Somewhere Out There
The sliver of moonlight that spread itself across the yard made him cringe. He wandered over to the willow instead, letting himself hit the ground, back first, without breaking his fall. The stars above him spelled patterns he could no longer understand. It had been a month since his world had spun straight.
He still remembered the moment, precarious as it had been, when she told him she was going. There, in the glow of moonlight, her hair had been softly violet and seemed to melt away at the ends, part of the glowing beams. He could taste her fear on the air between them like the flavors of wormwood, and her guilt was heavy on the wind.
“I do love you,” she had said, as if they had been arguing the point. Her body seemed to be strung from a different sort of thread when she got this way – everything tight and as close to graceful as she ever became.
He pushed the thoughts away from his mind with a force he’d never required. The violet light between the stars was somehow comforting. He could count her freckles in the constellations and pretend that she was somewhere out there.
Scorpius - Butterfly (prompt list 10, number 2)
Scorpius’s head reeled a bit as he carefully applied the plaster to his knee, bleeding far more than usual. His vision blurred slightly but the tears refused to fall and clear his sight, making his work sloppy at best. It would stop the blood from trickling down his leg, at least, which was the point. He leaned back against his wardrobe, tears finally slipping down his face, as if in relief. Even if the blood had gone on pouring, he would have endured it. He couldn’t go to daddy. He wondered, in his childish and innocent mind, why his daddy never ruffled his hair or hugged him up tight before bed, the way that mummy did. To his daddy, he was the type of small and fragile thing that fell to pieces at a touch; a pure white lily, browning in the perfect shape of a fingertip; a hesitant butterfly, dying with a single glancing brush of the hand. Even through his young eyes, he could see the invisible barrier that held Draco an arm’s length away. It was all he knew, but that didn’t stop the hot tears from falling. Scorpius just wasn’t cut out to be a butterfly.
Snape - Transparent (prompt list 7, number 33)
“Bugger,” muttered the boy beneath the tree, book in hand but eyes cast woefully across the grounds toward the lake. He was unable to look away from the couple necking there, although there was nothing he wanted to see less. It had been more than a year since he and Lily had stopped speaking to each other, but that didn’t mean he didn’t scoff and say, “I told you so,” when she and James Potter became a pair of sickening little lovebirds. He’d told her for years that Potter was nothing more than a skirt-chaser; he’d seen through him from day one.
“Don’t be silly,” she’d tell him, rolling her eyes. “I’m not a member of his little fan club, and he can’t possibly be that stupid.”
And now, there she was, her hair a sunburst around him as they kissed. It made Severus sick to his stomach to see her turned from a brash, witty girl to a fluttery, hair-twirling damsel in distress. He had heard the rumors that they were getting married and felt pangs of regret at the thought. Sure, he’d seen straight through Potter...but for once he wished he’d been a little more transparent.
