Work Text:
“I’m fine!” Neville says quickly, even as blood pours determinedly down his arm. “I can definitely patch this up myself, just a scratch.”
Technically, it’s a bite, not a scratch, from a fanged geranium. Entirely unprovoked, not that that’s in any way relevant to his injury or the way his body is reacting to it. He can feel shock setting in, a tingling in his fingers before they start to go numb.
“Should I call the matron?” One of his sixth-year students asks, nervously. Another, more instinctive student is already off running toward the main castle, before Neville has the wherewithal to call her back.
“No,” Neville says resolutely, feeling dizzy. “If you’ll just hand me a towel, and my wand.” He tries to look around the floor for it, but tilting his head makes him unsteady. “I’m not sure where I’ve dropped it.”
“Professor, I really think you should go to the infirmary.” Another student helpfully passes him his wand, just as a shadow looms in the door of the greenhouse.
“The infirmary, at once, Professor Longbottom. I will finish your lesson for you.”
McGonagall’s clipped tone leaves no room for argument, and Neville feels like a first year again.
The headmistress is far less scary, however, than Madam Pomfrey’s replacement.
When Neville reaches the infirmary ward, he pauses politely in the doorway, because she yelled at him last time for barging in. And yelled at him the time before that for not coming faster. He really can never win for trying.
“Hullo, I’ve injured myself again,” he announces.
She tucks a lock of dark hair behind her ear and swivels around toward him, green eyes narrowing immediately at the bloody rag wrapped around his arm. She darts across the room and takes him by the elbow, exasperation etched across her face.
They’ve done this particular dance many times before. Once already this week, actually.
“What did you do now?”
He gives her an apologetic shrug with his good arm as she shoves him into an examination chair.
“Just one of my plants. Again.”
She presses her lips together, annoyed, and primly drops onto the stool in front of him.
“Robe off,” she says, bossily, “or I’m cutting it out of the way.”
Neville awkwardly shrugs out of his robes, trying his best not to groan from the sharp pain shooting up his arm. His shirt is already ruined, and she doesn’t ask permission before slicing it up the sleeve to get a better look at the wound on his forearm. Under the light of her wand tip, it does look worse than he thought, the edges of it ragged and swelling.
“Was it poisonous?” she asks, without looking up at him. She is focused intently, her wand moving in circles, cleaning and stitching the skin back together as she goes.
“No,” he manages, voice tight, because it bloody hurts. She’s never once used an analgesic spell — maybe because he only comes to her when he’s already got half a limb hanging off. But he’s pretty sure she’s never even considered it.
“I still want you to take a disinfecting potion, preventatively.” Her eyes slide down the length of his arm to his hand, settling pointedly on the dirt caked around his fingernails. She wrinkles her nose and finally lifts her head back up to him.
“Do you need something for the pain?” Her voice is clinical, without a single molecule of nurturing instinct, one dark eyebrow arched like she’ll absolutely judge him if he says yes.
His arm still throbs faintly, but Neville shakes his head. It’s a good reminder to be more careful. One would think regular visits to the infirmary would be discouragement enough, but he seems to still keep winding up here.
“I’m good now. Thank you, Madam Parkinson, for patching me up.”
She hums noncommittally, turning to her desk. She pulls out a thick file from the bottom filing drawer, and he can just make out his last name on the cover. She drops it onto her desk with a heavy thunk.
“Could you at least try to make it a week without me, Longbottom?”
He can’t keep from smiling at her expression.
“I’ll try my best.”
“Why’d you decide to become a healer?” he asks, five days later, as she cradles his leg in her lap, annoyance painted all over her face.
Her small fingers press a burn salve into his calf, and it would feel heavenly if his leg didn’t still feel like it was literally on fire from the sting of ignis ivy, and if Parkinson weren’t digging her thumbs into the muscle like she’s trying to scrub a bloodstain out of white linen.
There is a quirk in her lip, like she can guess the reason he’s asking.
“Why, you don’t think I’m a natural?”
A natural mortician, maybe.
“I think you’re a brilliant healer,” he says, and her cheeks turn pink.
Her reaction surprises him, and he likes it. He wants to make her blush again.
“You’re just a bit… impersonal. In your bedside manner.”
She shoots him a scathing glance.
“I’m efficient, Longbottom.”
She accidentally snags a leg hair with her nails, ripping it out by the root, and he winces.
Instead of apologizing, she says: “You have the hairiest legs I’ve ever seen, do you braid it at night to keep it from tangling in your sheets?”
He grins, unbothered.
“I would, but it already takes too much time to braid my chest hair.”
She laughs, softly, and shoves his leg out of her lap.
“I’m not treating you again this week,” she threatens. “It’s almost like you’re maiming yourself on purpose.”
Monday is technically the start of a new week, even if it’s only been six days.
Neville is sitting backwards, naked from the waist up, straddling the exam chair while Pansy plucks dozens of spiky bush thorns out of his back.
“Fucking hell, Parkinson,” he grits out, flinching sharply. “Do you have to do that by hand? You don’t have a spell or something?”
A small bowl floats next to her hand, and she casually flicks the thorns she’s collecting into it. She’s practically a surgeon with a pair of tweezers, but as gentle as a razor-blade.
“I don’t, actually,” she snaps. “Unless you want them all to come out at once and shred your entire back. Which I would then have to heal.”
Neville rubs his forehead against his wrist, wiping a thin line of perspiration from his brow. “Just kidding, I definitely prefer you slowly doing it one at a time.”
“Good,” she says curtly, and yanks another one out. But when he flinches again, her left hand moves to his shoulder and trails lightly down, her fingers pressing in small circles against his ribs. It’s oddly soothing, and she’s literally never soothed him before.
He suppresses the urge to sigh, because that would definitely be embarrassing.
“Why didn’t you stay an Auror?”
He’s grateful for the distraction of her question.
“It was a bit post-traumatic, after the war,” he answers, closing his eyes. “I just figured out pretty quick I’d rather deal with plants, not criminals.”
“That makes sense,” she says, her voice soft. He’s distracted by her hand, still roaming his back, even after she’s plucked the last of the thorns. It feels so nice, it takes him a while to notice she’s tracing his scars, the mars he collected seventh year and had to heal himself, poorly.
“Are these all from plants?”
Tension roils back though his spine, a sudden flex of his shoulder blades. Pain shoots through his freshly de-thorned skin and his instinct is to buck her away.
But she presses both palms insistently against his lower back, urging him back down into the chair.
“Shhh, be still. I’m sorry. That was a stupid question.”
They’re both silent as she works a cooling cream into his skin, carefully avoiding the scars that aren’t fresh.
When he shucks his shirt back over his shoulders and tries to say thank you, she refuses to meet his eyes.
For two weeks, he is extremely careful, and he manages to avoid a single incident (serious enough to require medical attention.)
When the serious incident does occur, it’s not even his fault.
Maybe it’s a little his fault, but it’s mostly Harry’s. If it weren’t for The Boy Who Lived Then Died and Then Lived Again saying “C’mon, Nev, take the Firebolt for a spin, she’s still good as new,” he wouldn’t be lying flat on his arse underneath the visitor side goalpost, with Parkinson peering down her pointed little nose above him.
He never was very good at flying.
Neville’s left leg is pointed at a very funny angle, and he can’t feel anything below the waist, actually. Which is good, because if he could feel it, it would likely be quite painful.
“His femur shattered into his pelvic plate,” Pansy is saying, while she reads a diagnostic charm, her face very grey. “I don’t know if I can—”
“Ms. Parkinson, if you think a medical evacuation to St. Mungo’s is more appropriate, by all means,” McGonagall says, her voice pinched.
“I’m so sorry, Nev. I’ll take him to Mungo’s straightaway,” Harry cuts in, and Pansy looks frankly murderous.
“You’re not touching my patient,” Pansy snarls, “and stop standing so fucking close to me. I need space to think.”
She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes. When she opens them again, they are focused, resolute.
“We can’t move him, it’s too dangerous,” she says, decisively. Efficiently. “But I can do it here.”
She kneels down and brushes a sweaty lock of hair away from Neville’s eye.
“Hullo,” he says, with a grim smile. “I’ve injured myself again.”
“I know,” she says, with the barest quirk of her lips. “But I need you to listen very carefully, because I need your medical consent.”
“You have it,” he says, without a moment’s hesitation.
“Neville,” she tries again, squeezing his hand to keep his attention. “I have to vanish your hipbones and grow them back. Otherwise there might be pieces still lodged in your femoral nerve. It’s the only option and it’s going to be really painful.”
“I trust you,” he says, earnestly. “Whatever it is. Do it.”
She presses her lips tightly together, then nods. He mourns the warmth of her hand when she tugs it away.
“Pansy,” he says, urgently, and she stops digging through her medical bag to look at him with impatience.
“Would you use a bloody analgesic charm, just this once?”
“I already did,” she says, with a thin smile. “But brace yourself for when it wears off.”
He nods, and closes his eyes, trying very hard to think about anything other than what she’s about to do to his leg. He focuses on the brush of the grass against his neck, the cool breeze on his arms. The way her perfume smells, like lilac and vanilla. But Pansy’s voice pulls his attention back, as she whispers a spell he’s never heard before.
Then, there is only screaming.
“There you are.”
Her voice enters his consciousness, so distantly he isn’t sure whether she’s talking to him or just found a quill she’d dropped on the floor.
But when his eyes are able to focus on her face, and he realizes it’s her hand pressed against his cheek, he thinks maybe she did mean him.
“You found me,” he says, stupidly, his voice a raw croak.
“How are you feeling?”
“Like I fell fifty feet off of a twenty-year old broomstick.”
He remembers his leg and roughly pulls the bedsheet off. He’s in his boxers, which is for some reason embarrassing in front of Pansy, but not enough to dim his joy at seeing his hairy, mostly-straight, fully-boned leg. There’s not even a scar.
Pansy backs away, and he wishes he’d laid there a little while longer. He liked having her so close.
“Can you walk?” she asks, and he realizes she’s anxious, twisting the hem of her jumper between her fingers.
“I’m sure I can,” he says, like any uncertainty is deeply insulting. “You healed me, didn’t you?”
She doesn’t say anything, just watches him as he gingerly puts weight onto his leg.
He braces for pain, but it doesn’t come. He stands normally. Balances on one leg. Does a little skip.
“Good as new,” he crows, with a huge grin on his face. He turns to Pansy, to tell her how brilliant she is, but she bites her lip and sharply turns her face away.
Neville realizes with astounding horror that she is crying. He practically runs to be next to her.
“Pansy, what—”
She slaps him smartly across the face.
“Don’t you ever do that again. You can go to Mungo’s next time, or you can rot in the middle of the Quidditch Pitch. But don't you dare call me.”
She turns and storms into her office, and the door slams shut behind her.
“I’m sorry,” is all he can say, after her. “Fuck, Pansy. I’m sorry.”
He stays late that night in the greenhouse, talking softly to his plants.
There’s a whisper of robes behind him, and he knows it’s her before she speaks, by the way the air shifts to welcome her in.
“I’m surprised it’s just a perfectly normal greenhouse in here,” she says, a smirk in her voice. “You’d think it’s the seventh circle of hell.”
He smiles, hesitantly, and turns to her. “It’s peaceful, sometimes.”
She glances away, and he stares at the curve of her neck. He's never wanted to kiss any part of the human anatomy so badly.
“Listen, Longbottom,” she says, like the words physically pain her. “I wanted to apologize, for earlier. It was unprofessional, and I suppose it’s entirely your right to idiotically injure yourself as often as you like. I shouldn’t have… gotten emotional about it.”
Neville shakes his head. “You had every right, Pansy. I’m the one who should be sorry.”
She’s beautiful, next to his plants, shrouded in green. So in the hanging silence, he tells her that.
“You’re beautiful, next to my plants.”
She blinks at him, lips parting in surprise.
“Are you concussed?”
A slow smile spreads across his face.
“Maybe,” he says, reaching for her hand. When she doesn’t pull it away, he tugs her closer, until he can wrap his arm around her waist and feel her soft breath against his neck.
“I was wrong, by the way. About your bedside manner. It’s perfect.”
She smiles and breathes him in, curling her fingers against his chest.
“Shut up. You’re an absolute nightmare of a patient. The worst.”
He cuffs her chin, tilting it up, and Neville swears after he kisses her senseless, he’s going to apologize profusely and never, ever have an accident again.
…He’ll at least really try.