A/N: Thank you so much to Kermit 304 for their review on Chapter 16! :)
Only one more chapter left after this and then the story will be complete. Thank you so much for your support over the past year and your patience with my sometimes very long breaks in between updates.
Oh, and the Japanese "Chū kite!" means "Come in!", at least I think it does. If anyone knows of a better translation please do not hesitate to tell me.
RxExR!
Pictures on a Wall
Chapter 17 - Expect the Unexpected
Pansy hummed slightly as she moved through the small kitchen, taking her time to put all of the dishes and cutlery away properly. It had been a little over two months since Blaise's and Luna's wedding and last that she heard, the two of them had had quite an enjoyable time on their honeymoon in India.
Of course, now it was time for everyone leave behind the holidays and concentrate on their jobs once more. Luna had now joined the Ministry of Magic in the Creatures Department while Blaise continued to potter away in the Department of Mysteries. Harry was busy with all kinds of cases flooding in at the Auror Department and Ginny was now a regular for the Holyhead Harpies after having spent the past year training like mad in order to get the position. Lavender had also found a spot as a secretary in the Ministry of Magic, one that had pretty good work times as she only worked from nine in the morning until three in the afternoon for her shift, which was pretty good as the times for Hugo's nursery care were pretty much the same.
That in itself had caused some friction between her and Mrs. Weasley when Lavender had told her - she'd been adamant that Lavender could leave Hugo with her during the day, but Lavender had been just as set on not burdening her anymore and in maintaining her own independence.
She and Ron had returned to Japan though, happy to continue with their jobs as before. In fact, they were currently contemplating the pros and cons of staying in Japan even longer than their intended two years. The country had a sort of charm that the rest of Europe lacked; a charm that she and Ron both felt inherently drawn to.
A knock on the door pulled her from her thoughts and she wondered who it might be. Ron had a key and even if he should have forgotten it, he knew that she was at home right now so therefore the door would be open. And it wouldn't be Keiko or Yuki, the two of them knocked differently. This knock was too impersonal, too polite. It gave her a strange sense of foreboding.
"Chū kite!" She called, the Japanese words flowing easily from her mouth as she poked her head out of the small kitchen. When nobody made a move to enter the room, she pulled out her wand, walking to the door with it in front of her.
Opening the door, she was confronted with a sight she never thought she would see.
"Mother? Father? Azalea?" She looked from her parents to her sister in confusion, wondering why they were here. She hadn't heard from her parents since the end of the war (which was now over a good eleven years ago if she thought about it) and she hadn't heard from her sister in over a year, ever since she had graduated from Hogwarts. "What are you doing here?"
"May we come in?" Her mother's voice was as haughty as it had been in her childhood and Pansy's brow furrowed as she realised that her mother was completely ignoring her question.
"Of course. Please close the door behind you." She nodded, her own expression growing icy. She nodded and walked back to the kitchen. If they wanted to show up out of nowhere and then ignore her, fine. She had some work to finish anyway.
"That is the house elf's job." Her father stated and Pansy looked at him.
"We do not have one." The horror on her parent's faces was a look she wished she could take a picture of and eternalise in a book. It was truly spectacular. Her sister smirked slightly and Pansy was glad to see that. It meant that not all hope was lost for her family yet.
She watched her parents stand rather awkwardly in the combined living and bedroom and she ignored them in favour of drying the glasses and then putting them away. She knew that it rankled her parents, but honestly, she couldn't bring herself to care.
"What are you doing?" Her mother finally exclaimed, sounding completely and utterly aghast.
"Drying the glasses so that I can put them away." Pansy raised an eyebrow at her mother and continued working.
"One of your status should not be lowering themselves like that. Where has your good education gone?" Her mother sounded so affronted that Pansy wanted to start laughing. Only five minutes and she already knew that her mother at least had not changed at all since the war. Her father probably hadn't changed either.
"Down the drain." Pansy replied, finally turning around to face them. "Probably down the same drain that the family's reputation went down after you got involved in a war that you would have better done to avoid." She looked at her parents, the look in her eyes fierce now. "Let's get to the point, I have a lot of work still left to do. Why are you here?"
It pained her that her family was like this but it was something that she had gotten over.
"It is truly horrible to see how low you have sunken. I see that the rumours concerning your ineptitude with magic are also true." Her mother sniffed and Pansy rolled her eyes.
"It's a decision I made. I don't want to use magic at the moment. I'm perfectly content living like a Muggle. In fact, I'm happier right now than I ever was back in Oxfordshire." She dried her hands and sweeped her gaze over the three assembled members of her family. "But back to my question. Why are you here?"
"You are being willful and insolent and if we were back home, I would discipline you right now." Her mother fumed and Pansy resisted the urge to once again roll her eyes at her mother's antics. It was one of the perks of growing up; being able to not only form your own opinion about things but also see the flaws in your parents' way of life. In her parents' case, there were enough flaws to fill the Marianas Trench.
"You are to be married." Her father's stern voice finally made itself heard.
"Pardon?" That was not what Pansy had expected.
"Your willful and stubborn behaviour is beginning to affect the family's reputation, one that we have taken great pains in building up again over the past few years while you wiled away in that horrid school." Her father's disinterested look sweeped over the apartment while her mother was looking around in clear distaste at the simple decorations that adorned the walls and shelves. "We have managed, nevertheless, to reach an agreement with the Avery family. You are to be married to Carlton Avery in four months time."
"You should feel lucky that his parents agreed to it at all." Her mother added snidely. Azalea looked uncomfortable and sent her a look of pity.
"Get out." Pansy said quietly, a silent sort of anger filling her. "I want you to leave my house right now and never return."
"Pardon?" Her mother looked affronted.
"You heard me right. I desire you to leave the premises right now and never show your faces here again." Pansy drew herself up to her full height and glared at her parents. "The only man I can ever imagine marrying as of this moment in time is Ronald Weasley and as you are clearly deciding to ignore my rather obvious attachment to him and thus snub both him and me by doing so."
"Young lady-" Her father began.
Pansy's wand was in her hands quicker than they could blink. "Only because I decide to not use magic in my day-to-day life, does not mean that I am unable to employ it." Her eyes were cold as she looked at them. "In case you have forgotten, I shall endeavour to remind you of something. I grew up in a household where dark magic was taught to us before the alphabet and I fought in a war that cost too many people their life. I will use those spells that you taught me against you. Now, I won't ask again. Leave. Now."
Her mother sent her a disdainful look and she swept from the room with a huff. As Azalea walked past her a mumbled 'sorry' reached her ears but Pansy did nothing to acknowledge it.
"You are henceforth no longer a member of the Parkinson family. Your name will be erased from all records." Her father paused briefly in front of her to tell her that before leaving the room as well. "We shall not attempt to contact you again and you shall not try to contact us either."
Pansy remained standing tall watching them leave until they were gone completely and she had heard the 'pop' indicating that they had apparated away.
With a small swish of her wand she made the door fall shut and the lock click. Then she sank into a chair, her wand falling to the floor and her head into her hands.
What had she done?
~.~.~.~.~
"Ginny said that she had some quite important news to deliver to us today." Luna mentioned as she took a scone and put some cream on it.
"Yeah, she sounded quite excited over the floo." Lavender replied, placing a second scone on her plate and eyeing the cream before deciding that she was going to add some more to the two of them after all.
"Pansy's also got something to tell us?" Luna asked, putting the spoon back in the small jar of cream.
"Yeah, although she sounded slightly more distraught when I talked to her yesterday. I think she's looking forward to seeing Hugo again though." Lavender replied, reaching for the spoon that Luna had just put back.
She and Pansy had grown inexplicably close, bonding over Hugo as they took to calling each other at least once a week. It was a friendship that was admittedly unexpected, but wonderful to observe.
"Hermione also said that she would be here?" Lavender queried, looking over at Luna.
"Yes, although she said that she might be a tad late." Luna replied, now reaching for the strawberry jam.
"A tad late might be the underestimation of the century." Lavender replied, looking over at the clock hanging on the wall. As usual, she and Luna had appeared promptly in the small café in London at precisely four in the afternoon for the monthly tea that they had all taken to having in order to keep up to date with each other.
Emphasis on four o'clock. It was now four-thirty and the other three were still not here.
"Maybe they saw some Crumple-Horned Snorkacks." Luna said wisely and Lavender sent her a look full of doubt but eventually decided not to comment on it. One day, hopefully, Luna would realise that the creatures that she so firmly believed in were nothing but the creations of her father's overactive imagination.
Today would not be that day.
"Sorry I'm late." Pansy sat down in one of the chairs, letting out a huff of exhaustion as she sank down into it. "The portkey I was meant to take didn't work, the man at the Ministry in Japan hadn't put the spell on it correctly so I had to take the floo."
"But the floo doesn't connect between here and Japan." Luna pointed out.
"Exactly." Pansy nodded and smiled slightly at the waiter as he poured her a cup of tea. "I had to floo from the Japanese Ministry to the Chinese one in Beijing, then from there to the one in Mumbai in India. There I had to wait for some other Minister to arrive first before I could floo over to the Ministry for the Arabian Peninsula in Abu Dhabi and from there I flooed over to Cairo in Egypt. Then I had to floo to Rome and then to Paris before I finally arrived at the Ministry here in London." Pansy sighed and then took a sip from her tea. "I swear I'm never doing that again. I've seen more of the ministries of this world in the past half hour than I ever desired to see."
"That sounds horrid." Lavender agreed and Luna nodded.
"It is. They should try and organise a floo network that has a longer range, the current one is quite limited and portkeys can be quite a bother seeing as you always have to get the Ministries to make one and authorise it. And I don't particularly feel like telling some official that the reason I want a portkey is because I need to tell a friend about the engagement of my sister or something like that. And you can't apparate that far away either, you also have to apparate from country to country if you're lucky and talented but even then it uses up so much of your energy that you have to sleep once you get to the other side." Pansy looked seriously annoyed at the various types of transport and Luna nodded thoughtfully but before she could reply, Hermione entered the café.
"Sorry I'm late." Hermione rushed in, looking quite flustered with her hair all over the place as she took off her jacket. "My doctor's appointment started late because the session before mine ran over and then mine ran over as well."
"Doctor's?" Luna looked at Hermione in worry.
"Hi guys, sorry I'm late." Ginny arrived, smiling brightly at all of them as she took the final seat at the table. "I kind of lost track of time."
They all raised their eyebrows at her and she shrugged, looking sheepish.
"You know that everyone else has a genuine excuse?" Lavender asked, but her tone wasn't biting but amused.
"I forgot?" Ginny looked at them hopefully and they all chuckled and Hermione shook her head with uncontained mirth as she and Ginny sat down.
"So, what's new?" Lavender asked, glad that everyone was finally there. The talk turned to their work first, as it always did as Luna mentioned something about the passing of some new rules pertaining to creatures and how some people higher up in the Ministry weren't willing to pass all of them although they were apparently all necessary. Pansy ranted some more about the different modes of magical transport before telling them about some of the stranger customers that she'd encountered back in Japan. Hermione told them about the explosion that had taken out three of their labs two weeks prior and Ginny was quite enthusiastic about the recent season with the Holyhead Harpies. Lavender had now settled into her job at the Ministry completely and had finally found the balance between looking after Hugo and work so she wasn't quite as sleep deprived as before. It was also helping that Hugo was now nearly a year old, having passed the infant stages of his life.
"Oh yes, Diana gave birth last week." Hermione stated halfway through Ginny's tale of how she had managed to outfly one of the other chasers on the team that she didn't get along with quite as well as she would have hoped.
"Congratulations to her." Lavender said, the others also smiling. "What was it? They never did tell us."
"A boy, as per usual Pureblood families. They called him Paul." Hermione replied, her eyes warm as she thought of her little godson. Greg and Diana had been ecstatic and were still basking in the glow of people with a newborn child. Nothing appeared to be able to mar their happiness.
"As per usual?" Ginny queried, her eyebrows going up.
"Yeah, Draco and I looked into it a bit more, but essentially all Pureblood families give birth to a son first, no matter what. It's something to do with genes or some kind of ancient magic, but we're not so sure about that." She shrugged. "Fact is though, that all Pureblood families' firstborn is a boy which is why a lot of them never have more than one child."
"What about you Pansy, aren't you the eldest though?" Ginny turned to Pansy. Now that she thought about it, the eldest in both her mother's and father's families were boys and Charlie was the eldest in their family so that was also true in their case.
"No, I have an elder brother." Pansy responded, taking a sip of her tea.
"Why have we never heard about him?" Lavender asked, trying to remember whether she had ever come across an older Parkinson at school.
"He's a year older than me and my parents disinherited him while he was still in school, in his third year, which caused him to move over to the States in order to avoid the attacks that the rest of the Pureblood families would have orchestrated in order to get rid of such a disgrace. I haven't seen him since I was twelve." She looked sad at that.
"What's his name?" Luna asked, looking over at Pansy with sympathy.
"Lucas." She smiled slightly. "I don't know if he's still in the States but it might be worth trying to find him. Who knows, maybe now that I'm disinherited too he'll be willing to talk to me." She sighed.
"Wait-" Came Lavender's voice.
"You're disinherited?" Ginny looked aghast.
"What happened?" Luna and Hermione both voiced the same question.
"My parents came over about two weeks ago and told me, after insulting the way I'm currently living, that I'm to marry Carlton Avery. I told them that there was no way that I would so they disinherited me." She looked sad and everyone knew that despite the lack of contact between the members of the Parkinson family, it hurt Pansy that she had been disinherited.
"I'm sorry." Hermione put her hand on hers and Pansy nodded, a sad smile on her lips.
"How did Ron react?" Ginny asked, knowing with absolute certainty that her brother wasn't going to be happy about this.
"He was pretty mad when I told him. Wanted to go over to them and tell them where they could shove their behaviour. I told him to leave it, there was nothing that we could do to change my father's mind. And to be honest, I don't want him to change it. Either they accept my choice of partner and my style of life or they don't. We live in the twenty-first century, it's time that they got used to the fact that things change." Her eyes were sad nonetheless.
"So you're completely cut off?" Lavender asked.
"Yeah." Pansy nodded and looked slightly bitter. "I won't be able to access any of my inheritance and it's actually lucky that I opened a new bank account at Gringotts before and had all the money I earned over the past year transferred there. Otherwise I would be high and dry right now."
"What about your name?" Lavender asked and the other three looked at Lavender in confusion. She looked slightly embarrassed as she began to explain. "When one gets disinherited, they're not allowed to keep the family surname in order to avoid the family being shamed even more." She shrugged, her cheeks slightly pink.
"So you're-" Luna began.
"Lavender Starley is what I go by nowadays. It used to be my grandmother's maiden name so it's fine for me to use it." She sighed and looked out of the window before looking back at them. "Normally those of us which are disinherited and excommunicated take a surname from a minor family branch or of a former family that married into ours."
"You even have rules for after you're disinherited?" Ginny sounded incredulous.
"Yeah, we do." Lavender swallowed.
They all turned to look at Pansy.
"Pansy Perreault, at your service." Her smile didn't quite reach her eyes.
"Side family from France?" Hermione asked.
"Yeah, my great-aunt married into the family. It's quite a pain actually, I've had to go to the Ministry to notify them of my new surname and to Gringotts and all the other places where I had my name down too." Pansy replied.
"Don't they keep your old surname?" Luna queried, her brows furrowing as she considered it.
"No. As soon as my father notified them of it, they erased my surname so therefore I would have been simply 'Pansy' had I not told them of my new surname."
"Pureblood families can be horrible." Ginny muttered and Pansy merely nodded in response. There was nothing else she could say. "But to cheer you all up," She looked around at their downcast faces, "Harry and I are engaged to be married!" She was grinning broadly now and the others all looked at her in shock before the cheers erupted.
"Congratulations Ginny." Luna hugged her over the table. "I was sure that you two would end up together, ever since I caught you underneath the Nargles in fifth year."
Ginny blushed and the others laughed. "Thanks Luna." Ginny's cheeks were flushed.
"Congrats, you two deserve happiness." Lavender held her cup up and Ginny smiled at her.
"Finally, I thought you'd never get around to it." Pansy smirked and Ginny shot her an exasperated look which quickly melted into happiness as she saw the teasing light in Pansy's eyes.
"Took you two long enough." Hermione also hugged her and Ginny responded by also hugging her tightly.
"Thanks." She smiled at all of them.
"So when's the date for the wedding?" Lavender asked and the next half an hour was spent talking about the wedding (which was hopefully going to be next Spring, well after Christmas), the engagement party (in three weeks, once she got the courage to tell her mother that she and Harry were going to tie the knot) and various other things such as Harry's proposal and what she wanted to wear and so on and so forth.
At the end of it they were all grinning, the somber mood of their former topic having been left behind. Luna looked over at Hermione though as she remembered something.
"You said you were late because of a doctor's appointment, are you okay?" The corners of her eyes crinkled in worry and Hermione was quick to pat her reassuringly on the hand.
"Yeah, I'm fine." Hermione smiled gently. "I've just had the most awful stomach bug for the past two weeks so Draco dragged me to the doctor's." Luna's eyes widened as realisation settled in.
"You're pregnant!" She looked happy, shocked and slightly overwhelmed all at once.
"Yeah." Hermione nodded and then sighed, an expression of mock horror on her face. "Child number five, what should I say?"
Laughter filled the air as the others congratulated her as well and the sun was well on the way to setting when they finally got up to pay the bill and go back home.
Standing outside, Hermione looked up at the setting sun and a realisation struck her as the others joined her.
"What's the matter?" Luna asked, having always been slightly more perceptive than most. The others joined the two of them and Hermione turned to look at them.
"Nothing. I just realised that exactly two years ago all of you rejoined this time." She said softly and everyone's minds flew back over everything that had happened during that time.
"That long?" Pansy asked, wondering how the time had flown by so quickly.
"It's strange to see it like that." Lavender agreed. Two years ago she would never have thought that things would turn out the way they had and yet here they were.
"To a new part of our lives and may the next ten years be as amazing as the last two have been." Luna stated, suddenly feeling quite sentimental. Everyone nodded, their throats feeling slightly clogged up.
"To the next ten years."
They smiled and all went their separate ways back home.