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Pansy Parkinson fixed her hair in the mirror, ensuring her impeccable raven black bob was all in order. Her emerald green nails, freshly painted, glistened in the candlelight as she ran a careful hand through her hair, admiring her makeup. Smokey eyes, blood red lipstick.
“Oh, God, what have you done?!”
Pansy’s mother’s voice screeched in the background.
Pansy cast a sidelong glance at the scarlet howler that had been shrieking at her for the better part of fifteen minutes now. She wished somebody had discovered a way to shut up those infernal letters already.
“My sweet baby girl,” Azalea Parkinson despaired, the volume of her voice still ear-splittingly loud. The next door neighbours would be getting some free entertainment this evening, Pansy mused.
Pansy stood up from her seat, clearing makeup from the small table before admiring herself in the mirror. She was skinnier now than before the war, causing her arms to look angular and her collarbone to jut out— more elegant, Pansy liked to think.
“When the Zabini’s told me, I could scarcely believe it!” Azalea Parkinson continued via the howler, “My baby girl, dancing in a club like that? For money?!”
Pansy gave a derisive snort. She knew that whatever care and caution Azalea held for her daughter was far overshadowed by what her high society Death Eater friends thought.
“What am I supposed to tell the Malfoys if they ask after you?” Azalea shouted— Pansy could practically see her mother standing in the kitchen wringing her hands— “You should be glad I’ve kept this from your father for now. I don’t think he could take it. It would break his heart.”
Pansy turned at the Howler then, scowling.
She lived in a small apartment, tucked away in an industrial English town. Some would have called it dingy when she had first moved in, but Pansy had used her considerable disposable income to decorate it stylishly.
Golden ornate candle holders provided light. She walked across a beautiful Turkish rug on the floor that had been gifted to her by an enamoured customer at the club. She had a small double bed with a thick bedspread, tasteful leather armchairs by a fireplace, and a small makeup station in the corner.
Pansy sat aggressively in one of the armchairs, beginning to put on her heels in a rather violent fashion.
“I’m having fun, mother,” Pansy sniped back at the howler, though she knew it was deaf to her words.
At last, the howler dramatically scrunched itself up before throwing itself in the fire.
Pansy didn’t need to dance at the strip club. Her family were wealthy. She’d already come into her inheritance from her grandparents. But it was something to do, an excellent distraction. She liked dancing there. And she was goddamn spectacular at it.
The Pink Hippogriff was a cheap club. The owner had as many missing teeth as he had gold ones gleaming in his grin. The clientele varied to the extremes from those down on their luck, to wizards flush with cash following the end of war economic boom.
She spared a brief thought for her father, a first generation Chinese immigrant who had worked hard to make a good life for them. He came from money but still appreciated the feeling of putting in a long days’ work to grow his family’s wealth even more. He was small, quiet, reserved. Conservative. He had always been gentle in manner, but Pansy still held a firm dislike of him, his quiet disapproval of her always grating on her nerves.
Her mother, a pale woman from Knightsbridge, had grown up in grand Victorian homes and leafy garden squares. She considered herself a woman of pedigree, pureblooded all the way up her titan-studded family tree. She was loud and outspoken, a steamroller of a woman.
Pansy was surprised her parents hadn’t been arrested following the fall of the Dark Lord. More accurately, she was surprised she was surprised that they hadn’t been arrested. It should have come as no shock to her that the Parkinsons and their wealthy socialite friends had conveniently dodged prison time for the second war in a row despite being firmly aligned with the Dark Lord.
There were rumours that the Malfoys had even facilitated the torture and killing of people during the war, allowing Narcissa’s sister Bellatrix Lestrange the run of their large Manor. Yet Lucius and Narcissa still regularly attended high society functions with Pansy’s parents as if nothing had ever happened. Again.
Of course, Draco had never spoken of it to her.
They had never talked about the war.
Draco had done his family duty; and Pansy had abandoned hers. It was hard to say which of them was more bothered by their choice.
The nights they had met after the end of the war, Pansy had stroked Draco’s sleek platinum blonde hair, kissed his pale temple. She said how nice it was that he had avoided prison for his part in the war, even though they both knew it wasn’t nice at all.
They’d barely made eye contact as they embraced, descended to Draco’s bed. Even as their bodies moved against each other that night in the familiar, comforting way they did, the two friends could barely look at each other.
Mutual disgust. For each other and themselves.
“Slytherin will help you on your way to greatness,” they’d been told by their parents in their First Year. But at what cost?
Pansy visited Draco a handful of times in the two years following the war. It was always the same. Hollow words and chasing a desperate comfort in each other’s bodies. She didn’t keep in contact with anybody else from school.
Pansy fastened her heels before standing suddenly and striding back to the makeup station. There was a small tumbler of clear liquid on the dresser and she grabbed it quickly, throwing back the liquid in a quick gulp.
The liquor burned her throat but it was a soothing burn.
With a fistful of floo powder, Pansy was gone.
The dimly lit club pulsed with a heavy thud of music and throng of patrons. It was late Saturday night so Pansy expected the already large crowd to grow even bigger. Soon it would be wall to wall with shadowy figures, shouldering past each other to leer at the entertainment.
“All right, sweetie?” A toothless man grinned as he shuffled past her, a fistful of paper club money in his hands.
The line to exchange galleons for the pink paper tokens was already long, impatient patrons allaying their frustrations with strong drinks.
As usual, there were all sorts milling around. Businessmen tugging wearily at dress robes, labourers stretching sore muscles from a hard day’s work, oddballs stirring their drinks restlessly.
Pansy usually collected a large number of the paper club tokens in her sets, and would exchange them for fistfuls of galleons with the bar manager at the end of her shift. She waited until late to exchange her tokens, for the same reason she got ready at home— she didn’t like to talk to the others that worked there.
Not because she held any judgment— hell, she worked there too.
She avoided them because she found that when getting their makeup and outfits ready, they all wanted to bond.
Ask questions, share trauma, pry into backgrounds. It made Pansy sick to think about it.
No, she preferred the small talk of patrons instead. The hoots and cheers when she executed a perfect trick on a pole or a risqué dance move. The mumbled compliments in the private dance rooms as they pushed sweaty paper notes at her. If the patrons ever did talk more deeply, it was only ever about themselves. A hasty justification for their visit. A rambled dialogue about a partner back at home who “truly wouldn’t mind.” Sometimes an utterance of the war and how it had shattered their family.
But it was never about her, and that was how Pansy liked it. They praised her for her beauty and her moves, but they never asked about her.
Tonight, the energy in the club tonight was off.
Looking around, nothing seemed noticeably out of place. The same dim lighting. The same bassy music thrumming through the building. The same appreciation and enthusiasm in the crowd, as they moved restlessly throughout the club. The crowd of customers almost moved as a whole, flexing and stretching out into every corner of the club before retracting into a tight ball by the main stage. Right now they were stretched out widely, extending like spider’s legs into corners of the room as they jostled, ordered drinks, approached dancers.
Pansy couldn’t pick what was different about the night. It almost felt like the world was tilted on its axis.
But then again, Pansy didn’t care.
The second she stepped on that stage and the music started— nothing else outside her performance existed.
She nailed her routine as usual, throwing her all into executing moves on the pole that made her muscles burn and protest. She flexed and writhed in her floor routine, playing the audience like a puppeteer, tugging at their strings until they were reaching up desperately towards the stage, starry eyed.
She threw herself into everything, pushing her body as far as it would go. By the time she finished, she was out of breath and her muscles were protesting. Club tokens rained down like confetti as the audience cheered.
After she had collected her tokens and got off the stage, she leaned against the bar, drinking a water and basking in the post-performance adrenaline that ran through her system. She felt like she could run a marathon.
Lord knows she was good at running, given her disappearance the second the war had erupted.
Pansy shut her eyes tightly, bringing the chilled glass of water against her forehead to cool down. She didn’t want to think about the war right now.
“Violet,”
Pansy turned her head at her coworkers voice. Violet was the name she used while working. The name she used for her rent, her job… for everything in this life she had haphazardly created away from everything.
She liked being Violet and getting to leave Pansy behind.
“Yeah?” Pansy replied, affixing her best frown to dissuade any attempts at a friendly conversation. The woman’s smile fell slightly— Pansy had never bothered remembering her name— but she seemed to recover quickly, moving over to lean on the bar by Pansy.
“You’ve had a request for a private dance,” Pansy’s coworker told her.
“Great,” Pansy said neutrally, turning her gaze towards the shadowy figures moving around the club. She sipped at her drink.
“It’ll be in the Diamond Room in fifteen minutes,” the coworker continued, “A woman this time, which is always nice—isn’t it? They tend to be less trouble. She seemed a bit awkward if you ask me, which is kind of sweet—“
“Got it,” Pansy interrupted, not interested in prolonging the conversation, “I’m going to freshen up, see you later.”
Pansy didn’t even bother with the pretence of walking away, staring at her coworker until the woman took the pointed hint and left with a slightly offended look on her face.
Pansy smirked at her success in pushing the woman away with her rudeness.
The former Slytherin finished her water before finally, actually, going to freshen up. She was looking forward to another dance to keep her occupied. There was something about the art of the performance— of putting on a character, of pulling off gymnastic feats, of toying with people’s desire. It made Pansy feel free and occupied in a way she hadn’t felt in years. When she was performing— nothing else plagued her mind.
There were a few wayward hands and attempts at conversation as Pansy pushed through the crowd on her way to the private room. She never worried about how harshly she rejected people or swatted away their hands— her coldness seemed to make her more popular with the regulars, if anything.
Pansy was confident here.
She could be as cold and mean as she wanted and people still found her desirable. She could dance and smile and nobody would ask her what she had done during the war. Nobody would call her a coward.
Pansy drew her shoulders back and affixed an expression balanced between smouldering and bitchy. She wanted the customer to want her, but not enough to get attached. She couldn’t bear the ones that would come back every night trying to get her address so they could owl her.
She entered the Diamond Room, pulling back the appallingly tacky beads in the doorway as she stepped in. Several times Pansy had entertained the idea of moving to a bigger city, somewhere where the clubs were more fantastical, extravagant… But Pansy had sought out a place where nobody from her old life would think to venture for a reason.
The Diamond Room was a small room that was all red velvet furniture, a small floor space with a single pole, and a low table with a generous supply of champagne.
Pansy’s eyes fell on the lone figure waiting for her to appear.
Pansy felt all the air whoosh out of her lungs and her stomach sink dizzyingly. She felt submerged and numb, like someone had plunged her into a tank of ice water.
There, sitting in a back room of this cheap strip club in this far flung town, was somebody that Pansy had never thought she would see again.
The woman was dressed unusually for a night out, in jeans and a long sleeve tee. Her hair was as wildly voluminous as it had been at Hogwarts, though a little more controlled now. The woman pulled at her sleeves, and Pansy’s stomach roiled at the knowledge of what the woman was hiding beneath the thin material.
Pansy might have moved away from it all, but she wasn’t a total hermit. She had heard of the torture of Hermione Granger at the hand of Death Eaters.
For a horrible, head-spinning moment, Pansy thought she might actually vomit. She leaned heavily against the wall, breathing heavily. The heavy scent of her own perfume mocked her, invading her senses until she was suppressing a dry retch.
If Hermione Granger had noticed the sudden drop in her facade, the brunette didn’t show it. Her eyes were focussed on the table of champagne.
Those honey-flecked brown eyes. They had always been so full of curiosity and warmth, even when they had bickered at school. It made Pansy’s chest ache for a moment.
With Hermione seemingly preoccupied with the champagne, Pansy briefly analysed the situation. Hermione had somehow come across her and ordered a dance. Was she here to confront Pansy? Why? How did she even find her here?
Was she here out of some kind of desire to challenge Pansy? To ridicule her for her profession and her small little life in this town?
The dying embers of a rivalry long forgotten began to reignite inside Pansy.
Like hell Hermione Granger was going to get one up on her.
Pansy gathered her composure and raised her chin high. Hermione had come into her web. Pansy could make her just as needy and desperate for her attention as any of the other customers.
With a sway of her hips, Pansy cleared her throat and approached the pole.
She could feel Hermione’s eyes move to her as she began her first movement against the pole. Intense, as her gaze had always been those years ago at Hogwarts. Pansy pushed intrusive thoughts out of her mind as she did a quick spin around the pole before climbing higher. Her thigh muscles burned pleasantly as she hoisted herself up before bending backwards, this time spinning while stretching languidly upside down.
There was a click in her back, a faint reminder of her own mortality, as she readjusted. Pansy fell into her private room routine, counting the steps, pacing through the moves in the order she liked. She could almost forget that it was Hermione Granger sitting on the couch, watching her with those same eyes that haunted Pansy’s dreams.
Pansy squeezed her eyes shut tightly as her stomach suddenly twisted uncomfortably at the reminder that the patron was Hermione. She slipped, almost ruining her routine, before gracefully covering it as a dismount from the pole.
Hermione was watching her with a faraway look now— very different to the intensity of earlier in her routine— and it angered Pansy not to have the brunette’s full attention. Hermione always gave everything her full attention.
Pansy’s heels clicked with purpose as she strode to Hermione. She was sure she was openly frowning now, but she didn’t care. She sank down, wrenching Hermione’s jean-clad knees apart with aggression, before moving between them and sensually rising up again. Hermione’s eyes followed her, looking up at her as Pansy reached standing position.
“I knew it was you,” Hermione said absently.
There was no awe in her voice like Pansy’s usual customers. It stung. Pansy shoved Hermione roughly in the chest before straddling her waist. She let her hips roll and leaned back. As she felt Hermione’s hands finally fumble to grab her hips, Pansy smirked at the ceiling. There it was.
Hermione wanted her. Pansy thought that maybe a part of her had always wanted Hermione to want her. That a part of her still yearned for it. But it wasn’t a part of her she was ever going to admit to.
Pansy’s hips continued to roll as she leaned forward, moving her hands to tangle in brunette curls. The flames of their rivalry sparked brighter within her, burning hotter and hotter until they were something else entirely. Something that threatened to burn Pansy up.
And Pansy was entirely fine with burning alive.
Hermione’s hands gripped tighter on Pansy’s hips. Pansy’s breath was becoming ragged, coming in feral pants as she lost her face in the volume of Hermione’s curls.
It was too much.
Pansy pulled back abruptly, swallowing heavily.
“Why?” Pansy asked.
Demanded, really.
But when she looked at Hermione, the brunette’s eyes were glazed over. The faraway look was back in them and the brunette was smiling absently.
Pansy frowned, Hermione hadn’t looked that out of it before.
The raven-haired woman slid off Hermione’s lap to sit beside her former school rival. Her dark eyes took it all in quickly, the empty bottle of champagne, the strange small white tablets on the table. She’d never had an interest in Muggle items, but she knew enough from her coworkers’ idle chitchat that Muggles had their own type of potions and medicinal items. They could be used to heal, but could also be used recreationally.
She wondered how much Hermione had taken. How much was too much? Pansy had no idea. She’d never even seen Muggle medicine until now. She’d never cared about it until now.
“Are you okay, Granger?” Pansy asked uneasily, turning back to the brunette. She allowed herself to look at Hermione properly now. Where the brunette had previously been tanned and full of life, she was now pale and gaunt. She had dark circles under her eyes. She was still beautiful as ever— the damned perfect Gryffindor— but she looked haunted.
Hermione let out a laugh, short and sudden.
“I’m fine,” Hermione giggled, “I can’t feel a fucking thing.”
Pansy wasn’t sure if it was the uncharacteristic swearing or the enthusiastic giggle that unsettled her more.
Years after ending her education at Hogwarts, Pansy Parkinson once again found herself cursing Hermione Granger’s name.
Cursing Hermione for causing her to have to interact with her coworkers. She had been forced to drag the intoxicated brunette to a Muggleborn coworker to get a more educated opinion on the state of her and whether she would be okay.
Pansy was infuriated at Hermione for causing her to care as she took the— very unsteady on her feet— former Gryffindor to the bar to get her to have several glasses of water.
Pansy loathed Hermione for causing her to drag out this damned interaction between them as the brunette was unable to remember where she was staying.
Yet, Pansy found herself begrudgingly cutting her shift short, taking Hermione back to her tiny apartment to look after her. It was just as well that Pansy had asked for the rest of the night off, as the brunette promptly became nauseous, and the raven-haired Slytherin had been forced to hold brunette curls back as she threw up for a good hour.
So, entirely against her will, Pansy found herself lying on her back in bed, turning her head occasionally to look at the pale girl beside her.
Pansy couldn’t help but watch the shallow rise and fall of Hermione’s chest with each breath. She couldn’t help but scrutinise the pale complexion of the brunette, trying to work out if she really was okay. She seemed so fragile.
Pansy had felt it was too far to try and change Hermione in her state, so had simply put the girl in her bed in her jeans and long sleeve tee. As Hermione had shifted in her sleep, her sleeve had ridden up, revealing the end of an angry looking scar.
Pansy knew what was carved into Hermione’s arm.
Pansy considered it as she lay back on her bed and stared at her ceiling. How many times had she and Draco called Hermione a mudblood back at Hogwarts? Back when it was just a stupid word that they'd heard their parents use. Back when it hardly meant anything. Back when it was just an excellently cutting insult and edgy to use.
Pansy thought about the disastrous end to her normal schooling. The summer that had changed everything. Draco had told her that he wasn’t going back to school. He was no longer smiling broadly and flexing his Dark Mark. He looked worried.
During a party with some of her friends from school, Pansy sat there as Zabini and Crabbe joked about how they were going to maim Muggleborns. Jumping around and laughing as they mimed hexes and curses. Pansy had joined in the laughter.
It had all been so silly and ridiculous back then. Pansy had pushed Draco’s scared expression to the back of her mind.
But then one hot summer evening, Pansy had come home to find her parents in dark robes, masks hanging around their necks, spatters of blood on their faces. Smiling.
Pansy shifted uncomfortably in bed, thinking about how she’d asked them what was going on before immediately regretting asking anything at all. The sickening glee on their faces as they explained the ‘message’ they had sent from the Dark Lord. The excitement as they told her that they had thought about it, and given Draco was involved, and Pansy was over seventeen, she could join in too.
Hermione whimpered a little in her sleep and rolled over, moving closer to Pansy.
Pansy was a coward. She’d run away at the first hint of violence.
She couldn’t back up the words she’d tossed around so carelessly in the school yard. Not like her excited friends from Slytherin who had parents that had let them join the cause. And on the other hand, Pansy couldn’t find the courage to stop her parents either.
All she could bring herself to do was run. Run far, far away and not stop running until the war was over.
Hermione shifted again in her sleep, an arm falling across Pansy’s waist.
Pansy ignored it, glaring at the ceiling.
Hermione hadn’t run. Hermione, who had always fought to prove herself better than Pansy in every class, had stepped up where Pansy couldn’t. She’d stood up for what was right, and endured horrific torture for it to boot.
Hermione, teased by the Slytherins for her Muggle heritage, had been ruthlessly tortured for it. Nothing Pansy did could take that away. She’d been too cowardly to even be there.
Hermione began to whimper again, this time louder. She shifted back and forth in her sleep, seeming like she was distressed.
Pansy looked at the brunette and her heart ached.
The curtains moved with the wind, casting Dementor-like shadows in the light of the moon. The apartment was cheap, the gaps in the windows constantly causing light breezes or loud whistles depending on the weather.
Hermione began to scream.
Pansy pulled the brunette into her arms, squeezing her tightly as she screamed and cried in her sleep.
“Please, no!”
Pansy squeezed her eyes shut, her heart hammering in her chest at the fear in Hermione’s voice.
“Stop!”
Pansy held Hermione tightly, as if her embrace could save Hermione from atrocities that had already happened years ago.
The nightmares finally seemed to pass, as Hermione relaxed and melted into Pansy’s embrace.
Pansy opened her eyes again and watched Hermione’s face, with its long dark eyelashes and full lips.
Another lifetime, another set of choices, things could have been different between them. The passion that budded between them when they argued at Hogwarts could have blossomed into something else.
But Pansy had made her choices.
Still, she allowed herself the small comfort of holding Hermione Granger safe in her arms for one night.
Pansy blinked at the light in her room as she woke up. She heard shuffling around her small apartment and felt the mattress dip slightly as somebody climbed into her bed.
The whirlwind of the strange previous night rushed back to Pansy—of doing a private dance for Hermione Granger of all people, realising she had become too intoxicated, and taking her back to her apartment to look after her.
Pansy cursed under her breath as she rolled over, simultaneously pleasantly surprised and annoyed to find Hermione in her bed.
Hermione was looking considerably better than the previous night, though still pale and gaunt. She was nursing a mug of tea in her hands. Her hair was messy from sleeping and she had taken off her jeans, sitting cross-legged in Pansy’s bed in her underwear and long sleeve tee.
“Morning,” Pansy ventured suspiciously, unsure of what to expect from the woman.
“Er, uh, sorry about last night,” Hermione said sheepishly, “I… Uh…”
The brunette blushed and looked away. It was sweet, seeing Hermione so self-conscious and awkward, almost like they were back at school and the war hadn’t happened at all.
There was a flutter deep in Pansy’s stomach and a thousand different questions she could ask the Golden Girl flooded into her mind at once. She tried to quell the tide of thoughts, focussing instead on what felt most pressing.
“Did you know that I worked there?” Pansy asked curiously, a little less wary of the intruder in her bed.
Hermione blushed darker, dipping her head.
“I, er, might have heard through the Hogwarts rumour mill,” Hermione muttered under her breath, “Nobody believed it was true, of course… But I had to… I had to find out.”
Hermione peeked up at Pansy, raising her eyebrows as if silently asking Pansy if it was okay that she had showed up. Pansy could have giggled with how cute and guilty Hermione looked. She shook her head and tried to keep her focus.
“Oh, um, and I’m sorry for helping myself to a cup of tea,” Hermione added hastily, “And not making you one… I didn’t know you were awake.”
This time Pansy did laugh.
“Is there anything you aren’t sorry for?” Pansy smiled. Inwardly, she cursed herself for smiling.
“Errr,” Hermione blushed again and looked away. Her cheeks were almost scarlet enough to match Pansy’s bedspread. This intrigued the Slytherin.
She shuffled closer to Hermione with a sly smile, feeling every bit the reptilian Slytherin stalking a a weakened prey.
“What is it?” Pansy asked curiously, “What aren’t you sorry for? Throwing up in my bathroom? Calling my coworker ‘suspicious’? Refusing to drink water until I told you what some of the passwords for the Slytherin common room had been?”
Hermione winced at the memories, before shaking her head.
“I’m sorry for all that,” Hermione said, cringing, “Really sorry.”
“But not sorry for something, hmm,” Pansy replied teasingly, tapping a manicured finger on her chin, “Shall I keep guessing?”
“Forget it,” Hermione groaned. Pansy smirked. She’d missed this banter between her and Granger.
“No, no,” Pansy giggled, “Hmm… Let me guess, you aren’t sorry for blatantly staring at the bartender’s tits when she was bringing us more water? Or maybe—“
“Godammit Pansy!” Hermione interjected, blushing again, “I’m not sorry for… I’mnotsorryfororderingadancefromyou.”
Pansy’s smile grew and her stomach flipped. If Pansy wasn’t convinced her heart was made of stone, she would be sure it was fluttering in her chest.
“Really?” Pansy commented smugly with a smirk.
Hermione smiled then, the first genuine smile that Pansy had seen on her yet. It warmed her.
“Oh shut up,” Hermione smiled, playfully shoving Pansy, “Don’t flatter yourself.”
“I don’t need to flatter myself!” Pansy retorted gleefully, “You’re the one that’s glad they ordered a private dance with the Pink Hippogriff’s best dancer.”
“Oh don’t preen!” Hermione said with mock frustration, “But fine, yes, I’m glad I ordered the dance.”
“Oh, so you were glad, were you?” Pansy replied coyly, raising an eyebrow.
The conversation had taken a very different turn to how Pansy ever could have imagined. Part of her weighed up straddling Hermione right there and then in her bed and showing her just how magically her hips could move.
But reality lurked darkly behind the playful banter.
Pansy sighed and lay back on the bed.
“I was worried about you last night,” Pansy admitted.
The mood between the two shifted instantly. Hermione seemed to curl in on herself, hugging her knees and holding the mug of tea so tightly her knuckles were white.
“Why?” Hermione asked quietly.
“Why?!” Pansy repeated, rolling over and propping her head up on her hand, “Are you serious? I haven't seen you since Hogwarts and you show up at my work, then get so wasted I had to check with some Muggleborn that the tablets you’d taken weren’t going to hurt you.”
Hermione laughed darkly.
“You’re worried about pills hurting me,” Hermione scoffed, “I guess you really have been gone for a long time.”
Pansy felt the air rush out of her lungs. She felt like she’d been punched in the stomach. She wished she’d been brave enough to stay. She wished she’d been brave enough to oppose the Dark Lord’s side. Oppose the side that had all of the friends and family she had ever known and loved.
She could have fought beside Hermione. She could have saved Hermione.
Merlin, everything was so fucked up. If only things were still as simple as them being in opposing houses and having a stupid schoolgirl rivalry.
Pansy let out a long and shaky breath, staring intently at the wallpaper. She didn’t trust herself to talk. Didn’t trust the guilt coiling in the pit of her stomach.
An uncomfortable silence hung in the air.
“I heard what happened to you,” Pansy said finally. Though she spoke quietly, her words had a powerful effect. Hermione instantly stiffened beside her. Pansy caught her tugging at her sleeves out of the corner of her eye, but pretended not to see.
“I’m fine,” Hermione said, after another uncomfortable silence.
Pansy debated her next words. She watched the sun stretch over the ceiling of her cheap apartment through the gap in the curtains, its golden arch giving the room a hazy feel.
“You didn’t seem fine last night,” Pansy commented.
It was funny, with all the time Pansy had devoted to thinking about Hermione Granger over the years, she had never actually pictured them ever having a raw and candid conversation like this. She’d imagined she’d at least be showered and presentable if they did.
Pansy ran a self-conscious hand through her hair, playing it off as bravado.
“And you’re fine?” Hermione challenged. Pansy frowned.
“Obviously,” Pansy said, gesturing around the room. Hermione scoffed.
“Because cutting ties with everyone you’ve ever known and hiding out in a town where nobody knows you is normal,” Hermione retorted.
“I’m just taking some time off the grid,” Pansy defended casually, lifting her chin proudly, “There’s nothing wrong with having a bit of fun. Besides, the last thing I want to see is your face in every paper.”
Hermione was the one who frowned then. Evidently she didn’t like the celebrity status that had come with her role in the war. Interesting. Pansy filed this away in her memory.
“I talked to the bartender while you were on the main stage,” Hermione revealed, “She said you avoid everyone. You keep to yourself and they’ve never seen you with anyone.”
While Pansy had allowed Hermione to dig around a little, this was far too close to a nerve for her liking. It was time to push Granger off the topic.
“Why did you come here, Hermione?” Pansy cut in suddenly, derailing Hermione’s prying, “Why did you seek me out of all people? I’m sure I’m quite far down on your list of people you’re eager to catch up with.”
Hermione sighed heavily. She released her knees, stretching her legs back out on the bed, and took a large gulp of her tea.
Pansy’s hand twitched, wanting rebelliously to reach for the vulnerable looking brunette.
“You’ve never pulled your punches,” Hermione said with a laugh, before sipping at her tea again, “This is bloody good tea, by the way, you’ll have to let me know where you bought it.”
“So you wanted to visit me because I’m going to be a bitch to you? To get tea recommendations?” Pansy deadpanned, a little lost with Hermione’s half-explanation. Certainly, on some level, she had missed the arguing with Hermione at Hogwarts. The cute way the brunette’s brow furrowed, the clever insults they would trade, the tension between them when they encountered each other in a hallway. But she hadn’t imagined Hermione would miss the snide remarks she had flung at her.
Hermione turned to Pansy, smiling wryly.
“We certainly had our differences, sure,” Hermione shrugged, “But you were always straight up with me. If I’d answered every single question in a class, you’d come up to me and tell me you thought I sounded like a ‘know it all prat,’”
Pansy chuckled.
“Yeah, yeah, I did say that,” Pansy admitted, “But if I recall, didn’t you counter that insult by insinuating my mother was a dog?”
Hermione blushed, shaking her head in minor embarrassment.
“Not one of my more high-brow insults,” Hermione said wistfully.
“You know, that still doesn’t explain to me why you’re here,” Pansy pointed out. She sat up taller in the bed, straightening the singlet she had worn to bed. She was suddenly very aware of the part of her that wanted to look better for Hermione.
Hermione drained her mug of tea, settling back to lean against the headboard of the bed.
“I don’t like being alone,” Hermione stated plainly, “I haven’t since… You know.”
Pansy waited for Hermione to continue, patiently watching the brunette in her bed. Hermione sighed, rubbing her forehead with the heel of her hand.
“Everybody knows what happened to me,” Hermione explained, “They know how my parents were killed, they know about the torture Bellatrix inflicted on me… And I just can’t stand the way they look at me.”
“I know all those things about you too,” Pansy pointed out.
“They look at me with such fucking pity,” Hermione growled, “Not to mention that ridiculous way they speak to me — as if I’m a child that might break at any moment.”
Pansy’s eyebrows raised at the uncharacteristic swearing and the angry tone in the Gryffindor’s voice.
“And me?” Pansy ventured, trying to at least steer Hermione away from the memories that angered her.
Hermione let out a sharp exhale.
“You’ve never pitied me. Despised me? Maybe. Picked fights with me over nothing? Absolutely. But you’ve never minced your words and never held back with me,” Hermione explained, “I thought— admittedly after a several gins— that if I saw you, you wouldn’t look at me the way everyone else does.”
“And?” Pansy asked. She couldn’t help but edge slightly closer to Hermione in the bed.
“And I was right,” Hermione said gently.
Their eyes locked then, and there was a spark. A faint one, but a spark nonetheless. A reminder of the undefined tension that had always existed between them.
Pansy swallowed.
She liked that Hermione had sought her out. She liked that Hermione appreciated whatever it was between them.
But she was Pansy Parkinson: the pureblood Slytherin who had fled from the war.
“I’m probably not the best person to spend time with,” Pansy said, her voice coming out hoarsely. She swallowed again. Her heart was feeling heavy. The familiar cycle of thoughts was beginning to push at the edges of her mind: what could have been, what chances she had ruined, what couldn’t be taken back or mended.
Hermione shrugged.
“I’m not exactly the best person to spend time with either, these days,” Hermione replied.
Pansy frowned.
“No, that’s not what I mean…” Pansy tried to explain. She felt clumsy, unprepared— everything she loathed feeling— in the wake of Hermione and her curious warm eyes. “I… I wasn’t there. I let down everyone.”
Pansy fell into a numb kind of shock that the words had tumbled so carelessly out of her mouth for the brunette, when she had kept them so expertly locked up for years.
“I’m glad you weren’t,” Hermione answered. She had such earnest honesty in her eyes that for a wild moment, it almost made Pansy cry.
Pansy took in a sharp breath. This wasn’t how things should go. She was the one that was always in control, carefully pulling at the strings of other people’s feelings. She wasn’t the one to fall wide open at the first sign of care.
Pansy shook her head, screwing her eyes tightly shut.
“I’m not reliable… I can’t… I don’t know what you’re here for, but I can’t give you what you need,” Pansy said, lowering her head in shame.
Warm fingers caressed at Pansy’s jaw, running along her jawline to her chin, before tilting her head up. Pansy opened her eyes, surprised at the raw need in Hermione’s eyes.
“Right now, all I need is to be right here,” Hermione confessed, before leaning in.
Selfishly, Pansy let Hermione Granger kiss her. Shouldn’t she be allowed at least this one nice thing?
Hermione’s tongue slipped into her mouth abruptly and all doubts and fears in Pansy’s mind were wiped clear.
Pansy was falling. Free falling, like she had been knocked off a broom at great height, her stomach lurching, her heart pounding, her nerves fluttering.
Hermione took the opportunity to press Pansy onto her back and slide on top of her, a thigh slipping between the Slytherin’s legs.
Pansy felt a spark she had never felt with Draco.
Her arms wrapped around Hermione, a small moan escaping her as Hermione’s thigh pressed harder between her legs with a delicious friction.
It was everything she had wanted, but never admitted. Everything she had stuffed down and convinced herself she could never have.
Pansy was lost in the moment.
Hermione’s hands were tugging at Pansy’s singlet.
The spark set alight a wildfire.
Hermione and Pansy shed clothes— though Hermione kept her long sleeve tee on— moving like overexcited teenagers, like this was their first time being intimate with anyone.
Hermione bit down on Pansy’s bottom lip and Pansy’s back arched. It was pathetic, really, that Pansy was now the one having her strings so easily pulled. But that was the furthest thing from her mind right now.
Hermione’s hands trailed up and down Pansy’s body, soft then hard, gentle then needy. Pansy melted into her touch.
Everything — the years of anger, frustration, need, desire, admiration— it all poured out as their bodies entwined in the sheets of Pansy’s bed.
Hermione kissed down the toned expanse of Pansy’s stomach, causing Pansy to fist the sheets and whimper.
Teasing, Hermione paused after pressing a gentle kiss to Pansy’s hipbone. She ran a hand through her wild curls as she looked up at Pansy with a look of tenderness that threatened to shatter the Slytherin into a million pieces.
Pansy couldn’t catch her breath, panting as her head spun.
“Hermione,”
Pansy’s voice sounded rough and zealous.
Hermione dipped her head.
Fingers, lips, tongue. Pansy was gone, her careful control thrown to the wind as Hermione took her like she owned her.
But Pansy didn’t feel conquered. She felt safe.
Hermione saw her, all of her. She knew the Pansy that cared, that tried, that wanted to do the best in everything she did. She knew the Pansy that was dark, laughed at cruel jokes, judged quickly and sharply.
And somehow… It even felt like she knew the Pansy that had run away.
Pansy didn’t have to pretend.
Hermione’s fingers curved inside her and stars erupted behind Pansy’s eyes.
Quivering, keening, Pansy shook at Hermione’s ministrations before her body went slack. Hermione climbed up to lie at Pansy’s side, her hand resting on Pansy’s stomach.
Pansy panted, taking a moment to catch her breath.
And then in an instant, Hermione was the one pinned to the bed, as Pansy nipped and kissed at her neck.
“I missed you,” Pansy confessed.
“I need you,” Hermione admitted back.
Pansy’s hands explored a tanned stomach underneath Hermione’s top, caressed the toned muscles of her back.
She needed Hermione too, in a way she couldn’t articulate.
Hermione pressed down against Pansy’s thigh, and Pansy could feel how much Hermione wanted her. It was a euphoric realisation.
“I need you too,” Pansy murmured quietly.
She wasn’t sure if Hermione even heard her, but it didn’t matter. Her hand replaced her thigh to tease and toy with Hermione.
Pansy’s heart skipped a beat as Hermione responded with vocal approval, throwing her head back. Pansy nestled her face back into Hermione’s neck to kiss hot skin.
“Pansy,”
Hermione said her name with such tenderness that Pansy found herself pressing herself more needily against her.
Their bodies melded together, hearts hammering, hands desperate.
Two broken halves desperately crashing together in an attempt to feel whole.
Desperation and fervour gave way to ecstasy, and then faded into exhausted content.
But even after the rushed and eager energy was spent, Hermione and Pansy couldn’t quite let go of each other.
They lay in the bed together, arms around each other, and just looked at each other.
Hermione still looked haunted. Pansy still felt an emptiness deep inside.
But somehow, right there, in that moment, things seemed less bad. Things felt right, for the first time in a long time.
“Stay?” Pansy asked, no longer caring about the vulnerability sneaking through into her voice, “Stay for a little bit at least?”
Hermione nodded.