The next day I found myself being hounded by the press. There's 4 owleries in the Parkinson Manor though I guess I should explain how they work. One was an indoor owlery where only owls who could pass the wards of the Parkinson Manor were allowed in. There was a small open circle in the stone wall that the owls could fly through. Although it was just air in the inner circle, there were wards cast over this space as well so only birds considered part of the Parkinson Manor could get through. There had to be some deep and ancient wards done with the birds in order to allow them and only them through, they had to be bathed in a potion that seeped through their bones in order to be recognised by the wards - it was typically done after they were born as it was easier for them to endure the several minute long submergence young than old.
Sometimes older owls who could do all the flights needed for mail were rejected from the Parkinson Manor or any other wizarding family's owleries if they used such a method because they were too old to go through the rituals safely - it was really only the young owls that could be trained specifically for us. The indoor owlery was built specifically for them. I hated it. It smelt of hay and droppings no matter how regularly mother cleaned it with magic. The floor was hay, the shelves on the wall had hay, heather, twigs, leaves, dirt, small rocks, stones, a manner of things all around them. There were birdhouse like features built in that were quite large, like a large dollhouse, so the owl's had privacy and spaces to hide behind.
A lot of pets liked places to hide behind in their enclosures or tanks as it helped them get a bit of privacy and alone time to themselves which all animals needed. It was the advice from many petkeeper stores of both magical and muggle animals. The indoor owlery also had a circular table full of feeds of all varieties and water as well. It was where all the owls came to rest if they wanted to stay indoors (usually through a storm) though the owls were also allowed to rest in nests they built in the forests around here where we owned the land.
There were three rooms that were used as owleries, with windows that were open. The owls couldn't enter through the windows but they could drop parcels and letters through. These were situated near our study's, so father, mother and I each had our own reception area for mail and parcels I supposed.
I usually went there to check on mail from the press after any major events.
This morning was no different. At least several hundred mails, even some parcels probably with small gifts that companies thought to entice me with, begged of exclusive interviews from me for the ball. I opened the letters and read through the lines. There were several newspapers, tabloids, editors, journalists, who spoke with an overly familiar tone with me, overly friendly, as if we were best chums since Hogwarts, asking or requesting more like, exclusive interviews, with the assumption that I would enjoy giving them.
I sighed.
I didn't enjoy this but I had to be polite to keep up images.
With another sigh I scooped up the letters from people I really couldn't ignore, and penned nice and pleasant declinations, thanking the ones who gave me gifts most lavishly and hoping that I had hit the bare minimum niceness so I didn't ruin any connections between them and I.
After decades of dealing with the press I started to get a sense of the different newspapers, tabloids, and things that were around the wizarding world.
The Daily Prophet was the most objective newspaper, but even then they let a few scandalous newspaper articles through the paper. It was very possible for them to publish something that amounted to lies and gossip about infamous people through their medium. All other newspapers quickly dropped of in quality after that. Many scandalous articles were allowed through with zero filter. Then there were the tabloids which were complete junk on famous people in the wizarding world, including wealthy family's because we were simply well known and recognised by many, I swear they were just completely making everything up, but they churned out a dozen copies a day, numerous and cheap, bought by more people than you'd expect, and news from them circulated around to more people than you'd expect. Tabloids were the invisible transmission of news in society, but a very powerful one nonetheless.
The reason why practically every single newspaper and tabloid were so focused on celebrities in the wizarding world was because we were well known, we were interesting enough, through our family wealth, being a pureblood for generations, everyone had some idea of who we were, so it got sold. People were more likely to buy newspapers and tabloids featuring people they knew or had some sense of. Also because when they were sold, advertisements printed alongside these tabloids and newspapers were also sold at the same time, and a lot of companies wanted their advertisements to be spread around as well. Even if not everyone bought from the advertisements, it at least spread around the company's name more, made them well known, and there would be some people that would buy from them.
I always got the impression newspaper and tabloid journalists were always hounded to keep coming out with 'interesting articles' in order to fill up enough space for the advertisements to fly. They probably had a quota they tried to stick to.
Anything sensational that got it sold worked. So a lot of the articles that came out were pure and utter lies.
It should be illegal. But it's not because the wizarding world war was still in it's infancy, developing, and there weren't strong laws against journalism and privacy. If you were targetted, you sort of had to hold your breath and just hope that it'll be over.
There were some mass reforms with the law going on after the war, however it was moreso in the justice and fair trial part, and changing the way things worked around criminal cases, due to the recent events of the First and Second Wizarding World Wars. There were no changes in journalism or privacy. Not yet and it would most likely be decades before there ever was.
Time trickled away fairly quickly. Soon my whole morning as gone. I had a somber lunch out on the grounds outside, at the lunch tables closer to the back entrances of the Manor because I had no interest in going for a longer walk than I had to from the house, where I reflected upon the tedium of spending so much time on it again, before clearing up and heading back inwards where I also lost the rest of my afternoon answering the letters I had to answer to.
You wouldn't believe how much some companies can send out, and how many companies hoped for a little something more. I had to get good at wording my replies so that they didn't give away anything that could be twisted for any tabloids.
The thing with all these newspapers and tabloids was that they believed upper class wealthy socialite purebloods were better than the rest in a way. Many of them wanted to be us, dreamed of being us, to them it was like writing about a life they never knew or had, but so desperately wished they did in some alternate reality. It sickened me to see what suck-ups they were, and how strongly they believed they were inferior to us, but it was there, this sense, beneath the surface of far more people I met than you'd think, and even though they couldn't understand the pain they bought people like us with the articles, they wrote to ask for an interview or permission with this sick sense that it was good for us, that we wanted it, that we loved that sort of thing.
They admired us, adored us, all the same time, whilst they wrote things about us to help them sell their products we didn't want a hand in. Many of these people subtly built up our reputation, image, even. Just by sending all this activity our way. Which did help us with our own business deals. To know that we were wanted by the media, our opinions were seen to be worth something. I'm sure many a Parkinson or Malfoy have threatened to slur someone's name through the press when they were dealing with people outside of England or even from within, as if giving them a reminder of the influence and power we had. To let them we were top of the food chain. I'm sure it's increased our media image and reputation and helped us get more business with our deals going on beneath the surface at times.
We needed them. Or at least...none of us could really bare to turn them away. So all of us just dealt with it - politely for the most part.
It was some sick cycle. Of us feeding each other, us needing each other, two sides of the same coin. But a game we all played. Sometimes we would judge a wealthy socialite family if they didn't know how to play the game right and gave out information a little too personal or private, or did not recognise they were being slandered against in the media and unconsciously went along with it. For the most part we respected the lowgrade war each of us fought with the media.
So I had to be polite. I could not actually...say no to this entirely. I had to have some level of lowgrade happy connections with them.
After sunset I'd finally finished replying to all of them.
It was this for every major event, and even small things in between. At least several times a week I got mail from people I had never met in person, about once a fortnight a big request came and I had to think up the politest ways to decline them. I'd been doing this for many years now. I'd even recognised some of the names in my back and forth to them, and had some idea of who worked where, what each person's personality was like, just from the mail correspondence.
What a headache honestly.
I read the article Celestia wrote about me. She misunderstood the theme of the green and pink in a colossal way and wrote about how apparently I wanted babies and children, what the pink was for the warmth of newborns, love of a family, and how all the pureblood family's were hoping to quickly shackle up and snag a baby daddy after the war because of baby fever and all of that. A stupid angle, but then again...I had never exactly trusted Celestia for what she wrote.
Celestia was energetic, excitable. She was excited to be in the same house as us Slytherin purebloods from wealthy family's, she was like a spring that was already sprung, any little sign of friendship, any little show of favouritism towards her, anything small to suggest she was in the in-crowd with us, would already tip her over the age. Her mind was already buzzing with all sorts of thoughts about Daphne, Millicent and I, even when we did nothing more than coolly ignore her.
We kept her around because she was still in our house and believe it or not she was more bearable than some other people we had to deal with, but no one ever tried to correct her for whatever she liked to write about when it came to us because well...
She was just too far out in a way, to even begin to think about how to broach the topic with her.
I usually grinned and bared with it whenever I read crap from her. Today was the same.
I had no idea what mad her write it, what crazy things she was churning out from her interactions with Daphne, Millicent, I, or the other purebloods, but this was her sensational take on the ball.
It wasn't the worst. She didn't mention anything about the war (I doubted she knew it's significance to us, or how if it was believed we were prejudiced in the 'let's personally murder muggles way', our reputations would truly take a gigantic hit, and that's what we were all trying to avoid), she didn't mention anything about pureblood prejudice. It could've been worse.
That's what I usually thought of Celestia's articles. It could be worse, but they were usually unpleasant and I had never understood her thoughts behind them.
I thanked her for the article in a cool way, then groaned as I saw lots more owls flying in from the distance, dropping of mail through the window. Owls with mail addressed to the Parkinson's whilst they were holding them could put them through the window but not access the indoor owlery.
I was probably going to be out for the next several days responding to mail.
My estimate was right. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, all slipped away in the blink of an eye. Long arduous days trying to keep connections through mail. I almost felt like gnashing my teeth at how awful companies were - just how much exactly did they send out? Who in their right mind kept hounding people so much? But in the end I was finally done replying to all I needed to reply to. At least 37 articles had been written about the ball, mostly about me, but some about the other purebloods.
Apparently Draco had gone onto purchase many dragons after the war because he took sudden inspiration from this name, which related to dragons, and a bunch of ridiculous things. Some attendants at the ball had given interviews, I hoped they got paid for it, but even when they tried to embellish things, they did not know enough about anything to do so. Some of their misinformed or exaggerated comments made the ball out to be what it wasn't, so I suppose what actually happened was even less well known. I was sure most people in the wizarding world would be talking about it however, and that if I went out, I'd likely face many questions about it for the next month or so. Like I always did. With everything.
From Friday til Monday I helped my mother clean the Manor. We did major cleans of the entire mansion and the grounds once a month but cleaned all the rooms we actually lived in once every week. A Manor like this can quickly look like shit if it was messy, cluttered, dusty or dirty, so we preferred to never let it get to that point. I loathed it, no one that lived in a large Manor such as this really liked cleaning it, but what else was there to do?
It was something I'd seen mother do ever since I was young and knew I would have to one day. I would squash down my objections to this, and grin and bear my way through cleaning it every single time.
It was just another thing we had to do. Another obligation. Another duty.
There weren't really that many magical ways to make cleaning easier. Especially not for a large place as this. We attempted to do as much of it by magic as possible, but ultimately there was still a lot of work we had to do ourselves. On the monthly cleans we didn't clean or fix everything, just the bits that needed cleaning or fixing, which believe me, cropped up a fair amount of times throughout the years.
The reason why we didn't downsize was that the Manor had been in the family for generations, it was inherited and it was also still trendy for all wealthy socialites to still live in Manors. I was sometimes envious of the houses muggles lived in, large mansions with flat roofs, glass windows, that looked very modern and sleek. For all their trendiness it wasn't enough for many of the old pureblood family's to really sell their Manor's and live in that place. It was unlikely to change for at least a few more generations, so Manors it was.
It was just a tradition, an obligation, something we didn't think much of.
I told myself it was a privilege to even complain about cleaning something like this. But it was a complaint all the same.
I bottled up my mixed feelings towards being born into this position, everything, ever since I was a very small child in the single digits, and carried it around with me most of the time. Sometimes more reflective of it than not. During cleaning days it flared up again, these odd twangs of bottled up mixed feelings. But as always, it never flared up strong enough to call for any real changes, and I just simply, kept living.
Author's Note: Do you feel sorry for Pansy and the pureblood wealthy socialites? I've always felt a bit sorry for them from the books. I wrote this story partly to show their lives aren't as nice as many would make them out to be, and flesh them out a little bit. Pansy especially, she's always jumped out to be as a character that's in the thick of wealthy socialite issues, both good and bad, from the books, and I see her as an interesting nuanced character that I wish there a deeper exploration of, both in the books and fanfictions :)
