A/N: Written for the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Quidditch Match 1: Ravenclaw versus Hufflepuff. Prompts used are: golden, feather, tricky, baseball, darts, glue, muggle, jack in the box.
Suns that Set Blind
Her idea of beauty was the tender brush of gold in a fiery sky: the sky she could enjoy from the kitchen window, facing westwards to beg the last glimpse of the sun and take from it a brief respite. Her idea of beauty was the sun-kissed skin he wore on muscles so delicately toned, and eyes so carefully carved into perfection.
He was a Muggle, and her father would never approve, but when her magic and her blood failed her it was that Muggle world which accepted her dreams. Whatever they said and did to her was nothing – nothing compared that collar that choked her within her home. At least, to the Muggle world she could hang out her window, skimpy locks framing her pathetically gaunt and pale face, and watch and dream from afar.
She could dream she was the woman who rode with her, who watched him partake in whatever game showed his manhood in the most delighting of ways: shooting game outside their village perhaps, or something tamer, like a well-rounded game of darts, for the forays into city life.
But she was nothing: her heart a feather blown away by the wind and her soul bound by her house: the House of Gaunt. Her name succeeded her lack of magic: if nothing else, Salazar's noble blood ran thick in her veins, and she could breed. That, and that alone, made her still of value to her father's Pure blood ideals; if she had been cut free from the family line, she may at least have been able to pursue the dream that began to devour her respite and her lonely life. But instead she was glued to that other world: a world which slowly devoured her alive.
When she found herself free, she lost herself, bouncing wild and banging off all four walls like a jack-in-the-box suddenly let loose. She threw her shawl off, waved her wand until the stone walls groaned under the weight of her suddenly powerful spells, and she clutched gold coins in her hands and threw them to the skies, creating her own pretty little picture.
She had a lot of things she wanted to do, but she had no idea how to do any of it. She did them anyway: she brought pretty Muggle clothes and dressed up real nice, pretending she was like that other woman, the one he'd called "dear." She met with him, watched him shoot and throw darts and play some other Muggle sport that included rounded bats and balls and four square mats. She gauged him, she fell further in love with him, and finally ensnared him. That was the trickiest part, and took everything she had as well: the last of their family's meagre stores, her wretched soul, and all her hope. Her love was eternally one-sided – if it was love – but she had lost the ability to recognise or care. It was her only goal, her only point of light, and she let it devour her utterly.
The sky no longer stood, streaked with gold – or she had become blind to it. Just as she was blond to the drastic change in the man who finally acknowledged her, finally kissed her and took her in arm one blinded night.