Drabble: A Good Life Ron/Hermione, PG13
Title: A Good Life
Written for Round One, Week Three of rw_ldws
The prompt (or challenge, depending on how you look at it) was second person, which I've never done before.
Rating: PG 13
Warnings: Character Death
Featured Characters/Pairings: Ron/Hermione
Word Count: 500
Author's Notes: I was so afraid that the subject matter alone (and the fact that I had to self-beta and the only person I shared it with didn't really like it) would get me kicked off, but this was one of those things that wouldn't let me write anything else. This was somewhat inspired by the themes of the movie Up, which is sort of funny because last week's was named after Monsters, Inc. So next week, if you see me a drabble about unemployed superheroes or lovesick robots or toys with abandonment issues, feel free to smack me upside the head and tell me to come up with an original idea for once.
You found it in in the drawer of her night table, glittering brightly among ink-stained quills and bits of scribble-covered parchment. It had your name on it, and the number of a vault. You held onto it for months, dying of curiosity but afraid at the same time. Finally, on a beautiful summer day when you were still no closer to working out how to live without her than you were six months before, you stopped resisting the inevitable.
And in the cold stone cell, surrounded by a basin and dozens of tiny glass bottles, you relive a lifetime's memories.
The first bottle is labeled 'love,' and you find your twelve-year-old self facing her across a giant chessboard. You're riding a marble horse. Probably for the first time, she looks at you with something other than annoyance. You remember it took a lot longer for things to be clear to you.
Later, you see her face as you walk back into a tent you should never have left, the relief that spreads over her features before it is replaced by pain, then anger.
You revisit twenty seconds that changed your life forever, when you kiss with a pile of Basilisk fangs at your feet and your mutual best mate looks away determinedly.
Two bottles are labeled 'private.' You are still embarrassed to relive the first time she let you inside her, but you wouldn't trade the memory for the world. The other has the two of you locked together on a hotel bed, limbs wrapped around each other, perfectly still for an endless moment, apparently afraid to blink and break the spell. You still remember how terrifyingly huge it felt to be connected like that.
You relive Rose's birth, and Hermione awakens to find you gazing in wonder at the sleeping miracle you both made.
You witness one of a thousand Sundays where you shared a sofa and a cozy fire, she with a book, you with one of those math puzzles her father had got you hooked on. This one ends with the pair of you snogging like teenagers, much to your son's mortification.
One bottle has the pair of you blushing over Snargaluff pods, another has you sobbing over a tiny Weasley jumper, and still more depict weddings and funerals and Christmases.
And as you carefully replace the last bottle, you wonder when she found the time to do this, between her treatments and her determination to finish that last book. The memories were clear and precise, so it had to have been early on.
You'd spent the last few months berating yourself for not having given her more, made it easier for her, argued less, loved more. But somehow, even as she came to terms with the fact that that frighteningly brilliant brain of hers had finally decided to call it a day, she'd managed to outsmart the disease that she couldn't conquer. She was gone, but the life you made together was not.
Written for Round One, Week Three of rw_ldws
The prompt (or challenge, depending on how you look at it) was second person, which I've never done before.
Rating: PG 13
Warnings: Character Death
Featured Characters/Pairings: Ron/Hermione
Word Count: 500
Author's Notes: I was so afraid that the subject matter alone (and the fact that I had to self-beta and the only person I shared it with didn't really like it) would get me kicked off, but this was one of those things that wouldn't let me write anything else. This was somewhat inspired by the themes of the movie Up, which is sort of funny because last week's was named after Monsters, Inc. So next week, if you see me a drabble about unemployed superheroes or lovesick robots or toys with abandonment issues, feel free to smack me upside the head and tell me to come up with an original idea for once.
You found it in in the drawer of her night table, glittering brightly among ink-stained quills and bits of scribble-covered parchment. It had your name on it, and the number of a vault. You held onto it for months, dying of curiosity but afraid at the same time. Finally, on a beautiful summer day when you were still no closer to working out how to live without her than you were six months before, you stopped resisting the inevitable.
And in the cold stone cell, surrounded by a basin and dozens of tiny glass bottles, you relive a lifetime's memories.
The first bottle is labeled 'love,' and you find your twelve-year-old self facing her across a giant chessboard. You're riding a marble horse. Probably for the first time, she looks at you with something other than annoyance. You remember it took a lot longer for things to be clear to you.
Later, you see her face as you walk back into a tent you should never have left, the relief that spreads over her features before it is replaced by pain, then anger.
You revisit twenty seconds that changed your life forever, when you kiss with a pile of Basilisk fangs at your feet and your mutual best mate looks away determinedly.
Two bottles are labeled 'private.' You are still embarrassed to relive the first time she let you inside her, but you wouldn't trade the memory for the world. The other has the two of you locked together on a hotel bed, limbs wrapped around each other, perfectly still for an endless moment, apparently afraid to blink and break the spell. You still remember how terrifyingly huge it felt to be connected like that.
You relive Rose's birth, and Hermione awakens to find you gazing in wonder at the sleeping miracle you both made.
You witness one of a thousand Sundays where you shared a sofa and a cozy fire, she with a book, you with one of those math puzzles her father had got you hooked on. This one ends with the pair of you snogging like teenagers, much to your son's mortification.
One bottle has the pair of you blushing over Snargaluff pods, another has you sobbing over a tiny Weasley jumper, and still more depict weddings and funerals and Christmases.
And as you carefully replace the last bottle, you wonder when she found the time to do this, between her treatments and her determination to finish that last book. The memories were clear and precise, so it had to have been early on.
You'd spent the last few months berating yourself for not having given her more, made it easier for her, argued less, loved more. But somehow, even as she came to terms with the fact that that frighteningly brilliant brain of hers had finally decided to call it a day, she'd managed to outsmart the disease that she couldn't conquer. She was gone, but the life you made together was not.