A/N: This is my entry for the Twin Exchange June Summer Lovin' Challenge. I probably shot myself in the foot by listing Pansy/Harry as my pairing (for the life of me, I cannot remember what I was thinking when I wrote that down, but I apparently had a plan), but here we are! Voting for the challenge opens up towards the end of June, so head over to the Twin Exchange and read all the entries (and enter next month's challenge as well! They're fun :D )

Prompt: Sunflowers

Quote: "We're not alone."

Theme: Birthday party

Field of Irony

"Every friend is to the other a sun, and a sunflower also. He attracts and follows." Jean Paul Richter

Harry had never been much of an afternoon drinker. In fact, if Harry Potter really stopped to look at himself, there were a lot of things that he wasn't much of. For instance, he wasn't much of a gift-wrapper, hence the Daily-Prophet-and-Muggle-duct-tape-clad birthday present he had shoved into Draco Malfoy's unenthusiastic hands upon entering Malfoy Manor an hour or so ago. Other things Harry did not excel at included refusing invites to Malfoy birthday parties, making small-talk with Percy Weasley in the Malfoy ballroom, not accidentally kicking house-elves in the face when they attempted to refill his wine goblet, and finding a lavatory in Malfoy Manor without asking for help.

As it was, he did not much feel like asking any of the other Malfoy-birthday-goers where a bathroom was, and even if he did, the nearest person to him at the moment was Theodore Nott who, quite frankly, gave Harry the willies. As if tuning in to Harry's thoughts, Nott turned his dark eyes toward the Boy-Who-Lived and glared at him with a deadpan expression that did nothing to ease Harry's discomfort. Taking that as his cue, Harry quickly stood up from his seat near the overly-elaborate marble fireplace and made his way through the throng of partiers out onto the balcony.

It was mercifully empty, with the exception of a solid-gold champagne fountain that even at a millionaire's birthday extravaganza seemed a bit much. From inside the ballroom, Harry could hear the sounds of overly-enthusiastic waltz music and Malfoy's voice which stood out in a very definite way above the rest of the crowd.

"If Father were here, he would have an aneurysm of some sort, I'm sure. I don't think there's a single person here he would approve of."

"That's the beauty of having your father in Azkaban, Draco. It doesn't matter a niffler's arse what he'd approve of- Sorry for your husband's misfortune, Narcissa," the smooth voice of Blaise Zabini added as an afterthought. Harry almost grinned. Blaise was likeable in a dirty womanizer sort of way.

Narcissa's low, aloof voice was barely audible above the background music. "You are forgetting the one person your father could never disapprove of, Draco, dear."

Harry frowned, taking a step closer to the ballroom again in order to get a good look at whoever Narcissa was referring to. Who on earth would Lucius Malfoy have started a fan club for? Unless the Dark Lord was standing there sipping red wine from a golden goblet, which, after a few glasses of wine himself, seemed entirely plausible to Harry…

He squinted through the glass, seeking out the huddle of Malfoy, his mother, Zabini, and a pretty brunette girl who Harry had never seen before in his entire life. Whoever she was, the way the other three were looking at her clearly said that Lucius would have approved. Harry was surprised to see Draco's arm wrapped around the girl's waist, as he had been entirely sure that Pug-face Parkinson had dibs on the Malfoy fortune.

It was then that something Harry had most assuredly not wanted to see entered his line of vision. A couple waltzed by the glass doors, pressed close together and laughing vivaciously. The girl had fiery hair and a beautiful constellation of freckles across her cheeks and the man- well, Harry didn't have much attention to spare for him. Tearing his eyes away from the awful display of affection (in public no less…the nerve), Harry paced to the opposite end of the balcony where a grand staircase led down to the immaculately kept grounds below. Without a second thought, he raced down the stairs and headed towards the high hedges that fenced in the rest of the lawn of the Malfoy Manor.

After unsuccessfully trying to contain himself to a moderately respectable brisk walk and failing, he broke into a full-blown sprint towards the hedges. He was tipsy, he had to piss, and he'd just seen his ex-girlfriend twirling about with another man. Respectability be damned, he wanted to run.

So he did.

The sting in his chest was physically painful, and the muggy June afternoon did nothing to soothe his frayed nerves. Sweat built up on his face and back, and he stripped off his black formal jacket, dropping it to the grass and leaving it. As he ran, he ripped the sleeves of his white button-up up past his elbows and then tore his glasses from his face and gripped them tightly in his hand as he pushed himself to run farther. He felt the lenses crack and gritted his teeth in frustration.

He ran and ran, past a gap in the hedgerows and into a deserted lane- and then he froze, stumbling over himself and landing in a heap on the dirt walkway.

Everything was yellow.

Confused, irritated, and sweaty, Harry pulled his wand out of the back pocket of his black dress pants (somewhere, Moody rolled over in his grave) and pointed them at his glasses.

"Reparo." The cracks in the lenses sealed up nicely and Harry quickly pushed the glasses up his nose, blinking to clear the blurry edges away.

Everything really was yellow, because stretched out before him in every direction, as far as the eye could see, were fields and fields of sunflowers. Harry momentarily forgot his jealousy, his intense bladder discomfort, and the bead of sweat rolling steadily towards the seam of his backside. He had never, ever seen anything like it. And there- not ten rows of flowers away- was movement. Harry could just make out the top of someone's head bobbing among the golden petals, and he held his wand a bit more tightly in hand as he crept forward to see who it was.

He hadn't realized how tall the massive flowers were until he stepped into their midst, but he regretted his mistake now. He could no longer see anything except green stalks as thick as his wrists and the monstrously large sunshine-yellow heads of the flowers. Harry gave up his sneak-attack method in favor of something a bit more ordinary.

"Hello? Anyone there?" he yelled, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet in an unsuccessful attempt to see better.

Where there had been rustling before- somewhere off to his right- there was now silence, and then a low stream of swears.

"Potter?"

"Depends on who's asking," he said immediately, and then kicked himself for the childish retort.

The voice- it was a girl, though he couldn't quite place it- groaned. "Only you, Wonder Boy, would say something that idiotic with that stick-up-your-ass tone of voice."

Harry frowned, frustrated that he couldn't figure out who it was. The voice was familiar in an unpleasant sort of way. It was as if he'd only just been thinking about whoever it was a few moments ago… and now he couldn't put his finger on it.

"Sorry," he said dully, carefully weaving through the thick stalk in the direction of the voice. "I've had a few glasses of wine, I'm afraid."

The girl snorted, and Harry could tell that she was walking towards him as well.

"Keep talking, Potter, or I'll never find you," the woman commanded.

That sounded like a good enough idea. "Alright, then. I still don't know who you are, by the way. Any hints?"

Harry waited for her to answer, but she seemed to decide against it. Sort of.

"I'll give you three guesses."

"Er…" Harry racked his brain for an answer, but nothing came so he threw out the first name that came to mind. "Millicent Bullstrode?"

"Ouch, Potter. That hurt a bit."

"Was I at least close?" asked Harry, slightly amused.

There was an unhappy grumble followed by, "Yeah, sort of."

"Okay, then my next guess is… Bloody hell, who's sort of like Millicent Bullstrode? You aren't a man, are you?"

Harry grinned as the woman snorted back a laugh.

"That's it then: you're a bloke. Must be. I'm going to guess that you're…hmmm… Marcus Flint?"

"Minus the unibrow and package, maybe."

"Fine, I still have no idea. One last ditch effort?"

"Go for it," the woman encouraged, and Harry could tell that she was close- standing just far enough away so that he couldn't see her.

"You're Madam Hooch, aren't you?"

"Granger always was the brains of the operation," Pansy Parkinson said, sounding a bit disappointed as she stepped out from between the nearest clump of sunflowers.

Harry felt as if the wind had been knocked out of him. He'd just had a half-way decent conversation with Pansy Parkinson, and she'd known who he was! Harry thought for the thousandth time in his life that things really had changed since the war.

"Er…hi, Parkinson," Harry fumbled for words, awkwardly thrusting his hand forward for a handshake and then realizing that a handshake made no sense whatsoever in the current situation. Pansy eyed his outstretched hand as if she were thinking along the same lines.

"No need to go all shy now, Wonder Boy. Now answer me this- what are you doing out here?" Pansy demanded, hands on her hips and her snub-nose thrust in the air. Harry almost laughed- it was such a familiar sight, Pansy Parkinson flaunting her holier-than-thou attitude and acting like she owned every square centimeter of land her feet touched.

Harry decided to answer her, because he couldn't quite dig up a reason not to.

"Had to piss and then I saw my ex with someone and then I was drunk so then I left."

Pansy raised a dark eyebrow at him, her pink-painted lips quirking in amusement. "Do you always talk in run-ons, or is it just when you're tipsy?"

Harry shrugged half-heartedly. "Think it's just when I have to piss, actually."

Harry almost tricked himself into thinking Pansy looked as if she wanted to laugh at that- but that was impossible, so he pushed the thought aside. It was quiet for a moment, except for the sound of the warm breeze causing the sunflowers to brush against each other in a gentle whisper.

"You can't piss here," Pansy said finally, eyeballing Harry as if she expected him to whip it out any moment and get to work.

"I wasn't going to, but just for curiosity's sake, why not?"

"Because I said so. Go piss on the hedge."

"I don't know which way is out."

"You're bloody useless."

Harry snorted, then stumbled sideways when a wave of dizziness hit him. He heard the distinct snapping of the stalks of several sunflowers, and he felt Pansy get pissed off.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry," he muttered, struggling to his feet. A hand gripped his arm hard and started pulling him. He blinked to clear his blurred vision and found himself staring down at the back of Pansy's head, her pig-tailed black hair bouncing in an odd-but-cute way as she wound through the rows of flowers.

Within minutes, they were free of the flowers and standing next to the sky-high hedges that bordered the grounds of Malfoy Manor. Harry made to head up the path that led back to the Manor, but paused when he saw Pansy staying put.

"Aren't you going back up to the party? Malfoy'd want you of all people to be there, wouldn't he?"

The instant the words left his mouth, Harry wondered when he'd gotten flexible enough to shove both feet so far down his throat. The reason Pansy had popped into his head earlier now returned full-force and he groaned, dropping his face into his hands as he pictured Malfoy with his arm around that other girl.

"God, I'm a prick sometimes," Harry spoke into his palms. When he looked up, he was surprised to see that Pansy looked entirely calm. If she'd glared or even flinched at his idiotic assumption, her face was now a perfect mask of disdain so he'd never know.

"I've called you worse."

It went quiet again, and Harry wondered absently why he hadn't gone back to the Manor, or, better yet, gone home by now. One more question couldn't hurt.

"Who is she anyway? I saw them…before I saw Ginny, but I didn't know who it was."

Pansy looked away from him, out over the endless sunflower fields. Harry was uncomfortably aware of how hot it was and how much sweat was pooled at the base of his spine. Gross.

"Her name is Astoria. Her sister Daphne was in our year," she said finally, her voice detached and even.

"Greengrass?"

"Yes. They're a relatively unknown family. Only six generations of wizards," Pansy explained, the information falling out in an unsettling, robotic way.

Only six, Harry internally snorted. Only a witch who'd had her eyes set on Malfoy would consider six generations of wizards a small number.

"Don't look at me like that," she snapped suddenly, drawing Harry out of his reverie. He blinked groggily, green eyes puzzled.

"Like what?"

"Like I'm some sort of bigot just because I've had that information pounded into me since birth. The Parkinsons aren't the richest pureblood family, but we're proud, Potter. The men and women in my family may have had their ideals mixed up, but they sacrificed a lot to uphold those beliefs. And we're not alone. All real pureblood families were like that. You and your gilded trio and your light side- none of you know what it's like to grow up with the weight of four centuries of bloodlines on your shoulders," she hissed, reminding Harry of being back at school and having a nasty run-in with her in the hallway.

"I didn't mean… Sorry. Again," he conceded, shifting his weight awkwardly before leaning back against the hedges. "So…Malfoy and Astoria Greengrass?"

"Yes," Pansy answered tersely, her jaw set in a hard line.

Harry gave a stab at commiseration. "Must be hard to be around them."

"No, Wonder Boy. I love seeing them together, which is why I was walking around in a massive sunflower field two miles from the Manor instead of sipping champagne in the comfort of the charm-cooled ballroom," Pansy answered dryly. Harry noticed that one of her pigtails had come undone, and then he noticed that her dress was nice- bright yellow, just like the sunflowers behind her. He'd gotten used to thinking of her as an enemy- thinking of her how Hermione thought of her. Ugly, bitchy, stupid. Bitchy was certain, but he was beginning to waver on the other two points.

Deciding to give up on the Astoria subject for the moment, Harry asked another question that had been bothering him.

"Why are all of these here anyway?" he asked, nodding his head to indicate the sunflower army. Pansy's mouth twitched, and she crossed her arms over her chest in a way that made Harry feel as if he'd said something wrong. Damn, that had seemed like an okay question.

"They were a gift- when I came of age, he did this for me," Pansy said stiffly, her voice as hard as the set of her jaw.

Harry couldn't stop himself from snorting. "Draco? Draco Malfoy did this?"

He shrank back as Pansy turned her dark eyes on him, their force absolutely scorching in her anger. Some part in the back of Harry's mind wondered if she could set the hedges behind him on fire with that look.

"I only meant that- that I never really thought of him as the sentimental gift-giving sort, you know? I mean, I can see him handing you a diamond necklace or a solid gold house elf or something, but a field a flowers?" Harry shook his head slightly, grimacing when his sweat-soaked hair flopped onto his forehead.

Pansy reached up a hand, and for a moment Harry was entirely sure she was going to slap him. Instead, she pulled the rubber band off of her remaining pigtail and started running her fingers through the braid, carefully separating the ink-black strands.

"Don't pretend you ever knew him well," Pansy said quietly, staring directly into Harry's eyes. He cleared his throat quietly, trying to dislodge the unsettling suspicion that Pansy was secretly a highly accomplished Legilimens of some sort. "What you saw of Draco- hell, what you looked for was always him at his worst, at the lowest points of his life. You never got to see him when he wasn't- when he wasn't trying so bloody hard to be what everyone expected him to be."

Harry blinked at her, not quite willing to think about what she was saying. If he really took the time to ponder her words, there was a chance he'd have to actually forgive Draco Malfoy for being an unbelievable prat back at school and during the war. That was asking a lot of him, really, and he was, once again, hot, tipsy, and sweaty. It was just so bloody hot.

"Why a field of flowers near his home, though? Why not put them near your mansion or whatever?" he asked, trying to steer away from the subject of Draco Malfoy, the misunderstood victim of peer pressure.

Pansy shook her head immediately, running her hands over the billowing skirt of her dress to keep the lazy breeze from wrinkling it too badly. "I don't think he'd want me to say."

Harry snorted, raising his eyebrows at her. "He's in there with Greengrass and you're still protecting him. Do you really owe him anything?"

Pansy's eyes narrowed the tiniest bit and she pursed her lips. "It's not about owing him anything. The Weaslette in there- if I asked you something personal about her, something she wouldn't want me to know, would you tell me?"

"Er…" Harry hadn't quite expected that particular backfire. "Well, no, I suppose."

"And that has nothing to do with owing her anything," Pansy said simply, not even bothering to make it a question.

"Well, I suppose not," Harry allowed, wondering where she was going with this. Even if she'd never been the top of the class at school, she could sure as hell talk circles around Harry.

"It's about love, Potter," she said quietly, turning her face to the side for what felt like the hundredth time to look out over the endless sea of sunflowers. Harry couldn't help thinking that, pug-face or not, she looked pretty then with the breeze blowing her dark hair out behind her and the sun on her face. "There are all sorts of love, and just because he and I never felt the same sort at the same time doesn't make it meaningless. I doubt he'd want me to say anything, so I won't tell you why he decided to plant a field of flowers near his home for me."

"Fair enough." Harry wondered what sorts of love the two of them felt at what times, and then had to stifle his gag reflex at the thought of Malfoy in love.

"I'll tell you why he chose sunflowers though, if you'd like."

Harry thought that sounded like a good trade for not understanding why they were planted where they were, so he listened expectantly. Instead of launching into her explanation, Pansy asked him a question.

"What do you know about sunflowers?"

Harry was beginning to feel like Hermione Granger had inhabited Pansy's body. No one had ever made him feel quite this slow with just one relaxed conversation.

"They're…big. And yellow," he said lamely.

Pansy looked at him as if he were a drooling idiot (to his credit, he did run a hand over his mouth then, just to make sure he was in fact not drooling). "Do you know why they call them sunflowers?"

"Because they…are big and yellow," Harry supplied, grinning sheepishly now.

Pansy didn't even bother to look at him this time, but he thought he saw a muscle in her cheek twitch as if she were trying not to smile.

"Not quite, Wonder Boy. It's because they follow the sun. When sunflowers are relatively young, they turn there faces towards the sun as it travels across the sky. They watch it, worship it, adore it."

Harry wondered if she was pulling his leg. He'd been in the magical world long enough to know that some plants could, indeed, move, but sunflowers were Muggle plants. Muggle plants did not move.

"Right," Harry deadpanned, and Pansy smirked.

"If you don't believe me, go ask Granger."

Harry didn't much feel like apparating away to Ron and Hermione's home to ask about the mobility of sunflowers, so he decided to take Pansy's word for it.

"Well, fine, let's say that happens. I still don't get the sunflower thing."

"You're sort of dense for being the savior of mankind."

"I get that a lot."

Pansy did grin this time. "He picked sunflowers because that's how we were back in school, if you remember. He was like the sun for me, and I'd have followed him anywhere and admired him no matter what he did."

Harry tried to surreptitiously peel his damp shirt away from his skin, hoping to catch some of the breeze with the fabric. He really wasn't at all sure what he was supposed to say. A lot of "following" and "admiring" Draco Malfoy back at school sort of involved hating Harry and his friends, so they were at a bit of an awkward impasse.

"It's sort of strange though, that back then we never thought this far ahead."

"What do you mean?" Harry asked, genuinely curious.

Harry squinted his eyes to make sure that- yes, Pansy Parkinson really did look sad now.

"Sunflowers only follow the sun while they're in the early stages of development. Once they're mature, the flowers will always face the east no matter where the sun is in the sky." Even Harry caught on to what she was saying. "This is really a field full of irony. He planted it as a long-lasting gesture of friendship, but it was a bit of a bad omen."

Harry closed his eyes, but the field before him was so vibrant that he felt he could still see it through his eyelids.

"So I suppose you're facing east now?" he asked after a while.

Pansy laughed then, a single half-choked sob. "Maybe you're not so dense after all, Potter."

Harry felt warm in a way that was much nicer than the June afternoon heat-wave. "I wouldn't get my hopes up about that just yet." He opened his eyes to find Pansy contemplating him very seriously and smiling. He wondered when he was going to wake up.

"We can't stay out here forever, you know," Pansy said, sounding as if it was physically painful to spit the words out.

"Technically, you can. This is your field," Harry pointed out.

Pansy started braiding her hair again into one single plait over her left shoulder. "I mean we have to go in and wish him a happy birthday."

Harry cringed, picturing Ginny waltzing around the gold-plated ballroom in her most beautiful dress with someone else in her arms. Pansy seemed to understand, and after all, Harry thought, if anyone could it would be her.

"How about this, Potter? We'll continue our little truce long enough to go up to the Manor, walk into that ballroom, give Malfoy a happy birthday nod, and then leave and not come back until next year's birthday celebration. If, at that time, we are still in the same uncomfortable predicament, we will meet in this sunflower field again and wait out the end of that birthday as well."

Harry grinned at her in spite of himself. It didn't really sound that bad.

"Deal."

"One more thing, Potter."

"Yeah?" he asked, following close beside her as they made their way up the path to the Manor.

"Don't ever tell anyone about this- the field, the flowers, our conversation. None of it." He snorted, but she glared at him over her shoulder, serious.

"Why not?" Harry demanded, though he hadn't really intended to tell anyone anyway. Who would believe him?

"Because I said so."

A/N: So there that was! Hope you were able to sit through it XD