*first entry dance*
Title: Fully Roomated
Prompt: #1: Leaseback
Rating: PG
Fully Roommated
“I don’t know, Weasley,” Draco Malfoy drawled thoughtfully, his mercurial eyes narrowed as he scanned the interior of a small white cottage built on the outskirts of a quaint little Muggle village in southern England. “The pipes are leaking, the paint is chipping, there’s not enough space, the windows are too small, so there’s not enough light… plus, there’s this horrible sound that keeps drilling in my head. What is that ruckus?”
“Canaries,” Ginny Weasley replied dryly, secretly wishing she hadn’t gone out of the bed that morning. While the slick-headed abomination took another look around the kitchen, Ginny allowed herself a moment of release from her stoic posture and reached out towards this scrawny little neck with the fiercest urge to throttle him.
As if it wasn’t enough that she had to lease out her lovely little cottage, but to think that the evil git had to be the only one to reply to her post in the Daily Prophet, was just ridiculous. Fates were against her and she was most definitely now paying for the chocolate chip cookie she had nicked off her Mum’s tray when she was five, and paying dearly.
“Look, Malfoy,” she addressed him again, figuring he was her only chance of keeping this place in the prospect of her own future. “The pipes just need some tightening, which I can do, obviously-“
“You do plumbing?”
Ginny wasn’t sure if he sounded more astounded or disgusted when he suddenly whirled on her and stared at her as if she’d grown additional head or three.
“A little,” she bit back, trying to withstand from smacking the amusement right off of his mug. “No cracks, Malfoy. I can use a wrench in a large variety of ways.”
In an instant to the amusement was added a grin. “I bet you can.”
“Look,” she tried again. “I was planning on repainting the entire house anyway. There’ll be plenty of room for your coffin in the second bedroom. And I will get you another lamp as your house warming present. What do you say?”
“I say you should watch that tongue of yours, Weasley, or else you’ll lose a potential leaser. I’m supposed to lease this rackety place, albeit fully furnished, but fully roommated as well, and sell it back to said pesky roommate when my lease runs out. And I’m obviously supposed to do it against my better judgment.”
“Be serious, Malfoy,” Ginny snorted. “Your judgment could never be considered as ‘better’, no matter how you look on it. Just agree, already.”
“I saved your life back then. That was clearly a mistake I’d live to regret.”
“That wasn’t very nice.”
“You started it.”
“Fine!” Ginny exclaimed, exasperated. “Don’t want it, don’t take it. I’ll find someone else!”
“Don’t bother,” he drawled again, casting one last haughty look around him. “This place is mine already. It and everything in it.”
Relieved, Ginny’s face brightened up as she clapped her hands together and readily agreed. Only when Draco’s expression shifted to that of an awfully sly predator assessing its easily caught prey did she remember to swallow hard.
Title: A Widow Stood Before Me
Prompt: #2: Corrugated
Rating: PG13
A Widow Stood Before Me
There was something in the way she didn’t look at me when she reached for the tattered envelope that made my innards freeze. There were black circles around her eyes, black smudges on her hands from the spilled ink, and a black veil over her once vivacious red locks. Her hands were too thin, her fingers too unsteady and her whole posture too slackened to be that of the fifteen-year-old girl I fell so madly in love with.
She was no longer my Ginny - no longer my little red vixen, my dirty little secret, my conquest and my hobby. Now, a widow stood before me.
She wasn’t crying, and I was thankful for that. I could never bear the crystallized droplets on her cheeks, and now wouldn’t have been any different. She knew it, and didn’t cry in front of me.
“I… I don’t know what to say,” she whispered the words so quietly that I only heard them reverberating in my chest with great painful might.
“I do.”
“Yes, I guess you would. You were always so incisive. I- I’m sorry?”
She wasn’t sure if that was what I wanted, needed to hear, so her words came out as doubtful as she felt.
“Please, don’t be.”
“Yes, I guess, it would do neither of us any good if I wallowed in sorrow. Then… I miss you. I… I wish it wasn’t you whom I came to see here.”
“You and me both, Weasley.”
She choked down a sob and pressed a tight palm to her mouth to smother the heinous wail that threatened to break out of her ribcage and shred her body to pieces. She gasped desperately and clung to the wall, refusing to seek support in me, and the envelope in her feeble hand crumpled.
“I hate you…” she hissed pitifully, sliding to her knees and clutching her stomach. “Hate you…”
I knelt down beside her, but kept my hands to myself. My touch, though so feverishly wanted, was the last thing she needed right then. She leaned against the cold stone and I could feel her heartbeat against my chest. She was so warm, so red, so much mine and so much hurting.
After half an hour of helpless weeping, she picked up her black skirts and rose to her feet, freshly broken and barely alive. She left the crumpled envelope on the stone and without a second glance, walked away.
I needn’t have opened that envelope in order to know what its content bore. Small lines woven with small words pretending to be grand and eloquent, all carved in her awfully slanted handwriting on the cheap parchment as well as across the walls of my hearts in a jumble of pain and blood.
Strike the iron while it’s hot
Lash your anger, I won’t dodge
But in this wrath you lay with me
These corrugated sheets our lodge
I sought reprieve in heavens’ light
You sought it in my bed, my heart
Your soul’s as tussled as the sheets
And it is forcing us to part
You treaded roads I was against
You battled views I held so dear
But now it matters way too less
With this corrugation’s drawing near
Now, not a single crease, a single line
Your memory’s as smooth as ice
And what I feared and dreaded most
Shows nothing underneath these eyes
I refused to pick it up, to open and read it. I knew it by heart even before she wrote it. These lines killed me long before they made her cry when she reread them. So I just watched gravely as the curious winds picked it up and tossed it away from the cold grey stone bearing my name.
Title: Just Politics
Prompt: #3: Reform
Rating: PG
Just Politics
“Reforms! Reforms, and I’ll say it again - reforms! That is what this government is in need of after the colossal malfunction of our previous legislature, our previous boards of elected, and our previous Minister! And I say ‘our’, ladies and gentlemen, because I feel as let down and as disappointed and betrayed as you all are. I, too, have put everything I had into this community, and I, too, was horribly mistaken to do such a thing. And that is why I stand here before you now, that is why I beseech, nay, demand of you to entrust our ministry into the hands of those who care! Allow me to nurture this community, nurse it back to its magnificence and let me assure you, not a single one of you would be disappointed. I will make sure that the Wizarding World would regard Britain with the utmost respect she dese--”
“Why, that little--” Ginny muttered under her breath and dosed the Floovision with the remains of her coffee, thus termination the loud transmission. It was definitely way too early to be listening to that idiot’s broadcasts, considering the fact that she had barely three hours of sleep, less than a pint of murderously black coffee, and it was a bloody Saturday morning! Why the hell was she up at this ungodly hour?
She was reminded of the reason by the heinous bell ringing reverberating throughout her apartment and spitefully piercing her head with a headache. It was only natural in this twisted plot that the prat would decide to try the polite thing and ring the bell today specifically, instead of barging in like he’s used to and saving her the trouble of moving. Of course!
Growling and bearing something disturbingly resembling a snarl on her delicate round face, she stomped to the door and flung it open. She was greeted with the sight of a huge bouquet of violet lilies with legs. Well, maybe not exactly. It was most probably an idiot hiding his face behind a huge bouquet of violet lilies, which would obviously explain the legs more sufficiently.
“Weasley, stop admiring my breathtaking physique and take the goddamn flowers already! They weight a ton!”
She arched an eyebrow at him, though the fact that he couldn’t see the dryness of her expression gave little satisfaction. Slamming the door in his flower-hidden face, however, was just what she needed.
“Ow! Weasley!”
“Go away, Draco, or I’m bringing out Daddy’s shovel,” Ginny replied evenly, walking back to her freshly brewed coffee with somewhat of a smile.
“Damn it, woman!” His mutter carried from behind the door a moment before it was Alohomora-ed and the huge walking bouquet barged into the small apartment.
“If you slam that door in my face one more time, we’re through!” he hollered, dropping the flowers onto the kitchen counter. “I give you everything and this is the thanks I get? You are rudeness incarcerated!”
“Heard Zabini’s speech this morning,” she stated calmly, seeping on her cup of the dark brew.
Draco’s expression immediately shifted into something barely resembling sheepishness. “You did, did you? Why were you watching Floovision so early in the morning, love. You know it’s bad for your eyes.”
“My neighbor Flooed this morning to the Alley, and you know how these connected Floo infrastructures work. It was turned on right at the part about the ‘colossal malfunction’ of our previous Minister. How fascinating, don’t you agree?”
“Come now, Gin… You know I have nothing against your brother, it’s just… well, just politics. Let’s forget about this and get going already, alright?”
“You called Percy a malfunction and you want me to forget about it?”
“I didn’t call him anything, it was Blaise. Slytherins and our competitive strikes…”
“You are the one who writes his speeches,” Ginny countered, annoyed at the fact that he would presume her to be this dimwitted and senile. “Unlike you, I know what my significant other does for a living.”
“Yes, ‘significant other’, stick to that thought. You love me, you adore me, you want to make me happy… What would make me happy is you dressed - for a change, let’s not make a habit out of it - and ready to go and pick up the bloody ring!”
Ginny suddenly paused mid-frown. Slowly, beautifully, her lips crept into a wide, smug smile. “Is it a big ring?”
Draco’s eyes narrowed. “Avaricious bint. Yes, it is a big ring, the biggest they had. In fact, we might want to think about replacing your four-year-old cousin with that oaf Hagrid as the ring carrier. Happy? Can we go now?”
“Ecstatic and yes, we can,” she quipped and hopped off the stool, heading to the bedroom to get change, while Draco was once again thanking Merlin for her short attention span.
Title: Poison
Prompt: #26: Poison
Rating: PG13
Poison
“Your eyes are brimming with tears,” he whispered softly, shedding his mask with a swift and painless motion.
“You are delusional,” she managed to choke out. Her throat was tightening and soon she would be unable to draw a single breath, and she knew it. Her polished wand was still steadily pointed at his heart, yet the words were refusing to be voiced.
“I never meant to make you cry,” he carried on with the same heinous tenderness, his tone so sweet and caressing. He was gazing at her with the smallest of smiles, his eyes shining with that welcoming stoic glee she foolishly fell in love with.
“No, of course you didn’t,” she agreed dutifully as a good wife should, awkwardly nodding her head as the feeling of cold numbness began to spread throughout her quivering limbs. “You just meant to kill me.”
“I never thought it would come to this,” he replied evenly, shrugging in a casual apology.
“Come to what? A wedding? This marriage? This child? Why did you choose to prolong this charade? Why didn’t you get over with it the first moment you could? Why, oh dear Merlin, why?”
Tears were spilling in earnest down her stained face and her legs were no longer able to hold her up. She collapsed onto the floor and the sound of her wand hitting the floor and rolling away from her, made clear for the outcome of this scenario. Her vision was already darkening and she could feel her legs no more. Not long now, she prayed to herself, resting her hands on the swelled belly beneath her flowered dress. Please, Merlin, don’t let it be longer…
Somewhere through the fog she could hear a rueful sigh leaving his baleful lips. “I couldn’t, love. I just… couldn’t. You smiled that day at someone beside me, and you were so beautiful in that sunlight. You were so… peaceful. I couldn’t harm you then.”
“And now? You can harm me now?”
She was gasping for air now, wide eyes staring into the blackness with seeping panic. She felt him crouch down beside her and she couldn’t fight him off when he drew her into a tight embrace and started stroking her hair.
“It is night now, love. I can hide my sins from myself in the darkness. Thank you for these years. Thank you for this family and this child. I’m sure he would’ve been beautiful.”
There was a silence for a long while and he was sure the poison had finished its affects, and that his beloved wife was no longer with the living, when a shadow of her former voice resounded meekly.
“Draco…”
“Yes, love?”
“I smiled at you that day…”
And there was no more of Ginny Malfoy.
In the morning, Draco will discover that darkness itself refuses to hide such heinous sins. The sunlight will bathe the mansion in gold and stale silence will begins its reign.
Prompt: #1: Leaseback
Rating: PG
Fully Roommated
“I don’t know, Weasley,” Draco Malfoy drawled thoughtfully, his mercurial eyes narrowed as he scanned the interior of a small white cottage built on the outskirts of a quaint little Muggle village in southern England. “The pipes are leaking, the paint is chipping, there’s not enough space, the windows are too small, so there’s not enough light… plus, there’s this horrible sound that keeps drilling in my head. What is that ruckus?”
“Canaries,” Ginny Weasley replied dryly, secretly wishing she hadn’t gone out of the bed that morning. While the slick-headed abomination took another look around the kitchen, Ginny allowed herself a moment of release from her stoic posture and reached out towards this scrawny little neck with the fiercest urge to throttle him.
As if it wasn’t enough that she had to lease out her lovely little cottage, but to think that the evil git had to be the only one to reply to her post in the Daily Prophet, was just ridiculous. Fates were against her and she was most definitely now paying for the chocolate chip cookie she had nicked off her Mum’s tray when she was five, and paying dearly.
“Look, Malfoy,” she addressed him again, figuring he was her only chance of keeping this place in the prospect of her own future. “The pipes just need some tightening, which I can do, obviously-“
“You do plumbing?”
Ginny wasn’t sure if he sounded more astounded or disgusted when he suddenly whirled on her and stared at her as if she’d grown additional head or three.
“A little,” she bit back, trying to withstand from smacking the amusement right off of his mug. “No cracks, Malfoy. I can use a wrench in a large variety of ways.”
In an instant to the amusement was added a grin. “I bet you can.”
“Look,” she tried again. “I was planning on repainting the entire house anyway. There’ll be plenty of room for your coffin in the second bedroom. And I will get you another lamp as your house warming present. What do you say?”
“I say you should watch that tongue of yours, Weasley, or else you’ll lose a potential leaser. I’m supposed to lease this rackety place, albeit fully furnished, but fully roommated as well, and sell it back to said pesky roommate when my lease runs out. And I’m obviously supposed to do it against my better judgment.”
“Be serious, Malfoy,” Ginny snorted. “Your judgment could never be considered as ‘better’, no matter how you look on it. Just agree, already.”
“I saved your life back then. That was clearly a mistake I’d live to regret.”
“That wasn’t very nice.”
“You started it.”
“Fine!” Ginny exclaimed, exasperated. “Don’t want it, don’t take it. I’ll find someone else!”
“Don’t bother,” he drawled again, casting one last haughty look around him. “This place is mine already. It and everything in it.”
Relieved, Ginny’s face brightened up as she clapped her hands together and readily agreed. Only when Draco’s expression shifted to that of an awfully sly predator assessing its easily caught prey did she remember to swallow hard.
Title: A Widow Stood Before Me
Prompt: #2: Corrugated
Rating: PG13
A Widow Stood Before Me
There was something in the way she didn’t look at me when she reached for the tattered envelope that made my innards freeze. There were black circles around her eyes, black smudges on her hands from the spilled ink, and a black veil over her once vivacious red locks. Her hands were too thin, her fingers too unsteady and her whole posture too slackened to be that of the fifteen-year-old girl I fell so madly in love with.
She was no longer my Ginny - no longer my little red vixen, my dirty little secret, my conquest and my hobby. Now, a widow stood before me.
She wasn’t crying, and I was thankful for that. I could never bear the crystallized droplets on her cheeks, and now wouldn’t have been any different. She knew it, and didn’t cry in front of me.
“I… I don’t know what to say,” she whispered the words so quietly that I only heard them reverberating in my chest with great painful might.
“I do.”
“Yes, I guess you would. You were always so incisive. I- I’m sorry?”
She wasn’t sure if that was what I wanted, needed to hear, so her words came out as doubtful as she felt.
“Please, don’t be.”
“Yes, I guess, it would do neither of us any good if I wallowed in sorrow. Then… I miss you. I… I wish it wasn’t you whom I came to see here.”
“You and me both, Weasley.”
She choked down a sob and pressed a tight palm to her mouth to smother the heinous wail that threatened to break out of her ribcage and shred her body to pieces. She gasped desperately and clung to the wall, refusing to seek support in me, and the envelope in her feeble hand crumpled.
“I hate you…” she hissed pitifully, sliding to her knees and clutching her stomach. “Hate you…”
I knelt down beside her, but kept my hands to myself. My touch, though so feverishly wanted, was the last thing she needed right then. She leaned against the cold stone and I could feel her heartbeat against my chest. She was so warm, so red, so much mine and so much hurting.
After half an hour of helpless weeping, she picked up her black skirts and rose to her feet, freshly broken and barely alive. She left the crumpled envelope on the stone and without a second glance, walked away.
I needn’t have opened that envelope in order to know what its content bore. Small lines woven with small words pretending to be grand and eloquent, all carved in her awfully slanted handwriting on the cheap parchment as well as across the walls of my hearts in a jumble of pain and blood.
Strike the iron while it’s hot
Lash your anger, I won’t dodge
But in this wrath you lay with me
These corrugated sheets our lodge
I sought reprieve in heavens’ light
You sought it in my bed, my heart
Your soul’s as tussled as the sheets
And it is forcing us to part
You treaded roads I was against
You battled views I held so dear
But now it matters way too less
With this corrugation’s drawing near
Now, not a single crease, a single line
Your memory’s as smooth as ice
And what I feared and dreaded most
Shows nothing underneath these eyes
I refused to pick it up, to open and read it. I knew it by heart even before she wrote it. These lines killed me long before they made her cry when she reread them. So I just watched gravely as the curious winds picked it up and tossed it away from the cold grey stone bearing my name.
Title: Just Politics
Prompt: #3: Reform
Rating: PG
Just Politics
“Reforms! Reforms, and I’ll say it again - reforms! That is what this government is in need of after the colossal malfunction of our previous legislature, our previous boards of elected, and our previous Minister! And I say ‘our’, ladies and gentlemen, because I feel as let down and as disappointed and betrayed as you all are. I, too, have put everything I had into this community, and I, too, was horribly mistaken to do such a thing. And that is why I stand here before you now, that is why I beseech, nay, demand of you to entrust our ministry into the hands of those who care! Allow me to nurture this community, nurse it back to its magnificence and let me assure you, not a single one of you would be disappointed. I will make sure that the Wizarding World would regard Britain with the utmost respect she dese--”
“Why, that little--” Ginny muttered under her breath and dosed the Floovision with the remains of her coffee, thus termination the loud transmission. It was definitely way too early to be listening to that idiot’s broadcasts, considering the fact that she had barely three hours of sleep, less than a pint of murderously black coffee, and it was a bloody Saturday morning! Why the hell was she up at this ungodly hour?
She was reminded of the reason by the heinous bell ringing reverberating throughout her apartment and spitefully piercing her head with a headache. It was only natural in this twisted plot that the prat would decide to try the polite thing and ring the bell today specifically, instead of barging in like he’s used to and saving her the trouble of moving. Of course!
Growling and bearing something disturbingly resembling a snarl on her delicate round face, she stomped to the door and flung it open. She was greeted with the sight of a huge bouquet of violet lilies with legs. Well, maybe not exactly. It was most probably an idiot hiding his face behind a huge bouquet of violet lilies, which would obviously explain the legs more sufficiently.
“Weasley, stop admiring my breathtaking physique and take the goddamn flowers already! They weight a ton!”
She arched an eyebrow at him, though the fact that he couldn’t see the dryness of her expression gave little satisfaction. Slamming the door in his flower-hidden face, however, was just what she needed.
“Ow! Weasley!”
“Go away, Draco, or I’m bringing out Daddy’s shovel,” Ginny replied evenly, walking back to her freshly brewed coffee with somewhat of a smile.
“Damn it, woman!” His mutter carried from behind the door a moment before it was Alohomora-ed and the huge walking bouquet barged into the small apartment.
“If you slam that door in my face one more time, we’re through!” he hollered, dropping the flowers onto the kitchen counter. “I give you everything and this is the thanks I get? You are rudeness incarcerated!”
“Heard Zabini’s speech this morning,” she stated calmly, seeping on her cup of the dark brew.
Draco’s expression immediately shifted into something barely resembling sheepishness. “You did, did you? Why were you watching Floovision so early in the morning, love. You know it’s bad for your eyes.”
“My neighbor Flooed this morning to the Alley, and you know how these connected Floo infrastructures work. It was turned on right at the part about the ‘colossal malfunction’ of our previous Minister. How fascinating, don’t you agree?”
“Come now, Gin… You know I have nothing against your brother, it’s just… well, just politics. Let’s forget about this and get going already, alright?”
“You called Percy a malfunction and you want me to forget about it?”
“I didn’t call him anything, it was Blaise. Slytherins and our competitive strikes…”
“You are the one who writes his speeches,” Ginny countered, annoyed at the fact that he would presume her to be this dimwitted and senile. “Unlike you, I know what my significant other does for a living.”
“Yes, ‘significant other’, stick to that thought. You love me, you adore me, you want to make me happy… What would make me happy is you dressed - for a change, let’s not make a habit out of it - and ready to go and pick up the bloody ring!”
Ginny suddenly paused mid-frown. Slowly, beautifully, her lips crept into a wide, smug smile. “Is it a big ring?”
Draco’s eyes narrowed. “Avaricious bint. Yes, it is a big ring, the biggest they had. In fact, we might want to think about replacing your four-year-old cousin with that oaf Hagrid as the ring carrier. Happy? Can we go now?”
“Ecstatic and yes, we can,” she quipped and hopped off the stool, heading to the bedroom to get change, while Draco was once again thanking Merlin for her short attention span.
Title: Poison
Prompt: #26: Poison
Rating: PG13
Poison
“Your eyes are brimming with tears,” he whispered softly, shedding his mask with a swift and painless motion.
“You are delusional,” she managed to choke out. Her throat was tightening and soon she would be unable to draw a single breath, and she knew it. Her polished wand was still steadily pointed at his heart, yet the words were refusing to be voiced.
“I never meant to make you cry,” he carried on with the same heinous tenderness, his tone so sweet and caressing. He was gazing at her with the smallest of smiles, his eyes shining with that welcoming stoic glee she foolishly fell in love with.
“No, of course you didn’t,” she agreed dutifully as a good wife should, awkwardly nodding her head as the feeling of cold numbness began to spread throughout her quivering limbs. “You just meant to kill me.”
“I never thought it would come to this,” he replied evenly, shrugging in a casual apology.
“Come to what? A wedding? This marriage? This child? Why did you choose to prolong this charade? Why didn’t you get over with it the first moment you could? Why, oh dear Merlin, why?”
Tears were spilling in earnest down her stained face and her legs were no longer able to hold her up. She collapsed onto the floor and the sound of her wand hitting the floor and rolling away from her, made clear for the outcome of this scenario. Her vision was already darkening and she could feel her legs no more. Not long now, she prayed to herself, resting her hands on the swelled belly beneath her flowered dress. Please, Merlin, don’t let it be longer…
Somewhere through the fog she could hear a rueful sigh leaving his baleful lips. “I couldn’t, love. I just… couldn’t. You smiled that day at someone beside me, and you were so beautiful in that sunlight. You were so… peaceful. I couldn’t harm you then.”
“And now? You can harm me now?”
She was gasping for air now, wide eyes staring into the blackness with seeping panic. She felt him crouch down beside her and she couldn’t fight him off when he drew her into a tight embrace and started stroking her hair.
“It is night now, love. I can hide my sins from myself in the darkness. Thank you for these years. Thank you for this family and this child. I’m sure he would’ve been beautiful.”
There was a silence for a long while and he was sure the poison had finished its affects, and that his beloved wife was no longer with the living, when a shadow of her former voice resounded meekly.
“Draco…”
“Yes, love?”
“I smiled at you that day…”
And there was no more of Ginny Malfoy.
In the morning, Draco will discover that darkness itself refuses to hide such heinous sins. The sunlight will bathe the mansion in gold and stale silence will begins its reign.