Sweet

Pansy’s fingers twitch rather forebodingly as she stands in front of the door. A small, wooden thing with a plaque on it announcing Assistant Editor in boxy, cubic letters. Nothing foreboding about any of it, she can hear the whirling of the ceiling fan inside the office. Pansy forces herself to think through what she has been planning to say, the exact words. Years of society etiquette somehow proved to be inadequate in managing office politics. In her head, there are at least ten different versions of what’s going to happen. Six of them disastrously wrong. The others… well.

Someone comes out of the door, breaking her out of her daze. She rushes inside before she has time to reconsider.

Margo—the object of her dread—is leaning over her desk, staring intently at the photos she knew so well. The interior of the office is a stoic one, earthy brown and beige boxes stacked with papers surround the tidy furnishings. Margo does not care much for the decorum, or social cues. When Pansy coughs awkwardly to let her know she is here, her boss doesn’t look up. 

“Oh, hello,” Margo says, dreadfully pensive.

“Hey,” Pansy says encouragingly, already unnerved. “Listen, I—I wanted to talk to you about the new issue. This, uhm, double featurette we’re trying to do.”

“The Harry Potter one? What about it?”

“I don’t think we should do it.”

Margo hums as if she’s tasting the idea. “Really? Why?”

“He really doesn’t have anything to do with it.”

Margo looks up now, curious. She has a long, slender nose curved preposterously on the edge. Makes her look like a hawk, sometimes, when she rests her glasses there. Her cool, brown eyes only heighten the penetrating stare. Pansy used to admire her, once upon a time.

“What do you mean?” Her index trails along the picture, stroking the long, lean body of Ginny Weasley. She’s in muggle jeans and t-shirt, at the door of a store, somewhere in Montreal, Pansy assumes, judging by the schedule of Weasley’s latest match. In Montreal, at the front of some unnamed bakery, she’s backed against the glass, her mouth open in a laugh, kissing a guy who clearly isn’t Harry Potter. He has his arms pinned on each side of her face. Pansy assumed, in the long and pondering weekend, that he was smiling, too.

Pansy forces herself to look away from the pictures. She’s been looking at them all week, trying to run a story, be okay with it, or at least make sense of it. Sense of Ginny Weasley cheating on Potter and of the curious, deflated feeling Pansy feels in her chest. 

Margo is looking at her expectantly. Pansy blushes ferociously. “I mean, he didn’t cheat. It’s obviously Weasley and her poor choices. I just think it’s a shame to put out the Harry Potter expose without him actually doing anything.”

“Anything else?”

Her mouth goes dry. The plethora of excuses—no, reasons, she had told herself. All of them are good and sturdy reasons—all clot up in her mouth. It took her three days to decide that she couldn’t do that to him, couldn’t let anyone else do that either. In her head all the points—bulleted and catagorised—coalesce. It’s too sleazy for our paper. Never mind that it’s Witch Weekly. It’s not what our audience wants—no one wants to know that their heroes are fucked up and cheated on. The audience would love a peek into the damage, actually. Their engagement was really announced a week before, no one would want to see this… collapse of the Chosen One’s life. Not great in the political climate, the elections are coming and he’s supposed to be backing Kingsley Shacklebolt.

All these make perfect, logical sense. Impersonal. Because really, there could be no personal tying to Pansy Parkinson with this news. With this guy. Person. Harry Potter. She’s only seen him two times since school. Only talked with him once in about a year. But.

But amidst the battle of practicality, in the back of her head, like an afterthought, rings his voice. You’re not broken.

So what she says is, “Just… we can’t do this to him.”

“Our newspaper doesn’t run on moral conundrums. Especially the moral conundrums of one person,” Margo says, and even with her disappointment, Pansy commends her boss on the sleek, businesslike detachment. 

“But that’s why I wanted your opinion. Don’t you think it’s too—?” Cruel? Heartless? Impractical. Unreasonable. Irreversible. “Undeserving?”

“No. I, for one, think it’s better that he knows before the marriage, don’t you think?”

“I…” She hesitates. “I know—”

“And if you have any other scrupulous insights, I suggest you take it up with the chief editor.”

Margo presses her mouth in the hard, unyielding manner she’s been associated with, been used to, for the last one year. Pansy knows better than to argue, she does, it’s just—

“I know about you and Mr. Goodwin.”

“Excuse me?”

Pansy tries to find gravity again. Margo is staring at her now, the undivided attention pricks like a thorn. Suddenly the room is too small, cloistering in its neatness. “I don’t—I don’t intend on telling Mrs. Goodwin, the chief editor. Really, I—”

“Pansy Parkinson,” her voice thrums, still pensive. Reasonable. Pansy is doing something very, very unreasonable. “Are you threatening me?”

“No. I just.” Pansy hesitates. She’s run out of practice. It seems like a very long time since she’s threatened someone. Part of the whole be a better person, a small attempt at unbreaking herself. But none of it matters, at this moment. Inadvertently, her eyes sweep over the picture again. The guy, stocky and muscular, taller than her, was wearing shorts and a Harpies t-shirt. He is clearly someone she knows well, Pansy had thought impassively, as he squeezed her ass. 

And she imagines Potter’s face as he sees this. That beautiful, tired face falling at this… and it’s not a choice, really. 

“Don’t publish this,” she says, surprised to find herself calmer.

“If you think you’ll be getting away with this, you—”

“I’m not thinking about anything. This isn’t anything. A favour, perhaps, for all the thankless coffees and the errands and late night summoning, and breaking my trust. I ran into you both because you called me for a mojito at five am then forgot about it. I worshiped you, you know, when I first came here. And now the spell’s broken. Everyone disappoints, I know that, and he’ll know that. But it doesn’t have to be this way. It’s cruel and irreversible. I’m asking for a favour, Margo. Do me this favour. Then I won’t have to talk about you or Robert Goodwin, or even think about it. That’s all I am asking.”

She comes out of the room shaking.

She apparates to the pitch with the same awful dread pitting against her stomach. The air feels stung with the smell of freshly cut grass and broom wax. Her mind is ablaze with the look of reproach she got from Margo. Pansy stares sideways to find someone she knows, or doesn’t. It doesn’t matter. She could ask anyone where Ginny Weasley might be. She looks around the sheds, the field with people flying on broomsticks, like shooting stars. Must be fun, she thinks, shooting up at the sky while the mortals are stuck here. And why am I here? And you don’t need to do this, you’ve already done enough, for fuck’s sake. Against her better, far more reasonable judgements, she’s already instigated herself far too deep. And still.

It takes a few minutes of tiring, mortifying pondering before she finally finds Ginny Weasley at the dressing room changing from her robes. The redhead smiles for a second before she recognises Pansy. The smile dissipates, leaving only a displeased sneer. 

“Hello, Weasley,” she says, cringing. She had hoped to sound cheerily professional. Her voice came out belting the same passive tiredness of Margo Hanz, the assistant editor, the one she threatened.

“Hey,” Ginny Weasley says coolly, the sneer still there.

Just as well. Pansy doesn’t feel like pretending anyway. Wordlessly, Pansy hands her the picture. Ginny Weasley eyes her suspiciously before she takes it. Pansy feels a strange sensation, an inkling of dread, disappointment, and not a bit of triumph buzzing her chest as she watches the other girl sit down at one of the benches.

The colour of Weasley’s face drains when she scans the picture. Her lips part, a gasp, and the pictures are plopping out of her hands as she checks another, and another, and another. The pictures make a steady heap, seven in total.

Pansy can see that her hands are shaking.

“We should talk,” Pansy says softly.

Ginny Weasley tears the last picture in her hand. Pansy could roll her eyes, despite everything. Really, of all the futile gestures she choses this. “About what?”

In the torn pieces on the ground, she can still see the hands moving. The tattooed, muscular arm now clutches at Weasley’s arse. The hand squeezes territorially and Pansy’s stomach twists uncomfortably.

“You have to tell him.”

She blinks. “Well, I mean—what?”

“You’ll have to tell him you cheated before he hears it from someone else.”

“Is that why you’re here?” she says disbelievingly. “What’s it to you?”

“Great question. You could be a journalist.” Pansy smiles, painfully aware that her pensiveness doesn’t mask the sarcasm. 

“What’s it to you?”

“Why does it matter what I get out of this?”

The girl keeps staring at her, the all too familiar air of defiance in her. Her ponytail falls lopsided, messy as she looks like she’s ran a mile. Pansy sighs. The trouble is, it would get quite sticky elaborating on her long, subdued, fascination with the boy with the scar. Attraction. Affection. The realisation that he’s never had anyone saving him, not really. The realisation that there are not only so many ways you can damage a person, but also save one.

“He was kind to me once,” she says finally. There is that truth. Among all the others.

Weasley’s face widens in disbelief. Pansy’s mouth runs dry before she gulps the embarrassment.

“Witch Weekly won’t publish it, I’ve made sure of that… But I can’t say the same about other papers. Do you understand that? Sooner or later it will come out.”

“Is that a threat?”

“No, Weasley. That’s a fact.”

The surprise is still reeling in her face. It’s a pretty face, Pansy can’t help but feel a stab of annoyance at herself for thinking it. Really, of all the futile thoughts. Because she’s always been that. Beautiful. Bright and bold and vivacious. Now Ginny Weasley’s pretty face contorts, and even her guilt is bold and bright, not like Pansy’s. Not like her stoic and passive aggressive self-hatred, a clock-work of guilt tripping.

“I won’t—I can’t,” she hisses. “I love him. It’ll destroy him.”

“It’ll destroy him either way.”

“I can’t.”

“You’ve already done half of it,” Pansy snaps back. “He deserves to know.”

“Oh, shut the fuck up. It’s not up to you. You should stay out of this.”

And yes, she should. It’s sensible. It’s better for her sanity. She’s already done what she could, she threatened her boss. She confronted Weasley. 

“You all should stay out of this. What’s it to Witch Weekly if I—” her lips tremble, she can’t say it out loud. “You’re all busy inflating the truth, anyway. Hounding us with rumors and insuinatons and fucking—we’re not the perfect couple, okay? We never asked—when we hold hands in public or when we start living together I don’t ask to be seen as the it couple. I don’t—I never did. And now it’s never—real.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You put us on pedestal and you’re fucking breaking it down.”

Pansy watches in muted surprise as the girl unravels. Weasley doesn’t cry, no, she heaves. Her cheeks puff, eyes as red as her hair, as she clenches her jaw and looks at Pansy as if she’s asking for something. But she’s asking the wrong person.

“Do you want him?”

Pansy blinks. Is that so obvious? There’s an answer, pensive and duplicitous, burning in her head. Does she— she swallows it before the idea can form, like every other time. 

Weasley leans forward, eyes bright. “Is that it? You’re trying to push me out so you’d stick your claws in?”

“No,” Pansy says. “I don’t want—all that. There’s no ulterior motive to me coming, Weasley.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I’m sorry,” is all she says. “But I really don’t give a fuck.”

Weasley scoffs, her smile is as bitter as her next words, “Just as well. Not your fault, right?”

Pansy shakes her head. Maybe some of it is Harry Potter’s fault, not seeing things or people clearly. Of being blinded by his dream of a family and a home and his first love that he can’t see, quite clearly, that the girl in front of her—Ginny Weasley—is cut under the consistent watchful prying of how things should be. It’s his fault for seeing that she doesn’t really love him anymore.