Drabble Night!
Lovely work all around, once more, and many thanks to the other players: imochan, anjenue, yeats, starrysummer, violet_quill, soothsayer87, spiritstairway, spillingvelvet, and casira (glad you could make it!). Really, they're all wonderful, and have done sensational work with the themes.

This week's theme was Mornings.

So go check out the wonderful drabbles!

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Round 1: Severus/Harry, Luna/Hermione, and Draco/Ron

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Round 2: Sirius/James, Snape/Ron, Harry/Neville

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Round 3: Harry/Sirius, Remus/Harry, Severus/Remus

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Round 4: Percy/Lucius, Harry/Neville, Remus/Sirius

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Morning Breath - Draco/Ron

They - oh heaven grant them pardon - burn at the touch as the sun mottles red their ready, racing morning skin. It is fire that wends from hair to venom-throat, one tucked sleeping burden against the sloping, porcelain brace of the other's neck, the pulse-point that thrums life through veins still pounding with the ramport of their night's meeting, the unsteady compromise in mutual collapse. Damn the daylight, Ron thinks, and his hand curls shaking-hard about his wand, and he raises his head to peer down through slitted sleepy eyes at the form beside him, the twist of serpent down the trusting arm.

Draco lies so quietly Ron tells himself that maybe, maybe his work is already done, maybe there is no need - but then Draco sighs, and rolls onto his back, baring a new splay of skin, of sweat, and then Ron cannot pretend this is completion of an Ordered sort, though oh how his body begs to find completion here regardless. He shakes all the more, and shuts his eyes, and points wand to Draco's neck, only to find he can't - not here, not now - and he bites his lip instead, and turns away, feet finding cold floor and standing, so the blankets fall away and he has ample excuse to shiver as he thinks, what to do what to do what to-

He doesn't see Draco open his eyes, because Draco doesn't, but Ron hears the words, the syllables said so softly, and with such care, and so it goes, he thinks, as he falls a limp weight to the floor they rutted ceasefire against only hours earlier, worry falling away with essence. Draco simply breathed stronger, more fouler things into their morning than Ron had tried and failed to do. So it goes, he thinks, and so he does.



Shower - Snape/Ron

Night breeds epic battles, hexes and common soot marring fighters, leaving fallen, leaving victors and food for the alley cats to feast upon.

Morning breeds the aftermath, the reek of human sweat and matted hair and dirt-caked skin and blood, and rot. Especially rot. Morning breeds waking, breeds showers.

They stand wand-less, robe-less, at opposite sides of the shower stall, singular, outside the hut so many weary fighters had stumbled upon after the celebrations, and look as if making ready for a final duel of their own, in the light of so very many dead and wounded Weasleys.

“You first,” says Ron, steadily. “Professor.” He holds his towel tight against him and reminds himself the man before him – ally though he is – has aided the enemy, given them things they needed to kill Ron’s friends, his family. Inexcusable.

“How considerate of you,” Snape returns, coldly. He looks like the dead warmed over, so heavy are his wounds, and the dirt about them. He’s favouring a leg, and barely looks able to walk. “But I should rather the facilities were tested for hidden spells by someone expendable first.”

Ron glares. Snape meets the look with disgust. Minutes passed. On their skin, bugs crawl.

“Fine,” Ron snaps at last, and pushes forward. “This is stupid.”

“Agreed.” Snape lurches to step between Ron and shower. “Much as I should like a test dummy, the depth of my injuries requires more immediate treatment. Besides,” he adds, sneering, “I should think you’d be used to a little filth on you. Feels a little like home, doesn’t it, Weasley?”

Ron snarls, and shoves him, and Snape trips backwards through the shower and lands heavily on one hip. Ron stands over him, towel discarded, fist raised. “Fuck you, Snape!”

Snape winces at the pain lancing through his body, but nevertheless wraps his ankles tight about Ron’s leg and jerks him down overtop. “Very well,” he grunts, and Ron realizes just then, when Snape winces again at the weight of Ron atop him, how utterly small and petty and helpless Snape is, paying for all his sins in self-same wounds all about his body. “But… clean me first.”

And - oh, gross - Ron thinks, but he relaxes his fist and makes to stand and help Snape up anyway. Mum, Ron tells himself, would want him to forgive, even if this, the stall, the grit, the swearing, and the potential for something frighteningly more, isn’t quite exactly as she’d have him go about it.



Milk and Sugar - Severus/Remus

Morning after, and the streets outside resonate with celebration, but Remus lays curled in his bed, his hands raking hard over the sheets, wishing, just wishing, that for one moment – just one – these fingers could be claws against the sunrise, against this end, of war and evil and Voldemort and oh god James and Lily and Peter and… and…

And Severus is at his doorway, and then in his kitchen, and then at his bedside, and Remus can’t understand why; won’t even look up to be sure it’s him, though he knows the stride too well for it to be any other.

“Drink,” is the only word uttered in this god-awful hour, and a mug is set in the line of Remus’s sight – tea, with wisps of steam that curl a tempting heat against the shivers that wrack him, bowel-deep. He turns his hand palm up over the bedspread, his long legs tucked up desperately tight against him as he realizes he can move his hand no further: he hasn’t the energy.

But then Severus unexpectedly moves the drink into his hand, and Remus has no excuse, so he bows his head over the cup and tries to burn his tongue in it, a drowning he can permit himself, in this foreign need for strength, strength to go on. But Severus hasn’t made the potion hot enough for that, and so instead Remus finds himself drinking it, and finds himself wondering at the milk and sugar he can taste against the sterility of the brew, as if there to soften the edge of the hard concoction, made no doubt to wrest him from his repose, his shock, his oh god, just let me sleep as you let them and he looks up, surprised, and Severus looks away.

And Remus, shaken though he is, distracted though he cannot help but be, reminds himself this is all Severus has to offer, this is all Severus knows how to, against the fractures no words can heal, so he drinks it, all of it, though the sweetness weighs a guilty lump in his throat when he lays back, and tries to forget that he can’t forget this, not ever, not any of it, ever again.



The Morning After - Harry/Neville

They lie awake through the night, but lie still, each trying to maintain the pretense of slumber as if for the other’s sake, as if each is certain morning can’t come if someone, somewhere, is standing guard long enough against it – constant vigilance. But morning comes regardless, sunrise a heavy, sickly thing in the pits of their stomachs, and Harry closes his eyes, and swallows at the last, and wraps his hand about Neville’s wrist.

“Don’t go,” he whispers. “Stay, eh? And we’ll get a hut somewhere and go live like hermits and you can garden and I’ll fly about scavenging and—“

Neville smiles, his expression worn and grave as he sits up, drawing Harry’s hand to his mouth and pressing tentative kisses to the knuckles. “Can’t,” he whispers, shaking on the words, so frightened is he of what awaits him. “Fate calls.”

And in the shuttering rays of sunlight that pour through their dingy shared window, Harry can just make out the dark, vicious Mark on Neville’s arm, born there of Voldemort’s pettiness, his blatant manipulation of the rules during Neville’s capture: the last-minute realization of a new hero, a new star.

Not fair, Harry thinks desperately, as he lies back, shutting his eyes tight and trying not to listen to Neville dress and leave. Harry’s scar – now a useless bolt upon his forehead – rubs dully against the pillow where they’d lain, the two of them, on what might well have been the last night of Neville Longbottom’s life, and Harry tries once more to tell himself he did it because he wanted Neville to be happy, just once, but he can't quite shake the belief, horrible though it is, that there was something petty, something envious, in the way he mounted friend and ally for that first and maybe final time.

"See you later," Neville says at the door, softly, frightened, and Harry tries to answer, he really does.