sarea | Your mission, should you choose to accept it...

Current Mood: energetic

I have Gmail account invites (guess Google went nuts today :D), and I'd like to give a few away. Well, maybe "barter" is a more accurate term. <g>

If you don't know what the heck Gmail is, read all about it here. Essentially it's Google's new email service, which is currently in beta. You can only get an account by invitation. My favorite things about it: 1) the 1GB of storage, which means I can do far less deleting (their motto is "Never delete another email message!" but I don't think they quite understand my email volume); 2) it groups conversation threads; 3) it checks for new mail automatically.

Anyway, the first three people to respond to this post with ONE of the following things will receive an invite:

Fan art.

Pairing: Draco/Ginny. Doesn't have to be for a fic of mine or anything, but D/G t00biness in general would be fine. :D

Fic.
1. One of the following pairings:
2. Minimum word count: 1,500

EDIT: All submissions must be new and your own creation.

I was going to make the word count requirement on the fic fewer, but then I figured it wouldn't be fair to artists. :-S

Schmooches to all of you! :D

Keeping Track of Invitees:

1)

mynuet, who rocks hardcore. Read her awesome D/G ficcage here and shower her with love!!! 1,631 words. *in awe*

2)

obtabius, who has now joined us in the Bad Place and wrote fanfic for the first time. Gotta love Sarkney from Weiss POV! :D Link here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

mynuet.livejournal.com

Never mind that before, I finished before I left. Now to break your comments section.

----

Once upon a time there was a girl, and she was rather ordinary. She had bright red hair, or perhaps bright orange might be a better description, and more freckles than could possibly be counted, and more brothers than she wanted to count. She had a very long neck and a small head, and her left eyebrow had a funny quirk in it. It didn't seem like nature was ever going to endow her with great height, or the kind of figure that graced the magazines her brothers had hidden in every corner of their home. About the only thing that made her different from normal witches was that she had once had a brush with evil, and that wasn't exactly the sort of thing one advertised. Well, at least, she didn't care to; she thought that her roommate at Hogwarts, who insisted on wearing black lace dressed and heavy black eyeliner and a thick coating of white rice powder on her face to give her a suitably tragic pallor... Well, it was just silly. There wasn't anything romantic about being gloomy, no matter what "Clytemnestra" insisted on thinking.

Still, the girl thought, there were worse things she could be. She wasn't particularly ugly, or stupid, and sometimes being unnoticeable had benefits, such as when she could skip class with no one the wiser. Except Snape's class. She shuddered a bit at the memory of the detention she'd had the one time she'd tried. On the benefit side, though, no member of her family had ever had such good marks in Potions as she did, due to the impetus of wanting to avoid the full wrath of angry Snape directed at her ever again.

More importantly, though, it meant that no one noticed when she spent her time staring, or if they did, that she wasn't simply staring off into space. She'd made a habit of staring in all sorts of situations, usually picking a spot on the wall and gazing fixedly at it, so that nobody would ever notice the times when she was most definitely staring at something. Or rather, someone.

He wasn't beautiful. His nose was too long, and his chin too pointy. He was thin - bordering on weedy - and she didn't know what he used in his hair, since it looked like he coated it with lard, but of course a Malfoy would never touch such a plebian substance. He had a wretched sense of humor, and she hated it that most of the time, it made her laugh, although that had to be hidden, too, before everyone thought she was just as daft as Luna.

It didn't seem possible to stop watching him, though. Even her crush on Harry had never been this bad, and that was pretty bad. So her eyes were on him always when they were anywhere in each other's vicinity, and even sometimes when they weren't supposed to be, but she was hidden underneath the stands watching him practice at quidditch, or in a dark booth at the back of the Three Broomsticks where everyone knew only the Slytherins sat. She watched him and she wondered why, but then she watched him more, and when she was honest with herself, she knew.

She didn't watch him because she enjoyed it, or even because she wanted to, although both were true. Rather, she watched him for the same reason that a magnet always pulls together with its opposite, or the reason why witchlight and water merged to make something that was neither, but something entirely different which made the basis for the most efficacious of potions. She couldn't resist it, and there was no use in trying - all that she could do was hope that it was only temporary, some sort of aberration, and that it would go away eventually, leaving her in peace.

Sometimes, though, he would look back.

From:

mynuet.livejournal.com

At first, she hadn't thought anything of it; everyone's eyes had a tendency to drift, and she'd met many gazes that considered and dismissed her as they passed. That his happened to pass over her wasn't all that surprising, considering how much she looked at him, although whenever she would notice it happening, she would take care to switch her attention for a while, to focus on the way that his long fingers would move, or the gleam of his shoes which were always perfectly polished, or the way that the expensive fabrics he wore moved and stretched over his shoulders.

It changed one day, when she really had been absently staring off into space, just in his general direction, and then when she finally came out of her reverie his eyes were on hers and he winked. She had blushed furiously, determinedly looking away from him and firmly scolding herself every time her eyes tried to drift towards him. She'd skipped watching him practice that afternoon, hiding in her room and trying to concentrate on the transfiguration homework she'd ignored in favor of getting her potions work done.

He hadn't winked at her again, or said anything to his friends, unless he'd done so when she wasn't there to read his lips. But then, if he had, they'd all stare at her or laugh or something, and they didn't. The only thing that had changed was that sometimes, when she would stare at Draco (for that's what she thought of him as now; she'd developed a habit of saying his full name out loud so that no one would notice that she didn't automatically say 'Malfoy' in tones of disgust)... Sometimes, he'd stare back, and they'd stay caught in each other's eyes until something happened to make the outside world intrude.

It was strange. She felt like she knew him, but they'd barely ever exchanged a word, and even that had never been what might be called conversation. Still, it existed, and she didn't know what to call it, or what to think of it. She just kept watching him, and ignoring the little voice inside that said that this wasn't going away. The school year dripped away, minute by minute, interspersed with endless moments lost in his eyes.

They never spoke. She noticed that he still teased Harry, Ron, and Hermione mercilessly, but she also noticed that he stopped making generalized comments about the Weasleys, choosing instead to focus on her brother's many deficits. Some days, she heartily agreed with Draco's assessments, although it didn't mean she loved Ron any less. He still called Hermione names, although she noticed that, after a few times when she had scowled at him for a particular word or phrase and then refused to look at him, that his choice of epithets tended to focus on her looks or study habits rather than her birth. This realization had caused her to smile blindingly, and for him to look unbearably smug in return.

From:

mynuet.livejournal.com

It was quite possible that she should be horrified, because one day she found herself thinking that he wasn't bad looking, at all. His face was still thin and sharp, but now she thought 'aristocratic' rather than 'pointy'. She had caught herself mentally describing his eyes and stormy and mercurial and quicksilver, and scolded herself firmly for being so unbearably soppy, but she still thought it. The body beneath his robes didn't seem stringy anymore, especially since he'd developed the habit of flying shirtless during practices on hot days, so she'd had a chance to study his musculature in detail that she would vividly recall when laying in bed at night, the covers over her head so none of her roommates could ask why she was blushing.

Now it was time to go home for the summer, the leaving feast done with, the trunks packed, and the Express trip over. She had thought, perhaps, that she might go looking for him on the train, but then what would she do? All she knew how to do was stare at him, and she wasn't sure enough of her welcome to take the chance. Now the ride was over and she was holding onto a battered suitcase which held most of her clothes, her trunk having been stuffed to overflowing with books and potions materials for the extra homework she'd been assigned. She stood on the fringes of her family, looking around, hoping to at least be able to look at him one more time before she couldn't see him for months.

She caught sight of him stepping off the train and her eyes followed him as he moved. A quick look around showed that his mother was standing behind and apart from the Weasleys, so that he would have to pass close enough to Ginny that she could reach out and touch him, if she had the courage. She didn't think she did, and looked down at her feet so she wouldn't see him leave her behind.

However, instead of sweeping past her he turned abruptly, one hand tilting her face and the other going around her waist to crush her to him in a kiss that struck like lightning, burning through all of her senses so that all her world was made up of him. She dropped her suitcase, uncaring that the old latches popped open on the impact and spilled her clothes all over the floor of the station. She didn't hear the gasps of her family, or his mother saying his name in shocked tones, just his breath against her skin and the sound of their mouths working frantically against each other as months of tension resolved themselves.

Finally he stepped back, and they stared into each other's eyes for a long moment before he smiled. "Don't forget me over the summer, Weasel."

"As if I could, Ferret."

From:

sarea-okelani.livejournal.com

Dude. <33333333

The first section could really have stood on its own as a drabble and it would have been great already. (Never mind the word count min. for the moment.) However, once we got past that, I wanted to keep going and going and have it never end. <g>

You posted a bit of it before, right? Before you officially finished? The end, w/ the hot kiss? It still qualifies, I just want to make sure I'm not crazy. I love that kiss. :-*

From:

mynuet.livejournal.com

Yeah, the kiss you'd seen before, but I figured it could use a fic around it. Hopefully that it's only about 1450 new words doesn't change my status as rocking. ;)