Blaise was a part of Pansy, heart and soul.
He couldn’t just leave her like that. He wasn’t dying, not today, she’d decided. He couldn’t. He couldn’t leave her. She wouldn’t make it. He’d spent months, maybe even years, preparing her for this moment so he could know that she would move on without him. But she wasn’t that strong. She couldn’t do it. How would she get up in the morning with half her heart gone? Half her soul gone? She couldn’t. She couldn’t keep going without him. Did she tell him that? Did he know that? She was holding onto his hand as he was wheeled forward. She was telling him this. Telling him she couldn’t live without him. That he was her heart and soul. He clutched her hand and nodded. He told her that she was his heart and soul too.
She kept talking. She didn’t know what she was saying. She didn’t know what she said and what she just thought. She had to say all the things he needed to hear. She loved him so so much. She kept talking even after a healer pulled her away from his stretcher, pushing her away so he could be wheeled into the emergency room.
She collapsed on the floor in front of the doors and sobbed, screaming with pain as she watched him disappear from her view because she knew that her heart and soul wouldn’t make it the same way she knew that her fingers would move if her brain willed them too. She screamed until someone’s arms surrounded her, pulling her away from the door. She screamed until the other half of her heart and soul left her, tunneling under the cracks in the doors to find the rest of themselves. She screamed until there was nothing left of her, willing with all her energy that he would come back with the pieces of her heart and soul and they would all be back together again.
By the time the healer came to say they were sorry, Pansy had no tears left to cry. They had all fallen to the ground, pooling around her with the remaining pieces of her heart and soul, ripped from her body in mourning. The words didn’t sink in at first, even though she’d heard them before. She sat there silently as if still hoping that the healer would proclaim a miraculous recovery. But there was no great proclamation, and the pieces of Pansy remained broken by the floor, circling her feet aimlessly.
A distant voice asked her something, but she couldn’t understand what it was. Everything sounded like she’d stuck her head underwater, distant and warped. She wanted to turn toward the voice, but her body wasn’t listening to her brain. Her heart and soul, gone in an instant. She wanted to cry, she might have been. She couldn’t tell. She couldn’t feel her face. Or the rest of her. Blaise. He was gone. Forever. He would never be with her again. She wanted to scream. She might have been. Her hands were clutching something tightly, though what, she had no clue. She felt that if she let go, the pieces of her would float away, searching for him. She needed to steel herself. She needed to think. She was rational, it was her thing. She’d watched people die before. Friends and family members had died around her. She had to get through this. But she couldn’t.
The deaths of the others hadn’t torn her heart and soul apart like this. She’d loved many of them, sure, and pieces of her soul had went with them, but none of them were like Blaise. Blaise and Pansy had known each other for so long that it was difficult to tell where one ended and the other started. They were one. They shared a mind, a heart, and a soul. They were two halves of the same coin. What was she supposed to do without her other half? She screamed, she was sure she was yelling this time, but nothing could convey her grief. Nothing could tell those around her how she was being ripped apart right now. No sound could ever make them understand.
She screamed until her voice was hoarse with grief. Her hands clutched fabric as she screamed, something deep and guttural within her that she hadn’t seen since she was a child. Her Blaise, gone. She yelled and yelled until she didn’t know if any sound came out. He couldn’t be gone. Not yet. She still needed to tell him so much. She still needed to explore the world with him. They hadn’t done the things they needed to. He couldn’t die. Not yet. She needed him. She needed him with her now. She needed to reach out and feel his warm arms in hers. She screamed more when someone tried to calm her down. She screamed and screamed even as healers tried to talk to her.
Everyone around her be damned. She didn’t care about them. She needed him. She wanted to reach out and find him. But he was nowhere to be seen. He would never be anywhere again. He was gone. She shrieked and cried even as someone grabbed her, attempting to steel her. Trying to bring her back to reality. But how could she come back when her heart and soul was torn and broken, lying somewhere with Blaise? The image of him being in a body bag popped into her head, making her scream and cry again. She couldn’t breathe. There was a weight on her chest, preventing its rising and falling. She didn’t know if she would ever be able to breathe again. Not without him. Her head felt heavy and her whole body spun but she kept screaming. Sometimes she yelled no no no, most of the time, she just said his name. She screamed even as something stabbed her in the side, a sedative, meant to calm her down.
She screamed as it took effect, making it impossible to lift her head. She continued to scream as her body collapsed on the ground and she was wheeled away. She didn’t care. Her heart and soul were gone, how could she?
When she woke up, there was an unmatched heaviness in the room. People were gathered around with tear-stained eyes but she didn’t care. “Blaise?” She whispered his name with a hoarse voice, as if he would show up with that obnoxious smirk on his face and pull her into a hug.
When he didn’t show up, Molly Weasley whispered “Oh, honey, he passed away.”
She felt the intense pain stabbing at her side and her eyes, which she kept trained on the door, still waiting for him to walk through. She attempted to fight off the tears, but she was always weaker than her flaws. When she cried again, it was the same guttural sobs from before. Sobs that rocked through her, making it impossible to breathe. Her chest began to hurt, a heavy pain that draped itself over her. She was hyperventilating as she sobbed, and soon, she thought she started screaming again. When a sharp pain jolted up her arm, she realized she’d been thrashing around. Her body was no longer hers. It moved off its own volition, making her wonder whether she or it was in control.
She couldn’t breathe, she really couldn’t breathe, she realized with a jolt. The walls were closing in on her. The walls were she’d spent so much time with him. Now they were suffocating her. They were closing in on her, and all the people around her advanced, cornering her. She couldn’t leave. She was stuck in that room the same way Blaise had been. Did he know then that he was going to die? He always thought every time he got sick was going to be the end. He was right this time though. Pansy wished he would be wrong more. But of course, he wasn’t. 90% of the time, Blaise was right, regardless of topic. He would never be right again. She wished he would. The walls seemed smaller now. Still intent on crushing her. The people around her didn’t help. They were all stuck in here and they were taking all her oxygen. She was hyperventilating. She was using too much oxygen. The walls. Oxygen. The Weasleys. Blaise. The walls kept closing. The oxygen kept depleting. The Weasleys kept advancing. Blaise probably kept rotting in some basement room. She would never be able to escape. Blaise was the one in the body bag, but she might as well have been.
Her body bag had no zipper. No way in or out. No oxygen to breathe either. She would suffocate there, alone and in the dark. Even then, her and Blaise would remain separated, in their own body bags. She wondered if his bag was suffocating. But of course, he wouldn’t know because he was fucking dead. Pansy wished she was. She would give anything in the world to be the one laying in a bag right now. Anything for Blaise to be here.
She was still screaming, she realized. She couldn’t stop. The pain in her chest grew and grew. She thought it would always be there. Til she was reunited with her heart and soul. And who knew when they would be together again? When she reached out for something to steal herself with, she realized she’d climbed out of the be, holding onto the railing and screaming. She screamed and screamed and screamed until a healer came running, syringe in hand. The second time they sedated her, she was ready. She screamed as the drowsiness set in. She screamed until her body fell limp and she passed out. Even after she was out cold, the ghosts of her screams could be heard all over the hospitals. They were inescapable. They hid around corners and hit people when they least expected it. The screams of pure, unbridled grief. The screams of someone who had lost everything in an instant. The screams of someone whose heart and soul had been torn from their body, leaving them as only a shell of what they had once been.
The grief hung over the hospital, sneaking in through people’s nostrils and making a home in their brain. And every time Pansy awoke and began to scream again, the heaviness grew and grew until it seeped out of the hospital and into the streets around it. It stole the happiness of everyone around the hospital like a dementor, tearing their souls and leaving them broken. Even the innocent children playing in the houses nearby were not exempt. They felt the heaviness in the air as she screamed. They couldn’t hear her screams (thanks to silencing spells), but they felt her pain wash over them in waves.
Every time Pansy started screaming, huge, gray clouds rolled in. Rain poured and lightning struck the ground. Thunder rolled to tell the whole world that she was grieving. Her grief was felt everywhere, by everyone. They carried her pain with them in the rain and storms. Trees fell, houses flooded, and cars crashed when she was conscious. When she screamed, everyone felt it. She made them feel it, whether she knew it or not. Her magic forced everyone into grieving with her. The storms came, night and day, wreaking havoc in their cities. All around the world, she became known as the girl whose grief brought death to your door.
Children began to weave tales of her as as destructive as the storms. She was the monster hiding in their closets. The sun only came out when she was sleeping, which was often with how many times she had to be sedated. Stories passed from person to person, growing and growing until the whole world had heard of Pansy Parkinson, the flower who struck your family with lightning. Her pain caused fires and floods. For centuries, every time it rained, it was said that Pansy was crying for her lost love.
This was a factor that varied from story to story. It was generally understood that she was grieving over a boy, a close friend. Some believed they felt like siblings to each other, others thought they were in love. In some stories, Pansy’s husband was in the hospital with her when the storms first came. Supposedly, he visited her everyday, cursed to love a woman whose pain would cause the world to end. In some stories, the boy was her husband. The story had been told so many times over that no two ever fully matched.
Even centuries after her death, the sky weeped for Pansy. Her story continued to be weaved, to the point where no one knew anymore whether she was an urban legend, an explanation for the long period (nearly 170 years for anyone who was wondering) of volatile weather, or whether she was a real girl. When everyone who knew her eventually passed away, adults would tell their children not to listen to the tales of her. There was never a woman whose weeping brought tornadoes. That was crazy, they would say. How could she have ever been that powerful?
But the children still silently prayed that Pansy would sleep peacefully when they wanted clear skies. And sometimes, if they wanted school cancelled, they would pray that she would awake and scream for her lost soul again.
When statues and drawings were made in her honor, she secured her place as the Griever as she was often known by. The Griever was known everywhere and, in the wizarding world, she was often accredited with all volatile weather. She was a superstition. It was believed that she found people who reminded her of her lost soul, and she would bring storms everywhere when they died. It was believed that when grief befell your house, she would bring storms for you. It was believed that if you laid your dead loved one in her storm, that she would guide their soul safely to the afterlife. It was believed that she was still forced to stay on this world, as the boy had taken her heart and soul with her when he left, and now she roamed the earth, forever grieving.