Voting: Round 4, Final Challenge
Thank you to ifanciful and saraannette for getting your drabbles in! It was tough, and both of you just barely made it, but the drabbles are all outstanding.
Identities will NOT be screened this weeks in hopes that readers will take into account not only this week's drabbles, but also both contestants' previous drabbles when voting.
The rules for voting are as follows:
1. There are two groups of entries. The first consists of drabbles written for the prompts the authors came up with for each other, and the second consists of free choice drabbles. You will be asked to vote for your favourite of each group, and then vote for which author you believe should be the last drabble writer standing. Each vote in the first two polls counts for one point, and each vote in the third poll counts for two.
2. The drabbles are all rated PG and may contain hints of femmeslash. Proceed no further if that offends you.
3. Read with an open mind, and vote fairly. Please try to remember that the length and pairing of a drabble should not affect your judgment of its quality.
4. Contestants are not allowed to vote for themselves. If you vote for yourself, your vote will not be counted.
5. ** PLEASE TAKE NOTE OF THIS ** Voting will remain open until Thursday, June 26 at 11 PM EST. This should give readers time to both review authors' past drabbles and read this week's drabbles. The final results will be announced on Friday.
Challenge 1
saraannette's challenge: Pensieve
The drabble should focus on EITHER a character placing a memory into the pensieve (which memory? why? etc.) OR a character viewing somebody else's memory in the Pensieve. Characters, genre, etc. are at the writer's discretion.
Title: Clarity
Author: ifanciful
Rating: PG
Warnings: None.
Word Count: 498
There simply wasn’t room for four rowdy fifteen-year-olds under one invisibility cloak, so when James’d pulled it from under his robes, he’d grinned, saying at least two poor buggers would be out of luck if Filch popped up.
That was six minutes ago, but it was also six years.
Out in the corridor, moonlight poured around them from the high windows as easily as honey from a jar.
Glass clinked together, sharp as the prick of a quill, where James and Peter where under the invisibility cloak, where Remus saw nothing but stone floor, and he turned away. Behind the dark armour were him and Sirius, and even pressed to a wall, Remus looked to be falling all over himself. It came to him then, how true this was to the future: Remus cornered and Peter and James gone; Filch finally appeared as Remus yanked himself away from the memory.
He floated steadily to the surface of the Pensieve like a drowned corpse, its lungs still too full of oxygen to keep under.
It was still dark, but the moon came softer, muffled behind semi-closed curtains, coloured black as if stained from the darkness. Several vials were lined up across the table before him like silver bullets, and the wallpaper was tearing away, curling like the worried letters from his father.
They were letters Remus couldn’t answer yet, because for Merlin's sake, he had to know. It was an objective perspective he needed, though even with the Pensieve, he could hardly whittle away his judgments or the dry sting at the back of his throat turning the memories like curdled milk before he had even broken the surface.
Remus rolled his fingertips over the vials; it didn’t matter which one was next, stalling already came with the routine: he was fettered to the feeling that his veins were run over with some dry weed averse to any forward motion, but averse to the past also.
Though his need for some vestige of understanding pushed him forward. When he finally plunged into another memory - more like cringing forward than anything - it was toward events coloured bitter with knowledge, knowledge he reminded himself was futile to whisper to his past self. They walked through each other, both feeling nothing, only one realizing what would come that day:
Sirius was grinning, throwing his head back to laugh as he tossed wadded parchment into the air, catching it lazily, but it was the day he sold Remus out to Snape, just one step in the long trail to selling James to Voldemort.
Not for the first time, Remus was full-up with a rush of anger stampeding just below his skin. Brimful with frustration, he clawed toward the surface again, wondering what they all would think if they saw him now, then remembering there was no-one left to. Remus fumbled for the stop of another vial as he pulled the Pensive toward him, still not able to comprehend what exactly went wrong.
Challenge 2
ifanciful's challenge: It's clear that House Elves have distinctly different minds that separate the way they view life from the way a witch or wizard might. Likewise, they have a separate culture of their own, despite living in accord with (or as most of them would believe, to serve) wizards. We've seen shades of this in the book, though never in much depth.
So my challenge: A lot of what the norm is when it comes to House Elves was displayed through Winky in GOF. Write a drabble from her PoV, set anytime after she is released from the Crouch family's service.
Title: The Galleon
Author: saraannette
Rating: PG
Warnings: Elf angst? :D
Word Count: 421
i.
One by one, the doors slam shut in her face. It does not occur to Winky to be angry: not even in secret, not even silently behind the closed cage of her teeth. Each time she raises her knobbly fist to knock on a door, she is already picturing it closing. There will be nothing behind it, for her; no respectable work, no rest nor comfort.
One by one, the doors slam shut in her face. What she thinks is, It is just as Winky deserves. She believes in justice. She believes that is what has been meted out.
Bread scavenged from a wastebin mostly just tastes like waste. Tears taste like salt and terrible weight. Shame, in her mouth, tastes as rich and round as fruit.
She believes in justice. One by one, the doors slam shut.
ii.
It is four days since she's been free, since the first door closed. Her clothes feel like another, rougher skin atop her own. She cringes against the feel of them.
The sour stone in her stomach is hunger. It is nothing to do with why she wants work so badly. She wants work because she can think of nothing else worth wanting: she can think of no other use for her hands, her blood, her breath.
Her hands, her blood, her breath are heavy and useless. They are only reminders of her disgrace. Her failure is dirty grey, and clings like heat to her skin.
It is just as Winky deserves. She believes in justice.
iii.
She looks down, now, when she walks, her chin folded into her chest, so it is no surprise that she spots it straightaway: the Galleon wedged between the stones of the street, its gold dulled by a thick shroud of grime. Without thinking, she bends to pick it up, attracted only by its strangeness. When she realizes what she is holding, she cries out, and lets it clatter to her feet.
She would not like to be seen holding it. She might be mistaken for a paid elf, and she could not bear that shame on top of the shame she has earned. It is almost a consolation: she is not yet sunk as low as that.
The sour stone in her stomach is hunger. The soft ache just above it is her heart. Quickly as she can, Winky kicks the Galleon away. She barely slows her steps.
She believes in justice. It is just as Winky deserves. One by one, the doors slam shut.
Free Choice 1
Title: At the Seaside
Author: saraannette
Rating: PG
Warnings: None.
Word Count: 472
The restless back-and-forth lurch of the sea is like the pacing of some great caged beast. It is louder than Amy expected: she had been able to hear the waves even in the village, their shushings and weight, but here they are deafening. The sound seems to crash against her own thoughts, making them unsteady, and hard to hold onto. When Tom turns to speak to her, his words are lost beneath the ocean's complaint. But his smile, as bright and neat as plastic: she can make that out even through the grey-green dusk.
He speaks again, and this time she hears him. "Not much farther now."
Dennis frowns and glances over his shoulder, his eyes tracing the slim row of lights they've shed like skin. "We aren't meant to sneak off," he mutters, and his gaze skitters towards the jagged splinter of cliff before them. "We aren't meant to leave the village. Mrs. Cole said."
Amy narrows her eyes. Dennis Stupid Pratface Bishop, with his nervous hands and always-running nose: he ruins everything. He cannot know what he's doing, cannot possibly understand how important this moment is. Cause Tom Riddle has noticed her at last. The handsomest boy at the orphanage, the handsomest boy she's ever seen outside of a movie magazine; and he asked her, plain old Amy, to nick off to the beach with him. He asked her. "Nobody made you come, tag-along," Amy hisses to Dennis. It's the truth. He only smirks.
Loud enough so Tom can probably hear, he singsongs, "Amy li-ikes Rid-dle."
Amy spares him one last scowl before turning to race after Tom, who has not stopped to wait for them. The ground is becoming rocky, slick, beneath her feet. She presses her tongue to the roof of her mouth and tastes the wistful saltiness of the sea below.
"We're almost there," Tom calls back to them. "Wait till you see, it's awfully good."
He is almost to the cliff's edge; still, he turns around and walks backwards, seeming quite unafraid. He smiles once more, generous and wide, and looks as though he's holding back laughter as he shouts, "It's just this way."
Dennis peers dubiously at the cliff. "I don't think we can get to the beach from here."
"Yes, we can," Tom insists, and now he is laughing. "I know a shortcut." When Dennis hesitates, Tom rolls his eyes. "Don't tell me you're scared. I bet Benson isn't scared. You aren't, are you, Benson?"
Tom's hand is so white in the blackness all round them. Amy doesn't know when it got so dark. "C'mon," he says again, proffering his splayed fingers like a flower. Amy hardly pauses before grasping their coolness. Still, she trusts him absolutely. Still, she is so young. She cannot know, just yet, how she will never trust anyone again.
Free Choice 2
Title: Antitheses
Author: ifanciful
Rating: PG
Warnings: Femmeslashiness
Word Count: 484
The night feels heavy, laced in sweetness thick as treacle and gathering the two of them against it as the Fluttering Flashwhethers weave through the darkness before them, like a troupe of tiny stars had come down from the heavens to dance only for them. Luna admires their fluid motions while weaving her fingers through Hermione's hair and putting her lips at the soft skin near her ear, asking what feels more real now: that which can be seen or that which can be felt. Hermione presses closer, but her words still come more true to a skeptic; she knows what Luna's on about:
"They're not the same sort of feelings, a physical touch and your intuition."
The words sound short of breath, and Luna's lips involuntarily curl into a smile, the way a lazy cat stretches in a patch of sunlight. Hermione’s head is tipped toward the long veils of light dangling from the moon, and when Luna leans back, she sees Hermione's hair illuminated around the edges, like the silver lining, which manifested in February:
“It’s absolute rubbish, and I don’t believe a word of it.”
Because it was only that time that Luna had answered differently: "So I’ll help you to"
Hermione's hair is hanging around her like a sandstorm, and it tickles Luna's nose. She feels a fluttering of paper-thin wings brushing the lining of her stomach, and she smiles. Luna asks about love then, and how it fits into Hermione's logic.
"You know it's there, but only because you feel it," Luna says, possibly for the hundredth time. "It’s here.” Luna can reach then, in one way she couldn't last February: she places her hand over Hermione's stomach, curiously feeling for signs of fluttering, and Hermione makes a tiny surprised noise, almost like a mouse. "There's nothing to calculate," Luna whispers very close to Hermione's ear, like she’s placing the words in carefully, afraid they'll scurry away.
And it's all very well with things like the Fluttering Flashwhethers about.
Instead of her usual exasperated response, Hermione replies that the Fluttering Flashwhethers are ordinary fireflies, nothing more.
Later that same mouth is curving against Luna's, and it breathes the words that maybe give her hope: “Nothing feels more real, nothing at all.” They're encased within the quick pulse of warm breath against Luna’s neck, and Luna feels exhilaration spread though her, like the moonlight crawled under her skin, warming her bone-deep with the force of a bursting dam.
The night unravels to tumble over itself in reds and pale golds as morning hurtles in, sharpening the lines of Hermione’s smiling face and dulling the Fluttering Flashwhethers who zip out like a tide. Hermione’s fingers twine into Luna’s hair, mirroring their fluent, twining motions, recalling the warm tangle of their limbs and the knots of a rushing, fluttering feeling (paper-thin wings brushing the lining of her stomach), most solid of all.
Poll Round 4, Challenge 9: The Final Challenge
Identities will NOT be screened this weeks in hopes that readers will take into account not only this week's drabbles, but also both contestants' previous drabbles when voting.
The rules for voting are as follows:
1. There are two groups of entries. The first consists of drabbles written for the prompts the authors came up with for each other, and the second consists of free choice drabbles. You will be asked to vote for your favourite of each group, and then vote for which author you believe should be the last drabble writer standing. Each vote in the first two polls counts for one point, and each vote in the third poll counts for two.
2. The drabbles are all rated PG and may contain hints of femmeslash. Proceed no further if that offends you.
3. Read with an open mind, and vote fairly. Please try to remember that the length and pairing of a drabble should not affect your judgment of its quality.
4. Contestants are not allowed to vote for themselves. If you vote for yourself, your vote will not be counted.
5. ** PLEASE TAKE NOTE OF THIS ** Voting will remain open until Thursday, June 26 at 11 PM EST. This should give readers time to both review authors' past drabbles and read this week's drabbles. The final results will be announced on Friday.
Challenge 1
saraannette's challenge: Pensieve
The drabble should focus on EITHER a character placing a memory into the pensieve (which memory? why? etc.) OR a character viewing somebody else's memory in the Pensieve. Characters, genre, etc. are at the writer's discretion.
Title: Clarity
Author: ifanciful
Rating: PG
Warnings: None.
Word Count: 498
There simply wasn’t room for four rowdy fifteen-year-olds under one invisibility cloak, so when James’d pulled it from under his robes, he’d grinned, saying at least two poor buggers would be out of luck if Filch popped up.
That was six minutes ago, but it was also six years.
Out in the corridor, moonlight poured around them from the high windows as easily as honey from a jar.
Glass clinked together, sharp as the prick of a quill, where James and Peter where under the invisibility cloak, where Remus saw nothing but stone floor, and he turned away. Behind the dark armour were him and Sirius, and even pressed to a wall, Remus looked to be falling all over himself. It came to him then, how true this was to the future: Remus cornered and Peter and James gone; Filch finally appeared as Remus yanked himself away from the memory.
He floated steadily to the surface of the Pensieve like a drowned corpse, its lungs still too full of oxygen to keep under.
It was still dark, but the moon came softer, muffled behind semi-closed curtains, coloured black as if stained from the darkness. Several vials were lined up across the table before him like silver bullets, and the wallpaper was tearing away, curling like the worried letters from his father.
They were letters Remus couldn’t answer yet, because for Merlin's sake, he had to know. It was an objective perspective he needed, though even with the Pensieve, he could hardly whittle away his judgments or the dry sting at the back of his throat turning the memories like curdled milk before he had even broken the surface.
Remus rolled his fingertips over the vials; it didn’t matter which one was next, stalling already came with the routine: he was fettered to the feeling that his veins were run over with some dry weed averse to any forward motion, but averse to the past also.
Though his need for some vestige of understanding pushed him forward. When he finally plunged into another memory - more like cringing forward than anything - it was toward events coloured bitter with knowledge, knowledge he reminded himself was futile to whisper to his past self. They walked through each other, both feeling nothing, only one realizing what would come that day:
Sirius was grinning, throwing his head back to laugh as he tossed wadded parchment into the air, catching it lazily, but it was the day he sold Remus out to Snape, just one step in the long trail to selling James to Voldemort.
Not for the first time, Remus was full-up with a rush of anger stampeding just below his skin. Brimful with frustration, he clawed toward the surface again, wondering what they all would think if they saw him now, then remembering there was no-one left to. Remus fumbled for the stop of another vial as he pulled the Pensive toward him, still not able to comprehend what exactly went wrong.
Challenge 2
ifanciful's challenge: It's clear that House Elves have distinctly different minds that separate the way they view life from the way a witch or wizard might. Likewise, they have a separate culture of their own, despite living in accord with (or as most of them would believe, to serve) wizards. We've seen shades of this in the book, though never in much depth.
So my challenge: A lot of what the norm is when it comes to House Elves was displayed through Winky in GOF. Write a drabble from her PoV, set anytime after she is released from the Crouch family's service.
Title: The Galleon
Author: saraannette
Rating: PG
Warnings: Elf angst? :D
Word Count: 421
i.
One by one, the doors slam shut in her face. It does not occur to Winky to be angry: not even in secret, not even silently behind the closed cage of her teeth. Each time she raises her knobbly fist to knock on a door, she is already picturing it closing. There will be nothing behind it, for her; no respectable work, no rest nor comfort.
One by one, the doors slam shut in her face. What she thinks is, It is just as Winky deserves. She believes in justice. She believes that is what has been meted out.
Bread scavenged from a wastebin mostly just tastes like waste. Tears taste like salt and terrible weight. Shame, in her mouth, tastes as rich and round as fruit.
She believes in justice. One by one, the doors slam shut.
ii.
It is four days since she's been free, since the first door closed. Her clothes feel like another, rougher skin atop her own. She cringes against the feel of them.
The sour stone in her stomach is hunger. It is nothing to do with why she wants work so badly. She wants work because she can think of nothing else worth wanting: she can think of no other use for her hands, her blood, her breath.
Her hands, her blood, her breath are heavy and useless. They are only reminders of her disgrace. Her failure is dirty grey, and clings like heat to her skin.
It is just as Winky deserves. She believes in justice.
iii.
She looks down, now, when she walks, her chin folded into her chest, so it is no surprise that she spots it straightaway: the Galleon wedged between the stones of the street, its gold dulled by a thick shroud of grime. Without thinking, she bends to pick it up, attracted only by its strangeness. When she realizes what she is holding, she cries out, and lets it clatter to her feet.
She would not like to be seen holding it. She might be mistaken for a paid elf, and she could not bear that shame on top of the shame she has earned. It is almost a consolation: she is not yet sunk as low as that.
The sour stone in her stomach is hunger. The soft ache just above it is her heart. Quickly as she can, Winky kicks the Galleon away. She barely slows her steps.
She believes in justice. It is just as Winky deserves. One by one, the doors slam shut.
Free Choice 1
Title: At the Seaside
Author: saraannette
Rating: PG
Warnings: None.
Word Count: 472
The restless back-and-forth lurch of the sea is like the pacing of some great caged beast. It is louder than Amy expected: she had been able to hear the waves even in the village, their shushings and weight, but here they are deafening. The sound seems to crash against her own thoughts, making them unsteady, and hard to hold onto. When Tom turns to speak to her, his words are lost beneath the ocean's complaint. But his smile, as bright and neat as plastic: she can make that out even through the grey-green dusk.
He speaks again, and this time she hears him. "Not much farther now."
Dennis frowns and glances over his shoulder, his eyes tracing the slim row of lights they've shed like skin. "We aren't meant to sneak off," he mutters, and his gaze skitters towards the jagged splinter of cliff before them. "We aren't meant to leave the village. Mrs. Cole said."
Amy narrows her eyes. Dennis Stupid Pratface Bishop, with his nervous hands and always-running nose: he ruins everything. He cannot know what he's doing, cannot possibly understand how important this moment is. Cause Tom Riddle has noticed her at last. The handsomest boy at the orphanage, the handsomest boy she's ever seen outside of a movie magazine; and he asked her, plain old Amy, to nick off to the beach with him. He asked her. "Nobody made you come, tag-along," Amy hisses to Dennis. It's the truth. He only smirks.
Loud enough so Tom can probably hear, he singsongs, "Amy li-ikes Rid-dle."
Amy spares him one last scowl before turning to race after Tom, who has not stopped to wait for them. The ground is becoming rocky, slick, beneath her feet. She presses her tongue to the roof of her mouth and tastes the wistful saltiness of the sea below.
"We're almost there," Tom calls back to them. "Wait till you see, it's awfully good."
He is almost to the cliff's edge; still, he turns around and walks backwards, seeming quite unafraid. He smiles once more, generous and wide, and looks as though he's holding back laughter as he shouts, "It's just this way."
Dennis peers dubiously at the cliff. "I don't think we can get to the beach from here."
"Yes, we can," Tom insists, and now he is laughing. "I know a shortcut." When Dennis hesitates, Tom rolls his eyes. "Don't tell me you're scared. I bet Benson isn't scared. You aren't, are you, Benson?"
Tom's hand is so white in the blackness all round them. Amy doesn't know when it got so dark. "C'mon," he says again, proffering his splayed fingers like a flower. Amy hardly pauses before grasping their coolness. Still, she trusts him absolutely. Still, she is so young. She cannot know, just yet, how she will never trust anyone again.
Free Choice 2
Title: Antitheses
Author: ifanciful
Rating: PG
Warnings: Femmeslashiness
Word Count: 484
The night feels heavy, laced in sweetness thick as treacle and gathering the two of them against it as the Fluttering Flashwhethers weave through the darkness before them, like a troupe of tiny stars had come down from the heavens to dance only for them. Luna admires their fluid motions while weaving her fingers through Hermione's hair and putting her lips at the soft skin near her ear, asking what feels more real now: that which can be seen or that which can be felt. Hermione presses closer, but her words still come more true to a skeptic; she knows what Luna's on about:
"They're not the same sort of feelings, a physical touch and your intuition."
The words sound short of breath, and Luna's lips involuntarily curl into a smile, the way a lazy cat stretches in a patch of sunlight. Hermione’s head is tipped toward the long veils of light dangling from the moon, and when Luna leans back, she sees Hermione's hair illuminated around the edges, like the silver lining, which manifested in February:
“It’s absolute rubbish, and I don’t believe a word of it.”
Because it was only that time that Luna had answered differently: "So I’ll help you to"
Hermione's hair is hanging around her like a sandstorm, and it tickles Luna's nose. She feels a fluttering of paper-thin wings brushing the lining of her stomach, and she smiles. Luna asks about love then, and how it fits into Hermione's logic.
"You know it's there, but only because you feel it," Luna says, possibly for the hundredth time. "It’s here.” Luna can reach then, in one way she couldn't last February: she places her hand over Hermione's stomach, curiously feeling for signs of fluttering, and Hermione makes a tiny surprised noise, almost like a mouse. "There's nothing to calculate," Luna whispers very close to Hermione's ear, like she’s placing the words in carefully, afraid they'll scurry away.
And it's all very well with things like the Fluttering Flashwhethers about.
Instead of her usual exasperated response, Hermione replies that the Fluttering Flashwhethers are ordinary fireflies, nothing more.
Later that same mouth is curving against Luna's, and it breathes the words that maybe give her hope: “Nothing feels more real, nothing at all.” They're encased within the quick pulse of warm breath against Luna’s neck, and Luna feels exhilaration spread though her, like the moonlight crawled under her skin, warming her bone-deep with the force of a bursting dam.
The night unravels to tumble over itself in reds and pale golds as morning hurtles in, sharpening the lines of Hermione’s smiling face and dulling the Fluttering Flashwhethers who zip out like a tide. Hermione’s fingers twine into Luna’s hair, mirroring their fluent, twining motions, recalling the warm tangle of their limbs and the knots of a rushing, fluttering feeling (paper-thin wings brushing the lining of her stomach), most solid of all.
Poll Round 4, Challenge 9: The Final Challenge