Archive of Our Own

She arrives half an hour after she finishes crying. Her eyes are still puffy and her  nose is red. When she hands him the flyer he had stuck on the bulletin board in the student center, her hand shakes, but he either doesn't notice or pretends not to. He says, “Oh, it’s you,” when he takes it, which could mean that he genuinely doesn’t notice anything amiss with her at all, and truthfully, she really doesn’t expect anything less from Ronald Weasley. 

“Thanks,” she replies drily.

Like he only just realizes what he’d said, Ron winces and rubs the back of his neck with his free hand while peering down at his own flyer. “No, sorry.” He gives her an awkward smile. “I didn’t mean anything, really, I just didn’t expect you—I mean, it isn’t like we get on, you know? And this doesn’t seem like something you’d do. Really, I was expecting someone else. Someone who doesn’t have a boyfriend who hates me, someone who doesn’t hate me at all .”

She doesn’t respond.

“I mean, really,” he continues. “An entire campus of students, nearly twenty thousand of us and it’s you .”

“If you don’t want me, I’ll go.”

He shifts his weight from foot to foot and Pansy’s just about to swallow her pride and turn on her heel to hide her burning eyes when he sighs. “No, it’s fine. Stay.”

“What a warm welcome.”

Ron rolls his eyes as she walks past him into his flat. It’s the complete opposite of hers, which is to say it has life and a personality that hers so lacks. Every inch of the place is well loved and lived in with traces of memory clinging to the walls and the floors and the objects. The windows—left without curtains—are large enough to bring huge swaths of sunlight in, lighting the place even in the late afternoon. It smells like warm soup and paint from half-finished canvases leaning against the crumbling brick walls and a pot of boiling something left on the stove. Pansy’s eyes water, but she doesn’t let him see it.

“You live here?” She asks, peering around the studio.

Small, cozy. Kitchenette on the right, bathroom on the left, the entire place in front. Her eyes catch onto the bulletin board hanging by the stove, filled with postcards and polaroids of smiling faces. The lump in her throat grows.

“Yes,” he returns, sounding a bit more defensive than he needs to. He moves over to the stove to flick it off and grab the towel hanging off the counter. “It’s cheap.”

“Oh.” They both know that she’s not anyone that has to worry about living somewhere because it was the cheapest option. “It’s nice.”

Ron snorts. His red hair seems to move with the humidity in the kitchenette, or perhaps with his nimble movements. He pours the pot’s contents into a small white bowl without much hesitation and sets the pot into the sink, then gives her a look over his shoulder. “Sorry, I wasn’t expecting you.”

“I just ate.”

“Of course.” He grabs a spoon from a drawer beneath the one counter and sticks it in his soup.

They stare at each other for a moment and Pansy sniffs, running her hand through the ends of her short hair, averting her eyes in a very uncharacteristic way. Ron might not have noticed her red nose or puffy eyes before, but he seems to immediately notice that , unfortunately. He clears his throat and stands straighter.

“Are you okay?”

She lifts her chin, just so, and says, “Fine. Should we get started?” She doesn’t wait for him to answer.

There’s already a canvas set up on a tilted easel facing a ratty blue couch. She sets her purse down by the easel and shrugs off her coat.

“Whoa, wait—Pansy, wait.” Ron comes over without his soup. “No, we don’t need to start right away. We should just—talk—first, you know, stipend, expectations, stuff.”

“It’s on the flyer. Five hours a week for one month of anatomical study, twenty five pounds an hour.” She begins to unbutton her shirt. The collar’s stained and crumpled.

“Um.” He buttons every button she unbuttons. “Right, but we should still talk about your comfort and what um, what’s okay and, standards.”

Pansy places her hands on her hips and stares up at him. There used to be a time when she was taller than him, turning her nose up at his stupid hair and his stupid clothes, laughing at him with her friends while he got into trouble over and over again. He’s not all that different now; there’s paint smudged on his jaw instead of dirt and his hair’s more kempt than unkempt, but he has the same eyes, the same bones. He backs up a step at her sharp stare.

“What, you’ve never seen me naked before?” She tilts her head. “Does my nakedness make you uncomfortable, because it doesn’t make me uncomfortable.”

“I have to turn this in, Pansy. People are going to see it—and other things—won’t your parents be upset if there are nude photos-paintings of you around? Won’t you?”

She shrugs.

“What happened?” He asks, his eyes softening in such a way that makes Pansy want to strike him across the cheek. “My flyer’s been up for nearly the entire term.”

“I felt sorry for you, it was starting to get covered up by other things that were much cooler.” Her eyes burn while she waits for a response that doesn’t come. She starts unbuttoning her shirt again. “I don’t want to talk about it.” She watches him watch her undress. “How do you want me?”

Earlier that day, Pansy found Draco in the library when he had told her he was going to audit Theo’s class to learn something new. If it had just been a lie about where he was, she probably would not have cared so much. For a couple that supposedly loved each other more than the world, they lied to each other a remarkable amount. Small lies, of course. White lies. Things like, ‘I’ll be home late, I have to finish my paper,’ and ‘Oh, my mother wants me home for the weekend, I can’t go to your game,’ and ‘I love you, I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with you.’ Things like that.

But, it wasn’t just a lie. He had been in the library, finding a book in the aisles with Hermione Granger, who had no fault in the story, but Pansy could find the hatred in her heart to hate the both of them. She’d hated Hermione Granger in their youth anyway, used to snicker at her in the halls of their lofty boarding school and make fun of her hair. Draco used to do the same, but Hermione had found it in her heart to forgive him. Not her, but she supposed that she hadn’t changed much since school.

Pansy Parkinson, after all, was vindictive and spiteful and miserable. She was a bit of a misogynist and very much a classist. She hated the poor, she hated women, and she hated herself. She was on the same track as Hermione Granger, too, which was entirely unforgivable, because obviously, she had paid for her spot and she was definitely paying for her grades. They might have gotten along in their first year here, when Pansy had apologized through gritted teeth and scared the assholes in their group project into doing their part, but as always, a boy (a blond boy, of all things) had gotten between them and their potential had fizzled.

She didn’t blame Granger, truthfully, because a part of her had always known how Draco looked at her and one can’t help what the heart wants, but it was much easier to blame a stranger than the only boy she had ever loved in her entire life. If she blamed Draco for his wandering eyes and unfaithful heart, it opened up many doors to many truths that Pansy didn’t want to face and so, she turned her back on the truth that everyone in their graduating class knew and shrieked at Hermione Granger for feeling up her boyfriend in the library.

Draco stopped her, dragged her out of the building while she sobbed, and still dared to have a hard on as they yelled at each other outside the glass windows of the brand new library her family paid for. He defended Granger in a way that he had never defended her (because here’s the thing, she knew that he loved her and she knew that she loved him, but it wasn’t the kind of love where he defended her against shrews and assholes, more the kind that she fought for him and he let her because it made both of them feel better—and it wasn’t like she ever needed Draco to defend her, because Pansy Parkinson was never a girl who needed defending, so there had never been any defending, which was fine) and she had screamed at him for defending her.

“It isn’t her fault,” Draco had said in a manner much too calm for her liking.

She responded, “So you forced her hands down your pants?”

And he said, “What? No!” Which made her laugh and cross her arms.

“I know we’re not—we’re not—” Pansy made a weird, vague gesture meant to represent a loving couple. “But we’re still—” Another gesture to represent a couple. “I’ve never done this to you. Never.”

“I’ve never done it either!”

“You just did!” Her scream echoed. She hated how shrill she sounded. She sounded delusional. A delusional girlfriend holding onto a boyfriend who clearly did not want her. “You just did, Draco. You let another girl into your relationship.”

“Pans, come on .” He did the gestures that time. “We’re hardly in a relationship anymore.”

And she had no response to that, because he was right. They hadn’t spoken in weeks, really, outside of their texts filled with excuses as to why they couldn’t meet up. They didn’t hold hands anymore, they barely looked at each other. When they fucked, it was almost uncomfortable and she came, of course, but she would always shut her legs when he pulled out and immediately shower every trace of him off her skin.

Maybe that’s why it hurt so much to see him panting over Granger in the library like a small dog in heat. It had been years since he had been so excited to fuck her. It rendered her almost silent, the realization that the one thing she really had to offer Draco wasn’t something that she could offer anymore.

“Okay,” she replied and she started to walk away before he could see her cry any more. “We’re not, then.”

He didn’t even call after her.

Pansy didn’t go home, because home was an egregiously priced flat off of campus that belonged to both of them. She found a bench (donated to a Tom Riddle from a Merope Gaunt, something about love and romance that made her cry even harder) and cried until she thought she might throw up. People stopped to see if she was alright, but they all sort of stood off to the side while giving her a tissue, uncomfortable by the amount of grief she was leaving around her. Even Potter had stopped, walking with Theo in their stupid sports gear, and gave her an awkward pat on the shoulder.

“I can get him benched,” he offered.

Through her tears and blubbering, Pansy said something like, “Doanbothugh.”

And Theo gave her a pat on her other shoulder and managed to say, “I think this is for the best,” which didn’t help her at all, but she tried to smile at him anyway.

Theo was much nicer with Potter around. Pansy became quite volatile around Draco. It probably was for the best, but Pansy had cried, anyway.

She wasn’t much of a lovable person, not even her parents loved her all that much. Draco had been the only one, really. They used to spend summers together where they would sleep in the same bed and he would promise to always love her and she would promise to always love him, because they had similar parents and similar lives. He knew how she took her tea and he knew what made her squeamish and he knew how to take care of her when she got sick. If there was anyone who could love her, it had been him.

That was what she mourned.

When she finished sobbing on the bench, she walked to the student center to do her paper and maybe book a room at the hotel nearby, but instead stood at the bulletin board with a ripped flyer in her hands for almost ten minutes. She chewed on her thumbnail while reading the call for aid, staring at the address of a boy she used to know.

Did he love her? Could he? She left the student center.

The tops of his freckled cheeks are pink. He peers at her with a pencil in his hands, pursing his lips when he looks back at the canvas and draws a stroke. Ron quickly erases it and his eyes dart over to her. After chewing on his bottom lip for a beat, he puts down the pencil and picks up the bowl of soup he’s left on the ground.

“That’s good.”

Pansy blinks at him. He takes a big gulp of his soup and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. When she got undressed, he had turned away from her and pulled on the stupid jumper from his mother. A bit of soup falls onto the golden ‘R’, but she doesn’t say anything.

“That’s it?” She sits up, reaching for the scratchy white blanket he draped over the arm of the couch. “We’ve only just started.”

“Yeah.” He stands while holding the porcelain bowl. She noticed while posing that it was chipped on one side. He holds the chipped part carefully. “I’ve got to sketch for a bit. Probably a week.”

She drapes the blanket over her chest as he turns his back on her, walking toward the kitchenette. “Okay.”

Her clothes are folded in a neat pile by the easel and he keeps his back turned while she pulls on her clothes. When she’s finished, she rounds the easel to look at the sketch and presses her lips into a thin line. He’s been much too generous with the lines of her body. It’s all pencil and smudged strokes, but she already looks much more ethereal than she knows herself to be.

“You know,” she says. “I thought you were going into—business or something.”

“Oh, yeah.” The bowl clinks when he puts it into the sink. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? This is our last year.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m still in business, this is just an elective.”

“Oh.”

When they were applying for universities, Ron was the one out of his friends (Potter was a shoo-in anywhere he wanted to go and Hermione was also a shoo-in anywhere she wanted to go) who worried most about his future. He used to joke that he would just stay in town and help his brothers run their shop.

He would say, “It’s not too bad of a thing is it? I mean, I’d be helping my family.”

And then Granger would say, “Oh, Ron, that’s completely honorable.”

Which would prompt Potter to go, “Yeah, mate. But, apply anyway, then the three of us could stick together.”

And they’d spend twenty minutes discussing different areas of study. Potter was going to put down History and Politics (he wanted to be a professor, probably) and Granger had put down Linguistics (joint honours, of course, with Classical Languages, because she had larger ambitions of research and prizes and things of that sort) and after some back and forth, Ron had settled on eventually putting down Business, Economical, and Social Studies (since he believed he would still end up working with at his brother’s business anyway).

They sat a row behind Pansy and her friends, often speaking so loud that the entire class knew of their plans. Draco would snicker, but he’d turn over his shoulder and ask Granger where she was applying to, if she had gotten in, if she’d be able to afford it. At the time, Pansy assumed it was them laughing at the Golden Trio together, but now she knows it’s much more about Draco itching to talk to Hermione Granger in any way, even if it’s by making fun of her.

“So,” she says, folding her jacket over her arm. She could pace a thousand circles in this small flat without getting tired. “When should I come back tomorrow?”

He starts washing his dishes diligently. “Whenever. I have class in the morning. I, um, I’ve got rugby in the afternoon.”

“So,” she says again, coming up to his side. “Not whenever, then.”

Ron looks down at her. “Yeah. Sorry. Two?”

Pansy nods. “Sure, that works.” She doesn’t move to leave.

He finishes washing and rinsing his dishes, then dries his hands on the towel. It looks like he wants to say something, but he’s stopping himself. He can’t meet her eyes for too long and he’s fidgeting with his fingers, stuffing them into his pockets and pulling them out to mess with his hair. Pansy glares at him.

“Say what you want to say.”

“You said you didn’t want to talk about it,” he says sheepishly.

With a sigh, she crosses her arms and leans against the fridge. “Draco and I broke up. He was having fun being fondled by your friend in the library.”

“ Harry ?”

“The girl.”

“Oh.” Ron’s blush deepens until his entire face is light pink. He turns and stares directly into the sun. “Yeah. Right. Hermione.” A beat. “Oh, yeah, that makes sense. She’s had a crush on him for years.”

“Thanks, Weasel, that makes me feel so much better.” She turns toward the sun, too. It was setting leisurely, at its own pace, as if knowing that no matter how slow or how fast it went, somebody would be watching. Someone would notice it. “But, I suppose it does make sense. Draco’s had a crush on her for years.”

“Haven’t you two been dating forever?”

“Eight years.”

“Oh. Right, I knew that.” He clears his throat. “On and off, though, right?”

She grinds her teeth. “Still, eight years.”

He pauses. “I’m sorry.”

If anyone means it, it’s probably him. Pansy shrugs in response and stands off the counter, clenching her jaw. “I guess I’ll come back tomorrow at two.”

“Alright.”

He walks her out and shuts the door when she reaches the stairs.

On the fourth day of posing for Ron, she arrives when he’s hanging up curtains over his windows. They’re deep green—a shade most favorable for her skin but also a color she knows he’s not too fond of—and long enough to cover all the panes of glass. He’s standing atop a ladder, but with his height, he only needs to stand on the second rung to get the job done. Ron only notices her when she shuts the door loudly.

“Hi, Pansy,” he greets. “I realized yesterday evening that you were just posing for all my neighbors to see. Sorry.”

It’s sweet, but all Pansy can manage is a scoff. “If I had a problem with it, I would have said something.”

He finishes with the curtains anyway. Pulls them shut. Opens them again. Like a test.

“Won’t it affect the lighting?”

Ron hums. “Maybe. I have a plan.”

She starts to undress. After the first day, she stopped coming with underwear. After the second day, she stopped coming in anything with buttons. Ron pulls the curtains shut while she peels off her jumper and her socks. He sits behind his easel pretending to busy himself as she shimmies out of her leggings. Pansy stretches before draping herself across the couch, reaching toward the sky, then to her toes, then twists back and forth. When she’s finished, Ron gets up to do his thing.

He poses her according to his reference, keeping his touches light and purposely keeping his eyes from her chest and her legs. Then, he turns on a low-lit lamp by the easel. His studio is very barely lit, so dark that she can barely see him, but he says, “Just, trust me,” and she has nothing to say back.

Ron chews on the eraser of his pencil when he pauses and the action should make it unusable, but he still manages somehow. He pours all of his focus into his canvas and her form, creating a crease between his brows that Pansy would just love to iron out with her thumb. Her mother often did it to her, which meant she often did it to Draco. She itches to be useful to someone again, to be there to prevent worry lines, to remind them not to worry. It makes her restless.

“Why art?” She asks, breaking the silence that’s been hanging between them for the past four days. They don’t speak much when he’s drawing. She doesn’t know if she should or shouldn’t. She hasn’t felt like speaking.

“Oh,” he says, and makes a sure stroke. “It’s easy.”

“Easy? Really?”

“Yeah, it’s quite easy. It’s just drawing what you see.”

She goes back to being silent and watching him work. If he sees her watching him, he doesn’t say anything about it. All he does is glance, draw, glance, erase, glance, draw, glance, repeat. His brows remain creased.

“Ron?”

He hums.

“I’m sorry for how we treated you at Hogwarts.” She pauses. “Er, for how I treated you, I guess.”

This makes him smile. “Theo already beat you to the punch, I’m afraid.”

“Did you accept it?” Pansy frowns.

“Don’t frown, it’s ruining the vibe,” he says, and she stops frowning. “But yes, I did. Theo’s a nice chap.”

“Is he? He mocked me all throughout our time at Hogwarts.”

“Well, you mocked me and I think you’re plenty nice.”

Pansy’s cheeks grow warm and she looks elsewhere in the room. She stares at something stuck to the ceiling, a sticker of some sort, but she can’t make out what it is. Her eyesight is poorer than she cares to admit. It might be the crest of Ron’s old House at Hogwarts, based on the colors.

“You don’t have to be nice to me,” she says after a moment.

“I know.”

He makes her cheeks burn more and she hopes in the dim lighting he can’t see it.

She was never particularly nice to him. It wasn’t as if he was a saint at Hogwarts, but if an objective student had stood at a distance and compared Ronald Weasley to Pansy Parkinson, they would agree that Ron was more a heavenly figure in the school and Pansy was more the Devil himself. Objectively, she never had a problem with it.

Her mother used to brush her hair before bed and remind her that there was no winning as a woman. If she was too nice, she would be a pushover. If she was too mean, she would be a bitch. If she kept her legs shut, she would be a prude. If she spread them, she would be a whore.

Pansy had asked, “Then what should I do?”

And her mother replied, “Whatever it is you want to do, as long as you don’t anger your father or I.”

But, most things angered her parents, so she learned that there was no winning as either a woman or a daughter, and therefore, being the Devil himself was quite enough for Pansy.

When they were fourteen, there was a Winter Ball hosted by Hogwarts and Pansy went with Draco. She bought her dress a month and a half in advance. She spent the entire day getting ready. They took photos in the courtyard outside of the Great Hall and she held onto them for years, even if Draco didn’t look too particularly excited. She had never been so excited for anything in her entire life, but she spent most of the night sitting at a table near the edge of the dance floor sulking next to Draco.

He was staring at another girl the entire time, a girl who wore blue instead of pink, who had come with a boy about to sign a professional sports contract, who had learned to comb her hair and put on makeup. He didn’t notice Pansy sitting in the seat next to him, untouched, unloved, unimportant. She shed tears beneath the sparkling lights without much noise, letting the music drown out her sniffles. It took great care for her to not ruin her mascara, but the rest of her makeup was gone by the time students started to filter out.

Draco kissed the back of her hand when Theo and Blaise came to get him. He said goodnight and he left. Pansy stayed in her seat and tried to swallow the humiliation.

“Horrible night, ‘innit?” Ron asked. He wore the most atrocious get-up she had ever seen, but she couldn’t even say anything about it. His accent was much thicker than normal and his cheeks were flushed. He was staring at a girl who wore blue and paid little attention to him. He looked at Pansy. “You alright? What, did Malfoy tear your dress? Ruin your hair?”

She glared at him. “It’s not any of your business, Weasel.”

“Alright, I was just tryin’ to have a chat, no need to bite my head off.”

“You’re the one making fun of me, biting your head off would be the kindest thing I could do.”

“Oi, I was only teasing.” He crossed his arms. “Don’t matter, you’ll be snogging him tomorrow, anyway.”

And he was right, because it didn’t matter what Draco did, Pansy wanted him more than she wanted anything. She wanted him so badly it made her vicious. She wanted him so badly that instead of enjoying her night, she had spent it crying one foot away from him.

She stood and held her hand out for him. “Do you want to dance?”

“With you?” Ron looked up at her. He’d kept his hair long this year, she didn’t love it, but she decidedly didn’t hate it either.

“You must be daft.”

He looked around at the empty table and sat straight, fixing his hideous suit jacket before taking her hand. They walked onto the dance floor together, where there were only a few people left; Cedric was twirling Cho around while she giggled and Ginny was trying to teach Neville a simple step combination. Some others lingered, though they were largely ignored as they left.

The DJ announced he’d be playing one last song and Ron tentatively reached out for Pansy’s middle. They had taken ballroom classes earlier in the month, but she had been taking classes since she was a girl. Ron clearly had never even heard of the word dance before.

“Sorry,” he apologized after stepping on the tips of her toes. He sounded normal again. “I’m not much good at it.”

“It’s fine.”

She led him in the worst waltz she had ever performed and took note of each freckle on his skin. He had enough to draw constellations upon his cheeks; she could see Lyra and Hercules, even Draco if she tried hard enough. For the first time since she had met him, Pansy thought he could have been terribly blessed. She was incredibly envious when she thought of it more.

He had a family that loved him, siblings that cared for him, friends that made him laugh so loud he didn’t care if he looked stupid. She had a family. She had no siblings. She had friends that made fun of the shape of her nose. Pansy’s eyes grew glassy as the minutes passed. When the song finished, she pushed him away.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Oh, yeah,” he returned. “That was nice. I’ve never waltzed before.”

“Obviously.” Pansy turned on her heel as the DJ bid his goodnight and began storming out the Great Hall.

He caught up to her on his stupidly long legs and walked beside her. “Do you want me to walk you to your dorm?”

She gave a sharp glance out of the side of her eye. “Why would you want to do that?”

“My brother says it’s what I should do.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Uh, the guy.”

“You’re hardly a guy.”

Ron rolled his eyes. “I don’t see your boyfriend around waiting for you.”

They walked back in a simmering silence, her arms crossed over her chest and his hands in his pockets. The campus was more beautiful in the night, moonlight washing over the ancient stone arches and floors, shadows dancing along ivy covered walls. She would have enjoyed the walk much more if she were with Draco, but she supposed it was just as fine with Ron. Draco would not have spoken to her, either, and she would not have dared to start a conversation she knew he didn’t want to have. At least Ron…

She spared him a glance. At least he was pretending to be concerned and courteous.

“Didn’t get to dance with your friend?” Pansy asked.

“Harry?”

“No, the bushy-haired loser.”

“Oh, don’t call Hermione that,” answered Ron. “No. She wasn’t interested.”

Pansy hummed. They started descending the staircase to her House dormitory. She spoke between steps, “Do you like her?”

Ron nearly slipped, his shoe squeaking against the shiny steps before he caught himself with a hand on the bannister. He laughed, though it sounded both humorless and nervous. “Why would I tell you? So you can use it against us?”

It did seem like something she would do.

“No, I just… What’s it like when a guy likes a girl?” She continued walking down the stairs. “I don’t know, Draco and I’ve known each other our whole lives. If betrothals were still a thing, we’d have been betrothed as children.” Pansy trailed off as they reached the bottom of the staircase. “So, he’s always liked me, of course, but I just don’t know.”

“Right,” said Ron, who was fidgeting with his suit jacket. “I don’t know, either.”

“You don’t know what it’s like to like a girl?” Pansy stopped and looked up at him. “Weasel, do you like boys?”

“No!” A blush sprouted in his cheeks and he shook his head. “I like girls just fine, just… You like Malfoy, right? It’s the same thing. The… worms in your stomach or whatever.”

“Worms? Do you mean butterflies?”

“Worms make more sense, really, they survive in dark places.”

Pansy rolled her eyes and began to walk away, but again, Ron caught up to her without much of an effort.

“I don’t know, Pansy,” he whined. “It’s just, you get excited to see her and then you can’t stop seeing her. It’s like everywhere you look, there she is. You talk about her to your mates until they grow tired of it and you make yourself look like a fool in front of her,” he said and quieter he murmured, “Sometimes you’re not your kindest around her.”

They stopped outside of the Slytherin dormitory, but Pansy felt worse for wear at his answer. Her vision was so blurry that his suit jacket actually looked nice instead of furry and weird and terrible. She sniffed, but her nose was so snot-filled that it barely made a difference.

“What?” Ron asked, sounding offended. “Good God, Pansy, what’d I do now? I promise I don’t like you, you can stop crying.”

“You like her,” she said, feeling her tears spill over onto her cheeks. “And Draco likes her. And everyone likes bloody Hermione Granger.” But nobody liked her. Nobody had ever liked her. She turned away from Ron. “Thanks for walking me back. Goodnight.”

She shut the door behind her before he could say anything else.

There’s a box of her stuff in her arms when she arrives at his flat on Thursday. He’s only started painting her on the canvas, spending nearly a week on the background or foreground or something Pansy cared little to hear about. He had told her his entire plan while letting her look at his work so far, but she had heard nothing more than a dull whining from him while she tried to not cry at his artwork. She blamed her emotions on her breakup.

When Ron opens up the door (because she can’t, her hands are full), he raises an eyebrow. “You moving in?”

“Oh, hush,” she snaps. “I’m moving out of my flat, this is all I can carry right now.”

Ron shuts the door behind her as she drops it onto the counter. “Where are you going?”

“A hotel, probably.” She’d stay with her friends, but they’re all looking at her like she’s been hit by a car, or a train, or a bus, or all three in rapid succession.

In terms of their breakup, Daphne’s staunchly on her side, but she’s also moon-eyed around Neville Longbottom, who’s a good friend to Hermione Granger, and Pansy would prefer not to spend time with the Gryffindors. Theo’s doing Potter so he’s more sympathetic to the Gryffindors, but even if he wasn’t, he’s been Draco’s friend since they were born, so he’d planted his flag well before the breakup ever happened. Blaise is insistent on staying neutral, but he has a matching ring with Draco and Theo, so Pansy hasn’t seen much of him.

She doesn’t blame her friends, really. They’re good people, just like she knows Draco is a good person, and objectively, Pansy really is not. It’s a wonder they’re still her friends, but she supposes that she’s weaseled (hm) her way into their lives similarly to a parasite that will kill its host upon its removal.

It doesn’t quite matter at all, anyway, because within a month things will go back to normal and they will all go back to being friends. As normal, she supposes, as it can be without Draco and Pansy pretending to be in love.

Ron comes over to the kitchenette to peer into the box. There’s not much in it except for her books and pictures and sentimental things. Draco preferred things neat and orderly, which meant all of her sentimental knick-knacks were always out of place and messy. Ron picks up a puzzling sculpture made of yarn. It’s humanoid shaped, sort of, with bright red hair and a horrifying scribble of a face.

“What the bloody hell is this?”

“That is Ginger,” she says, taking the sculpture back. In a stroke of genius, she holds it alongside his head. “It kind of looks like you, actually.”

“Ha, ha.” He rolls his eyes and puts it back in the box after snatching it from her. He clears his throat, pretending to rummage through her stuff (because it’s normal, she guesses, to rummage through someone’s stuff) and says, “Well, if you want, you’re welcome to stay here. It’s free.”

Pansy laughs, a genuine, sharp, harpy-sounding laugh that she hasn’t laughed in a while. “There’s hardly anywhere to sleep and your mattress is on the ground.” She points to the messily made bed (generous term) in the corner of the flat near the windows. “You couldn’t even afford a frame?”

“Obviously, I would take the couch—and a bed is still a bed. What if I’m not too keen on bed frames? Ever think of that?”

“God, Weasel, you know even Potter has a bed frame.”

“Well of course he does, he’s trying to impress Theo. You Slytherins and your ridiculously high living standards.”

“I promise you, a bed frame is not a high standard, it’s a bare minimum.”

“I’d agree if I were wealthy, too,” he jokes and swiftly dodges the slap she attempts to deliver to his arm. “I mean it though,” he says, walking away from her. “If you want to stay, you can.”

And truthfully, a part of her wants to. This place is warm and filled with light and it smells like comfort and feels like shelter. There’s no bed frame, but the walls around it are sturdy and decorated with sketches and photographs. The kitchen is nothing more than one skinny stove, one skinny fridge, one countertop, and one fridge, but it’s creaky and used by people hovering around it with love.

Her flat with Draco had been clean. It was classic and beautiful. There were priceless pieces of art on the walls and the bed frame had cost too much. It was meticulously organized without a single thing out of place and Pansy had thought that she liked it. It meant no cleaning for her to do, no extra work. She could come home without being stressed by unneeded mess. It was nothing like Ron’s flat with its scuffed floors and scattered belongings.

But, Pansy shakes her head and slips away from Ron, her cheeks pink as she pulls her shirt over her head and drops her sweats. She looks over shoulder at Ron and sees him fascinated with the outside of his scratched fridge. “I’m not going to impose, especially when it seems like you can’t afford to host a girl of my high living standards,” she tells him, turning away to start her stretch.

He only comes over when she’s draped herself over the couch and he stares at her for a moment with his arms crossed. It isn’t the stare that he usually has when he’s painting, when he’s trying to determine which limb is just slightly off. He looks at her with his brows furrowed slightly and his lips pursed just so, stares at her for a second that feels like a lifetime and shakes his head.

“You wouldn’t be imposing,” he tells her, and goes to sit on his stool in front of the canvas. He says, “I just think it will be good for you to stay with someone. You don’t deserve to be alone after… everything.”

“I’ll be fine,” she says after a beat. “I’m alone most of the time, anyway.”

“You don’t have to be.”

She frowned until he reminded her not to. Pansy laid naked before Ron while he painted, wrestling with the knot tying and untying itself in her stomach.

Obviously, she knows she doesn’t have to be alone, but perhaps she prefers to be. She’s a callous kind of girl, after all, and she doesn’t get along with most people. Loneliness is the one thing that’s inherently hers, the only thing she’s had as a constant since she was born. She loves it. She thrives on being by herself. Being alone is being independent. Being by herself means learning how to take on the world without anybody at her side.

Pansy loves it. She loves it. She loves being alone.

“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” says Ron when he’s finished, wiping his hands on the cloth he’s draped over his thigh. “I was just offering.”

She’s sitting on the couch now, staring at him as he stares at his canvas. He doesn’t look at his painting the way he looks at her. Pansy can’t find the words to describe it.

“Ron?” She asks.

“Yeah?” He looks over at her.

A beat passes, and then she asks, “Do you want to fuck?”

Red blooms across his cheeks and he stumbles as he stands up, knocking his stool over and almost catching his canvas on his hands. “Um,” he says, rather elegantly in her opinion. “I wasn’t—”

“I know,” she says, pushing her knees apart just a bit. “But, do you want to?”

Ron’s eyes drag over her body before he averts his gaze, staring at his painting as if she’s not also in there. “Yeah?”

“Yeah?”

“Sure, if you want.”

“Come here, then.”

“Right, alright.”

The first time they had sex was when Draco had broken up with her to try and date Daphne’s sister. Pansy was angrier than she had ever been with Draco, which only seemed to spur him on to date Daphne’s sister harder. He posted her on his stories and he spoke about her to them all and he proudly stated that his parents approved of her when they had never really approved of Pansy.

Ron was there. He was at the party. He was tall. He was handsome. He was smiling at his success in the rugby game earlier that day. He saw her come in through the door of his and Potter's dingy dorm room and waved at her like he was happy to see her. And he might’ve been, because ever since they started at the same university, Ron had been nothing but cordial to her; a case of maturing, or something similar, the only excuse that she could think of.

While Theo made eyes at Potter, Ron kept her company on the couch and fended off his sleazy teammates. He brought her a drink (unopened) and sat beside her, talking to her about the game and their friends and their classes and how Granger spoke highly of her after their group project.

She cornered him in his room after dragging him away and asked, “Why are you so nice to me?”

He had sipped on his beer and said, “Maybe I’m just a nice person, Pansy, ever think of that?”

And she had replied, “You and your friends made fun of me for years.”

“After you had made fun of us!” He stood taller, knocking her arms down from where they had been caging him in. Pansy was far from short, but Ron was so much taller. “You know, maybe I’m trying to move on from adolescence.”

“Move on?” She scoffed. “We were at Hogwarts half a year ago.”

“And clearly you’re still that same girl. You came to uni to not change, how wondrous and shocking.”

His words had angered her so much that she kissed him. Wrapped her hands around the back of his neck and forced him to bend down to kiss her. He dropped his beer and wrapped his arms around her waist, picking her up to throw her onto his bed and kiss her silly atop his scratchy blankets.

Sex with him had been different than it was with Draco. It felt often like Draco had sex with her because he could, because he wanted to. He was the first of the boys to lose his virginity (with her) and he was the only one of them to have a consistent sex life. Sex with him was mostly that, which Pansy never minded too much, because she wasn’t much of a sexual person, but she could understand why Draco was and she loved him enough to have sex with him.

But sex with Ron was like learning there were more colors than black and white. He touched her and licked her and fucked her with so much concentration that he frowned the entire time. He asked her if this was okay, if he could touch her there, if she liked his fingers touching her cunt, if she felt okay with his cock inside of her. He fucked her until she saw spots in her vision and she watched his face contort with pleasure as he came on her stomach. It was like watching the sunrise after being blind all her life, taking in the pinks and the oranges, watching the world come to life after an eternity of nighttime.

The next time they had sex, she fucked him after Draco brought Astoria to the pub with all their friends. She rode him in his dorm room with his clothes still on after stripping herself naked. Ron had said, “Fuck,” in such a way when he saw her naked that it made her fingers tingle, and he squeezed his eyes shut when he came inside of her, gripping her hips so tight that she woke up with bruises the next morning.

Overall, she and Draco had remained broken up for nearly most of their first year at university, which meant she spent most of her first year sleeping with Ron. It was really the only reason she was most amiable with Granger that year and encouraging of Theo and Potter.

Sometimes, after they had sex, Ron would turn on his side and stare at her. He’d run his eyes over her face before ever looking at her body, pull her in with a hand on her jaw and kiss her just once.

He’d say, “Thank you.”

Which would make her laugh and say, “For what? Making you come?”

And he’d reply with a smile and kiss her on the forehead, as if that answered her question.

Most times, though, after they had sex, Ron would watch her get dressed without saying anything. She would fix her hair in the mirror after finding her clothes strewn around his room and leave without a goodbye. He was always there when she came to find him, but he never came to her.

The night before she and Draco got back together, he sat her on his university issued desk and ate her out until she was dripping all over his papers. He’d given her a grin that made her laugh and kissed her while her legs shook around his waist.

“Pansy,” he had said as she undid his belt. “You’re quite a woman.”

“Aren’t I?” She asked.

And he took her face in his hands and he stared down at her and she knew that what they were doing was dirty and far from sweet, but she had never been so intimate with somebody. Certainly not with Draco, who wasn’t a selfish lover but wasn’t so happy to be fucking her. They would have sex and he would go to the bathroom and he would come back dressed and they would fall asleep. On good nights, they would stay awake and talk for a small while before he reminded her to go pee and shower.

When did he last look at her like this? Had he ever?

Pansy let Ron fuck her on his desk and left while he slept. She went to Draco’s suite, knocked on it until he opened it, and slept with him, too. By morning they were back together (this is what’s right, Draco had said, and Pansy had agreed while she stared at the ceiling from his bed) and she convinced herself that she and Ron had done nothing but have sex for a couple of months.

His hands wander over her bare skin carefully, like she might leap away if he touches somewhere wrong. Pansy straddles his lap as they sit on the couch and she kisses him, twisting her fingers into his hair, rolling her hips against his. She moans when he grabs her arse and kneads the flesh, tilting her head back so he can kiss a path down her neck and over her collarbones. Her hands remain steady on his shoulders, an anchor point as she rubs her clit over the seam of his jeans.

Ron sucks a mark into the hollow of her neck and wraps an arm around her waist. He takes his other hand and finds a breast, pinching and pulling at a nipple before tracing down the taut planes of her stomach to her cunt. His first strokes are careful, almost experimental, but he finds a rhythm around her clit in an instant like he’s never forgotten how to make her keen and writhe from his touch. Her eyes water as her orgasm approaches, and Pansy leans her head forward to rest in the crook of his neck as she comes.

“Ron,” she sighs, and helps him free himself from his jeans and pants. She sinks onto him after pumping his cock twice and opens her eyes to watch his face as he enters her.

His eyes fall shut as his hands come to her waist, holding her loosely when she begins to move. He feels so good inside of her, as if he was meant to be there, like she was made for him. She can understand why Draco loves to have sex, especially if she makes him feel the way Ron makes her feel.

It’s not so much physical, the feeling. It’s hazy pink, tinged with yellow edges and orange streaks. It’s her thumb brushing against the redness of his cheeks and kissing his freckles while he thrusts up into her. It’s her swallowing up his groans, tracing shapes on the column of his neck and pressing her chest against his. It’s staring down at him while he comes and feeling her heart contract when he gazes up at her as if she has pulled down the moon for him.

Ron cups the back of her neck and presses their lips together in a crushing kiss, as soft as it is rough and as tender as it is callous. He softens inside of her and makes no move to let her climb off of him. He maneuvers them without much effort so she’s laying on the couch with him hovering over her, pulling out of her to rest on top of her.

He says, “Pans,” and nothing else.

His come is dripping out of her and onto the couch.

“Pansy,” he repeats, sitting up at her silence, covering his crotch with his hands as he looks down at her with a frown growing on his features.

She looks up at him in the dim lighting and the lamp flickers. She moves out from underneath him to get her clothes.

“Pansy,” he says again, following her up.

By the time she gets to the door with her clothes on and her box in her hands, her cheeks are lined with tears and she turns to him when he places a hand on her ribcage to stop her.

“Was this…” He trails off.

“I don’t know.”

He frowns, more hurt than angry she would guess, and she supposes that he’s never really been angry with her. Hurt by her words, frustrated by her privilege, annoyed with her incessant childishness, but not angry. Ron shakes his head. “Will you come back?”

“You still need me, right?”

“Yes.” Ron nods. “I still need you.”

He’s silent for the next few sessions outside of ‘Hello’ and ‘Goodbye’. Pansy doesn’t blame him, but she can’t stop her eyes from watering when she leaves, either.

Her parents have found out about her break-up with Draco (Draco, who is now holding hands with Hermione on campus and looking absolutely smitten in a way he has never looked like with Pansy) and her mother’s called her to lament about the loss of it. The only thing Pansy ever had for her parents was a relationship with the Malfoy Heir, and without it, she has nothing, really. Her mother said so in not so many words, but Pansy isn’t an idiot. She knows why her mother seems to be far more upset about it than she is.

Pansy, after all, is taking it quite well. She’s dressing up again and doing her hair. She hasn’t missed a single class and has recently taken over someone else’s lease for a much smaller flat than her previous one. It’s as small as Ron’s, actually. A studio with a kitchenette and a leaky bathroom, exposed brick, large windows, and a single polaroid photo of her and Daphne taped above her bed (which is the full bed—mattress, box spring, frame). She’s doing quite well for herself after the break-up, she would say, and everyone would believe her.

Everyone.

Draco did, anyway. He stood in the doorway of their (old) bedroom awkwardly while the movers came and got the rest of her stuff. She folded her clothes neatly to pack while he did and eventually said, “I’m fine, you can stop looking at me like that.”

“I’m sorry, Pans.”

“Yes, I know.” She blinked away the tears in her eyes while folding a particularly long evening gown. “It’s alright. I’m fine.”

If she said it enough, she’d start to believe it herself.

She goes between thinking herself pathetic for being broken up about the end of a loveless relationship and thinking herself right for it. Pathetic for having her entire life and happiness (though, happiness could be a relative term, since she hasn’t been beaming, yelling from the rooftops happy for a few years, but she was still quite content with at least having Draco) revolve around a man of all things, but right for realizing that they had dated each other for nearly half the time they had known each other. They’re still friends, but their relationship is irrevocably changed and they will never be what they were, even if they try their very hardest to get there.

She’s mourning someone who didn’t die, grieving over something that only hardly ever existed. Sort of how she used to look around at Hogwarts and feel a great sort of loss at a moment she was in, feeling time slip through her fingers before she could catch them. Pansy, if she were more the kind of girl to write flowery words and cry flowery tears, would describe herself as a melancholy kind of person, but she isn’t, so she doesn’t. She pinches herself before she can cry about Draco anymore and she pretends not to see him when he waits for Hermione after class and sometimes finds the time to sit with her friends at the pub and say that she’s fine.

Pansy Parkinson is quite fine.

When she gets dressed after the session, she goes to look at Ron’s progress and pinches the back of her palm between her nails. The girl in the painting looks beautiful, almost sad, looking directly at her with dark eyes and downturned lips. Her jaw is sharp and her nose is slightly upturned. She has a lithe figure made of long limbs and sharp edges. Her legs hang off the couch like she’s about to slide off of it—or more, like she’s about to be pulled off into the darkness surrounding her. Her body is lit by a soft, yellow glow slowly being eaten by the darkness around her. She looks completely lonely. An angel of night.

“S’it good?” Ron asks. “D’you like it?”

Pansy turns around to see him wringing his hands together. There’s paint on his jeans. She nods.

“You’re very talented, Ron.”

“Am I?” He smiles, but it doesn’t look quite full. “It’s just some colors and lines.”

She shakes her head. “No, no, it’s really good.” She peeks at it over her shoulder again. Pinches the back of her hand. “Why are you in business if you’re so good at this?”

“Because I’m good at business, too. My brothers, they’re really not so great with numbers, they need an accountant, a bookkeeper.” He shrugs. “This is just…” Ron gestures vaguely. “It isn’t what I get.”

Her lips press together thinly and Ron clenches his jaw. He takes a deep breath before walking over to her and brushing her hair out of her face. He says, “Are you alright?” and she says, “I’m fine,” and he looks like he wants to kiss her, but he doesn’t, so she kisses him, and he kisses her back, and she pulls away to see him frowning.

“Are you angry with me?” She asks.

And he says, “No.”

She blinks up at him, then walks away from him. “When is this due? For class?”

“Soon,” he answers. “I would’ve turned it in sooner, but I didn’t have a model.”

“Right, well, I hope you get a perfect score.”

In their second year, all the Hogwarts alumni came together from their programs around campus to meet with the visiting students from their elite boarding school in a hall they rented out. Because more people were interested in speaking with the Golden Girl than her, Pansy ended up alone by the entrance, holding a stack full of brochures about the Linguistics Joint Honours program to hand out to anyone who felt sorry enough for her.

She justified it as being alright because she never liked talking to snivelly children (and they were hardly children, but she considered them to be, based on their eagerness to prove that they weren’t children on a huge campus with huge people) anyway and she would still prefer sitting here instead of attending her terrible Statistics class. But, every so often, there was a roar of laughter from the small crowd surrounding Granger and sometimes when it happened, Pansy’s lips would purse and her chest would grow tight.

Not that it meant anything. She was alright.

“I’ll take one,” said someone approaching her, and she looked up in time to see Ron with one hand outstretched.

Pansy handed him a glossy brochure. She had designed it and printed it. Hermione’s were better. They didn’t discuss who was going to be making the brochure. Pansy was alright with it.

Ron sighed and took the folding chair next to her. It was cooler by the entrance where the doors were propped open and a breeze could slither in. The rest of the hall was wrapped in humidity and body heat, filled with the stench of teenage sweat and heat. Pansy was quite alright sitting by the door.

“You know, I always thought you would have gone into Business,” Ron mused, flipping through the brochure.

“Why?”

Ron made a noise and shrugged. “I don’t know, I suppose I always saw you following Malfoy everywhere he went.”

It stung, mostly because he was right, but because she knew she hadn’t done him right.

They used to spend time together during their first year talking, often before having sex, sometimes during, almost never after, but they still talked. She knew more about him than she cared to know, mostly about his feelings (how he dated Granger for one summer and couldn’t carry through with it because it didn’t feel right, how he and Harry once kissed to see what it was like, how sometimes he felt inadequate compared to his brothers and even his younger sister) and his schoolwork. She didn’t talk often about herself, but Ron used to say that it was alright because he knew everything he needed to know about her.

She bit the inside of her cheek and turned away from him, staring at the empty corridor outside the hall while she bit back tears. “Shouldn’t you be standing at your booth with your ridiculously suited crew?”

“Ah, they like Zabini and Malfoy,” he laughed. “Rich and handsome and all that. Did you know they’re heading off to big companies when they graduate? I’m only going back home to help out my brothers, not as impressive.”

Pansy thought it was plenty impressive, because anyway, Draco and Blaise were also going off to big companies to help their families—their families’ companies; Draco was going to his father’s company and Blaise was going to his mother’s. But, she didn’t say that.

She said, “Well, they like Granger plenty over there and she’s not going anywhere impressive, either.”

“What, you don’t think years and years of academia turned research is impressive?” He joked, which garnered a look from Pansy.

She spent plenty of time ragging on Hermione Granger, but Ron really didn’t—not to her, anyway. If she even thought about speaking ill of Hermione Granger, Ron would step in and tell her not to (which, really, was only another reminder of how much everyone loved Hermione Granger and defended her when absolutely nobody did that for Pansy Parkinson).

“I don’t know how I’m supposed to respond to that.”

Ron sighed and sat back in his seat. “Fine, you may say one rude thing about my friend.”

Pansy’s lips puckered in thought before saying, “Well, you’ve put me on the spot and now I don’t know what to say.”

“Pansy Parkinson doesn’t know what mean thing to say about Hermione Granger?” Ron placed a hand over his heart. “What has this world become?”

And she laughed, because he was being ridiculous and it was such a stupid thing to say and he was smiling in such a goofy way that she had no other choice but to laugh. She tipped her head back and laughed, covering her mouth with her stack of brochures.

“So stupid,” she muttered.

“Ah, I know.” He crossed his arms. “We should have chosen different things to study.”

She should have. She could have done well in Theatre. She would have done just fine in Business. “What would you study?”

He thought for a moment, long enough to greet a few Hogwarts students arriving and hand them some of Pansy’s brochures. She thought he’d forgotten her question until he said, “I’m not sure. Honestly, it kind of feels like I shouldn’t have gone to uni anyway. My brothers would have given me a job whether I had education or not.”

Pansy knew the feeling. She didn’t have to come to university, in fact, her mother had preferred her not to. At the end of the day, her mother only ever saw her as a housewife and no housewife needed a degree. Her father could not have cared less what Pansy did with her time, but it was clear that he thought university was just a whim for her, something she was doing because… Because Draco was doing it.

“Then, why come?”

“Because I’m so good at rugby that they gave me a scholarship.” He gave her a crooked smile. “And because Harry and Hermione insisted. Said more opportunities would be open if I went—but, I mean, again… I’m not going to be given the same opportunities as them.”

Pansy handed a brochure to a student leaving and they took it with a pitiful glance at the pair sitting on the rusted folding chairs by the exit.

“But, what would you choose?” He asked her, clearing his throat. “If you weren’t in Languages.”

“Linguistics,” she corrected. “And I’m not sure. I only did it to be like my father, anyway.” She looked at Ron. “He’s a diplomat.”

“I know.”

“Right.” She nodded and then shrugged stiffly. “So, I don’t know.”

“You’ve never wanted anything for yourself?”

“Neither have you, it seems.”

A beat passed.

“Well, Pans,” he said, shortening her already short name to a nickname usually reserved for friends, but she was enjoying their conversation, so she let it slide. “When you were young, what did you want to become?”

“Like my father.”

“All your life? There wasn’t ever a time where you wanted to be something else?”

Pansy sat with her ankles crossed and her brochures in her lap, heat growing in the apples of her cheeks as she thought about it. All Pansy had wanted to be when she was younger was loved . It was a ridiculous thing to want to be and not a career at all. The only job she had ever wanted was the one that had been placed in front of her.

She took a deep breath and looked over at Ron. “Perhaps a singer,” she answered. “Singing in some small lounge in a small city.”

“Really?” Ron looked perplexed. “I would never have guessed.” He paused. “But, are you any good at singing?”

“You’ll never know.”

He gave her a wide grin. “Fine.” He paused, then swallowed, then said, “I think I’d study art.”

It was her turn to look perplexed. She had known Ron since they were eleven and she had never once known of any interest he had in art. She knew that he liked rugby more than he liked girls, that he was very annoyingly loyal to his friends and house, that he had a thousand brothers he looked up to and a younger sister he would trade the world for, that he crinkled his nose when he laughed, that he liked to cook his mother’s soup when he was feeling down—nothing about art.

When she found her voice, she asked, “Are you any good at art?”

His lips tilted and he replied, “You’ll never know.”

Ron goes to rugby practice and Pansy stays to sit on his stool and look at the painting. While he’s away, she allows herself to cry one more time and wipes her tears after a certain amount of allotted time. Then, she turns on her heel and starts to clean his flat.

She makes his bed and picks up the clothes lying around his hamper instead of inside of it. She sweeps with the broom hanging by the door and dumps the dirt and dust into the trash. She puts on the gloves she found beneath the bathroom sink and scrubs the bathroom clean. As she’s starting to scrub the kitchen sink, his door opens and he walks in, talking to his mother on the phone.

“I don’t know, Mum,” he’s saying. He hasn’t spotted Pansy hunched over the kitchenette yet. “I’ve got a showcase before the break, you know…” He kicks off his shoes by the door and sets down his bag loudly. “Er, for my art class. Painting.” Ron walks into the bathroom and flicks on the light switch. “No, no, you don’t have to come, I’m not lonely… I know Dad will like it, he doesn’t have to come, either.” He looks at his reflection, then down at his sink with an eyebrow raised. The tips of his ears are pink. “Thanks, Mum, I love you, too. I’ll be home for break, but not before.” He nods to himself. His hair is damp. “Yes, I love you, bye.”

And then he turns toward the kitchenette and yelps at Pansy holding a wet sponge over the sink. Pansy blinks at him before turning back to the sink, pretending that she’s already swallowed the lump in her throat.

“Fucking hell, you scared the shit out of me, Pans.” He holds his hand to his chest. “My God.”

“Sorry,” she says. “It’s just horrid here.”

“Is it that bad?” He asks, looking around. “It looks fine to me.”

“Yes, because I’ve already cleaned it.”

“Oh.” He looks around again, then at the mess he’s already created by the door. “Why?”

Pansy rinses the sink clean and takes off the bright yellow gloves (that have obviously never been used before). “I don’t know. I think…” She trails off. There’s no real reason. She didn’t want to go home alone. She didn’t want to leave a mess. She… “You’ve made such a nice painting. You’re making me look a lot better than I am.”

“Oh,” Ron repeats, and then he laughs and walks over to her. He smells like body wash and shampoo, a wash of mint and cedar. “Well, shouldn’t I be cleaning your flat, then? You’re the one doing me the favor. I wouldn’t have been able to finish this assignment without you.”

She chews the inside of her cheek until it hurts, picking up the sponge and gloves and pushing past him to the bathroom. “Maybe,” she says. “I don’t know, Ron. I owe you.”

He follows her, leaning in the doorway while she gets on her knees and puts the sponge and gloves away. “You don’t owe me anything.”

“What is your problem?” Pansy snaps, climbing to her feet.

“What is my problem?”

“Why are you being so—so—” Her voice goes tight. “Nice!” She says it like an accusation.

“Maybe, I just like you, Pansy.” He blinks. “Ever think of that?”

Her eyes thin because her vision is blurring with tears. She slams his sink cabinet shut, marches past him, gets her things, and then leaves before he can see her cry.

Pansy and Draco’s building was built by a company under an umbrella corporation that belonged to Bellatrix Lestrange née Black (and not that it really mattered, because they were still paying the same rent as everybody else who lived there—though, Pansy maybe paid a little bit more than half only because she insisted she could so that she could prove something—but, Draco was a Black through his mother and the only heir to their fortune). It was a relatively new building that had many, many amenities that made it attractive to its wealthy clientele—students from the nearby university.

When asked what her favorite thing about the building was, she would gush about the pool and the spa and the masseuse that worked out all her knots, but actually, she liked that she could get up to the rooftop and fall asleep there without anyone disturbing her. Often, she found herself there when they hosted parties because she was stunning and she was a great hostess, but she was easily forgettable and once she was out of eyesight, people seemed to forget she existed. They liked her when she was chewing somebody out for them or when they were chatting about somebody that nobody liked, but they didn’t need her for much else, nor did they want her. It hurt her the first few times nobody came looking for her, but she was relatively fine by the time the end of their second year came around.

On the last day of their last term during their second year, she took the stairs to the roof by two and kicked off her heels the moment she pushed the doors open. She walked atop loose rocks and gravel in her path to the edge, ignoring the sting on the soles of her feet. Once at the edge, she leaned on the tall wall preventing her from jumping and looked out at the sunset. She could climb it, if she really wanted, but she didn’t want to. She’d be fine. She just needed some air. Maybe she’d go back and get a blanket later. A pillow. Nobody would notice.

She didn’t know how long had passed when the rooftop door swung open loudly, only that the sun had sunk so far it was only barely noticeable over the horizon. When she turned, she saw Ron Weasley walking toward her with a beer in his hand and purple knuckles. He had a smile on his lips, though, so whatever the cause of his bruises couldn’t have been something so terrible.

“I’ve been looking for you,” he told her upon his approach. “Looked everywhere for you.”

Her lips pursed. “Why?”

He hummed and leaned against the wall on his side so he could face her. “Do you think I came all the way to these posh apartments to listen to Draco talk about how well he did on his finals?”

“Mm,” she returned. “I thought you came because Harry was coming and you go everywhere he goes.”

“Touché.”

Her forearms lay flat on top of the ledge and she leaned her cheek against them to gaze at him. The sunset painted him pink, and yellow-orange around the edges. He smiled at her as he looked at her, running his eyes over her like he was trying to memorize the moment as it passed by him. 

“What happened to your hand?” She asked.

“Oh, someone said something about this girl I’m kind of sweet on.”

She pressed her lips together. “Is that why you came up here?”

Ron shrugged and took a sip of his beer. “I don’t know, maybe.”

“Why’d you come up here?” She asked.

This time, he answered, “‘M not sure, Pans, something about a girl, blah, blah, blah.”

“Is she pretty?”

“Very.” He sighed and turned toward the edge, facing away from her. “She’s got dark hair, keeps it short, and she’s got these eyes—terrifying, but in a good way, you know?”

“I’m not sure that I do.” She kept looking at him, taking him in like the sunset. “I hear that she’s a terrible person.”

“What do you mean?”

“In school, she was a bit of a bully. Afterward, she’s a bit of a bitch.” Pansy watched him give her a careful look out of the side of his eyes. “I don’t think she treats you very well.”

He tsked. “You must not like her very much.”

Her eyes burned. “I just think she isn’t the person you think she is.” She stood off the ledge and blinked her tears away.

A heavy silence enveloped them. She leaned her back against the wall and lowered her gaze, wrapping her arms around herself to protect herself against the spring night. Ron cleared his throat and placed his beer bottle on the ledge.

“My family’s not that wealthy. I mean we’ve got some land and we’ve got—a house, sort of, but we didn’t have much growing up, yeah?” He started. “Anyway, my brothers and I, we took care of this terrible, feral cat that lived on our land. It drank from the pond and the river and it ate mice and sometimes came inside the house when our mum was cooking something foul.”

“Are you comparing me to a feral cat?”

“Let me finish,” he said, waving her off. “My brothers and I took care of it, but they claimed to not really like it, said it was just absolutely terrible. And they told everyone that they knew and everyone that visited the house that there was a wretched cat that stalked the lands. They warned that it would bite and tear and steal your food and pounce on your legs if you went out without shorts, all that stuff, you know, and it sort of felt like the cat could understand them. 

“It seemed to misbehave the more that my brothers ignored it and enabled its behavior, but we knew it wasn’t like that, really. It was a kind fella, just hungry, just a little bit tired. And my brothers, they claimed to despise it absolutely and they warned people away from it, but only because they didn’t want anyone else to take it.” He sniffed and picked up the beer bottle again. “Anyway, it died when I turned thirteen, hunted down by Hermione’s much uglier and much more feral cat that she bought from a store . We all cried, even Ginny did. We loved it more than we knew.”

“You are comparing me to a feral cat.”

“I’m saying that not everyone sees you the way you see yourself,” he said quietly. “And… I think… that everyone shows love a little differently, and some things are more difficult to put into words… And, I think you’re very loved, Pansy, and very needed, and I don’t really know what I can say or do to make you—see that, but… I….”

She shook her head back and forth. Everything he said was exactly what she wanted to hear, but it wasn’t anything that made sense to her. What did he know of what she felt like? Of how she saw herself? What gave him the right to talk to her like she was a child who needed encouragement? Her cheeks burned and her eyes burned and her heart was beating so fast it felt as if it would leap out of her chest and she felt completely lonely and not lonely at all.

She said, “I don’t think we should talk anymore,” and started toward the door. She’d rather face the party than face him. “You really shouldn’t stop by anymore, either.”

Ron didn’t respond. She walked off the roof and back to the party, where nobody asked why she was crying.

Once, when she was very young, her family took a trip to France where they ended up in a smoky lounge where everything was ridiculously overpriced and lit by dim light bulbs and neon signs. There was a singer on stage, singing in the most beautiful voice Pansy had ever heard, and she was absolutely beloved. There was a man sitting by the stage, a cup of amber liquid in his left hand, a cigar between his teeth, and a rose in his other hand. He gazed up at the singer, dressed in a slinky red dress that brushed the ground she walked on, who stared at him back with content eyes as she sang to him. There was nothing more Pansy wanted than that. To be looked at like that. To be loved like that.

The water pressure in Ron’s shower is poor, but it gets the job done. He always offers after their session is complete, and he did the same today, barely glancing at her as he finished up his tasks. Normally, she goes home and showers, scrubs him and his flat off of her before getting dressed with underwear and expensive clothing that reminds her very little of him but, she accepted today.

Their time together this month has gone by both slowly and fast, a montage of silence and staring, pretending not to notice each other’s wandering eyes and bitten cheeks. She knows every inch of his flat now, knows too much about it. There are a pile of half-finished canvases behind the couch, not painted but very well sketched. His fridge is never well-stocked with raw ingredients or groceries, but he almost always has home-made leftovers. He keeps a stack of paperback books by his bed recommended by Hermione, but instead of reading them, he uses it to hold up a small lamp that can shine on the mattress.

Her flat is starting to look like his, even though she isn’t trying. She hasn’t invited him over (and she tells herself she likely will not, because she’s sure he will notice right away and say something that will make her feel not-stupid, probably something like, ‘This is my kind of flat,’ or ‘It looks good, very cozy, reminds me of home,’ whereas her friends have given her smiles and nods to make her feel only the slightest bit humiliated even if that isn’t what they meant), but he has somehow seeped into everything in her place. Paranoia possesses her sometimes when she has visitors, especially when Theo brings Potter over and she’s worried he’ll comment how much it reminds him of Ron, but nobody seems to notice the similarities except for her.

Perhaps it’s all in her head. Seeing someone everywhere, something, something.

After turning the water off, she dries herself off with a fluffy towel and stands in front of the mirror. The lighting is atrocious, but it doesn’t make her look any worse. It doesn’t make her look any better, either, which is to say that Pansy looks terrible. Her hair’s starting to grow out, so she’ll have to cut it soon (people take her more seriously when her hair is short—and it draws attention away from her nose). Her cheeks and eyes look sallow, but her term finals are approaching and she’s struggling to get excited about continuing her education, so she can blame it on that. Her skin, especially in this lighting, looks paler than normal. Almost green. She turns away from the mirror and pulls on her clothes before walking out, letting her hair drip down her back.

Ron is sat at the stool, staring at his painting of her, paint brush in one hand, a cloth in the other. His wide shoulders lift with a deep breath and fall when he sighs. He leaves the cloth on his thigh to run a hand through his hair, like he’s struggling with something. The painting looks more polished than she was last time Pansy saw it. It’s more complete. Shadows and light and emotion and everything.

She comes up behind him, listens to him sigh again, says, “You don’t like it?”

It’s a common question for her to ask, whether someone likes it or not—it often being her or an extension of herself; a gift she thought about for months, a dress she chose for an event, a painting where she was the model. She doesn’t look down at Ron, though she knows he turns his head to look at her for a moment before turning away.

“No,” he replies. “I do, I’m just…” Ron trails off and hums. “I don’t know, it’s missing something.”

She bites down on her lip, peering over his shoulder at the painting again. He has fixed her hair, kept it short, and painted her skin full of life. Her eyes shine, not as if she has stolen the stars but more like she has taken the rivers to place on her waterline. The tops of her cheeks are flushed rosy pink, and the Pansy in the painting looks so different from the Pansy that’s staring at it.

“You’re really good, Ron.” Pansy turns and gathers her things. A droplet of water runs down her spine. “If it weren’t another four years, I’d say you should change your course of study and go into art.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“So.” The stool creaks when he gets up. “You like it?”

“Yeah,” she repeats. “My tits look great.”

Ron laughs. He walks her to the door. “Well, your tits are great, but there’s many great things about you.” He looks down at her with a small smile. One might call it melancholy, if they were a person who wrote flowery words and cried flowery tears. “Thanks, though. It would’ve been a terrible painting.”

“It wouldn’t have been.” She turns to face him in the hall. “You’re talented, it would have been a good painting no matter who sat for you.”

“Good, I guess, but,” he trails off. “Not the same, I don’t think.”

“What do you mean?”

“I wouldn’t know how to describe it.” Ron’s lips quirk upward. “I’m a painter, not a writer.”

Her lips spread into a small smile. “Right.” She holds his gaze for a moment before looking down the short hall. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then?”

“Oh,” he says, and leans on his doorway looking sheepish. “No, Pans, I’m all done.”

She replies, “Oh.”

And then she knows that having an extra hour in her day gives her more time to do things, but she can’t think of any other thing at two in the afternoon except come here and sit in comfort for an hour. Perhaps she’ll take Daphne up on her offer for coffee, or maybe she’ll take Theo and Potter to the library (the old one, as she’s not the fondest of the new one her family built anymore), or maybe she’ll go to her flat and sit cross legged on her bed for an hour while staring at the wall.

“Okay,” she says with a nod. “So, you don’t need me anymore?”

And Ron gives her this look that she knows always comes before an answer that she doesn’t want to hear, but there’s nothing she can do to stop him from saying, “No, not anymore.”

And it was nothing more than her lying nude for him so he could finish a painting for his class, but she stands in the hallway outside of his flat and tries not to cry in front of him when she nods.

“Er, you can collect your stipend at the Art Building, I’ve been tracking the hours,” he continues.

She will decidedly not be picking up her stipend, because this was never about the money in the first place, but she nods anyway.

“And, well—thanks.”

“Yes, of course,” she says, already taking a step toward the stairs, already leaving the moment before it has passed them by. “Anytime, Ron. It was nice to—” (See you again/talk with you again/hear your voice/just be in the same room as you again) “Do this. It was a good experience.”

“Yeah, yeah, right, it was, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.” She turns away from him and says over her shoulder, “Bye, Ron.”

“Goodbye, Pansy.”

The winter air doesn’t stop her from wearing nothing more than a short dress and faux-fur shawl to the pub. Nearly no one else is dressed as extravagantly, but Pansy has never bat an eyelash at how others are dressed as long as she is dressed the way she wants. Anyway, she sits next to Blaise, who sits in a full tuxedo for no reason except he feels like playing Father Winter’s most modern version (i.e. gives a girl a gift at the end of the night for being a good girl all year—the gift is an orgasm).

“I thought you were staying in,” says Theo, not looking up from his phone where Potter lives (he has an exam in the early morning).

“Changed my mind,” Pansy answers, and nobody questions her, because nobody questions Pansy.

“Oh, love, Draco’s bringing his girlfriend tonight.” Daphne slides into the booth next to Pansy, effectively trapping her in when Neville sits down next.

“You can say her name. It’s been months since Draco and I dated.”

“But, he’s moved on rather fast when,” Daphne lowers her voice. “You haven’t.”

Pansy’s lips purse as she picks up a menu to peruse, despite knowing the pub’s menu front to back. She understands why it may seem like she hasn’t moved on. She spends very little time with the group, but only because she’s been throwing herself into her schoolwork. She’s been planning her futures with schools that have reached out to her. She meets with professors during most of her free time to discuss possibilities and projects after she completes schooling. 

But, the truth is, she doesn’t see her friends because all of her friends are friends with his friends and when she does find time to see her friends, it’s in the late hours when everyone’s lips are looser and the stories are more riotous. She hears so much about Ron despite having nothing to do with him. He’s painting a few more pieces for the gallery his curator professor is overseeing—Potter talks about him often, gushes about how talented he is, how beautiful his pieces are, and how this is a huge opportunity for a student who isn’t even really in the art program.

Pansy agrees with everything Potter says, of course, but she often doesn’t say anything. She takes a sip of her drink while her friends ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’, or she suddenly must reply to a text, or she’s making eyes at someone across the room.

But, she’s moved on from Draco, of course. There’s not much to say here, except that she’s not so hung up on him, but he makes for a good scapegoat.

“I’ll be fine,” she reassures Daphne and Neville, who’ve both taken to looking at her with the same doe eyes. “I promise not to be mean to Hermione.”

“What about Draco?” Daphne asks nervously.

“What about me?” Draco’s platinum hair is mussed, as if someone’s ran their hands through it a thousand times. Standing behind him is Hermione Granger, whose cheeks are all flushed as if she’s just been kissed.

Pansy gives him a look through her brows before lifting her chin and giving him a smile. “I was saying I’d be nice to your girlfriend.”

“What about me?”

“I said nothing about you, because you interrupted me.”

“Ah.” He pulls Hermione to his side by her hand and gives the group a beaming smile. “I didn’t know you were coming, Pans.”

“I wasn’t, but I heard you were bringing Hermione so I wanted to come.”

Hermione’s free hand curls into a fist like she’s about to say something in her own defense, something about not caring what Pansy thinks or being sorry that she fondled Draco in the library but that they’re happy together, something that makes Draco stare at her in adoration and her friends gain a little more respect for her (because, of course, the only way anyone can gain respect in this den of snakes is by insulting Pansy or knocking her a few pegs down—which, Pansy can get behind, but she really doesn’t want to deal with it tonight, so maybe on another night when she’s feeling more fierce), but Pansy sees Draco squeeze his hand around hers. A soft gesture. Gentle. Something said between them without any words at all.

Pansy presses her lips into a thin smile. “To welcome you, of course,” she says. “Not for any nefarious purposes.”

“What?” Theo sounds very barbie-like when he finally looks up, clearly shocked at Pansy’s lack of aggression.

“I’m not in the mood tonight, so it’s the best night for Draco to stop hiding you from us,” Pansy says to Hermione. “Welcome to the pub, have a few drinks, fondle Draco in the bathroom.”

Hermione’s entire face grows pink, but she manages to say, “Thank you, Pansy.”

Draco orders (and pays) for the table and they fall into a night of drinks and anecdotes and all the usual activities. Pansy sits in the center of the booth, surrounded by friends on both sides, nursing an untouched glass of sparkling wine, pretending to laugh and be entertained by the stories told by her friends. To nobody’s surprise, Hermione is effortlessly charming, blending in with the group like she’s always belonged. Pansy watches as her anxiety seems to melt off of her, observing as she stops gripping Draco’s hand and starts to chip at her cuticles, only to stop that and confidently take sips of her beer which leads her to be comfortable enough to insert herself into the debate between Daphne and Theo over what the best piece of classic literature is (Hermione says the term ‘Classic Literature’ is very objective, but considers herself to favor Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, which Pansy hasn’t read, but she finds herself agreeing with Hermione just to prevent Daphne and Theo from winning).

Her comfort makes Pansy feel both warm and cold inside, because everyone loves Hermione Granger—even Pansy, who staunchly tries to remain one hundred percent neutral with her, but can’t, because when Draco and Neville go to get another round and Theo takes Blaise dancing and Daphne goes to pee, Hermione scoots closer to Pansy and has the good sense to look embarrassed.

She says to Pansy, “I’m not very proud of how Draco and I got together,” and she goes back to fiddling with her cuticles, but continues, “I think that I’m the happiest I’ve ever been with him and I’m convinced that nobody understands me better and—I’m not one to believe in soulmates all that much, but if I did, I would think that he’s mine, but I’m not arrogant enough to ignore that we came together at your expense, and I don’t think there’s anything I can do to make it better, Pansy, but I am sorry.”

And Pansy finally takes a sip of her wine, if only to hide her face from Hermione. She says into her glass, “I don’t need your apologies, Granger.”

“I know.” But, Hermione holds the top of Pansy’s hand when she lowers her glass and says, “I know,” and Pansy wants to wring her neck for being so bloody smart.

So, Pansy knows that she can’t hate Hermione (and she hasn’t for a while, but she never thought that she’d end up liking her even the slightest bit) and she catches Draco when she’s about to leave, walking up to the bar while he’s in the middle of a conversation with Theo. He spots her coming and sends Theo away, waiting for her arrival with a smile so familiar she could trace it in her sleep.

They hug by the bar while someone makes the jukebox play a terrible American sounding song, crying into each other while everyone whoops and laughs and attempts to perform a square-line dance. He cups the back of her head and she squeezes her arms around his middle. They say so many things with their heartbeats and their palms, and Pansy supposes that she probably hasn’t moved on, but not in the way her friends think. She’s going to love Draco forever, and she will never stop loving him. She will never not know his most haunting nightmares and will never turn her back on him, she will never pretend to not notice him shaking with anxiety and will never let him face his parents alone. She will always love him. He will always love her.

It tells her what she needs to know.

She stands outside the pub for ten minutes, staring at the snowfall, wondering how she’ll get home with her heels on when the ground is looking wet and slippery. She knows that he lives nearby, but she won't bother him. She turns to look over her shoulder and sees her friends laughing and twirling each other on the dance floor. She walks home alone and feels good about it.

The painting before her is really quite ugly. She sips her champagne and tilts her head to the side. Maybe this one grey streak is more favorable from another angle.

It isn’t.

Her heels clack when she moves to the next painting. Another streak of paint, but this time it’s green. There’s a message in this series of art, something about seeing color or what remains in the blank spaces. Pansy did pay attention in art during Hogwarts, despite what everyone thinks.

She looks around at the gallery for reconnaissance, pleased with her ability to avoid Ron thus far. Potter invited Theo, who invited her with his brows pulled together and a conjured ignorance in his eyes. They drove off campus to a privately owned art gallery for the opening of its brand new exhibition. The pamphlet she received at the door described it as a mix of modern and classic, a collaboration of unique art styles to invoke a feeling of timelessness and eternity, something, something.

It had taken her very little time to find Ron’s name in the featured artists section, one of two students from the curator’s university class chosen to have their works shown. She had felt a great sense of pride at seeing his name printed, but strayed away from her friends when they went off to find him. They would congratulate him, surely, and toast to him and if she were there, she would ruin the moment by staring at him and then skirting away, so she didn’t choose to stay, at all.

She’s wandered over to the front of the gallery, where she hasn’t seen Ron in the past twenty-six minutes. He’s proudly circling the left area where his paintings are on display, shaking hands with people who want to know his name and see his other works, accepting pats on the back from his fellow students and his friends. He hasn’t spared a single glance at her, thank goodness, and she’s found herself pacing back and forth in front of the streaks of paint.

The pink one stops her in her tracks. It almost looks a bit phallic from where she stands, now. Maybe, maybe not. She takes another sip of her champagne and holds it against the pink streak. Less phallic now.

“Looks like a dick, doesn’t it?” Ron asks, bending to speak in her ear.

Pansy almost jumps out of her skin, but saves the champagne, turning to face him and deliver a sharp slap to his shoulder. “What is your problem?”

“My problem?” He has the audacity to pretend to sound offended, smiling at her when he stands to his full height. “You’re the one who hasn’t congratulated me on my amazing artwork, yet.”

“I only just arrived, didn’t see you.”

“You’re such a liar, I saw you walk in nearly half an hour ago.”

Her cheeks flush. She turns back to the painting and walks to the next one, a blue one that looks remarkably like a vagina. There’s a statement there, somewhere.

“You look amazing,” Ron says, following her. “I saw you through the window, actually, before you walked in. I thought, ‘Wow, Pansy looks amazing.’”

“So?”

“So, this one looks like a cunt.”

“Stop,” she says, bumping his hip with her own. “That’s rather crude.”

“Sorry, my love, this one looks like a woman’s center, the beautiful creature waiting between her legs.”

It’s not something to laugh at—it’s rather immature, really, but Pansy snorts. “You’re a moron.”

He doesn’t respond. She looks up at him to find him already looking at her, blushing and glowing and wholly happy with the moment. Pansy walks to the next painting, but Ron places his hands on the backs of her shoulders and steers her toward the left side of the gallery.

“I have something to show you,” is all he says, and they walk over to his artwork together.

The first piece is a meticulously painted piece of—Blaise, for some reason—wearing a toga and holding up a sword. She’s not sure what it’s supposed to mean, but it makes her eyes water.

“My professor’s especially fond of this one,” says Ron. “Likes the lighting, said I had the potential to become the world’s best oil painter.”

“Did he really?” Pansy asks, sounding congested.

“Sort of. Do you like it?”

She shakes her head and out of the corner of her eye, sees Theo recreating the pose with Potter. “I think your model’s really ugly, just so unsightly.”

And then she turns her head to look up at Ron, who’s staring at his painting with the faintest trace of a smile on his lips. His eyes are filled with stars, blue and wondrous and awe-filled. He traces the lines of his own artwork like he knows them intimately, looking up, then down, left, then right. He studies his own work with an unabashed pride, which makes Pansy’s heart swell in her chest.

She says, “But, the art is quite exquisite.”

Ron nods. “Yes, I’d agree.” He guides her toward the next one. “Now, look at this.”

It’s a painting of a haphazardly built house; one built atop another with stilts, almost leaning in the painted breeze, but not falling. It looks as if it will fall apart if a bird sits on the dark rooftop, but there’s smoke coming out of the chimney and the lights are on. The grass surrounding it is tall and there’s a pair of people dancing on the lawn.

Pansy imagines for a moment that it’s her and Ron, almost able to breathe in the spring breeze of the painting and hear the crickets in the grass. She leans in and examines the couple, sees their blazing red hair, and blinks back the tears welling up in her eyes.

“I like this one,” she says with a nod.

“Yeah?” Ron says, smiling wide. “Oh, it's home. Sort of. Home, if it were more magical. That’s my parents in the yard, big old romantics they are.”

“Are they here?” She asks, pretending to pick an eyelash from her eye.

“My parents? No, it’s expensive to travel, it’s fine, I’ve taken pictures of all of it, that’s good enough.”

It isn’t. “I’m sorry,” she says.

“Not your fault,” he answers, and then guides her toward a painting lit by a single spotlight.

There’s a small crowd gathered around, murmuring beneath their breaths, talking about purchase prices and brushwork and all sorts of things that art-passionate people talk of when they’re crowded around a painting in a gallery. Pansy knows what the painting is before she sees it, feels herself tense up as Ron guides her toward the crowd with his hand on the small of her back, trying desperately to swallow down the lump in her throat as the crowd parts for them.

She starts to blink back tears when the crowd parts for them, giving her most polite smile when people start applauding around them, feeling both ridiculous and overwhelmed. The girl in the painting is no longer bathed in darkness and instead surrounded by light, a soft glow that lights up the entire painting. The tears in her eyes are tainted with sunlight, making her look much more hopeful than she is despairing and the biggest change by far, she’s holding onto a hand just off the canvas, freckled and toned and almost hidden by the shadows, but she’s not alone. She never was. Pansy can’t take her eyes off of it.

Ron shakes a few hands and accepts some business cards before excusing himself to stand by her side. Her cheeks are wet with the tears she can't stop and she’s trying to dry them with her hands, but no matter how much she wipes, she can’t stop crying.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I don’t know why I’m crying. It’s just me.”

“And me.” He points to the hand.

“And you,” she cries, pathetically. “It’s just me and you.”

He has the gall to laugh at her tears, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and pulling her into his side. “Ah, it’s my favorite piece,” he says. “I don’t think I’ll ever part with it.”

“Why not?” She sniffles. “It’s a horrid creature.”

“I don’t know, I quite like it nonetheless.” He presses a kiss to the top of her head. “Pansy, I’m very quite fond of you, I’m not sure if you know that.”

“But, why?”

“Why, not? I adore everything about you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t have to understand,” he says softly. “I think the world of you, I think about you all the time, I think I might even be in love with you—but I know that might be premature.”

She says something that sounds like, “Buhthereisinagoodreasuh.”

And he laughs again and says, “I don’t need a good reason to like you, Pansy. People just like people.”

But, people don’t just like Pansy. She wipes her tears away, though they resurface again, and pulls away from him. The crowd has dispersed, doing a bad job of pretending not to witness Ron console his crying—friend. He leans closer to her to preserve his words for just them only, creating a moment inside of a moment.

“But, if you need reasons, the number one reason is because I’ve kind of loved you ever since we waltzed at the ball during our fourth year, because I saw you crying and I saw Draco looking at Hermione and all I could look at afterwards was you,” he says. “And then, you gave me a chance during our first year here and all I could do was listen to you talk and watch you think and see you breathe and learn you.

“Learn that you care so much about your friends that you let them rag on you if it makes them laugh, learn that you love everyone around you except yourself, learn that you are the most lovable and meaningful person I have ever met.” He grins. “I love you because you deserve to be loved and I would do anything to love you.”

Pansy can hardly see him anymore. He’s nothing but a blob of fair skin and red hair, a wide smile and even wider shoulders. He cups her face in his hands and turns her back toward the painting.

“Doesn’t my hand look particularly great, anyway? I had to study my own hand for quite a bit.”

She makes a gurgling sound that must be a laugh and stands by his side. “Oh, Ron,” she says, and they both know what she means.

He sighs contentedly and holds his hand out for her to take. She blinks the tears out of her eyes and puts her hand in his.