The same pair of frigid blue eyes which I had grown quite familiar with bored into my own, scrutinizing, riffling through my brain cells inside out. I prayed to whoever with a tiny bit of mercy to answer my prayers, for the first time after the church shut the doors on me years ago, begging to be spared of the horrible consequences awaiting me if the cold and cynical woman I call mother found out the truth about me.

She frowned.

I held my breath, preparing for the worst; blood pumping up my ears, rapidly paced but strong, as my cardiac muscles once again, acted on my will of living.

...

I was brought from St. Mungos the same day Pansy Parkinson was born,

April 20, 1980

91 years after the birth of the birth of the notorious Adolf Hitler, which indirectly led to the death of thousands of millions of innocent people.

And of course, two decades before my own demise.

In the rural castle of the Parkinson family, I finally realized the reason why most people's early childhood memories remained nothing but blurred, faint images entombed too profoundly in their heads to resurface again for ignorance was often bliss. My parents brought their exchange of mind games and their mutual hostility to the nursery, the nannies exchanged rumors and gossips among themselves, and the house guests bribed each other under the guise of friendly smiles and flattery. I heard that the Death Eaters (which I suspected were among the guests) had killed the last male heirs of the Prewett family on my first birthday party, I heard about their pathetic plots to assassin Dumbledore for Voldemort's favor, I heard all their political ploys whilst they were ignorant enough to think that babies were toned deaf to their words.

Six months after my first birthday, I witnessed their apprehension as panic spread through the fellow pureblood extremists that they might fall from grace, and for the first time, my parents looked mortal through and through; as vulnerable as any of us commoners (which I used to be) without their haloes of power. Being able to glimpse into the life of the rich and powerful induced a newfound sense of power, and satisfying my own adolescent mischievousness which still existed in a part of me, it almost took me through an ego trip until I realized that I was being too cocky for my role as a tamed and sweet-tempered child.

As Pansy -, as I began to age, I came to the awakening of the price of 'pureblood privilege' when my parents began to mode their 'Pansy' into a proper pureblood lady. I used to sneer at the 'anguished miseries' of the mayor's suicidal self-harming daughter over the news, laughing at how she brought it all upon herself, thinking that her grievances were unfounded as she was living the life that I would die to trade mine for.

Ironically, I did die for it.

Living my 'dream life' was certainly not a piece of cake as I used to think. The tendency to never stop wanting more in human's nature was acting out again, because once you've got all the luxuries that you craved, you would take everything for granted and think of them as something as dull and as ordinary as a plain pencil among the other stationaries with flamboyant designs on the shelf. At the point when I started to struggle with my acting skills, which were failing flat even in my eyes and lingering on the edge between terribly unconvincing and preposterous, I decided that I missed something that I used to dismiss and perceive as a basic right of mine; I was a free-spirit, now and then, I could almost relate to how the mayor's daughter in terms of feeling like a square peg in a round butt hole, and I wanted my own family who raised me to be myself, not this distant, defective one that I was stuck with. I cursed my pride and toughness-act that I needed a second life time to learn that home was where the people you love were.

I found myself disagreeing with most of the teachings that my parents, or the tutors that they hired, offered to me. I was more than eager to learn magic but the challenge it post was yet another 'reality check' of the apparent unreality that I was living in since I never expected even the baby steps of mastering magic to be such strenuous work as I could recite all the spells mentioned in the book and the movie. It was their one-dimensional, conceited insights of the world that I could not stand, they clashed horribly with the ones that I've spent a life time to build, the ones that were a fundamental part of my personality.

My disagreements of the pureblood extremist views were usually kept to myself, with the exceptions being my mumbling and whining to the house-elf Misty when no one else were present. But I let it slipped that I was a potential 'blood-traitor' on Draco Malfoy's birthday feast when Lucius Malfoy was introducing his glorious and blood-stained family history of murdering muggle neighbors for land.

'They are depraved murderers.' I commented before I could stop myself.

All eyes were shifted on me at once, eyes filled with blatant and unmasked shock, disgust, and displeasure of all sorts. My blood turned into ice and I froze on the spot, I heard mother apologizing to Lucius on my behalf, everything was happening so fast that I could recall almost nothing before I somehow found myself back 'home' with mother.

A look of repulsion and pique flashed across her face as mother looked down at me, but the rare facial expression she made was so briefly that it almost seemed non-existent with her expertize at the art of the minds.

'Pansy, I thought we've taught you better than to shame our family in front of the others, especially not the Malfoys,' Mother stated coldly, but I could tell her embarrassment, her disappointment at me through the little emotion that she still retained, 'you will abandon your blood-traitor ways wherever you get them from.'

I was petrified once again when mother took me in the eyes. I was in fear that she was able to gain access to the secrets withheld in my soul.

But it didn't happen; instead, she frowned with shock and perhaps dismay. 'I will tell Pascal to fix you himself,' she said coldly, averting her glance to the grandfather clock that had never moved one bit as long as I could remember. 'Afterall, you are the result of his incompetence.'

And she left in a rash, a picture of poise as she glided out of my sight, leaving only the sounds of heavy fabric sweeping across the floor and the looming weights of her harsh words.

Father wasn't home often, I knew him by reputation as a ruthless Death Eater and an effective politician who used his ties with the unconventional Greengrass family to escape Azkaban. He looked disappointed at me, but surprisingly he did not punish me harshly, except being made to attend father's 'Muggle Studies' lessons which was zeroed in screaming out the flaws of my 'blood-traitor ways', and hearing about how muggles were all feebleminded fools who took joy in killing off witches and wizards.

'Pansy, you're too young to understand the ways of the world.' Father would sigh between long lectures on how-to-be-a-Nazi-wizard, 'Muggles and mudbloods are the depraved animals, only muggle sympathizers like Dumbledore would disagree that they are actively trying to destroy us.'

It was mother who thought my 'childhood naivety' an unredeemable crime, I didn't exactly remember what happened; there was arguing and a few Hogwarts levelled spell slashing through the air, all I knew was mother being backed into a corner screaming and father relented, a few minutes later Harky, the family's oldest house elf pulled me into a basement like chamber. The servants quarter that once housed goblin and muggle servants.

I screamed and scratched on the dust layered floor, ruining my manicured nails with filth, out of frustration at myself and pent-up distress at getting stuck as a caged bird, as if dying a traumatising death wasn't enough. It wasn't until my throat couldn't make any sound and my numb fingers were coated in my own blood that I laid exhausted on the floor and slowly slipping back into consciousness.

It was a foolish and impulsive act indeed, to draw attention onto myself when I was trying to be as invisible as possible and undeniably irresponsible for the role I was playing. Being responsible to my own family was something that I never learnt, I was among the lucky ones who never had much obligations to comply with, and never cared enough to; but I figured that I should find a way to play a more convincing Pansy without defying my own morals as I was stuck with the Parkinsons whether I liked it or not.

I didn't know how much time had passed when Misty came collected my limp form off the filthy ground of the old servants' quarter, but I was too weak by then, at least emotionally, to bear the will to fight the restrains as I was bathed in ice-cold water that brought back too much of my ghastlier memories for my own comfort.

After the little outburst, I was more careful with words, but it didn't help that I am already labeled as a blood-traitor, nor the fact that people would use it to smear the name of Parkinson family. I learned from my parents and my observations as an infant that the other purebloods would never forgot the wrongs that you do for the chance to disadvantage you in the future.

The damage I did by failing to live up to the image of a traditional pureblood witch is set in stone, and I feared that it was only the beginning of the consequences.