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“I did the searching and remembering, she did the disappearing and the forgetting.”
Katie Bell wasn’t a girl who got hung up on things. If things didn’t work out, she’d shrug her shoulders and move on, ready to conquer another aspect of her life. Of course, she’d bitch and moan once she found out her plans didn’t pan out but she’d cut her loses and move on.
At least, that was her modus operandi in everything until Pansy bloody Parkinson. They got together by pure chance. Pansy was picking on Luna, Katie stepped in only to find out that she wasn’t being mean – at least not mean on purpose. Somehow they started flirting, their first date was a blur of quick, unfinished dinner before they decided to go over to Pansy’s and do what they really wanted.
They fell in a passionate, rocky relationship. They didn’t have that many things in common – more things divided them, actually. But they both wanted to make it work. And the sex was spectacular. That was all it was at the beginning but over time they started spending more time together, more time talking, more time enjoying one another’s presence. Katie loved Pansy’s deviousness and Pansy adored Katie’s brashness. They were opposites but they worked well with one another.
Their friends weren’t all that supportive – well, Pansy’s friends weren’t. It often drove Pansy up the wall and she refused to choose between her friends and her girlfriend, claiming to be Switzerland. Those times were usually followed by a quiet period, then reconciliation and even more spectacular sex. Katie wondered if Pansy didn’t mind the arguments, really, because she always seemed to be extra passionate afterwards.
And then, just as suddenly as they found one another, they broke up. Katie still didn’t know what happened, they seemed to be fine, things were going as normal until Pansy showed up at Katie’s and Roger’s, all stiff, prim and proper, all the things that made Katie so mad about her now were used against her. She didn’t kiss Katie hello, she didn’t take off her robes, she didn’t smirk nor tease nor seduce.
“I can’t do this anymore, Kate,” she said and she left, not waiting for Katie to say anything, knowing it would only escalate into a fight.
Kate watched her as she left. She thought she’d leave her be for that night and contact her the next morning to talk things through because, dammit, they were worth fighting for.
So she stayed in, drank with Roger and bitched about life. The next morning she gulped down the hangover potion, dressed the way she knew Pansy loved her to dress and set out to change her girlfriend’s mind. Only the wards didn’t let her through. Pans’ Floo was disconnected, her owl couldn’t find Pansy, either. She resorted to contacting Lavender and Astoria, hoping they’d have some way of contacting Pansy only to find out that Pansy had left them all.
It took Katie a long time to understand why Pansy just up and left and she still wasn’t sure if she understood. She searched for her for the first few months, asking anyone who knew Pansy after her but no-one could give her an answer. She even visited Draco Malfoy, bent on pleading with him to tell her where Pansy was because he had to know, if anyone knew it had to be him, only to have the door closed in the face.
So she gave up and tried moving on. But every few weeks she’d remember something about Pansy – the way she spoke, the way she looked just after they had sex or even the way she liked her coffee with peppermint – and her search began anew.
At first her friends tolerated it, even indulged her. Lavender missed Pansy just as much as Katie did and they’d spend some of their weekends pouring over wizarding trash magazines, hoping to see Pansy on one of the pages, socialising with someone and getting caught on the camera by accident. But Pansy, quite uncharacteristically, seemed to lay low.
After a year had passed since Pansy disappeared, Katie’s friends started growing impatient with her.
“She’s gone, Kates, you need to move on.”
“If she wanted to contact us, she would by now.”
“You’re better off without that cow anyway.”
Katie lost all hope of finding Pansy – but she still searched, she still remembered. The memories started growing foggy, she started forgetting the feel of Pansy’s skin on her skin, she started forgetting the way Pansy made her feel. She borrowed Harry’s Pensieve and put all her memories of Pansy in it. It took her a long while to stop rewatching them; actually, Roger had to take the Pensieve away and tell her to stop or he’d Floo her mother. She desisted at that moment and was left to her thoughts.
That’s when she realised why she couldn’t let go of Pansy blood Parkinson. She was in love with her even now. She sat on her bed, her head in her hands, focused on nothing but her epiphany. She was in love with a woman who left her. How pathetic was that?
“Kates, you okay?”
She looked up at Roger.
“No.”
“Do you want to, y’know, talk about it?”
“No.”
“... Okay. Want a beer?”
“Yeah.”
She drank the beer in one go and gestured at Roger for another. He gave her his beer with a sigh and went to get another one.
“You gonna be okay?”
“Yeah.”
And she would be okay. She would find Pansy and she would finally make peace with her mind. She was not going to stand for this, for being this sad little girl who can only mope after her girlfriend left her. By Merlin, she was no better than that Pigeon chick from that movie about sparkling vampires that Lavender talked her into watching. Hell no, she was Katie Bell, Appleby’s Chaser, a Gryffindor and she wouldn’t stand for this.
“I’ll be just fine, Roger, don’t you worry.”