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The haphazard stack of official letters mocked Pansy from its place on his bedside table.
Turning to stare at the ceiling, she let both the image and implications of it all fade. It was easier not to think about when she wasn’t looking at the physical embodiment of a concept reserved for those other than herself.
The future.
A noise to her right snagged her attention, and Pansy slowly rolled onto her side. With the offending parchments at her back, and a head of shaggy brown hair poking out from under the covers in front of her, it was effortless to focus on the present.
“Good morning.” Pansy slid her hand under the duvet and climbed the bare curve of Neville’s side with her fingertips, tracing the angle of his hip, and dipping lower still.
“Mmm.”
His rumble of contentment encouraged her explorations.
Though she knew the lines of his body better than any subject she’d ever studied, and could traverse the curves and bends with practised ease, she still catalogued each dip and charted a course to conquer his drowsy awareness.
“Fuck.” Neville’s eyes opened only to roll back as Pansy slid her palm along his length. “Mmm, don’t stop.”
She didn’t.
While her hand was objectively small, Neville was anything but. It was easy to learn how he liked to be touched.
Sensuality was more than just sex.
The sway of her hips and cut of her smirk were currency in the game of attraction, and she’d always been willing and able to pay any price for what she wanted.
“Let me.” Lowering her voice to that perfectly sultry pitch, she watched as Neville’s lids drooped.
Had he been any more awake, he would have stolen the opportunity for her to focus on him first. A gentleman in bed, his primary focus was always her satisfaction before his own, but right now she wanted to do this.
For him.
Armed with a plan to layer memory on memory in the book of these final, carefree days they were allowed to share, she slid down his body until she was wedged between his parted legs and hovering over the stiff length of his cock.
At the swipe of her tongue, he hissed between clenched teeth.
Pansy looked up just in time to watch his head fall back.
Rough from use, his calloused fingertips slid along her temples, brushing the loose strands of her black bob away from her face.
Pansy’s eyes slid shut and her heart beat hard against her ribs.
Glimpses of his affections were found in these small actions. Each tender touch made her ache. But now wasn’t the time to slip into melancholy over the rapidly approaching end to this easy arrangement.
Another rough swipe of her tongue made his hips twitch. Firm fingers bunched in her hair, pulling just enough to make her scalp tingle.
When she finally slid her lips around his cock, and dipped down as low as she could reach, the string of praise dripping from his lips made her preen.
The rhythm was rehearsed. Using every weapon in her veritable arsenal, she alternated pressure and angle as he climbed the peaks of pleasure. She could read each sign of his impending release as though it was printed in black and white.
He sucked in a breath when she flattened her tongue against his shaft.
He arched his hips when she drew almost all of the way off of his cock before plummeting again.
She moaned while his cock bounced against the back of her throat, and he clenched the taut muscles of his stomach until she could trace every line with featherlight fingertips.
Pansy Parkinson wasn’t a master of many things, but the practice of pleasure was an art she knew well.
Neville’s moan vibrated against her hands, one still wrapped around the base of his cock, and the other skating along the well-defined lines of his abdomen as she coaxed him through his release.
Not for the first time, Pansy was grateful for the comfort of private dorms in the magically modified Eighth Year corridor. It was happenstance that their dorms were situated across from each other, but precise planning over the last few months led her to find refuge in his room more often than her own.
Looking at him now, beads of sweat gathering across his brow and the clench of his jaw, she wondered when this had grown from a bored conquest to a bone-deep desire to satisfy the man in front of her.
Neville must have sensed her shift in mood as she moved to lay beside him on the bed. The pads of his fingers skirted the ridge of her ribs, danced along her collarbone, and traced the line of her jaw before he tilted her face to his.
The flash of something in his eyes made her pulse spike.
His following kiss sent it into overdrive.
As he’d done often during their time together, he demanded her undivided attention.
Like everyone else in their year—Pansy included—Neville had his own mountains to climb in the wake of the war, but if he knew exactly where her thoughts occasionally strayed, he opted not to pry.
She knew it was a small mercy.
Slow, languid strokes of his tongue grounded her to the moment as she slipped her arms around his neck and pulled herself flush against the solid lines of his body. Far too deep in her feelings for her liking, Pansy lifted her knee to slide up his thigh and found her footing again on the path to her earlier objective.
But Neville had other plans.
Catching the inside of her knee, he pushed it outward, opening her up before trailing his fingertips along the inside of her thigh.
His thumb pressed against her clit and her breath caught in her throat.
“I let you have your fun earlier.”
Pansy’s back arched on a moan.
“Now it’s my turn.”
Two thick fingers slid into her center.
“So wet, love.” The warmth of his breath tickled the loose wisps of hair at her temple. “Is this all for me?”
“Y-yes.” She gasped when he pulled his fingers out slowly, dragging against the walls of her cunt, before pushing them back in farther than before. “Gods, please, I—”
“Not yet.”
Patience was a virtue Pansy did not possess, but Neville was determined to teach it to her.
His pace was pure torture; slow and steady, he pumped his fingers in and out of her, twisting a little before starting over again.
Bruising kisses were sucked into the column of her neck and she selfishly wished she could spell them into stasis. To remember.
It never took long for Pansy to come when Neville was determined. His strokes were fluid and steady. She felt herself rising closer and closer to release. All it would take—
Snapping her eyes open, Pansy looked down to catch Neville’s gaze. With his kiss-swollen lips wrapped around her nipple—teeth scraping just the way he’d discovered she liked all those months ago—the gleam of determination in his eyes was unmistakable.
His name fell from her lips as she crested and fell into the bliss of climax.
As she pulled his mouth back to hers, the sharp edge of her nails carved her presence into his skin. Knowing they would leave red crescents and angry lines across the pale expanse of his back, some small, shameful part of her hoped he would stare at them in the mirror in the days to come—just as she surely would with her own.
She spelled the words she could not say with every intentional swipe of her tongue.
Instinct guided her movements as she lifted up and pressed him flat on his back before swinging her leg over his hips and straddling him.
“So perfect, Pans. You look gorgeous like this.”
Astride his center, flush with arousal, and keenly aware of every nerve in her body, she wanted to deny it, but the way he looked at her was…
Well, Pansy didn’t have time to focus on it before he tilted his hips and his length nudged her throbbing clit. Soaked, she slid along the outline of his cock. A steady hand guided him in before he grasped her hips and pulled her down.
“Fuck, I’m—”
“Shh.” Planting her hands against his chest, Pansy rocked her hips.
Feelings and sex had never been complementary ingredients in the recipe for Pansy’s life. Tutored to be the perfect wife, she’d learned early on that emotions were extraneous to her future.
Until she had fallen into bed with Neville Longbottom over Easter.
The war had uprooted her life, as it had so many others. Standing on this side of time, without a family to speak of and a name that weighed heavier than her pilfered vaults, Pansy had found space for things she’d once thought to be silly.
Rather than individual aspects of life, she was learning that when combined, emotions and intimacy created something worth more than either on their own.
The press of his fingers on her hips and muttered praises—good, yes, fuck—urged her on, and soon Pansy was chasing her own end as hard as she was driving Neville to his.
Three little words battered the back of her throat but she moaned instead, curbing the urge to express something she’d only recently decided to be true.
“Oh gods, I’m—” Twisting her hips, she gasped.
“You feel so—”
The noise Pansy made was foreign to every language and couldn’t be translated beyond pure physicality.
Every pulse of Neville’s cock made her cunt clench around him.
She felt like she was flying, ascending into the realm of the thing that shall not be named.
Too light to sink and expanding with every pump of her heart, she opened her lips to—
“Gods, I love you. Fuck, I can’t. I’m—”
Neville’s eyes were so large she thought his heart might have stopped.
She wasn’t entirely sure hers was still beating either.
She blinked once, twice, ashamed of the way her cunt gripped his softening cock at the thought of his confession.
“You—” Moving off of him to lay on her side, Pansy took a deep breath. “What did you say?” Her voice sounded small and childlike, filled with a wonder she’d never known before.
Neville cleared his throat, looking at the ceiling for a moment before meeting her eyes. There was a steady resolve in his gaze she would have been able to read even if she’d never studied the subject of him. But she had, and after what he’d just said, she knew what that look meant.
Her pulse beat hard in her ears.
“I said I love you.” He wrapped his steady hand around her shaking one and brought it to his lips, pressing a kiss against her knuckles. “I do. I have .”
“You have?” While Pansy had never been rendered speechless, she was sure this was as close as she would ever come. “When did you—”
“January, I think.” His lips brushed against her knuckles again. “In the greenhouse when you asked for help with the Herbology assignment. I—”
“What?” She almost laughed. “I didn’t actually need help. I was—”
“I know.”
“I was just trying to catch Draco in the act.”
“I know.” The curve of his smile made her bite her lip.
“You knew I was snooping?”
“Well, it was rather obvious when you were supposed to be looking for Venomous Tentacula but kept wandering around the Asphodel, which I happened to note was right by the wall that overlooked the field.”
Pansy stuck out her lip. “I was more covert than that. I—”
“It’s okay.” The glint of humour in his eyes was endearing. “You could have just asked. I knew they were fooling around, hell, half of Gryffindor house knew by then and—”
“Draco kept denying it and I was sure they were—”
She stopped when he shook his head fondly.
“Anyway, enough about them.” Pressing against his side, Pansy batted her eyelashes. “Tell me again.”
Wide and genuine, Neville’s smile stretched between his cheeks.
“Pansy Parkinson, I love you.”
A moment passed in silence and Pansy let his words seep into her skin, imprinting on her heart and colouring every memory since that fateful day.
The flicker of unease was written in the clench of his jaw and she only just realised why.
“I love you too, you know.” The words were the easiest she’d ever said. “Just in case that wasn’t clear. I—”
His kiss cut her off and she’d never been more thankful to be silenced.
When they parted, he leaned his forehead against hers. “What does this mean for…”
“Us?” She rather liked that word.
“Yeah. We leave in a few days and—”
Pansy left a lingering kiss on his lips before rolling over to grab the stack of letters that looked far less imposing than before. Laying them out on the bed between them, she looked up to find a quizzical furrow to his brow.
“It seems you have rather a lot of options.” Thumbing through each parchment, she pulled one at random. “Ooh, Romania sounds nice this time of year.” She grabbed another. “Or the States. I’ve always wanted to visit—”
“What?”
Pansy almost laughed at the dumbfounded expression on his face.
Time was a construct, and Pansy decided if she wanted more of it with him, she would carve it out herself.
Sentimentality was something he had in spades, and Pansy had never had time to entertain such notions, but she thought, maybe, for him, she wanted to try.
“What I’m saying is I’ll go anywhere.” She leaned forward and kissed him again. “As long as it’s with you.”