Fic: sad stories told in a language you can't understand
title: sad stories told in a language you can't understand
rating: pg-13 (violence)
character: pansy parkinson
length: 3300 words
summary: shadowed beneath her cloak, haunted by a child's last cries or sweltering in the athens summer sun as she looks back over her shoulder, pansy has magic. the world may be swathed in darkness, or it may be blinded with light and death, but at least she has magic.
disclaimer: pansy, draco, narcissa, bellatrix, millicent and anything else of the potterverse is not and is being used only for entertainment purposes. this does not constitute a profit-making enterprise nor a true psychic reading. esmerelda shelton and her overly lengthy, non-existent volume are creations of my own mind.
notes: written for hp_lovebirds for lilith_morgana, who wanted darkfic and warfic. thanks to snowflake_star, foreword, lauriegilbert and incognito for looking this over. as always, feedback is greatly appreciated and concrit is certainly welcomed.
sad stories told in a language you can't understand
Among the old-line pureblood families, religion stands between life and meaning, a sturdy, flat plastered wall of ritual. Whether it's the old gods of nature and season, or the new ones of candlelight and blood in wine, they hold onto themselves in prayer and in holiday.
Because to these few remaining families, there's nothing more powerful than magic, and nothing more important.
- Esmerelda Shelton, "Powers Beyond Our Own: A Brief History of Worship in the Wizarding World," p. 624.
---
Winter 1999
The room is dark save for a thin stream of light through heavy curtains. When Pansy wakes up each morning, she thinks she must be dead. The heavy fabric and the dry heat bear down on her and she thinks that this must be the hell she never believed in.
Christmas 1995
Pansy makes a secret wish for the hundredth time that Narcissa Malfoy were her mother as she stands on tip-toes and sniffs perfumes out of coloured glass vials, dressing up last-minute in borrowed scents for the party.
Narcissa Malfoy never smiles, except in condescension, and Pansy learns early to practise that perfect curl in her lip, the downcast look over lashes. But it never looks quite the same in the mirror, and she never grows cold inside.
They drink mulled wine, strong and spicy, at Christmas. Pansy watches Narcissa over the rim of her wine glass, and feels the person she wants to be slip further away.
She tries to lose herself in the glittering lights, in the gold-leafed ornaments on the Christmas tree, in the singing of hymns and the soft sound of laughter. After a while - and a second glass of warm wine spicy on her tongue - it works, and when Draco asks her to dance, the world spins silver and gold and shining and she thinks that this is what it is to be happy.
Fall 1996
Pansy sees the dirtied white glint of a worn out trainer rise up out of shimmering fabric, feels the trick of the eye fall away and knows, knows that someone's watching.
Potter, she thinks; she's sure. She says nothing as the train chugs its way northward.
Her fingers tangle in Draco's hair, smooth and still against her skin. He talks like the world is his; he lies back as if life is naught but expectation waiting to be fulfilled.
She holds her knowledge silent and close; she's used to it.
When Draco tells them to go on without him, she waits against the wall, proud of him for noticing the half-blood brat sneaking on his own. Her blood rushes with the sound of crackling bone, and she scurries away before he can catch her snooping.
Christmas 1996
It's in the fall of ninety-six that the Parkinson Shipping Company goes under, the anxiety of war coming down hard on unmarked boxes and mysterious origins. When Pansy returns for the holidays, her mother meets her at the station, alone. She doesn't talk to anyone, and they leave as quickly as they can, heavy-skirted robes catching dust in the rail station.
The fairy lights in the window are dark that year. Pansy sits in the window watching the snow fall, and the December sky seems greyer than usual. The hymns echo eerie in the hallway as the house elves take their once-yearly sit-down supper on Christmas Eve. Some of them leave in the morning.
She fire-calls Draco on Christmas morning. There are dark circles beneath his eyes, a flush in his cheeks from the cold. "Happy Christmas," she says to him, mostly out of habit.
She wants to sneak her way up to the question, find out if despite disgrace, she's still welcome for the party. Draco loves her, after all, right?
Then she remembers there is no party.
"You can still come over if you want, Pansy," Draco says finally.
She smiles back in spite of herself. They always did understand each other.
So she throws dust in the fire and takes him in her arms.
If the fairy lights are up at the Malfoys', and there's a golden star atop the tree, the mood is no cheerier. Narcissa sits at the head of the table, cutting her meat into tiny pieces and stirring her greens in her gravy. Draco taps his fork against his knife until she silences him with a glare.
Only Bellatrix is eating. She smiles at Pansy, a wide, pointed smile. "Happy Christmas," she says, and she laughs.
Pansy nods and drags her fork across her mashed potatoes.
They eat in silence, but Pansy can swear that across the table, Bellatrix is muttering something to her sister. Something that sounds like if I had a son to spare, or a daughter.
"She scares me," says Pansy later, standing flush against the closed door of Draco's room.
Draco's sitting on his bed, but the way he looks at her, she can swear he's looking down. "She can read my mind."
Fall 1997
It starts with borrowed robes, dusty from the attic, and spellbooks bought secondhand by mail (because even in last year's styles, her mother won't let her be seen buying used).
She tries to transfigure off the out-of-date ruffles, and wash them in the bath. But the soap lingers in the fabric, and she finds herself exhausted by the end of the day, her head pounding from the steady sap of energies, and the ruffles return.
Millicent laughs when it happens, as the train slows into Hogsmeade.
"You shut up," Pansy says.
Millicent doesn't.
Didn't she always used to listen? Pansy asks herself.
When they arrive in Slytherin House, Pansy expects herself to find embarrassment, but mostly it's just emptiness. The few younger students left scurry away when she glares at them.
It's lonely, but she likes it.
Pansy used to pass notes to Millicent and Daphne in classes, but Daphne is gone and she doesn't dare talk about silly social things. People will only ask if Draco is dead yet and laugh at her robes.
Instead she drafts long letters never sent to Narcissa. When she finds herself embarrassed at her idolatry, she writes to Bellatrix instead.
If I had a son to give, or a daughter.
Christmas 1997
Pansy doesn't ask this year. She doesn't know what to expect, and she's tired of sneaking around questions like her mother taught her. When the stairs creak beneath her tip-toed footsteps and the door cries on its hinges on her way out, her mother doesn't seem to notice, or doesn't seem to care.
She Apparates. It's easy enough, even if she never formally passed the examination.
Narcissa doesn't smile as she lets Pansy in the door, but she lets her in nonetheless. "I don't know what you were expecting, but Draco isn't here."
"No," says Pansy. She's not expecting him. She thinks he's dead by now. The rumours have gotten deafening enough to be true.
Pansy makes her own way into the sitting room. It's mostly empty. There's one ragged-looking house elf stirring the bowl of punch.
And Bellatrix Lestrange sits on the window-seat, staring out into the hedge maze.
Pansy sits quietly on the sofa and smiles until Narcissa leaves. She can hear her shouting at someone (or something) in the kitchen, and she stands and makes her way to the window.
"Tell me we're winning," Pansy says softly.
Bellatrix looks at her. "We will win," she says firmly. It's not reassuring.
Pansy's voice is nearly gone. It's half a whisper, half a breath, when she finally speaks again. "I want… I want to help."
And Bellatrix laughs. It's a caustic, grating laugh (and she'll hear it in her dreams, years later). "You can certainly try."
-
It's Boxing Day when she stands at the feet of the Dark Lord. The anger that burned hot as autumn waned to winter has cooled now, too. Her hands are icy and she's trying to keep from shaking.
"You bring me a girl," he says. His voice is a hiss, is barely human, and she feels like a child.
"I bring you a servant," Bellatrix says, her fingers on the back of Pansy's neck.
"Can you cast any spells?" he asks. "Or are you some sort of Christmas present, to wear out and throw away by New Years?"
"Of course I can cast spells," she says. It seems so simple a question. She feels herself starting to stand a little straighter.
"Crucio," says Bellatrix, all cruelty-in-idleness.
"Protego," shouts Pansy, loud and instinctual. She can see the ghost of a smile twisting the Dark Lord's features, and she's shaking.
"She'll serve."
Winter 1998
It's somewhere south of Newcastle as the snow whispers against the window and a child's cries finally go silent that she starts to think of her heavy, hooded cloak as swallowing her alive. She pulls the hood down tight and sees darkness, feels the slight itch of wool against her skin, and feels the power in her fingers clasping tight around her wand.
She can remember Bellatrix telling her at Christmas that they're winning, that the cause will persevere. And she tells herself that she is nothing but the cause, and the meaning.
Hood drawn, grip tight, she reaches out in darkness and a screaming mother goes quiet.
There's only the sound of the wind and the snow and her breathing, and it's all right.
She is the cause, and the meaning.
When she returns home, her mother looks at her askance. "You've missed dinner again," she says.
"It doesn’t matter," says Pansy, as she takes a box of cereal from the pantry and eats it dry.
"Weren't you supposed to go back to Hogwarts two weeks ago?"
Pansy doesn't answer. Eventually her mother pours herself another glass of wine, and doesn't ask any more questions.
She wonders if Millicent went back after the holidays, and who she sits with at mealtimes. She wonders if the Gryffindor girls still have such terrible hairstyles, but she can't for the life of her remember what it was that looked so bad.
So she wraps her cloak more tightly about her shoulders and wonders where she'll be come morning.
Spring 1998
Some days, Pansy thinks back and keeps count of things. Tells herself the notches on the bedpost are to show how far she's come.
Other days, she fades back from it, tells herself it's nothing. There's nothing but the feel of magic - blessed magic - at the end of her wand and the hush of a task gone by.
And when she closes her eyes, she sees nothing but victory. White and shining, and sometimes even Draco is there (though they found him in a ditch near Glasgow when the ground thawed). Each scream, each curse, each sunset over bloodshed is another step closer to the light.
Summer 1998
It's Narcissa who tells her it's over. She even seals the letter with the Malfoy seal, and sends it with the formal owl. The wax breaks, the paper crackles, and she slumps against the bedside.
She had a mission, had a meaning. Now she has an Auror on her trail.
Downstairs her parents are reading the newspaper as if they'd maintained neutrality in delirium. She's unmasked now, uncloaked, and can't find it in herself to break their wine-soaked reverie.
"I have to go," she says, and the door squeals on its hinges as it slams shut behind her.
She looks over her shoulder as she walks down the driveway. Her gait is hurried, uneven, as she walks the neighbourhood - walks past the neat little Muggle houses she'd never really noticed - but suddenly look so much nicer than her own. Each seems to hold smiling shadows, waiting to take her in.
She never did that much, she tells herself. It was only because she had to, it was only because they made her. She lets the excuses fly back and forth in her mind, until the overhanging oak trees close in on her and she feels dizzy. She sits against a tree trunk and the summer sun feels like a bright-lit lumos, wand-tip flying at her eyes. The wind whistles the taunts of captors, the swaying branches wands gone broken.
"I wanted to," she shouts at the sun. "I wanted to!" She's in tears, but at least she still has magic.
She closes her eyes tight, the sun burning bright against her eyelids, against the darkness that once gave her composure. She grits her fists against her wand, not caring now if any Muggles see, and stomps her feet into the ground, willing herself to concentrate as she Apparates to the furthest place she can picture in her mind.
*
Athens is blistering-hot in August and she's getting funny looks in her robes. She stops at a souvenir shop in the Plaka. Fumbling with the local money, she buys herself a cheap cotton dress in the over-exaggerated local style that only tourists wear.
She tells herself over and over again that nobody's following her, that it's nothing but Muggles. They're dirty (and she's dirty in the city-filth and hot summer sun), but if she can hold tight to her wand, she can hold tight to her magic even if she can never ever truly go home.
It's a sweltering summer Saturday, but she climbs the steps to the Parthenon anyway. She tells herself Athena was a witch. That the stories of the ancients are rooted not in explicating the natural or in half-smiling worship, but in the fundamental pre-eminence of wizard-kind. With each step, she finds herself thirstier, more spent, further yet from home, but she keeps going, imagining herself a goddess on the hill and calling it her penitence.
She could conjure water, she knows, but she worries someone's watching, someone with Ministry approval and a stunning spell on the tip of his tongue. So it gets hotter, and drier, and higher. She nearly collapses on the stairway to the temple, and when she looks down, the city valley is hazy below her, the view obscured by Muggles and the grime they call pollution, the filth that's all their own.
It wasn't worth it, she thinks bitterly, the words dry and silent against her parched lips, as she wonders how she's going to get down.
She leaves the city on the morning bus. It's not as hot here, but hardly anyone speaks English, and when they do she can't help but watch the lines of their arms into their pockets, waiting for wands to appear. Waiting for invisible chains to bind her, for a portkey back to the Ministry.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, she wants to say. I never really meant to, she whispers at the bus stops.
And, as the locals give her odd looks and mutter under their breath in a language she can't understand, she thinks that, no, she did it because she wanted to -- because she had to, to protect her kind from this sort of dirty world.
She gets off in Argos, because the name seems vaguely familiar. She thinks of a quest long ago, of the protection of a jealous goddess, and wonders what it is she needs to find.
The streets are full of dust, the flea market crowded with young teenagers. They're looking at sandals, stupid Muggle style that they are; they're jostling her into a table of polyesters. She pushes her way through the crowd and runs away beneath the shadow of a Byzantine church.
She huddles there for what feels like hours, hands to her knees. She's waiting for them to find her, waiting for the world to collapse in on her while teenagers on vacation to nowhere and history bargain in a polyglot for mismatched shoes.
It's all over anyway, she knows, and shivers in the sweltering sun.
Hera protect me, she thinks to herself, over and over and over again, as she pulls her wand from her pocket.
I'm sorry, she says, as she snaps it, splinters rough against her fingertips.
"They'll never catch me now," she says to no one in particular. An older couple passing by overhears, but they don't understand.
Fall 1998
She's found by an old wizard in the outskirts of Corinth as the tourists start to disappear. He doesn't speak English either, but he sees something in her awkward glare, in the way she fumbles with the money, muttering about being short on galleons.
He brings her into his flat and hands her a copy of the Prophet as he firecalls a friend in London. Too late, she realises what he's doing and starts to scream.
"It's going to be all right," says the British wizard on the other side of the fire.
Pansy's silent. She has no response but nausea, and she closes her eyes.
Winter 1999
When the nurse blows out the candle, she rolls over and dreams of the dark, rotten creatures that could slip your soul between their lips. They close in on her in the night, and when she wakes up in darkness, she finds herself at peace, and silent. She opens her eyes and looks around the room, remembering the shadowed hood of her cloak and the burning reminder on her left arm. As she stirs herself to midnight wakefulness, she remembers the screams of that first little Muggle boy, and the way his mother begged until she killed her, too. She tries to slip her own soul out beneath the pillow, but it never seems to work.
Breathless with frustration, she closes tight her eyes and counts the notches on the bedpost until she falls asleep once again, dreaming of Millicent Bulstrode laughing at her out-of-date robes, her voice the caustic cackle of Bellatrix Lestrange.
As the first rays of glaring morning light seep through between the curtains, she's dreaming of Draco, and Narcissa, with her vials of perfume laid out on the vanity. Everything smells like rose and sandalwood, and the candlelight burns bright-white in the wintertime. She awakens slow and hazy to the sound of metal clicking softly and peaceful, gliding footsteps, and thinks she must be dead.
The mediwitch comes in the morning, to bring breakfast and to take her temperature, to seize her from nightmare and reverie, and replace them with routine. The old mercury thermometer is cold and tastes like alcohol. Pansy tries to spit it out, but the witch's fingers hold it in until she sighs and takes it out to read it.
She shakes her head at Pansy as she cleans the thermometer and Pansy looks up at her, wanting to spit at the piteous look on her face. But a part of her still tells her it's not proper, and she knows if she can hold onto that part, it will all be okay.
"Stop pitying me," she says. "I can cast spells."
She remembers the words in her mind, echoing over and over, alongside Bellatrix's cruel laugh, and we will win, alongside the menacing, fluid tones of languages she doesn't understand.
"I can cast spells," she says once more, laughing just a little as she repeats it again and again. She holds tight to her words like she held tight to her wand, repeating them until the syllables start to lose sense in her mind, until they feel like a prayer in some nearly-dead language to an old, forgotten god. She starts to twist in her bed-sheets as the comprehension slips from her, as she starts to question the piecing-together of sounds to words, words to meaning.
"I can cast spells," she says one last desperate time, the words falling quiet with a hiss and a hush, as she tries to remember the feel of wand-wood between her fingertips. She clenches her hands tight and her words tighter and hopes that that's enough to keep them true as the mediwitch smiles at her sadly.
"Happy Christmas, dear," she says as she leaves and locks the door behind her.
rating: pg-13 (violence)
character: pansy parkinson
length: 3300 words
summary: shadowed beneath her cloak, haunted by a child's last cries or sweltering in the athens summer sun as she looks back over her shoulder, pansy has magic. the world may be swathed in darkness, or it may be blinded with light and death, but at least she has magic.
disclaimer: pansy, draco, narcissa, bellatrix, millicent and anything else of the potterverse is not and is being used only for entertainment purposes. this does not constitute a profit-making enterprise nor a true psychic reading. esmerelda shelton and her overly lengthy, non-existent volume are creations of my own mind.
notes: written for hp_lovebirds for lilith_morgana, who wanted darkfic and warfic. thanks to snowflake_star, foreword, lauriegilbert and incognito for looking this over. as always, feedback is greatly appreciated and concrit is certainly welcomed.
sad stories told in a language you can't understand
Among the old-line pureblood families, religion stands between life and meaning, a sturdy, flat plastered wall of ritual. Whether it's the old gods of nature and season, or the new ones of candlelight and blood in wine, they hold onto themselves in prayer and in holiday.
Because to these few remaining families, there's nothing more powerful than magic, and nothing more important.
- Esmerelda Shelton, "Powers Beyond Our Own: A Brief History of Worship in the Wizarding World," p. 624.
---
Winter 1999
The room is dark save for a thin stream of light through heavy curtains. When Pansy wakes up each morning, she thinks she must be dead. The heavy fabric and the dry heat bear down on her and she thinks that this must be the hell she never believed in.
Christmas 1995
Pansy makes a secret wish for the hundredth time that Narcissa Malfoy were her mother as she stands on tip-toes and sniffs perfumes out of coloured glass vials, dressing up last-minute in borrowed scents for the party.
Narcissa Malfoy never smiles, except in condescension, and Pansy learns early to practise that perfect curl in her lip, the downcast look over lashes. But it never looks quite the same in the mirror, and she never grows cold inside.
They drink mulled wine, strong and spicy, at Christmas. Pansy watches Narcissa over the rim of her wine glass, and feels the person she wants to be slip further away.
She tries to lose herself in the glittering lights, in the gold-leafed ornaments on the Christmas tree, in the singing of hymns and the soft sound of laughter. After a while - and a second glass of warm wine spicy on her tongue - it works, and when Draco asks her to dance, the world spins silver and gold and shining and she thinks that this is what it is to be happy.
Fall 1996
Pansy sees the dirtied white glint of a worn out trainer rise up out of shimmering fabric, feels the trick of the eye fall away and knows, knows that someone's watching.
Potter, she thinks; she's sure. She says nothing as the train chugs its way northward.
Her fingers tangle in Draco's hair, smooth and still against her skin. He talks like the world is his; he lies back as if life is naught but expectation waiting to be fulfilled.
She holds her knowledge silent and close; she's used to it.
When Draco tells them to go on without him, she waits against the wall, proud of him for noticing the half-blood brat sneaking on his own. Her blood rushes with the sound of crackling bone, and she scurries away before he can catch her snooping.
Christmas 1996
It's in the fall of ninety-six that the Parkinson Shipping Company goes under, the anxiety of war coming down hard on unmarked boxes and mysterious origins. When Pansy returns for the holidays, her mother meets her at the station, alone. She doesn't talk to anyone, and they leave as quickly as they can, heavy-skirted robes catching dust in the rail station.
The fairy lights in the window are dark that year. Pansy sits in the window watching the snow fall, and the December sky seems greyer than usual. The hymns echo eerie in the hallway as the house elves take their once-yearly sit-down supper on Christmas Eve. Some of them leave in the morning.
She fire-calls Draco on Christmas morning. There are dark circles beneath his eyes, a flush in his cheeks from the cold. "Happy Christmas," she says to him, mostly out of habit.
She wants to sneak her way up to the question, find out if despite disgrace, she's still welcome for the party. Draco loves her, after all, right?
Then she remembers there is no party.
"You can still come over if you want, Pansy," Draco says finally.
She smiles back in spite of herself. They always did understand each other.
So she throws dust in the fire and takes him in her arms.
If the fairy lights are up at the Malfoys', and there's a golden star atop the tree, the mood is no cheerier. Narcissa sits at the head of the table, cutting her meat into tiny pieces and stirring her greens in her gravy. Draco taps his fork against his knife until she silences him with a glare.
Only Bellatrix is eating. She smiles at Pansy, a wide, pointed smile. "Happy Christmas," she says, and she laughs.
Pansy nods and drags her fork across her mashed potatoes.
They eat in silence, but Pansy can swear that across the table, Bellatrix is muttering something to her sister. Something that sounds like if I had a son to spare, or a daughter.
"She scares me," says Pansy later, standing flush against the closed door of Draco's room.
Draco's sitting on his bed, but the way he looks at her, she can swear he's looking down. "She can read my mind."
Fall 1997
It starts with borrowed robes, dusty from the attic, and spellbooks bought secondhand by mail (because even in last year's styles, her mother won't let her be seen buying used).
She tries to transfigure off the out-of-date ruffles, and wash them in the bath. But the soap lingers in the fabric, and she finds herself exhausted by the end of the day, her head pounding from the steady sap of energies, and the ruffles return.
Millicent laughs when it happens, as the train slows into Hogsmeade.
"You shut up," Pansy says.
Millicent doesn't.
Didn't she always used to listen? Pansy asks herself.
When they arrive in Slytherin House, Pansy expects herself to find embarrassment, but mostly it's just emptiness. The few younger students left scurry away when she glares at them.
It's lonely, but she likes it.
Pansy used to pass notes to Millicent and Daphne in classes, but Daphne is gone and she doesn't dare talk about silly social things. People will only ask if Draco is dead yet and laugh at her robes.
Instead she drafts long letters never sent to Narcissa. When she finds herself embarrassed at her idolatry, she writes to Bellatrix instead.
If I had a son to give, or a daughter.
Christmas 1997
Pansy doesn't ask this year. She doesn't know what to expect, and she's tired of sneaking around questions like her mother taught her. When the stairs creak beneath her tip-toed footsteps and the door cries on its hinges on her way out, her mother doesn't seem to notice, or doesn't seem to care.
She Apparates. It's easy enough, even if she never formally passed the examination.
Narcissa doesn't smile as she lets Pansy in the door, but she lets her in nonetheless. "I don't know what you were expecting, but Draco isn't here."
"No," says Pansy. She's not expecting him. She thinks he's dead by now. The rumours have gotten deafening enough to be true.
Pansy makes her own way into the sitting room. It's mostly empty. There's one ragged-looking house elf stirring the bowl of punch.
And Bellatrix Lestrange sits on the window-seat, staring out into the hedge maze.
Pansy sits quietly on the sofa and smiles until Narcissa leaves. She can hear her shouting at someone (or something) in the kitchen, and she stands and makes her way to the window.
"Tell me we're winning," Pansy says softly.
Bellatrix looks at her. "We will win," she says firmly. It's not reassuring.
Pansy's voice is nearly gone. It's half a whisper, half a breath, when she finally speaks again. "I want… I want to help."
And Bellatrix laughs. It's a caustic, grating laugh (and she'll hear it in her dreams, years later). "You can certainly try."
-
It's Boxing Day when she stands at the feet of the Dark Lord. The anger that burned hot as autumn waned to winter has cooled now, too. Her hands are icy and she's trying to keep from shaking.
"You bring me a girl," he says. His voice is a hiss, is barely human, and she feels like a child.
"I bring you a servant," Bellatrix says, her fingers on the back of Pansy's neck.
"Can you cast any spells?" he asks. "Or are you some sort of Christmas present, to wear out and throw away by New Years?"
"Of course I can cast spells," she says. It seems so simple a question. She feels herself starting to stand a little straighter.
"Crucio," says Bellatrix, all cruelty-in-idleness.
"Protego," shouts Pansy, loud and instinctual. She can see the ghost of a smile twisting the Dark Lord's features, and she's shaking.
"She'll serve."
Winter 1998
It's somewhere south of Newcastle as the snow whispers against the window and a child's cries finally go silent that she starts to think of her heavy, hooded cloak as swallowing her alive. She pulls the hood down tight and sees darkness, feels the slight itch of wool against her skin, and feels the power in her fingers clasping tight around her wand.
She can remember Bellatrix telling her at Christmas that they're winning, that the cause will persevere. And she tells herself that she is nothing but the cause, and the meaning.
Hood drawn, grip tight, she reaches out in darkness and a screaming mother goes quiet.
There's only the sound of the wind and the snow and her breathing, and it's all right.
She is the cause, and the meaning.
When she returns home, her mother looks at her askance. "You've missed dinner again," she says.
"It doesn’t matter," says Pansy, as she takes a box of cereal from the pantry and eats it dry.
"Weren't you supposed to go back to Hogwarts two weeks ago?"
Pansy doesn't answer. Eventually her mother pours herself another glass of wine, and doesn't ask any more questions.
She wonders if Millicent went back after the holidays, and who she sits with at mealtimes. She wonders if the Gryffindor girls still have such terrible hairstyles, but she can't for the life of her remember what it was that looked so bad.
So she wraps her cloak more tightly about her shoulders and wonders where she'll be come morning.
Spring 1998
Some days, Pansy thinks back and keeps count of things. Tells herself the notches on the bedpost are to show how far she's come.
Other days, she fades back from it, tells herself it's nothing. There's nothing but the feel of magic - blessed magic - at the end of her wand and the hush of a task gone by.
And when she closes her eyes, she sees nothing but victory. White and shining, and sometimes even Draco is there (though they found him in a ditch near Glasgow when the ground thawed). Each scream, each curse, each sunset over bloodshed is another step closer to the light.
Summer 1998
It's Narcissa who tells her it's over. She even seals the letter with the Malfoy seal, and sends it with the formal owl. The wax breaks, the paper crackles, and she slumps against the bedside.
She had a mission, had a meaning. Now she has an Auror on her trail.
Downstairs her parents are reading the newspaper as if they'd maintained neutrality in delirium. She's unmasked now, uncloaked, and can't find it in herself to break their wine-soaked reverie.
"I have to go," she says, and the door squeals on its hinges as it slams shut behind her.
She looks over her shoulder as she walks down the driveway. Her gait is hurried, uneven, as she walks the neighbourhood - walks past the neat little Muggle houses she'd never really noticed - but suddenly look so much nicer than her own. Each seems to hold smiling shadows, waiting to take her in.
She never did that much, she tells herself. It was only because she had to, it was only because they made her. She lets the excuses fly back and forth in her mind, until the overhanging oak trees close in on her and she feels dizzy. She sits against a tree trunk and the summer sun feels like a bright-lit lumos, wand-tip flying at her eyes. The wind whistles the taunts of captors, the swaying branches wands gone broken.
"I wanted to," she shouts at the sun. "I wanted to!" She's in tears, but at least she still has magic.
She closes her eyes tight, the sun burning bright against her eyelids, against the darkness that once gave her composure. She grits her fists against her wand, not caring now if any Muggles see, and stomps her feet into the ground, willing herself to concentrate as she Apparates to the furthest place she can picture in her mind.
*
Athens is blistering-hot in August and she's getting funny looks in her robes. She stops at a souvenir shop in the Plaka. Fumbling with the local money, she buys herself a cheap cotton dress in the over-exaggerated local style that only tourists wear.
She tells herself over and over again that nobody's following her, that it's nothing but Muggles. They're dirty (and she's dirty in the city-filth and hot summer sun), but if she can hold tight to her wand, she can hold tight to her magic even if she can never ever truly go home.
It's a sweltering summer Saturday, but she climbs the steps to the Parthenon anyway. She tells herself Athena was a witch. That the stories of the ancients are rooted not in explicating the natural or in half-smiling worship, but in the fundamental pre-eminence of wizard-kind. With each step, she finds herself thirstier, more spent, further yet from home, but she keeps going, imagining herself a goddess on the hill and calling it her penitence.
She could conjure water, she knows, but she worries someone's watching, someone with Ministry approval and a stunning spell on the tip of his tongue. So it gets hotter, and drier, and higher. She nearly collapses on the stairway to the temple, and when she looks down, the city valley is hazy below her, the view obscured by Muggles and the grime they call pollution, the filth that's all their own.
It wasn't worth it, she thinks bitterly, the words dry and silent against her parched lips, as she wonders how she's going to get down.
She leaves the city on the morning bus. It's not as hot here, but hardly anyone speaks English, and when they do she can't help but watch the lines of their arms into their pockets, waiting for wands to appear. Waiting for invisible chains to bind her, for a portkey back to the Ministry.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, she wants to say. I never really meant to, she whispers at the bus stops.
And, as the locals give her odd looks and mutter under their breath in a language she can't understand, she thinks that, no, she did it because she wanted to -- because she had to, to protect her kind from this sort of dirty world.
She gets off in Argos, because the name seems vaguely familiar. She thinks of a quest long ago, of the protection of a jealous goddess, and wonders what it is she needs to find.
The streets are full of dust, the flea market crowded with young teenagers. They're looking at sandals, stupid Muggle style that they are; they're jostling her into a table of polyesters. She pushes her way through the crowd and runs away beneath the shadow of a Byzantine church.
She huddles there for what feels like hours, hands to her knees. She's waiting for them to find her, waiting for the world to collapse in on her while teenagers on vacation to nowhere and history bargain in a polyglot for mismatched shoes.
It's all over anyway, she knows, and shivers in the sweltering sun.
Hera protect me, she thinks to herself, over and over and over again, as she pulls her wand from her pocket.
I'm sorry, she says, as she snaps it, splinters rough against her fingertips.
"They'll never catch me now," she says to no one in particular. An older couple passing by overhears, but they don't understand.
Fall 1998
She's found by an old wizard in the outskirts of Corinth as the tourists start to disappear. He doesn't speak English either, but he sees something in her awkward glare, in the way she fumbles with the money, muttering about being short on galleons.
He brings her into his flat and hands her a copy of the Prophet as he firecalls a friend in London. Too late, she realises what he's doing and starts to scream.
"It's going to be all right," says the British wizard on the other side of the fire.
Pansy's silent. She has no response but nausea, and she closes her eyes.
Winter 1999
When the nurse blows out the candle, she rolls over and dreams of the dark, rotten creatures that could slip your soul between their lips. They close in on her in the night, and when she wakes up in darkness, she finds herself at peace, and silent. She opens her eyes and looks around the room, remembering the shadowed hood of her cloak and the burning reminder on her left arm. As she stirs herself to midnight wakefulness, she remembers the screams of that first little Muggle boy, and the way his mother begged until she killed her, too. She tries to slip her own soul out beneath the pillow, but it never seems to work.
Breathless with frustration, she closes tight her eyes and counts the notches on the bedpost until she falls asleep once again, dreaming of Millicent Bulstrode laughing at her out-of-date robes, her voice the caustic cackle of Bellatrix Lestrange.
As the first rays of glaring morning light seep through between the curtains, she's dreaming of Draco, and Narcissa, with her vials of perfume laid out on the vanity. Everything smells like rose and sandalwood, and the candlelight burns bright-white in the wintertime. She awakens slow and hazy to the sound of metal clicking softly and peaceful, gliding footsteps, and thinks she must be dead.
The mediwitch comes in the morning, to bring breakfast and to take her temperature, to seize her from nightmare and reverie, and replace them with routine. The old mercury thermometer is cold and tastes like alcohol. Pansy tries to spit it out, but the witch's fingers hold it in until she sighs and takes it out to read it.
She shakes her head at Pansy as she cleans the thermometer and Pansy looks up at her, wanting to spit at the piteous look on her face. But a part of her still tells her it's not proper, and she knows if she can hold onto that part, it will all be okay.
"Stop pitying me," she says. "I can cast spells."
She remembers the words in her mind, echoing over and over, alongside Bellatrix's cruel laugh, and we will win, alongside the menacing, fluid tones of languages she doesn't understand.
"I can cast spells," she says once more, laughing just a little as she repeats it again and again. She holds tight to her words like she held tight to her wand, repeating them until the syllables start to lose sense in her mind, until they feel like a prayer in some nearly-dead language to an old, forgotten god. She starts to twist in her bed-sheets as the comprehension slips from her, as she starts to question the piecing-together of sounds to words, words to meaning.
"I can cast spells," she says one last desperate time, the words falling quiet with a hiss and a hush, as she tries to remember the feel of wand-wood between her fingertips. She clenches her hands tight and her words tighter and hopes that that's enough to keep them true as the mediwitch smiles at her sadly.
"Happy Christmas, dear," she says as she leaves and locks the door behind her.