The garden looked particularly unwieldy when coming out of winter. For the Weasley witch, winter was an unruly menace and she abhorred the way her plants lost their life, becoming strangely skeletal underneath the lashing rain, wind and snow. The weather had begun to steady in early spring and the sunshine seemed to come earlier and earlier in the morning. She had spent her day off cleaning up the garden. She’d mowed the grass and tidied the leafy debris from her trees and she divested the raised beds of their weeds. She had then, as the afternoon light had begun to dwindle, set up her pots in the greenhouse. They were swollen with dirt and ready to have seeds – which she planned, today, to go out and get.
There were other errands to be done, too. The spare room needed a fresh coat of paint and Victoire was determined to pick up that, as well as a few other bits and pieces, from the hardware store. Moreover, she needed a new dress and a few other bits and pieces. She was writing a list for herself while she was picking her way through her breakfast, sat at the kitchen island. Between bites of her salmon and cream cheese bagel, her pencil scribbled her delicate script across the bright yellow paper, noting some things as afterthoughts before adding others as a notation to purchase if she got the opportunity to.
Once her bagel was finished, Victoire packed her breakfast things away and moved into the hall where she packed her sticky notes and pencil into her bag. Then she donned her shoes and wound her scarf about her neck before sliding on her coat. Then, lifting her bag onto her shoulder, Victoire opened her front door and grabbed her keys off of the hook next to it. She stepped out onto her doormat and paused to lock the house up before striding down the path to the gate which she opened and moved through onto the path. Thereafter, it was a short walk into the village.
The hardware store was the first port of call for the paint she wanted. She hadn’t been sure was she wanted for the spare bedroom and she spent a long time looking through the different colour cards before picking off a couple of small taster pots in order to compare. It was as she was turning the corner round the end of the aisle that she felt pain shoot up her leg. Out of nowhere, a pallet board of breeze blocks seemed to jump out to bite her and she gasped. Her fingers released the paint reflexively as she reached to grab at her leg and around her, pale pink and summer sky blue spilled onto the floor as the pots burst and let go of their liquid.
“Oh, fudge,” Victoire whined, pursing her lips together fiercely. She rubbed at her leg through her jeans and as she lifted her hand away she noticed the blood, wondering, dismayed, how she’d managed to cut herself on breeze blocks of all things. She shook her head and rubbed her hand on her jeans before looking around herself miserably, wondering how on earth she was going to explain this to the owner.
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