THC S8 R3
House: Slytherin
Position: Potions
Category: Standard
Prompt: [Dialogue] "Hey! Wait up!" [object] Blue Bracelet
Notes and Triggers: Mentions of police brutality. Also, amma is a word for mom and appa for dad used by many in the Indian diaspora. I have chosen not to italicised them purely because while it may be a foreign word to the people around Padma, it isn't a foreign word to her.
WC: 1162
Beta: Aya Diefair, Ikunni Hattori, DeepShadows2, DaughteroftheOneTrueKing, charlotteredmond99, Ash Juillet and beawrites
Note: I didn't intend for this to be an angry mess, but here we are.
Padma is angry the day she hands in her application for the Auror Department at the Ministry. She wears the anger like a badge, and the entire day she takes pride in the fact that her scores are perfect. It acts as justification that she has made the right choice, that irrespective of her parents' opinion, Padma is built to be an Auror.
Her body aches from a day of rigorous testing, and her brain is foggy from the amount of time she has spent thinking of solutions or answering test questions. More than that, she is lonely without either Parvati or her Ravenclaw dormmates to hang out with. The depth of her loneliness hits her the moment she steps into her room at The Leaky Cauldron. The mirror in her room does not help matters, commenting about the fact that she is seventeen and looks like she has dropped her entire life for a boy as she has come into one of the long-term rooms with a single backpack. Which she has not, she has dropped her entire life for her ambitions.
Padma doesn't say anything back to the mirror, but later asks Hannah for a cloth to cover it.
The night Padma's results for the Auror Academy come out is one of many nights where she wishes that she could go back home to her parents. She craves to share her achievements with them. While she admits that her career choice is defiant and goes against the idea of being a good Indian daughter, she misses her family. By herself, alone, there is no one to ask her if she has eaten, or to remind her to pray, or to bring a plate of cut-up fruit. Her life, for the first time ever, is truly her own.
She hates the loneliness that comes packaged with it.
So she can't lie and pretend her heart doesn't skip a beat when she hears Parvati's voice yell, "Hey! Wait up!" the morning of Padma's first day in the Academy.
But her sister doesn't tell her she is proud of her or that their parents want Padma to come home. Instead, Parvati hands over a flat box covered with blue felt. In it is the blue bracelet Padma got from her amma when she got sorted into Ravenclaw. She hasn't thought of the bracelet in years, and when she opens the box to make sure she isn't seeing things, Parvati has already left.
Padma doesn't run after her sister. She can't risk being late for class, so instead, she secures the blue bracelet on her right wrist—her wand hand, the hand she will use to enact justice— and heads to class.
Aurors work in teams of three; the team becomes a family and is made up of a leader, a healer, and the muscle. Padma's team consists of Harry, Ron and herself. She is the odd one out in their trio. When they go to the head instructor to argue for a different placement, their instructor takes a single look at their unhappy faces, tells them to grow up, and spares a critical glance at Padma's blue bracelet.
So Padma does just that: she grows up, or pretends to, and she hates it. When Harry finds out that she is living in a rented room above The Leaky Cauldron, he insists that she moves into Grimmauld Place.
The townhouse is cold, and Padma takes over the master bedroom at Harry's insistence. She refuses to take off her blue bracelet and is made the muscle of her team. The rest of her class do a double-take at the assignment and don't hide their surprise when she learns the more brutal take-downs faster than the rest of them.
It gets to the point that when Padma wears black, all the perpetrators and targets that her team is assigned report seeing a glint of dark blue before waking up in the lower levels of the Ministry holding cells.
Padma doesn't know whether she is proud of that or not. She loves Harry and Ron. They make good teammates and an even better pseudo-family. They don't ask her why she doesn't ever take off her bracelet or point out the fact that she is never at home when Parvati comes to visit.
Life moves on, and Padma soon becomes a stranger to her family. Sometimes her amma sends her letters that beg, plead, but mostly threaten: they withhold their love for her, wrap it in conditions they know she will never be able to achieve. The letters, black ink on yellow parchment, document the supposed shame Padma has brought on her family by choosing to pursue something outside the norms of law and healing.
The shamefulness of Padma's actions rushes to her every time she glances at the bracelet around her wrist. Sometimes, when the night raids are long and the days are too bright Padma wants to take the blue bracelet off. But this is the only connection that she has to the idea that her family might still care about her, that she is still her amma and appa's daughter.
She sees Parvati often enough in a professional setting. As Padma becomes a more experienced Auror, she is required to interact with lawyers. Parvati is sometimes assigned to the cases where Padma is involved. A sense of bitterness takes over Padma during those interactions. Parvati was always the perfect daughter, and her obedience has allowed her to stay in their family. For all her Gryffindor courage, Padma wishes her sister was more defiant. While Padma would never want Parvati to live with the isolation that plagues her existence, there is something to be said about a family that cuts you off with only a piece of jewellery to remember them by.
Padma's karma catches up to her in cruel ways. She is reckless with her anger, her voice grows louder and people fear her. They fear the glint of blue that accompanies her wand and, sometimes, they fear her voice.
The booming echo it makes when she screams at someone, "Hey! Wait up!" before cruelly sending a tripping hex. Her callousness makes her a brilliant Auror, but it chips away at her humanity, her empathy, her compassion. Padma doesn't have a lot of people to love, and the way she conducts herself at her job shows this.
She knows it wouldn't kill her parents to admit that she has made the right choice, to give her a nod of approval and admit that they are proud of her. She is at the top of her field. Ron and Harry hold her together on most days, but still she craves the presence of her parents.
Life is cruel, and coming into adulthood at the tail-end of war is even harsher. But the blue bracelet reminds Padma that sometimes (most of the time) all she has is herself, and even if it makes her bitter, Padma is free.