STARDUST

CHAPTER THREE

hii readers :) it's been a long long time since i posted anything on this site. hope you like it !!

-tina.

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The lifeless warmth of her apartment engulfs her in a blink. Pansy drops her bag on the floor before stumbling to her kitchen without a pause. She flicks her wand to settle the teakettle and then waits as the cup of tea pours itself. She keeps looking at her evenly cut nails and contemplating if she has made some sort of a fool of herself.

She probably has. 

It isn’t an uncommon sight to find him lurking around the hospital. It is practically his second home. It isn’t uncommon to find him flirting as well. He always seems to be doing that. Talking and smirking and lilting without ever settling down. After Ginny Weasley, every witch who had access to Witch Weekly was folding her cards in vain. Harry Potter just doesn’t look for anything serious. Pansy hates that she knows that, but she contends herself by arguing that it is essentially national news who he dates. She’s very persuasive.

So why would she run? Well, that is what she does. And also, she might’ve cried in front of him, or had a nervous breakdown, or kiss him again. Or all of them.

Pansy casts a calming charm on herself to ease her tremors, to ease the rush of thoughts in her head. She puts valerian root in her tea and casts a diluting charm before downing the cup. It takes about five minutes for her efforts to kick in, and then she stands up, determined to not think a single thing for the night. She passes through her small living room to her bedroom like a spirit, barely there, barely in her head, barely anywhere at all. Still in her starchy healer robe, she finds her bed in the dark and collapses on it. She runs her hand along her bed before she finds the bedspread and pulls it over her head.

Sleep comes unnaturally and immediately.

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So what happened was this -

Pansy Parkinson met Harry Potter at a party. It was loud and sanctimonious and utterly utterly dreadful. They both left the place and somehow got into her hotel room. They slept together. Then morning came and they left the place together. Nothing more.

That’s the short, rational version of events that Pansy tells herself in hopes of one day believing it.

The long version, however, plays on her head as she sleeps.

The memory of the night is always like a fogged up moving picture in her mind. Like a bright light she’s reaching for in the misty shadow. It’s all hands and lips and goddamn desperation. It’s all intangibles. But what she clearly remembers is the person she was before, someone cracking at the edges, someone desperately latching onto anything familiar.

All had gone downhill for her after the war - her father in Azkaban, her family fortune disintegrating for war-time indemnification, her entire philosophy of life crumbling beneath the weight of reality. She always knew she was a bit of a bitch, she was starting to realize she was rotten and corrupted as well. It was a terrible time to make a public appearance, but her mother insisted. So she went to the celebration of the battle of Hogwarts to be the face of the Parkinsons’.

It was insipid. It was just as bad as she had feared. Her classmates looked at her as if she was something poisonous, or something distinctly uncomfortable. And granted, she was used to it, she had built a whole persona based on her sharp features that said don’t you dare. But - it was one of the few times she realized that she deserved it. She deserved the suspicious eyes, the lips turned upward in a smirk at her fall.