Yule Ball Redux Chapter 4 (Patreon)

Content Warning: Nothing.

Parvati Patil woke up to a pounding head, an unfamiliar weight around her throat, and an unknown arm over her chest. She had no idea time she had ended up in bed, everything after her dance and classroom tryst with Harry…

Harry! Oh, fuck.

She slowly turned her head, groaning internally at the sight of the familiar scar and messy black hair.

She gently prised his arm off her, slipping out of bed. She grabbed his white shirt from the floor, pulling it on and buttoning it up, deciding to tackle the most pressing issue first. She needed coffee for her hangover headache. Once the pounding had lessened, she’d try to figure out how she had gone from asking Harry Potter for a dance to getting him to rail her till her soul left her body.

She silently padded into the small kitchen of her apartment, only to be greeted by a familiar face lounging in one of her two chairs, a carton of orange juice in one hand and a newspaper in the other.

“I gave you the key to my apartment for emergencies Lav,” Parvati groaned, not in the mood for her best friend’s antics that morning.

Come to think of it, all of this is because of her little stunt.

“I’d say this qualifies as an emergency,” Lavender said sardonically, pushing the folded newspaper towards her. “PP. They’re using your initials as your couple name.”

“What are you-” She paused mid-sentence, her eyes widening as she unfurled the paper to reveal a large photo of Harry and her slow dancing. “P+P?” she groaned, looking at the headline, running a frustrated hand through her tangled hair.

“You certainly got some of that last night,” Lavender smirked, setting the carton of juice on the table and wiping her lips with the back of her hand.

“I-how did-how long have you been here?!”

She didn’t remember everything that had happened the night before, but the parts she did had been… explosive.

“Half an hour ago, but I didn’t have to be here for the explosion to know it happened. You’re wearing a man’s shirt and there’s a pretty red collar with a teardrop emerald around your throat. Also, do you know your arm is glowing? What kind of kinky shit did you get up to last night?”

“Arm… what?” Parvati had turned and busied herself with the coffee maker partly to hide her blush and partly because her head felt like it was being split open. She abandoned those efforts, turning her neck to study both of her arms.

“Right shoulder,” Lavender pointed out helpfully, the merlin-forsaken smirk still plastered on her face.

Parvati pulled the loose shirt down her shoulder, groaning at the small thunderbolt on her shoulder. It didn’t look like a normal muggle or magical tattoo. Instead, it appeared to be liquid silver, glowing dimly. She had no memory of getting it, but then, a lot of what had happened the night before was a blank to her.

“Wow. If the two of you ever break up, you’re gonna regret that particular decision,” Lavender tutted, hopping out of her chair and walking over to her to poke at the tattoo.

“Hey!” She slapped her hand away, although the tattoo did not hurt in the slightest. There was no soreness, no tenderness, it was nothing like the other two tattoos she had gotten.

“Merlin, Patil, if you married him last night, I’m gonna lose my shit.”

“We didn’t. At least, not to my knowledge. The night is a little fuzzy after the classroom,” Harry said softly, walking into the kitchen.

Parvati Patil’s brain and body wanted two very different things at the sight of the shirtless man walking into the kitchen. Her brain wanted her to dig a very deep hole and hide, especially after her best friend’s rather loud wolf whistle, while her body wanted to be bent over the kitchen table and pick up where they had left off the night before, Lavender’s presence be damned.

“Damn Potter.” Lavender’s words broke her out of her trance, and she snapped her eyes away from her lover’s abs. “If I’d known that’s what you’re hiding, I’d have ditched the ambassador and taken you home myself.”

“...thank you?”

“Don’t mind her.” Parvati chuckled nervously, busying herself with the coffee maker once more, trying to ignore the heat rising in her body when he took the chair closest to her.

He didn’t do that on purpose, she reminded herself, flipping shut the lid of the coffee maker. You only have two bloody chairs and your stupid best friend is currently occupying the other one.

“Lavender is being her usual lecherous idiotic self,” Parvati growled, shooting a warning glance in her direction. The situation was awkward enough. They didn’t need her adding fuel to the fire with her innuendos. “Coffee?”

“Sure, thank you. My head is pounding.”

Parvati reached up to the shelf, retrieving three tea cups. She placed them on the counter next to the coffee maker, trying to ignore the two sets of eyes following her every movement.

“Hey, Parv?” Lavender called out, nodding to Harry’s bare shoulder.

“Hmm?” Her gaze turned to where Lavender was looking, eyes widening at the sight of the rather intricate butterfly glowing dimly on Harry’s bare shoulder. “Shit,” she whispered, whipping around to hide the deepening blush on her cheeks. They’d gotten complementary tattoos? That was even worse than matching ones!

Morgana’s tit, why did I act like a stupid, hormonal sixteen-year-old last night?

“Nice tattoo Potter. Very fitting design for the man who defeated the strongest Dark Wizard in a century.”

“I-what?”

Does he have no recollection of getting them either?

She poured the coffee into the cups, slowly carrying them one by one to the table. She was trying to delay the inevitable, to keep the surge of heat and power that seemed to rock her very core every time she stepped closer to the man at bay. It seemed like a futile exercise. She watched Lavender point to Harry’s right shoulder with a smirk and groaned internally at the gobsmacked expression on his face.

Merlin’s balls, did we fuck up our second Yule date even worse than the first one?

“I have no memory of getting this.”

“I-Uhm, I have one too.” Parvati cleared her throat, steeling herself. She moved to stand next to Lavender, and slowly pulled the shirt back down to bare her shoulder. “I don’t remember us going out to get these either.”

“Well, we must have. Right? I remember the classroom and the two of us… what we did,” Harry said, his face and neck turning red, “but everything after that is a blur.”

“Lavender, don’t you have to go open your store?”

“Nah. Polly can handle it, this is much more interesting,” Lavender replied with a grin, plucking her wand from behind her ear. She summoned the spare beanbag kept in lieu of an extra armchair in the living room, shifting to sit on it. She patted the now empty chair, looking up at Parvati with a look that clearly said, ‘You need to have this conversation, now.’

“Uhm… you don’t sound too distressed about this,” Parvati said softly. She had slipped into the seat, but could not bring herself to meet his eyes.

Steel yourself, woman, the voice in her head chided, you grabbed the man’s cock in a public atrium last night. You can look up at him.

The confidence that she had possessed the night before seemed to have deserted her, however, and so she picked up her cup, deciding that concentrating on the black liquid in it was a safer option.

“I’m not,” he said simply, and the calm in his voice finally gave her the courage to look up at him. He didn’t seem angry, or even upset. Why was the man smiling?

“You were right. Last night, when you said I need to be honest about what I want? Running from who I am… what I want… who I want, it was just making me miserable.” He picked up his cup, taking a sip. “Last night was the first time since the end of the war that I slept without a single nightmare. I feel calm, I feel happy. I can’t explain it, but I feel… whole. As for the tattoos, even if they’re magical we can get rid of them if we want to. Neville got rid of his a couple of months ago.”

“Longbottom had a tattoo?” Lavender piped up from the beanbag, her chin resting on her hands, watching the two with an amused expression on her face.

The man just confessed that I complete him, and that’s the first thing you want to ask him?

“A snorcack,” Harry replied with a chuckle, “Luna made him get it on their trip to Romania.”

“Putting aside Longbottom’s interesting life choices for the time being, Parv, do you want to share what you think about everything that’s happened and how you want to proceed?”

I want to proceed by having Harry Potter’s hand in my hair, his lips on my neck, his-

“Hellooooo? Earth to Parv?”

Parvati smacked away the hand Lavender was waving in front of her face. She pulled her lower lip, chewing on it as she tried to decide how honest she was going to be.

“The man bared his heart to you, the least you can do is follow your own advice and not run from your desires.”

Harry had stayed silent, and when she looked up at it, she found him sipping on his coffee, looking at her with an inscrutable expression on his face.

“I feel like I’m on fire,” Parvati confessed quietly. After everything that had happened the night before, after everything she had done and they had shared, she owed him the truth. It was the least she could do. “In a good way. I’m terrified, exhausted, and utterly spent, but I have never felt more alive than I do right now. That calm you feel Harry? I don’t have that, and it scares me. All I have is this raging fire in me that demands to be fed.”

“That was-”

“Lav,” Parvati said, turning to her with a warning glare. She wasn’t finished, and she instinctively knew that she would only have one shot at saying what she wanted to say. This was already their second chance, and she would not be the one to blow it. “Last night, I told you that I had no idea if what we have would last a day or eternity, but that I wanted to find out. I mean that.”

“Me too.” He finally smiled, reaching out to grasp her hand.

What was quite possibly the most romantic moment of her life was immediately ruined by her juvenile best friend making loud ‘aww’ and smooching sounds.

“Lav?” Parvati turned away from the hypnotic green eyes of her lover.

“Hmm?”

“Get lost, please.”

“Fine.” Lavender huffed, climbing to her feet. “I know when I’m not wanted.” She grabbed the newspaper, huffing and sighing during her entire walk through the apartment.

“She means well,” Parvati said softly once she heard the bang of her front door, turning to look at their clasped hands. “Underneath all the histrionics, she means well.”

“I know. She got us together, didn’t she?” Harry drained his cup before walking over to her side of the table, their hands still clasped. “What say you and I shower? Then we can try to piece together everything we did last night and figure out what we’re going to do about our tattoos.”

“You have a deal, Mr. Potter.”

“Miss Patil?”

“Hmm?”

“Am I forgiven?”

“Getting closer by the minute, sir.”

Tomes and Scrolls Book Store:

Lavender Brown leaned over the counter, slowly turning the tiny, half-empty bottle of Felix Felicis in her hand. She stared at the golden liquid shimmering merrily inside, ignoring Polly's inquisitive glances, trying to figure out a way to tell her best friend about what she and Ginny had done that wouldn't get them turned into warty toads.

A/N: I'm a sucker for using Felix Felicis as a way to get a couple who need to be together, you know, together. Lol.