Archive of Our Own

Pansy’s favorite thing about the strange and tragic union of her well-esteemed childhood friend and the bushy-haired swot he used to bully in school is the highly incongruous nature of their shared space. 

Their new cottage is basically a broom closet—barely the size of Pansy’s personal wing in the Parkinson estate—and yet it’s stuffed to the brim. Books are stacked two-deep on a massive mahogany bookshelf from the 1400s. An original Monet leans precariously against a coffee table littered with knick-knacks and water stains. An armchair that once resided in Versailles is covered in orange cat hair.

How far the Slytherin prince has fallen, out of favor with his own family and into the arms of the Golden Girl herself, spending his days working and reading and being in love.

Frankly, Pansy finds it all a little gauche. 

But because she is nothing if not a loyal friend, she goes where she is asked: to a sad Muggle clubhouse for Granger’s birthday, to the dusty depths of the Ministry to celebrate Draco’s promotion, to, now, the hideous and structurally unsound hovel they call home. So far, she’s been able to avoid a visit, seeing as she could just call on Draco at Malfoy Manor, but he’d demanded her presence for their engagement party, which is also their housewarming party, because, sadly, it’s also their Sorry You Were Disinherited By Your Parents, Draco party.

Pansy finds herself perched on the edge of the least cat-infested surface in the sitting room, which is, unfortunately, still heavily infested, sipping on champagne she brought for herself while Draco makes a futile attempt at fitting the rest of Granger’s books onto the already overflowing bookshelf. Granger herself flits in and out of the sitting room with trays of appetizers on tiny little plates, her muttering becoming increasingly more panicked as the clock ticks closer and closer to the actual start time of the party.

Pansy doesn’t know who Granger is trying to impress. Certainly not her, otherwise Draco wouldn’t have told her the party started two hours earlier than it actually did in the hopes she might end up being on time. She supposes a Weasley, however, might be impressed by the current state of things, orange hair and all.

It seems like Potter’s speed, too, she thinks as he suddenly bursts through the Floo in a flurry of soot. Despite being early, he seems to be running late, marching through the sitting room and down the short hall with nary a muttered greeting. It shouldn’t be surprising, considering he’s always rushing around somewhere—fighting crime, causing a scene, making poor fashion choices. 

It also shouldn’t be surprising that Pansy is inclined to follow him. She’s very nosy, and Granger is getting precariously close to asking her for help.

He’s set up shop in the small study, which is still full of boxes and trunks and smells like dust and mildew. Pansy wrinkles her nose as she surveys the space, and Potter pretends not to notice or care about her presence as he deposits the box tucked under his arm. He splits it wide open with a deft flick of a switchblade, revealing bits and pieces of what Pansy can only assume used to be furniture.

“What on earth is that?” she asks. “Did you get Granger a broken couch for a housewarming gift?”

“It’s a chair,” he says, still not sparing her a glance. “And it’s not broken. I need to put it together.”

But rather than a wand, he pulls out a silver metal…stick.

“What on earth is that?”

“Wrench,” he supplies. He dumps a small bag of other metal bits and bobs onto the ground.

“Did you lose your magic in your most recent bid to save the wizarding world? Or did you disarm someone and snap your wand in half again?”

He doesn’t rise to her jab, calmly flipping through the pages of a little white book. Instructions, she surmises.

“Magic doesn’t work on IKEA, Pansy,” he says. At her disbelieving huff, he does finally glance over his shoulder. “Don’t believe me? Try it.”

Pansy doesn’t know what IKEA is, nor does she know what might make it so special that it’s impervious to magic, but she does wave her wand, a muttered Wingardium Leviosa on her lips. The disjointed pieces of chair don’t budge. 

She frowns. “Why didn’t you just get a different chair?”

Pansy is skeptical of the choice of chair as an engagement gift in the first place. She simply brought a 1979 vintage Bordeaux like a normal person.

Potter sighs, seemingly contemplating the same thing. “Hermione wanted this chair.”

“Difficult witch,” Pansy mutters.

Potter hums his agreement. “Something like that.”

Pansy peers over his shoulder at the little white booklet, raising a brow at the clearly not English script. “What language is that?”

“Swedish, I think.” He sits on his haunches to fully look at her. “Any more questions?”

“I was going to offer to translate it for you, you arse. I’m very good at translation spells.” To demonstrate her skill, she flicks her wand. “There. You’re welcome.”

Potter only rolls his eyes. “Are you here to help? Otherwise, go away. Hermione could use some help with setting up, I’m sure.”

Well, Pansy certainly doesn’t want to do that. Though both Potter and Granger hold her in similar regard—low, likely—Potter expects marginally less of her. Easy choice.

“I’ll stay here,” she says, perching on the edge of Draco’s antique escritoire.

“Watching wasn’t one of the options.” He growls at two pieces of chair that don’t seem to be fitting together the way he expects and flips quickly through the pages of the little white book. “Which fucking way is this supposed to go?”

She peeks over his shoulder. Where she expects to see perfectly translated instructions, there are only…pictures.

“Where are the words?” she gasps.

“I thought we were done with the questions.” 

“I changed my mind.”

“Can you hold this?” He motions to what Pansy can only assume are the legs of the cursed chair. “So I can attach them.”

Pansy reluctantly slides off the desk. Daintily, she bends slightly at the waist, holding the legs in place with the very tips of her well-manicured fingers. As soon as Potter nudges them with a new tool—seemingly a cousin to Wrench—they clatter to the ground.

“Can you hold it better?”

Pansy sneers down at him. “How am I supposed to do that?”

His unimpressed gaze flits back and forth between her face and the floor. As if she’s supposed to sit there. The audacity—as if asking her to do manual labor wasn’t enough.

“This is a Chanel skirt!” she protests. 

“Just—can’t you just kneel—Pansy, you’re making this more difficult—”

“You’re the one who bought an unassembled chair made out of anti-magic nonsense—”

“It’s just particle board, Pansy.”

“What even is that?”

Potter growls in frustration, dropping miscellaneous chair pieces to the floor. “Remember the time you tried to offer me up to Vold—”

“We swore never to speak of that again,” Pansy hisses, but she does lower to her knees, snatching the chair legs from the pile and holding them in place the way he’d asked. 

After that, they mostly work in silence. Pansy is a good assistant, though she detests every second of it. She keeps the legs steady while Harry works what she learns is called a screwdriver. She hands him the pieces he requests. She does not complain about the bite of the rug against her knees. 

When the frame is finished, Potter offers to let her place the cushions, like he’s doing her the honor of giving her the last piece of the puzzle. Accepting his offer would be embarrassing, but letting him do the honors would be even worse, so after he rolls his eyes and shoves them into place himself, she adjusts them to her liking.

Potter breathes an exasperated sigh as she steps back to evaluate their work. The chair is a little crooked, and one of the legs is definitely backwards, but Pansy’s quite proud of it. She’s never really made anything before.

She moves to sit in it—certainly she deserves it, considering she spent almost an entire hour on the floor—but Potter yanks her away by the wrist.

“Excuse you—”

“I built it—”

There’s a bit of a scuffle, but somehow, Potter manages to get his ridiculous, annoying arse in the chair first. Pansy glares at him, though it seems to have no effect, as Potter only grins and crosses an ankle over a knee.

His celebration is cut short, though, as suddenly, a pair of clomping feet sound from the corridor. The smugness evaporates from his face as he leaps to his feet, dusting off the cushion as if he could have transferred his general disheveled-ness to the fabric. 

Granger swings the door open, popping her bushy head inside, likely in search of the evil cat she allows to live in her home, or, evidently, The Great Savior of All Wizardkind.

“Harry! I’ve been looking for you. Everyone is here—” She gasps, hand flying to her gaping mouth in such a display that Pansy assumes she’s been stunned from behind, but then she whispers, “I love it.”

The witch is near tears, leaving Pansy doing a triple take to make sure they are looking at the same chair. It’s hideous. Pansy is partial to it only because of her involvement in the construction of the wretched thing, but Granger is acting as if Potter has just gifted her a library full of books on cat herding and the art of watching paint dry.

Granger flings herself at Potter, and somewhere along the way manages to loop an arm around Pansy’s neck, too, wrapping them both in a suffocating headlock of a hug, forcing Pansy’s breath from her chest in a wheeze. 

“You worked together on this?” Granger mumbles as she squeezes tighter, and suddenly Pansy doesn’t feel so inclined to remind Granger that her housewarming gift is already sitting on the counter in the kitchen. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Hermione,” Potter says, squeezing Granger’s shoulder so she’ll finally loosen her grip. He shoots Pansy a glance, eyes widening like he’s trying to convey her some secret message.

Pansy only raises a brow. “What?”

She hears him sigh as she slithers from Granger’s grasp, eager to escape the hugs and thank yous and return to her champagne.

“Pansy says you’re welcome, too, Hermione,” Potter says as they follow her down the hall. Then, the most egregious of his lies: “We are so happy for you.”

Pansy isn’t unhappy for them, per se. She simply finds their whirlwind romance a bit…over the top. Disgraced Death Eater, reformed by the Gryffindor embodiment of goodness. How cliché.

They’d gone to extreme lengths just to be together—Draco gave up literally everything he’d ever known for Granger. To be worthy of her. And Granger, she’d found forgiveness somewhere deep—abyss level deep—inside herself and offered it to him. 

Together, they’ve navigated the intense scrutiny of the predatory media, they’ve deconstructed childhood prejudices, they’ve fought for each other—tooth and nail—and somehow, came out the other side in one piece.

They changed who they were.

For better. For love.

Who does that?

And for what? A warm body to sleep beside? A regular fuck?

Pansy’s had plenty of sex. Nothing to write home about. She likes her freedom. Her space. No one to nag her. No expectations.

“Why are you scowling?”

Pansy’s scowl only deepens at Potter’s annoying voice in her ear. She hadn’t noticed—or maybe just hadn’t expected him to—join her on the outskirts of the sitting room. Granger and Draco gallivant—if one can even do such a thing in space so small—around the center, mingling and accepting gifts from the other guests.

“This is just my face,” she hisses.

“No it’s not,” he says, as if he knows anything. “You were smiling before.”

She whips her head around to face him so quickly that a piece of her hair gets stuck in her eyelashes. She certainly doesn’t recall any moment since entering this wretched hovel in which she was smiling, but Potter seems so sure. Had she let her guard down in the study? Revealed something she hadn’t meant to?

“What?” He raises a brow.

“I wasn’t smiling,” she mutters, but she is, suddenly, fighting against the upturn of her lips.

She hears his chuckle, feels his shoulder brush faintly against hers as he shrugs. “Whatever you say, Pansy.”

Because of Draco’s disinheritance and following exile from Malfoy Manor, Pansy unfortunately must now call on him at the Granger-Malfoy shoebox. It’s no matter—Pansy never liked Malfoy Manor anyway. Too stuffy, dreadfully dark, uncomfortably chilly. His parents were terrible company anyway, as it was, with Lucius drooling drunk and Narcissa incapable of making drinkable tea without the assistance of her elves. 

So, in the continued interest of loyalty and friendship, Pansy comes around their hovel for wine nights, which she enjoys, trivia nights, which she could take or leave, and Granger’s book club nights, which, frankly, are ridiculous, considering Pansy does not read.

Potter is often in attendance as well, along with the occasional Weasley, though Pansy has never bothered to keep track of which. Suffice to say, there’s always someone Pansy sneered at in school skulking around, and because Granger keeps reminding her that sneering causes wrinkles, Pansy has kindly forgiven any of her old vendettas, letting her general distaste bloom into something more like general…indifference.

Pansy arrives in the sitting room as she always does—fashionably late. She can hear the rest of them prattling on about the book in the kitchen while she dusts the ash from her clothes. She times her entrance perfectly, hovering just outside the door frame, smoothing her hair and skirt until the perfect break in conversation, sashaying through the door at the ideal moment, drawing eyes and the leftover smiles from whatever was happening before. 

Pansy’s own expression of perfect indifference falters as she notices that one of the Weasley’s has convinced some girl to join their book club, which means their numbers are off, which means there aren’t enough seats at Granger’s shitty table, which means whoever arrived last—and Pansy always arrives last—doesn’t have a seat.

“Oh, Pansy, you made it! Let me grab you a chair,” Granger says, far too enthused for the occasion.

But instead of heading towards the study, where Pansy knows a chair exists, Granger grabs one of her Muggle pencils from the drawer where she keeps her junk—like Pansy would sit on a transfigured pencil, or anything else from such a heinous drawer.

“Where’s the chair?” Pansy protests, stopping Granger before she can even begin her futile quest. “You know. My chair?”

Potter snorts. “Your chair,” he mutters.

“Well,” Granger starts, worrying her lower lip between her teeth, “I ran out of room on the bookshelves.”

“My chair is not a spot for your books, Granger.”

“Not anymore,” she agrees. “The legs collapsed, unfortunately.”

“You broke my chair? After all the work I put in?”

Draco, for some reason, seems to think he should insert himself in the conversation. He snorts from where he’s wedged in the corner between a Weasley and…well, another Weasley. “All the work you put in?”

“Pansy worked very hard holding the legs,” Potter says.

Pansy nods. “Yes, thank you.”

“I was being sarcastic.”

With a growl, Pansy takes off down the hallway, huffing for all three steps it takes her to get to the study to examine her chair. It is, in fact, broken, toppled over on one set of legs, the broken one laying sadly to the side. The offending stack of books collects dust on the floor, and Pansy resists the urge to kick them.

Potter appears behind her, a low whistle escaping his lips at the sight of the scene. “Well. It’s definitely broken.”

“We have to fix it,” she whines.

“We?”

“We both know I can’t do it by myself.”

“So you mean I need to fix it.”

“Well.” She huffs. “Yes.”

He sighs. “You vex me.”

“Thank you.”

But Potter does march off, not in the direction of the dreadfully boring book club that continues with the clink of glasses and laughter in the kitchen, but instead out the back door, towards the sad dilapidated structure that Granger calls a garage. He returns shortly with a bag of various metal…things. Wrench, she remembers. 

He flips the chair upside down to inspect the dismantled base, muttering under his breath about nuts or bolts or whatever. Even with the window open, the early summer humidity hangs heavy in the air, and so it’s only logical, Pansy supposes, that Potter would remove his hideous jumper.

What is not logical, however, is everything beneath it. Arms, for one, and not the wimpy string bean arms from their teenage years. She had not previously considered that Potter was strong, what with being an Auror and fighting crime or whatnot. Surely, he’d been in short sleeves at some event she’d been forced to attend, but she generally refuses to look at him at any of those, so, tragically, she’s remained unaware. 

His thin white t-shirt stretches over his chest, rides up a bit as he bends over to reveal more golden-brown skin. He pushes his mess of hair out of his eyes—not that he can even see, with glasses like that—and his bicep flexes in such a way that Pansy thinks she ought to look away, but for some reason, she can’t, so instead she stares, wondering why her mouth is watering, why her breaths are coming faster, why the room has suddenly gotten ten degrees warmer.

“Pansy,” Potter says, and she realizes he’s watching her through narrowed eyes.

“What?” she snaps. Had he already called her name?

“I said—can you help me with this?”

“Oh,” she says lamely.

She falls to her knees on Granger’s hideous rug without protest. The skirt of her dress shifts across her thighs as she does. She reaches to adjust it—for she is not one to allow her appearance to approach unkempt—but as she does, she catches Potter’s eyes following the hem across her legs. 

She leaves it be.

After a beat, Potter clears his throat, then offers her the legs of the chair while he works with Wrench. Pansy watches his hands. His forearms flex as he does something with a…nut? Pansy still isn’t sure about construction.

“Fuck,” he mutters. “I stripped it.”

“You what?”

“The screw.”

“Did Muggles not think about double entendre when naming their things?”

He sighs. When Pansy releases the legs, they fall over, the screw bouncing as it flies across the floor. 

“What do we do now?” she asks.

“I dunno.” He shrugs. “It’s broken.”

“Well, fix it!”

“How am I supposed to do that?”

“I don’t know! Screw it again.”

His lips twitch despite his efforts to glare at her. “It’s just a cheap piece of—”

“It’s not!” she shouts. She doesn’t know why she’s shouting, or why she cares, but she does. “It’s not. We have to fix it.”

“Pansy.”

“I made it,” she says. “Well, I guess mostly you made it. But I made it, too.”

Potter looks at her for a long moment, not in judgement, for once, but in assessment. When he rummages around in the bag this time, he pulls out a big gray…disc.

“What is that?”

“Duct tape. Fixes pretty much anything.”

He pulls a long strip off the roll and slaps it to the bottom side of the chair.

“Please don’t tell me any ducks died for this.”

He sighs. “Duct.”

“That’s what I said.”

He ignores her after this, adding layer upon layer of the silver strips of stickiness to the bottom of their chair. By the end of it, the roll is skinny and the bottom of the chair is crisscrossed in tape. 

“It’s fixed,” he declares, flipping it over and shoving it back towards its spot on the corner of Granger’s hideous rug. “Or at least it’s not actively falling apart.”

It’s even more lopsided than normal, but otherwise appears functional. Pansy grins.

“Sit,” he commands. “See if it holds.”

For once, she doesn’t argue. She plops herself—very elegantly—into the seat, crossing one leg over the other. Her wand, gripped between her fingers, is poised to catch her if the chair does not, in fact, hold, but luckily, it does.

She tilts her head back, a giggle escaping without her permission, savoring the sun that pours in through the window and heats her skin. She loves this stupid chair and its scratchy cushions and poor lumbar support.

When she lifts her head, her gaze meets Potter’s, who watches her with slightly hooded eyes. For a long, agonizing moment, he doesn’t look away. The green of his eyes clouds her vision, making her blush, only leaving hers when they follow the path of pink from her cheeks to her neck to her chest, where he can surely see her next breath come in a stutter.

“What?” she manages, barely a breathy whisper.

He opens his mouth, but no words come out, just another ragged exhale, then an inhale—more sure this time—and then—

Granger raps twice on the doorframe, her bushy head peeking inside. 

“Oh!” she exclaims. “You fixed it!”

Potter holds her gaze for another long second before he finally looks away, running a hand through his hair as he surveys the mess they’d made of broken chair parts and discarded wads of Duck Tape. 

“It was a bit of a hack job,” he tells Granger, “but, it, uh—it works. It’s fixed.”

The following silence is awkward, Granger’s eyes darting back and forth between them.

“No more books in my chair, Granger,” Pansy demands. “Butts only.” She considers her own words with a tilt of her head. “Clothed, of course. One at a time.”

“Butts only,” Granger repeats, flashing a little smile at Potter, who only shrugs in response. “Got it. Now, are you coming? Draco is opening the good wine.”

Pansy traipses down the short hallway back to the kitchen, Potter following behind her with the chair, grumbling the whole way. The discussion is already well underway by the time he places the seat next to his—either by coincidence or convenience, Pansy can’t tell—but she doesn’t care, simply helping herself to a healthy pour, as she always does, and tipping her head back in relaxation. 

Potter leans over as she sips her wine, which is, in fact, the good wine, dousing her in the scent of summer, his breath hot on her cheek as he whispers, “I didn’t read it either.”

“You’re telling me,” she says, voice low, and it secretly thrills her to be having a private conversation with him, of all people, in a room full of others, “that you didn’t read it, but”—she furrows her brow as she examines the Weasley across from her—“George did?”

“That’s Charlie. He reads, I think.”

“Does Granger not scold you for your lack of participation?”

He shrugs. “A little white lie to get by never hurt anyone.”

“Harry,” Granger says just then, “what did you think of the ending?”

“It was moving,” he says easily.

Granger nods. “Pansy?” she asks hopefully.

Pansy peeks at Potter. His lips twitch into a grin. Normally, she’d tell Granger that her choice in book was poor, or complain about the inefficiency of flipping pages with wet nail polish. But, perhaps—

“It was…sad,” she guesses.

Granger gasps. “Did you read the original ending?” She starts flipping through the pages of her own book. Truthfully, Pansy doesn’t even remember the title. “I have the revised ending—I never thought—”

The rest of them start comparing their endings. Pansy snorts into her wine glass. When she glances at Potter again, he’s grinning.

“What?” she asks.

“You’re funny, sometimes.”

Pansy scoffs. She almost denies it on instinct. “Thank you,” she says instead. “I know.”

There had been a moment, however brief, in which Pansy thought she might actually like Harry Potter. They built a poorly crafted chair together. They repaired it together. They even spent time together without Draco or Granger twice—once when they bumped into each other in Diagon Alley, resulting in a long lunch and afternoon tea, and another time when Granger lost her wretched cat, which ended with the two of them at a pub—and neither experience had Pansy faking an emergency to escape.

All in all, she didn’t hate it.

But now, come to think of it—and really, she can’t stop thinking of it—she can’t stand Harry Potter. 

Michael Corner is a nice man. Quite tall. Handsome enough. Makes decent money at a decent job in middle management at the Ministry. He wears glasses, but they actually fit his face. They make him look smart. Rather—he is smart, Pansy thinks. She hasn’t been listening to him since he started talking about Muggle wind turbines.

He’d pulled out her chair when they arrived at the restaurant. Pansy likes that, usually. He’s well dressed, arrived on time, complimented her outfit. He’s checked all the boxes required for a first date shag, and yet—

Pansy is thinking about Harry Potter.

About how he’s tall, but not too tall—just the right height, actually. About how his glasses slide off his face as he talks. About how he would have somehow managed to be late, even though that’s her thing.

She runs out of wine. Michael keeps talking. She watches the rain patter against the windows over his shoulder, bouncing her leg under the table and chewing on her lip in such a way she knows would have gotten her punished as a child.

Why on earth is she thinking about Harry Potter?

“I have to go,” she says abruptly, her chair scraping against the floor as she stands.

Michael blinks at her, startled. “Oh. Are you, er—is everything okay?”

Her courage feels so far away now that she towers over the table, drawing the eyes of every patron and waiter in the vicinity. She’s faked a thousand emergencies to get out of dates, but for some reason, words fail her for this one.

What is she doing? Mid-date apparition is certainly frowned upon amongst the ladies of society, but–

She can picture it. Warm. Too warm, probably. Loud, but not offensively so. There are redheads everywhere, unfortunately, but also an unkempt head of jet black curls, a horribly put together outfit, and a joke whispered under his breath—just for her. She could do it in one jump.

She grips her wand, searching for something—anything—to say. “I need to…be somewhere else.”

Michael blinks at her. “Where?”

“I…have to return a book.”

“A book?” Michael questions.

She’d thought perhaps an acquaintance of Granger’s might find such an excuse plausible, if not urgent, but it seems only Granger herself would classify a late fee as a matter of emergency. 

She huffs. “Yes.”

“At nine p.m.?”

“Yes. Any more questions?”

“Actually—”

She bolts before he can start an interrogation, weaving through tables of gawking guests and curious waitstaff until she gets to the floo, hurling an unnecessary amount of Floo Powder into the hearth and disappearing into the green flames, winded and flushed, calling desperately for the place she should have been the entire night.

She exits in a dusty haze into the Granger-Malfoy sitting room—the new one, only partially unpacked, half-empty glasses and party favors still scattered about. The furniture is still covered in orange fuzz, but the space is much larger, with vaulted ceilings and a far more flattering color scheme. It’s quiet, though, no leftover Weasleys or do-gooders or rumpled, flustered saviors of the wizarding world whizzing about. 

Granger pops her head in from the kitchen, her trusty dish towel slung over her shoulder, wet from doing dishes the Muggle way. It seems no amount of magic or money is good enough for Granger to give up her menial tasks.

“Pansy? What are you doing here?” She checks her watch. “Shouldn’t you be on a date?”

Pansy shrugs, though her heart still hammers against the inside of her ribcage. “I came to warm the house. Where is everyone?”

“Everyone left hours ago,” Granger says. “You didn’t like Michael?”

“He was dreadfully boring, Granger, even for you.”

“I thought you’d at least enjoy one night with him,” Granger counters.

Pansy shrugs again. There’s a small assortment of gifts sitting on top of the coffee table, which is new, thankfully, and so far, still free of stains. A board game, half put away. A deck of Exploding Snaps, still smoldering on the end table.

She’s not put out about missing the party. She’s already attended one Granger-Malfoy housewarming event. How different could it be? At least this one didn’t come with a disinheritance.

She’d merely panicked at the restaurant. The Granger-Malfoy home felt like a safe place to land. That’s all.

To keep from fidgeting, she snatches the nicest looking bottle of wine off the coffee table, her jaw nearly hitting the floor when she reads the label. “1967 Bordeaux? Granger, you cannot put ice in this. Do you understand? Who brought this?”

Granger scratches her head like she can’t tell the difference between an aged Bordeaux and the three other bottles of red blend languishing on the table. “Er, Harry—I think?”

“That bastard,” Pansy mutters, but her lips twitch into a grin anyway. She places the bottle on the mantel instead, where it will be safe from the cheap wine. “Well? Do I get a tour, or what?”

Granger smartly leaves the rest of the cleaning to Draco, guiding Pansy around their new space with enthusiasm that even Pansy finds charming. There are multiple bedrooms, which is a big upgrade, and a sunroom Pansy can imagine lounging in, but after seeing every room—including the cellar, the shed, and all three bathrooms—Pansy is left confused, because her chair is not anywhere to be seen.

“Oh,” Granger says, far too casual when Pansy asks. “I gave it to Harry.”

Pansy stops in her tracks. “Excuse me?”

Granger shrugs. “Didn’t really fit in with the new décor.”

Pansy stares at her. The chair had never really fit in with the previous décor, aside from the fact that it was all hideous. Aesthetics aside—it was Pansy’s chair. And Granger just gave it to Harry. And Harry just took it. Without even bothering to ask her if she wanted it.

She doesn’t bother giving Granger a fake emergency. The urgency this time is real, evident in the echoing clack of Pansy’s heels against the floor as she stomps down the stairs and back to the Floo. All in one day, he’s copied her signature housewarming gift, ruined her date, and stolen her chair.

She cannot stand Harry Potter.

She’s so surprised the wards don’t eviscerate her when she stumbles through the Floo that she almost loses steam, but then she catches sight of him—lounging on a frumpy settee, shirtless—and she’s just as enraged as before. 

He startles at the sight of her, scrambling to his feet and sorting through pillows and blankets in search of his discarded shirt. “What the hell, Pansy?”

“Who the hell do you think you are?”

He tugs his shirt over his head, glasses askew, brows furrowed. “Well, I’m Harry Potter.”

Pansy is already stomping through his maze of an ancestral home, shoving open doors in search of her chair. “Where is it?”

“Where is what?”

She whirls on him, shoving a finger into his clothed chest. “You know what.”

“The chair?” He scoffs, then follows her down the hallway, his footsteps a clumsy echo to her staccato heels. “Hermione offered—”

Pansy flings open the door at the end of the hallway, revealing Harry’s monstrosity of a study, and— heaven behold—her lopsided, half-broken chair.

“How could you?” she laments. “Subjecting it to this dreadful place, knowing it should have gone home with me.”

Harry rolls his eyes. “Hermione was getting rid of it.”

“Maybe I wanted it!”

“Maybe I wanted it.”

Pansy resists the urge to stomp her foot. “You should have asked me first!”

“You didn’t even show up!”

“I was on a date!”

“I know,” he barks. Then, he takes a deep breath. “I know.”

Pansy blinks at him. She, too, feels the need to breathe deeply, but she fights it, gasping tiny little breaths out of spite.

“Why would you even go out with a guy like that?”

“Michael Corner? What’s wrong with him?”

Everything, she thinks. Everything about him was wrong. She can’t even remember why she agreed to go out with him in the first place.

“He’s not right for you,” Harry says simply.

“Right for me?” She barks a laugh. “And who is? You?”

He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t deny it. She watches as he rolls his tongue against the inside of his cheek, as his shoulders move, barely enough to be classified as a shrug. He’s not even flustered—at least not anymore than usual. He looks as sure as he ever has.

Pansy’s never been more unsure in her life.

“You can’t just say things like that!” she snaps, shoving her hands into his chest with all her might.

He barely moves. “I didn’t even say anything!”

Pansy tries to shove him again, but he bats her hands away, again and again until he traps them against his chest. His heart beats erratically beneath her fingers, the only sign that he might be feeling any of the same panic she’s feeling.

Suddenly, she’s not pushing but pulling—clinging, clawing—dragging his mouth to hers so she can breathe, grasping at his shoulders like he might be able to keep her upright, stumbling forward until his legs hit the chair and they fall into it together. 

She clambers onto his lap, then it’s his lips on her neck, pressure in her belly, heat between her legs. A belt, a zipper. Shuffling. Teeth, fingers, a groan from her lips, muttered curses from his. Hands—everywhere. Roaming across her thighs, her hips, her breasts. Running through his hair, over his neck. 

The chair, creaking in protest as it struggles against their combined weight, grinding against the floor as they glide toward some shared release of tension, soaring and cresting in a gasp, a cry, a plea. Then—

Silence, save their panting breaths, the rain on the roof. Fingers loosening their grip. Warmth, trickling down the inside of her thigh.

Awareness seeping back into her limbs, her chest.

Harry’s face is still buried in the crook of her neck. His voice vibrates against her pulse when he says, “Pansy.”

Pansy leaps off his lap and retreats, putting much needed distance between them. She pats down her hair, straightens the skirt of her dress, squeezes her legs together as if to will away the evidence of their mistake. Harry, on the other hand, still looks properly ruined—even more so than usual, his shirt rumpled from her fists, his hair mussed from her fingers. 

She lets her eyes flutter closed as he tucks himself back inside his trousers. What have they done?

When she opens them again, he’s stock-still in the chair, trousers still unbuttoned and unzipped while he regards her like a wild animal. Like she might spook at the slightest movement, like she might turn tail and run.

And Merlin, does she want to. She can feel her breath come in short puffs as the panic spreads through her limbs. What an idiot she is, what a mess she’s made.

“We shouldn’t have done that,” she whispers.

He exhales a long sigh from his nose. His lips are swollen from her teeth. His jaw is clenched from her words. 

“Pansy,” he says, “don’t. Please—”

But she’s already made up her mind. She cuts him off with a stiff hand, willing her back straight and her voice steady. She’s already halfway to the door when she finds her voice.

“We will never speak of this again.”

To Pansy’s luck, they very much do not speak of it. 

She adopts a strategy of avoidance, when she can, and when she can’t—denial. Harry definitely wants to speak about it, she can tell, but he doesn’t push. He leaves space at wine night, though she catches more than a few furtive glances, and doesn’t ask why she skips trivia night, considering it’s well documented that she could take or leave Granger’s overcomplicated version of a pub quiz. 

When they are forced to share a space, their interactions are polite, if not stilted. They are acquaintances—nothing more. Not enemies, not friends, and certainly not lovers. She does not return his furtive glances. Does not read into his longing gaze. Does not think about his hands on her hips, his mouth on her neck, his unyielding grip on her sanity—

Pansy closes her eyes, steeling herself against the presence of him as he settles beside her. She knows he’s there before he even makes a sound. She knows him by his warmth, his scent. Knows him by the way her own body reacts, unfolding and unfurling against her will, opening up like a flower in search of the sun.

She’d done so well with avoidance the entire evening, from passing him in the hallways as she frantically jogged between Draco and Granger’s respective bridal suits, to walking right behind him down the aisle, to being only six feet away from him as Draco waxed poetic about his new wife to a crowd of misty-eyed guests. 

When he’d given his speech as Granger’s best man, she’d escaped to the ladies’ room. When she gave hers, she felt his eyes on her, but she refused to look up from the parchment.

Thinking about him was already too much, but looking at him—admittedly dashing in a decently tailored suit and tie, sporting a painfully hopeful lopsided grin, looking right back at her like she might have answers to all his unasked questions—it’s enough to undo her.

She’d given it her best effort, and yet, just as midnight approaches, the dance floor sparsely populated with no one but drunk Weasleys and a few other nameless stragglers, a hand sneaks into her periphery, open and inviting, not trembling in the slightest as it offers her another chance.

“It’s just a dance, Pansy,” he says quietly.

Pansy’s eyes trail a path from his hand to his rolled up sleeves to the grin she knew she’d find. She’s tired. She’s had a few drinks. Would it really be so bad to take what he’s offering?

She slips her hand in his without much fuss. It seems to surprise him, but he recovers quickly, sweeping her out onto the dance floor, careful to avoid any flailing Weasley limbs.

“You’re a terrible dancer,” she tells him, barely sidestepping the threat of his feet on her toes.

“Then you lead.”

“How about,” Pansy says, stopping his fruitless attempt at a waltz before it can injure someone, “we just sway?”

This, unfortunately, brings them infinitely closer, the hand on her waist snaking around to the small of her back, the one on his shoulder sliding across the back of his neck. He seems to have lost his tie somewhere since dinner, and the undone buttons reveal a sliver of skin she wants to touch. 

They fit together almost perfectly. It doesn’t make sense. He tugs her closer until their chests touch, until he can tip his head and rest his chin lightly against her temple. How he’s so comfortable, she cannot fathom. How can he so easily forget who she is? What she’s done? Their past, in all of its messy, bellicose glory.

As if he can sense her doubt, the hand on her back travels up and up until it meets skin, his thumb doing soothing circles between her shoulder blades.

“It’s just a dance,” he repeats.

She releases several huffs of air, so many words rising up in her throat only to die on her tongue. How can it be just a dance when he holds her like this? How can she stay away when he’s the only place she wants to be?

Pansy Parkinson is not good or kind. She’s not a likeable person, nor is she a pleasant one. She owes a lot of people a lot of apologies. Especially Harry Potter.

“There are so many things I don’t know how to say,” she murmurs.

“Then don’t say them.” His voice is low and even in her ear, reverberating from his chest to hers. “Just be here with me right now.”

And because she’s missed him—like a gaping hole in the center of her—she nods, tucks her head safely into his shoulder, and sways.

After, when the music winds down and the dance floor empties, she lets him lead her to the floo, and then when they come out the other side in his sitting room, she lets him take it slow. Lets him kiss her, fully and deeply, lets him draw his fingers along the slope of her neck, her shoulder, the curve of her spine. Lets him peel the satin from her skin, lets him revel in what remains beneath it, lets him take his time—and hers, too—lets him carry her to his room, lets him unravel and detangle and set her soul to rights.

When it’s done, when they’re both breathless, when he asks her so, so quietly to stay, she does, finding the warmth of his body in the swimming sea of sheets, pulling him close and drifting off into dreams.

Pansy’s new arrangement with Harry is simple: Sex. Sleep. The occasional breakfast. Sometimes a coffee if she’s in need. Lunch, but only in emergencies.

It happens to work out splendidly for their new shared custody agreement of The Chair, as they’ve dubbed it, since Harry found it so bothersome that she kept referring to it as her chair. The unsightly thing fits in much better with his décor anyway.

No one else knows. Not about what happened at the wedding, nor the six months following. They do not speak of it—at least not outside the safety of his home. 

It’s cool. Casual. Easy. It’s just sleep and sometimes breakfast.

Except for now, Pansy’s somehow managed to stay well into the evening, and if she’s not careful, it’s going to be dinner, too. With great effort, she extracts herself from the tangled sheets and collects her things from where they are scattered about on the floor.

“Just stay,” he whines, reaching for her as she goes. His fingertips skim her back as she stands. “We’ll get takeaway.”

“I’ll be back tomorrow. It’s my turn with The Chair.”

Harry props himself on one elbow to glare at her, the sheets pooling at his waist. Pansy tries not to look at him when he’s like this—artfully mussed and painted golden by the evening light—especially considering she does actually need to leave, not crawl back into his bed.

“Pansy, this is ridiculous.”

Pansy huffs at the realization that she’s misaligned the buttons on her blouse. “What do you mean?”

“Is this really about The Chair? When was the last time you even sat in that thing?”

“What I do with it during my time is none of your business.”

She’s irritated him, based on his derisive sigh and dramatic flop back onto the pillows. She doesn’t know why he’s surprised. She’s an irritating person. She busies herself with realigning her buttons while he takes his time getting out of bed and finding his pants.

“Why do you really come here, Pansy?” he asks once he’s dressed enough, regarding her with a set to his jaw, a furrow in his brow.

“Did you hit your head? Surely you remember our arrangement. I get The Chair Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.”

“It’s Monday,” he points out, dragging an exasperated hand down his face. “Do you even hear what you’re saying?”

Pansy stubbornly does not dignify his question with a response.

“Pansy,” he says.

“What?” she snaps. “You don’t want me to come on Mondays anymore?”

“I want you to come here every day! I don’t want you to leave. That’s the point.” He sighs. “Pansy, I don’t want to split custody of a bloody chair. I want it to be our chair. In our house. Where we live together, because we are together.”

Pansy snorts. “We are not together.”

“Then what—” He closes his eyes, and Pansy watches in real time as something shatters inside him. “You have to know this isn’t casual for me, Pansy.”

It’s supposed to be casual. It has to be casual. Sure, she sleeps over most nights. She has her own drawer, or three. Pansy appreciates convenience, and it’s just easier to just stay than tiptoe around her parents and the elves if she went home in the middle of the night. 

Yet, as Harry steps closer, close enough he can reach up and tuck a rogue wisp of hair behind her ear, she knows exactly where her fingers would fit in the divots between his ribs. She knows what he’d taste like if he leaned in to kiss her. And, worst of all, she knows he’s not going to quit, because that’s who he is—brave, eager, reckless—and when he’s finished, nothing will be the same.

“Are you gonna make me say it?” he whispers.

She shakes her head no, no, no.

He takes a deep breath in, then out, his fingers curling into the hair behind her ear, his thumb sliding over her lower lip. “Pansy, I—”

“We will never speak of this again,” she hisses, and before he can say another word, she’s spinning through the Floo.

Pansy’s bed is empty and cold, just how she likes it. She has her freedom. Her space. No one to nag her. No expectations. It’s exactly how it used to be. How it should be.

She’s never been more lonely. 

She knows, logically, that she’d been spending most of her time with Harry. Any bit of time he wasn’t off fighting crime or defeating dark wizards or offending people with his frumpy sweaters—it belonged to her.

But now—none of it.

And for as secretive as she thought they’d been, her newfound misery must be obvious, because Granger treats her with extra care, regarding her like a wounded animal at the next book club meeting, helpfully keeping her wine topped off and unhelpfully patting her shoulder every time she glances over it towards the fireplace.

Harry never shows. Not to book club, not to wine night, and not to Granger’s arithmancy themed pub quiz, though Pansy can hardly blame him for that one.

From the inside out, she aches. She knows it’s because she misses him. Somewhere in the haze of her lust-driven descent into madness, she slipped. She became reliant on him. Dependent. She’d…fallen. And now, she can’t even muster the energy to scold herself for it. It’s her fault. He wanted more, and she couldn’t give it to him.

He doesn’t reach out, but neither does she, of course, considering she’s the one who vowed to never again speak of it—and what would she say, anyway? Every attempt ends with bleeding ink on parchment, drowning all the words she still doesn’t know how to say.

Instead, she tells herself she is content in her isolation. She does not wallow. She does not yearn. She moves on with her life—just the way it was before—and pretends Harry Potter does not exist.

Only until a great snowy owl lands on her windowsill and pecks aggressively at the glass.

The note she unfurls is perfunctory, written in his sloppy hand and containing too many grammatical errors for such a short missive. In her anger, she crushes the parchment in her fist, but the despair that follows has her smoothing it out against her desk, biting her lip to keep it from trembling.

She doesn’t waste a second. She apparates to a nearby alley, still in her sleepwear, taking the steps to the front door like a peasant, her pride already too wounded to handle the rejection of being bounced out of the Floo. He hadn’t explicitly told her to come. She wanted to see him, and even in just seeing his name—she hadn’t thought of much else.

When he opens the door, he’s as she remembers. A little messy, a little confused. Like he spent the day chasing bad guys through an old Muggle department store and got all his limbs stuck in the clearance rack.

“You’re here,” he says, blinking in surprise at the sight of her on his doorstep.

“Yes.”

“For The Chair,” he adds.

She presses her tongue to her teeth. “Yes.”

They walk wordlessly through the house, up the stairs and down the hall, Pansy trailing a step and a half behind the whole way, just close enough to feel the warmth of him, just far enough to keep her from reaching for him. The only sound is the discordant echoes of their footsteps and the squeak of the door as it swings open to the still-monstrous study, The Chair still in its spot by the fireplace. 

The hardwood creaks beneath her feet as she crosses the room to touch it with the tips of her fingers, her lips twitching as it teeters precariously on the two longer legs.

“Why,” she begins, willing her voice steady, “are you getting rid of it?”

Harry sighs. “Makes me think of you. And I’m trying not to do that.”

She knows the hurt is written plainly on her face. She tries to hide it, though she knows she’s failing. Harry, however, makes no effort to hide his heartbreak—it’s there in the half slant of his lips, the purpleish bags under his eyes, the slump in his shoulders. He’s always honest with himself, with her, like there’s simply no need for the armor Pansy so often hides behind. 

“You don’t want it anymore?” she whispers.

He shrugs. “You know what I want.”

“Harry,” she pleads. “It’s not about wanting.”

“Then what is it?”

Slowly, Pansy lowers herself into The Chair. It groans in protest, the haphazardly taped underside flexing under the stress, but she trusts it to hold her weight. Harry hovers at his place by the door, brow furrowed, lip worried between his teeth, watching her with the same hooded eyes from so many months ago, but this time the wanting is visceral, less like he wants to devour her and more like he wants to fall to his knees at her feet.

Pansy, the coward that she is, doesn’t meet his gaze.

“I haven’t had many examples of good relationships in my life,” she says.

“Hermione and Malfoy are basically the cover of a romance novel.”

Pansy grimaces. “But we aren’t like that.”

When she dares a peek, something has sparked life in his eyes. Hope, maybe.

“No,” he says. “I suppose not.”

“It’s…messy.”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

She sighs, squeezing her eyes shut when it does nothing to slow the slam of her heart against her ribcage. She feels exposed, vulnerable, like she’s one breath away from shattering, and all she wants to do is run, but she stays put, fingers wrapped around the worn wooden arms of The Chair, feet planted firmly on the ground in front of her, breathing in and breathing out, bracing herself for the fall.

“You’re…you,” she says finally, not even daring to open her eyes. “You are honorable, and kind, and good, and I…I’m none of those things.”

Harry laughs. “That’s what this has been about?”

Pansy’s eyes fly open. There’s a half smile on his lips, and incredulous quirk to his brow. She tries to glare at him, but he only smiles wider.

“You think you’re not good enough for me?”

Pansy stubbornly presses her lips into a thin line, glaring daggers at his mismatched socks as he crosses the gaping distance between them and lowers himself to his knees.

“Pansy,” he says, his hands falling to the cushion beside her hips, fingertips barely brushing against her sleep shorts. “Listen to me. I don’t care about good. You’re soft, and smart, and so, so funny. No one makes me laugh like you do.” He huffs, palms on her thighs now, warm and familiar. “And this chair. It’s a hideous piece of shit. Like, actual rubbish. And I can’t even properly get rid of it because it means something, Pansy. To me. Because I made it with you.”

Pansy bites her tongue so hard that a tear slips down her cheek, but he catches it, swiping it away with his thumb before it can reach her lips. “I don’t…what about that time I tried—”

“I thought we swore never to speak of that again?”

Her lips move without her permission, pushing up into a smile, the first she’s felt on her own face in so long. She knows what he wants: sex, sleep, breakfast, but lunch and dinner, too. Long nights, slow mornings. Good days, bad days—all of it.

And now, she knows she wants it, too.

“Okay,” she says.

“Okay?”

She lets her eyes sweep around the space. The ceilings are dusty, but tall. Intricate details are hidden behind stacks of nonsense and mish-mashed furniture. It’s a space she can work with. It’s a space she can see herself in, as long as there’s fresh paint and new…well, everything. As long as there’s him.

“Okay. I’ll move in.”

He barks an incredulous laugh. “You will?”

“That’s what you wanted, right? That’s what you were asking, last time I was here?”

“Yeah.” He nods, quickly and repeatedly, a grin spreading across his lips. “Yes. That’s—yes.”

There are many things Pansy is not: good, kind, brave, honest. But there are, however, many things she is: bold, selfish, impatient. 

And so it’s Pansy that closes the last bit of distance between them, practically falling into his lap, capturing his disbelieving smile with her own so she can taste it, better than the best champagne, better than even the rarest vintage Bordeaux. 

He holds her so desperately, so reverently, she doesn’t even care that she ends up on her back on a floor that is covered in dust and, somehow, Granger’s cat hair, she only cares that it’s Harry that’s right there with her, fingerprints leaving permanent imprints on her skin, wanting her only for what she is and never what she isn’t. 

Only after, as she watches the candlelight cast cobwebbed shadows on the ceiling, does she realize exactly what she’s committed to.

“You’ll let me redecorate, right?” she asks. 

He snorts into her hair. “Whatever you want.”

Pansy, through her own many trials, has discovered that there is an inevitability to an incongruous living space when it is shared by an unstylish and comb-less Gryffindor and someone who used to bully them in school. Even her own home, after weeks of redecorating, has not ascended to the lofty echelons of interior design to which Pansy is accustomed.

She keeps her things in the closet, like a normal person, whereas Harry stuffs his frumpy sweaters and bargain bin trousers in the drawers of an armoire that has certainly seen better days. She’s transformed the sitting room into something out of a magazine, yet there are still old quidditch posters hung in nearly every other room. And somehow, no matter how many spells she casts or donation boxes she fills, there is still so much scarlet.

Often, when she’s coughing up an ancient plume of dust or dodging falling bits of plaster, Harry so helpfully reminds her that 12 Grimmauld Place is at least twice the size of Draco and Granger’s first home.

It’ll do.

Soon enough, her own housewarming party has rolled around, and unlike Granger, Pansy has the foresight to hire a catering service to do all the flitting around with appetizers and champagne, and so she drapes herself across the new Victorian chaise, a glass of the good wine in hand. 

There are, unfortunately, Weasleys in attendance, though Pansy once again does not bother knowing which, but Draco brings her one of his original Monets, and Granger brings a red blend Pansy plans to dump down the drain, and Harry keeps sending her pleading looks from across the room as he is cornered again and again by Weasleys, so all in all, it’s a success.

Granger does demand a tour, though, despite the fact she’s spent more time in the home than Pansy has, and so Pansy begrudgingly abandons her chaise and guides her and Draco down the hall, showcasing her impeccable taste while kindly leaving the smoldering remains of old Black family artifacts behind closed doors.

Always one to dawdle, Granger stalls in front of a discolored square on the wall.

“How did you do it?” she asks, marveling at the blank spot where the repulsive and disgruntled portrait of Walburga Black once hung permanently.

“The portrait may be impervious to magic, Granger, but that does not mean it can withstand more…Muggle methods.”

“She used an axe,” Harry adds helpfully. His hand fits perfectly in the dip of Pansy’s waist as he joins them in the hall.

Pansy leans into his warmth. “I’ve taken an interest in construction.”

“More like destruction,” he mutters. She elbows him in the ribs, but he only laughs and slings an arm over her shoulders. “Do you think that’s how IKEA does it?”

Draco frowns. “What’s IKEA?”

Granger beams. “Do you still have it?”

“Of course we still have it,” Pansy scoffs, but guides the way towards the study. “It’s the entire basis of”—she waves her hand between herself and Harry—”this.”

“You’re giving an awful lot of credit to a piece of furniture,” Granger mutters.

“Ignore the walls,” Pansy says as the door swings open. “And the floors, and the ceilings, and, well, all of it, actually. This room has proven…difficult to remodel.”

Draco snorts at the sight of The Chair, slumped and bent and lopsided in its spot by the fireplace, but before she can properly lay into him, a familiar arm snakes around her waist and pulls her backwards until she’s falling gracefully into the rickety old chair.

“Do you have something to say, Draco?” she asks, reveling in the way he shrinks under her glare.

“Definitely not.”

“Go easy on him, Pansy,” Harry mumbles into her ear.

The warmth of him has her melting into his embrace, softening the edges of her glare when his thumb strokes patterns on her thigh.

Granger grins.

Pansy narrows her eyes. “And you, Granger? Something you’d like to share?”

“Nothing,” she says, humming wistfully. She leans into Draco’s side, looking up at him in a truly nauseating display of affection. “It’s just—you two remind me so much of us.”

Pansy leaps from Harry’s lap, jaw unhinged in shock. If she’d had the foresight to bring her wand, she would have already hexed Granger into next week.

To compare her relationship to anything resembling the revolting, disgusting, maudlin display that is Draco and Granger’s sappy and syrupy romance is reprehensible and immoral. She should have Granger sued for libel. Slander. Pansy nearly asks Harry to arrest her.

But instead, as he moves to stand behind her, his palm a comforting presence on her back, she leans into him—just like Granger had done with Draco—and she realizes, with great horror, that Granger is right.

Pansy can feel Harry’s chuckle, Granger is still grinning, and even Draco has dared a quirked brow. She glares at all three of them.

“We will never speak of this again.”