I do not own the Harry Potter series, or any of the Harry Potter characters. Just a humble lesbian who loves Pansy/Hermione
My pearl. Pearl Parkinson. We're strong because of what we have, love. Because of what we are. Do you understand, love? Do you understand?
Yes, mummy.
Good girl. Now twirl for mummy. Lovely - what a lovely dress. What lovely hair.
Thank you.
Promise mummy you'll never do anything to harm your lovely hair. Promise mummy you'll always be a Parkinson girl.
Yes.
My pearl. Let's go show daddy.
"I can't wait," Aunt Josephine trilled, braiding Pansy's hair with vigour as the ten-year-old girl stared at her reflection mutely. "Until darling Pannie's wedding day. Parkinson weddings are the events of the decade, my sweet. A beautiful bride. A beautiful groom. Nothing muddying up the room or the bloodline. Isn't that right, Scarlett?"
Pansy's mother beamed. "Don't try and steal my daughter away. She'll be my pride and joy, won't you, pearl? Are there any boys you want to dance with tonight, hmm, love?"
"That Malfoy boy, Draco, isn't he handsome, Pannie?"
"Oh, they're always playing together when Narcissa and Lucius come over. They're inseparable."
"Is that so? Oh look, Pannie, you're blushing. How adorable."
Pansy's mother placed a tight grip on her daughter's shoulder. "You like him, don't you, Pan?"
And Pansy knew to nod and smile.
Chapter One
The scorching water burned the skin on her neck as Pansy hung her head, standing unmovingly in the shower. The longer she stayed there, the less painful the burning became, until the feeling was nothing more than a numb ache. Pansy liked to get lost in that numb ache. She'd done it ever since she was little, ever since it became apparent to her she was to have no control over her life. Everything from who she associated with, what she said, down to her hair, her clothes, was to be controlled by her parents, by her stern mother. So showers became the one place where Pansy could do as she liked. Turn the water cold and chill herself solid. Turn the water hot and melt to a stump 'til she was washed down the drain. Turn the room so foggy she didn't have to get out and see her reflection in the mirror, smirking at her, knowing better than her, saying let's swap places, I can do your job better than you. Exist for herself, because everywhere else she existed for mother and father.
Of course, not any more. Now mother and father were dead. But the habit remained.
Everything was different to how things had been before the Battle of Hogwarts, but many things were also the same. Sometimes, when Pansy couldn't sleep on the stiff mattress of her new room at her aunt's house, she'd write two lists in the air with her finger. Things that were the same, things that were different.
Things that are the same:
- the Ministry is a joke
- the Parkinsons have a lot of money
- the Malfoys have a lot of money
- Pansy is alone
Things that are different:
- the control the pureblood families used to have is being stripped, piece by piece
- the Parkison family assets have been frozen by the Ministry due to the illicit ways their fortune was maintained
- mother and father are dead
- Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy are in prison
- Pansy is somehow even more alone than she was before
Now Pansy and her Aunt Josephine lived in her aunt's summer cottage on a hill by the beach in Dover. A tiny little thing that wasn't seized by the government for the simple and elegant reason that it had technically been the property of one Nicholas Goodlubby, deceased, former Muggle solicitor, former lover to Aunt Josephine. Yes, that's right. Every bigot is a hypocrite, not the least Aunt Josephine, who slapped her son bloody at a family gathering when it was publicly revealed he'd been sleeping with Muggle women. Now he was dead too. Bar distant relatives that neither Pansy nor Aunt Josephine knew how to contact, the two of them were the last of the noble, pure, powerful Parkinson line. Shacked up in a leaky, destitute cabin. Penniless. Loathed by the entire Wizarding world.
Pansy thought back to the afternoon she'd been told her parents were dead. It was the day after the Battle, and the children of the Death Eaters were being kept in the Slytherin common room, guarded by different professors who switched with shifts. 'Guarded' is a misleading word to use - 'watched' would be more appropriate, as no one really had any interest in protecting them as a group, more interested in making sure no one took up the brave cause of avenging their parents' defeat. What the other side failed to realise was that none of them had any interest in doing anything of the sort. It was taking them a few hours to go through the dead, identify them, make note of any missing criminals. Professor McGonagall had been the one to tell her. That's what was most vivid about the memory, Pansy recalled as she sat down in the shower, too tired to stand. Mostly it was low-level Ministry officials who'd never followed the new rule at the Ministry under the Dark Lord's control, and had now quickly reassembled to make sense of the post-war world, who entered the room coldly and called a name. The student would get up, follow them out, not come back. Even though they all knew nothing ominous or cruel was being done to them, one still had the feeling of impending doom, of sitting in purgatory.
"Miss Parkinson," Professor McGonagall's calm, tired voice had called. Pansy had looked up, disguising her surprise. After what had happened in the Great Hall the night before, when Pansy attempted to give Harry Potter up to the Dark Lord, and McGonagall had locked all the Slytherins away as a result, she didn't really expect to be spoken to by the woman again. Pansy had stood, ignoring the stares of her peers, walked out with her chin held high. Out in the hall, Professor Sprout - of all people - guarded the door. It was beyond darkly hilarious that Professor Sprout should've been there to witness Pansy's world turn upside down.
"Miss Parkinson, I'm afraid to say that your parents -" Professor McGonagall had stopped short, as though, if it were possible, she was at a loss for words. "Your parents were one of the Death Eaters to survive the Battle and flee. They apparated onto a train track not far from your house. However, they happened to do so at the exact moment a train was coming down the track."
Pansy had stared at her silently. Not registering. Not wanting to ask for clarification.
McGonagall had given it anyway, almost looking sorry for her.
"They were killed on impact, Miss Parkinson."
Killedonimpactmissparkinsonkilledonimpactmissparkinsonkilledonimpactmissparkinson. It was like a bad film, the words echoing through her head, her vision going blurry. And even though it felt as though someone had gutted her with a hook, inexplicably, Pansy began to laugh. Not snicker, or giggle, but cackle, howl, her laughter reverberating through the halls, splashing up against everything, drowning them all. Pansy laughed because Scarlett and Charles Parkinson, of the Parkinson family, belonging to the 'Sacred Twenty Eight', servants to the Dark Lord, Death Eaters first and parents second, child-killers as of 12 hours before when they fought the students of Hogwarts to further their hateful cause, had fled the scene of their crime, leaving their daughter behind, only to be hit by a Muggle train and killed instantly. Pansy laughed because she had hated her parents, but they had been all she had, and now they were gone. Pansy laughed because Professor McGonagall, given the situation, given what her parents had done and what they had fought for, could now not say sorry for your loss or may they rest in peace because they both knew that the motherfuckers didn't deserve it. No, McGonagall could only watch Pansy laugh, watch the laughter turn to sobs, and hold her student as she wept.
Pansy turned the water off when it faded to a lukewarm wash, stepping out and wrapping a towel around herself. She could've easily cast a spell to dry herself off, but in her new humble life she'd learned that many things weren't really necessary. Family heirlooms weren't necessary. Three wardrobes full of expensive robes were not necessary. Three house elves were not necessary. Drying spells were in the same family, and anyway, Pansy got a sick satisfaction out of being uncomfortable and cold these days. Like it was some kind of poetic justice being served to her. Aunt Josephine was less accepting of their new way of life. She hated the small house, the beating of the shutters in the ocean wind, the bland and sparse food, her job as a seamstress in town. Pansy was actually pretty impressed by her aunt's efficiency in packing up their things and putting the two of them on a train West, writing an owl to some people she knew in Dover who quickly arranged a job for her in the only Wizarding clothing store in town. For all of Pansy's life, Aunt Josephine had not worked a single day, and had thrown galleons around like they were an inconvenience to keep in her pocket. Pansy had quickly remembered that Josephine had married into the family, had married Scarlett Parkinson's brother, who had died of a sickness when Pansy was too young to remember him. Maybe she had had a harder life before, explaining her new-found logic and vigour. Pansy didn't ask. Pansy didn't really talk much at all, letting her aunt fill the silences.
Technically, now being eighteen, Pansy could've left her aunt and started her own life. But Pansy was too hollow to do anything so independent and strong. She was all at once empty and heavy with something, shuffling around their house quietly, sometimes having uncontrollable fits of shaking where she crawled under her bed, waiting for it to stop. Words popped into her head from time to time to describe her feelings - depression, loneliness, self-hatred - but she pushed them away. To understand herself was to confront herself. Once, and only once, Draco had come to visit. He'd written in advance to let her know he was coming, and Aunt Josephine had flushed when she read the letter over Pansy's shoulder, spending the rest of the week walking around the house cleaning and primping. Although Lucius and Narcissa were serving sentences in a newly formed prison - dementor free - the Malfoys still had all their money. Draco lived in their mansion alone, awkwardly trying to handle his family's affairs. No, him and Pansy had never been an actual couple. They'd had an unspoken agreement to pretend they were when in public, as though it made an unspeakable secret they both kept hidden easier to conceal, and they were friends even if not lovers. So he had come, stepping into their new home and saying nothing about their new - new and exciting! Adventurous and surprising! Try it now! - poverty. But Pansy had not known what to say to him. She'd laid in bed, facing the wall, listening to him talk about the Ministry reforms and the rebuilding of school and his parents' living conditions and his offers of charity to her and her aunt, not responding, until after an hour of trying Draco gave up and left. He wrote only once more, offering money again, and Pansy had burned the letter in the fire before her aunt could see.
Now, the night before she was due to return to Hogwarts, the unsettling hollow feeling within her had only trebled. She did not want to go. She did not understand why she should. Aunt Josephine was insistent - Whether you like it or not, Pannie, you and I are living in a drastically different world. We can't act how we used to. We no longer have that liberty. If I'm going to rebuild the Parkinson name, you need to go back to school and help me hold the hammer. Do you hear, Pannie? Don't you feel a sense of duty? You… - and had purchased (not saying where she got the money from) all of Pansy's supplies. Now Pansy sat on her sad little bed, staring at the trunk in the middle of the room, willing it to set on fire without uttering the non verbal spell, which she did not remember, to make it happen. This must be what Muggles feel like all the time, Pansy thought. Helpless.
How could she go back to that place? How could she face the people that would hate her, students and professors alike? Pretend as though everything was fine and nothing had happened? How could she suddenly become a real person - because all the years up until then, she had easily been just who her parents wanted (needed) her to be. A vapid, bitchy bigot who knew all the right words, pushed around all the right people, going back to bed at night and crying at her own weakness, hating herself for her self-pity, telling herself act for yourself you stupid fucking coward. Now there was no reason to be that person, and she wasn't entirely sure who Pansy was underneath it. How could she live everyday with the weight of what the Parkinson name meant?
How could she go back and face Hermione Granger?
A groan escaped from her, and she rolled off the bed and under it, into her now-familiar hiding place, dust sticking to her freshly clean skin. There she fell asleep, one feeling dominant: dread.