Writers Block: 31.8 - New Beginnings Voting
Banner by renrenren3
Challenge: New Beginnings
Points: 1st/2nd/3rd/Participation Only: 50/40/30/10 points & 20/15/10/5 knuts, respectively. 2pts for voting.
Deadline: Voting until Sunday, April 26th 11:59PM UTC.
Details: "New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings."
We have 7 wonderful entries! please vote for your favorite stories.
Entry #1
Title: Crucible
I truly thought I had died when I saw Lily's body. My own body went numb, my chest frozen, my breath stopped up in a branching agony of No.
The most virulent depths of Crucio would never have anything on that moment.
The time after that blurred and jumped, a hazy reel of mouths moving like marionettes and inquisitive glances like broken glass. I had no use for any of them. Somehow when I looked outwards again, I was sitting in Dumbledore's office. A terrible keening sound was coming from somewhere. After a long moment, I realized it was coming from me.
I looked up at Dumbledore, my misery and self-loathing cascading out in a wave of useless words.
And somehow, somehow, Dumbledore worked his ineffable magic of tongue and tone. Somehow, before I knew it, I was agreeing to be the protector of Potter's spawn.
No. That wasn't right. The boy was Lily's child. The last living piece of Lily, with her eyes.
Perhaps one day those eyes would hold forgiveness for me.
And for a moment, I felt wings unfurling in my chest, spreading wide and free and fierce with purpose. It burned and it ached, this purpose, but it was alive and I was alive. And it was good.
I glanced up at Dumbledore's phoenix, who had so recently risen from the ashes of its rebirth after a lengthy period of being a grubby little thing you would be hard-pressed to love if you didn't know it, and what it could become. And I swear the bird winked at me.
Every now and then, the universe deigns to be more direct in its symbolism. I took the hint.
I drew myself up, gathering the shattered remnants of myself into a new whole. An ornery, ferocious, and rather grim whole that demanded that any noble acts I would do on behalf of Lily's son would be forever hidden because I was not a bloody hero. But a new whole, nonetheless.
After all, I had work to do.
Entry #2
Title: New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings.
Snape's cape was bellowing behind him as he quickly walked to his meeting with Dumbledore. It was just forty-eight hours prior that his beloved Lily Potter had died. He stopped walking for a minute as the pain of her loss returned. He had to get to Dumbledore to find out what had happened. He had forewarned that old man what was going to happen! He had promised to protect her! It was then that he had let go of what she had asked him all those years ago to do: to leave the Death Eaters. That day was a vivid memory that he wished he could let go. Lily had asked him to stop hanging out those joining He Who Must Not Be Named, but instead lead to an argument & the falling out of them. It had pained him so much. Why was he such a stupid git! He still had to be part of them after he told Dumbledore he was switching sides to protect Lily, but he had to be a spy! Still it had not worked! It had been a new leaf, a new beginning, but instead of the happy reuniting with Lily, it was the final ending in his relationship with her. He chocked back a sob as he saw Dumbledore standing in the distance waiting for him.
Entry #3
She sat in silence, staring ahead without seeing much. The world out here seemed to be endless: flat fields went on for miles until they touched the grey, cloudy sky. A thunderstorm was approaching: she could feel it in her bones. Nymphadora Tonks wrapped her arms around her legs as she drew them up to her chest and rested her chin on top of her knees.
So this was it. A new beginning. The decision to go to Romania hadn’t been an easy one for the Hufflepuff. She knew her family had hoped she would continue her career as an auror. But neither of them had really attempted to stop her either. After all, if anyone knew what it was like, it was them.
What it was like to miss someone so much that even the prospect of a fine job at the ministry hadn’t really excited her enough to change her hair into that pretty pink colour she loved the most.
Now there she sat, miles away from home, and while a new beginning lay ahead, she wondered if she had made the right decision. Moving across the continent. For another person. How foolish was that? And how sappy? Her face scrunched up at the thought. She and sappy. Nah.
Yet she had done it, had made the step, and as she saw Charlie Weasley in the distance, looking up just then to wink at her, she couldn’t help the hint of a smile. New beginnings might be scary, but some of them disguised a painful ending. And in her case, that ending couldn’t have come fast enough.
With a sigh, Tonks got up and made her way down the hill, determined to trust her instinct and go with the new chance that lay ahead.
Entry #4
Title: You Don't Have to Go Home
On paper, the Manor was still theirs. On paper, they still had their assets. On paper, no charges were pressed, and they remained free-- pardoned of their involvement with the Death Eaters thanks to their help in defeating the Dark Lord with a self-serving but fortuitous betrayal.
But the reality was that the Ministry had seized half their property to investigate them for dark magic, tying up a good portion of what they owned in bureaucratic quicksand. Board positions weren't renewed, social invitations rescinded, and the Prophet, of course, turned against them. They might as well have been imprisoned.
So it was to France they went, to a smallish villa that one of the old Malfoys owned and bequeathed in a long-forgotten will-- Lucius ranting and raving like a wounded animal, Narcissa stoic and close-lipped even as she began to pull strings amongst French society to catapult them back to some level of prominence among those who may not know better yet. And Draco-- Draco found a room in the villa, and he filled it with an odd assortment of magical plants and the powdered horns of creatures and their pickled organs, texts ancient and musty and written in archaic languages about runes and charms, and he set to work.
Sometimes his parents heard the curdling of a cauldron well into the night, and in some early mornings, a muffled hiss, but the clinking of pestle against mortar continued, so they let him be. He emerged occasionally to feed himself, eyes sunken and face gaunt, but eyes afire with determination. They didn't ask, Narcissa because she knew it was important, Lucius because he was afraid to.
They didn't ask until the day they heard a loud bang, followed by a sequence of loud noises that sounded like a body crashing against a hard wooden table and a dozen copper cauldrons knocking against each other, and a gut-wrenching scream that carried through the tiny shack they now called their own. Lucius was the first at the door, wide-eyed and fearful, but it was Narcissa who drew her wand and swung the door clear off its hinges, rushing to her only son and gathering him in her arms. He had been on the floor, hunched over in pain, but when he turned to face her he was smiling, the left sleeve of his robes rolled up and the skin on his arm blistered red and now completely bereft of the Dark Lord's Mark, but he held it up with triumph, whispering I did it before he passed out from the pain.
Entry #5
Title: Scabbers
Ron was relieved that it was over, but he sure did miss having his rat Scabbers. Scabbers had been in his life for so long. It didn't matter that he had never really been a rat all along. Scabbers had been his pet, and it was painful not having a pet to care for. It was painful thinking that he had never really had a pet, but a fugitive in hiding. How had he not known?
It was a new beginning, but it was a beginning without a pet. Poor Ron would have to move on and live without his rat.
Entry #6
Title: Hearing the News
Remus didn't remember hearing the news. He didn't remember falling to the ground, screaming. He didn't remember breathing so erratically that he lost consciousness. All he remembered was that his friends were dead, that his friend had betrayed them, that little Harry had lost his parents.
Remus felt alone. He felt an ache in his chest from where his pack-mates, where his best friends used to sit. Everything just felt wrong. He was by himself for the first time since that train journey many years ago, and he didn't know what to do. He couldn't stay in England, where everyone was celebrating when he was in mourning. There was nothing keeping him here, as they said that he wasn't allowed to see Harry.
He found himself packing, even though he hadn't made a decision about where to go. All he knew was that he needed to go somewhere new, to bury the pain for a bit, to have a new beginning.
Entry #7
Title: Starting Over
After the funeral, Percy finds himself at a crossroads. He knows most people - his family included - assume that he’s not actually going to follow through with resigning from the Ministry now that all the Death Eaters in its ranks have been apprehended. But Percy knows he can’t go back - too many unpleasant memories. He just has to figure out what to do next. He looks over at George, who looks as lost as he feels and for good reason - Fred and George always did everything together and now Fred is gone. Then it hits Percy - George is going to need help at the shop and, well, his brothers did always tell him to stop taking things so seriously.
~~~~~
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