In which Pansy looks for a sign.
~~~
September
1997
Parkinson
Park
Hampshire, UK
The morning of September 1st
is overcast and grey. Pansy wakes up just after dawn and watches as the sun
attempts to break through the clouds. She thinks it is a sad, feeble effort, as
nary has a ray of sunshine managed to make its way through. It’s going to
storm, and Pansy feels heavy with the realization that there will be such
shitty weather on her seventeenth birthday. She wants to crawl back into bed
and sleep until the rain goes away, but it is September 1st; more
than just her birthday, she is to return to school today as well. Hiding under
her blankets will not stop the rain, or postpone her return. She cannot escape.
Though it is just after six, Pansy
can hear movement outside her door. The floorboards of Parkinson Park have
always groaned when stepped upon early in the morning; it is as if the house is
not fully awake itself, the creaking wood a protestation to such abuse so early
in the day.
Pansy wonders who is beyond her
door. Her father would not be out of his quarters at such an ungodly hour and
her mother has been dead for three months. A houseguest, Pansy decides then.
She reaches to her nightstand for a cigarette, frowning as her eyes remain on
the heavy door that separates herself from her father’s wandering friends.
Parkinson Park has accepted two
new residents since her lady’s passing, and Pansy wonders which of the two is
lurking in the halls now. Antonin Dolohov is the first that comes to mind. She
imagines his long, pale face in her mind, his features twisted in a way that
she finds unsettling whenever he looks at her. He is older than her father and
the gray in his hair shows it, though her father calls it premature when he
speaks of Antonin.
Her father says, “Old chap’s not
yet seventy, though you can’t tell by the looks of him. Poor sod ages like a
Muggle; I hear he gets it from his mother. Though excellent sport, he is. He’ll
be marvelous company to have around the house, don’t you think, dear?”
When her father says this to her
at the start of the summer, Pansy does not respond. She knows what she is supposed
to say: she is to smile at her sire and say, “Yes, father, Mr. Dolohov sounds
as if he will be quite agreeable to have around.” However, Pansy cannot make
herself say this. Antonin Dolohov does not sound agreeable at all. She has
heard of his exploits in the Department of Mysteries the previous June, of the
terror he inflicted upon Harry Potter and his army of Gryffindors in a battle
over Merlin-knows what for the Dark Lord.
And she has heard of his misdeed
against Hermione Granger.
“The Mudblood,” Dolohov calls her
at dinner, and Pansy is quite sure that he doesn’t know Granger’s name. She
knows little of the curse he used. She looks it up in an old spell book after
dinner, and her fingers shake as she thinks of the blood Granger must have
lost, of the horrible wound Dolohov had inflicted. She cannot imagine how
Hermione Granger could have survived such an attack.
Antonin Dolohov cannot wrap his
mind around this, either.
“Just a child,” he says to them.
“Antonin Dolohov can no longer silence a Muggle child. It is unheard of,” he says.
To this, her father grins. “It
must be the old age.”
The conversation makes Pansy sick.
She has not seen Granger since early that June, when she was called home from
school prematurely to be with her mother in her final days. But Pansy cannot
forget Granger and her vivacity—how she had strutted about Hogwarts as if she
belonged there, as if she had the right.
Granger had always been Pansy’s
prey, the girl she brought down with scathing words that questioned her worth
both as a witch and a human being. It had been good fun then. She’d laugh about
it all with Draco in the Great Hall over lunch and dinner. They were loud,
obnoxious even, and Pansy had delighted in seeing the stiffening of Granger’s
back where she sat with Potter at the Gryffindor table, before she excused
herself to go cry with Moaning Myrtle in the second floor loo.
It had felt good to hold such a
power over someone, even though Pansy hadn’t quite understood why she needed to
feel so. She remembered Draco’s words to her sometime first year, when she had
asked him why he bothered even teasing Hermione Granger.
“Someone has to put the filthy
Muggle in her place,” he had said haughtily. “That is what father says.”
Pansy had nodded at Draco’s words,
accepting her cousin’s—her uncle’s—words as the truth. And she had begun to
torment Hermione Granger just as Draco had, trailing behind him as if they were
engaged in some malicious form of ‘follow the leader’ which no one could truly
win.
And yet Pansy cannot imagine
Hermione Granger standing up to Antonin Dolohov. She thinks of Granger’s hair,
her plump, pink cheeks. She thinks of Granger’s oxfords and her knee-highs, of
the blossoming bosom she tries so hard to hide behind oversized jumpers.
Despite how Pansy teases her, she can admit to herself that Granger is in the
same position that she is in; they are fixed someplace between girlhood and
becoming women, their bodies and minds developing into things that they can’t
quite understand as they strive to find a place where they belong. Pansy cannot
imagine making a decision that places her in a situation in which she may die.
She cannot imagine defending herself against someone whose only intent is to kill. She thinks of the wound Dolohov
has inflicted on Granger, of the blood he described had poured from her chest.
She cannot finish her dinner.
Pansy wants to tell her father
that she doesn’t want Antonin Dolohov to stay with them. Dolohov doesn’t have a
home, her father has told her. He doesn’t have anything, but he is a follower
of their esteem Lord. However, Antonin Dolohov is a murderer. He has tortured
Muggles and murdered Aurors and her mother has just died. All Pansy wants to do is crawl inside of herself until the
bad things go away. She doesn’t want to be anywhere near someone who carries
the lives of so many on his bloody hands.
Pansy doesn’t say this. She cannot
say this, for it is not appropriate, and that is not how she was raised to be.
She knows this—can feel the knowledge pumping in her blood in time to her
heart—however, after her mother dies, she finds that inappropriate things often
yearn to leave her lips. She wants to yell and shout, to tell her father to shut up and Antonin Dolohov to get out and the entire fucking world to
leave her alone. However, Pansy knows better than to say this. She was raised
better—to know that she could not disrespect her father in such a callous way.
She says nothing at all to anyone—ever—to avoid the backlash of it all.
She can feel the words clawing at
her throat, begging to be spoken, released.
Antonin Dolohov explains what he
has done to Hermione Granger as he talks around what happened at the Department
of Mysteries. It is a sore topic in her household. Her family is connected to
the Malfoys by blood too close to ignore, and in light of her uncle’s public
fall from grace, it is uncomfortable to even mention his name.
Dolohov speaks of her uncle in
vague terms, of the dishonor they must feel at being so near a relation to
someone who has disgraced the Dark Lord is such an unforgiveable way.
“He will not stand for it,”
Dolohov tells them. “Lucius has disappointed our Lord far too often, and mark
me, something will be done. His family will pay.”
Dolohov proceeds to assure the two
of them that they will not be harmed, given the situation they are in. “Your
wife is dead and you should be happy for it, for now the only thing that
connects your family to his is her.” He turns to Pansy, and the look makes her
feel as if her dinner is about to make an unwanted reappearance. “However, you
should not fret about this, Florian. You have been nothing if not faithful in
your service, and your daughter, young as she is, has done nothing to garner
the Dark Lord’s ill will. She will make a fine bride for one of our soldiers.”
The corners of his mouth lift
faintly, as if he has just discovered something that gives him a small measure
of joy. “Are you ready for your service, my dear?” he asks her warmly. “A girl
of your standing—you’ve undoubtedly been ready for years. Who do you have your
eye on, may I ask? I may be able to arrange something, if I know the father. I
am quite good at that, the arranging.”
He stares at Pansy with an
intensity that unnerves her. His eyes—blue as the sea—smile at her, however
there is a darkness that lurks within their depths that pulls her into him,
making her feel as if he has somehow slipped beneath her skin.
“You’re a matchmaker now?” her
father asks, incredulous, teasing. “Never quite got around to it yourself,
though. I’m not sure if it’s safe for me to leave my daughter’s future in your
hands.”
“I assure you that they are very capable
hands, my good friend.”
Her father snorts. “They’re good
for something, Antonin, though I’m sure it isn’t matchmaking.”
They share a laugh at a joke that
Pansy cannot find funny.
Regardless of Dolohov’s efforts,
Pansy has no need for his interference. She has been betrothed since the
previous winter, and will be married to Theodore Nott shortly after graduation
next summer.
Her father says, “You will marry
well and bring honor to this family. This is your duty.”
She is betrothed to Theodore Nott
because after Katie Bell almost died last winter—one of Draco’s many failures
to kill Albus Dumbledore—Pansy got so drunk she thought she would die from the
sickness of it all. She wrapped herself around Theodore Nott—a boy as
forgettable as the weather—and kissed him once, twice before vomiting on his
shoes.
It was only afterwards that
Millicent told her that Theo was in love with her—had always been in love with
her, and that her kiss had suddenly given him ‘hope.’ Pansy hadn’t paid her
much attention, though two days after Christmas, her father informed her that
Theodore Nott had asked for her hand. Theodore told him that they are quite in
love, and that he felt honored that his betrothed was a woman whom he respects
so much. Her father says to her, “Congratulations.”
Her father would hear nothing of
her feelings on the union. Her mother ran her fingers through her hair and told
her that her tears would not solve anything. Her mother knew this pain well;
she was married right out of her schooling, too.
About Theodore, Dolohov says, “It
is a prudent match. Theodore is a very well-connected young wizard. You
will bring honor to your house when he takes you as his bride.”
Her father, of course, agrees.
Her father does not mean to invite
Dolohov to live with them, not at first. Initially, it is only dinner, a
desperate search for conversation to fill the silences the two of them lapse
into over meals. Pansy and her father have never talked, however even he will
admit that the table is too quiet, and he attempts to engage her in some form
of dialogue to stop the silence from eating him alive. He speaks more at her than he speaks to her, however,
even in her haze, Pansy can recognize that this is the most her father has
talked to her since she has been born. It is not enough. Her mother is dead,
and no amount of superficial attention will bring her back. Nothing will bring
Pansy’s mother back, and she leaves the supper table as soon as she is able,
desperate to return to her room, where she may mourn her mother in peace.
This goes on for three weeks.
Early July, he invites guests to stay for dinner. Pansy is to put on fine robes
and smile sweetly for her father’s friends; she may not leave the table until
the guests are satiated and the men retire to her father’s parlor for drinks.
Women don’t visit; her father has no want of dining with someone who is not
completely entrenched in the Dark Lord’s cause, and he dismisses everyone who
does not have the Dark Mark emblazoned upon their arm, his daughter included.
Dolohov visits once, twice for
dinner, critiques the pudding and the beef as he eats his meal. Pansy is sixteen—almost
seventeen—when he moves in. She finds him reading cookbooks on the chaise in
her mother’s sitting room in the early afternoons, and he tells her, quite
nicely, that he enjoys a good bit of sun while he reads, and asks her to join
him, should she have a book.
It has been two months since then.
She has not managed to resolve the image of Dolohov pointing his wand at
Hermione Granger’s chest and nearly killing her with the man who cooks three
meals a day for her family. She cannot resolve his malice with his quiet,
almost affable contemplation, the companionable silences he lapses into when
she reads with him in her mother’s sitting room before he gets up, says, “Do
you like custard, Pansy? My dear, I will make you custard and cake.”
Antonin Dolohov is a madman, a
murderer, however she cannot stop herself from thinking of how human he seems
to her, and how unfair it is to the wound he inflicted upon Hermione Granger
for her to feel this way.
It is ridiculous, she knows.
Hermione Granger is nothing to her. The most she should feel for the Muggleborn
is contempt that she happens to cross her path. Pansy used to feel that
contempt; she remembers latching onto it in the halls and in the classrooms and
any time she could in order to bring Granger down just a little bit more. But
such a feeling means nothing now that Antonin Dolohov has tried to take her
life.
It is as if Dolohov has tried to
take something from her, and she hates that she cares that Hermione Granger can
die—that she almost died, because of the man whom her father has invited to
live with them.
However, Pansy cannot imagine
Dolohov wandering the halls so early in the morning. Though her time with him
has been limited to the past three months, she knows enough of his habits to
deduce that he spends his mornings in the kitchen, torturing the house elves
when they interfere with his work as he prepares breakfast for the rest of the
household.
Antonin Dolohov is a murderer and,
she has come to learn, a chef.
Yet, if it is not Dolohov
wandering the halls, then that can only mean it is her father’s other guest who
has just passed outside of her door: Fenir Greyback
Greyback is a murderer and he
makes no apologies for himself. During meals, he eats with his elbows on the
table, his mouth open so she can see the sharp points of his teeth as he
speaks. Dolohov prepares his meat for him rare, and her father teases him about
it as he sucks the marrow from t-bones and turkey legs. He doesn’t bear the
mark like Dolohov or her father; his sole purpose in fighting for the Dark Lord
is to continue the spread of lycanthropy. He leaves their home in Hampshire
once a month to run amuck with his brothers. The next day, The Daily Prophet
runs stories of mangled bodies and decimated households, allowing the few
survivors to retain their anonymity, lest the rest of the world learn of their
curse.
He growls at her father sometimes
but he respects Dolohov; Pansy doesn’t know why. They are decades apart in age,
though even Pansy is able to see that there is something between them other
than their service to the Dark Lord.
She doesn’t think of it too much.
To be frank, Greyback scares the holy hell out of her, and she avoids him
whenever she can. Mealtime encounters are unavoidable. At dinner, he sits next
to her, always, and she thinks that he smells like a dog, regardless of how
much Dolohov assures her that he bathes.
Last night, in addition to his
usual scent, he arrived to dinner smelling of grass and her mother’s roses, his
eyes wild as if he had spent the past hour on one of his runs. Dolohov had
taken one look at him and had pointedly ignored his appearance. He focused on
his meal instead, introducing his dinner with a flair normally reserved for an
announcer at a Quidditch game, or something of the sort. But Dolohov is always
this way and their table always obliged him. If Greyback was allowed his wild
runs through the garden and the surrounding environs, then they certainly
couldn’t begrudge an old man the pleasure of introducing his culinary art.
All was well until sometime around
the third course, when Greyback elbowed her in the side—bruising her ribs—and
made a snide comment about the intricacies of Dolohov’s flavor palate. He said the
effort was a waste, regardless of his efforts, as people will eat anything,
really, were there ever a need.
“Not everyone is an animal,”
Dolohov told him promptly, slicing into his venison with small, precise
motions. “Not like you.”
Greyback grinned across the table
at him. “We’re all animals, Antonin. We simply differ in how close we are to
our...” He looked to Pansy. “...instincts.”
Pansy didn’t know if she should
feel objectified as a sexual object, or food. She looked to her father; he was
silent—as he often was when Greyback got in one of his moods. That he couldn’t
protect her from the monsters he let into their home...! Pansy could feel her
animosity towards him only grow.
Dolohov, on the other hand, was
outraged by Greyback’s behavior. He threw his napkin onto his plate, his lips
pursed like a woman’s. “Must you resort to such behavior at the table every bleeding day? Merlin, we’re around
decent people, Fenir, for once. Behave
yourself.”
Greyback looked to Pansy, then
back to Dolohov. He looked suitably chastised, and Pansy wondered how Dolohov
had such control over a werewolf. Greyback cleared his throat and said to her
father, “I meant no disrespect by it, Florian. Really. Merely making a point.
If you’re hungry enough, you’ll take a bite out of anything.”
Her father nodded. “Of course,” he
said. “If you’re hungry enough.”
“It isn’t just hunger,” Grayback
told him. It sounded as if he was growling, and Pansy suddenly remembered that
the full moon was close—too close for Greyback to control himself.
She wondered why he was still
around, why he handed left to wreak
havoc on some unsuspecting town with the rest of his brothers. It wasn’t safe
for any of them to be near him, when he was only a hairsbreadth from a
transformation.
Greyback had always frightened
her. Regardless of her father’s assurances that he would only be with them
temporarily, and Dolohov’s conviction that he was harmless, really, as he held
no ill will towards neither she nor her father, she wondered if this was her
breaking point—if he was seconds away from raking her claws across her face and
ripping her apart.
Pansy’s hands shook, causing her
fork to tap rudely against her grandmother’s china. Please, God, she said to herself, her eyes closed. Please don’t let him kill me.
Greyback was still going. “It’s survival,” he said, “bottom bloody line.
When we’re backed into a corner, we’ll do what we have to in order to survive.
Eat, kill, it’s all the same. To survive—” He was looking at her again, and
Pansy found herself lost in the black of her eyes.
A moment later, it was over.
“That’s enough,” Dolohov said sharply. He was standing, his eyes on Greyback as
he stared at Pansy with his black, animal eyes. Greyback blinked at her, before
excusing himself from the table.
Dolohov cleared his throat and
asked, awkwardly, if they were ready for the next course. Pansy excused herself
shortly afterwards.
Her memory of Greyback’s near
transformation is still close enough to the surface that Pansy can feel her
body physically recoil when she thinks that it may be him beyond her door. However,
the steps are too light for a man of Greyback’s stature. She holds her breath,
her heart thumping painfully against her chest as the fear she has lived with
since her mother passed claws its way up her throat, threatening to escape if
she even breathes.
A moment later, there is a light
tapping on her door. Tissy the house-elf lets herself in the room, and Pansy’s
breath escapes her in a slow whoosh
that makes her feel woozy.
“Missus Pansy,” Tissy tells her,
“it is time to start the day.”
Pansy is not ready to start her
day, or this year. She is not ready to be seventeen, for the inescapable path
of adulthood in a world the Dark Lord is poised to destroy. What is there for
her, but marriage to a boy she despises at the end of the school year—her duty
to her family and the Dark Lord’s cause? There is nothing for her, she thinks.
Nothing.
She looks to the letter on her
nightstand, received two weeks after Dumbledore’s fall. Professor Snape has
never written to her before, and she doesn’t know what to think, why the
murderer of one of the greatest wizards the world has ever seen would be
contacting her. He is her cousin’s
godfather, though her only interactions with the Potions Master have been
inside the dungeons at Hogwarts, both in class and, inadvertently, in his
private storeroom.
In second year, Pansy developed an
acute interest in brewing different sorts of glamours, most of which required
an extensive list of rare and expensive ingredients that she found were readily
available to her if she broke into the Potions Master’s private store. Snape
knew it was her, of course, and he increased the intricacy of the wards he used
to keep her out; however, Snape’s efforts to keep her out only succeeded in
teaching her how to work through their complexity. She spent many an early
morning huddled over spell books, studying shield theory and Ancient Runes in
order to work through the new puzzle Snape had left for her to solve.
By fifth year, Pansy acknowledged
to herself that it had become a game, and that her professor—in his own,
roundabout way—was teaching her the intricacies of warding and, by extension,
curse-breaking. If she ever became stuck in one of Snape’s puzzles—and often,
she did—he would scribble titles of books from the library on the homework he
handed back so that she could solve his latest puzzle and further hone her
skill.
Pansy recognizes the cramped
handwriting from her assignments in the missive he sent her early in the
summer—a sparse, single paragraph entreating her to find her cousin and make
him return to the Dark Lord.
He writes, “Miss Parkinson, I
believe we are all aware of the consequences that will follow if he does not
return.”
Of course, she is aware, she
thinks. How could she not be? The Dark Lord will murder Draco if he does not
return, and there will be nothing that anyone can do for him to help. The
anxiety eats at everything inside of her that matters. She has a stack of
letters in her dresser, all unopened and returned. She visits the Manor
once—sometimes twice—a week, though no one is ever home. The Floo is
disconnected, and even the house-elves will not respond to her calls. The
summer crawls forward. Her mother has been dead for days, weeks, months. Pansy
is at her wits end; she doesn’t know how to save him when he is so far away.
Dolohov tells her not to
interfere, that Draco needs to be a man and make his own decisions, instead of
allowing himself to be saved by a mere girl. She thinks that she should be
offended by this, though all she can think of is that Dolohov does not refute
Snape’s words, and she cannot find it in herself to feel anything but fearful
that Draco is going to die.
Then, two days ago, Pansy received
a letter from Aunt Narcissa. It apologized for her absence in her mother’s
final hours, and her inability to make the proper arrangements as the family
grieved. She reminded Pansy that it is necessary that they continue to move
forward, and that she expected Pansy would return to Hogwarts on September 1st.
In the end, she writes, “There are
many things I am able to do for Draco, though still some things that I cannot.
I hope, as always, you will support your cousin now that he is of need.”
Pansy finds herself feeling bitter
then—the same sensation that overtook her when she first read the missive. It
is unfair, she thinks, that she has gone out of her way to do so much for Draco
when he has done nothing for her. Her mother is dead, she wants to shout. Dead. And where was he? Hiding in Tel
Aviv with his cold, commanding mother as she tried to convince him that what he
was feeling wasn’t shame, that he hadn’t dishonored them all—worse, almost,
than his father before him—and put his very existence at risk in a futile
effort to make himself into a murderer. She wrote every day, she wants to say.
She visited, even though her father forbade her to. She cried, because she thought that was the only thing she could do, as she had no clear way to
help save his life.
She hates him for doing this to
her, and to Snape, even, who murdered Dumbledore in his place. Who still cares
for Draco and makes efforts to ensure his safety, even if that means abandoning
his pride and making an entreaty to Pansy, who has never been worth anything to
anyone.
She cries in the mornings.
Greyback leaves her to her tears, though Dolohov reminds her that Draco has
made his own choices, and that none of this is any fault of her own.
“But what choice did he have?” she
asks him. “What else could he have done?”
Dolohov looks at her very
seriously then. “He should have done as he said,” he tells her. “He should have
killed Dumbledore.”
Pansy continues to cry. She thinks
that, if the choice is between being a murderer to live and being a coward to
die, then she does not know where she would be, either, where she in his place.
Tissy busies herself in the room
as Pansy thinks, asking quiet questions about hairclips and dress robes before
she informs her contemplative mistress that her schoolbooks arrived yesterday
evening, and were packed away neatly in the trunk that is currently residing in
the foyer.
“Missus Pansy will want to get out
of bed,” she says finally. “Mr. Dolohov has prepared a special breakfast for
Missus’ birthday, and Missus Pansy will not want to be late.”
Pansy stands, finally, and walks
towards the washroom.
Tissy tells her, “Missus Pansy’s
shower is waiting.”
Pansy sheds her nightclothes and
climbs into the water. She brushes her hair, takes extra care in rolling up her
nylons as she dons the new dress her father procured for her birthday: a
darling baby doll shape with capped sleeves and almost childlike fringe about
the skirt. It’s hardly her school uniform, though she isn’t required to change
into the Hogwarts Standard until she boards the Express. She allows herself to
indulge, for the time, pairing the cream-colored shift with a clunky pair of
sandals and a pink cardigan that belonged to her mother.
She hardly looks the role of the
diligent learner, or even the mourning child. However, her clothes are one of
the few things in life that Pansy has ever felt she’s had control. Her mother
always indulged her tastes and her father, distracted man that he is, has never
particularly cared for her dress. Has encouraged her habits, even. For most of
Pansy’s life, their interaction was limited to her placing recently browsed
catalogues upon his desk and him sending missives to his secretaries to pick up
the dresses and shoes that she had carefully circled in the books. It is why
she has this dress, now. She’d selected it months before, when her mother had
just begun to cough—passing symptoms, they’d assumed, never imagining that the
affliction would take her away.
Pansy looks at herself in the
mirror, turning her face from this side to that as she contemplates what her
mother would say to her, were she still around.
There are bags under her eyes and
a gauntness in her cheeks that is appalling. Her mother would tell her to eat
something, to use a glamour, before she ever imagined leaving home.
Pansy pinches her cheeks for color
and that is the extent of her grooming. She instructs Tissy to make sure her
school robes are pressed before she is ready to leave, and the elf nods
enthusiastically as she takes the black material from her mistress and
Apparates away.
Pansy takes a breath, then
another. The world will not wait for things to get better. She doesn’t know how this could happen, anyway, how all
the wrong that has occurred could simply disappear, and she be left with the
fairy tale she yearns to get lost in.
You are not a child, she thinks. Still, she cannot hope but wish that she could
crawl inside of herself and hide until everything was over.
There are no times for thoughts
like these. There is breakfast to be had and the return to Hogwarts later in
the day. She tells herself to breathe, again, and makes her way to the formal
dining room.
Her father and his guests are
waiting.
“Pansy,” her father says to her.
He smiles at her with his eyes, his hands squeezing her shoulders
affectionately as he pulls her into a hug. “Seventeen, at last. Tell me, my
dear, how does it feel?”
“Odd,” she answers truthfully, pulling
away from her father’s grip. Dolohov and Greyback are waiting beside him to
pass on their well wishes, and just as she steps away from her father, Greyback
wraps a large, muscled arm around her shoulder.
“Odd?” he says. “Odd! Feel a bit
up the river like the rest of us now, do you? Not quite a young thing anymore,
are you, love?” He’s grinning at her, his face stooped low so she can see the
yellow in his teeth. His eyes are still black like the night before, and she
feels the same fear coil inside of her, making her insides shake.
“Fenir, please. Leave the poor child be.” Dolohov has pulled her away from
him, and Greyback is sharing a laugh with her father.
“I am kidding, Dolohov. She knows
I am only kidding. Pansy’s a good sport. Aren’t you, love?” He grins again, and
not for the first time, Pansy thinks that he must’ve been handsome, once,
before he became what he is today. Outside, the clouds have gathered into a
storm, rattling the windowpanes with each gust of wind.
“Good sport or not, no one needs
you horrendous façade so close to their own this early in the morn. Have a
seat,” he says. “All of you. We have to give Pansy a proper celebration before
she leaves on the Hogwarts Express.”
“And there is news,” her father
says.
Greyback nods. “There is news.”
Dolohov claps his hands, focusing
their attention on him. “First, let us eat.” Dishes begin to appear upon the
table: oatcakes, toast, grilled tomatoes, bacon, poached eggs with cream sauce,
and yogurt with honey. Her favorite breakfast items, she realizes as she looks
at the spread. Pansy’s insides feel cold, and her entire body shakes with the
sensation. It is unfair, she thinks—not for the first time, not for the
last—that these monsters are capable of such niceties. She does not want them to
be kind to her, to care.
She wraps her fingers around her
chair as she stares down at her place setting. There are roses from her
mother’s garden there, and she thinks that this
is why Greyback smelled of them when he arrived for supper last night. They
did all of this for her. The cold inside her clenches and her eyes burn with
tears. “This is all quite unnecessary, I assure you.”
“Unnecessary?” her father echoes.
“Nonsense.”
“It is your birthday, Pansy,”
Dolohov tells her. “You are also leaving us for school. We are celebrating.”
Pansy cringes. “It is too much,”
she says, the most honest that she has been with anyone in months. “I don’t
want—”
Dolohov’s hand closes around her
own. “Hush.”
“These months have been hard,” her
father says suddenly, “without your mother.” Pansy’s eyes swing to his. It is
the first time he has acknowledged her absence in the three months since her
death. He looks as if he feels as sad as she feels, as if he has missed
her—mourned her—all this months, just as Pansy had. “However, there is no
reward in mourning into perpetuity. We must move forward. You are seventeen, my
dear, the age of maturity. A new world has opened to you on this day, and we
wish to celebrate as you take your first step forward into adulthood.”
It is the most she can ever
remember her father saying to her, and she wonders why he could not always be
this way, why she could not understand that he loved her when her mother was
still around.
Pansy looks around the table, her
eyes connecting with Dolohov, Greyback. She is surrounded by a group of
murderers, her father included. She wonders at what turn of fate has caused
them to love her, as if she is one of their own.
She realizes, something vile
churning deep within her, that she is.
“Eat,” Dolohov tells her. Greyback
pushes the bacon in her direction first—a tremendous effort indeed—and she
mechanically places a piece onto her plate. She has toast, tomatoes, a scone.
Her father ladles cream onto his
egg, slicing into the delicate yoke before he looks at her from across the
spread. He says to her, very serious, “My dear, I want you to listen very
carefully to what I am about to say.”
~~~
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