Author's Note:
Prompts: "Outside the cabin…", Champagne, Fireworks
Beauxbatons Year 5
Theme=Christmas
Word Count=1 047
Outside the cabin, the wind howled through the trees, while inside, the old woman's fire was nearly out.
She sighed. Had she ever, ever expected this to happen?
Vernon's death, she tried to reason, would have happened anyway. It was the way of nature.
But Dudley had gone off with his friends; just when she needed a man to help. A new business, a new country. "I do miss you, Mum," he'd said, the last time he'd called. "Things are very busy here. I promise I'll visit you this year." Hearing his mother's soft sobbing, he swore on his life.
Yet it was the 25th of December, and he had not so much as called.
She remembered, as vividly as if it had taken place a few minutes ago, Christmas ten years ago. Dudley had finally come of drinking age, so they'd visited Old Favourites, Vernon's usual bar, to have a family round of champagne. They'd then driven back home, singing along to the carols on the radio; finally, lighting fireworks that illuminated the world.
But that had happened a decade (was it really so long) ago? Yes, it was, she scolded herself. A whole ten years: now Vernon was dead, they'd lost the business, had to move into a tiny cabin on the outskirts of the city, Dudley was working and earning in the north of Britain.
She remembered him, too; her nephew, with all his abnormalities and shortcomings. However, at the moment, she would have been glad to see him.
The Dumbledore man had been right. It hurt to admit it, but now she realized: Dudley had taken after his father.
Would he ever visit her before she died?
Was she missing him so much that she could hear him? Her little boy's voice, now rough and deep with years?
It was probably a passer-by, she thought.
As she got up to go and ask whoever it was to make less noise, considering that it was late evening, she heard a knock at her rough wooden door.