Who: Pansy Parkinson and OPEN When: Friday afternoon, following Narcissa's funeral Where: The ice cream shop in Diagon What: Pansy doesn't do funerals well. Rated/Status: TBD, incomplete.
Narcissa's funeral had been the most depressing thing Pansy had ever attended. It was grey and chilly and miserable, and seeing her grieving family had been the absolute worst. The worst of it had been going alone, having no one to stand next to her and hold her hand while they poured dirt on the shiny, expensive coffin. Watching Draco from so far away, seeing Lucius, such a powerful man that had scared her in her childhood, looking so broken. Daphne and Marcus and Clint were all there- all of her school friends, and of course, Pansy's mother had attended, her first public appearance since May. She was frail and pale and Pansy wondered how long she had left, how long before Pansy would be putting her in a box in the ground, too.
Pansy had a thing about public crying. It ruined one's makeup and absolutely no one had a pretty cry-face, with bleary eyes and a red nose. It was proper decorum to at least get to the loo. But there was no loo to run too, here, in the lovely little cemetery where all the reputable Blacks were buried. It started with just a few tears, dabbed away elegantly with Pansy's black silk handkerchief. But then it was like something snapped inside of her. It was just so sad. It was awful and she couldn't stand it. She couldn't stand there a second longer with her black patent heels sinking into the soft earth, watching them put the one woman she'd admired in her life away in the dirt forever.
It was the moment that they started lowering the coffin that she lost it. She wasn't sure when the sobs started, but they were great, wracking heaves of grief, so loud in her own head that she couldn't hear the funeral officiator. She covered her face with her handkerchief, unable to stop them, and then turned and fled, pulling out her wand to Apparate, no particular destination in mind. Just somewhere away. Safe. She opened her eyes after she'd settled, and she might have laughed if it wouldn't have meant deteriorating into hysteria again. The ice cream place. Of all the places in the entire bloody country. But she didn't want to go home, or back to her mother's, so here was as good as anyplace. And t was cheerful despite the grey outside.
There was hardly anyone here- it wasn't exactly ice cream weather, but she stepped up to the counter and ordered one anyway. Strawberry, with chocolate chips and rainbow sprinkles and gummy bears. She hadn't ordered it since she was a little girl, but it was oddly comforting. She took it and sat outside at one of the tables underneath a big umbrella, yanking on a pair of oversized black sunglasses, despite the cloudy skies. If anyone tried to talk to her she was absolutely going to kill them. Particularly the press.