Fic Post: no one ever told us about the sorrow
Title: no one ever told us about the sorrow
Pairing: Justin Finch-Fletchley/Pansy Parkinson
Prompt: the opportunities you missed
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3462
Summary: Three moments, across April.
Author's Notes: 9/13. Title from Al Green, “How Can You Mend A Broken Heart.”
Pansy tallies up her losses some nights, lying awake in her rented room at the Cauldron and staring at the strange yellow mottling on the ceiling, thinking about her family’s brownstone in Birmingham, her father’s closed-up Healing practice, all the galleons and sickles in the Gringotts accounts still frozen by the Ministry. All the things she can’t get back, all the opportunities she’s missed.
Three moments, across April:
1.
The restaurant Blaise asked to meet her in is elegant and expensive: crowded with Muggles, far, far away from the magical, maddening crowds filling Diagon’s high street. Pansy wears her highest heels and a white silk blouse, a pleated skirt in a deep shade of green that makes her feel brave. Blaise, in turn, is handsome and confident beside her - his bespoke grey suit is beautiful in its tailoring, he paid their taxi driver with Muggle notes like he does it all the time. Maybe he does, now - after eleven months apart, Pansy doesn’t know.
Blaise orders for them in rapid Italian once they’ve been seated at their table: red wine by the bottle, burrata with ripe tomatoes and black olives, beef carpaccio with asparagus, braised artichokes dusted with thinly-shaved parmesan. Pansy taps her nails on the tabletop while they drink, watching him make easy conversation with the wait staff, the deceptive lightness of his body language. Blaise entered the war attractive and rich and left it just the same, if not more, especially after his mother’s latest marriage: Stepfather Number Eight is a half-blood who doubled his fortune investing in Muggle stocks and remains firmly indifferent to the rumors surrounding Niobe Zabini’s previous husbands. Blaise went to New York after the dust of the last battle finally settled, fell off the edge of their world for the better part of a year and returned with his pockets full of gold, his cheekbones and his business sense both as sharp as ever.
There is, of course, a bit of mystery involved: Pansy might as well have pried it out of him with an oyster fork, but somewhere between the gnocchi and the saltimbocca and their second bottle of wine, she managed to dig out the truth. There was no waiting business deal for him in London; he has not come back for his family, for his friends, for a personal sense of closure. No: Blaise left New York City and all the empty, glittering multitude because he was married, and then divorced, and had nothing left to keep him there.
Pansy understands, to an extent; feels a sense of kinship in knowing that there are circles closed to him, now, that they share in having black spots on a map of favorite places neither one of them can ever visit. “She’s an American,” is all he says when Pansy presses him for details: a name, a photograph, a favorite color. “And a very gifted witch. Her father’s in hotels.”
They talk about his mother, spending the season in Barcelona with her newest beau; she tells him about living and working at the Cauldron, the sad monotony of her daily life; they trade stories about their shrinking circle of friends and classmates: the results of Draco’s parole hearing and Millicent’s recent escape to the States, Goyle’s trial and Tracey’s hospitalization and how much they both miss Daphne. Dessert, when it comes, is rich and satisfying: panettone with mascarpone, tiramisu, small cups of espresso. The bill is astronomical, but Blaise doesn’t bat an eye - he pays again with Muggle money, tips generously, and refuses to let her reach for her pocketbook to pay him back. If it were anyone else, she would be embarrassed, but that’s just Blaise: throwing money around like it doesn’t mean anything, spending his money and his time on her just because he can. It is remarkably normal, in a way she didn’t think she would ever feel again.
They are waiting for the server to return when she sees them: Pansy shifts her gaze and there, across the length of the busy restaurant, the maître d’ is leading Justin and Susan Bones to a table at the center, where a well-dressed group of men and women are already waiting to greet them. She was right: there is a strong resemblance between Justin and his family. An older woman rises to kiss his cheek and Pansy thinks, briefly, he looks like his mother.
It takes a moment, but once Blaise follows the line of her eyes, Pansy watches for the subtle click of recognition in his expression; when it comes, he stays, surprisingly, silent on the matter. Blaise reaches for her hand over the table and Pansy turns her palm up, lets him lace their fingers together before he pulls it closer, pressing a brief, dry kiss to the back of her knuckles.
Before they leave, Blaise gives her a diamond bracelet that once belonged to his mother - a gift to her from Stepfather Number Six, right before he was sent away for securities fraud. Blaise clasps it over her wrist and tells her that he wants her to have it, that it suits her. “A gift,” he says, “Because I missed you.” The unspoken truth feels electric between them: better you than the Ministry’s vaults, Pug. She appreciates it, anyway.
Pansy traces a fingertip along the platinum setting of the bracelet while they wait at the coat check, and when she glances back she watches Susan lay her hand over Justin’s wrist where it rests on the table, watches his family talk and laugh around him, and thinks about how it would feel to be there, in the center of all that warmth and affection. She wonders what would happen if she walked up and said ‘hello.’ Blaise slides her coat over her shoulders and as they head toward the door, she tells him that she always thought diamonds were for sad people.
“You are a sad person,” he says, and takes her home.
2.
Madam Montgomery’s office is the smallest in this particular Ministry suite: Pansy isn’t sure what she was expecting, sitting across from Amaryllis in a high-backed chair, feeling dwarfed by the floor-to-ceiling bookcases behind her. Amaryllis’ office is tastefully decorated, classic but still modern, with large faux windows filling the wall behind her broad oak desk; the world outside might be full of cold April showers, but Amaryllis has a warm, sunny beach scene playing on a loop behind her. Currently, the sun is beginning to set against a deep blue sky, crystal-clear water rolling up in strong, foaming waves against a sandy beach, and if Pansy concentrates she can almost smell it in the air circulated by the ceiling fan overhead, can nearly taste the salt in her mouth. If they like you, she is coming to understand, Magical Maintenance can work absolute wonders.
“This is clearly harassment,” Amaryllis says, brisk and businesslike, pushing her paperwork across the blotter for Pansy to inspect, and Pansy has a brief feeling of déjà-vu as she looks over the notes her aunt has scribbled into the margins. If they closed the curtains, let down Amaryllis’ hair from its tight French braid, Pansy could almost pretend she was a child again: small and curious, sounding out the sharp syllables of MAGI-level legalese under her favorite aunt’s watchful gaze.
Nothing is quite so simple anymore.
“The focus on Slytherin students is astounding,” Amaryllis says, tapping a finger against a paragraph near the top of the parchment. It’s from a box of casefiles she’d taken from Auror Savage, Pansy’s at the top, but then Adrian Pucey’s beneath it, Millicent Bulstrode, Nasreen Shafiq, Terence Higgs, Marcus Flint, the lives of dozens of Pansy’s friends and former housemates broken down into official Auror briefs. “For a government that prides itself on purging Death Eater interference from its practices, they are certainly willing to bend the law to their advantage to get their numbers up. Barty Crouch did that, in the first war - suspended due process, forced through guilty verdicts and Azkaban sentences. I’m not saying that there aren’t others in your situation who have legitimately aided and abetted criminal family members, but the DMLE encouraging procedure to fall by the wayside in their investigations is appalling. This kind of focus on unaffiliated bystanders is a lawsuit waiting to happen.”
“Does this mean the Ministry will stop following my every move?”
“Unlikely, unfortunately.” She scoffs a little, taking back the parchment. “At least for the moment. But an ethical breach like this is what we’ve been trying to move on from. I’ll have Waldegrave and the Lower Temple take a look at this, see if we can draw up a draft to petition the Minister. We can go over it in more detail at our next meeting,” Amaryllis says, pushing back a bit from the desk, rubbing lightly, tiredly, at her temples as she glances at the clock. “I have an appointment with the Minister’s counsel after this, and then I need to get home.”
Pansy nods, murmuring an affirmation as she gathers her things to leave, and it isn’t until she moves to get her cloak from the hook at the door that Amaryllis speaks again.
“Do you -” she starts, then stops. “Do you have dinner plans, Pansy?”
There is an almost comically long pause before Pansy understands the deeper meaning in the question. There are a few photographs on the desk, hanging on the walls: Amaryllis and her husband at their wedding, others with people and places Pansy has never met, never seen. Two girls in Gryffindor ties stand in front of the Hogwarts Express, holding tightly to the hands of a little boy with blond hair and an upturned nose. My cousins, Pansy thinks, and clenches and unclenches her hands at her sides. She has never met them. She isn’t sure what she would even say if she did.
“Oh.” Pansy bites her lip. “I’m sorry, I do. An old school friend of mine is back from the States, and I already promised him I would -”
Amaryllis waves her off. “Another time, then,” she says, cool and composed. If she’s disappointed, she doesn’t let it show.
Pansy makes her way through the department’s winding hallway, headed for the bank of elevators in the main vestibule that will take her back to the Ministry Atrium, and from there, dinner with Draco and Blaise. She passes open office doors and closed conference spaces, tries not to get lost as she passes a copy room, a mail room, the main desk of their in-house archive. Just down the hall, the Auror block is a maze of cluttered cubicles and mismatched furniture, sharp overhead lights highlighting the threadbare carpeting and overstuffed file cabinets, with ‘wanted’ posters and informational signs tacked to every bulletin board. In contrast, the Office of Magical Law is all warm colors and wood paneling, uncluttered and clean in a way that makes her think of courthouses and libraries and hotel reception desks. Aurors and Advocates might work side by side, but their operating space might as well be on the bloody moon, for how different they are.
Pansy has just taken the last turn toward the main vestibule when she sees him: it’s the last of the student annexes, the closed, student-only spaces throughout the Advocate block, glass-walled conference rooms where the Lower- and Middle-Temple trainees do their research for the Ministry’s various legal teams, practice their mock trial arguments, work on their MAGI theses. Justin Finch-Fletchley is alone at the long table, up to his elbows in casefiles and thick, dusty legal texts, caught in the warm yellow halo of the overhead light, and there is a moment where Pansy feels like she has been thrown back in time - yanked, Portkey-style, back to the beginning of last August, when she saw him sitting by himself in a corner table at the Cauldron. Remember when you thought he liked you? she asks herself. Remember when you thought the two of you were friends?
She reaches out and knocks hesitantly against the glass, and when Justin eventually looks up from his paperwork there is a second where all she can hear is her own pulse pounding in her ears, where it feels like her heart is going to fall out of her throat. Justin’s expression is surprised, but still inscrutable; Pansy swallows and smiles tremulously, offers a little wave, and Justin holds her gaze for a long moment before his eyes slide past hers and he turns away. A door opens soundlessly behind him and four other Advocates pile in, one carrying a cardboard tray of drinks, another a bag of Chinese takeaway, the lot of them talking and laughing but their voices unheard, protected by the soundproofing spells on the room.
Pansy disappears while he’s distracted, rushing down the length of the hallway until she is out of the department entirely, catching the lift just as the doors are about to close and pushing her way through the crowd to the back. No one looks at her, here: they are in just as much of a hurry to leave as she is, and Pansy takes some comfort in that, leaning her back against the wall of the elevator as they rise up the levels toward the Atrium, trying to steady her breathing.
She is so, so tired of feeling like she is somewhere on the outside, looking in; like she is forever cursed to keep her nosed pressed to the glass of her own damn life. Enough, she tells herself, Enough of this, already. Get a grip on yourself and move on.
If she repeats it enough, she’s sure, eventually she’ll come to believe it.
3.
Penelope Clearwater is dry-heaving into the bathroom sink the first time Pansy ever speaks with her. The Cauldron is half-empty this close to closing, and Pansy knocks on the door to the ladies’ room when she hears a sound like parchment tearing, the only response a long, harsh coughing fit that doesn’t stop when she walks inside.
The sight of her makes Pansy’s stomach twist: Penelope is bent over the sink, her hands gripping the sides as she shakes and retches, a long, thin line of yellowish bile falling from her mouth into the basin. She arches her back as she coughs again, reaching blindly for a paper towel, her expression blank when she shifts her gaze to the gilt-edged mirror. The two of them stand frozen in the glass for what feels like a long time: Pansy flushed pink with embarrassment, one hand anxiously twisting the hem of her apron, Penelope staring back with tired eyes, wiping the paper towel across her mouth so that it smears her lipstick halfway across her face. She turns on the faucet to wash away the sick, water pouring into the basin in a steady, noisy rush that muffles the sound of the closing pub bleeding through the walls.
“Are you alright?” Pansy finally asks. She sounds - stupid, she thinks. Stilted and awkward, still staring at Penelope as she gathers herself together.
“Yes, thank you,” Penelope says, and there is a jagged edge to her voice, her throat clearly still raw and hurting. She runs a fresh towel under the tap and dabs at her mouth, cleaning off the makeup smear that stains her mouth and chin. It’s a deep red, a dark red; the kind that Pansy favors, the kind that makes her think of pomegranate seeds, of soft, dark velvet. The kind that makes her think of blood.
“Can I help you with anything?” Pansy asks, and Penelope shakes her head, reaching for her open handbag on the counter to reapply her lipstick.
“No, thank you.” The lipstick slides easily over her mouth, and although she looks calmer now than when Pansy first walked in, there is still something missing in her expression; an emptiness in her eyes that Pansy doesn’t like. Penelope caps the black tube in her hand and puts it away. “Morning sickness is, unfortunately, a misnomer.”
Penelope fixes her hair and turns off the faucet while Pansy can only blink at her, caught off-guard at how easily she shares this news. Pansy barely remembers Penelope Clearwater from Hogwarts, and aside from the handful of times she and her husband have passed through the pub, she’s only ever really seen her in the papers. Penelope looks better than she did the last time Pansy saw her in person, or her photo in the Prophet: there’s more color in her cheeks, her face is fuller. She is only just beginning to show.
Penelope fixes on a pleasant, if vacant, expression as she turns to leave, and she is bony and thin under Pansy’s hands when she slips through a puddle in her sensible heels, her grip on Pansy like iron as she tries to regain her balance. Bony and thin, and surprisingly strong. Penelope gasps as she stumbles, and there is a moment where her eyes close, where the vacancy in her expression slips and slides into fear, then agony, then exhaustion, one right after the other. Penelope digs her nails into Pansy’s arm as Pansy helps put her to rights, faltering through the routine thanks as she straightens and clearly forgetting Pansy’s name until she helpfully supplies it.
“Parkinson?” Penelope echoes, and the clouds seem to disappear from her eyes as she focuses them on Pansy. “Right, Parkinson. Justin’s mentioned you.”
Pansy swallows hard at that, simultaneously curious and sick at the thought of Justin talking about her to other people, carrying her into contexts outside of late nights at the Leaky Cauldron. She forces a laugh and asks, “Is that good or bad?”
Penelope shrugs indifferently, looking back at her reflection for a moment before she moves to leave. “You’re the one he lent his records to, yes? I helped him choose a few of the albums. Rumours is a particular favorite of mine.”
When they exit the restroom, there is a moment where it is just the two of them standing in the hallway off the main room of the Cauldron, Penelope fumbling through her handbag, sending glances toward Pansy like there is something else she wants to say. Penelope is tall, taller than Pansy, and the warm overhead lighting catches in her curly hair, creating a halo around her head. She looks different up close, delicate but not breakable, but it’s clear just from watching her that if she weren’t already famous - or infamous, depending on your social circle - for her talks at the International Confederation of Wizards, or the Azkaban diary she’d published in December, she would still draw you in with that magnetic lighthouse charm, that moonlike pull into her orbit. It’s no wonder her Weasley husband looks at her like she’s the bloody sun, that Justin still looks to her for guidance.
“He speaks very highly of you,” Penelope finally tells her, and it’s Pansy’s turn to falter. “I’d like you to know that, in case you thought otherwise. I know that for the both of us, feelings are… difficult, at times. Some things are still hard to process.”
“Like what?”
“Joy,” she says. “Love. Happiness. Kindness. There are certain things that he and I both still struggle with, even now, and sometimes it can be…” Penelope glances away. Across the room, her husband is waiting at their table; when she catches his eye, Percy Weasley visibly brightens. She doesn’t smile. “It can be - easier, sometimes, just to embrace pain, and sadness, and disappointment. It isn’t meant to be personal, or a slight. It’s not even about you, not really. It’s just… it’s just the way things are right now. He’s still healing. We all are.”
Pansy’s mouth has gone dry. Penelope studies her quietly, her words hanging in the air between them. Pansy spends so many of her nights lying awake in her rented room, staring at the blank expanse of the ceiling, thinking about all the things she can’t change, or get back; thinking of all the opportunities she’s missed. What could she do with her life, if she was smarter, or bolder, or kinder? If she cared less about what people thought of her? What could Pansy ask of Penelope, if she were a different sort of person - a braver sort of person, someone who could handle being told the truth? Would she even want to know the answer?
Pansy doesn’t say anything for a moment, just nods, and feels very, very tired. “That’s good to know,” she says quietly, and then, “Congratulations, Mrs. Weasley. I hope you feel better,” before she turns and walks away, walks back behind the bar.
Three moments, across April. But they are, of course, just moments.
Pairing: Justin Finch-Fletchley/Pansy Parkinson
Prompt: the opportunities you missed
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3462
Summary: Three moments, across April.
Author's Notes: 9/13. Title from Al Green, “How Can You Mend A Broken Heart.”
Pansy tallies up her losses some nights, lying awake in her rented room at the Cauldron and staring at the strange yellow mottling on the ceiling, thinking about her family’s brownstone in Birmingham, her father’s closed-up Healing practice, all the galleons and sickles in the Gringotts accounts still frozen by the Ministry. All the things she can’t get back, all the opportunities she’s missed.
Three moments, across April:
1.
The restaurant Blaise asked to meet her in is elegant and expensive: crowded with Muggles, far, far away from the magical, maddening crowds filling Diagon’s high street. Pansy wears her highest heels and a white silk blouse, a pleated skirt in a deep shade of green that makes her feel brave. Blaise, in turn, is handsome and confident beside her - his bespoke grey suit is beautiful in its tailoring, he paid their taxi driver with Muggle notes like he does it all the time. Maybe he does, now - after eleven months apart, Pansy doesn’t know.
Blaise orders for them in rapid Italian once they’ve been seated at their table: red wine by the bottle, burrata with ripe tomatoes and black olives, beef carpaccio with asparagus, braised artichokes dusted with thinly-shaved parmesan. Pansy taps her nails on the tabletop while they drink, watching him make easy conversation with the wait staff, the deceptive lightness of his body language. Blaise entered the war attractive and rich and left it just the same, if not more, especially after his mother’s latest marriage: Stepfather Number Eight is a half-blood who doubled his fortune investing in Muggle stocks and remains firmly indifferent to the rumors surrounding Niobe Zabini’s previous husbands. Blaise went to New York after the dust of the last battle finally settled, fell off the edge of their world for the better part of a year and returned with his pockets full of gold, his cheekbones and his business sense both as sharp as ever.
There is, of course, a bit of mystery involved: Pansy might as well have pried it out of him with an oyster fork, but somewhere between the gnocchi and the saltimbocca and their second bottle of wine, she managed to dig out the truth. There was no waiting business deal for him in London; he has not come back for his family, for his friends, for a personal sense of closure. No: Blaise left New York City and all the empty, glittering multitude because he was married, and then divorced, and had nothing left to keep him there.
Pansy understands, to an extent; feels a sense of kinship in knowing that there are circles closed to him, now, that they share in having black spots on a map of favorite places neither one of them can ever visit. “She’s an American,” is all he says when Pansy presses him for details: a name, a photograph, a favorite color. “And a very gifted witch. Her father’s in hotels.”
They talk about his mother, spending the season in Barcelona with her newest beau; she tells him about living and working at the Cauldron, the sad monotony of her daily life; they trade stories about their shrinking circle of friends and classmates: the results of Draco’s parole hearing and Millicent’s recent escape to the States, Goyle’s trial and Tracey’s hospitalization and how much they both miss Daphne. Dessert, when it comes, is rich and satisfying: panettone with mascarpone, tiramisu, small cups of espresso. The bill is astronomical, but Blaise doesn’t bat an eye - he pays again with Muggle money, tips generously, and refuses to let her reach for her pocketbook to pay him back. If it were anyone else, she would be embarrassed, but that’s just Blaise: throwing money around like it doesn’t mean anything, spending his money and his time on her just because he can. It is remarkably normal, in a way she didn’t think she would ever feel again.
They are waiting for the server to return when she sees them: Pansy shifts her gaze and there, across the length of the busy restaurant, the maître d’ is leading Justin and Susan Bones to a table at the center, where a well-dressed group of men and women are already waiting to greet them. She was right: there is a strong resemblance between Justin and his family. An older woman rises to kiss his cheek and Pansy thinks, briefly, he looks like his mother.
It takes a moment, but once Blaise follows the line of her eyes, Pansy watches for the subtle click of recognition in his expression; when it comes, he stays, surprisingly, silent on the matter. Blaise reaches for her hand over the table and Pansy turns her palm up, lets him lace their fingers together before he pulls it closer, pressing a brief, dry kiss to the back of her knuckles.
Before they leave, Blaise gives her a diamond bracelet that once belonged to his mother - a gift to her from Stepfather Number Six, right before he was sent away for securities fraud. Blaise clasps it over her wrist and tells her that he wants her to have it, that it suits her. “A gift,” he says, “Because I missed you.” The unspoken truth feels electric between them: better you than the Ministry’s vaults, Pug. She appreciates it, anyway.
Pansy traces a fingertip along the platinum setting of the bracelet while they wait at the coat check, and when she glances back she watches Susan lay her hand over Justin’s wrist where it rests on the table, watches his family talk and laugh around him, and thinks about how it would feel to be there, in the center of all that warmth and affection. She wonders what would happen if she walked up and said ‘hello.’ Blaise slides her coat over her shoulders and as they head toward the door, she tells him that she always thought diamonds were for sad people.
“You are a sad person,” he says, and takes her home.
2.
Madam Montgomery’s office is the smallest in this particular Ministry suite: Pansy isn’t sure what she was expecting, sitting across from Amaryllis in a high-backed chair, feeling dwarfed by the floor-to-ceiling bookcases behind her. Amaryllis’ office is tastefully decorated, classic but still modern, with large faux windows filling the wall behind her broad oak desk; the world outside might be full of cold April showers, but Amaryllis has a warm, sunny beach scene playing on a loop behind her. Currently, the sun is beginning to set against a deep blue sky, crystal-clear water rolling up in strong, foaming waves against a sandy beach, and if Pansy concentrates she can almost smell it in the air circulated by the ceiling fan overhead, can nearly taste the salt in her mouth. If they like you, she is coming to understand, Magical Maintenance can work absolute wonders.
“This is clearly harassment,” Amaryllis says, brisk and businesslike, pushing her paperwork across the blotter for Pansy to inspect, and Pansy has a brief feeling of déjà-vu as she looks over the notes her aunt has scribbled into the margins. If they closed the curtains, let down Amaryllis’ hair from its tight French braid, Pansy could almost pretend she was a child again: small and curious, sounding out the sharp syllables of MAGI-level legalese under her favorite aunt’s watchful gaze.
Nothing is quite so simple anymore.
“The focus on Slytherin students is astounding,” Amaryllis says, tapping a finger against a paragraph near the top of the parchment. It’s from a box of casefiles she’d taken from Auror Savage, Pansy’s at the top, but then Adrian Pucey’s beneath it, Millicent Bulstrode, Nasreen Shafiq, Terence Higgs, Marcus Flint, the lives of dozens of Pansy’s friends and former housemates broken down into official Auror briefs. “For a government that prides itself on purging Death Eater interference from its practices, they are certainly willing to bend the law to their advantage to get their numbers up. Barty Crouch did that, in the first war - suspended due process, forced through guilty verdicts and Azkaban sentences. I’m not saying that there aren’t others in your situation who have legitimately aided and abetted criminal family members, but the DMLE encouraging procedure to fall by the wayside in their investigations is appalling. This kind of focus on unaffiliated bystanders is a lawsuit waiting to happen.”
“Does this mean the Ministry will stop following my every move?”
“Unlikely, unfortunately.” She scoffs a little, taking back the parchment. “At least for the moment. But an ethical breach like this is what we’ve been trying to move on from. I’ll have Waldegrave and the Lower Temple take a look at this, see if we can draw up a draft to petition the Minister. We can go over it in more detail at our next meeting,” Amaryllis says, pushing back a bit from the desk, rubbing lightly, tiredly, at her temples as she glances at the clock. “I have an appointment with the Minister’s counsel after this, and then I need to get home.”
Pansy nods, murmuring an affirmation as she gathers her things to leave, and it isn’t until she moves to get her cloak from the hook at the door that Amaryllis speaks again.
“Do you -” she starts, then stops. “Do you have dinner plans, Pansy?”
There is an almost comically long pause before Pansy understands the deeper meaning in the question. There are a few photographs on the desk, hanging on the walls: Amaryllis and her husband at their wedding, others with people and places Pansy has never met, never seen. Two girls in Gryffindor ties stand in front of the Hogwarts Express, holding tightly to the hands of a little boy with blond hair and an upturned nose. My cousins, Pansy thinks, and clenches and unclenches her hands at her sides. She has never met them. She isn’t sure what she would even say if she did.
“Oh.” Pansy bites her lip. “I’m sorry, I do. An old school friend of mine is back from the States, and I already promised him I would -”
Amaryllis waves her off. “Another time, then,” she says, cool and composed. If she’s disappointed, she doesn’t let it show.
Pansy makes her way through the department’s winding hallway, headed for the bank of elevators in the main vestibule that will take her back to the Ministry Atrium, and from there, dinner with Draco and Blaise. She passes open office doors and closed conference spaces, tries not to get lost as she passes a copy room, a mail room, the main desk of their in-house archive. Just down the hall, the Auror block is a maze of cluttered cubicles and mismatched furniture, sharp overhead lights highlighting the threadbare carpeting and overstuffed file cabinets, with ‘wanted’ posters and informational signs tacked to every bulletin board. In contrast, the Office of Magical Law is all warm colors and wood paneling, uncluttered and clean in a way that makes her think of courthouses and libraries and hotel reception desks. Aurors and Advocates might work side by side, but their operating space might as well be on the bloody moon, for how different they are.
Pansy has just taken the last turn toward the main vestibule when she sees him: it’s the last of the student annexes, the closed, student-only spaces throughout the Advocate block, glass-walled conference rooms where the Lower- and Middle-Temple trainees do their research for the Ministry’s various legal teams, practice their mock trial arguments, work on their MAGI theses. Justin Finch-Fletchley is alone at the long table, up to his elbows in casefiles and thick, dusty legal texts, caught in the warm yellow halo of the overhead light, and there is a moment where Pansy feels like she has been thrown back in time - yanked, Portkey-style, back to the beginning of last August, when she saw him sitting by himself in a corner table at the Cauldron. Remember when you thought he liked you? she asks herself. Remember when you thought the two of you were friends?
She reaches out and knocks hesitantly against the glass, and when Justin eventually looks up from his paperwork there is a second where all she can hear is her own pulse pounding in her ears, where it feels like her heart is going to fall out of her throat. Justin’s expression is surprised, but still inscrutable; Pansy swallows and smiles tremulously, offers a little wave, and Justin holds her gaze for a long moment before his eyes slide past hers and he turns away. A door opens soundlessly behind him and four other Advocates pile in, one carrying a cardboard tray of drinks, another a bag of Chinese takeaway, the lot of them talking and laughing but their voices unheard, protected by the soundproofing spells on the room.
Pansy disappears while he’s distracted, rushing down the length of the hallway until she is out of the department entirely, catching the lift just as the doors are about to close and pushing her way through the crowd to the back. No one looks at her, here: they are in just as much of a hurry to leave as she is, and Pansy takes some comfort in that, leaning her back against the wall of the elevator as they rise up the levels toward the Atrium, trying to steady her breathing.
She is so, so tired of feeling like she is somewhere on the outside, looking in; like she is forever cursed to keep her nosed pressed to the glass of her own damn life. Enough, she tells herself, Enough of this, already. Get a grip on yourself and move on.
If she repeats it enough, she’s sure, eventually she’ll come to believe it.
3.
Penelope Clearwater is dry-heaving into the bathroom sink the first time Pansy ever speaks with her. The Cauldron is half-empty this close to closing, and Pansy knocks on the door to the ladies’ room when she hears a sound like parchment tearing, the only response a long, harsh coughing fit that doesn’t stop when she walks inside.
The sight of her makes Pansy’s stomach twist: Penelope is bent over the sink, her hands gripping the sides as she shakes and retches, a long, thin line of yellowish bile falling from her mouth into the basin. She arches her back as she coughs again, reaching blindly for a paper towel, her expression blank when she shifts her gaze to the gilt-edged mirror. The two of them stand frozen in the glass for what feels like a long time: Pansy flushed pink with embarrassment, one hand anxiously twisting the hem of her apron, Penelope staring back with tired eyes, wiping the paper towel across her mouth so that it smears her lipstick halfway across her face. She turns on the faucet to wash away the sick, water pouring into the basin in a steady, noisy rush that muffles the sound of the closing pub bleeding through the walls.
“Are you alright?” Pansy finally asks. She sounds - stupid, she thinks. Stilted and awkward, still staring at Penelope as she gathers herself together.
“Yes, thank you,” Penelope says, and there is a jagged edge to her voice, her throat clearly still raw and hurting. She runs a fresh towel under the tap and dabs at her mouth, cleaning off the makeup smear that stains her mouth and chin. It’s a deep red, a dark red; the kind that Pansy favors, the kind that makes her think of pomegranate seeds, of soft, dark velvet. The kind that makes her think of blood.
“Can I help you with anything?” Pansy asks, and Penelope shakes her head, reaching for her open handbag on the counter to reapply her lipstick.
“No, thank you.” The lipstick slides easily over her mouth, and although she looks calmer now than when Pansy first walked in, there is still something missing in her expression; an emptiness in her eyes that Pansy doesn’t like. Penelope caps the black tube in her hand and puts it away. “Morning sickness is, unfortunately, a misnomer.”
Penelope fixes her hair and turns off the faucet while Pansy can only blink at her, caught off-guard at how easily she shares this news. Pansy barely remembers Penelope Clearwater from Hogwarts, and aside from the handful of times she and her husband have passed through the pub, she’s only ever really seen her in the papers. Penelope looks better than she did the last time Pansy saw her in person, or her photo in the Prophet: there’s more color in her cheeks, her face is fuller. She is only just beginning to show.
Penelope fixes on a pleasant, if vacant, expression as she turns to leave, and she is bony and thin under Pansy’s hands when she slips through a puddle in her sensible heels, her grip on Pansy like iron as she tries to regain her balance. Bony and thin, and surprisingly strong. Penelope gasps as she stumbles, and there is a moment where her eyes close, where the vacancy in her expression slips and slides into fear, then agony, then exhaustion, one right after the other. Penelope digs her nails into Pansy’s arm as Pansy helps put her to rights, faltering through the routine thanks as she straightens and clearly forgetting Pansy’s name until she helpfully supplies it.
“Parkinson?” Penelope echoes, and the clouds seem to disappear from her eyes as she focuses them on Pansy. “Right, Parkinson. Justin’s mentioned you.”
Pansy swallows hard at that, simultaneously curious and sick at the thought of Justin talking about her to other people, carrying her into contexts outside of late nights at the Leaky Cauldron. She forces a laugh and asks, “Is that good or bad?”
Penelope shrugs indifferently, looking back at her reflection for a moment before she moves to leave. “You’re the one he lent his records to, yes? I helped him choose a few of the albums. Rumours is a particular favorite of mine.”
When they exit the restroom, there is a moment where it is just the two of them standing in the hallway off the main room of the Cauldron, Penelope fumbling through her handbag, sending glances toward Pansy like there is something else she wants to say. Penelope is tall, taller than Pansy, and the warm overhead lighting catches in her curly hair, creating a halo around her head. She looks different up close, delicate but not breakable, but it’s clear just from watching her that if she weren’t already famous - or infamous, depending on your social circle - for her talks at the International Confederation of Wizards, or the Azkaban diary she’d published in December, she would still draw you in with that magnetic lighthouse charm, that moonlike pull into her orbit. It’s no wonder her Weasley husband looks at her like she’s the bloody sun, that Justin still looks to her for guidance.
“He speaks very highly of you,” Penelope finally tells her, and it’s Pansy’s turn to falter. “I’d like you to know that, in case you thought otherwise. I know that for the both of us, feelings are… difficult, at times. Some things are still hard to process.”
“Like what?”
“Joy,” she says. “Love. Happiness. Kindness. There are certain things that he and I both still struggle with, even now, and sometimes it can be…” Penelope glances away. Across the room, her husband is waiting at their table; when she catches his eye, Percy Weasley visibly brightens. She doesn’t smile. “It can be - easier, sometimes, just to embrace pain, and sadness, and disappointment. It isn’t meant to be personal, or a slight. It’s not even about you, not really. It’s just… it’s just the way things are right now. He’s still healing. We all are.”
Pansy’s mouth has gone dry. Penelope studies her quietly, her words hanging in the air between them. Pansy spends so many of her nights lying awake in her rented room, staring at the blank expanse of the ceiling, thinking about all the things she can’t change, or get back; thinking of all the opportunities she’s missed. What could she do with her life, if she was smarter, or bolder, or kinder? If she cared less about what people thought of her? What could Pansy ask of Penelope, if she were a different sort of person - a braver sort of person, someone who could handle being told the truth? Would she even want to know the answer?
Pansy doesn’t say anything for a moment, just nods, and feels very, very tired. “That’s good to know,” she says quietly, and then, “Congratulations, Mrs. Weasley. I hope you feel better,” before she turns and walks away, walks back behind the bar.
Three moments, across April. But they are, of course, just moments.