Submission for The Houses Competition Round 1
House: Gryffindor
Class: Ancient Runes
Category: Standard
Prompt(s): [color] terracotta, [weather] gentle rainstorm
Word Count: 1097
Ron sighed and leaned back in his chair. He was so tired of working this case. Everything seemed to be going in circles and he couldn't make heads or tails of it in any direction. He had hoped that taking it home over the weekend and looking at it in a new place might jog loose some ideas, but he was still out of luck.
"What happened to being the best chess player in all of Hogwarts?" He muttered sardonically. Everyone else had looked at this case already; Ron was supposed to be the strategist, the problem solver. Instead, here he sat, still without the foggiest clue.
There was a knock at his study door.
"Come in!" He wasn't getting anything done anyway.
Hermione pushed open the door, holding a mug in her hand.
"Tea?" She offered, uncertainly.
"That'd be great, actually," Ron said. "I'm a bit stuck."
"Is this the one you've been working on all week?" She handed him the warm mug. "I think you've been looking at it for too long. Give it a rest and come back to it later."
"I can feel it, though," Ron insisted. "I'm close, I know it, there's just got to be one thing that's missing…"
Hermione sighed. "Well, don't keep yourself holed up here all day. I expect to see you for lunch and dinner, at the very least."
"Is that an order, boss?"
"Directly from Madam Granger-Weasley herself," she said, rolling her eyes, "and here's another: don't overwork yourself."
"Yes, ma'am," Ron said cheekily. She smiled, and kissed his forehead before leaving him to his case.
Ron glanced at his files wearily and decided to take Hermione's advice. He kicked his legs up and rested his feet on the edge of his desk, cradling the warm mug of tea. There was a window across from his desk, and most of the time he kept the curtains drawn to avoid distractions, but now he took his wand and flicked it lazily, wordlessly moving the drapes aside.
Off to the side he had a narrow view of the street, but the day was gloomy, the sky full of clouds that looked about ready to let loose, and nobody was out and about. The rest of his view was of the neighbor's roof. Not very exciting, but much more interesting than the drapes.
The neighbor's roof tiles were an unusual color. Ron had been calling it orangey-red in his head until one time Luna was visiting and had exclaimed about how lovely the terracotta tiles were. Normally he probably wouldn't have remembered an odd comment like that from Luna since she made them all the time, but for some reason terracotta had stuck. He enjoyed the sound and the feel of the word as it rolled about in his mind. He absently took a sip of his tea, still staring at the tiles.
Hermione had gotten his tea exactly right again, like she always did. She was so talented and good at everything, sometimes he wondered what she saw in him. He couldn't even solve this one stupid case, for Merlin's sake!
A raindrop appearing on a tile suddenly caught his attention. A few scattered droplets were beginning to slowly fall, too gently to make any noise. This was probably Ron's favorite part of the view from his study: watching rain gradually fall on his neighbor's terracotta roof tiles and turn the orangey-red into a darker reddish orange. It was strangely fascinating and soothing.
Ron let his thoughts wander, deliberately trying not to think about his case as the tiles slowly got coated with rain. It was sporadic enough that some of the tiles were drying before more rain fell, leaving interesting patterns of multicolored splotches. He should probably get back to looking over his files again soon, Ron thought, but for some reason the rain on the tiles was mesmerizing.
Maybe it was something to do with the rain being reliable and yet unpredictable. He knew it was going to land on the tiles, but he didn't know when or where or how big each droplet would be. There was sometimes a comfort to be felt from things that were out of one's control, Ron decided. It was like a weight was taken off him.
It was a nice feeling. He and Hermione had a lot on their plates nowadays, with her being the new Head of the DMLE and him being assistant to Head Auror Robards, who had already strongly hinted that he would like to retire from the department in a few years and that he wanted Ron to take the job. Ron wasn't sure he was ready for all that responsibility, although it would mean less time in the field and Hermione was decidedly in favor of that.
On top of all that, they had also begun to talk more seriously about having kids. Ron hadn't really thought he'd want any for a while, but he'd discovered that the idea of having them with Hermione, perhaps in a year or two when she had the Ministry behaving properly, actually sounded rather nice. Harry and Ginny had just told them over lunch the other day that they were pregnant — although not after Ron and Hermione were sworn to secrecy for a few more months around their mum.
They'd already started thinking of names, and of course Harry wanted to use his parents' names. Ginny admitted that she wasn't a fan of flower names for girls, but if they had a girl she'd be alright with using the name Lily. Ron hadn't really thought about flower names before, but as he sipped his tea and watched the rain, he decided that although there were a few he wouldn't use — Pansy or Petunia, for example — he was sure there were lots of very nice flowers that he could see himself using as a baby name. Not Lily, since Harry was using that, but Rose sounded nice, and…
Ron tried to think of another flower. Mum had some geraniums in her garden but he didn't like that as a person's name at all.
Wait, Ron thought. That was it — nobody had bothered to investigate the garden! Merlin's scraggly beard, he'd solved it!
Ron sat up and set his half-finished tea aside, digging through the organized mess of files on his desk. He found what he was looking for in a matter of seconds and nearly ran out of his study in his excitement to show Hermione.
Outside, the rain gradually picked up its unrelenting fall, slowly saturating the tiles.
