Comfortable Streets (Pansy Parkinson, PG13)
Title: Comfortable Streets
Author: liseuse
Fandom: Harry Potter
Rating: PG13
Warnings: None.
Prompt: 56) A person without a memory is either a child or an amnesiac. A country without a memory is neither a child nor an amnesiac, but neither is it a country. -- Mary Astor.
Summary: After that dreadful incident before the last battle where can Pansy Parkinson go? More importantly, where can she feel at home? What does home even mean in these dark days?
All my thanks go to my wonderful beta aunty_marion who did a fantastic job. All mistakes are, obviously, my own.
A person without a memory is either a child or an amnesiac. A country without a memory is neither a child nor an amnesiac, but neither is it a country.
--
Three years, three months, three days, two hours and several minutes after
There was not, Pansy thought, enough caffeine in the entire world to make this seem like anything less than a dream. The spell blasted interior of Marylebone Station had somehow become shiny and gleaming; she could see the parallel street with its prosperous looking witches and wizards striding purposefully down it, and she knew that were she to pop into any of the small shops she could find things for which she had become accustomed to searching entire cities. She supposed she was home, back where she belonged. To these places that she knew, far better than anything before. And yet it felt as alien as Buenos Aires had. This city suddenly felt nothing like home at all. The idea of heading down Gower Street and seeing if anyone she knew was at home was worse than the idea of going back to Istanbul.
She stopped and laughed, a little too harshly, causing the man at the next table to look over. What had she been thinking? Anyone she knew? They were all dead or out of the country or they would never want to speak to her again. Blaise was swanning around Milan and Antigua and dropping in to pester Theodore when he felt that life was getting staid. Her sister was still ensconced in Bruges, learning her trade and refusing to enter "that Circe-forsaken country again" whilst her father pottered around in Geneva and mourned the loss of their house. Draco, she had heard through the grapevine, was alive, but he surely knew she was too, and had made no effort to contact her. No, she was back in this country, and with no one to see or talk to or not flinch from.
What precisely, Pansy wondered, did one do when the one place you thought you'd always be safe became the one place you couldn't stay?
One day, three hours and twenty seven minutes after
Stupid bloody Potter and his stupid bloody war and stupid bloody stupidity, Pansy thought viciously as she threw a glare at the money changer near the Place du 16 Novembre. It was not, exactly, that she had wished Potter to die. That had always been Draco's deep desire, and that, given that one should be fair, was mostly because he thought it was his duty. She had merely wanted everything to be over, to feel safe again and to go back to how everything had always been. Giving them Potter had seemed the best way to do it, in the heat of the moment. And now as she stood, marooned in Morocco, it still seemed like it might have been.
One year, eight months, two days and some unknowable amount of minutes after
Buenos Aires, it turned out, was not somewhere Pansy felt altogether comfortable. It had seemed a natural progression, Paris was too close to home, Madrid had felt too overwhelming and the sight of stark statues and downcast faces had not made Miskolc an entirely comforting place to be. Buenos Aires had presented itself, through dreams and misread signs and adverts and Pansy had found herself enquiring as to apparition routes and how long the journey could be expected to take. Perhaps, she thought, the ever present "here comes a chopper to chop off your head" in Draco's voice, that had accompanied her flights of fancy about South America, should have tipped her off as to the lack of suitability of her newest bolt hole.
The architecture was similar enough to comfort, it was true. Walking down San Telmo felt much like wandering through the back streets and back alleys of Paris. The feel of the people and the smell of food was reminiscent of Barcelona, and nowhere felt like London. It was that she had craved. The dour bridges and pigeons of Miskolc had been too close to London in the winter, to the highlands of Scotland and the walls of Hogwarts when the fog was hanging everywhere, and the sky was full of snow it wouldn't release. Miserable places and dark stone, Pansy realised, were only appealing when you were not truly miserable and downhearted to the very bone and fibre of your being. If you were, then even your teeth would begin to get in on the act, cause pain every time you opened your mouth and your words would fester in your throat. Unsayable because your accent wasn't quite right, unspeakable because they had nothing to cling onto. No shared valleys of experience. Just endless snow and rain and mist and hail.
Except that being miserable in bright sunshine, amongst smiling people, was turning out to be just as bad. It took more effort to be truly miserable when the sun was warming your bones and you couldn't attribute it to the fact that you hadn't been truly warm in the past three weeks, but it was somehow more terrifying for that. To be standing in the middle of the sunshine drenched plaza, and to feel out of sync with the world. To not know who you were anymore, to realise you hadn't spoken to someone in a language you didn't have to second guess for months, and even then only by accident because someone was trying to deal with the police and getting nowhere. Perhaps, Pansy considered, it was time to stop running away from words she knew and towards places they could be known, but still alien in different ways.
Seven months, two weeks, nine days and twelve minutes after
The flash of a camera alerted Pansy to the fact that she was being watched, and she thought, vaguely, that it was a testament of how far she had come that her wand was not instantly in her hand. Her immediate assumption was not death and alarums and the possibility of something dreadfully embarrassing happening, but that, once again, she was in the way of a tourist and their perfect shot of Notre Dame. One day Pansy swears that she will illuminate these tourists to the fact that all the truly stunning shots have been captured on pieces of card for one Euro, and that the only people getting new ones are the professionals, crouched in the corners of the square. As it is she shifts along the bench, muttering "pardon" with a tight smile and turns back to watching the pigeons and the smaller birds fighting it out for the rest of her sandwich. Perhaps, she considers, she is becoming known. A reasonably tall woman, with jet black hair, black clothing and bright green shoes who sits, every day, come rain or shine, and feeds the birds the remnants of her sandwich. Perhaps she gets a mention in little travel guides, and turns up unexpectedly in holiday snaps. She has, after all, been doing this for three months now. Sitting here, pretending to have a lunch hour, and to want to spend it watching the crowds push their way across the Seine. Or perhaps, as she is becoming more and more prone to doing, she is giving herself too much credit, and no one notices her at all. She is merely an inconvenience when in the way of a photograph, or useful because she paves the way for cute shots of birds pecking daintily at crumbs.
Two years, five months, one week, three days, eight hours and thirteen minutes after
There is an owl waiting, not entirely patiently, on Pansy's windowsill as she returns from the park. It is not, after all, that much of a shock or a fright or a concern. Instinct has treats in the drawer, sense has her convinced that they would not send an owl if they were going to kill her, and somehow the way the bird sits looks familiar. The parchment smells familiar as well. A heady mix of rosehips, pipe tobacco and the smell of burning yew. The ink is as striking a blue as she remembers, and the handwriting with its slight curve reminds her so suddenly, and fiercely, of hours spent passing notes, and round the common room tables and in the library, that she feels light-headed all of a sudden, and also full of tears she has thus far pushed back into the darker crevasses of her soul.
Two years, five months, one week, five days, one hour and ten minutes after
There are, Pansy knows deep in her heart, no words for the sheer relief of throwing herself into Theodore's arms and watching his smile take over his face again. She cannot say anything about it, but nor can Theo. They both stand, gazing at each other, fierce grins building on their faces and she cannot think of a sight more welcome. Or, because she thinks she should be honest with herself even, perhaps especially, now, there is one sight, but it is too painful to consider too deeply and so down into her shoes it must go.
Ten years, three months, two weeks, three days, twelve hours and fifty eight minutes after
These roads were slowly becoming more real and true and known in a deeper way than they had as a child, Pansy realised. They contained houses that people she knew lived in, had telephone wires that her voice was carried upon occasionally, hid Floo networks and banking tunnels and were hers again. They would never be hers in the same way she had wanted them to be, all those years she was away, but the signposts were familiar and friendly, the accents and tongues intermingling along them felt comfortable and they felt right under her shoes.
This would never again be the England she knew and wanted, and remembered, but it was new and different; and really, that was all she thought she could reasonably expect after everything that had happened.
Author: liseuse
Fandom: Harry Potter
Rating: PG13
Warnings: None.
Prompt: 56) A person without a memory is either a child or an amnesiac. A country without a memory is neither a child nor an amnesiac, but neither is it a country. -- Mary Astor.
Summary: After that dreadful incident before the last battle where can Pansy Parkinson go? More importantly, where can she feel at home? What does home even mean in these dark days?
All my thanks go to my wonderful beta aunty_marion who did a fantastic job. All mistakes are, obviously, my own.
A person without a memory is either a child or an amnesiac. A country without a memory is neither a child nor an amnesiac, but neither is it a country.
--
Three years, three months, three days, two hours and several minutes after
There was not, Pansy thought, enough caffeine in the entire world to make this seem like anything less than a dream. The spell blasted interior of Marylebone Station had somehow become shiny and gleaming; she could see the parallel street with its prosperous looking witches and wizards striding purposefully down it, and she knew that were she to pop into any of the small shops she could find things for which she had become accustomed to searching entire cities. She supposed she was home, back where she belonged. To these places that she knew, far better than anything before. And yet it felt as alien as Buenos Aires had. This city suddenly felt nothing like home at all. The idea of heading down Gower Street and seeing if anyone she knew was at home was worse than the idea of going back to Istanbul.
She stopped and laughed, a little too harshly, causing the man at the next table to look over. What had she been thinking? Anyone she knew? They were all dead or out of the country or they would never want to speak to her again. Blaise was swanning around Milan and Antigua and dropping in to pester Theodore when he felt that life was getting staid. Her sister was still ensconced in Bruges, learning her trade and refusing to enter "that Circe-forsaken country again" whilst her father pottered around in Geneva and mourned the loss of their house. Draco, she had heard through the grapevine, was alive, but he surely knew she was too, and had made no effort to contact her. No, she was back in this country, and with no one to see or talk to or not flinch from.
What precisely, Pansy wondered, did one do when the one place you thought you'd always be safe became the one place you couldn't stay?
One day, three hours and twenty seven minutes after
Stupid bloody Potter and his stupid bloody war and stupid bloody stupidity, Pansy thought viciously as she threw a glare at the money changer near the Place du 16 Novembre. It was not, exactly, that she had wished Potter to die. That had always been Draco's deep desire, and that, given that one should be fair, was mostly because he thought it was his duty. She had merely wanted everything to be over, to feel safe again and to go back to how everything had always been. Giving them Potter had seemed the best way to do it, in the heat of the moment. And now as she stood, marooned in Morocco, it still seemed like it might have been.
One year, eight months, two days and some unknowable amount of minutes after
Buenos Aires, it turned out, was not somewhere Pansy felt altogether comfortable. It had seemed a natural progression, Paris was too close to home, Madrid had felt too overwhelming and the sight of stark statues and downcast faces had not made Miskolc an entirely comforting place to be. Buenos Aires had presented itself, through dreams and misread signs and adverts and Pansy had found herself enquiring as to apparition routes and how long the journey could be expected to take. Perhaps, she thought, the ever present "here comes a chopper to chop off your head" in Draco's voice, that had accompanied her flights of fancy about South America, should have tipped her off as to the lack of suitability of her newest bolt hole.
The architecture was similar enough to comfort, it was true. Walking down San Telmo felt much like wandering through the back streets and back alleys of Paris. The feel of the people and the smell of food was reminiscent of Barcelona, and nowhere felt like London. It was that she had craved. The dour bridges and pigeons of Miskolc had been too close to London in the winter, to the highlands of Scotland and the walls of Hogwarts when the fog was hanging everywhere, and the sky was full of snow it wouldn't release. Miserable places and dark stone, Pansy realised, were only appealing when you were not truly miserable and downhearted to the very bone and fibre of your being. If you were, then even your teeth would begin to get in on the act, cause pain every time you opened your mouth and your words would fester in your throat. Unsayable because your accent wasn't quite right, unspeakable because they had nothing to cling onto. No shared valleys of experience. Just endless snow and rain and mist and hail.
Except that being miserable in bright sunshine, amongst smiling people, was turning out to be just as bad. It took more effort to be truly miserable when the sun was warming your bones and you couldn't attribute it to the fact that you hadn't been truly warm in the past three weeks, but it was somehow more terrifying for that. To be standing in the middle of the sunshine drenched plaza, and to feel out of sync with the world. To not know who you were anymore, to realise you hadn't spoken to someone in a language you didn't have to second guess for months, and even then only by accident because someone was trying to deal with the police and getting nowhere. Perhaps, Pansy considered, it was time to stop running away from words she knew and towards places they could be known, but still alien in different ways.
Seven months, two weeks, nine days and twelve minutes after
The flash of a camera alerted Pansy to the fact that she was being watched, and she thought, vaguely, that it was a testament of how far she had come that her wand was not instantly in her hand. Her immediate assumption was not death and alarums and the possibility of something dreadfully embarrassing happening, but that, once again, she was in the way of a tourist and their perfect shot of Notre Dame. One day Pansy swears that she will illuminate these tourists to the fact that all the truly stunning shots have been captured on pieces of card for one Euro, and that the only people getting new ones are the professionals, crouched in the corners of the square. As it is she shifts along the bench, muttering "pardon" with a tight smile and turns back to watching the pigeons and the smaller birds fighting it out for the rest of her sandwich. Perhaps, she considers, she is becoming known. A reasonably tall woman, with jet black hair, black clothing and bright green shoes who sits, every day, come rain or shine, and feeds the birds the remnants of her sandwich. Perhaps she gets a mention in little travel guides, and turns up unexpectedly in holiday snaps. She has, after all, been doing this for three months now. Sitting here, pretending to have a lunch hour, and to want to spend it watching the crowds push their way across the Seine. Or perhaps, as she is becoming more and more prone to doing, she is giving herself too much credit, and no one notices her at all. She is merely an inconvenience when in the way of a photograph, or useful because she paves the way for cute shots of birds pecking daintily at crumbs.
Two years, five months, one week, three days, eight hours and thirteen minutes after
There is an owl waiting, not entirely patiently, on Pansy's windowsill as she returns from the park. It is not, after all, that much of a shock or a fright or a concern. Instinct has treats in the drawer, sense has her convinced that they would not send an owl if they were going to kill her, and somehow the way the bird sits looks familiar. The parchment smells familiar as well. A heady mix of rosehips, pipe tobacco and the smell of burning yew. The ink is as striking a blue as she remembers, and the handwriting with its slight curve reminds her so suddenly, and fiercely, of hours spent passing notes, and round the common room tables and in the library, that she feels light-headed all of a sudden, and also full of tears she has thus far pushed back into the darker crevasses of her soul.
Two years, five months, one week, five days, one hour and ten minutes after
There are, Pansy knows deep in her heart, no words for the sheer relief of throwing herself into Theodore's arms and watching his smile take over his face again. She cannot say anything about it, but nor can Theo. They both stand, gazing at each other, fierce grins building on their faces and she cannot think of a sight more welcome. Or, because she thinks she should be honest with herself even, perhaps especially, now, there is one sight, but it is too painful to consider too deeply and so down into her shoes it must go.
Ten years, three months, two weeks, three days, twelve hours and fifty eight minutes after
These roads were slowly becoming more real and true and known in a deeper way than they had as a child, Pansy realised. They contained houses that people she knew lived in, had telephone wires that her voice was carried upon occasionally, hid Floo networks and banking tunnels and were hers again. They would never be hers in the same way she had wanted them to be, all those years she was away, but the signposts were familiar and friendly, the accents and tongues intermingling along them felt comfortable and they felt right under her shoes.
This would never again be the England she knew and wanted, and remembered, but it was new and different; and really, that was all she thought she could reasonably expect after everything that had happened.