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Falling into bed with Pansy is exceptionally easy.
It's lighthearted fun, something casual and carefree that tastes like the tangerine-grapefruit flavor of Pansy’s favorite lip gloss. it’s never supposed to be anything more. Hermione swore it wouldn’t be.
( But oh.
Hermione Granger is made of broken promises and hopes forever lost, of dreams unfulfilled and memories forever forgotten.
Her parents will never remember her, and as the years go on, she slowly starts to forget them—the sound of their voice first, but then smaller details, like the way her father scrunched up his nose whenever he laughed or the softness of her mother’s touch whenever Hermione would fall sick. What she never forgets, what she knows she never will forget is the sound of her own screams brought forth by a madwoman’a torture.
Her mind is cruel enough to let her hold onto these memories. )
The divide between them has always been one of catastrophic proportions. Slytherin and Gryffindor, opposite-sides-of-the-war once upon a time, muggle-born and pureblood—all of these separate them akin to a never-ending ocean. But the tides change, the rivers ice over up, and when they meet again—years after Pansy’s “take him!", years after Hermione’s “I'll go with you”—they’re different, for better (Pansy) or for worse (Hermione).
Hermione spots her across the room at the Leaky Cauldron, alone and nursing a glass of firewhiskey—a perfect match to her own, only Hermione’s is cracked, and she has to fight the urge not to slice her lower lip open on chipped glass. Instead, she gulps the rest of the drink down, and it burns burns burns , but the burning in the back of her throat and in her nostrils, the sting in the corners of her eyes—it’s quieter than the shouting in her mind, so she welcomes it.
Just like Pansy welcomes her—with open arms and a cheshire-cat grin of someone who knows exactly what Hermione needs, craves, wants. And Hermione—more than anything—simply wants to let go.
She falls apart in Pansy’s arms, all over and all over again.
Pansy breaks her down and builds her from the ground up in expensive suites of five-star hotels in Muggle London. She fucks Hermione like there’s only now, no past to bear witness and no tomorrow to look forward to. Her kisses are scorching-hot; they taste like the lemon zest from fancy lemon water she insists be sent up to their room before they even get there. After months and months and months of gentle-rough sex, of being remade by the hands of one and only Pansy Parkinson, Hermione can say with absolute certainty—Pansy is forever imprinted in her mind.
Her decaying memories of everything she had lost are suddenly replaced by the memories of a girl she knows she will never truly have—the rhubarb-sweetness of her perfume, the tangerine of her chapstick, the velvet of her emerald-green blazer with the sleeves rolled up. Her own screams that had plagued her nightmares for years slowly but surely morph into little whimpers and moans Pansy draws out of her with expert precision, and the shouting of her friends as a castle-not-a-home burned around them swiftly turn into Pansy’s whispers of sweet nothings and promises never made.
Hermione Granger is a painting restored, a book rebound, a castle rebuilt.
Pansy Parkinson is her conservator, her binder, her restorator.
Hermione is ready to fall apart if Pansy is there to catch her. Unflinchingly, unexpectedly, Pansy is always there—with a teasing smile and a soft scratch of nails painted crimson (nail polish; not blood). At some point, a scratch of nails becomes a caress of fingertips to naked, heated skin, while a teasing smile morphs into something so full of tenderness that Hermione’s whole world trembles.
An earthquake in the making. Always too late to stop.
It was never supposed to happen, yet Hermione knows she was foolish to expect anything else. She recalls, distinctly, the conversation they had last—in the middle of the night in yet another hotel room, swallowed up by a gentle glow of a half-moon and the chilly gust of late-november wind
“It’s hard not to be genuine with you,” Pansy whispers, because of course she does. Fucking reformed Pansy Parkinson. Hermione wishes, more than anything, that she was still a bigoted cunt the likes of which bullied Hermione at Hogwarts—yet Pansy is a woman changed.
She’s wormed her way into Hermione’s heart; stubbornly, she refuses to get out. Hermione is not brave enough to ask her to leave; nor is she brave enough to whisper the words that swarm like bees on the tip of her tongue—
Please. Please, be genuine, always. I can handle anything but dishonesty, and I cannot stand secrets, for I'm too tired of keeping my own. Can you offer me the burden of truth if I offer you the same in return? I love it when you’re genuine. It's like daffodils, new beginnings and rebirths. Please, rebuild me anew in a way only you can; in a way only you know how; in a way nobody else ever could. Were you made for me, I wonder? Can you read my mind, like the flower you were named after? Am I enough of a lover for you to slip into my thoughts unbidden? Because you are for me, for you wormed your way into my heart without even trying.
Falling into bed with Pansy is exceptionally easy. Yet, somehow, falling in love with Pansy is even easier. And so the words sting where they’re lodged at the base of Hermione’s throat, much like lemon-zest on Pansy’s tongue. They sting until she cannot take it anymore, and then they burst out of her like fireflies. Before she knows it, the two of them are illuminated by the dimmed, warm light of the dangerous truth held at bay for months.
Pansy shines brighter than all the constellations in the sky, forever genuine, and Hermione yearns.