House: Gryffindor
Year: 3
Category: Drabble
Prompt: "If you never try, you'll never know"
Word Count: 281
At first, it was just whispers. Soft, sweet murmurs in the back of her mind. They crept up when she was distracted, or when she wasn't distracted enough.
Then came the dreams, syrupy and seductive. Giving physical form to the whispers. Creating images that replayed in her mind for days afterwards.
Finally, came the feelings. The wrenching in her gut. The clenching of her heart. The sting of tears in her eyes.
The whispers could be ignored, held at bay by days filled with classes and evenings filled with studying. It was easy, after all, to allow people to assume it was worry about exams that drove her frantic need to remain occupied at all times.
The dreams could not be ignored, but they could be contained. Long nights spent studying left little time to dream, and when the dreams did come, it was easy to write them off as fantasy. To place them in the box of make-believe: dancing spiders, pink elephants, him.
The feelings, though. They could not be ignored, nor contained. They could not be held at bay by studying, nor sleep, nor lack of sleep. They demanded to be felt. To be experienced in all other visceral, beautiful power.
But, in the end, it was not the feelings that broke her; their raw intensity, pounding in her heart, did not convince her. Nor did the dreams; the undeniable lust of the imagery was not enough to sway her convictions.
No. It was the whispers. One soft whisper, uttered as his dark eyes met hers: If you never try, you'll never know.