"You wouldn't believe the dream I had last night... I... I don't even believe it. I've never felt such a way before." - Pansy to Mattie the morning after the silver and gold bracelet went on her wrist.

Pansy flossed her teeth and resisted the urge to snoop, going right to bed. She was exhausted. And not even being in a bed that wasn't her own in a room she'd never been in before could stop her from falling right to sleep. These blankets didn't smell like jasmine, they just felt… warm. She slept hard. And she dreamed.

Maybe they agreed to be friends. But in her dream, Neville was between her legs. Pinning her hands down over her head. She couldn't see his face but she could feel him. Moving inside her with a rocking motion that moved their bed, his chest crushing against hers.

It was him, no question. Wide shoulders. Strong. The quick, uneven breaths in her ear sounded like him. And he leaned up, not stopping for even a second, to look down at her with golden brown eyes. He squeezed her hands with his, pinning her harder. Fucking her harder. It was desperate, his passion. She couldn't handle it and she wanted to scream.

"Don't go," he panted, sounding heartbroken and desperate. "Don't go."

Pansy woke with a start, blankets kicked aside and clutching her chest as if her heart would pop right out at any moment. Her body ached in pain, the kind of pain that came from a lover too rough. "Stella?" She resisted the urge to cry. And failed. What did Pansy know of such things?

I'm here, sweetheart.

"It's not me," Pansy trembled, regretting the decision to stay in this house. Wishing she could go back in time and throw out Mrs. Grant's gift. Hating the turn her life took. Tears streamed down her face. "It isn't me."

No, it's not you. You were right before … and I was wrong. It might seem like you and that stud, but it's not. It's us. Gus and I had sex like that once.

Pansy wiped her face with shaking fingers. "You were going to leave him?"

No, no. I'm just a Muggle, but Gus ... He knows magic. We robbed our way up and down the east coast before we ended up in Boston, the police hot on our tails. But they didn't find us before my daddy did. He said he wouldn't turn Gus in if I came home willingly.

"What happened?" Pansy asked, still out of breath.

I lied and told daddy I would go home, but only if I could say goodbye to Gus first. But Gus thought I meant it when I said I would go with daddy. He was so angry with me that night. I never forgot the way he touched me.

"What did your father do?" Pansy wondered as her breath finally evened out.

Gus removed daddy's memory of me, and we stowed away on a big boat. We came to his childhood home, here in England.

"And then you made the bracelets?"

An odd silence followed Pansy's question, Stella clamming right up. But a shuffling sound outside the door caught her attention before she could ask again. She waited, lying in bed, for it to happen again. It didn't, but something else made her certain someone was just on the other side of the door. And after the dream she just had? She kind of hoped it was Hannah, the drunk ex-girlfriend.

Her certainty that someone lurked beyond the bedroom door coupled with the sudden silence from Stella made Pansy sure there was no way in Antheia's garden she would be able to fall asleep again. She threw her legs over the edge of the bed and wiped her face with her palms again, glad to find her cheeks dry.

Weeks of dreams had left her sleep deprived and unsure, even deranged at times, but none of it compared to the dream she just experienced. The raw, exposed feeling completely unfamiliar and unnerving both.

On unsteady legs she walked across the room and pulled opened the door.

Neville sat against the wall right next to her, head back, an elbow thrown over his eyes. He stirred at her presence, coming up on his feet. Her first instinct was to yell at him. It was his idea that she come to stay here, at Longbottom Keep. But Stella's love for Gus nearly toppled her over. Pansy hadn't been in love before, and she didn't know how to handle it.

It was his face she saw in her dreams and his hands she could still feel, pinning her down. Rough against her wrists. And his body deep inside her body.

But the look he gave her stopped the tirade before it could even start. Because he looked just as upset as she felt, put in a situation that didn't make any sense. She realized exactly at that moment how horrible this all was for him, not just herself. After ending a major relationship, being possessed by a hostile spirit, and having to deal with her… she didn't think about it from his point of view.

Not a great start to their friendship.

"I'm a virgin," she shared into the mostly dark hallway for them all to hear. Stella, Gus, and Neville. "Every man I've dated has tried to pressure me into sex before I was ready and with everything that happened… the Brotherhood… it just never happened."

"Then you've dated some real jerks," Neville snapped in a sleep heavy, gruff voice.

"They said the same thing, the both of them," she mentioned Hugh earlier to Hannah. But before Hugh had been Draco. He hadn't meant to be malicious when he told her she needed to put out or else she would end up all alone. Breaking up had been exactly what their relationship needed. They were better as friends. "Put out or be alone. Guess what I choose?"

"You chose yourself," Neville guessed correctly. And he knew it too. He crossed his arms, tired and annoyed. But she didn't think he was annoyed with her. "As you should've, Pansy. Guys who pressure their partners into sex are pricks. A real man doesn't coerce. He entices. Your first time? Your 100th? Doesn't matter. It should be special."

Then he threw his arms up with a frustrated grunt. "No as a matter of fact I do not approve of what I saw in my dream, you fucking prick! What kind of man holds a woman down like that?"

Oohh, he doesn't understand, sweetheart. Explain it to him.

"Well, I don't either, not really," Pansy admitted softly to Stella's whisper. Because she kind relieved at how Neville was responding. It meant she wasn't alone in her confusion and distaste at what she witnessed, what she experienced through the dream.

But it was dual sided, because a big part of her found a different kind of relief at his reaction. What if someone else had gotten the bracelet instead? A different bracelet 'buddy' as Neville coined. Someone who wasn't so pure-hearted, who would take advantage of her predicament.

Neville on the other hand… he was enraged at Gus's actions against Stella. The sex they had too rough, no matter their situation.

No no, c'mon sweet girl. Haven't you ever been in extremis before? Heart pumping and lungs screaming cause you've been running for your life? Afterwards you just wanna jump your man and never stop?

"No, actually, I have not," Pansy admitted. "Maybe because I'm not a bank robber, on the run from the authorities, or a total psychopath-"

Neville was also shouting. "I don't give two lollipop licks what you think about me or my bloody generation you old codger!"

You two are utterly boring, naive fools who don't understand real love. Neither of you have ever known what it's like to love someone so categorically you couldn't imagine life without them!

"Call me chump one more time-"

"Is that why you did it then?" Pansy shouted at herself, pressing her forehead into the door behind her. The hallway felt far too small for the four of them, even though technically there were just the two. "You put your souls in these bracelets so you would never be without one another after you died? Well you succeeded, and now you get to be together at our expense!"

Pansy turned and propped herself against the door with a frustrated sigh, looking at Neville who had his fists curled in anger and a very stern look on his face. He turned to face her, clearly having his own heated discussion.

But then, he shook his head. "Nope. Not happening. You hear me Gus? You think I'm emotional now? Just you wait, you try to take over me and lay a single hand on Pansy I will find a way to drag your spirit arse into the physical world and beat hell outta you!"

Then he stomped down the stairs, slamming multiple doors on his way before she heard the front door open and close rather violently as if the house was feeling mad right along with Neville.

Wow-wee, Stella practically moaned. Gus and I aside, hon, that is a man worth getting into trouble with.