Lavender Forever

The Dinner

Lavender Brown stared miserably at her mashed potatoes, idly moving her peas around her plate in a line. She didn't want to be sitting in that dining room. When Lavender declared that she thought she might be coming down with something, plus she would like to study before starting school tomorrow, her parents had laughed and proceeded to haul her towards the foyer, where the portkey was located. Laugh now, she had thought diabolically, but it won't be pleasant when I throw up over their Italian rugs!

"…Well, yes, it's cheaper there, but that place is filled with products that give me a rash just thinking of them…"

Well, she didn't. And now matter how much she willed herself, she couldn't. She got sick so easily it was pathetic, but never when she wanted to. She shifted in her seat, putting her fork on the plate momentarily to examine her blonde hair for split ends. It wasn't the room that was the problem; it was gorgeous, well lit, and furnished with the most expensive objects, like the rest of the house. The view from the dining room was spectacular; the compound rested on the top of a hill and Lavender could see the sunset easily. The house-elves prepared the meal exquisitely, though her mother forbade her to eat meat, telling her that she'll thank her one day. The food, at least the stuff she could eat, was too good to be true, which made her slightly weary. Whoever thought of putting potato skins in mashed potatoes should be given an award.

It must be the owners of the mansion, who drilled her mercilessly on all topics. She answered all questions politely and with a dimpled smile.

"…are simply appalling now. It's come a lot sooner than what all the specialists originally thought. Ever since…"

Lavender's mother chattered away with Narcissa Malfoy at one end of the unbelievably long table, occasionally picking something off the vegetable platter by their side. Supposedly, they discussed the organization for the next ball at the Club—the whole purpose of this get-together—but from what Lavender could hear, beauty charms dominated the conversation. To an observer, Narcissa Malfoy was like Lavender's mother in every single way: blonde, beautiful, witty, intelligent, perceptive, charismatic when she wanted to be, and, frankly, quite a harpy. Yet Lavender didn't like the woman the slightest bit, though she adored her mother.

"…bumped into Helena MacDonald at the counter and she wouldn't stop bragging about her son…"

At the other end, her father and Lucius Malfoy tried to outdo each other by "offhandedly" listing achievements, some substantial, some utterly ridiculous—something they did every time they met when they weren't talking about politics. Personally, Lavender found it quite disturbing that those two talked as if they were New Money, flashing their belongings around wildly. She could never say or hint at the behaviour, since her father would send her to her room and Lucius Malfoy scared the crap out of her.

Lavender picked up her fork again, sighing and glancing around the table. She'd examine the silverware, which was always polished to the point where it gleamed dangerously. She swore that she almost got blinded once when her family ate breakfast with them. There were rumours that the Malfoy home was a dark, bleak place, which Lavender thought was ridiculous, with all the entertaining the family did to stay on top of the pureblood heap.

"…I've never noticed your chandeliers, Lucius. Swiss, are they not? I prefer Austrian crystal myself…"

The worst of all Malfoys sat across from Lavender, looking innocent as he noisily cut at a piece of chicken. Upon their arrival, her mother had loudly announced that Lavender was on a strict diet, and therefore forbidden to have any meat or sweets at all. He'd given her a sneer then and made compliments on the meat all throughout dinner to his parents, who weren't listening.

"…thinking of putting Draco on a diet as well. Well, opposite of the one you've put Lavender on. He's a little scrawny. Draco, have more peas…"

She supposed she should have expected him to behave this way. This was the boy who batted his eyelashes while Lavender's mother complained that no matter how many charms she used, she couldn't get Lavender's to be longer. The one who moved to a place where his delicate pale features were highlighted when her mother gave her something to drink "to get rid of the freckles and make your face all nice and pale. Like Draco here." She never understood why her mother did this stuff whenever he was around. Parvati Patil had angrily ranted to Lavender for several hours once after coming home from a dinner where Draco had locked her in a closet. At least he wasn't armed with food, Lavender thought bitterly as she pulled some mashed potato from her hair and continued rearranging her peas.

"…jade imported from the Americas, though I prefer the jade from…"

He slung a pea at Lavender, which landed in her potatoes. Her mother had promised her a new designer bag for Christmas if she behaved herself at the dinner ("And that means not a single squeak!") and Lavender was determined to get that bag so she could come back, smack Draco's "perfect" pointed face with it several times and kick him in the shins with a high heel. However, the potatoes were all she planned to eat and now they were infested with a pea and her mother would throw a fit should she ask for a new plate of potatoes and then she wouldn't get the bag and that means he would have won. Going against the urge to hyperventilate, Lavender gritted her teeth and glared pointedly across the table. Matching his innocent expression, she carefully rotated her plate to let the boy see her army of peas. They filed in a nice rectangle, all ready to be fired off. Lavender cocked an eyebrow in challenge, placing a pea from her hair into the formation.

Draco's eyes widened momentarily, then he gave a trademark sneer, at which Lavender had to resist the urge of kicking him from where she sat. He began mouthing something to her: "She obviously is having an affair with Crouch. Must be. You don't look like that without being involved with someone so…"

Lavender blinked, confused. He rolled his eyes and tried again. She thought of herself as a pretty decent lip-reader, especially when there was gossip involved, but she couldn't for the life of her understand him. Probably because his mouth was too pointy. Thin-lipped arse. She shook her head and he mouthed once more. When she still didn't get it, she scowled and positioned her fork to let the first pea fly.

"…new machine that they brought back from Muggle London. It doesn't boil the water completely, so that the tea isn't as rich. They say you can't taste the difference, but…"

"You wouldn't dare, Brown," he finally hissed to her.

Lavender held his gaze, mulling the decision over in her mind. There was a high possibility of him tattling, but she had more than enough food from his plate in her hair and in her surroundings. Of course, he could just say that she stole the meat off his plate and ate rather messily—a habit she unfortunately did at home.

"New robes, Malfoy?" she whispered back.

"…only works when there's enough sun out. Otherwise, you just end up with orange skin like Helena and it's a horror to…"

He flushed with pleasure.

"Price tag," she continued.

His face fell. She casually flicked a pea at his head as he peered into his sleeves, looking for the offending slip of paper. It sailed over his head. Leaning back in her large chair, Lavender drank her water, wiping gravy from her hair with a napkin.

Triumphantly picking the slip out, he sneered as he glanced at it. "It's not a price tag," he murmured back, tossing it at her.

She caught it before it landed in her peas and peered at it for a moment. She could feel his smile growing wider. Cramming it into her pocket, she muttered under her breath as she wondered if she could divorce her parents. She considered denying the information on the card, then decided against it. Her denial would, in his eyes, justify the card. When she looked back up, he was grinning like a shark. She poised her fork again.

"Lavender," her mother began, causing Lavender to quickly place the fork back by her plate, "it's time to go."

"But Mrs. Brown," Draco drawled, smiling lazily at a cringing Lavender, "dessert hasn't been served yet and it's a recipe from France. Triple layer milk chocolate cake with white chocolate icing between each layer, cookie crumbs and fresh-picked berries mixed in to provide a…"

YES! Lavender thought as she looked at her mother pleadingly. That a slice of that cake would make the peas, potatoes, chicken, and gravy all worth it. Even if that brat slung chocolate cake at her, as long as she could eat some, it would be worth it.

"…and Lavender's such good company," Draco finished with a bright smile towards Lavender's dad.

Lavender's eyes briefly widened in disgust and horror, gaping in an unflattering way, then she smiled winningly at her father, who beamed back.

Her mother shifted from where she and Narcissa were now standing. She raised an eyebrow at the food in Lavender's hair. "I suppose."

Warning bells should have gone off in Lavender's head as a house-elf brought the decadent cake in as another carried plates and forks. They should have gone off as Draco offered to serve, which his parents, proud and surprised that their child was demonstrating such gentlemanly manners, agreed to. The only thing Lavender could come up with was that he might spit on her plate.

He served the grown-ups first, and when he was about to cut her slice, she whispered confidentially to him, "If…I could…just have a slightly bigger-"

"Lavender! Just take the slice as he cuts it," her mother with a sixth sense snapped.

Lavender blushed as her mother apologized to Narcissa, who was shaking her head and reassuring her. Nonetheless, Draco offered her a slightly bigger slice. The warning bells should have sounded like air raid sirens as she took it.

"No, this is chocolate from France, where…" Lucius Malfoy was saying to her father as they drifted off to the drawing room.

Admittedly, it didn't look as attractive on the original platter. The wave effects the house-elves used on the white chocolate icing didn't float Lavender's boat, but once the boy had carefully cut the large slice off and painstakingly placed it upright on her plate, giving her a view of all the layers from different angles… Blueberries… she separated a layer and saw raspberries… chocolate chips… cashews… Lavender thought she was in heaven as she got back to her seat and settled in, fork in hand.

"Mrs. Brown, isn't Lavender on a diet?" Draco drawled, cutting his own slice.

She froze. Ten thousand thoughts went through her mind. THAT BRAT! Kick him! Kick him! He's being an arse because you're taller than he is! If you shift just slightly, you can reach him and kick him in the shins! Chocolate, so yummy, so good, just sitting there. Slam his stupid head into the cake! No! Eat the cake! She's coming closer. Eat! Eat! Take a bite!!

With a determined look, Lavender hurriedly cut off a bite with her fork…

…which was plucked from her hand. She looked up imploringly at her mother. "Lavender Brown! You know better than to lie to me-"

"I didn't lie!" Lavender wailed, deciding whether or not to reach for the fork. "I just didn't-"

"You knew you're on a diet," her mother said, taking the large slice of cake from the table.

"But…but…"

"I'll deal with you later."

Lavender gaped after the slice of cake as it followed her mother out of the room, and heard snickering to her right. She turned her head slowly, to see Draco's hand covering his mouth to avoid full-out laughing. She understood the mocking "I'll deal with you later" he mouthed before dissolving into giggles.

Oh, hell, she was going to Hogwarts tomorrow. What were her parents going to do? Ground her? The purse was already gone. She gave him a smile of a cheerleader gone wrong, complete with a slight twitch in her right eye she had been working on for impressions of various members of the club.

He stared at her. "Is there something wrong with your eye?" It clicked. "Mother…" he called nervously, placing his plate of cake down as she ducked under the table.

When she appeared on the other side, he was halfway to the closed doors leading to the drawing room. She picked up his cake and threw it at his head.

He let out a high-pitched scream and ducked, running. The slice missed and narrowly missed a painting on the wall. The plate immediately fell off and broke on the floor. As for the cake, it stayed on the wall a moment longer before sliding down as layers fell off. He looked behind to see Lavender stick a finger in the remainder of the cake at the table, licking off the icing as she started for him.

"Mum?" he yelped, trying to open the doors as Lavender got closer. "MUM!"

"I'm gonna kill you and I'm gonna start by ripping those ridiculously long eyelashes off your eyelids, you little wanker!" Lavender screeched in time for the doors to open with all four adults staring at her as Draco darted between them and hid behind his mother.

Her mother looked horrified. "Lavender, where did you learn such language?"

"She's bloody psychotic!" Draco declared, pointing a finger at her.

Psychotic? I'll show him bleeding psychotic. Letting out a shriek that drowned out Lucius' annoyed, "Draco…", Lavender threw herself towards the boy, only to be held back by her father.

"He started it!" she blubbered as her father steered her to the Malfoy's foyer where they left the portkey. "It wasn't my fault!"

Her mother had hung back to exchange apologizes and offer to pay for the plate. When she caught the words "premenstrual syndrome", she stopped in her tracks and pointed dramatically at Draco, who was watching from his spot behind his family at the doorway of the drawing room. "He threw food at me! Look! There's STEAK IN MY HAIR! STEAK!"

"You're just a messy eater," Draco drawled. He walked from behind his parents and folded his arms across his chest, smirking.

Lucius put a hand warningly on his shoulder.

I knew it! I knew he'd say that! Lavender thought feverishly. "I may be a messy eater, but I wasn't eating steak! And I don't get FOOD ON THE WALL BEHIND ME!"

"There's no food on the wall behind you!" Draco shouted the same time her mother snapped, "Why didn't you say something?"

Lavender's eyes grew even wider and she clenched her fists, trying to keep from hyperventilating. "You mean you didn't NOTICE HIM THROW A DRUMSTICK AT MY HEAD?"

"Draco," his mother groaned, delicately placing a hand to her forehead.

Lavender's father took her back into the drawing room, where she made a last-ditch attempt of lunging for Draco. Lucius Malfoy eyed her warily and said, "Draco, go to your room."

The boy scowled, and Lavender triumphantly stuck her tongue out at him before her father declared that she was going home via Floo powder while her parents smoothed things over.

"But daddy, I'm sick! And I ate too many potatoes! And my hair! It'll get more messy and I'll have to double-"

"Yes, yes, your hair has potatoes in it," her father muttered distractedly, reaching in his robes and handing her a bag of powder.

She snatched it with her sticky hand and stormed to the fireplace, pausing when a thought occurred to her in her delusional state. Maybe I can still get that bag…AND I'LL THROTTLE HIM WITH THE HANDLES!!!

Putting on her most charming dimpled smile, Lavender Brown, whose mother was one of the most ancient and prestigious lines of wizarding families, and whose father came from one of the most wealthy and equally prestigious wizarding families, swept into a grand curtsey to Narcissa and Lucius Malfoy, potatoes and peas in her messy blonde hair, gravy splattered on her wrinkled blue robes. "Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy, I apologize for my horrid behaviour tonight and hope that the next time we meet, things won't be as… unpleasant," she said in a calm voice, her blue eyes focused on the marble floor.

She stood straight and headed for the chimney, finally looking up just before the manor disappeared from sight. The last thing Lavender saw before green flames and a whirl of fireplaces were Lucius and Narcissa forcibly smiling back and her parents staring at her as if she'd sprout a tree on her head.