Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/100582.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      F/F
  Fandom:
      Harry_Potter_-_Fandom
  Relationship:
      Hermione/Pansy
  Stats:
      Published: 2002-07-15 Words: 1783
****** Left Handed ******
by ivyblossom
She watches you from across the room. No doubt you don’t notice; you are busy
with your magical numbers and your equations, your lip has a black smudge on it
where you accidentally laid the tip of your quill while you were thinking. Your
hair falls forward while your hand whizzes across the page, scratching so loud
she can hear it from six rows over, distinct from the scrabblings of the
others, even from across the room. Your lips move when you write, just a
little, as if you need to say the words to have them make sense but have
learned to stop yourself, almost. She finds this strangely hypnotizing, and
sometimes tries to make out what you’re writing. It never works.
She watches you write and sees that you are unique among your friends. All of
them are right handed but you; your left elbow nudges against their arms and
spills their ink but you don’t notice. You are writing something true and real
and right and no one’s elbow or glare or exasperated sigh can stop you. At the
end of every day your left hand, from your little finger down to your wrist, is
coated with ink. Quills were never designed for the left handed.
She hears your voice all the time. She knows that it’s probably because she’s
listening for it, but it seems that you have the kind of voice that travels.
She hears you in the morning on the way to breakfast, sometimes scolding your
friends over their half-done homework, sometimes deadly serious and whispering
things she knows she isn’t meant to hear. She has learned a great deal about
you from those whispers, from the hurried “meet you by the restricted section!”
and “has he got your invisibility cloak?” to the cryptic “I’m scared.”
People think you’re so stuffy and stuck up, but she knows better. She has
followed you some nights when you sneak out of your dorm, when you crawl along
behind furniture and sneak into places you’re not supposed to be. She knows
about how you use polyjuice on occasion; once, you turned yourself into a
Blaise Zabini and came innocently into the Slytherin dorm. She wondered what
you were looking for, if you were there to check on her, see if she is a spy.
There is something funny about polyjuice. It leaves a smell, a faint trace of
something sharp, like juniper or pine needles. Her mother taught her this,
taught her to beware of that smell. Once when she was twelve her father came
into her room to kiss her goodnight smelling sharp like juniper and rubbing
alcohol and she screamed. It was only gin that time, too much of it too, but
the smell had burned a brand in her memory.
Blaise Zabini, wandering into the common room with a feminine gait, smelling
faintly of juniper. You even pushed back non-existent hair as you settled back
onto the couch. When she tossed a quill at you and you caught it with your left
hand, she was sure. And no Slytherin would start a conversation the way you
did. “Pansy,” you said slowly, “I’m sorry to disturb you, can we talk?” The
voice was his but the words were yours, the staccato diction.
She’s not sure what she wants from you. Even if she wants anything at all. Oh,
it’s not so strange, is it? She was kissing girls when she was nine years old,
there’s nothing strange in that. You haven’t lived if you’ve never felt a
girl’s lips against yours. When she was fourteen at her parents cottage the
girls in the neighbourhood would get together along the docks at night. They
would talk about boys, swim out into the water within the boundaries determined
by lanterns at intervals, pull the straps of their swim suits down and touch
each other under the water. And there was one girl, whose name she doesn’t
think about anymore, just, that one girl, who stayed with her longer than the
rest, the one who taught her how to kiss boys by demonstration. Taught her
something about fingers, pressure, rhythm. Damp neck under her lips, a muffled
groan that she was sure couldn’t be heard in the darkness. Not that it means
anything.
But now she doesn’t know. She stands in the hallway and watches you go by, she
smells the faint smell of shampoo and sandalwood that clings to you, watches
you stop to pull your sock up your calf. There’s a fierceness to you that
interests her; in the evenings she sits in the common room with the other girls
and feels a kind of brokenness that she never senses in you, a meekness. They
talk about boys, about class, who’s got a crush on who. She tells them that
Draco is such a dear, do you know what he did this time? They always want to
know, all the details. She tells them about their marriage plans, where the
honeymoon might be; sometimes she tells them how he kisses, but she doesn’t
offer to show them. They’re jealous and she enjoys it. They ask her about sex
and she tells them whatever they want to know, sort of absently, as if she
doesn’t care what they know. Most of the time she doesn’t.
Another day, another class, another book, another quill snapped in her hands,
she borrows one from you. She tries to think about what you might look like
naked, and can’t. Mudblood purity, the good girl, the smart girl, perfectly
decent asexuality, not even your friends remember that you can come. They jerk
off to pictures of movie stars and pretty Asian girls and never think about
you.She wonders what you think about when your fingers are between your legs,
and then wonder if they ever are. Maybe Mudbloods keep themselves vaccum
sealed, taken out for cleaning and that’s it. You certainly give off that
impression. Your friends are drooling over stupid girls, pretty girls, girls
with red lipstick on and blonde hair, girls like her, not you. Most of the time
you don’t seem to care. Sometimes you look hurt. She understands it, but she
thinks you’ve got the better deal.
Today you have tried to look pretty, that much is obvious. Your hair is
straightened and the sides braided up; you are wearing a tiny bit of makeup,
you are trying to smile more, to bat your eyelashes, to be cute and coy. It’s
all about pretending to be the girl you’re not. She can see it. When she hears
you giggle at some stupid joke one of your friends tells, she thinks she’s
going to be sick. This isn’t the way,she wants to tell you. This isn’t
you.Though she has no right to say such things, and no reason to know whether
or not it’s true, she feels certain that it is. She hates to see you like this,
less than you are. Defeated. Most of the time, with most people, she doesn’t
care much about things like dignity, but there is something about you that
makes her feel the loss when you do this, when you stumble into their
expectations and lower your own. She wants to shake you, slap your face, remind
you of who you are.
Just before dinner she cornered you, and you, exhausted from a day of play
acting, were at a loss for words. You looked up at her with a question, please,
don’t humiliate me today. Just not today. Your lipstick has worn off and your
mascara has left oily marks under your eyes.The rest were gone, she has kept
you behind, you can hear forks and knives and laughter from the Great Hall. She
puts her hand on your waist, she’s gentle and you’re surprised. She can tell
that you’re not sure what she’s doing until she leans in to kiss you. She
kisses you and means to say, don’t let them grind you down, don’t let them turn
you into something less than you are.You are too shocked and too overwhelmed,
perhaps, to do other than let her do it. She wonders through dinner if it was
shock or pleasure, shock or joy, shock or unspeakable horror. You are
unreadable to her, and that’s something about you that she likes. She watches
you all through dinner; you are flushed and now she knows what you would look
like with your fingers between your legs. There is a small smile on your face,
you touch your own lips and look off into space.
There are always ways, and she knows all of them. You think you’re safe, you
think your password keeps your enemies out, but it’s cheap security. She sneaks
into your room after midnight, expecting you to wake up and scream when she
closes the door but you don’t. You keep on sleeping, hair damp under her
fingers, a bit of lace around your throat.
There are some people who would be defeated by a boy. She knows she’s not one
of them, but she thinks that you are. She saw the beginning of your defeat
already; coy eyes, fake giggles, the wrong colour lipstick and awkward colours
on your eyelids. It kills you to do these things, and she knows it. She knows
what you want; you want to pin your hair back, scrub your face clean, you want
to roll your eyes at the stupid antics of your friends, not impress them with
your pretty legs. You want wear flat shoes and stand firm, not faint into
someone’s arms. You want someone to touch you, without slicing any of yourself
off to fit through some ideal cut out of a woman. Woman.She imagines that it’s
not a word you would even use for yourself.
She climbs into your bed with you and you shift, sleepily. Your eyes open when
she sides her hand under your nightgown and strokes your stomach. You looks at
her but she can’t read your expression. She kisses you on your clavicle, slides
her hand upward to stroke your breasts. The soft sound you make, the way you
lightly arch your back, confirms something she has always believed about you,
something you don’t know about yourself.
As she kisses you she imagines you kissing a boy, parting your thighs to let
him in, cringing a little as he punches his way inside of you and doesn’t
notice your pain. She imagines you rinsing the blood out of the sheets later,
crying, not able to get the stains out, feeling empty and torn apart. This is
now what she wants for you.
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