Chapter Text
Lady Pandora Malfoy tilts her parasol so that she’s shielded from the harsh afternoon sunlight. She generally prefers lace parasols, but this one is embroidered brocade so that not even a ray of sunshine can filter through. Even with cooling charms on her clothes, it’s still quite warm outside.
She stops at the expansive pier by the lake and watches the light sparkle on the water. It looks inviting. Perhaps, if there aren’t many people around later, she’ll indulge in a brief swim after she’s finished the novel in her reticule. Pandora is dying to find out if Lady Clarice Cheverton manages to effectively court Miss Ruth Callaway or discover if Lady Doris Wentwhistle successfully interferes and wins her heart.
“I should like to let a boat for the afternoon,” Pandora tells the witch standing inside a small office at the edge of the pier. “Whatever you have available will be acceptable.”
“My deepest apologies, Lady Pandora, we’ve just let the last boat to Miss Evans,” Miss Abigail Thornton says with a deep curtsy.
Pandora, who had been quite anticipating an afternoon spent reading beneath a canopy on a boat on the lake, sighs and says, “It cannot be helpe—”
“If you’ve no objections to sharing, Lady Pandora, there’s room enough for both of us on mine,” Miss Lily Evans says, her hand raised to shade her stunning green eyes from several feet away.
Pandora can’t help but gasp when the breeze swishes the skirt of Lily’s summer dress about her knees, revealing creamy skin that looks smooth to the touch; Miss Evans has always been a thing of beauty, but she is even more so right now, the sun shining on her radiant red hair, a genuine smile on her face.
“I should like that very much,” Pandora replies happily.
She had not intended to spend the afternoon in company with the New Blood witch who has captivated her for some time now, but she’s not at all opposed to doing so. Perhaps, this will be an effective way to gauge whether Lily is interested in witches as well as wizards. The latter already being a proven fact, on account of her brief courtship with Master Rabastan Lestrange that ended amicably some six months past.
“Allow me, please,” Lily says, offering her bare hand.
Pandora’s heart misses a beat. It almost feels disingenuous to allow the contact when Lily is unaware of her own interest, yet, would it not be discourteous to refuse such a kind offer of assistance?
“Thank you, Miss Evans,” Pandora says, placing her own glove-clad hand in Lily’s and boarding the boat.
“It was my pleasure, Lady Pandora. Please do refer to me by my first name, if you’re comfortable doing so,” Lily says, a sincere, bright smile on her face. “After all, you’re doing me the honor of allowing me your companionship for the afternoon when I’d no one to spend it with.”
Pandora closes her parasol and sets it on one of the seats, wondering all the while how Lily could possibly not have company if she so desired it. Many recent graduates of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry are occupied with apprenticeships, it’s true, but it honestly baffles Pandora to imagine that none of Lily’s friends or acquaintances would be available to accompany her on an afternoon spent at the lake.
“I appreciate that, Miss Lily.”
Pandora smooths her knee-length summer dress—the finest of cottons, embroidered with unicorns, per the Malfoy coat of arms—and sits on one of the two divans beneath the cloth covering that shields the boat’s occupants from the sun, providing shade and relief from the heat. The four posts that support it are inscribed with runes that facilitate the temperate ward on the boat, providing cooler temperatures and a lovely breeze.
“I must thank you again for allowing me to accompany you. I’ve the money to split the fee with you,” Pandora says, already reaching for her reticule. It’s only fair, after all, to pay for her portion. Especially since, not to be crass, she and her family—the Vigilant and Most Ancient House of Malfoy—have ancestral wealth, while Lily is a New Blood.
“Thank you for the offer, but it’s unnecessary. Your company is more than thanks enough,” Lily replies with a wide smile before settling on the opposite divan. “Please don’t feel obliged to stand on etiquette this afternoon, if you do not wish to do so.”
Before Pandora can inquire as to what precisely Lily intends by that comment, Lily slides her feet out of her flats and curls up on the divan, her feet reaching only part way down the piece of furniture. Lily is of average height for a witch, perhaps reaching Pandora’s shoulder when standing beside one another, and the divans are lengthy enough to accommodate the tallest of pureblood lords.
Even with the temperature ward, Pandora feels her cheeks flush.
Lily’s behavior is not obscene in the slightest. Yet, there’s something about seeing the delicate bones of her ankles and feet that feels unbearably intimate. Her toenails are lacquered a petal pink with ivory sparkles.
Emboldened by Lily’s behavior, Pandora toes off her own shoes. Though the sheer stockings she never leaves Malfoy Manor without prevent her skin from being truly bare, it still leaves Pandora feeling somewhat naked. The feeling increases when Lily’s lovely green eyes sweep gently down her body as Pandora mimics Lily’s posture on her own divan.
“I confess, I had planned to finish my novel,” Pandora says, smiling when the breeze ruffles her fringe against her cheeks, “but I’m more than amenable to conversation if that’s your preference?”
“It seems our plans aligned, Lady Pandora,” Lily says before laughing. She rolls a fine-boned wrist and a book appears in her hand; one of her bracelets must assuredly be a bottomless bracelet.
Pandora knows that such jewelry is especially de rigueur, but she much prefers her reticules. They are bottomless as well, storing whatsoever she should desire to place within them. Additionally, Pandora finds the weight of the reticule itself comforting, swinging from her wrist. She has more than a hundred, so that she might always have one to perfectly complement or intentionally contrast with any robe, gown, or dress in her wardrobe.
“So they did.” Pandora laughs softly, amused to have discovered yet another thing she and Lily have in common. She retrieves A Lady’s Pure Heart from her reticule and sets it on her lap, already opening it to where she left off.
Over the next two hours, she loses herself in Lady Clarice Cheverton’s courtship with Miss Ruth Callaway. It’s fraught with intrusions by Lady Doris Wentwhistle and Pandora, more than once, wishes she could hex Lady Doris.
It never fails to amuse her brother, Heir Lucius Malfoy, that Pandora—who never advocates for violence against living people—will profess a desire to hex, curse, and maim fictional characters.
When it ends with Mother Magic granting the newly bonded witches a daughter of their own following the Blood Magic Reproduction Ritual at the ancestral family altar, Pandora closes the novel with a soft sigh of longing, well aware that this is a novel she will read repeatedly.
It’s the second novel that the author has published and Pandora now has a new favorite. The first was touching, to be sure, but it didn’t resonate as deeply with Pandora as this one has. She feels seen all the way down to her magical core.
“How did you find it?” Lily asks, speaking for the first time in hours.
“I imagine I shall be rereading it weekly for the next year at least,” Pandora replies, turning her head to face the witch who holds her affections.
A flush colors Lily’s porcelain complexion; it’s beautiful. She wets her lips. “You enjoyed it that much?”
“I did.”
Pandora is a Ravenclaw. She has particularly high standards when it comes to novels, which exist solely for pleasure reading. Unfortunately, most novels that portray romances between two pureblood witches tend to characterize at least one of the witches as a flighty, indecisive, generally useless woman. A Lady’s Pure Heart is nothing of the sort. Even Lady Doris Wentwhistle, whom Pandora despises, is a competent witch.
A trace of bitterness twined with hope enters Lily’s voice when she asks, meeting Pandora’s gaze, “You didn’t find it ‘pedantic,’ and ‘an overdramatization that forces a feminist agenda’ and—”
“I did not,” Pandora interrupts, even though it is poor manners to do so because each word spilling from Lily’s lips appears to pain her.
It takes but a moment for Pandora to remember that she never told Lily the title of the novel she was reading. This, in turn, means that Lily recognized the novel based solely on the back cover—cream with a gilt lily.
Oh. Oh.
Pandora glances down at the cover and brushes her thumb over the author’s gilt initials: E.L.
Evans, Lily.
“The words you speak do not sound your own. Is that what that horrid Miss Skeeter said of your novel in the Daily Prophet, Miss Lily?” Pandora asks, irritated that a fellow Ravenclaw has caused Lily to doubt the magnificence of her work.
Lily nods, lips pressed into a flat line, her stunning smile hidden like the sun behind clouds on an overcast day. Pandora could ruin Miss Skeeter for that alone.
“I would be most grateful if you kept this knowledge to yourself, Lady Pandora,” Lily says softly, her eyes pleading. “Only my publisher knows my identity, and it’s protected by a Secrecy Contract.”
“You have my word,” Pandora replies instantly, relieved to see Lily relax as the magical promise seals between them.
The request fits ideally with what Pandora knows of Lily’s character. Lily is, despite being a Gryffindor, an intensely private person. She was never angrier at Hogwarts than when someone—most often the Marauders—forced her into being the center of attention. She’s not shy, not a wallflower, but she most assuredly does not enjoy everyone staring at her and whispering about her.
“You have my sincere gratitude, Lady Pandora,” Lily says, her smile coming out from behind the clouds that hid it.
Pandora’s heart waltzes into her throat. Because surely, surely if Lily has written and published a novel such as A Lady’s Pure Heart, she’s interested in witches as well as wizards. She must be, mustn’t she? This means that Pandora stands a chance of securing her affections, does it not?
She removes an extra pair of lace quarter-gloves from her reticule. An elegant roll of her wrist has her acacia and unicorn hair wand exiting her diamond wand-holster bracelet and landing in her hand. Transfiguration is not her premier magical discipline, but she is sufficient enough at it for this. With a swish of her wand and a quietly spoken incantation, her gloves become a bouquet of purple heliotropes with green fern leaves.
Devotion. Sincerity.
“Miss Lily, I should very much like to court you, if you’re amenable to such an arrangement,” Pandora says.