BITTERSWEET; pansy parkinson

OC X CANON | HARRY POTTER AU

June Lovegood transfers to Hogwarts in her seventh year under circumstances no one fully explains. The name alone is enough to spark whispers in every corridor - Lovegood, cousin of Luna Lovegood.

But June is nothing like the girl they expected.

Sorted into Hufflepuff, she is steady where others are strange, warm where others are sharp. She befriends Harry Potter and his friends with unsettling ease, and in doing so, earns the quiet disdain of Slytherin.
Most notably, Pansy Parkinson's.

Fiercely loyal to Draco Malfoy, raised on pride and prejudice, Pansy Parkinson has perfected the art of cruelty as self-preservation. She does not like Hufflepuffs. She does not like Gryffindors. She does not like being observed.

And she certainly does not like June Lovegood.

When Pansy wordlessly intervenes to stop a group of boys from bothering June, it is nothing more than instinct - irritation, perhaps. It is not kindness.

Unfortunately, June sees it as both.
What begins as annoyance turns into proximity. Proximity into awareness. And awareness into something far more treacherous than hatred. Because June does not flinch under sharp words. She does not retreat. She looks at Pansy as though there is something worth understanding beneath the venom.

And Pansy finds that far more unbearable than any rivalry.

In a castle divided by war and loyalty, it is easier to choose a side than to question it. But the last thing Pansy Parkinson ever expected was that the one person who refuses to fear her might also be the one who undoes her entirely.