The music is Elgar's Cello Concerto in E Minor (1919), the last of Elgar's long works. It's often interpreted as Elgar's swan song for pre-war Britain, or reflective of the horrors of the Great War. Incidentally, Elgar's own wife died several months after its first performance.
I occasionally think of characters in terms of music, and in this instance the piece works nicely that way, too: the Second Movement has rather busy, bumblebee-like string activity that reminds me of Albus, and the Third Movement is definitely Elizabeth.
The period is October 1945, after the defeat of Grindelwald (we assume it occurred before June). Elizabeth may have been killed shortly before or after Grindelwald was defeated.
Queen's Hall was destroyed in a bombing raid in the mid-forties, and although plans were made to rebuild, they were eventually abandoned and events such as the Promenade concerts moved permanently to the Royal Albert Hall.
the Bull and Bush: a pub in London.
It's all Aberforth's fault. He just had to make that "Poor sod," comment in the unnamed Albus fic.
This was written, by the way, in response to a fic challege by LJ user blackfall -- a Halloween ficlet, 100 - 1,000 words (failed there, it's about 1,434), on one of several possible themes: this one, obviously, is loss and grief. Word variants I chose to include were sear, crawl, and bone; I chose to exclude death, grave, magic.