When she realized she'd read the same line several times, Pansy frowned and sat back in her chair.

It was a renewal contract for the building Choyer was housed in. The lease was coming up and the new proprietor hadn't taken kindly to her patronage. Yet another man her father had managed to swindle, cheat and abuse when he'd been alive.

Hadrian hadn't planned on dying for his causes, though Pansy was sure he'd not have cared overmuch that she was having to deal with the ramifications of his decisions and foolish actions in the last war. That he'd died? That was the easy route. She resented what he'd made of their family, resented even more that he'd left it to her to clean up.

Born and bred to be nothing but a noble wife and yet now it was on her shoulders to make the Parkinson name a great one again. Money she still had in spades and it commanded a certain amount of respect, but she knew what was said about her by the peerage.

Not that a one of them was blameless, but their houses had not been tarnished as hers had and it was passé to be affiliated with the Death Eaters these days.

Glaring at the paperwork, Pansy swept it from her desk in a fit of anger. She watched the papers flutter to the floor before pushing back from the desk, boots clipping as she made for the door.

Something had to be done. She was sick and tired of hiding in her damn office, waiting for something to change, for life to hold some kind of charm again.

The doors she passed were closed, likely filled with noble women receiving their private massages and masques. The exquisitely appointed lobby and congregating area was tittering softly with female voices when Pansy came to view the room. Her eyes swirled darkly, anger just at the edge of her consciousness. For what, she didn't know, but it was all she seemed to feel lately, that or jaded apathy.

Anger was warmer. At least it gave her something to feel.

But there was no outlet here, not at Choyer, and she pushed it away as she clipped for the front desk.

"Miss Parkinson." The stylist nodded to her as she passed, and the next, and Pansy acknowledged them with the barest dip of her head.

"That's her, Druella." It was a whisper, but not carefully concealed.

Pansy hesitated in her step, anger tickling at her again, but kept forward. There were always whispers, accusations. Gossip.

“I don’t see it, Ursula … are you quite she’s the Dark Mark?” This voice was not quiet at all, as if the woman speaking had not a care who heard her.

As if she thought everyone’s decorum but her own was expected.

Anger flared in Pansy and she came to an abrupt halt. She didn’t try to hide the displeasure in her face, the fire in her eyes as she turned on her heel and tapped straight for the old dowager with curlers in her hair.

The old woman’s eyes widened as if this was a most unexpected turn of events and the room went silent, movement ceasing but for Pansy’s determined stride, the click of her booted heels echoing in the intent, hungry silence.

“I am quite sure I don’t have the Dark Mark of Lord Voldemort,” Pansy said, heat laced through her voice as she pulled up her sleeve and held it under the woman’s nose. The gasp at He Who Shall Not Be Named’s given name was ignored as her eyes narrowed at the woman before her. “No more marked than your second nephew, Ms. Crawford.”

At the shock on the other woman’s face, Pansy’s lips curled into a cruel smile. “Oh? You’d hoped to keep his affiliation with the Death Eaters a secret? It’s so easy considering he never did take the mark, hmm? It must have been such a relief that he wasn’t concretely connected to anyone who was convicted of war crimes.”

Anger filled the other woman’s features then and she raised a hand to point at Pansy. “Don’t you dare say such libelous things of my family.”

Before most of the rapt occupants of the room had time to blink, Pansy’s wand was wedged just underneath Ursula Crawford’s chin. Pansy’s voice was low, dangerous, but everyone heard what she said. “Perhaps you should refrain from doing the same of my family.”

There was fear in the old woman’s eyes, but defiance had her tipping her chin up and into the point of Pansy’s wand. “Your family is quite guilty.”

“And I am not.” Pansy narrowed her eyes and lowered her wand. She took a step back and pointed for the door. “Out.”

Ursula Crawford blustered and didn’t move. “You can’t make me-”

Shrieks rang out when the mirror behind Ursula’s head exploded in a thousand pieces, the glass tinkling in a great crash to the floor.

Pansy moved her wand several inches to the right so it was pointed at Ursula then. “Out.”

There was real fear in the woman’s gaze then and she hefted her large frame from the chair and skittered out as quickly as she could, curlers clinging to her hair still.

It was deadly quiet in the front room of Choyer and Pansy could feel all their eyes on her. She bent her head, dark hair obscuring her features.

How had she come so low? Serving people like this? Perhaps at one time the idea that it would make her father turn over in his grave had been appealing, but what had it become? Somewhere to come and see the Death Eater’s daughter for a slight charge?

Parkinson’s served no one, belonged to no one.

The mantra was what had gotten her through the war. It would serve just fine now with these gossip mongrels.

“Out.” It was low, anger burning in her tones.

Everyone looked at her as if they weren’t sure they understood what she had said, all trying to see in the curtain of her hair.

“Out."

When no one moved, Pansy raised her head slowly. The first woman who saw her face started, but when no one moved to leave, Pansy’s wand was up again and two more mirrors were crashing to the floor before little screams and the patter of feet signaled the retreat. Customers and employees ran for the door.

She stalked back down the hall, the tap of her boots signaling her approach. Doors blew open from the force of her spells. “Out, all of you, out.”

They left. Some in towels clutching their clothes, faces covered in colored masques, hair wrapped in damp turbans. They all ran.

When she stood in the center of the lobby again, Pansy looked around her, all that she had built – and for what? So that they could come to mock her? Use what little knowledge she had been encouraged to pursue for their own gain?

Never again. Never again would they benefit from what was hers.

Wand up again, she pointed and the front desk exploded. A splinter cut her cheek open as it blew by, but she continued to decimate all that she had built. Glass shattered, wood splintered and plaster crumbled until everything she’d brought to this place was nothing but a pile of rubbish.

One stool had survived her wrath and bending to turn it right side up, Pansy murmured a scourgify before settling atop it. The tiny shift dress that clung to her every curve rode ever higher on her thigh, the hem already nearly obscene, and she slipped her wand back into her thigh-high boot.

Now she would wait. The Aurors wouldn’t be too far off. Not when Hadrian Parkinson’s daughter had bared her wand in public.


SUMMARY: Pansy makes a decision about her life.