parvati patil. (gryffindorian) wrote in thispurgatory, @ 2011-07-09 09:17:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! complete, ! epilogue, parvati patil |
CHARACTERS: Parvati Patil and family.
SETTING: 2 May 2013; graveyard.
RATING: PG.
SUMMARY: An epilogue set 15 years after the Hogwarts Battle because I am a cornball like that.
It was shockingly warm for May. So warm, in fact, that the family of five were giddily planning a trip for frozen yogurt later in the evening. The light-hearted air vanished quickly, however, when they entered the achingly beautiful cemetery. A marble angel holding a small child greeted them, and a thatch of vibrant red flowers trembled and shook from atop their vines on the black gate as a gentle wind whistled and cooled the humid air. With one hand tucking her dark hair over her ear nervously and the other being squeezed tightly by the wide-eyed pretty girl secretly afraid of death and "the beyond", Parvati's infamously shiny, lipglossed pink lips smiled at the seven year old girl walking along the path ahead of her. She nodded her head when the little girl stretched out an arm and pointed down the third row of graves they came across, arching her eyebrows curiously. "Fourth one from the end," she said, voice calmer than she'd expected it to sound. She had walked this path dozens of times. The scenery had become terribly familiar to her, the names on the graves she passed almost like long lost family members who only showed up around Christmas. She knew to avoid the giant root poking out of the ground, just as she knew that a black cat often offered its company when it left its perch on the cross-shaped gravestone behind the row they were currently walking down. But this was the first time she had invited her family to come along. This process had, up until this moment, been a lone experience. She had never felt comfortable being in the presence of others when visiting him. It had been their time together. Just him and her, her talking and him listening. No one else had needed to come along, no one else understood, no one else, despite being sincerely interested, could grasp on to just what this time meant to her. She only got to be alone with him once a year, and, though it had been fifteen years to the day, there was no truth in the rumour that "time healed all pain". Time weakened the pain. Time was like a disinfectant, or even a band-aid. It eased the pain, it shielded the pain, but it never completely eradicated the pain. The scar on her stomach could, in a way, be compared to the pain of losing someone. Sure, the scar didn't hurt anymore. But it was still there, a near-constant reminder to the day her world was trampled on and her future pulled out from under her. It was not pretty, but it had faded over time. "Is it this one?" Amira's voice was so hopeful that Parvati would not have had the heart to tell her that she was incorrect. Thankfully, that was the one. She knew it by memory. Even after a year since her last visit, the font that his name and the date and the words of life after death were so very familiar. Parvati stopped walking and simply stood where she was, head bowed down and eyes racing over the words, reading over them again and again as though it was the first time she had ever seen them. Amira had taken it upon herself to start laying out the colourful array of flowers they had brought along. She was on her knees, dirtying the purple dress she had been forced to wear in place of her typical ripped jeans, in front of the gravestone, carefully and dutifully laying the roses and sunflowers and orchids out in a manner that looked lovely enough to match up to her high petulance for perfection. "Are we just going to stand here now?" Anita whispered, clutching Parvati's leg tighter and shivering against her. "Why don't you help your sister with the flowers? Go on." Parvati gently pulled the seven year old from her leg and gave her an encouraging pat on the back. It took another pat to get the girl to move, but once she did Parvati crossed her arms, which had begun to shake a little, against her chest. Her husband, holding their fidgety toddler, came up behind her and placed a kiss to the top of her head. She closed her eyes and sighed, leaning back so his chin nuzzled her hair and the comforting warmth and soft smell of his cologne stirred her soul and sturdied the wave-like tremors in the pit on her stomach. He didn't say a word, and he didn't have to; after placing the toddler down on the ground he kissed Parvati again, this time on the cheek, and let his fingertips caress her back. They stood there together for a minute before he left her side to jog after their son, who had recently discovered the fun art of rolling (and rolling and rolling and rolling) sideways and was very near rolling down what felt like an endless tangle of tall green blades of grass that opened into a hill. "How does that look?" Amira asked, glancing over her shoulder and raising her eyes towards her mother. "That looks beautiful," Parvati answered, hitching up her skirt a bit so, when she sat, it pooled around her legs. Anita instantly hurried over to sit on her mother's lap, shielding her face nervously in her chest, while Amira stayed kneeling where she was and studied the gravestone. "Mummy, you look so sad," Anita spoke, lifting her head back and glancing at her mother with giant brown eyes, which too watered at the sight of her mother's sadness. "Mummy's a little bit sad," Parvati admitted, pressing a quick kiss to her daughter's temple. "Mummy gets a little bit sad when she comes here, but she gets happy, too." "How? How does that work?" "He made me happy, and those days we had together make me happy. Nothing is going to take that away. But Mummy gets sad because he's no longer here to make her happy." "So you'll never be happy again?" Anita's eyes widened even further to near saucers and her bottom lip trembled. "No, Anita. When someone dies, everyone else has to try and move on and sometimes it's difficult, especially when the reason he died was so terrible. Have you not even read anything about the Second War?" Amira's voice sounded about triple her age as she, like always, tried to school her twin. "Mummy's happy, but she's allowed to be sad. Right?" "That's right," Parvati confirmed, smiling at Amira, then tilting her head down at Anita and crossing her eyes and sticking her tongue out. Anita giggled and quickly mimicked the expression with her own face. The giggle faded, however, as a question seemed to form inside her head. She turned at looked at the gravestone, then back at Parvati, back at the gravestone again. "How can you love Daddy and Caleb Joseph Ed...erm...el...bur...g? Can you love two people at once?" Parvati paused before she answered her daughter. Amira, also interested in the answer to the question, joined her sister on Parvati's lap and, sensing that it was a sensitive topic, wrapped an arm around her mother in support. A child's gesture of comfort was one of the most precious gifts in the world, and though she tried to fight it, Parvati felt her eyes well up like a gutter in a rainstorm and bit her bottom lip. Like every visit, her current life and the life she had saw for herself back in Hogwarts seem to clash somewhere in the middle. She loved the life she had more than she could ever possibly imagine, but it was so different than she thought it was going to be when she and Cal were simply two teenagers in love with an endless list of possible endings for their life together. She woke up every morning next to a man who seemed to be the exact opposite of Cal in every possible way. Not in a negative contrast, of course, but it was something that she thought about every once in a while. She wasn't a teenager anymore and a lot of the beliefs and ideals she had once had about love no longer existed; love was not as light as it had seemed to be when you were cooped up in one place, a castle, with that special someone. Would her love with Cal had survived that year apart they would have spent? Would it have thrived outside of the castle walls when they started their own respective careers and had to worry about bills and mortgages instead of homework and OWLs? If being honest, she had to admit that she didn't know. In her her heart, she believed it would, but as she got older she learned to function with a mix of both heart and mind, accomplishing something she had never been able to do as a teenager. But it was only natural. Work came before play, family before material items. She shuffled and folded clothes instead of tarot cards; her one-time obsession had long since been destroyed. As Parvati closed her eyes and allowed herself to grab a hold of her wits, she saw his face. He smiled at her, that way he always did when she walked into the Great Hall for breakfast, even if she hadn't slept well and her makeup hadn't glided on her skin well and her hair was boringly in a ponytail, or that way he did when she did something silly or started to massage his back and rattled off the latest gossip. It killed her each and every day that she never got to spend a single second with him that wasn't completely and utterly spoiled by the ever-present onset of war. She hated that their entire relationship had to be inside a bubble of paranoia and fear, heartbreak and loss. But she knew he loved her, and she knew that he knew she loved him. He had died proving that she deserved to live and that she deserved to be happy. It had been hard for her to fully accept that fact; the days she had wanted to join him in death were the coldest, blackest days of her life. Never had she felt that way again once she returned to the light, and hopefully she would never have to. "Sweetheart, there is no limit to the amount of people you can love; I promise that your heart will not explode on you. But...Cal was the first boy I ever loved." Parvati opened her eyes and tilted her head so she could peek first at Anita, and then at Amira. "You know how you girls love chocolate chip biscuits because those were the first biscuits we ever made together? But you also love peanut butter biscuits and don't feel guilty for loving them, right? Love is similar. Not entirely, of course," she added with a nod at Amira's brief knitting of the eyebrows, "but similar. You love those peanut butter biscuits, but you'll never stop loving those chocolate chip biscuits and you'll never feel guilty when you want to reach for a peanut butter one. And yet, when asked, you'll always be able to respond that your first biscuit love was chocolate chip." "I do love them both. So very, very much," Anita agreed, taking a strand of her black hair and twirling it against her finger. "I love how happy they make me." Her tone was light, even casual, but it struck a chord in Parvati. With shining eyes, she wrapped one arm around Anita and pulled her close, then did the same to Amira. Both girls sensed that their mother needed them, so they eagerly hugged back and kissed her neck in unison. They sat together in silence, sitting close and listening to a bird chip cheerfully in the large tree to their left. Parvati kept her eyes closed and allowed her every fiber to twist and turn all of her favourite memories in colourful bursts of a show better than the telly or film. They were the same memories she reminisced about every time she came to visit Cal, but they would never go stale. They would be a part of her throughout every trial and tribulation, joy and tragedy, hour and second of her life, until that day when she took her final, shuddering breath and said goodbye to a well-lived and fulfilling life. Maybe then she would see him again. Maybe then she would be able to hold his hand and giggle like the eighteen year old the mere thought of his touch made her feel like. That was the Cal she now remembered; he was perfect. "Will you bring us here again, Mummy? I'd quite like to return." Amira peeled herself from her mother, gently getting off her lap, and started outlining the words on Cal's gravestone with her finger. "Absolutely. There's going to be a memorial for the war tomorrow. You can make an appearance, but then you have to return home with Daddy while Mummy talks to her friends. You can say hello to Uncle Seamus, Uncle Zacharias, and Uncle Declan first, of course," she added quickly to counter the large pout that simultaneously formed on the faces of both girls. Ah, yes. How they loved their parties. After Anita got off her lap, Parvati pushed herself to her knees and mimicked Amira's actions. She traced Cal's name before bringing her finger to her lips and kissing it. The she placed it back on the stone and outlined his name again. Spoiling herself with a moment of pure detachment from the actual world, she leaned forward and closed her eyes, envisioning Cal's face watching her again, and placed her still faintly-scarred lips to the stone and kissed it. "Thank you. Love you, always." |