Written for the following prompts:
Hogwarts Writing Club: Liquid, 700 words
Ultimate Chocolate Frog Cards Challenge: Alberta Toothill – Write about a strong female character.
Diagon Alley Writing Bingo - Romantic Pair: Pansy & Tracey
Words: 700 exactly!
Water
The muggles say that I'm water. Well, they say that most of me is. Everyone is, according to them. I found it hilarious when I was first told. How can I be water when I feel so solid, when I can feel flesh between my skin and my bones? Water, so tasteless and transparent, common but vital to life, as deep as it is shallow.
I laughed when I first heard it. Who wouldn't? Is it water than flows through my veins, forced to course through my extremities by my strong, beating heart? Is it water that dances beneath my skin? It's blood. Red blood. Pure blood. Family blood. Generations of honour and integrity, passed down from father to child, blessing our line.
It boils beneath my skin.
Maybe… maybe I am water. Maybe that's why I can fold myself, so easily, into moulds laid out for me by those that know best. I know, of course, that it isn't my true form, but while the shape of the mould is clear, I can settle and smile. When it is taken away, I fall. Into puddles and raindrops; storms and icebergs; still and tumultuous.
It's water, I suppose, that makes us pliable.
I wonder if some of us, then, have more water than others.
Some of us can only see in black and white. For some of us, things are either this or that. Things either fall under this label, or that one. Things are either good or bad, acceptable or not, true or false.
It took me many years to admit that I saw things differently. Things have never been static, set in stone.
Those sort of things… they're fluid.
If I'm water, I was born ice, and it took me a long time to thaw.
Seeing the world with frozen thoughts was easier, at least. I didn't need to think about anything.
But I remember the thaw. It was like the first warm spring sun after a long winter; the first smile after a great tragedy; a breath taken after spending too long beneath the waves. It felt like my heart had only just begun to beat.
I remember the first time I looked at her with fluid eyes. She wasn't just Tracey, all of a sudden. Well, she was, but she was also so much more. She was potential.
I forgot to breathe for a short while before sucking in a gulp of air and smiling. "Are you water too?" I asked her, as if it was the most natural question in the world.
She laughed and frowned. I didn't make any sense to her. "What?" she asked. I said nothing as I watched her. "If you're water, then I'm water," she finally agreed, and I remember… I felt so happy I almost cried.
I thought I was the only one.
I tried to explain that I was water to my mother. She told me I was flesh and blood, and that those were more important. She didn't understand. I told her I was happy. She said happiness was for fools. I didn't get to choose, she said. I couldn't be water, she said. I had Draco, she told me, wrapped around my little finger, ready for me to bear him heirs. I told her I didn't want to bear anything for anyone, and that even if I tried, it would just fall through my liquid layers, sinking to the sand of my shores. She said I could have blood or water, but not both.
She meant it.
I learned that night how much water I had inside of me, because it poured out of my eyes for hours and hours, and I didn't even begin to waste away. I must have been bursting at the seams with it. I must have needed to relieve some pressure. That was all.
Tracey's liquid fingers wrapped around mine that night and refused to let go. I didn't know water could be so strong. She said I was brave, like a riptide, breaking away from the current and going against the grain, and she held me and didn't let go.
I am water, yes, but I am happy, even so.