Disclaimer: I do not own rights to Harry Potter. All characters and related material belong to J.K. Rowling. This is for entertainment purposes only, no money is being made.
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Limes
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spectrosilver
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She always liked the taste of limes. Not the flavour of limes in sweets, nor the scent of lime in fancy shampoos. Just plain limes. Limes that she imagined grew on trees somewhere far away.
She would eat limes often, with the peel removed, and he would smirk and say "Parkinson, how can you do that?" Limes are a bitter, harsh fruit. But she liked the taste and she always had, so she ate them often.
Even as a child she indulged in their sour taste. Her home wasn't unfamiliar with their presence; dozens lay still in a basket on the bar during the many social parties held. Social parties held to the silver and green. She would always sneak one lime. Sneak one, savor one. One precious lime. Her mother caught her nearly every time, eating that lime. And she would shriek and scold and tell her how horrid it was, that she had eaten a lime. Because the limes were only for display. For display and to be shared among the guests' drinks. Too tart to eat, not a suitable food. Rather, a decoration. Not something you'd want to be your meal, but something to poke at and occasionally squeeze into a drink. Nothing like that mattered to the girl though; she never listened to her mother. She fancied limes like no other fruit.
They, just her and the boy, would sit around and talk and drink their parents' finest liquors in silver goblets and crystal. Her glass always had a slice of lime on the rim. "Only he finest limes in the world," he would joke, but it wasn't really a joke. For that's how their parents were. And they would drink and laugh and drink some more, until the world seemed so distant, but it was always there. The sour, tart taste of the world never left.
One day, the boy pulled a lime out of his pocket. A small, rough lime that he gave to her. And he told her the news. The bitter, harsh news of the world. The news of the war and the news of the deaths. So many deaths. They may be next. She just listened and nodded and ate her lime one bite at a time. Her lime that tasted so bitter, so sharp. But somewhere in the middle of that lime, just like always, the bitterness broke. And it was pure, pure sweetness. Something that hardly anyone else found in a lime.
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