Writer's Block 40.3 - Voting!
banner by renrenren3
Challenge: Wish you were here
Points: 2pts for voting. 1st/2nd/3rd/Participation Only: 50/40/30/10 points & 20/15/10/5 knuts, respectively, for winners.
Deadline: Voting until Friday, March 30 @ 7pm EST/11pm UTC.
Details: Vote for your top 3 favourite drabbles. Do not vote for yourself or have other people vote for you.
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A.
Title: Dear Sal
Helga Hufflepuff writes to Salazar Slytherin after his departure from Hogwarts.
Helga stared for a long moment at the blank parchment before her. The quill trembled between her fingers and tears stung at the corners of her eyes. “Enough,” she murmured to herself. “Get yourself together, Helga.”
Dear Sal,
If you’re reading this, the owl has found you, for which I am more thankful than I have words to express. Where have you been? Why haven’t you sent word? I know you parted from us on unpleasant terms, but Sal, really, not even a note to let us know you’re alive? To let me know?
Sal, I’ll be direct: Hogwarts needs you most desperately. While we have found someone to take over as Head of your house -- which is still called Slytherin, even in your absence -- there is something going terribly, deeply wrong. Your sensible wariness of Muggles and their destructive power, your concern about the security risk young Muggleborns inevitably pose -- these are being twisted. The new Head of Slytherin is an aristocrat, and I fear he’s simplifying this complex issue far too much.
Sal, the Slytherin children are beginning to spout the most utter nonsense about blood purity. It’s frightening, and their young minds are so impressionable.
I’m frightened of the schisms I see building. They will destroy us in a way the external attacks never could and divide us beyond recognition. You must come back to us. Bring your clarity, your vision. I know your fears about trusting Muggleborns after the attack. But we will find a way. With you, together, we will find a way. Just come back to us.
Yours always,
Hellie
B.
Title: Letter to No One
It was a letter she would never send. Three pages long and written in small, neat handwriting. Detailing all the adventures that she and Ron and Harry had suffered through during the past year. Explaining where they went, what they did and why they did it. Telling about how it was all worth it to know the world was rid of the darkest wizard there had ever been once and for all.
And then there were the last few paragraphs. The ones written in the tiniest handwriting yet, the letters smudged by falling tears she couldn’t control.
Why she had done what she did. How she had needed to keep them safe, to make sure they wouldn’t be targets of her decisions.
She loved them, the letter said. She missed them. Every day. Every night. All she had thought about since the war had ended was seeing them again, reversing the spell, getting them back.
She hoped they would forgive her for what she had done.
She wished they could be together again.
It was all in the letter, now crumpled in the palm of her hand, as she stared across the way, at the man and the woman with the new life she didn’t recognize.
They looked happy, so happy.
They would hate her if they knew. It was a fear that had tingled the back of her mind for ages.
They looked happy.
She turned around, disappearing back into the crowds, leaving them be.
She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t change their life again.
She dropped the letter in the rubbish before she Apparated away.
C.
Title: Not out there
I’ve been here for almost a year-I think, it’s hard to keep track of time in here-and I still have trouble understanding what happened.
James and Lily are dead. That much I wrapped my head around.
But it’s because of you. You, Peter, barely a second-thought during our school years. Our pathetic follower became a murderer, smart enough to frame me and get me locked up here.
In Azkaban.
I wish you were here. If not instead of me, at least with me. Maybe the Dementors would allow us to share a cell, so I could show you exactly what I think of you.
I wish you were here, so it could be your neck my hands are wringing, not this bit of hay I picked up from the floor.
I wish you were here, so you could feel the cold, the sadness and the regret I feel every day.
I wish you were in here and not out there.
D.
Title: How old were you when you realised that miracles are dangerous lies?
Neville blinks. He is 5. He is 7- He is 13. He is taller, now, and they look shorter, shrinking.
He notices wrinkles on their skin. Nothing else changes.
His grandmother smiles at the echo of a memory of a son she once gave birth.
Neville should be grateful. He should be proud. He should be a collection of adjectives that taste like shards of glass.
They are alive. They breathe. He can’t mourn them. He hasn’t buried them, yet.
They will die and he will never know what his name sounds on their lips.
They are there. Like a portrait he can see and touch, and almost feel.
Hugging them is like rubbing his hands together with the gloves on. An anesthetised sensation, a delayed punch that will have him crying when he is back home.
Neville should be grateful. His parents stood to the Dark Lord and yet their names are not covered in dust in a cemetery. How many children did the war left orphan? How many kids wish everyday for their parents to be alive, to be there?
Neville swallows the bitterness that tells him that he has nothing to be grateful for. They are here. He repeats. They are here.
That’s enough.
But the emptiness in his parents’ eyes can be measured in galaxies, and Neville feels that they are always somewhere up there, trapped in dying stars, and never here.
E.
Title: Out of Sorts
Christmas was only ten days away. It felt like a fact recalled from a dusty history book with no relevance to Hermione’s life. Christmas meant family and she no longer had one. Obviously, she had Harry and he was closer than a brother but… Last Christmas Eve her mother reminded her to leave a carrot out for the reindeer, even though they dropped the pretense of believing in Father Christmas ages ago. Would her mother leave a carrot out in Australia? Probably not. That was the kind of thing one did “for the children,” (even if the children were scarcely children anymore) and Monica Wilkins didn’t have any children.
Hermione blew her nose loudly. She was being silly. They were in the middle of a mission to save the world, which included her parents, and this was no time for melancholy. This cold was making her out of sorts. She needed some Pepperup Potion. Of course they would get colds, camping (even in a magical tent) in the middle of winter all but guaranteed it. Hermione, the epitome of practical and prepared, had definitely brought along a flacon of Pepperup Potion--if only she could lay her hands on it.
Being sick made even the smallest thing seem difficult to manage. She usually knew right where everything was. She usually did whatever was best just as soon as she figured out what it was. She usually… had hot tea with lemon and honey and a pile of books beside her whenever she felt under the weather. Her mother would make her chicken soup with a dash of curry “to clear out the sinuses,” make library runs when she ran out of books interesting enough to hold her attention, and put something trashy on the telly when things got too muddled for reading. Any moment now Hermione would drag herself out of bed, rummage around a bit for the potion in question and be done with it, but right now? Right now she would let herself wish, just for a little bit, that her mother was here.