Katherine swung the grocery bag back and forth as she walked hand in hand with her mother. She looked up at her mother's beautiful smiling face. Always encouraging, always open. They had gone to the grocery store for some gram crackers, marshmallows and chocolate. Her mom had promised her s'mores tonight. It was Katherine's favourite snack as a child.
They reached the house and went in through the back door in the kitchen. "Put the bag on the counter, Katherine and we can get started." Her mother smiled as she got out a pan to melt the s'mores on and placed it on the stove.
"Here you go, mommy! I put the crackers in pairs for the s'mores!" Katherine exclaimed excitedly. She proceeded in trying to sneak a marshmallow to eat but her mother was quick as always and told her to wait for the s'mores to be finished.
There was the sound of a pop and Katherine's mother turned to the sound of her father apparating inside the living room. "Daddy's home!" Katherine ran to meet her father's embrace as he entered the kitchen. He scooped her up in his arms and gave his wife a kiss on the cheek.
Katherine noticed a sound at the door but she was distracted by her mother's urgent sounding words.
"Katherine, remember the flower we planted yesterday in the backyard? Can you go and water it a bit?" her mother asked her. Katherine, overjoyed to be given the responsibility to water her mother's flowers for the first time in her five years, scampered quickly out the back door, not noticing her parents' tense looks.
She hurried out to the garden and grabbed her little watering bucket. The pink one with the sunflowers on it. She ran to the far corner of the garden and spotted her mother's prized flower. The one that only bloomed at twilight, just this time, to show it's deep violet petals, which were her mother's favourite colour. The colour of Katherine's eyes.
Katherine lifted her watering bucket carefully and watered the flower at its base just like her mother had shown her. Satisfied she had watered it enough she put her watering bucket back in the shed and went back towards the back door of the house.
As she neared the door, she heard the voices of her parents as well as one other. An unfamiliar voice. One she never wanted to hear again. She peered in to the house through the window on the door, having been covered slightly by a small white curtain. Inside, she saw her parents both facing a man in long black robes. His face something too horrible to behold, with red eyes like a snake and slits for nostrils.
"You have betrayed me, Coxwell. I accepted you as my faithful death eater when you were young, and interested in the dark arts, but you have betrayed me claiming love for this mudblood." He spit the word mudblood out like a curse. "You have been lucky to hide away from me for so long, but not anymore. I cannot let someone unfaithful and associated with this dirty blood to continue on in this world." he raised his wand, ready to strike, lazily, like he had done it many times before. Katherine was sure he had.
"Please, not my wife. Take me, but not my wife." Her father moved in front her mother, his body acting like a shield. Katherine saw tears track down her mother's face and wanted to run inside to stop any person who caused her pain, but when she tried to put a hand to the doorknob and open it, she could not. She did not know at the time, but her mother had charmed her from coming inside, the moment the stranger had arrived.
Her father's pleas were lost to this man who raised his wand again and this time, green light flashed before Katherine's eyes as she watched her parents fall to the ground. She could not understand what was happening, she was hoping her parents would pop up and surprise her, saying it was just a joke, but she knew it would not happen.
As the stranger left without having noticed her, she cried because the smoke from the burning s'mores had travelled under the door and reached her eyes, making them water. She blacked out to the smell of burning s'mores and to the image of her mother's tears.
She woke up in her grandmother's house that smelt of her favourite chocolate chip cookies and roasted almonds. But even these things were not comfort to her confused mind. Her grandmother, seeing her awake, sat on the edge of the bed and helped her up to sit. She gave her a long hug and then searched her face for her innocent granddaughter, but all she found was a broken girl who said, "I want to forget, Grandmama. I don't want to remember." And so, forget she did. Not only the moment of her parents death, but also every moment before that, every memory, that made it so hard to let go of them. She could not take it, so she forgot, because that's what she could now do. She could remove the memories that were too painful to hold on to.
Since the death of her parents that she could not remember, Katherine had lived with her Grandmama. When she turned 11 years old she did not go to Hogwarts for school like all the other wizarding kids. She stayed at home where her Grandmama taught her all she needed to know through home-schooling. Her grandmother told her it was for her own safety. She spent her days in the house or in the yard, studying magic, writing in her diary or reading the countless stacks of books in her room. And when her grandmother went into her trances, Katherine locked herself in her room until her grandmother was done.
Her sweet Grandmama was a Sybil who could not control when prophecies or random bits of the future hit her. Katherine found the whispers of people's destinies daunting, but never as daunting as her own.
12 years later.
On her seventeenth birthday, July 17, her grandmother had let slip the prophecy of her granddaughter. She had known her granddaughter's fate for a long time but never had the heart to reveal to her the prophecy that could shape her actions. Katherine still remembered when her grandmother's voice turned cold and raspy as she spoke these lines:
"Under the white cherry blossom tree, she will meet the man she can't forget
Who will be the cause of her demise and the reason for her existence.
Their love is the one that will move the sun and the other stars even in death's parting. - "
Katherine knew the moment her grandmother had started speaking that it was the prophecy of her own future. She could not handle it, so she shook her grandmother's shoulders until she stopped. She had heard the fates of people she would never know and she could accept whatever their fates were, but when she heard her own prophecy, she could no longer accept that fate decided things.
After hearing the prophecy, Katherine decided that she would not live in fear of a future that may or may not happen.
Her grandmother continuously insisted that Katherine be careful and stay inside more often and above all avoid a white cherry blossom tree but Katherine wouldn't have it.
She would not stay cooped up in her grandmother's house anymore. She would not just wait around, scared of meeting a similar fate as her parents. She would face her fate, whatever it may be for if she was going to die, then she wanted her life to have some meaning to it.
She decided she was to start going out into the world, starting by finishing her schooling for her seventh year, at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
The prophecy spoke of her demise because of a man that she would meet. She did not believe in wasting her life in fear of a prophecy, so she was not afraid, 45 days after her birthday on her first day at Hogwarts, sitting under a white cherry blossom tree behind the quidditch pitch carefully writing her thoughts in her diary.