Pat McBeth: We're not bad people, Mac... just underachievers
who have to make up for lost time.
~Scotland, PA
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There
was partying in the Great Hall. There was kissin' on the Quidditch
Pitch. There was drinking on the steps. There was dancing in the
corridors.
And there was quiet deep inside the Slytherin common room.
Yule Ball night back in '94--rather long ago, wasn't it? But memories
burn bright.
She had been asked to go by Draco Malfoy, recognizably. But that had been
Parkinson's man, and didn't you know? It was only the right thing to do,
really. Although it hadn't much to do about right, anyway.
Everyone was out--save the younger students, and some went with older students
for the novelty 'of it all.' Which wasn't much, mind you, but
there was a spark and there was a flare and there was well--something.
And it was '94 and everyone who would ever become something would
be there, dancing the night away. She was hidden.
Parkinson was lucky and for no particular reason other than--she was there, she
was with the love of her life and she was to get married to him someday.
Someday not so far away. He loved Parkinson, and if you had eyes--you'd
know. But he asked Millicent first but just to be a prat. Parkinson
would know she wasn't asked first and there would be a slight damper that came
with that.
Millicent was a pawn.
They were the children of the new age. Dancing closely, humming
quietly. Wild. They were absolutely wild.
Parkinson arrived back to the commons at about one thirty in the early
'morn. Malfoy followed her some minutes later after he had some vodka
with Flint.
"Millicent?"
She was sleeping.
Parkinson shook Millicent awake. "Yeah, how was it?"
"It was okay," Pansy smiled and the smile told no lies. It was
amazing. It was fantastic. To die for.
"Yeah," Millicent said, "but you're a liar, Parkinson."
"Yeah," Pansy agreed, "but I'm a happy liar."
Then she flounced up to bed, stars in her eyes, her fancy heels slipped off her
delicate feet. Her glossy lipgloss smeared.
The grounds were covered in mist and haze and Hagrid's hut looked like warm
icecream drenched in sugar. Cigarettes
left all around the misty grass, liquor bottles thrown unceremoniously about
the Forbidden Forest. The whomping willow tiredly swayed with the moon. Voices were carried with the wind.
And all who were left partying would've told you--that Christmas of
'94--it was a wild time.
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