Chapter Text
The bell above the door chimes, and Pansy looks up from behind the espresso machine to greet whomever the poor soul buying coffee at the ungodly hour of five twenty three in the morning is, and instead of calling out a friendly, caffeinated “Hello! Welcome!” upon seeing the man’s bleary face, she drops into a crouch, completely hidden from view.
Merlin and Morgana help her; this is muggle London. What is he doing here?
“Psst—Rain!” she whispers, motioning to her coworker, who she can see clearly through the plexiglass window in the door to the stockroom. Rain sits cross legged on a stack of empty wooden pallets, earbuds in and drinking iced coffee while she scrolls through her iPod. She pretends to not see Pansy waving wildly at her for ten whole seconds, and once she makes eye contact, she rolls her eyes. It is still seven minutes until Rain’s shift starts, and Rain knows it.
She pushes her choppy, bottle blond hair behind her ears and points half heartedly to her right earbud in response, holding up seven fingers. She has the audacity to jut her chin in the direction of the register, where Neville Nagini-slaying, Cleft-chin, grew-into-his-looks, actually-quite-handsome, sweet-as-a-pygmy-puff, witnessed-all-of-Pansy’s-worst-moments-in-seventh-year (actually-all-the-years, one-through-six-were-not-stellar-either) Longbottom stands, waiting patiently and with the good grace to pretend that he doesn’t see her where she is clearly visible at this point, cowering behind the espresso machine.
Circe’s bloody pants.
Pansy, still squatting by the cabinet under the coffee machine, reaching for an excuse, grabs the first thing in front of her: a dusty, chipped ceramic mug.
“Oh hello,” she says, standing up, feigning innocence. “I didn’t see you there. Just tidying up a bit before the morning rush.” She offers a wilted, pearly-white smile, and places the cup back on the shelf, moving to stand in front of the register. “What can I get you, love?”
Longbottom clears his throat, and Pansy, suspended in a putrid, anxiety ridden moment, waits impatiently for him to respond. His throat bobs like a buoy in choppy, salty waves, and his dark eyes search hers for that spark of recognition she will not—no sir-y, thank you very much—give him.
As the moment drags on well past awkward, she is forced to consider the soundness of his intellect: is he, as she was once convinced (post-remembrall, face-plant in the rocks episode, circa first year), actually a victim of some mental illness? One that slows his faculties into lively competition with a woebegone and trodden on pygmy puff? While he certainly looks the part (not in a true to vision, picture perfect copy of a Weasley-bred, pink pouf, googly-eyed conglomerate of a creature (poor soul), because that would be silly.) No, it’s his general dewy-eyed and yellow labrador aura, the way his smiles look like they don’t cost him. It’s a goodness that radiates from him almost as strong as the awkward silence.
Their eyes are locked in a battle of wills, a ‘who will fold first’ type of heady silence that traps Pansy’s heart somewhere in the vicinity of her tonsils and sends her stomach plunging south like a deranged cephalopod into the inky black depths of the lake at Hogwarts.
Pansy doesn’t fold.
Coincidentally, she’s great at games. Wizard games, muggle games, chess, poker: you name it, she’ll win it. She maintains eye contact, a serene, unassuming smile plastered over her teeth.
Post Carrows, shiny War Hero status, and Order of Merlin, First Class, she thought he would act slightly more suave. This blushing, fidgeting man could very well be the thirteen year old version of himself, caught sweating profusely over a dangerously mis-brewed potion in Snape’s class, stammering and stuttering and generally making a fool of himself.
Finally, dear muggle Jesus, he responds. “Right,” he says, smiling softly. “A latte, extra shot, to go, please.”
He does not stutter, nor stammer, nor look like a fool, damn him. He just smiles like he’s discovered a new game and he’s high on beginner's luck.
“Milk?” asks Pansy, equally as pleasantly, scratching his order with a sharpie onto the side of a cup.
“Yes,” he says, his left eyebrow twitching. “A latte generally has milk.”
The sharpie in her hand stills and she frowns at him.
“No, genius,” she says, reinforcing her fake, customer-friendly smile. “What type of milk do you want?”
“Oh,” he blushes. “Er, almond? Do you have almond milk?”
“Yes, love. We have almond milk. Anything else?” Pansy says.
“No, that’d be all.”
“Alright, name?”
He cocks his head to the side, and his throat bobs. He adjusts the collar on his midnight blue button down and huffs a laugh. “Have you been obliviated?”
He says it like it’s the most normal question to ask in the middle of a muggle coffee shop, like he's asking about the weather or where the loo is.
She stalls.
But it’s too late to fold now. Now it’s time to up the ante.
“Have I been what, love?”
“You really don’t know my name?” he asks.
She could play the memory-charm angle. Anything to prevent another awkward, post war, so sorry to have been a massive bitch to you for practically every interaction we ever had and still a bitch in this very interaction and plus still the bitch that then acted complicit in the fascist, racist, psycho takeover of our school and government conversation. It’s the conversation she fled from six years ago, the conversation that prompted her to abscond to muggle London to buy a coffee shop and disappear from polite wizarding society, seemingly forever.
It would be nice to not be Pansy Parkinson right now, and she’ll do anything for the bit—and here’s the thing about the bit: it gives her a chance. The chance to not be outcast, social-pariah Parkinson for once. It's like a fresh slate. A nice, imaginary slate that she can gaslight Longbottom into believing in, if just for her own mental health, and if only for a short, ten minute interaction.
A girl needs to take care of herself; self love and all that bullshit.
And here’s the thing about Longbottom—Neville—he has this overgrown, wavy, Witch Weekly cover hair and a stupidly bashful smile to match. He looks like an overgrown garden gnome that got blessed by Aphrodite, and Merlin, he’s tall and lithe and sun kissed, and did she mention he was probably the bravest of all the Gryffingeeks during the war and stood up to Voldemort himself?
This is why she will take any scrap of a chance she can get to not do the bloody apology conversation with him. And dammit, she’s been quiet for too long. What did he ask her? If she knows his name.
“Should I?” She tries for a sly, sexy smile, and by all accounts succeeds as Longbottom flushes almost imperceptibly redder.
“No.” He shakes his head, turning down the corners of his lips into a question.
He folds. Pansy’s chest swells with satisfaction. (This is why she always wins games. Time to reap the winnings, motherfucker.)
“Sorry,” he continues. “You just look really familiar, like an old school mate. My name’s Neville.”
A school mate? Like they were friends? No way. She looks like an old bully. She was the one that started the nicknames for him. Her whole house called him “Dongbottom” and “Longbollocks” for four years straight. Even some of the nastier Ravenclaws joined in. It was pretty glorious while it lasted. And it lasted until no one wanted to fuck with him anymore, when the Carrows exploded like a dungbomb upon the castle, and he was their leader à la résistance that culminated with a swing of his sword like a guillotine against the bourgeoisie.
“Alright, Neville,” Pansy says, smirking over the coffee cup, “one almond milk latte coming right up. Two quid, and the tip jar’s right over there.” She winks at him and turns sharply to walk away, right to the espresso machine to make the drink.
Merlin, she just winked at Neville Longbottom. That settles it, she will never appear in wizarding society again. He can’t ever know that she winked at him in sound mind. She’s voluntarily made herself scarce these past few years, but now she has no other choice. She is now a poor victim of a miscast memory charm. Or perhaps that was her punishment for her role in the war? Or part of the mind healing afterwards gone wrong? It's a good story. It’s conceivable. She’d believe it if she read it in the Prophet. Maybe she should act ditsy, forgetful, spacey—just to validate the theory for Dongbottom.
No. She can’t make herself look even worse now. She has appearances to keep up, doesn’t she? She’ll be the best looking, sexiest, and innocent muggle barista Longbottom has ever encountered.
She shuts off the steam wand and pours the latte in the paper cup. She writes his name across the lid and adds a little heart for good measure.
“Oi, Nev,” she says, placing the cup down. “Have a good day, alright?”
He is still looking at her like she’s grown an extra head, but he shakes the expression off of his face. He flashes her a full, genuine looking smile as he takes his drink and nods at her. The bastard has the audacity to tip well and wink back at her before he says, “You too, Parkinson, lovely day.”
And with that, he strides out of the shop, leaving Pansy to grit her teeth and feel like a damn fool.
Rain clocks in, taking her place by the other espresso machine.
“You know ‘im or somefink’?” she asks.
Pansy clears her throat. “Kill me, please, Rain.”
“That bad, huh? Well, you prob’ly never see ‘im again. Cheers to that, yeah?”
“Cheers,” says Pansy morosely.
Rain is right. At least she never has to see him again.
And that should have been the end of it, it really should have, but that stupid bugger had to come back, didn’t he?
Bright and early, he pops in the next day around eight. Eight-seventeen, to be exact. Pansy is sitting in the corner table on the patio on her break, smoking a cigarette under the ‘no smoking’ sign (that she erected during that short, miserable time when she was trying to quit) and fuming to herself about her last customer, a real goblin of a man, who made her remake his drink five times—calling her ‘baby’ and ‘sweetheart’ the whole time—before he was satisfied. He made her half regret being a reformed, muggle-loving, perfect citizen who would never curse a muggle. What are you talking about Mr. Auror, sir? It doesn’t count if you obliviate them afterwards, right? (But alas, obliviate from the wand of a non-ministry official for non-ministry-approved (nefarious) business is sadly a crime, and now, Pansy is a paragon of perfect morals, an angel in her own right.) Besides, she got the last laugh. The bastard ordered extra caffeine, but she gave him decaf.
“Mind if I sit here?” Longbottom says, smiling at her like they know each other— like they know each other from wildly different circumstances than they actually do.
She gestures to the seat across from her, wavering between coming clean or doubling down. He tried to call her bluff yesterday—he said her last name. Well, that won’t do.
She takes a long drag off her cigarette and watches the cloud of smoke as she exhales through her nose.
“The sign says no smoking,” he says.
She looks up at the sign posted above the table and shrugs.
“Gonna tell on me, L-Nev?”
“There’s someone smoking on your patio,” he says.
“Narc,” she smirks, and he responds with a chuckle.
“Can I bum one?” he asks.
She nods at her pack, which lies between them on the table, and he withdraws one, placing it delicately at the corner of his mouth between his lips. Then, keeping eye contact with her, he withdraws his wand from the pocket of his coat, and uses the tip to light his cigarette.
Pansy does not flinch.
“That’s an odd looking lighter,” she deadpans.
“Isn’t it?” he agrees.
He comes back the next day and the day after that. He comes back every day for the rest of the week, stopping by and chatting with her while she makes his drink or sitting with her on the patio if he’s caught her during a break. Their conversation is pleasant, and he’s easy to talk to, that is, when he’s not trying to entrap her with allusions to the Wizarding World. After his little bit with his wand, he follows up over the course of the week with:
(One) Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans: offering her a handful and watching her carefully to see if she avoids the vomit and earwax flavors. She outmaneuvers him, claiming to be on a strict, no processed sugar diet.
(Two) Procuring none other than the accursed, sentient Monster Book of Monsters: Un-spellotaping its jaws and allowing it to attempt three playful(?) nips before stroking its spine and grinning at her.
(“That’s clever,” she had said. “Is it a wind-up toy?”
“Something like that,” Longbottom responded.)
(Three) Reading the Daily Prophet in front of her: silently daring her to remark on the title, “War Heroes or Death Eater Sympathizers? The Boy Who Lived and His Muggle-born Sidekick Caught Canoodling with He Who Must Not Be Named Followers”, or more importantly, the moving pictures on the front cover depicting none other than her old classmates, Theodore Nott and Draco Malfoy, sharing a pint with the aforementioned messy-haired duo, Four-eyes and Buck-teeth.
Pansy had buried herself in her novel, not sparing the offending article a glance.
Now she wonders how Longbottom has taken the news of his War Hero Friends Turned Traitors. Would he care that the Gryffindor Alums now have public dalliances with their childhood enemies? Pansy, herself, took the news inelegantly the last time she saw Draco, when he accosted her in her coffee shop last week and told her he was screwing Granger, of all people.
(“Dating,” he had said, “Not screwing, Pansy.”
“So you’re not even shagging? Can’t get it up for poor Buck-teeth? Can’t say I’m surprised…”
“Come on, Pansy. You know I won’t tolerate you talking about her like that.”
“Like what?” she said, tamping the espresso grounds with ill-contained violence. “With the nickname you came up with?”
He scowled. “I was twelve, at the time. Incidentally, the age you’re acting right now.”
“It’s just a lot to handle, that’s all,” she said, gesturing with a pitcher of steamed milk. It sloshed out the side and landed with a splat on the counter top. She grabbed a bar rag and wiped at it with a sigh.
“Don’t tell me you’re jealous,” he said, observing her antics. “That’s a rather plebeian emotion for you, isn’t it?”
“You wish,” Pansy scoffed, offended at the notion of an emotion as messy and inarticulate as jealousy. You can call Pansy Parkinson a lot of things (a bitchy, high-strung trust-fund baby; a fashionable entrepreneur; an unironically self asserted girl-boss) but messy? Never.
“Stop holding yourself hostage in this coffee shop and spend time with us again. You should meet her–”
“I have met her–”
“She’s great. A lot like you, actually. She’s a” —he made air quotes, grinning at her malevolently— “girl-boss, like you.”
“Dammit, Draco, I said it one time, won’t you ever forget it?”
“Never.”
“Get out of my cafe, you great, ugly brute,” she said, echoing the words he once used only a second before getting mauled by a hippogriff.
“You wound me, Parkinson,” he said, clutching his arm in mock offense.)
So, Longbottom’s magicky antics quickly become a problem, because they are, in fact, in the middle of muggle London, full of? You guessed it: muggles. Pansy has to take to casting a quick as lighting (only somewhat illegal) Notice-Me-Not charm on Longbottom whenever she spots his golden-haired and perfectly tanned head through the spotless, glass front doors.
(But what’s worse—one preventative charm on Longbottom, or Longbottom flaunting the Statute of Secrecy and risking a salem-inspired, honest-to-Muggle-Jesus witch-hunt and subsequent tied-at-the-stake witch-burning in her backyard?)
It’s become a routine: he saunters in, muggle-attired and Holywood-dimpled, they banter, she makes and delivers his coffee, he tries his damndest to expose the Wizarding World, and then he leaves, only to rinse and repeat the next day. As routines go, it’s not wholly unpleasant or unwelcome. It’s even (dare she say?) a little bit fun. Pansy loves a good game.
Even more, she loves the idea of acting. It's a profession wholly unattainable for a witch (unless she’d like to go into opera singing or ballet, which she wouldn’t, for Salazar’s sake). And around Neville, she dons this... persona. It’s still Pansy, but Pansy with clipped nails and clipped wings.
Innocent, beautiful, other: muggle.
It’s like that time she and Daphne Greengrass and Tracey Davis snuck into the Muggle World the summer before fourth year and saw their first ever film, Pulp Fiction. After the film, they had snuck about the city, from shop to shop, from pub to pub, pretending to be of age and avoiding the bouncers and muggle aurors. They crept from alley to alley, pointing finger guns at each other and doing their best impressions of Uma Thurman, Samuel L. Jackson, and Bruce Willis, striking each other down with imagined bullets and pickpocketing unsuspecting strangers to buy muggle alcohol.
It was an act of rebellion for them in a time when rebellion meant a slapped wrist or a revocation of the Gringotts vault key, not a death sentence for yourself or your family. For a summer they were truly free. It was a summer when they ran unchecked, high off the sweet hormones of newly christened womanhood, allowed to be children, allowed to laugh and run and joke without a care in the world.
It was a summer that melted imagined mafia bullets into sickly green avadas, when their parents began preparing for the Dark Lord to rise. It was the summer before Tracey’s mother was killed for marrying a muggle, the summer before the Dark Lord besieged Malfoy Manor; it was the summer that ended while they watched their fathers toss muggle children like rag-dolls in the air at the World Cup, drunk on testosterone and dark magic.
Well, no. THE GAME with Longbottom isn't quite like that.
It’s like the time in fifth year after a truly sporting day of catching Gryffindors on the Inquisitorial Squad, when the Slytherins broke open a bottle of Gregory Goyle’s cauldron-brewed Honey Mead and it was stronger than their young stomachs were used to. They got thoroughly pissed and watched Theodore Nott and Blaise Zabini play a game of ‘gay chicken,’ laughing as both boys leaned closer and closer to each other, taunting each other with the gut-wrenching fear of a kiss, twenty Galleons on the table between them, ready for the winner’s reaping: for whomever didn’t pull away first.
It turns out liquid courage was the tiny push the pair needed, because neither pulled away and their lips met with a drunken laughter from their onlookers. Nothing could tear them apart, nothing at all, for over a year. Not threats from Nott Sr, not sneers from upperclassmen, not a summer of crucios after sixth year. Not anything, anything at all, until Blaise’s mother discovered the crucios and decided Britain was no longer safe. She sent him home to Italy where their romance fizzled and dried out with distance like the wellspring of hope that had been carrying them for so long.
No, no, no. THE GAME with Longbottom isn’t anything like that. She's left those stories in the past where they belong.