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Chapter Text

July 1991

Pansy shouldn’t have dirt under her fingernails.

She’s only ten, but this is rule number one—not because of its preeminence over all the others (and gods, are there others) but because it’s the rule she breaks most often. 

Her parents have left her with a governess stupid enough to keep eating the lavender and valerian-infused biscuits that Theo supplied Pansy with and—just like Nott Sr.—the woman will be passed out cold ’til morning.

Her blunt-cut bob tickles her jaw as she leans over at the waist, resisting the temptation to muddy her white wool tights by kneeling as she delicately brushes the white petals of her diphylleia grayi. Just as Narcissa had described, the tiny green bud at the center of the petals is nestled in by six yellow stamens and each flower comes in a bunch of five or six, sprouting from a singular stem like the world’s most gradual firework.

The greenhouse is making the collar under her jumper cling to her neck as she reaches for the spray bottle, irritation streaking like lightning across her chest at the inefficiency that plagues her every move. In two months, she’ll be eleven. And, with any luck at all, she’ll have a wand in her hand soon after.

Until then, she’s stuck living like a bleeding squib. 

She rests her dirt-smudged finger on the trigger of the spray bottle and her ire drains; the ground soaking it up the way it always does. Pansy stills her chest, aims for the white petals, and pulls.

Her pink lips part in awe as the petals sprawl out, a perfumed stretch and yawn. They turn translucent as the droplets of water dissolve into them and for a moment she wonders if she accidentally did this in a burst of magic, but no. 

This is a skeleton flower. 

The tiny white veins embedded in the petals look like bones made to shatter, but when she pinches one in half between her thumb and forefinger, it bends with ease. 

Small-boned.

Distressingly transparent.

Something foreign wells up in Pansy’s throat so she plucks the petal and holds the impossible object to her chest.

Has there ever been a flimsier mirror?

Curling her fingers around it, she crushes it in her palm.

October 1991

Pansy sits perched atop the armrest of Draco’s chair in the Slytherin dungeon, eyes trained on the black and white chessboard even though her tailbone is smarting and the straps of her training bra dig into her shoulders. 

“Father said it runs in the family, Potions. Reckons I’ll end up teaching Snape a thing or two before I leave this godforsaken place.”

His smirk is a funny-looking thing to Pansy—a pointy-toothed pygmy puff—but she’s sharp enough to keep that to herself. Narcissa hardly allowed Draco to play with anybody but her and Theo Nott growing up, so she’s the only one in present company who can tell what lies beneath the posturing.

Draco’s excited.

Somehow managing to dwarf the deep purple armchair he sits in across from Draco, Marcus Flint’s dark brown eyes glint with something feral in the firelight. 

“Queen to e5.” His queen glides diagonally three spaces to the right, gracefully removing the chair from beneath her and bringing it down upon the head of Draco’s rook with a palpable air of satisfaction. It shatters, debris littering the board. “You’d be hard-pressed to fail Potions. Snape don’t bother pretending he doesn’t love the snakes.”

A flush begins to creep up Draco’s pale neck. 

And, because Pansy can sense Draco’s impending recklessness like a niffler can sniff out coin, she clears her throat.

“Herbology strikes me as a sophisticated subject,” she interjects, chest swelling. “I expect I’ll end up taking the N.E.W.T. for it, come Seventh Year.”

Draco scoffs. 

“If a fat lump like Longbottom can be considered a genius on the subject, you might as well take a N.E.W.T. for the mating behaviors of trolls.”

She takes it for the rebuke that it is, delivered with a drollness that stings like a slap across the cheek. But she doesn’t understand.

“Isn’t Longbottom pure-blood?” 

Draco’s steel grey eyes widen fractionally in warning, but Marcus beats him to it. 

“What, you fancy him?” he says, relishing in Pansy’s obvious discomfort. “You like blood traitors with all the magical talent of a squib?”

Slytherin is paired with Gryffindor for Herbology this year, and Pansy has been to a grand total of four lessons so far. Professor Sprout taught them how to harvest alihotsy without bursting into uncontrollable laughter, and Pansy found herself impressed with Neville’s careful control of his clumsy fingers. He was one of the few who didn’t sound like a hyena by the end of the period.

“Of course not,” she says hotly, eyes riveted on the chessboard. Leaning down, she whispers loudly enough to Draco that it carries. “Knight to g7. Check.”

Then she stands, ignoring the way Draco’s back stiffens and Marcus’s eyes follow her as she moves to sprawl across the velvet black couch closer to the fire.

She is the picture of repose even though her heart beats out a rhythm that bruises her chest from the inside.

The boys finish up their game—quickly, thanks to Pansy—and Marcus grunts something about waxing his broom when he disappears, leaving the two of them alone.

“You reveal your hand too quickly.”

She doesn’t want to hear it.

“He’s four years older than us; shouldn’t he be better at that game by now?”

Draco’s nostrils flare and for a moment, he’s Lucius. She hates it.

“You understand that everything is political here, right?” She doesn’t respond. “Every conversation, every game of chess. Why do you think I was letting him win?”

Pansy pulls her knees to her chest and hugs them. She deserves Draco’s ire for ruining his careful manipulation of the Slytherin Quidditch captain, a connection he’s invested in fostering. 

Even so, she’s a nerve exposed to the air, on edge and ready to lash out.

“Longbottom’s competency in the subject shouldn’t mean he gets to own it,” she says petulantly. “I know loads more than him.”

Draco waves his wand and watches with a frown as the chess pieces flit to their original places, shattered fragments melding back together.

“Doesn’t matter. You put yourself in a position to be his competition if you take Herbology seriously, and the only thing that accomplishes is making you look pathetic.”

Pansy bites the inside of her cheek to keep the vitriol brewing through her veins from spewing out onto her friend.

“He didn’t grow up with any of the traditions that we did,” Draco says, brow finally relaxing. At this moment, detached and contemplative, he looks like his mother. “Doesn’t have anybody expecting anything of him.”

Forcing her fists to unclench, she brings her hands up to hold her chin, thumbs brushing the soft skin under her jaw in an attempt to soothe herself. Whether in reality or memory only, her palms are fragrant like flowers.

One month into her first year at Hogwarts and already the most important thing to her has been taken away. 

It’s not a feeling she’s used to.

A tear drips down her cheek but she makes no move to wipe it—doing so would only alert Draco that she still hasn’t gotten a handle on her emotions. She’s surprised that he hasn’t stood up and left yet.

“You stick with me, Pans.” 

It’s a promise, she knows; his voice firm like he’s trying to coax her onto a broom. Trying to get her to pretend she’s not afraid for just one bloody minute.

“We won’t have to play dumb for long.”

February 1992

Pomona Sprout is the stupidest kind of soft.

She holds cacti and actual flesh-eating plants like a fussy toddler on her hip, bouncing through rows of greenery with a lilting hum. Her face is round with perpetually pink cheeks. Her pockets are deep and always filled with spare mint leaves to tuck into her cheek when the last one loses its savor. Her patience is endless.

She is sharp in all the ways that Pansy’s mother isn’t.

When Pansy grows frustrated with how slowly every other student seems to move in propagating dittany, forcing her hands to move at half-speed to keep from attracting attention, Professor Sprout gives her a wink.

When she “accidentally” snips a bouncing bulb free and nudges it in Longbottom’s direction, Sprout hits the purple growth with a knockback jinx immediately and passes her by with the faintest of tuts.

Class is over on a Wednesday when Pansy takes extra time packing up her belongings, telling Daph and Millie that she’ll catch up with them at dinner. Pomona doesn’t look at her as she waves her wand, floating the mess of soiled gloves into a basin of fresh water.

She pretends she doesn’t see Pansy disappear behind a row of bubotubers as she sinks to the ground, hands covering her face.

Because Pansy has made a severe miscalculation.

She’d spent lazy afternoons at Malfoy Manor with Draco and Theo, imagining what it might be like to finally make it to Hogwarts. Which part of the Slytherin table would they command? Which classes might they despise? Would it be possible to sneak out of bed and have a sleepover in the common room?

The warmth of those memories has grown cold. 

Because not only does Theo keep to himself these days and Draco’s gone and made friends with two of the dimmest oafs she’s had the misfortune of laying eyes on, but she’s stumbled upon the terrible realization that she can’t show her genuine interest in the singular thing she’s good at.

And now she’s failing at everything.

It’s bloody Longbottom’s fault, the blithering idiot.

“A wise choice of location for a bit of blubbering.”

Pansy squeezes her eyes shut at Professor Sprout’s voice. She’s spent weeks mocking this woman’s enthusiasm knowing full well that her hijinks haven’t gone unnoticed, but there’s no meanness in her tone.

“I’d like to be alone,” she grits out, face heating beneath her hands. 

Pomona laughs. It’s a cheery thing.

“Well, now you’ve gone and chosen the wrong place for that, haven’t you? On your feet, my dear. I need an extra wand to move these wiggentrees.”

Dazed at the total disregard of her request, Pansy wipes her cheeks with her wrist and stands.

The trees in question can’t be taller than half a meter, but the pots they sit in are twice as large. 

Despair crumples Pansy’s face once again.

“I’m rubbish at charms,” she says, hating that it comes out as a whine. “Couldn’t keep my sodding feather floating for longer than five seconds.”

Professor Sprout gives her arm a squeeze and winks.

“Then I suggest you lift with your legs.”

October 1993

He doesn’t stumble when nobody’s looking.

Aside from Pansy, of course, but she takes such care not to be noticed that by Third Year she accidentally invents a charm that provides the illusion that her eyes are looking down at her hands when they’re fixated on the stocky blonde boy with a smudge of soil across his forehead.

Still.

His hands are large and generally prone to disaster, but she watches his thick fingers untangle the tendrils of the gurdyroot he’s holding so gently it sends a shiver down her spine.

“Merlin, it looks like Longbottom is diddling himself below the table the way he’s staring at that gurdyroot,” Draco says, smug when the table erupts into laughter. He is much different when he’s tutoring her one-on-one or lounging about the dungeon, but then again, so is she. They both understand the practicality of being able to shed their skin when they need to.

Neville promptly drops the plant, round cheeks hot as he whimpers with shame from the mess at his feet. 

Vicious satisfaction pulses through Pansy to see all of his beautiful progress ruined—she’s been struggling to keep up with him over the past hour and is now the farthest along.

“To completion, it would seem,” she adds, mid-laugh when Pomona’s hazel eyes meet hers in disapproval. 

She stares back, refusing to be cowed in front of her friends.

“That’s quite enough,” Professor Sprout says gruffly, waving Pansy over. “Parkinson, you’ll stay after to assist Longbottom in finishing his repotting.”

Draco automatically flinches away from her, assuming that Pansy’s first reaction will be to elbow him at the unfairness of it all. 

She doesn’t.

Instead, she lets herself move as quickly as she’s been wanting to the whole time and finishes first, patting fresh soil around the newly potted plant.

Her friends murmur goodbyes and sarcastic wishes of good fortune as they filter out and head back to the castle. Professor Sprout begins her routine of levitating the tools and dropping them into the basin to wash, and Neville is already carefully piecing the gurdyroot back together.

She drops to her knees on the cobblestone, a belated stab of guilt lodging itself in her conscience like a particularly sharp crisp jabbing into the gum of her teeth.

“It wouldn’t be half as funny if you laughed too, you know.”

It comes out morosely, as does most everything she says these days. 

When she looks up, Neville is staring at her, lips pressed into a thin line as if he’s concentrating on a living, breathing Arithmancy problem. Pansy follows the curve of his long eyelashes with something like reluctance, appalled to realize that his light brown eyes remind her of earth dappled in sunlight.

Her thoughts must be written across her face because he smiles; a tentative, lopsided thing punctuated by a dimple in his left cheek.

“I guess so,” he says, cradling the gurdyroot to his chest as he stands back up. 

Pansy clenches her jaw and steadfastly pretends she can’t see Pomona smiling over Neville’s shoulder.

July 1994

The dress Narcissa gifts her is powder blue. Silk chiffon. It’s soft and supple, a direct contrast to the gooseflesh on her arms as she runs her fingers from elbow to wrist.

“See? No portkey to Paris necessary, Violet. It’s a perfect fit,” Narcissa says, the corners of her lips pulling up in a subtle smile. She sits straight-backed in the tufted velvet chaise next to Pansy’s mother, whose careful expression of boredom brims with irritation. Violet has toiled away the summer in England, itching to return to their family château in Paris under the guise of finding Pansy a proper gown for the Yule Ball. 

“It’s stunning,” Pansy agrees, exhilarated as she rubs the skin on her arms a bit more vigorously. Malfoy Manor runs notoriously chilly even though it’s the dead of the summer and it drags a concern to the surface. “But won’t I grow cold? I won’t be wearing it until end of December.”

Violet purses her lips in deep thought, but Narcissa stands and makes to brush the nonexistent dust from Pansy’s shoulder when a cascade of warmth suffuses all the way to the tips of her fingers. Narcissa’s gentle correction brings the flashing sting of embarrassment along with it.

“You’ve arrived at the point in every witch’s life when a warming charm becomes as easy as breathing. One should never have to sacrifice their figure to be swallowed up in the monstrosity of a cloak.”

Pansy’s warming charms only last fifteen minutes at most, regardless of Draco’s dedication as her tutor. This dress doesn’t have a wand pocket, either, so she’ll have to teach herself wandless magic to boot.

A practically unheard-of skill among Fourth-Years.

This is what Draco’s been griping about since they stepped foot in that castle, isn’t it? Narcissa has more common sense in her left pinky than almost every other good-for-nothing professor in that damned school. Why hadn’t she thought about practicing before? What else is she dreadfully behind on? 

Pansy will learn to cast wandless magic. She has to.

Lifting her eyes to the mirror, they meet Violet's. For one dizzying moment, it’s like seeing double. Same thick black hair, same upturned brown eyes. Even their frowns match. While Violet’s face is usually a portrait of polite boredom, right now her lips are pressed together, jaw set. She is angry. A second later, the pinched lines of her face vanish like she’s shoved them back into fathomless depths and waits to speak until the surface of the water is still once more.

“You’re right about cloaks, Cissa, but perhaps we can find a fur coat. Charms can be a bother and the Parkinson women have blood that runs colder than most.”

Narcissa concedes the point and sends the elf Belfry to gather her collection so that Pansy might be lucky enough to find everything she needs without leaving Wiltshire, and all the while Pansy herself only just manages to keep from grinning. 

Cold-blooded. Has there ever been a lovelier excuse for hands that shake and never seem to hold their heat? If there is, she hasn’t heard it. 

Belfry returns with a pop! and the creaking of two racks heavy with resplendent fur coats. 

Pansy slips her arms into one with long tawny fur that Violet holds for her, nearly groaning in relief as it comes to rest heavily upon her shoulders. If she closes her eyes, she can imagine the press of its weight to be the warmth of a body. 

Voluntary, fervent affection. 

All-encompassing safety.

A hug. 

Undiluted yearning sweeps through her body in a biting gust of wind, leaving her bones hollowed out and fragile like a bird’s.

Oblivious to Pansy’s internal crisis, Narcissa insists that she keep the coat for herself and becomes distracted with delivering Belfry instructions to return the racks to their room upstairs. In the murmur of voices, Violet drifts close to Pansy, lifting her hand as if to test the coarseness of the fur. Her mum’s touch is rare, so Pansy holds very still, trying not to spook the hippogriff.

She’s scarcely taken a breath before Violet’s hand drops. Her eyes avoid Pansy’s in the reflection of the mirror but there’s a rare glimpse of defiance to her smile when she leans in and whispers, “Sometimes magic doesn’t hold a candle to the real thing.”

September 1995-April 1996

Pansy learns how to grow blue milkweed on the eastern slope of the Black Lake.

She spreads rumors that grindylow venture to the shallows of that shore for mating—spends every free moment she can scrounge crushing up the dried leaves and rolling them into a tight bit of parchment to be smoked—and exhales indigo clouds with a hiss until her mind goes pleasantly numb.

“They hate us,” Millicent cries, broad shoulders quaking beneath her quilted emerald duvet.

Every day, Filch hammers a new ministry decree into stone by order of Umbridge, and every day, she trawls the halls with the rest of the Inquisitorial Squad like a fucking basilisk out for blood. And when they’re not doing the bidding of that toadish bubblegum nightmare, they’ve got O.W.L.’s for which to study and she’s a prefect to boot. Professor Sprout watches her with a frown more often than not and she imagines that Longbottom must scowl at her every chance he gets, but she won’t chance looking to confirm it.

Pansy floats above it all, watching Millie’s chin quiver as she fights to hold back a sob. 

Daphne rubs her friend’s back, equally weary with bruised half-moons beneath her blue eyes as she looks to Pansy for direction.

They always look to Pansy for direction.

“You lot have got to grow up,” she snaps.

It’s a Wednesday when she goes to the Lake with shaking hands only to find a scorched patch of earth where her blue milkweed had been before. 

A tidal wave of nausea crests at her throat, threatening to spill out before she pinches the bridge of her nose and breathes deeply. This is fine. She is furious. This is fine.

By the time she stumbles into Greenhouse Four, Professor Sprout is at her side in seconds, bushy brows shot to the top of her forehead.

“You followed me,” Pansy gasps, too flayed open to care that she’s crying and not making sense. “You followed me—you had—no right.”

Pomona’s hands are calloused and creased with dirt but they’re also soft as they wipe at Pansy’s cheeks, holding her hair away from her face. 

“Breathe, girl. You’ve got to breathe.”

But she can’t. Not when the only thing keeping her thoughts at the acceptable ankle-deep level has disappeared and now she can’t feel the bottom of them.

“I can’t do this.” She’s frantic, clinging onto the woman’s patchwork-covered shoulder. “I can’t do this I can’t do this I can’t do this.”

Draco has his family name to fall back on and a doting mother to give him absolution, but what does Pansy have? Parents who told her not to return home over the holiday because the risk of coming to gather her is too much now that the Dark Lord is rumored to return. They know their scrappy daughter with mud-stained knees and they know she’ll do what it takes to survive. She’s already cast in her lot with Draco—already sold her fucking soul to that arsenic-laced sugar quill personified, Umbridge.

She has no secret passage; no last-minute portkey. Just devil’s snare, all the way down.

Pomona wraps her arm around Pansy’s slight shoulders and digs into her pocket, pulling out a sprig of mint. 

“You chew this, you hear me?”

She obeys, blade of the leaf serrated and cool against her tongue. The flames of hysteria licking up her sternum begin to quell as she chews mechanically.

“The smell clings to you everywhere you go,” Pomona says, rubbing gruffly up and down Pansy’s arm. “For Circe’s sake, I can see the plumes of blue from the window of my quarters.”

Sharp pain at the base of Pansy’s skull dulls to a throb but her brain is like the battlefield of a duel, disorienting pops and flashes of light that make it impossible to think straight.

It’s been eight months.

Professor Sprout must have known the whole time.

“I can’t do this,” she repeats, voice cracking. She is so tired. She digs the heels of her hands into her eyes, not caring if they bruise.

“It won’t always feel this way,” Pomona intones, voice low and smooth like the richest of soil. Something for Pansy to plant her hopes in. “I promise you, it won’t always feel this way.”

Behind her back, she feels Pomona gesture at something and a moment later, there are footsteps and a clear glass of water being extended to Pansy from a large hand with dirt underneath his fingernails, condensation collecting at the bottom.

The hand that holds it is Neville’s and raised on the back of his skin in angry red lettering it reads, I must not tell lies.

Pansy twists and heaves, her sick splattering the cobblestone at her feet.

September-November 1996

She and Draco do the best they can to bear the brunt of their parent's decisions.

“In for a knut, in for a galleon,” she tells him, stilling the fingers that keep scratching at the agitated skin beneath his sleeve. “You will do what needs to be done.”

“Please stay away,” he responds.

They don’t believe each other and neither of them has the courage to cry about it.

People whisper about their dating but what they don’t understand is that they’ve bound their fate together and it isn’t always fraught with romance when you choose the person with whom you’re going to die. It’s the cold press of a hand to your back to keep you standing up straight when all you want is a safe place to rest.

She spends most of her free time in the greenhouses, mint leaf tucked beneath her tongue and trying not to feel guilty about clinging to the only thing that seems to keep her head above the water these days. 

“What might you choose,” Pomona asks one day when Pansy and Neville are helping her feed the venomous tentacula handfuls of chizpurfles, “if you could spend the rest of your life doing only one thing?”

One of the little blue crablike creatures sinks its fangs into Neville’s thumb and he yelps, but Pansy hardly notices.

The rest of her life?

It’s a bit cruel, she thinks, to be asked to take her own desires seriously in times like these—when most nights she lies awake and imagines a ghostly face with red slits for pupils; a flash of fangs and a giant, twisting body that squeezes her heart until it stops beating.

She’s held Draco in the dungeon while he sobs, painting his nightmares on the backs of her eyelids as he tells her of what he’s seen.

Before she can answer,

(she’d like to survive)

Professor Sprout clucks her tongue and bounds out of the room, muttering something about her wolfsbane.

The ease in the air slowly evaporates when Pansy and Neville realize they’re alone.

Will he berate her for all the horrible things she’s said to him and his friends? For being one person around Professor Sprout and somebody completely different with everyone else? 

Or will he threaten to expose how pathetic she was when struggling to maintain her sobriety over the past year? Will he tell people how he witnessed her throw fits that almost always ended in emptying the contents of her stomach at Pomona’s feet?

“If I could choose, I’d do this,” Neville says, carefully plucking a chizpurfle from the sleeve of his crimson jumper before gesturing vaguely around them. “I’d stay here and assist Professor Sprout however I could.”

Of course he would. 

This is Longbottom. He doesn’t have an ounce of venom in his blood.

Before she can erect walls of stone, the idea bursts past her guard and she finds herself considering the possibility.

What would it be like to stay in the warmth of Pomona’s motherly orbit? To spend enough time in the sunshine that she might have to wear one of those ridiculous, flimsy-brimmed hats to protect her delicate skin? To let the earth do its magic of absorbing all the ugliness inside her; to watch Neville’s freckles bloom across his nose as the summer stretches on?

Pansy’s longing is acute enough to cause a toothache. 

“That sounds—lovely,” she confesses, unable to pretend she isn’t completely heartbroken by the idea. 

Because even if she lives, Pansy is no fool.

She keeps count of every bridge she burns even as she sets it aflame; lets the heat of it emboss the truth into her skin: she is not her own.

Hogwarts will not welcome her if she turns out to be on the wrong side of the war.

Distracted by her existential despair, she doesn’t notice that she’s leaned too close to the pot in front of her. Before her eyes register the whip-like movement of Neville’s hand, a toothy branch bites into her shoulder nearly at the same time that it’s dragged—agonizingly—out and away.

“Stupefy!”

And then her face is crushed awkwardly into his armpit and she’s being pulled far away from the newly immobile venomous tentacula. 

“Shite!” Neville curses, large hands carefully rotating her to get a good look at her shoulder.

Pansy must be in shock because she can’t help but laugh. Neville Longbottom, with his nearly supernatural ability to swallow the most stinging of insults without flinging anything back, has let a filthy word pass his plush lips.

“Merlin, you kiss your gran with that mouth?”

He’s too confused to respond. 

Whether it’s a blessing or a curse, the shaking of her laughter finally awakens her to the twinging in her shoulder. She paws blindly at her black jumper, trying to pull it down enough to expose the wound. This snaps him out of his stupor.

“Here, let me,” Neville says, batting her hand away so he can do it. He rips her jumper—hey, that was Andalusian cashmere—to reveal four shallow teeth marks. They seem so small in proportion to the pain. 

Pansy’s head begins to feel like a balloon tied by a string to her neck, but somewhere in the back of her mind, she recognizes that she needs…something, and soon. She can’t quite remember the proper antidote.

“Accio bezoar!”

From the line of drawers on the opposite side of the greenhouse, a small stone flies through the air to land in Neville’s palm. 

“Open,” he commands, taking her jaw between his thumb and the side of his forefinger. She does so for a few reasons, only one of which she’s comfortable with admitting: she knows it’ll quell the sting.

It slides down her throat and she has to fight not to cough it up. She especially tries not to think about the fact that this stone was once in a goat’s stomach with all its digestive juices and—

She gags.

Neville is right there, crouching in front of her face, eyes blazing and fingers tight on her chin. 

“Swallow,” he tells her.

He might as well have imperiused her because Pansy has no choice but to obey. She swallows.

“Good, Pansy.”

His fingers leave her and the string between her head and her neck begins to shorten, floating sensation fleeing.

Neville heaves a breath of relief, casting a quick scourgify to clean the wound. Both of their necks and ears are flushed pink and neither seems to be able to hold each other’s gaze in the aftermath.

“Sit here,” he offers gruffly, transfiguring a spade into a small aluminum stool. It has three legs and is a bit flimsy—a fact that he seems to be keenly aware of as he scratches the back of his head, but it’ll do. The air between them thickens, his embarrassment finally catching up to him.

“I think I read somewhere that essence of murtlap makes the stinging worse,” he says, fixing his eyes fastidiously on her shoulder. 

Pansy is well-acquainted with the bone-hollowing sensation of coming down from a high. She hasn’t felt it in almost a year; the bitter taste on her tongue or the self-loathing that inevitably follows.

But here, staring at the supple strength in Neville’s jaw—noticing for the first time that he’s lost the baby fat in his cheeks and at some point must have undergone a spell to straighten his teeth and correct his overbite—her body tightens with that familiar dread.

“I’m fine,” she says, trying harder than she ever has in her life not to snap as she pulls her tattered jumper back over her shoulder. She’s never felt this naked, either. “That was—it could have been much worse.”

It’s as close to a thank you as she’s willing to skirt. He takes a few steps back, letting her pass with a wary glance at the venomous tentacula to her right. “I’m, er, sorry about your jumper.”

She can mend a jumper. Even an expensive one.

More concerning is the complicated cocktail of hormones and sincerity that he’s managed to dredge up inside her.

“I don’t care,” she tells him. Convincingly. Like she definitely means it.

She’s three meters away by the time he speaks up.

“Why do you pretend not to be good at Herbology?”

Sometimes she forgets that he’s not a Hufflepuff, but it’s moments like these that function as an aguamenti to the face to remind her that he’s very much a Gryffindor.

“I’ve not the slightest—”

“You spend all your free time studying N.E.W.T.-level plants and you have zero problems keeping up with me.” He looks away, annoyed with himself for coming off like a prat, probably. “I mean—that’s not to say that I’m an authority on the subject, but I’ve never seen somebody try so hard to pretend not to love the thing that makes them happiest.”

Pansy glances down at her shoulder, half convinced the jumper is exposing her entire chest.

She could tell him about chess pieces or foolish parents or terrified boys asked to do impossible things, but Neville Longbottom has never been taught to see anything in greyscale; has never been forced to mold himself into whichever shape is most survivable.

“You don’t know anything, Longbottom.”

May 1998

Pansy has never felt braver.

Because what must you do when a finger is cursed with dark magic? What is the singular way to keep it from spreading limb to limb?

The same thing you do when you first spot the tell-tale purple striations of wraith’s kiss on the leaves of a mallowsweet.

When an orange yew only yields fruit sour enough to shrivel a tongue.

When a daughter becomes a liability.

You sever it.

You sacrifice it because wholeness is a luxury and survival is the only god that nature worships; the only thing that counts in the end.

It’s not personal when it comes to Harry Potter—it’s simple maths. 

She sees Draco and Daph and Theo and Millie and Pomona and Longbottom and for once she isn’t thinking like a chess piece and the courage nearly fills her to bursting.

“But, he's there! Potter's there! Someone grab him!”

It's a mindless torpor that guides Pansy to the eastern slope of the Black Lake; the invisible string of destructive habits pulling her all the way to the edge of the water.

Where last the earth was blackened and singed, she notes with dark amusement that a mint bush has grown over the top. It’s fragrant and green and ridiculous in its sweetness for soothing the smoke that has raked its nails up and down her throat.

“See you’ve found my repurposed garden.”

Pansy doesn’t turn; doesn’t think she can bear to see the kindness in the lines around Professor Sprout’s mouth. She hasn’t shed a tear tonight—not even upon embracing Draco after an hour of searching for him. They had planned for the worst. Gods, maybe even deserved it. But it didn’t happen.

Her concrete heart has pressed preemptive grief like flowers; carefully dried and preserved them just in case her fears turned to reality. They hadn’t, and now it’s ridiculous to carry but she’s stuck with it because it turns out that displaced grief doesn’t much care about where it lands; it demands to be felt all the same. 

A hand, rough and calloused, lands upon her shoulder. It tethers Pansy to the earth.

“We’ve all got a bit of scorched earth to work with now, don’t we?”

She bites the inside of her cheek and looks down at her nails, dirt lined beneath them.

“Don’t,” she says; swallows, “try to make a saint out of me.”

Pomona snorts and bends down to gather a fresh harvest of sprigs for her pockets. 

“That’s quite beyond my pay grade, I assure you.”

Beyond them, the castle grounds are the loudest sort of quiet. Broken bodies and stones and chairs and ceilings are levitated by people too busy to collapse into their grief.

“I wasn’t wrong,” she says flatly. Stubbornly. She hasn’t let herself think about much other than the necessities: where she’ll sleep tonight (Nott Manor, so long as the Ministry hasn’t seized it by then), when she’ll see Draco next (at his trial, whenever that turns out to be). She helped Astoria find Daphne. She learned of Crabbe’s death and only moments later, stepped over the body of his father.

It was all too much.

“You were,” Pomona says firmly, hand placed on her back to ease its aching as she straightens. “Pansy, my dear. You were.”

She closes her eyes, furious to feel the sting behind them. 

“I can’t think that way,” she says, wiping roughly at her cheek with the front of her wrist. It comes away clean; no dirt or blood mingle with her tears.

Holding out a leaf, Pomona waits until Pansy takes it.

“You’re a shrewd girl. Surely you’ve noticed that those who might punish you for changing your mind no longer roam the earth.”

She had taken note of this. It’s a contributing factor to the equation of her baffling sadness; the kind she can’t get a grip on with her fingers because the edges are too flat and the weight too heavy. An awkward shape.

“I’m not what you want me to be.”

Pansy sees Professor Sprout cluck her tongue from her periphery as she stares out at the gently rippling water.

“And what’s that?”

Pansy’s throat tightens and she smiles, untucking the black hair from behind her ear so it can fall in front of her face.

“Good, obviously.”

And that’s that, she tells herself, feeling the phantom vines of devil’s snare begin to skate across her ankles. There is nothing salvageable inside of her, nothing worth replanting or repotting. No room in this new world for her to thrive. She is a thorned, venomous thing and aggressors like her don’t make sense to nurture.

Now Pomona looks at her as if she’s the only other person who can see the vines wind around Pansy’s torso, squeezing her lungs.

“Mmm,” she says, pursing her lips. “I suppose that would be a fine trait to hope for.”

Pansy laughs, though it’s brittle. The way her heart thrashes against her chest, she might as well be standing in front of a Hungarian Horntail that’s just inhaled, ready to melt her flesh in the next breath.

Professor Sprout tucks the sprigs into her pocket and pats them.

“You’ve been many things in your time here at Hogwarts, Pansy,” she says, hand coming back to Pansy’s shoulder to squeeze it. “Few of which have been yourself.”

And she’s wrong, of course, she has to be wrong because what else has Pansy been if not viciously herself? Uncompromising in her selfishness, unbothered by anyone who claimed to have the moral high ground over her. It’s such a nonsensical statement that she turns fully to face her teacher.

“Right,” she says, jaw tingling as she clenches it. “And what makes you think your opinion means a sodding thing to me?”

She’s being mean again and gods, isn’t that the point? So many people have died in the last twenty-four hours and the smell of burnt flesh is still clinging to her nostrils and the muffled sound of a hundred wands turning on her still echoes; bounces around in her mind like a doxy with particularly sharp elbows.

Devil’s snare, all the way down.

“Your heart, dear one,” Pomona says, almost as if she’s sorry to be the bearer of bad news. “It’s not quite as opaque as you might hope.”

And just like that, it’s lumos solem.

She doesn’t return the next year when the offer comes.