Work Text:
College is—
Disappointing.
Having a Starbucks in the lobby of her dorm stops being cool after she takes her first Political Economies midterm and realizes that studying with glitter pens and flashcards and gingerbread lattes like she had in high school is probably not going to work anymore, and even though the parties are technically more abundant and socially diverse and at least partially legal depending on the ratio of seniors to freshman—they’re not really different.
College is basically all the shitty parts of high school turned up to Bose-level decibels of deafening and all the fun parts just kind of…slightly rearranged.
And Pansy had expectations, okay? She had prepared herself for pulling all-nighters during finals and drinking tequila straight from the bottle on otherwise unremarkable Wednesday afternoons and piling laughingly into taxis with good-naturedly bemused drivers who would chuckle and commiserate and take selfies with her and—
She hasn’t done any of those things.
She has fallen asleep on her sketchbook and woken up to the point of a greasy lead pencil poking her in the cheek. She has polished off a carafe of Yellow Tail with her RA after being the only person on her floor to show up for the Orientation Week Icebreakers Session. She has gotten her period in the back of a cab on the return journey from the Magnolia they went to on Sex and the City and then been handed a spray bottle of Windex and a roll of industrial paper towels when she’d tried to gracefully exit the car.
So.
Yeah, college is disappointing.
It doesn’t help that Harry hasn’t been able to visit her yet, or that Daphne has somewhat inexplicably replaced Pansy with Hermione; and it doesn’t help that Marcus is off ghost-hunting with Luna and keeps sending Pansy fucking postcards as if she gives a shit about what the hell Cheyenne, Wyoming looks like; and it doesn’t help that Blaise has Theo and Draco has everyone and she had been so sure last year that she could survive on her own in New York and have fun and be Pansy without the accompanying hardware of her friends or her dad or—or Harry—
She was wrong, basically.
And it isn’t like she’s miserable, but—
There’s a loud, jarring knock on her dorm room door, rattling the full-length mirror she’s attached to the back of it.
Pansy frowns.
She glances at the small beige stain on her tank top—some asshole in the elevator had spilled tea all over her when she’d reached around to push the button for her floor—and then sighs. It’s probably just her RA. Drinking shitty Moscato out of pastel paper Dixie cups apparently forges bonds so permanent that not even Pansy’s horrifically bad attitude can fucking break them.
“Coming,” she calls out half-heartedly, wiping cupcake crumbs off her yoga pants and yanking open the door.
And Pansy—
She doesn’t make a conscience decision to screech like a fucking banshee and hurl herself at Harry when she sees him standing in the hallway because that would be ridiculous and Pansy is not a ridiculous person, okay, she isn’t, she’s just—she’s just missed Harry so much, has missed his stupid nerdy glasses and his stupid messy hair and his stupid smug grin that he’s never quite been able to shed ever since her dad had clapped him on the shoulder and gruffly invited him out for a beer.
“Surprise?” Harry manages to gasp, wrapping his arms around her waist as she rains kisses across his chin and his throat and his nose but not his mouth, no, she’s saving that for last—except he doesn’t let her, curls his hand around the nape of her neck and drags her lips up to his and she fucking melts into it, into him, because he tastes like spearmint gum and Doritos and home and Harry and she has missed him, she has, so much so much so much.
“You’re an asshole,” she tells him, bunching his t-shirt up with her fingers. “You could have, like, warned me, or something.”
Harry offers her his version of a charming wink which effectively jostles his glasses and makes his whole face look lopsided and she might not be ridiculous but he certainly is and she’s giggling before she can stop herself and her smile’s wide enough that her cheeks are fucking hurting with the stretch of it and it’s worth it, it will always be worth it, Harry will always be worth it—
“I brought tequila,” he says, nodding at his battered black duffle bag; the white Nike swoosh on the side is literally flaking off along the edges, but he insists that it has ‘sentimental value’ and continues to drag it along everywhere he goes and wow has Pansy never been happier to see it before now, seriously.
“Tequila?” she repeats.
He tucks a strand of her hair behind her ear and rubs his thumb along her jawline. “Tequila,” he confirms.
She pauses. “Can we drink it straight out of the bottle?”
His expression flickers with something like fond incredulity for a split-second before turning a little dirty and a lot excited. “You can,” he replies, lowering his voice and moving his hand down so that he’s framing the hollow of her pelvis. “I’m going to be more creative, though.”
She blinks. “Right,” she says faintly. “Right. So—you should come inside now. Yeah. Inside.”
He smirks.