Her family had once had an orange grove in their back garden.
The air used to be filled with the scent of orange blossom and the oranges themselves used to glow like little balls of orange light amongst the leaves. But that was a long time ago, now so farfar away: something that now seems part of a fairy-tale. It had seemed safe, that orange grove, but now she sees how naïve she had been. During that War nowhere had been safe, and her point had been proved when her family returned home one night to find that their house had been burnt to the ground. She'd run, screaming into the orange grove to find that all that was left of her fairy-tale place were blackened, gnarled stumps of something that had once seemed so beautiful. So safe.
That night, she'd cried for the orange trees and nothing else. What had her safe haven, the trees, the fruit done to hurt anyone else?
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The air smelt of oranges that night. It's one of the only things she can remember, but it's also one of the strangest things she'll never forget. Of course, Gabrielle knew that there were many types of orange: caramel orange, blood orange, mandarin oranges – or the oranges that look just plain orange – so it was difficult to pinpoint the exact smell to a branch of the citrus fruit. Yet at that precise moment in time, she wasn't really concerned with distinguishing orange types. Instead, she was trying to run away as fast as she could, away from the hulking figures in robes as black as ink and with scary silver masks on their face.
She'd only been eleven at the time - a time when the parts of the world were still strange and foreign to her and the farthest place from home seemed to be England. She hadn't been ready for something like this to happen, as everything she knew slowly crumbled around her and tears tracked themselves down her face and dripped into the dry ground beneath her. She remembers thinking that the earth had seemed too barren, and so utterly devoid of life.That night, she thinks of her orange trees and how utterly defenceless they'd been.
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When she grew older however, she'd learnt one more thing about that strange citrus fruit. She, Gabrielle Delacour, had developed a phobia of oranges. Wizard physiatrists could not source the problem as to why, but she knew exactly why. It went without saying, many witches and wizards had developed irrational fears and phobias after the war, but none as strange as hers. The fruit itself was fine. The pulpy flesh or sour tang of the juice as it hit her tongue did not frighten her. Nor did it when it was cut into segments and place onto a plate in front of her. Even the colour didn't scare her. The only thing that she feared was the smell.
She'd tried explaining that to the various physiatrists her parents and sister sent her to, but they just didn't seem to understand her. After all, why fear the smell of the orange when she could eat it perfectly well? It just didn't make sense. But in some ways it did. When Gabrielle could not see the orange, it was then that her phobia set in. She'd shake, cry and try to stop breathing so that the ghastly, frightful scent would miraculously evaporate from her senses. The smell was a trigger that brought back memories that were still as painful as a fresh, open wound.
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When she turned twelve, almost six months after the war had finished, she'd planted an orange tree next to one of the many the war memorials scattered around England. It was her way of saying goodbye to all the people – for she refused to only see them as names etched on a stone tablet – and giving them a safe haven, like her orange grove had been to her. In her view, an orange drew parallel with a lily. It signified loss and death, but where a lily failed the orange prevailed. It grew and then decayed and then, eventually, died in the ground only to be reborn again: a perfect circle.
She visited the same memorial whenever she could, touching the leaves and – when there was – the orange fruit hanging on the verdant leaves. The smell didn't bother her much anymore. She just hoped that the people on the memorial had liked oranges.
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A/N: This was a piece that I wrote a while ago for the Hogwarts Online challenge. I had to associate a character with an object and I chose Gabrielle Delacour and Oranges. Review?