Neville was fed up with Pansy.
She was chaos, brilliance, sharp laughter and sharper instincts, and she had detonated herself into his life so thoroughly that imagining it without her felt hollow and wrong.
But he was fed up in the quiet, exhausting way. The kind that had him rubbing a hand over his face several times a day, staring into nothing, wondering if what she was doing lately was a phase or the beginning of something breaking open inside her.
She had always been a lot. That was never the issue.
His life had been loud from the moment she bulldozed into it wearing couture and disdain for personal space. He had loved her fire, loved the way she filled rooms and conversations and silences alike.
But lately it felt as though every dial had been turned up too far. Her energy was relentless, her sharpness unchecked, her restlessness burning through the house until even Neville, who had survived a war on stubbornness alone, felt like he was struggling to keep his footing.
It made him wonder if she was picking fights just to feel something, anything, and whether he had stopped being enough to keep her grounded.
She annoyed him constantly now, and that scared him more than the irritation itself. It was not the affectionate exasperation he knew so well. It felt like being pricked over and over again, small barbs that never quite healed, leaving him tense and unsettled and unsure how to reach her.
It was not the harmless chaos he had learned to love.
She hovered and pushed at the same time, clinging too tightly while testing him, needling him in ways that felt less like affection and more like control. Or fear. She watched him closely, provoked him deliberately, as though she needed proof of how far she could go before he finally snapped. Before he raised his voice. Before he walked away mid argument. Before he broke the unspoken rules of their relationship that he had never once crossed.
Pansy had always been sharp. She had always known how to draw blood with words. But this was not playful sparring or wicked banter or the tension they both secretly enjoyed. This felt like a challenge. Like she was daring him to fail her.
And the worst part was that he did not understand it.
And for the first time, he was tired of being tested.
With a breath so deep it felt like it echoed through the house, Neville crossed the room slowly, deliberately, until he stood in front of her.
He waited until she finally lifted her eyes to meet his. Her gaze was sharp and volatile, flint striking flint, the space between them buzzing with unspoken threat, like two duelists frozen at the edge of something irreversible.
"What?" she asked, voice smooth and careless, the casual venom she wielded so easily, as if she had not spent days needling him, as if she were not perfectly aware that every glance and sigh had been designed to wear him down.
He ran a hand through his hair, fingers catching at the nape of his neck as he steadied himself. Then he said it, quietly but with weight.
"Pansy. What the hell is wrong with you?"
She blinked, genuinely startled for a fraction of a second. Then the mask slid back into place.
"What do you mean?" Too quick. Too light. Her eyes dropped to the book like it might save her.
His arms folded across his chest, jaw tight. "You've been insufferable lately."
She muttered something under her breath, sarcasm already assembling its scaffolding, retreating behind it out of habit.
He did not let her.
He reached out, took the book from her hands, and tossed it onto the coffee table with quiet finality. Ignored her sharp inhale.
"No," he said, firm and steady. "Enough. Talk to me."
Her scowl came instantly, instinctive, but beneath it something flickered. A tremor. Fear. It showed in the way her mouth wobbled before she forced it into a sneer, in the way her fingers twitched uselessly in her lap, searching for something solid.
And just like that, his frustration dulled under the weight of something worse.
Worry.
Because he knew her. Knew the patterns of her silence, the tells of her unraveling.
This was a cry for help dressed up as cruelty. A scream hidden inside a smirk.
She was not trying to push him away because she did not care. She was testing the structure of their love, brick by brick, to see if it would still stand when she set fire to it. She was daring him to stay. Daring him to love her when she was sharp and unbearable and self-destructive.
Would he still be there?
Would he still love her if she made herself impossible on purpose, if she reminded him again and again that she was not easy, not gentle, not built for peace and quiet?
Or would even Neville Longbottom finally walk away?
She had been unraveling for weeks, maybe longer, tugging at her own seams in private, disguising the damage with wit and deflection. Instead of handing him the pieces and asking for help, she had pushed. She had dared him to leave.
Because deep down, in the place she was most afraid to look, she was terrified of the answer.
And somehow, standing there in the quiet tension of their living room, Neville finally understood.
And now it was here.
The moment she had always known would come. The moment she had dragged into existence with every sharp word, every weary sigh, every refusal to soften in his arms because softness felt too close to falling apart. This was the end of their cruel little game, the last move in a love-laced war of attrition she had never truly believed he would finish.
"I'm going to a conference for a week," he said.
His voice was measured, careful, stripped of emotion in a way that only made the tension beneath it more obvious. Each word landed clean and precise, like a surgeon's cut.
He stood in the doorway with his wand tucked neatly inside his coat, his bag already slung over his shoulder, packed with ruthless efficiency. It looked practiced. Thought out. Like he had been planning this longer than she wanted to believe.
She did not answer at first. Her fingers froze around the ribbon she had been tying into her hair. It felt as though someone had pulled a wire tight along her spine, wound it until her whole body went rigid.
"What?" she asked, too sharp, too brittle, the color draining from her face as she turned to him.
His expression did not change. It did not crack. It did not betray the chaos she knew had to be twisting inside him too.
"I'm leaving, Pansy."
Four syllables. Two seconds. One clean strike straight through her chest.
The words hit her like a physical blow. Her lungs emptied so violently she nearly staggered. There it was. The thing she had always expected, always feared, always dared into existence. The proof that she had finally pushed too far.
Three words.
The same three words she had spent years pretending would not destroy her. The same words she had coaxed out of him with every calculated provocation because some broken, hollow part of her needed to see what it looked like when he stopped choosing her. When even Neville Longbottom finally reached his limit.
And now it was real. Final. Like a snapped wand. Like a door closing that would not open again.
She had told herself she would be ready for this. She had rehearsed it in her head like a script. The cold laugh. The cutting remark about him being tired or dull or incapable of keeping up with her chaos. The eye roll. The careless wave. Indifference perfected.
She had practiced this.
But standing there, watching him actually say the words, a cold terror bloomed in her chest. It curled around her ribs, slid into her lungs, made breathing feel like work. Heavy. Painful.
Because it was not just anyone leaving.
It was him.
The one who had seen her at her worst and still kissed her temple before sleep. The one who held her hand without asking for explanations. The one who never flinched when she bared her teeth. The one who stayed. Every time.
And now he was walking out the door.
Something inside her screamed to stop him. To grab his coat, to beg, to let herself be nothing but desperation and pride in ruins. She wanted to shout, to fight, to throw something just to make the moment loud enough to feel survivable. If it was chaotic enough, maybe it would not feel so permanent.
But her body betrayed her.
Her spine straightened. Her mouth curved into a small, sharp smile. The mask slid into place like instinct, smooth and effortless.
"Okay," she said.
One word. Flat. Empty. Spoken so easily it barely sounded like her voice at all.
Just okay.
And for a fraction of a second, he hesitated.
It was barely there. A pause no one else would have noticed. But she saw it. The stiffening of his shoulders. The way his hand tightened on the strap of his bag. Like some part of him was waiting. Hoping she would call him back. Say something. Give him a reason.
She did not.
Because calling him back would mean admitting she was terrified. It would mean letting him see that the worst thing she had ever feared was happening and she was powerless to stop it.
So she watched him nod once, distant and restrained, like this was business. Like they had not built a life together. And then, with a crack that felt like the world splitting open, he was gone.
The silence rushed in immediately. Thick. Deafening.
It was just her, the echo of his absence, and all the words she had never said.
She exhaled slowly, the sound dragging itself out of her chest, low and rough as it slipped past her lips. One hand pressed to her stomach, like she was anchoring herself against the nausea curling there. It churned deep and mean, a sick mix of dread and regret and heartbreak too swollen to name, the kind that made her body feel wrong. Too hollow. Too fragile to contain the rot blooming inside her chest.
Well. It is what it is, isn't it?
The thought echoed with dull finality, ugly and unforgiving. It might have been funny, if it were not so fucking tragic. If it did not feel like her entire world was collapsing inward while she stood in the middle of it pretending it was nothing more than bad weather. Just a bit of wind. Just a bit of rain. Just another day in the glamorous theatre of her own undoing.
A laugh tore itself from her throat, sharp and thin. Brittle as broken glass and just as dangerous. It tasted of poison and earned bitterness, and she turned toward the liquor cabinet without ceremony, like a woman already resigned to the worst version of herself.
She ignored the tremor in her fingers, the one she would later blame on the cold instead of panic or grief or the kind of loneliness that splits people open from the inside.
Her hand moved on instinct, sliding past the prettier bottles meant for guests and pretense and polite lies. Tonight she wanted something older. Darker. Something that burned its way down like it had a point to prove. Something that would not flinch when it met the wreckage inside her.
The cork came free with a sharp pop she did not bother to soften, her teeth tugging it loose like she was in a hurry to disappear.
She tipped the bottle back and drank, long and deep, until it felt less like indulgence and more like punishment. Like penance. Like she wanted it to scorch her throat because she deserved the burn.
"Cheers to me," she muttered.
The words were thick with mockery and hollow enough to echo. Her jaw clenched hard, muscles locking as she swallowed them down with the sob threatening to follow, the kind she knew would not stop once it started.
She drank again. And again. Her hand steady only through defiance, through that stubborn refusal to admit how shaken she was.
How gutted. How completely alone. The brandy bloomed hot in her chest and belly, but it did nothing for the cold. That ache had nothing to do with the air. It lived in the empty space behind her, in the silence where his voice should have been. In the absence where he should have been standing, breathing, arguing, staying.
Because this time she had pushed too far.
This time the sharp edges she wore like armor had drawn real blood. The echo of her own cruelty had finally drowned out the sound of him staying, always staying. And she knew it, deep in the place she never lingered too long, the place that terrified her most. This was not one of their storms. Not one of the fights they survived and joked about later. This was not another fire they would walk through barefoot, clinging to each other and laughing afterward.
This time it was not bruises and bickering and wounded pride.
This time, he had left.
And this time, there was no one else to blame.
~~~~~~
Pansy was certain he would not come back. Not this time. And really, why the hell would he.
There was nothing left to tether him here anymore, nothing left of the shimmering, beautiful chaos they used to be. Only the ruins of a love she had chipped away at piece by piece with every cutting remark, every irrational demand, every defensive jab disguised as a joke.
She had tested him for months, maybe years, nudging the boundaries of his loyalty, daring him to stay, daring him to leave, always dancing on the knife's edge of ruin. And in some twisted, masochistic corner of her soul, she had been waiting for this moment.
The moment he would finally prove her right. That even he, who had weathered wars and monsters and her, especially her, would one day reach the end of his rope and walk away.
And now, he had.
The house, their house, felt cavernous in his absence, as if it had expanded the second he left. Every room stretched out too wide, echoing with the unbearable absence of him. The walls no longer hummed with warmth. The air no longer carried that steady, grounding presence she had taken for granted. It was just furniture and flooring and a bed she could not bring herself to sleep in.
A vacuum of comfort and structure and scent. The kind of silence that pressed in on her ears until she wanted to scream just to hear something that was not her own heartbeat or the relentless ticking of the clock on the mantel.
Every inch of the place screamed his name. His boots by the door. His stupid Gryffindor mug she always pretended to despise. The empty space on his side of the bed that felt less like absence and more like a chasm.
But she had known. Of course she had. Somewhere deep in the private part of her she never let anyone touch, she had always known this day would come. That one day she would push him one step too far, twist the knife a little too deep, and he would stop loving her out loud.
So she did what she always did.
She took the sick, nauseating grief curled tight in her chest and shoved it down as far as it would go. She buried it under bravado and absurdity, drowned it in distraction, because if there was one thing Pansy Parkinson had perfected, it was making heartbreak look fabulous.
She got high.
Not the casual, cheeky indulgence she treated herself to on lazy Sundays or after long dinners. This was deliberate. A detonation. A chemically assisted exit from reality. She smoked until the world softened at the edges, until memories lost their sharpness, until the ache in her chest dulled just enough for her to breathe without feeling like she might tear herself apart from the inside.
She sank into the velvet cushions of the sofa as if it were swallowing her whole. The ceiling drifted lazily above her, lights fracturing into soft prisms she was not entirely convinced were imaginary. Her limbs felt heavy, disconnected from intention. She could feel her pulse humming in her fingertips. She could hear her thoughts too loudly, echoing around her skull.
And then, inevitably, came the spark of divine lunacy.
The kind of ridiculous, glittering idea that could only be born from heartbreak, marijuana, and a catastrophic lack of adult supervision.
Princess's Doggy Birthday Extravaganza.
Obviously. ✨
If her life was going to collapse around her like a cursed soufflé, then goddammit, she was going to make sure her dogs felt like the queens they were. Dogs who would never leave her. Dogs who would never pack a bag and say goodbye. Dogs who would never sigh like she was too much and walk away. If everything else was falling apart, then this, at least, would be perfect.
She was going to throw the kind of party people whispered about years later. The sort of event that spawned rumors and grudges and scandalized gossip columns. A party with a budget so offensive even the Malfoys would hesitate before pretending not to notice.
She grabbed the nearest notebook, some Ministry file she was meant to return to Neville weeks ago, sorry Nevie, and flipped to a blank page with the ferocity of a general mapping a battlefield. Ash from her half-finished joint scattered across her lap, soft grey flecks clinging to her silk dress. She did not care. She barely registered it. The gears had locked into place. The switch had flipped.
Step one. Gold plated dog bowls. Gold. Real, unapologetic gold. Because Princess was not some common mutt from Knockturn Alley. She was royalty.
Step two. An organic, grain free, enchanted dog cake baked by that insufferable patisserie Luna adored, the one that used vegan fairy butter and whispered affirmations to the batter. Only the best. Only the absurd.
Step three. Party favors for every guest. Tiny designer collars. Bone shaped macarons. Possibly bespoke party hats enchanted to sparkle without slipping off. Blaise could pay for it. He owed her anyway for that mess in Lisbon.
Step four. Dog yoga was a no. Dog massage, however, was a yes. Dog masseuses flown in from France. Theo would know who to call.
And maybe, just maybe, a tiny tiara.
Her pen hovered as the thought settled in, the high rolling over her like velvet water, slow and warm and indulgent. A tiara. Yes. A diamond studded tiara for Princess, with matching crystal paw cuffs for Lady. Something expensive and ridiculous and utterly devoid of emotional consequence.
Because if she could not control her heart, she could control this. She could control the glitter and the invitations and the guest list and the custom cocktails named after her dogs. She could control centerpieces and seating charts and the exact shade of pink used for the frosting.
She could not make Neville come home.
But she could throw the party of the century.
And right now, that had to be enough.
God. She should be crying, shouldn't she?
She should be folded into their bed, tangled in sheets that still smelled like him, breathing him in until it hurt too much to keep going. She should be shaking, breaking, letting herself feel the full, brutal weight of what she had lost. She should be grieving something she had never once admitted she needed as badly as she did.
But crying was never Pansy Parkinson's style.
Crying was for people who were blindsided. For people who hadn't seen the wreck coming from miles away. For people who hadn't carefully, deliberately laid the tracks for their own destruction and then walked down them with their chin held high.
This was consequence.
This was her standing in the smoking aftermath of choices she had made with both eyes open.
A laugh slipped out of her, sharp and bitter, as she scribbled royal canine fashion show onto the page, pressing so hard the pen nearly ripped straight through the paper. The sound startled even her, thin and ugly and wrong, but she didn't stop it. Let it exist. Let it echo.
So this was it.
A small sample of what hell must feel like. Not fire and screaming, but numbness. Silence. The absence of the one person who had always stayed.
And the worst part, the part that curled like a knife in her gut no matter how hard she tried to laugh it away, was knowing there was no one to blame.
She hadn't been abandoned.
She hadn't been wronged.
She hadn't been unlucky.
She had chosen this.
Every sharp word. Every calculated jab. Every moment she had dared him to leave instead of admitting she was terrified he would.
This was the prize at the end of that game.
And now she was sitting alone, high and hollow, planning a dog party like it might save her from the quiet.
~~~~~~
Pansy had sent out invitations to absolutely everyone.
If she had exchanged more than three words with someone in the last fifteen years, if a person had once stood behind her in a queue for croissants, if they had shared a smoking corner or complimented her earrings in passing, they were now the proud recipients of a luxurious, gold-foiled, hand-delivered, personally enchanted invitation to Princess's Royal Doggy Birthday Extravaganza.
Each invite was wrapped in silk ribbon, sealed with shimmering paw prints keyed to the recipient's house colors, and accompanied by a tiny charmed recording of Pansy herself purring, "You are cordially summoned, darling. Don't be a bore. Show up or suffer eternal irrelevance."
The whole thing was laughably extra, even by Pansy's standards, so extravagantly unnecessary it bordered on performance art, and yet no one questioned it. This was Pansy Parkinson.
Unapologetically lavish, relentlessly dramatic, and very clearly spiraling through emotional devastation disguised as glitter and champagne. No one dared comment on it out loud, not unless they wanted to be reduced to ash by a perfectly aimed insult and a glare sharp enough to crack bone.
Of course, beneath the absurdity, under the lace and diamonds and enchanted speakers blaring classical remixes of dog barks, there was a quieter truth. She was not throwing a party because she was bored, or even because Princess deserved a royal celebration, although in her opinion the dog absolutely did. Duhhh.
This was about something smaller and far less glamorous. She was filling a void. A wide, aching, Nevilless void that had taken up residence in her chest and grown larger with every day he stayed gone.
A void she could not shout at or flirt away or laugh off, no matter how many accessories she bought or invitations she sent. So she did what she always did when feelings threatened to break the surface. She performed. She dressed the heartbreak in velvet and opals, drowned it in rosé, crowned it with a tiara, and called it an event.
The first guests to arrive were Hermione and Draco, punctual as usual and already suspicious. Hermione stepped into the garden with the careful curiosity of someone who had braced herself for chaos and still found herself underdressed for the scale of it, while Draco scanned the scene like he was tallying costs purely for the pleasure of judging her later.
The garden had been transformed into a monument to wealth and madness. Literal thrones waited for the dogs. Champagne bowls were set out for canines and humans alike. A harpist in the corner played a hauntingly delicate rendition of "Who Let the Dogs Out," and centerpieces featured magically suspended bones encased in crystal. Draco stopped, took it all in, then turned to her with a voice as dry as parchment.
"Parkinson," he said, already exhausted, "are you having a full mental breakdown? I mean this with love, but this is somehow more unhinged than Theo's baby shower. And that involved live swans wearing crowns."
Pansy, draped across a fainting couch in something that could generously be called a dress and more accurately read as an expensive cry for help, lifted her glass and smiled without a trace of shame. "I am having a breakdown, yes. Thank you for noticing. Now be a good guest and place your offerings in the designated tribute zone."
She gestured toward a gold-canopied display labeled in foot-high letters, "Offerings for the Queen," beneath which Princess reclined on a silk pillow, deeply unimpressed in a custom Versace dog cape.
Hermione lingered near the entrance, took in her friend in one sweeping glance, and did not bother hiding the concern etching itself across her face. She looked Pansy over, the smeared eyeliner, the too-bright smile, the laugh pitched just a shade too high, then leaned closer to Draco.
"You think she's okay?" she murmured. "She looks like absolute shit."
Draco made a noncommittal sound somewhere between a hum and a restrained groan. "Mon cœur, don't phrase it like that. She'll accuse you of undermining her femininity." He paused. "But yes. She looks fucking terrible."
And she did.
This was still Pansy, devastatingly glamorous, like a couture banshee haunting luxury hotels and ruining men for sport. But beneath the highlighter, the flawless lipstick, the hair sculpted by three separate spells, there was a hollowness in her eyes. Something distant.
Blaise and Ginny arrived next, arm in arm and dressed like they were attending the Met Gala rather than a glorified pet birthday. Behind them came Luna and Theo, Theo clocking the atmosphere instantly with a look that sharpened as he took everything in, while Luna blinked slowly, as if she were deciding whether this was real or one of her more elaborate internal visions.
The moment their eyes landed on Pansy, all four of them exchanged a single glance. Wordless. Heavy. Knowing.
That carefully neutral expression settled over their faces, the one people wear when they recognize grief but are unsure whether acknowledging it will shatter something fragile.
A specific kind of frozen sympathy that said, We love you, but we are afraid of you right now. None of them asked questions. None of them commented. They knew better than to press when the wound was still open, still bleeding beneath layers of silk and sparkle.
Because there was no hiding it anymore. She could dress the pain in couture, drown it in excess, throw money and spectacle at it until the world glittered, but the absence was tangible. It sat between them like a missing limb.
No one had seen Neville.
And the silence around that absence, the space he should have occupied, rang louder than the music, louder than the laughter, louder than the absurd parade of dogs in velvet capes and jeweled collars. It followed Pansy wherever she moved, a shadow she could not shake, a hollow echo in the middle of her perfectly choreographed chaos.
It was his empty place beside her.
And it was deafening.
Ginny shifted in her chair with the subtle discomfort of someone who had wandered into a play halfway through the second act and could not decide whether to clap, scream, or pretend this was all perfectly ordinary. Her eyes moved from the string quartet playing jazzed up lullabies to the champagne fountain shaped like a paw print, then to the life size ice sculpture of Princess the pug, which appeared to be enchanted to wag its frozen tail.
"Are we just," she muttered under her breath, glancing at Theo, "pretending this is normal now? Like this is just a casual Wednesday inside Pansy's brain?"
Theo, who had long ago mastered the art of emotional triage, did not even blink. He drew in a slow, measured breath, the kind you take before walking into fire, and released it just as carefully. "For now," he said evenly, his voice as flat as the champagne flute in his hand, "yes."
Blaise watched Pansy down her third glass of champagne in under ten minutes and then casually summon an actual dog butler, an elf in an embroidered uniform balancing a tray of diamond dusted macarons.
He sighed with the quiet resignation of a man who had accepted madness as a lifestyle choice. "Yeah," he muttered. "Let's just play along." He took a long drink like he was bracing himself for the inevitable emotional catastrophe hiding beneath the glitter.
Luna stood apart from them, luminous and calm, wrapped in celestial silk that drifted around her very pregnant form as though she had stepped out of a dream. She did not speak. She did not need to. Her eyes remained fixed on Pansy, the dreamy softness narrowing into something sharper, older, knowing.
She saw the cracked mask. The tremor in Pansy's hands when she thought no one was looking. The way her laugh landed on the wrong note every time someone praised the party. Luna saw all of it, because she always did.
Pansy, however, was not ready to be seen.
She caught their stares and instantly smoothed her expression into something biting and beautiful and utterly untouchable, like an ice sculpture with teeth. "Lovelies," she called, her voice syrupy and sharp all at once. "You're almost late. Do put your gifts in the shrine and then come drink. Or sulk. Or cry. Or whatever it is you emotionally complex people do at social gatherings."
The machine lurched back into motion. Music swelled. Servers drifted past with trays of absurdly tiny hors d'oeuvres. Fireworks bloomed above the enchanted gazebo, spelling out Happy Birthday Princess in sparkling cursive. The party officially began.
And just like that, no one asked about Neville.
The air around Pansy was brittle and dangerous, charged with grief she refused to acknowledge, humming with the volatile edge of someone who had built a palace out of denial and dared the world to knock. It was the kind of pain you did not touch unless you were prepared to bleed.
So they hovered near the gilded snack table, clutched their drinks like anchors, and exchanged helpless looks. They pretended not to notice the way Pansy's hand shook every time she refilled her glass, or how her voice rose just a little too loud, her laughter just a little too sharp.
Theo glanced at Luna, who met his gaze with the exhausted disdain of a woman deep into her final trimester and profoundly over everyone. She shook her head slowly, one hand resting on her belly, the other making a small warding gesture. "Sunny," she said flatly, "I am not asking her anything. I am far too pregnant to be verbally assaulted by a heartbroken she devil armed with eyeliner and unresolved trauma."
Ginny slouched in her chair like a war veteran. "I literally just gave birth," she said weakly. "My pelvic floor is still recovering. I am too fragile for this."
That left one obvious option.
All eyes turned, slowly and mercilessly, toward Hermione.
She looked up, took in their expressions, and groaned like she had just been volunteered for a fight she never agreed to enter. "Oh, I see. I'm the sacrifice. That's adorable. Fuck all of you."
Blaise lifted an elegant brow and raised his glass. "If she starts screaming, Granger, I will scream back. It will be very therapeutic. We can harmonize."
Hermione looked one second away from throwing her drink, but Blaise was already standing, stretching like a man about to give a lecture titled How to Survive Emotionally Unhinged Witches.
"Enough," he said grandly, smoothing his jacket. "I will handle it. The Golden Girl is clearly too emotionally invested."
Theo and Draco exchanged a look forged from years of shared trauma and bad decisions. Draco adjusted his cuff with a weary sigh. "I suppose we're doing this."
"She's not going to listen to you," Theo muttered.
Luna, chewing on a lemon tart, added cheerfully, "She never does."
"Which is why it should be me," Blaise declared. "If I die tonight, let history remember me as her favorite."
Ginny snorted. "You were only her favorite before she developed a conscience."
"Oi."
"Don't lie."
Hermione rubbed her temples. "If you provoke her and I have to manage the fallout, I swear to Merlin—"
Too late. Blaise was already striding toward the storm, confidence and poor judgment in designer boots. Draco followed with the air of a man who had survived worse, nudging Theo. "If we're marching into disaster, we might as well do it together."
Theo exhaled and stood. "Fine. But if she throws something, you're taking it."
"Gladly," Draco replied.
They moved toward the center of the chaos, where Pansy stood like a queen on a glittering throne built from denial and heartbreak.
Luna watched them go and hummed thoughtfully. "Ten galleons says she throws her drink at Blaise."
Ginny considered. "Twenty says she makes them cry."
Hermione, staring into her glass, added calmly, "Thirty says she destroys all of them in under five minutes."
Luna smiled. "Deal."
And just like that, the girls were sixty galleons richer, cold hard victory lining their pockets and smug satisfaction plastered across their faces, because every single outlandish bet they had placed had paid off with terrifying precision.
Every ridiculous prediction they had cackled over like a coven of unhinged witches had come true.
Not only had Pansy managed to insult all three of the brave idiots within the first five minutes, Hermione had literally checked her watch and counted, but she had also hurled her champagne straight at them. Veuve Taillebelle, vintage 2243, no less.
She had done it with the flair of an Oscar winning actress in the middle of a divorce scene, screamed at them with such raw, feral intensity that even Draco, who had once faced a Dark Lord without blinking, visibly recoiled like she had hexed him somewhere deeply personal.
Then, with the precision of a verbal assassin, she had emotionally flayed each of them like it was a high stakes roast that had gone terribly and beautifully right.
Now they stood in front of the girls like wet dogs dragged back from war. Dripping. Furious. Stunned. Somehow still too proud to admit they had been absolutely annihilated by a woman in six inch heels and trauma lashes.
Champagne clung to their tailored suits like defeat clung to their egos, and their expressions were a cocktail of existential exhaustion, bruised pride, and the dawning realization that Pansy did not simply throw parties. She threw emotional grenades disguised as social events.
Draco was the first to break. He did not say a word. Not a single syllable. He simply turned on his heel like a man who had seen far too much, grabbed Hermione's hand in a grip that suggested survival instincts had finally kicked in, and apparated the hell out of there with the urgency of someone escaping Azkaban.
The poor man had spent years cultivating calm, aristocratic detachment, silky voiced indifference, and one champagne soaked scream from Pansy had cracked it clean in half.
Theo staggered back to the table like a soldier returning from battle without a medal and with mild emotional trauma, dragging Blaise with him. Blaise, it must be said, looked like he was experiencing all seven stages of grief simultaneously.
"Do not say a single word," Blaise snapped, champagne dripping from his curls, his once immaculate suit clinging to him like betrayal itself. His eyes were hollow in the way only a deeply wounded ego could manage.
Ginny's eyes sparkled with wicked delight. "I wasn't going to," she said, barely holding it together.
"LUNA," Theo barked, spinning toward her like a man who knew exactly where the most dangerous laughter was about to come from.
Too late.
Luna, wide eyed and incandescent with joy, pressed a hand to her chest like she was trying to contain the solar flare blooming inside her. The dam broke. All three women collapsed into helpless, gasping laughter. Hermione bent double in her chair. Ginny had to hide behind her wine glass. Luna looked positively exalted.
Theo let out a long, defeated sigh. The kind a man releases when control has officially left his life. "Right," he muttered darkly. "That's it. I'm fucking you in the bum tonight. Just for that laugh."
Ginny did not miss a beat. She took a slow sip of her wine, lifted an eyebrow, and replied calmly, "Like you do every time, Theodore?"
Blaise, still shaking champagne from his hair, whipped his head toward her as if she had challenged his bloodline. "Ginevra," he said with wounded theatricality, "you are getting that too. Raw."
Luna clapped her hands like a delighted child at the circus. "Ooh. That actually sounds fun."
Theo pointed at her, champagne still dripping down his temple. "Woman. You are on very thin ice."
She shrugged, entirely unbothered. "Honestly, you look radiant."
Blaise slammed his hand on the table. "She insulted my hair."
Blaise gasped, clutching his chest as the memory hit him. "She said I have a receding hairline. Me. A Black god. Me. Whose hair has been called poetry in motion in Witch Weekly. I—"
Ginny cut him off by tugging his tie and smiling sweetly. "Enough, amore. We're going home."
Luna turned to Theo, eyes bright. "So. Are we going home too?"
Theo groaned like a man who had died and been resurrected purely to suffer. "Oh, we're going home. And I swear, Luna, if you laugh about this again—"
"I make no promises," she sang, throwing her arms around his neck with affectionate recklessness that only sealed his fate.
And just like that, the night ended exactly as it was always destined to. Three men humbled, emotionally soaked, and quietly reconsidering their life choices. Three women richer in both galleons and personal satisfaction. And Pansy Parkinson, somewhere in the center of the chaos, sprawled across a velvet chaise with one heel kicked off, eyeliner smudged just enough to be dangerous, a half eaten macaron in one hand and her champagne bottle clutched like a sword.
Completely unbothered. Completely wasted. Completely convinced that this had been, without question, the best goddamn birthday party Princess had ever had.
~~~~~~
Neville sat in the dim hotel bar, a half empty glass of firewhiskey resting in front of him, the amber liquid untouched for nearly twenty minutes. The conference had been long and relentless, packed with lectures, networking dinners, and more discussions about magical agriculture than any sane person should endure in one week. Normally, he would have been fully engaged, animated even, arguing the merits of new hybridization techniques and sustainable potion ingredient cultivation with genuine enthusiasm.
But tonight, he felt like absolute shit.
He scrubbed a hand over his face, fingers pressing into his temples as if he could physically push the ache out of his head. He loved her. Merlin, he loved her so much it made breathing feel like work, like his chest was packed too tightly with something sharp and unmanageable.
But he was fed up.
Wasn't he?
Neville stared into his glass like it might offer clarity. He wanted to believe he had finally reached the end of his patience, that years of her pushing, her deflection, her refusal to let herself fully belong to him had finally worn him down.
But that would have been a lie.
Because despite everything, despite the secrets and the emotional barricades she built with ruthless precision, he was not done. He knew he should be. Any rational person would have walked away long ago.
But he had never been rational when it came to Pansy Parkinson.
He had left because he thought distance might give him perspective. That a few days away would dull the ache and sharpen his thinking.
Instead, it had done the opposite.
Every meal felt too quiet. Every bed felt wrong. Every moment felt incomplete because she was not there.
Even now, he could picture her perfectly. Throwing some ridiculous, overproduced party for that damned pug. Drowning herself in champagne. Wrapping heartbreak in glitter and excess because that was how she survived pain she refused to name.
And that, more than anything, made his blood boil.
What infuriated him was that she thought he would simply walk away. That she believed this was something she could outlast, something she could wait out until he grew tired and gave up.
She did not understand that she was his world.
Neville pushed the glass aside and exhaled slowly. He was still angry. Furious, even. But he was not going to let her keep pretending she did not care. Not this time.
He had always been steady. Thoughtful. The one who de-escalated instead of detonated. The one who chose patience over pride.
But right now, he had a terrible idea.
If Pansy wanted to act like she had moved on, if she wanted to bury herself in laughter and people and distractions, then fine. Let her perform. Let her convince herself his absence meant nothing.
But if she was going to play that game, if she was going to pretend she was not waiting just as much as he was, then he was done playing fair.
She thought she could outmaneuver him. That she could move pieces while he stayed soft and predictable.
Neville Longbottom was finished waiting for her to crack first.
If she wanted to believe he had moved on, then he would make her believe it.
Cool. Controlled. Untouchable.
And Miss Sassy was about to learn exactly what that felt like.
~~~~~~
Neville arrived home in the quiet hum of the afternoon, but nothing about his presence felt familiar. The moment he crossed the threshold, the air itself seemed to shift, heavier, colder, more deliberate. It was the kind of silence that did not ask for comfort but dared it to try.
He moved through the house like a man who no longer belonged to it, yet owned every inch of it all the same. The space between them had hardened something in him, something she could not quite name but recognized instantly.
Pansy was in her office, the one room she had hidden herself in all week, a self imposed exile dressed up as productivity. Her calendar was full. Her quill moved across parchment with convincing regularity. The room looked like the domain of someone impossibly busy. The truth, however, was bleak and suffocating. She spent more time tracing the cracks in the ceiling than actually writing.
More time staring into empty teacups than drinking from them. She had not looked in a mirror since the day he left, afraid of what might stare back at her, afraid of the woman revealed when the person who steadied her world vanished without turning around.
She heard his footsteps before she saw him, measured and unhurried, carrying the restraint of a man who had made his decision days ago. When she stepped into the hall, her heart slamming against her ribs, he was already in the living room.
His back was straight, his posture controlled, his expression carefully neutral, familiar features rendered distant by the space that had grown between them.
"In the evening," he said, his voice smooth and cold, "we are going to Astoria's birthday party. Be dressed and ready by seven."
That was all. When he turned and walked away without a glance or a pause, she clutched the edge of the doorway as though the floor might give out beneath her.
She did not cry at first.
When it came, it came fast and silent. Only tears spilling too quickly to stop, carving hot tracks down her cheeks as she stood alone in the hallway, breath trapped in her throat like shards of glass.
He still had power over her. That was the most brutal part.
She slipped into her fuck me dress, the one that used to make him feral, the one that had his fingers digging into tables and walls and her hips because waiting had never been his strength. She wore it with practiced confidence. Her makeup was flawless. Her lips were painted a perfect, dangerous red, the color of possession and promise and mine.
The plan unraveled the moment she saw him.
Neville stood waiting in a perfectly tailored Valentino suit, the cut sharp and precise, his tie effortless, his hair styled just undone enough to be devastating. He radiated control, power, and a detached composure that twisted something vicious in her stomach.
He looked like vengeance.
Like he knew exactly what this was doing to her.
Like he wanted her to feel every second of the pain he had carried alone.
~~~~~~
The party was nothing short of extravagant, as expected. With Astoria as host and a guest list that read like a roll call of pureblood royalty and Ministry elites, it could never have been otherwise.
Gilded chandeliers shimmered overhead like captured constellations, casting molten light across marble floors polished to a mirror sheen. Waiters in crisp black uniforms drifted through the room with trays of enchanted cocktails that smoked and glittered, each glass looking as though it held a fragment of the night sky.
Conversation buzzed in soft layers, laughter folding into gossip, flirtation, and the low hum of a string quartet tucked discreetly into one corner.
Neville registered none of it.
The music, the chatter, the polite compliments and bored socialite murmurs all blurred into background noise because his focus had narrowed to one sharp, singular purpose. He was going to make Pansy jealous.
He wanted her undone, shaking, scorched by the kind of jealousy that started as a whisper low in the gut and climbed until it screamed in the lungs. The kind that burned slowly and deliberately, stripping away every layer of control she thought she still possessed.
For weeks she had been cool and collected, distant to the point of cruelty. She had worn indifference like perfume, carried herself through their shared unraveling as if his absence had not cracked the ground beneath her feet. She had been silent and composed and unbearably untouched by it all, and it had driven him to the edge.
So now he would remind her.
He would remind her what it felt like to be wanted, to be chosen by someone who loved with a devotion that bordered on ruin. If he was going to start a war, he would aim straight for the most vulnerable part of her pride.
Daphne Greengrass.
Rival. Nemesis. The one woman who could make Pansy see red without saying a word. Their feud was legendary, born of childhood slights and sharpened through adolescence into something elegant and poisonous.
A long game of chess played in stilettos and smiles, in glances and whispered barbs. So Neville placed himself beside Daphne for most of the evening. Not brazenly, just enough to be seen. A hand at the small of her back as they moved through the crowd. Quiet laughter at her jokes. Eye contact held a fraction too long. At one point he leaned in, lips brushing near her ear as he murmured something entirely inconsequential.
That was when he saw her.
Pansy stood on the far side of the room, framed by candlelight and gold, wrapped in that black dress. The one that defied decency, the one that clung to her body like sin given form. She looked lethal. Beautiful. Furious.
Her gaze was locked on him, dark and glittering. Her jaw was clenched so tightly he was certain he could hear her teeth grind from across the ballroom. Her fingers curled around the stem of her champagne flute, knuckles white with restraint, her expression a flawless mask stretched over pure rage. For one savage heartbeat, triumph flared in his chest.
She saw him. She felt it. It was working.
Until it wasn't.
As the party began to wind down, and he leaned in to press a light kiss to Daphne's cheek as a final flourish to this cruel performance, he turned back toward the room.
Pansy was gone.
Apparating home felt like hurtling through fog. He did not remember where he landed or the precise moment his boots touched the ground, but he knew the instant he arrived that something was wrong. The house was silent, though not in a gentle or domestic way. It was hollow. Split open. Broken in a way that rang in his bones.
His belongings had been thrown out.
Thrown. Shirts hung from tree branches like flags of surrender. Ties were half buried in garden soil. One shoe floated in the birdbath, slowly spinning. It looked less like a move and more like a battlefield.
Inside was worse.
The second he crossed the threshold, the damage hit him all at once. Shattered glass crunched underfoot. Crystal lay everywhere, catching the light like ice. House elves scurried through the wreckage, whispering frantic apologies to the walls as though the house itself might forgive them, but he barely noticed. His attention fixed on the figure standing at the center of it all.
Pansy.
Her hair was wild, no longer sculpted into perfection. Mascara streaked her cheeks in dark, uneven lines. Her chest rose and fell too fast, breath dragging in sharp, shallow pulls that spoke of fury and heartbreak and everything she had refused to let herself feel until now. Shards of crystal glittered around her bare feet. Her hands were clenched into fists so tight her knuckles had gone pale.
She turned when she heard him.
Their eyes met, and the truth hit him like a physical blow.
Just raw pain. Rage stripped bare. Love that ached and bled and refused to be denied.