Written for Static Lull's Half-Baked Challenge on the HPFC forum. My characters were Gabrielle Delacour and Daphne Greengrass. The title comes from the Coldplay song In the Sun.

xxx

caught in the sun

You like that girl with dark hair and happy eyes. She laughs a lot and smiles more, and no one scolds her for being loud and flamboyant, and no one teases her for spilling pumpkin juice all over herself; they just seem to find it funny.

You try to laugh and smile as much as that girl, but Fleur just raps you on the wrist and asks whatever you're laughing at, there's nothing funny about the watered-down pumpkin juice and leering ghosts hovering over your shoulder, and no one laughs when the liquid spills down your blouse. Fleur tells you to cut it out, to stop being silly and go back to the carriage to change.

Secretly, you watch the laughing girl, because even though she's at the Slytherin table—and Fleur tells you that they're bad, that the Dark Lord was one of them once—you can't imagine her being evil. She's too pretty and happy, and everyone seems to like her too much.

You want to be pretty like that girl, loose and flamboyant and giggling and never afraid to be silly. Instead, your stuck in stiff clothes with stiff curls and stiff manners that bind your hands behind your back in modesty and your mouth shut. You want to laugh like her and have everyone push you affectionately and regard you with humor instead of delicacy, like a little china doll.

You take careful note of what she's wearing—a loose fitting blouse, now stained orange with pumpkin juice, a pleated skirt, and low-hanging pearls with matching drop earrings. So when you hurry back to the carriage to change your skirt, you rummage around in Fleur's things and try to find a blouse and skirt like that. You succeed only in finding the pearls, and when she comes in and finds you there, she laughs and says that you're très adorable, because she thinks you're trying to be like her, when in truth that's the last thing you want.

You want to ask her if there's a spell to change hair color—to make it pretty and dark and sleek like that girl's, but she laughs and asks you why you would ever want to do that. And then she pulls your curl lets it spring back, and you cross your arms and sulk.

Then she sits down and says she can't wait to get back to France, to Beauxbatons, because 'ogwarts is too ugly and the things they learn are horrible, transforming teacups into turtles, and that's when you realize that you don't want to leave. You like Hogwarts, with the ghosts and the lake and the moving staircases, but you'll never ever say this, because you're supposed to go to Beauxbatons.

You want to go to Hogwarts and drink pumpkin juice and laugh like that girl, but there's no point in wanting what you can't have, because you're going to Beauxbatons to learn to dance and be pretty and silent.

Every morning at breakfast you watch that girl, trying to commit all of her mannerisms to memory and yet never daring to try them out again, not after last time, and on the last day you try to follow her, but Fleur grabs your hand and pulls you towards her.

You watch the pretty girl flee down the hallway, laughing and smiling, her dark hair dancing around her face. And you want to be that girl so badly, you want to have her smile and her laughter and her dark hair, but most of all you want her freedom.

But you go with Fleur and your parents and to Beauxbatons, and you try to stop thinking about that girl, because there's no use wanting something you can't have, right?

And you never even learn her name, so three years later, when you see the death announcement for Daphne Greengrass in the newspaper, you close it and don't pay the words a second glance.

xxx

I literally wrote this in about fifteen minutes, so I'm not sure about the quality of the prose, but I do like the concept, so it's up here. Daphne is based on the way she's characterized in my other fic, the fire in your soul, because even though she's already dead when the story starts and she never makes an appearance, she's mentioned in a similar way by Astoria. Anyway, review please!