Response 1 to the fics-I've-never written challenge

This one was requested by janedavitt.

Houseguest

“Come on, then,” Hagrid said coaxingly. “It’s not a good idea fer yeh to be out in the forest at night. Summat might decide to take a bite out of yeh, fluffy li’l thing that yeh are.”

He gently opened the wooden cage in which he had trapped the strange looking creature. There was a muffled panting noise from inside it, and a pair of wild eyes stared at Hagrid’s fireplace, regarding the joint of beef currently roasting on a spit.

“It’s alright,” Hagrid said gently. “Yeh can come out if yeh like. No one here’s gonna harm ya.”

“Ha, ha, ha, ha…” the creature breathed raspily as he got out of the cage and proceeded towards the fire, intent on the food.

Suddenly, there was a knock on the door.

“Who’s there?” Hagrid asked, momentarily worried that his new friend might be discovered by someone who didn’t understand interesting creatures.

“It’s only me,” Prof. McGonagall said as she pushed the door open. “I’ve just come to tell you that the Head Master would like you to come up for a brief chat about the state of the centaurs.”

The thing in front of the fireplace wheeled around in place, its eyes bulging madly.

“Hagrid!” she screamed. “What is that… that…”

“WOMAN!” the orange and red thing yelled loudly as it launched itself after her. “WOMAN! WOMAN! WOMAN! WOMAN!”

“Animal, sit!” Hagrid called, but it was too late. Minerva McGonagall had already run screaming out the door, the furry fireball close on her heels.

“I hope she don’t hurt him none,” Hagrid worried as he watched her dash across the grounds, the pursuing beast’s calls competing with the clanking of its collar and chains in the general confusion.

It’s just possible Minerva McGonagall was giggling madly as she ran.

Another one

Another of janedavitt's prompts.

Forbidden Fruit

The summer holidays had been boring for Draco. He regarded the calendar on his wall whistfully, but no matter how much he wished it, July was undoubtedly still glaring back at him. Hogwarts might be full of mudbloods and idiots like Dumbledore and the Weasleys, but there was at the very least something always happening. The Malfoy estate was regal, impressive, and extremely dull, with the exception of the forbidden cellar.

Lucius Malfoy loved collecting things that were both rare and dangerous. Occasionally, he reminded Draco unpleasantly of Hagrid in that respect, but there was one great difference between the two: Lucius never for a moment pretended that the exotic “pets” he kept in his cellar were anything other than evil. That was, after all, the entire point.

Draco waited until his mother was off on a shopping trip to Paris and his father was away on business at the Ministry before deftly breaking all the warding charms to enter what amounted to his father’s personal menagerie. There was a long corridor filled with glass-fronted cells, the partitions charmed to be unbreakable. Slowly, Draco made his way from pen to pen, regarding a murderous harpy and an equally vicious manticore. He paused for long time before three sirens, all carefully gagged and nearly naked, unutterably beautiful but as deadly as they were alluring.

“You like them,” said a voice in the next cell, one he had not yet visited.

“I’m a sixteen year old boy,” he replied snidely. “If it’s female, pretty, and naked, of course I’m going to like it.”

There was a strangely childlike laugh, and Draco peered into the next cage. There was a woman inside it, about his height and slim as a reed. Her white dress seemed almost to glow in the dim light, and her black hair hung loose around her shoulders, making her skin nearly as white as her gown. It was her eyes, though, that were his undoing: blue as sapphire and flecked with gold. She certainly looked human, though.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“A princess,” she replied, and her eyes never blinked once. It was unsettling, almost as though she were a snake, and yet Draco found he couldn’t look away.

“Right. Princess of what, exactly?” he said, but it didn’t come out quite as caustic as he had planned.

“Fairies. Moonlight. Bits and pieces of the future. Would you like me to tell your fortune, dearie? Hmm?” she asked as she swayed back and forth, and it took Draco a moment to realize that his body was moving in the same motion, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. “Pretty skull and snake on your forearm, hissing black death and venom, going to the one with eyes of red and face flat as the viper. It’s a long tumble from the tower, but the Prince takes you under his wing to fly.”

“I… what?” he said, snapping back to himself. “You’re a seer?”

“Mmm,” she replied as she skimmed her hands lightly over her bodice. “Let me out so we can play? I know such lovely games, little dragon.”

Draco’s hand was moving of its own volition towards the switch that would open her door when suddenly a wooden cane came crashing down upon his knuckles, drawing blood and making him see stars.

“Return upstairs, Draco,” Lucius said in an enraged whisper.

“But Father, I…” he began to say as he glanced back over his shoulder at the girl, only to find that a nightmarish creature, her features both feline and reptilian, had taken her place, its eyes locked on the scarlet drops spattering from his hand to the floor.

“Now,” Lucius said, his tone cold as death. “We shall discuss this at some length.”

“Yes, Father,” Draco said, his voice rather high as he retreated down the hallway, past the other captives, and made a mental vow never to return.

“Drusilla,” Lucius said, regarding the demon who had nearly succeeded in bewitching his son into her release, “there will be no meals for a week.”

She whined pitifully, her face returning to its human mask.

“However,” he added, glancing in the direction of his son’s retreating form, “should my son disobey me again, I shall not intervene between you and your prey.”

She blinked at him, then threw her head back in a raucous laugh.

“So like my own Daddy you are, luscious Lucius,” she said as he exited, cane tapping like a cracked skull over the paving stones.

And yet another

From a prompt by gwynevere1. This one's relatively new territory for me, and rather silly.

Dinner Companion

“So, you’re, like… an Other, right?” Hurley asked.

It was a reasonable question to ask. He’d just been told to go back to camp and tell the rest of his group never to come on this side of the island again, and now, after shlepping through the jungle all day, he finally stopped to catch a few hours sleep when this woman showed up out of nowhere.

“Cause, you know, I don’t really dig the idea that I’ve been dragged all the way across the island, gotten hit with a tranquilizer dart, which, really, ow much, had a bag stuck over my head, and been cattle prodded, which, again, with the major level of ow on that, only to find out that, guess what, I’m still not one of the popular kids, and this whole ordeal really amounted to me being a human Post-It note that reads, ‘Stay out!’” he yelled.

She stared at him.

“No offense or anything,” he said with an apologetic shrug. “It’s just, you know, been a killer rough day, dude. So, like, what do you want?”

She paused and tilted her head.

“You’re confusing,” she finally said. “Your words run around in my head… and they’re all wearing bunny slippers and carrying surfboards and tacos.”

“I… wha?” he said, furrowing his eyebrows. “Look, lady, just tell me who you are, okay? It’s been, like, the longest day ever, and that’s without the purple-sky-loud-noise thing.”

“That was odd,” she said, nodding in agreement. “There were buzzing flies in the air, bzz, bzz, and the little dog laughed to see such sport, but the dish and the spoon can’t run away together, for there’s nowhere to go, you see.”

“Are you, like, related to Danielle? Cuz, seriously, you talk kind of the same way,” Hurley said. “I mean, not, you know, like you sound French, but the vocab is definitely out of the same book.”

“I’ve met her,” she said. “Her voice echoes with ghosts. I like her.”

“Uh-huh,” Hurley said, still rather unsure what to make of her. “Yeah, okay, so, I’m Hurley. Knowing your name would be nice, what with us being marrooned miles from civilization and kind of stuck with each other.”

“Drusilla,” she responded. “Pleasure to meet you.”

“Likewise,” Hurley said, then sat on a fallen tree. “So, pop a squat if you want, Dru.”

“I… don’t understand you,” she said.

“You know, grab a seat, take a load off, sit down,” Hurley said and patted the trunk beside him.

“Thank you,” she said and daintily sat beside him.

“So… how’d you get to be an Other? I mean, not really a career choice that comes up on those evaluations they give you in high school, but then, mine said I was supposed to be a brick layer, so, really, how accurate are those things,” he said, trying to be conversational to ward off the feeling that this situation was out of his control.

“I don’t know,” she finally said. “I was walking along, looking for a bite to eat, and then this man came up with a needle and poked me, and I went all foggy. I woke up in a big metal torpedo, and Benny told me to hunt out the weak lambs in the fold. I tried to hunt him, but he burns so, like holy water in my mouth.”

“Yeah,” Hurley said, edging a little further away from her on the log. “Um, not to be rude, but, you aren’t, like, going to kill me or something, are you? Because that really would not be cool.”

“I was thinking about it,” she admitted, then shrugged. “But I suppose I’m not all that hungry.”

“That’s… good…,” Hurley said, looking like he was trying to decide between running through the jungle alone at night in the dark with that smoke thing or staying with the crazy lady. “I, uh, don’t really want to be dead.”

“It can be fun sometimes,” Dru said to him as she looked up at the moonlight. “No pitterpat in the chest, but there’s lots of pitterpatting in my brain.”

“I just bet there is,” he said, inching a bit further down the trunk, the jungle starting to look pretty darn good.

“You’d know,” she said, suddenly turning her gaze on him, and her eyes looked sort of yellow. “You used to hear the voices too, until you got all better.”

“I’m not crazy!” Hurley said firmly. “Or, not anymore.”

“I don’t call people crazy,” Dru said primly. “It’s most impolite.”

“Totally impolite,” Hurley agreed.

A long pause followed, with the two of them fidgeting uncomfortably, not knowing where to look or what to say. Finally, Hurley remembered the bananas he’d grabbed as he was walking and reached into his shirt pocket for one.

“Hey, uh, you want a banana?” he asked her. “It’s probably a little squished but, you know, still banana flavored.”

Drusilla chewed her lip in consideration before saying, “No, thank you.”

“’kay,” Hurley said as he took a bite.

Chewing kind of was something to do anyway. Hurley continued to look around uncomfortably.

“I like you,” she finally said, getting up.

“That’s… nice…,” Hurley said, not sure how he was supposed to react to that.

“So I’m going away,” she said. “I’m going to play with the boars. They’re yummy. Then I might snap up an extra or two. Maybe Paulo.”

“Uh…,” Hurley said, not quite sure what she meant, “okay, but be careful. There’s this thing that floats around like smoke out there, and it, like, occasionally kills people. So if you hear something that sounds like a brontosaurus, like, run, dude. Got me?”

Drusilla grinned, then came closer to Hurley, gave him a kiss on the forehead that felt as cold as ice, and disappeared into the trees, her white gown visible against the darkness for a few moments.

“Dude,” Hurley said, taking another bite of his banana, “and that isn’t even close to being the weirdest thing that’s happened in the last six hours.”