Written for Hogwarts:
mythology task #9 - hephaestus, god of the forge: write a disability au
word count: 2740
other prompts + AN at bottom!
On a thoroughly miserable Tuesday, Pansy received a letter from the Ministry, saying that they'd be sending an aid over. This was surprising for two main reasons. One, the magical world tended not to care about disabled people at all; certainly not to the extent of providing any sort of help. That was seen as the family's job, and even then, there were plenty of people who didn't bother helping their relatives. Secondly, she was considered hardly better than a Death Eater. Why would they waste any of these newly acquired resources on her? Pansy wasn't sure she even wanted some Hufflepuff do-gooder showing up at her house.
"It might be fun to order them around," Draco offered with a shrug, snorting in annoyance when Pansy stretched her legs out across his lap. "Like a replacement house-elf. You're certainly bossy enough, and there's plenty to do around here." He slid a hand up her leg, towards her knee, and Pansy shrieked.
"No," she said emphatically, voice shaking a little. Draco lifted both hands in surrender, rolling his eyes.
"Fine, suit yourself. Have a huge scar forever for all I care, or better yet, put on the bloody scar cream yourself." He set the jar down, huffing and crossing his arms. Pansy, suddenly feeling far more exposed than she'd like, and silently cursing herself for deciding to wear a skirt, spread a blanket over both their legs.
"You know I don't like people touching it, Draco."
"And yet you asked me to do it."
"No," Pansy retorted with a put-upon sigh. "You asked if I'd been putting the cream on, and I said no, and then you asked if I was going to, and I said no again, and you went and got it from the bathroom all on your own while I was reading the letter."
"It looks horribly ugly," Draco said in another attempt to get her to care about the cream, giving her a patented Malfoy sneer.
"So do yours," she replied, reaching over and poking at his chest. "I've seen you shirtless." Pansy hesitated, and then spoke again. "The scar really doesn't matter that much to me. Yeah, it's ugly, but getting rid of it doesn't do anything but make my leg a little prettier. It doesn't actually fix things."
"You know I'd fucking kill that Healer if you asked me to," Draco said, voice rough. "It'd be worth going to Azkaban."
Pansy felt a stab of anger. Draco wasn't the only one who wished he could kill him, to get some sort of justice. She wished it every day. She suspected he'd mangled the healing job on purpose, as vengeance for what her family had done during the war, but she'd never know. Maybe he really was just incompetent. Sometimes she tried to tell herself it didn't matter anyway, since it wasn't like she'd been perfectly able-bodied before, but it did.
"You're far too delicate for prison, darling. If anything, let your boyfriend do something about it."
"Harry is not my boyfriend!" Draco went bright pink, and that set Pansy off laughing, temporarily forgetting about everything else."
"Granger," Pansy said blankly. Oh, yes, the Ministry should have included this information in the letter. She knew there had to be some sort of downside to this arrangement.
"Parkinson. You look...well." Hermione was infuriatingly polite, even managing a small smile, but Pansy was already angry. There was a veiled jab in that comment. She knew it. Everyone saw her as either too disabled, which somehow entitled strangers to ask her all too personal questions, or too "normal," in which case she must be faking it.
"Thank you." She forced a smile in return, pretending not to notice the implications. "I wouldn't have expected you to be doing this sort of work. Thought you would have gone back to Hogwarts this year."
"Oh, I have," Hermione replied. "My schedule's more flexible this year, so I thought it would be nice to do some volunteering on the side. I didn't know you were..." She trailed off, looking uncharacteristically lost for words.
Pansy raised an eyebrow, then glanced down to inspect her fingernails. Granger or not, this was a dance she knew by heart.
"Disabled isn't a dirty word, darling. It's okay."
"I, ah, never noticed." Hermione was going red, and Pansy wasn't sure whether it was due to the pet name or being less than fully informed for once.
"With all the attention you always paid to me?" Pansy scoffed, casually leaning against the wall in an attempt to subtly take some of the weight off her bad leg. "Your little gang only cared about me as an extension of Draco. Oh, and I believe you liked calling me ugly now and then too."
"I didn't..."
"Alright," Pansy said, cutting her off. "Sure. Regardless, you wouldn't have noticed. It wasn't nearly as bad in school. There was an...incident a few months ago. Turns out the Ministry isn't all that eager to go after people attacking bad little girls like me," she drawled. "Serves me right for wanting to keep myself safe, hm? Maybe you should do something about that."
"You were attacked? I don't remember hearing anything about that..." Hermione frowned, crossing her arms.
"Of course you wouldn't. Like I said, people don't care about Death Eaters getting what they deserve," Pansy said with a bitter laugh. All the times people had tried to hurt Draco...that was almost worse than her own pain. "Only...huh, that's weird..." she continued, yanking up her left sleeve to expose bare, unmarked skin. "It's almost like I'm not a criminal."
"But...weren't you able to get to St. Mungo's? They can't deny treatment to someone because of...ideology." Once again, Hermione was choosing her words with the care of someone approaching a hippogriff.
"Oh, yes, they can't deny treatment," Pansy agreed, barely holding back another near-hysterical laugh. "But they can torture you and make it look like an accident, claim they fixed you up just fine and you're a liar fishing for attention."
Hermione gasped, visibly tensing. She looked...almost angry on her behalf. That was a new one.
"They...and nobody did anything?"
Pansy shook her head, a grimace flashing across her face. When Hermione looked away for a moment, she rubbed her thigh, knowing it wouldn't actually do much to ease the pain. She still needed to use crutches some of the time, bloody ugly Muggle invention, but she'd come to the door without them for appearances' sake, and the extended time standing was taking a toll on her.
"Of course not. No proof he did it on purpose."
"That's horrible. I had no idea. I can't believe that Healer's still working, and with no consequences..." Hermione shook her head, making a face that seemed to suggest she'd be doing research and writing letters immediately after leaving.
"Yes, well, my reputation is terrible, which comforts me a lot. I doubt he'll be botching any good people's healing."
"Parkinson...Pansy..." Hermione was fussing with a loose thread on the sleeve of her jumper, brow furrowed. "I don't think you're a bad person."
"Could've fooled me."
"I mean, I think you've done some bad things, and you certainly haven't been very nice to me, but...you're not evil. We can't change the past, but you can turn your reputation around if you really try."
Pansy tensed, looking away and letting a curtain of hair fall in front of her face, blocking one eye. If it was longer, maybe she could hide from Hermione completely without even moving.
"I need to sit down," she muttered, limping into the sitting room. Pansy stopped in front of her favorite armchair, sliding her foot forward along the smooth floor as she sat down, compensating for her limited range of motion. Leg stretched out in front of her, bent far less than the other, she felt even more exposed.
Hermione sat across from her, gaze lingering on the offending limb.
"Can you...?"
"Don't. Please." Pansy hoped it wasn't obvious when her voice shook. "Not today." She'd been expecting some pushover she could order around, not Granger poking around where hardly anyone but Draco and Blaise were welcome.
It took a long while before Pansy allowed herself to be anything approaching vulnerable with Hermione again. The visits were largely unfriendly affairs. They'd bicker. Pansy would ask Hermione to do a few things, usually only indirectly related to "caretaking." That was that. Of course, it couldn't last.
"Fuck!" Pansy tripped, landing in a heap on the floor. Hermione was just in the next room, so Pansy was sure her yell was enough to get her to come investigate, but maybe if she could get up before Hermione got there, she could pass it off as something else.
No such luck. She tried to get up a few times, but wound up slumping back down to the floor, face feeling like it was on fire as she waited for Hermione.
"Are you alright? What happened?" Concern was written over every line of Hermione's face, something Pansy still wasn't used to seeing directed at her.
"I fell, obviously," Pansy growled, staring down at her bright pink socks so that she didn't have to look at her. Once again, she tried to get up, a sharp pain shooting through her knee in protest. Hermione was watching, biting her lip.
"Do you need some help?" she asked, stepping closer.
Pansy's immediate, instinctive response was "No." The word hung in the air for a few seconds, and she sat there on the polished wood, knowing that she was wrong, and that Hermione wasn't about to leave and let her brood about it in private. "...Maybe. Can you...?" The words were even harder to get out than she thought, and her eyes stung with tears. "Can you help me?"
"That's what I'm here for, isn't it?" Hermione leaned down, carefully pulling her to her feet. Pansy held on to her hands just a few seconds longer than necessary, exhaling shakily. A tear had escaped despite her best efforts, wet against her still-burning cheek, and Hermione reached in to wipe it away.
Without thinking, Pansy jerked away abruptly, knee buckling at the sudden movement. Hermione's arms shot out, just barely keeping her from falling again.
"It's clear we deserve each other."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Pansy muttered, sounding far more like a sniffling child than she'd like.
"Nothing," Hermione replied absently, guiding her to her favorite chair. "Things are certainly exciting when we're together, though. Never easy."
"Make yourself useful and just get me a fucking pain potion."
Either one of them could have just summoned the potion with a flick of their wand, but Hermione went to go get it herself anyway, giving Pansy a moment to compose herself. She took a couple of deep breaths, wiping her eyes and removing the telltale streaks of mascara from her skin with a cosmetic charm. Why couldn't anything in her life be easy?
When Hermione returned and handed over the potion, she was holding an ice pack as well. She carefully laid it over her knee, and Pansy just rolled her eyes and downed the potion, not bothering to question it. Never mind how good the ice felt.
Hermione's fingers grazed two small bumps just below Pansy's knee and frowned, looking up to her face in confusion.
"Do you know what these are?" she asked, gently touching them again.
"Yes," Pansy said curtly, setting the empty potion vial aside. "Screws. The Healer was Muggleborn. He used...surgery in addition to magical methods."
Hermione's expression grew even more grim, lips pressed into a thin line. She perched on the arm of Pansy's chair, done fussing with the ice.
"That would explain the scar then. I thought it looked like an incision site. I didn't think St. Mungo's even sanctioned surgery..." Scars, Pansy corrected silently. Hermione was surely referring to the largest one. Around six inches in length, it stretched from just above her knee to below the bumps she'd mentioned before. But there were others too, much smaller, from where he'd done...whatever else. Pansy didn't know the names of the Muggle procedures, she just knew that he'd cut into her again and again, slicing, screwing, sewing, and rearranging. And all of that had come before the real horror.
Pansy didn't speak for a long while, unconsciously leaning closer to Hermione for comfort.
"Oh, they don't," she said eventually, deciding to start with the easiest bit. "But he said my situation was uniquely complex, and they allowed it." Even Pansy herself wasn't sure whether she'd say more than that, but she did, eventually.
"He hadn't fixed anything, but they tried to get me moving again anyway, doing all sorts of exercises. Nothing was in the right place, so I couldn't..." She trailed off, biting her lip. "They just kept going no matter how much I screamed, acting like I was weak or didn't want to put in the work. I started having panic attacks. Draco and I managed to piece together what really happened, and...I haven't gone back there."
Not many more words were exchanged, but Hermione stayed an hour longer than usual, just sitting with her.
"I think I'd like a hot bath," Pansy announced, looking up from the perfume bottles she was organizing on the top of her dresser. She was still a little tired and out of breath from the long, laborious trek up the stairs, but was doing her best to hide it. As comfortable as she was starting to become with Hermione, it was still embarrassing to have trouble getting around her own house.
"And you want my help with that?" Hermione asked incredulously from across the room. "That doesn't seem just a little inappropriate to you?"
"Isn't that part of your job? Helping me with my day to day activities?"
"Well, yes," Hermione said quickly, voice crisp. "I didn't mean in the context of caregiver and patient. I meant the fact that we've..." She made a miserable little noise, clearly embarrassed to be saying this out loud. "The fact that you've been flirting with me, and I...haven't been discouraging you."
"You can admit that you're attracted to me, Granger," Pansy said. "Besides, I wasn't asking you to wash my back for me," she teased. "I just...need help getting in. Should be able to manage the rest fine on my own."
Pansy looked through her sizable collection of bath bombs as the tub filled, eventually settling on a sparkly green one and tossing it in. Hermione was gentle but entirely clinical as she helped her in, keeping her eyes averted as much as possible. The moment she left the room, leaving Pansy with nothing to focus on but the hot water, she felt a million times more relaxed. Showers she could do on her own without any trouble, but stepping over the edge of her massive, sunken tub and sitting down was a much taller order, and so luxurious baths had become a thing of the past.
She was able to get through the rest of her routine without much trouble, and by the time she returned to her bedroom, where Hermione was waiting, Pansy had made up her mind.
"Stay," she said simply, sitting on the bed and smiling faintly to herself as Hermione helped her get comfortable against the pillows, legs stretched out in front of her.
"Excuse me?"
"Stay. It's Friday, it can't be that urgent for you to get back to Hogwarts."
Hermione deliberated for a few moments, smoothing a hand over the comforter.
"And you're right, I have been flirting with you. So tell me something good for once. Tell me you'll stay. I think cuddling would be very good for my health."
"I suppose we'll just have to investigate that for ourselves," Hermione decided, joining Pansy in bed and wrapping a hesitant arm around her waist.
"We'll need quite a few trials then, to be sure," Pansy said in her best serious science voice.
"I think you might be right." Hermione pressed closer. "I've learned a lot about you over the past few weeks...I really underestimated you before, Pansy."
"Maybe I gained a little more appreciation for you too...You still have plenty more to learn about me, though, so you'll need to keep coming."
"Don't worry, I'm planning on it."
Several aspects of Pansy's experience are borrowed from my own life, so even though I'm not 100% satisfied with the way this turned out, it was definitely a different experience writing it compared to my usual fics. Maybe I'll come back to this AU at some point and add more to it. Disability isn't always a super visible, wheelchair-bound type of thing; it can seem subtle to outsiders who aren't living it every day, and I've found that it's so rare to find disabled representation I can really relate to, so I hope someone else can connect to Pansy here too.
- insane house challenge: 3. hermione granger
- 365 prompts: 338. sharing a bed
- fanfiction resolutions: write a fic about a disability or sensitive issue, write a fic exploring a different sexuality
- character appreciation: (trait) reliable
- disney challenge: the genie - write about someone feeling trapped
- book club: julie lawry - (character) pansy parkinson, (plot point) discovering someone's true colors, (word) information
- showtime: dancing through life - (dialogue) "It's clear we deserve each other."
- count your buttons: (object) perfume, (dialogue) "Can you help me?", (word) bath
- a year in entertainment: mean girls - (color) pink
- liza's loves: between the sheets - write about being cuddled under the covers
- jenny's jovial quotations: "My reputation is terrible, which comforts me a lot." - Noel Coward
- scavenger hunt: write a fic featuring hermione as a main character
- library lovers: me before you - (au) disability, (occupation) caregiver, (dialogue) "Tell me something good."
- gobstones: red stone - health ; accuracy - (dialogue) "We can't change the past." ; power - (action) tripping ; technique - (word) inappropriate
- play more cards: rummy - write a slash/femslash pairing
- 40 days challenge: no canon locations