notes; for hpfc's favorite character boot camp challenge (prompt #7: pain) and the 100 prompts challenge (prompts; haunted, sorrow, duel, anger, mistake, dreaming, devastation, nightmares). short drabble fic, a study in scars more than anything xx
waves that rolled you under
padma patil, post-war
.
most of our feelings,
they're dead and gone
youth, daughter
.
She kills herself in the afternoon.
Padma envisions the salty blood running from raked fingernails, blood-red nails scratching upon a velvet blanket of coarse skin, painted on a torn-canvas; but, this is not a television reality show, and as much as she dreams of escaping, she cannot do this, and instead bottles up thoughts - they bleed from worn fingertips, wrinkles and frown lines sparking devious plots, but stay in dreams. She will have to wake up every day (groggy eyes greeting the common room, feet trudging to the remains of the Grand Hall, a rote series of memorized steps) —
Until she does not wake up.
.
Survivors line the walls, their aching faces and proudly worn battle scars (but they are not children, and they are not proud of their mistakes) evidently separate from the rows of first-years;
Padma walks the halls and thinks that she is too old for Hogwarts.
A time will always come where a child most outgrow the walls of the castle, with their twisting, ever-changing staircases that lead to wonders; wonders, and miracles, and magic, and she cannot think of much more to sum up the castle, except that it is not a place of happiness anymore. There are blood stains upon banisters and stairwells that wrap around the school, inanimate things; the ghosts in the paintings disappear into the looming darkness, afraid to come out (they are dead, but the children are dead, too, inside). They are all dead, really.
.
She sits in Muggle Studies —
A group of children (first-years, third-year, and the like; there aren't enough adults in the Wizarding World who are willing to be teachers at the battle site where their children died; and if they survived, their childhood selves died there) smile, young faces beaming with effervescence. Their dreams are most likely filled with treacle tarts heaped upon silver platters, the way hers used to be before Voldemort had strangled her mother, fed poison to her father, and gave her her sister's head in a small-sized box through the Wizard Post. She pities them - envies their naiveté.
It will soon be crushed. Nobody stays happy forever.
We are all going to die, she thinks, and knows it bothers her. There are soldiers and Aurors who had fought valiantly at the Battle of Hogwarts, being trained from a young age - these were men and women, boys and girls, who knew when to die, they were not scared of death. Padma was a child, born into the world of pure blood luxury as one of the 28 families, and death was something that she had expected after a long, luxurious life, perhaps after the age of eighty or so; maybe even immortality, if she was fortunate enough.
Hogwarts used to be a home. Hogwarts is a recovering battle site, now.
Padma Patil used to be a child - she is a veteran, now.
.
The Headmaster made her Head Girl —
In an alternate universe, she would have been simply ecstatic - this is not a fairytale, and she nods her head slightly, trying to feel prideful about the actions, but knows that the position was only implanted on her because she is one of the few brave (stupid) enough children to result to Hogwarts for a seventh year. She is walking among the corridors, children running past with smiles on their face - gleaming white teeth - and notices two of the third-years performing a pseudo Wizard's Duel off the West Wing, and disarms their wands with a simple stroke of her wand (a spell she had invented herself - Padma hadn't been in Ravenclaw for no reason at all).
You can't be doing Wizard's Duel without teacher permission, she says numbly, reciting the words from the handbook, the rules and code of conduct for Hogwarts; words and numbers fly by her mind, and she's stopped thinking after a while.
The two third-years nod in response, laughing as soon as they've exited the corridor, complaining about the strict upperclassmen; for a moment, with weapons in their hands, they looked like soldiers, fighting wars, stern faces charging at one another; she blinks again, and the image is gone, and she continues on and pretends to be getting better.
.