For the Hunger Games: Fanfic Style III
Prompts: Charlie/Draco, Soulmate AU, axe, jealousy, unexpected
Not where I meant to go with this but… oh well.
There is a place between sleep and awake where souls first meet each other. They create an almost imaginary world they can coexist in until their realities collide. Perhaps, it's an unexpected meeting on the train, or maybe they sit beside each other in Potions class. Or maybe they won't meet each other at all… but in a perfect world they will.
Draco sees this place so clearly now as he lay in bed. The moon shines dimly through his curtains casting odd shadows across the sheets, his bare chest, the girl's hair scattered across the pillow beside him. They both know they are temporary lovers and nothing more. Just a person to waste each other's time with.
Perhaps that isn't fair. Perhaps it's not right to go to bed with someone one knows isn't the "right" one or the one you've imagined for years. Is it cheating? Technically, Draco supposes that it is, but he was never told the rules for such things. And he supposes if his mate in his imaginary snow globe of existence, in this other life that hasn't come to pass yet, really is his soul mate, then he probably doesn't mind. Draco feels this just as he feels that his soul mate is, in fact, a he. He feels it the way one soul knows another, without words or explanations.
His musings are interrupted as the girl shifts beside him. She sees the far off look on his face and she sighs.
"You're thinking about her aren't you?"
"Hmm?"
Draco moves his hand to play with her dark hair.
"Your mate. The one you dream about. You're thinking about her."
Draco grimaces as he sees in his mind's eye a tree surrounded by frost, a distance fire on the other side of a mountain, and footprints where his could be lover must have been just moments ago. They always cross paths just a little too late.
Draco calls upon the snow. He likes the snow, but this other person likes heat and warmth. Just a few feet away from the tree is a pile of firewood and an axe. Draco wishes, more out of curiosity than anything, that his mate had stayed. He wishes he had built a fire and stayed a while. Maybe then all of this would make sense.
The girl in his arms sighs again. "I'm rather jealous," she says. "Not only of her, but of you. Both of you really."
"Why is that?" Draco asks.
"I think mine must have died during the war," she says. "I don't see our river anymore. I don't see any sign of him anywhere."
"I'm sorry," Draco says. His fingers stray to the back of her neck. She really is beautiful like this. He didn't think much of her when they met at the Leaky Cauldron, but she grows on you, he's decided. It's a shame if her soul mate really did die or disappear somehow.
She just shrugs her shoulder. "It doesn't matter all that much, I suppose," she says. "Maybe another will come along. Or maybe I'll meet someone else without a mate. It's not that serious, I guess. What do you think?"
He doesn't respond. He's fallen asleep and she rests her head against his chest, and times her breathing with his.
The snow globe has shaken just a little, and Draco's snow covers the tracks his mate left in the frost.
Far away, Charlie Weasley turns his back to his own bedmate, and shivers.