The Flower and The Gardner
The words had been carved into Pansy Parkinson's bones since childhood, etched into her skin, "Ladies are meant to be seen, not heard." Every time her mother uttered them—lips pursed into that familiar moue of disapproval, sharp hazel eyes flashing with warning—Pansy felt the walls of her gilded cage tighten another fraction. At Parkinson Manor, she played her part - back straight dinners, nodding demurely when expected, putting on a practiced smile that never quite reached her eyes. But still, the fire simmered in her veins, boiling over at times when she couldn't control it.
"Why must you always be so loud?" her mother had sighed just last week, long fingers pinching the bridge of her nose as Pansy argued—again—about being allowed to shop at the Diagon Alley with Draco's family.
Pansy's perfectly manicured nails had dug half-moons into her palms, the sharp bite of pain grounding her. "Because if I'm not, I'll disappear," she'd thought but never said. The words tasted bitter on her tongue, heavy with the weight of all the things she'd kept to herself over the years.
The day she had first met Draco Malfoy and Theodore Nott at the Malfoy Manor, she'd tried, really tried—to be the proper pureblood daughter her parents expected. It had lasted precisely five minutes.
Draco had "accidentally" knocked over his goblet, sending ice-cold pumpkin juice splashing across her brand-new dragonhide boots. His smirk had been a challenge, those silver-colored eyes gleaming with amusement as he waited for her reaction.
Something inside Pansy had snapped.
She had seized Draco's goblet and upended the remaining contents over his perfectly coiffed blond head. The resulting silence had been deafening—until Theo's startled laugh broke it, his shoulders shaking with barely contained mirth as juice dripped from Draco's nose onto the Malfoys' priceless Persian rug.
As Narcissa Malfoy sighed and Lucius pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation, Pansy learned something vital: rebellion suited her far better than silence ever had.
Pansy wouldn't have noticed Neville Longbottom if not for Professor Snape's particular brand of cruelty.
"Parkinson," Snape had sneered during the third week of classes, his voice dripping with disdain as it slithered through the dungeon, "perhaps you can demonstrate your knowledge of Potions by ensuring Longbottom doesn't reduce my classroom to rubble."
Bracing for the expected incompetence, Pansy had instead been surprised to find unexpected precision in Neville's movements. His large hands—marked with nicks and callouses that spoke of hours spent gardening—moved deliberately as he chopped ingredients, the knife work exact. When it came time to stir, his rotations were measured but just a second off, not the frantic, haphazard motions she'd anticipated.
Their potion still failed spectacularly— Professor Snape's looming presence made even her usually steady hands shake—but it wasn't from lack of skill. As they cleaned up the resulting green sludge, something about Neville's quiet resignation struck her.
"I'm better with plants," he admitted when she commented on his technique, no shame or self-deprecation in his voice. Just a simple fact.
In the humid warmth of Greenhouse Three, Neville Longbottom transformed.
Pansy watched from her potting bench as he knew exactly how much water Dittany needed to thrive. He even discussed the ideal harvesting time for Bubotuber pus with Professor Sprout.
"You've got a gardener's touch," she said one afternoon as she leaned against his worktable, watching him repot Mandrake sapling. The words slipped out before she could stop them, surprising them both.
Neville's hands stilled for just a moment before he smiled—small but real, the expression softening his face. "Gran says that too," he admitted, returning to his task.
The way he said it—no bitterness, just quiet acceptance—made Pansy understand something fundamental. His parents' legacy weighed on him differently than hers, not as chains to bind him but as roots to ground him.
Hermione Granger's study habits were very predictable. The back-left table in the library, near the restricted section. Quill tapped exactly three times against parchment before beginning to write. Pansy had been observing her for weeks, noting these patterns with the same precision she used to catalog social slights in Slytherin house.
On a particularly dreary November afternoon, when rain lashed against the castle windows and the library was nearly empty, Pansy made her move.
"You're wrong about Cheering Charms," she announced without preamble, dropping into the chair opposite Hermione and sliding a heavily annotated textbook across the table.
Hermione's head snapped up, "Excuse me?"
"Page two hundred fourteen," Pansy continued, flipping the book open with practiced ease. "Your theory fails to account for the new findings made in 1989."
By the week's end, their "study meetings" had become quite famous—Pansy's cutting observations and ruthless logic meeting Hermione's encyclopedic knowledge in the explosive synergy that left onlookers both impressed and slightly terrified.
Draco Malfoy never joined their study sessions outright—that would require admitting interest, and Malfoys didn't admit to anything so pedestrian. But Pansy noticed things.
She noticed how rare potions texts began appearing on Hermione's desk, always exactly the ones the Gryffindor witch had been searching for the day before.
The real revelation came one cold night in the astronomy tower, when Draco confessed in a rare moment of vulnerability, "It's all... murkier now." He stared at his palms as if they held secrets, his usually pale face washed silver by moonlight. "The visions. They keep shifting. I see... possibilities."
The boy who was always so sure of himself and his actions, who had seen a dangerous path stretching before him and worked hard to change it, was now troubled because of the infinite changes and choices that affected his visions.
The confrontation came a few days after Theodore Nott finally gathered the courage to join their study group.
"Father says the Notts are becoming a disgrace," Gregory Goyle jeered in the Slytherin common room, loud enough for everyone to hear. "First your mother's scandal, now you cozying up to Mudbloods and Blood Traitors?"
Theo's inkpot shattered against the hearth, the sound very loud in the suddenly silent room. Pansy saw his fingers ball into tight fists, his face going parchment-white.
Before she could intervene, Draco materialized at Theo's shoulder like a blond specter. "Fascinating," he drawled, voice dripping with icy venom. "And when, exactly, did your father become an authority on... well, anything?"
The unspoken, you blithering idiot hung in the air between them. When Goyle slunk away, Draco didn't offer empty reassurances—just pressed a chocolate frog into Theo's shaking hand with a look that spoke volumes. The same look he'd given Theo when they were eight and Theo's father had forgotten his birthday. Again.
The question came on a golden afternoon by the Black Lake, when the setting sun painted the water in shades of orange and the air smelled of grass and soil.
"Why do you care so much, to speak up even when nobody wants to listen?" Neville asked, looking up from the Herbology notes he was examining.
Pansy watched the play of sunlight on water, the words forming slowly, carefully. "Because no one should have to be quiet when they have something to say."
Neville's smile then—soft and real and so utterly genuine—warmed her more than the sun ever could. "I like hearing you talk," he said simply.
And for the first time in her life, Pansy Parkinson felt truly heard.