Work Text:
The realization hit him exactly three flagstones past the tapestry: his left pocket was too light.
Harry stopped dead, the strap of his satchel cutting into his collarbone. He slid his hand into the small canvas divider where the small, amber glass bottle was supposed to live. Nothing. Just a stray piece of unused parchment and three loose sickle coins.
No. The System was flawless. It had been flawless for four months. Two blue pills every Tuesday and Thursday, swallowed with exactly half a goblet of pumpkin juice before the breakfast platters cleared, ensuring a precise twenty-minute absorption window before he entered the dungeon corridors. It was a ridiculous amount of work just to survive a two-hour class, but it was entirely necessary; he’d spent the first week of term tracking her movements like a man preparing for a raid, until he knew the approximate scent radius of her jasmine-and-clove shampoo was exactly four and a half yards in a drafty hallway, six if the torches were lit.
The side effect of all this hyper-vigilance was that he was suddenly everywhere he was supposed to be, exactly when he was supposed to be there. Hermione had spent the last sixteen weeks looking at him with a sort of tearful pride, convinced his sudden, rigid punctuality was a sign of intellectual awakening. He hadn't told her that his academic salvation had nothing to do with turning over a new leaf, and was entirely reliant on Muggle antihistamines bought in bulk from a chemist in Surrey over the summer.
He had been so good. He hadn't sneezed in front of her since May.
Harry turned on his heel, staring back up the corridor toward the Gryffindor tower. It was an eight-minute sprint up the stairs, three minutes to unlock his trunk, and eight minutes back down. Potions started in four. Snape was already looking for an excuse to give him detention until the winter holidays.
He stood frozen, doing the mental math. Parkinson had never actually managed to kill him via anaphylaxis before. The time in fourth year had just been hives and a very swollen tongue that Madam Pomfrey had fixed in five minutes with a pepperup potion. Today was a Thursday, which meant the dungeon windows would be cracked for the sleeping draught vapors. The ventilation would be working in his favor. Probably.
It would be fine. He would just breathe through his mouth for ninety minutes, sit behind Ernie’s broad shoulders, and avoid looking at her altogether.
He turned back toward the stairs and began to walk, ignoring the tiny, ominous tickle already blooming at the very back of his throat.
The dungeon door didn't slam behind him, but it was a near thing. Snape’s eyes flicked up from his register, a thin curl to his lip that boded absolutely nothing good for the Gryffindor house points. Harry didn't look at him. He kept his head down, slipping through the shadows of the back row toward the third table from the back.
His table. Their table.
Pansy was already there, exactly where she sat every Tuesday and Thursday. A bottle of ink, a perfectly stacked pile of green parchment, and a silver quill were already resting a full three inches over the center line of the desk.
Pansy didn't look up as he slid onto the stool. She didn't have to. Her territory was already established. Her dragon-hide bag sat on the floor between them, a leather barricade, and she had already claimed the shared cutting board.
“You’re late, Potter,” she said, her voice devoid of actual interest. She was busy slicing ginger as she spoke to him. “I’ve already done the baseline measurements of the potion Professor Snape assigned us today. If you ruin our assignment again because you can’t count to seven, I’ll drop a horned toad into your satchel.”
“Good morning to you too, Parkinson,” Harry said. He kept his voice low, his chest tight, breathing exclusively through his mouth.
The air in the dungeons was usually damp and cold, but today it was thick with the unmistakable, sharp tang of her shampoo. It was jasmine, not the fake sugary kind, but the sort that smelled like actual white petals crushing under a shoe, mixed with a faint undercurrent of clean, soapy rain. It was a nice smell. Under any other circumstances—if his lungs weren't currently treating it like a personal assault—he would have thought it was a very nice smell.
Pansy looked particularly neat today, her hair tucked behind her ears, her robes pinned back with a small silver clip that matched her quill. She had a way of being mean that felt efficient rather than cruel, like a tutor who had simply lost patience with a dull animal. Without a word, she nudged the neatly piled roots toward his side of the board, leaving the easiest stirring job for him while she took the heavy mortar and pestle for herself.
It was an incredibly small gesture, completely wrapped in a scowl, but it made something shift behind Harry's ribs. He liked the clip. He liked the way she didn't pretend to like him, and he liked that she actually tried to make the potion work instead of just throwing her hands up. She was helpful in a deeply condescending way, which was surprisingly refreshing.
He leaned in just a fraction of an inch to clear his throat, and that was his mistake. He just really wished his nose wasn't starting to itch.
“You’re doing it again,” she muttered, her quill scratching three precise lines into her notebook in green ink.
“Doing what?” Harry asked, carefully leaning six inches to the left as she reached across him for the lacewing flies.
“That,” she said, finally turning her chin to look at him. Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t act as though my presence is an affliction, Potter. It’s uninspired. If you have a grievance regarding the division of labor, state it, rather than performing some silent tragic opera.”
“I don't have a grievance,” Harry said, his voice a little thicker than it had been two minutes ago.
Her shoulder brushed his arm. A small wave of jasmine and warm wool hit him square in the face.
Don't sneeze. Harry went absolutely rigid, holding his breath until his ears started to ring.
Pansy scoffed, pulling back with a sharp jerk of her chin. “Unbelievable. God forbid a Slytherin exists within your immediate periphery without you looking like you’ve been targeted by a switching spell.” She reached out, her fingers catching the handle of his stirring rod without looking, correcting his clockwise motion with a twist of her wrist. “Seven times, Potter. Not six. Your hand is shaking.”
“It’s not,” he lied.
“It is. You’ve been doing this since September,” she said, turning a page of her notes with a loud snap. “Every Tuesday and Thursday, you sit here like you’re waiting for the ceiling to collapse. You won't look at my notes, you won't use my ink, and you look at me like I’m a particularly aggressive boggart. If this is some sort of prolonged protest regarding the seating arrangements, save your breath. I didn't ask for you either.”
“Parkinson, I swear it’s not—”
“Save it,” she snapped, though her hand was remarkably gentle as she dropped the crushed lacewing flies into the potion one by one, ensuring they didn't splash his robes.
Harry opened his mouth to tell her that he actually thought she was brilliant at potions, that he quite liked the way she always organized his ingredients by weight, and that he spent most of his time thinking about the way her mouth curved when she was being particularly annoyed with him—but a sudden, violent tickle exploded behind his sinuses.
He clamped his jaws shut, his chest heaving as he fought the absolute catastrophe brewing in his head.
Snape appeared from the shadows behind them, his robes billowing like a giant bat. He stopped by their cauldron, his dark eyes moving from Pansy’s immaculate notes to Harry’s rigid, red-faced posture.
“An acceptable shade of lilac, Miss Parkinson,” Snape murmured, his voice dripping with rare approval. “Clearly, your standard of excellence remains untainted by the... clumsy proximity of your partner.” He flicked a look at Harry . “Keep up the diligent work. Some in this room might eventually learn through osmosis.”
“Thank you, Professor,” Pansy said, her chin lifting with a small, pleased smile that made her look remarkably pretty.
Harry barely noticed the insult. His entire focus was centered on the space behind his eyes, which felt as though it were being slowly filled with hot sand. The itch had migrated from the back of his throat straight into his sinuses, and every shallow, tight breath he took through his mouth felt like swallowing glass.
He looked down at the cauldron. The lilac liquid was beginning to settle, taking on a Mother-of-Pearl sheen that rippled lazily against the copper sides. The steam rolled over the edges of the workstation, thick and heavy, dropping low over their hands.
With the steam came a wave of something so intensely familiar it made Harry’s chest seize.
It was the smell of the broom shed behind the Burrow after a July downpour. It was a heavy hit of treacle tart from the end-of-term feasts. And wrapping through both of those things, loud and entirely unmistakable, was a massive, suffocating burst of jasmine.
Harry’s eyes watered behind his glasses. He blinked rapidly, staring at the iridescent surface of the potion.
Jasmine.
Whatever they were making was throwing his own personal paradise—and his absolute medical nightmare—directly into his face.
“Parkinson,” Harry croaked. His voice sounded flat, completely blocked up, as if he were trying to speak while pinching his nostrils closed. “What... what exactly are we stabilizing today?”
Pansy didn't look up from her parchment. “Are you serious? You’ve been sitting there for forty minutes, Potter. You’ve been stirring the potion yourself.”
“It doesn’t take a bloody genius to stir clockwise,” he muttered, his knuckles turning white against the edge of the bench. He could feel his ears turning red from the sheer effort of holding back his diaphragm. “What is it?”
“Amortentia,” she said, her voice dripping with disdain. “Professor Snape explicitly stated it on Tuesday. If you actually looked at my notes instead of treating the middle of this desk like a combat zone, you might have processed that information before the steam reached us.”
Amortentia. The room seemed to tilt slightly.
“Oh,” Harry said, a cold sweat breaking out across his forehead. “Oh, shit.”
“What do you mean, oh, shit?” Pansy’s quill stopped. “If you’re going to be a childish hypocrite about the scent and—Potter?”
Harry was graying around the edges of his mouth, his eyes wide and completely bloodshot behind his lenses.
“Potter?” she asked again, her voice losing its defensive edge. She set her quill down, her hand reaching out automatically as if to feel his forehead. “You look completely ridiculous. Are you having some sort of fit? Did you breathe in the raw ginger fumes?”
As her hand hovered near his sleeve, her body pushed a fresh, dense wave of jasmine straight towards him.
Harry flinched. He slid his weight further onto the left edge of his stool, his boot heels hooking desperately around the wooden rungs as he tried to pull his entire torso into the narrow safety of the aisle, a full foot away from her fingers.
Pansy’s hand froze in midair. The defensive frost in her face returned with a vicious speed. Underneath it, just for a brief second, her mouth went flat and thin—a flash of hurt that she tried to kill immediately by dropping her hand back to her side.
“Right,” she said. “Okay. I see how it is.”
“It’s not—” Harry choked out, though it sounded like he was speaking through a wet sponge.
“No, please, don’t strain yourself,” she cut in, her fingers gripping her notebook so hard the green parchment crumpled under her thumb. “I’m glad my presence is so thoroughly repulsive that you’d rather risk falling into the corridor than let me look at you. You don't see me throwing a dramatic fit and pushing away from the desk, do you? Even though this entire corner of the room currently smells extra much like your stinky, sweat-stained Quidditch gear and whatever damp wool you fished out of the bottom of your trunk this morning.”
She turned her shoulder entirely to him, shutting him out.
Harry couldn't even form the words to defend his clean-ish gear. His entire upper jaw felt completely numb and his teeth were clamped together so tightly his molars ached.
Pansy tapped two measured drops of the dust into the lilac liquid. The cauldron gave a small, wet pop, and a fresh, spiral-shaped plume of steam broke from the surface. She waited for him to take up the wooden rod for the counter-clockwise stabilization turns. When the potion began to drift toward a dangerous, oily grey instead, she line-sighted his hands.
Harry had stopped entirely. He was just sitting there, frozen like a marble statue, his eyes watering behind his lenses and his fingers locked around the edge of the workbench.
“Potter, what are you doing?” she demanded, the hurt instantly evaporating. “The reduction is going to separate. Stir it. Three times to the left, now, or we’ve wasted the whole hour.”
He didn't move. He couldn't move without triggering the slide.
“Oh, for Merlin’s sake, give it here,” she muttered, exasperated.
She leaned across the center line, her small frame stretching over the cutting board to grab his wrist and force his hand toward the handle. A loose, dark strand of hair escaped her silver clip, swinging out in a smooth, dark arc until the very tips of her fringe brushed right over the bridge of his nose.
The clean, damp jasmine hit his nostrils at point-blank range. Harry’s eyes crossed completely. His chest gave one massive, involuntary hitch that pulled his shoulders all the way to his ears.
“ACHHOO!”
Pansy shrieked, a terrified sound as it caught her off balance. She had been leaning so far over the center line that the sudden jerk sent her shoes sliding across the stone. Her elbow clipped the edge of the iron stand, and with a wild flail of her arms, she began to tip forward, straight toward the bubbling, pearlescent surface of the reduction.
Harry’s brain didn't have time to process the jasmine or the allergy or the sudden, catastrophic closing of his windpipe. He just saw her dark hair falling toward forty quarts of boiling Amortentia.
He lunged across the desk, his left hand coming down hard into the tray of lacewing flies as his right arm hooked around her waist. He yanked her backward with a brutal, uncoordinated heave. Pansy twisted in his grip, her fingers clawing at his robes for leverage, and together they crashed sideways off the stools.
They didn't hit the floor cleanly. Harry’s shoulder caught the leg of the heavy oak table, jolting it three inches to the left. Above them, the iron cauldron tipped, hung in the air for one agonizing second, and then dumped its contents over the edge.
A tidal wave of hot, lilac slush rained down on them.
It was sticky, thick, and instantly soaked through their school robes, pinning Harry’s trousers to his knees. The smell exploded exponentially—a suffocating, industrial-strength fog of wet earth, burnt sugar, and her personal hair products that filled the entire back corner of the dungeon.
“Good God, Potter!” Pansy gasped, her cheek pressed against his collarbone as she tried to untangle her legs from his. She was panting, her silver clip gone, her dark fringe completely plastered to her forehead with purple goo. She shoved her palms against his chest, her face twisted in a mix of fury and disgust. “How long has it been since you washed your kit? Is that what that was? You’ve been fermenting old Quidditch socks in your trunk since May and you just—you just brought them into a closed space?”
Harry couldn't answer. He couldn't even draw enough air to tell her he washed his socks three weeks ago.
His vision was going blotchy around the margins. His throat felt as though it had been lined with hot cement, his chest heaving in tiny, shallow hitches that didn't actually move any oxygen. He was shaking violently now, his fingers clawing uselessly at the collar of his shirt, trying to pull the fabric away from his neck because his brain was convinced the tie was choking him.
“Potter?”
Pansy’s voice changed instantly. The sharp, aristocratic indignation dropped out of it, leaving something small and thin. She scrambled off him, her knees splashing in the purple puddles on the floor, and grabbed his face with both hands. Her palms were covered in sticky potion, but her fingers were cold against his burning skin.
“Harry, look at me. Stop it, look at my eyes.”
He tried, but his eyelids were swelling, the skin tight and heavy. He could see her dark eyes, wide and completely dark with panic, staring down at him through the smeared lenses of his glasses. Her mouth was moving, but the sound was getting distant, buried under a loud, rhythmic roaring in his ears.
Harry. She had never called him Harry before. It was always Potter, delivered with enough frost to freeze a lake, but right now, she sounded so soft. So incredibly sweet. He wanted to tell her to say it again, just to see if her mouth stayed in that worried little line, but his lungs wouldn't cooperate.
“Miss Parkinson! Mr. Potter!” Snape’s voice cut through the dungeon as he strode down the aisle. “What is the absolute meaning of this disgraceful—"
“He’s not breathing, Professor,” Pansy said. She didn't look up at Snape. She didn't drop her hands from Harry’s face. “His tongue is swelling. He’s having a reaction.”
“A reaction to what?” Snape stopped at the edge of the spill, his black boots turning purple in the slush.. “The draft is perfectly standard. If Mr. Potter has attempted to ingest the baseline elements out of sheer incompetence—”
“How would I bloody know!” she shouted.
The entire dungeon went dead silent. Harry felt his back hit the cold stone wall as Pansy hauled him upward by his armpits with a strength he didn't think she possessed.
“Miss Parkinson, leave him where he is until I can fetch the appropriate counter-agent from my stores,” Snape said. “You will not disrupt this class further by—”
“I don’t care about your stores,” Pansy snapped. She shoved her shoulder under Harry’s arm, lifting his dead weight until his boots caught the floor. Her dark hair was right next to his ear again, but his nerve endings were too fried to care. “He’s going to the hospital wing. Right now.”
“I did not give you permission to leave this room—”
“Then give me a detention, Professor,” she said as she dragged Harry toward the door.
The dungeon doors banged open, and then they were out in the corridor.
Pansy was surprisingly solid for someone who looked like she lived on tea and biscuits. With every step she took, her shoulder dug into his ribs, hauling him forward as his boots dragged uselessly.
“Keep your feet moving, Potter,” she ordered, her voice a mix of sharp reprimand and a strangely high, tight panic. “Don’t you dare pass out on me in the middle of the corridor. I am not dragging your giant Gryffindor carcass up three flights of stairs by myself.”
Harry tried to tell her he was trying, but all that came out of his throat was a dry, clicking sound. His head rolled sideways, his cheek brushing against the damp fabric of her robes. She still smelled like that clean, rain-soaked jasmine. It was maddening. He was actively suffocating because of it, his lungs closing like a pair of rusted shutters, but his brain—entirely detached from his immune system—could only think about how incredibly small and soft her hair looked from this close, or how the silver clip had left her hair falling in dark, messy waves around her face.
She looked terrifyingly gorgeous when she was furious.
“What else was in it?” she demanded, her breathing getting heavy as they reached the grand staircase. “The potion, Potter. What did you smell? It shouldn't have been that concentrated unless—was there something else? Are you allergic to the pearl dust? The ginger? Tell me what you’re reacting to, you giant idiot.”
Harry just shook his head slightly, his eyes half-closed. He couldn't explain to her that the Amortentia had simply multiplied her by a thousand. He just let her haul him through the double doors of the hospital wing, his body feeling heavier by the second.
Pansy didn't just open the doors, she kicked them. They hit the walls with a loud crash that brought Madam Pomfrey marching out of her office with a look of severe displeasure.
“What is the meaning of—”
“Potter’s broken,” Pansy announced, delivering him to the nearest cot like she was returning a defective broom to a shopkeeper. She lowered him onto the mattress with a rough shove, then stepped back, wiping a smear of purple sludge from her cheek with the back of her hand. “His face is turning into a pumpkin and he won't breathe.”
Madam Pomfrey’s irritation vanished instantly. She was at Harry’s side in two strides, her wand already tracing a series of rapid, glowing diagnostic symbols over his chest.
“He’s covered in Amortentia,” the Matron muttered, her eyes tracking the purple stains. “And... oh, for heaven’s sake. Severe respiratory distress. Neroli and jasmine toxicity.” She flicked her wand toward her cabinet, and a small, opaque blue vial came zooming through the air into her hand. She uncorked it, propping Harry’s head up with a firm arm. “Drink this, Mr. Potter. All of it. Don't try to chew.”
Harry swallowed the thick, chalky liquid. It tasted faintly of crushed mint and copper, but within thirty seconds, the vice around his windpipe began to loosen. The hot, frantic pounding under his skin slowed down, the frantic clack-clack of his lungs settling into a ragged but functional rhythm.
“He will be perfectly fine, Miss Parkinson,” Madam Pomfrey said, her tone completely calm as she adjusted his pillows. She’s clearly seen worse. “A classic histamine cascade. It will take an hour for the hives to recede, but his airway is clear. Go wash those robes before the potion stains them permanently.”
Pansy didn't leave.
Instead, she dragged the heavy wooden chair closer to the bedside, the legs screeching against the floor, and sat down. She crossed her arms tightly over her chest, her chin tucked down, staring at him with an expression of fury. Her small mouth was pinched into a white line, her dark eyes tracking every slow breath he took.
Harry looked at her through his smeared glasses, his chest still tingling. He couldn't tell what she was angry about. Was she mad that he ruined the potion? Mad that she had to touch a Gryffindor? Mad that she’d lost house points? The uncertainty of it was making his heart thud harder than the actual allergy had.
The blue potion was working quickly now, but it was doing something strange to the back of his neck. A heavy, pleasant warmth was spreading through his limbs, untethering his thoughts from his usual defensive guard.
“Your hair is messy,” Harry heard himself say. His voice was still a little nasal, but the words came out perfectly smooth.
Pansy’s eyebrows shot up. Her arms remained crossed, but her shoulders went rigid. “Excuse me?”
“The silver clip,” Harry explained, waving a limp hand toward the side of her head. “It fell out when we hit the table. I liked it. But your hair looks nice like this too. ”
Pansy stared at him, her mouth opening slightly. The furious scowl on her face flickered, replaced by a sudden, stunned stillness. “Potter, are you delirious? What did she give you?”
“An antihistamine,” Harry said, leaning his head back into the pillow and looking at her properly. “Muggle ones are smaller. It’s not that I don’t—look, I have a whole system. I’ve had it since September.”
Pansy’s arms stayed crossed, but her chin tilted forward. “What system?”
“The Tuesday and Thursday system,” Harry explained, the words tumbling out of him in a lazy, unfiltered rush. “Two blue pills with half a goblet of pumpkin juice at breakfast. Exactly twenty minutes before the dungeon stairs. If I take them on time, I don't sneeze. I haven't sneezed since May. I had the whole thing worked out.”
Pansy stared at him, her mouth opening slightly. “You have a system. For me.”
“For the jasmine,” Harry corrected, though his head felt too light to care about the distinction. “And the east corridor on Wednesdays. I have to take the detour past the trophy room because the draft from the lake pushes the air right toward the Charms classroom.”
Pansy’s face was doing something he had never seen it do before. The aristocratic stiffness was completely gone, replaced by a strange, blank sort of confusion. Her dark eyes moved over his face, tracking the slight puffiness around his eyelids, then dropped to the purple-stained collar of his shirt.
“You knew my schedule,” she said, her voice dropping into a quiet, flat cadence.
“I knew the parts of your schedule that were relevant to—”
“You knew my schedule, Potter.”
“For safety reasons,” Harry muttered, his hand twitching against the mattress. “The time in fourth year with Daphne was just hives, but Pomfrey said if it happened again, my tongue might stay swollen for an hour. I just didn't want to risk it.”
“Potter.” She cut him off, her voice very small now. She reached out, her fingers curling around his wrist—not rough like she’d been in the corridor, but firm, her thumb resting right against the quick beat of his pulse. “Why didn't you just tell me? Why didn't you say 'Parkinson, your shampoo is trying to kill me'?”
Harry fumbled for the right words, his brain feeling pleasantly heavy under the weight of the minty potion. “I didn't want you to think… I didn’t want you to change anything. On my account. You always look so neat. And you like the jasmine. It would be stupid if you stopped using the things you like just because my lungs are broken.”
Pansy opened her mouth to speak, then closed it immediately. She let out a sharp, private breath through her nose and looked up at the stone ceiling, her jaw working as she swallowed whatever she had been about to say.
Then, without a single word of warning, she dropped his wrist.
A sudden, fierce flush crept up the sides of her neck, turning the tips of her ears a bright, damning pink. She stood up so fast the heavy wooden legs of the chair shrieked against the stone floor. Her black robes whipped around her ankles as she stormed out of the hospital wing, the doors slamming shut behind her.
Harry let out a slow breath and plopped back down onto the mattress, his head sinking deep into the starched white pillow.
The room was completely quiet now, save for the distant ticking of Madam Pomfrey’s mantel clock, but his skin still felt hot where her fingers had just been. He stared up at the high, vaulted ceiling, his mind drifting lazily under the warm, loose weight of the counter-potion.
Pansy had been right there. She had been sitting on his bed. Her hair had been messy, her fingers had been holding his wrist, and for a few minutes, there hadn't been any desk or any center line between them at all.
The dungeon door didn't slam behind him on Tuesday morning either.
He had swallowed the two blue pills at exactly 8:12 AM with precisely four ounces of pumpkin juice, tracked the twenty-minute absorption window down the grand staircase, and slipped into his stool at the third table from the back with his mental armor completely buckled on. He was prepared. The System was back on.
His stomach, however, was doing a series of miserable, high-altitude flips that had absolutely nothing to do with histamines.
You smell really good, Pansy. He had actually said that. To her face. While covered in purple love potion and looking like a drowned rat. He’d spent the last four days staring at the ceiling of the Gryffindor dormitory, agonizing over the sheer, unmitigated loser-dom of his own unfiltered mouth. He was going to have to look at her for two hours. He was going to have to share a cutting board with someone who knew he had mapped her Wednesday morning route past the trophy room like a common stalker.
Pansy didn't look up as he sat down. She was already there, her silver quill tracing a neat, margin down her parchment. She looked exactly as she always did: immaculate, sharp-jawed, and entirely unbothered by his existence. Her dragon-hide bag sat firmly on the center line.
“You’re thirty seconds late, Potter,” she said, her voice smooth and level as she reached for a handful of shrivelfig roots. “I’ve already done the chopped elements. Don’t touch the scales with your thumb this time.”
“Good morning, Parkinson,” Harry said, keeping his voice professional. He kept his eyes fixed on the blackboard, his shoulders rigid, waiting for the inevitable hammer to drop.
Five minutes passed. Then ten. They worked in a quiet rhythm that felt almost identical to every other Tuesday of the term, save for the fact that Harry was breathing exclusively through his nose, his nervous system wound tight like a coiled spring, waiting for the first hint of white floral petals to trigger the alarm.
It didn't come.
At the twenty-minute mark, the cauldron began to simmer, and Pansy reached across his side of the desk to snatch the iron ladle. She leaned in close, her shoulder brushing against his arm just as she always did to check his measurement, her dark hair swinging forward in a neat, glossy curtain.
Harry instinctively went rigid, bracing for the impact.
But the air didn't change. There was no suffocating wall of jasmine.
Instead, a faint, incredibly light scent drifted over the copper rim—something that smelled simply of clean, soapy linen, lemon water, and cold rain. It was completely harmless. His lungs didn't even twitch.
Harry’s entire prepared-for-combat brain simply short-circuited. He froze, his hand hovering over the shrivelfigs, staring stupidly at the side of her face.
Pansy didn't look back at him. She was staring remarkably hard at page forty-two of her textbook, her cheeks touched with a very faint pink that stopped just short of her ears.
“Parkinson,” Harry said.
“Don’t,” she said immediately, her voice flat, her eyes never leaving the paragraph on powdered sage.
“I was just going to say—”
“I know what you were going to say,” she cut in, her chin lifting by a fraction of an inch as she turned a page with a sharp, defensive snap. “Don’t.”
Harry stared at her for three more seconds, taking in the line of her profile and the tiny, stubborn set of her jaw. Then, very slowly, he looked back down at the bubbling grey liquid in their cauldron.
He picked up the wooden stirring rod, gripped it properly, and began the turns, smiling like a complete idiot into the steam.