Written for Alarice Tey's Drabble Collection Challenge on HPFC forum.
Each drabble is to be 250 or less words with a theme assigned for each chapter/drabble. Will end up being a total of 19 chapters.
Word count: 248
Theme: Contrasts
The first time they really met, without hatred, prejudice, or a group of angry friends behind them was in his sixth year.
He'd tired of pacing in the dormitory in the dead of night. He crept his way through the still halls, the kitchens his aim. Ice cream could cure all ills, a troubled mine included. One laughing fruit portrait later and there he was.
And there she was.
She looked ridiculous.
She'd frozen, tongue halfway out her mouth, lips red with cold from the melting mass of brown perched on a crispy wafer cone.
"Weasley," he'd stiffly greeted, too tired for a confrontation.
"Malfoy," she returned, more wary than hostile.
A house elf scurried forward already carrying a cone of vanilla ice cream. They knew what he had come for, what he always came for.
And then they just looked, ice cream forgotten, silence stretching between them.
He looked at her freckle dotted skin, so unlike his own unblemished white, more like a symptom of a deadly disease than anything. Whoever had first thought freckles were endearing was a loon.
She looked at his white blond hair, fine and neat despite the late hour, dismayed at her own ginger mess.
They looked each other in the eye, cold grey glued to warm honey brown.
She reached out a hand, a trail of chocolaty cold streaming down to her wrist.
"Vanilla's boring."
He bent at the waist, neck craning forward for a taste.
"You might be right."