Disclaimer: I don't own anything to do with Harry Potter, please don't sue me.
A/N: Just a thought.
Purple Shoes
She once had a pair of purple shoes.
Not grape juice purple, or the deep purple of sunsets. They weren't lilac color or even bluish-purple. Instead they were their own color. Too dark to show if she got mud on them and light enough to still look very purple.
She had found them when she was eleven years old. She had been shopping with her mom, one of the last times they had truly 'bonded.' There had been giggling and ice cream and sunflowers. Then they got to the shoe store.
"Are you sure you want those?" Her mother asked, looking longingly at pair of conservative white tennis.
"Positive," she had said, looking down at the perfect pair of purple tennis she had picked out. Her mother did not understood, but the shoes had made her daughter smile, so she bought them.
That night her father asked her what she would do with such 'unusual' shoes, in a tone that meant he didn't think they were very appropriate. It was the first time her father had ever questioned his daughter's taste. The purple shoes just didn't fit into his world of brown loafers and white jogging tennis.
'Well, maybe it's just a stage,' he thought to himself, 'besides, she'll grow tired of them soon.'
However, days passed, and his daughter did not get tired of her new shoes. She wore them everywhere. Her parents tried to ignore them, and the stares they thought passersby must be giving them. For who let their child walk around in such outlandish shoes?
They needn't have worried, for their daughter would soon be gone. Off to a school were owls delivered mail and anything was possible. Running off to where they could never follow her. Of course they were supportive, but privately they though it was the shoes. Before then, their perfect angel daughter had been so… normal.
Slowly everything was changing. When she came home that summer, she was different. She seemed more confidence and happier, yet she could not explain to her fully what she had done that year. Things like House Cup, Gryffindor, and Voldemort just didn't make since to them. Yet, she still looked like their little girl, still dressed like a normal person, well… except for the purple shoes.
Her mother tried to take her shopping again, to recreate what had once been. There had been very little giggling and the ice cream store had gone out of business. When they reached the shoes store it was apparent how little the two had in common now, and they left without finding any new shoes.
"I suppose those will fit you for another year," her mother said absently, as if it really didn't matter
Her daughter beamed as she looked down at her favorite shoes, then went on to tell her mother all about a troll and a bathroom.
There were fewer owls the next year and a Christmas alone. Easter rolled around with a greeting card and no trains home. Finally it was summer and she came home, changed forever. She was older and wiser. Her hair was as bushy as ever, but that was the only thing that remained of their little girl, that and the shoes.
The shoes were getting ridicules now, faded till they were nearly brown and splattered with years of mud. Her mother decided to take maters into her own hands and brought back a pair of nice normal white tennis for her daughter. There was no pretence at bright sunny, ice cream filled days now.
"Oh, they're nice," she said when she saw the shoes, slowly pushing them aside as she went back to her homework.
Over the next few weeks, she seemed to wear the new shoes. But her mother couldn't help noticing the old pair still in plan sight on her daughter's floor, ready for use. When she left for her friend's house, halfway though the summer, she wore the purple shoes.
"I don't want to get the new ones dirty," she told her mother when she asked. Then she disappeared through the fire. The last thing her parents saw of their daughter that year were the purple shoes, mocking them. Tell them they had truly lost their little girl.