Lavender Forever

The Holiday

At precisely 6:28 AM on December the 25th, Lavender abruptly sat up in bed and hopped out. So what if her parents sent her to bed early because she made a mess at the dinner table and was only feeling marginally better? It was nearly seven hours into Christmas and a mountain of presents was still lying by a Christmas tree to be unwrapped. She had gotten lazy.

Her mission pushing away the nausea, she grabbed her wand, quietly opened the door and crept down the hallway. Her parents' insistence of obtaining the best quality of materials in their home insured that the floors didn't creak. Still, she could…stub a toe and yell in pain. Have a mirror talk to her. Have a portrait talk to her. Wake Theo's dog and have the thing give her looks that would make her feel guilty for opening every single present. Accidentally get kidnapped by someone who broke in and was currently trying to steal something from their home and get shipped off to Mozambique, where she would then have to work as a courier for shipments to the Americas and be forced to eat those Pop Tart things for the rest of her life.

After calming herself down, she slowly went down the staircase, then through a long hall before finally pushing a door open. Poking her head in hesitantly at first, she sighed with relief and entered. The couches sat to the right, with a coffee table in the middle. She could barely make out the grand piano sitting to the left under the fading moonlight. And straight in front was the large tree. Barely able to suppress a grin, she whispered, "Lumos."

Upon giddily shredding wrapping paper, Lavender discovered that she had received several books that she planned to use as paperweights or stones to make a pathway in the garden, a few Quidditch-related things, candy, jewellery and some school supplies. And the bag. With a singing Christmas card from her parents, her eyes lit up as the paper and tape were ripped back to reveal the black school bag that she had wanted since August.

Needles clung to her hair as she reared back from sneezing while crawling around the tree, looking for more gifts until there was just a mess of paper and packages. With that, she began loading her bag with the goodies. Spot eyed her from his spot by the door.

"Having fun?" her mother asked in an amused tone, smiling more as Lavender nodded while pausing to read the covers of the books before jamming them in.

"Your mother and I agreed that you can stay home during the dinner tonight," her father said, pushing away some of the ripped paper to look for some of the gifts Lavender had so kindly unwrapped for him. "And you don't have to eat at the breakfast tomorrow, but since guests are coming over, you need to be there."

"But you're still going to the ball," her mother continued, moving the presents in different piles.

Lavender took what she could get. Swinging the bag over a shoulder, she bobbed her head cheerfully as she gave her parents a quick hug and a thanks before racing back upstairs.

As soon as she got back to her room, she dumped the contents on the floor by her fireplace, browsing through them for a more thorough examination. While flipping through a book about improving French skills, she found her old exam bookmarked at the halfway point of the book. An angry red mark circled the "Je suis fini" she ended her narrative piece with, "Well, duh," written in the margin next to the "Fail" stamp. She let out a good-natured laugh before looking for her fire poker and skewering her paper, ready to let it burn. She spent the rest of the day alternating between reading, playing with Cotton and accidentally dyeing the rabbit orange, shoving Theo's dog out of her room, eating, and drinking potions.

--

The first time was when she was three. Her mother enjoyed the fact that some of the shops in Diagon Alley participated in the quaint little tradition known as Boxing Day sales. Theo, ever the scholar, looked up the source of Boxing Day and explained it to their parents: the charming little idea that servants were excused for a day, or something like that. And thus, the Boxing Day tradition was born.

Lavender's mother cooked, refusing help from the rest of her family. It wasn't that Rosemary Brown was stupid; she was quite intelligent. It was just that when it came to cooking, well, she lacked experience after living a life of house-elves and chefs. The food was never inedible; it just looked horrid, which was enough to make her family feel rather sick. Pancakes were never just pancakes; they always had a little "twist" in it. And for some odd reason, her mother always had trouble with eggs.

Theo claimed that the event allowed him to be creative. After all, coming up with places to dump the food was rather difficult. If he was in a good mood, he'd help clear a bit of Lavender's plate as well. If he was in a poor mood, he would clear his plate, then gleefully watch Lavender eat some of her food before their father made a comment that she looked green and threw it out for her.

As for her father, he made comments about craving certain dishes at certain restaurants, though that only prompted her mother to try new things for the following year.

When Lavender was ready after downing several horrid potions the house-elves left on her dresser, she threw open the door to the hallway and stopped. Sniffing the air, she wondered if the house was on fire and no one bothered to tell her. Upon realising it was the breakfast, she felt slightly nauseous simply from imagining what it could possibly look like. Hesitantly, she ventured down the stairs and towards the breakfast room, which was different from the lunchroom in the home and the lunchroom in the gazebo in the garden. And that was different from the dining room that had the small table, and the dining room that had a long table to impress guests with.

Guests. Lovely. After muttering, "Please let it not be Draco and his family" under her breath for well over a minute, she opened the door.

Grey eyes stared at her.

"Lavender!" her mother beamed, carrying a smoking pot towards the round table that Cedric and her father were already seated at. Her father kept casting irritated glances at the door to the kitchen as he tried engaging Cedric in a conversation. Cedric's parents were nowhere in sight. "If you want to eat anything, feel free."

Lavender smiled and nodded, taking a seat next to Cedric. Through the French doors that led out to the deck, she could see that more snow had piled on during the night. How she longed to run out and bury herself in there somewhere. She tried to sound cheerful as she asked, "So, what are we having for breakfast, mum?"

Her mother had donned a once-white apron over her black robes, which now had flour among other things splattered across them. Normally, her hair was swept up in an elegant fashion and today was no exception. Only now it had some food—if one could call that food—bits in her hair. With a smile, she lifted up the lid of the pot and showed it to Lavender. "Pancakes."

Lavender's smile felt more forced. "Oh…" was all she could manage, looking away from the grey lumpy thing as she felt queasy. It certainly looked different from the purple eggplant thing last year. It wasn't entirely, grey; more like white with many black specks, almost like someone added pepper to it. Although mundane spices couldn't explain why the thing in the pot looked like it was alive.

Lavender glanced at Cedric, who was answering politely. She began to speak when he suddenly turned to look at her. His voice filled with concern, he asked, "Are you feeling better?"

"Y-yes," she managed to stammer. Dear Merlin, she was starting to sound like Quirrell. Something must be done to remedy this.

He broke into a smile.

Feeling obligated to say something, she randomly plucked something out of her brain, praying that it would be brilliant and witty. "W-where are your parents?"

The door the to kitchen swung open and Lavender could hear the sounds of the morning soap operas through the Wizarding Wireless Network amidst some strange scraping sound.

"Putting out a fire in the kitchen," Amos Diggory announced proudly, walking out with a smudge of soot on his face. "Shouldn't use that much grease for the eggs, right, Ced? He cooked a big breakfast for us last May after that ball at the Ministry." Strangely, though, his mouth kept moving though no sound came out, forming "It didn't work."

"Really?" Lavender's father asked, putting away his paper. There was a slight tone of resignation in his voice.

"It was nothing. It was just a recipe from-" Cedric began.

"But you still cooked it, right, son?" Mr. Diggory beamed, bumping Lavender on the head as he cuffed Cedric on the shoulder. "Oh, hi. Amos Diggory," he said, offering Lavender his hand.

"I'm Lavender," she replied, shaking it.

As he sat down, the man looked around. "Rosemary, where's Junior?"

"In Switzerland," Lavender's mother said, trying to scrape the pancake from the bottom of the pot. A bubbling grey lump started oozing onto the plate in front of Mr. Diggory. "We figured we'd let him do whatever he wanted, since he's going to be working for the Ministry when he graduates."

Lavender stared at the grey thing.

"Got accepted already?" Mr. Diggory asked, helping her out by prodding the "pancake" with a fork.

Her father shrugged, moving out of the way as Mrs. Diggory came by with a steaming pot with a handle poking out from it.

Immediately, Cedric stood up, reaching to help his mother, though she moved away from him. "You're just trying to throw it out the window. Sit down." She walked to Lavender's father first, saying, "Tell me when to stop, Basil," as she scooped up some eggs. A thin, pale yellow liquid ran off the sides of the ladle as she moved it towards him.

Lavender's father looked at it, slightly cringing. "Er…stop…" The first spoonful had barely touched the plate.

Nonetheless, she moved on to her husband. "Tell me when to-"

"Sweetheart, you know I'm on a diet…"

Satisfied that the grey gloop had successfully landed on Amos Diggory's plate, Lavender's mother swept off to the kitchen. Probably to make more.

After taking his seat again, Cedric allowed his mother to put a decent amount of eggs on the plate before he asked her to stop. A pale yellow liquid filled his plate, blackened bits of eggs floating in it.

"I'm still kind of sick, so I won't be having any," Lavender said, hoping to have a hint of regret in her voice as she rose slightly to peer into the pot. Most of the solids that were in the pot were put onto the plates, though something remained at the bottom.

Cedric's mother nodded, then served two other plates before heading back to the kitchen.

Lavender thought she heard her father curse softly as Cedric picked up a spoon to examine the fluid on his plate. "Isn't poisoning someone a violation of something, Mr. Diggory?" she asked, brows furrowing.

There was coughing from the adults at the table before she finally received a shaky "Yes, I believe it is" from Mr. Diggory as his shoulders quivered.

Her father used his chin to gesture at an open window and Cedric grabbed an empty goblet and poured all the liquid from his plate in there. He went to the window, taking the goblet with him. Mr. Diggory was having a difficult time cutting up the still bubbling pancake into small pieces. The small pieces also went in a goblet. With a sigh, Lavender's father simply pushed the contents of his plate into a separate goblet and left the room abruptly.

Giving up, Mr. Diggory picked up his plate and left the room as well.

Suddenly, Lavender realised why one of the toilets was plugged up last Boxing Day.

She liked Cedric. She really did. And it wasn't just because he made her feel all warm and gooey inside. He carried a good conversation about Quidditch teams that didn't end with an argument of "You're stupid!" "No, you're stupid!" "You're stupider!" "You're stupidest!" "You're stupiderest!" "See how stupid you are? ‘Stupiderest' isn't even a word, stupid!", and he was unbelievably nice. Another plus was that he didn't have pasty skin, pasty hair, pasty eyes, and a pasty personality. Alright, he might have pasty eyes by her definition of pasty eyes, but his eyes were just shining with life.

Watching him pick at the pancake that awaited him when he returned, she idly wondered if he could come over to her home more often. He was older than her, so he could probably help her with homework and stuff instead of arguing over who was more mentally insane or slapping tests down with the dumbest questions.

And he didn't swear.

"Lavender?" Cedric asked, as if he had been repeating her name for a while.

"Yeah?" she said distractedly.

"Your father said that you've met Aidan Lynch."

It hit her like a shockwave and sent her falling sideways out of her chair. She nearly fell into Cedric's lap and had she not been too preoccupied with being utterly mortified by the mention of the Aidan Lynch incident alone, she would have felt more embarrassed. "He did what?" she asked shrilly, trying to pick herself up from the floor.

Cedric stood up and gripped her hands, pulling her up. "Are you alright?"

Feeling her face grow more and more hot, Lavender looked down at her toes as she responded. "No." She snatched her hands away and ran out of the room.

--

Tugging her blanket closer to her chin, Lavender examined the ceiling, brows furrowing in curiosity. She never really noticed wooden tiles amidst the chandeliers before. As she stared, the cushions she was using as a pillow began shifting away from her and with a grumble, she pulled them back.

"You have two," Parvati said, yanking the bottom one out from Lavender, then hitting her on the head with it before taking it back to the couch Padma had already sprawled comfortably across. "You should have been around the club these past couple of days, Lavender. The desperation in there was truly pathetic."

"Cedric got several marriage proposals," Padma added, reaching into the jar of cookies on the coffee table separating the two couches. "They got down on their knees."

Parvati plopped onto the couch and sank in, hugging the cushion. With sideways glance at her twin and a smirk, she said, "Padma proposed twice."

"Parvati proposed three times," Padma pointed out as she fished a chocolate chip cookie.

Parvati motioned for Padma to pass the jar. "Pansy didn't propose and just went on following Adrian and asking him to dance with her until he finally agreed."

"That was really pathetic," Padma commented.

"I know," Parvati replied, reaching for the jar. "But it worked."

"Shucks," Lavender grumbled sarcastically, "and I've just been stuck at home, bored out of my mind, arguing with my dad about being melodramatic, and being forced to read absolute crap." She sat up, letting out a huff of breath. "Did you know I got this stupid book about an armless Muggle and I'm rereading the book for the third time and I still don't understand the book and the Muggle isn't armless and instead, I'm just scarred for life now?"

"No," Padma said uncertainly, "but we do know now."

Parvati paused in sorting for the cookie of her choice. "Why are you reading a book about Muggles?" she asked, wrinkling her nose in disdain.

"Hence the ‘scarred for life' part," Lavender muttered, falling back onto the cushion.

"Are you going to the ball with anyone?" Padma asked, rubbing her hands together to get rid of the cookie crumbs.

"No," Lavender said with a sigh. Her eyebrows rose as Parvati and Padma exchanged knowing glances.

"We thought you'd be going with-"

"I'm not."

"Oh, we'd never imagine that it'd be your idea. It's always your parents," Parvati said in a tone that made Lavender wonder if the topic was frequently discussed at the Patil household. "I mean, completely disregarding the fact that you two hate each other, it'd be a perfect match."

"One of the old wizarding families that's fallen from grace working its way back up…" Padma began.

"Another old wizarding family that's powerful and needs someone equal…" Parvati continued, finally pulling out a cookie.

"From a political standpoint, it's brill-"

"So," Lavender said loudly, "who are you going to the ball with?"

"A bunch of younger kids asked us," Padma said with a shrug. "And I mean kids."

Parvati replaced the jar back onto the table. "And I've decided that we should have a rule that we don't date people shorter than us. Younger is okay, but shorter? No."

"I thought you said you weren't shallow," Lavender commented.

"I'm not shallow. I just have standards," Parvati retorted.

"Harry's shorter than you."

"I make exceptions."

"Ah."