Writer's Block 41.2 - Voting!
banner by renrenren3
Challenge: From Now On
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 Thursday, June 28 @ 11pm UTC.
Details: Vote for your top 3 favourite drabbles. Do not vote for yourself or have other people vote for you.
Fill this out for voting
First Place:
Second Place:
Third Place:
NAME/HOUSE OR SIGTAG
A.
Title: The One Who Watched
From now on she had an important task, a task that gave her meaning. From now on she was not only a Squib, but someone people trusted.
Arabella Figg had never felt so important in her life before.
Most of the time the magical community looked her with barely hidden contempt in their eyes, questioning why she even existed and why she thought she could be part of the world she had nothing to give to. But she didn't belong to the Muggle world either, not really. She was too different, too odd, too set in her ways to really blend in.
But from now on? Everyone would know Arabella Figg as the one Dumbledore had trusted with looking out for the Boy Who Lived.
B.
Title: Just Wanna Have
“Bo-o-oring.” Bellatrix’s voice rang out, floating high above the masculine murmurings around the finely polished mahogany table. She tilted her head in that birdlike way of hers that usually presaged her saying something entertaining and all too true. “What good is being part of a secret society to take over the world if it’s all boardroom meetings and dull little gatherings where nothing happens?”
Every eye turned first to look at her, and then at me.
I arched an eyebrow. “Don’t look at me, gentleman. I quite agree.” I gestured at the linen parchment in front of me, with today’s agenda artfully written below a rather insipid Death Eater insignia. “Bella, what would you suggest?”
I felt a surge of nonverbal, wandless magic from her a moment before it rolled out in a shuddering wave that shredded each agenda copy into a sparkling wave of snowflakes with razor edges. Some of them blew across Walden MacNair’s face, leaving blood trails, and he hissed in startled pain. Ah, I did so enjoy this girl.
“A fresh start, my Lord,” Bellatrix said.
“Mmm. Perhaps less endless planning would be more to your taste?”
“And I believe more to yours, my Lord.”
“Quite right, Bella.” I stood up and offered her my elbow. “From now on, gentleman, I think we’ll be having a little less ritual, and a little more fun around here. Bella and I are going out for some...improvisational activity.” I caught Lucius Malfoy’s eye. “I suggest those with a longterm interest in our little group join us.”
Malfoy managed to make scrambling to his feet while cuffing Walden MacNair a graceful move. “I feel an evening jaunt would suit us all. Don’t you, gentleman?”
A flurry of assents and chairs scraping back.
“Marvelous.” I felt the thrum of barely contained energy from Bellatrix’s mark like something alive in my chest. “Let’s go have ourselves an evening.”
Note: Tom’s line about ritual vs fun is taken from Spike in Buffy the Vampire Slayer: “From now on, we’re gonna have a little less ritual...and a little more fun around here.”
C.
Title: Music & Lyrics
All the muscles in Myron Wagtail’s face were straining not to grimace as he was reading off the sheet of paper in front of him. Orsino, his drummer, had gotten his neighbour’s fourteen-year-old nephew an internship with the Weird Sisters for the summer, and the kid fancied himself a lyricist.
“The title is ‘From Now On’.”
Myron almost replied, “you don’t say?!” Every second line in the song started with those three words. He never would have picked such an obvious title.
Not that he’d’ve ever written anything so terrible in the first place.
He set the page down on his desk and tried to smile at the boy. “Thanks, we’ll talk about it.”
Beaming, the kid turned around. As soon as he’d closed the door behind him, Myron sighed and turned to his bodyguard, a troll-looking wizard (or a wizard-looking troll, jury was still out on that one). “Do me a favour,” he said. “Never let that kid near my office again.”
D.
Title: The Dog Ate My Homework, Honestly
Charms had always been one of the things Ginny felt quite confident about. Even her mum said her Scourgify charm was a thing of wonder. So the Silencing Charm essay which Professor Flitwick assigned hadn’t given her a moment’s hesitation. It was done and the parchment neatly rolled up amongst her school books days ago. Pride goes before a fall though and now, the morning of the day it was due, Ginny was staring down at less than half a scroll.
The edge was neatly nibbled, not torn. It wasn’t some vindictive schoolmate to blame. Ginny had a sinking feeling she knew exactly who the culprit was. She glanced at the happily humming Pygmy Puff on her shoulder. Arnold, hungrily eying the parchment, confirmed her sinking suspicion. Her adorable pet’s love of all things nominally edible was her undoing.
There was no helping it, she would have to rush another essay out over lunch and hope for the best. Arnold’s being allowed at Hogwarts at all was a delicate thing and if word got out that he was dining on parchment? Professor’s Flitwick’s disappointment would be a much better burden to bear. From now on, however, Arnold was spending his nights sleeping in his cage.
E.
Title: Forever changed
She had feared this moment since the day she learned she was pregnant with Charlie. Wherever she had gone since then, whatever she had thought about, somewhere in the back of her mind she had always worried.
The fear had grown stronger as child after child after child was born. And then stronger still when He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had returned.
She had always known it was a possibility, perhaps even a likelihood. She had seven children. Seven brave, stubborn, independent, wonderful children. How possible would it have been for them to have all survived? To come out unharmed on the other side?
But all the fear and all the worry in the world hadn’t prepared her for this moment.
For seeing her son, her child - her baby - cold and unmoving on the ground. The laughter that was always in his eyes gone. The smile on his face vanished.
She wanted to cry, to scream, to curse, but nothing was coming out. She heard the sobs of her husband, of her children, but she felt frozen in place, memories of a lifetime flashing before her eyes.
Cradling him in her arms just seconds after he was born. Laughing the first time he waved his arm and one of his toys flew through the air and hit his father in the head. Standing in the kitchen yelling the first time a niffler had popped up out of their sink - the first practical joke of way too many.
And then worse, the last time she had seen him, a wisp of red hair around a corner.
She closed her eyes, tried to remember. The last time she hugged him. The last time she’d told him she was proud of him.
She’d told him, right? She hugged him, right?
She still couldn’t move, couldn’t talk, couldn’t breathe. Her throat wasn’t working. Her vision was clouded.
Her baby was gone.
Gone.
From this moment on, nothing would ever be the same.
Nothing.
Molly sank to the floor and finally cried.