1.
Prompt - Hockey Stick:
He found the hockey stick in a used goods store, leaned against a wall with two brooms and one of those Swiffer things. His fingers ran over the unpolished wood and memories, not his own, came unbidden to mind: a dad, cheering at his kid's first game, practicing in the backyard, passing a brand new hockey stick over a slice of home made birthday cake.
Happiness. Home.
Dad.
Harry couldn't say what drew him to the unusual staff, but he knew what made him take it home and make it his.
2.
Prompt - Murphy:
6:30 AM, out of bed, in the shower, clothes, shoes, coffee, and out the door, just in time to wait and yell at the traffic.
12:00 noon, working lunch, choke down a sandwich and Kirmani's bad attitude while alternately wheedling and threatening Harry to just let her in for once, damn it.
3:30 PM, the start of a late afternoon headache. Tylenol, water, but those reports just won't wait and neither will her boss.
8:00 PM, pull into the driveway, close the front door with a heavy sigh, and the only welcome voice she's heard all day:
"Mom? That you?"
3.
Prompt - Morgan:
Everyone knows Morgan likes responsibility. He likes punctuality, the hard work of training young Wardens, and the feeling he gets when justice is done.
Few would guess it, but Morgan likes jazz. He likes well-made suits and sensible shoes, but also thick, cable-knit sweaters, and brandy on a cold night. Sometimes he even likes Harry Dresden, but he will never admit it.
Morgan doesn't like evil or situations he can't control. Morgan doesn't like to fail.
Morgan hates it when his students die because evil exists, because there are things he can't control, and because sometimes, just sometimes, he fails.
4.
Prompt - Necromancy:
Once upon a time, Bob the ghost was called Hrothbert of Bainbridge and had at his control every element of nature, the very power of life and death itself. Now he is all but harmless, insubstantial as air, unable even to turn the pages of a book. His days are spent bound to man who, for all his haggard appearance and lack of magical finesse, has managed a feat Bob could never have imagined.
Hrothbert of Bainbridge may have raised the dead, but a wizard called Harry has given life to the dust-dry heart of a lonely ghost.