Copyright: What elements of this story that I own, and are not the property of anyone else, are licensed
CC-BY-NC-SA. That means that you can take anything in this story, up to and including the whole thing, and use it
however you like, as long as you promise me three things:
1. You will link back to me (preferably to my author page)
2. You will not make money off whatever you do
3. You will share your work under these same conditions
Welp, I failed at this challenge.
I apologize profusely to everyone who has been waiting so long for this update - complications in my personal life had completed sapped my desire to write. As it stands, I'm unlikely to complete the challenge as I originally anticipated, but I hope to at least get through all 30 prompts.
Today's prompt: 'What is your character's favourite ice cream flavour? Color? Song? Flower?' See if you can identify all four in the chapter below (Hint: It's not that hard). Also keep an eye out for the symbolism I threw in, because pretty much every answer to that question is in some way symbolic.
As a final note, there is a single lyric from a song included in this chapter. I don't think that violates FFnets rules, and I'm sure the Copyright Gods will forgive me, but now you know. Enjoy!
"I have to admit, Mister Potter," Hermione teased, "You certainly have a different idea of how to take a girl on a date." This was hardly Hermione's first date with a boy, but it was certainly her favourite - and for more reason than just who was accompanying her. All of her previous boyfriends had tried to impress her by spending money: fancy restaurants and expensive dinners and such; all the kinds of places Hermione was always going for work-related 'social' events.
Not Harry, Hermione smiled to herself. He knew her better than anyone, and had listened to her complain over and over about those fancy places: the restrictive and revealing cocktail dresses, the painfully tight shoes, the absolutely ghastly food (typically prepared by house elves, no less), the constant clamouring for photographs of the risen political star. So he had not brought her to such a place. Instead, he brought her to an ice cream shop. A muggle ice cream shop.
Harry laughed, a light smile on his face. "And you're loving every minute of your vanilla ice cream, Miss Granger."
Hermione pulled on a mock-offended look and swatted him on the arm. "Don't you dare make fun of vanilla ice cream, Potter." Harry tried to look cowed, but she saw him failing to conceal the amusement in his eyes and the smile tugging at his lips, and soon enough they were both laughing uproariously.
Hermione was amazed at how easy it was to be with Harry. Her other dates had been terribly dull, in stuffy locations and forced conversation; even the ones that started out well eventually devolved into that. With Harry, she didn't have to pretend to be enjoying herself; just seeing him, seeing his eyes light up when she laughed at his terrible jokes, was enough for her.
This wasn't really their first date, Hermione realized as they laughed and bantered. Their easy back-and-forth was a staple of their lunches, and of their relationship in general. What this was, though, was their first date, which meant that Hermione was free to stare as much as she liked at the attractive man her scrawny best friend had turned into.
Whatever Harry's wonderful physical qualities - and there were many, from his physique to his silky-smooth hair - his best feature was still his eyes. Hermione wheedled people for a living; her bread and butter depended on her ability to know what people were thinking. This was something she had become very good at, but she had first started learning on Harry. His eyes were so entrancing, so expressive; that remarkable shade of emerald green pulled you in, and then you couldn't help but see every emotion reflected in them. Amusement, anger, happiness, sadness; Harry's eyes were Hermione's favourite book, and she could read anything in them. Her favourite pastime, in fact, far more so even then re-reading Hogwarts, A History for the fifty-seventh time (and counting), was staring into Harry's eyes.
This was usually a very unfortunate fact. Her other boyfriends had tended to get upset when their girlfriend would stare at another bloke's eyes for long periods, and Harry's other girlfriends had similar reactions. So Hermione had been forced to abstain from her favourite hobby, and it was only now that she was given free reign that she remembered how much she had missed it. She was especially reminded just how much she loved their colour. The colour of Harry's eyes had no equal that Hermione had ever seen - even the pickled toads of Ginny's hilariously awful poem failed to exactly capture their hue, the way the light reflected them in exactly the right way at all angles.
But all of these thoughts, even her ruminations on the colour of his eyes, flew from Hermione's mind when a string of piano came over the shop's sound system. "I love this song!" She exclaimed, cutting him off in the middle of a sentence about a recent resurgence in infectious diseases that she would normally have found much more interesting than one might think.
Harry blinked. "You like muggle music?"
She flushed slightly, trying to prevent herself from humming along. "Not all of it, but I like this one."
She was surprised when he stood up abruptly. "In that case," He announced with so much pomp and gallantry that she had to giggle, "May I have this dance?"
"You may," She answered, rising to meet him and failing to keep back her laughter even as he failed to keep back his.
Never a wish better than this, the speaker sang as the pair danced, laughing, oblivious to the looks of the other patrons - those smiling and those scowling - as they danced, When you only got 100 years to live.
***
Hermione awoke the next morning on such an emotional high that she had to wonder if her date with Harry had been a dream. Surely, she imagined to herself, occasions such as what she had experienced could only exist in her fantasies. It wasn't until she rolled over and saw the barn owl perched outside her window, a bouquet of orchids tied to its leg, that she would finally admit to herself that it had happened.