Work Text:
Pansy had done due diligence on thirty companies. Sure, she’d gotten the role at Sterling Capital from Draco’s father — but let the record show she had smashed those exams.
The creative businesses were always the worst. Graphic design studios with ‘unlimited PTO’ and no actual revenue. App developers who said disrupting without irony. Small-batch manufacturers that couldn't produce a balance sheet.
The file said: Wheezes Workshop. Bespoke prop design and fabrication. Est. 2012.
Pansy’s brain said: for fuck’s sake.
She’d met a Weasley or two at university… In the middle of a careers fair Ginny had once called the Slytherin Society a ‘womb of wee nepo babies’, which was—
Well, not wrong.
But rude.
Pansy had not kept in touch.
Now a Weasley business had landed on her desk as an acquisition target. Pansy anticipated the audit would be short-lived; wade through arts and crafts with delusions of grandeur to find six months of receipts in a shoebox. She’d write the recommendation to buy the contracts, fire the team, and meet Astoria for a cocktail at 7.
Pansy’s System: arrive early, establish authority, wait for them to scramble.
The building looked like the sort of place production companies went to die or launder money.
At 8:56am she tried the door and found it unlocked.
A vague sense of primary-school colours permeated the place, and Pansy crinkled her nose disdainfully at the slight scent of glue. A single desk sat near the back of the cluttered front office, its cabinet satellites stuffed with folders. Carton boxes bred in the corners. Framed photographs of stages and shows hung on the wall or were strewn on shelves with the feather boas.
It was the particular chaos of people with too much to do, meaning no one had time to manage the books because no one had time to find them.
At 9am, Ron Weasley walked in and immediately fumbled his tea. ‘Pansy Parkinson?’
He didn’t drop the mug, but it was a close thing. Score one.
‘Ron Weasley.’ She shook his hand. ‘I trust you know why I’m here.’
He was still gaping, then seemed to collect himself. Mostly. ‘Er— yes. Look at some files?’
‘Great. We’re already acquainted, no need for preamble,’ she said with a thin smile. ‘If I could see please Wheezes’ twelve-month financials, EBITDA reconciliation, and aged receivables— we can start from there.’
The System: ambush with requests for complex documentation and watch them flounder.
‘Oh, now?’ Weasley ran a hand through his hair sheepishly. ‘Right. I think it’s— let me check.’
He disappeared through a door behind the desk.
Classic. He’d root around and come out with a folder of crumpled invoices. Maybe the whole shoebox. She let some moments pass before pulling out her notebook.
His voice called out from another doorway: ‘Summary or itemised breakdown?’
Pansy blinked.
‘Both,’ she snapped.
‘Err— right, give me a bit, sorry. George moved the filing cabinet again.’
Pansy glared at her surroundings.
Scuff marks on the wall, a whiteboard drowning in notes, boxes overflowing. Except… the boxes had labels, the whiteboard a key, and the scrawl — on closer inspection — was red for deadlines, black for delivery.
There was a lot of black.
Growing suspicious, she inspected the photographs… the Matilda cake, horse masks from Equus (a favourite), Phantom chandelier—
‘Here we go.’
Weasley handed her a folder and Pansy registered with alarm that it was warm (freshly printed) and had colour-coded tabs.
‘I put the summary up front, but the breakdown’s in annex two-point-three. Let me know if you need supporting invoices; they’re in the other cabinet — George moved that one too — but I can pull them.’
She opened the folder — the tabs were indexed.
‘Tea?’ Weasley asked. ‘Kettle's just boiled.’
— ✦ —
The meeting had passed in a blur.
Pansy had flipped through the documents, searching for a miscategorised expense or oddly round number…
Nothing.
She’d asked some cursory questions — some banal drivel about supplier terms — and Weasley answered, only briefly flipping through his own copy of the folder. She'd left by 10:30am and told herself she'd find the problems at home.
That was six days ago.
The folder was still on her kitchen table, annotated: check, looks high? and too clean and, on one particularly unhinged evening, HOW???
The figures were fine; not fine as in passable, but fine as in forty-three percent gross margins. (She checked the EBITDA reconciliation. It reconciled.) By Sunday, she'd moved on to denial — the folder was a front, the real finances must be hidden somewhere.
No one who fumbled their tea like that could possibly be this organised.
*
Mr. Weasley,
Please provide contracts and payment histories for your top five suppliers by volume.
Regards,
Pansy Parkinson
Director, Portfolio Due Diligence
*
Pansy,
Attached. Note Supplier #4 (Mundungus Fletcher, specialty components) operates on a handshake basis.
Shout if you need anything else.
Ron
P.S. It's just Ron. "Mr. Weasley" makes me turn around looking for dad.
*
Mr. Weasley,
To clarify, you have a supplier who:
(1) operates without written contract,
(2) is named Mundungus, and
(3) provides ‘specialty components,’ which I am forced to assume means ‘parts that fell off a lorry.’
Please advise.
Regards,
Pansy Parkinson
Director, Portfolio Due Diligence
*
Pansy,
In order: (1) yes, (2) yes, goes by Dung, (3) never asked and not going to start.
Ron
*
Mr. Ron Weasley,
"I've never asked" is not documentation.
Regards,
Pansy Parkinson
Director, Portfolio Due Diligence
*
Sure. But the wolf skeleton turned up on time, and it was a real wolf.
Mr. Ronald Weasley
Chief Vibes Officer
Wheezes Workshop
*
Somehow that’s worse.
Pansy
*
The title, or the wolf?
*
Pansy didn't laugh. Absolutely not. The sound that came out of her was a cough, or a scoff, or some other irritated noise that definitely wasn't a laugh like she was someone who enjoyed jokes from Ron Weasley. She shut her laptop in horror.
— ✦ —
The kettle was already boiling when Pansy arrived at 8:55am, which irritated her in a way she chose not to examine.
Weasley looked at her. ‘You keep saying “Weasley” like that narrows it down.’
‘I’m maintaining professional distance.’
He snorted. ‘Professional distance requires surnames?’
‘Yes.’
First names were for situations where you weren’t about to hand someone’s life’s work to Lucius Malfoy on a platter.
He huffed a small laugh, like she’d made a joke. (She hadn’t.)
As if on cue, a head popped around the workshop door. ‘Oi, which cabinet did you—’ He spotted Pansy. ‘You’re the new money person’.
‘Director of Portfolio Due Diligence,’ Pansy said, in the crisp way that made people nod.
‘Right. That.’ The other Weasley turned to Weasley. ‘Rigging schematics?’
‘Green cabinet, second shelf. Labelled “rigging”.’
‘Bit on the nose, eh Ronnie.’ And with a wink, he was gone.
'George,' Weasley sighed, by way of explanation. Then he snorted ungracefully. ‘“Director of… whatever” is lots of words to say “accountant”.’
Pansy bristled.
The nerve of Weasleys.
‘How many other offers have you received?’ she redirected.
He looked away a little too casually. ‘We’ve had interest. Happens when you’ve been around a while.’
‘Interest from whom?’
‘Various.’
Pansy waited, but Weasley didn’t budge.
‘You turned them down,’ she said eventually. ‘The previous buyers.’
‘Wasn’t the right fit.’
‘What would be the right fit?’
He looked at her then, like he was weighing something. ‘Someone who’d let us keep doing what we’re doing,’ he said, with a stiff shrug. ‘Not gut the place for parts.’
Pansy was saved from having to reply by a loud crash of metal on concrete. Weasley cringed.
‘RONALD. I NEED YOU.’
He pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘He’s not dying.’
‘I’M DYING. DOESN’T BOTHER YOU, YEAH, BUT YOU MIGHT CARE ABOUT THIS WING? THAT WILL DROP — WERE I TO DIE.’
‘Coming!’ he yelled. He stood, then hesitated. ‘You can come see what George’s brought in, if you’d like.’
Pansy didn't need to — she had the folder — but a crash like that would’ve made anyone curious.
George was outside the building, supporting a large metal frame, expression strained. 'Left,' he wheezed.
Ron braced one hand on a copper bar and Pansy noticed absurdly, irrelevantly, that his forearms were freckled all the way down. Not just scattered… Populated. Like someone ought to conduct a census.
She cleared her throat.
‘Oh — sorry,’ Ron said, looking like he meant it, ‘d’you need something? I—’
‘No, you’re busy. I’ll email.’
He shot her a relieved grin before turning back. ‘Cheers!’
Dismissed by a Weasley.
Pansy left before she could think of a response that wasn't unprofessional.
— ✦ —
The folder was still on her kitchen table. Three weeks now, and she hadn't filed her analysis.
Instead Pansy sat there, in her quiet flat with no scuff marks on the walls or strange structures casting shadows. She had never thought of her flat as empty before. She thought herself intentional.
And yet— what choices had she intended to make?
She chose the economics degree because it was respectable. Sterling Capital because Draco mentioned it. Audits because she had an eye for what was wrong; with systems, with numbers, with other people's choices.
She had never committed to something because she wanted it, or cared enough about an outcome to be disappointed by one. She had certainly never emailed someone back in seven minutes because she was excited to talk to them.
The System was in peril.
— ✦ —
Her third visit was incidental. Pansy had found a mismatched invoice— could have been an email, perhaps, except Ron had mentioned being busy with a big commission, and sorting things out in person was simply more efficient.
Pansy was being considerate, really.
Finding no one at the main shop, she walked into the warehouse — and stopped.
George was suspended, adjusting something on a— dragon? If dragons were made of copper, canvas, and articulated joints that caught the light like something alive.
‘Left wing’s dragging,’ Ron called up. He was at a worktable covered in technical drawings, frowning. ‘Counterweight’s off.’
‘The counterweight’s fine, problem’s your rigging point—’
‘My rigging point is exactly where you—’
‘I revised—’
Ron sighed, setting down his pencil. ‘Come down, I’ll go up.’
‘You’ll break it, you’re tall as a wardrobe!’
‘You’ve probably already broken it!’
George muttered something about ‘six feet of unsolicited opinions’, but descended.
Ron climbed, the structure held, and Pansy agreed — Ron was stupidly tall.
But she watched him move through the framework; careful, adjusting tension lines with deft hands. He reached the wing joint, shifted something, and with a frightening groan the dragon settled.
‘There,’ Ron said smugly. ‘Seems the rigging point was up your—’
‘Piss off.’
Ron smirked. It rearranged his whole face in a way Pansy refused to have an opinion about.
Pansy wrote invoice clarified and left.
— ✦ —
Her fourth visit was the audit review. Final signatures, things that needed to happen in person for legal reasons and no other reason. She'd called him Ron when she arrived, and he’d smiled like she'd given him something. Pansy added this to the list of things about Ron Weasley that were personally irritating to her.
(The list was getting long and would need subsections soon.)
She had been there for twenty minutes, flipping pages, Ron signing where she pointed. The radio was on low in the workshop while George sang along, off-key and distant.
‘Sorry, one sec—’ Ron was frowning at a clause, pen hovering. ‘Hermione always said I should actually read these before signing. Bit late to start, but.’
He chuckled at himself, light and easy.
Pansy’s mouth moved before her brain caught up (apparently jealousy ran far quicker than sense).
‘Granger? I remember her. Needed everyone to know how hard she’d worked for everything.’
Ron didn’t look up, and his voice was calm, but she saw his jaw stiffen slightly. ‘She taught me everything I know about this business that isn’t building dragons.’ He glanced up and his eyes were hard. ‘So, maybe don’t.’
Her pulse was doing something inconvenient.
‘Fuck off,’ Pansy said, but somehow pronounced it: ‘Noted’, and in a small voice.
He turned the page.
‘She dumped me,’ he said slowly. ‘Three years ago. Half of what works here is because she taught me. The other half might be spite.’
He said it like a joke. It wasn’t, quite.
‘Sorry, bit much to tell the money person, hey… But now I find I almost like the calculations. Well, I’d rather be building, just it’s not as—’
‘I like them, too,’ she interrupted, somewhat desperately. ‘Accountant, and all that.’
Ron nodded slowly, like she’d said something that made sense to him and he wasn’t sure why. They went back to the paperwork. It should have been awkward; it wasn’t, quite.
Later that evening, Pansy stared at her screen.
Recommendation: Proceed.
She'd written it dozens of times, and this should have been one of the easiest — margins solid, clients loyal, team begrudgingly impressive.
Pansy thought about dragons and the half of things you had to learn yourself. About what it might feel like to choose something.
She typed Abort.
— ✦ —
It was a month later, and the show was Antigone. Modern adaptation, small theatre, good reviews, half-empty house. Pansy had told herself this was about the Greek tragedy. She’d never been a convincing liar.
The programme credited Wheezes Workshop for set and prop design, and Pansy supposed — well, yes, she’d checked — that opening night meant the whole team would be there.
She spotted him at intermission. He was in a casual suit — navy — that emphasised his unreasonable height, and she added this annoyance to the list. He grinned as he talked to someone from the production and she almost bolted.
She waited until he was alone. Then she waited another minute, because she was a coward. Then she went over anyway.
‘Pansy? What are you— didn’t know you liked theatre.’
He looked pleased to see her and made no attempt to hide it. Ridiculous.
‘I contain multitudes,’ she said, which was a stupid thing to say.
He scoffed good-naturedly. ‘Come on,’ he said, nodding toward the bar. ‘Intermission’s only twenty minutes and the line’s murder.’
They ended up in a corner with drinks neither of them touched. Ron leaned against the wall, easy and unhurried, like he had all the time in the world for whatever this was. Studying her.
‘You’re not here for Antigone.’
‘The set design is excellent.’
He rolled his eyes. ‘I heard the deal fell through.’
‘Funny how these things go.’
‘Did you have something to do with that?’
Pansy could lie. She probably should. But she’d typed Abort and come here on purpose, and she was tired of only doing things because they were easy.
‘If you want to find out,’ she said, with far more courage than she felt, ‘I suppose I’ll have to tell you over drinks.’
He laughed — startled and warm.
‘Is that blackmail?’
‘It’s a date, Weasley. Keep up.’
He rolled his eyes again, but his smirk was doing something funny to her insides. ‘Friday?’
‘Friday.’