#you would have left him alive and let Merlin roast him every day in front of the people

[ksuhi13]

Me run with letter: Dear Santa, please forgive me for the confusion, I know you are very busy, but I ask you to listen to me about the gift. I know it’s quite late but listen, 11 years ago on this very day...

Santa instantly climbs out of the pipe: I don’t know how to resurrect the dead understand already a stupid creature, dear deer save me

Me: Oh no, I already understood that I just need a little apocalypse so that Arthur can come back we people haven't ruined everything enough

[essays-for-breakfast]

One Vow

Melizabeth Week Day 6: Promise/Devotion

Promises. At this point, Meliodas had made and broken so many he had lost count. He had promised Hawk to pick out the empty bottles and store them somewhere other than the top of the counter. He had promised Ban another round of their ongoing arm-wrestling competition to give him the chance to make up for his last defeat. He had promised Merlin to keep that tiny creature with an appetite for scorched fingers in her lab alive while she visited some far off library. Of course, he had failed all of them, so broken pledges were part of the course with him.

Hawk had no reason to be surprised that Meliodas had, in fact, not practiced his cooking skills.

“You can’t tell me all of this is just lack of talent,” the loudmouthed swine yelled and pointed accusingly at the food in front of him with his hooves. Meliodas considered adding pig feet to the menu of his tavern. “You are nothing but a lazy pig, you could do better if you tried! Or you want to poison me with your terrible scraps.”

“That isn’t scraps,” Meliodas said and pulled the plate of baked carrots and potatoes out of Hawk’s reach.

“Which only proves my point. How are we supposed to attract customers when they die of disgust as soon as they eat a spoonful of that?”

“Well, we have a travelling tavern, so I only need to lure them with the smell of the food once. Never said I wanted long-lasting relationships with the drunk folk you call customers. Besides, I heard roasted bacon is really popular these days. Fits great with Aberdeen Ale.”

Hawk narrowed his eyes which only made the fat in his cheeks more alluring. A good slate of pig cheek – not even Meliodas’ lack of skills with a frying pan could ruin that image. “The ground on which this establishment stands belongs to me. You would have long starved if it weren’t for my generosity. And just so that we’re clear, Mama will eat you if you try anything funny.”

“I wouldn’t even dream of it.”

The floor stopped swaying as Mama Hawk halted at their destination on the hill outside the next town, only to tilt as she dug herself into the ground to create the illusion of a normal tavern that had been built from the ground up overnight. Meliodas grabbed Hawk by his ears to prevent him from skidding through the room like last time before he marched into the kitchen to prepare for the first customers.

The shoebox of a room in the back of the circular building showed all the signs of a tavern without any employees – apart from the fund manager who happened to be an excessively talkative pig. Sacks and caskets with ingrediencies stacked on every surface and most of the floor, and the mix of plates without one to match another towered on the workbench next to the sink. Maybe before his next stop, Meliodas would find the time to furnish a new cupboard.

He pried a fork from the basket in the corner and took a bite of the meal Hawk had assaulted with words. Awful. Even worse than how Hawk had described the taste. With a frustrated sigh on his lips, Meliodas showed the remains into Hawks bowl on the floor and frisbeed the plate onto the top of the stack of its mismatched brothers where it landed with an indignant clatter. Where was Ban, that criminal, when he needed him?

The first guest dribbled into the tavern, and Meliodas greeted them with a cheerful grin and a tray of ale mugs. From the looks of it, business would run well today, nothing to worry about. Some of the folks brave enough to order food accused him of poisoning – enough to make Hawk raise a smug eyebrow –, but another serving of ale appeased them.

Meliodas was about to mark this day as the best one in a while, when chatter about a rusty knight on the lookout for the Seven Deadly Sins caught his attention. Sure, whenever season was dry and people had nothing to gush about, the old stories about the Sins resurfaced with more ghastly details than the previous year, but no one had been idiotic enough to look for them until now. And as if the mention had summoned a ghost onto Meliodas porch, a knight clad in full armor stepped through the door and rattled, “The Seven Deadly Sins…”

Now that was interesting.

But Meliodas’ clientele viewed the situation a tad differently, screamed at the top of their lungs, and made a run for the door faster than the eye could see. In no time, Meliodas was left alone with the Rust Knight swaying back and forth like a drunkard. He sighed. Ghost apparitions were bad for business; he wouldn’t sell a single mug of ale in this town as soon as word spread about the supposed murder knight who searched for the even more murderous Seven Deadly Sins.

Well, now that the Rust Knight had found its way into his tavern, least Meliodas could do was find out why he was looking for him. “Who’re you?” he asked.

As an answer, the knight reeled back and crashed on the stone tiles with a rumble loud enough to alert every Holy Knight in the kingdom. The knight’s helmet rolled under a nearby table to reveal its owner’s identity…

…No, no, it couldn’t be, what were the odds? She had no reason to travel this far away from the capital, no reason to search for him. His eyes must be playing a trick on him, the girl was nothing but an illusion created by his desperate mind because he hadn’t seen her in so long. And yet, the face under the helmet belonged to her without a sliver of doubt. Elizabeth.

She had grown since last Meliodas had seen her, her soft features had abandoned some of the childlike roundness in favor of maturity. He knew every inch of her soft skin, had stroked these cheeks in love and death with fingers bleeding, cold, or full of life. He had dreamed of these fine eyebrows and the small, adorable nose day in and day out, no matter if he was with her or without her. He had kissed these lips more times than he could count, kisses of innocent love, of unending devotion, of tear-filled goodbyes. These silver strands Meliodas had brushed a million times charmed her face as she lay on his tavern floor still as death if it weren’t for the faint sound of her heart.

She was a mirror image of the original Elizabeth in every sense of the word. They had all been, all 105 incarnations between then and now had dawned these features Meliodas couldn’t help but fall in love with, over and over again, until the day the earth would stand still. But for reasons Meliodas failed to find words for, this version seemed closer to the one he had first met during the fires of the Holy War. She was her, and yet she was all of them at once.

And before Meliodas had taken a single step forward to check her heartbeat, he had already lost himself in his love for Elizabeth for the 107th time.

But he had to make sure, convince even the last fiber of his heart that wanted to doubt she had returned to him this soon. Meliodas removed the pieces of armor until the girl wore nothing but her skintight black undergarment. And the more of her curves he revealed, the more Meliodas had to force the muscles of his face into an emotionless mask, even though his seven hearts beat against his ribcage with adoration and longing; he couldn’t allow Hawk to see how much their guest threw him off balance.

She felt too light, malnourished and defeated, in his arms when Meliodas carried her to the second floor and placed her into the cushions of his bed. Hawk struggled to climb the steps with his short legs and warned Meliodas to keep his hands to himself while he worked hard to heave his bacon up the stairs. But for just one moment, Meliodas was alone with her in this room that had felt lonely until she had come along to fill the emptiness with her presence.

He took Elizabeth’s hand and pressed the limp fingers against his cheek while he fought down the tears. The last remains of doubt had long faded, and her scent of summer days long gone filled his mind with regret strong enough to drown him.

“I let you down so many times,” Meliodas whispered. “How often did I promise you I wouldn’t let you go through this again? I promised to break the curse when I had the hope it could be done. I promised to love you even though the thought of losing you always remained in the back of my mind. I promised to stay away because of how much I hurt you – but it seems I failed. Again.”

Elizabeth remained motionless under his touch. If she died right here and now, the curse would still have triumphed. Meliodas would have been in lost in love while she died in front of him. The same way their shared path always ended.

��I promised to continue to fight and free you from this curse even if you die. But look at the failure I am, Elizabeth.” The chuckle escaping his lips sounded more like a desperate sob. “I will make it up to you. A thousand times over with interest. As long as you stand beside me and lend me your strength. I won’t fail you this time.”

Meliodas’ promises might have little value left with how often he had broken them, but he swore he wouldn’t allow this Elizabeth to die. He would learn all about her quirks, the things she enjoyed in life and the nightmares that kept her up at night, no matter what it would take. If he had to take Zeldris’ power, if he had to face the Ten Commandments all at once, if he had to wear the shackles of the Demon King, he would do all this and more.

This time, Elizabeth would live.

This time, Meliodas would keep his promise.

[fromdecemberwithlove]

It’s day five of what Ron has dubbed “the roasting fest”. She doesn’t approve of the name, but she reluctantly admits that it does give a general idea of what is happening.

She’s just glad exams are over. It would have been unbearable to have to sit for her N.E.W.T.s in this scorching weather.

But it’s not just the thick, awful, unrelenting and unnatural heat that she can’t stand; it’s the chaos it brought along with it.

Because, apparently, it wasn’t enough to simply make them all sweat through every pores, every second of the day—no, the heat wave also felt the remarkable need to give free reign to the teenage hormones of a shocking number of people among the student body.

She knows it’s not normal, the way those people just seem to fall into each other. There is magic involved in the way the unexpected couples get together; a strong, pulsating urge that demands attention and refuses to be ignored. Yes, she is sure of it—this heat wave that came out of nowhere and bears down on Hogwarts with the legendary stubbornness of a horde of hippogriffs, has magic written all over it.

Yet no one has an explanation for why couples are springing left and right in the normally cold, stone hallways that now feel suffocating and somehow narrower than they actually are. No one can provide a reason for this all-consuming feeling of being slowly, methodically stewed alive. No one understands how it happened. No one knows why it’s here. No one knows anything and it is filling her with both outrage and dismay.

At breakfast on day three, Luna explained it’s all because the Nargles’ centurial mating season has started, and Hermione just rolled her eyes and downed her fifth glass of cold water in less than half an hour.

She has a theory; of course she does because she is the brightest witch of their age. Because when doesn’t Hermione Granger have a theory about things? She thinks it’s their version of climate change—the magical equivalent of seasons becoming unstable and prickly and vengeful and generally burning with the desire to fuck them over like Humans have fucked over the planet for centuries.

Hermione finds herself in the library for the umpteenth time since this whole mess has started. She needs answers, she can’t just ‘let it run its course’ like McGongall suggested when she asked her about this anomaly on day two. She needs to know because there is always a reason. Nothing just happens!

And what about those students who seem to have lost their mind? She’s even walked in on a Slytherin girl and a Hufflepuff boy in the girl’s bathroom on day four, for Merlin’s sake! That isn’t even the most absurd pairing wandering the halls, snogging each other into oblivion, and that is saying a lot. She can’t even imagine being that close to another human being in her condition. Her own skin feels like too much—like a thick coat that she wore during winter but somehow forgot to take off and it just merged with her epidermis.

On her way down to her sanctuary, she’s passed no less than five couples devouring each other’s faces in varying states of undress in the hallway (a clear and blatant violation of school policy), seemingly lost to this unknown phenomenon, having surrendered their common sense to its overwhelming power.

She’s determined to not let that happen to her. Her mind is her own and no magic or weather or curse or whatever this abhorrent thing is will ever take that away from her. That’s why she’s been spending all her time in the restricted section, regardless of the suffocating high temperature, since day one.

Harry and Ron don’t care about any of her misgivings, much like the rest of Gryffindor, and just shot her a quick “see you later” before hurrying down to the lake to cool off and enjoy their last days at school with their friends.

She puts the bottle of ice water under a Stasis charm at her feet next to her bag, and pulls the volume on Weather Magic and Other Druidic Spells on her lap and starts reading. No one is here, except for Madam Pince, and she feels at peace, protected from the mayhem outside, despite the sweat dripping down her back.

Absentmindedly, she gathers her hair into a high chignon and sticks a transfigured quill in the mess of curls. There’s nothing in the first twenty chapters and she huffs, irritated, and closes the book to take a long swing of her water before grabbing another tome from the selection on the table before her.

She is halfway through the sixth chapter when someone comes in. She doesn’t know why she feels the intruder’s presence, but there is a shift in the air—like a cool breeze that tickles the exposed nape of her neck. She lifts her head and looks around only to find the last person she wants to see standing on the other side of the bookshelf behind her.

She frowns. The breeze is gone and she thinks she just imagined it all. However, she can’t help but notice that the air is suddenly more breathable—lighter somehow— and something at the back of her mind whispers that it’s because of him—because he is there, because they are alone, because he is so close.

He is clearly ignoring her, but something in the way his whole body tenses while perusing the shelf in front of him makes her think he feels it too.

“Of course you’d be here.”

Or maybe not. Maybe that’s just how he is wired to respond to her proximity.

He turns around and comes into the aisle where she is and she can see that his hair is wet and messy, and his tie is undone, hanging loosely around his neck, and the first four buttons of his shirt are undone and his skin seems to glow oddly with the thin sheen of sweat that clings to it.

Maybe it was a draft? She mused, only she knows it’s not, because there hasn’t been any wind in what feels like an eternity.

She just rolls her eyes at his comment, and goes back to reading, but then she feels it again—the breeze, a refreshing chill that feels oh-so-lovely on her warm cheeks. And when she lifts her head, he is so much closer now. And the air is lighter, crisp and it somehow reminds her of the beginning of spring. 

“What are you doing?” she manages to bite out when he takes a sit next to her. He props an elbow on the table, resting his head against his hand and just stares at her, trademark smirk in place. Instinctively, she shrinks back, pulling her book closer to her chest.

“Why aren’t you at the lake with the rest of your merry bunch?”

“Homework,” she answers.

He barks a laugh, “Granger, exams are over, there are no homework.”

Her scowl deepens and she snaps the book closed. She needs to get out of here. She grabs her book and her bottle and stands up so abruptly the chair topples over.

She closes her eyes and flinches as the clattering noise seems to reverberate in the silent library. When she opens them, she sees the amusement dancing in his eyes and that just sours her mood further.

Quickly, she replaces the chair and storm out of the aisle, determined to put as much distance between them as possible. But as soon and she leaves the alcove, the air suffocates her. The thick and heavy heat engulfs her and grabs her by the throat, and she feels like she is being smothered and choked all at once.

She stops and gasps for air, her body bending forward in shock and desperation. She can’t seem to remember how to breathe and the rising panic in her chest is not helping. It’s alarming, because she’s never felt like this— it’s harder than trying to catch your breath after running from Snatchers; it’s possibly worse than drowning, because she feels like she is drowning only in lava.

And then it happens again—the breeze, only it’s not a breeze this time, it’s more like wind; strong and cold and so light it wraps around her and embraces her like the best hug in the world. She straightens and tries to inhale it, to keep it there because it feels like freedom and deliverance.

But when she finally notices him standing on her right, she tenses. And the look in his eyes… is that concern? No, she shakes her head and grips the strap of her bag tighter and glares at him.

“What are you playing at? Is this your doing? Did you find some sort of spell to counter this?”

He looks at her like she’s insane, and that just makes her angrier.

“Well? Come on now don’t be shy, you obviously found a temporary cure to this bleeding heat, don’t you want to gloat? Don’t you want to bask in the glory of having finally one upped me? Honestly Malfoy this is low, even for you.”

She turns to leave but he grabs her arm and stops her. It’s not so much his grips that halts her movement as it is the feeling that comes with it. She feels like she’s suddenly bathed in snowflakes. Her eyes open wide and she looks at his hand around her wrist, then at his other one balled into a tight fist at his side, and she briefly wonders when and where in the hell he’s learnt to perform wandless, wordless magic.

A part of her wants to pull away—to go back to her initial plan of ignoring him and get as far away from him as she can, just as she’s done all year. But damn it if the feeling of being wrapped in a flurry of fluffy snow isn’t the best thing she’s felt in ages. Even better than the ethereal hug earlier.

“When did you lea-” she starts, but she doesn’t want to dwell on that part of the equation just yet. She bites her lip and forces herself not to succumb to the overwhelming urge to sigh in pleasure. The feeling of being stroked by a gentle snowstorm is enthralling, and so damn distracting

She swallows hard, “where did you find this spell?”

“What spell? What the fuck are you talking about?”

She stares at him for a second, really looks at him. His eyes show no deception. He looks irritated and confused.

But she can’t accept that.

“The counter spell, Malfoy!” she repeats between gritted teeth, “for this bloody heat? where.did.you.find.it? I’ve looked all week and couldn’t find anything so how did you-”

She pauses and narrows her eyes at him. Could it be dark magic? No, dark magic would be more likely to cause this sodding heat than soothe it. She shakes her head, effectively dismissing the idea.

“Where did you find it?”

“Again, Granger, what-the-fuck-are-you-talking-about?”

She stomps her foot in aggravation. 

“Alright,” she closes her eyes briefly and breathes in, breathes out trying to reign in her anger. Oh merlin the air has never felt to good going into her laughs, it’s so sweet and so clean. There’s a hint of something else there, like parchment and cardamom and lavender. She can’t help it this time; she leans in and breathes it in and sighs in utter contentment.

He suddenly lets her go and steps back like she’s made of fire. The snow melts on her skin in rivulets of sweat.

“What...?” she opens her eyes, slightly disoriented, and meets the horror in his. “Malfoy?” He turns around and practically stumbles as he flees the room.

_____________

Written for Prompt Thursday @dramionefanfictionwriters  Prompt : Heat Wave