He did it again.
Bastard.
I learned a long time ago to stop crying. It only makes the humiliation that much more unbearable. You know, I really don't know why I was ever so istupid /i to think that he would actually be faithful to me. To love me. To even care in the slightest. How naive. I guess I just wished that I could be happy. But I've learned to stop wishing. To stop trying.
I have acquired the new hobby of staring out the window from the window-seat in our sitting room. I watch longingly at the people walking hand in hand below our downtown-London loft. How happy they seem to be. I guess they should be, it is Christmas Eve. Yet still, Draco Malfoy insists on being unfaithful.
He's looking at me. I don't care. He's drunk.
"Doesn't it bother you, Pansy?"
Of course it does, you bastard. Yet like so many other things, I've learned the consequences of voicing such thoughts.
"No."
It comes out weaker than I had intended. I smile slightly as I see a little girl walking with her father. She's smiling. She looks like me. Except she's prettier. Bouncy red-brown curls, pale skin cheeks rosy from the cold. It's snowing. He father picks her up and twirls her around. I've always loved children. They're so innocent. So carefree from the woes of the world. Now he's kneeling beside her. She's young, maybe five or six. He retrieves a small present from his coat pocket and gives it to her. Her face lights up. Her little red wool jacket falls off her shoulder as she opens the gift.
It's a charm bracelet. Simple and elegant. She's delighted. When she puts it on, it slides right off her slender wrist. I barely hear Draco say anything, but I know he's talking. Probably telling me how worthless I am, and how I'll be a horrible wife and worse mother.
I still haven't told him.
I lost the baby two weeks ago.
Everyday I sit here waiting
Everyday just seems so long
And now I've had enough of all the hating
Do we even care, it's so unfair
The little girl starts to run across the street, when her father stops her just in time to save her from a passing car. I can see him chastising her, but then he smiles and carries her across when the way is clear to a woman, presumably the mother. The girl shows off her bracelet. The mother is happy for her daughter. Then they disappear into the vast crowd.
Draco is still saying something, I think. I'm not paying any attention. Not even when he calls my name.
"Pansy! Are you even fucking listening to me?"
I slowly turn to him. His eyes are dilated. I can smell the perfume on his shirt. Dior. Probably a middle class girl. Not rich, not poor. No one I'll ever meet. Muggle. And blond judging by the long stray hair on the collar of his shirt. I look into his steel grey eyes.
"Of course."
He knows I wasn't. He's done this too many times not to know that I zone him out. He simply walks up to me, hits me across the right side of my face, and leaves.
Nothings changed.
Three hours later, when I decide to go to bed, he's waiting for me. I can see the lust in his eyes.
I ignore it.
"Pansy…" he growls at me.
I turn to face away from him. He turns me around.
"I won't do this Draco."
He's angry. I don't care.
"How dare you! You will do what I say you do."
It's a threat. I know it well enough. For the first time in a long time, I feel anger.
"No! I won't. Not tonight."
He hits me again.
Any day it'll all be over
Everyday there's nothing new
And now I just try to find some hope
To try and hold onto
But it starts again
It'll never end
I close my eyes as the pain racks through the upper half of my body. My eyes sting as I think of when he hit me so severely, I could feel the life form die inside of me.
"Draco, please!"
He's still furious with me.
"So you want me now?"
Against my will, a single tear falls. "You are so self-centered!"
"I am whatever I want to be. You will be my wife and you are carrying my child, therefore you will respect me or else I will make you're life a living hell."
He says it so coldly. I wonder how he ever fakes any emotion whatsoever.
"No, Draco, I'm not."
He looks at me. "You're not i what/i Pansy?"
I look back at him, clutching my stomach.
"I'm not carrying your child."
He has a blank look for half a second before he gets enraged. More enraged than I've ever seen him.
"Whore! You fucking whore!"
It takes me a second to realize he's come to the wrong assumption. By that time he's started hitting me once again. It goes on for minutes. Until I start coughing up blood. Then he stops.
"You are the biggest slut I've ever met."
As he walks from the apartment, he spits on me from my place doubled-over on the floor. More tears fall. Before he leaves I yell back at him.
"You killed her! You killed our daughter!"
I'm crying.
He stops and turns to face me just as he was pulling on a jacket.
"You're lying."
And then he leaves. I stay on the floor, still crying. It's four in the morning before I drift off into a nightmare-filled sleep. I can't get the picture of birthing a stillborn out of my head.
I'm heavily broken
And I don't know what to do
Can't you see that I'm choking
And I can't even move
When there's nothing left to say
What can you do
I'm heavily broken
And there's nothing I can do
The next morning, it happens again. Almost exactly the same, word for word.
With one exception: It's Channel No. 5 this time.
When he calls me a whore yet again, I break.
"You have the nerve to call me a whore? Let me tell you something, dear, I've never cheated on you. In fact, I've never even slept with anyone except you. I've never even thought to venture away from you because it was expected. Now, you want to know the fucking truth? I lost our daughter two weeks ago to a miscarriage. Guess how it happened? You hit me. In the exact spot that killed her." I pause as he looks shocked "Guess what that makes you? A murderer."
I turn away from him, grabbing my wand from the mantle.
"I won't do this. I will die before I am married to you. Although it wouldn't make much difference, you'd probably kill me anyway. And you know what the worst thing is? I love you."
Taking one last look at him, I walk past him outside into the bitter cold. It's snowing again. It's around 1 in the afternoon, yet the sun is nowhere to be seen. I start walking. Anywhere. Anywhere away from him.
Almost giving up on trying
Almost heading for a fall
And now my mind is screaming out
I've got to keep on fighting
But then again
It doesn't end
By morning, I'm back at the apartment. Only to be greeted by false empathy and cold emotion. He apologizes, I say I forgive him. He gives me a diamond necklace. Three stones. It's beautiful. I tell him so. But I hate it. I don't tell him that.
I can't do this much longer, I know. He says he's changed. Says he loves me. But I just can't bring myself to believe him. Once he's left for work,. I'm crying. I'm still crying when he gets back eight hours later. For the first time in over six years, he comes home to me before going to any other woman.
It stays like this until New Years Eve.
There is a ball to attend. I look fine, I suppose. Shallow, and starved, but it's amazing what glamour's can do for your appearance. We appear happy. He appears happy. I am obedient. I feel I can survive the night until I see him with another woman. Not just talking, no. Making love. Something he never have me. When I got pregnant, I was raped. It's the only word that comes close. My heart breaks. I can almost hear it.
I turn away from him, and walk out the door onto the balcony. Then I scream. I scream my heart out. Everything, for the last nine years comes out in yelling, crying, screaming. He doesn't care. It's a harsh reality that I have learned to expect. I go back into the ballroom, to find him looking once more impeccable. I whisper to him.
"I'm leaving."
He nods. So I do. I go home; I pack everything I care about, from my sisters wedding pictures to the diamond tiara my mother gave me on my sixteenth birthday. I meet him at the lobby door.
"Where are you going?"
"Away from you. Goodbye Draco."
I can see a hint of hurt in his eyes. I pass it off. He's hurt me too many times. He tries to stop me, but I shrug him off. Now, he's crying. If circumstances had been different, I would have laughed. I've never seen him cry before. I start to cross the busy street.
I can hear him call my name frantically. I keep walking.
I didn't realize he was trying to tell me that a car was speeding down the street the opposite way I was looking.
Not until I had been hit.
I fell to the ground. He was beside me.
"I love you," he was chanting over and over again.
If I wasn't dying, I would have noticed he was honest.
But my immune system was too weak from him, from all the beatings, especially the one last week. I'm too fragile. Like porcelain.
It's getting darker. There are shapes all around. But I'm gone before I can make out what they are.
I said I was leaving, and I meant it.
R.I.P
Pansy Parkinson
December 9, 1980 – January 1, 2006
You will always be remembered.