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i.
Her parents were stupid, she knew that much.
Were stupid?
Are stupid. One bad decision was never really enough for them - they just decided to keep going on making them, long after their own relationship failed.
Weird. In that way, they were perfect for each other.
They met at a rave in a forest, because
of course they did. Love at first sight, her mum had insisted, as they’d locked eyes across a muddy plain. She’d laughed at him because he kept losing his balance - he’d danced with her until the sun came up, and they didn’t leave each other’s sides for the next four weeks.
They’d married within two months, spur of the moment in the registrar office with only two close friends as witnesses. Her mother wove a flower crown, and wore her hair loose. Her father had bought the rings last minute from an antique shop down the road.
Spur of the moment, but they were committed. They might be living in the back of a van, but they were
living. They just cared about being together, everything else came second.
The stuff of real romance, obviously.
Except it wasn’t.
They’d divorced within four months, Paisley just a bump under her mother’s clothes.
Maybe it was love? Her mother insisted that that was what real love felt like. All-consuming, passionate, and intense. Obsessive, and fun, and volatile.
It was meant to happen, she insisted.
Even if it didn’t last, we were meant to meet each other.
Paisley didn’t see that. To her it seemed fleeting, insubstantial. What good was it if it couldn’t be sustained? If you couldn’t sustain all the things that came with it? What made it worth it?
God, they’d really done a number on her.
ii.
It’s fun, isn’t it? her mother had asked her through a cloud of smoke, one hand on the steering wheel, fag in the other. The windows were down in the old camper, fields zipping by the window in a colourful blur. It was sunny, and so was her mother’s mood.
It’s a new adventure, Pais, her mother had insisted, grinning to herself as she swayed to the tapes she had playing.
We’ll make it work - we always do, she’d said, again, with another firm nod.
Paisley kept on shrugging as she stared out of the window. Her mother already knew that she didn’t want to go - that she never wanted to go - but that never really made any difference. There was never anything left in that town. Or the one before. Or the one before that.
They’d tried to stay somewhere once - a small village in Cornwall, at the recommendation of a passing friend. Paisley had loved it there - for two whole years. But her mother, she could never do it. There was always something calling her to move on, or something that drove her away. Places weren’t permanent, but passing attractions.
Home is where you make it, Pais, her mother told her.
Paisley wondered why you couldn’t just make that home a house.
iii.
She…visited her dad.
Michael Corner wasn’t exactly a complicated man. He did as he liked, and liked what he did - and he didn’t like to commit, so he never did for very long. He had four separate children to four separate women to answer to that.
It didn’t suit him really, having anything to tie him down. Some would call it selfishness - he would call it commitment to his own happiness.
For all his faults, Paisley couldn’t say she didn’t think he loved her. He did love her, in the way he understood love. He gave her things. He sent her birthday cards. He congratulated her on her achievements. He hugged her and ruffled her hair.
He just wasn’t
there.
iv.
She really,
really hated her name.
Paisley, because of the paisley shirt Jackie saw someone in the hospital wearing. Blossom, because Jackie liked the flower. Corner for father that claimed her but left a gaping empty hole.
As with most things, her mother had never thought about the impact her name would have on her child, and did something just because she felt like it.
Her mother wasn’t bothered by the strange looks of the other mother’s in the playground watching them with a morbid interest. Her mother wasn’t bothered by the incredulous and judgemental tone people had when they read out her full name for the first time. None of it mattered, because none of it was permanent - those people would be mere memories not long after, left behind as they moved on to their next life somewhere else.
But it lasted for Paisley. It mattered to Paisley.
Her mother had cried the time Paisley had threatened to change her name. She didn’t get it, and Paisley knew she would never get it. Paisley had aspirations, had dreams beyond a transient meaningless existence her mother was content with. Who would hire her - who would take her seriously - if she lived like her mother did?
They were different people: these things didn’t matter to her mother. These things mattered to Paisley.
v.
You have such
a fun Mum, they said to her.
My Mum is nowhere near as cool as yours, they told her.
Paisley had a Cool Mum who’d take her on late night swims at the beach, just because. Paisley had a Cool Mum who’d wear fun clothes and let Paisley wear whatever she wanted too. Paisley’s Cool Mum let you drink, and drank with you. Paisley’s Cool Mum never told you off.
Paisley and her Cool Mum.
They had fun together, sometimes. They shared the same taste in clothes; they both liked the same places to eat takeout; they both enjoyed wandering through vintage and antique shops. It was nice, spending time with each other. It is hard to live, travel and learn with only one other person your entire life and not love them. And Paisley did love her mother very much despite well….everything.
Her friends over the years love how Jackie Martin seems just like an older sister rather than a mother. An older sister is great, but Paisley would honestly just have liked to have a mother, at least some of the time.
vi.
She’d always loved getting back marked work in primary school.
Her mother, naturally, didn’t put much stock in what her daughter was getting up to in school - it didn’t really matter in the end to her. She was just concerned about whether or not her daughter was enjoying herself, and if she was then that’s all that mattered. And Paisley did enjoy herself, when she was doing well.
There was something about all those big red ticks on a page and a mark at the top that gave her a huge sense of satisfaction. She worked for those ticks. Just like she worked for the stars next to her name on the class register, or the stickers you got when you got full marks. This all meant something very important to Paisley - success.
She thought she was going to struggle, really, with the transition from a muggle primary school to a wizarding boarding school, but she took to it with surprising ease. Her mother wasn’t worried - even though she herself was a muggle, she knew her daughter’s dedication to things, and that wouldn’t make a difference no matter what or where she was studying.
The stickers and stars she worked for turned into points, and then into something more palpable - Prefect. And she knew as she kept going, she wanted more. She wanted to keep proving herself, keep bettering what she’d done before. And she would work as hard as she had to to get there.
vii.
Contrary to the kind of reputation she’d tried to build herself, Paisley was not blind to her urges. Sometimes she wanted to leave her homework for an hour and join in that game of Exploding Snap. Sometimes she considered breaking a rule and sneaking out of the Common Room after hours with her housemates.
Sometimes thought about dancing with that guy, or found herself looking at that girl.
But they were fleeting thoughts - mere blips in hours and days and weeks of dedication to her ambition. Because Paisley knew what she wanted, and what she didn’t want, and she knew what it would take to get there.
Because before any of those thoughts can properly materialise, she thinks of her mum and her dad, and a forest - and everything that came after.
What comes of giving in to yourself, and what it would mean for her, to stop moving towards something bigger.
The deepest dissatisfaction. An uncomfortable chaos. Stagnation disguised as freedom.
She couldn’t live like that, not forever.
Yeah. Her parents had
really done a number on her.
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