Where a whimsical and macabre plot device is introduced.
Thursday, November 19, 1994
Draco drew the barbs of his crow-feather quill back and forth over his lips. His half-written History essay swam languorously in his unfocused vision, lit by the dappled, green-tinted sunshine that filtered through the lake outside the window. The tickling sensation had a strange rapport with the fickle, dancing light, especially when he teased the very tip of his upper lip. With perfectly measured pressure, he could make the tingling travel all the way down to his toes.
In his mind’s eye, it wasn’t the feather tickling his lips, but the soft, barely-there baby hair on the nape of Potter’s neck. Draco had seen it a few times, lighting up like a golden halo when the sun struck Potter’s profile just so in the Transfiguration classroom, even though Draco usually sat on the other end of it. Unlike Potter, Draco had exceptional eyesight.
Draco hesitates in front of Potter’s door. Everyone else has gone out for breakfast, and it’s really none of his business if Potter has decided to sleep in and skip it. Potter has more than a few legitimate friends far better suited to worry about that sort of thing than Draco. But none of them have noticed Potter’s absence from the common room this morning. Draco has. How could he not? It’s like being out of air.
Tracking the movement of Potter’s eyes, Draco runs a greasy finger over the thickest of his scars. “You like them, don’t you? Pervert.”
Potter tosses his head back, jostling the mass of his curly fringe from his forehead. “I bet you were into scars long before you had any of your own, Malfoy.”
Yes, Draco wants to say. I want to lick yours. What he says instead is, “Fuck you.”
“Fuck you,” Potter echoes, putting the same pregnant emphasis on the F.
Draco bites his lower lip, wrestling down the rise of euphoria. “Your turn,” he says. “Take that off.”
It’s a Tumblr event where every day throughout December, people make Harry Potter fanwork recommendations in response to a set of prompts. And I took part! I didn’t have a rec for every day, but I did for more than half, and the exercise helped clear some of my rec backlog. It was also an opportunity for me to use some of my artwork! In what follows, the background of each banner is my very own scanned watercolor or acrylic painting. 😊
