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rarepair_shortsAuthor: [is sneaking off to Honeydukes]
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rarepair_shorts community
Title: Halcyon
Pairing: Pansy Parkinson/Tracey Davis
Rating: PG
Word Count: 500
Summary: The women of Slytherin House are the first to recover.
Author's Notes: None.
The women of Slytherin House are the first to recover.
Sweet, unassuming Davis opens a cupcake shop in Knockturn Alley, between an apothecary that once specialized in 'provisional matters of a most sensitive nature' and a tailor Leander Parkinson once patronized. Once, Pansy thinks, the sear of the ice-rimed iron door handle, snug within her palm, equal to the memory of her father. Once, before his 'stay'—to borrow her mother's desperate, delusional term—at Azkaban.
She twists, then pulls. The door gives, and when Pansy steps into the shop, the soot smell of Knockturn remains just there, at the threshold. She inhales. First the essence of peppermint, then the clean, sharp scent of fresh-cut persimmon and pomegranate. The burnished skins of ripe fruit, the give of their flesh beneath slender fingers—her spine electric, now, like squares of chocolate shaved with a steady hand.
'I see you've found good use for the Ministry's reformation Galleons, Davis.'
'Oh, yes,' Davis agrees, a flutter of pulse, near imperceptible, at the hollow of her throat. A flush there, too—from her presence, Pansy wonders, or the heat of Muggle ovens? The embrace of alternative cultures, she knows, is just one stipulation of the Ministry's post-war business incentive.
Davis wears paisley today, the pink of her apron like that of her Cupid’s bow of a mouth. Pansy thinks of kissing the matte shimmer of the remains of her balm away, of her bitten-tender lips bruising Davis’ own. Of the press of tongue, of the surrender.
'Would you like a sweet, Pans?'
Davis sells only one sort of sweet, Pansy knows. Cakes that nest just so within the hand, heavy with sugared fruits and whorls of carefully piped frosting. Cakes with silver-ribboned wrappings, their centers decadent and tender. Foxglove muted with aromatics, lavender and sage. The Ministry’s newest solution to its most difficult of cases and its unsubtlest of Aurors.
Davis smiles. ‘Without the special ingredient, of course.’
It is that smile, Pansy suspects, that turns them all to such fools. That convinces the Ministry to sleep with a snake more talented at potions and poisons than her own dearest Draco, that turns the watchful eye blind.
‘Business good?’ she asks. She edges her thumb, its polish dull against shining glass, along the lip of the display. New. The Muggle register, with its gilded keys so sensitive to Davis' gentle touch, new. The cakes in their lace and paper sleeves, empty space where brothers and sisters once sat.
'Lemon is our most popular flavor.'
Fitting, Pansy thinks. The wizarding world with its public support of the reformation acts, of their allotment of rights, contained and controlled, to the old families. The blood traitors and Muggle-borns with their unbecoming, private appetite for vengeance. Davis at the center, choosing what and who to sell. Davis at the counter, a bare slip of shoulder—of pale skin and lace underthings.
Yes. The women of Slytherin House are the first to recover, but Pansy knows she is drowning.
Recipient: the
rarepair_shorts communityTitle: Halcyon
Pairing: Pansy Parkinson/Tracey Davis
Rating: PG
Word Count: 500
Summary: The women of Slytherin House are the first to recover.
Author's Notes: None.
The women of Slytherin House are the first to recover.
Sweet, unassuming Davis opens a cupcake shop in Knockturn Alley, between an apothecary that once specialized in 'provisional matters of a most sensitive nature' and a tailor Leander Parkinson once patronized. Once, Pansy thinks, the sear of the ice-rimed iron door handle, snug within her palm, equal to the memory of her father. Once, before his 'stay'—to borrow her mother's desperate, delusional term—at Azkaban.
She twists, then pulls. The door gives, and when Pansy steps into the shop, the soot smell of Knockturn remains just there, at the threshold. She inhales. First the essence of peppermint, then the clean, sharp scent of fresh-cut persimmon and pomegranate. The burnished skins of ripe fruit, the give of their flesh beneath slender fingers—her spine electric, now, like squares of chocolate shaved with a steady hand.
'I see you've found good use for the Ministry's reformation Galleons, Davis.'
'Oh, yes,' Davis agrees, a flutter of pulse, near imperceptible, at the hollow of her throat. A flush there, too—from her presence, Pansy wonders, or the heat of Muggle ovens? The embrace of alternative cultures, she knows, is just one stipulation of the Ministry's post-war business incentive.
Davis wears paisley today, the pink of her apron like that of her Cupid’s bow of a mouth. Pansy thinks of kissing the matte shimmer of the remains of her balm away, of her bitten-tender lips bruising Davis’ own. Of the press of tongue, of the surrender.
'Would you like a sweet, Pans?'
Davis sells only one sort of sweet, Pansy knows. Cakes that nest just so within the hand, heavy with sugared fruits and whorls of carefully piped frosting. Cakes with silver-ribboned wrappings, their centers decadent and tender. Foxglove muted with aromatics, lavender and sage. The Ministry’s newest solution to its most difficult of cases and its unsubtlest of Aurors.
Davis smiles. ‘Without the special ingredient, of course.’
It is that smile, Pansy suspects, that turns them all to such fools. That convinces the Ministry to sleep with a snake more talented at potions and poisons than her own dearest Draco, that turns the watchful eye blind.
‘Business good?’ she asks. She edges her thumb, its polish dull against shining glass, along the lip of the display. New. The Muggle register, with its gilded keys so sensitive to Davis' gentle touch, new. The cakes in their lace and paper sleeves, empty space where brothers and sisters once sat.
'Lemon is our most popular flavor.'
Fitting, Pansy thinks. The wizarding world with its public support of the reformation acts, of their allotment of rights, contained and controlled, to the old families. The blood traitors and Muggle-borns with their unbecoming, private appetite for vengeance. Davis at the center, choosing what and who to sell. Davis at the counter, a bare slip of shoulder—of pale skin and lace underthings.
Yes. The women of Slytherin House are the first to recover, but Pansy knows she is drowning.
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Date: 2013-01-29 02:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-30 05:46 am (UTC)