With One Breath

Gimme Some Truth

It was a particularly dismal mid-January evening, with storm clouds obscuring all the stars on the Great Hall ceiling, but to Parvati the sun had been shining nonstop for three weeks. She looked up from her dinner to see her sister, and her boyfriend, sitting down next to her at the Gryffindor table.

“Hello there!” Padma said. “Where’s your other half?”

“What other half?” she snapped.

“Lavender of course!” Padma replied.

“She isn’t my other half! Why would she be my other half?”

“I was only teasing you! Because you’re such close friends and inseparable and all that.”

“Well, it just implies—”

“Oh stop being so touchy! I wasn’t implying anything.” She looked at her sister, who was nervously making her potatoes into the shape of a cat. “Unless—Oh, Vati.”

Parvati looked up. “Nothing has happened,” she whispered.

Padma raised an eyebrow.

“Okay,” Parvati admitted in a whisper, “but it’s only two friends helping each other. Nothing more. Happens all the time at school. Practically a tradition. It doesn’t mean we’re gay.”

Padma shook her head. “What if you were?”

“What?” she whispered, sharply.

“What if one of you were?” Padma asked, putting her hand over her sister’s. “You might want it to be more than just helping out a friend. And that would be upsetting for everyone.”

“Well, that isn’t going to happen because neither of us are!” Parvati protested, pulling her hand away.

Padma sighed. “Vati, I just want you to be careful.”

Parvati stood up from the table. “I will thank you to stay out of my affairs! Just because you are eleven minutes older and have a boyfriend does not mean you know better than I!” And with that, she stormed out of the Great Hall.

The Gryffindor table sat silent for a moment before returning to the usual dull roar. Padma looked down at her plate but found she had lost her appetite.

“Wow,” Ron said.

“What?”

“I never noticed it before, but when she gets angry she sounds just like your mum.”

“Thank you, Ron. What a helpful observation.”

He grinned at her, then asked, “Are you going to finish those beets?”

“No, Ron, you can have the lot,” she said, sliding her plate over to him. She looked up toward the door, though she didn’t know why, as Parvati had long since left the hall.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Parvati walked back from her private Divination tutorial a bit earlier than scheduled. Trelawney had been oddly distracted, except when they discussed the Emotional Attachment charts. Trelawney had said that the unusually dense fog that surrounded the castle that day made reading any signs futile, but Parvati suspected it had something to do with the potions master, and that aspect of their lives, she felt, did not require her scrutiny.

As she reached the bottom of the stairs from North Tower she heard a familiar giggle from the Charms corridor beyond. Had Lavender come to meet her, as Dean so often did with Seamus? After all, they had been “laying together,” as Lavender referred to it, for over a month now, and Friday would be Valentine’s Day. Perhaps, for the first time, she too would have someone of her own.

She walked quickly down the corridor toward the voice, which came from one of the classrooms. It would be so like Lavender to be planning a surprise, Parvati thought as she pushed open the door.

What she saw certainly was surprising. There were no lights on in the room, but by the eerie glow of the fog outside the windows, she could see Lavender leaning back against the wall of the classroom, with Ernie MacMillan nibbling at her nick. Parvati stood staring, too shocked to speak or even move. She had been kissing that neck just two nights before. She had been making Lavender call out her name for the last six weeks. She wanted to run away to find a place to think; she wanted to pull Ernie’s dirty paws off her Lavender; she wanted to slap her friend across the face for betraying her; she wanted to scream so loud that everyone in the castle came running to see what she saw; she wanted to close her eyes and erase this moment from her memory forever. But she did none of these things. She merely stayed, and tried to breathe.

After an eternity, Lavender looked up. Her eyes flew wide open, seeing Parvati there in the door, staring, her mouth agape. “Oh!” she gasped, and pushed Ernie away.

He turned and looked up at the door where Parvati stood and grinned at her sheepishly.

Suddenly, rage flared within Parvati, and she found her voice. “What’s this, then?” she asked coldly.

“Ernie walked me back from Herbology,” Lavender replied, “and we were talking about this and that, and so we came in here, and one thing led to another I suppose.” She smiled at Ernie.

“Apparently so,” Parvati replied.

Ernie kissed Lavender quickly on the cheek and darted out of the room. Parvati closed the door behind him.

“Is something wrong?” Lavender asked. “You look upset.”

“I thought you were done with Ernie.”

“I was, but he was so sweet, and he made me laugh, and I thought that perhaps I was too hasty, or choosy, and I should give him another chance.”

“I see.”

“Are you cross, Parvati? I didn’t mean to keep anything from you, it just happened so quickly —”

“What about us?”

“What about us? How would this change our friendship? You like Ernie well enough, don’t you?”

“No. Well, yes, of course, but I mean — what about what we’ve been doing?”

“Oh! I hadn’t thought about that. I suppose we’ll have to stop, won’t we? I mean, if things become serious with Ernie.” Lavender furrowed her brow.

Hadn’t thought about that? Parvati thought. “You suppose so?” she asked aloud.

“Well, I’m not sure it’s really cheating since you’re a girl but I don’t know if Ernie would agree. Anyway I don’t think I could do much more than kiss someone if it wasn’t exclusive.”

“And we weren’t exclusive? You did a great deal more than kiss me.”

“But darling, that was different, like we said. It didn’t really count in that way.”

“Didn’t count?”

“It wasn’t serious, it was just scratching an itch. It didn’t mean anything. We’re not gay!”

Parvati slumped against the closed door. “Oh, Lavender, I think I am.”

Lavender looked puzzled. “Am what, darling?”

“Am a lesbian. I — I think I am.” She bent her knees and slid down the door to the floor. “Fuck.” She buried her face in her hands.

Lavender tried not to gasp. This was indeed entirely unexpected. Her mother had always said she was unobservant and here was the proof of it—again! “Oh, Parvati, I had no idea, at all. Oh dear, this is a muddle.” She knelt down next to her friend on the floor and reached out to rub her shoulder in comfort.

Parvati shrugged away and slid along the wall, away from the door. “Don’t touch me,” she said, low but firm.

Lavender flinched. “I just wanted to say that I’m sorry! I didn’t mean—”

“I know what you didn’t mean,” Parvati growled. She lifted her head up, and Lavender could see the tears in her eyes. “I think you should go now.”

“But Parvati—”

“LEAVE ME ALONE!” She put her head back into her hands, against her knees, and began to cry in earnest.

Lavender stood up, sniffling a bit. “Okay, if that’s what you want.” She waited, but when no response came, she opened the door and left, closing it behind her. She walked down the hall, unsure what to do, whom to talk to, when suddenly she found herself near the Transfiguration classroom. She turned to a nook nearby, shrouded in purple curtains, and knocked on the wall.

The curtains parted, and Lavender saw Padma and Ron laying on either end of the couch, studying. “Padma?” she asked.

Padma looked up and saw Lavender’s face, white as a sheet. She sat up quickly. “What happened? Is it something with Parvati?”

“I think I made a terrible mistake. Again.” She bit her lip.

Padma could sense Ron sitting up next to her. “Where is she?”

“In the lower level Charms classroom.” She sniffled a little, then one large tear ran down her cheek. “Oh, Padma, I’m so sorry! I didn’t know!”

“I don’t think she even knew.” Padma quickly packed up her things. “Ron, could you escort Lavender up to the Tower?”

Ron looked a bit wary, but nodded. “Of course, of course.” He stepped around the small table and reached out to take Lavender’s arm, but the girl buried her face in his chest, grasping at the front of his shirt. He looked over her head at Padma, his eyes wide open.

Sorry, she mouthed to him, motioning that he should put his arm around her, rather than having it hanging in the air. Padma blew him a kiss before turning down the hallway.

Ron gingerly put his free arm around the crying Lavender and patted her shoulder awkwardly. “There, there,” he said. “We need to get you up to the Tower, eh? Can you walk and cry at the same time?”

Lavender replied by sobbing even louder.

Padma, meanwhile, raced down the Charms corridor and opened the one closed door. Her sister sat on the floor of the darkened room, hugging her knees, staring blankly ahead. Her face was red and streaked with tears. Padma gently closed the door behind her and sank down to the floor next to her, putting her arm around her shoulders. “Vati, it’s okay, I’m here,” she said.

Parvati turned to look at her. “I’m so sorry, Padi. I tried, really I did, but . . . “

“You haven’t anything to be sorry about.” She pulled her sister closer, and Parvati rested her head on Padma’s shoulder.

“Mother won’t like it.”

“No, Mother definitely won’t like it, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“The whole school probably knows by now.”

“I don’t think Lavender is going to tell anyone anything you don’t want her to. She’s your friend.”

Parvati lifted up her head. “You tried to warn me and I didn’t listen.”

Padma smiled slightly. “Well, that’s hardly unusual.”

“But—you knew?”

“I suspected, but I didn’t know.”

“Oh.” She put her head back down, and Padma stroked her hair. “What will happen now?”

“I don’t know,” Padma answered. “You might want to ask Seamus, or Dean.”

“I don’t want to go back to the Tower.”

“Well, you will have to face her eventually, you know. But tonight, you can sleep in Ravenclaw with me.”

“Really?”

Padma nodded. “It will be just like when we were girls. And I’ll as Ron to get the house elves to make you some ras malai. That will make you feel better.”

Parvati smiled. “Thank you, Padi.”

“I’m always here for you, Vati. Always.” She looked up and saw that through the window that the fog had finally begun to clear.