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Pansy Parkinson didn’t date nice boys for the same reason she didn’t eat meat—despite public opinion, she was rather opposed to slaughter at her own hands. Pansy knew she would destroy someone like that. Girls with blade sharp words and blood-tinted lipstick weren’t meant for soft loves. They were barely meant for love at all—certainly not the kind of get-inside-you, unshakeable love nice boys were built for.
Neville Longbottom was without question a nice boy.
Time had changed his features for the better. Gone were the ears that stuck out too far and the shorter stature than all the other boys from their year. He’d grown into something Pansy certainly wouldn’t have predicted. He was hot. Not aristocracy hot like Draco or Blaise. He was nice boy hot. His brown hair was tucked underneath a hat. His stubble was shaped around his nice jaw.
He looked up from the other side of the bar. “Pansy Parkinson,” he said as if they were old friends running into one another. There was a smile around her name.
She couldn’t hear it well—the music was too loud despite it being a hotel bar (as if they thought anyone was here to dance) and he was on the other edge of the bar, but she could imagine the way he would greet her perfectly.
Pansy Parkinson didn’t date nice boys, but as she went over to say hi despite the fact that she did not approach men at bars ( only to say hi , she thought, definitely nothing more ), she couldn’t help thinking there was something about nice boys. Something she never understood ( couldn’t understand, wasn’t allowed to understand ).
She leaned against the bar beside him. “Neville Longbottom,” she greeted right back.
She went back to his flat. Sue her.
It felt innocent when he’d suggested it.
“It’s too loud in here,” he’d said, curled toward her ear in a way that from anyone else would have felt like a come-on. “Want to come back to mine? I’m close and have much better wine.”
So now here she was. In his flat. And he had a cat.
“You have a cat,” she said dumbly. Then she felt rather stupid because Pansy wasn’t stupid , but she’d had any of number of people think it about her over the years.
Because she didn’t care about school. Because she wasn’t Hermione fucking Granger. Because her bravery didn’t present itself like the blind stupidity all those Gryffindors loved. In actuality every movement she’d made since the day she was born was calculated, thought through, done exactly the way she had laid out for herself.
So why the hell was she here?
Neville laughed. “I have a cat. You have to have something to come home to, and I’d gotten rather fed up with roommates. Do you know how disgusting Seamus Finnigan is? His socks… anywhere. Just crumpled in front of the couch.”
Pansy snorted. It wasn’t her most attractive gesture, not one she used in her game of cat and mouse when trying to get men to ask her back to their place— make them feel like it’s their decision, her mother used to preach to her as she combed through her long black hair at night. Men want to always feel like they’re the ones in control.
“So…” Neville hopped from one foot to the other. “Wine? I suppose you’re a red girl.”
The smirk that fell onto Pansy’s lips was second nature. She loved when people thought they could get any glimpse into who she was.
“Red,” she confirmed. She eyed the living room for the best place to sit. There was only a lone chair or the couch, where the cat was perched right in the middle, and she chose the latter.
The cat looked at least a hundred years old, and she now noticed it only had a single eye; it didn’t bother to even look at the intrusion into its personal space as she sat.
Neville busied himself in the other room, and Pansy crossed her legs. She’d decided she wasn’t going to wonder why she was here. It wasn’t that she was trying to seduce Neville Longbottom, and it wasn’t as if she particularly wanted anything from him, but every time she thought about cutting her loses and leaving she kept remembering the way he had said her name. Pansy Parkinson.
Not Pansy Parkinson, the girl who tried to throw us all to the wolves. Pansy Parkinson, Slytherin Princess. Pansy Parkinson, bitch. Just her name. A welcome.
When he returned she accepted the heavy pour with a head nod. The wine was alright, not something she would pick for herself, but her taste was still expensive. It was truthfully better than what she’d been drinking at the bar.
“What were you doing at a hotel bar?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Usually it’s quieter. I know some of the bartenders there since it’s so close. Sometimes I drop by for a pint after work.”
“And work is?” she asked, taking another sip. She shivered, probably from the wine and not because Neville had turned himself slightly on the couch, bringing his arm to the back of it, and now she was seeing his forearm. It was a rather nice forearm.
“I”m contracted by the Ministry to do some independent research right now.”
Pansy searched her brain to remember the key facts of Neville. She remembered the frog and the clumsiness and— “On plants?”
He beamed. Pansy could have sworn it cracked her heart a little. That had never been her world—kindness for the sake of it. She had no idea how people went around living with their hearts on their sleeves. That, too, she assumed was a sort of bravery that would never be her.
“On plants,” he confirmed. “On deep-rooting plants to be specific, but any more specific than that and I’ll be sure to bore you.” He paused. “I never would have assumed you would remember anything about me.”
She knew her bluntness and self preservation often appeared to be selfishness. And she was selfish, she wouldn’t deny that, because selfishness kept you living in a time of uncertainty. But she was also perceptive, that was how you stayed alive too. You kept your eyes open and took in the facts. She was particularly good at reading people.
“Hm,” she hummed and looked down at the swirling wine in her glass. She wasn’t going to articulate that to him, or reveal more than was absolutely necessary. When she looked back up, his eyes were watching her curiously.
He blushed when her gaze met his. “And what about you?” he asked. “Why a hotel bar? What are you doing?”
Shoulders back, she resituated herself. The cat mewled minutely, turning toward her so the fur brushed against her leg. “I had a client come in so I had to greet him. I manage talent.”
“Seems fitting,” Neville said. “Doing something glamorous.”
She scoffed. “It’s not particularly glamorous. It usually feels like babysitting toddlers with incredibly expensive tastes and poor judgement.”
“You’re friends with Malfoy, I would assume you’ve trained for that your whole life.” He froze as he realized what he’d said, eyeing her to see if he’d misstepped.
Pansy barked out a laugh. Neville’s whole demeanor softened with the noise. “Holy shit. That was good, but to pack a real punch you would have had to say Blaise. Draco is actually surprisingly self-sufficient.”
“Noted.” Neville was still looking at her. Pansy knew that was what happened in conversations, you made eye contact, and it wasn’t that she was averse to it. But it was hard looking at a nice boy and all his niceness just offered for free.
And maybe it was the niceness or the wine in her glass. Or the fact she'd had two vodka seltzers at the bar before this to forget the sleazy way the lead singer of the band she’d welcomed into the city had suggested she stay for a drink here, won’t you darling? Maybe it was a lot of things—the years of trauma she had yet to unpack, the fact that the war was still around them everyday.
Maybe it was just Neville in his own unique particular Neville-ness that threw her off guard.
Either way, she said, “I don’t know what I’m doing here,” and it was almost too honest. She wanted to suck the words right back into her mouth the second she’d said them.
The bastard didn’t even seem put off by it. He shrugged. “Want to see my herb garden?”
The porch he showed her was barely big enough to fit the both of them. Their shoulders brushed as he showed her the tiny box overflowing with herbs. She could smell the basil and it brought her back to summers at her father’s place in Italy. The fine wine and finer pasta.
“Here, you like mint, right?” he asked as he leaned forward and picked a leaf to offer to her.
He chewed his own leaf while she popped her own into her mouth. Her Italian memories continued to spill as she remembered the mint gelato she would eat every day. Her mother begged her to watch her overindulgence.
You sure do love things that aren’t good for you, she had joked, but mother’s jokes weren’t ever only jokes. Maybe that was the truth to why Pansy didn’t like nice boys. Nice boys could destroy you. Pansy had tried to cut out all the things in her life that weren’t good for her a long time ago.
A string of emotion cut through her chest. “Perfect,” she told him.
That over-exuberant beam was back. He leaned against the railing, and she bent forward, put her elbows there so she could watch the small view of the city he had. Their shoulders kept brushing. He was so warm.
“I”m not…” he paused, cleared his throat. “I didn’t invite you here because I was expecting anything of you, Pansy. I just saw you at the bar, and I thought… I don’t know. All our classmates got out of a war and got married and settled as if it would make up for all the dysfunction of our school years. And you’ve never pretended, and I saw you and it just seemed so stupid. That I didn’t know you, and somehow it felt like seeing someone I know really well because how do you not after going through everything we have, and I guess… I wanted to change that.”
Pansy sucked in a deep breath because her lungs felt as if they couldn’t fill themselves. She took another, and she felt grounded again. She turned her head to the left, and he was nervously looking at her. Her hand moved on its own accord, reaching to cup his cheek as if she did know him. As if she was allowed that simple touch without paying anything for it.
Maybe she was. He leaned into it, eyes still on her, smile so sweet it reminded her of the mint flavor still dancing on her tongue.
“You’re dangerous,” she whispered.
He huffed a small laugh through his nose. “No one has ever called me dangerous before.” Neville shifted slightly toward her, and bent to be closer to her eye line as he said what he said next. He reached forward and tucked a hair behind her ear, and his thumb grazed her cheek. “You’re kind without any of the fake parts of it.”
She bit her lip and didn’t worry about whether it messed her lipstick up. “No one has ever called me kind before.”
He nodded. “They should.”
The way she sat was unladylike—legs spread wide on the carpet as if there wasn’t a couch a few feet away. But Marceline—his cat was named Marceline —had moved to the floor and Pansy was petting her head. Her soft purrs warmed Pansy’s cold heart.
Neville had joined her, but he was less concerned with the cat than she was. His back was against the floor while one of his arms extended toward Marceline, the other arm bent so his forearm was over his eyes. His chest rose with soft, smooth breaths.
“Aren’t you a sweet girl,” Pansy whispered.
“She’ll never want you to leave,” Neville said. His voice was calm, something near sleepy.
“Oh, Neville. Be honest. You can say you're the one worried you’ll never want me to leave.”
He laughed softly. Everything about him was so fucking soft. Pansy was sure she was too sharp to touch him.
“We should do something. Another time.” His other arm fell to the floor too, and Pansy could see his eyes were closed.
Pansy nodded, though he couldn’t see her. “Okay.” It should have felt like a betrayal to admit it, though Pansy wasn’t quite sure a betrayal to what. It nearly felt like ripping off a layer of armor, but that wasn’t true, either. Neville didn’t seem to want her to change at all.
The thought was tender.
“Hey Neville?”
He hummed.
Marceline stood and stretched before moving back to the couch. Pansy crawled on all fours and inched closer to him. “Would you mind if I laid here with you for a little longer?”
His eyes opened, and he smiled at her. Neville nodded, motioned for her to come closer.
She inched beside him, and then in a moment of bravery she leaned into him. Her head was close to resting on his shoulder.
His arm scooped around her, and she could feel now the way his soft breaths moved his chest up and down in rhythmic swells. How was he so warm?
Pansy didn’t date nice boys. They scared her, and she didn’t trust herself around them, and frankly they seemed too fragile to a woman made of shards of glass. But she was building herself smoother now, and Neville didn’t seem to see that sharpness as a deficit.
She wasn’t dating Neville, she’d only talked to him for a night, but she felt herself dozing beside him. She let herself. And that seemed like a dangerous step in a direction she might be ready to take.