Monthly Challenge - October: Challenge of Challenges

[coolh5000]

So, I was lying in bed with my sore throat refusing to let me sleep and I started planning this challenge and then decided that I may as well post it rather than simply thinking about it.

This challenge is a little bit different to how I actually plan to run monthly challenges in the future, but as we're already half-way through October, I decided I may as well try something different. And this idea is either going to work spectacularly or pretty much fail completely!

So, I was thinking about the barmaids that we've had in here and how many different challenges and themes there have been and it occured to me, that there might be a challenge that people have seen and thought, I really wish I'd been around to enter that. And so, for the rest of this month, your challenge is to find an old challenge, set by any barmaid, and write a drabble based on that prompt, sticking by all the rules etc of the original challenge.

The best way to find old challenges is to search Hermione's Corner. I was going to be helpful and provide you with various links to searches but the search feature has decided it doesn't like me at the moment, so some suggestions for searches would be either keywords 'Weekly Drabble Challenge' or to go to advanced search and find threads started by either coolh5000, mugglemathdork, MithrilQuill or Magical Maeve depending on how far back you want to go!

I was almost put off running this challenge when I came to the conclusion that it was going to be impossible to judge but then I thought, why shouldn't people have the opportunity to stretch their writing skills, just because points can't be awarded. Yes, that's right, this challenge is just for fun - no points will be awarded and no winners declared. I honestly wouldn't know how to begin judging a challenge where every person had written to a different prompt! And so, as it's not a regular monthly anyway, I decided to have a challenge just for fun. Sometimes we forget that writing on the boards doesn't have to be about points, and so for this, I want you to instead think about celebrating the great work and inspiring prompts of the previous barmaids (especially our very own ebil one!) What I may try to do, however, is instead of judging for a winner/points, I will provide brief feedback on my own opinions of your drabble.

If you would like to enter this challenge (and I really hope some of you will!), please submit your drabble using the form below:

Title:
Rating:
Warnings:
Word Count:
Link to Original Challenge:
Why you chose the challenge:

Rules

You may pick any previous TTB challenge but the challenge you pick must be one that had a 500 word limit as that is the word limit for this.
You may enter more than once, using a different challenge each time, depending on how inspired you are.

The challenge will close at midnight GMT on 31st October 2009. (don't worry - I still have Halloween plans as well). Please ask any questions in the Question Corner

And, well, enjoy! And hopefully this challenge will actually be rather interesting! (as it also gives me a chance to see the kind of things that inspire you). And if you don't take to it, well be assured that this is a one-off and I have plenty of other ideas for this month!

[Roonil_Wazlib125]

Title: With All My Heart, Dean
Rating: 3rd-5th years
Warnings: Mild Profanity
Word Count:
Link to Original Challenge: Monthly Challenge: February-Love Letters
Why you chose the challenge: I'm a sucker for romance in general, but especially love letters. They are SO sweet and romantic and just...I love them. I'm also good at writing romance. This challenge seems like an interesting one, as well.

Dear Luna,

It's tough to think that you're getting married. What happened to the dreamer I once knew? Or maybe, you're still the same. Of course, I haven't seen you since the day you told me Rolf had proposed.

It's kind of upsetting to be getting married. You're losing your childhood and becoming part of a man you met two years ago. You're leaving your friends and family behind to live with his friends and family. But the worst part is, Rolf won't trust any of the letters I might send you. He'll think we're having an affair, which would be a damn nice thing for me considering I can't hold onto a girlfriend for longer than a month.

Luna, that last sentence was a joke. I'm sure you don't think affairs are very good to do, and I highly doubt you'd take part in one. But Luna, I can't hold a girlfriend for longer than a month, really! I always think of you just as things start to get "serious", and then it just disappears. It's horrible and upsetting and I need you to make it better. I need to hear something about Crumple Horned Snorkacks. I want to hear you, to see you, to just be with you. I'm going mad, Luna! Please, just answer this letter as a friend. You don't have to love me for me to love you.

With all my heart,
Dean

Poor Dean. Luna doesn't love him.

Roonil_Wazlib125 aka Annmarie poooff

[ron lover]

Title: Yours Forever
Rating: 3-5 years
Warnings: implied sexual situations
Word Count: 205
Link to Original Challenge: Monthly Challenge: February-Love Letters
Why you chose the challenge: I think that this challenge is a great idea. It is just such a cool challenge.

Dear Lily,

I’m not going to tell you who I am in case someone else reads this. You will know who I am once you read this letter.

Lily, I just needed to talk to you. It’s been years since we’ve talked. The thing is, Lily, I love you. I love you. I can’t stop thinking about our time at Hogwarts together. I can’t stop thinking about the nights we spent together. Back then I didn’t love you. It was far from love – it was lust.

I know that you broke it off between us when you left Hogwarts because it wouldn’t work out between us, or so you said. You said that we didn’t belong together – being on two different sides made that so. I know that I made the wrong choice. I shouldn’t have become a Death Eater. I’ve changed though; I know that I was wrong. I am going to change everything, though; I’m going to change what I have done.

This is the last time I’ll be able to talk to you, Lily. I just want you to know that I could have made you happier that James ever could. I hope that you are happy with your decision.

Yours forever.

That wasn't Snape, in case you were wondering. It was a certin Padfoot's brother, commonly known as Regulus.

[Equinox Chick]

Title: Of Gifts and Billet-Doux
Rating: 1st-2nd years
Warnings:None
Word Count: 500 (phew)
Link to Original Challenge: Life of a Wizard - Courtship
Why you chose the challenge: Because it was the one challenge I missed since I started entering challenges. (I was on holiday) And also, when I read the challenge it scared the bejeezers out of me.

It was normal, in her family, for a wizard to court a witch slowly.

A letter exchanged between the prospective groom’s father to the prospective brides’ father would start off the proceedings. If the father of the witch were agreeable to the match, then the young wizard could proceed with the next step, which would be a small corsage sent with the head house-elf and a billet-doux asking if he could take tea with her in her parent’s parlour.

She looked at the corsage on her dressing table. It hadn’t been delivered by the head house-elf from his manor, for he had none. Instead , he had climbed in through her window and placed it there himself. It was a pink lily. He’s knows what I like, she thought ruefully.

If tea in her parents’ parlour proved agreeable, then the young wizard would send his lady-love a gift – gloves, perhaps, or chocolate-coated candies.

She supposed the tea had gone well. At least they had not argued and her mother had remained silent. She had tried not to look at his eyes as they silently implored her. It was too soon, she thought.

On her dressing table the next morning, she found a heart-shaped box containing chocolates – Honeydukes finest – but the taste was cloying and she pushed them to one side. Of course, he doesn’t know, she thought and felt a lump in her throat.

If the young witch (and her parents) found the second gift acceptable, then the young wizard would be invited again to the parlour for tea, and this time the young couple would be allowed a few minutes alone.

She hadn’t eaten the chocolates, but her mother had, and so she let him call again. She allowed herself to listen to his pretty speech declaring his love, but then her mother returned and he left without hearing her reply.

If the second visit was agreeable to the courting couple, then the young wizard would send her another gift – something to trim her Sunday best bonnet with. And if the young witch accepted the young wizard’s favour, then she would trim her Sunday bonnet with the ribbon and thus declare her intent.

On her dressing table, she found a box of brightly coloured ribbons. She dug her hands in the box, delighting in the myriad of colours. I don’t have a hat, you prat, but I know what to do with these.

He was waiting outside the house, hoping for a miracle, when she appeared. She had no hat – he knew that – but instead she’d weaved the ribbons through her hair, matching the colours to every tress. She smiled that wide smile and held out her arms to him.

“Most people,” she said as he held her close (or as close as he could with ‘the bump’ in between them) “do their courtship before they’re married, and not when the wife is pregnant.”

Remus kissed her tenderly on the lips. “Since when have we been ‘most people’, Dora.”

I'm not sure this is quite what the setters had in mind, but then I'm fond of flipping things.

Carole

[mudbloodproud]

Title: “Shut up, Sirriwus”
Rating: 1st to 2nd year
Warnings: mild language (one word, once)
Word Count: 500
Link to Original Challenge:Word Beads 5
Why you chose the challenge: I missed posting this drabble by literally a minute or two. The thread was locked as I was creating the post. I had so much fun with this drabble, it is perfect for another chance to be read.

Lily stood and looked at the mess in front of her. Shaking her head, she bent to clean up the broken lamp. Carefully, she placed the green pieces into the handkerchief she held in her hand. Harry had so much fun on his toy broomstick chasing the cat she didn’t have the heart to stop him.

As she bent down to look under the table for stray pieces, she spotted Harry’s lost bottle. Reaching her hand under the table, she pulled out the bottle and in the process cut her hand on a piece of the lamp.

“Darn it,” she said. She would have said something stronger, but Harry had started repeating everything he heard and she was always yelling at James and Sirius to watch their language around him. It wouldn’t have been good if he repeated something she said.

Standing, she went into the kitchen to wash off her hand and determine how deep the cut was. She could have just healed it using magic, but her wand was upstairs and she didn’t feel like trailing blood through the house.

The scene that greeted her in the kitchen had her forgetting her hand. Sitting at her once clean table was James and Sirius. In front of them they had various greasy parts from what she could only imagine was Sirius’ motorbike.

“No, I think this is the oil pump,” said Sirius, holding up a dripping part.

“Naw, this is it,” James replied holding out an equally dirty part.

“Look in that book thingie with the notes we got from that Muggle repairman,” said Sirius.

James picked up the steno pad on which Lily could see writing. “Doesn’t tell us what it looks like,” James said forlornly.

Lily couldn’t take it anymore, she started yelling at both of them, “What in Merlin’s name do you two think you’re doing? Don’t you realize the mess you are making?” She marched over to the table.

Reaching out, she ripped the part Sirius was holding out of his hand and held it out to James. “This is an oil pump, that is the fuel pump. How you two can even think about fixing anything is beyond me.” She threw the part onto the table and stormed over to the sink.

“Lily, what happened to your hand,” James asked.

“I cut it cleaning up the lamp Harry broke,’ she answered as she washed off her hands. She opened the cabinet and pulled out a bottle of organic antiseptic her mum had left. She only hoped it wouldn’t sting like the ones when she was a kid.

She held her hand over the sink and dumped the bottle onto the cut. ‘Damn,” she said without thought.

‘Damn,” came the little voice from the highchair.

‘Watch your language,” Sirius said in perfect imitation of Lily’s voice.

“Shut up, Sirius,” she said growling as she walked out of the kitchen leaving the men laughing.

As she was leaving, she heard her son say, “Shut up, Sirriwus.”

[minnabird]

Title: The End
Rating: A high 3rd-5th, I think
Warnings: Mild Language, Character Death
Word Count: 487
Link to Original Challenge: January Monthly Challenge - Xenophilius Lovegood
Why you chose the challenge: It was actually between this and another (the Ghost challenge), and since I had a more definite bunny for this one, I wrote it. I didn't like it as well as I thought I would, though, so I decided to write the other...but that one got so long I knew it'd have to be a one-shot if I wanted to do it right. >.< So I'm posting this.

This is her diary, and maybe some people would leave it alone, not write in it, but I can’t just leave it unfinished.

It’s hard to write this. Even thinking about it, the words don’t come the way I wish they would. She deserves an elegy from a great poet, but I’m just an ordinary man. And the only words that seem to want to come are words that describe what happened…but not, perhaps, what I felt and feel.

It’ll have to do.

I know she was writing in here about the experiments she was running. Said it would help her with the reports when she’d gotten the spell right at last. This spell didn’t want to be made, seemed like. But she was determined. Her brother-in-law was dying of the illness it was meant to cure, after all. That was the funny thing about her – she could like people despite the company they kept. Look what he married.

As I said, the spell she was trying to create was giving her difficulties, but she was determined, and when she sets her will to something she throws her whole self into it.
Set. Threw. Damn it - I hate this past tense.

Finally one day she got a gleam in her eye that I knew meant she’d had a burst of inspiration. She never liked to work in the house; the first spell she worked on for her research place blew up the kitchen. So she headed out the back door. I was busy at the press, but Luna was playing outside and I wanted to make sure she didn’t get in her mother’s way, so I followed her into the back garden.

I was telling Luna something about “Mummy’s got work to do, we can’t distract her,” when a blinding light flashed in the corner of my eye. I’m not sure how I did it, but I got Luna behind me and turned to face my wife, just in time to be clouted in the face by some massive force.

When I woke up – in the hospital, I might add, and thank God our Luna knew how to Floo for St. Mungo’s – my whole head was pounding, but my first thought was for her.
But two of our closest friends were waiting for me to wake, and it was them who broke the news.

Only the edge of the bad spell had caught me, and I came out of it with just my looks messed up. My wife, the only woman I’ve ever, will ever love…she died of it. Probably instantly, they said. We were all crying by that point. We’re all still crying. Nothing’s right anymore, without her.

But of course, there’s Luna. Little Luna. She’s the only thing I have left, really. Her and the Quibbler. But then, she has a lot of her mother in her.

She might even make things all right.

...Yeah, I'm definitely not big on this one, but in the words of Xeno, "It'll have to do."