#↤ though i feel like that’d be the same as rosier pandora

[moutainrusing]

clandestine

850 words, @pandalilymicrofics

They’d decorated the room – it was a ballroom – but Pandora didn’t like to call it that, so it was the room. The wide, high-vaulted room in the centre of her family’s house – the Rosier mansion – but Pandora didn’t like to call it that, either. She just wanted to call it a house. A home. That sounded sad. She wasn’t, though. She was just wanting.

Wanting more than mahogany walls of gilded gold, flames flickering in the candelabras that lined the edges, chains constructed with every colour of rose swirling around archways draped with gauzy satin curtains, gleaming hardwood which looked more like a lake than the floor. Pandora could see her reflection in it as she descended the spiral staircase, running her fingers over the fine figures etched into the rosewood handrail. Her dress was sweeping, gilded like the stupid walls, tiny spiderwebs threaded across ivory silk, except they weren’t spiderwebs, because that’d be eerie, not suitable for the ballroom. It was just a room. And Pandora’s dress was just a dress. Gilded with gold.

Flowers. The pattern was flowers.

Letting her fingers linger over smoothly carved loops in the stairway railing, Pandora trailed slowly into the room, brushing the tips of her nails against the rail one last time before finally letting go, even though the direction she wanted to go was right back up the stairs, turn a left, flop into bed.

Instead, she continued walking with her head high, over a sea of tiles before eventually reaching her brother, leaning against an arch in the corner, twirling a cigar between his fingers. Smoke spilled out of his mouth as he drawled, “Put your mask on, Dora.”

Pandora wrinkled her nose. “I hate masquerade balls. They’re time waste. I don’t want to dance with a man. I can’t even see his face, it’s a useless way of trying to find suitors.”

Evan side-eyed her, drawing another drag before exhaling, “If you can’t see his face, then how’d you know he’s a man?”

Rolling her eyes, Pandora gestured to herself, “Only men would dance with this girl in a dress.”

Evan shrugged, kicked off the arch and dropped his cigar into an ashtray, nodding his head toward the entrance, “Guests are coming. You should put the mask on.”

Sighing, Pandora pulled her mask out from the folds of her dress, pressing it over her face. It moulded to her features. A gold-white butterfly, hovering above the flowers.

- - -

The man that danced with Pandora didn’t look like a man. There was a curve to his hips beneath the suit, a rosy flush to his upturned lips, and this was the first suitor Pandora had ever wanted to kiss. He couldn’t be a man. (She didn’t want to kiss men.)

Gradually, she manoeuvred the dance towards the corner of the room, and was the man steering too? It seemed he was guiding them in the same direction that Pandora was, past the archways, down the corridor, into dimly lit rooms that became darker the more they traversed, until they were still, hidden within the towering maze of bookshelves in the library. For the first time in her life, Pandora’s gut wouldn’t tell her what to do. Whether to run or whether to crack the mask off the man’s face, open him as if he were a box, delve her hands into the contents within and find out why he made her feel, or should she run, because he made her feel, twisting her heartstrings, tying them into a noose, strangling her voice until her throat was dry. This could be manipulation. Alone with a man who could do anything to her…

A clandestine encounter shrouded within musty pages of literature.

She ripped the man’s— the woman’s mask off. A gasp caught in Pandora’s throat, stuttered past her lips, “Lily?”

She’d wanted to kiss Lily. Lily? She hadn’t known it was her village friend when she was eyeing the lips behind the mask, that was the only reason she’d even looked at the lips, because Pandora wasn’t meant to look at a woman’s lips. She wasn’t, in case she ever wanted… to stop herself wanting. She wasn’t allowed. But now she’d looked, and she couldn’t get them out of the forefront of her mind, and now Lily was smiling at her, shyly, sheepishly, “Hi, Pan.”

“How did you…?” Pandora weakly gestured to Lily’s suit, Lily’s presence, the entire inconceivable fact that Lily, poor, working-class, out-of-town Lily, was here.

Lily tentatively raised her fingers to thumb the edges of Pandora’s mask, gently removing it and flitting her gaze across Pandora’s face, “I wanted to see you.”

Pandora wanted to kiss her. She swallowed, the words bubbled back up. “You… courted me,” she muttered, staring at the floor, “The way a… suitor would.”

A hand beneath her chin, lifting it until she was greeted by the sight of Lily quirking an eyebrow. “And? What’s your answer?”

Pandora couldn’t contain it. She kissed her. It was so much more than how subconsciously, pushed to the back of her mind, Pandora had imagined it would be.

[remusbuzzcutt]

i started to change my pandora characterisations based on her last name. as a rosier she’s a shameless freak, but has quite a high moral compass. as a lovegood, she’s basically the common fandom characterisation(/luna clone). as a lestrange, she’s basically the definition of a daddy’s girl. she’s a bit spoiled and people think that— because she’s more composed— she’s unlike her two borderline coocoo brothers. in reality, she’s just as bad.