Just Weather

You go to see her every time storm clouds roll in.

You go to see the rolling moors and think of how many sleep in unquiet surrender beneath your feet.

It was so much harder for you at school, harder to tie in how weak she made you, and how she imprisoned you.

She knew you watched her from across the dormitory, how the night drowned her severe expressions and how the daylight made her cruel. It was a long time before she said anything about it, a long time before she came to grasp the power you offered her.

She was so strong, so harsh. She held you up, but you were her crystal goblet. When you leaned over her at night, she would say she could almost see the moonlight through you. You let her think you delicate, and you would laugh while kissing her. You never told her how thin she made you.

"Tell me I am beautiful, Pansy," she would say, and you could feel her nails diggings into your arms. She knew you loved her, knew you would never tell her heartbreaking truths. She demanded from you, with her you felt like you could give.

"You are."

"And you are mine," she would laugh. She never got over the fact she had stolen you from your destiny.

Fourth year, at the Yule Ball, you went with Draco, knowing she would end up alone. She had watched you dance with him all night, sitting near the doors of the hall in calculated despair.

You had seen her walk out, and you followed.

You asked her if she was having a good time and she pushed you into the snow.

"I hate you," she said, and you believed her more than all the times she claimed you as her own.

In the end you submitted only to her cruel kisses, plotting with her in the forbidden hallways of the school. You pushed your beds closer in the dormitory and she put anyone who asked questions in the infirmary. You were there to ensure everyone thought her victims were simply accident-prone.

Millicent. All imposing height and harshness and long brown hair that curled slightly at the ends. She never cared what anyone else thought, least of all you, but you remember her as more beautiful than any one you have loved since. She found you, she made you, she wrapped you up in her taciturn sentences and frowning eyes.

For years you wore long sleeves to hide her dark handprints on your body. She never wanted anyone else to know, and it was never her fault she hurt you.  Her rough hands on your thighs always trembled with her forced gentleness. She had asked you once to teach her to be kind and you did not mind when she ignored everything you said. You loved her. You loved her more when she was not kind. It made you feel hers when you could trace the crescent marks of her nails on your arms, and when you could see your blood on her hands.

You loved terrorizing the other students with her at your side. She would whisper to you their faults at night, and you would take points away by day. You were the prefect, after all. She loved seeing you abuse authority; it made her kisses desperate. It made her powerful. You showed a hard face to the school, but she owned you. After classes you would return to the domain she made for you.

It was hard for you at school. You would not have endured hatred, hushed whispers, your own house if she had not been behind you. When she was feeling generous she would tell you she could not survive the mockery without you. You made her beautiful.

The gravestones stretched on for miles, looking mournful shrouded in overgrown heath and roiling skies.  It always looked like that after wars. You thought you heard her scornful voice in your memory.

"What would your headstone say if you died today, Pansy? RIP Pansy Parkinson. Laughed at everything Draco ever said."

She had made you someone, who were you to keep on existing when she was not? You drop to your knees at her grave, wishing she had not been one of the ones who died. There were so many, there had been so many.

RIP Millicent Bulstrode, it said, and you could feel your insides heaving and withering again. You never cried, there was a forlorn desert where your emotions should have been. The war, it killed more than just witches, wizards and families.

Beloved.

That was all the headstone read. You had picked it; her family had all been killed with her. You might have been hers, but your love remained when she was gone and it hurt more than any Dark Magic could have.

You always go when storm clouds threaten. You guess it is because it always felt right when the rain poured on your misery. She was your rain; she had kept you alive all those years. Even as she had hollowed you out and claimed you, she nourished you.

At the same time, you knew it would always be the same. You would mourn her when the skies could cry for you, when the weather could make up for the emptiness inside you. And you would return until that was all you would recall about the death mounds that had once been hills.

The weather. Not the breath of the disremembered and unaccounted for, but the wind in the ears, or spring ice thawing too quickly. Just weather.