"I trust you enjoyed your evening out Friday?"
Pansy jumped at the voice over her shoulder, nearly dropping her tea cup in the sink, amber liquid sloshing over the side.
She whipped around like a Quidditch cloak in high wind, knuckles tightening around her cup handle, and scowled up at Percy Weasley. "Must you always startle me?"
"My apologies, that wasn't my intent."
"Well, stop sneaking up on me," she snapped, eyeing today's sartorial choice: a burgundy plaid suit with a barely-blue shirt underneath. Chromatic plaid suits required a certain amount of self-assurance and aplomb on the wearer's part; Weasley did it with ease.
"If I might say, Miss Parkinson, you're rather prickly. I see why Garrison hired you, as he's rather prickly himself. You'll do well with him." He moved to the sink, and she stared at his profile.
"Is that supposed to be an insult or a compliment, Weasley?"
He glanced at her. "Neither, just an observation."
She raised a plucked brow, offended. Then his initial greeting came back to mind. "What did you mean about Friday night?"
"I asked, did you enjoy your evening out?"
She tucked her chin back in confusion. "I'm sorry?"
"At Hansen's Pub, Friday night."
"Are you checking up on me?"
He laughed. A genuine laugh, the first one she'd heard from him that was directed at her instead of someone else. His eyes crinkled and his dimple made a brief appearance before disappearing into his wide grin. Unfortunately, his laughter was at her, not with her. "I have better things to do with my time than check up on the activities of our legislative staff, Miss Parkinson. I saw you leaving the pub. I assume you were there with the women from the staff office?"
She didn't think he'd seen her, she'd purposefully avoided him. "I was. I left early to meet some friends at the Wild Wand."
He nodded and went back to preparing his tea. She stood there for a moment or two, and when he didn't say anything else, she turned and strode back to her desk, wondering why she let him get under her skin.
The next two weeks passed in much the same manner as her first, which was to say, Garrison continued to snap at her, she continued to spend large parts of her day in the file room doing research, and Percy continued to dole out grins and easy support to everyone, it seemed, but her.
Pansy was becoming more confident in her skills, more secure in the research and analysis she prepared for her boss. If she were asked as a teen whether she envisioned herself working as legislative staff for the Wizengamot, she'd have laughed herself silly. She might have envisioned herself on the Wizengamot one day, but she certainly wouldn't have imagined going through the role of a staffer to get there. Her status as a Sacred Twenty-Eight member would have been enough to secure a position, had she wanted one.
That all changed after the war, though, and Pansy's image of her place in wizarding society had changed, too. She couldn't completely rid herself of eighteen years of ingrained belief in her family's superiority within wizarding Britain, but the structure of their society and government had fundamentally transformed, and she and her closest friends had spent much of the past two years coming to terms with what that meant for them.
Theo had largely walked away from their world, enrolling in Muggle university. Daphne had gotten a job at Witch Weekly, much to her parents' horror, and was enjoying honing her writing and interviewing skills. Draco kept a low profile and was working to extricate his family's assets from the questionable, and sometimes illegal, ventures Lucius had invested in.
Pansy had spent the past two years thinking long and hard about what she wanted to do. Despite her tendency to be loud and critical, she was at heart an observer, constantly analyzing the actions of those around her and determining the best course of action to achieve a particular outcome. In her teens, her desired outcomes had been friends and influence. She could put those skills to a higher use, she decided, and become a Wizengamot member, influencing policy and the direction of wizarding society. She didn't want to work for just any Wizengamot member to get there, though. She had bided her time until the Chief Warlock's staff position opened up, and she had beat out a dozen other applicants to get the job.
The research and analysis were a grind, and she'd be happy when she was the one delegating those tasks instead of doing them. But it was a rung on the ladder, and she was in it for the long game.
Three weeks into her new role, her boss asked her to attend a meeting with the Undersecretary in his place.
"Okay, I'll have the notes on your desk when you return," she replied.
Garrison frowned at her. "I need you to do more than take notes, Pansy. I need you to represent me at the meeting."
It was Pansy's turn to frown. "I can't represent you, Garrison. I don't know anything about—" she looked down at his meeting schedule "—our relations with the French Ministry."
"Well then, read up. The point of your work is to help me with my meetings and Wizengamot sessions. So today, you'll use your research instead of me. We can spend a few minutes prior to the meeting talking through your analysis and my thoughts, to prepare you."
She spluttered, "But I don't have any experience doing anything with the analyses I give you! I can't go into a meeting with the Undersecretary and pretend to help her develop strategies for a diplomatic visit with France!"
"You can, and you will. Get going." He shooed her toward the door of his office, which infuriated her.
"I don't appreciate being shooed away like a kid," she snapped at him, remaining firmly fixed in her seat.
He raised a brow at her. "Get out of my office, Pansy."
She huffed and stomped out of the room.
"The Undersecretary's running a few minutes late," Percy informed her later that afternoon as Pansy walked into Hephzibah Smith's office.
"Oh," Pansy said, needlessly smoothing her black pencil skirt. "When should I come back?"
"You can wait here," he replied. "I'm just finishing up some notes." He gestured to a chair and then bent back over his scroll, his ginger waves brushing the temple of his glasses on one side. He had the metallic gray ones on today.
She moved to a seat at the small table, setting her notes down and reviewing them, in order to have something to do while they waited for the Undersecretary. Her eyes drifted to Percy's parchment, and she watched his hand move across the page, fingers flexing as he wrote. His nails looked manicured — perfectly trimmed and no ragged cuticles or skin around them. She wondered if he was naturally blessed with nice nails or if he really did get them manicured.
She looked down at her own nails, a dark blood red today, and pondered turning them green tomorrow and wearing a green and black skirt and blouse ensemble. She glanced at the clock on the wall and wondered when the Undersecretary would arrive.
Percy sat up straight, pushing his parchment into a folder, and the faint scent of cedar and citrus wafted over her, warming her from the inside out. He fixed her with a polite smile. "How have you liked your first few weeks on the job?"
"They've been fine. The research is a bit of a slog, but someday I'll be the one assigning the tasks, so it's worth it."
The red-head's brows rose above the frames of his spectacles. "I didn't realize you had aspirations to become a Wizengamot member."
"You think I took this job because I enjoy spending all my time in the file room?" She grimaced and bit out a sharp laugh. "I'm not a brainless bookworm, Weasley. I have higher ambitions for my career than being support staff for others."
"I'm glad to hear it, Miss Parkinson," he responded, sitting back in his chair. Today he sported a gray windowpane plaid three-piece suit with a mustard yellow and gray diamond-patterned tie that went quite nicely with his hair. She wondered if he'd ever considered becoming a clothing model. Madame Malkin could triple her sales of suits with him as her poster boy.
To break the silence, she said, "You can call me Pansy. You don't have to call me Miss Parkinson."
"Certainly, if you prefer."
More silence.
Pansy wanted to ask him about his own career aspirations, or where he got his suits, or even who his friends were that he'd been with at Hansen's that night, but she found herself tongue tied, a sensation she was wholly unused to.
"Look, Weasley—"
"Percy."
She stared at him blankly.
"If I'm to call you by your given name, you should call me by mine." He folded his hands across his file folder and leaned forward. "We're going to be working together for some time to come, Pansy—"
A pleasant warmth flared inside her at the sound of her name on his lips, like a candle bursting into flame, a sudden feeling that all was right with the world.
"—and it would be helpful for us to get along." He ended the sentence with his standard bland smile, and the warmth inside her shriveled up and died. He was simply being polite.
"Understood," she clipped out, the word harsh on her lips, and then she turned back to her notes, pretending to shuffle through them in preparation for their meeting. She couldn't bear to look at him. It was clear he thought she was an entitled prat, and he was only being polite for the sake of propriety. She would, too, in his shoes, after how she'd spoken to him in the file room on her first day. And how she'd treated his family throughout their childhood.
"Pansy," he said.
"Have you met any of the French delegates who will be visiting?" she asked, still staring at her notes.
"Pansy—"
"It must be interesting meeting wizards from all over the world, in your position."
"Pansy." His voice held a warning in it this time, a chastisement, inducing her to look at him. But still she stared down, and, at that moment, Undersecretary Smith walked in, saving her from finding out what he wanted to say.
Somehow, she made it through the next hour discussing French diplomatic relations with some semblance of competency. She made it three steps out the door afterward before he cornered her in the hallway.
"Pansy, please come to my office in an hour, I think we need to talk." He glanced at his watch, a finely detailed silver timepiece with three dials. "I have a meeting with the ICW delegates now, but I should be finished by four o'clock."
His blue eyes studied her from behind his lenses, and she noticed a small tic in his jaw near his ear, belying some emotion she couldn't read, anger or frustration maybe.
"Okay." She turned away, but not before she saw him remove his glasses and wearily rub his temples from the corner of her eye. Her stilettos echoed through the hallway with each step she took, and she fought the urge to look back when she heard no second set of shoes walking the other way. He must be still standing there, likely studying his notes for his next meeting, but she imagined the weight of his disapproving gaze on her back.