"Marionette"
Demeter
Disclaimer: All rights and privileges to Harry Potter are trademarks and property of J.K. Rowling, Scholastic, Warner Brothers, and associated parties. The author claims no legal responsibility for problems associated with using this work. The story, the relationships, and original characters within the fic are copyright of the author Demeter.
Pairing: None
Rating: R
Note: For The First Kill Project, presented by Xandria. Written pre-OoTP, interestingly enough. It's been a long path.
The smell seeped into her pores, into the grains of her clothing, into the strands of her carefully-coiffed hair. The smell swirled up in waves of heavy, metallic flavours, including copper and steel and iron and blood. The cacophony of screams, groans, grunts, orgasmic shrieks rent her ears, might have reached her soul if she ever could admit she had one. But no; girls of her sort didn't have souls, didn't have hearts; hearts and souls only broke uselessly.
She should have shuddered, thrown up, or even look mildly disgusted. But her face was as blank as the slates that bound the Ministry together in bleak force. Her thin shoulders were squared with careless abandon, and she moved through the chaos unharmed, unaffected, almost unseen if not for the lust-filled eyes of those who coveted her simply because she was untouchable, because she was that wizard's future vessel for breeding a grandchild off of.
How beautiful the child would be. How pure.
She stepped through a rapidly pooling puddle of tepid, crimson water, pausing only to make sure her delicate robes would not be splashed by the offensive liquid. She held her wand loosely in small, white hands, confident, sure, carrying it as a second skin. Muggle-born wizards and witches couldn't do that. Nor could half-bloods or mudbloods or… one had to be born into a life of servitude, of iron chains, of unbreakable promises from father to father that mercilessly took years of youth…
But her choice...?
What might have been sigh – bored, at that – drifted from lips painted maudlin red. Red for hopes and dreams. Red for blood. Red for love. But never red for reality.
"Two words, Pansy. Just two words."
She nodded with a distant confidence only someone bred from infancy could. A drop of anxiety soured her father's normally bland tone, but she knew he had a right. Everything would be determined by this one event, by this one mission. She would be led by Voldemort himself into the seething underbelly of muggles, where she would make her choice, where she would utter two simple words – derived from Latin, for all spells were – before banishing the muggle to eternal darkness.
And of course, she accepted her path with great equanimity. She had never been shown any other path, and even though she had secretly tested others, this was the only one that she felt no fear of. The familiar was far more comforting than the unknown and the frightful, uncertain future. She hated uncertainty with a surprising intensity usually reserved for Gryffindors and their beautiful ilk.
They continued slowly along their long road, akin the to the hellishness of the path Dante traveled. But since muggle literature was below the elder Parkinson patriarch, he failed to note this particular parallel. But even if he had, would he have wanted to see? The likeness of all the tortures – true or not – to those that were thrust on those muggles who sinned in ways that provoked the wrath of God and Satan. But then, who was the Satan? The vengeful Father, the Lord, who commanded Satan, or the foolish minion who only did what his Lord told him to do? Indeed, parallels. Minion to Lord? Pure to half?
Pansy, had, unfortunately, read of Dante, had read The Inferno. Rebellion in her young teenage years coupled with a strange thirst for those she would destroy – a far more delicate word than murder – in her elder years. Even if the years would be squeezed together, and she would find herself a killer before she was twenty.
But then… it would be her choice to choose murder rather than suicide.
The shrieks of pain suddenly disappeared as a dark figure, sweeping and terrible in his – it's? – power, cracking heavily like small bolts of thunder, lightening, ecstasy all mixed together. Slowly, she and her father sank to their knees, reverence and awe in their slightest movements. But she held her head up, dark eyes gazing steadily into his, for this wasn't the night – no, not tonight – for fear and cowardice to rear their faces, for panicked denial to take root. There was no room for doubts and whispered dreams of someplace brighter, better. No, tonight was where she made the transition from girl to woman, from child to adult, from Slytherin to Death Eater.
She was decidedly neutral about it all.
"Anthony… is this your… daughter?"
"Yes, Lord Voldemort. My only daughter, Pansy." He kept his head bowed, face hidden, but the sudden pride was evident and painfully clear.
She might have winced, if she felt like it. Pride and honour were imperative and vital to almost all pureblood families. And tonight, of all nights, he would feel pride for his daughter, for his heir, for the one would continue his place in the Inner Circle, who would prove that purebloods were worthier than… than who? Than what?
Sinful red gazed down at her, scrutinizing her, gently tearing the fabric of her mind apart, examining every part with a painful, clinical air. Would she be pure enough? Would she be worthy? Would she… actually be alive as a witch rather than a woman? A smile – terrible, frightening, damning – crossed the darkness in the face of Lord Voldemort. She finally bowed her head, suddenly feeling a heavy terror, born on the wings of ignorance, of hatred, of generations strung high from grief.
Her choice because she hated muggles.
A sudden gray vision of her many ancestors – for she knew every single one for name and sight – being burned at the stake, being drowned, being dismembered… was it so easy for those half-bloods to forget? To let go of the pain and suffering previous witches felt as they were blamed for anything that ever went wrong? Couldn't they remember how many things those dirty muggles could do when a wizard was down? How the worst could be sliced, carved, burnt, beaten, fucked, torn, melted… meted into a body, when a witch or wizard had their wand taken from them?
"Look up, my pureblood daughter."
And she did.
"Are you ready to undertake your task?"
"Yes."
"Do you hate the infestation that has delivered our holy world to evil?"
"Yes."
"Do you have the courage to face your enemies and permanently rid the world of them?"
"Yes."
No, yes, no, yes, no, yes.
"Then follow."
Slowly, she raised herself from the kneeling position, distantly noting that her father stayed, her father remained. She couldn't say goodbye. Not to him, not when disinheritance or death awaited her if she failed. For failure was not a word in a pureblood dictionary, not a word definable in any sense or feeling. Sometimes she felt as if she was made of pliable wax, molded to the thoughts of others, shaped in the dreams of those wiser than her. Could she never be her own person?
But then it would mean freedom… and that wasn't a word in the pureblood handbook either.
The time was coming. She had to wipe her mind clear of all doubts. She must never show her insincerity or distrust, or she truly would be wiped. She would become a tabula rasa, someone who didn't know the pride of her birth, someone who was forced to eke out a living as a…
She allowed no further thoughts. Poison, mud, dirt, soiled ideas that whispered like spiders dropping through her skin, like clay wedged into her ears, like the threats of memories.
"Here we are." His voice was like smooth satin, bordering on silk. But the rough edges of arrogance stiffened him and subsequently, he was a level beneath that of her Head of House.
There was no regret.
She looked.
It was her choice to see.
Figures were huddled against the dingy walls, nearly pressed flat into the shadows of the corners. The smell from their sweaty bodies and the combination of urine and defecation was overpowering. But since she had been trained since young to take in any odor without change in expression, she felt little more than absent disgust. A sweep of his cloaked arm, the torches lit, and the room was flooded with a brilliant burst of shadowed luminosity.
Whimpers drifted to her ears, but she felt no pity, no sympathy. Remorse was for the weak, the unchallenged. And she had already been challenged.
"Choose your First…"
A woman struggled forth, her thin and dirty face crumpled by the days of endless imprisonment. "No! Please! No more!" She crawled on her knees, slowly begging for a life, for many lives. A mother with only one child left.
She didn't particularly care.
"Her?"
A pause, a long silence, a considering quiet, as she looked upon the bowed woman, who was shaking in terror, at the huddled children behind her, the other small groupings… pickings were plenty.
"Him." She languidly pointed at a small child – for she had always held a small grudge against men and small boys especially – behind the woman, and a terrible shriek ripped through the still air. A howl of prevention, and the woman fell backward with desperation and clutched the child to her chest, bent over as if to protect him with her arms, with her physical body. As if she possibly could. Silly muggle. Or not so?
Her choice to choose the child instead of the mother.
"Please! Let him go! Please! He is my only child left!"
"Him." Placidly, she watched as two black-robed Death Eater dragged the child away from the mother and another held the mother down with a ruthless nonchalance, barely any effort in his wand. The other prisoners, ragged in appearance and spirit, could only close their eyes dully and close their ears to the heartbroken sobbing.
With fluid grace, she bent down to look at the child in the face, and in the back of her mind, she noticed with a far moment of surprise, that he had green eyes. As green as the hard emeralds of Harry Potter who never looked at a Slytherin with his infamous kindness and generosity, who eyed them with contempt and hatred, when in the beginning, they had done nothing wrong.
Irrationally, that irritated her. And the child did too, with his wide, terrified eyes. With green eyes that reminded her of Harry Potter. Celebrity of Gryffindor.
She raised her wand with a breath and was about to utter words, two words, when Lord Voldemort stopped her.
"Wait, pureblood daughter. Is death the only road for this parasite?"
"Lord?" And Jesus wept. She had also read the Bible. Unfortunately.
"What else?"
There was a short silence, and then she closed her eyes in mute concentration. When they reopened, coldness had replaced the detachment. Her mind supplied images of her long lineage. Of whispers that the muggles would do it all over again, would call for their torture and death if their secrets were revealed in the way Dumbledore wanted. Of the deaths and tears, of the hatred and fear, of the very reason why witches like her were pure rather than half or mud. Granger came to mind, and her mouth twisted with resentment. Snotty, pretentious, prejudiced mudblood!
"Crucio…" glided from her lips – painted a maudlin red – before any other thoughts entered her shattering mind.
And then there were other screams. The child writhed on the floor, limbs flailing in a helpless attempt to escape the exploding pain. It burned. Cruciatus burned and were like hot knives on cold flesh, cutting through ski, fat, muscle, bone, marrow, bone, muscle, fat, skin and then coming though the other side clean and true.
Her choice to use this curse.
The woman strained at her child, blood trickling from burst veins, eyes no longer able to weep as she stared unblinkingly at the boy being ripped apart. He was now reduced to whimpering, face ashen and growing blue as his lungs refused to breathe anymore.
She allowed for the spell to work a moment longer before releasing the child from her wand. He lay there coughing violently, body twitching with uncontrolled spasms. She turned to his mother, who stared at him with dull eyes. Then she looked up at her son's torturer, and a voice rasped, "We never did anything to you…"
No.
"Not you, but your people did. And will." Her Lord had spoken and it was final. "Finish him."
Yes.
She raised her arm, barely acknowledging the sudden struggle of the mother, seeing but ignoring the gasping screams for her to stop. But for whom? The Slytherin? The Death Eater to be? The Pureblood? The future Mrs. Malfoy? Or… Pansy? Pansy the cow. Pansy the bitch. Pansy the whore.
And lowered her arm.
"Avada Kedavra."
Green – why was everything supposedly evil linked with such a lovely colour? – light lit the room with it's ghastly fingers of death, and when the darkness fell once more, the child was still. His tiny chest no longer moved, his fingers no longer wavered weakly, and no whimpers stirred his cold, pale lips. Once red and just begging to be bitten.
She ignored the silent, sudden weeping in her mind.
But it was her choice.
The mother subsided from her frantic movements. Animal-like sounds scratched their way from her throat and she then lay still onto the ground, the tiny rivers of blood drying like sticky candy on a child's…
A small, halting sound. "We… we never…" A dying breath. "…Did anything to you." A hand fluttered weakly and then nothing more.
Single applause sounded as Lord Voldemort glided up to her. "My dear Pureblood Daughter. Your First was well-done." Approvingly, with a careless wave of his hand – wand-less magic? – the mother's body burnt away into dark, oily ashes. "Louse. Only they would so easily die." He spat out the words, as if tasting something fouler than…
She stared at the two bodies, one killed by her, another by grief – she had not known it was truly possible until now – and found herself unable to do anything more but kneel at the feet of her Lord and press cold lips to his rich, beautiful robes.
There'd been less blood than she had expected.
"Return to your ancestral home. You will be initiated into our ranks, into the Inner Circle when the next blood moon draws near. You will receive the Mark, for you are worthy now." A skeletal hand brushed gently – she had not known the feared Voldemort could be as gentle as this – over her hair and rested for a moment, passing his benevolence into her. For Lord Voldemort was a God.
She slowly rose.
He motioned to the other Death Eaters and bowing respectfully, they escorted her out, hands carefully kept to their sides. They knew better than to defile her with anything other than eager worship and calculating hope for favor. Who knew where the dragon might rise? Left? Right?
Gliding silently through the dank and echoing halls, she purposely kept her mind off her recent… actions. It was the only way to be able to seem unconcerned within this den of bereavement. She needed composure to present her purest image. And purity was value above all else by her elders.
When they returned to the cavern where this had all started, her father's face lit up like a beacon. Almost immediately, there was control again, but she had seen it, and a single, stray thought filled her.
I hate you.
She was oddly surprised.
He put an arm around her, nodded to the Death Eaters, and Apparated her away.
His wife and her mother waited for them, pacing back and forth in the parlor. When she saw them, she sprang forward, the question on her face. He nodded proudly, and she turned to her only child, her only heir, her only daughter, expressions of pride and worry finally melting to relief all mixed on her face. She put out her hand – manicured and carefully maintained – stopping right before touching her daughter's shoulder. It hovered there, hesitant. But never fell.
With a murmur of letters that needed to be written – but never exhaustion, for a pureblood daughter was never visibly tired – she left them speaking softly to each other, and she couldn't help but feel the traitorous thought, the poisonous idea flitting with freedom through the nerve synapses in her brain – for she had also read muggle medical texts – once more.
I hate you.
She opened the door to her bedroom.
Large. Spacious. Beautiful. Perfect. With no hint of dust or dirt or disarrangement. The house elves always did their absolute best. And of course… Silver. Gray. But no green. For the colour would have clashed with the rest of her décor. There was a large room on the right filled to the brim with her glut of clothing – a new collection every spring. An ornate vanity table made of gold and precious stones gaudily stood out in a corner, and the various rugs… pink. No red.
This was the life of a Pureblood Parkinson. But not the bedroom of Pansy.
Closing the door gently, she spilled her robes to the ground, revealing a simple blouse and shirred skirt. Throwing those onto a marble side table, she removed her undergarments with a degree of detachment.
What had been the woman's name?
Standing naked, bare in the middle of the room, a quick, whispered spell locked her door, and she sank into the thick carpet. She stared at her wand. Eleven and a half inches. Willow. Springy. Flexible. Pliant. With dragon-heartstring and the hair of a virgin unicorn. With her since she was seven. For wizarding pureblood children always started their education early. And her hands – small, white, pretty – started trembling so slightly.
Murderer.
She had exterminated.
Death Eater.
She had destroyed.
Slytherin.
She had killed.
But her choice.
Hugging the wand to her bare breast, she stumbled – a rarity, since she no longer allowed clumsiness to mar her steps – into her great, big bed and slipped underneath the silken comforter with the soft down of diricawl fluff. Bare skin slid with familiarity – but how? The sheets were changed every few weeks and then thrown away – and she closed her eyes tiredly.
Sleep would not come. And she had long, dreary feeling that it would never come easily again.
Without sound, without tears, without breath, she started crying into her pillow, curling closely together, discarding the Death Eater, the Parkinson, the Slytherin, the Pureblood, and reverted to her seventeen-year old self, young and easily fooled, young and faithful to this thorn-edged path long set out before her birth, young and having already fulfilled a prediction of evil and had committed a grave mistake. The Gryffindors would have been superiorly righteous.
We had been right. Slimy, evil Slytherins. Not a good one among the lot. They're Death Eaters. No doubt.
A little boy. She had caused his death and subsequently, his mother's death. She was a cruel, sadistic witch. And she could only cry harder.
Killer. Murderer. Death Eater.
Pansy hated…
- fin -
While a little maudlin in nature and overly-sympathetic, still one of my personal favorites. )