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Pansy hurries in from the pouring rain and knocks on the door to his flat. Her hair is in wet clumps, her long coat dripping with water, her luxury mascara running down her flushed cheeks. She looks like a wilted flower. Slumped, tired, dying, but beautiful. Tragically beautiful. The beauty of what once was, of what could have been.
Ron opens his door but doesn’t let go of his grip on the knob. One arm wrapped around himself, while his face gazes down at her. He looks better than he ever had. Better than he had when Pansy approached him for the first time, like he was a challenge to be won or a new hobby to test out. Better than he had when she’d torn away his last bits of innocence from underneath the covers of his bed, or when Pansy had realized – awfully, unfortunately – that she was growing to care for him. Better than he had when he’d told her to walk out his door and never come back.
He wants to apologize. But what for? It wasn’t his fault that she’d thrown it all away, that she couldn’t handle having something good and true without reverting to that treacherous girl she had once been. He couldn’t be held responsible for her, not when she was never his.
She wants to loathe him. How could he stand there, looking so perfect, so improved, so empty? How could his face slip into shock when he saw her, as if he couldn’t fathom why she would ever return? Worst of all, how could he stand there and stare into her with those clear blue eyes of his, making her love him still?
“Why are you here?” He asks, soft, his words tiptoeing around her with careful precision, as if with one misstep, she would break.
He had never spoken to her like that before. A small smile grew on her face, making her cheeks feel stretched and raw. “You told me to never come back. You know I never do as I’m told.”
Pansy had already been broken.
Ron tilts his head, looking at her for a heavy moment, his eyes yelling, that’s not all you want to say, and we both know it.
“I – I miss you.” She can hardly manage the words through her tight jaw.
“That’s all?” Ron asks, his narrowed eyes tearing into her and crumbling her last defenses into dust.
Pansy doesn’t reply. She can’t.
“That’s all?” He repeats, shaking his head in disappointment like he’d done a thousand times before, clutching the doorknob, ready to shut her out for the last time.
Just as the door is almost shut, just as he’s almost out of her life without another word, he pauses at the sound of her voice.
“I love you. Still.”
She could hear his frown, and then none of her body held any warmth. Even her blood runs cold.
“When did you ever love me before, Pansy?”
The door shuts. It doesn’t slam, just closes without a sound, as if it had never been opened in the first place.
Pansy falls to the floor.