for the first sentence fic thingy!: "It was right then, in a moment so casual it would otherwise be considered uneventful, that Pansy realised she was in love with Neville"
It was right then, in a moment so casual it would otherwise be considered uneventful, that Pansy realized she was in love with Neville.
He’d fallen asleep on the longest sofa, Textbook of Pollen Analysis, 6th Edition open on his chest and Hermione’s malign and hideous cat curled in a ball over his crotch.
Which was fine. Who gave a shit? Nobody cared about Longbottom and when and where he slept or ate or showered or repotted sticky, fetid plants or the active interest he appeared to be taking in Luna Lovegood.
Pansy stepped through the low tunnel connecting the 8th years’ dormitory to the corridor outside, threw her satchel into a chair beside the hearth and her robes immediately after, and yanked her tie loose.
Every last thirteen year-old in the castle could go and pox themselves. If Arithmancy tutoring was her self-selected penance for her spiritual crimes, she’d changed her mind. Far better to burn in a boiling lake than be condescended to by a pubescent who already had all the answers.
The cat regarded her with one baleful honey-colored eye as she clanked a cup too hard on the kitchenette counter, then aggressively excavated a teaspoon of English Breakfast leaves from the tin.
She set the kettle to boil. Why? She had magic. Because it was there, and she felt like it, and her mother and all of her endless judgmental commentary could fucking precede her in the plummeting hand basket.
Pansy poured water over her tea, then lay both hands over her face, rounded her lips into an O and breathed out slowly.
“Is there enough for two cups?”
Pansy opened her eyes to find Longbottom looming over her shoulder.
Apparently before he lay down, he’d shucked his tie and rolled up his sleeves. After that, sleep had scrambled his hair and crinkled his clothes.
Just as he began scrubbing a hand through the back of his disorganized hair, the cloud cover shifted, and sunlight poured through the western windows.
He was gilt: dark hair and sun-gold skin burnished with a drowsy, benevolent yellow.
And then he smiled, eyes soft and listless, one corner of his mouth drawn in a parenthetical curl.
Pansy stared—could feel herself physically performing the act of staring, and was entirely unable to stop it.
She clapped her teacup down on the counter, sloshing a burning mouthful over the back of her hand.
Neville jumped, hopping back on one foot, eyes two circular windows into the inner life of a bewildered man.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
Pansy squeezed her eyes shut, and then opened them.
He was still there, still Neville, and she was still being wracked by a warm wave of—desire, yes, fuck, but—in that moment, Pansy wanted nothing more in the entire world than to suddenly ascend, and then return: as a book, open on this boy’s—man’s, fuck!—chest, or a cat, curled up in his crotch.
“Are you alright?” he asked again, only he wasn’t leaning back anymore, he was leaning in, and his hand, very gently, cupped her elbow.
“I’m fine.” She said it in quite a small way, like a weak, vulnerable, discreditable little mouse.
“You’ve burned yourself,” he said.
And then her thin white hand with its angry island of red was resting in his broad tan palm, and Neville had brought out his wand.
