catko

Domhnall Gleeson (Dublin, Ireland) as Bill Weasley

Evanna Lynch (Termonfeckin, Ireland) as Luna Lovegood

Kenneth Branagh (Belfast, Northern Ireland) as Gilderoy Lockhart

The challenge at lands_of_magic is to write a fic showing how your characters dealt with a difficult turn of events. You can't change the event, just address it. I thought of ... well, you'll see.

Fandom: Harry Potter
Words: 371

   Mrs Granger: "Hermione. Tea's ready, darling."
    Hermione: "Coming, Mum!"

With an effort, Hermione plasters a happy expression onto her face—not the most common for her as it was, and even more arduous now. She takes a deep breath and walks slowly down the stairs.

Fortunately in a way, her parents are facing away from her, gathered around the tea-table but looking out the window, remarking, as they tended to do, on the scenery outside.

“Just the wallcreepers and nuthatches today, love,” her mother says fondly. “Aye, finches more in the morning, yes,” says her father, putting his arm around his wife.

Hermione steels herself to do this quickly. Once they turn and see her, she might not be able to pull it off. She raises her wand and mutters the phrase. As she stares for one last time around her, the familiar sitting-room already seems to blur around the edges. She wipes her eyes brusquely, but still the blurring shimmers and glows—and with a determined set in her jaw, she turns to leave the house of her childhood, forever.

*****

The tea things rattle and the husband and wife look at each other in vague alarm. “What’s this?” asks the man, “truck going by?” “Dunno, I thought it was me, a bit of a dizzy spell.” The woman touches the items on the tea-tray, rearranging them slightly. The man shakes his head as though to clear the cobwebs, then smiles at his wife. “P’rhaps it’s just the excitement of our new adventure, love! Giving us a bit of the willies!”

The woman looks around the sitting room, with the photos of the two of them on holiday, linens, clocks, and other homey items. “Will be hard to leave home, but fantastic to be set in Australia!” she says brightly. “Now for tea!” She looks down at the tea-tray and grimaces. “What now?” asks the man.

She gestures at the tray, with the three tea cups, three saucers, and three sandwich plates. “Dunno what I was thinking, I suppose I am at sixes and sevens,” she says brightly, though as she gathers up the extra set to return to the kitchen, she feels a wave of loss and sadness that she cannot explain.

I've always wanted to try my hand at these beautiful art boxes, a la Joseph Cornell (mostly since they featured so prominently in one of my favorite books, Count Zero by William Gibson, where they take on a haunting mysticism).

So, I thought I'd try one for ... well can you guess who? It doesn't look like much, but thinking of the items, gathering them (or reasonable--I hope--facsimiles), and arranging them did take some time. Not sure how successful, but anyway, now I'm intrigued to try more.  For lands_of_magic.

( See it here! )

For a challenge at womenverse. This was cool, I'd never seen mood boards before. At first I was stumped, but thanks to blue_sunflowers, it kind of popped. It's her creativity that inspired the Luna one; I admire how her suggestions were all adjectives, while the ones I came up with on my own were mostly nouns. That means something I think.



( Guess who... )

.
.
.