Of Rust and Stardust

Of Rust and Stardust

By MissMoppet

~*~*~

Part One

"There was a little girl, who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead"

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

~~~~~*~*~~~~~

If you think me bad-tempered, if you find me in want of manners and beguiling social graces, then do try to withhold your assessment for a moment and remember that I was, after all, raised by a house elf.

I don't say please because a house elf never demands it, let alone expects it, unlike porky Mummies who bend over a child with a dangling fist-full of sweets in their hand, cooing in that insipid way. Say the magic word, sweetums. Say the magic word for Mummy.

Gimme that.

I was given over to Gabby on the same day I was born. Portia was exhausted after nineteen hours of pushing my over-sized head through her girlish pelvis, and Virgil was off to the south on business. My head really does seem over-sized, much too big for my swaying neck, and one of my first memories has me yanking and pinching at Gabby's ears, asking where my own bat-like set had gone off to. Flown away, perhaps. Back to the belfry.

"Missy Pansy is not an elf!" Gabby said, her eyes saucering. "Missy Pansy is a human like her parents, Missy Portia and Mister Virgil."

I don't remember feeling particularly happy to hear this. Nor was I sad. All that mattered was that I did not have a set of bat-like, twitching ears. Gabby had them and I didn't, so I continued in my attempts to pull her own ears off, straddling her on the floor of my nursery with my insubstantial toddler's weight. Tears filled her enormous eyes but she did nothing to deter her little mistress. She was lucky that I had not yet developed thieving, dexterous fingers--otherwise those ears would have been mine, like everything else that came into view of my starving eyes. Later that night she came to me with her heavy, bandaged head, Portia trailing behind her.

"Hello, Pansy," Portia said gravely, kneeling on the nursery carpet.

"Hi Mummy," I returned. Already I knew how the word tipped her senses askew. It was not in her plans to love me.

She cleared her throat and pushed her mirrored spectacles up the snubbish slope of her nose. "Gabby tells me that you would like to have ears like hers. Is this true?"

I glanced at Gabby, who gave me a shy smile from beneath her halo of bandages.

"Yes," I said. I studied Portia intently, from the matte black of her hair, so like my hunger for liquorice whips, to the creamy buff of her hands, which were always folded into a very precise bundle when they weren't working a quill over parchment.

"Then I think I can help to satisfy your needs," she said, unfolding her hands and reaching for her wand. She issued a spell and I felt my ears go hot with ringing. In the mirrored spheres of her spectacles I saw two perfectly shaped bat-like ears erupt from my head, flapping gaily upon their arrival. I touched them and they felt rubbery and cool. Real.

Gabby applauded, seeming pleased for me, and I saw then that her own ears, a little tattered and scratched from my man-handling, were still wiggling from beneath her dressings. At the sight of them I let loose a squall of screams and wails.

"No no no!" I bellowed, pointing at my quaking house elf. "I wanted Gabby's ears!"

***

I was born south of Marlborough, Wiltshire, in a Manor at the edge of Savernake Forest. Or Saversnake Forest, as it is known to wizards and witches of fine and noble lineage. Saversnake Manor, our home was called, and the neighbouring forest was the birthplace of Salazar Slytherin-- a 1200 year old oak tree grows in the middle of the ancient woods, having sprung up in the exact spot where his ancestral home once stood. The muggles in the nearby parishes believe that if one dances naked around the oak in a counter-clockwise direction, at the precise striking of midnight the devil will appear. What he does after appearing is not known. Not much, perhaps. It seems unlikely that the devil can be bothered with muggles.

By the time I reached the age of six Portia was inviting me to spend Sunday evenings with her in the Eastern tower where she lived and worked. One night, after Gabby had fed me a dinner of sugared pears and shepard's pie, I was sent up the spiraling stairs with a sobbing candle in my hands, our ancestors snoring placidly in their portraits as I passed them. I thought them rude to sleep in my presence, and held the candle to a bonneted witch's frame until she awoke and ran screaming through her backdrop of springtime pastures, her bonnet sending up a smoke signal.

"You're an unpleasant girl," said a man who held a dripping scythe in his hand.

"So?" I stopped on the stairs to regard him.

He squinted at me. "You're Portia's little one?"

"Yes." I tipped the candle and watched the hot wax dribble down my hand. I was not used to conversing with adults, and already this one had begun to bore me.

He smiled proudly, shaking his scythe so that blood pattered over his white robes. "I am Lord Elmer Edwyn Parkinson of Saversnake," he announced. It was I who single-handedly slaughtered the Perkins Clan and returned Salazar's rune to Parkinson hands, the rightful stewards of Saversnake Forest."

I knew only dimly of what he spoke, so I nodded in an agreeable enough fashion and resumed my journey up the tower. The rest of the portraits were awake now, whispering behind cupped hands as I passed them.

Even at that age, I thought of Saversnake as mine. The nursery that Gabby was instructed to keep me confined in was roomy and furnished with all manner of childish amusements. I had dolls and puppets and a cage full of chirping, golden finches. There were storybooks that had been spelled to read themselves aloud, and a singing fairy in my bedside lantern who crooned Gaelic lullabies when it came time for me to nod off to sleep. On holidays I would dine with my parents in the grand dining room, Gabby cutting my roast goose into bite-sized pieces while Portia and Virgil exchanged insignificant and adult words between one another. The grand dining room, with its high, cathedral ceiling and dripping chandelier, only served to show me how small my own section of the Manor really was. On the night of my fifth Christmas I threatened Gabby with a ivory-coloured shimmy until she finally relented, unlocking my nursery door for the very first time.

My mother's tower was the only room I had not explored, knowing with an intuitive sense that Portia, who was endlessly patient in the face of my spoilt-brat tantrums, would not be so patient if I were to intrude into her own domain. I was cautiously excited, then, to have finally warranted an invitation.

Portia was a woman of letters, having written and published over twenty novels before the age of thirty. Her tower room was a disorganised study filled with books and grand but worn furnishings, all of them surrounding a central fireplace whose belly was always roaring flames, even in the peak of summer. I was disappointed to see that it was such a plain and stern sort of place, and guessed at once that there was no fun to be had here. Only Portia's voice, warm and welcoming, compelled me to cross the threshold.

"Sit upon the ottoman, Pansy," she said, pointing to something that looked like the footstool Gabby sat upon while keeping me company. I hunched down by the fire instead; it was the dead of winter and my feet were bare. Portia didn't seem to mind; she took the ottoman for herself, gathering her skirt up carefully before sitting.

"I found Gabby cleaning finger-paints off the kitchen walls," she said, her hands folded into her lap. Her lips--stained with ink in one corner, from licking her equally ink-spattered thumb--curved into something like a smile. "It seems you've finally outgrown your nursery."

I puffed my cheeks out and stared at her. I hadn't been in my nursery for months, except for those occasional days when I noticed that the colour of my dress had become impossible to determine--too covered in paints and ice-cream drippings for even a grubby child like me to stand wearing. I would pull off the dirty frock and give it to Gabby to clean, then would wait impatiently while she dressed me in another. As soon as the pinafore was tied around my waist I was off and running, back to the green house to watch the mourning glories pucker up and cry, back to the pantry to feed the mice that nested behind the flour sacks.

"Just look at you," she said, lifting my arm and rubbing at a streak of dirt idly. "Not a baby at all."

"I'm not a baby," I said, my lower lip stuck out in a pout.

"I can see that." I wondered how she saw anything from behind her dark mirrored glasses. "You must understand my relief, as I never did have a fancy for babies."

I understood well enough. My storybooks had told me that babies were bothersome things, always being kidnapped by kelpies or wandering into bogs, never to be seen again.

"I think you are old enough to learn to read," she finally said, rising to her feet.

"What's that?" I found a pinecone on the edge of the hearth and tossed it into the fire, pleased to watch it crisp up and crackle.

"Reading is too look at a book and see a story," she said simply enough, her back bent over a shelf as she searched out its load. I liked stories and was satisfied when she put a book in my hands, one filled with pictures that moved like magic under the push of my thumb. "Look at this and learn," she ordered, then returned to her desk and picked up her quill, the sound of her scratching filling my ears. The book asked me to trace out the letter "A" and I did as it said, my finger working in sharp strokes. By the end of the evening I had spelled out my first word, apple.

"I want an apple," I announced, looking up from the book.

"Did you spell the word?" Portia asked, not looking up from her writing.

"Yes." I held the book up to show her, but she didn't turn her head.

"Very good," she murmured, then slid open her desk drawer and removed an apple, perfectly polished and red.

***

I don't know where I found enough patience in my being to cultivate a love of reading; it is lucky that I did, or else I might have grown up completely uncivilised. Even all the secrets held in the Manor could not entertain me forever, and I was soon throwing myself into tales of Witches and Wizards who battled for their lives on Quintaped Island, or searched for jewels that offered up the power to rule over all the earth's fiercest creatures. I was thrilled at the bloody details of their adventures, while at the same time disgruntled to learn that there were people in the world who were clearly having more fun than I was.

"Why do we not have a pirate ship?" I asked, lounging on a cushion in front of the fire. I was seven by then.

"Because we are not pirates," Portia said, setting her quill down.

I came to attention. It wasn't often that she sat her quill down.

She pivoted her desk chair around, its wheels squeaking in protest, and regarded me with her obscured eyes. "We will have visitors tomorrow, Pansy," she said.

"Who?" I asked, then glanced down at my book. "A pirate? Will he bringing a ship?"

"No," she said, opening and closing her fingers silently before bundling her hands together again. "Piracy ended in the 1720's, when the muggles stopped fighting each other and turned their attentions to eliminating sea marauders."

"Oh," I said flatly, dropping my book. Everything interesting in the world, it seemed, had been put to a stop by muggles. "Is Virgil coming, then?"

She turned her head to the windows. "Your Father is in Berlin appraising a collection of bottomless goblets," she said. Virgil's profession was not entirely understood to me; I knew only that he traveled a great deal and was paid a healthy sum of galleons to look over very old magical objects. Whether he was at the Manor or not affected my attitude and moods very little, but he almost always brought me a present, and presents were always something to look forward to. Portia cleared her throat and continued. "We are to be visited by Narcissa Malfoy, one of my oldest friends, and her son Draco." She turned back to me and smiled enigmatically. "He is about your age."

I gave her a quizzical look. "You have friends?"

There was something in her voice I had not heard before. Only later would I identify it as worry. "Yes, of course," she said hurriedly. "And you will have friends, too."

"What for?" I asked. "I have Gabby." Humans, who I sensed would not be so willing to bring me sweets and sing songs to me on demand, seemed a poor trade.

"Yes, well." Her voice was unusually brisk. She stood up to her feet quickly, her skirt sweeping the floor boards, and came to my side, something hidden in her hand. "It is time for you to have a friend other than Gabby." She held out a photograph for me to consider. It featured a man and woman who were white and gold all over, like the Veelas in my copy of Magic and Myth. Curled protectively under his Mummy's wing was a little boy with a puckered up, lemon of a face. "These are the Malfoys, and they are your friends."

I pushed the photograph away. "I don't like them."

"Pansy," she began, her voice careful. "I am asking you to please not be petulant."

I looked at her profile. Just behind the mirrored sides of her glasses, I could make out her eyelashes flickering, outlined in delicate gold from the fire-light. My skin shuddered over with surprise, feeling too tight and warm for me to continue wearing. Until that moment I had thought her eyeless, the upper part of her face a perfect mask of white, unblemished skin, like a permanent blindfold.

"I'm not," I said, my voice an odd whisper. Odd because I never whispered.

She took my hand in her own, and I dropped my head to study their alien meeting, her small, inky fingers dwarfing my own pink ones. "In front of our friends, Pansy," she began, those eyelashes still fluttering, "I would like for you to call me Mother."

***

By now you might be feeling sorry for me, and thinking it quite sad that I have never known a Mother's love. I will return to you your pity at once, if so, and remind you that in having never known a Mother's love, I have never known just what it is that I have missed out on. Gabby watched over me with something far closer to love than Portia or Virgil ever did, and I enjoyed boxing her floppy ears and lording over her with my dirty frocks just the same. I was allowed to do as I please most of the time, and who isn't happy when they are allowed to do exactly as they please? Love can be the most suffocating of things at times. I know; I've seen it myself.

Narcissa Malfoy looked to me like one of the white luna moths that fed from our mourning glories, humming musically as they dipped to sample the pollen, their wings lit from within like subtle moonlight. Her hair tumbled in a carefree way over the expanse of her pale robes, making it impossible to determine where she began and ended, and she drew me into all that white upon our first meeting, welcoming me with a breezy embrace.

"What a lovely child," she said, and I only stared. Gabby had groomed me for nearly an hour that morning, brushing my wayward hair until it virtually gleamed. My dress was white, like Narcissa's, but I sensed that it did nothing for me but to point out all my contrasting imperfections: the patch of yellowish freckles under each of my eyes, and the blunt shadow of my temporarily shiny hair.

The boy Draco was brought over, and I was relieved to see that he was frowning like one who had no need for friends, just as I had no need for them. His face was just as puckered as it was in the photograph, but a gentle prod from Narcissa's hand rearranged his features into a mask well-practised neutrality. "How do you do?" he asked in a stiff little voice.

"How do I do what?" I returned, my gaze wary, as serious as a pin.

Narcissa laughed aloud, and Portia--who had until this moment been twisting her hands together in a subtle show of nerves--tittered along, her voice a false note. "So precocious!" Narcissa remarked. "I think Draco will come to love her."

Draco's face scrunched as if lined with a drawstring, and I contorted my mouth in an ugly fashion. We didn't take our eyes off one another, not even once.

We were out in the gardens, an elegant tea service awaiting us on fresh linens. I gorged my mouth with honeyed scones while Draco nibbled on a single biscuit, our mothers engaged in chit-chat that did not interest us in the least. I noticed that his manners with pristine and girly, like Narcissa's, and smirked inwardly at the delicate grip he had on his teacup. I drained my own cup within seconds and had the decency to set it back in the corresponding saucer before mopping my hands off on the linens.

"I'm going to play in the woods," I announced, wiping a smear of honey from my mouth.

"Oh?" Narcissa arched an eyebrow, then looked to Portia. "She plays in the woods?"

Portia held her teacup at half-mast for a moment, her lips quirking uncertainly. "It's quite safe, Narcissa," she finally said, taking a throat-quenching sip. "And fresh air has healthy benefits."

Narcissa seemed sceptical of this. Her glance bounced from me to Draco several times before she finally pressed her napkin to her mouth. "Very well," she said, her voice muffled. "Go and play, Draco. But stay with Pansy and be careful." Draco came to his feet reluctantly, his biscuit unfinished. "Stay clean," Narcissa added, the worry in her tone undisguised now. I would have thought this an odd request if Narcissa had not so completely fit the picture of one who had never been dirty in her life.

I raced for a familiar path, scaring up birds in my haste. The woods were as known to me as all of Saversnake by then, and their darkness made my blood roll to sing-song pitch, their combined scent of decaying leaves and vibrant foliage filling my nose with the twin promises of danger and life.

"Where are we going?" Draco met up with me, panting.

"The woods." I wondered if all of his questions were so dull.

"Where in the woods?" His voice needled in my ear, hot with irritation.

I came to a sudden stop and he thrashed and caught himself, coming up short of fumbling into me. "You know about Salazar's tree?" I asked, lifting my chin at him.

"Everyone does." He sounded unimpressed.

"That's where we're going," I said, pointing into the heart of the forest. "The devil lives there, you know," I added.

His already-wan cheeks seemed to go dead for lack of colour. "My mother won't like that," he said, tugging on the buttons of his robes.

"So what?" I scrunched up my face, incredulous at such words.

When we reached Salazar's tree he was sweating rivers, his clean robes now marred with stipplings of mud at the hem. The tree itself was round-bellied and huge, layered in ancient, fragrant moss, its branches thrusting up for the sky and then gnarling downward, as if thinking to snatch us. He leaned against a tree a safe metre or so away and issued complaints while struggling to catch his breath. "I'm dirty now, and you made me run so fast I think I've twisted my ankle."

"Gabby!" I clapped my hands together, unfazed, and she popped into view.

"What does Missy Pansy need?" she asked, her eyes round and eager.

"He needs a glass of water," I said, my finger at Draco's gasping figure.

A glass of ice water appeared in her hand and she passed it over. Draco drank from it feverishly, but he stared at Gabby from over the rim of the glass the entire time, his eyes clouded with mistrust.

"Rub his ankle, too," I said, circling the tree and poking my finger into a knothole, then holding my eye to it to search the darkness.

"What?" Draco sputtered his outrage. "Don't let it touch me!"

"Why not?" I circled the tree, bringing him into my line of sight again. Gabby was bowed before him with her hands outstretched, frozen in hesitation. Draco gawked at her in revulsion, as if being approached by a parasite.

"Because it's disgusting!" he protested, hiking back his supposedly wounded ankle as if thinking to kick her.

I tilted my head at him, curious. Gabby was often an irritation to me for any number of reasons: she could be so painfully slow, for one, particularly when I was hungry or in want of entertainment. She also chattered a blue streak whether I felt like listening or not, but as long as I didn't have to talk back I more or less tolerated her conversational nature. That she might be disgusting had never occurred to me.

My contemplations were interrupted by an explosion that rocked the sky and traveled through the trees, their roots quaking in protest. I looked up at the smoke and saw stunted branches come raining down, one passing within a hair's breath of knocking my skull in. Gabby gave me a single, fearful look and then disappeared with a pop. Draco screamed and fell to his knees, throwing his arms over his head for haphazard shelter. "The devil!" he yelled. "The devil's come!"

"There's no devil!" I countered. He was rolling in the mud by then, sobbing gibberish that was punctuated every now and again by a high, girlish shriek. I hoisted up one of the branches and brandished it at him. "Shut up, you!"

My threats were dwarfed by Narcissa's scream. She darted into the clearing, whiter than vapour, with Portia close at her heels. "Draco! Oh, oh, Draco!" She threw herself on him, mud splashing, her son's name dribbling from her mouth like a mindless chant.

"They're all right, Narcissa!" Portia exclaimed, but she looked more hectic and frenzied than I'd ever seen her. She inched towards me then, placing her hand on my shoulder as if to ensure its wholeness. "It's just Perkins testing our wards. He does it all the time."

Narcissa drew her son to her chest and stood upright, turning to face us . Against her white dress the mud looked as dark as spilt blood, and Draco was her sobbing, murdered victim. "And what if your wards had failed?" she asked, her voice a cool hiss, edged by a tremor that suggested she was holding back either rage or hysteria. "My son would be dead."

Portia's mouth fell open and stayed that way, as if she expected an answer to come in on the air that she breathed.

It was Draco who supplied her with the words she was looking for. "I'm fine," he said, his sobs abruptly cut off. His face seemed cut in half by a thick, red flush that had gathered under his eyes, and he struggled weakly against his Mother's arms. Narcissa held tight, her face like plaster. Draco struggled again, then went limp as linen . "I'm fine," he repeated, his voice bloated with misery and embarrassment.

I imagine that Portia must have sent over a dozen owls before Narcissa accepted her olive branch. The acceptance finally arrived in the form of a curt invitation in which I was asked to join Draco in a play date at Malfoy Manor--a perfectly penned postscript made clear that never again would Narcissa or Draco set food in Saversnake. My ensuing visits to Malfoy Manor were seasonal affairs that came around every spring, summer, winter and autumn. I did not look forward to them in the least, and had to be more or less coaxed with promises of new pets and trinkets before I would agree to dip my fingers into the jar of floo powder. Play dates at Malfoy Manor were quiet, dull affairs in which Draco and I played gobstones in the drawing room, sipping from spill-proof glasses of fruit juice. On my first visit I nearly nodded off out of boredom, my head lolling painfully into the knob of my shoulder.

Draco resurrected me with a smart gobstone to the forehead; my drowsy eyes flew open and I brought my hand up, touching the stinging welt the stone had left behind. "You blubbering crybaby!" I bellowed, then began at once to mount the game table, prepared to fling myself at him.

"I'm not," he said in a voice so assured and cool--casual, even, as he sat across from me clicking gobstones between his fingers--that I sank back down into my seat. "And if you tell anyone that I cried that day in the forest," he continued, "I'll tell everyone what my Mother told me about you."

"What's that?" I asked, lowering my head and looking at him through my hair. I wondered who he thought I would tell. Gabby? Portia? It didn't matter--they'd already seen his blubbering for themselves. I wanted to hate him, really, but he was thrust into an interesting light just then, his eyes squeezed into calculating slits and his hand filled with gobstone ammunition.

"I'll tell them the truth. That you were raised by disgusting house elves." He blew on a gobstone then. Shined it up like a new galleon on the breast of his tailored shirt.

***

"And this... this is Salazar's rune." Portia's voice was hushed over with reverence as she lifted the rune from the vault that was hidden beneath her desk. I had never glimpsed it there before, sunken into the floor and barred with a number of locks and charms.

I eyed the rune, which looked like nothing special to me. "It's just a rock," I said. And it was: a fist-sized chunk of stone, unremarkable in quality and lustre.

Portia turned it over in careful, tented fingers, as if it might crumble to dust. "In this case the word rune is closer to 'ruin'. This is all that remains of the house where Salazar was born, right outside in Saversnake forest."

I waited for her to say more. "What's it do?" I finally ventured.

"Do?" Her lips twitched, as if the question had never occurred to her. "As long as the rune remains in the hands of the rightful stewards, Salazar's will cannot be thwarted."

We were the rightful stewards, this much I knew. Portia showed me the parchment that said as much; it glowed faintly with protective charms and was written upon in a strange language. Old English, she called it, and pointed to a scribble of ink that looked as if it might say Parkinson. "The Perkins clan believe that Salazar decreed them as his stewards, that this says Perkins and not Parkinson, and they have spent the last twelve hundred years attempting to steal the rune from Saversnake Manor."

They had succeeded a few times, too. Their first victory had come in the year 1300, when the Perkins outnumbered Parkinsons by dozens and managed to ambush the Manor in the night. They were too foolish to end the Parkinson line while they had the chance, and Elmer Edwyn had retaliated five years later by launching a full-out massacre, swinging his magical scythe and beheading three strapping Perkins sons with a single stroke. In two days time most of the witches and wizards of the Perkins family lay dead, and the rune was back in Parkinson hands.

"Those who protect Salazar's rune are the protectors of Salazar's will," Portia said. Her words sounded like something from a fairy tale, made even more magical by the low, melodic quality of her voice. "And those who protect Salazar's will are gifted with Salazar's blessing."

Salazar's will had been thwarted only once in recent history. That was in the year 1981, when his heir was nearly killed by a common wizarding boy named Harry Potter. The early 1980s were bad years for the Parkinsons. We had lost the rune and all of the blessings that came with it. It was three years of bad luck that began with 1980, the year I was born.

I was ten before Portia finally told me the history of Saversnake and Salazar's rune. By then I was long used to old wizard Perkins' attempts to breach our wards with hexes and curses that he fired from his end of the forest. Some were strong enough to shake the entire Manor, so that vases skated across table tops but never quite spilled over and broke. Perkins was the last of his kind, all of his sons killed in the first war, and his only daughter trotted off to Azkaban and given the dementor's kiss. I knew that he hated us, but until then I hadn't known why. I merely accepted his attacks as nature's course, much as those who live on fault lines never question the earth's occasional tremors, thinking they have a perfect right to live just where they are--right in the heart of the battle.

***

I vividly remember the summer that my Hogwart's letter came--vividly because it was both the best and worst summer of my life. At the time, anyway.

I was visiting Portia's tower almost every night by then. She finally saw, it seemed, that her loose, hands-off approach to parenting had left me thoroughly lacking in all of the fine social skills that a young witch of pure lineage would be expected to have. "Oh, there's so much you don't know," she would fret, nervously plucking at the cuffs of her blouse. I thought I heard a different truth in her words. There was so much that she didn't know--how to be a Mother, how to tap her wand over my head and turn me from a pumpkin to a princess.

"Don't be a daft munter," I said from around a mouthful of fast-melting ice lolly. In the summer heat I had developed both a taste for them and rude insults--most of them gleaned from the vividly pornographic texts kept on Portia's highest shelves. I could reach those shelves by then, and Portia had done nothing to stop me, not even as I looked up from the pages of the book every once and a while to venture a query. "What's a cunt? What's it mean to frig it?" She offered me no answer, only kept on with her endless scribbling and paused long enough to lift her wand and send an anatomy text flying into my lap.

Her sudden show of concern, so long concealed, unimpressed me. For I had seen enough of Narcissa Malfoy to know how well-bred witches behaved. All I need do was wrap myself in a cool cloak of politeness and keep conversation guided to pleasant topics like weather and fashion. But even I knew that one didn't become as poised and polished as Narcissa through mere emulation, and this realisation put a stab of worry in my belly, making the sweet ice in my mouth sour a little.

"You don't understand, Pansy," Portia said, pacing around the fireplace. Her face was flushed and energetic, her black curls zig-zagging every which way. "You will not have Gabby there to dress and groom you. There will be rules to follow, and if those rules are broken you will be punished." Something, a private thought, perhaps, made her voice voice go dark. "And you've never before suffered punishment. I've made certain of that."

"You're making this school sound as appealing as a rip-roaring bellyache," I complained, tossing the remains of my ice lolly into the fire. Then I clapped my hands and Gabby appeared with a fresh one, already unwrapped and steaming faintly as its icy surface hit the moist, warm air of the tower. It was lemon, my favourite.

But Portia was right. Oh, I was already a fine pretender by then, sucking so blithely on my lolly while she tied herself in knots over all that could go wrong. But I wanted what she wanted: to learn, to live in the outside world, amongst children my own age. I wanted it with a fire that had me choking on ice, all in an attempt to feed away the wild flaring of my nerves.

And so my education began. I was an unpleasant pupil who complained bitterly to Portia, my very unpractised professor, but I did try. I tried until it pained me. First came penmanship, in which Portia showed me the proper way to hold a quill, how to sharpen it when it dulled, and how to shape my sloppy words into a round, neat Palmer-script. Following that was tea service: how long to steep, how much to pour. How to drop in a cube of sugar without making a splash. It all sounds simple enough to you, I'm sure, but I was very unaccustomed to doing anything without making a splash. To live a life without making a splash didn't seem like living to me.

I thought myself so free in comparison to those girls in books, who were forced to live dreary lives before reaping their sweet reward at the end. And now I was being made into one of them. I was a princess turned into a plain, placid pumpkin, practising my curtsey before the mirror and then cursing when I couldn't get it right. One of my knee-socks would sag, or my hair ribbon would come untied. I was impish and dark, not much taller than Gabby, and any curtsey I made looked like a smirking, silly gesture--there was no serene Narcissa waiting to bloom inside me.

I hadn't seen how small my own world was, but now I sensed it. It was no more than a weak little splash in a vast, roaring ocean, and the ocean was coming up around me.

Even Virgil had a hand in my transformation, taking a three-day holiday from his travels in order to take me shopping in London. It was my first time to Diagon Alley, and I marveled at its noisy mix of grandeur and squalor. Owls hooted from rooftop cages, their droppings raining down on those who weren't careful enough to watch their step, and children ran across the cobblestones, laughing and setting off dung bombs. At least three haggard, cloudy-eyed witches tried to pull me aside for a palm reading, and a hat seller trailed me for half a block, waving a scarlet cap with a feather plume that he swore was made just for me. I was measured for my school robes, fitted for a wand, and given a pile of books so heavy they made my arms ache. And Virgil, he seemed to know everyone, calling out hearty greetings to wizards and witches of all ages. When he introduced me as his daughter--proudly, it seemed--I couldn't help but glow. "How do you do?" I'd say, the words giving me a secret thrill. They didn't know how long I'd had to practise them--just to make them sound sincere, just to make it sound like I'd been saying them for years.

He took me to the Magic Box theatre that night. We first dined on cold oysters that had been heaped onto a silver platter of ice, and their salty liquor left my throat with a delicious sting. "Be sure to chew him till he screams," Virgil said, prising an oyster open and washing it down with a long drink of lager. I laughed at his words, which were often as careless as my own, then forgot myself and reached for his lager, several long gulps fizzing down into my belly before he reached across the table and removed the mug from my hand, his touch gentle but chiding. For afters there was cherries jubilee, and the lights went down just as I forked into it, the curtain rising on a metamorphmagus who stood on stage and shaped himself into famous wizards throughout history. Everyone laughed when he turned into Uric the Oddball and made rude, squirting sounds with his wand--even me, my voice joining with the chorus as if it had always belonged there. Then the curtain lifted a second time, revealing a plain-faced woman who looked rather awkward before the footlights until she finally opened her mouth and lilted out the sweetest, most haunting song I'd ever heard.

Believe me if all those
Endearing young charms
Which I gaze on so fondly today
Were to change by tomorrow
And fleet in my arms
Like fairy gifts fading away
Though would'st still be adored
As this moment thou art
Let thy loveliness fade as it will
And around the dear ruin
Each wish of my heart
Would entwine itself
Verdantly still

And just as the tremolo of her voice seemed to strike the theatre dumb, another curtain lifted behind her, revealing the large, velvety paws of a manticore. It strode up behind the woman with its tail dripping poison, its face alarming human beneath the halo of its mane. The tail lifted to a dangerous height, aiming for the woman's neck, and a gasp went through the crowd. Then the woman's voice seemed to affect the creature. His fur stood on end, a tremor passing through his powerful limbs before he curled to the floor without so much as a single roar. He closed his eyes and slept, and the woman sat upon his sleek back, her hands caressing his haunches.

I watched with my mouth flung open, a cherry stuck to the end of my forgotten fork. A foreign, suffocating sensation filled my breast, and had I known then what I know now I would have regonised it for what it was at once. Rapture.

The feeling stayed with me for a time. It was with me a few nights later as Portia prepared me for the next day, the day I would leave for Hogwart's from Kings Cross. We were packing my trunk, and I was quiet and patient as she showed me how to fold things properly, how to roll stockings together and line my jewellery and hair ribbons inside a special velvet case. "Soon enough you'll be able to use your wand and will learn the spell for self-packing trunks, but for now..." She trailed off and shut the trunk's heavy lid, brushing its handsome leather once before standing up.

She took me to the bathroom then, to issue my final lesson. Hair, it was. All week we'd worked on face-washing and bathing, tooth-brushing and deodorising. I could make myself neat and clean without Gabby's help, sure enough, but my hair was still a raggle-taggle nest of black snarls, and to even run a comb through it caused me to yelp out in pain.

Portia positioned me in front of the mirror, rising up behind me like a taller version of myself. "See," she said, her fingers forking into the crown of my hair. "Your hair is like mine, thick and straight as a nail. Prone to tangle, as well." I stared at her reflection, glimpsing myself in the mirrored surface of her spectacles.

"Yours is nicer than mine," I said. And it was, looped up into curls that framed her heart-shaped face. Her fingers pattered against my scalp, as if in thought.

"First, take some of this," she said, opening a cupboard and handing me a small bottle. A conditioning potion, she called it, and a knut-sized drop was enough to soften up the tangles so that I could freely run my fingers through it. She showed me how to part it down the middle and gather it at either side. How to tie the bunches off with a ribbon. Then she showed me how to twist three chunks of hair into a plait. I tried to copy her motions, but being all thumbs the plait fell apart, back into a limp ponytail.

"That's all right," she said, smoothing down the ponytails on either side of my head. "This looks nice as it is." She continued to smooth them, then moved her fingers up to my fringe, shaping it into a single, thick curl that matched the one on her own forehead. I wanted, for the first time, to sleep at her feet and be stroked.

"Your eyes," I said, my voice hoarse. "I've never seen them."

Her hands froze on my shoulders, then softened. "I was set on marrying your father at eighteen, but my mother didn't like the idea" she finally began, and I wondered what this had to do with her eyes. She'd never mentioned her Mother before, and indeed, I couldn't recall ever having met her. Virgil's parents were dead, killed in the war, but Portia's own parents presumably lived on, somewhere. I only wanted to see her eyes, just once, but I wanted her to keep touching my hair, too, so I kept silent and waited for her to go on. "It would be a burden, she said, to be a steward. She came from the Parkinson line herself, a cousin of Virgil's grandmother, but saw none of the glory in being a steward. My mother..." And here her voice broke, and she seemed reduced to a child for a moment, but then straightened up and hardened her tone. "My mother was a very stern woman. I could scarcely make a move without inviting her criticism."

Her hands trembled upon my shoulders and all at once I understood. My free little life up until then, lived without any rules or expectations, it had been Portia's gift to me. A misguided gift, I now know, but a gift just the same, given with only the best of intentions. I nodded soberly, and I think she sensed what I had come to understand.

"I was eighteen, soon to be married and on my own. I could not have been happier." She tweaked my ribbon then, such an unaffected, playful gesture that it nearly made me jump. Her voice had turned oddly light, as if she did not want to scare me with the words that would come next. "I was in Diagon Alley, shopping for my gown, when Aurors came flying through the streets, their wands firing. They were in pursuit of a Death Eater, you see, and they killed him not half a metre from where I stood, admiring fine lace through a window. Avada Kedavra, it was. The green light, it was blinding."

"But you're not blind," I said bluntly. I knew that she wasn't.

"No," she said, her voice a wistful sigh as she ran her fingers through my hair for the last time. "But it still hurts to look."

I wanted to hope that she wasn't looking at me as she said it, but really, how could I know?

***

Draco and Narcissa came to Saversnake by floo the next morning. It was their first visit since the incident out by Salazar's tree, and as Narcissa stepped from the fireplace she brushed invisible soot from her shoulders and looked around suspiciously, as if Perkins might be lurking from somewhere up on a balustrade, his wand outstretched and waiting. Portia and Narcissa exchanged cold, airless kisses, one on either cheek, and Draco looked hot and irritable, burdened by a massive trunk that dwarfed my own.

"Well then," Narcissa piped up, looking as if she did not care to dally at Saversnake for any longer than necessary. "Have you all your things, Pansy?" She studied me from head to foot, her expression softening into one of surprise. "Why, how fresh and bright you look this morning."

"Thank you, Mrs Malfoy," I lilted, admiring my imitation of her own patrician soprano. She didn't appear to notice that I was emulating her, but Draco shifted and placed me in his line of vision, his lips pursed as if he did not quite know what to make of me.

"Pansy." Portia came toward me, her skirts faintly swishing. She bent to my height and reached out, as if to touch me, but brought her hand to my trunk instead. I sensed she was looking very hard into my eyes, and I stared back and saw only my own, which were brown and unblinking. "May Salazar bring you blessings," she said, her voice a grave whisper. Her words startled me. I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't that.

"Tell Gabby goodbye for me," I said finally, my fingers curling around the handle of my trunk.

She nodded and then, startling me again, went to Draco. His eyes widened as if he were being approached by a ghost. Portia leaned down and whispered something in his ear, something he only nodded at, and then she withdrew, reaching for the jar of floo powder that sat on the mantle.

When the green floo-flames surged up around me I wondered, briefly, if the colour made Portia's eyes water and sting--if not with pain, then with memories.

She did not follow us to Kings Cross. In the eleven years I had known her she had not left Saversnake even once.

***

"What did Portia say to you?"

These were my first words to Draco since Narcissa had left us at platform nine and three quarters, and they came out blunt and demanding, my façade of good manners already tossed aside in my first half-hour away from Saversnake. We were sitting on the rounded lids of our trunks, waiting for the Hogwart's Express to pull in to the station. Already a throng of other students surrounded us, burdened with flapping wwls and pushy parents.

Draco lifted an eyebrow and let out a laugh. "Ah, I was wondering where the real you had gone off to." He jumped off his trunk and began fussing with his tie. "You shouldn't call her Portia in front of the others, or they'll think you odd."

"Fine." I gritted my teeth together a little. "What did my mother say to you, then?"

He lifted his shoulder in a half-shrug, looking up and down the tracks. "She said goodbye. What else?"

My mouth turned down in doubt, but before I could open it to protest Draco was off and shouting heartily, waving at two large boys who'd just come on to the platform. They were a thick, lumbering pair, and as they approached I saw that one had a extraordinarily fuzzy, single eyebrow, and the other a face that was a bit too squashy, as if it had softened in the sun and collapsed, leaving him with a mean, closed-up expression. I watched as Draco greeted them with a familiarity he'd never shown me, slapping each brute on the back with jovial good cheer.

"Who's that?" the boy with the eyebrow asked, looking at me from a height much greater than Draco's.

"Oh, that's Pansy," Draco said breezily, the way one might introduce a house elf. If one weren't, say, as disgusted by them as Draco was. "Pansy Parkinson."

"Parkinson?" The squashy-faced boy looked impressed. "Of the stewards?"

"Yes," I said, the pride in my voice quite new to my ears.

"Parkinson!" Two girls, who had apparently been positioned behind the two brutish boys and therefore out of my range of sight, suddenly skipped towards me. Very pretty girls, the both of them, their blue eyes bright as they took me in. "Did you hear that, Tracey?" said the blonder of the two. She looked to me like a smaller, plumper Narcissa. "Slytherin is sure to take the house cup now, with a steward in the dungeons!"

"How do you know you'll be in Slytherin?" I asked, and from their expressions knew at once that it was the wrong thing to ask. They dropped away from me slightly, a puzzled glance passing between them. A grumble of dark thoughts bubbled within me. They were just silly, flapping girls, certainly no more pure of blood than I. I popped to my feet and held out my hand. "I am a Parkinson. Call me Pansy. I'm afraid I have no idea who you are, either of you."

My haughty words matched my pose as I jutted out my chin and planted my free hand on my hip. I thought they might balk at my rudeness, but I hardly cared at that moment, my lessons in good society manners already forgotten. But they didn't balk, they only blinked simultaneously, as if being puppeted by the same set of strings. Then they shared matching smiles--amazing!--and began giggling and fawning over me at once. "Oh, is she not a doll!" the one named Tracey exclaimed. "This is Daphne Greengrass, and I'm Tracey Davis. We're all sure to be very good friends."

Good friends

. They would all be my good friends, Tracey and Daphne, Vincent and Gregory. I would make them my good friends, and if they didn't like it, too bad. Even Draco I would make my good friend. He would most certainly not like it, I knew, and the thought made me giddy. He liked me best when I hated him most, when my hand curled into a fist and threatened his nose. He liked the honesty in that furious gesture, I think, and to see me toddle after him like a faithful pet was to witness an act so obvious that it caused him to glance at his surroundings with sudden mistrust. If I, who so heartily disliked him, could pretend so well, then how easy must it be for everyone else?

"Let us sit with Draco and the boys," I whispered to Tracey as we boarded the train. It had pulled into the station only moments before, scarlet and smoking, and excitement filled my belly as we navigated the narrow corridors, peering into each car and sizing up the contents.

"Hmm, oh no, I don't think so," I said, having plunged my head into a car where a toothy boy sat all alone, a fat toad struggling desperately in his hands. Tracey and Daphne let loose a squeal of shocked giggles and I smiled in grim satisfaction, pleased that I was already able to predict their reactions. What a pair of pigeons, I thought.

The next car down revealed another lone boy. He was tall for his age, a scrawny thing with squarish glasses too large for his face. "Ew, it's Theodore!" Daphne said, clutching at the back of my robes. The boy stared at us plainly, and his glasses were so unlike Portia's--unlike hers, they hid nothing. If anything, they seemed to magnify his simple earnestness, which swam across his face so vividly that my throat went tight and uncomfortable.

"Keep on," I muttered, prodding Daphne in the back.

We found Draco at last, sitting at the end of the train and already stuffing his face with chocolate frogs. Vincent and Gregory flanked him on either side, delighting over their cards with sticky fingers. "There you are, Draco!" I trilled, flopping into the seat across from him, the mary janes on my feet swinging gaily. His eyes widened and his mouth fell open, even as he worked his mouthful of chocolate. "You've saved me all of your favourite cards, I hope?" I stared back at him neutrally, my eyes daring him to call out my bluff. He only swallowed and muttered noiselessly. Tracey and Daphne settled in beside me, flanking me in much the same manner as Draco's two bookends, and as they did so I felt my position take shape, solidifying around me like iron, like the sturdy stone of Salazar's rune.

I didn't realise then that my story was only beginning. I thought it had finally finished, and as the Hogwart's Express chugged to life and struggled out of the station I tilted my head back and closed my eyes, feeling the engine speed up and deliver me to my new life. A life which filled me like a sigh of contentment. A life where the princess already has her well-deserved finale, her hands filled with rewards after all those years of uncomfortable toiling. And she lived happily ever after.

What a blinking load of shite, that.