Competition/Challenge Block
Written for/Stacked with: Monthly Challenges for All (Year 5); The Houses Competition (Year 9)

MC4A:

Houses: Gryffindor; History of Magic; Drabble ([Restriction] Must contain a flashback; [Word] Refusing)

Word Count: 880

Beta: Ash, CharlieManx, Jet

Author's Note: Have some more sad Drastoria. It is my specialty, okay?

Paper Cranes

Housework was never Scorpius' favorite pastime, but he knew it was important to his parents to keep a tidy and clean home. He also wasn't really into organizing things, but it was part of what gave the mansion its character, he supposed. Everything had a place, his mother always said, so it was their responsibility to keep to it and refusing to do one's part projected bad energy, and no one wanted that.

What Scorpius didn't understand was why his father wanted to haul a bunch of stuff to the attic when it all had its own place beforehand. The attic was a gross place that was always covered in cobwebs, dirt, and dust. The house-elf Dizzy said that the cleaning magic can only ward off that stuff when the casters are regularly present in the rooms, and since no one visited the attic often (or a lot of the upper floors, for that matter), the magic pushed the ick there instead.

Looking around his parents' vacant bedroom, the just visible contents of a large box caught his attention. He approached it and lifted the flap to see it contained hundreds of paper cranes. They varied in size with patterns of flowers, fish, birds, dragons, and simple solid colors, and all were in shades of red, white, cream, and gold. They were even still perfectly folded and in pristine condition. Scorpius couldn't help but gently stick his hand into the pile to feel how deep they went into the box. When his hand felt something soft underneath, he parted the cranes to reveal a silk white kimono.

"Our wedding box," he heard his father say from behind him.

Startled, Scorpius pulled his hand out of the box and faced his father who was approaching. Letting out a breath, he looked back at the cranes again.

"Paper cranes for a wedding?"

Draco stopped beside Scorpius and nodded, his attention was on the cranes, too.

"It is tradition for the bride and groom to fold one thousand cranes together before the wedding day. It brought good fortune to the newlyweds and granted our prayers to be carried to the heavens to bless us with a strong unity."

Scorpius felt his jaw fall open, staring at all the cranes. "One thousand? Mother of Merlin! How did you not get scars from paper cuts?"

Draco smirked, combing through the sea of cranes. He seemed to be looking for a particular one, and Scorpius blinked a few times when his father plucked two cranes from the pile that didn't match the color scheme of the others. One was a soft, pale green and the other a gentle lavender purple.

"I only got one cut when I made this green crane. It was refusing to cooperate…"

Without another word, Scorpius watched as his father turned to another box nearby—this one was circular—and opened it. Scorpius looked to see what appeared to be a silver adorned mirror, but it had what looked to be like water laying on top of it.

Draco took his wand and placed the tip of it on his temple, and Scorpius saw a small silver thread start to manifest and curl around the end of the hawthorn wand. In a fluid and almost hesitant motion, his father moved his wand over the mirror-like disc and gently tapped it to get the silver string off. It stuck to the wand, refusing to cooperate, so instead Draco collected it in his hand.

"You want to see the memory?" he asked, voice wavering.

Scorpius eyed the memory strand and the cranes before looking at the silver disc. "Mum didn't like Pensieves."

"I know, but I don't think she'd mind it this one time," Draco said, tilting his hand so the silver thread fell into the water-like surface.

"Ouch!"

Draco hissed, pulling his left hand back from the delicate green paper to inspect the thin line on his finger that quickly turned red.

Astoria was beside him, finishing up the finer details of her own origami paper crane. Hers was lavender. She stopped when Draco swore under his breath and stuck his middle finger into his mouth.

"Don't do that," she scolded, pulling his hand back with her own.

"It's just a cut," he grumbled. "Of course it had to be on the last crane."

Astoria lightly kissed his finger. "Then it is good luck."

"How?"

"You managed to make hundreds of cranes without injury, yet the one thousand and second one hurts you," she explained as if it was obvious.

Draco ruffled his hair with his other hand. "I don't see that as something lucky…"

"Well," Astoria continued, curling her hand in his. "We decided to make two extra instead of one, blood tributes aren't always a taboo ritual either, are they?"

Draco bit his lip, looking at the almost finished green crane in front of him. "Perhaps not."

"Why one thousand and two?" Scorpius asked once the memory faded.

Draco closed his eyes then, holding out the two colored cranes in his hand that Scorpius took.

"Because your mother wanted a couple extra to send her special prayers with," he half-whispered. "So these carried our hope to one day add to our family, and then we had you."

"So, they worked?"

"Yeah… they worked."