Normal
ADJECTIVE
1. Conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected.
/
It had never been a normal relationship.
Not normal like 'Miss Goody Two-Shoes Granger and her flame-haired knight in shining armour' kind of normal. Harry and Pansy didn't go for casual pints and gin and tonics in airy pubs with their friends nor did they take long walks and have picnics at sunset in the park and share gentle, chaste kisses on the way home.
Nor, in fact, was their relationship normal in the fashion of Pansy's erstwhile best friend and boyfriend, Daphne Malfoy (née Greengrass) and her now-husband, Draco. There were no flawless couple shots taken at the latest high society ball, splashed garishly across the front page of Witch Weekly, and there were no good-humoured family dinners with the parents every other Saturday (not least because Harry and Pansy each had no parents to speak of).
Even Neville Longbottom's nascent relationship with the quirky, airy blonde girl, Luna Lovegood, seemed to smack of normality more than Harry's and Pansy's own. Nargle-hunting and bizarre Herbology plant-splicing experiments were at least done together; shared activities that the pair could always find solace and comfort in when times weren't so rosy.
Normal wasn't passionate, neighbour-disturbing sex conducted into the small hours of the morning then mutual receipt of the cold shoulder and icy stares the next day as the two invariably passed each other in the corridor of their shared Department of Magical Law Enforcement workplace.
Normal wasn't curling up against each other in the cold winter nights and whispering a deep, shared love for one another followed by an avoidance of eye contact as Harry gathered his stuff and Apparated back to his own home the next morning.
Normal wasn't Harry keeping a ring and a key to his flat in his sock drawer, alternating which one lay cushioned in the small velvet box hidden beneath the old mustard yellow socks previously owned by his uncle.
Normal wasn't Pansy, as a full-grown twenty three year old, doodling P+H in love hearts in her notebook while Roger Davies droned for hours about the need to crack down on the enchantment of Christmas trees in Muggle areas in one of his numerous DMLE team meetings.
They knew their relationship wasn't normal, which is why Harry stood outside Pansy's small, dingy London flat in the rain holding a bottle of wine, praying she wanted the same thing as he and working up the courage to ring the buzzer.
They knew their relationship wasn't normal, which is why when Pansy opened the door dressed in an oversized Smiths t-shirt and fluffy slippers to see Harry standing nervously on her doorstep, having not arranged to see each other through clandestine notes at work, she let him in whilst trying to swallow the heart which had just recently jumped into her mouth.
They wanted to make their relationship normal, which is why Harry asked Pansy about her day and suggested that they order Chinese food.
They wanted to make their relationship normal, so in the morning after a surprisingly gentle round of love-making and the ensuing emotional outpouring otherwise known as post-coitus cuddling, Pansy didn't kick Harry out and made him a cup of tea in bed instead.
How could Pansy Parkinson ever be described as normal, Harry wondered to himself, as she lifted her wedding veil and turned to face him at the altar and stared up at him, eyes sparkling with happiness and tears?
Normality, Pansy had decided, was what you make it. She and Harry weren't normal in the wishy-washy, bourgeois Granger/Weasley style, nor were they normal in the boring 'young, rich and famous' way that the Malfoys were, and certainly they were not normal like Neville and his saucer-eyed Ravenclaw were (maybe those two weren't normal after all).
No, they were normal in their own, occasionally slightly twisted, way, and that, they both decided, was just fine.
End.
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Hi everyone,
First off, thanks to every one of you that read this. Please review!
I'd like to apologise for 'Forgiveness' (there's some irony in there somewhere) - I found I'm far better suited to one-shots than multi-chapter epics, so with that in mind I hope now to get more works out on a regular basis.
I hope you enjoyed the fic and follow me to stay updated!
-TFE
N.B. I should of course say I claim none of the characters nor the background story in this work as my own, it is all J.K. Rowling's. I gain nothing out of this other than my own (and hopefully your) enjoyment.