A Gift For flipflop_diva: Holiday Plans, (Hermione/Pansy)
Author: kiertorata
Recipient: flipflop_diva
Title: Holiday Plans
Pairing: Hermione Granger/Pansy Parkinson
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2500 (exactly!)
Summary: Hermione has a plan for the holidays. What she doesn't expect is Pansy Parkinson wrecking that plan.
Author's Notes: Dear Kristine, hope you're having a lovely holiday! Your prompts were a thrill to work with. The ones that inspired me were 'firsts', 'characters dealing with grief and regret from the war', and 'unexpectedly stuck spending the holidays together'. Thank you L for the beta job, U for the look over and the mods for arranging this fest!
It was the first day of Christmas holidays, but Hermione Granger wasn’t in the holiday mood. All she could think about was how she was a horrible little liar.
When the Hogwarts Express disappeared into the horizon, its grey smoke blending with the dull winter sky, she set off on the path leading to Hogsmeade. But once the coast was clear, she turned on her heels and headed back towards the castle. Dodging the most popular passageways, she took the long way back to the Eighth-Year Common Room.
Soon, she would be with her schoolbooks and her hoards of novels. Soon, she would be alone in her pathetic self-imposed guilt.
At least she could be at relative ease during her holiday captivity. She had the dorm to herself. Everyone had packed the night before; Pansy Parkinson had made a particularly large spectacle about her holiday plans.
‘Daphne, which bikini should I take? Do you think this one’s too dark for my pale skin?’ she had said loudly to the other Slytherin girl sharing their dorm room. ‘Not that that will be an issue soon. Tomorrow, I’ll be lying on the beach while all of you enjoy your freezing British winter. Ha!’
Ridiculous. Of course, that hadn’t stopped Hermione from glancing her way to see her dangling a non-existent scrap of fabric in front of her exposed breasts. She had looked away fast, feeling a blush heat up her cheeks, but not fast enough for Pansy’s quick eye not to notice her.
With a smile of wicked satisfaction, Pansy had turned back to talking with Daphne as if nothing out of order had taken place. This had caused a shiver of insecurity to run through Hermione’s spine.
Apparently, despite things turning out considerably less antagonistic between them after the war, Pansy Parkinson still had the ability to get under her skin.
Brushing off all thoughts about insidious Slytherins and their breasts, Hermione muttered the password to the statue guarding the Eight-Year tower and climbed into the exposed tunnel. The Common Room was clear, which wasn’t surprising; Hogwarts was mostly deserted over the winter holidays. The war had shaken magical families across Britain and most students were grateful to spend Christmas with their loved ones.
She slipped behind the curtain guarding her dormitory and sighed with relief.
‘Aaaaah!’
A flustered Pansy Parkinson stared at her from her bed, mouth gaping in disbelief. Surrounded by a disarray of half-eaten boxes of chocolates and trashy magazines, she looked like she had most definitely not been expecting company.
‘Aren’t you supposed to be... home with your Muggle parents, doing whatever a... Muggle Christmas entails?’ Pansy said, while haphazardly reorganizing her bed. Hermione saw her slip Witch Gossip Daily under the pillow.
‘Well aren’t you supposed to be scorching yourself under the sun in Bali or something?’ Hermione said accusingly. ‘What are you still doing here?’
‘As it is... I just got an owl that my Portkey was delayed. Cancelled-my Portkey was cancelled,’ Pansy said, brushing a crumb off her fluffy, pink pyjamas. ‘Not that it’s any of your business,’ she added with a glare.
Hermione’s eyes narrowed at the sight in front of her. All she wanted was to curl up with her Ancient Runes book and perhaps dig into some of that chocolate fudge she had been saving for moments of self-pity, but apparently, she would have no rest before she dealt with Parkinson.
‘You look all too cosy for anyone to fall for that. I’m not stupid.’
‘Fine,’ Pansy said. ‘There never was any holiday to Bali. Are you satisfied?’
Hermione stood there for a moment before she threw her bag onto the floor and slumped into her bed. ‘If it makes you feel any better, I just told Harry and Ron that I would meet my parents in Hogsmeade before leaving together for Christmas.’
She had told her friends she wanted to treat her parents to some of the magical holiday atmosphere they had missed out on and that she would Side-Along Apparate home with them.
‘Why didn’t you?’
Hermione turned around on her back to face the Slytherin who stared at her in genuine bafflement. She sighed; she had no reason to tell Pansy anything, but if they were going to spend the next two weeks sharing the dorm between them, she might as well.
‘I can’t go home because my parents aren’t home for Christmas. Well, technically, they’re home. But their home is no longer my home,’ Hermione said.
‘They disowned you?’ Pansy said. ‘Wow, Granger. You must have done something pretty bad. You’d think they’d have been proud of you fighting in the war.’
‘Of course they didn’t disown me,’ Hermione said with a snort. ‘Rather... I disowned them. And I haven’t claimed them back yet.’
‘If you’re going to tell me, at least try to make sense,’ Pansy said, annoyed. Hermione threw a glare at her but proceeded to talk.
‘After sixth year, before Harry, Ron and I left to fight the war, I erased my parents’ memories, so they wouldn’t remember me. I had them move to Australia and they’re... still there. Harry and Ron and everyone think I went to fetch them over the summer.’
She drifted off, turning back to face the ceiling of her four-poster bed.
‘Why didn’t you?’ Pansy said, breaking the silence. Her voice was surprisingly soft.
‘I did. I went to their house in August. My mother walked past me without recognizing me. She was walking a dog. A dog,’ she said with a hollow laugh. ‘They didn’t have one before.
‘They seemed so happy. Like they couldn’t imagine a life elsewhere. I was going to talk to them, but... I suppose I just froze.’
She fiddled with the hem of her duvet and didn’t look at Pansy. It still gripped her insides to think about her parents, and if she had thought talking about it would help, it didn’t. She continued however, somehow compelled to speak now that she had started.
‘I’m not even sure returning their memories is possible. All I wanted was to keep them safe, so I didn’t really think that far. I guess I was more prepared for the scenario in which I wouldn’t return.’
‘You could take them to a specialist. There’s a Spell Damage department at St. Mungo’s,’ Pansy said.
Hermione remembered the way Lockhart had been when they had stumbled into him in St. Mungo’s with Ron, Harry and Ginny. She shook her head.
‘I doubt even a specialist could return seventeen years worth of memories. I think I’ll just talk to Mum and Dad some day and see if we can start building some sort of new relationship from there,’ she said. Finally looking up from her bed, she locked eyes with Pansy and said, ‘Now that I’ve poured my heart out to you, you owe me one, Parkinson. Why are you here?’
Pansy looked like she wanted to evade her question. She gave Hermione a scowl.
‘Fine,’ she finally said. ‘But this stays between you and me.’ She directed a glare at Hermione and dropped her gaze to her nails - blunt and painted a glossy dark red - where she pretended to inspect some invisible spec of dust.
‘I can’t go back for Christmas because I don’t have a house to return to. Turns out, my supposedly uninvolved parents had some secret on-goings during the war. They weren’t exactly happy when my attempt to sell out Potter put them under the scrutiny of the new Ministry. Reparations for the war turned out far more expensive than anyone thought and now we’re without our manor,’ she said, shrugging. Something about her voice made Hermione think she wasn’t as nonchalant about it as she would have liked to be.
‘Currently they’re licking their wounds somewhere in France at some distant relatives. And let’s just say that I’m not welcome.’
Despite the cool indifference she was clearly trying to project and the way she sat so stiffly in her fluffy nightshirt, Hermione had never seen her so vulnerable. She felt a small tug at her heart; she wasn’t great at emotional talk, but she wanted to say something. She was about to open her mouth when Pansy cut her off.
‘I swear, if you tell this to anybody, I’ll hex your face off,’ she said, her brown eyes narrowing at Hermione. ‘Everyone’s going to find out eventually, but I’d rather it wasn’t just yet.’
‘Whatever, Parkinson,’ Hermione said, a little relieved that Pansy was back to herself.
Pansy got up from her bed and stretched, her pyjama top lifting to reveal an inch of pale skin. She started to dig through her trunk, clearly done with talking to Hermione for the moment. When she rolled off her pyjama bottoms to change into something else, Hermione quickly grabbed a book off her bedside and started reading.
She couldn’t concentrate on the words on the pages with all the new information she needed to process. Pansy Parkinson had just opened up to her. She had been shocked when she had first seen Pansy in the room, but oddly they seemed to be... getting along.
‘I’m going to the kitchens to get food. Can’t survive on chocolate all break,’ Pansy said, interrupting her thoughts.
‘Oh? I thought that was going well for you,’ Hermione said and looked up from her book. She could swear her heart skipped a little faster when she caught a glint of amusement in Pansy’s eye.
‘You coming?’
Surprised she had been asked, Hermione said, ‘No, er, I think I’ll stay. I don’t want to bother the elves.’
‘Granger. You eat food prepared by the elves daily. Going on a kitchen raid is no less ethical than eating in the Great Hall.’
Hermione gave a dignified sniff.
‘The elves will have to go out of their way to make something specially for us,’ she said. ‘Besides, I prepared for this. I have a food stash.’
‘If by food stash you mean that pile of stale crackers and cans of... are those beans?’ Pansy’s gaze found the assortment of food Hermione had started to unpack onto her bedside table. ‘Ugh. I may be poor now, but I’m not that poor.’
‘I have some teabags in my trunk, too,’ Hermione said, hugging a can of beans to her chest in defence. ‘And water from the bathroom sink. Heating charms will do just fine.’
‘I knew you were crazy, but you’re taking this self-punishment thing a notch too far,’ Pansy said, throwing a final, amused look at her from the door. ‘Well, suit yourself. Enjoy your beans.’
Hermione watched her curvy frame almost disappear through the curtain.
‘Pansy... Wait!’ Hermione said. ‘I’m coming with you.’
*
‘What was your plan, anyway?’ Hermione asked. Three days into their holiday captivity, they no longer bothered to even pretend to hate each other. They were lying in Pansy’s bed, just having come back from one of their kitchen raids. So far, they had managed to avoid running into anyone except one of the ghosts.
It had been an interesting few days. Pansy had briefed her on all the fascinating scandals currently holding the wizarding society in suspense. Hermione had leafed through the multiple examples of bad journalism shoved at her with badly concealed judgement and laughed when Pansy had given her her version of the stories. In the name of fairness, she had introduced Pansy to some of her favourite authors and even forced her to study for half an hour. Of course, the Slytherin had seen it as torture, but in the end, she had admitted it had helped stifle some of the guilt of the past few days.
It was maddening, thrilling, and occasionally awkward, but Hermione found she liked trying out their newfound dynamic.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Were you just going to pretend you avoided the sun the entire time and came back as pale as ever?’ Hermione said.
‘Of course not,’ Pansy said. She gave her wand a lazy flick and a glass spray bottle came flying from her trunk, landing in Hermione’s hand. ‘I bought this.’
‘Tanning potion,’ Hermione read aloud off the etiquette. She turned to Pansy. ‘You do know that Belladonna combined with Lizard’s Leg is mildly poisonous, right?’
‘What?’
‘They’re both on the ingredient list on the label. Oh, of course you didn’t read it,” Hermione said, rolling her eyes. ‘It shouldn’t cause any permanent damage, but it may cause your skin to break into a rash. You could balance it out with some Fluxweed extract if you knew the precise measurements.’
‘Swot,’ Pansy said, and snatched the bottle back from her. ‘Well, I know I’ll never be owl-ordering anything off Cornelia’s Cosmic Cosmetics again...’ she mumbled. ‘Not that I’ll be ordering much of anything anymore.’
She said the last part in a normal voice, but the look in her normally sharp eyes became glossed over for a second. Then she gave a loud groan and dug her face into her pillow.
The muffled groans that occasionally left the pillows told Hermione that she had nothing to worry about; Pansy was just being overdramatic.
Pansy had bribed the house-elves to get them more chocolate. Hermione had pretended to disapprove, but she had been far too interested in watching Pansy’s way with flattery in her interactions with the elves to really stop her.
She grabbed one of the chocolates that had managed to escape Pansy’s mad craving for sugar and threw it at the girl.
‘Ow!’ Pansy said. ‘Fuck off!’
‘Stop moping,” Hermione said.
“Fine,” Pansy snapped. She emerged from the pillows, her face scattered with creases from the pressure.
With an excessive swing of her arm, Pansy reached across Hermione into the bag of sweets on the bedside table. Her arm rested on Hermione’s shoulder for a few seconds before she pulled back with a fistful of assorted sweets, which she proceeded to shove into her mouth.
Watching her chew and slurp through the giant clod of sweets was simultaneously revolting and weirdly arousing. Hermione laughed.
‘Why are we doing this to ourselves?’
‘Because we’re miserable,’ Pansy said. She licked a crumb off her face. ‘And full of self-pity.’
Pansy rolled around to face her. She was close enough for Hermione to see the individual lashes on her eyes and the smudged relics of silver eyeshadow on her eyelids.
She could admit to herself she had always found Pansy unnervingly attractive.
Pansy smiled slowly, never breaking eye contact, and Hermione held her breath. With a quick glance down at her lips, the girl leaned forward and kissed her.
It was both soft and earth-shattering. Pansy’s lips were just as delicious as she had imagined in some of her most private fantasies.
‘But you hate me,’ Hermione whispered when they broke apart. Her lips tingled pleasantly.
‘We’re not fifteen anymore,’ Pansy said with a pleasant snort. She grabbed Hermione’s hand and squeezed it. ‘Let’s turn this holiday into not complete shite.”
Recipient: flipflop_diva
Title: Holiday Plans
Pairing: Hermione Granger/Pansy Parkinson
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2500 (exactly!)
Summary: Hermione has a plan for the holidays. What she doesn't expect is Pansy Parkinson wrecking that plan.
Author's Notes: Dear Kristine, hope you're having a lovely holiday! Your prompts were a thrill to work with. The ones that inspired me were 'firsts', 'characters dealing with grief and regret from the war', and 'unexpectedly stuck spending the holidays together'. Thank you L for the beta job, U for the look over and the mods for arranging this fest!
It was the first day of Christmas holidays, but Hermione Granger wasn’t in the holiday mood. All she could think about was how she was a horrible little liar.
When the Hogwarts Express disappeared into the horizon, its grey smoke blending with the dull winter sky, she set off on the path leading to Hogsmeade. But once the coast was clear, she turned on her heels and headed back towards the castle. Dodging the most popular passageways, she took the long way back to the Eighth-Year Common Room.
Soon, she would be with her schoolbooks and her hoards of novels. Soon, she would be alone in her pathetic self-imposed guilt.
At least she could be at relative ease during her holiday captivity. She had the dorm to herself. Everyone had packed the night before; Pansy Parkinson had made a particularly large spectacle about her holiday plans.
‘Daphne, which bikini should I take? Do you think this one’s too dark for my pale skin?’ she had said loudly to the other Slytherin girl sharing their dorm room. ‘Not that that will be an issue soon. Tomorrow, I’ll be lying on the beach while all of you enjoy your freezing British winter. Ha!’
Ridiculous. Of course, that hadn’t stopped Hermione from glancing her way to see her dangling a non-existent scrap of fabric in front of her exposed breasts. She had looked away fast, feeling a blush heat up her cheeks, but not fast enough for Pansy’s quick eye not to notice her.
With a smile of wicked satisfaction, Pansy had turned back to talking with Daphne as if nothing out of order had taken place. This had caused a shiver of insecurity to run through Hermione’s spine.
Apparently, despite things turning out considerably less antagonistic between them after the war, Pansy Parkinson still had the ability to get under her skin.
Brushing off all thoughts about insidious Slytherins and their breasts, Hermione muttered the password to the statue guarding the Eight-Year tower and climbed into the exposed tunnel. The Common Room was clear, which wasn’t surprising; Hogwarts was mostly deserted over the winter holidays. The war had shaken magical families across Britain and most students were grateful to spend Christmas with their loved ones.
She slipped behind the curtain guarding her dormitory and sighed with relief.
‘Aaaaah!’
A flustered Pansy Parkinson stared at her from her bed, mouth gaping in disbelief. Surrounded by a disarray of half-eaten boxes of chocolates and trashy magazines, she looked like she had most definitely not been expecting company.
‘Aren’t you supposed to be... home with your Muggle parents, doing whatever a... Muggle Christmas entails?’ Pansy said, while haphazardly reorganizing her bed. Hermione saw her slip Witch Gossip Daily under the pillow.
‘Well aren’t you supposed to be scorching yourself under the sun in Bali or something?’ Hermione said accusingly. ‘What are you still doing here?’
‘As it is... I just got an owl that my Portkey was delayed. Cancelled-my Portkey was cancelled,’ Pansy said, brushing a crumb off her fluffy, pink pyjamas. ‘Not that it’s any of your business,’ she added with a glare.
Hermione’s eyes narrowed at the sight in front of her. All she wanted was to curl up with her Ancient Runes book and perhaps dig into some of that chocolate fudge she had been saving for moments of self-pity, but apparently, she would have no rest before she dealt with Parkinson.
‘You look all too cosy for anyone to fall for that. I’m not stupid.’
‘Fine,’ Pansy said. ‘There never was any holiday to Bali. Are you satisfied?’
Hermione stood there for a moment before she threw her bag onto the floor and slumped into her bed. ‘If it makes you feel any better, I just told Harry and Ron that I would meet my parents in Hogsmeade before leaving together for Christmas.’
She had told her friends she wanted to treat her parents to some of the magical holiday atmosphere they had missed out on and that she would Side-Along Apparate home with them.
‘Why didn’t you?’
Hermione turned around on her back to face the Slytherin who stared at her in genuine bafflement. She sighed; she had no reason to tell Pansy anything, but if they were going to spend the next two weeks sharing the dorm between them, she might as well.
‘I can’t go home because my parents aren’t home for Christmas. Well, technically, they’re home. But their home is no longer my home,’ Hermione said.
‘They disowned you?’ Pansy said. ‘Wow, Granger. You must have done something pretty bad. You’d think they’d have been proud of you fighting in the war.’
‘Of course they didn’t disown me,’ Hermione said with a snort. ‘Rather... I disowned them. And I haven’t claimed them back yet.’
‘If you’re going to tell me, at least try to make sense,’ Pansy said, annoyed. Hermione threw a glare at her but proceeded to talk.
‘After sixth year, before Harry, Ron and I left to fight the war, I erased my parents’ memories, so they wouldn’t remember me. I had them move to Australia and they’re... still there. Harry and Ron and everyone think I went to fetch them over the summer.’
She drifted off, turning back to face the ceiling of her four-poster bed.
‘Why didn’t you?’ Pansy said, breaking the silence. Her voice was surprisingly soft.
‘I did. I went to their house in August. My mother walked past me without recognizing me. She was walking a dog. A dog,’ she said with a hollow laugh. ‘They didn’t have one before.
‘They seemed so happy. Like they couldn’t imagine a life elsewhere. I was going to talk to them, but... I suppose I just froze.’
She fiddled with the hem of her duvet and didn’t look at Pansy. It still gripped her insides to think about her parents, and if she had thought talking about it would help, it didn’t. She continued however, somehow compelled to speak now that she had started.
‘I’m not even sure returning their memories is possible. All I wanted was to keep them safe, so I didn’t really think that far. I guess I was more prepared for the scenario in which I wouldn’t return.’
‘You could take them to a specialist. There’s a Spell Damage department at St. Mungo’s,’ Pansy said.
Hermione remembered the way Lockhart had been when they had stumbled into him in St. Mungo’s with Ron, Harry and Ginny. She shook her head.
‘I doubt even a specialist could return seventeen years worth of memories. I think I’ll just talk to Mum and Dad some day and see if we can start building some sort of new relationship from there,’ she said. Finally looking up from her bed, she locked eyes with Pansy and said, ‘Now that I’ve poured my heart out to you, you owe me one, Parkinson. Why are you here?’
Pansy looked like she wanted to evade her question. She gave Hermione a scowl.
‘Fine,’ she finally said. ‘But this stays between you and me.’ She directed a glare at Hermione and dropped her gaze to her nails - blunt and painted a glossy dark red - where she pretended to inspect some invisible spec of dust.
‘I can’t go back for Christmas because I don’t have a house to return to. Turns out, my supposedly uninvolved parents had some secret on-goings during the war. They weren’t exactly happy when my attempt to sell out Potter put them under the scrutiny of the new Ministry. Reparations for the war turned out far more expensive than anyone thought and now we’re without our manor,’ she said, shrugging. Something about her voice made Hermione think she wasn’t as nonchalant about it as she would have liked to be.
‘Currently they’re licking their wounds somewhere in France at some distant relatives. And let’s just say that I’m not welcome.’
Despite the cool indifference she was clearly trying to project and the way she sat so stiffly in her fluffy nightshirt, Hermione had never seen her so vulnerable. She felt a small tug at her heart; she wasn’t great at emotional talk, but she wanted to say something. She was about to open her mouth when Pansy cut her off.
‘I swear, if you tell this to anybody, I’ll hex your face off,’ she said, her brown eyes narrowing at Hermione. ‘Everyone’s going to find out eventually, but I’d rather it wasn’t just yet.’
‘Whatever, Parkinson,’ Hermione said, a little relieved that Pansy was back to herself.
Pansy got up from her bed and stretched, her pyjama top lifting to reveal an inch of pale skin. She started to dig through her trunk, clearly done with talking to Hermione for the moment. When she rolled off her pyjama bottoms to change into something else, Hermione quickly grabbed a book off her bedside and started reading.
She couldn’t concentrate on the words on the pages with all the new information she needed to process. Pansy Parkinson had just opened up to her. She had been shocked when she had first seen Pansy in the room, but oddly they seemed to be... getting along.
‘I’m going to the kitchens to get food. Can’t survive on chocolate all break,’ Pansy said, interrupting her thoughts.
‘Oh? I thought that was going well for you,’ Hermione said and looked up from her book. She could swear her heart skipped a little faster when she caught a glint of amusement in Pansy’s eye.
‘You coming?’
Surprised she had been asked, Hermione said, ‘No, er, I think I’ll stay. I don’t want to bother the elves.’
‘Granger. You eat food prepared by the elves daily. Going on a kitchen raid is no less ethical than eating in the Great Hall.’
Hermione gave a dignified sniff.
‘The elves will have to go out of their way to make something specially for us,’ she said. ‘Besides, I prepared for this. I have a food stash.’
‘If by food stash you mean that pile of stale crackers and cans of... are those beans?’ Pansy’s gaze found the assortment of food Hermione had started to unpack onto her bedside table. ‘Ugh. I may be poor now, but I’m not that poor.’
‘I have some teabags in my trunk, too,’ Hermione said, hugging a can of beans to her chest in defence. ‘And water from the bathroom sink. Heating charms will do just fine.’
‘I knew you were crazy, but you’re taking this self-punishment thing a notch too far,’ Pansy said, throwing a final, amused look at her from the door. ‘Well, suit yourself. Enjoy your beans.’
Hermione watched her curvy frame almost disappear through the curtain.
‘Pansy... Wait!’ Hermione said. ‘I’m coming with you.’
*
‘What was your plan, anyway?’ Hermione asked. Three days into their holiday captivity, they no longer bothered to even pretend to hate each other. They were lying in Pansy’s bed, just having come back from one of their kitchen raids. So far, they had managed to avoid running into anyone except one of the ghosts.
It had been an interesting few days. Pansy had briefed her on all the fascinating scandals currently holding the wizarding society in suspense. Hermione had leafed through the multiple examples of bad journalism shoved at her with badly concealed judgement and laughed when Pansy had given her her version of the stories. In the name of fairness, she had introduced Pansy to some of her favourite authors and even forced her to study for half an hour. Of course, the Slytherin had seen it as torture, but in the end, she had admitted it had helped stifle some of the guilt of the past few days.
It was maddening, thrilling, and occasionally awkward, but Hermione found she liked trying out their newfound dynamic.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Were you just going to pretend you avoided the sun the entire time and came back as pale as ever?’ Hermione said.
‘Of course not,’ Pansy said. She gave her wand a lazy flick and a glass spray bottle came flying from her trunk, landing in Hermione’s hand. ‘I bought this.’
‘Tanning potion,’ Hermione read aloud off the etiquette. She turned to Pansy. ‘You do know that Belladonna combined with Lizard’s Leg is mildly poisonous, right?’
‘What?’
‘They’re both on the ingredient list on the label. Oh, of course you didn’t read it,” Hermione said, rolling her eyes. ‘It shouldn’t cause any permanent damage, but it may cause your skin to break into a rash. You could balance it out with some Fluxweed extract if you knew the precise measurements.’
‘Swot,’ Pansy said, and snatched the bottle back from her. ‘Well, I know I’ll never be owl-ordering anything off Cornelia’s Cosmic Cosmetics again...’ she mumbled. ‘Not that I’ll be ordering much of anything anymore.’
She said the last part in a normal voice, but the look in her normally sharp eyes became glossed over for a second. Then she gave a loud groan and dug her face into her pillow.
The muffled groans that occasionally left the pillows told Hermione that she had nothing to worry about; Pansy was just being overdramatic.
Pansy had bribed the house-elves to get them more chocolate. Hermione had pretended to disapprove, but she had been far too interested in watching Pansy’s way with flattery in her interactions with the elves to really stop her.
She grabbed one of the chocolates that had managed to escape Pansy’s mad craving for sugar and threw it at the girl.
‘Ow!’ Pansy said. ‘Fuck off!’
‘Stop moping,” Hermione said.
“Fine,” Pansy snapped. She emerged from the pillows, her face scattered with creases from the pressure.
With an excessive swing of her arm, Pansy reached across Hermione into the bag of sweets on the bedside table. Her arm rested on Hermione’s shoulder for a few seconds before she pulled back with a fistful of assorted sweets, which she proceeded to shove into her mouth.
Watching her chew and slurp through the giant clod of sweets was simultaneously revolting and weirdly arousing. Hermione laughed.
‘Why are we doing this to ourselves?’
‘Because we’re miserable,’ Pansy said. She licked a crumb off her face. ‘And full of self-pity.’
Pansy rolled around to face her. She was close enough for Hermione to see the individual lashes on her eyes and the smudged relics of silver eyeshadow on her eyelids.
She could admit to herself she had always found Pansy unnervingly attractive.
Pansy smiled slowly, never breaking eye contact, and Hermione held her breath. With a quick glance down at her lips, the girl leaned forward and kissed her.
It was both soft and earth-shattering. Pansy’s lips were just as delicious as she had imagined in some of her most private fantasies.
‘But you hate me,’ Hermione whispered when they broke apart. Her lips tingled pleasantly.
‘We’re not fifteen anymore,’ Pansy said with a pleasant snort. She grabbed Hermione’s hand and squeezed it. ‘Let’s turn this holiday into not complete shite.”