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The rustling of the surrounding willows in the wind turns into a whispering hum, as though they gossip about these children who slip out of the manor in secret and walk all this way on their own. A cool breeze passes through, stirring Pansy’s short, dark hair. The little girl lifts a hand to the nape of her neck and smooths it back. She glances at the boy beside her from time to time, carefully keeping the distance between them.
A reed suddenly bursts from the river below and plunges back into the water; the sight makes the boy smile. Pansy catches it and smiles back. She does not know what to say. She wants to ask questions, yet she is unsure. Shouldn’t he be the one to speak first? Her mother always says that girls do not speak unless they are spoken to.
“Pansy,” he says finally as they sit on the stone bridge a little beyond Parkinson Manor, with more distance between them than two friends would ever leave, because they are not two friends, his eyes rest on his own idly swinging legs, his hands gripping the stone until his knuckles turn white.
“Hmm?” Pansy says, happy that now she can speak. She’s unable to tear her eyes from the rainbow colors dancing in the deep blue water before them. She turns her head slightly toward Neville, but her pupils seem chained to the shimmering bands of color.
“Why don’t you ever play with me when other’s around?”
The weather is sunny, very much so. The sunlight makes Pansy’s patent-red shoes look even redder than they are, and the bright rays fall directly over the two unsupervised eight-year-olds sitting side by side. (If Mippy, Pansy’s nanny elf, were here, she would scold them properly and then shoo them inside before the sun could cook their little heads.)
The sweltering, suffocating heat is bothersome enough, but Neville’s sweating has an entirely different cause.
Now Pansy’s eyes on him. She looks like she’s been caught off guard.
“Mum says no,” she lies, her small voice giving it away.
“But gran says she asked your mum before, and she said that you can if Mippy is accompanying you.”
Accompanying? He knows big words other boys don’t. That’s why Pansy likes him a bit more than her other friends. Just a little bit, she thinks.
“No.” she continues to lie.
“Pansy,”
“Yes, Neville?”
“Are you ashamed of me?”
“No,” she says but she doesn’t understand the concept of being ashamed of someone; maybe her mum knows it, maybe that’s why she never likes being seen with her. Pansy should ask someday.
Are you ashamed of me, Mother?
(She never calls her ‘mum’ to her face; only ‘Mother’ is allowed.)
She might get angry at the question, scold her, even punish her for being ‘mouthy.’ Her mother is a very angry woman; many people, elves included, are afraid of her. She cannot be bothered with silly little questions from silly little girls, and she certainly won’t tolerate them.
But Neville isn’t angry. He’s rather nice. She could ask him… couldn’t she?
She likes learning, after all, so she will.
“What does it mean to be ashamed of someone?”
“It’s when you pretend you don’t know someone… ‘cause you’re scared your friends will laugh.”
Ohh. Is that why Pansy’s mother rarely brings her to any of the family’s occasions? Or why, whenever guests are received at the manor, she sends Pansy to her room and warns her with a pointed finger not to come out? Because she is scared that her friends will laugh at her daughter. That would make Pansy very sad, wouldn’t it? So her mum doesn’t want Pansy to get sad, because she cares? About her? That might be the reason why. She isn’t sure.
But Pansy isn’t afraid her friends will laugh at her for liking to play with Neville. Matter of fact, she likes playing with him more than she likes playing with any other boy or girl. He is quite nice, in every game they play, whenever Pansy loses and Neville wins, Pansy puckers her lips and looks ready to cry, and Neville immediately steps back and says this round doesn’t count and they can try again. So she always wins and he always loses.
“I’m not ashamed of you Nev,” she says simply, now she has a better understanding of the concept. She doesn’t lie, that’s naughty.
A Parkinson does not lie. But she knows, that’s just another lie even her mother tells.
“And why don’t you? Hmm? Play with me when they’re around?”
“Because if I let them include you; you’d have to play with Astoria and Dephne too.”
“And? Do they dislike me?”
“No, Neville. They don’t dislike you.” Quite the opposite she wants to say, they adore you.
“Why then? I’d like to make more friends.”
“We will, when we start school.”
“In three years? There’s still plenty of time until then,” he says, still not looking up at her.
She studies his profile- his upturned nose, his long lashes, the freckles dusting his cheeks.
She remembers Mippy saying, ‘The Longbottom boy? Charming little chap, he is.’ That had been last year, after one of the the pureblood gatherings Pansy was allowed to attend, when she had asked about the new boy she’d never seen before and wanted to know more. Why had he offered her his sweets? Pansy knows you should never offer someone your sweets, they're yours and they're rare, at least for her.
“Why shouldn’t I play with Astoria and Daphne?” he asks again, his cheeks blooming pink.
Pansy thinks his gran must love him very much, she probably wants to peck his plump cheeks all the time.
Well, Pansy does… sometimes.
He is small and well-liked, always shy and quiet; he doesn’t shout when he’s angry the way Pansy does, and he never cries when he loses. Instead, he nudges the toe of his shoe against the ground in that bashful little circle he always makes, his hands clasped behind his back, answering every question with simple, unguarded honesty.
Pansy wonders if the Longbottoms have rules like ‘never tell a lie.’
If they do, Neville must never break them.
She wonders if he ever gets scolded at all. She ignores his question and asks one herself.
“Do you get scolded? Like ever?”
He chuckles, “Course every kid does!”
“Even you?”
“Especially me.”
“Why especially you?”
“Gran says I’m a disgrace, and that I must never forget it. They say my father was a great man, an excellent Auror. Pity that he had me as a son. Gran also says the Longbottoms were cursed with a bloodline-ending dark spell hundreds of years ago… and that I’ve become the end of it, because now they ended up with a squib heir.”
She holds her breath, a squib is someone who’s born into a magic family but doesn’t have magic. It means magic skipped them, outcasted them. She knows this. She knows Draco and Blaise use this word to throw insults at each other when they’re moody and annoyed.
So, is Neville actually a squib? Like really? He must feel so bad, is it because he is so quiet, so no one would find out that he doesn’t have magic? Well, they’re too young to do magic yet, so much as one or two accidental bits.
“Neville, are you a squib?” she asks, her voice carries an extra layer of gentleness, as though she’s trying not to offend him.
He doesn’t answer, his cheeks bloom even more pinkish. His legs begin to swing faster, a sheen of sweat gathering at his temples. Neville’s hands grip his knees now, as though he’s trying to hold himself steady.
“It’s okay,” she says clearing her throat, she doesn’t want to upset him.
He’s the only person, besides Mippy, she ever tries not to upset.
Well… sometimes not even Mippy makes it onto that list.
“Is it okay if I’m a squib? Even if I’m the end of my bloodline?”
His hazel eyes no longer hold that usual sweetness, and even with the shy distance between them, Pansy sees tears beginning to gather there. She has never seen him cry before.
Not even when Draco and Theo take his toys; he just simply sits in silence and waits for them to lose interest and hand the toys back. ‘Of course they’ll give them back, Pansy,’ he says when she asks why he doesn’t try to take them back.
‘Gran always gives them back if I sit down and behave.’
“Why would you be the end? Does no magic mean no kids for a wizard?” she purposefully skips the word squib, and she means the question, quite frankly.
“No witch would marry a squib with no magic. You’re not a wizard if you don’t have magic, you are a squib.”
“Mother says there are wizards and witches who marry muggle-borns or even muggles.”
“I know.”
“You could marry one,” she offers. “In the future, you can have children, so you won’t be the end of your bloodline.”
She says it because she herself is meant to marry Draco, her mother always tells her so. You must be raised properly to be a suitable wife for the Malfoy heir, Pansy. They’re quite a renowned family. You must be aware of yourself when he is around.
Her mother’s words echo in her mind as she speaks.
So that means Neville can marry another girl too, Pansy won’t mind as long as his wife lets her to kiss him on the cheek once in a while. Would he still look adorable when he is a grown-up? Pansy dislikes grown-ups, none of them are adorable and they are always concerned with matters of consequence.
“But I don’t want to marry one,” he says, pouty and sulking. Pansy has never seen him sulking, not even over his toys.
“Why? You don’t want to have kids? Do you dislike kids like my mother? She says that no grown-up likes kids, she is one so she dislikes kids as well. Even me, yes. I don’t mind it though,” she says in one go, “most of the time.” she adds.
“No, I don’t want to marry a muggle or a muggle-born!” For the first time, his voice takes on a childish defiance, like a little boy refusing a meal he doesn’t want—much the same tone Draco uses when Narcissa tries to make him eat his vegetables, when she visits Malfoy Manor, she sees this happen sometimes, and while Pansy shoves the carrots she enthusiastically hates into her mouth in a rehearsal way with a lady like manner, she can’t help herself but wonders:
Does Draco’s mother really never pull his hair or slap him when he refuses to do what she says?
If he won’t eat, doesn’t he stay hungry for two days, until one of the elves takes pity on him and sneaks him food at the risk of being caught?
Does Narcissa always try to persuade him in that gentle, soft-spoken way of hers? Or is she nice like that only because Pansy is here to witness? Isn’t he scared what would happen once Pansy leaves and they’re alone?
Pansy finds herself wondering many things. Maybe she is wrong. Maybe she isn’t one of those grown-ups who hate children as much.
Or does Narcissa love her son simply because he is a boy?
She sees them hugging sometimes, and she wonders again:
If Draco had been a girl, like her, would his mother still hold him like that? She wants to know how does it feel to be hugged by a human adult. Mippy is just as tiny as she is.
And Pansy wonders why doesn’t Neville want to get married to a muggle, she is quite sure that Longbottoms don’t hate muggles, even though her mother greatly disapproves of such approaches she never prevents Pansy from socializing with other kids whom have families of different approaches, Good for the Parkinson image, she says, but as long as they’re purebloods. But Pansy disagrees with her mother, she plays with everyone if they ask her to. She holds her own set of beliefs, yes. Does Neville also hold his own set of pureblood beliefs? Different than his family’s?
“Why? Do you dislike muggles?”
“No, I love everyone.” He says, still pouty. Pansy can’t help herself but thinks that he is quite cute, would he like a kiss on the cheek? Now?
“You’re so lovely,” she finds herself confessing, now her own cheeks are burning. “Why then?” she adds.
“Alice and Frank loved each other and they got married. So they had me. You like each other, then get married, then kiss, no wait- You like each other, then kiss, then get married, then have a baby. That’s how it works. So it won’t work for me.”
“Why wouldn’t it work for you? You’re quite lovely, a girl will definitely like you one day. She might kiss you and marry you.”
“But-“ he says with the shyness of a child protesting for the first time in a game he’s starting to lose, and with a petulance that doesn’t seem to belong to him.
“I already like a girl. She isn’t a muggle, she is a pureblood like me.”
Pansy feels a sudden rush in her stomach, who is this girl? And why does she feel annoyed by a girl she doesn’t even know?
“And? She might marry you as well.”
“No, I told you, no witch would marry me. Especially a pureblood.”
“Why?”
“Gran says that, she also thinks no one would marry me in general. She says that she doesn’t care about blood status but if I marry a muggle, all of my offsprings will be squibs as well. Pansy, do you know what does offspring mean?”
“Children, it means children,” she answers, causing Neville to hum with understanding. She likes to read, she likes to act smug and cheeky to annoy her mother time to time.
“So that’s why. I am the end of my bloodline.”
“Neville,”
“I’m sure that’s the reason why you don’t want me to play with you and your friends. I understand, don’t get me wrong.”
“Neville,”
“I also always bring my toad with me, and the girls don’t like him, he’s not a cat or a puppy, is he? No. Girls like those. And I suppose I’m only good at catching balls, not throwing them, so it’s all right for me to just sit and catch them while you all play.”
“Neville,”
“I don’t mind it truly, I just like to see you play, run around,” his mouth is quivering as if he fights a delightful memory.
“Neville,”
“Your hair looks a bit lighter under sun, one might think it’s black but they shall see it under sun, it isn’t quite black.”
“Neville,”
“And you run fast! Good Godric! So fast. Even Draco can’t catch you, can he?” He laughs, shakes his head side to side to the memory.
“Neville,”
“You always play with him, but he likes to throw the ball at Astoria, although she always misses and you always catch. Why does he do that? Why does he choose to throw it to her? Pansy, If you let me play with you, I’d always choose you,” he pauses, “I’d choose to throw the ball to you.”
“Neville,” she says, her voice raising a bit.
“Yes, Pansy? Sorry.”
“I’d marry you.” she says, simply, just like that.
Neville turns to her suddenly, his hazel eyes wide open, fixed on her without a single blink, as if he’s afraid that if he does blink, the little girl in front of him might disappear.
He says nothing.
“If you wouldn’t want to marry a muggle and if that pureblood girl you like doesn’t like you back, I can marry you. I don’t mind you being a squib.”
“Pansy,”
“I understand that I might not be as beautiful as other pureblood girls that you’ve met but mother says Draco and I shall marry one day, I get lessons to be a proper pureblood wife, and I don’t want to marry Draco, I can be your wife.”
“Pansy,”
“I got my lessons, I still get them I’m quite good at Wizarding Etiquette and Conduct, Public Appearance Skills, Dining Etiquette and Dressing and Fashion Instruction. My governess is quite pleased with me.”
“Pansy,”
“I wouldn’t say the same for History of Witchcraft and Wizarding Genealogy because they’re so boring! What can I do? They are!”
“Pansy,”
“But I’d make a great wife overall, if that girl says no to you, you can marry me. I don’t want to get married to Draco anyway, he is just a annoying albino peacock.”
“Pans-“
“But you’re lovely Neville, you are so lovely.”
He is silent now.
Pansy is still looking at her red shoes, like her eyes are anchored to them, she doesn’t realize that his voice has been coming a little nearer than it did before because of the distance between them.
Has the distance between them grown smaller?
But Pansy is still sitting in the same place.
She doesn’t dare turn her head to look at him; all at once she feels terribly shy.
Then she lifts her head and meets a pair of hazel eyes. Why are they crying? Has she upset him?
“Pansy,” a tear is rolling down his cheeks, Pansy holds her breath. Neville shifts and he sits quite close to her now.
“Neville?”
“You are that girl,” he says, his fragile voice is breathy. “You are that girl I like.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?”
“Because you’re liked by me.”
“Would you be sorry?”
“For what?” he asks his eyes roaming over her face.
“If you were liked by me?”
“No, course’ no!”
“Good, because I like you too.”
“Are- are you serious?” he mutters, half whisper half shout.
“Yes.”
“Why don’t you let me play with you then?” he is blinking with his wet eyelashes.
“I don’t want Astoria or Deph to play with you. They already think you’re cute.”
“Do they?”
“Yes. And they’re prettier so if I let them play with you you will want to be their friend and get bored of me.”
“I wouldn’t want that.”
“Of course you would Neville, boys like pretty girls, that’s known,” she says, squinting her eyes with displeasure. Duh.
“You are pretty,”
“Lying is bad. Don’t.”
“I’m not. Pansy.” he takes a breath as if he is getting ready to say something big. “You are the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen.”
Pansy feels her eyes burning, she wants to hide and not to be seen so she closes her hands over her face.
“No,” she simply says, her tone is so quiet.
“You are Pansy, I swear to you. Have you ever heard me lying? I never lie!”
“Deph has long blonde hair and It’s down to here,” she puts her tiny hand on the small of her back. “And big blue eyes resembling of jewels, Astoria is a child model for Pixie Press magazine, and I'm just-“ she pauses, a lady doesn’t complain about these, she knows better.
“Pansy, your eyes look like the shiny part of the river,” he points with his foot toward the parts of the riverbank where turquoise and moss-green mix together. “When you wear your green robes, because I know you will be sorted to Slytherin like your parents, they’ll look like jewels to everyone. Then I’ll be a bit upset that everyone will realize how beautiful you are, but that’s okay, you said you like me, don’t you? That’s the only thing that matters? And your hair is really pretty… it looks like ink. I want to smudge my hands with ink while gran writes a letter to someone sometimes. I don't obviously, I'd never hear the end of it, truly. Pans, your hair looks so soft, can I touch it?”
She lifts her gaze up to him, he looks at her like she is… ethereal.
She smiles as she nods.
His small hand reaches toward Pansy slowly, carefully, as though giving her time to change her mind.
His fingertips visibly tremble when they brush her fringe, and then he gently tucks the strand behind her ear.
After that, he moves his hand a little farther, letting his whole palm rest against her hair, stroking it the way one might soothe a wild creature, with great care, deliberate gentleness, and a kind of enchanted worry.
“You’re so soft,” he says, giving her the brightest little smile.
“Neville we did the first step,” she says as she smiles at him back.
“We have the kiss and the marriage next.”
“Yes,'' she confirms, clearing her throat.
“We can get married when we’re eighteen. We have ten more years.”
“Mhh-Hmm,” she confirms again.
“So the kiss can happen in five? Realistically?”
Realistically? What does that mean?
“So we can kiss when we’re thirteen?” she asks, she is suddenly grateful for her unyielding attention at Fundamentals of Magical Numerics private classes that she took.
“Yes, I suppose,” he says with a quiet shy voice.
“Neville,”
“Yes, Pans?”
“But I can kiss you on the cheek now.”
He clears his throat and holds his hands together in front of him, all shy.
“Can I?”
“Yes, Pans. If you want.”
“But do you want it?”
“Mhh-Hmm,” he confirms.
Pansy shifts a little, with a nervousness that doesn’t usually belong to her, and moves closer to Neville.
Now the space between them is completely gone, their knees touching.
Pansy leans in and places a small kiss on Neville’s cheek. It makes him shiver. His cheek is dense and soft, still wet from the tears he’d just shed. They become even more pink with her kiss. Why is he so adorable? Pansy wonders many things.
She suppose she shall has to grow up, but she doesn’t want to. She dreams a reality where all children, except one, grow up.
And she knows dreams do come true, if only we wish hard enough.
Pansy laughs and as she leans in to place a second kiss, she realizes that her hands, meant to steady her against the stone, are resting on her knees instead.
In a brief moment of distraction she loses her balance, her breath catching as a muffled sound escapes her throat.
She feels her weight pitch forward, and when her hips lift completely off the stone, the sheer suddenness of it all sends her tumbling ahead.
A scream slips from her lips, and as her body begins to drop quickly downward, her breath snatches in her throat. Instinctively, she squeezes her eyes shut in fear.
The rush of wind tearing through her hair horrifies her, and she braces herself, certain she’s about to hit the water face first.
But nothing happens.
As the moments pass, Pansy realizes the wind tugging at her hair has stopped.
Did she fall into the water and lose consciousness?
Did she faint?
Is she… dead?
Like a nervous little sparrow, she lifts her eyelids just a bit.
When her eyes open fully, she notices a wash of bright blue before her.
Did she fall into the water?
Why doesn’t she feel wet?
But… you don’t feel wet while you’re underwater, do you?
She turns her head to the side, and her eyes land on flowers… on grass.
And that’s when Pansy realizes she hasn’t fallen into the river at all-
she’s suspended in the air.
She tries to tilt her head further down to see her legs, but it feels as though something invisible is holding her completely still-
something glasslike, wrapped around her on all sides.
Pansy realizes she’s being kept aloft by magic.
And she’s absolutely certain it isn’t her magic.
So then… whose?
Mippy’s? Mother’s?
Who?
Suddenly the magic pulls her upward, stealing her breath.
She rises for what feels like minutes, until the top of the bridge comes into view—
and at last, she sees them:
a pair of hazel eyes,
a small, adorable boy,
a boy she will kiss when she turns thirteen,
a boy she will marry when she turns eighteen,
a boy who chooses her,
a boy who likes her.
a boy named Neville,
Neville Longbottom.
When the magic finally lowers her onto her knees, setting her gently on the ground, Pansy can’t hold it in anymore—
she begins to cry. Violently, unapologetically.
Her hands tremble over her eyes as she sobs.
“Pans, Pansy,” a voice says, his voice.
His hands wrap around her shoulders, he hugs her tightly.
“It’s okay Pans, you’re okay. You didn’t fall.”
She continues to sob violently, she can’t stop herself. It was so scary. A lot of emotions, she wasn’t prepared. Who would be prepared to fall from a bridge anyway?
The boy holds her tightly until her crying softens into little hiccupping breaths.
When she finally pulls her hands away from her face and searches for him with her eyes,
She finds his hazel eyes, right there.
Neville is there, smiling at her.
“You- you saved me,” she says, Neville isn’t a squib? He has magic? She wants to hug him back.
“You have magic!” she shouts as if she wants everyone to know. “Nev! You have magic you are not a squib!” she says looking up to him under her damp eyelashes.
He just looks at her, taking her in, making sure that she is completely fine before celebrating with her.
“Yes,” he answers, simply. As if her being okay is more important than anything, even his magic.
“That’s a miracle, Nev! I can’t believe it, Oh Salazar.”
“You are the miracle.”
“What?”
“You are my miracle, Pansy. You are my tiny little miracle.”