A CHALLENGER HAS APPEARED: Jormungandr
Line: "Hagrid... Why is there a goblin on stage?"
Length: 1000/1800
Lime: 60 Minutes

 

I have a better one.

A CHALLENGER HAS APPEARED: Jormungandr
Line: "I have 99 problems but a Death Eater ain't one."
Length: 500-1000
Time: 30-45 minutes

 

I love how you guys just breeze by poor phazer11 and pick the vet

A CHALLENGER HAS APPEARED: phazer11
Line: For two years Dobby had struggled to obtain a job, trying pitch after pitch to offer his services. Eventually he had exhausted them all, save one, "..."
Length: 500-1000

Humor-oriented or at least aimed toward, but hey.

 

[vague pop music reference] [shitty joke about canon] [apology for never finishing challenges] Could I get a short easy challenge?

 

A CHALLENGER HAS APPEARED: Gambit
Line: "Mrs. Malfoy, you're trying to seduce me. Aren't you?"
Length: 500-1000

You can change character if you want.

 

oh good god, and I think I have just the plan ...

 

In the mood to write and drawing blanks. Anyone have one for me? Preferably not a comedic challenge, I have the sense of humor of a dead fish.

 

"Draco was born before Lucius was given the Dark Mark, and that makes all the difference in the world."

 

Okay,chronologically a bit difficult but I'm on it.

 

Throwing one up from a few months back, its free for anyone that wants it.

 

I'll take it, Zenzao, when I get home. I've got such a good scene in my head.

---------- Post automerged 01-23-2012 at 02:44 AM ---------- Previous post was 01-22-2012 at 06:14 PM ----------

My answer is here:
https://forums.darklordpotter.net/showthread.php?t=21113

A bit shorter than I expected, but it really wanted to end there.

 

Not having read any Dresden books (closest is the Denarian Trilogy by Shezza), I can't comment on your piece, but it's good to see this thread moving again.

Who knows? One of these days...

 

[IMGUR]Z1PRg[/IMGUR]

As the last unanswered challenge, figure I'll give this one a shot. Need to kill an evening. Not entirely sure how I'll make this work but I suspect figurative language or timetravel.

As I'm easing back in, it'll be the former for the moment lol. And likely not very good.

Right, will try to finish in 1 hr or less.

---------- Post automerged 8th Dec 2012 at 03:11 AM ---------- Previous post was 7th Dec 2012 at 10:34 PM ----------

So that's why you shouldn't write on a laptop in bed after a killer week.

Anyway, awake now, ish. The end isn't quite what it might have been because I'm still not fully conscious, but afetr not writing for a while, it's a start.

~ ~ ~ The Sickle's Edge ~ ~ ~​

Confused, Draco looked on.

So... Harry Potter was dead. The whispers had reached them, the face of everyone who spread the revelation seemingly too shocked to show their feelings, real or hired... yes, those whispers had reached them all before the half-giant ever did. But there he was, now. A scrawny teenager limp within the cradle of the monster’s arms.

Making slow progress in the crowd, Draco noted. So many people.

He looked down before the image burned itself into his psyche, at once fighting for emotions and subduing them, trying to work out whether he should react and wondering even how, feeling peculiarly hollow and somehow bloated, feeling... confused, all together.

It was easier now he stared at the stone between his feet. He cut away the minutiae that formed the trimmings of conviction, shed considerations in the way he always had, succumbing to desire... and found himself for a glorious, fleeting moment believing that the despair straining against his emotional dykes was nothing more than upset dipping a toe.

I didn’t get to kill him, he let himself believe, perhaps. I wanted to be the one to beat him.

Before long the brittle walls of that particular faith were dust. The other boy still lived, and was even now scrambling inexorably from the giant’s arms. Draco felt no jubilation, no disgust. Once again, in fact, he found himself feeling... nothing. Desperate nothing.

It was in this state that his mother reached him.

She grasped him as though clawing at a memory she was soon to forget. He felt an emotion blossom somewhere deep within him, a cacophony of sudden, hot honesty from a place within him he’d forgotten existed, and felt his being strain with the weight. She laid her head in his lap, weeping.

That fear - that potential for fear - scared him. And in realising that fear was now in the mix as well, sour and heady, he shut his eyes and fought to shut his heart, too. Any one, tiny spark of feeling would ignite him. Fear or love or hate or despair, it did not matter. Each was strong enough in that instant to cancel each other out. He... he simply refused to feel. If any single emotion took hold of him at that moment, he did not think his sanity would hold.

Achieving that harmony was extraordinary. Precarious, yes, but a somewhat level crossroad from whence each path to destruction could stretch just out of sight.

He would have to maintain it for a while, he knew. That void. He couldn’t start down any of those paths. He wouldn’t let himself. He needed to distract himself from... from everything.

He turned to look at his father.

Perhaps his subconscious provided that solution, or perhaps he simply wanted to see if his father was managing, and how. He found the man huddled, staring in the same direction as everybody else. Even in that mental place, Draco found himself surprised, as he did every time, that the man he now looked upon differed so greatly from the figure of his father that had been burned and beaten into his mind.

Gaunt. Not enough left of him physically or mentally to hide behind. The scraps of what remained were laid bare. Rags, in man and cloth.

The void held. Draco realised he no longer cared. He could examine it objectively... no hate, no love, no despair. Not even fear, he considered. He was devoid of emotion - stubbornly so - and the emotionless were rational. The rational could not fear what did not exist.

And his father no longer existed.

He considered for a moment, breath held. No spike of emotion. Nothing.

It would come, probably, but it didn’t put him at risk now. He tried to consider his options - not repercussions, necessarily, for that way lay disaster, but simply what would come next. Which way might be forwards, from there. If he’d been led by emotion at that point, he realised he’d probably have decided on something instantly. Reaction instead of action. He looked at the skeletal remains of House Malfoy, letting the ideas seek him, the facts become apparent, not daring to venture, and found the decision formed itself slowly.

Obvious, really, when you found it. Perpetually in the last place you look.

In his heart - nay, in the essence that surged through his very being - Draco had been born before Lucius was even given the Dark Mark, and that makes all the difference in the world. All that Draco was, truly was, had owned a place in eternity that had been hewn before his father had even been conceived.

Before Voldemort, even.

This night, though, would not be his cocoon. He considered and dismissed the idea, unsure how he might have reacted to it out of rage or lust or any other avenue he was denying himself. Something was happening in the distance, beyond his attention, some confrontation, but Draco sat in perfect stillness. His own rebirth would not take place overnight, even a night like this. There was too much to... consider.

No, he decided, in as near as he could get to satisfaction. That night would not be transformative. But he would allow it to be fully destructive. He would thoroughly destroy the boy he had once been. For good. No more obstacles, not even himself.

He became aware, gradually, of those around him. They had not done anything to warrant his attention - in fact, all eyes were still on the centre of the hall, the coliseum floor - but he came to understand just how difficult his task would be, with so many knowing the Draco Malfoy that had been.

A far cry from the entity that fate dictated he should - or could - be. With so much potential, so much of a headstart, so much skill and determination, he had squandered his past life. All present knew as much. In doing so, all believed he had too squandered his future.

A green flash in the background. Many nearby gasp. Draco held tight to the reigns in his head. He understood, now - he knew - that all that was happening out there was essentially preordained. A foregone conclusion, even if none could see it. They all - all - had believed against it - had not known.

There was but one possible eventuality. Like it or not, it was irrelevant. He was coming to understand it, and appreciate it - there was no alternate course.

They had been made to believe there was, though, he thought, looking at the man who had once been his father. They had manned the ranks of fear. A veritable phalanx of futility and compensating brutality, blind to the crushing inevitability that flanked them all. Contributing to it, even.

The light in the hall seemed particularly bright. Not more spellfire - no - perhaps simple clarity. Barely registering, he looked down at his lap to find a blonde woman’s head nestling on his leg. Sorrow streaked black across her face as her eyes held something only she could see.

Exhaling, Draco, solace itself, disregarded her. He also disregarded the urge to look around him - even if he did, he knew he would not recognise the man who had once been his father. It could be anyone. It could be no one.

There, in the distance, stood a person that he once had known. Or perhaps not - black hair and glasses were not necessarily uncommon. Victorious, it seemed, in some altogether forgotten altercation.

Draco noticed that the world, it seemed, began to come to life around him once again, as though a collective breath was released, and knew that for one deceptive moment there, existence had seemed to teeter on the Sickle’s edge. But throughout, the planet had continued turning, apathetic, and only now did it seem he might be able to move with it.

Like a snakeskin, Narcissa retained some of her shape as he shed her, his standing leaving her foetal and smeared.

Those surrounding him had their attention on the play extempore behind him. He wondered if he might kill, in order to make his way. Would he carve it out of those around him? They would find out. He, even, would find out - he did not know.

Taking in the crowd that now lay between him and the door, each of them in some strange way bearing witness to all of himself he left behind, he knew he’d have to cut through many lines of sight to reach the outside world. Each line was a tether to the old and broken. A bar between him and the rest of his life.

He fondled a silver Sickle in his pocket, thumbing the edge, before starting forwards. The crossroads were already way behind him, but he did not remember them. Since his incarnation, this place was where he'd always been, was where he'd always be. His eyes were only for what was to come. What he would bring to come.

No time to spare... and none would be.

~ ~ ~​

Damn, getting back on that horse is a bastard.

Approx. 1,500 words. Feedback would be greatly appreciated. As would other challenge response

 

I... have never completed one of these, and my beers are telling me it's a good idea to volunteer. I'll look up my prompt and answer tomorrow between cleaning my house and car shopping <_<

 

I want something unique, something special. Oneshot, anything between T and MA rating.

No Crossover and no slash and I'm game. Can anybody give me a smacker of a challenge?

 

A new challenger has appeared: Tommy B
Length: 1000+ words (make it meaningful and not just a joke)
Line: Hagrid took a deep drink from his flagon and then continued, "Smart woman, Olympe. Saw that me heart already belonged to another witch. An impossible love, but when's tha' a surprise, right?"

 

Challenge accepted:

Okay, here it is. A little shoddy, as I haven’t edited it yet… but here!

Harry Potter walked through the destroyed grounds and to the hut that belonged to Hagrid. He noticed, all around him, several pits that bordered the Great Lake of Hogwarts, presumably having been dug out by spell-damage. The fenced-in paddock that was behind the hut seemed to have been removed entirely, the posts having been dug out from the earth.

The hut had taken about two hours to repair, after most of it was found intact. Striding up to the hut and stepping onto the small step before the door, Harry knocked on the door to Hagrid's hut. It was three days after the final battle and Hagrid had decided to keep a low-profile in his hut.

After a few seconds, the door cracked open and Hagrid gazed down at Harry from his tangled mass of a beard.

"'Arry?" said Hagrid in what counted, for him, as a whisper.

"Hagrid, old friend," Harry reached up to pat the elder man's shoulder. "You feeling okay?"

Hagrid Hiccuped into his beard and nodded slowly. "Alrigh, I guess."

He shuffled backward, a tired man who appeared to be burdened with the weight of the world on his massive shoulders, allowing Harry entrance.

“You were with me, Hagrid,” Harry murmured into the silence of the crackling fire. “You were there when I was declared dead – yet you doubted it. You had faith in me and I could never repay you for that.”

Hagrid had been Harry’s first friend in the Wizarding world and if Harry had been about to die, Hagrid would have been his last. The fact that Hagrid had been there all these years, an unmovable force that would stop at nothing to support the name of Dumbledore and to back Harry up meant that Hagrid was loyal to the core.

After ten minutes of catching up and Harry thanking Hagrid for being there in his hour of need, he noticed that after all matters were settled and all apologies were uttered, that Hagrid still did not budge from his emotional state.

"There's something else bugging you, isn't there?" Harry asked, having grown tired of skirting the problem.

"Noth'n for you to worry abou, 'Arry," Hagrid tried to sound convincing.

"Yeah?" said Harry, disbelief dripping from every octave that his word rose. "Tell me, then, why are you pouring a heavy mixture of fire-whisky and dragon urine for yourself?"

Dragon urine was known to have a kick and a very strong one at that. Add an odor-removing charm and you had a very potent alcohol. Hagrid, who couldn't see his way out of this one, began to tell his story about the conversation he had had with Olymp, a few hours after Harry had ended Voldemort's reign of terror:

"We were chattin, Olymp and I. We spoke of what'd happen now that yeh've finished old Tommy. It was general natter, things like: What we'd do, how we'd set things to rights and the like.
Olymp, though, wasn't happy with speakin of minor things, y'know? So she tried to change the conversation to... us."

Harry nodded sympathetically. Indeed, he knew what Hagrid meant. War had changed them. Ginny had similarly approached Harry, only to be rebuffed. Now, her hero was back and now she wanted him. Maybe the circumstances of Harry and Ginny’s relationship, compared to that of Hagrid and Olymp were different.

Hagrid continued with his story, "Olymp could see that I was hintin at 'er, so she could change the topic, but I could see she knew what was 'appenin."

Hagrid took a deep drink from his flagon and then continued, "Smart woman, Olympe. Saw that me heart already belonged to another witch. An impossible love, but when's tha' a surprise, right?"

Again, Harry nodded. He truly felt for his friend, a man who had nobody to be his proverbial shoulder to cry on; nobody to warm his bed at night - save for Fang. A curse of loveless existence, all because of his status as a half-giant. Similarities between Harry and Hagrid seemed to be cropping up at an alarming rate.

"She jus' looked at me all funny-like and s-said..." Hagrid began crying in Ernest, now. Big tears pooled in his beetle-black eyes. "She said that she'd wait, 'Arry! She’d wait for me to… to make up mi mind, bless her."

Hagrid hunched over his table, his shoulders forward. He sniffled and sobbed, letting the emotions pour from him. Harry hated to see such a big man vulnerable. He had a question, though, but he feared the insensitivity of it. He tried to think of a delicate way to phrase it, so as not to plunge the half-giant into further bouts of depression. Deciding that there was no way around it, Harry took the plunge and came out with it.

"Hagrid," he said carefully. "Who is this other woman you speak of? This other… love?"

Hagrid sat back up and began mopping his eyes with his table-cloth-sized handkerchief. Gulping and trying to prevent the flow of further tears from spilling into his drink, he said three words that finally managed to make Harry leap, headfirst, out of his post-war stupor:

"Dolores Jane Umbridge!" he shouted.

Harry sat there in numb disbelief, letting Hagrid’s words wash over him. Surely, he had heard wrong?

“U-Umbridge?” Harry asked uncertainly.

“Oh, mi Dilly Dolores!” Hagrid exclaimed, his expression clearing at once.

“B-but…” stuttered Harry, “how can that be! She ran you down, for Merlin’s sake!”

Harry remembered all those nights ago, sitting atop the astronomy tower and watching Umbridge and her band of Aurors, as they tried to take Hagrid out. He remembered Hagrid lumbering into the forest, Phang under one arm.

“Don’t worry, 'Arry,” Hagrid reassured. “Dolores is with my brother at the mo. We like to take ‘er in turns, see?”

Harry felt like he wanted to vomit. “I-in turns?” he stammered out.

“Yeah!” agreed Hagrid, a smile creeping onto his face. “Sometimes, we even double-team… ‘Arry? ‘Arry! Where yeh goin!"

 

...paragraphs? Though given the last few lines, I'm not sure I want it to be legible...

 

Fixed. My bad, I kinda rushed it.

 

I give you credit for trying. I laughed. Hagrid is amusing.

Though his dogs name is Fang, not Phang, wherever you dredged that up from.

Also,

Where you at, Gambit?