a passionate, fragmentary girl, maybe?
Summary: "If all you see is how I look, you miss the superchick within. Christen me titanic? Underestimate and swim!" A series of drabbles and other snippets looking into the life and times of one Parvati Patil.
Sylvia Plath once wrote: "I am still so naive; I know pretty much what I like and dislike; but please don't ask me who I am. A passionate, fragmentary girl, maybe?" If she'd ever heard of her, Parvati Patil would probably say it was written with her in mind.
Parvati stands in the corridor, wearing nothing but her knickers and a pair of wellies. She doesn't realise her lack of clothing, however, until a sudden gust of wind blows through and she shivers. (Why does this always happen in her dreams?) A howling, positively piercing scream echoes all around her, bouncing off the walls with a frightening velocity that makes her ears burn. Her hands try to cover them but nothing can block out that sound. It tears her heart into tiny pieces, rips through her body, makes her knees quake, and roots her to the ground.
It's a good thing she can float, then. Which she does — like a ghost across the floor and through the wall. There's snow on the ground and a big tree growing in the middle of the room. Draco Malfoy sits under it, combing his hair.
"Nice knickers, Patil," he smirks, looking up, but it doesn't quite reach his eyes.
"Yes, well, they're my best ones," she replies.
"I wouldn't expect a serious Ravenclaw such as yourself to spend a galleon on that sort of thing," Draco continues, still combing even though his hair is perfectly smooth and shiny. Parvati frowns.
"I'm Parvati, not Padma," she corrects him, feeling upset.
"Yes, yes, I know."
"Then why did you-?"
"Oh please, as if you could ever hope to understand me," he scolds, shoving the comb back into his shirtpocket where it disappears. "Now shush. Can't you hear?"
"Hear what?" Parvati asks, confused, shivering again as it's gotten dreadfully cold again.
"The nargles, of course," Draco looks at her like she's got the IQ of a vegetable when he says this. A series of playful giggles can be heard from up in the tree and she notices it has radishes, plums, and butterbeer caps hanging from it instead of leaves.
"You best come sit here with me, where it's safe," he tells her seriously, which seems like a perfectly good idea so she walks over, her bare feet again touching the freezing, snowy ground. Parvati sits down, wishing she had a cloak or something because it's embarrassing enough that Draco Malfoy has seen her practically naked, the last thing she wants is for him to get a proper look at anything.
But then she hears this rattling noise, and why does Draco have a forked tongue and two very pointy teeth? More importantly, why is he leering at her with now-red eyes that don't blink? He leans forward, taking her arm, and promptly bites into her wrist. The skin there turns grey and dead, but doesn't bleed, and spreads up her entire arm until it's covered in scales and she screams that familiar howling, piercing scream — it must have been her all along.
Parvati shoots straight up in bed, taking frantic, gulping breaths and covered in a cold sweat. Her hand lays over her erratically beating heart, as if trying to calm it. What in the hell…? Too afraid to go back to sleep, she thinks maybe she ought to steer clear of a particular blonde Slytherin boy for a while. You know, just in case.
This takes place in HPB, and operates in the mindset of the earlier "soli deo gloria," and that Parvati has somewhat clairvoyant dreams.