WC: 428.
Proven Interest in Space - Task: Write about a character longing to go to space.
For as long as Neville can remember, he has cherished two loves. One belongs to the Earth, to plants growing strong under his careful guidance and care; he excels at it like no one else he knows and it fills him with pride because there are few things he's good at. The other belongs to the infinity and beyond, to the moon and the sun's of other planets, and the countless stars; pieces of a puzzle that grow wider and deeper the most Neville stares at them.
He grows, and his greenhouse is full of different plants in many hues of green. There are mundane flowers, beautiful in their own right, with colors going from white to red, from blue to black. Some of his plants are poisonous. He has doll's eyes and children's bane; meadow saffron, stinging tree and bleeding heart. He likes to be close to them and feels powerful knowing he has the knowledge and ability to care for those plants without dying.
He also collects telescopes, but he doesn't ever tell anyone about it. It's a guilty pleasure to look at the stars at night, to gaze with longing at the moon and think of touching its rocky surface. Neville can even feel —if he closes his eyes and reaches out to the sky— the soft caress of space dust as it passes through his fingers. The solar touch that could kill easier than any of his plants is a warmth he longs to feel, even though he knows no wizard can survive it.
Muggles can, and that is why space becomes a guilty pleasure; traveling there and seeing the magnificence of the Universe is something muggles can do and wizards can't. A person without magic can step on the Moon and Mars; they can trek through the solar system and see Earth from above, the voyager planet which never tires of circling the sun. And the mighty wizards can't.
Neville can't imagine it, even if he tries. There are too many emotions present in his mind when he conjures the sight of Earth from the Moon. He gets lost amongst the vastness of space, soaring —in his dreams— across the Universe. Earth is soon forgotten, the home that is never mentioned in a romance with a new city.
(Maybe Neville will return one day).
Then he opens his eyes and he's in the middle of his greenhouse, watching the evening primroses and the catchflies putting on a show of yellow and white under the moonlight.
Maybe some day wizards will go to space but meanwhile, Neville has his flowers and the everlasting green.