Post by parvati patil macmillan on May 11, 2021 19:21:32 GMT -7
TW/CW: Death
Mid-January 2026
Reading the obituaries in the Daily Prophet wasn't exactly something that one did for pleasure, and Parvati Macmillan was no exception to that rule. She didn't really see a reason to check the section regularly, finding the very idea of that to be rather morbid. It was only because she was flipping through the newspaper that she stopped, stunned, at what she saw: Aurelia Flint was listed as among the deceased. Certain that that must have been a mistake (or at least the case of the death of some older relative after whom she had been named), she looked again. No, she saw, a sinking feeling overcoming her. It was plain as day that it was Rusti.
Even worse was the realization that she had died on some sort of Herbology expedition to that island that had only just appeared. Parvati knew that there were Order members who had gone there, too, and she was even more grateful that they had returned alive. She breathed in, trying to work through it all. Had any of the Order members seen Rusti and the others? Had they encountered them and tried to assist, at least? There remained some hope inside of her that perhaps they had, though certainly someone would have thought to tell her before she had to find out from the Daily Prophet. And what about her siblings? She hadn't heard anything from Dusti about it.
The more she thought about it, the worse the situation became. Rusti was dead, like Marcus and Pansy before her. Parvati could feel her chest tightening as she recalled finding out about Marcus's death at Pansy's hands. If she had thought that that was complicated, if she had thought that her becoming intimate with him was a mess, what was she supposed to do about Rusti's death? Had anyone told Ernie? Would he even care if she had to be the one to tell him that one of the daughters he'd never cared for was dead at not even twenty years old? She had to tell Sav and Shreya, too, she imagined, unless either of them had had the misfortune of coming across the news already.
Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion, and a million things she hadn't planned to do that day were suddenly at the top of her to-do list. There were letters that she needed to send as soon as she could, trying to piece together what had happened and if the remaining Flint children needed any assistance from her. Strangely, she wondered if it would be easiest to do that through Raleigh, given that they were both in the Order, but she didn't doubt that he and Dusti would be difficult to get through to. It wasn't that it would be hard to get an owl to them, but after yet another death in their lives—and of their sister—she couldn't picture that they would come asking for her help.
Trying to figure out how best to word such sudden and traumatic condolences for what felt like the hundredth time in recent years, Parvati struggled to hold back her tears. Rusti might not have been her child, but her death was the closest thing that she had experienced to what it might feel like to lose Sav or Shreya. She was doing so well for herself, even starting a business at her age. She had somehow defied the odds in one way and suffered a fate that Parvati couldn't picture, having no frame of reference for what the young woman's last moments must have been like. The feeling of choking without a true lack of air never really went away, she thought. Death was death. Perhaps that made her the strange one, because she wasn't numb to it all after so long, but she shook her head and tried to breathe in again, pushing the newspaper away from her with what limited available space there was on the surface of her desk.
Gradually, the tightness in her chest gave way in favor of weeping. It could have been anyone. Unless something even stranger were afoot, it wasn't even because of the Purifiers or some other terror group. She couldn't even send flowers, could she? The irony hurt almost as badly. She couldn't make promises to right the wrongs of the world so that something like it never happened again. She could only caution anyone she knew and hope that perhaps they could bring some closure as to what had happened out there.
For reference:
aurelia edith flint @dusti @raleigh @sav @shreya
Even worse was the realization that she had died on some sort of Herbology expedition to that island that had only just appeared. Parvati knew that there were Order members who had gone there, too, and she was even more grateful that they had returned alive. She breathed in, trying to work through it all. Had any of the Order members seen Rusti and the others? Had they encountered them and tried to assist, at least? There remained some hope inside of her that perhaps they had, though certainly someone would have thought to tell her before she had to find out from the Daily Prophet. And what about her siblings? She hadn't heard anything from Dusti about it.
The more she thought about it, the worse the situation became. Rusti was dead, like Marcus and Pansy before her. Parvati could feel her chest tightening as she recalled finding out about Marcus's death at Pansy's hands. If she had thought that that was complicated, if she had thought that her becoming intimate with him was a mess, what was she supposed to do about Rusti's death? Had anyone told Ernie? Would he even care if she had to be the one to tell him that one of the daughters he'd never cared for was dead at not even twenty years old? She had to tell Sav and Shreya, too, she imagined, unless either of them had had the misfortune of coming across the news already.
Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion, and a million things she hadn't planned to do that day were suddenly at the top of her to-do list. There were letters that she needed to send as soon as she could, trying to piece together what had happened and if the remaining Flint children needed any assistance from her. Strangely, she wondered if it would be easiest to do that through Raleigh, given that they were both in the Order, but she didn't doubt that he and Dusti would be difficult to get through to. It wasn't that it would be hard to get an owl to them, but after yet another death in their lives—and of their sister—she couldn't picture that they would come asking for her help.
Trying to figure out how best to word such sudden and traumatic condolences for what felt like the hundredth time in recent years, Parvati struggled to hold back her tears. Rusti might not have been her child, but her death was the closest thing that she had experienced to what it might feel like to lose Sav or Shreya. She was doing so well for herself, even starting a business at her age. She had somehow defied the odds in one way and suffered a fate that Parvati couldn't picture, having no frame of reference for what the young woman's last moments must have been like. The feeling of choking without a true lack of air never really went away, she thought. Death was death. Perhaps that made her the strange one, because she wasn't numb to it all after so long, but she shook her head and tried to breathe in again, pushing the newspaper away from her with what limited available space there was on the surface of her desk.
Gradually, the tightness in her chest gave way in favor of weeping. It could have been anyone. Unless something even stranger were afoot, it wasn't even because of the Purifiers or some other terror group. She couldn't even send flowers, could she? The irony hurt almost as badly. She couldn't make promises to right the wrongs of the world so that something like it never happened again. She could only caution anyone she knew and hope that perhaps they could bring some closure as to what had happened out there.
For reference:
aurelia edith flint @dusti @raleigh @sav @shreya
