Disclaimer: Harry Potter - JK Rowling. And I do not, shall not etc. profit from using these characters.

Summary: The aftermath of the worst day of her life begins now.

12. Some of us want to be forgotten

Katie Bell, Katie Bell. Why am I the only one who remembers Katie Bell?

Somehow they all believe that Ginny Weasley was the ball scoring person instead.

"Look, I am not quite up to my Quidditch, but I am certain that Ginny Weasley was not a ... Scorer."

Blaise buries his face in his hand. "Chaser, Parvati. Chaser."

"Parvati," Neville throws his arms up. "Ginny Weasley was the Chaser for the Holyhead Harpies. What other position would she fly?"

"Angelina, Alicia and Ginny," Fay chirps in, "Why else do you think we were the dominant team during the nineties?"

"Harry Potter?" I suggest, rolling my eyes.

"Well, we do have that," Neville is always the one to stand up for Harry, "but Ginny was as important as Harry. The two of them practically scored all the goals for the Gryffindor Team."

"Harry Potter," I am exasperated, "was absent for most of his Captaincy, Neville. Don't you remember?"

"Look," Blaise crosses his arms, "I played on the Slytherin team, okay? I was a Chaser, and I don't remember any Katie Bell."

"Parvati, honey," Hannah sounds tired. "we stayed up all night looking for you. Give it a rest with your imaginary friend, okay? You weren't ever interested in Quidditch. I have no idea why you're so preoccupied with this Katie Bell. Is that even a real name?"

I spend the rest of the morning, frantically trying to search for the tavern again. But my mind is a mist and I end up running up and down Knockturn Alley in filthy clothes like a mad woman.

I borrowed Hannah's robes and apparate home for a spare. Mother looks startled at my arrival, but accios a fresh set of robes from no where.

Mother is taking care of the toddler, and the two boys are running around the kitchen in circles. I think they're holding pieces of Roger's reports, as they have clearly watermarked Weasley's logo in the corner. Padma shoves a pile of fresh laundry into my arms and tells me to get useful for once in my life. She needs to prepare Roger's dinner.

I hear Roger's frustrating yelp from upstairs, and the twins scramble away into the basement. Even Padma looks agitated for a moment. Down from the basement, there comes a screech, as the twins had probably forced the door of Roger's Weasley Mustang. The doors have been coming loose lately. Mother takes the toddler and pushes it into Padma's arms, where she begins to soil Padma's apron.

I see Roger hurrying downstairs in a panic, throwing an annoyed glance at Padma, before disappearing into the basement screaming.

I suppose it was my misjudgment to come home expecting some peace and quiet. I take the baby from Padma's arms and place her in her baby chair. A slight pull of Padma's arms is enough to lead the shell shocked sister of mine into the empty shack outside. I shove a cigarette in her mouth, and she inhales deeply. Her eyes remain closed.

"You have no idea-" she begins.

"Start again," it's an old argument of ours. If we can't understand each other's problems, we agreed not to start throwing blame.

"Roger is getting a lot of pressure at work," Padma tries to sort out her problems. "the Ministry is pushing for a civilian level trade with the muggle world. He's been stressed out a lot."

"That's his problem," I shrug. I just want to get to Padma's inner demons, but she's always telling me about Roger this and Roger that.

"That not His Problem, dummy!" Padma snaps. "You wouldn't understand!"

"Start again," I shrug.

Padma inhales deeply, letting the savor of nicotine wash over her. "Roger's problems are my problems. I don't just simply exist apart from him, you idiot. He brings home the food, my part is raising the kids. We already have a house, and a fund set up for our kids. You're a dummy if you think that one day, you'll find the right man and settle down and expect to live happily ever after. It's all work. I know how you look down on me for settling early. But guess what, Parvati, the jokes on you once you realize that you should stop your bullshit and start worrying like the rest of us."

"I have my own worries," I light my own.

"What? About drinking yourself to oblivion?" Padma laughs hysterically. "Did they find you sprawled out on your own vomit in Knockturn Alley? You know how much Mother worries about you."

She's always like this. It's always about 'where are you in life? look at where I am!'.

"I keep telling Mother that you should have counted your blessings when Blaise Zabini asked you to marry him."

I turn to leave the shack, what used to be our own little hideout, when she grabs my arm.

"I'm worried about you, sweetie."

Am I being stubborn?

"You keep telling me that I won't understand your problems," Padma continues, relenting a bit, "but I perfectly understand. You really do need to settle down. It's different from what it looks like from the outside. You think that you can tell me that my life is a mess, and bring me out to the Shack to calm me down? I love it, Parvati. I love that I have little Angel's shit on my apron. I love that the twins who sometimes look like me, sometimes like Roger, act like they're somehow Fred and George reincarnate. They're my children, I smell them, I coddle them and nothing I would give to go back and imagine that I'm some sort of uppity Witch on the cover of Witches Weekly."

"I don't-"

"Yes, you do." Padma persists. "You fawn after Lavender, and you're jealous of Hermione. You think your one fling with Harry Potter entitles you to some elevated position. You think that Dumbledore's army was the high point of your life."

I cock my head. Is she crazy? "No! No, I don't! I really don't."

"Don't be stubborn, Parvati!" Padma wrings her hands exasperated. "Why else would you go off to Slughorn to try and become something you're not? It's okay to settle, sweetie! Look at me! Roger is a Vice President at Weasley's. We're going to go on a vacation to the South Pacific! I don't need to remind myself of how my life sucks compared to Hermione Granger. I have my kids and my husband. Besides, look where that's gotten Lavender! Look what happened to Pansy Parkinson! Look how completely forgettable Cho Chang has become!"

I love my sister. Her words are from her own heart, and I guess I'm a little saddened how perfectly she mirrors my own self. She is probably no different than I. But at least she has her family to help deal with her demons.

Not sure what I'm supposed to do, I wander around a bit before I decide to go back to Hogwarts. Returning to Knockturn Alley again before I have something tangible is definitely the last resort; first, I am powerless to overcome whatever had washed over me, and I don't think it was just the beer! Second, I really, really, really hate Knockturn Alley, and if it wasn't for Dennis I wouldn't have made that left turn. Besides, I have an OWL Charms class for fifth year Slytherins. Not something I take lightly.

House Slytherin had fallen on bad times since the Wizarding War. There is a veritable lack of students who are sorted there, since the Sorting hat almost never forces a student to a house he or she is consciously unwilling to join, always providing an alternative, House Slytherin now barely supports itself by a few students brave enough to remain. Some have suggested that House Slytherin be changed to House Snape. A few of the more respectable Slytherins, such as Theo and Blaise, had tried to voice independent opinions. Blaise went around asking the alumni to sign petitions, but ended up mostly being frustrated at the lack of participation. Of course, I signed his petition, too, but it mattered little. It was only until, surprisingly, Draco Malfoy entered the scene that it all settled down.

It had been his first public appearance since he graduated. Of course, he had been busy rebuilding his family fortune into the towering conglomerate of potioning wizardry that is now the Malfoy Potion and Charms, but he had never come out in public. There had been a lot of jeering from the public when he came to donate a sizable chunk to rebuild the Slytherin dungeon and to refurnish the Hogwarts Library. He also went so far as to set a commemorative statue of Professor Snape outside the Slytherin Dungeon, where he embraced Harry Potter in public. I am sure Harry attended one of his own rare public appearances for his strange fondness he had developed of Snape. Lav once speculated that Harry might actually be the illegitimate son of Snape; rubbish, I know, but that's the way of the gossip mill. Soon Draco had turned his public image to something of a repenting apostate, a prodigal son, a philanthropist. Some even argue that the public image of Malfoy P&C is better than Weasley's. Nevertheless, Slytherin still remains less attractive than most, and even now its ranks are often filled with the down trodden family of Death Eaters who nurture their young into becoming Neo Death Eaters.

Blaise once told me it was the curse of the Slytherins to be attracted to power. Power was, in his belief, something everyone sought, but only Slytherins claimed to seek in unabashed frankness. He's protective of his Slytherin roots, moreso than the lukewarm feeling I have for Gryffindor. What defines a person to join a House? I still cannot fathom what had brought me to Gryffindor. I am not brave; I am not adventurous; I am not proud and stubborn. Sometimes I suspect that the sorting hat simply sent me to somewhere other than Ravenclaw because I couldn't bear to be confused with Padma for the rest of my life.

In any case, Charms for Slytherins puts me on the edge of my seat. Slytherin, I am immediately flashed with an image of the noseless demon cackling in the ruins of our courtyard. Even after all these years, I still think about Slytherin as an unruly bunch of Neo Death Eaters mixed with Highborn snobs and an undercurrent of mistrust that I still can't shake despite having lived with non other than Mr. Highborn Snob, Blaise Zabini. It's my first class with this group, and I know I shouldn't go in with such apprehension, but I can't help it.

So, I am surprised when I walk into a rather mellow, calm atmosphere of dapper young fifth years. None of them have been selected for the Tri-Wizard competition, and hence their class had been generally pushed to after most of their peers who do have Tri Wizard contestants have fully mastered their own Charms classes.

The eyes follow me up to the pulpit, and they have all dutifully opened their books, looking up at me with what alarmingly seems to be the same apprehension that mirrors my own.

"Preparation for the OWLs requires you to master all of your previous training in Charms for the past five years, as well as basic Charms for fifth years that involves basic Concealment Charms."

I have long since abandoned opening classes with my favourite "what is the difference between Charms and Transfiguration". After a couple of classes teaching the upperclassmen it became uninteresting, and the students below the fourth year found it beyond their grasp.

"You'll find the list of previous studied charms in the syllabus I've handed out. These are the basic charms that have appeared most frequently in the OWLs for the past five years. I want you to learn them and practice them until you have achieved a success rate of at least seventy percent."

I hate myself for saying that. It takes out all the Magic from Magic. But Sprout specifically told me that class objectives should be the center of every student's study agenda, and she wanted nothing less than an average 64 points at the OWLs.

"The spells you do have to learn this year are the branch of Concealment charms involving mostly visual concealment, including transparency, and onwards to rudimentary spell concealment."

Half expecting to have been already greeted with a Malfoy to sneer at my introduction, my eyes flit this way and that at the congregation. They remain respective and calm, though somewhat aloof. Is this what Slytherin has become? I know I should be relieved, somewhat, but to see them this... this... Docile.

Later I am outdoors, a cup of coffee and five cigarette stubs in the ashtray. The autumn breeze is slender and delicious. Blaise has brought Tracey, and is sitting across me. I think he wants to finalize where he stands. He must have been unnerved the night I disappeared. Tracey probably put him up to this, but I understand where she's coming from, and she doesn't give off a vibe of ill will. We don't specifically talk about the mixed relationship that had be twist my ankle, but Tracey wants to clear any bad blood between ourselves.

"Docile," Tracey cocks her head to one side, "is pushing it. Blaise and I think that the new step for Slytherin is to clearly distance ourselves from the image that represents Voldemort. Times are changing, and we can't afford to always be the 'bad apple' of Hogwarts."

"Weeding out the weak," Blaise leds support to her opinion, like a neatly synchronized set of magical oscillators, "is putting it too bluntly. What the New Slytherin tries to put forth is putting it in a more positive spin. 'Fostering excellence', if you may say so."

"We actually look towards Slughorn as the new Paradigm," Tracey smiles, nodding at me as though she considers that I am Slughorn's protege. "In a decade, as the new Slytherin emerges from its lair, we will be the most well connected, socially advanced fraternity in the entire wizarding world. You want to access the high minds of the Ravennclaw? Want to get a stubborn Hufflepuff moving? Want another angle to join a venture with a Gryffindor? Slytherins will be there as the movers and shakers."

"That's what Draco is doing, lately," Blaise adds, "to create a social connection between all the different and fractured houses-"

Draco's name slaps me back from the surreal insanity that they are sputtering on about. "I thought you hated Draco."

"I don't hate, Draco," Blaise laughs uncomfortably, "I think we were just juvenile. We had our differences when we were young. But you can see he's become a new Draco. He's not the weird angst ridden creepy little prat he was when he was pissing in his PJs on how HP hurt his ego."

That was a bit too much detail, and I am certain Blaise is just smothering his continuing dislike of Draco Malfoy just to agree with Tracey in front of me.

"But we've both outgrown that, and we've come to understand the new role that Slytherin must take."

"When did this happen?" Just a few weeks ago he was so angry that I had compared him to Draco.

"Just a few days ago," Tracey smiles incredulously, as if I should know better, "Professor Slughorn and Draco threw a Slytherin get together for the new Slughorn Foundation. Didn't he tell you?"

Slughorn had been full on about how he was looking after Cho's missing husband. And I had thought that perhaps he was adding more of a personal touch to the lives of those around him for a moment. But this had come out of the blue. As having been the deputy general secretary of the Slug Club during my slave years, news that Slughorn had simply fished up a new Slug Club without telling me anything seemed too much of a shitty move so like him in nature that I am momentarily ashamed that I hadn't expected it.

I stare at the couple for a moment. Blaise, something of an ex fiance, chatting about how he repents his former dislike of the 'System' before me to his new girl. Tracey, throwing all the right jabs that are sure to stick like spears on the hide of hunted deer.

I suppose it's all come to this, and there is no one to blame but me. Inactivity on my part had festered my own state to grow into a putrid heap of passiveness.

I had denied the post war Glory that was sure to come to many of Dumbledore's Army in favor of living my own life than that of a foot note. A ride on which Michael Corner, Tony Goldstein and Neville Longbottom, to some extent, had taken to their current positions at Hogwarts.

I tried to chase my own dreams, to be different from Padma, ignoring Blaise, and endlessly persevering under the Slug, to end up more discarded than before. Blaise is with Tracey, denying his past which he not only shared with me, but also in my dreams of living apart from what defined us as Hogwarts students. Slughorn ditches his old fraternity he slaved me to maintain as soon as he smells money from the Malfoys. And my identical sister lives her life deep in the flow of things, presenting me always with a stark contrast to who I might have been: happily married, children of my own, a loving husband and no stormclouds over her head full of self-doubt and regret.

I look at the couple before me, wonder briefly for a moment if that's the vital thing I have been missing. You can often get lost from the ideas that you chase, but those that stand beside you are the constant of your life. I know Blaise too well to hate him. He is not cowarding out before me, he is not being a bastard to show me his new girl. I know that Blaise is giving me what I need, a good slap in the face to realize that I've been truly chasing windmills. What is tangible to him, and should have been tangible to me, the connection with another human being who will ride it out with you in storm or sunny sunshine is the only thing that you take with you in life. He is telling me that he has chosen Life.

Tracey is chatting excitedly of how she was going to ask Draco at their next meeting to support St. Mungo's chronic wasting curses department. Blaise momentarily ignores her and turns an eye toward me, intently with a mixture of sadness and steeled resolve.

'This is as far I would go with you on your journey, Parvati,' he seems to say.

I return a tender smile. I understand. I've made my decision myself.

You can't go on living like a teenager, or even like a twenty something, full of dreams and ideas all your life. Some day you will have to settle. It is never an easy path, and the difficulties of 'Reality' will eventually pull you down. Like Padma, who seemed to have swam headfirst towards settling down, as though she was eager to 'get ahead in life in everything', not even knowing where she was heading. And like many of my friends who eventually drifted to the bottom of the stream like sediment. I had let the caustic reality hurt me for so long. And I am grateful for Blaise, to give me this one final slap in the face to realize that it is time for me to make a choice.

Drift into the comfort of life, or go on living dangerously toward the uncertain future. It is not about mediocrity and genius. It is just about giving up or not.

And I am not spent. Not at all.

It is all a matter of seeing clearly.

Some days you will feel that you are at the bottom of the lowest of low. Some days, even despite what ever modicum of achievement you have reached, you will feel that your life has been wasted. It happens to the best of us. And it can happen to me.

I stand before the entrance to Knockturn Alley, dark even in the day time. It's random cobbled steps that irrationally dance to a lower street where buildings seem more crooked than what is sensible. I know I had not stumbled far down into the Alley. I had spent the best part of the morning searching, to no avail. Ordinarily, people would have given up, and normally it would be so easy to blame it on my intoxication.

I sense the truth; It doesn't want to be found.

I was not overwashed with emotion to have imagined a tavern appearing out of no where. And somewhere in these streets I had found a tavern where girls were faceless. Deep in my guts I feel it holds the key to where I am, and where I should be going. But most importantly, what happened to my friend, who seems to be threatening to become forgotten in the eyes of the wizarding world. I owe it to Lavender. And more importantly, I owe it to myself. One last attempt to see things that I believe in to the end.

I open my eyes and I see a doorway to the tavern I knocked upon last night, as though a disillusionment charm had been cast to mask what might have been apparent. I enter.