In Ashes
{December, 1981. The Order of the Phoenix adjourns.}

After the din, after the thoughtless, mindless madness that was the first of November, the second of November, the third, the fourth…it’s December now, the autumn of victory passed into the winter that had to come.

The merriment of glittering victory has died, the enchantment fallen away ( Read more... )

Cauterize

{"Of course it's missing something vital. That's the point." Dennis Creevey takes up his brother's camera after the war}

Days after the battle, Dennis Creevey finds Colin’s camera exactly where it was left, in perfect condition in his brother’s room. And he leaves it again, because he is young and it is nothing but salt and lemon in a ( Read more... )

1979
{it would have been a good year...twelve months Fabian Prewett never lived}

1979 would have been a good year.

January: Fabian would have gone home to Dorcas in the first few hours of the year, would have shaken the biting cold from the Newcastle streets out of his cloak, would have climbed in their warm bed and watched her sleep awhile, would ( Read more... )

Part III
{can't keep safe what wants to break}

It’s the food of Witch Weekly’s gossip columnist for a solid three weeks; everyone’s waiting for the newly un-engaged Astoria Greengrass to be found in a compromising position in some dark corner of Knockturn with Draco Malfoy.
Ms. Greengrass has not so much fallen from grace as taken a headlong running ( Read more... )

Part II

"it's not perfection, how boring if it is"

“What am I doing?” Astoria wonders aloud around the girly, menthol cigarette she’s just dug out of her brown leather handbag, hands still sifting for her wand or the little ivory lighter (whichever surfaces first).
“What are you doing what?” Draco presses, eyes narrowed suddenly.

The lighter it is. She ( Read more... )

Part I

"the beauty is in what isn't said"

Chase This Light

Draco Malfoy falls head over heels for Astoria Greengrass while he’s sneaking out of her engagement ball (in the most literal sense; he trips over her.) She’s sitting on the first of three stone steps leading out of the kitchen into the groomed back gardens of the MacMillan estate, elbows ( Read more... )

Red Ink Remains

Fred Weasley’s card tricks are like real magic. He finds the Queen of Hearts for her over and over, smiling broadly across the counter as she examines the cards again in disbelief.

The last time he comes, one cold day over Christmas holidays, one day without his twin, he smiles at her and leaves the Queen of Hearts on her counter, ( Read more... )

Mourning Bride and Mulberry

{They bury her two weeks shy of her twenty-eighth birthday. Funeral flowers thread the air and it is only in death that Marlene McKinnon does not smell of ash}

Marlene McKinnon is a study in self-destruction, a fury of anger and disappointment. Gideon Prewett has loved nothing in his life like he loves this burgundy ruin ( Read more... )

Worth Saving
{He's just about to leave, to go and fight and maybe not return, when he turns to look, just one more time, at the beautiful mess he's made of his life. Kingsley Shacklebolt, before the Battle of Hogwarts, wonders: We're all human, aren't we?}

Worth Saving
We're all human, aren't we? Every human life is worth the same, and worth saving.
( Read more... )

A Good Way to Fall

{how Alastor Moody came to use his flask, and six other drabbles on the man before Mad-Eye}

Alastor Moody receives his first Secrecy Sensor in 1904 from his best friend, in celebration of his graduation from the Auror Academy. From the moment he pulls the thing from its wrappings, it starts vibrating. Violently.
Benjy Fenwick is ( Read more... )