Chapter Text
It all started, in the way that it often does among a group of women in their mid-twenties, with a book club.
But before that came the Howlers.
2 May 2005
Cho Chang had known what was coming the moment she’d clocked the grimace deepening across the new intern’s face as he trudged in from the Daily Prophet’s Owlery, juggling three precariously stacked containers filled with jittering blood-red envelopes.
If the newsroom hadn’t known what day it was, they certainly would now.
Pansy Parkinson’s gaze lifted from the paperwork she’d been scanning at the precise moment he turned the corner, her wing-lined eyes narrowing at the sight. She stood slowly as he drew closer, her countenance resigned, her perfectly manicured hands flat against the slab of wood separating them, her black patent-leather stilettos tapping impatiently against the floor.
He paused before her, shuffling awkwardly as the boxes threatened to tip. "Do you want me to…?" He didn’t bother completing the thought. Cho wondered what he’d have possibly offered to do for her anyway.
"Leave them," Pansy commanded, her voice sharp as a blade. The intern nodded, dropping the crates with a relieved sigh and scurrying away before suffering the fallout along with her. Pansy’s lips, a perfect match to the envelopes before her, pursed as she scanned the sea of crimson.
Cho watched as her former classmate schooled her features, returned gracefully to her seat, and, with one small, tired exhale, began to open every single letter.
The office filled with a cacophony of screams, the discordant tones ricocheting chaotically around the open-plan space like rogue curses. The usual midday commotion of the newsroom stilled abruptly at the disruption, the Howlers’ messages amplified in the rare stillness.
HOW DARE YOU SHOW YOUR FACE AFTER WHAT YOU DID—
GO SUCK VOLDEMORT’S ROTTING COCK, TRAITOR WHORE—
YOU DESERVE TO SUFFER FOR THE REST OF YOUR MISERABLE—
IF YOU DON’T QUIT THE PROPHET I’LL COME TO DIAGON ALLEY MYSELF AND—
FUCK YOU MISS PARKINSON, I HOPE YOU HAVE THE DAY YOU DESERVE—
YOU SHOULD BE PUT DOWN JUST LIKE YOUR MOTHER YOU PUG-FACED BIT—
Cho worried at her lip as she studied Pansy’s flinches, the whites of her clenched knuckles clasped calmly atop the stack of notes in front of her. Should she walk over? Dispose of the lot of them herself? Would Pansy be thankful or displeased? They weren’t friends, per say, merely friendly colleagues... or as friendly as she imagined any relationship with Pansy Parkinson could be.
She needn’t get involved, anyway. The pale blue-painted door behind Pansy jerked open and their supervisor—the editor-in-chief of the Daily Prophet and the most terrifying human Cho had ever encountered, Death Eaters included—stepped out, her heels clicking atop the marble floors she’d had installed the week she took over the newsroom, had paid for out of her own Gringotts vault. L’habit fait l’homme, she’d replied when her predecessor had dismissed the choice as typical of the frivolous whims of women.
"Incendio," Fleur Delacour said calmly, and a cresting wave of fire engulfed every Howler, opened and unopened. Flecks of charred paper drifted like ash around Pansy’s desk, settling atop her unfinished stack of paperwork. Only a scorch mark remained where the box of letters once sat.
Fleur eyed her assistant imperiously, not bothering to speak another word as she retreated into her office. The door slammed shut again with the flick of a wand.
Cho turned back to her work as if she’d never been watching, a Quick-Quotes Quill still paraphrasing notes she’d taken at last night’s game between Falmouth and Ballycastle in her precise, elegant cursive, just the way she’d done the past three May the seconds. At least there wasn’t any Bubotuber pus this time, she reckoned.
In the corner of her desk sat this year’s invitation: We cordially invite you to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to commemorate the fallen on the anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts, on May the second, two thousand and five.
She dragged it along the birchwood with her middle finger until it fluttered into the bin beneath her desk.
✦
"I— oh, Merlin, sorry," Cho blurted out, frozen in the doorway of the toilets.
Pansy palmed furiously at the streaks of mascara her tears had tracked down her cheeks, her attention drifting from her reflection in the mirror to land on Cho.
"If you must disrupt my five bloody minutes of emoting this year," she drawled, imperious as ever, "at least have the decency to close the door behind you."
"Right," Cho said, taking one step forward and feeling the cool rush of air against her back as it swung shut. She sucked in a quick breath, nodding to herself in some unnecessary display of self-affirmation, and quickened her pace toward the nearest cubicle—only to pause at the partition, her fingers just barely grazing the cool steel.
She twisted on her black platform boots, her eyes lifting to find Pansy’s attention already on her. One brow lifted in the mirror.
"I just… are you alright?"
Pansy’s lip twitched. "What do you think," she said flatly. Her gaze shifted as she drew out her wand, reapplying her makeup with precise, perfectly articulated charms. "I don’t need your pity. I’m used to it by now."
"I don’t pity you." She chewed on the inside of her cheek. "I just don’t think it’s fair. And the things they say, it’s absolutely despicable. They wouldn’t dare say half of those things to a man, anyway."
"I’m certain I deserve every Howler I receive." Pansy’s sigh was resigned. "Would I prefer not to get them the week of my birthday every year? Sure, but— what is that Muggle phrase Creevey always says? Peasants shan’t be choosers?"
"Sorry?"
"Is that not the—"
"It’s your birthday?" Cho asked incredulously.
"Oh. That." Pansy applied a new layer of crimson lipstick, smacked her lips, and withdrew from the mirror. She turned to face Cho, leaning back against the sink, her ankles demurely crossed. One hand drifted casually into the pocket of her dark green trousers, a perfect match to the loose-fitting blazer with which Pansy didn’t bother wearing a blouse. She was sharp as a diamond, chiseled into a facade men often labelled bossy or unapproachable.
Cho, too, had long mastered the art of effortless grace, had spent a lifetime being held to an impossible standard of perfection—not only as a pureblood witch, but also as an Asian woman in a white man’s world. It was the way of her mother, and her mother’s mother, and so it had become hers. Cho had never even considered the notion that she could not be respectful. ‘Nice.’ Avoid causing others discomfort at any cost.
This was a notion to which Pansy was particularly well-accustomed.
And yet, she and the witch before her were undeniably two sides of the same patriarchal coin: one pliant and deferential, the other unyielding and frigid.
Pansy waved a hand dismissively. "It’s not today. It’s on Wednesday."
"We’ve worked together for… three, four years? And you’ve never even mentioned your birthday." Cho had witnessed the deluge of hate mail flooding Pansy at work in the first week of May every year; she could only imagine what awaited her at home.
"We aren’t friends." Pansy’s tone indicated that this was a rather obvious point.
"Well, yes."
The uncomfortable silence stretched on for a second too long. Pansy finally headed for the door, adding a surprisingly earnest, "Thanks for… whatever this was."
"Would you like to come to my book club?"
Pansy’s hand froze atop the doorknob. She glanced back at Cho, her expression flitting between amused and curious.
"It’s on Wednesdays, at Flourish and Blotts," Cho rushed out before Pansy could reply with what she assumed would be a swift rejection. "It’s just me and Marietta—Edgecombe, from Hogwarts? She manages the bookshop now. We read Muggle books, but they’re really quite good. This week’s is called The Bell Jar."
"A book club?"
"A book club," Cho confirmed, then wondered why she even bothered speaking.
Pansy nodded once and pulled open the door, walking out without another word. Cho turned to study herself in the mirror, retucking her ivory turtleneck jumper into her black miniskirt and adjusting the collar of her oversized black blazer.
"I tried," she reasoned to her reflection with a shrug.
As Cho packed her Dior saddle tote at the end of the day, stuffing her notes and blank parchment into it for a late night of writing at her flat in Shoreditch, the steady click of heels grew louder, pausing just before Cho’s desk. One black-painted nail tapped in a staccato rhythm along the scales of the small jade dragon Cho’s mother had gifted her on her first day of work at the paper.
She traced the movements of Pansy’s fingers, pausing at her parents’ inscription: 我們的小龍.
Our little dragon.
"What time," Pansy said without preface.
Cho glanced up at her. "Half seven."
"Mind if I bring Millie?"
Millicent Bulstrode, another of their former classmates, had joined the Prophet staff two years ago. As a fat, queer woman and a reformed pureblood supremacist—and, most importantly, as a woman with strong opinions and no real outlet for them—Millie had approached their former editor-in-chief, Barnabas Cuffe, to propose a new column shortly after Cho had been hired. Pansy had mounted a rather stirring defense of Millie’s concept, passing around a petition for the institution’s desperate need for embracing diversity to quell the smolder of prejudice still simmering just beneath the surface of British wizarding society.
Barnabus had laughed them out of his office. I personally support your… lifestyle, Miss Bulstrode, of course I do, he’d said in a manner he’d clearly assumed was consoling but was instead gratingly problematic, but the shareholders would have my head for this, you understand. Fleur, then the paper’s managing editor, had gritted her teeth and bore it, though she’d been the first staffer to sign Pansy’s petition.
The week Barnabas had announced Fleur as his successor a year or so later, her first move had been promoting Pansy to be her executive assistant. Her second had been hiring Millie as their new political columnist.
"Not at all." Cho actually rather liked Millie. She’d maintained the brashness for which she’d been notorious in their Hogwarts days, but Cho found her brutal honesty a refreshing change from posh underhanded pleasantries.
Pansy hummed in thought. "Does your book club have a name?"
"Yes." Cho couldn’t stop the laugh from bubbling out. "We call it the Book Club for Unlikeable Women."
✦
4 May 2005
From the outside, Flourish and Blotts appeared relatively unchanged from the first time Cho had stepped foot in Diagon Alley as a child, her hand clasped tightly in her mother’s. Nestled between Madam Malkin’s and Quality Quidditch Supplies, the bookshop’s display windows had always exuded a certain warmth, a feeling only books can offer: an invitation into other lives, other worlds. The same whimsical sign hung directly above the entrance, creaking with each swing when bursts of wind travelled through the narrow street.
Inside, however, the cluttered, chaotic space of Cho’s childhood had been rendered a distant memory.
Marietta, Cho’s best friend from school, had spent much of their Seventh Year at Hogwarts secreting herself among the Library’s bookshelves as the scarring on her face slowly healed from her betrayal of Dumbledore’s Army; no amount of makeup would cover the evidence of Hermione Granger’s jinx. But over the course of that year, Marietta had fallen in love with the many books she’d hidden behind, and she wound up accepting a position in Hogsmeade as a bookseller at Flourish and Blotts instead of pursuing a mastery. When she’d implemented a new organisational method the owner had described as revolutionary (though, to be frank, anything would’ve been a noticeable improvement from complete anarchy), Marietta had been offered the bookshop’s manager position.
For years, the store had been deemed lively in the same placating tone one might refer to their child’s artwork as inspired. Towering shelves had filled every corner of the space. Books of all sizes, shapes and subjects were stacked haphazardly along their rows and piled in heaps on the floor, exuding a deeply earthy, dusty smell, which was equal parts nostalgic and an actual health hazard.
Marietta had completely transformed it, maintaining its eccentricities while eliminating the chaos and the concerning griminess that had accumulated over hundreds of years. The front of the shop showcased bestsellers in an inviting display, the rest of the ground floor offering Hogwarts textbooks and tomes for magical study. She’d built out the relatively unused second and third floors, the second floor dedicated to wizarding history, politics, and culture and the third—the most controversial shift, and its most successful yet—a haven for romance readers. The top floor housed only Marietta’s office and the private meeting room they’d used for their book club every Wednesday evening of this year.
Cho slowly traversed the rounded stairs, pausing three floors up to glance out at the crowd of patrons milling about on the lower levels, her eyes scanning them involuntarily for a midnight-black bob. She didn’t know why exactly she felt so nervous, why it even mattered to her whether Pansy would actually show up or not, but it was the closest thing to a risk Cho had taken since the end of the war. It felt like extending a hand in the dark and not knowing if anyone would reach out and grab it.
She shook her head and refocused on rounding the last set of steps ahead of her until she reached the top floor. The door was ajar, though she’d not caught sight of anyone in the meeting space yet.
Cho poked her head into the room and looked around. The space had a quiet charm, with toffee-brown leather chairs around a well-worn oak table, surrounded by shelves of books in various states of use. Soft light filtered through large windows in the corner. A large vase of fresh peonies in shades of pink bloomed at the centre of the table, adding a burst of colour and fragrance to the room’s calming neutrals.
"Coming, coming!" Marietta called out from her office. Cho heard the steady tap of Marietta’s standard white trainers down the short hallway before she emerged in the doorway, her white t-shirt and light jeans a far cry from the Prophet staff’s office wear. Her reddish-blonde curls had deepened into a light auburn since their school days, twisted up today into a messy top knot. The scars that once covered her face had faded substantially over the years, though remnants remained from those she’d picked at without knowing any better; from a distance, they appeared as freckles dotting her cheeks and nose, but they were far more apparent up close.
"We ran out of copies of Shacklebolt’s memoir before noon, and my best bookseller Lex is out with spattergroit, the fucking horror, can you imagine? And don’t even get me started on the… anyway,"—Marietta waved a hand as she drew closer, planting a brief, perfunctory kiss on Cho’s cheek and drawing away, the subtle blend of vanilla and lily from her perfume lingering in her absence—"hello, darling."
"Day was a shambles, I take it?"
Marietta’s eyes widened in confirmation as she collapsed into a chair. "I’m absolutely knackered. I either need a day’s worth of sleep or a boat-full of booze. Did you finish the book? Is Parkinson actually—"
"—as terrifying as I was in school?" a velvety voice drolled from the doorway. "Don’t fret, I’ve mellowed. Slightly. You can call me Pansy, you know. Only Draco calls me by my surname."
Pansy hadn’t bothered changing from the office—black turtleneck, pleated skirt, thigh-high stockings, so very Hogwarts of her—but Cho’s eyes lingered on her lips. She’d traded a nude shade for a striking deep red, so dark it was closer to black.
Cho bit back a grin. "Pansy, you might remember Marietta Edgecombe from school—she was in my year, though, so you might not have crossed paths much."
Pansy shifted to appraise Marietta. "I heard the stories," she said slowly, and Cho grimaced.
Marietta’s brows lifted. "As did I," she replied.
Pansy’s lips drew into a knowing smirk. "I think I like you," she said.
She shifted quickly on her heeled ankle boots, her skirt swishing dangerously high with the movement, to shout out the door, "MILLS."
"Merlin, I’m here," Millie said, exasperated, as she reached the end of the staircase and joined Pansy in the doorway. "Bloody stairs never end. And did you stop in the romance section? Couldn’t stop myself, genuinely."
Pansy ignored her friend and gestured among the room’s occupants. "Mills, Marietta. Marietta, the one and only Millicent." Pansy strode to the table without another glance, gracelessly dropping her Goyard tote into the seat beside her before taking her own, crossing one leg over the other.
"Love what you’ve done with the place," Millie said, looking around the room and gesturing behind her. "That erotica section is… inspiring."
Marietta laughed. "I won’t lie—you're not the first person to tell me that."
"That cover with the Veela and the mermaid?" Millie sighed dramatically.
"Sirens and Sighs? I love that one."
"Gods, yes. That should’ve been this week’s reading."
"Actually… that’s not a bad idea." Marietta glanced around, her lips curving downward when she failed to find spare parchment. "Let me jot that down in my office," she called out as she stood and walked. "You’re the journos. Give me a name. Out on the Shelf?"
Millie laughed. "Reading Rainbow?"
"Cliterature Club?" Pansy proposed.
"A bit on the nose, isn’t it? Oh! Almost forgot," Marietta called from her office, returning with a chilled bottle of Muggle champagne in hand. "I heard we’re celebrating a birthday. Shall we?"
"You didn’t," Pansy said with an exaggerated eye-roll—but everyone at the Prophet, Cho included, knew the difference between Pansy’s pleased eye-roll and her displeased one.
Cho shrugged, glancing away. "It’s your birthday. Of course I did."
"Oh, thank Merlin," Millie interjected. "Didn’t know if I’d get through this without a drink."
Pansy raised a neatly pencilled brow at Cho’s unsophisticated snort before indelicately nudging Millie.
"Oh, bollocks," Millie said. "I only meant it’s always— well, you know, being around new people…"
"You could not possibly find two people who relate to this more," Marietta said reassuringly.
Cho nodded. She drew her wand from the tote at her feet and pointed it at the curio cabinet beside the window, flinging its drawers open and summoning four colourful coupes. The glasses floated into the air, refracting soft rainbows of light from the early-evening sun as they gently settled onto the table. Marietta worked in tandem, her wand lifting the bottle of Bollinger to pour generously into each glass.
"To our favourite Slytherin bitch—long may she reign!" Millie shouted, clinking her glass indelicately against Pansy’s. Marietta offered a "Hear, hear!" before taking hers down in one large gulp.
"Happy birthday, Pansy," Cho said softly from across the table. Pansy’s eyes snapped to hers, one corner of her lip quirking just barely upward. She lifted her glass just the slightest bit in Cho’s direction.
"Cheers," Pansy replied, lifting the glass to her lips and taking a slow, steady sip.
Cho instinctively followed suit, relishing the effervescence of the liquid on her tongue and its crisp, slightly sweet taste as it slid down her throat, already willing the flush in her cheeks away—whether from the drink or the attention, she didn’t know.
She’d always been rather self-conscious about how easily she reddened when she drank, a trait passed down from her mother, and her mother’s mother before her. Marietta had always been an exception, a safe space, as she was one of the few people who could truly understand Cho’s frustration at her body’s betrayal, the shame of the world seeing something she’d rather keep hidden. Among other friends and colleagues, Cho had long chosen to abstain from spirits altogether, even when it left her feeling left out from some important rite of adulthood, like she’d never truly know what it felt like to be young and alive and free.
But she’d invited Pansy here, on her birthday no less, and this felt like an important step. Like it was worthy of Cho letting down her guard for just one night. It would certainly make this whole endeavour feel less uncomfortable, anyway.
"Well, let’s dive in, shall we?" Marietta began, lifting herself off the chair to sit cross-legged in the leather chair. "Welcome to the Book Club for Unlikeable Women, where we subtly plot the downfall of the patriarchy and also read books from women who’ve attempted the same. As you can tell, recruitment has… not gone swimmingly, but at least we’ve doubled our ranks tonight."
"With a name like that, I can hardly imagine why," Pansy murmured dryly.
Marietta ignored her. "Usually, I’m the only one who’s finished the book, but I remain hopeful." She sent Cho a pointed look; it was usually a fifty-fifty chance Cho dropped that week’s read midway through for the latest romance that had captured her attention. "This week’s reading was The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. Did anyone actually read it?"
Everyone in the group nodded, and Marietta’s face lit up in surprise. "Really? Brill. I thought we could start off with a discussion about women’s roles in society." Her gaze darted between the women, as if expecting the room to burst into enthusiastic debate. After a minute of awkward silence, her head drooped slowly onto her palms, her elbows resting on the table, and released a long-suffering sigh. "Like… the pressure Esther feels to conform to 1950s ideas of femininity? Her desire for autonomy?"
Cho had only skimmed the book, if she were being honest (and likely wouldn’t have even done that if she’d not gone and invited people she felt a need to impress), but she was nothing if not a supportive friend.
"Yes—Esther!" She glanced around, trying to appear intellectually curious rather than desperate to pull something profound out of her arse. "I really enjoyed the, erm… well, her desire to be a poet, to be a writer. Obviously, that resonated. And I’ve never quite understood why we are told we can have either a career or a marriage. Why do I have to curb my own ambitions just to satisfy society?"
The women around her nodded.
"I rather liked the fig tree," Pansy said.
Marietta’s countenance looked somewhere uncomfortably between amused and impressed. "Expound, Parkinson."
Pansy crossed one thigh elegantly over the other and chewed on her lip. "I suppose I once saw my life branching out before me like Esther’s fig tree. Except instead of not being able to choose among them and watching them wither away, I saw all of the possible lives my parents had laid out for me, and they were all absolute bollocks. And then I finally saw the ones I wanted for myself, and they were the farthest branches... so far I could hardly see them, let alone touch them." She exhaled deeply and reached back out for her champagne. "Eventually, I burnt every branch blocking their path to the ground. And here I am,"—she raised her glass—"happily disowned and unwedded, receiving a bloody army’s worth of Howlers every birthday. But at least I’m on the branch I chose."
For a moment, only the echoes of passing voices outside and the soft trill of birdsong filled the silence of the room.
"Fuck, Pans, you’re a proper philosopher," Millie finally said at her side.
"Oh, sod off," Pansy hissed, though she bit back a smile.
"No, I adore it," Marietta cut in, and Cho knew from her tone, the way she drew out her vowels, that Pansy Parkinson had just entirely wooed her. "To being on the branch we choose! That ought to be our slogan."
"Our slogan?"
"Yes, for our book club."
Pansy’s gaze shifted for a hint of a second to Cho, her lip just barely twitching upward, like she’d just realised precisely what she’d signed up for by agreeing to come tonight. "Right," she said slowly.
"That’s actually absolutely bang-on, too, one of my favourite moments in the book," Marietta continued. "So much of Esther’s crisis is rooted in not being able to form an identity that feels authentic within a patriarchal society!" Her voice sped up, the surest and most constant sign to Cho that her best friend was getting overexcited about a book again. "The bell jar is—"
"A metaphor," Pansy finished, her nails tapping lightly along the armrest of her chair.
"RIGHT!" Marietta slapped the table in front of them, wine glasses shaking unsteadily at the impact, and Cho flinched at the sound. "A metaphor! For suffocation, for isolation, for being scrutinised and limited and—"
"Hogwarts was a bell jar, wasn’t it," Pansy interjected.
Millie lifted her glass in cheers at that.
"But it’s a bell jar cloaked as freedom, d’you know?" Millie said sadly. "They made us think the entire world could be ours before the glass trapped us in. It didn’t matter who or what we were, not if we weren’t men. If we were purebloods, we had to always be perfect. If we were half-bloods or Muggleborns, we had to always be grateful." She reached down and yanked a spare quill and piece of parchment from her purse, scribbling a note down. "I really ought to write a column about this…"
"It wasn’t a bell jar if you were in Harry Potter’s inner circle, though," Cho said quietly, and Marietta rolled her eyes knowingly.
"At least you didn’t try to turn him in to old Voldy," Pansy quipped.
"No, but I might as well have." Cho hated the fact that those memories still stung—that they still mattered so much to her. "Marietta might’ve borne the scars from it, but Hogwarts was not friendly to anyone who fell from Harry’s good graces. They called me emotional. They said I was manipulative and dramatic! My boyfriend was murdered and I was a teenager and grieving and apparently that made me ‘too much.’"
Marietta nodded furiously. "And you know, in the book, you can see Plath’s obvious commentary on the nature of women’s pain often being dismissed or misunderstood—"
"And you know," Pansy interjected, "Harry himself said–"
"Never going to discuss a bloody book in this club," she mumbled to herself.
Time slipped by as the chat meandered, the evening drew on, and they’d moved from champagne to a rather cracking red wine Pansy had nicked from the family estate’s cellar.
"Anyway," Cho said with a long sigh, "it was better before… everything. Before Cedric and Harry and the war, when we were just on the outskirts of whatever the Gryffindors were doing. When we could just be invisible."
Marietta and Pansy both snorted.
Cho crossed her arms, her eyes shifting between the women. "What?"
"Babes," her best friend said, reaching out and squeezing Cho’s hand. "You were never invisible."
"What is that supposed to—"
"Don’t be daft," Pansy interrupted, rolling her eyes. "You were a Quidditch star, and you know you were the fittest witch at school, besides Daphne." She sent a quick, unreadable look to Millie, something between teasing and pointed, before turning her attention back to Cho.
Cho opened her mouth, then closed it again. She took a long sip of wine instead.
"I was invisible," Millie said after a moment, swirling the last sips of champagne around. "Sometimes it felt like I didn’t even exist. Like because I wasn’t thin or conventionally beautiful, I wasn’t worth paying any mind. So I decided I’d just be cruel instead." She glanced around the room. "People can’t ignore cruelty."
"Would you rather have been seen, though?" Pansy countered, one finger tracing the rim of her glass. "The Slytherins called Daphne and me the Serpent Slags. And I didn’t even particularly want to fuck boys—they were just the only thing I thought I could fuck back then."
"It’s a ridiculous double standard, too, just like Plath describes!" Marietta exclaimed, oblivious to the drops of wine littering the table in her wake as she leaned over to refill everyone’s glasses again. "Men get to be praised for experience, while women are shamed for it."
"They called you what?!" Cho cried. "That’s despicable."
"Oh," Pansy purred. "You ought to have heard the things they said about you in the Slytherin common room, then. The perfect, mythical, unspoiled cunt of Cho Chang."
Cho grimaced. Millie let out a dramatic retching noise. "Merlin, men are the worst."
"Tell me about it," Marietta said, rolling her eyes.
"I wasn’t unspoiled anyway," Cho said with a hiccuping giggle, her hands slapping over her mouth at the slip. She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial mock-whisper. "Cedric and I used to shag in the Prefect’s bathroom."
"You naughty bint!" Millie gasped. "Now that feels like smashing the patriarchy. A true service for womankind. Was it good?"
"Merlin, yes," she said, sighing. "He is the only person who’s…"—she waved one hand around carelessly—"well… you know."
"Gotten you off?" Pansy supplied, and Cho’s stomach twisted into a knot.
She nodded, finishing off her… Merlin, she couldn’t really be sure how many glasses she’d had. Cho stared at the now-empty glass, trying to recall the last time she’d drank this much.
"You really ought to correct that," Pansy deadpanned, and an abrupt laugh poured out of Cho’s mouth just before they locked eyes and she realised it’d not actually been a joke.
"Alright," she said meekly, glancing away and welcoming another refill of her wine from Marietta.
The conversation wandered, spiralling out into other books, past lovers, terrible dates and better ones. Several of the lilac-coloured candles scattered about the room, once casting their glow and perfuming the air with bergamot and lavender, had burned down to their wicks, pools of wax cooling in the dim light.
Marietta yawned, raising her hands above her head in a stretch. "Well, it’s getting late. The shop is probably"—she glanced behind her at the small wall clock, her eyes widening as she caught the time—"closed! Bollocks, Katie will actually Avada me if I keep her after hours again."
Cho paused as she caught her own reflection in the mirror beside the staircase on their way out, glimpsing the obvious flush creeping up her cheeks and down her neck, disappearing beneath the neckline of her white silk blouse. She could feel her rapid descent into the spiral of mortification: how long has it been like this, how obvious is it, they must think I’m—
The voice was low behind her, a tone she’d never heard within the walls of the Prophet. She could nearly feel the ghost of an exhale along the back of her neck. "It suits you."
Cho froze, her eyes snapping ahead. She didn’t look back. Didn’t want to see the look on Pansy’s face. "What does?"
Pansy hesitated. "Joy, I suppose?" she finally replied. "Just... you, a bit messy. It’s nice to see you undone."
The cresting wave of her embarrassment fizzled instead of crashing, though she was more aware of the warmth in her cheeks now than she’d been all evening.
"Thank you," she replied softly, collecting herself and continuing down the stairs.
The shop had emptied in the hours since Cho had entered the building, the sign on the door flipped to Closed, the last remaining bookseller waiting impatiently for Marietta to reach the ground floor with crossed arms, her Doc Martens tapping rapidly against the wood floor.
"If I’d have known you just get bollocksed and whinge about life at book club, I’d have joined one ages ago," Millie said loudly as they descended, gripping Pansy’s arm for stability.
Cho offered Marietta a commiserating smile and a wave before stepping out with Pansy and Millie into the brisk evening air, lamplight casting a soft glow over the darkened cobblestone street. The usual bustle of Diagon Alley had faded into the peaceful stillness of a weekday evening, only the faint sounds of distant footsteps and the locking up of shops surrounding them.
"This was lovely," Cho said at the base of the stairs, filling the silence. "I’m glad you came."
"Yeah, thanks," Pansy replied, her expression unreadable, her tone reverted to the classic Pansy Parkinson Cho had always known. She wondered if the moment on the stairs had just been a figment of her imagination. Too much time spent in the bookshop’s erotica section.
"A proper good time," Millie said, linking her arm in Pansy’s as she added, "Can I stay with you tonight?"
Pansy nodded.
Cho turned away, mentally preparing herself for the trek back to Shoreditch.
"Next week, then?"
She twisted back to Pansy in surprise, the corners of her lips lifting involuntarily. "Next week," she agreed.