RP: Vandals and Wards Date: 27 January 2006 Characters: Pansy Parkinson, Harry Potter Location: 212 Cicero Lane, Hogsmeade Private/Public: Private Rating: PG Warnings: Pansy wishes.... Summary: Pansy gets word of an unfortunate occurrence that she's going to have to handle. Complete
Pansy was sitting in the first floor sitting room, going over a passage that the Superhero had marked in one of the childcare books while Polly played on a blanket on the floor. The baby was a little fussy...she wasn't liking the new system of parenting any more than Pansy was. Hard as it had been, Pansy was forcing herself to not pick up Polly to cuddle her at the drop of a hat.
Oh, she still snuggled her. She read to Polly at least twice a day and took that time as a chance to cuddle. And she still cuddled her at feeding times, though those were not as frequent as they used to be. Nor as neat. She was feeding Polly cereal in the morning and the evening, though she cheated at the evening feeding with a special bottle she'd gotten at her second trip to the baby store when she'd complained about how hard it was for her daughter to swallow cereal from the spoon. The bottle had some weird almost-floor inside that pushed the cereal down to the nipple as Polly sucked. It was easier to swallow and, more importantly, much lessy disgustingly messy!
She would only use it until Polly got better at swallowing from the spoon, she told herself. No matter how well she charmed the baby and herself (and the room!) clean, she always found cereal somewhere odd hours later. She'd finally given up and started bathing Polly after the morning cereal....and then herself.
She'd also started letting Polly drink one feeding from the bottle with Harry, thinking he might be missing cuddle time, too. She wasn't sure if Polly was gaining weight yet, but she was less demanding about feeding all the time, with the additions.
She looked down when Polly gave a cranky cry, but didn't pick her up. Polly was only doing it half-heartedly from time to time, anyway, and then getting distracted by something that she would end up playing with a few minutes. The worst times were when Polly got really frustrated and cried for several minutes. It was all she could do not to rush in to get her at those times. She'd end up crying herself, more often than not, standing just out of sight of the baby and trying not to let herself give in...
Pansy went back to her reading, trying not to think about her recent exchange of owls with Draco. His replies had frustrated her more than helped her and while she believed him to be wrong in this instance, she couldn't help but remember that she'd thought he was wrong about Gilderoy, and just look how that had turned out. Not that she hadn't loved Gilderoy, she had. She just couldn't live with him day in and day out. And she kind of suspected that that meant Draco had been right about them being together.
Of course, his objection to Gilderoy had had a basis in more than just that his blood wasn't pure....
The sudden appearance of Hilly in the room startled her so much, she lost her place in the book. Polly looked up at the elf and gave a half-hearted cry, too, waving her arms. Pansy could just swear that the baby had looked at her first and turned to the elf, as if to say if her mum wouldn't give her attention, the elf would.
'What do you need?' Pansy asked the agitated elf.
'Oh, Mistress, it's Mnemsy,' the elf chittered, naming one of the Parkinson elves that stayed permanently at the estate to oversee things (i.e. was too old to persuade to leave and wanted to die in the only place that have ever been its home so Pansy had agreed to let it stay....)
'What?' Pansy said in surprise. 'What about him?' she added, thinking he might have died. Was he that old???
Hilly wrung her hands nervously. 'He's downstairs, Mistress. Something's happened at the Old House,' she said rapidly, cowering slightly.
'Wicksy!' Pansy called loudly. 'Come stay with Polly!' She waited until the elf appeared and then followed Hilly out the door, following her down to the kitchen where the elderly elf was pacing the floor and eying the hot stove.
After forbidding him to burn himself on the stove, something she said automatically after dealing with Hilly so long, Pansy listened to his story, feeling something in her stomach she hadn't felt since she'd heard that the Death Eaters had shown up at the Cornfoot lighting ceremony.
'Hilly, get Harry!' she ordered. 'Tell him to come to the sitting room down here....' she added.