do you remember
Pansy remembers it all.
Eleven years old, huddled in the Quidditch stands, golden autumn settling into the Highlands beneath a rare sun high in the sky.
Draco grumbles next to her about Potter’s privilege and Potter’s ridiculous new broom. “Father says there’s loads of issues with them. Says there’s no point in getting one ‘til they’ve fixed all of them with a new model.”
Pansy makes a bored, noncommittal noise that Draco accepts, because despite all his bluster, he knows when she’s reaching her limit. When she’s ready to foist him upon Vince and Greg, and he really doesn’t want that.
A trio of scarlet races past them to thunderous applause from the Gryffindors on the other side, and just above the Slytherins, Harry Potter cheers from atop his subpar, faulty new broom. Allegedly.
She’s been at school with him long enough —which is to say, two months—to hate his mangy friends and the giant oaf of a gamekeeper they follow like ducklings.
But when their eyes meet for the first time, she can’t seem to muster the same feeling for the apparent saviour of their world.
And so she stares in a way her mother would call most uncouth, challenging him to scowl or glare or make any indication that he feels for her what she should for him.
Instead, he merely stares back. Lets his bottle-green eyes linger blankly upon her until, moments later, Oliver Wood yells at him from across the pitch. He flies off, and soon after, secures the golden snitch.
A rush of emerald flames brings Pansy back to herself.
“Sorry I’m late,” says his tired voice as he steps from the fire. Harry unstraps his wand holster and tosses it onto the leather sofa.
Five o’clock shadow fringes his face—his hair out of sorts even for him—and she would make one of her usual, semi-caustic remarks if he didn’t look nearly as bedraggled as when he emerged from the rubble of the Final Battle. So instead, she says, “You’re lucky I’m a forgiving woman.”
She uncurls herself from the armchair and saunters toward him, wrapping him in a hug once she’s close enough. “Gryffindors,” she murmurs into his neck, “always working desperately hard.”
“And yet you like it,” he says back, voice gravelly, “just how desperate I can be.”
Heat settles behind her navel, but before she can do or say anything, Harry pulls back, eyes wide like he’s remembered something.
He bends down to reach into a pocket in his robes, and from it, emerges a small jewellery box. “Collected it just before they’d closed. Want help putting it on?”
“If you insist,” she says as she turns around, lifts her hair, and Harry huffs a soft laugh, telling her, “You’re incorrigible.”
He slides the dainty chain around her neck, and though Pansy would never admit it, a wave of relief rolls through her now that the golden snitch—the very one returned to him from Dumbledore, shrunk down to a tiny pendant—has returned to its rightful home.
“I was thinking about it on the way home,” he says. “The first time I saw you up in the stands.“
“Really?” she asks.
“Really.”
Of course, Harry remembers, too.