Author's Note: Written in April 2021 for persephone_stone's birthday. Persephone, I had a ~5k ficlet all planned out for you, but life got in the way. Please consider this drabble a teaser before the (eventual) main course! I hope you had a wonderful birthday. Thank you for existing: in the world, in this fandom, and as a friend.
Float or Fall
Pansy Parkinson hadn't meant to laugh.
In fact, until that fateful giggle, her life had been one of strategic control. Since childhood, she had followed the tight twists of the dance choreographed by her parents. Each step brought her closer to the finale: a slow walk down a petal-strewn aisle in a floor-length white gown.
Her governess taught her simple spells with a ronin wand, nurturing her natural talent for Charms. Etiquette lessons taught her how to be a lady. Horseback riding straightened her posture, and summers abroad cultivated a beyond-her-years worldliness that her mother insisted boys would appreciate and girls would envy.
And then there were the endless afternoons spent in her mother's stuffy parlour. In lessons of a different sort, Pansy practised sitting in still silence as her mother chatted away with some primped stranger. She sipped scalding, too-sweet tea across from fidgeting boys and tried to divine their shared future from the undrained dregs simply because she had nothing better to do.
Only after she'd turned ten did these afternoons transition explicitly into negotiations. But by then, Pansy had stopped paying attention. Her participation in these teatime talks—junior attempts to influence their outcomes—hadn't yielded any results.
It didn't help that her parents discouraged curiosity. Her mother believed that questions bittered the brew, and her father lacked the patience required to address issues he considered trivial. Easier for everyone, then, if Pansy kept quiet and intuited her own answers.
If she never associated with girls her own age, it wasn't because her father saw no value in female friendships. It was because the other girls were competition, and Pansy couldn't risk revealing a vulnerability that might put her at a disadvantage on the marriage market.
If she was denied cake on her birthday, it wasn't because her mother thought Pansy's waistline merited the restriction. It was because their last elf had died some years before, and human bakers couldn't be trusted to deliver a sponge free of substances more harmful than buttercream.
And if her value as a person hinged on marrying a wealthy, pure-blood man, it wasn't because her parents were old-fashioned, short-sighted, or cruel. It was because, to her parents, marriage—more than academic, professional, or artistic success—was the most Pansy could ever hope to achieve.
Pansy was a leaf in a river, caught in a current she couldn't hope to change. Her life was a series of predefined milestones, and her future was one that didn't require tea leaves to foresee. She was fine with that—had even made peace with it.
Until Harry Potter.
The boy had pulled Draco's attention from her at age eleven, becoming an unexpected impediment to a future that had felt as predictable as dawn. She'd declared war on him then, treating him with all the disdain and bitterness she would a love rival. Even when she realized, at age sixteen, that she didn't love Draco and, most days, actually dreaded becoming his wife, Pansy harboured her silent hate.
The habit stuck. Plotting Harry's failure had become second nature, a compulsion driven less by active malice than passive instinct.
An instinct that had nearly ruined her in Seventh Year, when she'd suggested offering him up to the Dark Lord.
Pansy's world had fallen away in those few moments of pregnant silence, when her river of quiet compliance sent her careening over a waterfall.
She hadn't meant it.
Not really.
Harry's death had been the means to an end. An easy solution to a persistent and, recently, far more acute problem. Besides, he'd already survived so many close calls that the fact of his mortality felt rather overstated.
Pansy's stomach had dropped as his eyes bored into hers from across the Great Hall. Her breath had caught in a brief moment of weightlessness: that split-second between float and fall, before the plummet began in earnest.
She'd landed, ashamed and reviled, a coward and an embarrassment. Her marriage prospects disappeared, and her parents' lifetime work came undone in an evening.
The river had spat her out.
The promise of an easy, comfortable life was gone. Pansy needed to decide for herself what her future would be, navigate the river instead of allowing it to carry her forward.
She needed to work for it.
Returning to Hogwarts had been the first step.
Taking a job at Witch Weekly had been the second.
The posting had been full of corporate jargon: engaging with colleagues and clients, providing key input on photoshoots, and acting as a brand ambassador. It read more like code for procuring morning coffee, coordinating lunchtime orders, and doing so with a smile. Pansy had accepted the position open-eyed: success and failure were self-determined, and nothing was guaranteed.
It wasn't glamorous. She'd helped the production crew scout locations for the past month, and the best they could find was an empty warehouse that smelled of old Potions ingredients and had walls the same, dull grey color as the concrete floor.
It wasn't prestigious. She'd been tasked—on this critical first shoot with the gossip rag's most famous client in a generation—with passing out pastries.
It wasn't her fault.
Because when Harry Potter stepped barefoot from his dressing room wearing a pair of red leather trousers and a grey vest with no shirt, there was really no other alternative than to laugh at him.
His gaze locked on hers from across the set, and Pansy's laughter died as gravity faltered.
She felt weightless once more.
A leaf, floating or falling—it was too early to tell.
All that kept her tethered to reality were his bright green eyes.