Max has been (anything1) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2014-02-06 23:51:00 |
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Entry tags: | door: tales, draco malfoy, rose red |
Who: Rose and Draco
What: Traveling from the village to the castle
Where: The place where the snow won't stop
When: Recently
Warnings/Rating: Nope
The snow hadn't stopped falling, and more and more people were freezing to death. The entire Homelands were covered in white, feet deep and this was even worse than the dead years. During the dead years there hadn't been food, but they'd been warm, and they'd been able to travel. Dying of hunger took days, and generally someone showed up with something horrible and disgusting to eat before it happened. But this cold, this was different. It was bitter and bite, and it froze people overnight and left them dead by morning. And moving was impossible with the snow piled high and deep. Horses sunk into it, and even snowshoes only helped so much.
Rose had been stuck at the village for a week. She'd been waiting for the path to the castle to clear, but it hadn't cleared at all. She'd started considering other options, but the best she'd come up with was lining the path home with vines. She could do it, but she wasn't sure if her strength would hold out the entire way. It was miles, and she didn't want to freeze to death in the middle of the journey. She didn't want to die at all. Then Belle would just make off with Henry, and it would be like she'd never existed. Just like her tale was forgotten in the mundane world, she'd be forgotten here, and she was vain and childish; she didn't want to be forgotten.
She'd been feeling sorry for herself, and then Draco had been in contact. She missed him. He'd been one of her first friends here, and she hadn't seen him since she stopped hiding in his door. She still thought about how much easier everything would have been if he'd just liked her more, liked her instead of Harry. But that hadn't happened, and she'd forced herself to stop feeling bad about it ages ago. Now, she was just glad her friend was coming.
She had a door propped open for him in the stables behind the village, the one with the walls lined with vines and the roof reinforced with them. The place smelled of green and hay and fur, and it was warmed by the fire that had been carefully created in a damp circle in the center of the space. Cows mooed and horses brayed, and she waited, dressed in jeans and cream, cableknit sweater. Her cloak, which she wore over the mundane clothes, was rose, and her mittens were too, and her nose was cold-red and her lips were chapped.
Oh, and it was freezing.
Draco was used to hard winters, or what he considered hard winters. England always had snow, more or less depending on location. He wasn’t really a fan of the weather, preferring sun to the usual gloom of the country that seemed to drain him of any humor at all. Still, he had the clothes for the occasion. He also had magic to keep him warm.
He stepped inside the door in all the layers he had allowed himself. Thermals with a warming charm lined his skin, followed by jeans, and yet a third layer of insulation. He also wore two thick sweaters under a winter parka, along with a lined hat and scarf to cover all the skin that could be exposed from the elements.
He noticed her immediately and smiled through the material of the scarf. Rose was unique, by far his favorite woman. There was no doubt that they had a connection, and could be a couple, or maybe could have been. If there would be a woman in his life, she was that one. Harry had arrived at a time where there were questions. The unresolved issues had brought them together, perhaps over things that should have been realized when they were boys at school. However, the two stood on fairly equal ground, if he had to confess. He wasn’t sure that she knew that, but it was true. Henry had caused him a good bit of jealousy, but perhaps she had to rectify her past as much as he did.
He looked around the clearing, not really seeing what was so bad just yet, although he was sure that would change as they got further past the door. He left the door propped open, moving towards her when he felt the chill of the wind, even through all his layers. “Good bloody God,” he hissed against it. “It’s good to see you.” He always missed her. It was a given.
She didn't have charms to help with the cold, and her teeth chattered as she smiled. No, she had no idea that he had any interest in her. She'd grown up in an old place with old morals and old values, and she didn't realize gender interest was fluid. In recent years, she'd adopted mundane clothing and mundane curse words, but she was still very much a Homelands girl at the core, despite her very immoral actions in the past. When he'd chosen Harry, he'd confused her in a way that was foreign, and she didn't understand how he could like girls and boys; they were so different.
"Wait until we go outside. It's even colder, " she told him, and she wasn't a girl prone to caution. She hugged him without restraint, arms around his shoulders and a kiss with chapped lips to his pale cheek. "I missed you," she admitted. It was a testament to how far she'd come in the past few years, that she would admit to missing anyone without feeling the need to hide the sentiment. But she had missed him, and she was a copper bright smile as she stepped back, only to hide her cold, be'mittened hands inside his winter coat. "I stole this stable, but things out there are bad. I missed the early morning melt, and it'll be deep snow to the castle," she told him, and she hoped he had magic that would keep them from sinking into the snow. She wasn't sure if his broom would work in the kind of snow and wind that had been whipping the village for the past few days.
That said, her expression turned sympathetic, empathic in a way that few people were permitted to witness. "I'm sorry about your mother," she said, hand soothing his sweater beneath her fingers, and then she pulled back entirely and looked up at her sturdy roof of vines, then at him once more. "Are you sure you want to brave it?" She smiled again. "It's really fucking cold."
Draco sighed, finding it hard to put both of their relationships into any words at all. It always came out wrong. It wasn’t that he had chosen one over the other. It was a fairly level playing field when it came to his heart. However, the past was a monster, and it was one that he needed to resolve, and then perhaps he could mend himself as well, and not be so tied to it. Harry had been a big factor in his past. Their relationship was based on forgiveness, and a need to truly understand those motivations that were never quite what they appeared. He knew that it probably would have been better to just write off that history, and yet it couldn’t quite be denied so easily.
He leaned into Rose a little bit when she kissed him. To Draco, she represented a future. He was different when he was with her. He was purely himself, right now. His past never played a role in how they got to know each other, and he would do everything he could to defend her. His mother had liked her too, enjoyed hearing about her, which was actually often. “I missed you, too,” he echoed, smiling.
He moved before getting himself into trouble, although he wasn’t sure how long he wanted to resist that pull that she had on him. “Let’s do this,” he said, taking out his wand. He was going to have to manipulate a few things, he was certain. He had taken some time to review a few charms for the trip out, not really sure how bad it was. “First things first.” He stuck the tip of his wand just inside her cloak, mumbling a warming charm that would keep the warmth inside. It would still be cool once the wind hit, but it would be tolerable for the most part.
She smiled when he said he'd missed her too, the smile a genuine thing that most people didn't ever get to see. She was thorns and vines and self-protection, and he was one of the few people who'd never told her she needed to change, that she was wrong, that she wasn't enough the way she was. So, he got honesty in her smile, and she had no need for the thorns around him. Even the hurt with Harry had been something that he'd owned up to, told her about, and she didn't hold it against him. Men that cheated, those scared her. He was honest, and she was unafraid. He was like Faust in that way; truthful with her, accepting, and she didn't have very much of that in her life. Now, Snow had joined that number, but it remained a very small group indeed.
Her mittened hands slid along his cheek when he pulled back, and then she watched as he took out his wand. She let him slide it into her cloak without any concern that he was going to curse or hex her, and she made a happy, happy sound when the warming spell did its work. However insufficient it would be for the terrifying cold outside, it still felt like comfort right then. "I should have stolen you away ages again," she joked, and she tugged the cloak closed and looked toward the door. "Okay," she said, as if she wanted to give him one last chance to change his mind.
And then she pushed open the door, all of her weight against the wood, and even then it was a fight to get it open in the chilled wind. She whispered, and green kissed the air, and vines slithered from their places inside and held the door open with their thick arms. It was merciless outside, blizzard snow and a whipping cold that went right through to the bone. She tugged her hood up over her copper hair, and she waited for him to join her. She leaned against his side almost immediately, because more heat, more heat was good. "I told you," she said over the wind. She'd spent a lot of time in his London, and it was nothing like this.
In truth, Draco and Rose were a lot alike. They were both stubborn and headstrong, and had taken more than a few beatings for their beliefs and the lives they led, and they were still survivors. He had recognized that spirit right away. In a way, she was stronger than he was, and he appreciated that strength. She had even infused it in him. He could never ask her to change, not a thing. She was absolutely perfect in his eyes, and she had accepted him for exactly what he was, through it all. He felt that familiar tug that came with her hand on his cheek. It always lingered, and he held on to it.
Once the door was opened, he stepped back just a little after the wind shocked him. The snow wasn’t a few inches deep, it was feet deep. The weather was relentless. “Merlin,” he said. He had his broom, but the wind was so bad that there was a strong chance of being blown off into the mountains of snow, or the bare trees. That wasn’t safe. Warming spells were not going to burrow out a tunnel. By the time they got anywhere, their clothes would be soaked. He had to have a plan.
He couldn’t blow the offending white blanket away, but he could make ice. A hard ice pack would keep them on top of the blanket. It would be slippery, but they could work with that too. He waved his wand along the top layer of snow, mumbling a freezing charm. He had grown in power since his youth, grown in skill as well. The ice would extend over a long distance, and he would just have to pay attention. He climbed up, inspecting his handiwork, feeling the chill coming through the layers. “England is apparently in the middle of a heat wave next to this,” he said, reaching to help her up to the top layer of ice so she wouldn’t slip.
The fact that it was worse than he'd expected made her smile. There was some strange pleasure in shocking him, when she'd already warned him it was bad. "Did you think I was exaggerating, or did you just think I had really thin skin?" she asked, copper-bright smile and cheeks gone red from the cold. But the warming spell was the best thing she'd felt since all this started in October, and she had her arms tucked nice and deep inside her cloak, and the smile she gave him was genuine and unworried. She'd known him for years now, this pale and angular boy with the wand and the broom, and she knew nothing would happen to her while he was around. It was, perhaps, the safest she'd felt in awhile. This place had turned lonely and empty, with Henry never around and only antagonism at every corner. And she didn't help, she knew, by picking fights. But it was safer, in its own way. Thorns were a way of life for Rose.
She waited while he figured something out; she knew he would. He'd given her one of his books once, and Max had told her about the others. She knew he survived when few people would. She knew about wars; she'd survived one herself, and she thought his Voldemort sounded a lot like her Adversary. She waited, and she smiled at his quip about the heat in England, dimpled cheeks and her hand in his as she climbed up to that top layer of ice. "Are we walking? Or flying?" She suspected they would need to walk carefully, but his magic was still strange to her in many ways. "If we're walking, I can give us something to make it less slippery," she offered, and she didn't think it would hurt, either way. She didn't utter any incantations; her magic didn't require it. And she was better now, much better than the last time he'd been to see her. The air around them tasted green and took on the sharp tang of spring days, and then weeds pushed up through the snow, and they wrapped themselves around his ice, wrap wrap and almost crunchy and dead as soon as they gripped the slick cold. But easier to walk on, certainly, and it would be easy enough to add on more as they went.
The wind was still sharp, too sharp for them to fly. He didn’t want to put her in danger, and getting blown away by gusts was not a good idea. He looked at her and smiled. His mother liked her, and he knew why. “This is brilliant,” he said. “Walking will have to do, but at least we won’t be trying to cut through it. He held out an arm for her to hang on to as they walked.
“Not that I was doubting you or anything, but this is a bloody mess. How long has it been like this?” The freeze had to be going on far below the surface by now, killing whatever they grew. At one time, he wouldn’t have cared, but he had to now. He was involved, and he wanted to do what he could. In a way, there was a part of him that still wanted to be a hero, maybe if it was just for a few people, not passed over or judged. She had never done that to him. “What do we need to do to make it better?”
She took his arm, her grip tight and trusting. "It's been like this since October on the mundane calendar, but it's gotten so much worse in the past month," she said, leaning against his side for extra warmth. The green beneath their feet extended without her needing to even think about it; she hadn't been lying when she said her magic had grown stronger. "I think I can build an entire house out of trees and vines and grass now, if I want, and stay warm inside, but Belle is out there being stupidly altruistic, and I don't think going back to the Witching Wood is a good idea." Which had nothing to do with the cold, really, but her train of thought rarely stayed on the track, to quote the mundy idiom. But it was a telling little statement, because it said, plainly, Henry isn't here. And Henry hadn't been anywhere near her since before the winter holidays. She was starting to think Snow was correct, that she needed to just end it with Henry and let him have his princess in a yellow dress, but she had a stubborn streak that was as bright as her copper hair.
"I think we need to find out where the curse originates? Faust was going to help, but I haven't seen him yet, not with all this snow. Blue says there's something wrong with my sister, so I need to make sure she's okay, too. He's meeting us at the castle. He has some way to move around that isn't affected by the cold, or that's what he says." She wasn't very worried about Snow, though, and that was evident enough in her voice. Snow had always been the resilient one, where she'd always been the wild one; maybe Blue just didn't know that yet. Either way, she'd go check on Snow. "I'll bring her back to the castle too. Will you stay? I can get them to make up a room for you, and Henry isn't there, so there shouldn't be trouble." She hoped not, since she'd invited Blue, Faust and Belle in, and now she was inviting Draco. Snow coming, that was a given in this weather, if they could get her there.
Draco walked, listening to the grass under his feet. It crunched the way it did in London after a frost. This was much worse, but the noise was familiar. He was impressed with her magic. He wished he could do it without a wand, and it was something that he was working on. In his world, the wand was used for channeling that energy. Wandless magic wasn’t taught to the degree that he liked, but learned over time as the witch or wizard sought fit. Some never learned it.
He got most of what she was saying as she talked. He at least knew the players in this world. He could hear her tone when it came to her sister, still not a perfect relationship, but he wasn’t sure it would ever heal, or even if it should. Mistrust was hard to overcome. It was Snow’s loss, at least in his eyes. He had spoken with Faust, but had only heard of Blue in passing. “So they are all taking shelter in the castle, but Henry isn’t there? Where has he been?” He was almost sure that he wouldn’t be eaten by the creature, or stabbed by the man, but there would be some discomfort.
It was the invitation that surprised him, although maybe it shouldn’t have. It wasn’t until she spoke that he realized that he wanted that. “Yes, I’ll stay,” he said, smiling behind the scarf that hid his mouth, although it was evident in his tone. “We will get the place warm, sealed in, and comfortable.” He was also looking towards a door that seemed to be opening wider for him, or maybe it was just his impression. He was interested in seeing where it would lead with the two of them.
"I think his door person has kept him away," she said of Henry, though it wasn't the complete truth, and she was terrible at demurring about things that displeased her. She sighed. "The last time I talked to him, he was going to the village to help Belle with the villagers. It's like she's queen or something, the way she's finding rooms for everyone and inviting them to shelter in places." She would have crossed her arms petulantly, but his arm in hers stopped her, and she exhaled a puff of air into the cold.
She would have kept pouting, but he agreed to stay, and that made her light up. She pressed a kiss to his cheek, her lips scratchy and chapped against the pale skin above his scarf. "Thank you, Draco," she said, every bit the girl that had been taught etiquette to sit at her sister's table in court. Going back to the castle seemed more tolerable than it had that morning, and she leaned against his side and chattered the rest of the way.