Stone-faced Girl
I'm such a coward, these wretched things I do
Disgrace and treachery and the sickness that I know is true
Ava - Famy
Pansy should’ve felt relieved. After all, her supposed side won. But she was a Parkinson, and Parkinsons knew there was no such thing as a full victory. Not without cruelty, ugliness, brutality, and enough indifference to be ruthless in enforcing the violence.
She’d seen it first hand as a mobster’s daughter; how fear and paranoia could be wielded as a weapon to bend the fates to their will. Later, as Draco Malfoy’s friend, she watched the fear bloom and consume him whole as his father’s mistake weighed heavy on his shoulders; he was Atlas holding up the sky.
Fuck the whole lot of them. How stupid it was to voluntarily follow a man unstable and volatile in his greed for power. It had been alarmingly clear—at least, to herself and her father—that Voldemort had nothing more than a dream. For all of his dramatic displays of chaos and destruction, he didn’t have a sustainable strategy.
To truly conquer and control, like the Parkinsons had done with the underbelly of wizarding London, strategy had to be everything. Every move had to be by design, calculated for at least three possible outcomes and at minimum three steps ahead. Empires were such fragile things. Its bricks ought to be laid with care.
Fear, while handy as a deterrent for betrayal, would always eventually fade to be overtaken by either a suicidal embrace or courage for an uprising. What good was it to have an army stiffened by fear? What good was it to be led by a tyrant? It was loyalty without reward.
Imagine being ambitious enough to find it an acceptable condition, to find that instinctual self-preservation could be ignored because there could be a minuscule chance of basking in the glory of someone else’s coattails. Perhaps that was the real downfall of being a Slytherin.
Voldemort shouldn’t have scared her. She’d seen dozens of men like him and all of them crushed beneath the weight of their own madness. But he was different. He’d broken the way Slytherins operated, separated them into increasingly contentious factions when they were supposed to be a united front, looking out for their own in a world already hostile to snakes. That was his ultimate crime, and be it as it may, he was no Slytherin to her.
***
The Parkinsons had remained neutral, staunchly so. Her father had made sure of it, staring down every member of the family, daring them to disagree.
“A second fucking war based on blood supremacy. Load of fucking horseshit. A fool’s crusade,” he’d growled. “Let the blood traitors sully their line if they wish. Let the Mudbloods conduct their business as long as they stay in their place. No such thing as bad money in our business. You would all do well to remember that.”
Money was money, but it couldn’t buy everything. Pierce Parkinson would pay for his neutrality and become the first to be made an example of.
***
August 15th, 1997
Strategy meant being three steps ahead, to think for three possible outcomes. But like most things, it was not infallible, and sometimes the sprawling branches of road all led to hell, the circle of which to enter a dreaded decision.
She was of rulemaker blood, compliance almost a sin. Almost because sometimes it was a mean to an end, an opportunity to weave a scheme beneath the surface of false security.
There hadn’t been a scheme to weave this time. The only end was to survive.
Her father hadn’t been an arrogant man, aware of his own mortality and flaws. Three steps ahead. Three possible outcomes. So this time, she was a piece of the strategy puzzle, returning to the harsh regimentation of Hogwarts as a compliant stone-faced girl.
He had sat behind his mahogany desk, single malt whiskey in hand, expression unchanged as though he was giving orders to an associate rather than his only daughter. “In difficultatibus versabatur. Weather the storm. It is what we have done since the days of Edward I. It is what we will continue to do.”
Though she had understood, a wave of fury and hurt and bitterness still ran through her, nearly shattering her already cracked layer of composure. She searched his eyes, looking for a hint of hesitation, a hint of fatherly instinct, just so she could have something to cling to. He met her stare unflinchingly before he set his glass down and rose to his feet, crossing over to where she stood.
He placed his hands on her shoulders, lowered his head—as though begging for repentance—and pressed a gentle kiss on her forehead. With her eyes closed tightly, she whispered, “In difficultatibus versabatur.”
***
Boarding the Hogwarts Express for the final time should’ve been a joyous, bittersweet event. Instead, it had felt like walking into the ocean to patiently wait for a merciful wave to swallow her whole. And that was exactly what it became. Heart in throat.
Layers of tension and torture built upon the castle, its integrity shaken by the violent takeover. Student laughter and chatter drained out into the Great Lake, tainting and taunting especially the Slytherins through the green tinge it gave to their common room. How fitting it was to be reminded that it was their House that had nurtured the source of terror that reigned over them now, as though they didn’t fucking know their noble House had been warped into an image of inherent darkness.
Pansy had done what she was told, not daring to protest when Alecto Carrow selected her from the back to demonstrate the Cruciatus on a nameless Ravenclaw whose mouth had been too smart. Maybe the mobster’s daughter can show them all how it’s done. Her hands didn’t shake, her face void of emotion. She was a zombie. Maybe a monster, too.
What did it matter? Everyone already knew she was unsympathetic. Cold and cruel. Mean.
Quickly evident, there was no such thing as neutrality. Being obedient wouldn’t protect her from the abuse. Her surname and House suddenly meant nothing despite it having meant everything before, the very definition of her position in wizarding society. The aforementioned factions of Slytherin House separated previously by lines in the sand had deepened into ravines, and if nothing else, one thing was clear—if you weren’t firmly on the side of Voldemort, then you were the enemy standing in the way of a revolution.
Every night, when there was a necessary eight-hour standstill, she would heal her bruises and split lips and down a cocktail of potions; some to relieve the deep ache in her muscles—the same ones she had inflicted just to receive in turn—some to float in technicolour, the last to sleep without vision, neither dream nor nightmare, just the relief of sinking into blankness.
In the morning, she would conceal her dark undereye circles and cast her beauty charms in front of the bathroom mirror with a handful of girls who had fathers like hers. She let herself appear unaffected, consistent with the way she was on the first day everyone saw her. She would die before they would be allowed to see her broken and cowering in fear.
***
May 2nd, 1998
Then came the day, nine months too late, when Potter and his sidekicks arrived as the apparent cavalry. Some fucking cavalry. How could a teenage boy—even one that luck seemed to favour—single-handedly shift the tide? Was it so radical of her to see him as ordinary? To not subscribe to the god-like worship the masses fell into?
“Give me Harry Potter, and none will be harmed. Give me Harry Potter, and I shall leave the school untouched. Give me Harry Potter, and you will be rewarded.”
It was a simple proposal. Whether his word could be trusted wasn’t something she could concern herself with in the moment. All she knew was that there was a chance for reprieve.
She had laid out her long-buried desperation for all to see, shaking arm and voice, and received unanimous hostility. She couldn’t bring surprise to rise beneath her nausea and humiliation as she crawled through the tunnel leading to Hog’s Head.
As soon as her feet touched the sticky bar floor, her wand was out to whisk her away to 92 Arnpore, a safe house location known only to herself, her father, and two paternal uncles; the only Parkinsons by blood out of the three hundred that bore their black raven inked behind the ear. Wasn’t trust supposed to run the deepest in blood?
(She wasn’t so sure anymore.)
Warm humid wind blew hair across her cheeks upon landing on the square slab of concrete in front of an unassuming brown door. It swung open, revealing her father. He looked the same. Inscrutable and cold, but guiding her through the door and into the sitting room, his hand was gentle on her elbow.
He didn’t ask if she was all right. Instead, he snapped his fingers for Mipsie, their house-elf, to bring them tea and said, as calm as can be, “So it begins.”
“So it does,” she replied, feeling her mask of indifference fall back into place. “Will Uncle Peter and Uncle Phineas be joining us?”
“No. They insisted on defending the manor.”
She hummed and took a sip from her cup. White darjeeling. It was her mother’s preferred variety. Her shoulders tensed at the recognition. Since her passing, white darjeeling had seemingly gone extinct in their world. Her heart clenched. Was this his way of showing uncertainty? And in what exactly? Sometimes she wished they could just lay their hearts and truths bare and ignore the inherent game of communication, but of course, he was Pierce Parkinson, head of the most powerful crime family in all of Britain. He couldn’t afford to go without subtlety, had to keep every card close, and ultimately, it was what it was.
She cleared her throat after a moment and met her father’s eyes. “Tea’s perfect. Mipsie has outdone herself.”
“Yes,” he said, despite his own cup being untouched. “Your bedroom’s been prepared. I’m sure you’ve had a long day.”
It was a clear dismissal, as well as a safe deduction, though she had to bite back the retort that it had been, in fact, two hundred forty-three successive long days. She gulped down the rest of the tea and set her cup down on the saucer with a delicate clink. “Goodnight, Father. I’ll see you in the morning.”
***
May 3rd, 1998
Dawn broke in a mere four hours after she took her nightly dose of Dreamless Sleep. The familiar shadow of emotional numbness had not left, and that was fine. She went through her morning routine, finding it to be undisrupted despite the change in location.
Her father was already seated at the dining table, puffing on a cigar as he read The Daily Prophet. Her own copywas laid out beside her placemat. She moved to sit, smoothing her skirt beneath her, but faltered when she saw the unmistakable headline: LORD VOLDEMORT TRIUMPHS AT HOGWARTS.
There was that feeling again, the same she felt on the late morning of September 1st. Heart in throat. She speared a piece of cantaloupe and left the paper untouched. The rest of the meal was spent in silence until she placed her fork down onto her plate with an air-penetrating clank.
It was infuriating to see her father appear so placid, flipping through the paper like it was any other day. Change had arrived, and surely, he must have known that this new regime would not spare the neutral. They would be coming for them. Where was his famous sense of self-preservation now? The very same that had sent her into the corrupted depths of Hogwarts to represent their wise neutrality.
“Something on your mind?” He looked up from that damned paper.
“No. Excuse me,” she said, pushing her chair back roughly and taking pleasure in the way it produced a loud scraping noise against the polished marble floor.
***
Time passed differently when the muscles were tensed in the face of uncertainty, expecting a gut-punch blow, or if instinct proved false, a cushion of gentle set down. Being at the safe house, however lavish the place was, felt like imprisonment. A necessary thing, of course, but imprisonment all the same.
She couldn’t decide whether it was a blessing or a curse when evening arrived quickly. It was jarring.
“Master wishes to be seeing you in his study, Missy Pansy.” Mipsie’s high elf voice came softly behind her.
“Thank you,” she said, nodding in acknowledgment before Mipsie bowed and disappeared.
***
She did not bother to knock on the closed door of her father’s study. Why should she? They were the only two in this damned house, and wasn’t he just so confident that it would remain that way?
“Never in my life, would I have thought that you would be blinded by sentiment,” she said in lieu of a greeting, of polite veneer. “You think you can trust Uncle Phineas to not hand us over? Or Uncle Peter?”
His silence fanned the flames of her fury. She had trusted her father to have their best interests at heart. She had trusted that enough to endure seventh year at that bastardised version of Hogwarts, to help him play the long game and emerge from the war clean. She had trusted. She had “weathered the storm” and what had it gotten them?
“What about me?” she asked boldly. “They tortured us, you know. All of us. Me.” This got his attention, but she laughed without humour. “What if I had told them about this place?”
“You will stop this now, Pansy,” he said, quiet and tense. A warning she didn’t care to heed.
“Why?” she demanded. “Because I’m saying what you won’t? You think blood prevents betrayal? Have you even thought about what we might do if they come here?”
“Of course I have!” he shouted, standing abruptly.
She took a step forward, a thing only a daughter or a wife would dare do in the face of the Parkinson patriarch. “Then surely, you know that certain things are uncontrollable.”
His eyes were tired, a mirror of hers, unhidable between the two of them. He exhaled sharply through his nose. “Whatever you have lost, you need to retain faith in my actions—”
“I did! I did have faith!” Her voice broke in its sudden shrillness.
“I see.” He deflated, but his face was as impermeable as ever. Did he feel remorse? Like a failure? She hoped he did.
A loud bang came from below, the sound of wards breaking and its energy exploding the wood and brick it was meant to protect. She felt frozen, but a gasp escaped her. A gut-punch blow. They were here. Her father moved toward the door.
“Was this a part of your plan? Did you know they were traitors?” she managed to choke out, still rooted to the spot.
“Mipsie,” he called instead, the elf appearing instantly.
“Master?” Her eyes were bulging, hands twisting nervously as shouts and heavy footsteps came closer.
“You know what to do,” he said.
Mipsie shuffled over to Pansy’s side and took hold of her trembling hand. “I is to be taking you to the safe place.”
“Father, please,” she said. The urgency in her voice made him pause at the door, left hand on the knob poised to turn, his silver wedding band reflecting the waning fire. She whispered, “Why?”
Sometimes it was the only way to present a question when there were too many, all jumbled up. Why did you let this happen? Why didn’t you do something? Why are you sacrificing yourself like this? Why? Why? Why?
“Because you are my daughter.”
He then turned the knob and stepped out into the hallway with a swiftness that betrayed no further emotion. Before she could respond or make a move to stop him, Mipsie had tightened her hold and sent the two of them into a spiraling vortex.