Drabble Day: Prompt 19
Dec. 26th, 2011 12:32 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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hd_writersPick a character whose name starts with the same letter as yours (either username or real name), or better yet, is the same as yours, and write about them.
(E.T.A - if you're writing a pairing, only one of them needs to share your initial - tho... Kingsley/Krum? y/y?)
This is a reminder that the competition to Name Kneazle's Tablet is ongoing. Details can be found if you click on the rules post below!
(kneazle considers writing about Kristy from The Babysitter's Club)
Remember, the rules are here, and Chatzy is here!
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no subject
Date: 2011-12-26 03:37 am (UTC)Lol, Vlo. I love you.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-26 06:49 am (UTC)Word count: ~ 1825
Pairing: Cho Chang/Cedric Diggory; Cho Chang/Cybèle Peltier
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Drama
Warnings: Angst, barely-canon character repurposed to make lesbians, lame plot, lesbians, unbeta'd, unusual grammar.
AN: wat. wat. this got away from me so bad.
--
His being dead was never the trouble.
Cedric Diggory had always been larger than life. After his murder, immortalized in youth, he smiled down from his Hogwarts portrait or his memorial photograph, the same handsome young man he had been that fateful day in June. He had been so perfect, almost unreal, that he seemed to transition seamlessly between living and legend: one day, Cho had held him in her arms, inhaled the heavy, woody scent of him; the next day, Cho had held the cold metal trophy in her arms as if she had won it herself as the press snapped photographs of her and asked how it felt to be the girlfriend of a fallen hero. Nothing else changed, and her life had continued as if he had been alive, along the trajectory he would have walked alongside her.
No, the trouble was always in her being alive. In wanting to live; in being hungry for the next day, and the next day; in refusing to be lulled back to sleep by the dreary, muggy British morning. If she had let herself fall back into the welcoming embrace of a warm bed, maybe she'd have been able to see him again, to pull him against and over and into her.
Not even a ghost remains.
"Maybe you should go abroad," suggests her mother, who is angling for a winter in Shanghai, when she hopes to see her daughter married off to someone respectable and literate. "It might do you some good."
Eventually, Cho gives into her request.
"The weather in Nice is beautiful this time of year," says the woman behind the portkey allocation desk. "And Paris is beautiful in the middle of winter." Eager for her commission, she points to a glossy poster of shuffling, dazed-looking French teenagers. They remind Cho of Cedric and Harry and all those girls when they were supposed to be studying — she wanted to sitsoclosetogether. So close together and they would say nothing.
Cho buys a one-way to Stockholm.
--
KQL Seeking Seeker
When Cho arrives in Kiruna — 19 hours north of her original entry point, courtesy of six whiskey sours and a muggle train — she checks into an inn, sleeps off her hangover, and wakes up at dawn to to begin a new life. She casts a Tempus each for time and temperature and becomes glad she brought four coats and a book of clothing charms.
She packs light, in case she has to leave.
Only she doesn't. They like her. They ask her to play first string seeker, and she moves in over a deli that opens at six am on the dot. Even though it's dark — impossibly dark, bordering on twilight at high noon — she finds the dim halos of illumination heartening and the cloistered community welcoming if not a bit wary. Cho doesn't blame them: she is here by accident, and at any moment, she could float away on a northwestern breeze.
It's almost June by the time anyone from the European League comes this far north to challenge the Kiruna Krusaders. They've won the Arctic Conference, including a no-score against Russia and the shortest game ever played in (and lost by) Canada. Cho remembers pride there, pride she hadn't felt since Cedric's death.
"We're playing the Amsterdam Amazons the day after tomorrow," Coach Anderberg is telling her, in Swedish. Cho is surprised she can understand him, his rapid-fire style, but he suspects it's just because he repeats his pep-talks so often. "They are a Euro Team, soldiers! They represent a gateway to showing those bastards out there that Bjørn is just as relevant as Wronski. I want you to win, women. I want you to win."
He nods his head at the beater Oleg, the only man on the team and a transfer from the St. Petersburg Stones. "You also, Oleg. Don't let us down."
no subject
Date: 2011-12-26 06:51 am (UTC)The day of the match, Cho spends a half hour in her clapboard dressing room. She looks at herself in the mirror, reaches out to touch her reflection with the tips of her fingers. When the cold becomes too much, she withdraws them back into her coat. The gloves are kept with the Snitch, and she'll have to suffer until then.
Cedric would have been proud of her, right?
She smiles behind her scarf. A good lot, here: an undefeated Quidditch team, a flat that smells of pastrami most of the time. It could have been worse.
But it could have been better. It could have been Cedric.
Eventually, Cho forces Cedric out of her mind. Not much time. Not much time. She keeps trying to moisturize her hands but they're starting to bleed, and she hasn't been on a broom in weeks and it shows and her hair won't lie flat on her head, which won't matter 30 meters in the air and —
"Might I recommend aloe vera and shea?"
Cho jumps so hard at the unexpected sound that she almost falls off her stool. "Excuse me?" she squawks, even as she recognizes it as advice, a suggestion. A good one, too: she should have used aloe, first, especially since it doesn't freeze easily when mixed with a little bit of vodka.
She shakes her head. Only in Kiruna, right?
The speaker clears her throat. Cho knows who she is the second their eyes meet — Amazons Seeker Cybèle Peltier, formerly of the French National Quidditch Team, has world-renowned eyes. The color of silver. The color of water.
Or ice. Cho looks away. She remembers them.
"You're not supposed to be here," she points out. No trouble. Wasn't that the point? Leave her meddling mother, leave Britain, leave Cedric?
Marry Quidditch. Not a man. Not a woman. Not Cybèle Peltier, who is close to her now, her dark hair making whorls around her ears and those pale, eerie eyes staring out of her cinnamon skin.
"I haven't seen you since — what, '94?"
The year on everyone's mind. Cybèle is the memory of all those Beauxbatons girls, beautiful and slender, ripe and open. They'd been close, for a spit. Cho's stomach clenches and floods of memory wash over her, dissolving the last of her resolve. She was so young then, that was so long ago, but it's as fresh as yesterday's bruises.
"It's been a long time."
A long, long time.
Cybèle Peltier's mouth moves, but her voice comes from far away, underwater, a distant future. Cho wonders what she's trying to say, what language she's trying to speak, why it's so important that Cho understand it right now.
Then a hand is on her shoulder, and something must be horribly amiss because Seeker Tampering is an automatic forfeit. Her head clears a little.
"Chang. Chang."
"That's me," says Cho. Her voice wobbles. Maybe she has been Seeker Tampered. “You're not supposed to be here.”
"Neither are you. You were supposed to be out on the pitch at half six."
Maybe all that friendliness was imagined. "Sent you to find me, eh?" She doubts it.
"Sent everyone to find you. It's almost nine."
Cho jumps, but she seems to lose her balance again. What? And then her eyes are shut, and she can see Cedric, golden and haloed in polar light, smiling down from the back of her eyelids.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-26 06:52 am (UTC)"We had no idea she had been so badly injured," the Healer is saying, through a field of clouds and mist and extraneous sound. Cho opens one eye and sees her coach in a plane of white, moving around in that nervous way of his. It's too warm to be the dressing room, and she's hardly dressed: her wrists touch the clean air, and she doesn't have any socks.
"Excuse me," she begins, and although she's certain it comes out wrong, everyone's eyes are on her suddenly.
"By God, she's finally awake." Coach Anderberg is at her side instantly. "You were concussed, Chang. We had no idea." He's touching her arm in a fatherly way. Her eyes threaten to slip shut and she forces them open again. The time for sleeping has passed. Now is the time for waking.
"Should I go notify that abhorrent French woman?"
Coach Anderberg scowls. "Technically, she has the right to report her loss to the opposite team's Seeker, as the Seeker was not present at the match."
Cho tries to sit up and nearly vomits. "The match? We played?"
Anderberg sighs and rubs his forehead. He pats her forehead and she relaxes into the pillows. "Zellens insisted. Wanted to run that new three-Chaser diamond play. Amsterdam caught the snitch, but we beat them 290 to 210."
A smile creeps across Cho's face. "That's the way I like it," she says. "You can send in Peltier. I can talk to her."
Nodding, Coach Anderberg stands and gives her a hard look. "If she tries anything, you scream. Loud as you can. And if you can't, rip that IV out of your arm and one of those nice little nurses will come running."
They leave her alone, and a moment later, Cybèle Peltier steps into the room.
"I am so glad you have survived," spills from her mouth before anything else. Cho remembers liking that about her, being entranced by her blunt, wounding honesty. "They said you had been hit on the head."
"Yeah, in Nunavut. Don't ask."
Cybèle comes to sit beside Cho's bed. She crosses her smooth legs, one over the other, and folds her hands across her knee. Cho knows there's a story in every hard line of the woman's face, but she doesn't know them. Was never meant to know them. "I was just — I saw your name on the roster. I had hoped I would face you on the pitch."
"But instead, you're here to inform me of my victory."
Nodding, Cybèle grazes her fingers over Cho's arm, to which Cho responds by inching towards the edge of her hospital bed. "You never wrote to me," Cybèle says. The break in her voice makes Cho's heart feel compressed. "I waited for you to write to me."
Those memories are so far away they're hardly hers any more. Cho had forgotten all about them, until the moment she looked into Cybèle Peltier's iceiceice eyes and those wounds opened up like air-starved mouths. Cho shakes her head and buries her face in her hands.
"I'm sorry," she whispers. She's sorry for everything she's forgotten. She's sorry about being hurt in Canada. She's sorry she couldn't marry a man who spoke perfect Chinese. She's sorry Cedric died, and she's sorry she held onto him for so long. "I meant to. I meant...I meant to."
Cybèle touches her hair, softly, softly.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-26 10:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-26 09:15 pm (UTC)Author
Beta None. She's not online.
Word Count 113
Pairing/Characters Ginny/Harry. But she moved on.
Author Notes I ship Ginny/Harry, but still, I always wonder how Ginny got over their separation.
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It was a wonder Ginny had any sanity left. Waiting for Harry to notice her for years and then having to stand by while he went to save the world. She appreciated the noble thought, but still, she could’ve come with him just as easily as Hermione and Ron. Being left behind put her relationship with Harry in perspective. Why should she wait, when it was his fault she had to. If he’d just let her come along, they could’ve had it all. Instead, Ginny got to spend months thinking about it, seeing how wrong it was. When he came back, things wouldn’t go back to the same rut. She had moved on.
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Date: 2012-01-22 02:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-22 02:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-22 02:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-22 06:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-22 11:22 am (UTC)