𝐃𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬 ~ 𝐇.𝐏

One ~ drowning.

May 2nd, 1999.

A GREAT MAN HAD ONCE SAID that in the midst of darkness, light would persist.

Pansy Parkinson begged to differ, because that man was a fool. A great, old, ignorant fool, and he went by the name of Albus Dumbledore.

Ironically, he proved it to her himself, getting pitched off the Astronomy Tower in Sixth Year at the hands of a sixteen year old.

She scoffed, would've given all the Galleons in the world to see that prolonged expression of horror and desperation smack his features. Would've done anything to see his warm, blue eyes turn into ice. She wanted to hang over his dead body, and shove her Dark Mark into his face.

This is your fault, she'd scream. You should've saved us too.

But it wouldn't have made a difference.

So, rolling the tobacco between her thumbs and middle fingers, a Muggle herb that the infamous Theodore Nott had introduced her to, she slowly started to shape a cigarette.

Maybe, just maybe, the brilliance of her lighter— another Muggle item that Theo had shoved down her throat—would allow some faint outline to become visible in her cell of ruination.

Well, it wasn't really a cell.

But oh, Salazar, it sure as hell felt like one.

Even though glimmers of moonlight slipped through her curtains and the privilege of walking in and out her room whenever she pleased had been granted to her, she felt trapped.

It made her skin itch — made her feel guilty. Because the Muggleborns in the dungeons were actually trapped. She wasn't.

She should've been glad— Just like Theo had told her to be.

She scoffed and inhaled deeply with a tight jaw.

Here she was, in her private luxury cell, gold almost draping from the walls and she didn't feel pleased at all. No triumph. No nothing.

She licked her way along the edge of the paper, making the gum sticky and then, she lit her rather ghastly rolled cigarette on fire. The Muggle way.

Another ridiculous conviction Theodore had infected her mind with.

Sodding idiot.

She sucked at the filter but nothing happened. Her fire randomly damped down.

She found herself staring at her cigarette for nearly an entire minute, gritting her teeth and clenching her jaw.

"Fucking hell." She lit the cigarette again.

Desperately sucking at the filter,  she came to the heart-wrenching conclusion that it was too tightly rolled.

Another thing Theo hadn't bothered to inform her with.

"Crap," she mumbled, fidgeting with her lighter as her fingers trembled slightly.

"You could just conjure one, you know."

She snapped her head up and looked at the smug expression on Daphne's face. "There's nothing wrong with using your wand," Daphne continued. "It's not a crime."

The brunette glared at her and Pansy found herself balling her hands into tight fists. She tensed up. "Drop it, Daph."

"You have to get dressed, Pans."

Get dressed.

If there was one thing in the entire world that Pansy Parkinson did not want to do, it was to get dressed.