1 hour – prompts used: 'greed' 'pearl' 'blood' 'poem' 'message'
Draco Malfoy was used to getting what he wanted and he had a powerful greed for having Hermione Granger. Before the war, his greed had been intense, his thirst for power and control bursting at the seams but then he'd seen the colour of Hermione's blood when she was being tortured on his drawing room's floor with his manic Aunt Bellatrix standing above her.
Red.
He didn't think much about it then, his discomfort sprouted from the fact that it was someone he knew. But when she escaped and Lord Voldemort was standing over him and his father, torturing them both for their failures, his mind wandered to that colour.
It was the same colour as the blood that had been dripping from his father's nose that evening and the same colour that would dribble from cuts that littered his skins when in the Battle of Hogwarts.
It wasn't muddy and that was what confused him.
But he finally got the message. The same one that Hermione, and everyone else that wasn't in Slytherin, had been trying to teach him from day one. Muggleborns were the same as purebloods – the only difference being their lineage.
Now, in their eighth year, he'd look at her and remember the day that she was screaming and begging for Bellatrix to stop. He'd see the colour red not brown and he'd forget that she wasn't a pureblood and that she wasn't someone his parents would want him to be with. He didn't care anymore though because he was starting to see her for her.
Hermione's smile was beautiful and her hair really wasn't as outrageous as everyone had made it out to be. Unless she was stressed or it was hot – then that hair would frizz like no tomorrow. She hid her curvy figure beneath baggy clothes and robes but she walked with a style that oozed self-confidence. She spent the same amount of time in the library as she did with her friends and half the time when in the library, she was reading muggle books instead of studying. Every three giggles when she laughed would turn into a pig snort and she chewed her lip when she was bored or worried. She tugged on her hair when she was annoyed and pulled on the sleeves of her top when she worried.
He was seeing too much of her that he was becoming obsessed but Merlin if he wasn't falling in love with her.
He'd tried to write her a poem about his feelings – an anonymous one, of course – but the words he wanted just didn't come out right. But then it all did when they were partnered together for Potions. They'd struck up a friendship, tentative at first, but he'd proven himself and eventually she split her time from the library, her other friends and him. She spent time with the other Slytherins, creating a weird bond over chocolate with Theodore Nott and started learning how to speak Italian with Blaise Zabini.
Then, one day, they'd been alone and the moment felt right and the words just came out. "You're my pearl." She'd blinked at him from across the table, unsure of what to do or say and he was worried that he blew it. But he carried on. "You're important to me and you're just so worthy. You're my pearl." The grin that blossomed on her face was one that he'd never seen before and he decided there and then that it was going to be one saved and used just for him.
Now, ten years after they first got together, he was still as in love with her as he was then and he could still see all of her same habits. But there were more. Her eyes would always find his when she or himself, entered a room. Her left thumb would play with the rings that lay on her left ring finger and her brow had a little furrow in it when she was annoyed with their little Scorpius.
She was his pearl and he was happy that his greed for her won.