Sorry this is so long in coming - up to my ears in dissertation and marking. It's also a little shorter, but frankly there's only so long you can describe someone walking along a road. Unless you're Cormac McCarthy, which I'm - sadly- not .
When she was little, her parents used to take her to the local park on Bonfire Night to see the fireworks. Her curls would bounce as she jumped and squealed with each new bang - colours of red and green and purple and gold exploding around her, with the crowd cooing at the beauty and excitement before them. After, she had slept soundly, tucked tightly into her room with its books and floral wallpaper, a smile lingering on her face as she dreamt of colours and bangs and her parents' laughs.
It was amazing to her how much the end of her world had resembled those nights in the sharp cold. It was yet another memory of her family that left a bitter taste in her mouth - like the spatters of blood a Death Eater had gleefully decorated that wallpaper with, or the Muggle photos that had been left torn and charred around what remained of her parents.
No, the fireworks that final night - after her parents, after everything else - had not been followed by adoring gasps of excitement. Those violent bursts of colour had instead been followed by screams that made her stomach churn, or - worse - silences that were suffocating in their finality. As she fought and stumbled and bled and hid, she saw the blank eyes of her friends, others vomiting in corners between duels, some sobbing uncontrollably, cradling what seemed to be pale, waxy imitations of people she had known. She remembered the scream from Ginny Weasley that tore through her like ice as she watched her mother fall. She searched through bodies for red hair, black hair, white -
This had been a fireworks display, indeed, but she never let herself remember it - at least not while she was awake. Her nights were now her own personal horror, where her parents laughs now mixed with the brutal cries of war.
It had been six years since she had seen Scotland, and noted with fondness and exasperation that it was freezing, as ever. She crossed over the border hooded and soft-footed - the welcome sign was dismantled into a crude pile, with a new, wooden sign in place, two red eyes fixed on her as she approached.
To her left a wild forest grew menacingly over the tarmac that had once seen so many cars; now the branches scavenged and twisted their way across. It was almost night, and a cool mist hung hawk-like over the road, the puffs of air from her mouth rising lightly as she walked briskly. Her hands stayed stuffed inside her jacket pockets, partly for warmth, partly to keep a tight grip on her white card. She knew what it meant; she knew who it was from. But in a world where she had no possessions past her wand, her boots, and the jacket she had taken from some poor dead woman in the street one desperate evening, she gripped the card tight enough to put a bend in the middle and creases at the corners.
As she walked, she tried to imagine the conversations she would have when she reached them. She imagined hugging Harry tightly, then frowned at the thought. She could not, not now. She wouldn't be able to bury her face in her best friend's shoulder now, relishing the smell of wool and Quidditch leathers that had been for her safety and simple, uncomplicated love. It wasn't often she felt angry now - she couldn't, really; it would have burned her inside out if she'd stayed as furious as she had been for so long. The thought of not being able to cuddle her friend made her kick a stone so violently it - impressively, she reflected later upon calming down - splintered the thick branch it hit. She walked on.
She tried rather too hard not to think of him. To remember. She had flashes of crumpled sheets, moans, hands gripping her thighs, "yes". She closed her eyes and physically shook her head. Stop. She needed to stop.
She walked through the night, stopping only to check her bearings with her wand, and only then under cover of a tree or ruined outbuilding. It was dawn when she finally decided to rest, stepping into a small ramshackle shed on the outskirts of a field, it's roof sparkling with frost in the low winter sun. She curled into a ball, wand in pocket in her fierce grip; the card was clutched in the other. Her dreams were muddled - white hair in her fingers, smirking whispers in her ear, and warm in her stomach. Between that, they were as they usually were - screams, and cries, and blood. And those damned fireworks.
