Weekly Drabble Challenge - A Thousand Words: Love - Results

[ashestoashes]

Name: ashestoashes.
House: Ravenclaw.
Title: Ritual.
Warnings: none.
Word Count: 478.
Pairing: Draco/Ginny

A/N: Thanks to Inverarity for looking this over for me.

"Love comes from the most unexpected places…” Draco Malfoy thought, as he walked somberly down a Muggle pier with his son to complete a ritual begun four years ago; a ritual that allowed father and son to remain connected to the woman who had given them life, albeit in very different ways. “Unexpected” was an understatement for the way they had found love on a battlefield, fighting savagely for opposite sides. Fighting desperately to uphold beliefs they had been born into, beliefs that had kept them apart their entire lives.

When they had reached the end of the pier, Draco took the small boy into his arms and placed him on the railing, keeping a steady hand on his back and checking for the presence of early risers. As expected, they were quite alone.

Father and son looked at the heart carved in the railing between them. The years had taken their toll on the rail, the color bleaching in the sun, the wood cracking as the seasons passed. The blood red of the heart however, remained as vibrant as it had been the day it was carved, four years ago.

With the mechanical precision of actions long practiced, Draco withdrew a small vial from an inside coat pocket and a silver knife from his belt. Removing the stopper from the bottle, he emptied three drops of Ginny Weasley’s blood into the heart, then pricked his finger and added three drops of his own. Glancing at his son – their son – Draco realized that the boy had his own finger held out solemnly, ready to make his own contribution. Appraising the four-year-old, Draco finally nodded once and pricked the boy’s pointer finger. When the blood welled up, three drops were added to the mixture.

Satisfied with the preparations, Draco drew his wand and muttered the incantation. Holding his son close, they watched together as the head of a silver creature began to emerge from the puddle of blood inside the heart. Before long, the spirited creature had materialized completely, and began prancing about the pair watching from the rail. The silvery substance of Ginny’s Patronus was barely visible in the early morning fog, but made its presence known by the comforting feeling it spread to the quiet observers.

Reaching out a tentative hand, Draco caressed the head of the filly, eyes closed, breathing in Ginny’s familiar scent, feeling her presence enveloping him in the warmth and joy he had always come to associate with her. The silvery filly approached the small boy next, nuzzling him affectionately and whickering softly when he patted her head.

Too soon, the filly began slowly to fade. As the silvery substance finally let go of the form it held and became one with the early morning fog, father and son felt the caress of gentle hands on their faces, and the wind seemed to whisper:

I love you…

[Gin_Drinka]

Name: Gin_Drinka
House: Hufflepuff!
Title: The History of Footprints
Warnings: Um... the exhaustive use of metaphor.
Word Count: 397
Pairing: Dean/Luna. You might not be able to tell, but that's what it was in my head.
Authors Notes: So, I know this is vague. But, poor old me, I love this kind. You can believe what ever you want about what happens between them. Whether they were together, then not, or only together after a long time, you choose. The only fact your forced to cope with is that they are in love. Says me, of course.

Your father hadn’t known how to love. He’d run away to something you refused to believe was better. You refused to believe he’d found love. Love wasn’t only a home and smiles.

He hadn’t been anybody’s love either. He’d stood safely on the doorstep. He’d added his name to letters as an afterthought. He’d broken your mother’s heart when he left and showed her she’d never really had any love to begin with.

Your mother hadn’t looked for love again. She said she’d had her chance and something had gone wrong and she had more important things to care for anyway. After all, love was more than a heart on fire.

Most stories you didn’t believe. You liked to think of the world as something more than just a pair of eyes and lips. And you guessed that those stories were meant to make everyone yearn, not to make them understand. But you knew; love was more than a heart on a bench and a promise in a ring.

At some point you’d started looking for it. You had seen glimpses; smiling silhouettes that rounded corners and seemed remarkably familiar, no matter how indecipherable their faces.

And then suddenly, with a force that lead your steps to abandon paths and follow only the aching draw toward another’s footprints, you found it.

You found her. She had tales you never believed, and a heart too big to fit, and your life kept obliviously between gifts for things that didn't exist.

Years would come, unstoppably, bringing a whir of other faces and touches and promises. There would be children, all of whom grew to let you hold their dreams delicately in your hands for a while, before you gave them back. There would be goodbyes to say to friends and times that made you wish you could take it all back.

But you never did. You stayed on that trail of footprints that you could not help but follow and you went over all the things you knew that love was more than: more than a home, more than a heart carved into a bench, more than the words no one ever forgot.

You walked on a directionless road, toward an endless future, making synchronized footsteps in the sand that were all the world had left of you; that same untellable story no one ever got tired of failing to understand.

[megan_lupin]

Name: megan_lupin
House: Gryffindor
Title: Daddy Loves Mummy
Warnings: Alternate Universe
Word Count: 499 (and that's the edited version; the original was almost 800 words)
Pairing: Sirius Black/Hermione Granger
Authors Notes: Yes, this is AU. Pretend either a) Sirius never died or b) Sirius came back from the Veil. Hermione would be in her twenties, now.

“Mummy, come look!”

She looked up at the sound of the little girl’s voice, putting down her book. Her eyes scanned along the sidewalks, searching for that certain someone …

That little four-year-old girl running towards her, a large smile on her lightly coloured face and her curly black hair bobbing around her head as she ran.

“What is it, sweetie?” she asked, picking the child up from the ground. “What’d you want to show me?”

“It’s over there,” the little girl answered, pointing a finger away from the café and closer to the beach. Pulling her mother’s hand, she pushed herself down to the floor. “You got to come see it, Mummy.”

Smiling, the young woman got up and followed her daughter as she led her to the spot where she’d been playing just moments ago. When they’d arrived, the little girl ran over to her pile of toys. She picked up one of the papers and gave it to her mother.

In the centre of the paper was a big red heart, outlined in black, and the little girl had also written two words in her childish hand. On one side of the heart, she’d spelled “Daddy”, on the other “Mummy”.

“You like it, Mummy?”

Unable to speak, the young woman just nodded, putting a smile on her face, praying her daughter didn’t see the tears that were threatening to fall. That little girl was remarkably intuitive – a trait many said she’d inherited from both her parents. Swallowing, she knelt down next to the child. “It’s beautiful, sweetie,” she whispered.

“It’s like the picture on the wood, see?” The little girl pointed behind the young woman’s head, causing her mother to turn around.

Carved into the wooden plank next to her was a heart, its centre coloured a bright red, with a name etched on either side of it. Some young couple had obviously engraved their feelings into the wood for all to see. The names were a bit difficult to make out, but the heart stood bright and red, directly in her line of sight.

Just like the heart on her daughter’s drawing stood bright and red in front of her.

“Yes, you did a lovely job.”

The little girl smiled, her grin looking so much like her father’s that the young woman had to keep those tears away even more aggressively. Oh, how she missed him. But she couldn’t focus on that line of thought for too long.

“Mummy?”

“Yeah, baby?”

“When’s Daddy coming home?”

“I’ll come back soon, Hermione, I promise.”

“I just have a bad feeling about this, Sirius.”

“I know, but everything’ll be fine; I won’t be gone more than a week –”

“Sirius –”

“Besides, there’s you and Cee to come back to, Hermione … I love you, you know?”

“I know, Sirius. I love you, too.”

Yet over two months had passed.

“I’m sure Daddy will be home soon, Cecilia,” muttered Hermione.

“Very soon,” said a voice from behind her.

Hope you liked that.

~Megan ... who absolutely loves this pairing!

[mugglemathdork]

++First Place::
The History of Footprints by Gin Drinka

++Second Place::
Your Addiction by Mistletoe

++Third Place::
The Darkest Light by Hermoine Jean Granger

++Honorauble Mentions::
One-sided by eternalangel
Love in the Office? by Equinox Chick

This was really hard. Lots of good entries.
Points will be posted shortly!
~Ebil One