Special Challenge Voting: Best Flash Fiction
Best Special Challenge Flash Fiction (101-500 words)
Complete rules and procedures can be found on the main voting page. To summarize:
1. To submit your votes for this category, copy and paste the code below into a comment to this post (will be screened), or send it in an email to dramioneawards[at]gmail[dot]com. No anonymous comments allowed!
2. You must vote for your top THREE favorite fics, and rank them with your top favorite fic in the #1 position.
3. When casting your vote, please use the number assigned to the fic, rather than writing out the whole title.
CODE (SC2):
Best Special Challenge Flash Fiction:
1. (TOP CHOICE)
2.
3.
Return to Main Page
Special Challenge Entries:
1.
Title: Cor Leonis
Author: Musyc
Word count: 425
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Notes: Cor Leonis is also known as alpha Leonis or Regulus, the brightest star in the constellation of Leo, and one of the brightest stars visible in Earth's sky.
Prompt chosen: "For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love."
Hermione set her brush down on her dressing table and looked into the mirror as Draco approached her. From a black velvet bag, modest and unassuming, only the width of his palm, he drew a necklace of serpentine chain. The platinum gleamed in the soft candlelight, reflecting gold and silver against her skin as he draped the chain around her heck. Hermione held up her hair with one hand while he fastened the clasp, the other touching the discreet sapphire that dangled from the center of a spiral pendant. "What's this?" she asked, tipping her head back to meet his eyes.
Draco settled his hands on her shoulders and bent to kiss her forehead. "Keeping a promise." He moved to lean against the dressing table and went through the collection of cut-glass bottles lined up at the base of the paneled mirror. He opened one, sniffed, and recapped it with a shake of his head. "Just a little something I promised you when we first started seeing each other."
Hermione picked out a bottle in a deep shade of pink and handed it to him. Draco tested the scent, antique rose and ambergris, and nodded in approval. He tipped a bit of the thin oil onto his fingers and stroked the narrow space between her collarbones, just above the necklace. Hermione tilted her head and pointed to the hollow beneath her ear. Draco followed her silent directions and painted her skin with the perfume. "What promise?" she asked as she held her arms up so he could apply the scent to her wrists and the sensitive curves of her inner elbows.
He smiled and caught her hand, pulling it up to press a kiss to the heel of her thumb. "I promised that when we were married, I'd give you the heavens. If you asked me to, I'd pull the stars down from the sky to make a necklace for you. You laughed at me for being so confident that soon, then you told me I'd have to start with--"
"Cor Leonis," she finished with a brilliant smile. "The heart of the lion." She touched the sapphire, her eyes shimmering, and rose to wrap her arms around his neck. "And it's even a blue star, Mister Malfoy. Excellent research skills."
"I know what gets you going," he said with a laugh. He tugged her against his chest and gave her a long and lingering kiss, the point of his tongue tracing the bow of her lips. "Happy anniversary, Madame Malfoy. Thousands of stars to go."
2.
Title: Walks in the Rain
Author: Slivovitz (anitapandit)
Word count: 417
Rating: K+
Warnings: none
Notes: adapted from a fic I wrote and never posted :]
Prompt chosen: "Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things."
“D’you fancy a walk?” he asked hesitantly. She grinned at him, her teeth sparkling from behind her crooked smile.
“In the rain? Sounds like fun.” She gripped his hand firmly and led him to the door, her brown curls bouncing behind her. When they got to the door, Hermione’s face fell as she realized something.
“Something wrong?” inquired Draco, opening the door for her. He noticed her pull her blue umbrella out of a pocket in her cloak.
“My umbrella isn’t big enough for the two of us,” she said apologetically, stepping down the steps into the rain, the droplets catching in her hair and weighing it down so it began to straighten out.
“Here.” Draco quickly reached into the pocket in his robes and pulled out his own umbrella. He didn’t think he could bear it if her hair got drenched. “Mine can accommodate us both. Wish you had magic now, hm?”
“No, there’s no way I’m going to lose this bet.”
“Face it,” smirked Draco. “You need magic just as much as I do.”
He opened the umbrella, covering her slightly damp curls so they wouldn’t get too wet. He held the umbrella at arm’s distance, hovering it over Hermione’s head and not noticing that he himself was getting soaked. She saw this, though. Hermione laughed and reached out, pulling him towards her and under the umbrella he was holding.
“You’re all wet now.” Merlin, he loved her smile.
“Yeah,” he chortled, shaking his head and spraying water in all directions. “I guess I am.”
But it didn’t matter if he was wet. It could have mattered less if he was drowning, because nothing else mattered when he was with her. She smiled, then looked up. The giant black umbrella loomed over the two of them, shielding them from the falling water.
“What’s with the umbrella?” she laughed, pushing him lightly. “Is everything you own either green or black?”
“Black is practical,” he said defensively, though he couldn’t wipe the smile off his face. “Not like your umbrella.”
“I happen to like this color,” she said playfully, waving her royal blue umbrella in his face so that drops of water sprinkled his eyebrows. “It’s my favorite.”
“Well, black is my favorite color.”
Hermione laughed again, linking her arm in his and resting her head against his shoulder. “Draco, you’re so boring.”
“I know,” he smiled, placing an arm around her waist. He kissed her on the top of her head. “That’s why I need you.”
3.
Title: Six Disconcerting Little Clues
Author: starduchess
Word count: 444
Rating: G
Warnings: none
Notes: for Flash Fiction category
Prompt chosen: "There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic." -- Anais Nin
The first disconcerting clue Draco noticed about Hermione was an odd little shift in her eyes. He would say something particularly clever--by his estimation anyway--and her eyes would unfocus for an instant before she flung a good retort back in his face. He thought it was her method of contemplating attacks.
The second disconcerting clue he noticed was her perfume, a dark musk with cinnamon and gardenia, heavy and cloying, but most striking was that she only wore it around him. If he caught her out unexpectedly, she had a clean scent. He swore she did it to drive him nutters.
The third disconcerting clue was the notes she left all over his desk. Whenever he would return from being out at lunch or a meeting, there would be a plethora of dictations strewn about like flower petals. He assumed she did this to all her friends, so it was confusing when he looked in Potter's and Weasley's offices and none were to be found.
The fourth clue--and this is where it really got strange--was the books slowly accumulating around her flat when she would invite him to tea. Of course, she was an avid reader, but the titles grew suspicious. History of Culture. Etiquette at Its Finest. Pure-blood Family Names: A Genealogy. He was sure there was a conspiracy somewhere.
The fifth was all the little bits of food with which she plied him. They ranged the gamut from little rice crackers topped with pickled fish eggs to dessert pudding so runny that he was sure it had never seen an oven. She claimed that variety was the spice of life, but as she served the gillyweed and asphodel salad, he was absolutely certain she was attempting to poison him.
The sixth and latest clue came as little touches: brushes of fingertips on his arm, bumps with her knee, claps on his shoulder for a job well-done. He couldn't stand the familiarity, but she paid no mind to his scathing looks and in-drawn breaths.
When she gave him the first peck on the cheek, he growled his frustration.
"What is all this, Hermione?"
"I was hoping to entice you into dating me," she said simply.
Draco stared at her. He thought back over the pieces, and suddenly it all fell into place. She liked him! The feeling was more disconcerting as a whole than it had in its individual parts. He wasn't sure what to make of all this, but his Slytherin nature decided to take advantage of and embrace the opportunity.
"Alright, I will. Shall I escort you to dinner at eight?"
She nodded, eyes alight with elation.
4.
Title: Gone
Author: Elysium
Word count: 461 words
Rating: PG
Warnings: Implied Character Death
Notes: N/A
Prompt chosen: "Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things." Antonio Smith
He didn’t know it then, the way he does now. Those moments, small fragments in the vastness that is life, were the ones that would haunt him. He can acknowledge this now because he’s been without. He’s spent the time analysing the infinitesimal details, the little parts of her that come to make the whole.
He doesn’t have the whole anymore. His memory of her in all her burning glory has splintered into remembered features.
Lips. Pink and wide. Open. The endless stream of clever and frustrating things that tumble from their shape.
Hair. Wild and unruly. Like her spirit, untameable. The way it wraps around one’s finger and holds.
Heat. Sun is the smell that lingers on her. Warm skin. Burns to touch. It blazes through the soul.
Eyes. Bright and fierce. Knowing. Always seeing, watching, knowing. They pierce the layers of cloth and skin and lies to see the truth.
Heart. Big and bold and red. Obnoxious in its welcoming. The tendrils of feeling are unfamiliar, even as they close around one’s own.
Gone. Once here to coat him in her presence. No longer. Her heart, as big and bold and red as it was, hasn’t room for him any longer. It hasn’t for some time.
He can see now, with the wealth of age and wisdom that he owns, just what she was to him. She was that transient burst of clarity and light. The glow from the candle before the pool of wax around the wick has swallowed it whole.
His eyes, now milky and unfocused, stretch back through years to recall the smiles that she sent him, the touches of her hand as she reached out to his own. A gesture that still resonates through the passage of time. She made the call to him; saw something within his depths that suggested he was worthy.
Worthy of her. Worthy of time. Worthy of friendship and soft words and forgiveness.
As his fingers, lily-white and paper-fine, drum across his chair, and his unseeing gaze tilts toward the window, the moonlight falling on his face, he ponders. If he had known it then and understood what they could be, would it have been different?
Would she have been more than the girl who reached out to him, the first to take his hand? Would she have held it firm at an altar, dressed in ivory silk and pretty smiles? Would she be lying encased in the white marble of his ancestors, awaiting the time when his eye-lids close and he joins her once again?
Would she have loved him with the fierceness that she loved another?
He thinks about her lips, her hair, her heat, her eyes, her heart and how she’s gone. And wishes it was yes.
5.
Title: Absolution
Author: eilonwy
Word count: 498
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Notes: None
Prompt Chosen: “For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.” Carl Sagan
Walls, ceilings, windows, floors.
The ancient stonework should have stood for centuries longer, only suffering the spidery cracks that time, rain and persistent ivy imposed. So much was now charred rubble, splintered glass.
Hogwarts Castle was broken, but struggling to stand. Some teachers had returned, those McGonagall had successfully persuaded, and small bunches of students had trickled back as well, now that September had arrived.
Hermione paused at the foot of the Grand Staircase, glancing down a corridor still in ruins. Trudging up the steps, she instinctively gripped the banister as the staircase began a precipitous shift to the right. She’d missed virtually all of seventh year. But she’d worked too hard the previous six to abandon everything now.
Coming back was hard, though. There were ghosts everywhere. Those students who had returned seemed little more than shadows themselves, tentative and subdued. The pervasive quiet was eerie.
Discovering him in a remote corner of the library, his blond head bent over a book, had been a shock. She hadn’t realised he’d returned as well. Sensing her eyes on him, he’d glanced up. An enigmatic half-smile, a slight lift of an eyebrow, and then he’d turned back to his book.
*
“Couldn’t stay away, eh, Granger?”
Hermione looked up from her plate. Malfoy had taken the seat next to hers. There were so few students, relatively, that all the houses mixed together now at shared tables.
She shook her head, smiling a bit ruefully. “You either, I see.”
“Reckon not.” His laugh was hollow. “My parents… well… let’s just say me coming back here wasn’t exactly high on their agenda.”
“But you came anyway,” Hermione said quietly. “Why? You didn’t have to. Especially--”
She trailed off and, colouring faintly, studied the food on her plate.
“Especially after what I did. It’s okay. You can say it.” He stabbed grimly at a bit of chicken, his voice lower now. “It’s my fault, all this. Everybody knows that. I just… I wanted to help put it back, see?”
He looked away for a moment and then met her pensive gaze once again, his own clear and unflinching now, almost defiant.
After a long moment, both turned back to their meal.
“Pass the pumpkin juice,” he muttered after a while, and then casually, almost as an afterthought, he added, “S’pose you’ll be in the library later…?” He slanted a quick, covert look at her.
She nodded, handing him the jug. “Mmm.”
Hastily downing his drink, Malfoy stood, hoisting his satchel over his shoulder. “Well… see you.”
“See you,” she murmured, watching him stride away, and then looked up at a sudden noise overhead.
Just above a gaping hole in the ceiling, an owl hovered for a moment, its powerful wings beating the air, before streaking off, wraith-like, into the deepening blue of the evening sky. Around Hermione, students were pushing back their chairs and preparing to head off to their common rooms.
Shards of normalcy. A beginning.
Grabbing her bag, Hermione followed.
6.
Title: Read On
Author: zeec
Word Count: 247
Rating: K+
Warnings: One kiss
Notes: None
Prompt chosen: "We can do no great things; only small things with great love."- Mother Theresa
Draco sighed inwardly as his wife was yet again enchanted with the beauty of this place or another in a certain corner of the world. He watched her, his pale brows furrowed, as she watched the Muggle contraption called the television. Her mouth was hanging open in awe as the screen showed the Taj Mahal in India.
Draco sighed again. He would have taken her there and every other place she desired to visit if he could afford it - but he no longer could, not after his parents cruelly disowned him for marrying the most beautiful woman in the universe.
Draco patiently waited for the show to end before turning off the telly. He carried a stool towards Hermione, placed it before the couch she was curled up in and sat down. He opened the book in his hand and returned her curious expression with a serious one. "I can't take you anywhere," he pointed towards the now empty television screen, "but I hope this would suffice."
With that, he read, "It was in Milford Sound that I felt I have glimpsed heaven. The cascading waters from the rocks towering over me were catching sun light and releasing them in rays of seven colours. There was not just one, but many of these falls. Rainbows danced around us…"
Draco did not have time to finish his sentence before Hermione softly pressed her lips against his pillows of flesh. Snuggling back into the couch, she smiled at him, "Read on."
7.
Title: Snowflakes
Author: lazerxangel
Word count: 182
Rating: K
Warnings: None
Notes: Same as above.
Prompt chosen: "Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things."-- Antonio Smith
A fleck of snow melted on her tongue as she danced around with her mouth open, and she grinned. “Catch a snowflake, Malfoy.”
He looked at her haughtily. “It’s unhealthy to eat that stuff, you know. They’re filled with dust and pollutants and-arghmmmph!”
She laughed again and wiped off her gloves while he spat out snow. “You’re absolutely deranged, Granger. I don’t know who’d ever want to date you, much less marry you.” She only smiled at him in response.
Three years later, she stared thoughtfully at a little boy running around the field, his mouth wide open, willing the flakes to fall onto his tongue.
“Catch a snowflake, Granger.”
She turned to look at him and smiled. “It’s unhealthy to eat that stuff, you know. They’re filled with dust and pollutants and-oh.”
She stared down at the ring he was presenting her to on one knee.
“I’m not going to take back what I said three years ago. You’re still deranged and an utter lunatic, but I think I found the person who wants to marry you.”
She smiled.
Return to Main Page
Complete rules and procedures can be found on the main voting page. To summarize:
1. To submit your votes for this category, copy and paste the code below into a comment to this post (will be screened), or send it in an email to dramioneawards[at]gmail[dot]com. No anonymous comments allowed!
2. You must vote for your top THREE favorite fics, and rank them with your top favorite fic in the #1 position.
3. When casting your vote, please use the number assigned to the fic, rather than writing out the whole title.
CODE (SC2):
Best Special Challenge Flash Fiction:
1. (TOP CHOICE)
2.
3.
Return to Main Page
Special Challenge Entries:
1.
Title: Cor Leonis
Author: Musyc
Word count: 425
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Notes: Cor Leonis is also known as alpha Leonis or Regulus, the brightest star in the constellation of Leo, and one of the brightest stars visible in Earth's sky.
Prompt chosen: "For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love."
Hermione set her brush down on her dressing table and looked into the mirror as Draco approached her. From a black velvet bag, modest and unassuming, only the width of his palm, he drew a necklace of serpentine chain. The platinum gleamed in the soft candlelight, reflecting gold and silver against her skin as he draped the chain around her heck. Hermione held up her hair with one hand while he fastened the clasp, the other touching the discreet sapphire that dangled from the center of a spiral pendant. "What's this?" she asked, tipping her head back to meet his eyes.
Draco settled his hands on her shoulders and bent to kiss her forehead. "Keeping a promise." He moved to lean against the dressing table and went through the collection of cut-glass bottles lined up at the base of the paneled mirror. He opened one, sniffed, and recapped it with a shake of his head. "Just a little something I promised you when we first started seeing each other."
Hermione picked out a bottle in a deep shade of pink and handed it to him. Draco tested the scent, antique rose and ambergris, and nodded in approval. He tipped a bit of the thin oil onto his fingers and stroked the narrow space between her collarbones, just above the necklace. Hermione tilted her head and pointed to the hollow beneath her ear. Draco followed her silent directions and painted her skin with the perfume. "What promise?" she asked as she held her arms up so he could apply the scent to her wrists and the sensitive curves of her inner elbows.
He smiled and caught her hand, pulling it up to press a kiss to the heel of her thumb. "I promised that when we were married, I'd give you the heavens. If you asked me to, I'd pull the stars down from the sky to make a necklace for you. You laughed at me for being so confident that soon, then you told me I'd have to start with--"
"Cor Leonis," she finished with a brilliant smile. "The heart of the lion." She touched the sapphire, her eyes shimmering, and rose to wrap her arms around his neck. "And it's even a blue star, Mister Malfoy. Excellent research skills."
"I know what gets you going," he said with a laugh. He tugged her against his chest and gave her a long and lingering kiss, the point of his tongue tracing the bow of her lips. "Happy anniversary, Madame Malfoy. Thousands of stars to go."
2.
Title: Walks in the Rain
Author: Slivovitz (anitapandit)
Word count: 417
Rating: K+
Warnings: none
Notes: adapted from a fic I wrote and never posted :]
Prompt chosen: "Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things."
“D’you fancy a walk?” he asked hesitantly. She grinned at him, her teeth sparkling from behind her crooked smile.
“In the rain? Sounds like fun.” She gripped his hand firmly and led him to the door, her brown curls bouncing behind her. When they got to the door, Hermione’s face fell as she realized something.
“Something wrong?” inquired Draco, opening the door for her. He noticed her pull her blue umbrella out of a pocket in her cloak.
“My umbrella isn’t big enough for the two of us,” she said apologetically, stepping down the steps into the rain, the droplets catching in her hair and weighing it down so it began to straighten out.
“Here.” Draco quickly reached into the pocket in his robes and pulled out his own umbrella. He didn’t think he could bear it if her hair got drenched. “Mine can accommodate us both. Wish you had magic now, hm?”
“No, there’s no way I’m going to lose this bet.”
“Face it,” smirked Draco. “You need magic just as much as I do.”
He opened the umbrella, covering her slightly damp curls so they wouldn’t get too wet. He held the umbrella at arm’s distance, hovering it over Hermione’s head and not noticing that he himself was getting soaked. She saw this, though. Hermione laughed and reached out, pulling him towards her and under the umbrella he was holding.
“You’re all wet now.” Merlin, he loved her smile.
“Yeah,” he chortled, shaking his head and spraying water in all directions. “I guess I am.”
But it didn’t matter if he was wet. It could have mattered less if he was drowning, because nothing else mattered when he was with her. She smiled, then looked up. The giant black umbrella loomed over the two of them, shielding them from the falling water.
“What’s with the umbrella?” she laughed, pushing him lightly. “Is everything you own either green or black?”
“Black is practical,” he said defensively, though he couldn’t wipe the smile off his face. “Not like your umbrella.”
“I happen to like this color,” she said playfully, waving her royal blue umbrella in his face so that drops of water sprinkled his eyebrows. “It’s my favorite.”
“Well, black is my favorite color.”
Hermione laughed again, linking her arm in his and resting her head against his shoulder. “Draco, you’re so boring.”
“I know,” he smiled, placing an arm around her waist. He kissed her on the top of her head. “That’s why I need you.”
3.
Title: Six Disconcerting Little Clues
Author: starduchess
Word count: 444
Rating: G
Warnings: none
Notes: for Flash Fiction category
Prompt chosen: "There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic." -- Anais Nin
The first disconcerting clue Draco noticed about Hermione was an odd little shift in her eyes. He would say something particularly clever--by his estimation anyway--and her eyes would unfocus for an instant before she flung a good retort back in his face. He thought it was her method of contemplating attacks.
The second disconcerting clue he noticed was her perfume, a dark musk with cinnamon and gardenia, heavy and cloying, but most striking was that she only wore it around him. If he caught her out unexpectedly, she had a clean scent. He swore she did it to drive him nutters.
The third disconcerting clue was the notes she left all over his desk. Whenever he would return from being out at lunch or a meeting, there would be a plethora of dictations strewn about like flower petals. He assumed she did this to all her friends, so it was confusing when he looked in Potter's and Weasley's offices and none were to be found.
The fourth clue--and this is where it really got strange--was the books slowly accumulating around her flat when she would invite him to tea. Of course, she was an avid reader, but the titles grew suspicious. History of Culture. Etiquette at Its Finest. Pure-blood Family Names: A Genealogy. He was sure there was a conspiracy somewhere.
The fifth was all the little bits of food with which she plied him. They ranged the gamut from little rice crackers topped with pickled fish eggs to dessert pudding so runny that he was sure it had never seen an oven. She claimed that variety was the spice of life, but as she served the gillyweed and asphodel salad, he was absolutely certain she was attempting to poison him.
The sixth and latest clue came as little touches: brushes of fingertips on his arm, bumps with her knee, claps on his shoulder for a job well-done. He couldn't stand the familiarity, but she paid no mind to his scathing looks and in-drawn breaths.
When she gave him the first peck on the cheek, he growled his frustration.
"What is all this, Hermione?"
"I was hoping to entice you into dating me," she said simply.
Draco stared at her. He thought back over the pieces, and suddenly it all fell into place. She liked him! The feeling was more disconcerting as a whole than it had in its individual parts. He wasn't sure what to make of all this, but his Slytherin nature decided to take advantage of and embrace the opportunity.
"Alright, I will. Shall I escort you to dinner at eight?"
She nodded, eyes alight with elation.
4.
Title: Gone
Author: Elysium
Word count: 461 words
Rating: PG
Warnings: Implied Character Death
Notes: N/A
Prompt chosen: "Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things." Antonio Smith
He didn’t know it then, the way he does now. Those moments, small fragments in the vastness that is life, were the ones that would haunt him. He can acknowledge this now because he’s been without. He’s spent the time analysing the infinitesimal details, the little parts of her that come to make the whole.
He doesn’t have the whole anymore. His memory of her in all her burning glory has splintered into remembered features.
Lips. Pink and wide. Open. The endless stream of clever and frustrating things that tumble from their shape.
Hair. Wild and unruly. Like her spirit, untameable. The way it wraps around one’s finger and holds.
Heat. Sun is the smell that lingers on her. Warm skin. Burns to touch. It blazes through the soul.
Eyes. Bright and fierce. Knowing. Always seeing, watching, knowing. They pierce the layers of cloth and skin and lies to see the truth.
Heart. Big and bold and red. Obnoxious in its welcoming. The tendrils of feeling are unfamiliar, even as they close around one’s own.
Gone. Once here to coat him in her presence. No longer. Her heart, as big and bold and red as it was, hasn’t room for him any longer. It hasn’t for some time.
He can see now, with the wealth of age and wisdom that he owns, just what she was to him. She was that transient burst of clarity and light. The glow from the candle before the pool of wax around the wick has swallowed it whole.
His eyes, now milky and unfocused, stretch back through years to recall the smiles that she sent him, the touches of her hand as she reached out to his own. A gesture that still resonates through the passage of time. She made the call to him; saw something within his depths that suggested he was worthy.
Worthy of her. Worthy of time. Worthy of friendship and soft words and forgiveness.
As his fingers, lily-white and paper-fine, drum across his chair, and his unseeing gaze tilts toward the window, the moonlight falling on his face, he ponders. If he had known it then and understood what they could be, would it have been different?
Would she have been more than the girl who reached out to him, the first to take his hand? Would she have held it firm at an altar, dressed in ivory silk and pretty smiles? Would she be lying encased in the white marble of his ancestors, awaiting the time when his eye-lids close and he joins her once again?
Would she have loved him with the fierceness that she loved another?
He thinks about her lips, her hair, her heat, her eyes, her heart and how she’s gone. And wishes it was yes.
5.
Title: Absolution
Author: eilonwy
Word count: 498
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Notes: None
Prompt Chosen: “For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.” Carl Sagan
Walls, ceilings, windows, floors.
The ancient stonework should have stood for centuries longer, only suffering the spidery cracks that time, rain and persistent ivy imposed. So much was now charred rubble, splintered glass.
Hogwarts Castle was broken, but struggling to stand. Some teachers had returned, those McGonagall had successfully persuaded, and small bunches of students had trickled back as well, now that September had arrived.
Hermione paused at the foot of the Grand Staircase, glancing down a corridor still in ruins. Trudging up the steps, she instinctively gripped the banister as the staircase began a precipitous shift to the right. She’d missed virtually all of seventh year. But she’d worked too hard the previous six to abandon everything now.
Coming back was hard, though. There were ghosts everywhere. Those students who had returned seemed little more than shadows themselves, tentative and subdued. The pervasive quiet was eerie.
Discovering him in a remote corner of the library, his blond head bent over a book, had been a shock. She hadn’t realised he’d returned as well. Sensing her eyes on him, he’d glanced up. An enigmatic half-smile, a slight lift of an eyebrow, and then he’d turned back to his book.
*
“Couldn’t stay away, eh, Granger?”
Hermione looked up from her plate. Malfoy had taken the seat next to hers. There were so few students, relatively, that all the houses mixed together now at shared tables.
She shook her head, smiling a bit ruefully. “You either, I see.”
“Reckon not.” His laugh was hollow. “My parents… well… let’s just say me coming back here wasn’t exactly high on their agenda.”
“But you came anyway,” Hermione said quietly. “Why? You didn’t have to. Especially--”
She trailed off and, colouring faintly, studied the food on her plate.
“Especially after what I did. It’s okay. You can say it.” He stabbed grimly at a bit of chicken, his voice lower now. “It’s my fault, all this. Everybody knows that. I just… I wanted to help put it back, see?”
He looked away for a moment and then met her pensive gaze once again, his own clear and unflinching now, almost defiant.
After a long moment, both turned back to their meal.
“Pass the pumpkin juice,” he muttered after a while, and then casually, almost as an afterthought, he added, “S’pose you’ll be in the library later…?” He slanted a quick, covert look at her.
She nodded, handing him the jug. “Mmm.”
Hastily downing his drink, Malfoy stood, hoisting his satchel over his shoulder. “Well… see you.”
“See you,” she murmured, watching him stride away, and then looked up at a sudden noise overhead.
Just above a gaping hole in the ceiling, an owl hovered for a moment, its powerful wings beating the air, before streaking off, wraith-like, into the deepening blue of the evening sky. Around Hermione, students were pushing back their chairs and preparing to head off to their common rooms.
Shards of normalcy. A beginning.
Grabbing her bag, Hermione followed.
6.
Title: Read On
Author: zeec
Word Count: 247
Rating: K+
Warnings: One kiss
Notes: None
Prompt chosen: "We can do no great things; only small things with great love."- Mother Theresa
Draco sighed inwardly as his wife was yet again enchanted with the beauty of this place or another in a certain corner of the world. He watched her, his pale brows furrowed, as she watched the Muggle contraption called the television. Her mouth was hanging open in awe as the screen showed the Taj Mahal in India.
Draco sighed again. He would have taken her there and every other place she desired to visit if he could afford it - but he no longer could, not after his parents cruelly disowned him for marrying the most beautiful woman in the universe.
Draco patiently waited for the show to end before turning off the telly. He carried a stool towards Hermione, placed it before the couch she was curled up in and sat down. He opened the book in his hand and returned her curious expression with a serious one. "I can't take you anywhere," he pointed towards the now empty television screen, "but I hope this would suffice."
With that, he read, "It was in Milford Sound that I felt I have glimpsed heaven. The cascading waters from the rocks towering over me were catching sun light and releasing them in rays of seven colours. There was not just one, but many of these falls. Rainbows danced around us…"
Draco did not have time to finish his sentence before Hermione softly pressed her lips against his pillows of flesh. Snuggling back into the couch, she smiled at him, "Read on."
7.
Title: Snowflakes
Author: lazerxangel
Word count: 182
Rating: K
Warnings: None
Notes: Same as above.
Prompt chosen: "Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things."-- Antonio Smith
A fleck of snow melted on her tongue as she danced around with her mouth open, and she grinned. “Catch a snowflake, Malfoy.”
He looked at her haughtily. “It’s unhealthy to eat that stuff, you know. They’re filled with dust and pollutants and-arghmmmph!”
She laughed again and wiped off her gloves while he spat out snow. “You’re absolutely deranged, Granger. I don’t know who’d ever want to date you, much less marry you.” She only smiled at him in response.
Three years later, she stared thoughtfully at a little boy running around the field, his mouth wide open, willing the flakes to fall onto his tongue.
“Catch a snowflake, Granger.”
She turned to look at him and smiled. “It’s unhealthy to eat that stuff, you know. They’re filled with dust and pollutants and-oh.”
She stared down at the ring he was presenting her to on one knee.
“I’m not going to take back what I said three years ago. You’re still deranged and an utter lunatic, but I think I found the person who wants to marry you.”
She smiled.
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