Poison, Sunshine, and Grace

Pansy Parkinson was brought up to always look pleasant in public. It was a rule she'd had a lot of trouble with when she was at school, especially since her parents had put a lot of effort into teaching her that Mudbloods and Muggle-lovers didn't count as people. In retrospect, she thought that her parents had hardly done her justice, teaching her as they did to hate so young and so well. The young have no sense of proportion.

Nevertheless, by the time Draco Malfoy took her virginity, very little ruffled her public calm. She was a master at innuendo, a true graduate of Slytherin House, and she never told the truth when she could avoid it. At dinner parties she never spoke of herself except to say that she was travelling around the Continent and expected to spend some time learning French and Italian; this kind of close-mouthed modesty found favour with both the matrons of Wizarding society and hopeful suitors.

Her first full day in Italywas spent daydreaming on the balcony of her hotel suite. Brought up to believe that tanned skin was a mark of the lower classes, Pansy found to some surprise that she liked the heat of the sun beating down on her face. At first she made sure to dress quite correctly; although her retinue consisted of no more than her tutor and an old maid, there was no way of telling how much was being reported back to her Mother, and no way to tell who amongst the people she occasionally met might have influence in the Wizarding Courts.

As time wore on, Pansy found herself wearing finer and finer linens, her hair in school girl plaits rather than the buns she had accustomed herself to, and even going without her underskirts. Even at Hogwarts her Mother had made certain that she was properly attired; Pansy, in Italy, was quite independent, and enjoyed the sensation immensely.

By the time she reached Athens, six weeks behind schedule, she had discovered that her skin tanned an even brown, and her hair - her dull ash Parkinson hair - lightened beautifully in the sun. She had never been considered pretty; too often candlelight made her look washed out and pug-like - a taunt that had followed her through Hogwarts and beyond - but the sunshine seemed to do something to Pansy that she had not expected: it made her sparkle.

She wrote to her parents infrequently, and blamed the lack of correspondence on unreliable owl posts. This was, of course, a lie - she could have easily sent her own Othello, but chose instead to rely on hired owls rather than risk her own dear bird. They replied equally infrequently, and the letters began to sound almost concerned as the months rolled by and Pansy was still sunning herself indolently on the Mediterranean coast.

She found herself standing on docks in her cotton skirts and breezy linen blouses, fabrics bought cheaply in a fascinating market and sewn up by the faithful maid. Neither the tutor nor the maid spoke of her sudden predilection for bright colours and loud patterns, but she knew that she'd have to leave her cotton dresses behind in Europe when she eventually returned home. The Muggle docks were a swirl of colours and sounds, tastes and smells, and every evening when she returned to the succession of beautiful hotels in Wizarding districts she was encrusted with salt and sand, glittering with tiny shards of quartz.

Six months went by in a haze of sunshine, long lazy days of golden sand and blue skies, before she thought to bestir herself and make friends. Her Mother had envisaged Pansy spending most of her time in Europe travelling from one great residence to another, making friends, allies, and the occasional enemy. It was expected, after all. But the Wizarding community in Greecehad begun to refer to her as 'that strange English witch' long before she used her mother's connection to make a dinner engagement with some of the daughters her own age, and as such she was treated at first as a novelty.

It was a man who proved her downfall, a tall man with eyes that glittered in the light and dark hair that shone. He had a way of smiling at her as if she were the only person in the world, and the habit of brushing against her as they danced through the rounds of social engagements. Pansy, who had never been considered important by anyone before, found this irresistible, and she swayed into his arms without ever realising that he had pulled her there.

He said he was a widower, and although she thought it strange that such a young wizard - not yet thirty - would have already suffered the death of a wife, it did not occur to her to question him further. His smiles made her stomach leap, and when he frowned it was as if her beloved sun had suddenly been blinked out. They flirted improperly before all of Wizarding Athens, and if sometimes the dowagers gave her rude looks she did not think anything of it, assuming they were jealous that their daughters had not been picked out for the singular honour of being courted by this man.

When finally he fucked her, beneath the portraits of his ancestors in the summer house he took her to, she cried out with passion and joy, and wondered at his expression when afterwards he rolled off her without a word. "You were not a virgin," he said finally, flatly.

"Well, no," she answered, confused. "Neither were you."

"Whore!" the portraits shouted, and she hurried out of the house clutching her skirts about her and spent the night on the beach. The next morning she stumbled back to the hotel to find a goblet of hemlock and her lover's wife waiting patiently by the window.

"Go," the wife said, a girl about her age who Pansy had seen a myriad of times at the edges of dance floors, dressed always in expensive robes and heavy jewellery. Pansy did not answer except to nod, and called her maid to pack her belongings. As she left the room, she saw out of the corner of her eye the wife pick up the goblet and drink, a long draught that ended only when the goblet fell to the floor.

When Pansy Parkinson returned to England, there was an indefinable grace in her carriage, and a sadness in her eyes that never quite went away.

FIN