This story was written for the Eat Your Heart Out 2022 fest. It was originally published on February 14 on AO3 and I'm crossposting it now to fanfiction dot net.
Beta'd by the wonderful iam0kaywiththis on AO3.
Some notes: this is a 1960s Muggle AU, though there are substantive supernatural elements to it.
This story is categorised as a dead dove, though it is fairly mild in nature for that type of work. However, please heed the following warnings: graphic depictions of violence, dubious consent, explicit sexual material, mind break. This is not a story for the faint of heart. If you feel like it wouldn't suit you, I recommend you do not read it.
If you do though, please enjoy!
31 days left
Desolation had steadily swept the abandoned walls of Pavenham Manor, the bricks and stones and wood consumed by the silence and the loneliness and the abandonment, the manor violated by the forgetting of what once stood within its walls, under its roof, the past now nestled within the bristles of its hardwood floors, specks of dust floating in the air, disturbed only by the summer breeze sweeping through the breaches in the walls. As vines and ivy and creeping figs flowered and blossomed, swallowing whatever remained of humanity in this forsaken place, the memories etched themselves into corners, dreading the sun, every morning, that would take them away. The manor had stood for a hundred years—and maybe it would stand for a hundred more—
but now, it was dying.
Pansy Parkinson had known the home long ago, as a child. Her mother had brought her there, every summer without fault, to vacation in between two years at boarding school. That was—until the summer of 1942; when she had been dragged out of her bed in the dark of the night, amidst the buzzing of the cicadas, by her mother, in a panic.
"Come now, my child," she had urged her, picking up her frail body and carrying it down the stairs, her steps heavy with urgency and anguish. Pansy remembered being surprised by the strength of her mother's arms—arms that, until then, had not been able to carry more than a purse filled with cigarettes and rouge.
Pansy had left her doll behind. She had cried for it, begged her mother to drive them back to the estate, screaming in her ear, her small frame bumping against the driver's seat. It had been no use. Her mother never went back—and so, her doll lay there, forgotten, gathering dust with the furniture, the art, the clothes, and the jewellery.
Now, eighteen years later, she stood in front of the iron gates, her mother's will loosely held between her fingers down her side, her eyes swallowing the manor and its grounds whole, remembering those summers, and that night—
That one night. The last night before she had been torn away from her mother.
Her hand held onto the piece of paper tighter, creasing it in the middle, rumpling it in her rage and confusion. There was no reason for her to be here—and yet, it had been ordered that she had to be. One last summer at Pavenham Manor, one last summer and she would finally get her hands on the family fortune. One last summer and she would finally be able to live off imported caviar, exquisite champagne and luxurious fabrics. She would reach for the skies, unlacing the ties of her mundane life, removing the weights anchoring her to the masses, and float away to new heights. She would touch the moon and the stars—and never look back.
Pansy pushed the iron gates—they squealed in protest, the rust crackling in pain, resisting her. After some effort, she managed to enter the grounds. The morning fog from the nearby lake was hovering above the ground, hiding the disarray of the abandoned gardens to their new mistress' eyes. Pansy walked up the gravel pathway, her senses tingling with curiosity and memories fluttering beneath her skin. She saw the swings her mother used to push her on, the small gazebo where they picnicked every so often, the shed beneath which she would crawl during hide-and-seek. All of it was rotten now, broken and eaten by nature, by time.
She walked to the porch and stood facing the front door, wondering if she could find it in her to cross the threshold. Her mother's perfume still lingered in the air—amber and sandalwood and vanilla—the scents of the past clinging to Pansy's dress, as if she had just been here yesterday, hiding beneath her mother's skirts, a child filled with growing pains and tremors of timidity. She inhaled deeply and pushed the heavy oak door, her heart thumping in her chest, as if she was expecting her mother to wait for her on the other side. She closed her eyes and walked through the crack in the door, body trembling and armour loosened, the desire to be reunited with the ghost of her past burning in her chest.
The foyer was empty. Dust had piled up on the antiques, the vision one of true despair and loneliness. Abandonment. Pansy's heavy heart recoiled—it was an absurdity to have thought, even for a single second, that her mother would be standing there, waiting for her. She was buried at Nunhead Cemetery, six feet underground, closer to maggots and cockroaches than to her own daughter. Things were as they should be: still, dead. Forgotten. Sinking deep in the trenches of human loss, joining the legions of others who had passed, who had left nothing behind, single morsels of dust and ash, carried away by the winds.
Her mother had left her one thing—this manor. And she needed to honour that last wish, to give her mother's spirit the respite it so deserved.
Pansy walked about the foyer. Her every step sent dust flying about, revealing inches of the forgotten summer home. A princess returning to her castle and finding it in ruins—it would be poetic if it wasn't woven with so much pain. Her hands caressed the walnut handrails, her palms turning grey and matte with dust. She remembered the doll and ran up to what had once been her room, sending the door flying open without dithering. The bed covered in satin pink sheets was still sitting there, untouched, unmoved by the time that had passed since it had last been slept in. It looked absurdly small to her now—she had only been a child when she had last been there, a frail and underdeveloped girl. She remembered the bed feeling too large for her then—now, it looked so small, so fragile, she was scared to break it by merely sitting in it.
Her eyes trailed the room, in search of her long-forgotten doll, for the toy she had cried so dearly for. It wasn't there.
Pansy tore the sheets from the bed, rummaged through her toy chest, slipped her hand under the bed, scoured the shelves and the dressers. It was nowhere to be found.
The manor had remained still for twenty years—nothing had moved. The silence and the desolation had swept up the traces of its past life, leaving the furniture and the drapes and the clothes untouched, waiting for Pansy to come back for them, to return them to their former glory.
The doll was gone.
30 days left
Her mother's bed was cold. The sheets crinkled as she slipped into them—though they were clean and fresh, having been washed earlier in the day, it was as if they were stiffened by the passing of time, never recovering from the absence of the woman who used to sleep in them.
Pansy tossed and turned for hours, unable to find sleep—dread kept crawling up her spine, forcing her body to contort and twist itself into knots. She tried pushing it down—it was a ridiculous feeling, and one she would certainly not indulge. In the years since they had fled the manor, Pansy had theorised that her mother had had a bit of a psychotic break and had begun seeing things that weren't there. Thus, as she lay there, waiting for sleep to find her, she found no reason for her body to be this reluctant to join Morpheus and his stretched-out arms. In fact, it infuriated her—she was rational, a woman of science! She had spent her formative years in the best boarding school in the country, Hogwarts, and then gone on to attend the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Science, which few women could claim to have done, even in this modern day and age. It made no sense for her to be this terrified at the idea of falling asleep in an old and abandoned house. One she had explored every square inch of, only to find nothing more than armies of dust motes.
Resigning herself, Pansy tossed the covers at the foot of the bed and exited the bedroom. A nice cup of tea would be sure to help—she reasoned that she was just overstimulated by all the changes in her life. The dread had been grief, the fear was stress—there was nothing more to it. Tea was a natural remedy to these emotions.
She walked to the kitchen and opened a window, letting the fresh summer breeze fill the room until it no longer felt dead. She bathed in it, surveying the very room she had cleaned earlier in the day—it was spick and span, a testament to the education she had been given by the aunt who had taken her in, in hopes that she would soon marry. It had been a great pain for the old woman to see her ward deny every bachelor presented to her—all boys from respectable families, no less—but Pansy had refused through and through, keeping a darkness within her that she knew she could never hope to show the world.
She placed a kettle filled with water on the stove and scooped some black tea leaves in a small strainer, which she placed over her cup. As the pressure of the boiling water rose, a whistling sound erupted through the air, startling the young woman. She turned to the stove and felt her lungs expand in her chest—it was only the kettle. A human contraption, a machine, a rational thing. She shook her head—the memories of her mother, of their summers in the manor, were playing tricks on her. I am a woman of science, and I will not indulge in my mother's delusions. Her mantra. The line she had repeated to herself throughout the years, since that night, eighteen years ago. Since she had been taken from her mother.
She poured water in her cup, a black swirl erupting from the child-sized strainer as the tea expanded and bled into the water, the colour of mud and bog. Pansy placed a spoon in the cup, twirled it around, and set the timer for three minutes. She focused on its ticking, on the seconds flying by, to relieve herself of the uneasiness breathing through her. There was nothing in the manor. There was just dust and old furniture and abandoned antiques. Just the wind of memories and summer, travelling through the open windows and rattling around what had been left behind. Nothing more, nothing less. She let the lull set by the ticking ease her mind, and soon found herself closing her eyes to enjoy the breeze on her face, the tips of her hair gently flying by—no, there was nothing to worry about.
Then, the ticking stopped.
And the whistle kept going.
The timer was off, the kettle was off.
But the whistling was still there. Pansy leaned on the counter and shook her head, trying to rid her head of the sounds it was making… but could still hear it clearly, if distantly—a melodic chant, the hum of a nursery rhyme she could have recognised anywhere. One she had sung one too many times, in the courtyard, along with the other girls, to torment a girl in the year below hers—Ginevra Weasley. "Pop goes the weasel."
The hum skirted its way through the manor, vibrating within the walls, and soon found its way to Pansy—not to her ears, but to her soul. It attached itself so deeply within her that, like a well-oiled machine, she began singing the accompanying lyrics, in tune with the melody. It grew louder and louder, forcing her to drown it out with her voice.
All around the cobbler's bench
The monkey chased the weasel
The monkey thought 'twas all in fun
Pop goes the weasel
I've no time to wait and sigh
No patience to wait 'till by and by
Kiss me quick, I'm off, goodbye
Pop goes the weasel
Half a pound of tuppenny rice
Half a pound of treacle
That's the way the money goes
Pop, goes the weasel
I've no time to wait and sigh
No patience to wait 'till by and by
Kiss me quick, I'm off, goodbye
Pop, goes the weasel
She sang it over and over and over again, her vocal cords acting against her very conscience, forcing her to push them to their boundaries, until she sounded raw and ragged, the tips of her fingers littered with tremors and shakes. Then—
the melody stopped.
And, as if suddenly pulled out of a trance, Pansy collapsed to the ground, sobs rattling through her; she covered her ears with her hands and prayed for the hallucination to end.
I am a woman of science, and I will not indulge in my mother's delusions.
She stayed there for what seemed like hours, unable to comprehend what had possessed her to do such a thing. Perhaps the folly in her mother's genes was finally blooming within her, taking hold of her sanity. Perhaps she was finally going properly mad, after trying to escape the family curse for so long.
When she found the strength to get up, she forced the drumming of her brain to die down and listened carefully. All traces of sound were gone. Silence had fallen on the manor, a blanket draping it tightly, isolating it from the world. Even the wind was gone, chased away from the walls. Sighing, Pansy picked up her cup of tea (though it was a wonder why, as it was now cold and bitter) and walked to her room. She walked a little faster than usual, just in case, shutting the door a little too abruptly, missing the head full of curly hair turning a corner afar.
18 days left
The corners of Pansy's mind had always been a mystery, even to herself. When she was six years old and her mother was taken from her by tall men in blouses, who cited a need for urgent medical care in a restrained psychiatric facility, she had sworn off her history. Her aunt had picked her up in a battered old car and driven her far away from London, bitter and resentful to be forced to care for her sister-in-law's spawn. The estate had been stored away under the watchful eye of a trustee, with some of the money going to the facility her mother resided at, and some earmarked for Pansy's care. The monthly stipend was just enough to cover the expensive tuition of the private schools she attended, per the rules of the estate's trust, new uniforms every year, and the food to keep her sustained. There were no holidays, no luxuries, no gifts under the Christmas tree.
Still, Pansy lived in a dream. A dream where all that money was hers, because it was, in a way, even if she didn't know when she would ever reach it—if she ever did. She renounced her mother, refusing to even know why she had been taken from her, and befriended the wealthiest and snottiest kids at school, hoping to earn their protection. The sole fact that she was not on a scholarship or in ragged clothes, unlike those Weasleys, was enough for her to find solace in the arms of the likes of Draco Malfoy, Blaise Zabini, and Theodore Nott. Men she could trust with her life—as long as she showed them undying loyalty in the face of their enemies. Over the years, that loyalty expanded beyond simple insults directed at Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, their sworn enemies—it also meant being at their entire disposal, physically and otherwise. Draco crawled into her bed at night, and she gave him everything he asked for—enthusiastically so, even if the idea of a man touching her was one she had grown to hate. One she had never cared for in the first place.
It was the price of her protection.
The price to pay because she had no money of her own to actually buy her own safety.
One she gladly paid if it meant ensuring her place in society—and, of course, complete discretion about the state of her affairs, both financial and familial.
The family curse had already taken her mother from her—it did not need to destroy her future too.
After so much sacrifice, so much pain, and the family estate being inches away from her grasp, Pansy could not let the madness affect her. She needed to keep it at arm's length, if only for one summer. Until the one and only task left in her mother's will was accomplished. It was for this very reason that she donned her ugliest clothes, wrapped her hair in a shawl, and began cleaning the entire manor, from ceiling to floor. She only left the bedroom once the sun was up, and rushed back in, door locked thrice behind her, before it went down. She could only thank the long days of summer—she finished cleaning the manor in less than a week.
It proved difficult, however, to find something to fill her days with after. She had brought some books, of course, but the idea of sitting idly in any part of the manor made her uneasy—she walked around with boulders sitting in her stomach. They rumbled and poked at her insides constantly, never letting her rest properly. Her nights were short-lived and far more tiresome than they were peaceful. The sheets were always too cold, the bed too hard, and the humming too loud. The delusions were grabbing at her, tentacles of a curse she had sworn off but that would never let her be. The humming never stopped—the melody ever the same, a song of weasels, one she found herself regretting having ever sung to the red-headed girl she had gone to school with. She sometimes dreamt of those she had relentlessly bullied, their faces haunting her mind until she woke up, drenched in sweat, broken up in her guilt and her shame.
On her twelfth night at the manor, that shame took the form of a new delusion. As Pansy was staring at the ceiling, her mind restless and moving about, the walls began to inflate. It was a progressive and slow event—it simply seemed at first that the humidity had taken a toll on the old bricks, leaving them covered in a sheen of liquid. If Pansy had been a creative writer, she would have said the walls were sweating. She dismissed the impression and turned to her side, closing her eyes and attempting to drift off. She was safe in the room—nothing ever happened in her mother's bedroom.
But sleep did not come. Instead, the room grew warmer—to an uncomfortable degree, and quite literally so. The thermometer by the door read 41 degrees Celsius. Pansy's body cried sweat, and her breathing grew rapid, uneven, like she had just run a marathon. She left her bed to open the window, but it wouldn't budge—instead, the walls bubbled further and further, pushing the boundaries of physics as Pansy knew them. A flittering feeling of claustrophobia grew in her gut, shutting her body until she collapsed on the floor, hugging her knees to her chest, her nightdress soaked in her heat and her fear. Little by little, pieces of furniture laid out by the walls got knocked over, or crushed in between two spurts of a bubble, splinters of wood flying through the air, some landing neatly into Pansy's skin. The blood and the sweat and the tears flowed continuously out of her, threatening to dehydrate her body to an irreversible degree—threatening her physical envelope to be left here to die and decay, forever more and always.
She watched desperately as the room closed in on her, bricks expanding like bubble gum, the temperature growing so hot the thermometer was whistling, on the brink of explosion—a process most of the furniture had already gone through.
Dizzy and terrified, Pansy began crawling away from the ever-smaller room, digging her nails into the hardwood floors, which felt eerily soft and mushy by now. She didn't notice her fingernails breaking and the skin of her fingers being clawed away by the wood, the blood gushing out of her and leaving a trail behind her. It took a painstaking amount of time for Pansy to reach the door—the temperature was now so unbearable her vision was blurry, her inner organs burning up and choking her, soon to be shrivelled like old prunes in her decaying corpse. She pushed herself beyond what she imagined herself to be capable of and managed to unlock the door, but not much else—for, when she tried reaching up to the handle, barely touching it with the tips of her bloody fingers, her hand slipped again, and again, and again, until all she could do was sob, laying floppily by the door, the taste of death lingering in her mouth.
Right as she had given up all hope, resigning herself to dying crushed by the inflating walls, the door burst open and hit her in the head, sending her flying across the room, her bones shattering against the wall as they collided. Pansy let out a scream so visceral, so animalistic that, for a second, she doubted it came from her. The sound reverberated through her, crushing whatever still stood intact within her and she fell to the floor in a loud thump, sending waves through the inflating walls.
She lay there unconscious for what seemed like hours, every part of her aching and screeching, a never-ending torment of stratified horror building its walls within her, anchoring her to a moment she knew she would never be able to leave behind. Perhaps she was truly dying, finally reckoning with the suffering she had inflicted onto others. It seemed time was standing still.
When she finally woke, the sun was hanging up in the skies, mocking her through the window—which was now open, and letting in a steady stream of fresh summer breeze. Pansy's eyelids fluttered and she dizzily surveyed the room, rushing to sit up once she noticed the impossible—it was all there. The furniture was intact. The walls were thick and straight and hard again, like brick should always be. The only memories of the evening were the traces of blood on the floor—the trail she had left as she had crawled away. She brought her hands to meet her eyes, and nearly vomited in disgust. It was like the tips of her fingers had been shaved away—everything was blood and flesh and raw, bits of skin dangling and drying up, nails broken, some even missing entirely. She lowered her hands and tried to assess the damage done to the rest of her by slowly moving each part of her, letting the pain signal the broken bones and—God forbid—the punctured organs. She winced throughout, but relief soon washed over her—there was nothing irreparable or irreversible. Her right wrist was sprained, this much was a certainty, but other than that… There was more pain than there was actual damage. Physically, at the very least.
Mentally, Pansy was reeling. It would be easy to chalk up the raw fingers to a delusion, to say she had simply imagined the walls inflating and crawled on the ground of her own accord. The memory of bones shattering was another story—because nothing could rationally explain the door sending her flying against the wall, not even if she tried her best. It dawned on her for the very first time that, perhaps, her mother had not been delusional after all. Perhaps her mother had seen or heard or felt something that had forced her to drag her daughter out of bed in the middle of the night, to drive her into the horizon, never looking back.
Until now. Pansy dragged herself to the kitchen, her mind abuzz with questions. Whether her mother had been delusional, or whether she had really experienced something, she had done everything in her power to remove her daughter from that situation. Why, then, force her to come back, some twenty-odd years later, in order to grant her access to the estate? She rifled through the drawers as the questions rattled in her mind and delicately fashioned a sling for her wrist—going to the hospital was not something she could even consider. A looming dread lurked in the pit of her stomach, telling her she ought not to leave, not yet. As if leaving would bar her from returning. As if leaving was betraying the memory of a mother she realised she had never really known. A mother who had willingly forced her own flesh and blood to sleep amidst the nightmares she had once lived herself.
There was more to be known, more to understand. The idea alone gave Pansy a budding headache—though she couldn't be sure it wasn't just the residue of her eventful night. She rifled through the drawer some more and grabbed the ibuprofen—a clear and painless head was the very least she deserved. She roughly bandaged up her fingers and left the kitchen to sit in the gardens, away from the terror.
As she sat on a lounge chair by the bedroom window, languidly taking in the sun to forget her nightmares, it suddenly dawned on her that she had been unable to open that same window during the night. She had left it closed.
And now, it was open.
Pansy could no longer deny the obvious truth. These were no simple delusions. There was a presence in the manor.
16 days left
The exorcist hmmed and aahed as Pansy explained her story. "It should be a very simple case, Miss," he said once she was done, pulling out curious-looking instruments and ingredients from his briefcase. Some even looked like the oddities that had once decorated the desk of her former Headmaster's office at Hogwarts—Albus Dumbledore.
"What are we to do?" asked Pansy, her hand hovering over the objects, ready to pluck one so she could inspect it closely.
"Patience, my dear, patience. I need to call the spirit first." He patted on her head like she was a capricious child and she scrunched up her nose in disgust—an expression that had earned her the moniker "pug-face" during her school days.
The exorcist was a gentle old man—a Catholic priest she had dug up from an old phone book. His hair was thin and brittle to the point of being fictitious; his eyes were a clear blue, drowning her in kindness and understanding; his lips were thin and dry, and his nose was small, nearly effeminate. He called her "dear" and smiled earnestly whenever he spoke to her. Pansy wondered if he would remain just as nice if he knew the truth about her. The truth of her condition.
"Well?" She tapped her foot on the floor. "Are you going to call the spirit?"
He nodded enthusiastically and pulled a spirit board in front of him. Pansy scoffed, more out of habit than anything else, and the priest quirked an eyebrow, but did not say anything. He hovered over the board for a minute, moving the planchette from corner to corner.
"Spirit," he called, "show yourself!"
The intensity in his voice, coupled with the flurry of ridiculous movements he performed with the planchette made Pansy snicker. She couldn't help it—the entire enterprise had been an idiotic choice on her part, she was realising now that she was seeing it happen before her very eyes. He remained oblivious to her mockery and began reciting a series of chants and prayers in Latin—and though Pansy caught some of the words here and there, she understood none of it. She watched as he disturbed the silence with his blabbering, while the sun set down over the horizon, kissing the Earth as they melted into one another. It would soon be after dark. And nothing was happening.
Pansy grabbed the book she had left on the side table, its spine cracked where she had laid it open, ready to give up and accept the loss of the few pounds she had gambled by hiring this man. It was not all in vain, after all—it helped her come to terms with the fact that her fear had been overblown, created by the remnants of her mother's genes, those she had infused her child with upon giving birth to her. Maybe she had opened the window, after all. Maybe she had thrown herself at the wall.
She needed to hold on to her sanity for just another few weeks.
More precisely, for sixteen more days.
She was finally feeling herself settle into what she imagined to be knowing bliss when the shutters closed suddenly behind her.
"The spirit is being extracted!" yelled the exorcist in triumph, his thin hair crackling with excitement. "Abite spiritus! I non ludere ludos!" The brittle old man spoke with the strength of a thousand soldiers, revelling in the power he believed he was holding. Spirit begone, silently translated Pansy. I will not play your games. "Leave this home now and forever!" He pulled a handful of salt out of his leather pouch and threw it in the air, oblivious to the lights blinking around them, to the shutters opening and closing in succession, to the freezing draft suddenly causing the creeping of their skin. Pansy dropped her book to the ground and watched in awe as the manor came alive for the first time since she had settled in it—it was riveting, if terrifying.
"Do you see that?" she whispered, hoping this was not a delusion.
"I see it, child! The spirit is leaving!" He threw more salt in the air, shaking his fist like a conqueror, his skin flushed and his chest heaving.
Pansy was inclined to disagree. Whatever was inhabiting the walls, it seemed angry; preparing to attack. The sound of the shutters was growing more violent, more erratic, its pattern ever-changing, until it was all just noise—Pansy felt herself drown in it. She watched as the exorcist became more flustered, more frustrated, his gestures nonsensical to the point of being comical. He repeated his chants and prayers, his voice louder and more unstable with each repeating verse—in between, he screamed "Begone spirit! I will not play your games!" Pansy wondered if his frail stature would survive the night—the man seemed on the verge of a heart attack. It astonished her that he hadn't yet abandoned—she had only paid him a few pounds, after all. The money could not possibly be worth his life.
"Begone, old man! Or you shall perish within these walls!" The threat had been sudden. It emanated from everywhere, and yet, nowhere at all. Pansy clenched her chest—the voice. This was the voice humming "Pop the Weasel" night after night.
She barely paid attention as the old man gathered his things and ran out the door in a terror. She had no care left in her anymore—here, and now, was a spirit seeking her out. Forcing others to leave. It wanted her—it wanted to hurt her.
Had it hurt her mother?
Jumping to her feet, Pansy yelled back into the void. "Show yourself, spirit!"
A cackle erupted through the air. "Really, Pansy Parkinson? Are you commanding me? Do not wish for what you might regret." The voice sizzled and sparked. Pansy shivered. She recognised it—it was the voice that hummed every night… but it was also something more. Something from her past. Something she couldn't place—not quite yet.
She watched as the shutters locked themselves and as the lights turned off, forcing her in complete darkness.
"It's been years since I've had the honour to see your pug-face, darling. They say you've gone on to do quite a few interesting things." The sarcasm sounded misplaced, nearly out of place, like it didn't suit the person who spoke with it.
"I know they can't be that interesting if you're holed up in this miserable place, waiting for an inheritance you'll never see the light of," it cackled, the sound brushing against Pansy's skin, like it came from right beside her. She turned around, desperate to see or feel the presence, but it was no use.
"Oh, darling, I am positively aghast to see that the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Science has taught you nothing. Then again, you were never very bright, were you? Just another snotty purebred aristocrat, walking the halls of our dear school like you were above it all. Above my kind." A snicker, thick like a brick. A click of frustration, of despair.
It was like Pansy had suddenly lost all memory of her past. She had heard those sounds—she had been acquainted with them for years, like the growing pains in her back and legs. Nasty little noises, bugs and tremors that repulsed her. But whose were they? Whose had they been?
"Watch out for your pretty neck." It dripped like honey down her back, thick and syrupy, sticky and far too sweet for its own good.
A threat—a menace.
A warning.
A conclusion, a curtain drawn—the lamps turned back on without missing a beat, the sound of the shutters simultaneously unlocking and opening back up, letting the moon light flood the petit salon. Pansy's eyelids fluttered close until she could find herself growing accustomed to the light again, her body recoiling from the encounter. When she finally admitted to herself the things she had long denied, refused and locked away, she opened her eyes and saw the manor with newfound clarity. The decrepit walls and faded carpets, the bricks soaked with pain and humiliation and terror, the lacklustre furniture and wasted wood—it had once been, certainly, a place of love and luxury and prestige. But it had been gutted of the love and the adoration and the loyalty—it was now a cadaver, its only living organism being one of destruction and loneliness. It feasted on those who had suffered, dragging their darkness out of them until they were nothing more than empty shells, dead in every way that mattered.
Fine, conceded Pansy. The will stated she was to stay one more summer at Pavenham Manor—it did not stipulate she had to be in it. The executor could pop by at any time to verify she was complying with the terms of the agreement, but he surely wouldn't complain about her sleeping in the gardens. Thus, Pansy rummaged through the closets until she found the outdoor equipment her mother had stockpiled somewhere, hoping to one day take her daughter on camping trips and grand nature excursions across the United Kingdom, to show her the beauty of Mother Earth and cultivate her curious young spirit.
They had never been. Not even once. The manor had sucked all the life out of Amelia Parkinson before she could have breathed any into her daughter.
Pansy shoved those memories to the back of her mind and began throwing out what she deemed useless until she finally reached the items she had sought out: the tent and a sleeping bag. There were two of those—one, of course, was now ill-suited to Pansy's adult woman body, and she discarded it in favour of the one her mother had picked out for herself. She compiled a few more items—a petrol lamp, a first-aid kit, some matches—and walked proudly out of the manor, choosing to set up camp near the lake.
She had found a loophole—and she was going to stick with it, mosquito bites be damned. If one of her professors had asked her to justify her reasoning, to explain how she could possibly know the presence was forced to stay within the bounds of the manor itself, Pansy would have found herself unable to provide any sources, any hypothesis. She wasn't even sure she thought this to be true—all she knew was that the risk of walls inflating around her and shutters trying to snap her fingers off was necessarily mitigated if she stayed far from the walls and the windows and the doors and the shutters and the plumbing and the electric grid.
Perhaps she should have remembered, having studied tropical medicine, that nature is often a worse enemy to man than his own structures could ever be. Terror, it seemed, had begun to make her mind slip.
7 days left
The days whittled away, each emptier and more desolated than the previous one, their backs burdened with the memories they carried of Pavenham Manor and its inhabitants.
The nights witnessed Pansy Parkinson's body being tied to the ground with the vines of a nasty plant, native to the manor's grounds—Devil's Snare. Tentacles of the Earth, they slipped into her mouth, beneath her tongue, and injected her with their poison, ensuring her slumber as they violated her integrity. They slipped beneath her breasts and bruised her ribcage, tightening around her ankles and pulling her legs apart, sliding above her clothes and coiling themselves around her until she was firmly etched into the soil, ready to be violated by worms and maggots and creatures of the underground.
But the nights were too short for that fate to ever be accomplished. Every morning, Pansy awoke bruised and sore, but alive and well. She felt a bitter taste slide down her throat, pain in her limbs and rigidity in her back—she chalked it up to her uncomfortable sleeping quarters and moved on, only crossing the threshold of the manor once she knew the sun to be hanging in the sky, high above her. Even then, she only toured those rooms she deemed necessary—the kitchen, the bathroom, a few closets. She stayed away from all the bedrooms and had locked the petit salon, throwing the key in the lake. Perhaps the spirit had stayed put—she could only hope.
Still, she found herself wandering further and further from the stretches of reality. At times, it seemed she could not retrace her steps, finding herself in a wing opposite to the one she remembered being in, unable to know when or how or even why she had moved. Her dreams, usually vivid and narratively structured, were now vague impressions, colours. Black ink, red roses, green envy. Indigo rage. The days were long, stretched into eternity by the summer heat—and yet, Pansy found it difficult to remember what she did. She never left the grounds—this, she was sure of. Why she never left the grounds was still a thought impervious to her rationality—she felt tethered to this haunted place, forced to hide in its shadow for as long as she was legally mandated to. It was an excuse, of course—no reasonable executor would demand she stay put for a little over sixty days. But the thought evaded her—the idea was blurry, a feather teasing the tip of her nose, like a sneeze that would never come. Even memories of the haunting were now becoming mere objects in her mind, stationed in shelves alongside bits of the past, blending in with the normal and the rational. She would pause and find names that had previously come to her naturally stuck on the tip of her tongue, forcing her mind to sputter and whirr and clank for minutes at a time, only to come to a full-stop without any satisfying conclusion.
The oddity of Pansy's condition was only tampered by the fact that she was growing immune to her own methods of rationality. She did not question the strangeness of her circumstance because her circumstance shut down any questioning preemptively. It had all the makings of a vicious circle; one she was really only vaguely aware of at the rarest of times. She would find herself puzzled, trying to catch a thought mid-air, only to wonder why it was that her thoughts seemed to evade her so often—and that question would then drift away as suddenly as it had come, leaving her in suspended motion, staring blankly at the walls.
Pansy was unaware of her own decay.
It was only on her twenty-fourth night on the grounds, a week before her stay was due to end, that Pansy came to understand that she was in graver danger than she had imagined—and that it was too late to turn back now.
The Devil's Snare had already done its job, pinning her to the ground, body splayed and stretched, sinking into the soil beneath it. The pressure and the poison seeped into Pansy's subconscious, deep within the trenches of her mind, until they reached what lay beyond the rational. Her dreams.
She found herself wandering in the gardens, wearing a blindingly white summer dress. She was barefoot, grazing the grass glacially, like a ballerina preparing for her final performance. There was nary a cloud in the sky—it was a warm spring day. Pansy looked back at the manor and was surprised to find it relieved of its vines and grime and dirt. Like it had been built just a few years ago.
"It was something in its time, wasn't it?" Pansy spun around, shocked to see her mother standing next to her, looking alive and well.
"Mother?"
"I dreamt of inheriting this estate, as a child, you know. My mother purposefully kept it away from me—jealousy, I thought. She wants it to be hers only, I thought. She tried to have the town buy it from her, she tried to push it onto foreign investors, rich aristocrats, everyone she encountered! They all refused. Didn't like its history, as it were. I knew of the rumours of course—ghosts of a treacherous past, come to punish those who have wronged them. It seemed far-fetched, even to a little girl like me." Her voice was airy, light, her smile fond and happy. "My mother would have burnt it down, I believe, if my father hadn't been so adamant that it would be worth a lot of money down the line. "Forget the ghosts, Grace!" he'd say at dinner, in that tone he always used to impose his authority. "Even if you don't, by the time this place is worth in the millions, everyone else will have!" I don't think she ever believed him, truth be told—but she listened, as good wives are always prone to do. And so, with only one child of her own, one who was about to be married off to the Parkinson family, my mother relented and passed the manor down to me. I never believed the ghost stories, of course, so I brought you here. For years! Six years, to be exact. Your father was… who he was (she gestured in the wind, dismissing the man who was more prone to chasing young skirts than to caring for his family), so it was always just the two of us. How I enjoyed those first years! How I wished they would last into eternity! But nothing good lasts forever, my child. Nothing. And so…" Her voice died in her throat.
Pansy heard a storm brew afar. She tried to urge her mother to finish her story. "What happened?"
The silence worried Pansy, who turned to face her mother, only to find herself faced with an image of sheer horror. Her mother's eyes were crying blood, melting down her face, burning the rest of her as they did. Pansy screamed and yelled and cried but the storm was louder, drowning her, pushing her to the ground, next to her mother's melting corpse.
She sank onto herself, begging for the nightmare to end, for her reality, as horrific and cold as it was prone to be, was far better than the image of her mother melting to the ground.
A hand touched Pansy's shoulder and she looked up in shock.
It was that classmate, that girl she had taunted along with the Weasley girl. Hermione Granger.
"You've been hiding from me, Pansy Parkinson."
"I… You… It was you?" Pansy stuttered, her eyes wide with disbelief.
"Of course not, silly. I mean your penchant. Your affliction. Your truth." Her chocolate eyes bore into Pansy's own, who could not find the words to respond to her, every thought dying on her lips before it came out into the wild.
"Yes, Pansy. You taunted me. You insulted me. You tormented me. But I knew. How could I have not known?" Her hand ghosted over Pansy's hair, who was clutching her knees to her chest much like a child would, unsure of what she could trust anymore.
"Scared of storms? And here I thought you so… dauntless." The word hissed and slithered out of her with mockery and sarcasm.
Pansy rose to her feet. "I'm not scared of anything here. Least of all you. I only scare in the face of real, actual, threats. Unlike you Gryffindors, who knock at the doors of danger every time it calls."
Hermione threw her head back and laughed. The rain dripped through her wild hair, thickening it and curling it with a grace Pansy had never suspected her to have. "We're not at Hogwarts anymore, Pansy." She placed a hand on her shoulder. "You don't have to be scared to admit it anymore. It's not a threat."
Pansy shivered, her eyes tracing the frail fingers touching her. Her fingernails were still short and raw from being anxiously bitten, much like that had been in school. Not that Pansy had noticed. Because she hadn't. Not then, not now, not ever.
In her denial, she failed to notice that Hermione had leaned closer to her—her lips brushed against her forehead, softly, sprinkling hot air on Pansy.
"Just say it, Pansy. There's no need to hide anymore. There's no one to see you here."
Her heart fluttered and tightened. The girl she had tormented for years was inviting her in, removing the fences of their rivalry and giving her an opportunity—one she might never encounter again in her lifetime.
"What do you want me to say?" Her voice was a whisper, strained by the fear of letting the darkness out.
"Tell me you want me. Tell me you've always wanted me." Hermione's hand lowered the strap of Pansy's dress, uncovering her shoulder. She brushed her knuckles against her skin, teasing her collarbone, hovering close to her chest.
"I do want you. I've always wanted you," breathed out Pansy, unable to resist the call of the siren. Just as the words left her lips, the rain stopped, chased away by the returning sun.
"Good girl." Hermione's lips brushed against her ear. She placed her hands in Pansy's hair and peppered a trail of kisses along her jaw, inching closer and closer to her lips.
Pansy's mouth opened in anticipation, a moan escaping her. She had never been touched with such candour before—Draco would always shove himself roughly into her. Hermione was nothing but soft touches, gentle gestures. She was slow, agonisingly so—she was building a tension that threatened to make Pansy implode. She tugged at Hermione's dress, digging her fingers in the fabric, nearly gasping for air.
"Patience," whispered her nemesis. Her mouth was hovering just above Pansy's.
Until she finally crashed into her, sending sparks flying down her throat, to the pit of her stomach. All she could think of was the tenderness of her skin, the silkiness of her hair as she tangled her fingers in it, the teasing of her tongue as it darted into her mouth, begging for her to let herself be visited, for the last of her walls to come crashing down. Pansy moaned in her former classmate's mouth, welcoming the intrusion with relief—no, with abandonment. She felt a hand lower to the nape of her neck, then down to her shoulder—pushing down the other strap of her dress and revealing her chest out in the open.
Pansy gasped—she had always been small-chested, something the Slytherin boys had teased her for mercilessly, despite slipping into her bed and hungrily gobbling them up every other night, leaving her bruised and self-conscious with every new sunrise. She wanted to cover her breasts with her hands, to prevent Hermione from seeing her in this state, but the wild-haired brunette did not let her. She lowered her hands while she continued hungrily drinking Pansy in, cupping a breast with each. Her palms were warm, touching her eagerly, but not brusquely—she massaged her nipples through her fingers, eliciting soft gasps from Pansy.
Hermione interrupted the kiss, smirking. "The vines really do help, don't they?"
It was like thunder ruptured through the veil of the dream, breaking the image in a thousand glass shards, sending it flying into the emptiness. Gone was the sundress, gone was the green grass, gone was the restored manor—all that remained of the dream was her nightie tossed beside her. Pansy was settling back into reality—lying down beneath her tent, vines wrapped around her, pressing into her nude silhouette. She gasped in horror, wriggling and struggling against the Devil's Snare, trying to push herself out of it.
"There's no need to fight, dear. Devil's Snare only obeys its master, and its master only exists in Death."
It was the voice—
It was Hermione Granger.
Pansy turned her head back, her protest dying on her lips. There, above her, was Hermione Granger. Except, unlike in the dream, she wasn't made of flesh and bones. No, she was nearly transparent—like a ghost would be.
"Surprised to see me, dear? It's a shame. You were awfully enjoying yourself only a few seconds ago." The brunette leaned forward, her ghostly lips brushing against Pansy's. "Shall we keep going?"
Every logical bone in Pansy's body screamed at her to refuse. To escape and run for her life.
But, even as the word slithered to the tip of her tongue, ready to be spat on Hermione Granger's ghost face, it morphed and shifted, dictated by the darkness she had buried so deep within her.
"Yes." She sounded weak. She hated how weak she sounded.
"Perfect," purred Hermione, her lips descending upon Pansy once again, kissing the crook of her neck, licking every morsel of skin until she was nestled within the valley of her breasts.
Pansy groaned, limbs shifting in ecstasy—the ghostly state of her paramour was thrilling, even more so than the physical form she had drummed up in her dream. She could feel her spectre ever so slightly melting in her skin, touching bone and skin at the same time. When the brunette's hungry mouth nibbled on one of her breasts, Pansy gasped at the feeling—it was hot and cold meeting within her, sharp teeth poking through her skin with a surreal softness, a body made of air and ectoplasm drowning into hers.
Hermione's mouth sank further down the ridges of Pansy's body, trailing her with a teasing tongue, lapping over the vines holding their prey down, until she reached the creases and folds of her cunt. Pansy tugged at the vines wrapped around her stomach, her breath uneven and rapidly increasing in intensity.
Cold breath hovered above her heat and she lost all semblance of control.
"Please, Hermione, I… please," she begged.
She felt the ghost smile against her, causing shivers to creep up her spine and the vines to tighten around her. A new one pushed through the soil and coiled itself around her neck, nearly causing her to pass out.
"Tell me what you want," taunted Hermione, still buried deep within her thighs, mere inches away from the prize.
"Please lick my cunt, Hermione. Eat it whole, until I can't beg for more." Pansy's voice was nothing more than a murmur, a depraved chant bursting from the depths of her lungs.
The brunette snickered and finally complied. She slithered her tongue between the folds of Pansy's cunt, lapping up at the wetness that had leaked out of her and spread down her thighs. She toyed with her clitoris, nibbling the bundle of nerves with the edge of her teeth, making stars and galaxies explode in the pit of Pansy's stomach. Her hips began to buck and words she wasn't sure she understood poured from her lips in a discordant song. She was beyond conscious thought, beyond logical reasoning—all she was aware of was Hermione's mouth and the wet, throbbing, pounding pleasure building up within her core. When two ghostly fingers grazed the inside of her, slipping past her entrance, she felt sparks igniting within her—she knew there and then that she was close to an earth-shattering bang, to the gates of Nirvana. The tension within her was tying knots in every part of her body, her heart pumping blood with inhumane speed, clogging whatever was left of her scientific and well-reasoned thoughts. She was a star dying and morphing into a black hole.
As the vines coiled themselves tighter and tighter around her, depriving her of oxygen, choking her in a pain so forceful it bordered on pleasure, she thought that she called out Hermione's name. She continued to whisper it again and again even as her orgasm hit, devastating her completely, as she flooded the ghost's lips and chin with her pleasure. Her body convulsed completely out of control, and, in some distant part of her mind, she was aware of the sound of wet slapping as the vines soaked her with juices of their own, wriggling themselves on her burning skin in rhythm with the shaking of her limbs.
The ghost of Hermione Granger resurfaced, lying next to her, waiting for her breath to even itself out and for her mind to be able to form sentences anew.
"The vines will release you in the morning."
And, on these words, she disappeared.
Pansy patiently waited, her mind burdened with questions of how and why. She found forming cohesive thoughts beyond difficult—as if the Devil's Snare keeping her tied to the ground had poisoned her, poisoned her ability to think clearly. In the back of her head, a small voice popped up, one she recognised to be Hermione Granger's when she was eleven years old and they had both entered Hogwarts.
"This is the price you will pay for killing me."
Pansy wanted to protest—she had tormented the girl in school, but she hadn't killed her! She had never even laid a hand on her! She wanted to yell, to struggle against the Devil's Snare—but it was useless, for, the stronger the dissent rifling through her, the more powerful the slumber that overcame her. She fought against every instinct the poison had instilled in her until she shut down entirely and found herself welcome by an eager Morpheus.
She left his kingdom several hours later, tormented by the questions still swirling in her mind and gnawing at her. She needed to know. She needed to understand.
Her eyes fluttered open—the vines were well and gone, but their memory was etched into her skin. She was bruised all over, black and blue patches trailing her pale skin, like tattoos forbidding her from ever forgetting her late-night encounter. She could also feel the Devil's Snare liquid pleasure sticking to her pores, an acid green sheen mixing with her sweat and what remained of her own arousal. Not bothering to retrieve her silk night garment, Pansy walked over to the manor and made a beeline for the bathroom, desperate to wash away the traces of the night.
As the cold water of the shower rained down her skin, flushing her sins down the drain, Pansy tried to clear her mind and put the pieces of the manor back together, to understand the mystery that held it together. Her mother had sent her back for a reason—and she felt that she knew enough to elucidate the puzzle at hand. The summer home, however, wouldn't let her, choosing instead to retaliate every time it felt her coming closer to the truth. Is my former classmate's ghost the reason for all my torment since I've been here? The sponge jerked up her arm and scratched through the skin of her arm. Pansy yelled, watching the blood stream down her skin—but she kept going. Did my mother encounter an enemy ghost? The water turned sharper, drops like tiny razors descending upon her and piercing her skin. She banged on the wall, and scurried to the other side of the bathtub, where the water couldn't touch her. Why is Hermione Granger here and why did her ghost fuck me?
"Did I hear my name?" whispered a voice beside her.
"What the fuck do you want from me?" Pansy's voice was still drained and exhausted, sputtering out of her throat.
"Revenge," whispered the spirit in her ear.
Pansy opened her mouth wide, unsure of how to react. She had nothing left in her anymore. She wasn't willing to fight back—not when she only had seven more days to hold on.
The ghost of Hermione Granger tucked a strand of Pansy's wet hair behind her ear. Her hand trailed down her neck, stopping every time she encountered an injury
"It's unfortunate that you let me lick you raw, my darling. But I guess no one can keep that darkness at bay forever—temptation called, and you came running." She laughed. "You couldn't get enough of it! And now that a piece of me forever resides in you, I can toy with you as I please. I do not need to wait until the cover of dark. I own you. You're mine, now and forever."
Pansy tried responding, but her voice was lodged in her throat.
"It's no use, my sweet. The Devil's Snare has been poisoning you every night for days. You let it join you in your pursuit for pleasure yesterday—I would have expected better from a botanist, but they do say the Devil's Snare is native only to Pavenham Manor. Something about vengeful spirits loitering the grounds for decades and infecting the flora." She inched closer to Pansy, trailing her knuckles against her cheek. "Soon, you will be dust."
1 day left
Pansy wandered the grounds of the manor, letting her hand caress the plants and the flowers. Hermione walked beside her—their fingers occasionally met, grazing each other in a soft silence, under the light of the August sun.
"Tell me, Pansy," said Hermione, turning to face the raven-haired woman. "Do you know why you're here?"
Pansy tilted her head; an air of confusion distorted her graceful features. "Do I need a reason to be here, with you?"
Hermione laughed gently. "You do not, darling. I'm asking because a car will be heading up the path to the manor shortly. It will be here to take you home."
"But I am home!" protested Pansy, her cheeks flushed in anger.
"That's right, you are home. And you want to stay here with me, forever. Don't you?"
Pansy let out a giggle. "Of course I do, silly. I'm never leaving you!" She grabbed Hermione's hand in hers, pulling her close. "You're my forever."
"That's what I was hoping to hear." She tucked a strand of Pansy's hair behind her ear. "If you want to stay here with me forever, you'll have to do something for me." She removed the knife she had placed in Pansy's pocket that very morning, after dressing her. "You will take this and place it against your throat. You can do that little favour for me, can't you?"
Pansy giggled, grabbing the knife like it was a toy. "Of course! Like that?" she asked, the blade squarely sitting in front of her throat.
"Just like that."
"And now?"
Hermione smiled sweetly. "Now, follow my lead." She hugged Pansy from the back, holding her tightly, and placed her hand above hers. "This is how you die," she whispered in her ear, all manner of sweetness and fondness gone from her voice. In one swift motion, she pulled back Pansy's arm, making her slash her own throat.
She watched as the blood gushed out of her nemesis, as her body now devoid of any mind or soul fell to the ground. And she smiled.
