It's Not Just Sex

Well I promised myself I'd get something done and posted over the christmas holiday and here we go... Beta-ed, once again by the sensational Salon Kitty

Chapter 8: Disaster

Harry looked up at the canvas ceiling of the tent and wondered where everything had gone wrong in his life. Immediately his earliest memory came to mind; an awful all-encompassing green light. That undoubtedly had been the start of it all, the end of his family, but didn’t account for just how much he had messed things up recently. He was cold, he was hungry and Hermione had left him. The loss was a gaping hole in the group and it was becoming more and more apparent with every passing day.

For the first few days, they’d been able to pretend it wasn’t an issue. They were all here voluntarily, after all, he hadn’t forced anyone to come and he couldn’t force anyone to stay. There were mostly minor annoyances: Hermione had taken her bottomless beaded bag with her; without it they’d had to haul the collapsed tent and all the gear in their own rucksacks, making them much heavier and more awkward to carry. The trio went to their beds aching and tired from the day’s work now.

But this was merely the rip of the iceberg as far as loss was concerned. Hermione had been a more or less omnipresent presence in his life for the last six years; for more than a third of his life and certainly all of it that Harry considered worth remembering. Whenever he was tired or anxious, he caught himself turning to where Hermione was... [i]should be[/i] to ask her opinion on whatever was bothering him. It was then that her very absence itself became an almost tangible presence of its own. It seemed to Harry that no matter how closely he stood with Ron and Pansy to talk, or cluster around a book or map, there always seemed to be enough room between them for another person to stand.

Gazing across the darkened room, Harry’s gaze fell upon Pansy curled up in bed on the other side. Her sleeping face was so full of the calm and peace that was escaping Harry that he found himself quite resentful of her. After all, if he hadn’t been involved with her, then Hermione would still have been at his side. He tried to crush the thoughts growing in his head and during the day he generally succeed but this night, his restlessness kept his mind at work. Why was he even involved with Pansy in the first place? Logically, his brain could find no reason for their relationship; no common values or skills or memories to bind them together. Was it, as everyone seemed to have warned him over the course of their relationship, just about sex? Had he lost the loyalty of his one of his oldest and dearest friends over nothing more than physical pleasure? In the darkness, with only his own thoughts for company, Harry tried to be honest with himself: his relationship with Pansy relationship had started as sheer escapism, not only the actual pleasure of sex but the cessation of the worries and stresses of his real life. Such a beginning only made it more ironic that his worries and stresses were now redoubled by his relationship. Harry tried to blame Pansy: not had only had she initially seduced him, it was her demands and actions that had forced them in to a deeper relationship and her into the perils of his life. But of course, as was always the case with him, it was more complicated than that. He couldn’t fool himself into believing that he wasn’t as equally complicit in the mess that their situation had become, that he hadn’t been just as responsible for the progression of their relationship. As much as he’d like to.

Harry stared hard at his sleeping girlfriend. It would have been easy to gain reassurance from her, all he had to do would be to walk the two steps to the next bed and wake her up for a talk. When he was in her presence, it was all but impossible for Harry to have any doubts about the two of them. Some soft words, a softer embrace and he knew his worries would melt away. That in itself was a worry for him. Whenever it happened, he knew he couldn’t keep his hands off her, which only reinforced the idea that it was purely physical between them. Harry felt bedevilled as he considered the mishap that had occurred as a result of their last intimate encounter. They’d already come to a silent agreement on the matter that it was best they not indulge again. Glumly, Harry realised the irony that the one time they’d screwed since leaving Grimmauld place had had to coincide with the one time that Ron had an unprecedented bout of insomnia, which was about typical of his luck these days.

Thinking about Ron did not improve Harry’s mood at all, and directed his thoughts down a darker path. He glanced towards the front of the tent where the older boy sat silhouetted in the flickering light of the fire. The idea of taking watches had been Hermione’s and Harry had half-expected them to abandon the practice now that she was gone, but no sooner had they settled down to go to sleep that first night then Ron had announced he was keeping watch and shouldered his way outside into the night. Harry and Pansy had to relieve him in shifts if only so that he didn’t freeze to death as he tried to stay out all night. With only the three of them, they all had longer watches and less sleep. Ron’s eyes had the darkest rings under them that Harry had ever seen. They made a shocking contrast with the paleness of his skin, making him look quite demented. With all the continued silence from Ron, Harry could only wonder one thing:

Would his friend ever be able to forgive him for this?

Tearing his mind away from his dark thoughts, Harry tried to concentrate on the positives. After a lot of work trying to find it; tomorrow, he was finally going to reach Godric’s Hollow, a place he’d wanted to visit for months. It was the place that he had lived with his parents, where’d he been part of a real family, all those unremembered years ago. It was perhaps the only place that had ever, really, been his home He was quite looking forward to it.

For the first time, in weeks, Harry had a good feeling about tomorrow.


~O~

The patch of clearing was deep inside a forest. It had been forgotten by most people, TV and computers games and all manner of modern contrivances had drawn children away from exploring it. It had lain undisturbed for many years and was covered in a soft unmarred field of snow.

A thunderclap rent the air and a trio of teenagers fell out of nowhere and crashed into the snow.

Pansy Parkinson released her grip on the two young men she was clutching with both hands. As was becoming a rather worrying habit, she’d just had to side-along apparate the pair of them out of deadly peril. Pansy was good at apparition but the effort had strained even her abilities. She lay on the ground, almost deathly still aside from a trembling of her limbs, she couldn’t tell if it was from the cold or just nerves. Fear clouded her brain and she wondered how she had found herself in such situations. She immediately found the answer; such things were just part and parcel of knowing Harry Potter. The enormity of what they had just seen and done threaten to overwhelm her. She knew if just stopped to think about things for a moment, all hope of composure or sanity would just shatter. She pushed every thought to the back of the head; there were things that needed doing.

With great effort, she hauled herself laboriously to her feet. To her left, a red headed figure managed the same. To her right, Harry did not.

That wasn’t to say he didn’t move. He seemed to be overcome by a fit of twitching, his muscles firing off involuntarily in a way, that didn’t strike Pansy as entirely random; they seemed to propel his body into a roughly sinuous movement, shifting his form in a fashion that looked inhuman. With a shudder, Pansy realised how snake-like he looked and her mind presented her was a sudden terrible flash of recollection: of the giant green snake in Bathilda Bagshot’s house; coiled about Harry’s body. Scales glinting as its coils attempted to constrain him; its wedge shaped head with vivid yellow eyes bulging in their sockets and its mouth stretched wide to expose long dagger like fangs dripping with venom.

“What the bloody hell just happened?” Ron said, likewise staring at Harry in horror, “What’s wrong with him?”

Pansy had no answer for him. Harry had seemed well enough when she’d disapparated him or as well, as anyone yelling in terror at the approach of their mortal enemy could be.

“Harry? Harry, please answer me,” she cried, desperately falling to her knees next to his body, but he gave no answer. His eyes were open but had rolled back into his head, only the thinnest slice of green was visible under his upper eyelid.

Still murmuring his name, she shook him, and then dashed more cold snow in his face but was still unable to rouse him to sensibility.

“Ennervate” Ron said pointing his wand, light from its tip enveloped Harry but to no effect.

“He hasn’t been stunned, Ron,” Pansy snapped, “Just put up the tent will you? We’ve got to get him out of the open.”

She ignored the dirty look he shot her and the excessive force he used when spelling the tent to erect itself. The stakes and guide lines slammed into the frozen earth violently, as the tent sprang upright. It took both of them to move Harry inside. His random motions were not powerful but they were still enough to make him exceedingly difficult to hold onto. Eventually, they managed to half carry and half drag him inside the tent onto his bed. The blanket immediately became twisted and tousled underneath his squirming body.

“Great,” Ron growled, “Now what are we supposed to do with him?”

Truthfully, Pansy had no idea but the expression on Ron’s face suggested that it might not be the best idea to say so. She cast about for something they could do.

“Let’s get that locket off him,” she said, “I mean it’s got a bit of the Dark Lord’s soul in, that can’t be a good thing for him.”

And she matched words with actions; stripping off Harry’s jumper to get at the heavy golden locket but as her fingers brushed its metallic surface, the horcrux suddenly heated up to unbearable temperatures. Simultaneously, Harry’s flailing redoubled in force, and he yelled. Random half formed words erupted from him, in both English and parseltongue, wild words morphing seamlessly into the weird hissing and spitting of a snake’s language. Even though Pansy had immediately retracted her hand, the locket did not chill again, harry’s t-shirt smouldered and smoked as he roared incomprehensibly at them.
Ron pounced on him, holding him down by shoulders from the side, giving Pansy a clear shot at the locket.

“Get it off him,” He said, panting with effort, “I don’t care how.”

Pansy pulled her wand out and stuck the tip at the joining off Harry’s skin and the locked.

“Diffindo” she screamed. There was a blast of light and the locket came lose, though it was still hot to the touch. Pansy grabbed it and hurled it away from them onto the table, where it crackled and sizzled on the woodwork.

Harry’s body slackened, his jaw hug open and lose and his shouting quieted to tiny whimpers. Though no longer facing the immediate danger of having his ribs burnt through it was soon clear that he wasn’t going to come out of whatever fit had afflicted him. Pansy and Ron slumped into armchairs. Not wanting to look at Harry in this highly disturbing state but unable to take their eyes off him, for fear he might slip away from them the very moment they did.

“What the hell happened?” Ron groaned, his head in his hands.

“Why do you keep asking that?” Pansy snapped back, “You know everything I know, We let him go upstairs with that old bint alone, then we hear crashing and shouting, run up to him and found him wrestling with that.. that thing, must have been a fucking basilisk or something and shouting that The Dark Lord was coming.”

“All I know,” said Ron, glaring at her, “Was that Hermione was right.”

“What’s that’s supposed to mean?” Pansy said, returning his glare, full force.

“It means, we just ran headlong into a trap,” Ron yelled, coming to his feet, “it means we almost got eaten by a snake, it means we just came face to face with You-Know-Who. Merlin, my life flashed before my eyes!”

“Well I can see how that would be so terrifying for you, then” Pansy retorted. Likewise coming to her feet.

They were now standing mere inches apart glaring at each other, having subsided into furious silence.

Except there wasn’t silence in the tent, even without Harry’s disturbed ramblings from his bed. Pansy broke first, her anger-lined face subsiding into an expression of confusion. The murmur grew louder filling the room as the two of them looked about in confusion trying to locate the source, until finally...

“Ron,” she ventured slowly, as if afraid of being labelled crazy, “Why is your pocket talking?”

Ron gazed downward at the spot on his trousers where Pansy’s attention had become fixed. The strange muffled voice did appear to be coming from inside Ron’s jeans. His hand dived into his pocket at pulled out something. It was the Deluminator that Dumbledore had bequeathed to him in his will. They stared at it, rather nonplussed at the development. Then it talked again.

“Ron,” it said, in the voice of Hermione Granger, “I’m sorry Ron, oh god. I’m so sorry. Where are you?”

Next: He Who Dares...