Disclaimer: Not mine.
Pansy's Alphabet
A is for the absolution that she is sure will never come. Pansy curls into herself in a dank corner of the cell she occupies and tries to ward away disconsolate feelings of hopelessness that swarm her. She has committed treason against the side of Lord Voldemort, but it is not his side that pulled her confused and thrashing body in an unsanitary holding cell. The light believes in black and white in the way small children do and they won't make exceptions for anyone with affiliations to the dark side, the fact that Pansy has willingly come over to the light side with information of the Dark Lord's plans makes no difference to them. Parkinson is a dark name, into Azkaban they go.
B is for the brain-numbing inquisitions that Aurors insist on inflicting upon Pansy. She refuses to talk until she is treated with some decency, but they react to her suggestion as if she had just told them that she wanted a luxury suite in Paris and the refusal to answer prodding questions angers them, so B is also for the bruise that mars her filthy cheek. If they think that beating her like a bad dog will make her do anything other than bare her teeth at them and spit, her mother was right, Aurors don't have any smarts at all.
C is for the cold that she feels when ever the dementors stray too close. She isn't in the heart of Azkaban yet, but the dementors don't have restrictions as to where in Azkaban they can go, so sometimes a lone dementor will float eerily over near her holding cell and suck away memories of her happy times and leave her head in a jumble. She'll be jittery with acute hatred and tears will gathers at the corners of her eyes only to freeze before they have fully left. She wants to ask for a blanket to bundle tight inside, but the cold is coming from within her so that wouldn't do her any good. And nobody would get her a blanket anyway.
D is for the dog she had as a child. She falls asleep with her head pillowed in her arms and dreams of her puppy-dog, Johnny. He would snarl and snap his miniature jaw at Pansy but at the same time he would cuddle into her side and share his body heat with her with a generosity that never extended to the food he nicked off of Pansy's plate. Pansy thinks that she can almost feel the waves of heat her black furred dog seemed to give off until she moves to hug him closer to her and finds nothing but herself. She wakes feeling halfway insane.
E is for Draco's posh English public schoolboy accent. Pansy has a posh English accent too, but assuming that Draco is still living in lovely conditions, his voice has to be smoother than her voice gone hoarse with misuse. Pansy has taken to screaming her name over and over again, she's afraid that she'll forget it.
F is for forever. That's how long it feels like she's been in the stupid shithole they call a holding cell. Azkaban is covered in fog as far as she can see out the tiny window near the ceiling. She can't tell whether it is night or day or what hour of the day it might be. By estimation, Pansy thinks that she's been in Azkaban maybe four months, but Pansy's mathematical skills have always sucked and her sleeping patterns are too irregular to rely on. She leans against one of the crumbling rock walls of her six by six by six foot cell and stares out the window too small to crawl out of, trying to catch a glimpse of the sun or the moon or a constellation she'd never know the name of.
G is for Gryffindors. Her only human contact in however long it was since the Aurors forgot about her is Weasley. He stands close enough for Pansy to reach out and touch him to make sure he isn't figment of her imagination. Her nails are ragged and freakishly long and the glass shine of her polish has been worn away, but Pansy couldn't care less. Weasley, Potter's red head sidekick, is standing in front of her cell with a solemn set to his eyebrows and a ring of keys dangling from his long freckled fingers. Pansy starts to pant in anticipation, she's going to be let out. Finally. But Weasley doesn't move to unlock her door to freedom and instead just stares at her as if maybe she isn't real. Pansy doesn't care if she is or if she isn't, but either way she doesn't want to be trapped inside a stone and steel box anymore, so she scratches slowly down Weasley's pale, clean cheek and hisses at him wetly, "Let me the fuck out Weasley. Let me out." She digs her jagged nails in deep enough to make him bleed, but all he does is wince a little and tell her that the Order needs some information from her and then maybe she'll go free. Maybe.
H is for hatred. The only way to get out of Azkaban's holding cell and into the real world is to cooperate with Weasley's stupid questioning. He asks her to identify a few Death Eaters and to tell him all she knows of Voldemort's plans, but Pansy has been out of touch with anything past her cell for a long time and the plans she knew about have probably already been initiated, but Pansy tells all with hatred in her eyes. Weasley notices and glares right back and thinks "Death Eater" in his head, but he never veers off course from his questions even when Pansy's words start to drip with venom that hatred so readily provides.
I is for the irony that strikes Pansy as so not amusing, but rather as hair pulling frustration. She had come over to the light side only to be stuck in a holding cell in Azkaban of all places despite the fact that she didn't not posses a Dark Mark. It wasn't fair. "The world isn't fair Pansy darling," her mother would say. "It isn't fair for anyone, especially women stuck in complicated circumstances." Weasley tells her that it's her fault for being a Slytherin with Death Eater relatives and gets a wad of spit in his eye for his trouble.
J is for the jasmine perfume that Weasley brings her on the second day of questioning. Pansy had requested it because in Azkaban there are no baths and she had gotten tired of smelling gross long before the first week of her stay was up. When she had finished spraying herself damp to mask the smell of the shit bucket in the corner and her grimy body odor, Pansy smiled at Weasley with her mouth closed because her teeth felt like she had dressed them up in fuzzy socks to keep warm.
K is for kiss, the Dementor's kiss to be exact. It was Mr. Malfoy receiving the dreaded kiss. When he was marched to the middle of the platform Pansy saw through the fog, a little lighter today, that he was gaunt and his long blond hair was on the wrong side of beautiful. But he walked with his head held high and looked down his nose at the jeering crowd surrounding him. Pansy watched from her paneless window in a horrified trance as a gliding dark figure sidled up to Mr. Malfoy and clutched his face in two skeletal hands like a lover would. It swooped down in one smooth motion and claimed unwilling Mr. Malfoy's soul. Clutching at the wall as she slid down Pansy blinked away frightened tears and tried not to remember the look of a scared baby deer frozen onto Mr. Malfoy's face. She could still hear the horde of witches and wizards screaming cheers after they had all left. She covered her ears, but the sound only got louder because of that.
L is for laughter that Pansy can't seem to conjure. She's tried to laugh, but all that comes out are depressing croaks and bitter puffs of air. Weasley finds her practicing the next time he comes around for questioning, but he doesn't interrupt her with useless inquiries, instead he leans against the bars between him and her and says that he doesn't know how to laugh proper anymore either. Pansy looks up at him and tries to laugh, but what comes out didn't even start out as a laugh. Pansy sobs and cries for her mother, her uncaring mother of all people, to be her shining prince and to come save her from her isolated tower. Weasley looks away and lets Pansy cry and doesn't pester her with questions about the dark side. Her answers have started to turn into complete fabrications of her mind anyhow.
M is for mold. Mold grows like it's going out of fashion on the bread that guards bring her as "food" in exchange for a happy memory or two. Pansy chucks that out the window then immediately regrets it when her stomach protests at such an action. She takes to sipping at tepid water from a plastic cup and wishes that she had an equally moldy fork to stab into her brain.
N is for how nasal her voice is. She's got a cold due to the freezing temperature of Azkaban prison with no blankets and the lack of energy from the lack of food and her immune system has gone to hell. The dementors' sometimes visitations might be attributing to the quality of her voice also. She demands a mediwitch in the most commanding voice she can muster with a cold when Weasley next drops by for a round of twenty questions, but is informed that Azkaban prisoners are not provided with health care. When Pansy says she's not really a prisoner, Weasley shrugs and looks almost apologetic, then gets to asking Pansy what she knows of the Malfoys. Pansy glares at Weasley and tells him that she has never met a Malfoy in her life and isn't there a Malfoy out there that he can ask. Weasley glares back at her and looks about ready to punch her, but he doesn't and takes a deep breath and repeats his question. "Get me a mediwitch and I'll answer your question," she says. He says that if she doesn't cooperate she'll be stuck here until she dies. Pansy purses her lips in anger than gives in. Weasley doesn't seem to be bluffing.
O is for overwhelming. That's the feeling in Pansy's chest when Weasley tells her that she'll be out within the next two weeks. Her chest feels so full of hope, she could explode. She doesn't know what she'd do if her hope was deflated.
P is for the Parkinson estate. Sprawling green surrounded by tall black gates with pointed tips, a worn stone mansion on top. Pansy hated her childhood home for as long as she could remember, but suddenly, out of the blue, she finds herself missing it desperately. She wants to ask Weasley if the land and the house are still hers but Weasley hasn't been around for a while now. She pushes back angry, breath-shortening panicky thoughts of Weasley abandoning her and leaving her by herself in her dingy cell to rot. She thinks of tea time at the Parkinson estate with her distant grandmother and her snub nosed mother. She remembers her nanny house elf, Twinky, and wishes that she were here with a brush for her tangled curls and a hug when mummy dearest wasn't looking. Pansy wishes that Twinky could cry fat salty tears from her bottle green eyes for her, so that Pansy won't have to cry anymore. She's awfully tired of it. Pansy was never fond of the Parkinson estate, but it was home and she misses it. She misses it so much that her heart squeezes a bit too hard and hurts when it beats.
Q is for her nickname, Queenie. She was the child-queen of the world. Her mother had a chest full of costume jewelry stored up in the attic from her days as a teenager. (Pansy can't picture anyone like her mother ever being thirteen or even seventeen, she thinks that her mother was born all grown up like Aphrodite from sea foam, but her grandmother, on the rare occasion that she noticed Pansy, told her that she spent nearly two days in labor with her mother. Pansy heard it but it all went in one ear and out the other. Her mother being born all grown up has been an insane belief of her childhood that has never quite disappeared.) Pansy would try on pearls and faux emerald and silver rings, but what caught her three-year old eyes' attention was the rhinestone tiara hidden in the very bottom corner of the trunk. It was slightly lopsided from being squished underneath everything else, but Pansy polished up the glass and wore it all around the house until she went to Hogwarts, thus Queenie was born.
R is for rain. Pansy's chapped lips quirk up into a tiny smile of amazement. This is the first real weather change that has happened since she has been in Azkaban. The wind blows rain into her cell, but she doesn't mind, she's always loved rain. The smell of jasmine and rain permeates her nostrils and it takes her back to her fourth year at Hogwarts, right after the Yule Ball. Draco had given her a corsage of jasmine and baby's breath because he felt that she should at least have one thing beautiful to wear to the Yule Ball. The sickly pink ruffled disaster was her mother being sadistic, Pansy thinks. A little before the ball was officially over it had started to drizzle then the drizzle became pounding tears of angels from heaven. They were upset about something bad about to happen, but the bad hadn't happened yet, so Pansy tugged on Draco's inky sleeve and ran with him outside in the rain. Draco had stood for a long minute or two glaring at her with the exact expression of a sullen cat, but brightened up a second later when Pansy took his aristocrat's hands in hers and spun around and around and around, the background in a fast forward blur of gray and spots of green. They had laughed nonstop and almost hysterically, even when they fell into the lake. That night smelled of jasmine and rain. Pansy closes her eyes, opens her mouth and sticks out her tongue to catch stray raindrops. Suddenly the raindrops are ice and Pansy can't remember that post-Yule Ball memory anymore. By the time Pansy finds strength enough to open her eyes again, the dementor has gone and Pansy is screaming herself deaf because she can't enjoy the rain anymore.
S is for "sorry". That's what Weasley said to her when he came to her. She asked if he meant himself or the Ministry. Weasley didn't answer her question, just said that she gets out in "ten days less than a fortnight". Pansy stared at him, her eyes fierce, and told him that whether he or the Ministry was sorry didn't matter and that which ever he was saying sorry for should be. Weasley looked at the floor and walked stiffly when he went away.
T is for Thursday. Pansy has decided that Thursday is her favorite day. She's finally out.
U is for ugly because that is all she sees. Pansy's clean now, but she's totally regretting getting access to a mirror. Her eyes are purple as if she has an abusive spouse and her cheeks have sunken in unattractively. She resembles those Muggles that were mistreated sometime during a square mustached, little man's reign over much of Muggle Europe. What are they called again? Holocaust survivors fresh out of Auschwitz. That, or Lavender Brown, that anorexic prig. Pansy's hair is scraggly and some parts have gone prematurely gray. She wants to crush Azkaban to the ground. If only she were brave enough to go anywhere near it again.
V is for the volume of shock that rings in her ears when she hears of Draco's death. He was killed in the last battle. Mauled by a Crucio not let go of until he was bleeding internally. He coughed up dark red blood that dried burgundy on his blank Death Eater mask by his nose. He called out for his father, his mother and even Pansy, finally giving into tears when no one he wanted came. Weasley didn't look so upset when he told her this. Pansy gasped and cried until she nearly fainted, she was so dizzy. "Does he have his own grave?" she murmured sadly. Weasley shook his head and said that not many did. Pansy's knees gave out causing her to slump heavily against the brick wall behind her. She bit through her bottom lip and rasped with pain laced through every syllable, "He said he'd come back for me. It's not fair."
W is for weird. It's the feeling of accusing stares when she goes out in public. It seems that everyone in wizarding Britain knows that she was in Azkaban. The official reason for her extended stay was because she was a "suspect Death Eater" that was being "held for valuable intell". The public sees it as "Death Eater. How much did she pay to get out?" Mothers steer their children clear from her path and men stare down their noses at her like they do to the whores in the darker corners of Knockturn Alley. Pansy always has to resist the urge to run down the street with her head ducked down in shame. "I have nothing to be ashamed of," she thinks, but the stares are starting to convince her otherwise.
X is for xenolith. A xenolith is a piece of rock of different origin from the igneous rock in which it is embedded (1). That's what Pansy feels like. She's the black sheep. Pansy feels as if she is experiencing xenophobia from the people around her, only she isn't a foreigner, just a pariah. So X is for xenophobia too.
Y is for Yvonne or Yasmin. She can't decide which name would suit her better. Pansy's going to change her name and go away somewhere where no one knows who she is or cares who she is. She'll make herself a new life that she can stand to live. In Paris maybe or in Germany. She can't speak Bulgarian for the life of her, so that's out. Maybe she'll go as far as to America. Maybe she'll even try at being a Muggle. No. That's not an option. She doesn't know enough about the Muggle world and if she slips and says something specifically wizarding, she'll get narrow eyed glances that wonder if she's a recent escapee from the loony bin. She'll be fine anywhere not too close to England. She knows that it's a total coward move to run away from everything, but she's a Slytherin, not a Gryffindor. She wants some peace.
Z is for the zenith that is the sunset Pansy sees in magentas and reds because of the oversized sunglasses perched upon her nose. She hums a melancholy lullaby to herself and waits for Weasley to come to meet her. He apparates next to her with a sucking sort of pop and seats himself quietly close to her. They sit in silence until Pansy can't stand it anymore. She turns to him to find his long-lashed eyes already gazing intently at her. She starts and exhales abruptly, blowing warm breath onto his face.
"You're going aren't you," he says. His hair falls over his scrunching eyebrows and makes him look younger than his old-youth. Pansy grimaces a smile at him and nods her head.
"Yes," she says. "I'm going to South America. Argentina." She hesitates and looks back at the fading sunset. "Come with me."
Weasley is silent. The sunset fully disappears and Pansy is about to point out that his friends are dead and so are most of his family, he doesn't want to turn into a war torn ghost, does he? But he inches his long hand next to hers and whispers so quietly that she almost doesn't catch it, "I've got to learn to speak Spanish."
"I'll teach you," she says, "while we get golden tans that England would never give us."
(1) The definition of xenolith was acquired at Dictionary. com
AN: Thank you for those who reviewed "Breathing" and "Triangle".
Please Review.