leave it alone

i. It tastes so bitter on my tongue

parvati patil is born in the middle of a thunderstorm on april 6, 1980 at dhanvantari hospital in the wizarding settlement of kalale in india. 

she is born five minutes after her sister padma, a welcome surprise to her parents. one daughter, after all, was a gift; two was a blessing. padma comes into the world as a solemn presence. her father is proud of presenting his eldest daughter to his friends- this child never cries, he boasts, and padma stares out at the world with her solemn brown eyes from the cradle of her father’s arms, a piece of orange string tied around her wrist to tell her apart from her younger sister. parvati, though, makes her presence felt, frequently and loudly. she is more than padma, even from the very beginning- second to enter the world, screaming and implacable. Her mother ties a pink thread around her left wrist to differentiate herself from her sister, even though their personalities soon make the strings unnecessary. 

as the twins grow, their parents dote on padma. she’s so like them, after all: quiet, obedient, brilliant from a young age. parvati, though, struggles. padma’s magic manifests during their move to london when the girls are toddlers. parvati’s comes later, once the girls have entered primary school. even early on, padma has a better control over her magic, while parvati’s is wild and tempestuous. it isn’t that her parents love parvati less than padma- they just love her differently, but to parvati, it feels like less. padma is golden and parvati feels lesser.

when the girls go to hogwarts, quiet, studious padma is sorted into ravenclaw while parvati is sent across the great hall to gryffindor. it is the first time the two have been separated, but it isn’t the last.

ii. the truth’s a killer

gryffindor hones parvati into someone different. she starts her first year as a wide-eyed innocent child and comes home bolder and brighter than before. where before she was wild and ungoverned, she comes home stronger, quicker. she learns to flirt and cast spells and brew potions and read her future in the tarot deck professor trelawny presses into her hands. it’s bleak. as the years pass, she starts to pull padma along with her, until by her fifth year they are finally fully in sync. both join the d.a. and learn to fight. after all, a war is coming, and they’d be stupid not to fight it.

by their seventh year, parvati has fully brought padma into the fold of her brash and bold housemates. for once, she doesn’t feel less- she feels more, bigger, better, more splendid than her older sister. 

when the final battle comes, it is more bang than whimper. Harry’s body is dangled in front of them and parvati can hear people screaming as her knees give out beneath her. she can’t make a sound as padma pulls her back to her feet, wrapping her arms around her shoulders and telling her it isn’t over, not yet, as neville swings the sword and the battle erupts around them again.

she and padma and dean are duelling ferociously against yaxley and travers. Spells are cutting through the air and she can feel her magic in a way she hasn’t before, around her and in her-

and then padma falls, eyes sightless.

parvati can hear herself screaming, can feel the magic tingle through her veins like a shot of firewhiskey and she cuts her wand through the air, green light leaving it as yaxley falls. she and dean cut travers down. the pops of disapparition ring out not long after. it’s a hollow victory.

iii. but i can’t leave it alone

after it’s all over, after padma is buried, parvati cannot find peace. she wears white and stands over her sister’s coffin and she cannot cry. how do you mourn someone you’ve shared a womb with? how do you weep for the other half of your soul? she waves her wand with her parents and casts the spell to cremate padma’s body, her eyes blank.

there comes a point, after a few months, where she cannot stand it anymore. she hates going to pubs with her fellow survivors and to diagon alley and seeing shades of padma everywhere and feeling the itch of pitying stares on the back of her neck- so she runs.

When Pansy had left England there had been no cafes on Diagon Alley. The closest you could get was the Leaky Cauldron which, really, was nothing like a cafe. She had been pleasantly surprised to discover that there now was a cafe … and it was practically next door to the Daily Prophet offices. She spent practically every lunch break there, listening in on other people’s conversations while pretending to read. Or actually reading, if nothing interesting was being discussed. On this particular day the place was quite packed, so she walked determinedly up to a nearly-empty table and pointed to one of the empty seats. “Do you mind?” she asked, in a tone that suggested she was going to sit no matter what the answer was.

Parvati glanced up from the copy of Witch Weekly she’d been absently thumbing through. The cafe wasn’t her favorite on the Alley, but when she was in town, it was the closest to the Prophet’s offices and it made the most sense when she was in a hurry. She quirked an eyebrow when she saw Pansy standing in front of her. They’d come to a bit of an unspoken understanding over the past few years, which was nice, but that didn’t mean she was someone Parvati wanted to spend too much time with.

“Of course,” she said after a beat, folding up her magazine to stick in her bag and pulling her tray closer. “Be my guest.” She gestured at the empty seat across from her.

death  :  is there anything in your muse’s life that they should be letting go of ?

“yes. yes. what seems to be the problem?” bill asked the person standing in the middle of an open vault. he had been called out of his office during his lunch break, which normally wouldn’t have been a problem, except he was rather enjoying the food his wife had made for him. “a multiplication charm? well that seems rather odd.” bill examined the item on the floor, careful not to touch it. “and you weren’t the one who put cast it? no? alright well, i know a counter curse that should work.” he motioned for the person and the goblin to step aside before taking out his wand. he pointed it at the object and spoke the incantation. “should be good as new!” 

Parvati crooked an eyebrow and watched as Bill cast the counter curse. Her mother had asked that she go to the bank to fetch a set of Padma’s bangles from their vault. She already wasn’t in the mood to run this particular errand, but who was she to try to say no to her mother? She tentatively reached down to touch the bracelets where they sat on the floor, glinting in the light from the torches on the walls. When they didn’t multiply at her touch, she let out of deep breath she hadn’t been aware she was holding.

“Thanks, Weasley,” she said, twitching the corners of her lips up into a small smile. “I don’t know how that happened.”