The Couple Time Forgot
His brittle bones ached as he slowly stumbled to the bench, not willing to be tardy. He had agreed that he would meet his wife at four o'clock, and at four o'clock he would be there- age wearing his body down or not. Stopping for a minute to catch his breath, he finally strode the last few metres of the dusty trail and fell onto the steel seat.
Breathing deeply, he sighed. The park was nowhere near as decent as it used to be when he and Druella were first wed. For one, there were never any crisp wrappers floating around as they became swept up in a light gust years ago. That was because there were hardly ever any filthy muggles around in this particularly shady area when they had first visited, let alone any of their disrespectful spawn who didn't know that it was highly inappropriate to run around and squeal in joy.
He went to wipe the earth off his polished shoes when he noticed that his wife had finally joined him. She was wearing the beautiful silky green robes she usually wore on special occasions, and her hair was neatly pinned up. Although he wouldn't tell her, he breathed a moan of admiration as he noticed she looked just as young and pretty as the day they had met.
She gave him a small smirk as a muggle woman ran past with her pug. The woman was barely clothed in the crop top and shorts she was wearing and was playing irritatingly loud music out of a small blue contraption.
Cygnus shook his head, groaning in disapproval. A thought occurred to him, and he turned to his wife.
"Funny how those creatures drag around other creatures; you'd think the dogs would be the ones holding the leash," he saw Druella nodding her agreement and continued, "what's even funnier though is that that mutt reminded me a little of our Draco's new friend, the Parkinson girl. At least he is mixing with Purebloods."
Druella didn't say anything, but grabbed his hand and rubbed it soothingly as he let out another sigh. "I just miss the way things used to be. Wizards were revered and now the filth are taking over, even the Mudbloods are dominating Hogwarts according to Narcissa. It's a pity Bella couldn't continue the cause-" he couldn't finish his sentence, leaving his regret hanging in the air.
He allowed Druella to continue rubbing his hand, thinking it useless to place himself in such a state of disappointment over the lost golden years of wizard kind. She leant into his shoulder, and together they watched the sunset.
Hours passed and eventually he dragged himself upwards, knowing that he'd better get a move on if he were to make it home before nightfall. Apparating wasn't an option in his elderly state, and Merlin forbid he risked his life catching the Knightbus home.
Promising Druella to meet again the next day, he left, not looking back at the always empty bench.
A/N: I do not own Cygnus or Druella, let alone anything else you recognise from the world of Harry Potter.
This drabble was written for the Diagon Alley II forum's Sacred Stones competition for the final prompt, Earth. The challenge was to write a drabble of 500 words or less on my OTP at a park.
This drabble is set in 1992, the final year that Cygnus has been noted to live. I used my head canon and the Potter wiki for information to help guide this fic.
I'm not sure if I did it well enough, but the concept was that Cygnus has lost his wife, and although ghosts do exist, Druella in this scene is just a figment of his imagination, drawn from the times they used to be together. I was somewhat inspired by the Disney/ Pixar movie Up in that there's a scene where the man is sitting by himself without his wife (I've only watched it once so if I'm wrong ignore me haha).
OTP: I thought I'd continue my theme of writing about the older Blacks and chose Cygnus and Druella.
Word count: 500
