It Was the End of the World

It was the end of the world, and only I was left to see it.

The end of the world happened on a Sunday afternoon The Day of the Lord and I remember being faintly surprised. I was sitting underneath the apple tree in the back yard, when the ground began to shake and my mother's roses began writhing against the side of the house or maybe the side of the house was writhing against the roses and apples began raining down from above. As an apple hit me on the top of my head the soft spot on a baby's head is called a fontanel I was reminded of a 5^TH year Arithmancy lecture about Isaac Newton and pondered the practicality of muggle science at the end of the world which was clearly a Biblical notion.

If it was going to be the end of the world, I ought to be dressed more appropriately. I walked into the house through the back door, and saw my eldest brother hunched over the cutting board, earring wobbling to and fro, shoulders shaking slightly almost as if he too was shaking with the tremors of the earth's last gasps of life. When he heard my heavy footsteps on the linoleum he straightened, and turned red eyes to me the devil was in his despair. He opened his mouth, as if to speak, but I only smiled serenely and walked past him, through the doorway, and up the carpeted stairs that were also beginning to swim alarmingly. I walked over to my room last door on the left and went straight to my closet, pulling out a yellow sundress, because there was no reason to wear black on the last day of the world. After dressing, I lay upon my bed. I stared up at my ceiling 1274 dots of spackle on the patch above my pillows and just looked at it, as I knew I might never see it again, since who knows what happens to one after the end of the world.

Dressed in the yellow sundress I walked back down the stairs, and some time must have passed, for there were people filling the living room and the den and the kitchen. The cutting board was nowhere to be found, and there was food on the table and there were so many people all dressed in black, how depressing milling about, and I could hear my brother's voice solemnly welcoming them in as if they were supposed to be here. Didn't they have their own houses to be at on this last day of days?

My second oldest brother looked at my yellow sundress in horror, his eyes questioning the appropriateness of my dress and the uncombed nature of my hair and my unmade-up face. Why was everyone spending the end of the world dressed in black and looking at me with pity in their eyes?

My eldest brother had returned from the front door and looked at me with horror. "Sis, you can't wear that to Mum and Dad's wake..."

And then Ginny Weasley tried not to shatter all over the floor, because there was still a war to fight and revenge to be had.