Chapter Text
Pansy stared at the hallway wall, one finger tapping her chin thoughtfully. The wall, once a very boring magnolia, was now bright with clumsily drawn stick figures, scrawled notes and labels, strange symbols (which Pansy called made up and Tonks called eldritch) and, sprawling out from the point at chest height just beside the kitchen door where they’d started the game, and now covering nearly the entirety of that wall, was a complicated, colourful, untidy map. Silly Buggers was a game they’d invented together one drunken evening just a couple of weeks after they’d got together. It had begun with a Princess, a Knight, and a Castle, and had swiftly grown to become the sprawling mess it was now. Yesterday, Tonks had moved their Bishop of My Untidy Knicker Drawer to the Temple in Celebration of Stinky Cheese, which Pansy definitely hadn’t seen coming and was somewhat stymied by. She was still trying to work out how to counter the Bishop when Tonks themself opened the kitchen door and looked out at her.
“Stop playing Silly Buggers and get in here,” they said.
“But I want to win Silly Buggers,” said Pansy, eyeing The Dragon Cyril Wellbeloved thoughtfully.
“Win it later. I need you to stir my Christmas pudding batter before I steam it.”
Pansy pulled her eyes away from the Felicitous Forest and stared at Tonks.
“What? Why can’t you stir it yourself?”
Tonks rolled their eyes.
“I can. I have! But it’s stir up Sunday and everyone in the house has to stir the pudding for good luck.”
Pansy narrowed her eyes.
“Is this a real Muggle tradition or is it another piece of crap you’ve pulled out of your arse to make me look like an idiot? I can literally never tell.”
Tonks snorted with laughter. Only last week they’d solemnly informed Pansy that according to Muggle tradition you couldn’t say the word “toothbrush” inside a bathroom or a monster would come out of the mirror and pull all your teeth out. Pansy had fucking believed them (not about the monster, even she wasn’t that gullible, but that it was a Muggle superstition).
“It’s real,” they said. “Dad always did it. We’d all have a stir, and if there was anyone staying with us at the time they’d have to have a go too. It was a whole thing.”
“Why would stirring a pudding give you good luck?” said Pansy, following Tonks into the kitchen nevertheless. “Do you get bad luck if you don’t stir it?”
“Dunno, but do you really want to risk it?”
Pansy did not. She took the wooden spoon and gave the mixture, which smelled rich and alcoholic and was dense with fruit, a vigorous stir.
“Do I get to eat the mixture off the spoon as a reward?” she said, taking the spoon out and waving it.
“Only if you can eat it before I do.” Tonks lunged at the spoon, mouth open. Pansy stuck the end in her mouth just as Tonks collided with her, grabbing her wrist and licking the base of the spoon. She yanked back and licked the mixture out of the bowl of the spoon.
“That’s not fair, your bit has more!” Tonks lunged again, grabbing the back of Pansy’s head, and then their tongue was in her mouth. Pansy spluttered and dropped the spoon.
“You’re fucking disgusting!”
Tonks withdrew, laughing. “What are you talking about? My tongue is constantly in your mouth!”
“Not at the same time as food!”
“Weird boundary to have, but okay.”
“You just tried to lick Christmas pudding mixture out of my mouth, you don’t get to call me weird!”
Tonks picked the spoon up off the floor and tossed it in the sink.
“Maybe stirring it up in your mouth will give us extra luck,” they said thoughtfully. Pansy snorted.
“You’re ridiculous.”
“I know. All right, I’m putting this on to steam.”
“Why’s it so huge, anyway?” said Pansy, looking at the enormous bowl into which Tonks was now spooning their mixture. “We’ll be eating this until July.”
“It’s for the party, not for us,” said Tonks.
“Oh.” The laughter drained out of Pansy. She looked away.
“What’s up?”
“Nothing.”
Tonks looked up from the pudding, which they were now wrapping up with layers of greaseproof paper. They frowned.
“Yes it is. You’re a shit liar.”
Pansy flushed.
“I’m fine, Tonks,” she said. “I have to go and put my stuff away.”
She left the room, grabbed her bag, and fled up the stairs before Tonks, their hands full of Christmas pudding, could disentangle themself and follow. She didn’t even have anything to put away, unless you counted her bag, which usually lived in the hallway anyway, so she’d have to take it back downstairs and hang it up sometime. Preferably before she forgot what she’d done with it. Not until Tonks had forgotten about the little upset, though.
There was a tapping at the window. Pansy went to open it and let in the owl who was perched on the sill, a letter tied to its leg. The envelope bore a discreet crest and the owl was, unfortunately, all too recognisable.
“Come on, Gertie,” said Pansy, extending her wrist for Gertrude to hop onto. The owl always came with instructions from Mother not to leave until Pansy had given her a reply. Pansy had long since given up trying to evade it. She untied the letter from Gertrude’s leg and let her fly over to the perch, where owl treats awaited. Sinking down onto the bed, she tugged the letter out of its envelope and unfolded it.
Pansy,
As always, I shall be hosting a Yule gathering at Molybank on the evening of 23rd of December. You have not attended my last five gatherings. It was understandable while you were living in France, but you have been back since spring (and, loath as I am to complain, I will confess to feeling deeply hurt that you have not yet visited Father and I since your return), and it would be, if I may be frank, extremely disrespectful if you were to absent yourself from this year’s festivities. You may bring the Tonks girl with you. After the debacle a few years ago, I am generous enough to admit that it can only be good for our reputation if we can be seen to associate with families who supported Harry Potter—and, of course, the girl’s mother is a Black, and with the father dead the family is practically respectable again.
I expect to hear from you forthwith. Father sends his kind regards.
Your loving,
Mother.
Pansy threw the letter on the floor and, for good measure, jumped off the bed and stamped on it. Fucking, fucking fucking Mother and her hurt feelings and her parties and her fucking misgendering. Tonks had asked her to use she/her pronouns a grand total of once since they’d first met, but fucking Mother… Pansy stalked to the bedroom door, meaning to lock herself in the bathroom and scream at the mirror for a few minutes. With a silencing spell on it, of course. But when she wrenched the door open, Tonks was standing there, hand in mid-air, looking startled.
“Pans,” they said. “I’m sorry I pushed earlier. I was just worried…”
Pansy held her hands up to stop them.
“You want the truth, Tonks?” she half shouted. “I don’t want to go to your party, okay? I don’t want to go to any fucking parties!”
She shoved past Tonks and ran down the stairs, grabbed her shoes off the rack, and had slammed the front door behind her before Tonks was halfway down the stairs. She paused at the corner to shove her feet into her shoes, then ran on. She didn’t want Tonks following her, talking at her, trying to make her talk to them. Fuck, but it was cold. She kept on running in the hope that it would keep her warm, but she wasn’t exactly fit, and after a few more turns she had to slow down to a walk. She shoved her hands into her skirt pockets. Tonks was going to be furious. Pansy had insulted them and yelled at them and run away from them, and why had she run away, anyway? Pansy wasn’t the running away sort. She was the stand up and scream in people’s faces sort.
She walked on and on, hands clenched in her pockets, trying not to shiver too hard, trying to probe at her own feelings. She’d never been much for self awareness. Oh, she knew she was pretty and clever and selfish and a coward, but beyond that… well, what was the point of self awareness when you knew perfectly well that all you were going to be aware of was the petty, cruel, shameful things you’d done? Much better never to let her thoughts touch the past. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t changed, after all. She did good things now. She didn’t say bad ones. She hardly ever even thought them. Not the sort of things the war had been fought over.
But here she was, already head over heels in love with Tonks, yet unable to look them in the face. Why? She turned another corner and winced as the wind hit her full in the face. Was she running because she was in love? Did that even make sense? Why would she run from someone she loved? Surely they should be the person Pansy could be herself with.
Oh.
The realisation hit her almost as hard as the wind had.
She and Tonks had spent three and a half months happy. Happy together, happy apart. Mostly together, these last few weeks. Pansy didn’t officially live with Tonks, but she’d barely been back to her own flat in the last, what, month? At least. And in all that time the worst argument they’d had had been over Tonks leaving their shoes lying around in the hallway one too many times (which, to be fair, had been incredibly annoying). Tonks had never seen Pansy at her worst, had never had Pansy screaming in their face when she just couldn’t hold her anger in any more, had never been on the receiving end of one of the nasty, cutting barbs that still came all too easily to her tongue when she was angry. Tonks might know a few stories of what Pansy had been like at Hogwarts, but they’d never been there to gasp and stare in the corridors as Pansy hissed slurs at some inoffensive Muggleborn, or watch as she tore a humiliating strip off a younger Slytherin in the common room, leaving them in tears. They didn’t know what she could be like.
And she didn’t want them to.
She stopped in the middle of the pavement, half turning. Her sudden understanding of her own motivations didn’t make the idea of going home and actually talking to Tonks any more appealing. But she also didn’t want to go home and face their anger, or disappointment, or whatever it was she’d undoubtedly sparked. You couldn’t just shout at someone and run away and expect no consequences.
Pansy hated consequences. Consequences with Mother were quick and painful and stayed with you. At Hogwarts they’d been uneven but usually tedious and frustrating, until seventh year, when she’d found herself administering them and they’d been more horrifying, more terrifying, than she could possibly have imagined. She’d never forget the faces of the children she’d tortured, the way they cringed away from her in the corridors afterwards.
No, no, no. She couldn’t think about that. Never think about that. This was about Pansy and Tonks, and Pansy being a fool and a coward. She walked on. She’d think about what she was going to say to Tonks, and then she’d turn back. She’d say, I’m sorry Tonks, I shouldn’t have run away. She’d say, I was afraid I’d show you too much of myself. No, she wouldn’t say that. It was too true. She’d say, I was afraid I’d say something unforgiveable. That was better. True, but not too true. And forgiveable. And then she’d say, I was just rattled because I got a shitty letter from Mother, but obviously I want to go to your mum’s party. Which wasn’t true at all, but was the sort of thing you were supposed to lie about in relationships, she was pretty sure. You definitely couldn’t say that you’d actually rather never meet your partner’s mother or friends at all, ever, even if the two of you stayed together your whole lives. And if you did, you’d have to explain, which brought Pansy back to the whole not wanting Tonks to know everything about her thing.
God, this was such a fucking mess. It hadn’t been this complicated with Mandy. Pansy kicked a stick out of her path. No, that wasn’t fair. It had been less complicated with Mandy because first they’d been living in Paris and Mandy’s friends had been Pansy’s friends, not the other way round. Pansy’s French friends, who only know her as a writer of steamy queer romances and a bright, outgoing, lover of fun. And when they’d moved back to the UK, Pansy had refused to go out in the wixen world. Which had, of course, created its own problems, up to and including Mandy falling in love with someone else. Cowardice again. Always Pansy’s own cowardice, ruining everything. She couldn’t let it ruin this thing with Tonks. She wouldn’t.
Pansy ducked, suddenly, into an alleyway leading between two tall buildings, and once she was a few feet in, disapparated.
She reappeared in the alleyway a few houses down from Tonks’s, which she and Tonks generally used if they weren’t apparating directly in or out of the house. That felt a little too risky right now. Was that cowardice again, or simply good sense? Pansy never seemed to be able to tell the difference until afterwards, which wasn’t much use.
She stood in the alley for a few moments, shivering and trying to summon up her courage. This thing with Tonks was already so much better than the thing with Mandy had been, even though she’d thought she was in love at the time. No, had been in love. But still. It was better with Tonks. Tonks was kind and bright and lovely, and they really cared about how Pansy felt about things. And they were straightforward and honest, too, which Pansy had never been much good at.
Well, that was what she was hoping to be now, wasn’t it? She was going to walk into the house and apologise to Tonks and… and explain. The words would come when she was face to face with them. She’d explain, and she’d be honest (but not too honest), and Tonks would be honest too, because they always were, and it would all be okay. It had to be.
The plan began going awry when she reached the front door. She’d meant to go in quietly and find Tonks and sit down beside them and they’d talk, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Instead she knocked.
There was a long pause before the door opened.
“Pansy,” said Tonks, looking a bit blank. “Why are you knocking?”
Pansy, her hands still deep in her pockets as she shivered against the damp wind, shrugged her hunched shoulders.
“In case you didn’t want to let me back in,” she said. Tonks snorted and grabbed her arm, pulling her inside and closing the front door.
“God, it’s brass monkeys out there,” they said. “You look frozen. I’ve got a fire going in the lounge, come on.”
Somehow shivering even more now that she was in the warm house, Pansy followed Tonks through to the lounge and perched obediently on the edge of the sofa. Tonks looked down at her for a moment, then sighed.
“I’m going to make us some hot chocolate. You stay there. We’re going to have a talk.”
“All right,” said Pansy. By the time Tonks was back with the biggest mugs they owned, filled to the brim with rich, creamy hot chocolate (and, by the smell of them, a hefty shot of firewhisky), she was finally beginning to warm up. Tonks put her mug carefully into her hands and sat down beside her, cradling their own mug against their chest.
“Come on, what’s got your knickers in a twist?” they said. They took a long slurp of hot chocolate. Pansy wrinkled her nose. Tonks laughed.
“Why aren’t you pissed at me?” said Pansy. Tonks looked surprised.
“Why would I be?”
“Because!” said Pansy, irrationally annoyed. “I yelled at you! I was… I was trying to hurt you. And then I ran away.”
Tonks shrugged.
“We all have bad days,” they said, as though it didn’t matter. Because, Pansy reminded herself, they didn’t know. They didn’t know what Pansy could be like. The fear and self-preservation that always simmered just under the surface, just waiting for a reason to strike. It always seemed necessary in the moment, and she almost always regretted it afterwards, but that didn’t stop her from hurting people when those feelings slithered up and hissed danger, only subsiding when they deemed that Pansy had won and was safe again. Tonks didn’t know any of that. They thought she was just having a bad day.
The silence had dragged on for too long. Tonks was looking worried. They put a gentle hand on Pansy’s leg.
“Come on, love. Talk to me.” And then, when she still didn’t say anything, didn’t touch them back or smile, the way she usually did when Tonks touched her, they bit their lip and said, “I read your mum’s letter. It was pretty brutal.”
Pansy’s eyes flew up to Tonks’s face.
“You read it?” she said.
“Yeah. Sorry. I’d read the first few sentences before I even realised what it was. And then I finished it. Sorry.”
Pansy shrugged.
“It’s fine. Although I’m sorry you saw the misgendering. I’ve told her, but she’s just a bit of a crap person.” Like me.
“How come you never told me what she was like?”
“Why should you have to see that?” said Pansy. She sipped her hot chocolate. It was delicious. She sipped again.
“I don’t mean the misgendering,” said Tonks. “I mean, I’m not going to say I like it, but people have said a lot worse things to me. I meant the stuff she said to you. Treating you like a naughty kid. Trying to make you feel bad for not visiting her. Making it sound like she’s being all kind and generous for letting you associate with me.”
“In her mind she is,” said Pansy. “She still buys into all the pureblood bollocks. It’s like the last few years haven’t happened.”
“Was she…” Tonks hesitated, their hand still resting on Pansy’s thigh, warm and solid and comforting. “Were your parents Death Eaters?”
Pansy let out a mirthless laugh.
“God, no. They agreed with them, but they weren’t interested in getting their hands dirty. They were happy to sit on the sidelines and let it all happen. I think they thought they’d be able to just walk in and find a nice spot at the top of the pile when V-Voldemort had won. They probably would have, too, if he had. It’s just a bonus that they haven’t lost much now that he’s gone.”
“You know that you’re not them, right?” said Tonks, still sounding cautious. Obviously they’d realised that there was a lot more going on with Pansy’s family than she’d ever told them. She hadn’t told them, mostly, because like everything else that was terrible, it was better not to think about it. She grimaced.
“Yeah, but I’m not you, either.”
“I wouldn’t want you to be me,” said Tonks, grinning. “Imagine the confusion.”
Pansy couldn’t grin back.
“I don’t mean…” she said. “I mean I’m not good like you. I’m not brave like you. You’re a Black, and you were never even tempted!”
“Well, yeah, my Mum’s a Black, but Dad was Muggleborn. Obviously I wasn’t going to be tempted.”
Pansy put her empty mug down on the coffee table and ran her hands through her hair, frustrated.
“That’s not what I mean! You were never tempted because you’re you! You know what’s right and what’s wrong and you fight for what’s right. You don’t even have to think about it. You just do it! Like when we met. You didn’t know me! You just saw a person hurting and it didn’t matter who I was or what I’d done, you just wanted to help. I’m not…” She shook her head, blinking back the angry tears that were prickling her eyes and nose. “I’m not like that.”
“Well, that’s okay,” said Tonks. “People are all different. Just because you’re not like me doesn’t make you a bad person.” Pansy looked away. “Is that what you think? That you’re a bad person?”
“No,” Pansy lied. “I just…” I just don’t know if I’m a good one. Tonks put their arm around Pansy.
“Talk to me,” they said again. “I love you, okay? I’m not going to leave you if you tell me the truth.”
Pansy’s stomach clenched. Say it. Just fucking say it.
“I’m afraid you might,” she whispered. Tonks put their own mug down.
“C’mere, you idiot,” they said, and pulled Pansy closer, kissing the top of her head and then arranging her so that she was lying on her side, facing away from them, her head in their lap. Pansy curled her legs up to fit on the sofa, and closed her eyes as Tonks started threading their fingers through her hair. Pansy loved this. The touching, the attention, the comfort of it all. Despite herself, she felt her whole body start to relax, and the tears, which she’d been forcing away throughout the conversation, spring back to her eyes. She brushed them away with an angry finger, hoping Tonks wouldn’t notice. They probably had. They were dreadfully observant.
“I’m not going to leave you,” said Tonks, quietly and calmly, their fingertips moving over Pansy’s scalp. She closed her eyes again. “For several reasons. I love you. I know that you’re a good person. Maybe not the same kind of good person I am, but a good person. We’ve been practically living together for the last two months; you’d have given me some kind of clue by this time if you weren’t. Also, I like having you around. My house has literally never been so tidy or clean, and you’re a shit cook but you’re amazing at, you know, life stuff. And I love playing Silly Buggers with you. It’s your move, by the way. I don’t know how you think you’re going to defeat my Bishop now…”
“I was thinking of doing something with my Capybara of the Luminous Glare,” Pansy murmured. Tonks laughed and leaned down to kiss her cheek.
“There you are. I’m not just in this because you’re hot, or even because you’re nice.”
“I’m not nice.”
“Exactly. I love that about you. I’m with you because I think you’re amazing, Pans. I’m not going to leave because I find out something true about you. I want to know true things about you. I know that being open about stuff isn’t really your forte, and that’s okay. I know who you are right now, and I’m happy with that. But if you want to tell me more, I want to hear it. Okay?”
There was a long silence. More tears leaked out between Pansy’s closed eyelids. Tonks’s short, strong fingers never stopped their ministrations. Pansy took several long, slow breaths.
“Okay,” she said. There was another long silence. Pansy could do this. She didn’t have to tell Tonks everything. Just something. She tried to marshal her thoughts, to march up and down the line and pick the right one, the one that would show she was trying but that wasn’t too big, or scary, or horrible. “I’m scared to go to your mum’s party,” she blurted.
Tonks’s fingers continued to comb through her hair, over her scalp, drifting every now and again down to her neck.
“Okay,” said Tonks. “Want to tell me why?”
No.
“I think everyone’s going to hate me.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because so many of the people who are going to be there…” Pansy gulped. Tonks’s fingers rubbed her neck. She gulped again and said another truth. “I was awful at Hogwarts, Tonks. Not just ordinary awful. Really awful. You don’t know.”
“You aren’t that girl any more,” said Tonks.
“Aren’t I?” said Pansy. “What makes you so sure?”
“The fact that I know you,” said Tonks.
“But you don’t,” said Pansy desperately. “I hide it all away. The me on the inside isn’t the same as the me on the outside.”
“What makes you so sure?” said Tonks, still slowly moving their fingers through her hair. “It’s not as easy to hide who you are as you seem to think. Maybe you just haven’t noticed how much you’ve changed.”
Pansy swallowed hard, trying to suppress more tears. She forced the next words out.
“I think the things I did are unforgiveable.”
There was a silence, though Tonks never ceased their ministrations.
“I don’t think that can be true,” they said. “I think you’re just finding it incredibly hard to forgive yourself. I think other people will be a lot more understanding than you think.” Pansy wiped away more tears. They were coming steadily now, dripping down her face in a miserable stream. Tonks went on. “Everyone does things they regret, that they’re ashamed of, and the war just made that worse for all of us. You remember me telling you that Harry and Draco are married now?”
“Yeah,” said Pansy.
“You think Draco never did anything he’s ashamed of?” Pansy thought of Draco in second year. You’ll be next, Mudbloods! (Herself, standing beside him, laughing.) Or in third year, getting that hippogriff executed. Pansy had been proud of herself, at the time, for not betraying, even for a second, that the thought of the dead hippogriff made her feel sick. His unnerving mood swings in sixth year, as he veered from despair to elation to pride and back to despair, his face becoming thinner and gaunter as the year progressed. Both of them in seventh year, grimly obeying every order because the world had ballooned into a nightmare so inescapably horrible, so filled with dread on every side, that they couldn’t think of anything else to do.
“I…” she said.
“Harry loves him,” said Tonks gently. “And do you think Harry himself never did anything he’s ashamed of? Or Hermione? Or Ron? Or…” their voice hitched slightly. “Or me?”
Pansy sat up so suddenly that Tonks jumped.
“You?” she said. Tonks rolled their eyes.
“Yes, me,” they said. “Come on, Pans, did you think I was some kind of saint or something?”
Pansy wrinkled her nose.
“You’re a hero,” she said. “Auror, member of the Order of the Phoenix, dragging the DMLE into the twenty first century kicking and screaming, helping Hermione Granger reform the Ministry from the inside.”
“Yes,” said Tonks patiently. “But we were at war. We all had to make hard choices, didn’t we?”
Pansy looked away.
“I just wish I’d made different ones,” she said.
“I know. So do I, some of the time.” They hesitated. Pansy didn’t look at them. Tonks was trying to make her feel better, but the fact was that it was different for them. They’d been fighting on the side of good. They’d had to make choices that were about saving people, not just choices that made their own life easier or safer. They hadn’t spent the years before the war bullying people because of their appearance or wealth or blood status. They hadn’t laughed at other people’s misery and shouted slurs in the corridors. She shook her head.
“You don’t understand,” she muttered. Tonks nudged her with their shoulder.
“Then tell me.”
Pansy shook her head again. She was a coward, always a coward, and she couldn’t tell Tonks, brave, good, kind, shining Tonks, about the darkness that lived inside her. Tonks took her hand and squeezed it.
“All right,” they said. “Why don’t I tell you one of mine? There was this one time, during the winter of what would have been your seventh year at school… it was a really bad winter. I don’t know how much you knew about it, at Hogwarts, but Muggles were being killed for fun all over the place, and we practically never got word in time to do anything about it. We did usually get more warnings about Muggleborns, since they were being taken in “officially”, by that hellhole the Death Eaters called a Ministry, and there were a few of us in there still. I was pretending to be leaning into my Black heritage and getting my hands on as much information as I could at the same time. I couldn’t go back after this happened, of course. Anyway, we’d managed to swipe a Muggleborn family right out from under their noses that afternoon. At least, the kid was magical but the parents and sister weren’t, and they had grandparents staying with them at the time, so we had a magical kid and a bunch of Muggles, who’d have all been completely helpless against the Death Eaters. Our plan was to get them out of the country. Claudia Finkle… she was the year above me at Hogwarts and Muggleborn, so you probably wouldn’t have known her. Anyway, she and I had to get them to a safe house, where Remus was waiting with a portkey that would take them across the Channel to our contacts in France. Obviously they couldn’t apparate themselves, and there were only two of us, so we were going to take it in turns to side-along them to the safe house. Only it all went wrong.”
“What happened?” Pansy breathed.
“Death Eaters,” said Tonks. “We never did find out how they discovered where we were operating from, but they had all the Ministry’s resources behind them, so if they had a clue it wouldn’t have been that hard to do. It was always a risk. Anyway, Claudia was going first, and she was hanging onto the kid, just about to leave, when they blew a hole in the wall and burst in. She disapparated, but she was closest to the place where they’d got in, and Dolohov managed to grab her just before she left. He’d have access to the safe house, and Remus wasn’t the only one there. There… there was also a group of Squibs who were helping us out with stuff that didn’t need wands. Making potions and that sort of thing. They knew the risks, but still, they’d be just as defenceless as the Muggleborn family, and there were a dozen of them there at the time. It was stupid of us to use the place for more than one purpose, but we’d lost another safe house that week already, and…” They shook their head.
“You were doing the best you could,” said Pansy softly. “What happened?”
“By the time Claudia had disapparated along with Dolohov and the kid, the rest of the Death Eaters were already surrounding us. There were three of them. The mother was already dead. Yaxley had the father under a Cruciatus, Nott was having fun with the grandparents, the sister was crouched on the other side of the room screaming, she was only tiny, and Bellatrix…”
“Your aunt?”
“The same.” Tonks grimaced. “She was coming for me. So I ran. Well, disapparated. To the safe house. I didn’t even try to help those Muggles. I knew that Dolohov would alert the rest of the Death Eaters to the location within seconds. We communicated with patronuses, and they had their ways of communicating too. Remus and Claudia would be the only ones defending a dozen Squibs against who knew how many Death Eaters, but the three of us would have more chance than I would against Aunt Bella and the others. I landed outside and sent out a bunch of patronuses. We won that fight, although the kid and two of the Squibs died.”
“And… the Muggles?”
“All dead. They took them away after I left, so that they wouldn’t be… interrupted. But they left the bodies where we’d find them afterwards.”
They stared down into their half empty mug.
“You did the right thing,” said Pansy, uncertainly.
“Did I?”
“Yes! You couldn’t have saved the Muggles, but you did save the Squibs, and probably Remus and Claudia too!”
Tonks closed their eyes.
“That’s what I tell myself. They hadn’t had time to send patronuses, so if I hadn’t, they’d have been completely outnumbered. They’d probably all have died. But perhaps I could have saved those Muggles. If nothing else, I could have given them a quick death.”
“But you’d have been killed, too.”
“I might have got away. I’m good.”
“But you might not!” said Pansy. She put her arms around Tonks, who rubbed their cheek against hers. “And even if you had, Remus and the others probably would have already been dead. You saved more people than you didn’t, Tonks.”
Tonks sighed.
“Yeah,” they said. “I’ll never really know. It wasn’t the only time I had to make a hard choice, but it’s the one that I wonder about the most. I’ve made my peace with it, mostly. It just weighs on me sometimes. You know?”
“Yeah,” said Pansy. Somehow it hadn’t occurred to her that the people fighting against Voldemort and the Death Eaters would have had to make terrible decisions too. She’d thought Tonks was just saying it to make her feel better. She kissed Tonks’s cheek and drew back.
“You know about the stuff that happened at Hogwarts when Snape was in charge?” she asked.
“Yeah,” said Tonks softly.
“I was… I was there, helping. Him. Them. The Carrows. Not the kids who were being tortured, or the ones who were hiding out in that weird room. I was the one using the Cruciatus curse on people in detention. I just… I did everything I was told. I never questioned it. Never refused. Never fought back. Never…”
Tonks’s fingers tightened on hers.
“I already knew that, Pansy.”
Pansy stared at them.
“You… knew?”
“Of course I did. It was splashed all across the Daily Prophet for months afterwards, don’t you remember?”
Pansy didn’t. She’d spent that summer shut up in her bedroom, barely speaking to her parents, refusing most of the delicious meals Poppy, their house elf, brought her. Even when she’d gone back to Hogwarts, she’d kept to herself, spending most of her free time in the room she’d shared with Tracey in the eighth years’ newly created dormitory, and even at meals she’d spoken as little as possible, rushing to class or bedroom as soon as she could. She hadn’t wanted to listen to the comments her victims of the previous year would throw at her, or see the looks on their faces when they saw her walking through the corridors, free and unpunished for her crimes. It wasn’t that she blamed them, and really, there’d been fewer comments than she’d expected, but oh, it had been such a relief to finally sit her NEWTs (she’d failed most of them) and leave Hogwarts. She’d taken a portkey to Paris three days later and that had been that.
“There’s a reason the Ministry gave amnesty to all the Hogwarts students, Pansy,” said Tonks. “You were schoolkids.”
“I was an adult,” Pansy snapped.
“Yeah, but you don’t just suddenly become able to cope with terror and torture and fascism on your seventeenth birthday, do you?”
Pansy shrugged. She hadn’t, but plenty of people who were younger than her had still managed to fight against those things, hadn’t they? It wasn’t an excuse.
“I still chose, though,” she said. “I still Crucioed those kids. I still turned Michael Corner in to Alecto and she nearly killed him. I still tried to give Harry up to Voldemort.”
“I’m not saying the things you did were okay,” said Tonks. “I’m not ignorant, Pansy, and I’ve been friends with Draco for a few years now. I know what you two were like. But he’s not the same person he was at Hogwarts, and neither are you.”
Pansy looked down, staring again at her hands, tense and pale in her lap. The silence stretched on, but Tonks didn’t fill it, didn’t move at all, just sat there, watching her.
“What if I am?” said Pansy at last.
That was the crux of it, really, and she felt some of the tension leave her the moment she said it.
“Is that what’s been worrying you?” said Tonks.
Pansy nodded, shamefaced, still staring down at her lap. Tonks let out a long breath and put their arm around Pansy, pulling her close.
“Darling,” said Tonks. “You are not that person any more. Have you ever spoken a single slur in my presence, about my blood status or my gender or anything else about me? Or about anyone else, come to that?”
“No,” said Pansy. “But how do you know I’m not thinking them?”
“Are you?”
“Well, no,” Pansy admitted, and it was the truth, too. Since moving to France, and especially after she’d moved to Paris instead of living out in the country with her cousins, she’d spent quite a lot of time in the company of Muggles. Several of her French friends, the ones she wrote to every week without fail, were actual Muggles, not even Muggleborns. It hadn’t taken long for her to realise, with an astonishment that made her cringe, now, that they were just people. They all knew about magic, usually because of friends or partners, but they treated it like another odd quirk, the way they thought of Armand’s habit of dying his hair several times a month or Claudine’s obsession with Fabergé eggs. Certainly they wouldn’t have dreamt of treating any wix as some sort of superior being, and, as she learned the uses of more and more Muggle electrical and mechanical appliances, Pansy couldn’t blame them. A dishwasher was better than a scourgify, and who needed owls when there were phones and the internet?
“There you are, then,” said Tonks. “You aren’t that person now.”
“It’s not just about that,” said Pansy. “I mean… okay, I don’t think the same about Muggles and Muggleborns any more. I know it’s bollocks, all the pureblood stuff. But it’s still there. In my mind. Sometimes I look at my life and I just think, what the fuck am I doing? This isn’t what I was born for.”
“Darling, everyone thinks that sometimes.”
Pansy looked at them, frowning.
“Really?”
“Morgana’s tits, yes! None of us thought when we were growing up that we’d end up fighting in a war. None of us imagined that carnage, or the way the wixen world has changed since. I never imagined myself being so conflicted about working in law enforcement. I never thought my dad would be dead before I was thirty. Nobody’s life turns out the way they thought it would, or the way it was supposed to. Nobody I know, anyway. Or,” they added after a reflective pause. “Nobody I know and like.”
Pansy giggled, but her smile faded again.
“I just hate thinking about who I used to be. And I try not to be her any more, because I hate her, but when I get scared… it’s like she’s still inside me, just waiting until I’m frightened enough, and then I lash out and I don’t care who I’m hurting, as long as I’m not the one getting hurt.”
Tonks’s arm tightened around her.
“I’m not going to pretend you couldn’t use a good therapist, Pansy,” they said. “You grew up never feeling safe, and then you were in a war, and you’ve developed a powerful, effective defence mechanism. Just because you’re safe now and there’s no war doesn’t mean your defence mechanism knows that. It’s still trying to protect you, that’s all. It’s something you can work on. It doesn’t make you a bad person.”
Pansy sat up again, slowly this time, so that she could look at Tonks’s face.
“That’s… a thing?” she said.
Tonks grinned at her.
“Of course it is. Wixen don’t have the same history of therapy as Muggles do, but in the last couple of decades it’s been a growing discipline, and since the war it’s gained a lot of traction. There’s plenty of mind healers around now. We can find you one, if you like.”
“What will they do? Poking around in someone’s mind sounds… dangerous.”
Tonks shook their head.
“There’s no poking around. Not physically; no pensieves or legilimency or anything like that, although that does exist as a discipline too. It’s just talking.”
“Talking?” said Pansy, dubiously. “Does that really make much of a difference?”
Tonks shrugged.
“How are you feeling after this conversation?” they asked.
Pansy didn’t even have to think about her answer. “Better,” she said. “A lot better, actually.”
Tonks smiled at her.
“You see? And you didn’t even lash out and hurt me, the way you said you were afraid of. You’ve just talked to me and been honest. I’m really proud of you.”
“I did lash out,” Pansy mumbled. “I shouted at you about not wanting to go to your party.”
Tonks waved an airy hand.
“Yes, well, you’d just read that revolting letter from your mum. Anyone would have been upset.” They looked at Pansy. “I’m not saying it’s okay to just go around shouting at people whenever you feel like it, obviously, but you don’t do that.”
“I didn’t… hurt you?”
“Nope. I’m fine.”
Pansy cogitated for a moment.
“Well, I’m still sorry about yelling,” she said. And then, “You think this therapy… mind healing… can really help me not to… can stop me…” Those were the wrong words. She prodded at her feelings again, trying to find the right ones, and then, there they were. “You think it can help me be the person I want to be?”
“Yeah, I do,” said Tonks. “It’s different for everyone, but if you find someone you can trust and work well with, I think they could help you a lot. It has me. I’ve been going for a few years now.”
“Okay,” said Pansy. “Then maybe… maybe after Christmas we can try and find someone. Would you help me?”
Tonks leaned forward to kiss her.
“Of course I will. And, look, you don’t have to come to Mum’s party. There’s going to be a whole slew of people you knew at Hogwarts there, and I totally understand if you’re not ready for that. We’ll stay at home and watch slushy Christmas movies in our pyjamas all night instead. It’ll be brilliant.” They grinned, but Pansy shook her head.
“No, I… I think we should go. I’ve been hiding for six years. That’s long enough.”
“Are you sure? A party’s not the gentlest of ways to meet them all again. We could arrange something quieter in the new year. Start by having Draco over for tea and go from there.”
“Or I could look at it as getting it all over in one go,” said Pansy, smiling wryly. “If they all hate me, at least I’ll know. And this party’s really important to you. It’s your family’s thing, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, but missing it one year won’t really matter. The two of us could start our own tradition.”
“I’d like that, but we should go to the party as well. And I know you’ve been wanting me to meet your mum. And hey, if they don’t all hate me, maybe it’ll even be fun. I used to love a party.”
“They won’t hate you,” said Tonks. “I know you can’t believe me, yet, but you’ll see.”
Pansy smiled faintly, leaning against them again.
“I hope you’re right,” she said.
“I absolutely am,” said Tonks, breezily. They dropped another kiss on the top of Pansy’s head. “I meant it when I said I’m proud of you, Pans. I know you find talking about your feelings hard, and I really appreciate you being honest with me. You’ve done such a good job today.”
Pansy felt the tears well up in her eyes again.
“I thought I’d fucked everything up,” she admitted. “I thought you were going to find out what I was really like and leave me.”
“As if,” said Tonks. “I know what you’re like and I love you.”
Pansy smiled through her tears, curling closer in to Tonks as they held her.
“I love you, too,” she said.