Prompt 036. Smell
Word Count: 530
The building had once been a tall, proud mansion home to a large family. Now, it was reduced to a wreck of rubble, burnt rubbish and a tangled mess of body parts and untouched furniture. The freshly cast Dark Mark hung high in the sky as an ominous warning.
He wrinkled his nose with disgust as he walked through the charred archway. He hoped that she would have had the sense to run, to escape the Dark Lord's wrath while she could. But standing here in the place of her childhood, he knew she had stayed to fight.
He groaned and kicked at the piles of homely comforts that meant warmth anywhere else but there. He found a charred arm under one table and a dead child in the dining room. He came across bits of her father in the study of the ground floor and found the rest of him on the stairs. The first floor held the bodies of her remaining siblings. He covered his mouth in horror at the carnage.
He opened the door to her mother's bedroom and saw the woman lying on the bed. Her body had clearly been violated right before she died. Feeling sick to his stomach, he quickly shut the door before heading towards the upper levels of the house.
After retching for an eternity and a half, he finally came upon her wing of the house. Since she was the oldest girl, she had been given a separate bedroom and bathroom from her sisters and brothers. It was meant as a rite of passage. It had been given with the intention that she could prepare herself for balls and courting much more easily if she had her own quarters.
The scent of death hung in the air. Afraid he would find she met the same end as her family, he hesitated, unsure if he should enter. He lingered in the doorway until he heard a faint gasp. Leaping forwards as if propelled by some higher power, he hurried to rescue her body from the wooden beams and other debris that littered the area.
Her eyes were half open when he finally dragged her out. Upon seeing he was her savior, she smiled.
"Lilies and sexiness - I'd know that cologne anywhere," she teased him. It was an old joke from their school days.
He smiled, relieved and overjoyed to have found her alive. He pulled her into his arms and hugged her so tightly they didn't realize they were both crying until their eyes met.
He pulled her in for a kiss and she snuggled into his warmth.
"Okay, now that our sweaty, tearful snogging session is over, let's get you washed," he said, releasing her lips. "I think someone needs to get the smell of sawdust and glue off their skin." He smirked to let her know he was joking.
She scrunched up her face and stuck her tongue out playfully, like how she used to when they were kids. "Well, at least I'm not the one who smells of blood and flowers," she remarked disdainfully, wiggling her nose.
They laughed, glad to be given a moment in time together.
Revised this after several typos and other authorial powers I can command here, yaddi-yadda, etc. y'all get the point (: