This is my response to Static Lull's "Taboo Challenge". My character was Madam Rosmerta, and my un-prompts were the Three Broomsticks, Hogsmeade, drinking and butterbeer.
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She flexed her fingers as though they had once belonged to someone else, which, Madam Rosmerta supposed, they had. Pushing the thought from her head, she stepped from the front steps of her little wooden bungalow and onto the frosted pathway. The cold winter air chilled her, snatching her breath in pure white swirls from her lungs, as potent as the sensation that her body wasn't quite hers.
Rosmerta shivered and folded her arms, knotting her fingers in the thick wool adorning her leather jacket. They were her hands, perhaps not as full and smooth as they had once been, but with the same quick grace and perfectly manicured nails; hands that expressed herself as she bantered with old friends; hands that had slipped death as casually as a few knuts change across the counter. Hers.
Everywhere the greenery was smothered by a blanket of snow, as pale and as relentless an element as that boy.
Draco Malfoy.
All her life, Rosmerta had excelled at reading others, yet she had ignored the glimmer of desperation in his eyes. She was no longer young, but still striking enough that the odd young wizard could find interest in her. It had been easy to ignore the feeling in her gut, to allow herself to savour the prospect of flirtatiously, kindly, telling him to find someone else.
Clenching her hands, Rosmerta continued walking, disregarding the falling flurries of snow with a brazened toss of her head. She had always been an independent business woman, firmly attached to the land around her and the people inhabiting it. During the war, Rosmerta had tried to keep her head down and make do with what little business she had, believing that it would be enough to keep safe. She looked at the bare silhouettes of trees, stretching above her head like skeletal fingers, stark against the grey sky.
Not every plant could survive the winter. Only the strongest lived, enduring their time in the frost. Perhaps it was a foolish notion – she could barely stand to look at her own reflection in the mirror; the saucy smile and ringlets that had once been such a pleasure in her life – but Rosmerta liked to believe that she was one of the strong. She had been crushed, but things would improve. As other people became braver, they would slowly, hesitantly, make life normal once more, like the first green shoots of spring.
Pulling her jerkin more tightly around her body, Rosmerta felt her will return, a will that had never belonged to anyone else. Slowly, she removed her hands from their woollen refuge, spreading her fingers wide. The cold was so severe that her fingers felt raw and stiff in seconds. Rosmerta knew that the fire in her home would restore the feeling. She could smell the smoke already. She did not return her hands to her pockets, instead enjoying the steady crunch of snow underneath her boots.
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Thanks for reading. Please review.