Written for the Quidditch League Season 9, on the team Caerphilly Catapults.
Round 12: Fated
Thanks to my fateful betas: CupCakeyyy, S L Blake
Using prompts:
Chaser 2: You can't see color until you meet your soulmate.
[setting] Coffee Shop
[word] Direction
[dialogue] "I've waited my entire life for this. What if I mess it up?"
Word count: 2157
The day I met my soulmate was the day he died.
It was a cold, wet, miserable, grey day. I visited a nearby coffee shop I'd frequented since starting work at the Ministry, hoping a warm drink would stave off the cold.
I didn't get as far as ordering my drink, though. I didn't even reach the front of the queue.
No, before that, I glanced back at the man who joined the line behind me and the world blossomed around me. Greys became greens and blues and reds and a million other pigments and shades that you could never imagine if it hadn't happened to you. I'll admit, I never thought it would happen to me, that I would be that lucky. That I would see colour. That I would meet him.
I'd always preferred my own company, so someone who was the one for me seemed impossible.
But there he was. Impossible.
He was round-faced, had dirty blond hair that needed a tidy, broad shoulders and kind eyes. I wouldn't have called him my type, but this was a magic more powerful than my own preferences. Magic knew he was the one for me.
He looked at me in shock - I knew he could see colour having met me, too. He had expected it maybe less than I had.
Then that shock on his face turned to a horrifying, immediate sadness; something so deep that I can recall it more vividly than any other moment of that day.
"No," he exhaled in a heavy breath, denying the connection between us. It hurt. It was devastating, made all the worse by the fact I didn't even know the man's name.
Then he ran. Out the door, onto the Muggle street.
I chased him. I remember how slick the pavement had been that day, how anyone could have fallen.
He looked back at me once, his awful despair still there, etched on his features.
Maybe he knew who I was. Maybe Draco Malfoy is just that infamous and he wanted absolutely nothing to do with me.
He fled five feet further onto the road before being hit by a car.
And I was there, by his side, as he slipped away.
I only knew him for a minute at most.
There was a funeral. I was the only one who attended. They never were able to identify him. His wand wasn't in Ollivander's records but that wasn't so rare; my father had had mine custom made for me when I was a boy. He could have been from abroad, or it could have been inherited. There was no way to tell.
I visited his unmarked grave every once in a while. I've mused about the irony of the man who brought colour into my life, now laying hidden beneath a grey slab.
It broke me. For a long time, I was simply a shell.
Friends tried to get me out of the house to enjoy a life now in colour. I tried a few times, then I stopped trying. I declined their attempts, saying I wanted to stay in.
They always worried, but I reminded them that I was fine in my own company. I'd managed before. I could manage again.
Life is a fickle thing, though. It has a way of giving you reasons to keep on going, even when hope seems lost.
I heard a rumour about a project the Unspeakables were working on. Normally, I would ignore it (best to ignore most of the things going on down there) but this was on the subject of time.
There wasn't a day that went past where I didn't wish I could go back. Stop him from running onto that road. Give us both a chance at the happiness I knew we could have.
That was the spark, the spark that made the colourful world around me seem like there might be some hope.
When the world was grey, I'd never cared much for dreams. For the longest time, colour was just a reminder that I dare not even try for happiness.
But after I put in for a transfer to the Department of Mysteries, I had an ambition, one that had more than just power and political acumen as the ultimate goal.
No, this time, it was a loftier goal. I wanted him. I wanted us. I wanted to live.
Time slipped away from me, just like he did. A year passed, studying, investigating, trying to crack the mystery, trying to understand what it was.
Another year slipped away as I experimented with time-turners and prophecies. Tangled with the impossibilities of paradoxes.
A decade passed, but I stayed steadfast. I felt like it barely affected me, like I was a constant point. Even as the years sped away from that fateful day in that coffee shop, time moving in the wrong direction, I never gave in, never gave up on him.
The Unspeakables are more social than their titles imply. They tangle with the deepest mysteries of magic, and it's a passion they love to share. I came to know dozens of people in my time in the Department, people who worked on Time, Love, Death and Rebirth. There were parties and marriages and breakups and funerals.
It made me wonder who would be there at my funeral.
I think a few of them wanted to be closer to me, to be friends, but I'd always been closed off. I knew it was hard to get to know me. But it gave me more time, and I knew myself well enough to get by.
It might have been fifteen years into my tenure when a man named Bruce joined our little hidden family, a fresh faced man barely out of Hogwarts, and I swear he nearly gave me a heart attack. I thought for a moment that it was my mystery man, the face dead over a decade, but it wasn't. He was far too young for the face I still remembered, the first I'd seen in colour. A family member, I thought? He was an only child, and both his parents were alive. His whole family was accounted for.
That was life for me. Fickle. When it gives you an ounce of hope, it can take it away again just as quickly.
Still, he was close to that oh-so familiar face, and it gave me a reason to reach out, to be a friend. So I was there when he met who would one day be his wife, when I saw that blissful discovery of colour come over the both of them. I was there on their wedding day, though, I'm glad to say I didn't have the responsibility of being the best man.
He asked me once to be the godfather of his second child. I'd laughed him off and let him down gently. Taking care of myself was enough of a burden for me, thank you very much.
Maybe that was selfish of me, but I think Bruce understood, maybe more than anyone else. He saw how determinedly I approached the mystery of time. And he was there when I cracked it.
It was a sunny, bright, beautiful day when I finally figured out how to travel back to that fateful morning, some stretch of decades earlier that I refused to count. Time didn't matter so much to me anymore. When I fixed things, none of this would matter. I could rest.
The sky was blue. It was the first time I appreciated that colour.
Bruce became my only confidant in my plan to return to the past. There was a sadness about him as he discovered the purpose behind all of it, and no small amount of pity. I think that's why he agreed to help me; for all the burdens that came with parenthood, I think he wanted all of the joy that came with his life for me.
And I was going to give it my all to get it.
We prepared, setting the calculations, working out the dates and numbers needed to send me back. I collected the materials and Bruce prepared a Polyjuice Potion, so I didn't spot myself in the past and go mad.
It was a dangerous, possibly world ending mission. It could all be for naught.
I was prepared to risk it all, just to give myself a chance at the happy life I should have had.
Finally, it was time to go.
"I've waited my entire life for this. What if I mess it up?" I asked him.
Bruce pulled me into a hug.
"You can do this, Draco. If it goes wrong, nothing changes, but if it goes right…"
I nodded. I didn't hug him back. I didn't do hugs.
He realised that and let me go. He smiled though, despite everything.
"You're going to do it. God knows it's well past time you settle down," Bruce said.
"Maybe." I smiled back. "I don't-"
"-mind your own company," Bruce finished. "I know." He rolled his eyes a little, but I knew he didn't mind.
I looked over our experiment one last time.
"I'm ready," I said.
He handed me the Polyjuice Potion, dosed with his own hair. It was far safer than going as myself; Bruce wouldn't even be in Hogwarts at the time I was going back to, there was no way anyone would recognise him as an adult.
I drank the potion and Bruce activated the device.
I was flung backwards. Towards him. The right direction, after all this time.
It was raining. A miserable, grey day, even in colour.
Draco Malfoy would be in the coffee shop soon. For the first time since this very day, time moved too quickly, that minute I knew him for was approaching too fast.
I beat Draco to the coffee shop. Rain hammered against the window. People passed by outside with collars drawn up and umbrellas trying to shelter them from the onslaught.
I was early, but time seemed to move so fast now. I didn't think it would ever run out.
I shivered. It could have been from the cold. I think it was probably from fear. Everything depended on these next few minutes.
I bought a coffee and settled down to watch, sitting in Bruce's skin, hidden in plain sight.
Draco walked in, stepping to the back of the queue.
I looked so young. It made me realise that time had always been running out.
How many years had I lost to get to this moment? How much of my life has been spent getting here?
I wanted to reach out to Draco, to warn him. I didn't know if it would all be worth it.
The door to the coffee shop opened. It could mean only one thing.
The figure started moving towards the queue, moving towards Draco.
Moving towards the inevitable.
I stood, moving to intercept.
I had wrestled with Time for so long, all to protect the two of them.
I got into the queue, just managing to get in between the two of them. If Draco didn't see him-
But it wasn't him. I looked and it was a woman, mousy brown hair around a cherubic face, as far away from my mystery man as you could get.
I glanced forward to Draco, scared that I had already missed the moment and Draco looked back at me.
And the world that had always been in colour finally crystallised for me. Finally, I could see.
Draco looked at me and I saw the wonder in his eyes as the world burst into colour.
My heart sank.
"No," I uttered, a word stolen away from me in a single breath. This couldn't be happening. I couldn't be the one that caused all of this.
I saw the moment that one word broke poor Draco's heart. I could feel it even now, I could remember how broken my own eyes made me feel.
I couldn't bear this.
I turned and fled, rushing out of the coffee shop.
The ground was slippery beneath my feet.
Draco didn't deserve this. He didn't deserve me, a man so desperate to live in a moment, in this single minute, that he had wasted his life trying to get back to it.
He deserved to live a life of happiness, of friends and fun and all the things that make this world a beautiful place. To enjoy all the colours.
Draco came out of the coffee shop as I reached the curb. I looked back at that man, still so young, with a life ahead of him. I could only think about how he deserved so much better.
I only made it five feet onto the road.
Life was a fickle thing.
He held me as I slipped away. I wished I could have stayed longer.
I only knew him for a lifetime at most.
