Dramione Prompts Challenge
Author's Note: (For the first chapter I'd appreciate it if you read the author's note before the story. It's kind of important.
Okay, now that that warning's done. I just wanted to explain a few things. This story is largely based of this prompt/drabble challenge thing I found online because: a) I struggle with coming up with ideas sometimes, even if I want to write the story b) I've never fully done a prompt/drabble challenge thing that was beyond one chapter. So I wanted to give both a try and use the challenge thing to help me with it. Basically for each chapter I have a prompt and I can interpret and write whatever I want with it, though I want to try and aim for reasonable closeness between the prompt and chapter, and I've chosen to write a modern day AU with a prompt for each chapter. So all the chapters of this story are going to be chronological and like a story I guess. That's really it. Enjoy reading!)
Prompt: Person 1 wakes Person 2 at 4am because they want someone to eat cereal with. Person 2 questions why, but Person 1 surprises them and says "I just wanted a reason to be with you, is all..."
Chapter 1: Cereal in New York
Hermione Jean Granger looked out of her small condo window. The dismal grey clouds hinting of rain and perhaps slight hail reflected straight back at her. Fourteen hours and twenty-seven minutes ago she had been in a similar position, staring out the small airplane window and looking at the golden peach clouds before her flight touched down on American soil and she had truly departed the only world she'd ever grown up in and ever known.
New York had been nice to her so far. She'd hailed a yellow cabbie as she'd seen in old films depicting the great West in her childhood, and as she had looked up on trip sites before deciding to pack up her life and leave for another country. Except it wasn't exactly yellow, more like faded orange with little bits of paint coming of at the sides. But, she thought as she examined a paint chip between two fingers after she'd gone through the process of opening the door and getting inside, it was only the start of her journey so far, and every little bit, every little detail, etched itself into her memory as if forever. It was only the start of her personalised journey afterall. This was her new york, with it's haunting imperfections and the chipped paint and all.
After the great battle of Hogwarts, she couldn't bear to return to that same old country school again. Same village, same castle, same fights and feuds and inner tensions running high within.
Running from voldemort. In the forest. Woods rising high, trees on either side. Heart beating in her chest and fear leaping to her throat as she sprinted with blood running through her veins and fear echoing in the wake of a green flash of light - real or imagined she didn't know.
Hours spent reading books and pouring over the wizarding system, the very cracks and pockmarks in it that allowed for this to happen. For the ministry to be so easily twisted and corrupted in Voldemort's fingers. She often felt frustrated reading those.
The wizarding world was too trapped in the past. Old prejudices and blood fueds. Fear and prejudice against animals and other magical species that lead to this huge war, which was mostly fought on ancient prejudices and old fear and hatred, which could have been easily prevented but weren't. Even the wizarding system, of the purebloods having all the inherited wealth in the economy, and the cycle generation after generation. Even the fact that the wizarding economy was basically non-existent compared to the muggle world, and there was no real chance for advancement or opportunity if it weren't for marriage or blood. The very crusps of a shit society that she had once believed would be her saving grace as an innocent just turned twelve year old receiving her letter and then soaring away along the rail through the english countryside to what was once a place of magic but became a haunting melody later.
Afterwards.
The world rebuilt.
Hogwarts was rebuilt within a summer and a year. Most of the physical work was carried out in the summer directly after. She had been on site considering she was the only one of the original trio that were considering going back to study and complete her final year, along with some other classmates of the same grade who also wanted to graduate, and a whole lot of absences of classmates that didn't.
It was hell. Silence. Awkward glances. Raised eyebrows. Feelings of 'we shouldn't have spilt and wasted so much blood over what was a stupid stupid start.'
Hogwarts was rebuilt, the students started pouring in. The physical rebuilding happened mostly in one summer, the mental happened mostly in the first year. The cracks were filled up. Hermione often took on leadership roles, tired and creaking from all the bad memories of life-endangering moments at Hogwarts and trying to teach students that all was well and good and dear and sweet in the world, and that there was hope and optimism after a war spilt on empty blood and null morales.
The new students seemed to like it. The new head and professors of Hogwarts stepped into their role hesitantly. Little children and young students screamed and shrieked with laughter and chatter again among it's walls.
Like everything was over.
Hermione remembered watching, several weeks short of her final exams, from a balcony overlooking the great lake where the triwizard tournament once took place and she feared for the life of her friend Harry, watched the giggling and gagging students laughing in the sweet grass, or exchanging spells and whispering about magical secrets they had discovered upon their days here.
It may have been rebuilt. Slowly.
The voices and people and student surveys may have told of positive and cheery tales.
They may have been convincing, but they haven't convinced her.
Either way. She couldn't take it anymore. Couldn't stand it anymore. A book from the library later, a manuscript she chanced to pwn from a professor who maybe understood her plight at Hogwarts, one which was a political science dissemination of the war and why it happened, looking at all the political tension and details behind it. Was all it took for her world to come crashing down.
Hogwarts. England. Magic. Wizarding world.
Just old and ancient and corrupted and moraled and everything and nothing.
Suddenly all she wanted to do was shut behind this world of magical and wizarding schooling, put it all behind her. Seek a job in the muggle world. Stay there for however many years. Maybe forever.
It had been simple convincing her parents. As much of a role as they didn't have in the war, they weren't too convinced of the wizarding world's goodness either way. One conversation, some flight tickets and a letter for a transfer application later, and then...
New York.
She had put her hopes and dreams of the past behind. The magical world. Closed it in a book, kissed the pages goodbye, and was keen to start a new chapter. As if she had no recollection of the last.
She was going to Kennings University. A little known one but still famous for it's efficiency in giving students opportunities to extend their studies outside of the curriculum and finding them jobs after, and was still rated as one of the happiest universities around, situated not in the middle, but pretty close, sort of on the outskirts of the heart of New York.
It wasn't an Ivy League. She didn't want an Ivy League. Her academic transcript from Hogwarts final end of year exams would have translated to quite competitive muggle scores on her muggle transcript, coupled with what she was allowed to say about her involvement in the political aspects, and also running an activist group SPEW in her later years among prefect and other stuff, was enough that applying to an Ivy League wasn't completely out of the question.
But she ran away from England to get away from the institutionalised prejudices and old blood didn't she?
New York had meant everything and nothing to her.
She'd touched down at her place, she wasn't staying in a uni dorm because she registered quite late (admittedly, there had been a reason but...she'd pushed that reason in the past. Out of sight, out of mind. It had not been one she was pleased with and wanted to dwell upon) and all the room slots were full. So instead, she was sharing with a few other flatmates, in not actual university campus rooms, but a flat near the university which she was informed the real estate agent often kept rented out for uni students, and made the paperwork easy as he had the same paperwork prepared every year.
She'd arrived in, placed down her luggage and everything. Checked the apartment to see that it was like the images, as if pretending she didn't already apparate here once (in hours she knew no one was around) to check that it was alright, and then stopping for a rest and a sigh at the kitchen table. The hours of sleep deprivation crept up on her. She was sure she was almost an entire night's sleep deprived if the time zones were right.
She was staring out at the small condo window, feeling evanescent and sad, and forlorn and yet happy and relieved and glad all at the same time. Staring at the clouds, so grey and filled with promise, and was it her or did the edges seemed to be lined with silver?
Some footsteps thudded in the distance. Maybe a flatmate. Maybe a dancing mouse. Huh, why would it be dancing? Her brain conjured up images of mice in tutus and tiaras and she was momentarily confused and thinking how nice it would be, and perhaps a meal and some coffee would be nice, when suddenly, she was awoken out of her stupor by the stark contrast of candlelight and midnight dusk, and a long bony finger that had just retreated from it's unwelcome prominence into her shoulder.
"What," She said, still grumpy and tired from having woken up. Should she be worried? Should she grab the New York landline and dial an emergency service at this intruder? She was still tired and some part of her was aching and for some reason, even though she was dreaming of nonsensical things before she dosed of, her brain had awoken and her first thoughts jumped to the political dissemination of the war she had read which just screamed 'it was due to a pointless and stupid reason' and she was grumpy and tired. And the world seemed to be pointing fingers at her predicament and her life and yet offering her a chance. And she didn't know whether she ought to feel deeply aggreived at the intruder or not.
She glanced sideways. Her heart leapt to her throat.
"Sorry. I should have known you wouldn't have wanted to see me." Deeply apologetic, a slew of thick something to the voice, but none could take away the usual and if not ever so slightly somewhat haughty tone of a certain blonde haired, grey eyed boy she knew well. Malfoy.
"Draco. What are you doing here?" she spat out along with the last of her sleep. She glanced at the kitchen clock beside the mantelpiece. 4am. She had really fallen asleep. Probably hours? She glanced outside. The grey clouds of her evening musings had long gone and in their place was just pitch blackness staring back. A little bit of a transient midnight moment. "Don't tell me...you're sharing a flat for a university dorm and also studying here?"
"Alright I won't tell you then," said Draco a little curtly, she noticed he'd been holding the candle with trembling hands, perhaps from tiredness or hunger or anything really, and his travelling coat was still on. He seemed tired and not the best presented at the moment. "I guess I'll have to keep this secret from you for the next three years," he pinched the candle with his fingers and Hermione flinched as the contact of the pale flesh burnt out the flame. Then he switched on the light and suddenly it was all fun and daysy again. The kitchen came back in all it's colours, the oven, the stove, everything, and it had made being up at 4am with none other than Draco Malfoy, in an obscure room in the new city of New York never seem more normal than that.
He shuffled about and Hermione saw that his luggage was just freshly placed near the front of his room, and his gloves were lain on the table just a mere few spaces away. "What was I supposed to do? Come here. Late flight? See a hunched up figure fallen asleep in the middle of the night and not do anything?" he said, "glad I had the sense to carry around candles with me in my travelling case before I found the lights."
Oh right. Pureblood. There were no electric lights at his manor, Hermione remembered, just a whole lot of candles and chandeliers. Charmed, she was sure, but that candle just seemed normal.
"Alright enough of that. It's quite clear you're studying here," she said, a part of her heart dropping to her stomach as she said that. "But. Why wake me? Since you have the intelligence to realise this is a shared dorm between prospective uni students and that flights are a rather hectic schedule as evidenced by your own, why wake up a probable uni student whose just fallen asleep by the table? I could have been grumpy-"
"You're not?" he asked, as he fiddled around with some items on the tabletop and opened the fridge, surveying it's contents.
"Your footsteps startled me a little before I awoke. I was having a good dream of dancing mice before you woke me," she admitted.
Draco snorted.
"But still. I could have been grumpier than I was now. Why not just leave me to sleep til the morning and then resume the day?"
"Because," he says, locating some milk and bringing it out, checking the expiry date as he did so, "I wanted somebody to eat cereal with."
Hermione raised eyebrows. The light from the kitchen was really too blinding come to think of it now, with the stark contrast of black outside. Draco seemed to sense this also, for he reached over and turned the dimmer on the lights. The room became a darkened haven almost, cozy, warm, lit up with a warm yellow light at the top as the corners flickered with warm shadows.
He pulled out some cereal, Blanflakes, from a shelf somewhere and got to work pouring milk into the bowl with a soft clink.
Draco sighed. He suddenly looked older, more older and wiser than Hermione had ever seen him. If a look could convey a thousand words his would convey he had aged a thousand years. He frowned and darkened shadows seemed to creep over his face and glint in his eyes, before he dropped his gaze and resume the cereal pouring. "Didn't want to be alone on a first night like this," he muttered finally, "just didn't want to be all by myself doing...this. Anyone would do. Even you Granger," he muttered darkly and instantly Hermione knew, he hadn't forgotten, "Anyone. I just wanted a reason to be with you I guess..."
Hermione accepted his admission with a brief nod of her head, thoughts racing at a thousand miles per hour. She had so much to say and ask but now seemed too early to pierce the silence.
"You also want a bowl?" He held up the slightly crumpled box of cornflakes at her.
"Sure. You know. Given our reasons for moving here, let's be crazy," she said, "cereal at 4am in the morning on a New York first day. Sure."
She missed small smile that crept up his face as he fixed her a bowl of the cheap edible.
They switched the lights on a little more to match the rising sun, placed the bowls on the kitchen table, and suddenly nothing felt more out of place and right than eating cereal at 4am in a cloudy haze on a New York morning. She glanced at him. He smiled back at her. She looked back down. She knew it would be all lost by the morning, or midday more like, the proper time they would wake up after crashing after this, but yet some part of this new memory felt so wrong and so right all at the same time.
Author's Note: Thank you so much for reading if you've made it so far! Don't forget to follow, favourite and review. And I'm just wondering, milk or cereal first. How do you guys do it?
-Whymsicalbell