Fic: Against All Odds (Pansy/Neville)
TITLE: Against All Odds
RATING: PG-13
SUMMARY: Post-Hogwarts. Neville is a Herbology Professor at Hogwarts. Pansy buys and sells illegal plants. When Pansy steals a very rare and valuable plant, she goes to the best in the business to identify it - Neville Longbottom.
FANDOM: Harry Potter (Pansy/Neville)
STATUS: Complete - 6,889 words
DISCLAIMER: I do not own anything. This story is a work of fiction and came from the deepest, darkest, corner of my imagination.
AUTHORS NOTE: Originally written for wizard-love but it didn't meet requirements. Thanks to d_andru and freakingcrups for beta reading.
***
Pansy Parkinson Apparated outside the gates of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Straightening, she gazed up at the castle she hadn’t seen in over eight years. “Hogwarts,” she greeted fondly before chuckling bitterly. “I did not miss you.”
“I’m sure it didn’t miss you either.”
Pansy directed her attention to the young man walking up the path towards her. He wasn’t handsome, or cute, or sexy, or any other word that Pansy would usually use to describe a man. He was masculine. He attracted. He was goofy in a set-your-teeth-on-edge kind of way. He was the kind of man Pansy wouldn’t flirt with in a million years.
Lifting her chin, Pansy placed her hands on her hips. “Longbottom.”
He nodded. “Parkinson.”
“I wasn’t expecting a welcoming committee.”
“One person is not much of a committee.” He lifted his wand and the gates tinkled before opening to admit her.
Pansy didn’t step through the gates; instead, she remained in place, eyeing the boy she hadn’t seen in eight years. He looked different, older. Pansy couldn’t remember him being so tall. He towered over her, even in her heels. She also couldn’t remember him being so slender; he wore a simple fitted dark green sweater with black trousers underneath an open black coat and Pansy was sure the outfit looked ten times better than it would have seven years ago. But all that said, he was still Longbottom. He was still awkward and gangly and looking slightly uncomfortable, even in his new and improved adult body.
“You’re not going to hex me the second I step inside, are you?” Pansy finally asked.
He pocketed his wand. “I wasn’t planning on it, no.” When she didn’t move, he lifted an eyebrow. “Were you planning to hex me?”
“I was hoping not to.” Pansy admitted. “I need your help.”
“Yeah, the Headmaster told me. I have to say, those are four words I never expected to hear from you.” Neville said, lips turning up slightly at each corner. “Are you going to come in, or are you going to stand outside a little longer?”
“We need to establish some kind of working relationship,” Pansy said, not moving from her position.
“I’m listening.”
“The nature of my business is-” Pansy struggled for the correct word, but Longbottom waved a dismissive hand before she could finish.
“I know where you work. I know what you deal with.”
Oh. Well that was good. Pansy really didn’t want get into the ins and outs of the career she had built herself buying and selling illegal plants. “Right, well then you can understand the sensitivity of-” she broke off and grimaced. Fuck, what she was saying? She wasn’t Granger! “Look, just don’t turn me in, all right?”
Neville rolled his eyes. “Fine. Can you come inside now? I have a class to teach in an hour.”
Pansy finally stepped through the gates and followed Longbottom across the grounds to his office beside Greenhouse Seven. He waved her through the door and she entered the small office, glancing around the room to gain her bearings before sliding into the chair across his desk.
Longbottom slid his heavy winter coat off his shoulders and sat down in his chair. “Okay, what can I do for you Parkinson?”
“I came across something.” Pansy dug into her purse and extracted a small jar. She slid it across the desk. “I’ve never seen anything like it before. I can’t find any research or notes on the colour, shape, size, petal structure... anything. I’ve taken it around to a couple of people, but no one knows much, and considering the means I took to obtain it-” Pansy broke off and waved a hand. “Let’s just say that there is only a tiny number of herbologists that I can take this to.”
Neville examined the glass before peaking at Pansy over the rim and smirking. “Maybe it’s a Pansy.”
Pansy blinked. “Was that a joke? Did you just joke with me, Longbottom?”
He chuckled. “Forget it; it was way too soon for me to say something like that.”
“Please tell me you weren’t just trying to exchange friendly banter with me.”
He looked at her.
Pansy slumped back in her seat and crossed her arms. “Let’s just go back to being enemies okay? You’re disturbing me.”
He ignored her, hand moving to the lid. His eyes flicked up. “May I?” he requested.
Pansy nodded. “Go ahead.”
He donned his gloves and gently extracted the tiny flower with a pair of tweezers. He laid it down on his desk and they both stared at it.
“It’s beautiful,” Longbottom murmured.
Pansy had to agree with that. The unknown flower balanced on the end of a thin green stem - its petals were so pale and thin that they were almost transparent. Three of the white petals were lined with pink veins that throbbed gently in a steady pulse, whilst the forth petal was primarily coloured bright pink aside from random splotches of black, white and bright green.
“Any strange effects?” Longbottom asked quietly, maneuvering the stem so he could look at the flower from all sides.
“No.” Pansy rested her elbows on the edge of his desk and watched his gloved hands work. “But I’m no herbologist. I don’t know what I’m dealing with here. I haven’t run any experiments.”
“What did the other herbologists say?”
“Nothing. They just ran some tests to see how it reacted to different spells...”
“And?”
“And nothing, aside from discovering that the flower is pretty much indestructible.”
“Fire? Ice?”
“Yes and yes. They tried to crush it, break it into pieces-pretty much everything.”
Neville grunted thoughtfully. “Is this something that you can leave with me, or...”
“I’d rather not.” Pansy stood, tucking her scarf back around her neck. “Until I know what it is, I’d rather keep it locked in my own safe.”
Neville looked up. “Where are you going?”
“I’m really not in the habit of wasting my time, Longbottom. If you don’t know what it is-”
“I didn’t say that.”
“So you do know what it is?”
“I didn’t say that either. Look,” Neville sighed and placed the flower back in its jar. “Let me do some research and I’ll get back to you in a couple of days. What is the best way to contact you?”
“You don’t contact me, Longbottom.” Pansy snatched the jar back as soon as the lid was on. “I’ll contact you on Friday.”
Without waiting for a response, Pansy flounced out of his office with a dismissive wave over her left shoulder.
*
A resounding crash welcomed Pansy on Friday evening.
“What the hell are you doing!?” Neville shouted from where he stood with a shattered plate at his feet.
Pansy supposed it had been a tad rude to Apparate into the middle of his sitting room unannounced. She looked around curiously. “Nice pad, Longbottom. What happened? You get so sick of Hogwarts during the week that you decide to go home on the weekends?”
Neville was still gaping. “How- but I- the wards...”
Pansy waved a hand cutting him off. “Oh please, I know people who know other people, who know even more people.”
“You can’t just barge-”
“Would you relax?” Pansy rolled her eyes and flopped down onto the sofa. “I’m your guest; you’re supposed to welcome me with a cup of tea and some biscuits.”
“You have got to be kidding me.” Neville ran a hand over his face and knelt to pick up the broken shards of his once whole plate. “Do you make a habit of turning up in people’s homes unannounced?”
“Sometimes.” Pansy said, propping her feet up on the coffee table and getting comfortable. “Boys are usually happy to see me.”
Neville shook his head, a slight blush crossing his cheeks. “Yes, well, I am not most boys. Would it have killed you to give me some warning? I could have been naked.”
Pansy grimaced. “My eyes are burning at the mere thought.”
His apartment actually wasn’t as horrible as Pansy had been expecting. She’d had some strange idea that his apartment would be covered in plants and crocheted rugs, but in reality, his apartment was very simple - it held all the basics in neutral colours and had just enough extras to feel homey without feeling cluttered. Pansy was oddly impressed. When had Longbottom developed such fine taste?
Her eyes fell on a photo of Longbottom and that Hufflepuff girl. Well... that explained the interior design. “Who’s the girl?” Pansy asked, nodding towards the frame. “Girlfriend?”
Neville swept the last of the glass into a dustpan and looked up. “Um... no, that’s Hannah Abbott. She was in our year, don’t you remember?”
“Hmm,” Pansy mused. “I have a vague recollection of throwing Cockroach Clusters at her in Advanced Charms.”
“How charming,” Neville said, dumping the excess glass into the trash.
“So...” Pansy prompted. “There’s got to be a story here. You have a photo of her in your living room.”
Neville sighed, brushing off his hands and leaning against the kitchen counter. “We were engaged.”
Pansy’s eyes widened. “Whoa. Way to move fast, Longbottom. Geeze. Don’t you want to live a little before you go shoving a ring on some girl’s finger?” Pansy sat up straighter and pointed across the room to him. “Did you know that it is actually impossible for two people to grow and evolve at the same rate for the rest of their lives? You marry that girl, and it’s doomed to fail before it even gets started.”
“Thanks for the pep talk,” Neville remarked dryly, “I appreciate it.”
Pansy smiled smugly. “You’re welcome.”
“Now if we’re finished discussing my personal life. I did some research and I found some information on your flower.”
“Do tell.”
“I can’t tell you. I have to show you.”
Pansy wrinkled her nose. “Ya know, boys have said that to me before. It never ended well for them.”
“Do you ever shut up, Parkinson?”
*
Of all the things Pansy imagined herself doing on a Friday night, pouring over dusty old tomes with Longbottom was not one of them. They had Apparated to the Bodlein Library and slipped inside without many issues. Now they sat at one of the intricately carved tables with a pile of old books stacked up between them.
“Look at this.” Neville slid his open text across the table and pointed to a tiny section of writing.
Pansy squinted and read aloud. “Of all the known botany of the world, there is none rarer than the Celoryllis. There are only two known plants in existence and both were discovered in the early 1400’s by Dame Phyllida Spore...” Pansy swept her eyes across to the opposite page where a black and white drawing depicted the exact flower that she currently held in her safe. “Huh. Well done, Longbottom.”
Neville reached out and tapped the page. “A name and a discovery date. That’s it. ”
“Why does Phyllida Spore sound so familiar?”
“Because you carried around her textbook for seven years. She wrote One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi.”
“Huh.” Pansy sat back in her chair and stared at the text. “A name and a date don’t really tell me much.”
Neville pulled the book back to him and flicked through the next couple more pages. “It was the best I could do on short notice. I’m a herbologist, not an academic, and I’m not a scientist either, so if you want to run some more experiments then I suggest you take that plant of yours to someone who knows a test tube from a beaker. But if I were you...” Neville sat back in his chair and mirrored Pansy’s posture. “I’d get rid of that flower as soon as you can. Sell it to the highest bidder and forget you ever saw it.”
That sounded vaguely ominous. Especially for a boy who couldn’t scare someone if his life depended on it. Pansy crossed her arms over her chest. “Why?”
“Because anything this rare, with this little information, is not something you want to be caught up in. A plant like this means big money. You won’t be the only person who wants it.”
Pansy smirked. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
*
Two weeks later, Pansy was beginning to wish she had taken Longbottom’s advice.
It started as more of an inkling than anything else. Suddenly, her contacts were asking more questions than usual, her suppliers were coming to her instead of her going to them, and Pansy was pretty sure that she was being followed. That had never happened before. But even more disturbing - the wards around her safe had been tampered with. No one had managed to get inside, but someone had given it a pretty good go.
So it wasn’t all that surprising that Pansy found herself outside the gates of Hogwarts for the second time in a month. The wind was more than a little chilly coming off the Black Lake and Pansy clutched her traveling cloak tighter around her frame, ignoring the way her long dark hair blew wildly around her face. She didn’t have to wait more than a couple of minutes for a figure to appear on the path and start making his way towards her.
“You know, when we graduated, I had really hoped I’d never see you again,” Neville said as he strolled towards the gates.
He was wearing a vest and tie over a white shirt rolled up to his elbows. It was the most Muggle thing Pansy had ever seen. She planted her hands on her hips. “Believe me, the feeling is perfectly mutual.”
Neville strolled right up to the gates and wrapped his fingers around the bars. “So, what can I do for you, Parkinson?”
“I think - and if you tell anyone I said this I’ll deny it - but you were right.”
Neville lifted an eyebrow. “About?”
“About other people wanting the Celoryllis. The contacts I usually deal with have been sniffing around and word of on the street is that I have it.”
“Any buyers?”
Pansy shook her head. “No. No one wants to buy. But someone wants to steal-”
Neville lifted an inquisitive eyebrow.
“-someone tried to break into my safe.”
Neville sighed, letting go of the bars and running a hand through his short hair. “I told you to get rid of it.”
“Yeah, Dad, I remember,” Pansy deadpanned. “Are you going to let me in or not?”
Neville’s eyes widened. “Why? What do you expect me to do about it?”
It was a good question. Pansy had to admit that she hadn’t really thought this visitation through. She had noticed the broken wards and Apparated without thinking twice. It made sense though, right? Whom else was she going to go to about an illegal flower that just happened to be in her possession? Instead of answering, Pansy dug through her bag, extracted the jar and held the Celoryllis up for Longbottom to see.
“How do you feel about becoming a temporary scientist?”
*
“So what made you decide to-” Neville paused awkwardly. “Do what you do?”
Pansy tucked a hand behind her head and stretched out on the couch in Neville’s living room. It was the following weekend and Neville had successfully managed to convert his kitchen into a temporary science lab. As a result, he was sitting on a stool bent over the Celoryllis, while Pansy lounged around drinking multiple cups of coffee.
“After the war, I didn’t really know what to do.” Pansy admitted, not really sure why she was bothering to make conversation with Longbottom in any shape, size or form. “I started working at Borgin & Burkes and dealing in plants was just something I fell into. I did all right in Herbology at school, so when people would bring in plants to sell, I was usually the one who could identify them. It all just grew from there, I suppose.”
“Do you still work at Borgin & Burkes?” Neville asked curiously.
“No. I don’t need to. I do pretty good business all on my own.” Pansy sat up and propped her arms up on the back of the couch, looking over to where Neville sat heating up a beaker on his stove. “What about you? How did you end up back at Hogwarts?”
“Professor Sprout offered me the job the second I had a graduation certificate in my hand.”
“That simple?”
“Pretty much.” Neville looked up. “I did a brief stint in the Ministry, but I was back at Hogwarts less than two years after graduation.”
“Huh.”
Their conversation dwindled into silence and Pansy lay back down on the couch, staring up at the ceiling and nursing her coffee.
Neville noticed. “You don’t need to be here, you know? This could take days.”
“I’d rather be here than at home,” Pansy admitted. “Someone has been sneaking around my house. It creeps me out.”
*
Pansy hated to admit it, but Neville was quite possibly the most patient person she had ever met. He didn’t even look twice when Pansy’s toothbrush appeared in his bathroom. He didn’t bat an eyelid when her things started appearing in his guest bedroom. Finally, Pansy stood in front of his workstation with her hands on her hips, staring at him confused.
“You do realise that I’m slowly but surely taking over your house?”
Neville hushed her patiently. “Don’t talk right now.” He was bent so far over the Celoryllis that his nose was almost touching one of the translucent petals.
Pansy rolled her eyes. “I’ll come back in a week.”
Neville didn’t even look up.
*
In the end, after Neville almost blew up his kitchen twice, he placed the flower back in its jar and they went to visit a retired and aging Professor Sprout.
“Professor Sprout always kind of freaked me out a little,” Pansy admitted in a whisper as they walked up the cracked path to a quaint cottage just outside Oxford. The path was narrow and their shoulders brushed from time to time, the sporadic touches didn’t repulse Pansy as much as she thought it would.
“Why?” Neville asked. He flattened down the front of his shirt before reaching out and rapping his knuckles smartly against the front door.
“She always had dirt under her nails, in her hair, on her clothes.” Pansy tucked her hands into the pockets of her coat and glanced sideways at Neville. “It’s unnatural for a woman to be that blasé about her appearance.”
Neville ran his eyes over Pansy’s form and Pansy knew he was taking in everything from her black designer coat to her stiletto heel boots.
“Maybe she liked her work more than she liked staying clean,” Neville suggested once his perusal was complete.
“Or maybe she-” Pansy broke off abruptly as the front door opened and Professor Sprout appeared on the other side. She looked exactly the same as Pansy remembered; apparently, there were some benefits to spending one’s life in a greenhouse.
“Neville,” Professor Sprout smiled. “What a pleasure.” She stepped forward and hugged the former Gryffindor tight. She pulled back and clasped his face between her hands. “How are you?”
“I’m going really well. How are you?”
“Oh, you know me. I’m just plodding along.” She smacked a kiss onto Neville’s cheek before pulling back and smiling brightly at Pansy. “Miss Parkinson, what a surprise.”
At least three different snarky replies manifested in Pansy’s head, she forcefully restrained them and smiled tightly back at her old Professor. There was just something about authority that made Pansy want to pull out her inner bitch. “Hello, Professor.”
“Well don’t just stand there,” Professor Sprout stepped back from the door and beckoned them inside. “Come in, come in.”
“Thanks for seeing us on such short notice,” Neville said politely as they both entered the cool dark house.
Pansy took off her scarf and blinked a couple of times, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkened interior. For whatever reason, Professor Sprout had thick dark drapes over all of her windows and the small cottage was lit only by soft candles that stood at various locations around the room. Pansy raised an eyebrow. How odd. But then, she hadn’t really been expecting anything less than abnormal.
“Nice place you’ve got here,” Pansy smirked, hanging up her coat and ignoring Neville’s warning glare.
Professor Sprout said. “Your sense of humor has not changed in the slightest, Miss Parkinson.”
Pansy wrinkled her nose and followed her old Professor down a long hallway with Neville bringing up the rear. They emerged into a small kitchen and following Neville’s lead, Pansy slid into one of the rickety chairs around a small dirt-stained table. Professor Sprout bustled around making tea and Pansy took the opportunity to sweep her eyes around the room - it was filled with plants; they rested on every available surface. It was disturbing. Pansy internally promised herself that she would never take her work home with her again.
“So what can I do for you two?” Professor Sprout asked when they all had a cup of steaming tea in front of them.
Neville caught Pansy’s eye and nodded.
Pansy sighed. She still wasn’t sure about bringing an ex-Hogwarts Professor into this, but it wasn’t as if she had a lot of choices at the moment. Neville had failed to accurately test any of his hypotheses and as a result, she didn’t know any more about the Celoryllis than she had when she first swiped it from a dealer at the Hog’s Head. Pansy dug into her coat and extracted the jar. With a flourish, she sat it down in the centre of the table.
“Oh my,” Professor Sprout murmured, clearly surprised by the appearance of the flower. “Where did you get that?”
“Is that important? My hand slipped, okay? It has a tendency to do that. I go out with nothing but the most innocent of intentions and when I come home I have an arm-full of plants.”
Neville kicked under the table. Pansy grimaced. “I just want to know what it is.”
Professor Sprout took the jar and brought it close to her eyes. “Don’t you know, Neville?”
“I know that it’s a Celoryllis. But outside of its name and when it was discovered, I haven’t been able to find anything.”
“There isn’t a lot of information about the Celoryllis,” Professor Sprout agreed, “for a long time its existence was thought to be a myth. But as you probably know, Dame Phyllida Spore was a former Headmistress at Hogwarts-”
“I didn’t know that,” Neville mused.
Pansy was already ten thousand steps ahead of him. “So you have or have had access to her journals?”
“I have,” Professor Sprout said. “And she wrote extensively on the Celoryllis.”
The suspense was almost killing Pansy. Patience had never been her strong suit. “And?” she finally prompted impatiently.
“The Celoryllis is the flower of youth. A drop of nectar from this flower will prolong the effects of aging and if enough drops are consumed over the course of several years, then the effects will halt completely.”
“Immortality?” Neville asked.
The Professor shook her head. “No. Unlike the Philosophers Stone, the Celoryllis will not grant eternal life. Its effects are only on the exterior. Whilst you may look young forever, that would not be the case underneath the skin.”
Pansy blinked. “You could make a fortune with that thing. The beauty industry would have a field day.”
“Ah,” Professor Sprout said. “A Celoryllis flower will only ever produce thirteen drops of nectar. So, the field day might be relatively short.”
“So why do people want it so badly?” Pansy asked confused.
“I imagine, with so few plants in existence, they would want to plant and grow more.” Professor Sprout stood and poured more tea. “That, of course, would be very difficult.”
“Why?” Neville asked.
“Because the conditions in which the Celoryllis thrives are unknown. Once clipped, a Celoryllis flower will live forever. This flower here has probably been passed down from generation to generation. I have no doubt that the thirteen drops of nectar have long since been depleted. But the problem is just that - the flowers were removed from their original plantation and all knowledge of it has long since been forgotten. To reproduce such a plantation could be next to impossible.”
“Dirt conditions, sunlight, is there a certain spell involved-” Neville murmured thoughtfully.
“Exactly,” Professor Sprout agreed.
“So, I have a useless flower basically?” Pansy asked dryly.
“What you have in this jar one of the greatest mysteries of Herbology,” Professor Sprout smiled.
*
“Thanks for coming with me, Longbottom.”
It was a couple of hours later and on a complete whim, Pansy and Neville had decided to stop by a local pub and have a couple of drinks. As a result, they sat in one of the smaller pubs in Oxford, nursing pints of ale.
“It’s no problem.” Neville took a sip of his beer and smiled softly. “It’s actually been sort of interesting from an academic perspective and also, I’ve somehow managed to spend time with someone I hated for seven years.” Neville paused and took another sip. “I still sort of hate you.”
Oddly enough, Pansy wasn’t offended in the slightest. “Well, I was a complete and utter bitch to you and all your friends for seven years. And for a while there... I kind of wanted to kill the lot of you.”
Neville lifted an eyebrow. “Not anymore?”
“Oh, I still want to kill you.” Pansy admitted. “I just don’t want Voldemort to be the one who does it.”
Neville looked like he didn’t have a clue what to say to a declaration like that. He just sat there, eyes tracing curiously over Pansy’s face before he nodded, accepting her words at face value.
Pansy sat back in her chair and extended her legs out underneath the table. “Do you still see everyone? From school, I mean?” Her foot knocked into Neville’s; neither of them moved away.
“Sure. I mean, not everyone, but I still see all the Gryffindors from time to time.” Neville paused. “I’d ask you the same question, but from what I’ve heard a lot of the Slytherins ended up in Azkaban.”
“You heard right.” Pansy looked out the window, watching Oxford students hurry past, laughing and chatting with their friends. After the war, anyone with a Dark Mark, regardless of their crime, was rounded up and thrown into Azkaban to await trial. Then, in the largest form of racism and hypocrisy Pansy had ever seen - every single pure-blood in the wizarding world, and every single witch or wizard who had ever been in Slytherin house was sent to the Wizengamot.
Neville followed her gaze, continuing hesitantly. “I heard that you went to trial.”
Pansy laughed bitterly. “The whole of Slytherin house went to trial. In fact, I’m pretty sure the entire wizarding world went to trial at some point in the months after the war.”
“The Ministry was scared-”
“They were stupid,” Pansy corrected. “I watched the Wizengamot trial a six-year-old little kid. He was on trial because his mum was a Slytherin.” Pansy threw her hands up. “She was a Healer, for Merlin’s sake. They sent her to Azkaban for three months for nothing more than her House affiliation.”
“I didn’t know that...”
Pansy waved a hand cutting him off. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not having a pity party. I’m just answering your question.”
“Do you miss them?” Neville asked curiously. He took the final sip of his drink and held up two fingers for another round.
Pansy shrugged. “Sometimes, I guess. I don’t know. I miss Millicent. Everyone else ... I honestly don’t think of them very much.”
Neville opened his mouth to ask another question, but Pansy cut him off, not wanting to talk any longer about things that could not be changed. “Can we change the subject?”
“Sure.” Neville nodded towards Pansy’s bag. “So what are you going to do about the Celoryllis?”
Pansy looked at Neville thoughtfully, the decision already made in her mind. Reaching into her bag, Pansy extracted the jar and pushed it across the table to Neville. “I’m not a herbologist; I really don’t know the first thing about plants aside from knowing which ones I can sell for the most money. So here,” Pansy nudged it a little further towards Neville’s surprised form. “If anyone can work out how to plant and grow this beast, it’s you.”
Neville blinked surprised. “Wait. You’re giving it to me?”
“I’m loaning it to you,” Pansy corrected. “An extended loan because I know you’re desperate to get a good look at this thing.”
“I...” Neville shook his head. “I don’t know what to say.”
Pansy smirked. “Say that you’ll keep me in the loop.”
Neville’s hands closed protectively around the jar. “I will definitely keep you in the loop.”
*
Pansy didn’t hear from Neville for a couple of months.
She no longer had the Celoryllis in her possession, but Pansy’s regular and not so regular contacts continued to ask questions whenever she stepped foot in the wizarding world. Eventually Pansy set up a fake sale at the Hog’s Head and with the heat finally off her back, life went somewhat back to normal.
Sometime in July, Pansy was cooking dinner when suddenly Neville Apparated into her living room. Pansy jumped out of her skin as the loud crack interrupted her cooking and at the sight of Longbottom appearing out of thin air, Pansy couldn’t help it, she shrieked. “Blood hell, Longbottom. You scared the life out of me!”
Neville looked extremely pleased with himself. “I’m just repaying the favour. If you Apparate into my house, I’m Apparating into yours.”
Pansy stepped away from the stove, thankful she hadn’t lit herself on fire and burnt the house down. “I don’t even want to know how you managed to lift my wards.”
Neville opened his mouth, perhaps to tell her exactly how he had accomplished it, but Pansy waved it away. “It doesn’t matter. I’m making lasagna; do you want some?”
“Wait...” Neville looked confused by the abrupt shift of conversation. “Are you inviting me to dinner, Parkinson?”
“Well, technically, you invited yourself. But you wouldn’t be here without some good news for me, so let’s just call this... a coincidence dinner.”
“You’re totally inviting me to dinner,” Neville teased, reaching out and accepting the plates and cutlery that Pansy handed him.
Pansy put together a quick salad while Neville set the table and poured them some drinks. She dished out the lasagna and within fifteen minutes, the two of them were sitting down at Pansy’s tiny kitchen table as if that had been the intention all along.
“So.” Pansy began after they had both taken a couple of bites of their meals. “What happened to make you Apparate into my living room?”
Neville’s eyes were suddenly excited. “It’s growing.”
Pansy’s eyes widened. “Are you serious?”
Neville nodded. “It took weeks to find an environment it thrived in, but for the past month, it has been growing and as of this morning it’s bulbed, which means-”
“A second flower,” Pansy breathed.
“Bingo.”
“Well done, Longbottom.” To say she was impressed was an understatement. After their visit with Professor Sprout, Pansy had assumed the whole project was a lost cause. She figured she might as well just sell the Celoryllis for a ridiculous sum based on rarity alone. But this... this was beyond all of her expectations.
“I’ve given some cuttings to Madam Pomfrey,” Neville continued, cutting into his lasagna. “She thinks she could develop some new medicines for acne and other skin conditions.” Neville paused. “Of course, the flower is technically yours, so you can choose what to do with it...”
Pansy shrugged. “I have no need for it. In case you haven’t noticed Longbottom, my youth is in perfect condition.”
“Yes, but considering you have the information you came to me for, I presumed you would want to sell.”
“No rush,” Pansy replied easily, biting into a carrot stick. “Money I have. Selling I can do anytime.”
“Okay.” Neville’s eyes narrowed slightly as if he was trying to work out the catch in the deal. “That actually works out really well since there is so much research that can still be done and Poppy-”
“I get it,” Pansy cut in with a small, amused smile. “Do whatever you need to do. It’s not like you can actually kill the Celoryllis, and there is no safer place for it than Hogwarts, so...” Pansy shrugged, “whatever.”
“Why are you so blasé about this?”
“I kind of like the idea - I steal and take so many things that aren’t mine. So, lending the flower to you and Pomfrey, it’s kind of good karma.” Pansy bit into her carrot stick and smirked at Neville “And besides, I need an excuse to Apparate into your apartment again.”
*
It became a habit; every second Friday night, Pansy would Apparate into Neville’s living room or he would Apparate into hers and they would spend a couple of hours drinking wine and discussing the Celoryllis’ progress. It was odd, Pansy never would have thought she might actually enjoy spending time with a boy she had teased and ridiculed for seven years, but Longbottom was actually proving to be okay company... for a former Gryffindor anyway.
They spoke about the Celoryllis constantly, but as weeks turned into months, conversations that featured the steadily growing plant dwindled. Instead, Pansy found herself opening up about her own life and then listening with rapt attention as Neville returned the favour.
Pansy would even go as far to say that they were friends.
*
“So I have a favour to ask.”
“I’ve never done very well with those,” Pansy admitted. She reached out and refilled Neville’s glass.
“Hear me out.” Neville took a deep breath. “Every year, the Society for Herbologists hosts a fundraising gala.”
Pansy had a feeling she knew where this was going. She was glad she had caught on so quickly because her mind was reeling with the mere thought of what Neville was about to ask her. She wasn’t too sure if she was flattered or horrified.
“Last year I took Hannah, obviously since we were engaged and-” Neville rolled his eyes, “-most of these people I only see once a year and there is a big unspoken rivalry between us and-”
“You don’t want to be the lame single guy who lost his fiancée?” Pansy supplied.
Neville winced. “Something like that. And I know we have a lot of history and most of the time we really don’t like one another, but we’ve been hanging out for a couple of months now, so I’d really like it if you’d accompany me, Pansy.”
Pansy waited for the disgust to overcome her, waited for the peals of laughter and the subsequent teasing that would result in Neville’s bone deep humiliation, but none of those things came. Instead of bitch-Pansy flying to the surface, Pansy just felt... warm.
It was disturbing. Did she actually want to date Longbottom?
Neville started to look vaguely freaked out by Pansy’s lack of response. Pansy let him stew on that for a couple more minutes before she smiled. “Sure, I’ll come with you, Longbottom.”
*
Pansy hated to admit it, but the Society for Herbologists threw a pretty glamourous party. The event took place in one of the larger ballrooms just off Diagon Alley and Pansy was extremely glad she had decided to wear a long black ball gown when she saw all the other women dressed to the nines.
The invitation had specified black and white as the compulsory colour to wear and as a result, nearly all the men wore simple black tuxedos or dress robes and the women wore black and white gowns. The ballroom was done up with white flowers and gold trimmings and outside the large ballroom, hundreds of tables were set in white finery. It was beautiful.
“Fancy,” Pansy whispered to Neville as they strolled through the massive doors into the circular ballroom.
“As I said,” Neville whispered back, holding out his arm for Pansy to take. “We can’t help but showoff a little.”
“Is there anyone in particular you are just desperate to get the best of?” Pansy asked. “Because I can be quite charming when the mood takes me.”
Neville guided Pansy over to a large group of men and woman standing together and talking animatedly. “I try to stay out of it if I can.”
“How proper. Don’t worry, Longbottom; I’ll do enough damage for both of us.” Pansy pulled out her most brilliant smile as they approached the group - this evening could actually turn out to be fun.
*
“That man is still staring at you,” Neville said disbelievingly as they sat down at their assigned dinner table later that night.
Pansy tossed a smile over her shoulder, meeting the older businessman’s eye and winking. “That’s sweet.”
“Pansy-” Neville cut in mortified. “You’re going to give that man a heart attack.”
“Relax.” Pansy turned her attention back to Neville and smirked. “He’ll be fine.”
“Why does he get brilliant smiles and all I get is smirks?”
“Is there a difference?”
“Like you wouldn’t believe.”
Pansy slowly converted her smirk to a smile, piling on the charm and dazzle. “Better?”
Neville smiled back. “Much.” His eyes drifted to the dance floor. “Do you want to dance?”
“With you?” Pansy asked. “If your dancing skills at Hogwarts are any indication, I think I want to keep my toes.”
But Neville was already standing and holding out his hand. “C’mon, it will be fun.”
“Fine,” Pansy relented, placing her hand in Neville’s warm one. “But squish my toes and I’m out of there.”
Neville laughed, squeezing Pansy’s hand and leading her out onto the dance floor. He twirled her once before guiding her into formal dance position.
“When did you learn to dance?” Pansy finally asked after a couple of minutes of successfully intact toes.
“Hannah taught me some,” Neville admitted, spinning Pansy and pulling her back smoothly. “She had this dream of the two of us dancing at our wedding. Obviously me tripping all over myself was not going to work.”
“Why not?” Pansy asked, tucking her arm closer around Neville’s shoulder. “What difference does it make? She’s not marrying you for your dancing.”
“You would say that. Miss, two people can’t grow and evolve, hence your marriage is doomed.”
“I’m a realist.”
“Are you?”
“Of course.”
“Okay, I’ll give you something real.” Neville pulled back slightly, meeting Pansy’s eyes. “Go out with me. On a date. A real one. Not some stuffy ball and not some sporadic dinner at my place - a real date, where I pick you up, you talk my ear off about shoes and the benefits of moisturizing, and then I take you home, kiss you on your doorstep, and call you three days later.”
Pansy lifted an eyebrow. “I don’t know who you’ve been on dates with Longbottom, but my dates don’t follow that formula.”
“No? What do your dates entail?”
Pansy cupped Neville’s face gently between her palms, and brought their lips together. It was soft and sweet, barely even a whisper of contact between them. Pansy stepped a little closer, deepening the contact.
Neville’s hands shook as he traced his fingertips up Pansy’s back to her shoulders, his fingers flexed into her skin as if unsure of his moves. Neville’s eager lips opened for her, begging her to taste. Pansy leaned into his body, her tongue exploring, devouring.
She gasped for breath as she pulled back, giving them both the opportunity to breathe. Clearing her throat, she tried to ease some of the hunger raging through her body. Who would have thought it would feel this way with a boy she had known and hated forever.
Neville wasn’t quite so keen to let go. In one quick movement, he slid an arm around Pansy’s waist and pulled her close.
“This is a date,” Pansy whispered against his lips, “and you don’t have to wait three days to call me.”
“Why?” Neville whispered back.
“Because you’re coming home with me tonight.”
Neville smiled and kissed her again.
END
RATING: PG-13
SUMMARY: Post-Hogwarts. Neville is a Herbology Professor at Hogwarts. Pansy buys and sells illegal plants. When Pansy steals a very rare and valuable plant, she goes to the best in the business to identify it - Neville Longbottom.
FANDOM: Harry Potter (Pansy/Neville)
STATUS: Complete - 6,889 words
DISCLAIMER: I do not own anything. This story is a work of fiction and came from the deepest, darkest, corner of my imagination.
AUTHORS NOTE: Originally written for wizard-love but it didn't meet requirements. Thanks to d_andru and freakingcrups for beta reading.
***
Pansy Parkinson Apparated outside the gates of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Straightening, she gazed up at the castle she hadn’t seen in over eight years. “Hogwarts,” she greeted fondly before chuckling bitterly. “I did not miss you.”
“I’m sure it didn’t miss you either.”
Pansy directed her attention to the young man walking up the path towards her. He wasn’t handsome, or cute, or sexy, or any other word that Pansy would usually use to describe a man. He was masculine. He attracted. He was goofy in a set-your-teeth-on-edge kind of way. He was the kind of man Pansy wouldn’t flirt with in a million years.
Lifting her chin, Pansy placed her hands on her hips. “Longbottom.”
He nodded. “Parkinson.”
“I wasn’t expecting a welcoming committee.”
“One person is not much of a committee.” He lifted his wand and the gates tinkled before opening to admit her.
Pansy didn’t step through the gates; instead, she remained in place, eyeing the boy she hadn’t seen in eight years. He looked different, older. Pansy couldn’t remember him being so tall. He towered over her, even in her heels. She also couldn’t remember him being so slender; he wore a simple fitted dark green sweater with black trousers underneath an open black coat and Pansy was sure the outfit looked ten times better than it would have seven years ago. But all that said, he was still Longbottom. He was still awkward and gangly and looking slightly uncomfortable, even in his new and improved adult body.
“You’re not going to hex me the second I step inside, are you?” Pansy finally asked.
He pocketed his wand. “I wasn’t planning on it, no.” When she didn’t move, he lifted an eyebrow. “Were you planning to hex me?”
“I was hoping not to.” Pansy admitted. “I need your help.”
“Yeah, the Headmaster told me. I have to say, those are four words I never expected to hear from you.” Neville said, lips turning up slightly at each corner. “Are you going to come in, or are you going to stand outside a little longer?”
“We need to establish some kind of working relationship,” Pansy said, not moving from her position.
“I’m listening.”
“The nature of my business is-” Pansy struggled for the correct word, but Longbottom waved a dismissive hand before she could finish.
“I know where you work. I know what you deal with.”
Oh. Well that was good. Pansy really didn’t want get into the ins and outs of the career she had built herself buying and selling illegal plants. “Right, well then you can understand the sensitivity of-” she broke off and grimaced. Fuck, what she was saying? She wasn’t Granger! “Look, just don’t turn me in, all right?”
Neville rolled his eyes. “Fine. Can you come inside now? I have a class to teach in an hour.”
Pansy finally stepped through the gates and followed Longbottom across the grounds to his office beside Greenhouse Seven. He waved her through the door and she entered the small office, glancing around the room to gain her bearings before sliding into the chair across his desk.
Longbottom slid his heavy winter coat off his shoulders and sat down in his chair. “Okay, what can I do for you Parkinson?”
“I came across something.” Pansy dug into her purse and extracted a small jar. She slid it across the desk. “I’ve never seen anything like it before. I can’t find any research or notes on the colour, shape, size, petal structure... anything. I’ve taken it around to a couple of people, but no one knows much, and considering the means I took to obtain it-” Pansy broke off and waved a hand. “Let’s just say that there is only a tiny number of herbologists that I can take this to.”
Neville examined the glass before peaking at Pansy over the rim and smirking. “Maybe it’s a Pansy.”
Pansy blinked. “Was that a joke? Did you just joke with me, Longbottom?”
He chuckled. “Forget it; it was way too soon for me to say something like that.”
“Please tell me you weren’t just trying to exchange friendly banter with me.”
He looked at her.
Pansy slumped back in her seat and crossed her arms. “Let’s just go back to being enemies okay? You’re disturbing me.”
He ignored her, hand moving to the lid. His eyes flicked up. “May I?” he requested.
Pansy nodded. “Go ahead.”
He donned his gloves and gently extracted the tiny flower with a pair of tweezers. He laid it down on his desk and they both stared at it.
“It’s beautiful,” Longbottom murmured.
Pansy had to agree with that. The unknown flower balanced on the end of a thin green stem - its petals were so pale and thin that they were almost transparent. Three of the white petals were lined with pink veins that throbbed gently in a steady pulse, whilst the forth petal was primarily coloured bright pink aside from random splotches of black, white and bright green.
“Any strange effects?” Longbottom asked quietly, maneuvering the stem so he could look at the flower from all sides.
“No.” Pansy rested her elbows on the edge of his desk and watched his gloved hands work. “But I’m no herbologist. I don’t know what I’m dealing with here. I haven’t run any experiments.”
“What did the other herbologists say?”
“Nothing. They just ran some tests to see how it reacted to different spells...”
“And?”
“And nothing, aside from discovering that the flower is pretty much indestructible.”
“Fire? Ice?”
“Yes and yes. They tried to crush it, break it into pieces-pretty much everything.”
Neville grunted thoughtfully. “Is this something that you can leave with me, or...”
“I’d rather not.” Pansy stood, tucking her scarf back around her neck. “Until I know what it is, I’d rather keep it locked in my own safe.”
Neville looked up. “Where are you going?”
“I’m really not in the habit of wasting my time, Longbottom. If you don’t know what it is-”
“I didn’t say that.”
“So you do know what it is?”
“I didn’t say that either. Look,” Neville sighed and placed the flower back in its jar. “Let me do some research and I’ll get back to you in a couple of days. What is the best way to contact you?”
“You don’t contact me, Longbottom.” Pansy snatched the jar back as soon as the lid was on. “I’ll contact you on Friday.”
Without waiting for a response, Pansy flounced out of his office with a dismissive wave over her left shoulder.
*
A resounding crash welcomed Pansy on Friday evening.
“What the hell are you doing!?” Neville shouted from where he stood with a shattered plate at his feet.
Pansy supposed it had been a tad rude to Apparate into the middle of his sitting room unannounced. She looked around curiously. “Nice pad, Longbottom. What happened? You get so sick of Hogwarts during the week that you decide to go home on the weekends?”
Neville was still gaping. “How- but I- the wards...”
Pansy waved a hand cutting him off. “Oh please, I know people who know other people, who know even more people.”
“You can’t just barge-”
“Would you relax?” Pansy rolled her eyes and flopped down onto the sofa. “I’m your guest; you’re supposed to welcome me with a cup of tea and some biscuits.”
“You have got to be kidding me.” Neville ran a hand over his face and knelt to pick up the broken shards of his once whole plate. “Do you make a habit of turning up in people’s homes unannounced?”
“Sometimes.” Pansy said, propping her feet up on the coffee table and getting comfortable. “Boys are usually happy to see me.”
Neville shook his head, a slight blush crossing his cheeks. “Yes, well, I am not most boys. Would it have killed you to give me some warning? I could have been naked.”
Pansy grimaced. “My eyes are burning at the mere thought.”
His apartment actually wasn’t as horrible as Pansy had been expecting. She’d had some strange idea that his apartment would be covered in plants and crocheted rugs, but in reality, his apartment was very simple - it held all the basics in neutral colours and had just enough extras to feel homey without feeling cluttered. Pansy was oddly impressed. When had Longbottom developed such fine taste?
Her eyes fell on a photo of Longbottom and that Hufflepuff girl. Well... that explained the interior design. “Who’s the girl?” Pansy asked, nodding towards the frame. “Girlfriend?”
Neville swept the last of the glass into a dustpan and looked up. “Um... no, that’s Hannah Abbott. She was in our year, don’t you remember?”
“Hmm,” Pansy mused. “I have a vague recollection of throwing Cockroach Clusters at her in Advanced Charms.”
“How charming,” Neville said, dumping the excess glass into the trash.
“So...” Pansy prompted. “There’s got to be a story here. You have a photo of her in your living room.”
Neville sighed, brushing off his hands and leaning against the kitchen counter. “We were engaged.”
Pansy’s eyes widened. “Whoa. Way to move fast, Longbottom. Geeze. Don’t you want to live a little before you go shoving a ring on some girl’s finger?” Pansy sat up straighter and pointed across the room to him. “Did you know that it is actually impossible for two people to grow and evolve at the same rate for the rest of their lives? You marry that girl, and it’s doomed to fail before it even gets started.”
“Thanks for the pep talk,” Neville remarked dryly, “I appreciate it.”
Pansy smiled smugly. “You’re welcome.”
“Now if we’re finished discussing my personal life. I did some research and I found some information on your flower.”
“Do tell.”
“I can’t tell you. I have to show you.”
Pansy wrinkled her nose. “Ya know, boys have said that to me before. It never ended well for them.”
“Do you ever shut up, Parkinson?”
*
Of all the things Pansy imagined herself doing on a Friday night, pouring over dusty old tomes with Longbottom was not one of them. They had Apparated to the Bodlein Library and slipped inside without many issues. Now they sat at one of the intricately carved tables with a pile of old books stacked up between them.
“Look at this.” Neville slid his open text across the table and pointed to a tiny section of writing.
Pansy squinted and read aloud. “Of all the known botany of the world, there is none rarer than the Celoryllis. There are only two known plants in existence and both were discovered in the early 1400’s by Dame Phyllida Spore...” Pansy swept her eyes across to the opposite page where a black and white drawing depicted the exact flower that she currently held in her safe. “Huh. Well done, Longbottom.”
Neville reached out and tapped the page. “A name and a discovery date. That’s it. ”
“Why does Phyllida Spore sound so familiar?”
“Because you carried around her textbook for seven years. She wrote One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi.”
“Huh.” Pansy sat back in her chair and stared at the text. “A name and a date don’t really tell me much.”
Neville pulled the book back to him and flicked through the next couple more pages. “It was the best I could do on short notice. I’m a herbologist, not an academic, and I’m not a scientist either, so if you want to run some more experiments then I suggest you take that plant of yours to someone who knows a test tube from a beaker. But if I were you...” Neville sat back in his chair and mirrored Pansy’s posture. “I’d get rid of that flower as soon as you can. Sell it to the highest bidder and forget you ever saw it.”
That sounded vaguely ominous. Especially for a boy who couldn’t scare someone if his life depended on it. Pansy crossed her arms over her chest. “Why?”
“Because anything this rare, with this little information, is not something you want to be caught up in. A plant like this means big money. You won’t be the only person who wants it.”
Pansy smirked. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
*
Two weeks later, Pansy was beginning to wish she had taken Longbottom’s advice.
It started as more of an inkling than anything else. Suddenly, her contacts were asking more questions than usual, her suppliers were coming to her instead of her going to them, and Pansy was pretty sure that she was being followed. That had never happened before. But even more disturbing - the wards around her safe had been tampered with. No one had managed to get inside, but someone had given it a pretty good go.
So it wasn’t all that surprising that Pansy found herself outside the gates of Hogwarts for the second time in a month. The wind was more than a little chilly coming off the Black Lake and Pansy clutched her traveling cloak tighter around her frame, ignoring the way her long dark hair blew wildly around her face. She didn’t have to wait more than a couple of minutes for a figure to appear on the path and start making his way towards her.
“You know, when we graduated, I had really hoped I’d never see you again,” Neville said as he strolled towards the gates.
He was wearing a vest and tie over a white shirt rolled up to his elbows. It was the most Muggle thing Pansy had ever seen. She planted her hands on her hips. “Believe me, the feeling is perfectly mutual.”
Neville strolled right up to the gates and wrapped his fingers around the bars. “So, what can I do for you, Parkinson?”
“I think - and if you tell anyone I said this I’ll deny it - but you were right.”
Neville lifted an eyebrow. “About?”
“About other people wanting the Celoryllis. The contacts I usually deal with have been sniffing around and word of on the street is that I have it.”
“Any buyers?”
Pansy shook her head. “No. No one wants to buy. But someone wants to steal-”
Neville lifted an inquisitive eyebrow.
“-someone tried to break into my safe.”
Neville sighed, letting go of the bars and running a hand through his short hair. “I told you to get rid of it.”
“Yeah, Dad, I remember,” Pansy deadpanned. “Are you going to let me in or not?”
Neville’s eyes widened. “Why? What do you expect me to do about it?”
It was a good question. Pansy had to admit that she hadn’t really thought this visitation through. She had noticed the broken wards and Apparated without thinking twice. It made sense though, right? Whom else was she going to go to about an illegal flower that just happened to be in her possession? Instead of answering, Pansy dug through her bag, extracted the jar and held the Celoryllis up for Longbottom to see.
“How do you feel about becoming a temporary scientist?”
*
“So what made you decide to-” Neville paused awkwardly. “Do what you do?”
Pansy tucked a hand behind her head and stretched out on the couch in Neville’s living room. It was the following weekend and Neville had successfully managed to convert his kitchen into a temporary science lab. As a result, he was sitting on a stool bent over the Celoryllis, while Pansy lounged around drinking multiple cups of coffee.
“After the war, I didn’t really know what to do.” Pansy admitted, not really sure why she was bothering to make conversation with Longbottom in any shape, size or form. “I started working at Borgin & Burkes and dealing in plants was just something I fell into. I did all right in Herbology at school, so when people would bring in plants to sell, I was usually the one who could identify them. It all just grew from there, I suppose.”
“Do you still work at Borgin & Burkes?” Neville asked curiously.
“No. I don’t need to. I do pretty good business all on my own.” Pansy sat up and propped her arms up on the back of the couch, looking over to where Neville sat heating up a beaker on his stove. “What about you? How did you end up back at Hogwarts?”
“Professor Sprout offered me the job the second I had a graduation certificate in my hand.”
“That simple?”
“Pretty much.” Neville looked up. “I did a brief stint in the Ministry, but I was back at Hogwarts less than two years after graduation.”
“Huh.”
Their conversation dwindled into silence and Pansy lay back down on the couch, staring up at the ceiling and nursing her coffee.
Neville noticed. “You don’t need to be here, you know? This could take days.”
“I’d rather be here than at home,” Pansy admitted. “Someone has been sneaking around my house. It creeps me out.”
*
Pansy hated to admit it, but Neville was quite possibly the most patient person she had ever met. He didn’t even look twice when Pansy’s toothbrush appeared in his bathroom. He didn’t bat an eyelid when her things started appearing in his guest bedroom. Finally, Pansy stood in front of his workstation with her hands on her hips, staring at him confused.
“You do realise that I’m slowly but surely taking over your house?”
Neville hushed her patiently. “Don’t talk right now.” He was bent so far over the Celoryllis that his nose was almost touching one of the translucent petals.
Pansy rolled her eyes. “I’ll come back in a week.”
Neville didn’t even look up.
*
In the end, after Neville almost blew up his kitchen twice, he placed the flower back in its jar and they went to visit a retired and aging Professor Sprout.
“Professor Sprout always kind of freaked me out a little,” Pansy admitted in a whisper as they walked up the cracked path to a quaint cottage just outside Oxford. The path was narrow and their shoulders brushed from time to time, the sporadic touches didn’t repulse Pansy as much as she thought it would.
“Why?” Neville asked. He flattened down the front of his shirt before reaching out and rapping his knuckles smartly against the front door.
“She always had dirt under her nails, in her hair, on her clothes.” Pansy tucked her hands into the pockets of her coat and glanced sideways at Neville. “It’s unnatural for a woman to be that blasé about her appearance.”
Neville ran his eyes over Pansy’s form and Pansy knew he was taking in everything from her black designer coat to her stiletto heel boots.
“Maybe she liked her work more than she liked staying clean,” Neville suggested once his perusal was complete.
“Or maybe she-” Pansy broke off abruptly as the front door opened and Professor Sprout appeared on the other side. She looked exactly the same as Pansy remembered; apparently, there were some benefits to spending one’s life in a greenhouse.
“Neville,” Professor Sprout smiled. “What a pleasure.” She stepped forward and hugged the former Gryffindor tight. She pulled back and clasped his face between her hands. “How are you?”
“I’m going really well. How are you?”
“Oh, you know me. I’m just plodding along.” She smacked a kiss onto Neville’s cheek before pulling back and smiling brightly at Pansy. “Miss Parkinson, what a surprise.”
At least three different snarky replies manifested in Pansy’s head, she forcefully restrained them and smiled tightly back at her old Professor. There was just something about authority that made Pansy want to pull out her inner bitch. “Hello, Professor.”
“Well don’t just stand there,” Professor Sprout stepped back from the door and beckoned them inside. “Come in, come in.”
“Thanks for seeing us on such short notice,” Neville said politely as they both entered the cool dark house.
Pansy took off her scarf and blinked a couple of times, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkened interior. For whatever reason, Professor Sprout had thick dark drapes over all of her windows and the small cottage was lit only by soft candles that stood at various locations around the room. Pansy raised an eyebrow. How odd. But then, she hadn’t really been expecting anything less than abnormal.
“Nice place you’ve got here,” Pansy smirked, hanging up her coat and ignoring Neville’s warning glare.
Professor Sprout said. “Your sense of humor has not changed in the slightest, Miss Parkinson.”
Pansy wrinkled her nose and followed her old Professor down a long hallway with Neville bringing up the rear. They emerged into a small kitchen and following Neville’s lead, Pansy slid into one of the rickety chairs around a small dirt-stained table. Professor Sprout bustled around making tea and Pansy took the opportunity to sweep her eyes around the room - it was filled with plants; they rested on every available surface. It was disturbing. Pansy internally promised herself that she would never take her work home with her again.
“So what can I do for you two?” Professor Sprout asked when they all had a cup of steaming tea in front of them.
Neville caught Pansy’s eye and nodded.
Pansy sighed. She still wasn’t sure about bringing an ex-Hogwarts Professor into this, but it wasn’t as if she had a lot of choices at the moment. Neville had failed to accurately test any of his hypotheses and as a result, she didn’t know any more about the Celoryllis than she had when she first swiped it from a dealer at the Hog’s Head. Pansy dug into her coat and extracted the jar. With a flourish, she sat it down in the centre of the table.
“Oh my,” Professor Sprout murmured, clearly surprised by the appearance of the flower. “Where did you get that?”
“Is that important? My hand slipped, okay? It has a tendency to do that. I go out with nothing but the most innocent of intentions and when I come home I have an arm-full of plants.”
Neville kicked under the table. Pansy grimaced. “I just want to know what it is.”
Professor Sprout took the jar and brought it close to her eyes. “Don’t you know, Neville?”
“I know that it’s a Celoryllis. But outside of its name and when it was discovered, I haven’t been able to find anything.”
“There isn’t a lot of information about the Celoryllis,” Professor Sprout agreed, “for a long time its existence was thought to be a myth. But as you probably know, Dame Phyllida Spore was a former Headmistress at Hogwarts-”
“I didn’t know that,” Neville mused.
Pansy was already ten thousand steps ahead of him. “So you have or have had access to her journals?”
“I have,” Professor Sprout said. “And she wrote extensively on the Celoryllis.”
The suspense was almost killing Pansy. Patience had never been her strong suit. “And?” she finally prompted impatiently.
“The Celoryllis is the flower of youth. A drop of nectar from this flower will prolong the effects of aging and if enough drops are consumed over the course of several years, then the effects will halt completely.”
“Immortality?” Neville asked.
The Professor shook her head. “No. Unlike the Philosophers Stone, the Celoryllis will not grant eternal life. Its effects are only on the exterior. Whilst you may look young forever, that would not be the case underneath the skin.”
Pansy blinked. “You could make a fortune with that thing. The beauty industry would have a field day.”
“Ah,” Professor Sprout said. “A Celoryllis flower will only ever produce thirteen drops of nectar. So, the field day might be relatively short.”
“So why do people want it so badly?” Pansy asked confused.
“I imagine, with so few plants in existence, they would want to plant and grow more.” Professor Sprout stood and poured more tea. “That, of course, would be very difficult.”
“Why?” Neville asked.
“Because the conditions in which the Celoryllis thrives are unknown. Once clipped, a Celoryllis flower will live forever. This flower here has probably been passed down from generation to generation. I have no doubt that the thirteen drops of nectar have long since been depleted. But the problem is just that - the flowers were removed from their original plantation and all knowledge of it has long since been forgotten. To reproduce such a plantation could be next to impossible.”
“Dirt conditions, sunlight, is there a certain spell involved-” Neville murmured thoughtfully.
“Exactly,” Professor Sprout agreed.
“So, I have a useless flower basically?” Pansy asked dryly.
“What you have in this jar one of the greatest mysteries of Herbology,” Professor Sprout smiled.
*
“Thanks for coming with me, Longbottom.”
It was a couple of hours later and on a complete whim, Pansy and Neville had decided to stop by a local pub and have a couple of drinks. As a result, they sat in one of the smaller pubs in Oxford, nursing pints of ale.
“It’s no problem.” Neville took a sip of his beer and smiled softly. “It’s actually been sort of interesting from an academic perspective and also, I’ve somehow managed to spend time with someone I hated for seven years.” Neville paused and took another sip. “I still sort of hate you.”
Oddly enough, Pansy wasn’t offended in the slightest. “Well, I was a complete and utter bitch to you and all your friends for seven years. And for a while there... I kind of wanted to kill the lot of you.”
Neville lifted an eyebrow. “Not anymore?”
“Oh, I still want to kill you.” Pansy admitted. “I just don’t want Voldemort to be the one who does it.”
Neville looked like he didn’t have a clue what to say to a declaration like that. He just sat there, eyes tracing curiously over Pansy’s face before he nodded, accepting her words at face value.
Pansy sat back in her chair and extended her legs out underneath the table. “Do you still see everyone? From school, I mean?” Her foot knocked into Neville’s; neither of them moved away.
“Sure. I mean, not everyone, but I still see all the Gryffindors from time to time.” Neville paused. “I’d ask you the same question, but from what I’ve heard a lot of the Slytherins ended up in Azkaban.”
“You heard right.” Pansy looked out the window, watching Oxford students hurry past, laughing and chatting with their friends. After the war, anyone with a Dark Mark, regardless of their crime, was rounded up and thrown into Azkaban to await trial. Then, in the largest form of racism and hypocrisy Pansy had ever seen - every single pure-blood in the wizarding world, and every single witch or wizard who had ever been in Slytherin house was sent to the Wizengamot.
Neville followed her gaze, continuing hesitantly. “I heard that you went to trial.”
Pansy laughed bitterly. “The whole of Slytherin house went to trial. In fact, I’m pretty sure the entire wizarding world went to trial at some point in the months after the war.”
“The Ministry was scared-”
“They were stupid,” Pansy corrected. “I watched the Wizengamot trial a six-year-old little kid. He was on trial because his mum was a Slytherin.” Pansy threw her hands up. “She was a Healer, for Merlin’s sake. They sent her to Azkaban for three months for nothing more than her House affiliation.”
“I didn’t know that...”
Pansy waved a hand cutting him off. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not having a pity party. I’m just answering your question.”
“Do you miss them?” Neville asked curiously. He took the final sip of his drink and held up two fingers for another round.
Pansy shrugged. “Sometimes, I guess. I don’t know. I miss Millicent. Everyone else ... I honestly don’t think of them very much.”
Neville opened his mouth to ask another question, but Pansy cut him off, not wanting to talk any longer about things that could not be changed. “Can we change the subject?”
“Sure.” Neville nodded towards Pansy’s bag. “So what are you going to do about the Celoryllis?”
Pansy looked at Neville thoughtfully, the decision already made in her mind. Reaching into her bag, Pansy extracted the jar and pushed it across the table to Neville. “I’m not a herbologist; I really don’t know the first thing about plants aside from knowing which ones I can sell for the most money. So here,” Pansy nudged it a little further towards Neville’s surprised form. “If anyone can work out how to plant and grow this beast, it’s you.”
Neville blinked surprised. “Wait. You’re giving it to me?”
“I’m loaning it to you,” Pansy corrected. “An extended loan because I know you’re desperate to get a good look at this thing.”
“I...” Neville shook his head. “I don’t know what to say.”
Pansy smirked. “Say that you’ll keep me in the loop.”
Neville’s hands closed protectively around the jar. “I will definitely keep you in the loop.”
*
Pansy didn’t hear from Neville for a couple of months.
She no longer had the Celoryllis in her possession, but Pansy’s regular and not so regular contacts continued to ask questions whenever she stepped foot in the wizarding world. Eventually Pansy set up a fake sale at the Hog’s Head and with the heat finally off her back, life went somewhat back to normal.
Sometime in July, Pansy was cooking dinner when suddenly Neville Apparated into her living room. Pansy jumped out of her skin as the loud crack interrupted her cooking and at the sight of Longbottom appearing out of thin air, Pansy couldn’t help it, she shrieked. “Blood hell, Longbottom. You scared the life out of me!”
Neville looked extremely pleased with himself. “I’m just repaying the favour. If you Apparate into my house, I’m Apparating into yours.”
Pansy stepped away from the stove, thankful she hadn’t lit herself on fire and burnt the house down. “I don’t even want to know how you managed to lift my wards.”
Neville opened his mouth, perhaps to tell her exactly how he had accomplished it, but Pansy waved it away. “It doesn’t matter. I’m making lasagna; do you want some?”
“Wait...” Neville looked confused by the abrupt shift of conversation. “Are you inviting me to dinner, Parkinson?”
“Well, technically, you invited yourself. But you wouldn’t be here without some good news for me, so let’s just call this... a coincidence dinner.”
“You’re totally inviting me to dinner,” Neville teased, reaching out and accepting the plates and cutlery that Pansy handed him.
Pansy put together a quick salad while Neville set the table and poured them some drinks. She dished out the lasagna and within fifteen minutes, the two of them were sitting down at Pansy’s tiny kitchen table as if that had been the intention all along.
“So.” Pansy began after they had both taken a couple of bites of their meals. “What happened to make you Apparate into my living room?”
Neville’s eyes were suddenly excited. “It’s growing.”
Pansy’s eyes widened. “Are you serious?”
Neville nodded. “It took weeks to find an environment it thrived in, but for the past month, it has been growing and as of this morning it’s bulbed, which means-”
“A second flower,” Pansy breathed.
“Bingo.”
“Well done, Longbottom.” To say she was impressed was an understatement. After their visit with Professor Sprout, Pansy had assumed the whole project was a lost cause. She figured she might as well just sell the Celoryllis for a ridiculous sum based on rarity alone. But this... this was beyond all of her expectations.
“I’ve given some cuttings to Madam Pomfrey,” Neville continued, cutting into his lasagna. “She thinks she could develop some new medicines for acne and other skin conditions.” Neville paused. “Of course, the flower is technically yours, so you can choose what to do with it...”
Pansy shrugged. “I have no need for it. In case you haven’t noticed Longbottom, my youth is in perfect condition.”
“Yes, but considering you have the information you came to me for, I presumed you would want to sell.”
“No rush,” Pansy replied easily, biting into a carrot stick. “Money I have. Selling I can do anytime.”
“Okay.” Neville’s eyes narrowed slightly as if he was trying to work out the catch in the deal. “That actually works out really well since there is so much research that can still be done and Poppy-”
“I get it,” Pansy cut in with a small, amused smile. “Do whatever you need to do. It’s not like you can actually kill the Celoryllis, and there is no safer place for it than Hogwarts, so...” Pansy shrugged, “whatever.”
“Why are you so blasé about this?”
“I kind of like the idea - I steal and take so many things that aren’t mine. So, lending the flower to you and Pomfrey, it’s kind of good karma.” Pansy bit into her carrot stick and smirked at Neville “And besides, I need an excuse to Apparate into your apartment again.”
*
It became a habit; every second Friday night, Pansy would Apparate into Neville’s living room or he would Apparate into hers and they would spend a couple of hours drinking wine and discussing the Celoryllis’ progress. It was odd, Pansy never would have thought she might actually enjoy spending time with a boy she had teased and ridiculed for seven years, but Longbottom was actually proving to be okay company... for a former Gryffindor anyway.
They spoke about the Celoryllis constantly, but as weeks turned into months, conversations that featured the steadily growing plant dwindled. Instead, Pansy found herself opening up about her own life and then listening with rapt attention as Neville returned the favour.
Pansy would even go as far to say that they were friends.
*
“So I have a favour to ask.”
“I’ve never done very well with those,” Pansy admitted. She reached out and refilled Neville’s glass.
“Hear me out.” Neville took a deep breath. “Every year, the Society for Herbologists hosts a fundraising gala.”
Pansy had a feeling she knew where this was going. She was glad she had caught on so quickly because her mind was reeling with the mere thought of what Neville was about to ask her. She wasn’t too sure if she was flattered or horrified.
“Last year I took Hannah, obviously since we were engaged and-” Neville rolled his eyes, “-most of these people I only see once a year and there is a big unspoken rivalry between us and-”
“You don’t want to be the lame single guy who lost his fiancée?” Pansy supplied.
Neville winced. “Something like that. And I know we have a lot of history and most of the time we really don’t like one another, but we’ve been hanging out for a couple of months now, so I’d really like it if you’d accompany me, Pansy.”
Pansy waited for the disgust to overcome her, waited for the peals of laughter and the subsequent teasing that would result in Neville’s bone deep humiliation, but none of those things came. Instead of bitch-Pansy flying to the surface, Pansy just felt... warm.
It was disturbing. Did she actually want to date Longbottom?
Neville started to look vaguely freaked out by Pansy’s lack of response. Pansy let him stew on that for a couple more minutes before she smiled. “Sure, I’ll come with you, Longbottom.”
*
Pansy hated to admit it, but the Society for Herbologists threw a pretty glamourous party. The event took place in one of the larger ballrooms just off Diagon Alley and Pansy was extremely glad she had decided to wear a long black ball gown when she saw all the other women dressed to the nines.
The invitation had specified black and white as the compulsory colour to wear and as a result, nearly all the men wore simple black tuxedos or dress robes and the women wore black and white gowns. The ballroom was done up with white flowers and gold trimmings and outside the large ballroom, hundreds of tables were set in white finery. It was beautiful.
“Fancy,” Pansy whispered to Neville as they strolled through the massive doors into the circular ballroom.
“As I said,” Neville whispered back, holding out his arm for Pansy to take. “We can’t help but showoff a little.”
“Is there anyone in particular you are just desperate to get the best of?” Pansy asked. “Because I can be quite charming when the mood takes me.”
Neville guided Pansy over to a large group of men and woman standing together and talking animatedly. “I try to stay out of it if I can.”
“How proper. Don’t worry, Longbottom; I’ll do enough damage for both of us.” Pansy pulled out her most brilliant smile as they approached the group - this evening could actually turn out to be fun.
*
“That man is still staring at you,” Neville said disbelievingly as they sat down at their assigned dinner table later that night.
Pansy tossed a smile over her shoulder, meeting the older businessman’s eye and winking. “That’s sweet.”
“Pansy-” Neville cut in mortified. “You’re going to give that man a heart attack.”
“Relax.” Pansy turned her attention back to Neville and smirked. “He’ll be fine.”
“Why does he get brilliant smiles and all I get is smirks?”
“Is there a difference?”
“Like you wouldn’t believe.”
Pansy slowly converted her smirk to a smile, piling on the charm and dazzle. “Better?”
Neville smiled back. “Much.” His eyes drifted to the dance floor. “Do you want to dance?”
“With you?” Pansy asked. “If your dancing skills at Hogwarts are any indication, I think I want to keep my toes.”
But Neville was already standing and holding out his hand. “C’mon, it will be fun.”
“Fine,” Pansy relented, placing her hand in Neville’s warm one. “But squish my toes and I’m out of there.”
Neville laughed, squeezing Pansy’s hand and leading her out onto the dance floor. He twirled her once before guiding her into formal dance position.
“When did you learn to dance?” Pansy finally asked after a couple of minutes of successfully intact toes.
“Hannah taught me some,” Neville admitted, spinning Pansy and pulling her back smoothly. “She had this dream of the two of us dancing at our wedding. Obviously me tripping all over myself was not going to work.”
“Why not?” Pansy asked, tucking her arm closer around Neville’s shoulder. “What difference does it make? She’s not marrying you for your dancing.”
“You would say that. Miss, two people can’t grow and evolve, hence your marriage is doomed.”
“I’m a realist.”
“Are you?”
“Of course.”
“Okay, I’ll give you something real.” Neville pulled back slightly, meeting Pansy’s eyes. “Go out with me. On a date. A real one. Not some stuffy ball and not some sporadic dinner at my place - a real date, where I pick you up, you talk my ear off about shoes and the benefits of moisturizing, and then I take you home, kiss you on your doorstep, and call you three days later.”
Pansy lifted an eyebrow. “I don’t know who you’ve been on dates with Longbottom, but my dates don’t follow that formula.”
“No? What do your dates entail?”
Pansy cupped Neville’s face gently between her palms, and brought their lips together. It was soft and sweet, barely even a whisper of contact between them. Pansy stepped a little closer, deepening the contact.
Neville’s hands shook as he traced his fingertips up Pansy’s back to her shoulders, his fingers flexed into her skin as if unsure of his moves. Neville’s eager lips opened for her, begging her to taste. Pansy leaned into his body, her tongue exploring, devouring.
She gasped for breath as she pulled back, giving them both the opportunity to breathe. Clearing her throat, she tried to ease some of the hunger raging through her body. Who would have thought it would feel this way with a boy she had known and hated forever.
Neville wasn’t quite so keen to let go. In one quick movement, he slid an arm around Pansy’s waist and pulled her close.
“This is a date,” Pansy whispered against his lips, “and you don’t have to wait three days to call me.”
“Why?” Neville whispered back.
“Because you’re coming home with me tonight.”
Neville smiled and kissed her again.
END