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Pansy brushed her black hair out of her face and prayed for inner strength. Now was not the time to have a meltdown - internal or otherwise. Her daughter was looking at her example, looking for the steadiness and confidence a parent is supposed to exude, no matter how horrible the situation. No matter how ridiculous and irresponsible and uncalled for -
“Mum?”
She choked back a gasp and swallowed the wrong way. The glob of uncooked cookie dough lodged in her throat. Her daughter, quicker on the uptake than Pansy no matter the situation, walloped her on the back harder than Pansy felt strictly necessary. It worked, though. The force of her daughter’s palm made the dough splat back on the counter, where it remained to mock her life choices.
“Thank you,” Pansy coughed out, eyes watering. No big change from her usual state, and this irritating fact helped for once. If a tear slipped out now, at least it would be for a new reason - one she wouldn’t have to try and hide from Elianor.
Ellie took an appraising glance between the kitchen island and the oven. “Any cookies baking, or have you eaten them all in advance?”
Pansy rolled her eyes. “Obviously, I’ve eaten the vast majority. If there were any cooking, you’d have smelled them. And I think we can throw this one out.”
“I don’t want it.”
Elianor took over, nudging Pansy out of the way with one bony teenage hip. “You saved… three. Three cookies. Out of how many?”
Pansy wouldn’t call it ‘saving’ them; more that she hadn’t had a chance to ingest the rest before almost choking on one. “Hush, you. Either eat them or bake them, then.”
“Hardly seems worth baking three.” Ellie tore off a piece of the dough with her fingers and popped it into her mouth. Pansy sighed. Setting an example, indeed.
Since Marcus left them both three months ago (early enough that Pansy couldn’t quite call it the ‘Christmas holidays’ but close enough to taint the entire affair regardless), Ellie had handled it better than Pansy. Well, Pansy couldn’t be completely certain. Sometimes she wasn’t sure whether that would be better or worse than Ellie handling it… worse. Was it better for Pansy to handle it better than her daughter? Better that Ellie seemed mostly alright? But nothing could be good about Pansy handling it poorly - because then, of the two of them, Ellie was stuck being the parent.
Either way stunk. That was all Pansy had been able to decide. Her mind traced these circuitous routes and always ended up in the same place.
Nearly choking on cookie dough in the kitchen. Maybe it was cookie dough and maybe it wasn’t. Maybe she almost choked and maybe she didn’t. But either way, it felt like Pansy leaned on Elianor in a way a mum shouldn’t need to rely on her daughter. It should be Pansy leading by strong and confident example.
Daphne would tell her it wasn’t as bad as all that. She’d say Pansy was doing an excellent job keeping things together, that she was being unnecessarily critical of herself. That it wasn’t helpful to her or Elianor to drag herself down this way.
But it was hard, so stupidly hard, when her self esteem was already in the gutter.
With no preamble whatsoever, Marcus had just left, just blitzed out the front door to meet up with some twenty-six-year-old American socialite. That she looked exactly like Pansy had looked at that age was salt in the wound. Pansy would never look like that again. She didn’t need Marcus to remind her.
(Somewhere in the deepest recesses of her mind was that Ellie looked like Pansy used to at fifteen. That creepy fact had never crossed her mind around Marcus, not until he left her for a doppelgänger ten years her junior. But now, a teensy part of her was glad Marcus was gone, that the possibility of… Ellie would never have the opportunity to cross Marcus’s mind.)
“Let’s go get our nails done. What do you say? We can get red French tips for Valentine’s Day.”
Ellie was enthused. Pansy sighed in relief. Distraction achieved - for both of them. One distraction at a time was all Pansy was able to wrangle.
* * *
Manicures always helped. Pansy was a firm believer, and to her ever-increasing pride, so was Elianor. Her daughter was a constant source of joy. Pansy did something right, one thing in her whole life - but it was a major thing. She made Ellie. Somehow, some way, she had made Ellie, and no amount of Marcuses (or lack thereof) could dampen Pansy’s love for her daughter.
Marcus wasn’t Ellie’s father. But he’d welcomed her with open arms and Pansy’s love for him had felt bottomless. She’d just never thought it would be conditional, five years later, that suddenly Pansy - and by extension, her daughter - would no longer be enough for Marcus. She didn’t know what had happened. Three months later, she still didn’t know. But she was finally ready to admit she was better off.
That didn’t mean she could envision a future without him when she opened her eyes in the morning. The world still felt… desolate. Pansy knew, logically, that she wasn’t on an island. People loved her - her and Ellie. But illogically, she’d never felt so alone. She felt alone against the world, her only possible anchor a fifteen-year-old girl who Pansy was supposed to anchor. Not the other way around.
Her own daughter had gotten a special dispensation to come home on weekends, just to spend time with her, but this wasn’t really why. Ellie was checking in, making sure Pansy was alright. Making sure she didn’t choke on raw cookie dough in the kitchen.
Perhaps she should switch to ice cream. Every way she turned looked like failure.
The manicure helped. She knew it would. But then what?
This was a regression of sorts. Right after Marcus left, it had felt like this. It had built and built, and then peaked right before Christmas and didn’t relent until well past New Year’s. But then things had improved, for long enough that Pansy had begun to grow slightly optimistic. Nothing crazy, of course, nothing wildly hopeful, but it hadn’t felt like every hour of the day needed to be a distraction from the facts, from the dissolution of her marriage.
Valentine’s Day was throwing Pansy for the kind of loop that she hadn’t expected. Maybe she should have (she definitely should have). But that just felt like another failing.
“Mum, you got something.”
“Mm?” Pansy looked up, lost in thought all over again. Ellie held out an envelope, battered and worn. “For me?”
Ellie nodded, waggling the envelope in the air between freshly-manicured fingers. Pansy plucked it away and looked at the label.
Pansy Parkinson
That alone was odd. She’d been Pansy Flint for half a decade. She tore into the seal, the weak adhesive putting up no fight at all. The envelope contained a tri-fold piece of parchment and nothing else. She unfolded it slowly, suddenly tentative about the whole thing for reasons she couldn’t quite identify. Ellie watched with gossipy teenage interest from her right, hip cocked and resting her weight against the back of the sofa, but Pansy had forgotten about anything and anyone around her.
Pansy,
I wish I could tell you in person, but I’m a coward when it comes to you. You’re the most incredible woman I’ve ever known. I have no hope of ever being good enough for you, but my heart won’t let me rest until I try - so, here I am. Me and my cowardly heart will put it all on paper, only for you.
I’ve admired you for years. Your tenacity, your loyalty, your intelligence, and your good heart - you always stand up for those you love. I could never hope to deserve a woman like you, but I must put my heart on the line. Pansy, will you let me take you on a proper date? I’d love nothing more than to show you and the whole world how much I adore you. I want to do it right, and so I am writing a love letter - a love letter to the most amazing woman I have ever known.
Please respond as soon as you receive this. I couldn’t bear not knowing how you feel for one more day.
She could hardly breathe. Her eyes filled with tears, threatening to overflow with a single blink. She couldn’t help it, though, and they spilled free, streaking her cheeks with cold trails she couldn’t ignore. Her hand clapped to her mouth, holding back a sob.
The signature was plain:
Yours, Neville
* * *
Pansy stepped through the Floo in Headmistress McGonagall’s office. She’d called in four different favours for this, and considered all of them well spent. She got her bearings from the incessant spinning and dusted off residual ash, taking slight pleasure that the bright red of her tipped nails refused to be muted. The Headmistress tipped her chin to Pansy and pointed to the left, as if Pansy could ever forget which direction the greenhouses were in on these hallowed grounds.
Her heels sunk into the soft dirt as she approached the six extended sets of wooden planks dug into the side of the hill for stairs. Checking her landing and balance on each in sequence, she strode on. Always onward, Pansy’s mind chanted in endless refrain, for three months on end now.
Hagrid’s hut was still off in the distance, exactly where Pansy remembered it. She battled back a fierce wave of nostalgia and centred her mind. She must stay focused. The greenhouses lay just ahead, and if she recalled right (though she was no Hufflepuff), Professor Sprout’s personal quarters had been attached to the rear of greenhouse four.
Nothing had changed as she marched onward to fling open the heavy door to the greenhouse, throwing all her weight behind the pull. She might as well be fifteen again.
Professor Neville Longbottom
Pansy steadied herself with a single deep breath, and rapped on the door with her knuckles hard enough to sting. Nervously, she straightened her skirt and lifted her chin. Physical armour, her mum always used to say. Look excellent and feel excellent. Confidence exudes confidence.
The door swung open.
Neville’s handsome face stood just behind, deep brown eyes set against high cheekbones, thick brows and lush lashes (why did men always have such luxurious eyelashes, anyway?), and the most egregiously perfect amount of stubble on his jaw.
“...Pansy?”
The tentative question, the surprise in his deep voice, inflamed her fury.
“How… dare… you?”
She couldn’t help but breathe the question in stages, unable to harness her anger the way she’d been raised to do. Neville managed nothing more than shocked silence, which didn’t encourage her.
“You send me… this?!”
Pansy whacked her palm into his chest, flattening the letter between them, trying to shove it into him. Of course, he didn’t budge, Pansy’s efforts meagre as a fly.
“What did you mean by it?! Did you - did you hear about Marcus, what he did, how he -”
Without warning, Pansy began to cry. She hated this, had always hated it, this tendency to cry in anger and make it seem like she was sad when she wasn’t.
“I don’t need your pity!” she shrieked, nearly screamed it, and her second fist had come up to beat against Neville’s irritatingly broad chest to match the first. His clasped hers, enveloping them in entirety. He plucked the letter from between her fingers with no effort at all, inflaming her all over again.
“Parks, I -”
She didn’t give him the chance to get further. That nickname, the one only he ever used, now? Now? She was too vulnerable, too injured, for this. And the simple fact that she was, and that he was seeing her in this state… it was too much. It was all just too much.
“...Why?” is all she could manage, her tears overwhelming her at last. “Why now?”
Neville looked lost, but his one remaining hand covering hers did not release its hold. His other held up the letter for him to scan, thick brow furrowing as soon as he opened it and not changing as he read along.
“Parks… Pansy, I - I wrote this -”
“- yes, I know you did,” she interjected, using her one free hand to wipe her eyes and hoping desperately that her mascara wasn’t running amok. A lost cause, she was sure. How embarrassing.
He squeezed her trapped fingers. “I wrote this years ago. I have no idea why it just arrived.”
Mortification swallowed Pansy whole as she absorbed this single, deadpan statement. Years ago? How many? It didn’t matter; what mattered was that it wasn’t current, didn’t matter now, and now, Pansy was making an absolute fool of herself.
She tried to yank her hand free with no success. Neville clasped it as easily as he was clasping the letter.
“Let me g -”
“Not yet,” he replied absently, squinting at the letter and fumbling briefly for a pair of reading glasses tucked into his breast pocket. Settling them in place and looking absolutely adorable doing it, he turned over to inspect the back half. Nothing there, as far as Pansy could tell. And she had looked.
Finally, he graced her with his attention. Pansy, while wishing he’d let her leave entirely, found her cheeks flushing a disobedient shade of pink.
“Parks, I know - well, I might know more than I should. I don’t know how to… how to… do this.” Neville covered his eyes with the hand holding the letter. Pansy hoped he didn’t get a papercut on the bridge of his nose, but didn’t know how to ask. Or whether she had the right to be concerned about it at all.
“I know about Marcus. And I’m sorry. But I didn’t write this because of that. I wrote this…”
Pansy held her breath, not knowing why. Maybe because her hand was still enveloped in his big, warm one, right on top of his chest. She could feel his heart rate, even and steady beneath her palm.
“I wrote this after we… after I saw you at Blaise’s birthday party at that pub in Edinburgh. We talked all night and -”
Pansy couldn’t inhale properly. Something odd was going on with her lungs. That was… four months before Marcus first asked to take her out. To court her, in formal terms, the eventual goal of marriage being plain from the start.
The night with Neville was branded into her mind, though. She’d hoped for some kind of signal from Neville. Something official, something formal, some clear mark of intent beyond talking at the late-night birthday party of a mutual acquaintance. They’d had the loveliest night, though, talking until the wee hours. His hand had been on her knee and she’d had butterflies in her stomach every time he shifted his weight. Her eyes hadn’t left his all night.
And then… the gesture of intent never came. Pansy had been disappointed (maybe more than that, but it was silly to acknowledge such things off such a casual encounter) and had pushed it aside. She’d begun dating Marcus four months later.
And now…
Now, five years had gone by. Half a decade. And now she’s pounding on Neville Longbottom’s chest with her fists from some misplaced sense of… angsty miscommunication? What was she, fifteen?
This broke through in an odd way. Would Elianor be so misled? As a middle teenager, did Pansy’s daughter know herself and her surroundings better than Pansy herself did?
Maybe.
She tilted her chin up at the same time her fingers made a fist in his shirt. She wanted to pull him down to her, to make him see - this had all been a giant misunderstanding. And it was her fault, all hers, and she could rectify it!
“Pansy.”
His single word stopped her, a breath away from his lips. Mortification swarmed her again and she tried to step back. Again, he didn’t let her.
“Pansy, please. Give me sixty seconds to talk and I won’t waste them.”
She didn’t think he could possibly waste them, and sheer curiosity was the only thing that kept her from trying to bolt. Again.
“I wrote that five years ago. I don’t know why it just arrived, but… I think it was somehow meant to happen that way. Maybe it would have been better before… Marcus. But now… I need you to know that whatever happened with Marcus doesn’t matter at all to me. When I wrote this, and when you didn’t answer… I figured you weren’t interested. That you didn't feel what I did. I…”
The pain in his voice was palpable and Pansy’s heart wanted to crack into two. She’d been disappointed by that night, but Neville had put his heart on the line with that letter and she’d just… never received it. He thought she’d rejected him with silence, that she’d never felt him worth any kind of response at all. In reality, she’d just assumed he wasn’t interested.
They had both been wrong.
If this letter had arrived… Pansy could have spent the last five years entirely differently.
“Parks…”
Gods, what if he was in a relationship? That hadn’t occurred to Pansy until just this moment. What if Neville was honourably confined by some perfect, amazing witch who -
“Parks. Are you listening?”
Sort of? Pansy tried to focus.
“I don’t want to complicate things with Elianor.”
Huh? Ellie? What about Ellie?
“I need you to know that she’s one of the most diligent and responsible students. But I could never let -”
“I don’t care that you’re one of Ellie’s professors.”
Probably she should care. She’d be justified in caring a lot, really. But Neville was saying he wouldn’t complicate things, and Pansy certainly wouldn’t.
“Pansy, I… will you give me a second? Stop - stop that. I sent this five years ago, but…”
“You don’t still mean it, do you?”
Reality came crashing down. Pansy’s heart sank, her fingers retreating back into her fists. Her eyes welled with tears, back to their typical state. She’d so hoped she was done with all this, and not just because of Neville. Neville would have been a bonus, a surprise, a -
“Please stop. Parks, stop.”
Her watery eyes met his.
“Your daughter is my student, but only for two more years. She’s great, by the way, if you didn’t hear that part. And I would… love to take you on a proper date. I have no idea why that letter arrived so late. It got lost somewhere, I suppose. I’d love to know where it’s been all this time, but for now… maybe it was just in time. But… am I right in guessing that… if it had arrived, you'd have said yes?”
Pansy choked back a watery sob. “Yes. Yes, I would have. I wish it had come then, I wish - I’d have never -”
She dissolved into tears and Neville gathered her to his chest.
“So maybe… we just pretend the last five years never happened?”
A laugh stuck in her throat, not unlike the glob of cookie dough so many hours ago. Neville rubbed her back.
“Pretend, except that Elianor is now a fifth year. But that doesn’t bother me if it doesn’t bother you. What say you, Pansy Parkinson?”
Pansy scraped a harsh hand across her eyes, undoubtedly smearing her mascara now, if it wasn’t already all over her face.
“Neville… how can you be so understanding about this?”
Neville squeezed her fingers again. “Parks, I don’t think you understand. I’d have waited years for you. Don’t misunderstand; I wasn’t waiting on purpose. But nobody really compared. You didn’t reply and then you married Marcus Flint, and I tried to move on. But nobody quite… fit. I did try. But I never married - obviously - and… and now…”
Pansy’s eyes filled with fresh tears. “And now?”
“Parkinson, I’d love nothing more than to take you on a proper date. You’re everything I’ve ever wanted. You’re brilliant and gorgeous, and -”
She didn’t hear the rest as she pressed her lips to his, at long last, long past due. She’d wanted to at Blaise’s birthday so long ago, but it wasn’t proper. It still wasn’t proper, but she was so far past caring.
“Do you care that I’m a Hogwarts professor?”
Did she care? Not a bit.
“The only bit that could possibly matter is how much time you spend here, versus in London with me - but I’m sure we could work something out.”
Neville smiled against her mouth, his cheeks dimpling with his effort. “There’s Floo access everywhere. And I’d go anywhere for you, Parkinson.”