Challenge #088: Zombie Apocalypse // Challenge #077: Next Generation // Challenge #074: Summer Holid
Title: Here at the End of the World
Rating/Warnings: G
Characters/Pairing: Ron, Hermione, Luna
Summary: When we found her, she was nearly unrecognizable.
Word Count: 1053
Author's Notes: Brrrrraaaaaiiiiiiinnnnnsssssss
Registered purchases?: Both!
When we found her, she was nearly unrecognizable.
Her hair was cut short. Ragged, jagged, dirty. It was clumped in places and matted in others, tied into a ponytail where the length would let it. She didn't look like she cared. She never did. Her cheeks were streaked with dirt, her fingernails caked with mud and what looked like, but couldn't have been, dried blood. She had bruises on her arms, bags under her eyes, which were guileless as ever.
At least some things never changed.
We were hidden in the Shrieking Shack, of all places. It was hers now, and I had cast what little protective wards I knew to keep us safe. She'd only shaken her head, tapped her ear. We would listen, was her signal. We would be safer alert.
There wasn't much in the room. In one corner lay a threadbare blanket, a leather satchel, a jug that had seen better days. There was a bit of food in one of the bags, I knew, but despite my grumbling appetite, didn't ask her which bag. She wouldn't offer, with good reason. We all needed it just as much.
When she spoke it was but a wisp of a whisper, grave as a warning.
"I don't know how it happened," she said. "I don't know how it began."
She took out her longblade then, a curved cut of steel that glimmered more than anything in the room. With her wand she murmured a long-forgotten spell to sharpen it, and then she went on.
"All I know is you've got to be careful. These aren't Inferi we're dealing with anymore."
Beside me, Hermione bristled. "They look like--"
"Zombies," she said. "They're zombies."
"There aren't any zombies up here," Hermione argued. She still liked doing that, even now at the end of the world. "In the African continent, maybe, but those instances are fairly often well-controlled, isolated early--"
"Don't you think that's why we were so unprepared for them? Because we were expecting to use what defeats Inferi to defeat them as well?"
Hermione blinked with a sudden look of understanding. I didn't see her very often with that look, least of all one that she got from someone else and not from her own reading or research. "Fire charms don't work on zombies," she breathed. "We've been using--"
"Exactly."
"Fiendfyre or Incendio and they don't--"
"So many wizards have died." She looked, for a moment, sorry. "It isn't very hard to make zombies though, not today. All you need is for an Inferi to bite a wizard."
"But why haven't they figured out yet? If you know, why don't others?"
"Others do know, Hermione," she said then. Her tone is careful and evenly toned, but there was a brittleness to it that I have never heard before. She went back to her longblade, sharpening it as she spoke. Her hand never shook but I suspected it almost did. "But no one is ready for what it takes to live."
"The sword?" Hermione ventured.
"Harry told me once," I told her, speaking up for the first time I was there. "He said the zombie games his cousin had made you cut off their heads."
"The brains need to be disconnected to the rest of the body," she said. "That's all. You don't need to cut off the head, although that's often found to be the most effective."
We sat there in silence for what might have been ages. Hermione and I have been on the run since the outbreak, fleeing as opposed to fighting. We've managed because she's smart and I guess, if it comes down to it after all, I can be useful too. We haven't heard from Harry or Ginny in a while--when we got to their house it had been vacated. Our owls haven't been returned. Guess they couldn't find anyone they wanted, either, or Harry and Ginny must have gone underground.
We hoped they went underground. It's a better thought than the other possibility.
But we were tired of running. We were tired of hiding. The Ministry was in shambles--the Aurors they sent to protect us against the zombies thought they were going up against an Inferi army and acted accordingly. Acted recklessly, stupidly, and now it seemed there would be no end in sight. We've taken to hiding out in abandoned houses in the middle of nowhere, or caves deep in the forests, with one of us awake at all times. In one of these caves we were told there was someone who knew what to do. That we should see her if we could find our way to the Shrieking Shack.
We were all the way in a forest by London, then. We were so far from Hogsmeade.
It took us a few days, but I cut off a sturdy branch, and Hermione, oh bloody brilliant girl that she was--we had no books but we had her brains, and we didn't know the spell to make brooms fly but she came up with it herself. A charm for our branch, and it was good enough to fit us both, and we made it here. We didn't know what we would find, or what we would hear, but as it turned out, it was this.
"So what should we do?" Hermione asked. She'd tied her hair in a tired ponytail, the frizzy curls framing her face. She was just as ragged, just as exhausted, and we just wanted this whole thing to end already.
"We've got to fight, haven't we?" she asked back. "They've closed the borders; all of England is infected. What else is there to do?"
"But that's--"
"Shh." Luna's eyes, large and watery blue but no longer as innocent, darted outside. She pressed her index finger against her lips and she sat there, listening.
So did we. From outside I could hear nothing, really. Just the faint rustling of the leaves, the howling of the wind.
No.
The moaning of the wind. The warning of the dead.
"They're here," she said, glancing at us gravely. She grabbed two spoons from her bag, Transfigured them into longswords as well. "What do you want to do?" she asked.
I looked at Hermione. Did we have a choice at this point?
"We're going to fight," I said.
Word count points: 1053/30 = 35 pts
Bonus points: 10 pts
Title: Twenty Years Later
Rating/Warnings: G
Characters/Pairing: James Sirius, Albus Severus, Lily Luna, Rose, Hugo, Scorpius, The Sorting Hat
Summary: The next-gen kids and their thoughts on Sorting.
Word Count: 1667 (!)
Author's Notes: Apologies for any errors. I was typing like a furious typing thing.
Registered purchases?: Both!
Lily
"It's okay," Lily is telling Hugo as they run through the wall to get into Platform 9 3/4. "Daddy says Hogwarts is going to be fun!"
"I know it is," Hugo says. His eyes are still thoughtful and he frowns. "But where am I supposed to be Sorted now? Where are they going to Sort me?"
Lily shrugs. She had a brother who was a Gryffindor and another who was in Hufflepuff, and after the debacle that was last year and her parents' reaction to Albus' Sorting she figures she can't really be bothered with the family heritage any longer. "You get Sorted wherever you want!" she decides with certainty.
"Lily, Hugo is going to be Sorted where the hat thinks he'll be best," her mum tells her kindly.
Lily only shakes her head. "Daddy said you can tell the hat where to go. Daddy said you can choose."
She doesn't miss the look her mum gives her dad, who only sputters something about making choices and how they matter most in the end.
"Come on," she says, grabbing Hugo by the hand and dragging him inside. "We're gonna miss the train!"
Hugo
Hugo doesn't worry about many things unless they warrant worrying. So that means, obviously, that he has a long list of concerns. His parents were more than happy to tell him they were going to be proud of him no matter what, and that they would love him whatever happened, but he is sure they're only saying that so he'd agree to go to Hogwarts in the end.
He doesn't really want to, now.
Last year Rose wrote back after her first day at school and told everyone she was all right, but Hugo can tell, from the way his dad's face turned purple and the way his mother clutched the letter to her hand, nearly crumpling it, that something was wrong.
That something was terribly wrong.
Rose came back fine, of course. She was still the sister he knew and she still played with him and told him stories about the school, but Hugo could sense something was up regardless.
And now he is properly worried.
"What if--" he starts, but Lily doesn't hear him. She shoves him, in typical Lily style, into a compartment and sits them down.
"This is going to be so much fun!" she says.
Hugo hopes she is right.
James
"Oy! You guys!" James says, passing by moments later with a few of his friends. He nods at Harry (too many of his friends are named Harry) and waves him and Hermione (too many of his friends are named Hermione too) away. "You go on ahead. I'll follow later."
He pokes his head in the compartment, where Lily is resolutely talking Hugo's ear off and he is resolutely ignoring her.
"Alright in here?" he asks.
"Oh! Hi James, yeah we're fine," Lily says.
"Hugo? You alright?"
Hugo wrinkles his nose. "I don't want to be a Hufflepuff," he says. "Or a Ravenclaw. Nothing wrong with those houses, right, but I want to be in Gryffindor, like my dad and mum."
James enters, shuts the door behind him. He nods solemnly. "It's okay, Hugo," he says. "You're definitely the most Gryffindor guy I know."
"Really?"
To be honest he thinks Hugo has the tendency to worry like a Hufflepuff, and the keenness in books and stuff like a Ravenclaw, but while James made sure to make Albus' life a little difficult after his Sorting, he doesn't actually find anything wrong with a different house. They were all alright, he thinks. (He'd never think to make Lily's life difficult--she'll only probably get back double. Personally, he'd not be surprised if she ended up in Slytherin.) "Positive."
At this Hugo smiles, and James ruffles his hair. He's fond of Hugo. He's always quiet and nice and never bothers James, and even looked impressed when James returned during second year hols after making seeker on the Gryffindor team.
Albus
"Albus, it's time to change."
"What? Oh, right, yeah," Albus says. He looks up at last from his book--just light reading material on the history of Hogwarts--and smiles uneasily at Rose. She'd already turned her back to him, rooting through her own things to pick out the robes that her parents had bought her after she grew like a foot taller over the summer.
He makes his way to his own bag, picking out the yellow and black tie that he had never in a million years thought he'd wear. His dad seemed okay with it, in the end, and even his mum had offered words of support, but something about the way they talked around him made him a bit uneasy.
Certainly his gran couldn't excuse the way she basically keeled over from shock when he wrote back to tell her that the red-and-gold jumper she'd sent him was actually not his house colors, as her letter had implied, and could she please send him some in the Hufflepuff colors next year? (He'd been polite and everything too, but he guesses that wasn't good enough.)
It wasn't so bad, being a Hufflepuff. He was doing fine in classes and he liked his Housemates well enough. They were a great house, really. Not a bunch of duffers at all, like his brother James had teased multiple times.
He likes their common room too.
"Hey Rose?"
"Hm?" She'd already smoothed over her tie. It didn't look bad on her, the blue-and-bronze of the eagle. You'd think her parents would be proud, but after the debacle of last year--
"Lily and Hugo are going to be fine, right?"
Rose
Rose smiles at Albus in reply. It's the only thing she can do--she's got a sharp mind and quick wit, things Rowena Ravenclaw did value in her students--but sometimes she wonders if maybe honesty is all it's cracked up to be.
The truth is that she knows her parents mean well, but at the heart of it, old prejudices die hard. The sins of the father, and all of that.
"Lily and Hugo will be okay," she says, and it's true. Lily is one of the most outspoken people she knows, and that's counting the adults. Hugo is a little timid, a little shy, but he's got a good head about him and she's going to be proud of him no matter what. Whatever their parents say, whatever house they end up in, she thinks they'll find their way eventually.
She's glad Albus didn't include qualifiers in his statement--when she says they're going to be okay, she means they're not going to find Sorting as difficult as Albus thinks they will. She knows full well Albus is asking about them getting into Gryffindor, and the truth is, that's only something the Hat would know, wouldn't it?
Someone knocks on their compartment, and she stands up. "Hang on--" she says, and opens the door. "Scorpius!"
Scorpius
"Sorry, I was nearly late," Scorpius says, smiling hesitantly when he sees Albus in the compartment with Rose. He is wearing his Ravenclaw tie with some reluctance--it took his mum all of the entire summer to convince him she wasn't disappointed, and that his father would eventually come around. He's not very close friends with Albus but Rose likes her cousin well enough, and Scorpius likes Rose well enough (he overheard his mum telling one of her friends it was the friendship with Ronald Weasley's daughter that was bothering his father so much, but that was silly, Scorpius thought) so he's willing to be civil if Albus is.
Which seems likely, since he's a Hufflepuff. He's already grinning back, scooting over to give him a seat, and offering him a Chocolate Frog. All in the first minute of his arrival.
"How was your summer?" Rose asks, sitting back across from Albus.
Scorpius takes the seat beside Albus to face Rose and props his feet up beside her. "It was okay," he says. "Went to France. Just came back yesterday, and we all were so knackered we overslept. Almost missed the train but got on just in time."
"I don't know what you would've done if you'd missed it!" Rose says.
"Dad says he and Uncle Ron did one time, because of a house elf," Albus pipes up. "They flew a car over London to get to Hogwarts!"
It sounds like a load of crock to Scorpius but he raises an eyebrow and asks Albus to tell him more. It's for Rose's benefit, he thinks.
They have a long year ahead of them and it wouldn't do to antagonize his best friend's friends.
Meanwhile, in Hogwarts
The Sorting Hat has had a long summer. Sort of. It's less eventful than the past summers have been, and these days it's decided that haikus make by far more efficient songs than sonnets or other kinds of poetry ever did.
It is on the last verses of this year's song, coming up with a word that rhymes with cooperation and wondering whether it was really five syllables or not.
Sometimes haiku were difficult that way, it reasons.
The Sorting Hat does more than Sort, it decides. Long ago that was its task but it also took it long enough to figure, when Gryffindor decided that it needed a Hat to decide where students went, that it was also responsible for house unity above all.
It had always been responsible for house unity.
It had screwed up many times actually following that tenet, but these days it had much more effective ways of achieving this. From students' minds it read the prejudice of their parents still lingered, long after their sins were supposedly forgiven, and it has since devised a plan to pierce through those biases. It had hoped it had done enough with Weasley's and Malfoy's the year prior, but it knows another set of Weasley and Potter are about to start Hogwarts.
The dungeons, it reasons, will definitely have a very interesting class this year.
Word count points: 1667/30 = 56 pts
Bonus points: 10 pts
Title: Six Summers
Rating/Warnings: PG-13
Characters/Pairing: Draco, Theodore, Blaise, Pansy, Daphne, Astoria, Blaise/Pansy, Draco/Astoria
Summary: Snippets of six summers via Slytherin students. (there's a tongue twister for you)
Word Count: 1426
Registered purchases?: Both!
Draco and Theodore
"Big things are coming," Draco Malfoy says with all the solemnity of a boy who just turned fourteen. He knows so. His father told him everything, or at least that's what he hopes his words imply. Truth be told, his father has been annoyingly tight-lipped about everything going on these days, and if not for a few instances here and there where Draco is able to listen in to his father's conversations, he would otherwise know nothing at all.
Beside him, Theodore Nott nods in agreement. Draco knows Theodore's father would have told him things--everyone always says Theodore's got the maturity of an adult, anyway--so he doesn't doubt that at all. "They're getting ready," he says.
Draco leans forward, eager to know more. He hopes Theodore does not notice this. "Has your father told you too?" he asks.
"Enough to know to be ready," is all Theodore would say. The way he casts a sideways glance at Draco, the way the corner of his lips sneer the slightest bit, make Draco feel uncomfortable. It's like he's having a laugh on Draco's expense.
Draco frowns. "He's told you nothing, hasn't he."
Theodore merely shrugs. "Believe what you want."
When the Notts leave--Thaddeus Nott's hand on his son's shoulder, stiff and imposing--Draco doesn't say goodbye.
He's already in his father's study, looking through books for any way to listen in next time his father has a fire-call from one of Them.
Theodore and Blaise
"Thank you, Mrs. Zabini," Theodore says. He wipes his mouth with the napkin, remembers his manners, and does not forget to smile graciously, gratefully, when Isabella Zabini offers him more food.
It is a risk she is willing to take, he knows, taking in the son of an imprisoned man, but he can't help the bile rising from his throat, the anger coursing through his veins every time he remembers how stupid his father had been. How reckless. How thoughtless.
Blaise Zabini is less than sympathetic. He leaves Theodore alone for the most part, though one time he does venture outside his own room or the village cafe (where he's trying, unsuccessfully, to get into one of the waitresses knickers) to bother Theodore while he's reading.
"Do you suppose that's going to help when you're in Azkaban yourself?" Blaise asks. He lacks the subtlety of a snake.
"What do you want?"
"Are you still going to Hogwarts this term?"
"Why shouldn't I?"
"It's rather risky, isn't it? You don't know what those students will do to you. What Potter will."
"Malfoy is Potter's business. I'll be fine, though I will take note to thank you for your concern." Theodore ignores him for the rest of the afternoon, and soon enough, Blaise takes the hint and disappears.
Blaise and Pansy
"Come here," he whispers, leading Pansy into a hidden corner of the Zabini gardens.
"What are you taking me here for?" she asks, breathless and pink-cheeked. She knows damn well, the slag, but Blaise plays along. He knows that's the sort of game she likes.
"I wanted to show you something," he whispers.
Pansy giggles then, and Blaise's hold on her wrist tightens the smallest bit. His mother and Pansy's encouraged their so-called friendship, especially once the Malfoys' name had gone to utter shit, and Blaise is never one to ignore such an opportunity. Pansy is pretty, after all, even though she's still hopelessly infatuated with Draco.
He hopes to change that soon enough.
Pansy is soft, small against his hands. She sighs against his lips and doesn't squirm away when he lets his hands wander.
He has her against a sturdy oak tree (is it always oak trees that first witness lovers, he wonders?), his hands on her hips and his mouth on hers, when he tastes the salt on her tongue.
"Pansy?"
She doesn't look up, doesn't say anything for the longest time.
"Pansy?"
When she speaks her voice breaks. Her fingers cling to his shirt and she sobs, unflattering sounds breaking through her tiny body, against his chest. "What's going to happen to him?" she asks, and he does not have to ask to know who she means.
He holds her until her tears subside, long after the sun sets.
Pansy and Daphne
They talk like there's nothing wrong, like the world just hadn't gone to shite and nobody's life is in danger.
Theirs isn't; they're both pure of blood and even purer of guilt.
Daphne's talk is superficial, of NEWTs and boys and the latest glamors that Witch Weekly talked about in their latest issue.
Pansy laughs along, hums along, gabs along, but her thought is heavy with other things.
"What are you doing after Hogwarts?" she asks suddenly.
Daphne blinks for a while, as though she has never considered the question before. (In all likelihood, she really never has.) "Mum says there aren't very many prospects left in England anymore," she starts. "She says I might have better luck if I summered in France and see if I might meet with any of the pureblooded families there. You?"
"Russia," she says with a rueful smile. She hates the idea herself, personally, but her mother has many great friends there, and already a few good contacts. It is inevitable at this point.
Everything, it seems, is inevitable at this point.
Daphne and Astoria
"You have nothing to worry about, I don't even know why you're fussing the way you are," Daphne tells her sister, but Astoria only rolls her eyes in response.
Of course she'd roll her eyes, but Daphne doesn't care much. She's got a ring on her finger already--Andre, a rich pureblooded French boy, has wooed her and swept her off her feet within a week of holidaying in France, and she's already planning their wedding for the year after. Meanwhile, Astoria has two years left in Hogwarts and even fewer friends to go by. Most of Slytherin have left, or so she hears from Emma Dobbs, who knows these things, so Daphne supposes her younger sister has more than a few concerns.
"It's just going to be different," Astoria says. Not that the last few years have been anywhere close to normal, mind, what with all the madness going on. "Pansy's lucky she doesn't have to return, but I still do.
"Do you think I should have a fall wedding or a winter wedding?" Daphne asks instead, already bored with the topic. "I do love fall but winter could be ever so romantic, don't you think? I'd love a fur coat and a carriage to carry us off into the sunset."
Astoria wrinkles her nose. "You're not listening to me!"
"Oh, Astoria, you've nothing to worry about," Daphne tells her. "You know what I hear? Draco's supposedly coming back."
"What?"
"He never really finished his NEWTs or anything, did he?" Daphne asks. "They're making him return to Hogwarts. You are going to be the least of anyone's worries."
Astoria frowns.
Astoria and Draco
"So what now?"
Draco looks at her. "What do you mean?"
"What are you doing now?"
Draco shrugs. "I don't really know, to be honest."
He has never really returned to the Draco Malfoy she knew growing up. In school he tried to blend in the shadows, going about his classes with a haunted look and avoiding everybody in the hallways when he passed them by. She reaches out to close her hand around his, and he looks up to catch her gaze. "Mum says--" she starts, not sure how to bring this up. He's still proud, she knows. "Mum says you're free to apply to the apothecary. She says one of the Potionsmasters is looking for an apprentice."
"Astoria--"
"Will you at least try?" she asks. "You're one of the best I know at Potions, this isn't a handout or anything--" He gives her a baleful look-- "Oh, come on, you know that's what you're thinking and it isn't!"
"I can find something on my own," he argues.
"But you'll hate everywhere else. The apothecary is a good place to start. The Potionsmaster is really good, too, and he won't care about-- about anything other than ability."
Draco doesn't look all that convinced.
"At the very least, try it for a year?" she suggests.
"And then?"
"And then if you hate it, well, at least I'll be out of Hogwarts, and then maybe--"
Draco looks somewhat.. hopeful?
"Maybe we can take it from there and see?"
"Alright," he says. He turns his palm around to face hers and squeezes. "I'll try."
Word count points: 1426/30 = 48 pts
Bonus points: 10 pts
Total word count points: 35 + 56 + 48 = 139 125 points
Bonus points: 10 + 10 + 10 = 30
Total points: 155 pts for Ravenclaw!
Rating/Warnings: G
Characters/Pairing: Ron, Hermione, Luna
Summary: When we found her, she was nearly unrecognizable.
Word Count: 1053
Author's Notes: Brrrrraaaaaiiiiiiinnnnnsssssss
Registered purchases?: Both!
When we found her, she was nearly unrecognizable.
Her hair was cut short. Ragged, jagged, dirty. It was clumped in places and matted in others, tied into a ponytail where the length would let it. She didn't look like she cared. She never did. Her cheeks were streaked with dirt, her fingernails caked with mud and what looked like, but couldn't have been, dried blood. She had bruises on her arms, bags under her eyes, which were guileless as ever.
At least some things never changed.
We were hidden in the Shrieking Shack, of all places. It was hers now, and I had cast what little protective wards I knew to keep us safe. She'd only shaken her head, tapped her ear. We would listen, was her signal. We would be safer alert.
There wasn't much in the room. In one corner lay a threadbare blanket, a leather satchel, a jug that had seen better days. There was a bit of food in one of the bags, I knew, but despite my grumbling appetite, didn't ask her which bag. She wouldn't offer, with good reason. We all needed it just as much.
When she spoke it was but a wisp of a whisper, grave as a warning.
"I don't know how it happened," she said. "I don't know how it began."
She took out her longblade then, a curved cut of steel that glimmered more than anything in the room. With her wand she murmured a long-forgotten spell to sharpen it, and then she went on.
"All I know is you've got to be careful. These aren't Inferi we're dealing with anymore."
Beside me, Hermione bristled. "They look like--"
"Zombies," she said. "They're zombies."
"There aren't any zombies up here," Hermione argued. She still liked doing that, even now at the end of the world. "In the African continent, maybe, but those instances are fairly often well-controlled, isolated early--"
"Don't you think that's why we were so unprepared for them? Because we were expecting to use what defeats Inferi to defeat them as well?"
Hermione blinked with a sudden look of understanding. I didn't see her very often with that look, least of all one that she got from someone else and not from her own reading or research. "Fire charms don't work on zombies," she breathed. "We've been using--"
"Exactly."
"Fiendfyre or Incendio and they don't--"
"So many wizards have died." She looked, for a moment, sorry. "It isn't very hard to make zombies though, not today. All you need is for an Inferi to bite a wizard."
"But why haven't they figured out yet? If you know, why don't others?"
"Others do know, Hermione," she said then. Her tone is careful and evenly toned, but there was a brittleness to it that I have never heard before. She went back to her longblade, sharpening it as she spoke. Her hand never shook but I suspected it almost did. "But no one is ready for what it takes to live."
"The sword?" Hermione ventured.
"Harry told me once," I told her, speaking up for the first time I was there. "He said the zombie games his cousin had made you cut off their heads."
"The brains need to be disconnected to the rest of the body," she said. "That's all. You don't need to cut off the head, although that's often found to be the most effective."
We sat there in silence for what might have been ages. Hermione and I have been on the run since the outbreak, fleeing as opposed to fighting. We've managed because she's smart and I guess, if it comes down to it after all, I can be useful too. We haven't heard from Harry or Ginny in a while--when we got to their house it had been vacated. Our owls haven't been returned. Guess they couldn't find anyone they wanted, either, or Harry and Ginny must have gone underground.
We hoped they went underground. It's a better thought than the other possibility.
But we were tired of running. We were tired of hiding. The Ministry was in shambles--the Aurors they sent to protect us against the zombies thought they were going up against an Inferi army and acted accordingly. Acted recklessly, stupidly, and now it seemed there would be no end in sight. We've taken to hiding out in abandoned houses in the middle of nowhere, or caves deep in the forests, with one of us awake at all times. In one of these caves we were told there was someone who knew what to do. That we should see her if we could find our way to the Shrieking Shack.
We were all the way in a forest by London, then. We were so far from Hogsmeade.
It took us a few days, but I cut off a sturdy branch, and Hermione, oh bloody brilliant girl that she was--we had no books but we had her brains, and we didn't know the spell to make brooms fly but she came up with it herself. A charm for our branch, and it was good enough to fit us both, and we made it here. We didn't know what we would find, or what we would hear, but as it turned out, it was this.
"So what should we do?" Hermione asked. She'd tied her hair in a tired ponytail, the frizzy curls framing her face. She was just as ragged, just as exhausted, and we just wanted this whole thing to end already.
"We've got to fight, haven't we?" she asked back. "They've closed the borders; all of England is infected. What else is there to do?"
"But that's--"
"Shh." Luna's eyes, large and watery blue but no longer as innocent, darted outside. She pressed her index finger against her lips and she sat there, listening.
So did we. From outside I could hear nothing, really. Just the faint rustling of the leaves, the howling of the wind.
No.
The moaning of the wind. The warning of the dead.
"They're here," she said, glancing at us gravely. She grabbed two spoons from her bag, Transfigured them into longswords as well. "What do you want to do?" she asked.
I looked at Hermione. Did we have a choice at this point?
"We're going to fight," I said.
Word count points: 1053/30 = 35 pts
Bonus points: 10 pts
Title: Twenty Years Later
Rating/Warnings: G
Characters/Pairing: James Sirius, Albus Severus, Lily Luna, Rose, Hugo, Scorpius, The Sorting Hat
Summary: The next-gen kids and their thoughts on Sorting.
Word Count: 1667 (!)
Author's Notes: Apologies for any errors. I was typing like a furious typing thing.
Registered purchases?: Both!
Lily
"It's okay," Lily is telling Hugo as they run through the wall to get into Platform 9 3/4. "Daddy says Hogwarts is going to be fun!"
"I know it is," Hugo says. His eyes are still thoughtful and he frowns. "But where am I supposed to be Sorted now? Where are they going to Sort me?"
Lily shrugs. She had a brother who was a Gryffindor and another who was in Hufflepuff, and after the debacle that was last year and her parents' reaction to Albus' Sorting she figures she can't really be bothered with the family heritage any longer. "You get Sorted wherever you want!" she decides with certainty.
"Lily, Hugo is going to be Sorted where the hat thinks he'll be best," her mum tells her kindly.
Lily only shakes her head. "Daddy said you can tell the hat where to go. Daddy said you can choose."
She doesn't miss the look her mum gives her dad, who only sputters something about making choices and how they matter most in the end.
"Come on," she says, grabbing Hugo by the hand and dragging him inside. "We're gonna miss the train!"
Hugo
Hugo doesn't worry about many things unless they warrant worrying. So that means, obviously, that he has a long list of concerns. His parents were more than happy to tell him they were going to be proud of him no matter what, and that they would love him whatever happened, but he is sure they're only saying that so he'd agree to go to Hogwarts in the end.
He doesn't really want to, now.
Last year Rose wrote back after her first day at school and told everyone she was all right, but Hugo can tell, from the way his dad's face turned purple and the way his mother clutched the letter to her hand, nearly crumpling it, that something was wrong.
That something was terribly wrong.
Rose came back fine, of course. She was still the sister he knew and she still played with him and told him stories about the school, but Hugo could sense something was up regardless.
And now he is properly worried.
"What if--" he starts, but Lily doesn't hear him. She shoves him, in typical Lily style, into a compartment and sits them down.
"This is going to be so much fun!" she says.
Hugo hopes she is right.
James
"Oy! You guys!" James says, passing by moments later with a few of his friends. He nods at Harry (too many of his friends are named Harry) and waves him and Hermione (too many of his friends are named Hermione too) away. "You go on ahead. I'll follow later."
He pokes his head in the compartment, where Lily is resolutely talking Hugo's ear off and he is resolutely ignoring her.
"Alright in here?" he asks.
"Oh! Hi James, yeah we're fine," Lily says.
"Hugo? You alright?"
Hugo wrinkles his nose. "I don't want to be a Hufflepuff," he says. "Or a Ravenclaw. Nothing wrong with those houses, right, but I want to be in Gryffindor, like my dad and mum."
James enters, shuts the door behind him. He nods solemnly. "It's okay, Hugo," he says. "You're definitely the most Gryffindor guy I know."
"Really?"
To be honest he thinks Hugo has the tendency to worry like a Hufflepuff, and the keenness in books and stuff like a Ravenclaw, but while James made sure to make Albus' life a little difficult after his Sorting, he doesn't actually find anything wrong with a different house. They were all alright, he thinks. (He'd never think to make Lily's life difficult--she'll only probably get back double. Personally, he'd not be surprised if she ended up in Slytherin.) "Positive."
At this Hugo smiles, and James ruffles his hair. He's fond of Hugo. He's always quiet and nice and never bothers James, and even looked impressed when James returned during second year hols after making seeker on the Gryffindor team.
Albus
"Albus, it's time to change."
"What? Oh, right, yeah," Albus says. He looks up at last from his book--just light reading material on the history of Hogwarts--and smiles uneasily at Rose. She'd already turned her back to him, rooting through her own things to pick out the robes that her parents had bought her after she grew like a foot taller over the summer.
He makes his way to his own bag, picking out the yellow and black tie that he had never in a million years thought he'd wear. His dad seemed okay with it, in the end, and even his mum had offered words of support, but something about the way they talked around him made him a bit uneasy.
Certainly his gran couldn't excuse the way she basically keeled over from shock when he wrote back to tell her that the red-and-gold jumper she'd sent him was actually not his house colors, as her letter had implied, and could she please send him some in the Hufflepuff colors next year? (He'd been polite and everything too, but he guesses that wasn't good enough.)
It wasn't so bad, being a Hufflepuff. He was doing fine in classes and he liked his Housemates well enough. They were a great house, really. Not a bunch of duffers at all, like his brother James had teased multiple times.
He likes their common room too.
"Hey Rose?"
"Hm?" She'd already smoothed over her tie. It didn't look bad on her, the blue-and-bronze of the eagle. You'd think her parents would be proud, but after the debacle of last year--
"Lily and Hugo are going to be fine, right?"
Rose
Rose smiles at Albus in reply. It's the only thing she can do--she's got a sharp mind and quick wit, things Rowena Ravenclaw did value in her students--but sometimes she wonders if maybe honesty is all it's cracked up to be.
The truth is that she knows her parents mean well, but at the heart of it, old prejudices die hard. The sins of the father, and all of that.
"Lily and Hugo will be okay," she says, and it's true. Lily is one of the most outspoken people she knows, and that's counting the adults. Hugo is a little timid, a little shy, but he's got a good head about him and she's going to be proud of him no matter what. Whatever their parents say, whatever house they end up in, she thinks they'll find their way eventually.
She's glad Albus didn't include qualifiers in his statement--when she says they're going to be okay, she means they're not going to find Sorting as difficult as Albus thinks they will. She knows full well Albus is asking about them getting into Gryffindor, and the truth is, that's only something the Hat would know, wouldn't it?
Someone knocks on their compartment, and she stands up. "Hang on--" she says, and opens the door. "Scorpius!"
Scorpius
"Sorry, I was nearly late," Scorpius says, smiling hesitantly when he sees Albus in the compartment with Rose. He is wearing his Ravenclaw tie with some reluctance--it took his mum all of the entire summer to convince him she wasn't disappointed, and that his father would eventually come around. He's not very close friends with Albus but Rose likes her cousin well enough, and Scorpius likes Rose well enough (he overheard his mum telling one of her friends it was the friendship with Ronald Weasley's daughter that was bothering his father so much, but that was silly, Scorpius thought) so he's willing to be civil if Albus is.
Which seems likely, since he's a Hufflepuff. He's already grinning back, scooting over to give him a seat, and offering him a Chocolate Frog. All in the first minute of his arrival.
"How was your summer?" Rose asks, sitting back across from Albus.
Scorpius takes the seat beside Albus to face Rose and props his feet up beside her. "It was okay," he says. "Went to France. Just came back yesterday, and we all were so knackered we overslept. Almost missed the train but got on just in time."
"I don't know what you would've done if you'd missed it!" Rose says.
"Dad says he and Uncle Ron did one time, because of a house elf," Albus pipes up. "They flew a car over London to get to Hogwarts!"
It sounds like a load of crock to Scorpius but he raises an eyebrow and asks Albus to tell him more. It's for Rose's benefit, he thinks.
They have a long year ahead of them and it wouldn't do to antagonize his best friend's friends.
Meanwhile, in Hogwarts
The Sorting Hat has had a long summer. Sort of. It's less eventful than the past summers have been, and these days it's decided that haikus make by far more efficient songs than sonnets or other kinds of poetry ever did.
It is on the last verses of this year's song, coming up with a word that rhymes with cooperation and wondering whether it was really five syllables or not.
Sometimes haiku were difficult that way, it reasons.
The Sorting Hat does more than Sort, it decides. Long ago that was its task but it also took it long enough to figure, when Gryffindor decided that it needed a Hat to decide where students went, that it was also responsible for house unity above all.
It had always been responsible for house unity.
It had screwed up many times actually following that tenet, but these days it had much more effective ways of achieving this. From students' minds it read the prejudice of their parents still lingered, long after their sins were supposedly forgiven, and it has since devised a plan to pierce through those biases. It had hoped it had done enough with Weasley's and Malfoy's the year prior, but it knows another set of Weasley and Potter are about to start Hogwarts.
The dungeons, it reasons, will definitely have a very interesting class this year.
Word count points: 1667/30 = 56 pts
Bonus points: 10 pts
Title: Six Summers
Rating/Warnings: PG-13
Characters/Pairing: Draco, Theodore, Blaise, Pansy, Daphne, Astoria, Blaise/Pansy, Draco/Astoria
Summary: Snippets of six summers via Slytherin students. (there's a tongue twister for you)
Word Count: 1426
Registered purchases?: Both!
Draco and Theodore
"Big things are coming," Draco Malfoy says with all the solemnity of a boy who just turned fourteen. He knows so. His father told him everything, or at least that's what he hopes his words imply. Truth be told, his father has been annoyingly tight-lipped about everything going on these days, and if not for a few instances here and there where Draco is able to listen in to his father's conversations, he would otherwise know nothing at all.
Beside him, Theodore Nott nods in agreement. Draco knows Theodore's father would have told him things--everyone always says Theodore's got the maturity of an adult, anyway--so he doesn't doubt that at all. "They're getting ready," he says.
Draco leans forward, eager to know more. He hopes Theodore does not notice this. "Has your father told you too?" he asks.
"Enough to know to be ready," is all Theodore would say. The way he casts a sideways glance at Draco, the way the corner of his lips sneer the slightest bit, make Draco feel uncomfortable. It's like he's having a laugh on Draco's expense.
Draco frowns. "He's told you nothing, hasn't he."
Theodore merely shrugs. "Believe what you want."
When the Notts leave--Thaddeus Nott's hand on his son's shoulder, stiff and imposing--Draco doesn't say goodbye.
He's already in his father's study, looking through books for any way to listen in next time his father has a fire-call from one of Them.
Theodore and Blaise
"Thank you, Mrs. Zabini," Theodore says. He wipes his mouth with the napkin, remembers his manners, and does not forget to smile graciously, gratefully, when Isabella Zabini offers him more food.
It is a risk she is willing to take, he knows, taking in the son of an imprisoned man, but he can't help the bile rising from his throat, the anger coursing through his veins every time he remembers how stupid his father had been. How reckless. How thoughtless.
Blaise Zabini is less than sympathetic. He leaves Theodore alone for the most part, though one time he does venture outside his own room or the village cafe (where he's trying, unsuccessfully, to get into one of the waitresses knickers) to bother Theodore while he's reading.
"Do you suppose that's going to help when you're in Azkaban yourself?" Blaise asks. He lacks the subtlety of a snake.
"What do you want?"
"Are you still going to Hogwarts this term?"
"Why shouldn't I?"
"It's rather risky, isn't it? You don't know what those students will do to you. What Potter will."
"Malfoy is Potter's business. I'll be fine, though I will take note to thank you for your concern." Theodore ignores him for the rest of the afternoon, and soon enough, Blaise takes the hint and disappears.
Blaise and Pansy
"Come here," he whispers, leading Pansy into a hidden corner of the Zabini gardens.
"What are you taking me here for?" she asks, breathless and pink-cheeked. She knows damn well, the slag, but Blaise plays along. He knows that's the sort of game she likes.
"I wanted to show you something," he whispers.
Pansy giggles then, and Blaise's hold on her wrist tightens the smallest bit. His mother and Pansy's encouraged their so-called friendship, especially once the Malfoys' name had gone to utter shit, and Blaise is never one to ignore such an opportunity. Pansy is pretty, after all, even though she's still hopelessly infatuated with Draco.
He hopes to change that soon enough.
Pansy is soft, small against his hands. She sighs against his lips and doesn't squirm away when he lets his hands wander.
He has her against a sturdy oak tree (is it always oak trees that first witness lovers, he wonders?), his hands on her hips and his mouth on hers, when he tastes the salt on her tongue.
"Pansy?"
She doesn't look up, doesn't say anything for the longest time.
"Pansy?"
When she speaks her voice breaks. Her fingers cling to his shirt and she sobs, unflattering sounds breaking through her tiny body, against his chest. "What's going to happen to him?" she asks, and he does not have to ask to know who she means.
He holds her until her tears subside, long after the sun sets.
Pansy and Daphne
They talk like there's nothing wrong, like the world just hadn't gone to shite and nobody's life is in danger.
Theirs isn't; they're both pure of blood and even purer of guilt.
Daphne's talk is superficial, of NEWTs and boys and the latest glamors that Witch Weekly talked about in their latest issue.
Pansy laughs along, hums along, gabs along, but her thought is heavy with other things.
"What are you doing after Hogwarts?" she asks suddenly.
Daphne blinks for a while, as though she has never considered the question before. (In all likelihood, she really never has.) "Mum says there aren't very many prospects left in England anymore," she starts. "She says I might have better luck if I summered in France and see if I might meet with any of the pureblooded families there. You?"
"Russia," she says with a rueful smile. She hates the idea herself, personally, but her mother has many great friends there, and already a few good contacts. It is inevitable at this point.
Everything, it seems, is inevitable at this point.
Daphne and Astoria
"You have nothing to worry about, I don't even know why you're fussing the way you are," Daphne tells her sister, but Astoria only rolls her eyes in response.
Of course she'd roll her eyes, but Daphne doesn't care much. She's got a ring on her finger already--Andre, a rich pureblooded French boy, has wooed her and swept her off her feet within a week of holidaying in France, and she's already planning their wedding for the year after. Meanwhile, Astoria has two years left in Hogwarts and even fewer friends to go by. Most of Slytherin have left, or so she hears from Emma Dobbs, who knows these things, so Daphne supposes her younger sister has more than a few concerns.
"It's just going to be different," Astoria says. Not that the last few years have been anywhere close to normal, mind, what with all the madness going on. "Pansy's lucky she doesn't have to return, but I still do.
"Do you think I should have a fall wedding or a winter wedding?" Daphne asks instead, already bored with the topic. "I do love fall but winter could be ever so romantic, don't you think? I'd love a fur coat and a carriage to carry us off into the sunset."
Astoria wrinkles her nose. "You're not listening to me!"
"Oh, Astoria, you've nothing to worry about," Daphne tells her. "You know what I hear? Draco's supposedly coming back."
"What?"
"He never really finished his NEWTs or anything, did he?" Daphne asks. "They're making him return to Hogwarts. You are going to be the least of anyone's worries."
Astoria frowns.
Astoria and Draco
"So what now?"
Draco looks at her. "What do you mean?"
"What are you doing now?"
Draco shrugs. "I don't really know, to be honest."
He has never really returned to the Draco Malfoy she knew growing up. In school he tried to blend in the shadows, going about his classes with a haunted look and avoiding everybody in the hallways when he passed them by. She reaches out to close her hand around his, and he looks up to catch her gaze. "Mum says--" she starts, not sure how to bring this up. He's still proud, she knows. "Mum says you're free to apply to the apothecary. She says one of the Potionsmasters is looking for an apprentice."
"Astoria--"
"Will you at least try?" she asks. "You're one of the best I know at Potions, this isn't a handout or anything--" He gives her a baleful look-- "Oh, come on, you know that's what you're thinking and it isn't!"
"I can find something on my own," he argues.
"But you'll hate everywhere else. The apothecary is a good place to start. The Potionsmaster is really good, too, and he won't care about-- about anything other than ability."
Draco doesn't look all that convinced.
"At the very least, try it for a year?" she suggests.
"And then?"
"And then if you hate it, well, at least I'll be out of Hogwarts, and then maybe--"
Draco looks somewhat.. hopeful?
"Maybe we can take it from there and see?"
"Alright," he says. He turns his palm around to face hers and squeezes. "I'll try."
Word count points: 1426/30 = 48 pts
Bonus points: 10 pts
Total word count points: 35 + 56 + 48 = 139 125 points
Bonus points: 10 + 10 + 10 = 30
Total points: 155 pts for Ravenclaw!