Harry contemplates the decision even before he takes the final step into the darkened terrace. He deliberates between staying for the sake of his promise, his loyalty, whatever or sprinting as he shivers—inwardly, outwardly, every possible way a person can shiver—as he takes the final step into the open air. Frigid air, cool, repellent fresh air. He shoves his free hand–the one that isn’t holding the beer can thrusted into him by a stranger who was really sure he knew his story— further into the pocket of his jeans, fingers tracing the blunt edge of his iPhone.
The joints in his knuckles sting in pain as he presses onto the rectangle and he wonders if he could call Ginny—wonders if he could call Ginny without disintegrating the rest of his self-restraint. He is bored, buzzed, and on the edge of his patience. Harry craves some familiarity. A steady fuck, maybe. Something to drown in. He is wondering about the guy he punched. Blond, pointed nose precise and sharp like those sculptures Hermione likes to ogle at. He looked rich, crisp and prissy. Pissed. Asshole .
A heavy gust of wind snaps his head from the loud party to here, on the rooftop. He can still hear the blunt rock music in the background. He lets out a partially gratified breath and it almost hangs in the air before him. Almost white and misty and he wonders again—Ginny, the Burrow, a warm cup of—
That’s when he sees her.
He hears her, at first. A cough. He wheels back, heart hammering only a bit at the sound, at the surprise, and sees a girl, the back of a girl in a dark dress. Pony tailed dark hair, feet presumably hanging off the rails.
“Hey,” he calls as gently as he can. “What are you doing there?”
The girl moves, ripples really. Straightens her back and the sequins of her dress shimmer in the moonlight. He takes a few more steps, gets out of the remnants of the party. No sound, as he gets closer to the girl, still on the rails, tilting her head slightly to stare at him.
“Hey,” he says again, right beside her now. He can see her face. She has a sharp, precise face. Heart shaped, small face. Checklist pretty. High cheekbone, pouty lips and almond eyes, light iris.
She brings her hand to her mouth while Harry appraises her, rather clumsily, a cigar dangling between her fingers, dangling precariously, just like her entire body is swaying on the edge of this really high roof. “Hey,” she says crisply, taking a short drag. Instead of inhaling it, she lets it go as fast as she’s sucked it.
Harry smiles involuntarily at her amateur posture. The ruse is clear, so embarrassingly incompetent. “What are you doing here?”
“Smoking.” Another short, discomfitingly vain drag. Harry wants to fix her posture, he wants to tell her that this isn’t how you smoke—nor how you pretend . But he has to agree she looks pretty with it all, the act, the careless drag and the smoke flashing a quick misty wisp in front of her face before melting away. She looks pretty, and he has to appraise her just a moment before—
“What are you doing here?”
He lets the phone fall in his pocket as he takes out his hands to straighten his hair, clammy cold now.
“Avoiding a mess.”
She raises an eyebrow. And Harry marvels for a second—a tiny fraction of a second—at how perfect the movement is, a slight pull on her eyebrows, almost careless. As if she’s practiced it before. And he answers more from that appraisal than the desire to, well, answer.
“I punched a guy,” he blurts out.
She snorts. “Me, too.”
He stays, somehow.
She doesn’t specifically ask him to, doesn’t offer any engaging—or even boring—small talk. She stares at him for a second, considering, gauging, taping him up. He deliberates between backing away and staying still in the space. The girl keeps taking that flimsy drag of the fat cigar that smells more like spice than nicotine. It reminds him of the sizzling, burning taste of ground cinnamon, black pepper, and sweet cardamon from one of those Indian dishes at Patil’s. Her eyes are a light color—green, he thinks, there’s no way to be sure in the scarcity of light—and sharp, really sharp and almost precise in their intensity.
After a minute, maybe, she scoots over, a minuscule slide of space, not really to give him space but to showcase the offer, and Harry immediately—almost embarrassingly immediately—decides.
He doesn’t know why.
After the brief, sprightly invitation, there is a long chain of silence. Uncomfortable, tinged with electricity. Like how the hair of your arm stretches out to meet the comb after grating. The terrace is nice and empty and feels endless between equally high buildings around it. Harry stares ahead, eyes only making out the vague outline of the girl on his periphery. Blunt outline of her breasts and stomach and the bend of her knee and her calves as she sits. He wonders if she’s looking too.
Doesn’t look like it, like the arch of her eyebrows the careless posture is perfected. Harry could be transparent, permeable as it is. But not really. The chill begins to seep in, just like the night. A minute after she offers him her cigar. Again, just a gesture, the stretch of her hand with the fat cigar trapped between her fingers, not looking at him.
He takes a careful drag. Spice, tobacco and something sweet. Molten sugar, maybe. Maple syrup, maybe.
“So,” he asks, too aware of his voice being chafed from the cold and the cigar and… everything else, really. “Who did you punch?”
There’s a pause, a slight ripple in her face. She tightens her jaw and Harry has only a second to be embarrassed before she answers, chipped and haughty— “My boyfriend.”
Oh. And he stops mid-drag, wonders if he should pry, it he even wants to pry but then—“Actually, ex boyfriend, as of now.” She picks up the cigar to take another flimsy drag. “Ex. We didn’t talk about the terms of conditions or our headspace, but he cheated on me. So.”
“Sorry.”
She nods and nods. And adds, as it’s an afterthought, as if it isn’t thought out at all, “It was quite dramatic, actually. I walked in on them, making out, going towards more… But then again, what’s good is that I broke up with him – even more dramatically—before he could. I’d feel awful if I was simultaneously cheated on and dumped… you know?”
“I have no idea.”
“Lucky you,” she says bleakly.
Harry plucks the cigar, the edge a burnt, ruby red. He wonders if it’s polite to ask something in these situations. Hermione would know. He wonders if Hermione is looking for him, if the absence has been noted. Where’s the blonde idiot. If he’s the tweeting type, or the silent planner type. Or the drunk, impertinent, idiotic type.
“Who did you punch?” the girl asks sharply.
He purses his lips. “A ferret. More or less.”
She doesn’t snort or chuckle like he hoped. Her voice is rather tight as she asks, “Did he deserve it?”
“He kept nagging me. Bringing up my past and—whatever. Yeah, he deserved it.”
What’s up Scarface? Why that funny face? I bet you get girls so easily with your scar and your story and I bet you’re so full of yourself.
The guy didn’t say all of that, didn’t have time enough to say. But. It was there. It’s always there. Some stranger corners him and asks things most people would like to forget. It all feels like the replaying of the same hour, the same day, sometimes. He’d read somewhere that all we had was one day—the same day—repeating over and over again and lately, for a few weeks, months, years, he feels as if he’s distinctly aware of the time. Its passage, how it doesn’t really pass.
He returns the almost finished cigar, and the girl takes it, plucks it out of his fingers and he is conscious of his surroundings just enough that he realizes that she’s staring, for the first time. Overtly. Intrusively. He bites the inside of his cheek, pushes his hand inside his pocket to trace the outline of his phone again. Ginny, even though they aren’t together, or even friendly, or anything at all. He could call her. Let her peek at him with her unimpressed pair of eyes. Cool. Blue. Doesn’t budge when he gets called Scarface or whatever because she’s known him since they were kids. He likes the familiarity more than anything. He likes the lack of interest. Or even the lack of spark.
She’s still looking. Peeking. Staring. The girl. The girl in the sequin dress that glints a dozen different ways with every miniscule movement. He keeps his eyes on the empty expanse of air in front of him—high up in the space, with lights from other buildings blinking, teeming, flickering—and his focus on her. The hairs on the back of his neck prickles and it seems that after forever, she lets out a cough—half constricted and… awkward, really—and it sounds like the beginning of a conversation. He tilts his head slightly to the left to look at her and catches her eyes.
Her mouth falls open, slightly, unexpectedly. She looks taken aback for a moment. As if she hadn’t expected him to return the favour. She blinks. And says, “I’m Pansy.”
Harry coughs and it almost mimics the sounds she made a moment ago. “Harry.”
He waits—like a habit—for her to say she knows, she’s heard , but she only nods. Her lips curl to something more like a smirk than a smile. But it’s softer and mellower and sort of hangs like a question, a suggestion and it’s nice. It’s warm. It’s… welcoming.
He lets the phone fall from his grip inside the pocket, inadvertently decides to stay for another few minutes. Or hours. Whatever.
“Nice to meet you,” he says.
Pansy likes to talk.
A lot.
And Harry likes her voice, the soft purr that suggests hours of singing lessons, a seasoned voice, a well-practiced voice. A voice that’s aware of the bases and the notes and the octaves necessary for individual words, their purpose to a sentence. She dips her head and lets out a hum vibrating from her throat at the word conspicuous and projects a lofty scoff at blond and it’s sort of cheeky, sort of hypnotic, definitely charming. She’s a natural storyteller who knows her own strength, the length and breadth and width of a perfect story. The cliffhangers and—maybe because he’s clumsy with words, maybe because he’s talked for far too long with far too many people about his own thoughts and feelings and traumas that he likes someone’s who’s a little too perceptive of herself, who curates her words and scrunches her nose—a cute, button nose—and rolls her eyes at her own words before Harry could respond. Pansy swishes her feet back and forth as she describes her ex, who’s an asshole, but who’s also been her friend since they were kids and he was a right git. He once got bitten by an eagle because he was convinced his charm surpassed the rules of… well, logic .
“He called it a chicken ,” she says, chuckling tartly. “And threatened the zookeeper that his father was going to shut down the zoo. He can act like a certified douche, Draco, it’s like his default to any complexity.”
But he was also uniquely insightful. Coupled with the distracting vice of being clueless. Like when her mother died and he—
She stops, suddenly, pointedly. And the silence is almost as sharp as the air surrounding them. Almost brisk and nippy and Harry inwardly shivers as he realizes they’ve reached a point to the conversation when it’s too much and too soon and—
“He got me a dog,” she mumbles, and it’s not poised, her voice, it’s slightly uptight, slightly embarrassed. “And it was—uhm, I’m allergic to dogs and cats and—uhm. I didn’t know. I got a fever and couldn’t breath after we gave him a bath and blow dried his hair and my father realized what it was because my mother’s family has a history of allergy and he almost pummeled Draco and… we ended up— he ended up giving Orion up to the pet shelter. And it’s almost always like that with him.”
She stares at her knuckles tightened around the edge. “It’s my fault,” she spits out, and now it’s only bitter, her words her voice. It’s only cold.
“It’s not your fault,” Harry blurts out instinctively. And as she turns her head to look at him he feels… idiotic, moronic. Because that’s what everyone always says, isn’t it? It’s almost like it’s been off the script of some B grade movie. And he wants to add more that comment. And he would, but then she shrugs, curls her lips in a shadow of a smile and turns back.
“No, I meant. I should’ve understood he was going to do… something like that. The signs were all there. He was exceptionally nice these past few weeks. He was—” she snorts. “He called me every night and did the absolute cringey phone kiss thing. He went on double dates with my friend Daphne and tried to be affectionate and caring and called me nicknames like honeybee and sweetpea which was—embarrassing? Sort of condescending because I know him and how he thinks of PDAs and I was—it was all there, Harry. That’s what I’m saying. I’m not dumb, I am—I know how people think and how he thinks and I just ignored it. That’s what’s bothering me.”
She shivers slightly, sliding closer. Her voice drops like it’s suddenly aware of itself. “I just wanted a break, you know? I saw the red lights and I didn’t want to figure them out. I’m just—after mum died I just had to clean the house? Metaphorically, of course. My dad was… good, I mean, he didn’t marry her nurse or tried to ship me off to my grandparents… who are a nightmare, by the way. But he—didn’t know exactly what to do except… except sign me up for jiu jitsu and like, give me books on self-help and motivation. Dad lacks practicality to the point of self-distraction. So it’s like, I had to fix his meals and make sure he didn’t work himself to death. So it’s— oh Christ , do you want to go?” her question ends in a screech.
It almost rattles Harry because he’s been listening too intently, he’s been picturing her, small and skinny in a Kimono and wondering if that’s why punching her boyfriend was an instinct to her. If that was a defense of offense to her. He wondered if, while taking care of him, she wanted to punch her dad as well.
So he’s disconcerted, suddenly, and surprised by how much he doesn’t want to go. “No,” he says, shakes his head. “No, I—I’m listening.”
“I understand if you want to go.” She purses her lips. “You probably came here for silence and whatever. You were pissed off and you came here and I—”
“It’s OK.” He shrugs. “It’s actually more calming, you know, indulging in someone else’s trouble. It… makes me feel less shitty.”
She narrows her eyes, and he widens his and trips back to the meaning behind his words and was it a bit sadistic? Was it self-serving? Is he implying that he’s enjoying her problems? But then she shakes her head, lets out a chuckle, it’s mirthless, a bit dry, but still.
“Well, that’s good. Because I was about to jump from this building in embarrassment. I don’t usually bear my heart to strangers. Even cute strangers.”
He snorts, a tiny warm flush creeps at his neck.
“I wish I had a few siblings, who I’d probably resent and want to kill every day but, still, someone who shares your genes are good people to bear your heart to.”
“I doubt it.”
“Yeah? Why?”
“I used to—er, date a girl who had seven brothers. Kind of toughened her up, kind of made her rebellious and whatnot. She was always angry about it, you know? How much they interfered and understood what her problem was. There was no space for privacy in the family.”
Her lips lift up, and it’s—Harry notices with wide eyes—a smirk. And, oh god, did he mean it that way? Did he try to mention Ginny to her in a sort of weird, awkward flirting gist; he did have a girlfriend, he was dateable, dating another girl isn’t actually the farthest thing from his mind… and he has a type, probably, presumably her. The sharp, witty ones, little tough, little grating like jagged edges of a knife. The type who could throw a punch to unfaithful boyfriends.
“So she had seven brothers?” Pansy asks, and her voice is only slightly higher, slightly haughty and he may have blurted out the awkward, impromptu quip well, awkwardly, but he suddenly realizes that he hundred percent means it.
“That’s right. She was the little sister, sort of picked up on all the fighting techniques and pranks.”
“I’m an only child. My edge comes from being entitled, really.”
“Even better.”
And that’s that— that’s definitely flirting. Harry feels the heedy rush of blood to his neck, that slight buzzing excitement teeming at his throat. There’s a challenge to it, flirting, a wonder. A risk. Pansy stares at him, eyes narrowed, eyes all over him because flirting is about looking too, for signs and ticks and what the other person puts up on the table. Harry tries to put his charm on the table. He stares back, smiling, waiting and—
Then her lips curl into a smile—ghost of a smile. It turns into a chuckle and she says, “I don’t know you. Why don’t I know you?”
He shrugs. “I don’t... I’m not a student here. My friend brought me as her date.”
“Your friend?”
“Yeah. I’ve known Hermione since we were children.”
She blinks. “I know her. Hermione… Granger? She’s quite notorious. Academically, of course.” She chuckles. “Have you known her since you were kids?”
“Yeah. Same school.”
“Where do you go now?”
“I’m uh—I don’t.” He involuntarily straightens his shoulders. “I’m with Surrey Rovers, I…I’m a football player.”
Pansy tilts her head, visibly impressed. “You’re young.”
He feels his cheek go hot. A blister forms in his face and he knows it’s half from the compliment and half from the anticipation of how this conversation goes—how it always goes. “They recruited me when I was a senior in high school.”
“You must be good.”
And—well, that does it. Harry lets out a small, relieved sigh, a choked out breath. The answer freezes at the tip of his tongue as he retains, reimburses, relishes the fact that Pansy doesn’t know him. Of his name or the notoriety or… anything. And it wouldn’t be like other times—most other times—of him getting an insipid, disdainful nod. Surrey Rovers had made a point of brandishing him, his history and it was a good game. That was the business. Recognition brought money fame brought notoriety. And all sales. He is good, he is hoping for a solid season, he earns more than he can think of spending, and his aunt Petunia—a wrung out, methodical woman—had him set accounts, found a solicitor to maintain the said accounts and, well, he was almost set. Life was a straight line of trekking through players on a green grass field. Life was better than to him than it was to a lot of other people.
It’s just that… sometimes people forgot he was good too. He had passion and ambition for the game too. He was—good, great. He was a magnet chasing after the ball in the field. He was a firecracker. He normally doesn’t get to tell people that it wasn’t all show. It wasn’t all practical.
So he tries to weigh the words in his mouth, ring them around in the empty space before answering, “Yeah. Yeah, I’m good.”
She nods, apparently unaware of the silent conundrum, unaware of how the air shifted in Harry’s space. The air feels lighter, more sharp, easy.
“So,” Pansy starts again, and from the haughty upturn of her voice he can tell that it’s the end. Of the topic. Maybe. “So it’s a bit pathological of me to try to fix him. Draco. He—uh, he’s careless and arrogant and also pretty and rich which gets him off most of the time. But not all of the time. And I kept fixing his disasters all my life and I just—now, I just wanted to ignore that. That prickling responsibility. That I had to look through his words and try to fix his problem. I just wanted to be ignorant. Sue me, if you want. But. Do you know how it feels to have a nickname? I’m Miss FixerUpper . And it’s stupid, it’s exhausting, because once you have name, it’s all you’re ever going to be. Do you under—”
“Yeah, I do.”
Pansy snaps her head at him, at the roughness of his voice, maybe. At the instancy of the acknowledgement. Harry can almost laugh, because of the accuracy, or the tone-deafness of her voice throwing the question at him . It’s funny, hilarious, and sweet. Charming.
Pansy appraises him for a moment before saying, “Maybe you should tell me your story now. You know, with all the gory details, all the mortifying ordeals.”
She turns around, plots down down from the edge without a sound, smoothly. She waits as Harry follows suit and there’s a moment—a silent, heavy moment—that the time seems to stop. Take a break, look around and see the changes. The people. How much that happened. How much that still could. He thinks about his story. His mortifying ordeal. And how talking always helps, begrudgingly, belatedly, like the temper of a restless child. Maybe he should tell Pansy about his story and his anger and how much he has inside of him without all of that. Maybe he should. Maybe he can .
So when she asks, voice only slightly trembling, “My room?”
He nods, breathless despite the abundance of air. “Yes.”
Her room is dark, her bed is small, the air is thick as they’re smashed up against each other even before she kisses him. It was long overdue, by the time Pansy traced her fingers over his lips, up the slope of his nose, then cheekbones, the again lips. She flits her fingers on him as if she’s making a map, as if she’s memorizing and appraising and the tension, the electrifying coil of tension builds and builds and Harry touches, too. He touches her waist and her neck and her hair as he tells her about his teammates, his house, his aunt and her OCD and her tough heart and her tough love. She doesn’t ask about his parents. He runs his thumb over her lips. And when she finally pushes in, melts the miniscule distance between them, it’s even better. Better than waiting and laughing and her breath hitches and he smells the strawberry of her lip balm and the lavender of her shampoo. He stops. “You good?”
“Yeah.” She has her arms bracketing his chest and shoulder and palms spread across his face and he presses even further. When Pansy talks again—just a word, just a name—her mouth moves on his with more urgency. Like she’s finally caught on to what she wants and how she wants. His hands at her waist and her breast and up—up her hair. Soft and smooth and as her lips part, there’s a sigh melting on top of his face when she pulls away, just a bit and stares at his face. Harry kisses the side of her head, on the wet hair, slides down to her cheeks—flushed and hot, and the top of her nose. There’s a small smile, a huff, a giggle coming from her and it makes him even more daring. He kisses her throat, they shift a little and Pansy tugs at his t-shirt when he kisses the hollow of her throat.
“Get it off,” she murmurs, sliding away to lie on her back. She guides his body so he’s on top, and he lifts his hand, touches her cheekbone, the smooth stretch of skin over it, bends down slightly to kiss the place his thumb touched.
“No,” he breathes on her skin.
She stops moving. “Excuse me?
Harry chuckles, he shifts his legs, trying his best not to put too much pressure before he tugs on her dress, kisses just on the edge of her cleavage, lingers on the skin to catch the smell of her skin.
“I mean—” he starts, sliding down past her dress, the sequins blinking at him as they scratch his cheek. His eyes are on hers. The thin stretch of air between them intensifies, moulding into the anticipation and the shiver and the miasma that smells of mint and strawberries and he allows the smug smile on his face as Pansy’s eyes widen, realising. Waiting. She props up on her elbow, hair askew, and Harry stops just below her stomach, nudges his nose before bunching up her dress over her legs, up her thighs and stomach. Hesitates only a second before grazing his teeth on the smooth skin over the black, lacy panties.
He’s stopped breathing by this point, and Pansy looks—lightheaded, waiting. Watching. And that’s the moment he craves, the moment it was all building up to. Harry flattens his palms against her stomach, feels her shiver when he dips down to kiss her over her panties, right at her opening, his nose bumps again her clit and her breath hitches.
“Okay?” he says, rasps, really. There’s a slight patch of wetness on her knickers, at the seam, and it coils his insides, it builds a familiar pool of need on his abdomen. As she nods, just the smallest amount, barely perceptible. But he sees it because there’s just her in the world right, she and her body and her face taut in anticipation, in need of him as he pulls down the knickers completely.
Harry holds her gaze as he kisses her, just below her clit because he’s saving that for later. He’s saving that because he wants her soaked and aching and trembling as he licks up her wetness. As he pushes his tongue past her cunt and holds her steady with his palm against her stomach, wants to see her pant and beg and say his name until there’s nothing else to hold onto, until she forgets about exs and disappointments and holds onto this moment and how this feels. This, as he uses his fingers to open her wide and it’s dirty, it’s filthy and Pansy watches him with a shivering anticipation because she wants that too. Wants more of this and of him and Harry knows he will see her completely unravel before he kisses her clit, plumps his lips against the taut bundle of nerves and sucks so she’ll come.
Harry holds her gaze as he starts, the sensation of her shiver is almost as good as the anticipation itself.
Pansy’s breath hitches.
She shivers.
She moans.
Harry wakes up with a heavy head, with his eyes fluttering open to the harsh sunlight peeking through the curtains. He screws them shut again, yawning, stretching. But as he tries to move, body still adjusting to the weight pressing against him, he suddenly remembers where he is, with who he is and—
“Good morning,” Pansy says, her back to him.
“Hmm.” Harry stretches his arm that was already over her, nudges his nose to her hair. “Good. Morning.”
“You slept well?”
“Great.”
She twists on her side to face him. Somewhere in the night she’d changed into a tank top and a trouser. She touches his face, fingers digging into his hair. Her lips curl and Harry realizes that she looks… embarrassed. Apprehensive. Indecisive. And he blinks to get rid of the remnants of sleep, of morning drowsiness—inserts in his consciousness the fact that she sounds sober and well out of sleep—and tries to ask her what’s wrong, but—
“There’s no easy way to say this,” she starts, biting at her lower lip. “But… Blaise called me this morning, and—well, it seems that the guy you punched? He was Draco.”
Harry’s eyes widen involuntarily. His voice gets caught in throat. “Draco as in your—?”
“Yeah.” She raises her other hand, and there’s her phone and her lock screen flashes a picture of her kissing the— Christ— the blond ferret. They were probably at their prom, dressed up and color coded. For a moment he feels a tint pan of something uncomfortable. Then disbelief. Then for a moment he wants to laugh, for one moment he wants to marvel at luck and chance and the ridiculous timing of all things. But—an insidious thought crosses his mind and—
“Do you want to be with him again? Is that—I don’t know, are you sorry that I—?”
“What?” she scoffs. “ No. Just. Weird. This whole thing.” She lets the phone drop to the side, slides back to get up from his side. Pansy slides her knees to her chest. She hesitates. “He also told me who you are. You’re—Harry Potter. The one he—the celebrity he said he’d bring.”
And… well, this was long overdue as well. Harry sits up too, without talking. Finds his glasses from her bedside table and puts them on. The room floods in with sharpened details. The wallpapers, the soft cream drapers, the personalised table of hers with stickers and sticky notes and colored pens. It all floods into his senses and suddenly he remembers all about last night as well.
“I—well, my parents were killed by this—” he starts begrudgingly, but Pansy holds her hands up. She looks prettier in the morning light. Without makeup she looks… softer. Lovelier.
“You don’t have to—”
“I’d rather you heard it from me and not—” he sighs, touches his forehead with the heel of his palm. “ Voldemort , this serial killer. He was on a spree and when he… he killed my parents he tries to kill me as well.” Harry gulps. He remembers it well. Too well. Sometimes it feels as if it’s all that’s ever happened to him. Him and the white, cold monster were all that was real and his life, before and after, was fake. A dream, a—
“He tried to kill me too but a neighbor caught onto what was happening. They called 911 and I—I lived.” He brushes his fringes aside with a shaky hand, bringing the lightning shaped scar to the light, to the full view. “He carved these on everyone he killed. I’m the only one who lived to see another day.”
Pansy doesn’t talk. He doesn’t look. He keeps his eyes at her feets, her nails painted an electric blue and waits. Waits. And curses. Destiny and its own pace, never waiting for him, never stopping a moment to see if he’s caught on—or if he’s slumped on the sidewalk.
After hours, it seems, Pansy whispers, “I’m sorry Draco said that to you.”
He shrugs. “It’s OK. He’s—I’ve… it’s done. I don’t care.” He dares a feat, on impulse, on a whim, he looks up and asks, “Are we okay? Because…” he leans a bit and—in an impulse, in a particularly boisterous move—holds her hand laid flat on the bed sheet.
“Because I like you. I don’t—I hope I didn’t scare you or… I just. I know it was a whim and probably a one time thing for you but, I like you. I hope you feel the same. So… are we OK?”
He blushes, the stuttering rattle of his words sound worse than it did in his head. Worse than anything he would’ve ever thought. The desperation and the childish fucking nagging and—
His chain of thoughts stutters and breaks as Pansy returns some of the pressure in his hand.
“I like you too.”
His heart rate pick up. “Yeah?”
She nods, a tiny, ridiculous grin flashing over her face. “Look at the facts. You’ve already given me a head and an orgasm, which is not nothing, alright. I’ve had issues. Talk about clichés, right?” Pansy scrunches her nose. “And we’ve shared our greatest misery and you punched Draco. So, we’ve rushed through, like, six to seven steps in the rites of passage.” She stares at him, smirking, joking, still her eyes flash with an intensity. A challenge. “So I guess what’s left is knowing about each other’s favourite colors and hobbies and calling it a date. Or—”
His breath hitches. “Or?”
“Or, you know, call it a one time thing and say goodbye for good. What do you say?”
He stares at her, absentmindedly runs his palm on his jaw. He blinks in surprise as the stubble grazes his fingers, his eyes narrow instantaneously to her legs, her thighs and the very real possibility of all the places his cheek and his jaw and his weekend stubble touched. Grazed. He can’t stop wondering if they left bruises, not for hurt—Christ, no—but for… remembrance, for her to slide her fingers past them and feel the ghost of his touch. She came with a cry of his name. Was borderline immobile when he got up and kisses her hair. Then laughed, a breathy, throaty laugh before melting further into his body.
“Want me to return the favour?” she asked.
Harry coiled his arms around, strangely content. “Maybe next time.”
And it was mostly a gimmick, something to say, something so it would not ruin the moment, her smile and the rare comfort and how she twisted her legs around his. But now, even with the morning light, Harry knows without a doubt that he wants to hear that again.
He runs his fingers through his hair and tilts his head, smiling. “So what’s your favourite color?”
Pansy snorts, leans back to give him a fuller smirk. Her eyes move all over him before she opens her mouth as if she’s decided on something and says, “You know I’ve never dated anyone with his own Wikipedia page.”
And… damn his head and the useless panic it fuels at the simple, nonsensical sentence. He hears himself speak, splatter like a child the first thought that occurs to him. The first thought that he thinks she’d have figured. “My Wikipedia... it’s not. Not all true. I mean there are facts but— I’m good at soccer. I mean… I am—good. They haven’t just picked me because I have a popular face.”
And he watches in embarrassment and a heavy gush of regret as her eyes widen. As she picks up on the implication. His awkward speech reverbates between the both them until—
Until her eyes soften. Pansy moves toward him and, without a word, holds his face in her palms and presses a long, lingering kiss.
“I didn’t think they did. Okay?”
He nods, barely moves. “Okay.”
“I’ve spent the last forty five minutes scanning through Google.” She pecks him again. “You know what I haven’t found out about you?”
“What?”
“Your favourite color.”
And Harry laughs, he can’t help it. Half from relief and half from the sheer ridiculous shiver the simple, unassuming question brings.
Pansy looks entirely too happy with herself. “What? It’s important . Rite of passage, remember? I’m a methodical person.”
“Yeah,” and he hopes he’s not showing the softness he feels, the comfort, the hope.
“So?”
In answer he kisses her. The color, the simplest answer to the question, bursts into his head as she hums against him. He has half a mind to answer her but then she makes a sound, a gasp, maybe a hitch, from the back of her throat and Harry feels her slide her hands to his neck, and up up to her hair and she curls her fingers, and grabs, and pulls so they’re even closer. They fall back on the bed, and he parts just enough to pant, “Red.”
Pansy raises her eyebrows, her face open with such soft incredulity that it breaks his restraint. She pulls over his shirt and asks, “And hobby? And—” she chuckles, which ends in a pant as he bends down, sucks and pulls at her nipples over her top. “B-bands?”
The answers get lost somewhere between their mouths, but it doesn’t matter. Harry tastes the strawberry chapstick on her lips sharp and fresh as she yanks him to her. It’s staggering, the reality of her taste and her smell and how it’s for him. At least for now. This moment. It’s only the morning.
They still have the rest of the day.