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"Ms. Parkinson, would you please stay a moment?"
Pansy stifles the groan that threatens to escape her throat when McGonagall warbles the question. All of her assignments have been turned in on time; all of her marks are excellent. There's no reason for McGonagall to ask her to remain after class. Even so, she turns back from the doorway and waits for the other students to filter out of the NEWT level transfiguration class. Holding her books to her chest, she arches an eyebrow and waits to hear what the old biddy has to say.
"Thank you, Ms. Parkinson." McGonagall approaches Pansy. The professor is a good head taller than her, and radiates quiet power. Pansy lowers her eyebrow and assumes a posture of respect. "It's my understanding that you are doing quite well in your potions class?"
Pansy nods, unable to suppress the pride in the gesture. "Top marks, yes. I'm also doing the bonus seminar in the combination of potions and charmed objects with Professors Slughorn and Flitwick."
McGonagall offers a soft smile, to Pansy's surprise. "Just so. I know you are a very busy young witch, Ms. Parkinson, but I am hoping you might make some time in your schedule to do some tutoring."
"Tutoring?" Pansy frowns. She doesn't think she is at all suited to that sort of thing.
"Yes. For Neville Longbottom." Longbottom? Pansy opens her mouth to protest, but McGonagall continues speaking and Pansy doesn't dare interrupt her. "His potions grade improved enough with Professor Slughorn at the helm to allow him into NEWT level potions, which he needs for his advanced herbology seminar. However, he is still woefully behind. I do believe with someone as talented as yourself, he will be able to catch up. I would normally ask Ms. Granger, but as you know, she has opted out of attending school this year."
Second choice to Granger, even when Ms. Frizz was absent? A sneer forms on Pansy's face. "Well, as you noted, Professor - my schedule is quite full. I don't think I'll be able to make time. Perhaps one of the Ravenclaws can assist."
"I thought you might say that. I have negotiated with Professor Snape to release you from your Inquisitorial Squad duties, should you agree to help Neville."
McGonagall quirks her lips in a smirk that rivals Draco's. This is a honeypot of an offer, Pansy knows. She loathes the IS, especially with the Carrows in charge. It has gone from a bit of fun catching the Gryffindors out at doing things to cost them house points, to a torture squad tormenting people at the Carrows' behest. Pansy wants no part of it, and she will trap herself into spending hours with the most fumbling boy she has ever had the misfortune to know to see herself released.
Pansy finds herself agreeing to McGonagall's request, even shaking the old professor's hand. She feels the spark between their clasped palms of a promise that must be kept. She tells McGonagall when and where Longbottom can meet her for their first tutoring session, and resigns herself to an entirely different sort of torture.
~*~
Neville flops into a chair in the Gryffindor common room, feeling a bit as though he has just run a marathon. He has not engaged in any physical activity, however; he has simply survived his potions tutoring session with Pansy Parkinson. A mental marathon, perhaps. He sighs deeply, rubbing at his temples as if he can massage away the sound of Parkinson's sharp, biting voice.
"How're you cracking on, then?" Seamus Finnegan asks from the next squashy chair over, a note of amusement in his question. "Things going well with your Slytherin harpy?"
"She's not my anything," Neville contends, his hands dropping from his face. "And I wouldn't call it cracking on so much as trying not to aggravate her any more than necessary."
Which was harder than it sounded. Questions aggravated Parkinson. Smiling aggravated Parkinson. Inquiring how her day was going aggravated Parkinson. Each session, of which there had now been a week's worth, was a delicate dance akin to avoiding the thorns on a pyracantha plant.
Seamus laughs, idly turning the page of his book. He is allegedly reading a book on Irish magical history, but Neville hasn't noticed his eyes moving over the page. They are all finding it hard to focus these days; everything is awful with Dumbledore gone, and without Harry there to stand between them and the evil roaming the halls of their school.
"Well, I know you're proper exhausted, mate, but we're meeting in the you know where for the you know what tonight at midnight." Seamus says this sotto voce, though Ginny Weasley has lined the room with as many protective spells as possible.
"I'll be there," Neville says firmly. He is never very sure that he has anything of value to offer the DA, but more than ever it feels important to participate. To defy the darkness, in whatever ways he can. Which he did not suppose meant being under the tutelage of one of the most frightening Slytherins in the school, but he is even more frightened of saying no to Professor McGonagall, so it's just another thing heaped on his very full plate.
As if thinking about her has somehow attracted Parkinson's attention, a Stygian owl, already familiar to Neville after just a week, swooped in through the open window, immune to any of Ginny's wards. The owl drops its missive into Neville's lap and lingers on the arm of his chair expectantly.
"Wotcher, Tamora?" Neville says, reaching into the pockets of his sweater for an owl treat. The bird, far more pleasant than her mistress, takes the treat with a soft hoot, and flies away without awaiting a response. Responses also aggravate Parkinson. Tamora gone, he breaks the seal on Parkinson's note and unfolds the parchment.
Longbottom,
The potions storeroom is low on the following, which we will need for our next remedial potion. Retrieve the following from the greenhouse and bring them to our meeting on Monday:
Jessamine
Jimsonweed
Queen of the Night
Cordyceps mushrooms
-P.R.P
Neville slowly refolds the note into its perfect thirds, and resumes rubbing his temples. Seamus laughs again.
~*~
Pansy is impatiently awaiting her student, who is now seventeen minutes late, in the potions laboratory. It is very disrespectful, she thinks, to be so careless with the time of someone who is doing you a favor. There are countless other things she could be doing. She drums her lacquered nails on the table, conceding this is not like Longbottom. It is still terribly annoying of him.
He bangs into the room at twenty four minutes past the hour. She looks up, a sharp word on her tongue for how noisy his arrival is, when alarm briefly silences her. His eye is a swollen mess, the majority of it obscured by tender, reddening flesh, and there is a deep mark slashing across his cheek.
"What happened?" she demands, already moving towards the cabinet where the ingredients for a healing potion are kept.
"Amycus Carrow happened," Longbottom replies, sounding tired, rather than rightfully furious as she would have under the same circumstances. "Or rather, Edgar Bulstrode happened," he continues, setting down his rucksack as he names the fifth year Slytherin, "with Carrow watching." He gingerly prods the still swelling skin around his eye. "Think Carrow was well pleased with him."
Pansy harrumphs as she sets out ingredients in front of a cauldron. Avoiding such revolting displays is why she is here with Longbottom.
"Healing potion," she says, indicating everything she has laid out. "We'll work on this rather than the draught I had planned." She doesn't bother expressing sympathy or fussing over Longbottom's injuries. He won't want that from her, she assumes, and she believes there is no point in gestures when action can be taken. "Basic stuff, of course, so you will brew and I will observe."
Longbottom's expression is hard to read. Is it surprise? Perhaps anxiety. No matter, this potion was learned in second year, and any student hoping to attend NEWT level potions should be able to brew it with one hand tied - or, rather, one eye mostly shut. Whatever he is feeling, he pushes up the sleeves of his jumper and reaches for a phial of bubotuber pus.
"Take that grandfatherly thing off," Pansy barks, envisioning one of the sloppy sleeves knocking something over or dragging through the potion, adding wool to the brew and ruining the whole thing.
Longbottom's mouth tightens, but he unbuttons the oversized cardigan, shrugs it off, and stuffs it into his rucksack.Then he returns to uncorking the bubotuber pus, emptying the first of the three necessary phials into the cauldron.
"I don't have all the ingredients you asked for anyway," he says, too focused on adding the next phial to show his usual timidness when contradicting her.
"And why not?" Pansy narrows her eyes, watching the flame level under the cauldron closely while Longbottom turns his attention to cutting up the dragon liver.
"I have the jimsonweed and Queen of the Night," he says, using his head to indicate the direction of his bag, "because we grow them in the greenhouse. But the cordyceps and the jessamine need to be harvested from the Forbidden Forest."
"Okay…" Pansy draws the word out, uncertain why Longbottom did not simply go a-harvesting, then.
"And," he continues, cutting his eyes toward her in an unexpected way, "jessamine only blooms at night, which is why it is efficacious in sleeping draughts, but makes it much harder to harvest given current rules and regulations."
Pansy feels a flush warm her cheeks, as if she is somehow responsible for the current state of things. She breaks the eye contact irritably.
"I see." She pauses. "I can get you out of the castle after hours."
"Oh?" says Longbottom, sweeping the chopped dittany into his large paw to sprinkle it over the top of the potion. He is moving like a professional chef that once invited the Parkinsons to dine with him privately in Paris. Pansy cannot quite put her finger on what has made the difference in Longbottom's confidence.
"Yes," she says, with a bit of reluctance. "I am still technically a member of the Inquisitorial Squad. I can come and go as I please, and if I get caught with you, I can make the excuse that I'm taking you into the Forest for some nefarious purpose."
Longbottom nods thoughtfully, tapping the cauldron three times with his wand and stirring the brew ten times anti-clockwise. When he decants the potion, it is the rich ruby color that it should be. Pansy purses her lips, and refrains from praising him. It is, after all, what any twelve year old witch or wizard should be capable of.
"Let that cool a bit before you drink it," she cautions. She sits down across from him while they wait. "Shall we go tonight, then?"
Longbottom hesitates, and then says cagily, "I can't tonight."
A flash of annoyance crosses Pansy's face, and Longbottom winces in the way with which she is familiar - as if he expects she will hex him in the most unpleasant ways possible.
"Why not?" She repeats her demand from earlier. "Hot date?"
Longbottom shakes his head. "Not that. But I can't tonight. I'm sorry. I'm free tomorrow, though."
Pansy frowns. She doesn't like not having an explanation. But it's obvious he's not going to say, and he's not going to banter with her, either.
"Fine. We'll go tomorrow night. Don't think that gets you a free afternoon, though." If he skives, then she's got to spend the afternoon with the Carrows. "I will think of a substitute potion."
He looks relieved. The relief on his face makes Pansy perversely wish she'd pried more. It also makes her even more curious.
"You can drink that now," she says instead of questioning him further.
Longbottom swallows the potion in one go. The injuries begin healing before her eyes.
"Perfectly brewed, Longbottom," Pansy says in spite of herself.
Standing abruptly from the table, she indicates the evidence of potion brewing in front of them with a dismissive sweep of her hand. "You can see to tidying that."
~*~
A few hours after curfew the next night, Neville finds Parkinson waiting for him outside of the Gryffindor portrait exit, as they'd agreed upon. Their lesson that afternoon had been exceedingly awkward, because Parkinson clearly wanted to know what he'd been up to the previous evening, and had used every weapon in her arsenal to try to get him to spill. There had been abrupt changes in subject to catch him off guard, casual questions, attempts at wit and charm, and even a singular smile, which had put him in mind of Wednesday Addams in the second Addams Family film and had been the most unnerving tactic of all. None of it had worked, because the DA was not his secret alone to tell.
Now she looks sour, and perhaps a little too willing to play the role of IS tormentor. He's been very careful not to be even a millisecond late, however, so she just says, "Let's get this done," before walking away, clearly expecting him to follow, and not looking back to see if he does.
The journey out of the castle is a silent one. Neville suspects that Parkinson is no more eager to run afoul of the Carrows or their ilk than he is. He recalls that she hadn't asked what he'd done to earn his injuries the day before, or seemed surprised that Carrow and Bulstrode had been the ones to inflict them. He tucks that thought away for further pondering later.
The Forest is as dark and foreboding as ever, though Neville is far less frightened by it than he was as a first year. Night foraging with Professor Sprout in prior years has rendered Neville more confident. He's actually missed visiting the Forest, and when they enter the dense foliage, Neville leads Parkinson without giving it much thought, telling her to follow him to where he knows there is a patch of jessamine growing wild. Parkinson follows him without protest, which is a blessed relief.
The jessamine is not too deep into the forest, and it has bloomed beautifully in the moonlight. Neville smiles softly as he squats to take a few cuttings with his gardening snips.
"How many do we need?" he asks Parkinson, turning to look at her over his shoulder.
She has a strange look on her face, one Neville can't categorize. It is soft and a little dreamy, and her features are less harsh in the moonlight for it. She snaps back to focus when he asks his question.
"We'll need about ten petals for the recipe. It calls for fresh, so probably no more than that. Pity, because it would be nice to stockpile," Parkinson answers, tilting her head slightly. "Especially as it's so hard to harvest them under the current rules."
Neville bites his lower lip, considering. "I'll also take a couple of cuttings and see if I can get it growing in the greenhouse. Other people besides us might need jessamine, and they might not be able to get it as easily as we are."
Parkinson nods, and Neville suspects the needs of others hadn't been high on her priorities, but she makes no snarky or irritable commentary, so he thinks that maybe she agrees with him.
He murmurs soothing words of thanks to the jessamine as he removes some of the petals and takes his cuttings, tucking them away in phials he has enchanted to keep everything fresh. He puts the phials back in his rucksack, and stands back up.
"Alright, then, let's go find some cordyceps," he says to Parkinson, who is wearing an even stranger look now. Probably due to the talking to plants, he reckons.
He is beginning to amble away when an ominous thunderclap rolls through the forest. He and Parkinson make eye contact, and then groan in unison.
~*~
It begins pouring almost immediately. Pansy casts an umbrella charm and takes off running. To her great shock, when she looks to her left, Longbottom is right beside her, having done the same.
"Hey, Parkinson!" he shouts, barely audible over the sound of the sudden storm.
"What?" she shouts back, not slowing.
"Where are you going?" His lips are quirked into a crooked smile.
She draws up short, coming to an abrupt halt. "I don't know," she admits.
Longbottom passes her by a yard or so, but doubles back. "I know a spot."
He takes her by the elbow, and Pansy lets him. He clearly knows his way around the Forbidden Forest, and she does not. He leads her to a place where the trees have bent toward each other, forming a sort of natural alcove. Releasing her elbow, Longbottom waves his wand about, transfiguring the tangle of branches into a solid structure, open at the front, like a wooden cave. Then he gestures for Pansy to come inside. She does, dropping the umbrella charm as she enters.
"Clever," she concedes, casting a cushioning charm and taking a seat on the forest floor. She pats the cushioned ground next to her, and Longbottom joins her.
"Yes, well, I'm not totally daft." His lopsided grin returns. "Just lousy at potions."
"You're not actually, though," Pansy says, frowning a little.
Longbottom's facial expression is one of disbelief. He hoists an eyebrow skyward, daring her to elaborate.
"You're not lousy at potions. You're … anxious at them."
Pansy can't think of a better way to put it. She had noticed the previous day, however, that when he was slightly distracted by the conversation, he'd moved with sureness and brewed the healing draught perfectly. And then she had thought further about it and had realized that he makes the most fumbles when someone is barking at him. Tonight, he has been a giant display of confidence and competence; they have been in his element, and thus there was nothing for him to be nervous about. Pansy feels like she has chipped away some at the conundrum that is Neville Longbottom, Gryffindor.
Longbottom appears to be mulling over what she has said. After a long pause, he says quietly. "I think everything about potions has made me anxious. Starting in first year with Professor Snape …"
Not even knowing why she feels compelled to do so, Pansy reaches over and covers Longbottom's hand with her own. She can see everything so clearly now, how his anxiety would just build and compound itself over five years in Snape's classes. She hadn't been much of a help herself, she thinks, a flush of shame heating her cheeks.
"I know. But McGonnagall says you've been going along alright with Professor Slughorn."
Longbottom nods. "He's nice enough, if a bit of a star chaser, yeah? So I feel pretty calm doing potions around him. I think I do better with people that don't scare me." He chuckles ruefully. "But now I've got all this catching up to do on my basics."
Pansy is stuck on the prior sentence. "You did quite well yesterday," she points out. "Does this mean I don't scare you?"
She is not sure why she cares, but she does. She definitely does.
"Not anymore." His lips curl into that crooked grin again. It's quite nice, really.
Impulsively, she leans over and brushes her mouth lightly over his.
He draws back, looking a bit shocked. "What was that for?"
She shrugs. "For not being scared of me, I guess." And because she likes his smile, but she's not going to tell him that.
Pansy sighs and leans back on her hands, looking out into the storm. "How much longer do you think we'll be stuck out here?"
Longbottom peers out of their shelter. "No telling. I'm hoping we can wait it out and still get those cordyceps. If you're tired or over it, though, we can go back to umbrella charms and a mad dash back to the school."
Pansy shakes her head. "I'm not tired or over it." She takes a deep breath. "I like talking to you. And I like that you're feeling confident around me."
She quite thinks that she would like him to demonstrate exactly how confident he is feeling, and he must be clairvoyant, because at that moment he leans toward her and repeats her earlier action, fitting his mouth gently to hers.
"Let's wait it out, then."
~*~
The next afternoon, Neville perfectly brews a pleasant dreams potion with the ingredients he and Pansy gathered the night before. It is like a dreamless sleep, except that as the name suggests, the person would have pleasant dreams along with a deep sleep. It will be helpful for the students during these times; perhaps their nights will be better than their days,
Pansy announces that she will be happy to keep tutoring him.
Neville kisses her with all the confidence he feels.
~Fin~