Flowers And Fortunes

It was the easter holidays and Mary had decided to leave the castle and return to her routes in Diagon Alley. She'd initially returned to see what had happened to her old fortune cafe. Once upon a time Mary learned all she knew about being a seer and divinations in her grandmothers tea shop. People would enter requesting their tea leaves to be read, or maybe a palm reading. Mary had always been fascinated by predicting the future and devoted her life to learning it and now, now she appeared to be the teacher. She'd closed the store she'd inherited from her Grandmother and ventured to Hogwarts not so long ago. Four months later the store was hardly recognisable. The golden letters over the door were now black, the stain glass windows were leaded and plain whilst the wooden frames were no longer the mystical purple they once were painted now: brown. Boring brown.

Mary hadn't lingered at the window of a new magical repair store, instead the seer hurried to an alleyway by Gringotts, fell behind a barrel and bawled her eyes out. All the memories: her first prophecy, the first time she'd held a crystal ball, a romantic date, meeting families from across the country, getting to know the regular oldies; all of those memories had been evaporated. Vanished. Evanesco.

For twenty minutes Mary continued to cry and the fact that a rat had scuttled across her feet hadn't helped matters. She'd flinched, gave the rat a good boot and now was staring at it's corpse. It's feeble, dirty, limp corpse. Mary was a murderer, or a rat slaughter to be precise. She liked animals even the horrible ones she liked and to know that she was the cause of the rats death was heart wrenching. That rat would never feel loved, never see it's family again - the family. The family would be without a father, a mother would have lost her son and why? Because Mary had gotten scared. She really was a bit of a coward. The professor could stand up for herself, show bravery from time to time, but in the present she was a coward.

After crying for twenty more minutes Mary finally exhausted her supply for tissues. Her eyes were blotchy and her make up smudged where she'd rubbed her face. Finding the energy to lift herself from the ground Mary laid the rat neatly on the barrel and withdrew her wand. She would host a funeral, a memorial service. It didn't matter that nobody would be attending, after all who in their right mind would go to the funeral of a rodent? Pointing her wand at the barrel Mary paused. She didn't know the spell. She loved flower arranging, collecting different flowers, painting flowers but conjuring flowers was something the witch had never mastered.

Not wanting to leave the rat alone she placed him (Cornelius Mary had named him) and hurried from the alleyway and up the cobbled alley. She was positive there was a flower shop nearby, it was new, just opened last year and... There it was! With a jingle of an overhead bell Mary stepped into the tranquil store capturing the concoction of aromas that made her tear up. It was a beautiful setting. A butterfly had entered the store and was drifting from lily to carnation, from carnation to flutterby bush.

'Excuse me.' Mary began, approaching the counter where a blond witch stood. 'I'm wondering if you could help me. I - I need a small arrangement for a funeral.' The tears escaped their ducts and trickled down her cheeks. Hopefully the clerk wouldn't ask too many questions, then again it may be good to get her feelings from her chest?

There had been a liberation on the home front. A political prisoner had broken rank, scaled the fence and escaped. Said prisoner was now darting through London and disappeared into a shop with big golden letters on a bright purple field reading ‘Fleurish.’ It was a lot more interesting if you read it like that. Or perhaps, better, a Princess had stopped waiting on her Prince, jumped out her tower, pulled her parachute and was now wandering through the Enchanted Forest. That was also far more exciting than: after hexing Elijah Krum, Millie donned her coat and Flooed to the Leaky Cauldron where from there she went to work, regardless of her situation. Twenty-four weeks was something she was used to now. There was no man in her life that could get her to sit down and shut up. She was bored of that. She wanted action. She wouldn’t get a lot of that in the shop, granted, but it was better than sitting drinking tea for the rest of the day.

It was just before lunchtime that Millie walked into Fleurish and her brother immediately shot her a look of concern. She ignored him, however, and hung up her coat in the back room before going out to help a customer. He had nothing to say to her, of course. Nothing he could say could make her go home again. Flooing Keiran and making him come and pick up his errant wife would also have very little effect. She was a good saleswoman and it was mostly women and sheepish husbands that came into Fleurish looking for flowers. Others were writers or readers wanting to be in a different locale amongst pretty things and hot coffee. The Finnigans were more than happy to oblige, too. She did a good job. That, Elliot couldn’t begrudge her of. He, too, wanted something to eat before long and so it was Millie he left behind the counter while he went out to grab some lunch for them.

Millie was just beginning a book she’d taken off of one of the shelves when the door opened. She looked up, the curls by her temples bobbing about her as she moved. It was then that she saw the teary blonde woman and she frowned a little bit, closing her book and setting it down on the counter. She stayed seated for the moment, though, her feet having started to ache, and her hands came instinctively around her swollen stomach, feeling for the fluttering, fidgeting babies inside while she watched the woman before her in her abject misery. It wasn’t something Millie could claim to be used to – another woman crying. She could barely deal with herself crying so someone else was just far too awkward. Millie was actually rather grateful when the lady spoke, having reached the counter.

“Funeral?” Millie back-channelled, mostly for her own benefit. “I can certainly get something together for you. How soon do you need the arrangement, Miss-?”

A funeral for a random rat, a random rat sitting in Mary's pocket that was no doubt diseased. Mary didn't need to be intelligent to know how stupid the whole situation would sound, for starters she didn't have a coffin for the rat and could hardly conjure one. Perhaps there would be an empty bertie botts every flavour beans wrapper knocking around? Then again that could be considered disrespectful - unless of course Cornelius always was a daredevil bean biter.

'Mist, Mary Mist and as soon as you can please.' Mary began to explain through her tears. 'It only needs to be a tiny arrangement though, the coffin will only be small.'

Oh Gosh, why did she have to say that there may not even be a coffin! Moreover the clerk was no bound to think that the coffin was for a child, maybe even a baby. Mary really needed to dig herself out of this whole before the witch thought she was mad!

'It's for an animal.' Oh great. Like that made things better, who cries hysterically over a flower arrangement for an animal? Hopefully the florist would assume it was for her pet. Scratch that hopefully not! Mary didn't want anyone to think her cat, Lavender, was deceased it would be a dishonour to the cat and what if the witch - most unlikely - were to come across Lavender? How would she get out of that one?

'It was an accident, he wasn't a pet just-' After deciding to come clean Mary's voice caught in her throat. Taking a deep breath in Mary closed her eyes for a few seconds, wiped away her tears and looked into the witch's. 'Just a small arrangement please.'

There had been some odd people in Fleurish. A flower arrangement for a deceased animal wasn’t the strangest thing in the world, granted, but it was when the animal wasn’t belonging to the person ordering the flowers. Millie, however, was one of those pleasantly bizarre people who would eagerly provide a flower arrangement for a deceased animal. She certainly didn’t mind giving Miss Mist (Millie paused to appreciate how wonderful that name was) a flower arrangement. She just hoped that the poor animal hadn’t suffered an awful death. Thankfully, Millie was feeling quite calm and collected that day. If she had been anything but, perhaps she would have jumped to an awful conclusion – and though she did rub her hand thoughtfully across her stomach, she didn’t pay the mention of the small coffin much mind at all. People were odd.

“What’s his favourite colour?” She asked jovially, taking one of the small, tester vases out from under the counter. She set it on the counter and part filled it with a little bit of water before taking out a few pink camellias. She had never actually made a funeral arrangement. Elliot was a bit better with the black roses and everything else. Millie preferred the idea that you could actually have flowers you truly wanted there. She’d suggested the arrangement for her father’s. Elliot had made that, too. But, nevertheless, they looked beautiful. She just hoped that it wasn’t totally inappropriate to have something colourful.

“I’m Millie by the way,” she introduced herself with a smile. “Millie Hayes.”

'Orange.' Mary replied without thought only coming to ponder why her subconscious had come through with the answer orange after she'd replied. Had Cornelius had an orange aura? Perhaps. Oranges were generous and social, they enjoyed the company of others and are rather in tune with how others feel. Well, that was true. He did run by her, a stranger, and he seemed to understand the fact that Mary was startled by him.

Of course oranges can also be hot headed, impatient and tend to rush into projects and experiences too quickly. Well that settled the matter. It had been in inner-seer shining through when she answered orange. Cornelius had rushed by her without thinking of the dangers. He didn't want to wait for her to leave to scuttle to the sour swede rotting by a dustbin. The dead rat in her pocket had been an orange and now. Now he was empty, gone and-

'I'm sorry, Millie.' Mary sniffled, pulling out a packet of tissues from her hand bag to wipe her tears. 'It's just. I, I feel so guilty!' She cried before her legs carried her falling body to a chair at a nearby table where Mary began to sob.

'I did this. He came at me. I was scared, startled, I didn't mean for this to happen! I didn't mean to take a Father from a son, a husband from a wife. He was probably such a good rat, so happy and cheerful. O-one moment he was joyfully bounding to a rotting swede then the, the next, he, he was-' Mary couldn't continue, she simply began to waft her fingers at her eyes, looking up at the ceiling as the tears cascaded from her cheeks onto her lap.