Round 3, Challenge 5; Drabbles & Voting
Sorry for the delay everyone, the power has been out all day.
Here are the drabbles for the latest challenge: All things truly wicked, start from innocence, Ernest Hemingway.
Remember the rules, keep an open mind, don't vote for yourself, and don't tell people what you wrote.
Drabble #1:
Title: The Beginning
By: bambu345
Rating: All Ages
Warnings: None
Summary: Hermione finds the last piece of a puzzle, but what does she see
Pairing: None
Word Count: 975
I rolled the small phial between my fingers, mesmerized by the gleaming silver essence within. Its surface calm was belied by the volatility of the living memory; mercurial substance curling in upon itself, leaving a slick iridescent residue to cling to its glass prison.
Five years it had taken me to acquire this memory. It had been an impossible task, but I had somehow acquired it. Who knew why she’d given it to me, that hawk-nosed, dark-haired woman with sharp, raptor’s eyes. She might have recognized my unquenched need.
“Who are ye’?” she’d asked, one gnarled hand clinging to her cane as if for protection.
“My name is Hermione Granger,” I’d replied. “But my name is unimportant. I could offer you testimonials and identification, but really, Ma’am, I am only seeking to jog your memory.”
The twenty pounds I offered had worked where my earnest request had fallen on deaf ears. Once cooperative, it had been the work of a moment, or rather the utterance of a name which had recalled the memory, and I’d left the cottage with the precious memory strand in hand and a happily Obliviated pensioner in my wake.
I now possessed a vital piece of the puzzle I’d been sorting out since the year Tom Marvolo Riddle had ceased to exist.
Where once I’d used euphemisms and stuttered over his appellation, I no longer referred to him as anything other than his birth name, the one thing he’d acquired from his Muggle father. I burned with the fire of unquenchable curiosity. I needed to see, to know, to understand how someone as vile as Lord Voldemort could have risen to power in my chosen world.
The small phial shone brightly in the electrically lit room; my room, the one I’d called mine since childhood. I lived alone in my parents’ former house. I’d bought them out when they decided to remain in Australia.
Ironically, it had been during the week I’d restored my parents’ memories to them - spending hours in the Pensieve with them, reliving precious moments of my childhood when the idea had popped into my head.
Harry had learned selective pieces of information about Tom Riddle, but I wanted to know more. To understand him … to understand the metamorphosis from abandoned child to homicidal tyrant.
That had been five years ago, and now we were nearing the end of our search. Harry and Ron should arrive at any moment, and, together, the three of us would view this final memory. It was the final steps to completing the first Magical Law Enforcement case-book on Tom Riddle, Jr.
Corrupt.
Evil.
Murderer.
Necromancer.
All those words applied to Tom Riddle, a/k/a Lord Voldemort, but there were other descriptors which were equally pertinent.
Charismatic.
Brilliant.
Innovative.
Lonely.
Isolated.
At that moment, Ron and Harry quietly slipped through the door, nodding their hellos, and taking their customary places flanking me; Ron’s chair overstuffed and floral, and Harry’s chair, spare, wooden, and intricately carved.
“Ready?” I asked.
They nodded, and we leaned toward the ornate Pensieve placed dead center between our chairs. It had once belonged to Albus Dumbledore, but before that, it had belonged to Dilys Derwent, and long before that, the Pensieve had been magically carved by Salazar Slytherin.
I thought it uniquely appropriate to contain all of his final descendant's relevant moments in the family receptacle.
Quickly I uncapped the small phial and turned it over. The strand of memory slid into the bowl, joining the other memories within. It only takes seconds before this memory joined the spinning collective in a Coriolas effect, and when I saw the hawk-nosed woman’s face - albeit one many years younger - rise to the surface I knew the time had come.
With well-rehearsed synchronicity, Ron, Harry and I poked our fingers into the slipstream of memories, easing into the familiar disorientation of Pensieve investigation.
We landed on our feet - so different than the first time, when I landed on my head - and quickly familiarized ourselves with our unfamiliar location. It was a small, bare room. One with a wood floor, plain walls, hosting a crucifix hanging above the narrow, iron-framed bed, a small chest of drawers and an armoire complete the furnishing. The hawk-nosed woman, years younger than when I’d encountered her to collect the memory, attended to a woman in labor’s extremis, hard contractions distorting the mother’s face, but Harry recognized her instantly. He whispered her name, “Merope Gaunt.”
We stood there for hours as the labor continued into the late hours of the night, but time is immaterial and distorted in a Pensieve. We will have only lost a few minutes in our time, but in situ the tableau is oppressive. No one comes to offer support or comfort to the laboring woman, save her single grim-faced attendant, sitting in vigil, offering prayers which held no meaning, save the soothing sound of another human voice, to the pureblooded descendant of a once-great wizard.
And then, the denouement was upon us.
A flurry of activity heralded the end. Merope Gaunt’s hair hung in limp strands around her reddened face, and tears streamed down her chapped cheeks, but there was a strange light burning in her eyes as she forced her child through the crucible of birth.
The baby’s head crowned, and when he was pulled from his mother’s birth canal, Ron gagged as a rush of red-tinged amniotic fluid gushes onto the bed. Harry was grim-faced, but watched in wide-eyed fascination as if attending a session of the Wizengamot in full debate.
My attention was riveted to the thick black hair of the babe. Vernix-covered he might have been, but his features were perfect, as if he’d suffered no trauma from the journey into his new life.
A small, fierce cry rent the quiet industry of the room.
Evil had been born.
Drabble #2:
Title: The water was hot on her skin
By: gingeraled
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Angst
Summary: She sits on what used to be her bed, and stares at her hands
Pairing: No pairing
Word Count: 570+
The water is hot on her skin, scalding, even, but Hermione wants it this way. She wants the hot water to wash away all the grime and dirt on her body, and some that she thinks may have stuck to her soul.
Her face is wet. Wet with water, sweat, and tears that combine to drip down to the shower floor. If only her agony and guilt would drip down and away, as well.
She holds the soap tight in her hands and scrubs away at her face, her sides, her arms, her hands. Her hands. There is no blood on her hands, dirty and heavy with death.
So she scrubs them. Scrubs her hands with scalding water, soap, and all the resolve she can muster.
--
She’d lost sight of Ron only minutes ago, and Harry has been missing since they came down from Dumbledore’s office. She is running the fastest she’s ever run in her life. She’s running for her life, ducking spells aimed at her.
Hot on her heels is a Death Eater laughing maniacally, loving chasing ‘the mudblood girl that’s caused us so much trouble.’ He’s going to kill her easily, he says, but not before he’s had some fun.
And then there is a dead end. Hermione is forced to spin around and face her pursuer. She hears the sounds of the ongoing battle somewhere in her head, but she pays them no mind. What she does is point her wand at the man, and utter the two words she thought she’d never say in her lifetime.
--
Her hands are sore from all the scrubbing but still she feels dirty. And tired. She feels tired. She slides down and slumps on the floor of the shower.
It was easy. Hermione hates the first-hand knowledge that killing a fellow human is easy. With just two words and the power of a wand, she’d ended someone’s life.
She resents knowing that she could have just stunned him, or taken his wand, or done a million other things. But for one reason or another, she'd willed him dead at that precise moment. Maybe it was the evil glint in the eyes behind the mask that pushed her. Maybe it was just a desire to end everything, once and for all.
She knows she did it to survive, that in the context of war, killing is justifiable. It was either him or her. She’s on the side of Light. But whatever the reason or justification, Hermione still hates herself for what she’s done, like she hates herself for altering her parents’ minds. Like she still hates herself for scarring Marietta Edgecombe.
She doesn’t know when she turned from innocent to evil. Wicked. She does not know how, how she can live with what she has become.
--
With great effort, Hermione pulls herself up from the floor. She turns off the water, towels herself dry, and steps out into Gryffindor girls dormitory. All the other girls had gone home to their families after the battle, leaving her alone in the big, circular room.
Now clothed, she sits on what used to be her bed, and stares at her hands. They’re nothing special, just a teenage girls’ hands, but they’ve already scarred and killed. Hermione thinks she’s about to cry again, but no tears leave her eyes. There’s only a dull pain in her chest now.
Hermione lies on the mattress and lets the darkness absorb her. She knows it’s going to be long before morning comes.
Drabble #3:
Title: Comeuppance
By: minervasrevenge
Rating: All ages
Warnings: EWE, character death
Summary: Hermione must face her actions in the past.
Pairing: N/A
Word Count: 701
Harry stood before of the house in disbelief that the occupant was missing. Despite his recent marriage to Ginny, he knew the address of his first love well.
Her home gave every indication of being vacant. Harry let himself into the yard and walked around it, looking for anything suspicious. All of the curtains were drawn except on the second floor where one billowed out with the breeze.
When Harry stealthily spelled the door open and found a broken wand at his feet, he knew his missing person case had become something else entirely. Helpless guilt filled him. He hadn’t spoken to her in years and they had been friends once.
Harry took a calming breath.
Procedure dictated that he take in the scene slowly so that his memory could be analyzed later in a Pensieve. Once he was inside with the door shut, he cast a couple of quick spells and was dismayed to find that he was the only living thing in the house.
The hall was dark but nothing looked out of the ordinary. Harry moved slowly, glancing from floor to ceiling, filled with foreboding. The first doorway led into the kitchen. It was obvious she’d entertained recently - a package of biscuits sat open on the counter and a serving tray was abandoned in the sink. Harry left the kitchen for a formal dining room.
Two places were set but the candles sat unburned in their sticks and the napkins were still folded.
Harry forced himself to sweep his gaze over the entire untouched room and move into a small, cozy parlor.
Yellow light was shining from an odd angle behind the settee, casting ominous shadows. Immediately, his gaze was drawn to the fallen lamp, severed ropes on the floor and a smudged, brown stain on the chair. Harry had to close his eyes against the well of anxiety rising in him - there were reasons that Aurors had to follow procedures. He wanted to do everything he could to catch the person responsible for hurting her even though he had the sickening feeling that he was too late.
Harry deliberately made himself focus on the overturned lamp and move slowly through the room, sweeping it with his gaze. He couldn’t stop his mind from wondering what had happened. No sign of forced entry - magic or otherwise and there were two places set in the dining room. She’d expected someone. Harry looked at the writing desk, shifting things around in the hope that he might find a calendar. When he unearthed one, he wasn’t surprised to find the word “dinner” scrawled across a date three days earlier.
Harry’s eyes moved almost of their own accord to the brownish stain and angry guilt flooded him again. Since when had he been a stickler for the rules, anyhow? He stepped out of the parlor and back into the hall, looking for more signs of…violence. There was her broken wand again. It had been placed there deliberately. Harry spun and found himself staring at a carpeted stairwell. A spot caught his eye - it was almost at the top of the steps.
He’d get lectured about it later but he practically flew up the stairs, noting that the spot was the same brown as the stain downstairs. A breeze stirred, coming from a cracked door at the end of the corridor. Wand drawn, Harry took silent steps towards it. Before he knew it, he was pushing open the door, holding his breath in the fragile hope that she wasn’t behind it.
But there she was, curled up on her side as if she was sleeping.
A pang of familiarity shot through him at the sight of her still body. He knew she was dead but he couldn’t stop himself from walking around her to see her face.
“Cho,” he whispered.
Long, dark hair covered her features and Harry used his wand to magically nudge her onto her back. One glance at her face told Harry two things: the killer's identity and her next victim.
His blood ran cold. He needed to warn Hermione that Marietta Edgecombe had escaped Azkaban again.
Harry Disapparated.
Across Cho's face a series of boils spelled the word "sneak."
Drabble #4:
Title: All the Difference
By: luvscharlie
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Summary: Hermione joins Harry and Ron in researching what transformed Tom Riddle into a monster.
Pairing: None
Word Count: 890
This wasn't what Hermione had expected when she agreed to help Harry and Ron in their assignment for the Auror Department. Yet how could she refuse a request to research the most feared wizard of all time and what had turned him the way he was? The answer was simple; she could not.
The idea was brilliant really, performing research into what might have turned the orphaned little boy who was Tom Riddle into the handsome young man who charmed nearly all who met him during his days at Hogwarts, and then into the monster who became Lord Voldemort. It was her own invention that had made this research even possible. Therefore it only made sense that she assist once Harry retrieved the memory from a very aged Mrs. Cole, former caretaker of the Muggle orphanage in which Tom Riddle had grown from innocent baby to troubled boy; from troubled, albeit charming boy into a monster who bore little resemblance to a man.
Hermione had created a much improved variation of the Pensieve. Though the Pensieve that sat atop Harry's desk looked no different from the one that Dumbledore had kept in his office back at Hogwarts, what it did was far different. No longer was one forced to simply stand back and watch a memory play out before them. They could now interact with the individuals inside the memory, question them, touch the things and people that were there.
One could make no mistake in its function, however. It was not a Time-turner. Their interactions with the memory and those contained therein were unable to alter the past in any way. It only gave them a more hands-on way of studying it.
Ron took Hermione's hand and they followed Harry's lead, pressing forward until their faces touched the shining, shimmering, silvery substance swirling in the basin, and they were falling forward, their feet no longer touching the floor of the office.
And then, they were there, inside the Muggle orphanage with a warm, crackling fire blazing in the hearth as the harsh snow swirled outside on this cold and desolate New Year's Eve. The irony was not lost on Hermione that on this date when Muggles were readying themselves to wipe the slate clean, making resolutions to start a year anew, fresh, better, this particular child was making his entry into a world in which he would bring about so much despair and destruction.
She wondered if babies were ever simply born evil. She didn't believe so. Where, then, had this child gone so wrong?
A young woman, a girl really, no older than 18, came down the stairs from an upper floor with a grim look on her face. She faced the trio as though their sudden appearance there was nothing out of the ordinary. "She's gone." Those two words said with such finality confirmed that the aged Mrs. Cole's memory had not been what it once was, and that what Harry had procured would offer them fewer answers than they had hoped.
Hermione heard a high-pitched gurgle and noticed the bundle nestled in the crook of the girl's arm. "May I?" she asked.
The girl nodded and Hermione held out her arms to take the child nestled in the warm blankets. As was the way of mothers, Hermione had never held a child she found more beautiful than her own-or at least she had not until that precise moment.
Tom Riddle had been quite beautiful as a baby. He did not possess the wrinkled, red skin that had been prominent on every newborn Hermione had ever seen. His skin was the colour of alabaster, and his dark, rich curls contrasted starkly with it. His eyes were open and alert, not like those of a typical baby, even one of magical blood, seeming to take in everything around him with interest.
Ron and Harry commenced asking questions of the adults who had come into the room, but Hermione found an old wooden rocker and dragged it over by the fire. She sat with the baby in her arms, counting each of his ten fingers as they curled around her own. She pulled back the blankets to see that the child before her looked no different than any other baby, except for his beauty. She began to rock the child in her arms, marveling at the warmth of his skin, as yet unblemished by any of the harsh realities of life, and it was hard to imagine this child had become something so evil.
She began to hum a lullaby that she had often hummed to her daughter, and the child cooed up at her, his expression alarmingly aware, and then he yawned, no longer able to fight the closing of his eyelids and drifting away in peaceful sleep.
For the first time, Hermione felt true sympathy, not for the monster this child had become, but for the child who had been cheated of a mother's arms to hold him, to offer comfort when knees were scraped or hearts broken. As she brushed a dark curl from the baby's forehead she had to wonder if it might have made all the difference.
Poll Round 3, Challenge 5; Drabbles & Voting
Here are the drabbles for the latest challenge: All things truly wicked, start from innocence, Ernest Hemingway.
Remember the rules, keep an open mind, don't vote for yourself, and don't tell people what you wrote.
Drabble #1:
Title: The Beginning
By: bambu345
Rating: All Ages
Warnings: None
Summary: Hermione finds the last piece of a puzzle, but what does she see
Pairing: None
Word Count: 975
I rolled the small phial between my fingers, mesmerized by the gleaming silver essence within. Its surface calm was belied by the volatility of the living memory; mercurial substance curling in upon itself, leaving a slick iridescent residue to cling to its glass prison.
Five years it had taken me to acquire this memory. It had been an impossible task, but I had somehow acquired it. Who knew why she’d given it to me, that hawk-nosed, dark-haired woman with sharp, raptor’s eyes. She might have recognized my unquenched need.
“Who are ye’?” she’d asked, one gnarled hand clinging to her cane as if for protection.
“My name is Hermione Granger,” I’d replied. “But my name is unimportant. I could offer you testimonials and identification, but really, Ma’am, I am only seeking to jog your memory.”
The twenty pounds I offered had worked where my earnest request had fallen on deaf ears. Once cooperative, it had been the work of a moment, or rather the utterance of a name which had recalled the memory, and I’d left the cottage with the precious memory strand in hand and a happily Obliviated pensioner in my wake.
I now possessed a vital piece of the puzzle I’d been sorting out since the year Tom Marvolo Riddle had ceased to exist.
Where once I’d used euphemisms and stuttered over his appellation, I no longer referred to him as anything other than his birth name, the one thing he’d acquired from his Muggle father. I burned with the fire of unquenchable curiosity. I needed to see, to know, to understand how someone as vile as Lord Voldemort could have risen to power in my chosen world.
The small phial shone brightly in the electrically lit room; my room, the one I’d called mine since childhood. I lived alone in my parents’ former house. I’d bought them out when they decided to remain in Australia.
Ironically, it had been during the week I’d restored my parents’ memories to them - spending hours in the Pensieve with them, reliving precious moments of my childhood when the idea had popped into my head.
Harry had learned selective pieces of information about Tom Riddle, but I wanted to know more. To understand him … to understand the metamorphosis from abandoned child to homicidal tyrant.
That had been five years ago, and now we were nearing the end of our search. Harry and Ron should arrive at any moment, and, together, the three of us would view this final memory. It was the final steps to completing the first Magical Law Enforcement case-book on Tom Riddle, Jr.
Corrupt.
Evil.
Murderer.
Necromancer.
All those words applied to Tom Riddle, a/k/a Lord Voldemort, but there were other descriptors which were equally pertinent.
Charismatic.
Brilliant.
Innovative.
Lonely.
Isolated.
At that moment, Ron and Harry quietly slipped through the door, nodding their hellos, and taking their customary places flanking me; Ron’s chair overstuffed and floral, and Harry’s chair, spare, wooden, and intricately carved.
“Ready?” I asked.
They nodded, and we leaned toward the ornate Pensieve placed dead center between our chairs. It had once belonged to Albus Dumbledore, but before that, it had belonged to Dilys Derwent, and long before that, the Pensieve had been magically carved by Salazar Slytherin.
I thought it uniquely appropriate to contain all of his final descendant's relevant moments in the family receptacle.
Quickly I uncapped the small phial and turned it over. The strand of memory slid into the bowl, joining the other memories within. It only takes seconds before this memory joined the spinning collective in a Coriolas effect, and when I saw the hawk-nosed woman’s face - albeit one many years younger - rise to the surface I knew the time had come.
With well-rehearsed synchronicity, Ron, Harry and I poked our fingers into the slipstream of memories, easing into the familiar disorientation of Pensieve investigation.
We landed on our feet - so different than the first time, when I landed on my head - and quickly familiarized ourselves with our unfamiliar location. It was a small, bare room. One with a wood floor, plain walls, hosting a crucifix hanging above the narrow, iron-framed bed, a small chest of drawers and an armoire complete the furnishing. The hawk-nosed woman, years younger than when I’d encountered her to collect the memory, attended to a woman in labor’s extremis, hard contractions distorting the mother’s face, but Harry recognized her instantly. He whispered her name, “Merope Gaunt.”
We stood there for hours as the labor continued into the late hours of the night, but time is immaterial and distorted in a Pensieve. We will have only lost a few minutes in our time, but in situ the tableau is oppressive. No one comes to offer support or comfort to the laboring woman, save her single grim-faced attendant, sitting in vigil, offering prayers which held no meaning, save the soothing sound of another human voice, to the pureblooded descendant of a once-great wizard.
And then, the denouement was upon us.
A flurry of activity heralded the end. Merope Gaunt’s hair hung in limp strands around her reddened face, and tears streamed down her chapped cheeks, but there was a strange light burning in her eyes as she forced her child through the crucible of birth.
The baby’s head crowned, and when he was pulled from his mother’s birth canal, Ron gagged as a rush of red-tinged amniotic fluid gushes onto the bed. Harry was grim-faced, but watched in wide-eyed fascination as if attending a session of the Wizengamot in full debate.
My attention was riveted to the thick black hair of the babe. Vernix-covered he might have been, but his features were perfect, as if he’d suffered no trauma from the journey into his new life.
A small, fierce cry rent the quiet industry of the room.
Evil had been born.
Drabble #2:
Title: The water was hot on her skin
By: gingeraled
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Angst
Summary: She sits on what used to be her bed, and stares at her hands
Pairing: No pairing
Word Count: 570+
The water is hot on her skin, scalding, even, but Hermione wants it this way. She wants the hot water to wash away all the grime and dirt on her body, and some that she thinks may have stuck to her soul.
Her face is wet. Wet with water, sweat, and tears that combine to drip down to the shower floor. If only her agony and guilt would drip down and away, as well.
She holds the soap tight in her hands and scrubs away at her face, her sides, her arms, her hands. Her hands. There is no blood on her hands, dirty and heavy with death.
So she scrubs them. Scrubs her hands with scalding water, soap, and all the resolve she can muster.
--
She’d lost sight of Ron only minutes ago, and Harry has been missing since they came down from Dumbledore’s office. She is running the fastest she’s ever run in her life. She’s running for her life, ducking spells aimed at her.
Hot on her heels is a Death Eater laughing maniacally, loving chasing ‘the mudblood girl that’s caused us so much trouble.’ He’s going to kill her easily, he says, but not before he’s had some fun.
And then there is a dead end. Hermione is forced to spin around and face her pursuer. She hears the sounds of the ongoing battle somewhere in her head, but she pays them no mind. What she does is point her wand at the man, and utter the two words she thought she’d never say in her lifetime.
--
Her hands are sore from all the scrubbing but still she feels dirty. And tired. She feels tired. She slides down and slumps on the floor of the shower.
It was easy. Hermione hates the first-hand knowledge that killing a fellow human is easy. With just two words and the power of a wand, she’d ended someone’s life.
She resents knowing that she could have just stunned him, or taken his wand, or done a million other things. But for one reason or another, she'd willed him dead at that precise moment. Maybe it was the evil glint in the eyes behind the mask that pushed her. Maybe it was just a desire to end everything, once and for all.
She knows she did it to survive, that in the context of war, killing is justifiable. It was either him or her. She’s on the side of Light. But whatever the reason or justification, Hermione still hates herself for what she’s done, like she hates herself for altering her parents’ minds. Like she still hates herself for scarring Marietta Edgecombe.
She doesn’t know when she turned from innocent to evil. Wicked. She does not know how, how she can live with what she has become.
--
With great effort, Hermione pulls herself up from the floor. She turns off the water, towels herself dry, and steps out into Gryffindor girls dormitory. All the other girls had gone home to their families after the battle, leaving her alone in the big, circular room.
Now clothed, she sits on what used to be her bed, and stares at her hands. They’re nothing special, just a teenage girls’ hands, but they’ve already scarred and killed. Hermione thinks she’s about to cry again, but no tears leave her eyes. There’s only a dull pain in her chest now.
Hermione lies on the mattress and lets the darkness absorb her. She knows it’s going to be long before morning comes.
Drabble #3:
Title: Comeuppance
By: minervasrevenge
Rating: All ages
Warnings: EWE, character death
Summary: Hermione must face her actions in the past.
Pairing: N/A
Word Count: 701
Harry stood before of the house in disbelief that the occupant was missing. Despite his recent marriage to Ginny, he knew the address of his first love well.
Her home gave every indication of being vacant. Harry let himself into the yard and walked around it, looking for anything suspicious. All of the curtains were drawn except on the second floor where one billowed out with the breeze.
When Harry stealthily spelled the door open and found a broken wand at his feet, he knew his missing person case had become something else entirely. Helpless guilt filled him. He hadn’t spoken to her in years and they had been friends once.
Harry took a calming breath.
Procedure dictated that he take in the scene slowly so that his memory could be analyzed later in a Pensieve. Once he was inside with the door shut, he cast a couple of quick spells and was dismayed to find that he was the only living thing in the house.
The hall was dark but nothing looked out of the ordinary. Harry moved slowly, glancing from floor to ceiling, filled with foreboding. The first doorway led into the kitchen. It was obvious she’d entertained recently - a package of biscuits sat open on the counter and a serving tray was abandoned in the sink. Harry left the kitchen for a formal dining room.
Two places were set but the candles sat unburned in their sticks and the napkins were still folded.
Harry forced himself to sweep his gaze over the entire untouched room and move into a small, cozy parlor.
Yellow light was shining from an odd angle behind the settee, casting ominous shadows. Immediately, his gaze was drawn to the fallen lamp, severed ropes on the floor and a smudged, brown stain on the chair. Harry had to close his eyes against the well of anxiety rising in him - there were reasons that Aurors had to follow procedures. He wanted to do everything he could to catch the person responsible for hurting her even though he had the sickening feeling that he was too late.
Harry deliberately made himself focus on the overturned lamp and move slowly through the room, sweeping it with his gaze. He couldn’t stop his mind from wondering what had happened. No sign of forced entry - magic or otherwise and there were two places set in the dining room. She’d expected someone. Harry looked at the writing desk, shifting things around in the hope that he might find a calendar. When he unearthed one, he wasn’t surprised to find the word “dinner” scrawled across a date three days earlier.
Harry’s eyes moved almost of their own accord to the brownish stain and angry guilt flooded him again. Since when had he been a stickler for the rules, anyhow? He stepped out of the parlor and back into the hall, looking for more signs of…violence. There was her broken wand again. It had been placed there deliberately. Harry spun and found himself staring at a carpeted stairwell. A spot caught his eye - it was almost at the top of the steps.
He’d get lectured about it later but he practically flew up the stairs, noting that the spot was the same brown as the stain downstairs. A breeze stirred, coming from a cracked door at the end of the corridor. Wand drawn, Harry took silent steps towards it. Before he knew it, he was pushing open the door, holding his breath in the fragile hope that she wasn’t behind it.
But there she was, curled up on her side as if she was sleeping.
A pang of familiarity shot through him at the sight of her still body. He knew she was dead but he couldn’t stop himself from walking around her to see her face.
“Cho,” he whispered.
Long, dark hair covered her features and Harry used his wand to magically nudge her onto her back. One glance at her face told Harry two things: the killer's identity and her next victim.
His blood ran cold. He needed to warn Hermione that Marietta Edgecombe had escaped Azkaban again.
Harry Disapparated.
Across Cho's face a series of boils spelled the word "sneak."
Drabble #4:
Title: All the Difference
By: luvscharlie
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Summary: Hermione joins Harry and Ron in researching what transformed Tom Riddle into a monster.
Pairing: None
Word Count: 890
This wasn't what Hermione had expected when she agreed to help Harry and Ron in their assignment for the Auror Department. Yet how could she refuse a request to research the most feared wizard of all time and what had turned him the way he was? The answer was simple; she could not.
The idea was brilliant really, performing research into what might have turned the orphaned little boy who was Tom Riddle into the handsome young man who charmed nearly all who met him during his days at Hogwarts, and then into the monster who became Lord Voldemort. It was her own invention that had made this research even possible. Therefore it only made sense that she assist once Harry retrieved the memory from a very aged Mrs. Cole, former caretaker of the Muggle orphanage in which Tom Riddle had grown from innocent baby to troubled boy; from troubled, albeit charming boy into a monster who bore little resemblance to a man.
Hermione had created a much improved variation of the Pensieve. Though the Pensieve that sat atop Harry's desk looked no different from the one that Dumbledore had kept in his office back at Hogwarts, what it did was far different. No longer was one forced to simply stand back and watch a memory play out before them. They could now interact with the individuals inside the memory, question them, touch the things and people that were there.
One could make no mistake in its function, however. It was not a Time-turner. Their interactions with the memory and those contained therein were unable to alter the past in any way. It only gave them a more hands-on way of studying it.
Ron took Hermione's hand and they followed Harry's lead, pressing forward until their faces touched the shining, shimmering, silvery substance swirling in the basin, and they were falling forward, their feet no longer touching the floor of the office.
And then, they were there, inside the Muggle orphanage with a warm, crackling fire blazing in the hearth as the harsh snow swirled outside on this cold and desolate New Year's Eve. The irony was not lost on Hermione that on this date when Muggles were readying themselves to wipe the slate clean, making resolutions to start a year anew, fresh, better, this particular child was making his entry into a world in which he would bring about so much despair and destruction.
She wondered if babies were ever simply born evil. She didn't believe so. Where, then, had this child gone so wrong?
A young woman, a girl really, no older than 18, came down the stairs from an upper floor with a grim look on her face. She faced the trio as though their sudden appearance there was nothing out of the ordinary. "She's gone." Those two words said with such finality confirmed that the aged Mrs. Cole's memory had not been what it once was, and that what Harry had procured would offer them fewer answers than they had hoped.
Hermione heard a high-pitched gurgle and noticed the bundle nestled in the crook of the girl's arm. "May I?" she asked.
The girl nodded and Hermione held out her arms to take the child nestled in the warm blankets. As was the way of mothers, Hermione had never held a child she found more beautiful than her own-or at least she had not until that precise moment.
Tom Riddle had been quite beautiful as a baby. He did not possess the wrinkled, red skin that had been prominent on every newborn Hermione had ever seen. His skin was the colour of alabaster, and his dark, rich curls contrasted starkly with it. His eyes were open and alert, not like those of a typical baby, even one of magical blood, seeming to take in everything around him with interest.
Ron and Harry commenced asking questions of the adults who had come into the room, but Hermione found an old wooden rocker and dragged it over by the fire. She sat with the baby in her arms, counting each of his ten fingers as they curled around her own. She pulled back the blankets to see that the child before her looked no different than any other baby, except for his beauty. She began to rock the child in her arms, marveling at the warmth of his skin, as yet unblemished by any of the harsh realities of life, and it was hard to imagine this child had become something so evil.
She began to hum a lullaby that she had often hummed to her daughter, and the child cooed up at her, his expression alarmingly aware, and then he yawned, no longer able to fight the closing of his eyelids and drifting away in peaceful sleep.
For the first time, Hermione felt true sympathy, not for the monster this child had become, but for the child who had been cheated of a mother's arms to hold him, to offer comfort when knees were scraped or hearts broken. As she brushed a dark curl from the baby's forehead she had to wonder if it might have made all the difference.
Poll Round 3, Challenge 5; Drabbles & Voting