that she is again staring at the ocean.

"All the way from Britain?"

He nods. "The minister was killed in his office."

She keeps staring at the ocean.

Finally she asks, "What do we do now?"

He lets the silence stretch between them. "We live."

iii.

Without magic, life is suddenly difficult. She gives an ironic, bitter laugh, almost a sob. With magic, life was difficult; without it, life seems impossible. She's one of the lucky ones, she supposes, who managed to get out of England with part of her family's money, if only because her father never completely trusted anyone, goblins included. She converts it all to Muggle cash when she makes it to France, and though it 's not much, it's enough to get her where she's going.

Pansy finds Ron in some overtly tropical island half a world away, all sunshine, beaches, palm trees and bright, bright flowers.

She is entirely out of place.

"I was sorry to hear about Draco," he says, after she'd shown up at the address he'd shown her... it felt like a lifetime ago.

She nods. He sounds sorry, and she can't tell if that makes it better or not. "How did you hear?"

"We still get the Prophet." He gestures to the house at large. We means a dozen or so wizards and witches, all with the common sense to leave Britain before Lucius had become minister.

"I don't..." She hesitates. "I don't really know what I'm doing here," she admits around a bitter laugh. Ron lifts his chin and looks at her. He's quiet, calm. He's changed. Pansy can feel tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. She blinks angrily and squares her shoulders. "I don't really have anywhere else to go, though."

Ron nods. "We don't use magic here if we can help it," he tells her, a little gruffly, "because it's too easy to trace. But it's not so bad. You get used to it after awhile."

"I don't have a wand, anyway."

His room is small and square and almost Zen in its sparseness, but it's clean. One tiny window allows light to pool in. Outside, Pansy can here the ocean. Ron walks over to the window; he studies the dying sunlight that angles through, highlighting his freckled face. "You can stay here as long as you like," he says after awhile, turning his eyes back to her.

*

There's a shooting range two kilometers away from the house. It's a strange thing to see in this tropical land; it doesn't quite fit, not with the paper umbrellas and the American tourists.

But it's there just the same.

She eyes it every time she walks by.

It doesn't quite fit, but neither does she.

*

"Do you think you'll ever go back?" she asks him once. She unties a black apron from around her waste, the stench of stale smoke and jasmine clinging to her hair. Working as a waitress was fairly easy money, especially when the only requirement seemed to be English and an easy smile (the latter of which she could fake), but she could do without the smells.

She slides lightly onto a barstool. Ron stands behind the bar, wiping it down. There are no customers left, and music rolls out of an old juke box in the corner; it sounds tinny, strange.

Ron throws the rag into a sudsy plastic box, wiping his hands on his shirt.

"I doubt it," he says after a minute.

Pansy nods.

Ron places his hands on the bar, elbows locked, and looks at her. "There's nothing left there," he explains, as if she'd asked. "What's there now, it's not we fought for. It's not what they died for. It just feels like it'd be betraying them." He pauses. "Even if we could go back."

Pansy opens her mouth. Shuts it.

"What?" Ron leans forward.

"Don't you ever think about..."

Ron cocks an eyebrow. "Revenge?" he astutely guesses.

Pansy shrugs.

With lips pursed, Ron shakes his head. "It's not worth it. It'll never make up for what we lost."

*

"Hey."

Pansy looks up. Ron is elbow-deep in a duffle bag when she walks into the room.

"Hey yourself," she says back, a smile playing on her lips.

"I got you something." He grins; it splits his whole face in two, goes on for miles.

Pansy just raises her eyebrows.

"Ah ha!" he exclaims, finally pulling his arms out of the bag. "It probably won't work perfectly, and yours, well, it was better, I'm sure, but this was all I could find. Emergencies only."

He tosses something to her and Pansy catches it, one handed. The wood is both knobby and smooth beneath her fingers. There's no sudden tingle that rushes up her spine when she catches it, not like her first wand.

She whispers an incantation, and a glass of water floats off the table, into her hands.

"Thanks, Weasley," she says, the name sounding foreign to her. When had she stopped thinking of him as Weasley and started thinking of him as Ron?

He grins at her. "Don't mention it, Parkinson."

*

The first time she holds a gun, she thinks about how fragile life is. There's a weight there, in the metal, in the catch and the click, that is comforting. She's never had that with magic. It didn't matter that you could take life with magic just as easily. There was nothing concrete in that, nothing solid.

The first time she fires a gun, her ears ring and arms shake, they hurt. But she hits the paper target lined up in front of her eyes, and when the instructor tells her she's a natural, she just smiles and aims the gun again.

*

"Why didn't you tell me it was your birthday?" Pansy feels her lips moving into a pout. Alcohol sluiced lazily through her veins, and she giggles, just a little. Ron looks ridiculous, a pointy hat purchased on his bright head, eyes hazy from too many tequila shots.

He swings his eyes her way. "I just didn't want you to feel obligated to buy me a present."

Pansy rolls her eyes, pushes against his shoulder. "Please, Weasley, as if I'd ever feel obligated to do anything for you." She can't help but smile at the goofy face he pulls, as he grabs her hand between his and holds it, twining their fingers together.

His eyes grow a bit dark. "You shouldn't either, you know, ever. Feel obligated."

Pansy feels her smile grow serious. "I don't," she promises, and Ron answers with a "good" just as someone yells at them to smile.

There's a flash of light from the direction of the camera.

"I'm going t' want a copy o' that," Ron says, a little drunkenly.

He's still holding Pansy's hand.

*

The idea of revenge can get under your skin, seep into your heart and your blood and your bones. It can end your life like a debilitating drug or propel you forward like the shock of adrenaline. It will always drive you mad.

*

He's stretches of freckled skin and warm eyes and white teeth that seem to cut through the air around her. Somewhere along the way he'd moved from comfort to friend to something deeper, something stronger.

She slumps against him and buries her face in his chest. She wishes she could make a die and keep this feeling with her.

Her bag is already packed. She has few belongings that matter anymore, and all fit into a small knapsack that can be slung over a shoulder. There's an address in there too, someone trusted who lives in London and can rent her a room and find her a gun and make certain she gets back out.

"I just need to see the world for a bit," she lies to Ron. And he knows it's a lie, she can see it in his eyes.

She's grateful he doesn't call her on it. That's the thing about Ron. He's got big arms to wrap around her and he understands the value of secrets kept, and the importance of letting people go when they need to be gone.

She hopes he understands the importance of letting them back in, as well.

vii.

It begins like this.

She takes one step, and then another, and then she is walking towards him.

He wraps himself around her. His lips open above hers, and she thinks maybe that's enough.