Post by parvati patil macmillan on Mar 21, 2020 12:31:09 GMT -7
TW/CW: Anxiety, PTSD, mention of vomit
June 10, 2025
The league finals for the Quidditch season weren't of enough interest to Parvati to warrant her attendance, and she became glad that she had skipped out on it. By that afternoon, she had developed a nagging headache. It didn’t seem to be anything too serious, but it was enough to lead her to decide to rest in order to avoid aggravating it. The results of the Quidditch match would be on the WWN, regardless, and she knew no shortage of people who were there—Savtaj included. She would be hearing about it until the start of the next Quidditch season, she was sure, but she couldn’t say that she minded. It was a needed break from all of the fear—of Hag’s Fever, of Elaine Dupree and the Purifiers—and she knew that the Ministry and the Daily Prophet had been trying to keep everyone’s spirits high.
After managing to fall asleep for a few hours, Parvati turned on the radio at about the time that the match should have ended. She could tell in an instant that the tone of the broadcast wasn’t what it should have been. Instead of news about who had won the match, words like “accident” and “fire” came through. Her hands shook as she turned up the volume, and her heart felt as though it had stopped beating entirely. Was she hearing things properly? It couldn’t have been about the Quidditch finals. There must have been some mistake. Her ears rang as the reports coming through got worse and worse. She prayed that she had only misheard them. Members of the public were unaccounted for… as well as the Minister for Magic herself. There were some already confirmed dead, and a section of the stadium had been destroyed in its entirety. If anyone had been left alive, one person speculated, it would have been a miracle. It didn’t help that she had no idea where, exactly, the damage had occurred or where it had been relative to everyone else. If Hermione was unaccounted for, though, she wouldn’t have been far from the rest of her family… No, maybe they had made it out, Parvati considered, clinging to the possibility. Mediwizards were still on the site of the match, treating the injured. Some patients had been transported to St. Mungo’s; others had made it out relatively unscathed.
Legs wobbling as she sat down again, Parvati began to feel sick to her stomach, going through the list of people she knew or assumed were probably there. She didn’t want to think about how there was a very real chance—however small it was—that they were all dead. Going to the stadium in the midst of the chaos would only worsen the situation, and the hospital would be similarly crowded. All that she could hope for was that someone would contact her when they could. Someone would have known to contact her if they saw Sav, at least. It felt as though she had forgotten how to breathe, choking on what air she could force into her lungs. She thought, briefly, of using a Patronus messenger. Anyone who had been in Dumbledore’s Army, the Order of the Phoenix, or Ouroboros would have been able to recognize the mongoose as hers. Even that seemed futile, though; she didn’t know if she had the clarity of mind to conjure up her Patronus.
The rest of the words that came from the radio buzzed in the background. She had lost track of what was being said, and she didn’t know if she could bear to hear any more of it. She felt as though she was slowly losing her mind, gasping for air and watching helplessly as the room seemed to spin. It needed to stop. Someone needed to make it stop. She closed her eyes tightly, attempting to shut out the world long enough to catch her breath again and get the taste of vomit from rising in her throat. It didn’t work, but she began to see flashes of the Battle of Hogwarts. They were just fragments of memories that she had tried to repress, but it felt to Parvati as real as though she had been dropped forcefully inside of a Pensieve. The devastation… the destruction… the bodies of the dead, laid out in the Great Hall. The tightness in her chest continued as she heaved sobs, powerless to do anything but live through the horror of her adolescence again. Explosions and screams and the green light of the Killing Curse in her peripheral vision—she couldn’t break out of it; she could only watch. The sensation of crumbling stone crashed around her, and she gripped at the sofa cushion as she sought out her wand. It wasn’t there—not in reality—but she needed to defend herself. The sequence of events meshed into one blur. She found herself facing Antonin Dolohov one moment, and he was nowhere to be found the next.
Parvati breathed out sharply, chest aching from her tears. The room still spun, but she gradually recognized that she wasn’t trapped in battle. Her vision was heavy and her cheeks hot with tears, but she was still in the safety of her sitting room in Hogsmeade, with the WWN audible from the radio. A wave of embarrassment rushed over her as her reality came back to her. As terrified as she was that she was alone, she was grateful that no one else had seen her react as she had. She wouldn’t have wanted anyone to have seen her like that, seemingly out of touch with the world around her. Once she felt that she was capable of getting up and feeling her legs underneath herself again, she got to her feet and turned the radio off. For her own sake, and perhaps it was selfish of her, she couldn’t listen to the speculation any longer.
Played characters mentioned: @sav , Elaine Lyra Dupree , @hermionejean
After managing to fall asleep for a few hours, Parvati turned on the radio at about the time that the match should have ended. She could tell in an instant that the tone of the broadcast wasn’t what it should have been. Instead of news about who had won the match, words like “accident” and “fire” came through. Her hands shook as she turned up the volume, and her heart felt as though it had stopped beating entirely. Was she hearing things properly? It couldn’t have been about the Quidditch finals. There must have been some mistake. Her ears rang as the reports coming through got worse and worse. She prayed that she had only misheard them. Members of the public were unaccounted for… as well as the Minister for Magic herself. There were some already confirmed dead, and a section of the stadium had been destroyed in its entirety. If anyone had been left alive, one person speculated, it would have been a miracle. It didn’t help that she had no idea where, exactly, the damage had occurred or where it had been relative to everyone else. If Hermione was unaccounted for, though, she wouldn’t have been far from the rest of her family… No, maybe they had made it out, Parvati considered, clinging to the possibility. Mediwizards were still on the site of the match, treating the injured. Some patients had been transported to St. Mungo’s; others had made it out relatively unscathed.
Legs wobbling as she sat down again, Parvati began to feel sick to her stomach, going through the list of people she knew or assumed were probably there. She didn’t want to think about how there was a very real chance—however small it was—that they were all dead. Going to the stadium in the midst of the chaos would only worsen the situation, and the hospital would be similarly crowded. All that she could hope for was that someone would contact her when they could. Someone would have known to contact her if they saw Sav, at least. It felt as though she had forgotten how to breathe, choking on what air she could force into her lungs. She thought, briefly, of using a Patronus messenger. Anyone who had been in Dumbledore’s Army, the Order of the Phoenix, or Ouroboros would have been able to recognize the mongoose as hers. Even that seemed futile, though; she didn’t know if she had the clarity of mind to conjure up her Patronus.
The rest of the words that came from the radio buzzed in the background. She had lost track of what was being said, and she didn’t know if she could bear to hear any more of it. She felt as though she was slowly losing her mind, gasping for air and watching helplessly as the room seemed to spin. It needed to stop. Someone needed to make it stop. She closed her eyes tightly, attempting to shut out the world long enough to catch her breath again and get the taste of vomit from rising in her throat. It didn’t work, but she began to see flashes of the Battle of Hogwarts. They were just fragments of memories that she had tried to repress, but it felt to Parvati as real as though she had been dropped forcefully inside of a Pensieve. The devastation… the destruction… the bodies of the dead, laid out in the Great Hall. The tightness in her chest continued as she heaved sobs, powerless to do anything but live through the horror of her adolescence again. Explosions and screams and the green light of the Killing Curse in her peripheral vision—she couldn’t break out of it; she could only watch. The sensation of crumbling stone crashed around her, and she gripped at the sofa cushion as she sought out her wand. It wasn’t there—not in reality—but she needed to defend herself. The sequence of events meshed into one blur. She found herself facing Antonin Dolohov one moment, and he was nowhere to be found the next.
Parvati breathed out sharply, chest aching from her tears. The room still spun, but she gradually recognized that she wasn’t trapped in battle. Her vision was heavy and her cheeks hot with tears, but she was still in the safety of her sitting room in Hogsmeade, with the WWN audible from the radio. A wave of embarrassment rushed over her as her reality came back to her. As terrified as she was that she was alone, she was grateful that no one else had seen her react as she had. She wouldn’t have wanted anyone to have seen her like that, seemingly out of touch with the world around her. Once she felt that she was capable of getting up and feeling her legs underneath herself again, she got to her feet and turned the radio off. For her own sake, and perhaps it was selfish of her, she couldn’t listen to the speculation any longer.
Played characters mentioned: @sav , Elaine Lyra Dupree , @hermionejean
