The Love Of A Good Wizard

All's not Fair in Love and War

"Minnie, you wouldn't mind if I had a talk to Harry alone, would you?" Pansy asked, squeezing Minerva's hand surreptitiously.

Minerva smiled. "Of course not." She stood and walked towards the door of the Room of Requirement, but turned at the last moment and said to Harry, "I've known Tom a long time, Harry. I know he can be difficult, and he doesn't make friends easily, and there might even be some who are scared of him." She ignored Harry's slightly desperate snort of disbelief. "But I know one thing - he's opened up to you like a flower to the sun. I know what you're thinking - if he's a flower, he's a right thorny rose. You're right, but he's quite mad about you, and I've never known him to change the way he feels about people."

With that, she left a smiling Pansy and a gawking Harry behind, softly closing the door behind her.

"Some who are scared of him?" were Harry's first words to Pansy. And following right after, "I can't believe what you got me into!"

She sighed. "Be fair, Harry. How was I to know Tom Riddle fancied boys?"

He looked at her suspiciously. "Are you sure you didn't know? Because I'm wondering now if that's why I'm here."

She gaped at him. "Oh, for--" She rose and crossed the room, looking annoyed. But by the time she stood in front of him, fully realising how worried and betrayed he looked, she sighed and knelt down. "I asked you to come with me because you have a connection with him that's unique, and I thought it might come in handy."

Harry laughed humourlessly. "Unique is right."

"Also, you're a powerful wizard." She looked up at him, smirking. "But if I had pondered, somewhere in the back of my mind, that there was the off-chance I might be the wrong gender altogether, then okay, I might have considered you a backup plan."

Harry glared at her. "I knew it!"

She shrugged. "I thought we both went into this willing to do whatever it took?"

"I'm not gay." Harry's eyes drifted to the door and back to Pansy. "And while I'm picking up on things at last - excuse me for pointing out that you might not be all that straight."

Pansy snickered. "Let's just say I'm not gender-prejudiced." She grew serious. "And excuse me for having my doubts about your straightness."

Harry's jaw dropped. "I've never fancied a boy before!"

"Before Tom, you mean," Pansy said softly, smiling when Harry blushed and deciding not to remind him that he had seemed more than awed at Cedric Diggory. "You can keep telling yourself that you don't melt a little bit every time he so much as looks at you, but you're still a Gryffindor at heart, Harry. And I don't think you're going to lie to yourself forever - it smacks of cowardice."

Harry sucked in a breath and his eyes were hard with anger. "Don't you dare call me a coward for not wanting to fancy the man who killed my parents!"

Pansy's hands suddenly covered Harry's on his knees, and she squeezed them. "I'm not. But Harry - I'm going to be completely blunt now. Your parents do not exist yet. Don't look at me like that - they don't! They're not even a twinkle in anyone's eye yet. And you know as well as I do that we're here to prevent them ever getting hurt once they do exist."

Harry opened his mouth to contest Pansy's words, but he couldn't. "That doesn't mean I don't remember what he did to them. And other people I love."

"Might do, not did," Pansy corrected. "I know you can't stop remembering these things, but you have to stop thinking of them as having happened already, because they haven't. And you have to stop thinking of them as inevitable." She sighed. "Can you see this Tom - the one who fell for you for all to see the moment he laid eyes on you, the one who looks at you as if you're all his birthdays wrapped up in one package - can you see him killing your parents? Doing anything that would hurt you that much?"