Lavender Forever

The Weather

Lavender, scowling, shifted in her seat between Parvati and Pansy. She reached for a Cauldron Cake while trying to balance Magical Drafts and Potions in her lap. When she found out which adult had the brilliant idea of shoving her, Padma and Parvati in the same compartment as Draco Malfoy, Pansy Parkinson, Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle, there'll be hell to pay. Just because Lavender and Draco muttered apologies after much chiding and bribing from each of their parents, it didn't mean that they were best friends now.

"What do you want me to do?!" Lavender had demanded shortly before they left for the platform. "Apologize for being in the way? 'Draco, I'm bleeding sorry that you're such a prick.'"

"Lavender!"

"Honestly, Lavender, where did you learn such language?"

Padma, who, when awake, coughed in a rather unattractive manner, slept next to the window as Parvati went sifting through a pack of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans. Pansy started nodding off. Opposite of them, Gregory and Vincent sat asleep beside, who stretched out luxuriously, taking up two seats. He stared out the window, obviously bored out of his mind. The compartment had been silent the whole trip, other than when everyone found out they were stuck together and when the lady came with the cart of goodies and they started arguing over what to get and how to split the cost.

Someone knocked on the door of their compartment.

"Maybe she's back and she's got some Blowing Gum left this time," Pansy muttered sleepily, reaching for the handle.

The door slid open and Draco glanced up with an unimpressed look on his face. "Can we help you with anything?" he asked the round-faced boy.

"Sorry," the boy began tearfully, "but have you seen a toad?"

"A toad," Pansy repeated flatly. "You brought me out of my sleep because of a toad?"

"Yes, I'm terribly sorry, but-"

Pansy snapped, "Damn right, you're sorry." She slammed the door shut.

Padma lifted her head groggily at the noise, then placed it back down.

Parvati scowled. "Pansy, that's so mean," she said, dropping a few grey ones into another box. "You didn't have to slam the door."

Draco rolled his eyes and glared at Pansy to keep her from retorting. "Look, it's just a toad anyway and we haven't got-"

"Oh, for Merlin's sake," Pansy seethed as the door opened again, this time without a knock.

It slid open to reveal a girl with the biggest hair Lavender had ever seen. Lavender's mother's voice came to her, listing a variety of charms and potions that would easily calm such a mess. The boy appeared behind the bushy-haired girl, on the opposite side of the door to keep away from Pansy. The girl regarded them with an air of irritation, no doubt hearing about Pansy's previous display. "Has anyone seen a toad?" she asked in a bossy tone.

Pansy stared at her large teeth in disbelief. "No." She closed the door and settled back in her seat.

Parvati threw her box of beans at Draco, then stood up, climbing out of the compartment after the pair. Lavender remained seated, trying to read the boring book. There was a mutter as Draco discovered that Parvati had taken all of the flavours he recognised and liked.

By the time Parvati arrived back, face flushed with excitement, Pansy had fallen asleep. Lavender was working on her last Cauldron Cake when Parvati flopped down on her seat, eyes wide. After swallowing, Lavender asked, "What?"

"Guess!" Parvati squealed.

"Just spit it out. You know you want to," Draco said irritably.

Unfazed, Parvati chattered, "Harry Potter's on the train! Three compartments down. I went to apologise for someone's--I won't mention any names--appalling behaviour and the girl with the really big hair had just come out of a compartment with that boy with the toad, well, not just, I looked around for a moment or two, and she said that Harry Potter was in that compartment!"

"He's really on the train?" Draco asked, leaning forward.

"Yes!"

"Really?

"Yes!"

"Really?"

"DRACO!"

Lavender's eyes grew as wide as Parvati's. She placed her Cauldron Cake on top of her book and stood up, putting her book down on her seat. "We have to meet him!" she announced determinedly, starting for the door.

Parvati looked in the window, trying to catch her reflection. "We can't meet him like this!" she said in horror, hands frantically patting down the flyaway hairs from her plait. "My hair looks almost as big as that other girl's!"

"No, it isn't. And if she can meet him with hair and teeth that big, so can you," Lavender offered, trying to sound helpful, knowing that she wasn't.

Parvati scowled, trying to tug her trunk loose from where it was stored. "Easy for you to say. Your mother uses so many potions on it. Malfoy, move your feet."

"You're wrinkling your robes, Parvati."

"You're not helping, Lavender."

"You're going to embarrass yourselves," Draco drawled, leaning back.

Parvati made faces as she pulled on the handle of a trunk. "I can almost see it. It's right at the back..." she mumbled, shoving Pansy's trunk out of the way. She looked up and sat back, brown eyes wide with a wild idea. "Malfoy?"

He looked down at her. "What?"

"You can meet him!"

Draco raised his eyebrows.

"And we can eavesdrop!"

Silence.

Lavender bobbed her head wildly, licking the Cauldron Cake bits from her fingers. "We can't possibly meet him in this current condition! You can see if he's nice."

"Why would I do that?"

"We're taller than you," Parvati said, standing up to glare down at him.

Lavender continued nodding enthusiastically. "Because you're a nice, handsome, powerful, charming, young pureblood who's also very, very cute," she added sweetly.

Draco rolled his grey eyes, nudging the two sleeping next to him awake. They looked at him with bleary eyes and he nodded his head towards the door, hopping off his seat and sliding it open. He tossed a glare at the two who were slowly getting on their feet after him and noticed Parvati and Lavender, who could barely conceal their glee.

"What do I say?" he asked them as they half-dragged him to the compartment door.

"You're a smart boy," Lavender said, when they arrived in front of it. "You'll think of something. Now go." She scurried a few feet away from the door, next to Parvati, keeping out of sight.

Flanked by Gregory and Vincent, Draco glared at them then slid open the door.

He had disappeared from view first, Gregory following, then Vincent.

"Is it true? They're saying...that Harry Potter's in.... So it's you, is it? ...Oh, this is...Goyle. And... name's... Malfoy."

Parvati and Lavender exchanged looks when they heard snickering from inside the compartment.

"...name's funny, do you? No need to ask who you are. My father told me all the Weasleys have red hair, freckles, and more children than they can afford." A pause. "You'll soon find..."

Oh, Merlin. Lavender stepped towards the window and quietly began banging her head against it.

"Don't do that," Parvati muttered. "You'll get wrinkles or something. Probably a mark on your forehead."

Lavender paused and shook her head. "We're really stupid."

Parvati's reply was interrupted by Draco's clear voice ringing out, "Oh, you're going to fight us, are you?"

"Oh. Merlin. We should have known," Parvati groaned, walking towards the compartment. She picked up speed when she heard a yell, then nearly got bowled over by the three running out of Harry Potter's compartment. "What'd he-"

The three ran inside, leaving Parvati and Lavender in the hallway. A beat later, they scrambled in after them.

"He's rather daft," Draco announced once they were back inside.

**

Lavender yawned, idly staring at a curtain. She had been trying to sleep for an hour now, but she couldn't; Hermione Granger decided to review the astronomy charts before they were to head up to tower in two hours. Parvati and Lavender stayed up gossiping the first night, and they paid the consequences and fell asleep during the History of Magic class, though Parvati blamed the teacher, who tried to wake her up by calling her "Miss Paterson" and "Miss Paisley". He was lucky she didn't hear him calling her "Miss Pickles."

She and Lavender resolved to call him "that teacher" from now on, though she knew his name. But damn, if he didn't know their names, "Miss Pickthall" and "Miss Blunkett" weren't going to know his name either.

As for the other classes, Lavender didn't want to think about those; Herbology, Charms, and Transfiguration didn't turn out too well. It was Tuesday, which meant three more days until Friday, where Gryffindors got the afternoon off, which meant that Lavender had plenty of time to... catch up on the classes she slept or passed notes through. And of course, there was the concealing the Witch Weekly behind the textbook trick that only worked in the odd class.

She idly reviewed the day in her head, hoping to get some sleep. It started with breakfast, where Lavender got a letter from her parents and the monthly issue of Witch Weekly that they spent classes passing back and forth, writing in the margins and generally bitching that someone like Roselind Porimarolo got to be on the cover. She could hear Draco Malfoy bragging about the chocolate éclairs he got from home while she got a "reminder" to stay off sweets. Speaking of sweets, she also got a delivery of free samples from Bertie Bott's.

Even sleeping in her favourite pajamas, which had French pastries with their names "en francais", couldn't put her to sleep. With a huff of breath, Lavender pulled back her curtains and tried looking for her sleeping mask in her trunk. She glanced at Hermione, who was still looking at charts.

"Still studying? You know, you'll find them easily enough," Lavender said, moving aside several boxes of Chocolate Frogs she managed to stash away. With the amount of charms and potions her mother packed away for her, it would be morning by the time she found the mask.

Hermione looked up briefly at the noise as Lavender shoved away some bottles. They hadn't really talked much since Lavender told her in a bright voice that there were charms and potions that could easily remedy her of "that big hair and the enormous teeth". Lavender took Hermione's angered look as a sign to take her mother's advice next time and learn more tact.

"I do well in class because I stdy in class and out of class," Hermione sniffed. "You should study more yourself."

Lavender rolled her eyes, placing a box of Beans on her bed for later as she continued moving trinkets around her trunk. "I do study," she said defensively. "It's just that the Muggles call my form of studying 'cramming'."

"Well, that's not studying, now, is it?"

"No, I suppose not." Lavender smiled to herself as she pushed aside some more potions and pulled out the mask. She always prided herself in having good taste. It had two turquoise moons to cover the eyes. "Are you staying up until midnight, then?"

Hermione barely nodded, eyes still on the star charts.

"Great, so you'll wake us up? 11:30 like we said?"

Another barely-there nod.

"Splendid." Lavender closed the curtain, put on the mask and went to sleep...only to be woken what must have been five minutes later.

And thanks to Hermione's prodding, all the girls in the dorm were up at the tower early. Very early.

"When we agreed on 11:30, I meant waking up at 11:30, not being there by then," Parvati grumbled, clutching some charts and her telescope under her arm.

"I'm cold," Lavender moaned, sending a glare in Parvati's direction.

Parvati scowled. In her "obvious sleepiness", or so she claimed, she had insisted on going to the Astronomy tower in their pajamas and cloaks so that as soon as they were done, they would just flop back into bed. Obviously, not much thought was put into it.

Lavender sneezed as she set up her telescope.

"If it isn't Bayley and Prescott," Draco drawled, dismantling his own telescope beside them.

A list of possible people that could have told Draco, who would no doubt tell his own parents, who in turn would tell her parents, went through Lavender's mind. She couldn't come up with any, since she and Parvati were usually the ones in their year in the House to do that. Well, it's just come to bite me in the ass, she thought bitterly. "Go trip over your telescope, Malfoy."

"Go throw yourself over the tower, Brown."

"Keel over and die."

"Only if you keel over and die first."

"Shut up, the both of you," Hermione called over. "Some of us are trying to work."

Draco sneered, gathering his charts. On his way out, he made sure to bump into Parvati, who nearly dropped the telescope that refused to stay on the stand. She fumbled for it, sighing with relief when she caught it in her arms.

Lavender gripped onto the side of the tower as she launched into a sneezing frenzy. At the end of it, she sniffed delicately, and then peered through her telescope as if nothing happened.

"Lavender," Parvati said hesitantly, fiddling with her telescope, "do you want to go back?"

Lavender shook her head furiously, peering at a chart of Mars.

"Well, do you want me to get something for you?"

Another shake of the head.

"Alright."

**

"Not one word," Lavender said, clutching her bag tightly against her chest as she sneezed. They stood outside the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom with a few other Gryffindors, who were all chattering excitedly. In over twelve hours, Lavender had acquired a full-blown cold.

Dean Thomas paused in discussing his theory behind Professor Quirrell's turban and looked over at Lavender in concern. "Do you need to go to the hospital wing?"

"I'm perfectly fine," Lavender stated, blowing her nose into a handkerchief.

Parvati scowled. "She's been like this all morning."

"Well, if someone hadn't insisted on going to classes in pajamas, I wouldn't miss the only class-"

"Point taken." Parvati huffed and leaned against the wall, looking for split ends in her plait. Lavender hauled her out of the Great Hall as soon as they were finished lunch to get to one of the few classes she was looking forward to.

Lavender was staring at the stone ceiling when a weary, but relieved voice called out, "It's Lavender Brown!"

She immediately brightened up and blushed furiously. The voice belonged to none other than the tall, dark-haired, blue-eyed Adrian Pucey, fourth-year Slytherin Quidditch Chaser ("Oh, I know Marcus. I've got that position in the bag."), son of the prestigious Hailey and Sanford Pucey, and possessor of cheekbones that could cut through ice. Born May 5^th, 1977, he had been playing on the Slytherin team for a year now and his favourite colour was blue, his favourite candy Sugar Quills and he loved spaghetti. Contrary to what Draco Malfoy said, Adrian was not daft, merely, Lavender concluded, not studious. And despite Parvati's claims that he resembled a troll when caught in the light at a certain angle, at other angles, he was quite pleasant to stare at.

Now he came towards her, a strained smile on his face as Pansy Parkinson followed him, sulking. "Parvati! Lavender!" He beamed, tossing a nervous glance at Pansy.

Lavender felt herself melting. She didn't have to trail after him for several minutes before he noticed her this time.

Ever so helpful, Parvati sent them her best glare of death, as if to ward Adrian and Pansy away from them. "Hello," she said politely after he backed off a few steps.

"Pansy and I were just talking about you, Lavender," he said, giving her a warm smile as he shifted his bag from one shoulder to the other.

Lavender sank against the wall, nodding numbly at the thought of him talking about her. And he couldn't possibly be discussing it in a "she's stalking me again" tone, since she was just innocently lining up for class.

"Oh?" Parvati asked with a sniff. She eyed Pansy balefully. "I wouldn't put it past her to do that."

He ignored Parvati and Pansy giving each other death glares and glanced at the door. Making a sympathetic noise, he asked, "Defense Against the Dark Arts? My condolences."

Lavender bobbed her head, pausing to sneeze.

"It's a shame you got put in Gryffindor," Adrian continued, glancing back at a scowling Pansy. A draft found its way through the hallway and blew at his school robes and hair oh-so-dramatically.

"Actually," Lavender found herself babbling, "the Sorting Hat was actually considering putting me into Hufflepuff, actually. I don't know why, since my mother always says I have no patience or anything of that sort." When she realised the words escaped her mouth, she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to will herself into disappearing. If she had an Invisibility Cloak right now, she would give up Cauldron Cakes for a month--no, a year. No...a decade...

Snickering broke out and Lavender reopened her eyes to give Dean and Seamus a glare before smiling weakly at Adrian, who looked pained as he suppressed laughter beside a chortling Pansy.

The bell rang. He leaned close to Lavender, ruffled her hair. "See you around, Pansy, Parvati, Lavender," he said, scuttling away from Pansy as fast as he could, pausing momentarily to shoot an elastic at a third-year Gryffindor, who was walking by in a group with her friends.

Pansy glared at Parvati and Lavender and stormed off, tossing her hair over her shoulder. "Adrian! I don't know how to get to my next class!" she called after him.

By the time Professor Quirrell arrived, the rest of the class was waiting outside his door and Dean and Seamus were talking to Ron and Neville about Quidditch. Nonetheless, Lavender was in a foul mood and eating a Chocolate Frog furiously. She was halfway done and dropped it as Quirrell turned around to open the door.

"Professor, what's that smell?" she asked irritably, stopping at the doorway of the classroom. "It's so strong that even I can smell it." People behind her started to grumble and Lavender didn't care if it was over the scent of the class or the fact that she refused to move.

"It's garlic, Lavender. Now move," Seamus said with scowl, pushing her into the classroom. He made his way near the front with Dean, still looking eager for the lesson.

"Yes, I know it's garlic, but why does it smell like garlic?" she snapped back, still hovering near the doorway.

A murmur went through the classroom as students tried to reason it out.

Lavender settled near the back, crossing her arms, then thinking better of it, pulled out a Witch Weekly and a fresh handkerchief. There was a noise as Parvati pulled out the chair beside her.

Lavender buried her face in her magazine as the word "actually" kept repeating itself over and over again in her mind. When she heard her name in roll call, she muttered a "here" and continued trying to read about Aiden Lynch.

"...to ward off the vampires from Romania," Quirrell was stuttering as Seamus nodded with rapt attention. "Otherwise, they m-might come back. A-as for my turban, M-mr. F-finnigan, i-it was g-given to me b-by an African p-prince as a thank-you for getting ride of a zombie."

Lavender glanced up from her magazine, then around the classroom. She put a hand up and spoke when he nodded at her. "Professor, can we open a window?"

Seamus turned and glared at her, then turned back and enthusiastically put his hand up. Without waiting to be called, "Professor, how did you fight off the zombie?"

"And why would the prince give you a thank-you gift that smells funny?" Lavender added, thoroughly annoyed now. "Isn't that like a non-thank-you gift?" There was a slight sinking feeling in her heart as she felt guilty for taking out her boy troubles on a professor that couldn't, in her opinion, speak properly.

The professor turned rather pink. "I-it's a b-beautiful day out. G-go ahead and open a window, M-miss B-brown. Did y-you see those c-clouds out? C-cirrus and you know what that means."

He kept chattering about the weather as Lavender made her way to the front and tried to force a window open. Beside her, Seamus Finnigan leaned over and whispered, "That's precisely why you weren't sorted into Hufflepuff." Dean snorted as he tried to stifle a laugh.

Shoving open the window loudly as she sneezed, Lavender whirled around and glared at him. "Do you want to know another reason why I wasn't sorted into Hufflepuff?" she hissed through clenched teeth, eyeing him with a look that she reserved for a few people. Sticking her nose in the air, she strolled back to her seat.

"Erm, y-yes... I-it hasn't rained in Singapore, but we're expecting rain here..."

She spent the rest of class passing notes damning Seamus Finnigan with Parvati and half-listening to Professor Quirrell stutter on about the weather.