Eggcorns Challenge
Title: Morning Doves
Author: lionille
Rating/Warnings: G
Prompt: Morning Doves
Summary/Description: Fleur ponders life (Fleur/Bill)
Word Count: 900
Fleur sits on the edge of a lake in a strange country and wonders how it has all come to this. One day she is a tournament contestant, the pride of Beauxbatons, and the next she is forgotten. Where there had been sportsmanship and glory there is now only mourning. It is all memorial services, and shattered whispers and pale, streaky faces.
Fleur thinks of lovely, brave Cedric ~ her fellow champion ~ and her heart aches. It is all such a shame.
She just wants to go home, to escape the grief-soaked atmosphere of Hogwarts. She wants to sit in the sun on her family’s back porch, and eat a buttered croissant kissed with a red smear of her mother’s best berry jam. She wants to forget the cold terror of losing sight of Gabrielle under the murky water, of staring into Krum’s empty eyes, of being swallowed whole by the blackness of the maze.
“Pardon me. Are you all right?”
Fleur hastily wipes the tears from her face with her long fingers. It’s an unladylike gesture, she knows, but necessary. She looks up to see who has interrupted her dark reverie.
He’s tall, too old to be a student, but she doesn’t think he’s a professor either. His red hair is tied back in a roguish ponytail, and there’s something that looks suspiciously like a dragon’s tooth dangling from one ear.
“Bill Weasley,” he introduces himself, extending a hand down to her, which she accepts, blinking. “Ron’s brother?” he prompts. “You must know Ron…. Harry’s dorm mate?”
“Of course, ‘e ‘ elped ‘arry save my Gabrielle.” Mention of the other Hogwarts champion sends another pang through her heart. She thinks of the young boy who’d caused such controversy, but tried so hard, unassuming to look at but with the light of a hero shining from his green eyes.
“ ‘ow ees ‘arry today?” she asks anxiously.
Bill’s clouded expression darkens further, doing little to comfort her.
“No one tells us anything!” she flares up, and stares out across the lake.
“No one knows anything!” Bill sounds frustrated, too, and Fleur’s gaze drops to the daisy dotted grass.
“I am zorry,” she mutters.
“No, I’m sorry. It’s just that Harry’s practically a member of our family, and my mother’s beside herself, and…”
“Beside herself?”
“Upset. Mind if I join you?”
Despite the vista of available seating, she scoots over in the grass as if to make room. He takes the invitation and folds himself down next to her. They both stare across the lake, the water is frosted with white ripples like an iced pastry. Fleur’s been told there’s some sort of sea monster in there, a squid of some proportion, but she’s never seen it.
It’s a relief not to talk, to have to search and fumble through the foreign words. She casts a glance at him from time to time, though, until at last curiosity gets the better of her. “What does zee dragon tooth mean?” she asks, tugging at her own earlobe.
He smiles, and it’s quite a nice smile, she decides suddenly. “Mostly it means my brother is a dragonkeeper and sends us interesting things in the post. Ginny’s got a necklace made of scales that Charlie collected off the ground during shedding season.”
“Zat sounds very pretty,” she says, remembering the glistening dragon she had faced in the first task. “I zink I would like one of those.”
Bill’s smile grows a little wider. “I’ll get you one.”
~*~
Fleur stares up at the ceiling of her honeymoon suite, raising her hand now and then to study her ring with both wonder and relief. The only reason she and Bill are even here is because of her steadfast resolve. She had simply held on and refused to let go.
She knows she almost lost him on several occasions. First to the werewolf Fenrir, and then to the depression afterwards, as he mourned what he had been and was no longer. She’d also had to overcome the resistance of Bill’s mother and sister every step of the way. Such headstrong women! She remembers the frustration as they’d all planned the wedding, arguing over the impossible difference between pink and rose and blush, or ecru, beige and eggshell….
It didn’t matter to Fleur what things were called, or labeled, it was their true essence that mattered. She knew what she liked, what she wanted, what she loved. And in the end, she had gotten what she wanted, from dress to cake to groom.
Her ruffled thoughts are calmed by a gentle calling outside her window. She’s seen the plain, grey birds in the courtyard, sitting in the trees, or on the Muggle phone wires. She’s noticed that they’re usually in pairs, which she finds charming and quaint.
The soft hooing sound they make is plaintive, but Fleur finds it soothing, and she’s nearly lulled to sleep.
“It’s a nice sound, yes?” she murmurs to her husband.
Bill picks his head up off the pillow briefly. With his hair undone, and the earring gone, he looks quite different, handsome despite the scars, natural. “The birds, you mean?”
“Yes. I asked the girl at the front desk what they were. She said they were Morning Doves. I don’t know why they call them that,” Fleur says thoughtfully, laying her head on Bill’s speckled shoulder. “I only ever hear them in the afternoons.”
Author: lionille
Rating/Warnings: G
Prompt: Morning Doves
Summary/Description: Fleur ponders life (Fleur/Bill)
Word Count: 900
Fleur sits on the edge of a lake in a strange country and wonders how it has all come to this. One day she is a tournament contestant, the pride of Beauxbatons, and the next she is forgotten. Where there had been sportsmanship and glory there is now only mourning. It is all memorial services, and shattered whispers and pale, streaky faces.
Fleur thinks of lovely, brave Cedric ~ her fellow champion ~ and her heart aches. It is all such a shame.
She just wants to go home, to escape the grief-soaked atmosphere of Hogwarts. She wants to sit in the sun on her family’s back porch, and eat a buttered croissant kissed with a red smear of her mother’s best berry jam. She wants to forget the cold terror of losing sight of Gabrielle under the murky water, of staring into Krum’s empty eyes, of being swallowed whole by the blackness of the maze.
“Pardon me. Are you all right?”
Fleur hastily wipes the tears from her face with her long fingers. It’s an unladylike gesture, she knows, but necessary. She looks up to see who has interrupted her dark reverie.
He’s tall, too old to be a student, but she doesn’t think he’s a professor either. His red hair is tied back in a roguish ponytail, and there’s something that looks suspiciously like a dragon’s tooth dangling from one ear.
“Bill Weasley,” he introduces himself, extending a hand down to her, which she accepts, blinking. “Ron’s brother?” he prompts. “You must know Ron…. Harry’s dorm mate?”
“Of course, ‘e ‘ elped ‘arry save my Gabrielle.” Mention of the other Hogwarts champion sends another pang through her heart. She thinks of the young boy who’d caused such controversy, but tried so hard, unassuming to look at but with the light of a hero shining from his green eyes.
“ ‘ow ees ‘arry today?” she asks anxiously.
Bill’s clouded expression darkens further, doing little to comfort her.
“No one tells us anything!” she flares up, and stares out across the lake.
“No one knows anything!” Bill sounds frustrated, too, and Fleur’s gaze drops to the daisy dotted grass.
“I am zorry,” she mutters.
“No, I’m sorry. It’s just that Harry’s practically a member of our family, and my mother’s beside herself, and…”
“Beside herself?”
“Upset. Mind if I join you?”
Despite the vista of available seating, she scoots over in the grass as if to make room. He takes the invitation and folds himself down next to her. They both stare across the lake, the water is frosted with white ripples like an iced pastry. Fleur’s been told there’s some sort of sea monster in there, a squid of some proportion, but she’s never seen it.
It’s a relief not to talk, to have to search and fumble through the foreign words. She casts a glance at him from time to time, though, until at last curiosity gets the better of her. “What does zee dragon tooth mean?” she asks, tugging at her own earlobe.
He smiles, and it’s quite a nice smile, she decides suddenly. “Mostly it means my brother is a dragonkeeper and sends us interesting things in the post. Ginny’s got a necklace made of scales that Charlie collected off the ground during shedding season.”
“Zat sounds very pretty,” she says, remembering the glistening dragon she had faced in the first task. “I zink I would like one of those.”
Bill’s smile grows a little wider. “I’ll get you one.”
~*~
Fleur stares up at the ceiling of her honeymoon suite, raising her hand now and then to study her ring with both wonder and relief. The only reason she and Bill are even here is because of her steadfast resolve. She had simply held on and refused to let go.
She knows she almost lost him on several occasions. First to the werewolf Fenrir, and then to the depression afterwards, as he mourned what he had been and was no longer. She’d also had to overcome the resistance of Bill’s mother and sister every step of the way. Such headstrong women! She remembers the frustration as they’d all planned the wedding, arguing over the impossible difference between pink and rose and blush, or ecru, beige and eggshell….
It didn’t matter to Fleur what things were called, or labeled, it was their true essence that mattered. She knew what she liked, what she wanted, what she loved. And in the end, she had gotten what she wanted, from dress to cake to groom.
Her ruffled thoughts are calmed by a gentle calling outside her window. She’s seen the plain, grey birds in the courtyard, sitting in the trees, or on the Muggle phone wires. She’s noticed that they’re usually in pairs, which she finds charming and quaint.
The soft hooing sound they make is plaintive, but Fleur finds it soothing, and she’s nearly lulled to sleep.
“It’s a nice sound, yes?” she murmurs to her husband.
Bill picks his head up off the pillow briefly. With his hair undone, and the earring gone, he looks quite different, handsome despite the scars, natural. “The birds, you mean?”
“Yes. I asked the girl at the front desk what they were. She said they were Morning Doves. I don’t know why they call them that,” Fleur says thoughtfully, laying her head on Bill’s speckled shoulder. “I only ever hear them in the afternoons.”