Pansy Parkinson stood at the edge of a cliff, looking out to the fields below. She felt weak, and every movement she made proved that. Her limp hair hung around her pale face, her eyes blank and empty. She couldn't help but compare the calmness of the villages below to all the destruction she had seen minutes ago.
She was the only one left.
The battle had been quick but ferocious, each side fighting with everything they had. And her side had lost. Voldemort and his Death Eaters had actually lost. After all the terror they had brought about in the past years, they had been defeated.
She couldn't remember how she had managed to escape it. All she remembered was the vicious fighting, the spewing blood, the falling of the corpses. She looked behind her to the grassy field where it had all taken place and felt sick to her stomach. The stench of death was still evident in the air.
And she felt practically dead herself. All the life had been sucked out of her in those past hours, from the preparations to the actual fighting. She couldn't believe they had lost. They had planned each move carefully, discussed every possible strategy. They had thought they were invincible, that they couldn't have lost.
Well, they were wrong.
Overconfidence was an awful weakness.
She, like all the others, had expected to be victorious, so the Darkness would rise more than ever. She had wanted to make all the common people cower when they heard her name. She wanted the power. She had yearned for it so long; she had sacrificed everything. She thought she deserved to be rewarded.
Why was fate so cruel?
She had lost her love in that battle. That wound would never heal. It was carved in her heart forever. He had died to save her life. She wished he hadn't done that. Her life was meaningless now. How could she go on when there was nothing to go back to?
And she had a dreaded secret too. It was a secret that would cause others to shun her forever.
She was no longer human.
That had also happened during the fight. A vampire, who was an ally of Voldemort, had bitten her during one of his bloodlusts. He had almost sucked her dry, but her blood revived him at the last minute and he was horrified to see that he had brought the death of a friend.
He saved her the only way he could, by turning her into one of his kind. He also passed on, for the energy required was so great that it drained the life out of him.
Couldn't he see that she didn't want to be like him? It was a cursed life, one that Pansy wanted no part of. A life where she would be forever lonely. But she had no choice. Immortality was now hers, and her death could only be caused that way.
The only problem was, she didn't know what that way was.
The sky was slowly darkening, long shadows being cast onto the ground. She sighed, still staring into nothingness.
She had cheated death so many times today. So many had died just so she could live? Why? Why was her life so important to them? She felt like nothing, she had done no great deeds. And yet they all wanted her to live so badly, to live and flourish.
How could she now? She was a monster. A creature. She would have to feed off the blood of humans to live. That very thought disgusted her, and she felt the urge to throw up.
She had no trouble with killing others. To her, this had been a needed task, it would ensure that she would be great. They were only obstacles that stood in her way.
But this? She couldn't stand to suck the very life out of them. So many had already died to save her life, and there were many more that would have to. That is, if she chose to live.
A life of bitterness, of loneliness and regret. Did she really want that? The killing...she was sure that would get easier as it went on. And she didn't have to drain all their life. Just enough to keep her going.
To live as a shadow, watching others achieve what she had always wanted. It would be torture. She would hate every moment of it.
Now, she regretted the choices she had made years ago. She regretted that she had ever joined Voldemort.
She had been naive then. She had had her ideas of good and evil, of what was right and wrong, but somehow, they had all gotten twisted around by the time she graduated. She joined Voldemort, with all the others, seeking something she thought the world couldn't offer.
She laughed out loud, the sound echoing all around her.
What had she been looking for? She hadn't been a typical Slytherin when she was at school, ambitious as she was, she had never dreamed of joining the side she thought she would fight against forever.
She was disgusted with herself.
But there was no use torturing herself over the past. All she could change was the future. And it was a future that didn't look too bright.
She imagined herself walking into the Leaky Cauldron, and having everyone run out, fearing for their lives. It was what would happen if her secret ever got out. The sense of power that she would have was appealing to her, but she decided that it wouldn't be worth it if she were isolated for the rest of her life.
Pansy had always had friends. She had always pitied the poor souls that didn't. Not enough to befriend them, she always pitied them from a distance. And then she taunted them with the rest of the children, while hoping that they wouldn't hate her for it.
As a child, she had always had such a guilty conscience.
That had all ended once she was grown. When your job consisted of killing people, you couldn't feel guilty about anything. It just didn't fit together.
Now that Voldemort was gone, and her initial shock had worn off, all her previous beliefs came flooding back to her and she fell to the ground. Her memories of everything she had done stayed with her, taunting her.
It hurt.
Nothing would sink in properly. She hated herself, for being so weak. She hated herself for not standing up for her beliefs. She had thought she was so strong. This obviously proved otherwise.
Being what she was now, it would be even harder to fight back. It would take forever to undo all the damage they had done. She felt ill, knowing she had been a part of it.
Her guilt came back. She welcomed it; feeling relieved that at least part of her was still human.
Was it worth living in a world of pain?
She decided it wasn't.
So she stepped closer to the edge of the cliff and jumped.
*~*~*
A little boy in the village below awoke suddenly, feeling that something was not quite right. He knew he had dreamt, but the details were blurry, something he couldn't remember. He knew something big had happened. Something that could change everything.
He looked out the window, where a full moon was hanging in a pitch-black sky. One lone bat flew past the moon, darkening the brightness. Its silhouette was reflected for a moment, then disappeared just as quickly.
Somehow, this gave him comfort.
Disclaimer: All Harry Potter characters belong to J.K. Rowling.
A/N: Yeah, it's odd, isn't it? You can decide for yourself whether she died or not. Review? =)