Chapter Text
“So, have you decided? Are you going to kill me?” Far to measured, too steady, given his position. Pansy didn’t like it.
It was far enough into Autumn now that she could see the pale mist of every breath that escaped him, each one damning her as a liar, a coward, a fool. Liar? Pansy would admit to. Coward? Who was to say in times such as these. And fool? Well, she’d brought him here, hadn’t she?
You could have escaped. If he got through the wards then maybe you might have slipped out. That thought - useless now, the opportunity lost - kept gnawing at her, content to nest with its siblings: mistakes made, actions not taken. Merlin only knew, it would not find itself without company.
In and out, Pansy could almost pretend that it was nothing but the swirl of the vapour against the black mirror of the greenhouse glass that gave her pause. That there wasn’t a man there. Living. Breathing. If she closed her eyes, maybe she could pretend. Maybe it wouldn’t be real… after all, they came with such regularity, full of a confident steadiness that belied the fact he was currently handcuffed at wand point. It felt almost impossible that anything - two words - could break that rhythm.
If she closed her eyes…
He’d see.
He’d know. Even if only for a moment. And Pansy wasn’t sure she could bear that.
She would not be seen, not by the likes of him.
But Longbottom it seemed had yet to get the memo. His face was impassive. Unreadable. Even as she willed hers to steel.
She wouldn’t look away. Let him break. Let him flinch first.
Although she wouldn’t put it past a Gryffindor to defer – ladies first.
The idea sent a flicker of something that she once might have considered mirth tickling through her. She was in control here, she had the power. She was Pansy Parkinson. She. Was. Not. Afraid. If her hand shook it was only because it was trying to learn its new grip around the unfamiliar wood of his wand. Fingers slipping on the smooth handle, futile in their search for the familiar dip where her index finger liked to sit.
Kill him, some part of her hissed. Bury him in the flower beds and have done with it, at least then something might grow.
He’d been rather good at Herbology at Hogwarts if she recalled. Even in death, he’d probably grow more from her pathetic attempts a winter greenhouse garden than she ever had.
“I might…” Careful practice kept the tremor from her voice. But his brown eyes – steady, unafraid – softened, just slightly. It had been too long, she knew it instinctively, the same way you might smell an oncoming storm. ‘Are you going to kill me?’ It was a question that was bound to give anyone pause, and yet in the eternal consideration she found only betrayal.
After all, for a man held at wand point, Neville Longbottom seemed remarkably composed. Though she imagined it more habit than practice by now. He’d seen a very different side to this war than she had felt within these walls. She narrowed her eyes, half willing him to smile at her, to take the idea of mercy as granted. Then she’d show him.
“I supposed you’re used to this,” she said, flicking the wand tip at him. She wanted him to flinch. Just once. Let something in that carefully neutral expression might crack.
Give me something, Longbottom. Anything.
Anything to rid myself of my own consequence.
Longbottom shrugged and then hissed in pain, twisting his body around what Pansy knew to be a rather… uncomfortable sensation. After all, the effects of the Parkinson wards had been designed to linger. She still didn’t have any sensation in two of the fingers on her right hand - was close to resigned that she might never again. The worst had lasted close to fortnight, her entire right leg from the mid-calf downwards had locked up into an intolerable cramp. Although of course the sprained ankle she’d found necessary to manufacture to explain her sudden limp to Marcus hadn’t helped matters. Though she supposed she ought to be grateful he’d left her unhealed. Lest he discover the ruse.
A kindness really. How predictable her husband was in his cruelty.
“That,” he ground out once it seemed the worst of the pain had passed, nodding towards his wand that sat rather awkwardly in Pansy’s hand, “is unfortunately par for the course.” He rattled the handcuffs she had charmed to bind him to the little potting station where the new cuttings of Quivering Anne refused to take “whereas this, I’ll admit is new.”
“I’m so pleased I could oblige,” said Pansy, not quite sure what she was supposed to do now. As a rule, she tried not to listen to Marcus or the others when it was their turn to host. The less she knew about anything the better. But even Pansy had picked up enough to know that Longbottom, unlike Granger and the eternally slippery Weasel - who at least had worth as hostages – had no value. He’d be killed on sight. He had caused headache enough for the consolidation of the Dark Lord’s regime to warrant mention over whisky where names she only knew because of school would be bandied about with little fanfare as to whether they had information enough to torture or if simpler solutions were preferred.
She didn’t have to leave the grounds of her estate to know it - everyone had grown sick of this drawn out war.
By rights, she should have left Longbottom to perish in the ward. But had he been found alive… he might have let it slip that she had once again resumed her pacing. Marcus, her dear husband, did so hate her pacing. Not the done thing, he’d say. To have one’s wife stalking the perimeter like some caged beast.
She could have killed him then. When he’d oozed crimson, barely breathing with nothing beyond the barest wisp of life fogging in the bitter cold. But too late, too late was the cry, because she had dragged him to her greenhouse. Hadn’t even thought to check if he had a wand. She’d healed him – at least as best as she could manage based on her rather poor recollections from school.
That was the worst part of all of this misery. She’d done all of this to herself.
Kill him, the voice whispered. For the love of Merlin - it’s mercy for you both.
Marcus would torture him, pull secret after secret out from between bloody lips. He would die a thousand deaths. After all, Pansy wasn’t so blind to the Sorting Hats’ follies as to not think that Gryffindors didn’t suffer. They bore their chains of honour and loyalty. He’d betray them. One by one. Friends and family and lovers alike. And his soul would rot long before his body was allowed to succumb. It would be a kindness. Pansy regarded her accidental hostage silently. Wished that she’d thought to put something on her face this morning. Anything to shield her from those cool brown eyes. They seemed to flit between her and the room. His prison, she supposed, if she chose to make it one.
Kill him. Just kill him and be done.
Her wrist twitched and by the sudden narrowing of his eyes Pansy knew Longbottom had seen it.
She could fetch Marcus. Send an owl to wherever the Dark Lord had seen fit to send him. Beg mercy. He might not even care that she’d healed Longbottom first. Pansy’s mind was already whirring. She could say he was important - an Order member, maybe useful. That she’d needed to save him, that he might know something. That…
Dread pooled in her stomach. She could almost feel it already - that smoke-like touch curling into her mind.
How did you find him?
Why care for him?
For three days?
Why was he hidden?
Why did you let my servants walk into a trap in pursuit of him?
Why did you heal him? Why did you heal him? Why did you heal him?
“Are you going to hand me over?” asked Longbottom, quiet.
Pansy turned away from him. Tried to school her face into something safer. Something less likely to see her at the wrong end of a Crucio. That was the problem with greenhouses though. Night pressed in, close in against the glass - and everywhere she saw the same face staring back.
She didn’t know when she had lost her edge, only that in times like these she ached for it.
“I’m thinking about it…” Even she could hear the lie. That little waver that seemed to flicker something within him. He probably thought that she felt pitied him. That her hesitation meant she was for the turning. Fool that he was Longbottom would try and work her. Appeal to some sense of justice to try to get her to free him. He’d see her damn them both.
The best thing - the only thing - would be to kill him. Bury him beneath one of the long central beds. Maybe he’d like it. Fitting really – to let him rest amongst the plants he loved.
It seemed almost perverse - that she remembered anything about him. Yet here they were: captor and captive, killer and victim…
And he liked plants.
His breath still came in – steady and even. Some mad part of her wanted to reach out. Wrap a hand around his wrist. Feel the hot thrum of his pulse. She’d probably find it steady. He probably thought her little more than a housecat with the ambitions of a tiger.
I could show you.
Maybe it would make it easier if she killed Longbottom first. Practice for when the real job had to be done. You had to mean it after all. Pansy stared into the night. Far beyond the faint patterns of the condensation on the panes, the windows of Parkinson Manor - her home - were dark.
He wasn’t back yet. Good, she thought. It gave her a little more time.
Closer, little more than a ghost in the glass, a woman stared back at Pansy. A stranger in every way that mattered. Even seeing herself like that made Pansy feel tired, the tight press of her lips doing little beyond remind her that Marcus hated it when she carried tension in her jaw.
‘You ought to at least try to look like you’re happy,’ he’d say. And Pansy would reapply her lipstick and plaster on some bright smile. Her rictus grin.
She’d never needed the mask here. Not in the greenhouse. It had been the only place she’d ever been completely alone. Here, Pansy was free to look as tired and miserable as she pleased. Tonight though a hundred faces stared back from the inky glass. All hollow. All drained of life. Whatever skills she had once taken pride in – that she had once dared think herself a master at concealment - the stress of the past year, her husband, had stolen that too. Her reflection was little more than a shell of the girl that used to set the likes of Longbottom cowering in the hallways of Hogwarts. Now Pansy had him at wand point and yet was somehow the one who looked like she was about to break.
“Parkinson?”
The world swam back into focus. Pansy half staggered as she fought to regain her footing.
“Do you think you ought to sit down?” said Longbottom, ever the white knight – a blatant attempt to get her on side.
“I’m fine,” she snapped back, forcing her knees to do their bloody job and hold the rest of her upright. All see had to do was get through this. Then bed.
“You look like you’re about to keel over,” Longbottom said, as if he were stating a simple fact.
Pansy narrowed her eyes at him, “I’m perfectly capable, thank you. And if you think some pathetic attempt at supposed concern over my-”
“If you keel over and die over there I probably stand a good chance of starving to death before I’m found,” he said with a shrug that was far too nonchalant for a man in handcuffs, “whereas, if you take a couple of steps forward…” he gave another shrug. “Maybe try and drop the wand within reach.”
Pansy stared. “I ought to kill you.”
“It probably would make the most sense,” Longbottom said.
She couldn’t help it. All effort at pretence unravelled. She just stared.
“I’m not in the habit of begging for my life,” Longbottom said, “I wouldn’t be fighting if was was.” A flicker crossed his face as he seemed to weigh something. “To be honest,” he met her eyes. “I don’t think you’re going to do it. You’re not the type.”
Pansy tried to school her face back into some semblance of control. The prickling fury that he would doubt her. She was capable of anything and everything. She let it seethe beneath her skin. But the wand still felt unfamiliar. Foreign in her hand. You had to mean it. “How would you know if I’m the type.” She snarled. Some dark part of Pansy almost wanted to laugh. Imagine it, the sheer embarrassment of a failed killing curse. Maybe that was what had done the Dark Lord in the first time. Maybe the whispers of forbidden magic were wrong. Some desperate cover for the fact that he had tried and failed to kill a baby and then literally died of shame.
“I know the type,” Longbottom said, his expression still oddly blank barring the faint stubbornness that had set itself about his jaw.
Her fingers ticked along the length of the wand. Maybe Longbottom thought each movement meant choice. That she was weighing options. At least there was some power in the silence, of decisions unmade. He might reassess, fear that she was capable of something. Anything. Other than standing here staring at the man she had once known to be nothing more than a clumsy oaf of a boy.
He watched her, and Pansy couldn’t tell if it was that damned Gryffindor behaviour in the face of death or if her truly considered her as weak as the rest of the world did. But his eyes never left hers. Inscrutable, forever assessing. As if he might simply reach into her head and pull out the single lynch pin that held the rest of her together.
Pansy could bear it no more.
Sleep. She just needed sleep. She could kill him in the morning.
“Fuck you,” she snapped as she turned on her heel. Forced herself to leave the greenhouse at a pace that couldn’t be misconstrued as anything approaching flight.
It wasn't a retreat. It was exhaustion. A desperate need to find peace.
She didn’t know if he meant her to hear it. But his voice followed her, the only sound in the rain.
“I’ll see you in the morning then.”
So much for peace.
Tomorrow, tomorrow she would kill him.