pansy doesn't leave parkinson manor much these days; 'these days' being the last few years following the war.
saying it that way makes it sound like she has a choice, which of course she doesn't. she can't blame them, really; potter and his merry band. she's a traitor in their eyes, and she understands. she'd do the same, too.
doesn't make it any less boring, of course.
boredom. a constant companion, and the reason she's rooting around in the old attic for the umpteenth time this day alone. there's nothing interesting here, there wouldn't be; they'd cleared it out entirely before moving her in, granger's idea. a good one, too, for the manor had been chock-full of a number of dark artifacts. would have made escape— and revenge—far too easy.
smart girl, that granger. annoying and stubborn as all hell, but smart. and pretty too, although perhaps not as pretty as weasley's sister.
pansy lets her thoughts meander, humming tunelessly under her breath. her eyes are glazed over, boredom and apathy sinking so deeply into her bones that she almost doesn't notice it— the somber gleam in the darkest and dustiest part of the attic. but she does; it pierces her eyes, dull, yet— yet not, somehow. she cannot explain it, how it draws her mind, her feet forward. she does not realize she has stumbled towards it until she stands before— a portrait. a woman, dark eyed, dark haired, skin white as bone and lips... red. red like spilt blood. the portrait is unmoving. not a wizard's work, then, yet it is magic still. unmistakably so. pansy can feel it and the eyes— the eyes are alive.
her hand lifts almost of its own accord, resting, trembling, against the portrait. she swears the woman smiles.
a pulse, a breath, and she is gone. she stands in a wood that breathes around her, and a woman, the woman, kneels before her. despite that, it does not seem to be an act of submission. if anything, as the woman's dark eyes rake over her, as she tilts her chin up defiantly and her lips turn up in a wolfish grin, pansy feels the most vulnerable she has ever felt. naked, naked as the day she was born, and as helpless too, fear strikes her to the bone. yet she steps forward on wobbling calves' legs, heart in her throat, blood leaping in her veins, drawn forward by the somber light in the woman's eyes.
"be not afraid," the woman says, hoarse voice shattering the silence of the woods. the trees, the earth, and pansy tremble, yet the woman is still as a statue but for the eyes. "be not afraid, daughter of eve," the woman repeats, "for here, all of your sins are washed away."
"who are you?" pansy croaks, desperate, afraid, longing. the woman's smile carves a cruel path across her face.
"i do believe that in your world i am rowena of the house of ravenclaw, but here, i am jadis— and you, dear, shall be my knight."