Round 7 Challenge 2: Voting
Round 7 Challenge 2: Voting
SIX
FIVE
THIRTY
More presents for Draco! Very thoughtful ones! Hermione might be a tad jealous.
A couple of things to remember when deciding which drabbles to vote for (most and least favorite):
Guidelines:
As a voter, you have the option of leaving a brief statement about why you voted the way you did, for both most and least favorite. Your feedback will then be given to the drabble writer (if they want the feedback) ANONYMOUSLY.
Example: Most - #40: the ending was brilliant - OR - Least - #57: the ending fell flat
Please remember writers, that you may not vote for yourselves.
Here we go for week two!
Choose your favorite and least favorite drabbles. Favorites will receive +1 point per vote, and least favorites -1 point per vote.
Voting ends at 11:59pm, Friday, May 14th.
Prompt:
“A single sunbeam is enough to drive away many shadows.” ~ St. Francis of Assisi ~
Birthdays, especially auspicious ones, can be a time for quiet reflection.
Our birthday boy is in a pensive mood. (from round four, ch 7)
1
Title: To Do
Author: floorcoaster
Rating: G
Warning(s): None
Word Count: 484
It’s raining.
Big, cold drops making ripples in the puddles dotting the sidewalk in front of his flat.
Thirty.
If there had been a list of the things he’d wanted to accomplish before this particular birthday, he knows he wouldn’t have come close to achieving half of them. Just thinking about the items he hasn’t put on this non-existent list is enough to make him tip his glass back and relish the amber burn.
Things not on the list: savor fine wine while watching the sunset over Tuscan hills; dive with dolphins off the coast of Fiji; snorkel in the Great Barrier Reef; eat General Tso’s Chicken with chopsticks in Hong Kong.
Restore his family name.
He doesn’t feel quite ready for this milestone, but he’s already started to collect memories he wants to make before he turns sixty. Pulling the Malfoy name out of the muck is at the top.
Thirty years of pride, wealth, death, and disgrace. Up and down, through shadow and fire. Only the last fifteen months has he felt what it means to be alive.
Flat, grey storm clouds sulk across the sky. Despite the good path his life is on, he can’t help but mourn the waste of so many years. His thoughts vacillate, unable to settle on anything happy for long. Perhaps it’s the weather.
He wants to travel the world, see what inspires the poets, the artists, the dreamers. Paris, Rome, New York, sure, but the lavender fields in Provence, the black sands of Hawaii, the pristine snows of Tibet.
Most of all, he wants his heart be full, to threaten to burst with a mere thought.
Despite the gloom around him, he smiles. Behind him, the refrigerator opens and its contents are moved around in search of the last slice of chocolate cheesecake. It’s his biggest weakness; hers too.
She joins him on the balcony with two forks and sits with one leg on the chair, her bare feet tapping a beat to the music of the rain. Without even looking, she hands him a utensil and takes a bite from the back corner of the dessert, leaving him the rest of the crust-his favorite part.
She’s thoughtful like that.
When the piece of cake is finished, she smiles at him and licks the last crumb off her fork. The slightest change in light makes him glance at the sky. The barest hint of silver can be seen, lining a cloud.
He has experienced the most beautiful of sensations in the form of forgiveness, and he has discovered the simple pleasure of having a hand to hold.
Her smile is as warm as her skin when her fingers brush his. There is one thing that never would have made his list, had he made one, that he has been able to check off.
To do: marry the woman of the dreams I’ve never had.
2
Title: Nothing Monumental
Author: ayane_tsurugi
Rating: G
Warning(s): None.
Word Count: 479
It always snuck up on him. He’d sleep the night away in blissful ignorance only to wake up to owls pecking at his bedroom window, a poorly constructed cake on his kitchen table from one of Pansy’s house elves, a myriad of colored balloons left on his desk by his much too enthusiastic secretary, or, on the years when Pansy was feeling generous, a bottle of booze with a couple candles magicked to the side.
This year, the first in a long while that he wasn’t living alone, his only warning was a lucky sighting of the Daily Prophet on the kitchen table before his girlfriend spotted him from where she’d been pouring tea and smiled, swelling with the pleased words, “Ha-”
“Don’t say it.” Hermione visibly deflated at the sour look on his face.
“But-”
“Nope. Just another day, this one. Nothing monumental going on at all.”
She rolled her eyes at him, but handed him the cup of tea anyway, leaning up to kiss his cheek. “Fine. Nothing monumental. Though I still think I owe you for that debacle on my birthday.”
He smirked into his cup. “That was completely Potter and Weasley’s doing.”
“And you’re a liar.” Having kissed his cheek again, she grabbed her case where it was waiting for her by the door. “You’ll be home for dinner?”
“I reserve the right to leave if you’re not the only person here when I arrive.” She laughed, then was gone.
If he was being honest, Draco reasoned as he made his own way to work, he was lucky to have found someone who put just as much stock in birthdays as he did. Hermione hadn’t found a lot to celebrate on her past few birthdays, much as he hadn’t.
He’d spent his twentieth birthday at Azkaban, visiting his father for what would be the last time. His twenty-first, he’d drunk himself silly, and though he still has no recollection, Pansy has told him many times that it was a fun night. On his twenty-third, he’d spent the whole day in negotiations over his mother’s will. His twenty-seventh had been spent talking Pansy down after her divorce from Theo was finalized.
So he was glad that, with Hermione, he didn’t have to worry about thirty of their closest acquaintances jumping out at him from behind the furniture when he came home.
In fact, throughout the morning, there was no mention of his birthday at all. Even his secretary, who never missed a chance to chat insipidly at him, seemed to have been warned off. He lost himself in piles of paperwork, allowing the scratch of his quill to carry him somewhere else.
And somehow, when he came back to his office after lunch to find a cake sitting on the desk adorned with the words “Nothing Monumental,” he even found himself smiling.
“Happy Birthday to me.”
3
Title: Tea and Company
Author: bookishwench
Rating: PG for one very mild curse
Warning(s): none
Word Count: 494
Draco sat alone at breakfast in the dining room of Malfoy Manor on the morning of his eighteenth birthday. His was the only chair occupied, as it had been the case ever since the Battle of Hogwarts.
Through the window, the sun was barely discernible behind a thick blanket of rainclouds, but then there wasn’t anyone to see. His parents had been arrested by the newly re-formed Ministry after Voldemort’s demise. He normally would have been dragged off to a holding cell along with his parents, but with Azkaban in disarray and a huge volume of prisoners, he’d been put under house arrest until his case came before the Wizengamot. The house-elves had been freed by the Aurors. Draco was the sole occupant of over one hundred rooms. It was unnervingly quiet.
When he heard the soft pop of Apparition, the noise startled him so badly he nearly knocked over his chair. He reached for his wand, forgetting it had been taken from him as soon as the Aurors had seen the Mark on his arm. Instinctively, he grabbed the nearest thing and threw it at the intruder.
“Ouch!” yelled a voice he recognized too well.
“What are you doing here, Granger?” he asked, scowling at her. Inwardly, he was relieved. He was sure he didn’t have to worry about a sneak attack from Goody-Goody Granger.
“A teaspoon, Malfoy?” she said, retrieving the offending cutlery. “How the mighty have fallen. You’d best be careful or you might put someone’s eye out.”
“You haven’t answered my question,” he said, still glaring.
“I’m here to see if you need anything,” she said.
“Very nice of the new government to treat its prisoners so humanely,” he said, sneering.
“I’m only following orders,” she said, her expression a withering mix of disdain and disgust.
“Weren’t we all,” Malfoy mumbled, then added much louder, “Get out.”
“So you don’t need anything?” Hermione asked with less of an edge in her voice.
“A bit of damn sentient companionship would be nice,” he said, “well, aside from the portrait of Grandfather Abraxas, who seems to think I’m ten years old.”
Hermione frowned, then asked, “Exactly how long has it been since you’ve seen another person?”
“What day is it?” he said, suddenly realizing he really didn’t know.
“Total isolation is a very extreme form of punishment,” Hermione said thoughtfully, though Draco wasn’t sure she was speaking to him or herself. “I’m sure that isn’t permissible under the Wizarding Prisoner of War Act of 1942.”
“Whatever,” Draco said, wiping off the teaspoon before listlessly stirring his porridge.
Hermione paused, then waved her wand and a plate of hot buttered scones and strawberry jam appeared on the table.
“I haven’t eaten yet,” she explained, sitting down.
He eyed her suspiciously but took one of the offered scones, spread it with jam, and chewed it silently. He didn’t say a word, but the sun streamed through a break in the clouds, mirroring his thoughts.
4
Title: Possibilities
Author: ilkee
Rating: PG
Warning(s): None
Word Count: 490
They are sitting on the floor in the dark, backs numb against the wall, their knees like black mountains silhouetted against the dawn, quiet and blue.
Where everything else is black, a clock on the other side of the room has a gilded edge that shines white in the starlight from the window. A waning crescent just before the new moon.
Tomorrow there will be a raucous party, but tonight… tonight the clock punches out a slow, meaningless litany. Tonight time is better measured by the sound of her breathing, the occasional scrape of branch on the outside of the house, or not at all.
This night has been full of confessions and secrets and apologies, and long quiet spaces. He has told her everything. He’s cried. Though it was just one tear that rolled down his cheek, hidden in shadows, and she didn’t see.
For a long time they say nothing and somehow, the shared silence feels more important than anything else. In his mind, he sifts through thirty years of memories. Thirty years of love and all the places love should have been.
He remembers himself, eleven years old, boarding the train, in love with a world full of possibilities.
He remembers - and it hurts - the intense, blind love he felt for his parents. At thirty, he can see that his world had never really been full of possibilities.
He remembers Hermione Granger, first in a periwinkle dress, but then later, in sixth year, looking at him with concern and maybe a ticket to freedom, or at least somewhere with… possibilities.
She shifts next to him and the movement draws his eyes from the window. For a moment the growing light of dawn washes over her face and Draco thinks this is where love should have been.
He is amazed by her patience. And her forgiveness.
The thought reminds him: there is more to tell her.
It’s hard, so…he pretends he’s alone. And the room is empty and listening.
His voice sounds strange and rough. But when he’s managed to say the worst of it out loud - when the most terrible things inside himself have finally been revealed, he holds his breath and waits.
She shifts again and her thigh momentarily nudges his. He won’t look at her, but he can feel that she’s looking at him.
There is one more thing he has to tell her. Something that makes his heart pound and his face feel hot. But it’s almost morning, and these things have to be said in the dark, so he does.
After a while she reaches for his hand and tangles their fingers together on top of her knees.
Draco’s exhales.
And then he is empty and there is nothing more to say so he just sits next to her, listening to her breathing and watching the morning light, pale and soft, as it rolls over her knees and over their hands resting there.
5
Title: Twelve Years
Author: terrayn
Rating: PG
Warning(s): none
Word Count: 499
On rainy days, he liked to stand on tall things, shouting words unutterable in polite company while it thundered.
He pretended it was his voice that shook weathervanes and sent children scurrying, that change was in the air, that swollen clouds hid more than the acid which invariably rusted roofs and balconies and the tall things he liked, that perhaps the tension in the wet breeze meant his interminable stalemate with the girl (woman now) who had called him true and unbearable things, who he’d run out on, might end someday.
“This is my favorite weather,” she’d once said, “because it feels like something’s about to happen.”
“Yeah. Rain.”
“No, nothing so mundane!” She laughed, tilting her face to catch the first droplet on her cheek. “Everything’s suspended with people holding their breaths, glancing nervously at the sky, waiting for something to snap.”
“So?”
“So, this moment right before it rains-it’s a window for someone somewhere to throw caution to the wind and do something. Something spectacular.”
Draco thought this was a bit melodramatic for overcast skies, but she smiled and said, “But you grew up with dazzling magic. You don’t see it in the simple things anymore.”
Their romance came and went, transient and merciless as the rain. His need for her had bruised in those pulse-rioting, postwar days; eventually they’d cracked under the crushing reality that for all the ‘opposites attract’ swill romantics always preached, relationships built under duress were flimsier than grass in drought. They gave way to the inevitability that the first person you loved was almost never the last. And yet, despite the imprint left by a dozen ensuing years, he still thought of her when it rained, her head flung back awaiting something irrevocable, or perhaps merely improbable, to begin. In his mind’s eye, she was always somewhere near, thinking of him, both of them inhabiting the same space by virtue of sharing the same thought.
Footsteps sounded behind him. “Malfoy?”
He watched Granger pause by the chain-link fence cordoning off the Ministry’s roof. Somewhere a cloud must have splintered because an orphan sunbeam clung to her staid robes and flushed skin. In the stark light, he saw that she wasn’t indifferent to him; the strange pressure in his throat eased. “I’ve been working up the courage,” he said.
“What?”
“To do something so out-of-character you’ll forgive it as a birthday fancy.” Draco ran his fingers along the nape of her neck, savoring her shiver. “It’s been hell having you as a co-worker, you know that?”
“No,” she said, unflinchingly honest.
“You think no one notices you disappearing on rainy days?” he murmured. “I do. I’ve been waiting.”
“Why?”
He laughed. “Because you’re my right-before-it-rains moment. I want to do spectacular and foolish things around you.”
“Like what?” she breathed.
“Like believe in second chances.”
The cloud cover broke. Rain beat on their skin, drenching them. He leaned, she pulled, and somehow, they met in a kiss twelve years in the making.
ooo
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Poll Round 7 Challenge 2
For readers, supporters, lovers of everything dramione -
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This Week: A Single Sunbeam
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SIX
FIVE
THIRTY
This Week: A Single Sunbeam
Voting ends 11:59 EST (GMT -4) May 14th
Please spread the word and thanks for dropping by!
SIX
FIVE
THIRTY
More presents for Draco! Very thoughtful ones! Hermione might be a tad jealous.
A couple of things to remember when deciding which drabbles to vote for (most and least favorite):
Guidelines:
- Which drabble best incorporates the prompt?
- Is the drabble clever, different, fresh? Does it evoke an emotional response (good or bad)?
- Does the drabble contain grammar, canon or spelling errors?
As a voter, you have the option of leaving a brief statement about why you voted the way you did, for both most and least favorite. Your feedback will then be given to the drabble writer (if they want the feedback) ANONYMOUSLY.
Example: Most - #40: the ending was brilliant - OR - Least - #57: the ending fell flat
Please remember writers, that you may not vote for yourselves.
Here we go for week two!
Choose your favorite and least favorite drabbles. Favorites will receive +1 point per vote, and least favorites -1 point per vote.
Voting ends at 11:59pm, Friday, May 14th.
Prompt:
“A single sunbeam is enough to drive away many shadows.” ~ St. Francis of Assisi ~
Birthdays, especially auspicious ones, can be a time for quiet reflection.
Our birthday boy is in a pensive mood. (from round four, ch 7)
1
Title: To Do
Author: floorcoaster
Rating: G
Warning(s): None
Word Count: 484
It’s raining.
Big, cold drops making ripples in the puddles dotting the sidewalk in front of his flat.
Thirty.
If there had been a list of the things he’d wanted to accomplish before this particular birthday, he knows he wouldn’t have come close to achieving half of them. Just thinking about the items he hasn’t put on this non-existent list is enough to make him tip his glass back and relish the amber burn.
Things not on the list: savor fine wine while watching the sunset over Tuscan hills; dive with dolphins off the coast of Fiji; snorkel in the Great Barrier Reef; eat General Tso’s Chicken with chopsticks in Hong Kong.
Restore his family name.
He doesn’t feel quite ready for this milestone, but he’s already started to collect memories he wants to make before he turns sixty. Pulling the Malfoy name out of the muck is at the top.
Thirty years of pride, wealth, death, and disgrace. Up and down, through shadow and fire. Only the last fifteen months has he felt what it means to be alive.
Flat, grey storm clouds sulk across the sky. Despite the good path his life is on, he can’t help but mourn the waste of so many years. His thoughts vacillate, unable to settle on anything happy for long. Perhaps it’s the weather.
He wants to travel the world, see what inspires the poets, the artists, the dreamers. Paris, Rome, New York, sure, but the lavender fields in Provence, the black sands of Hawaii, the pristine snows of Tibet.
Most of all, he wants his heart be full, to threaten to burst with a mere thought.
Despite the gloom around him, he smiles. Behind him, the refrigerator opens and its contents are moved around in search of the last slice of chocolate cheesecake. It’s his biggest weakness; hers too.
She joins him on the balcony with two forks and sits with one leg on the chair, her bare feet tapping a beat to the music of the rain. Without even looking, she hands him a utensil and takes a bite from the back corner of the dessert, leaving him the rest of the crust-his favorite part.
She’s thoughtful like that.
When the piece of cake is finished, she smiles at him and licks the last crumb off her fork. The slightest change in light makes him glance at the sky. The barest hint of silver can be seen, lining a cloud.
He has experienced the most beautiful of sensations in the form of forgiveness, and he has discovered the simple pleasure of having a hand to hold.
Her smile is as warm as her skin when her fingers brush his. There is one thing that never would have made his list, had he made one, that he has been able to check off.
To do: marry the woman of the dreams I’ve never had.
2
Title: Nothing Monumental
Author: ayane_tsurugi
Rating: G
Warning(s): None.
Word Count: 479
It always snuck up on him. He’d sleep the night away in blissful ignorance only to wake up to owls pecking at his bedroom window, a poorly constructed cake on his kitchen table from one of Pansy’s house elves, a myriad of colored balloons left on his desk by his much too enthusiastic secretary, or, on the years when Pansy was feeling generous, a bottle of booze with a couple candles magicked to the side.
This year, the first in a long while that he wasn’t living alone, his only warning was a lucky sighting of the Daily Prophet on the kitchen table before his girlfriend spotted him from where she’d been pouring tea and smiled, swelling with the pleased words, “Ha-”
“Don’t say it.” Hermione visibly deflated at the sour look on his face.
“But-”
“Nope. Just another day, this one. Nothing monumental going on at all.”
She rolled her eyes at him, but handed him the cup of tea anyway, leaning up to kiss his cheek. “Fine. Nothing monumental. Though I still think I owe you for that debacle on my birthday.”
He smirked into his cup. “That was completely Potter and Weasley’s doing.”
“And you’re a liar.” Having kissed his cheek again, she grabbed her case where it was waiting for her by the door. “You’ll be home for dinner?”
“I reserve the right to leave if you’re not the only person here when I arrive.” She laughed, then was gone.
If he was being honest, Draco reasoned as he made his own way to work, he was lucky to have found someone who put just as much stock in birthdays as he did. Hermione hadn’t found a lot to celebrate on her past few birthdays, much as he hadn’t.
He’d spent his twentieth birthday at Azkaban, visiting his father for what would be the last time. His twenty-first, he’d drunk himself silly, and though he still has no recollection, Pansy has told him many times that it was a fun night. On his twenty-third, he’d spent the whole day in negotiations over his mother’s will. His twenty-seventh had been spent talking Pansy down after her divorce from Theo was finalized.
So he was glad that, with Hermione, he didn’t have to worry about thirty of their closest acquaintances jumping out at him from behind the furniture when he came home.
In fact, throughout the morning, there was no mention of his birthday at all. Even his secretary, who never missed a chance to chat insipidly at him, seemed to have been warned off. He lost himself in piles of paperwork, allowing the scratch of his quill to carry him somewhere else.
And somehow, when he came back to his office after lunch to find a cake sitting on the desk adorned with the words “Nothing Monumental,” he even found himself smiling.
“Happy Birthday to me.”
3
Title: Tea and Company
Author: bookishwench
Rating: PG for one very mild curse
Warning(s): none
Word Count: 494
Draco sat alone at breakfast in the dining room of Malfoy Manor on the morning of his eighteenth birthday. His was the only chair occupied, as it had been the case ever since the Battle of Hogwarts.
Through the window, the sun was barely discernible behind a thick blanket of rainclouds, but then there wasn’t anyone to see. His parents had been arrested by the newly re-formed Ministry after Voldemort’s demise. He normally would have been dragged off to a holding cell along with his parents, but with Azkaban in disarray and a huge volume of prisoners, he’d been put under house arrest until his case came before the Wizengamot. The house-elves had been freed by the Aurors. Draco was the sole occupant of over one hundred rooms. It was unnervingly quiet.
When he heard the soft pop of Apparition, the noise startled him so badly he nearly knocked over his chair. He reached for his wand, forgetting it had been taken from him as soon as the Aurors had seen the Mark on his arm. Instinctively, he grabbed the nearest thing and threw it at the intruder.
“Ouch!” yelled a voice he recognized too well.
“What are you doing here, Granger?” he asked, scowling at her. Inwardly, he was relieved. He was sure he didn’t have to worry about a sneak attack from Goody-Goody Granger.
“A teaspoon, Malfoy?” she said, retrieving the offending cutlery. “How the mighty have fallen. You’d best be careful or you might put someone’s eye out.”
“You haven’t answered my question,” he said, still glaring.
“I’m here to see if you need anything,” she said.
“Very nice of the new government to treat its prisoners so humanely,” he said, sneering.
“I’m only following orders,” she said, her expression a withering mix of disdain and disgust.
“Weren’t we all,” Malfoy mumbled, then added much louder, “Get out.”
“So you don’t need anything?” Hermione asked with less of an edge in her voice.
“A bit of damn sentient companionship would be nice,” he said, “well, aside from the portrait of Grandfather Abraxas, who seems to think I’m ten years old.”
Hermione frowned, then asked, “Exactly how long has it been since you’ve seen another person?”
“What day is it?” he said, suddenly realizing he really didn’t know.
“Total isolation is a very extreme form of punishment,” Hermione said thoughtfully, though Draco wasn’t sure she was speaking to him or herself. “I’m sure that isn’t permissible under the Wizarding Prisoner of War Act of 1942.”
“Whatever,” Draco said, wiping off the teaspoon before listlessly stirring his porridge.
Hermione paused, then waved her wand and a plate of hot buttered scones and strawberry jam appeared on the table.
“I haven’t eaten yet,” she explained, sitting down.
He eyed her suspiciously but took one of the offered scones, spread it with jam, and chewed it silently. He didn’t say a word, but the sun streamed through a break in the clouds, mirroring his thoughts.
4
Title: Possibilities
Author: ilkee
Rating: PG
Warning(s): None
Word Count: 490
They are sitting on the floor in the dark, backs numb against the wall, their knees like black mountains silhouetted against the dawn, quiet and blue.
Where everything else is black, a clock on the other side of the room has a gilded edge that shines white in the starlight from the window. A waning crescent just before the new moon.
Tomorrow there will be a raucous party, but tonight… tonight the clock punches out a slow, meaningless litany. Tonight time is better measured by the sound of her breathing, the occasional scrape of branch on the outside of the house, or not at all.
This night has been full of confessions and secrets and apologies, and long quiet spaces. He has told her everything. He’s cried. Though it was just one tear that rolled down his cheek, hidden in shadows, and she didn’t see.
For a long time they say nothing and somehow, the shared silence feels more important than anything else. In his mind, he sifts through thirty years of memories. Thirty years of love and all the places love should have been.
He remembers himself, eleven years old, boarding the train, in love with a world full of possibilities.
He remembers - and it hurts - the intense, blind love he felt for his parents. At thirty, he can see that his world had never really been full of possibilities.
He remembers Hermione Granger, first in a periwinkle dress, but then later, in sixth year, looking at him with concern and maybe a ticket to freedom, or at least somewhere with… possibilities.
She shifts next to him and the movement draws his eyes from the window. For a moment the growing light of dawn washes over her face and Draco thinks this is where love should have been.
He is amazed by her patience. And her forgiveness.
The thought reminds him: there is more to tell her.
It’s hard, so…he pretends he’s alone. And the room is empty and listening.
His voice sounds strange and rough. But when he’s managed to say the worst of it out loud - when the most terrible things inside himself have finally been revealed, he holds his breath and waits.
She shifts again and her thigh momentarily nudges his. He won’t look at her, but he can feel that she’s looking at him.
There is one more thing he has to tell her. Something that makes his heart pound and his face feel hot. But it’s almost morning, and these things have to be said in the dark, so he does.
After a while she reaches for his hand and tangles their fingers together on top of her knees.
Draco’s exhales.
And then he is empty and there is nothing more to say so he just sits next to her, listening to her breathing and watching the morning light, pale and soft, as it rolls over her knees and over their hands resting there.
5
Title: Twelve Years
Author: terrayn
Rating: PG
Warning(s): none
Word Count: 499
On rainy days, he liked to stand on tall things, shouting words unutterable in polite company while it thundered.
He pretended it was his voice that shook weathervanes and sent children scurrying, that change was in the air, that swollen clouds hid more than the acid which invariably rusted roofs and balconies and the tall things he liked, that perhaps the tension in the wet breeze meant his interminable stalemate with the girl (woman now) who had called him true and unbearable things, who he’d run out on, might end someday.
“This is my favorite weather,” she’d once said, “because it feels like something’s about to happen.”
“Yeah. Rain.”
“No, nothing so mundane!” She laughed, tilting her face to catch the first droplet on her cheek. “Everything’s suspended with people holding their breaths, glancing nervously at the sky, waiting for something to snap.”
“So?”
“So, this moment right before it rains-it’s a window for someone somewhere to throw caution to the wind and do something. Something spectacular.”
Draco thought this was a bit melodramatic for overcast skies, but she smiled and said, “But you grew up with dazzling magic. You don’t see it in the simple things anymore.”
Their romance came and went, transient and merciless as the rain. His need for her had bruised in those pulse-rioting, postwar days; eventually they’d cracked under the crushing reality that for all the ‘opposites attract’ swill romantics always preached, relationships built under duress were flimsier than grass in drought. They gave way to the inevitability that the first person you loved was almost never the last. And yet, despite the imprint left by a dozen ensuing years, he still thought of her when it rained, her head flung back awaiting something irrevocable, or perhaps merely improbable, to begin. In his mind’s eye, she was always somewhere near, thinking of him, both of them inhabiting the same space by virtue of sharing the same thought.
Footsteps sounded behind him. “Malfoy?”
He watched Granger pause by the chain-link fence cordoning off the Ministry’s roof. Somewhere a cloud must have splintered because an orphan sunbeam clung to her staid robes and flushed skin. In the stark light, he saw that she wasn’t indifferent to him; the strange pressure in his throat eased. “I’ve been working up the courage,” he said.
“What?”
“To do something so out-of-character you’ll forgive it as a birthday fancy.” Draco ran his fingers along the nape of her neck, savoring her shiver. “It’s been hell having you as a co-worker, you know that?”
“No,” she said, unflinchingly honest.
“You think no one notices you disappearing on rainy days?” he murmured. “I do. I’ve been waiting.”
“Why?”
He laughed. “Because you’re my right-before-it-rains moment. I want to do spectacular and foolish things around you.”
“Like what?” she breathed.
“Like believe in second chances.”
The cloud cover broke. Rain beat on their skin, drenching them. He leaned, she pulled, and somehow, they met in a kiss twelve years in the making.
ooo
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