Harry Potter - Tanabata
learned about a Japanese holiday today. this will probably be stuck in with Portraits (H/D stand alones on ff.net).
Tanabata
*
Wizards these days didn’t put enough stock in the old ways. Draco did. He had seen the way prayers were answered. He was wizard enough to know that every religion held its own grain of truth, and every saint carried a magic that lingered into the present. Sitting in the dark, dry dungeon room, candles lit and plants arranged just so, Draco stood hunched over the lone desk, writing.
His right hand held his left sleeve away from the paper weighted down by the edge of the heavy tome lying open before him. The brush in his hand dipped again in the bowl of fresh-made ink. The parchment he carefully filled with sure black strokes was rice paper imported from Japan, blessed by Shinto priests and further spelled by Draco himself upon its arrival. He would write upon this paper a prayer, as he had done on each paper now drying on the string hanging above his head. He did as he had done every day, praying to one saint or another, honoring one holiday and a thousand. His wish was always the same:
Bring him back alive.
(He would not think of those who returned, floating between the mediwitches, anonymously covered in sheets.)
Bring him back whole.
(Or of those who returned in pieces, the blessed ones dead or shells of themselves, the unlucky ones screaming and crying and coughing up blood.)
Bring him back mine.
(Because he belonged to Draco. Whether he knew it or not, he always had. And when the war was over, he would belong only to Draco, and the world would know and accept.)
The gods knew of whom he wrote. They could see into dreams and speak through the mouths of crazy old biddies like Trelawney or regal beasts like Firenze.
Draco rested his hand on the open page of the book lying on his desk. September 9th-the ninth day of the ninth month: Tanabata; Japanese. Underneath was written the tale of how the day became sacred for those hopeful wishers: a god married his daughter to a serious man, and both husband and wife stopped working to be with each other. The god grew angry and separated them, but his daughter’s tears were so pitiful he granted her wish to be together with her husband for one day of the year. That day is Tanabata.
The day when wishes written lovingly, desperately, came true.
Bring him back alive, Draco wrote. It was his seventh sheet. Bring him back whole. This time he wrote in runes. Bring him back mine.
The gods knew of whom he wrote.
Surely one of them would honor his request.
Tanabata
*
Wizards these days didn’t put enough stock in the old ways. Draco did. He had seen the way prayers were answered. He was wizard enough to know that every religion held its own grain of truth, and every saint carried a magic that lingered into the present. Sitting in the dark, dry dungeon room, candles lit and plants arranged just so, Draco stood hunched over the lone desk, writing.
His right hand held his left sleeve away from the paper weighted down by the edge of the heavy tome lying open before him. The brush in his hand dipped again in the bowl of fresh-made ink. The parchment he carefully filled with sure black strokes was rice paper imported from Japan, blessed by Shinto priests and further spelled by Draco himself upon its arrival. He would write upon this paper a prayer, as he had done on each paper now drying on the string hanging above his head. He did as he had done every day, praying to one saint or another, honoring one holiday and a thousand. His wish was always the same:
Bring him back alive.
(He would not think of those who returned, floating between the mediwitches, anonymously covered in sheets.)
Bring him back whole.
(Or of those who returned in pieces, the blessed ones dead or shells of themselves, the unlucky ones screaming and crying and coughing up blood.)
Bring him back mine.
(Because he belonged to Draco. Whether he knew it or not, he always had. And when the war was over, he would belong only to Draco, and the world would know and accept.)
The gods knew of whom he wrote. They could see into dreams and speak through the mouths of crazy old biddies like Trelawney or regal beasts like Firenze.
Draco rested his hand on the open page of the book lying on his desk. September 9th-the ninth day of the ninth month: Tanabata; Japanese. Underneath was written the tale of how the day became sacred for those hopeful wishers: a god married his daughter to a serious man, and both husband and wife stopped working to be with each other. The god grew angry and separated them, but his daughter’s tears were so pitiful he granted her wish to be together with her husband for one day of the year. That day is Tanabata.
The day when wishes written lovingly, desperately, came true.
Bring him back alive, Draco wrote. It was his seventh sheet. Bring him back whole. This time he wrote in runes. Bring him back mine.
The gods knew of whom he wrote.
Surely one of them would honor his request.