Work Text:
“My eyes are up here, Nev.”
Neville startled, his whiskey tumbler nearly toppling from his hand. It wasn’t so much that he’d had too much to drink at Draco and Hermione’s engagement bash as it was that Pansy Parkinson had caught him in the heady act of staring.
It took him a beat to realise that she thought he had been staring at her breasts. “No, not... I wasn't.”
As a matter of principle, he did not stare at Pansy's anything.
Whenever she visited his Herbology lab, for instance, she was required to wear a coat. Like all his clients.
That was all Pansy was, of course.
That was all she could be.
As the head of her family’s storied Maison de Parfum, she was his biggest customer for botanical ingredients, only after Draco. There was no mucking that up, no matter how shockingly lovely she had turned out to be.
But fate, Neville’s lifelong foe, had other plans.
Peril came in the form of Pansy in a low-cut gown, which brought heretofore hidden parts to his attention. He had only ever seen her in a uniform, or a crisp white lab coat. Not one bit of her décolletage in sight. But now?
“I wasn’t—” he tried again. “You have very nice”—clavicles—“Not that your, uh”—breasts— “aren’t also…”
“Pardon?” Her shoulders curled as she laughed, which only accentuated the feature he had been caught ogling.
“Sorry,” he coughed, and shuffled off to bang his head against a wall.
Really, this was all his gran’s fault.
Neville owed his sexual awakening solely to Augusta’s art and romance novels of old, which had in his pubescent years led him to believe that there was nothing more enticing than a woman’s delicate collarbones. Except perhaps her ankles.
Whereas ankles were outdated, if inconvenient to fixate upon, collarbones were timelessly pretty to Neville. Not to mention elusive, covered by wizarding robes as they were. He was up to his mid-teens when he learned from the other boys that breasts and bums were more the thing.
His clavicular fascination persisted, however.
While he had long recognised Pansy as a prepossessing woman, a single sighting of those soft angles beneath her skin, smooth and clear like moonlight, had awakened his inner Victorian pervert.
Gods! And he met with her every week!
The days that followed were sheer torment for poor Neville. As the official perfumer for the impending Granger-Malfoy nuptials (who knew there was such a thing!) Pansy took her R&D seriously, and decided to stop by his lab daily to test and select her botanical oils personally.
And as a sensible wizard, Neville thought this was overkill.
Pansy had also, over the days, eschewed her lab coat to display her tops with all manner of tempting necklines. Neville found himself struck dumb daily at the sight of the exposed hollows just south of her dainty neck.
One day, Pansy wore a camisole that hung flimsily from her shoulders. She was trying to kill him, he was certain.
“Coat,” he rasped. “Please.”
“It’s stuffier than usual,” she complained, leaning over his work bench.
“My new floral extraction required some heat,” he apologised.
Her eyes gleamed. “New extraction? For me, or for Draco?”
While Draco sourced many potions ingredients from Neville, Pansy’s requirements were more olfactory in nature.
“Draco,” Neville said, grappling for coherent thought. Was it just him, or had she inched closer? “Mostly.”
His traitorous eyes traced the line of her clavicles. He sorely yearned to caress her. To graze his stubble against her skin, not only there, but everywhere.
He gestured to a nearby decanter, a collarly scholar in abject distress.
“It, uh,” he mumbled, “it smells nice, too.”
Pansy wafted its fumes towards her nose. A grin flashed over her lips before she schooled her expression into one of pleasant curiosity. “May I try?”
“Feel free.”
She dipped a stirring rod into the oil and dabbed some onto her wrists and neck.
“Come here,” she purred. “Smell.”
Neville was beginning to doubt the torture was purely self-imposed. He drifted close… and pressed his nose to her clavicle.
His eyes shot wide open. He had made a grave error!
“Belladonna,” Pansy smirked. “A Veritaserum ingredient for Draco; a dark, compelling scent for me.”
Neville backed away stiffly, face drained of blood. Pansy smelled intoxicating. Belladonna was literally toxic, at least, when ingested. As for its effects…
He stared hard at the shadowy dips of her décolletage, eyeballs straining uselessly.
“Nev,” Pansy crooned, “my eyes are up here.”
“And I’m trying desperately to look at them,” he blurted uncontrollably. “You’ve drugged me.”
“No tricks. You let me.” Her voice took on a chiding tone. “You know as well as I do what belladonna does.”
So he did. He was a fool. Belladonna pulled truth from a person. Or, at least, it compelled it.
“Why have you been acting so strange with me lately?” she asked.
So cunning. He was trapped.
“Did you use the oil just to know?”
“I merely dabbed it onto my skin. It’s not my fault you inhaled so deeply.”
Neville bit his cheek, straining against the truth. Like trying to avert his gaze, it was useless.
Pansy sighed. “I wish I could take a peek inside your mind.”
“I think you’ll find my thoughts are chiefly preoccupied by a fine set of collarbones.”
“Oh?”
There was no taking it back now. He squeezed his eyes shut, resigned. “Yes. Yours, actually.”
“Of all my assets… really?”
Her maddening lines, so elegant and delicate and intimate. Those teasing divots which had, until so recently, been hidden from him.
Merlin, Pansy was his client! And she did not want him!
He dared to open his eyes, expecting to see disgust or anger in hers. Instead, he found wary curiosity, and… disappointment?
“Is this...” she ventured carefully, “some sort of fetish?”
“No,” he swore. “I… I apologise.”
She frowned. “Whatever for?”
“For offending you. For overstepping. You are… lovely. And infinitely interesting. And you do have a fine set of—gods, I suppose it is a fetish, isn’t it? I’m sick. And you’re my client.” Neville grimaced. “Please forget I said anything.”
“I shan’t,” she declared.
“If you wish to terminate our partnership, I wholly understand—”
“Terminate? Oh, no. Then our friends would never get the wedding scent of their dreams. Though their accords are more spicy floral, I think.”
Neville blinked. “Why's that a thing again?”
“Because it’s one of their fixations,” she explained. “Which you know a thing or two about, no?” She took his hand and brought his fingers up to her clavicle.
“You’re my client,” Neville choked again.
“Yes. And I think it’s in our mutual interest to deepen our partnership.”
He wavered. “How?”
“Let’s start here.” Pansy squeezed his hand, which trembled on her shoulder. “What do you think?”
Neville slowly lowered his nose to the crook in her neck, allowing the belladonna to pull the truth from him one last time. “I think there’s nothing I’d like more.”
FIN