Tales of the Battle

Epiphany

I watch Harry and Luna head out of the room, and then turn back to see how Cho Chang is reacting.

It was obvious that Cho was looking forward to going off to the Ravenclaw Common Room with Harry. She is definitely not happy; her disappointment is openly etched across her face.

Ginny, however, is looking very pleased with herself. She suggested Harry take Luna, and Harry agreed.

Cho is wasting her time; she has got absolutely no chance with Harry. She's a Ravenclaw! Is she really stupid enough to think that she has? Harry could probably have any girl he wanted (except the ice-maiden Susan, of course). I quite fancy him myself; even though I have no doubt that he would be a lot of work. But it makes no difference, he doesn't like me. I know that for a fact, because the famous "Chosen One" has never been very good at hiding his emotions.

Harry is only interested in three girls: Ginny, Luna and Hermione. In that order, I think, because it's obvious that he doesn't actually fancy Hermione. He treats her like one of the boys, he always has. But then, Hermione has always acted like one of the boys. She doesn't seem to care about her appearance. I am better looking than she is, and better made up, and I take care to dress nicely, too. Not that any of those things did me any good with Ron.

Ginny is looking smug. I'm not sure that she should. I suspect that Ginny doesn't realise that Harry is a lot fonder of Luna than he is of Cho. I don't think that Harry fancies Luna, but he likes her. I have no idea why. She's another strange one; she has no fashion sense at all. Perhaps he likes her because she doesn't scare him, which is odd because the Lovegood terrifies me. I never know what she is going to say or do. Luna even frightens Neville, bless him.

Neville Longbottom, our brave and noble leader. He's really quite cute; rugged and rather fanciable. He doesn't have a girlfriend, either. He's available. Unfortunately, I have a boyfriend.

------------

I am reminded of my first year at Hogwarts. My mind drifts back to my very first night in my new dormitory.

'I know we got Potter, and yet another Weasley, but who's the useless little fat kid, Parvati?' I asked.

'I think he's called Nigel something, Lavender.'

'He's called Neville Longbottom, and he's actually very nice,' our squeaky voiced and buck-toothed dorm-mate told us.

I smile to myself at the memory. Is the Granger girl NEVER wrong?

------------

For Harry, Ginny is the one. We all know that they "split up" after Dumbledore's funeral, because Ginny told us so at the beginning of this year. Of course they did! But, that's what you wanted us to believe, Ginny, and that's fine.

I actually believed Ginny when she first told us, we all did. She really is an extremely good liar. But later, whenever there were rumours of bad news about Harry, you could see the fear and the love in her eyes. She's got it real bad.

I wasn't certain that it went both ways, not until a few minutes ago. But I saw the way Harry looked at her when she arrived; "A look of desperate longing", that's hoe they describe it in the romantic novels I read, and that was Harry, looking at Ginny. Until I saw those two look at each other I wasn't certain that "desperate longing" even existed. I know now.

I saw the way that Ginny reacted to Cho's suggestion, too. Harry and Ginny are crazy about each other and, when they are together, they simply can't hide that fact. Perhaps that's why they stayed apart. Something else is obvious, too. Harry wants Ginny to be safe, and he doesn't care about the rest of us.

That's not fair of me.

He does care, that's why he's here. He's here because he would die for us all. But if he lives and Ginny dies, he'll be heartbroken; I can see that. I fancied Ron something rotten, above and beyond common sense, certainly. And he broke my heart.

It was tragic! It was the end of my world!

At least that's what I told Parvati at the time, but I got over it after a few weeks. Somehow, I don't think that Harry would ever get over losing Ginny. I wonder how that feels? It must be wonderful--and terrifying--to feel that way about someone. Last year I deluded myself into thinking that I felt that way about Ron, and this year, I did the same thing again with Seamus. But I already know that I don't feel that way about Seamus, not any longer.

I'm sorry, my bruised and battered lover; I like you, and I thought I loved you, but I don't feel desperate longing. I am truly sorry, and when this is over and your poor beaten body is healed I'm going to tell you that it's over between us.

I turn my gaze to Ron and Hermione.

Hermione, you're supposed to be clever, but you don't know everything. You certainly don't know how to attract boys. Wear some make-up, get some decent clothes, don't shout at them and don't lecture them. It's your fault that you and Ron still aren't together, because you fancy him and he certainly fancies you. You are a couple of idiots.

As I am watching Hermione, she is watching me. I wonder what goes on inside that annoying, frightening, calculating brain. I turn my attention to Ron. And that's when I really, truly know that whatever we had has gone. He sees me looking, and lowers his head. He can barely look at me, he's embarrassed. That could be useful. I could make you squirm, Ron, but I won't, because although those giddy, dizzying feelings have fled, I still miss those lovely long, enveloping arms.

I was so immature last year, I know that now. And so was Ron. Not any longer. He's grown up; he is serious, and not afraid to give Harry advice. Then something else strikes me. As I watch Ron and Harry I realise that, unlike most of us, Ron has never been afraid to give Harry advice. I wonder what Ron is saying to his friend, and what that bruised and battered trio have been through. Even more than us, by the way they look.

------------

I remember the beginning of this year, when we'd been told that Ron had spattergroit and wouldn't be at school.

'What on earth did you see in the idiot, Lavender?' Parvati asked. She doesn't like Ron, she thinks that he's an "ignorant fool". Actually, when she says that, I think that she's simply voicing Padma's opinion.

'He is an idiot, but he's really quite cute and he's funny and he's tall, very tall. I like tall men, Parvati.'

'So why choose Seamus? He's not much taller than me,' Parvati asked me.

That was a good question, and I still don't know the answer. I think that it was because I wanted a boyfriend, because a girl should have a boyfriend. And anyway, Seamus has always fancied me, ever since the Yule Ball. Of course, he was one of only two seventh-year Gryffindor boys available at the beginning of the year.

I had a choice of two, and I still managed to choose the wrong one. What does that say about me?

------------

Oliver Wood has just arrived. He's tall and very good-looking, but he's holding Katie Bell's hand. Who are all of these people? Where have they come from and why are they here?

They're here to fight, because this can't go on. Poor Michael Corner would have died in that cell if Neville and the boys hadn't rescued him from the Carrows. They were just starting on Seamus when we rescued him. If we hadn't, he'd have been next. Welcome to the school of torture.

I hope that Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle rot in hell; the Bulstrode bitch, too!

Padma and Parvati are talking about combat tactics, wondering what will happen. It's late evening and it is the day after my eighteenth birthday. I should be sitting on my bed in my dorm, talking about boys and clothes and make-up and normal stuff. Instead, I'm hiding in this room and I'm discussing the best methods to use against killers and criminals while we are fighting for our lives.

We celebrated my birthday in this room. I'm eighteen years old and I don't know whether I'll reach nineteen.

------------

I think back to my last day in the school, the Muggle Studies lesson, just over a week ago.

'I want to join the Muggle-born Registration Commission when I leave school, Professor,' Pug-face simpered.

'An excellent ambition, Miss Parkinson! And what about you, Brown?' the She-Carrow asked.

'I want to be an Auror. I want to track down and capture stupid, fat, ugly, and evil witches who spread lies and torture children. You're top of my list. Bulstrode is next,' I told her.

I had finally had enough of their smirking superiority and I cracked. Only the night before they had captured Seamus (who'd fled a week earlier) and they had him locked in the dungeon. I was already teetering on the edge, and Parkinson's and Carrow's snide sniping finally pushed me over.

I had my wand ready. The foul Fury always left her wand on the table while she was telling horrible lies, or "teaching" as she liked to call it. When she made a dive for her wand I stuck it to the table with a sticking charm. That was a mistake, I should have summoned it. If I had she wouldn't have been able to torture any more little children with it.

'Densaugeo,' I shouted, hitting the Bulstrode behemoth squarely in the face with my jinx. It was one of my best; her teeth grew so quickly that they actually pierced her desk and lifted her feet from the ground. Parkinson went for her wand next; I simply Stunned her. Pasty-face Malfoy wasn't moving; he was simply looking scared. That's all he's done since he came back after Easter, so I ignored him and blasted his two ugly cronies, Thick and Thicker.

I looked at Parvati, but she shook her head and mouthed, "Padma! Go!" She wouldn't leave her twin, I realised, and the Ravenclaws were in Charms with the Hufflepuffs. I got out of that classroom as fast as I could.

As I ran through the corridor I worried about Parvati. She was now the only seventh-year Gryffindor left in the school.

'Expecto Patronum,' I shouted as I fled, sending a message to Neville. I needed to get into the room and I couldn't do it without him.

'Basement, near the Potions classroom,' Neville's Patronus told me seconds later. I cursed, I'd been heading upstairs.

What would we do without the lovely Neville?

------------

As I sit in this room, my home for a week, I recall our escape from the school (though we are still in the school) and our subsequent rescue of Seamus. I suddenly realise that I meant what I said to Carrow: "I want to be an Auror." I really do want to track down and capture Dark wizards. I want to do something important, I want to be someone. I want to be a brave Gryffindor like Harry and Ron and Hermione, Like Neville and Seamus.

Harry and Luna are back and they have news for us. Snape is gone, the Carrows are captured, and we're fighting. We stand and leave our hide-out for the Great Hall. That's when I notice that Luna and Dean are holding hands.

Just when I thought that my life could not get any stranger, Luna Lovegood and Dean Thomas are holding hands!

oooooooOOOOOOOooooooo

Fall

There are Death Eaters and their allies inside the school.

I'm standing on the balcony alongside Parvati and Padma and we are blasting spells down into the Entrance Hall. Parvati has just hit a Death Eater with a Full Body Bind and we think that we are doing well. Then we hear a scream from behind us.

I turn and see a girl collapse; she's a Ravenclaw, a friend of Padma's. I have never seen so much blood.

A bloodstained someone stands over the girl and growls.

No not someone, something bestial, a monster. Fenrir Greyback parries my hex, and Parvati's and Padma's too. He licks his lips.

'Hello, pretty ones,' he says. His voice is quiet, but somehow it carries over the noise of the battle below.

'Tasty, tasty, little morsels.' He leers at us. 'Who wants to be first?' He licks a bloody claw.

The twins are between me and the werewolf. Padma is staring at the dead girl, staring at the still flowing blood, and sobbing; she isn't concentrating on the danger. I must protect my friends. I raise my wand and charge towards Greyback. He uses his wand to parry, not to attack. He wants to get physical, to bite, to scratch, to tear flesh. Parvati screams as Greyback leaps towards her.

I have already decided that he is not going to reach her. I will not allow him to hurt her. Unthinking instinct takes over and I jump, too. Greyback and I collide in mid-air and we tumble. I hit the balustrade. Weakened by spells, the stonework collapses with a loud crack and we are falling.

My abdomen is on fire, and my robes feel wet. The beast has clawed me. As I fall, I watch my attacker fall too. He is now several feet away. Unlike me he went over the balustrade not through it. His unimpeded trajectory carries him almost across the hall. Through my pain I watch my torn robes wafting, they are drenched with my blood. I am flailing, falling uncontrolled. Greyback is twisting, cat-like, poised and already ready. I land very badly and I hear my own bones breaking as I hit the ground. He lands on all fours like the beast he is and charges towards me.

------------

Bizarrely, as I lie on the floor in pain, I remember a Quidditch conversation with my first real boyfriend.

'Have you ever fallen off your broom, Won-won?'

'Loads of times, Lavender.'

'Does it hurt?'

'No, falling off a broom doesn't hurt.'

'It doesn't?'

'No, it's the sudden stop when you hit the ground; that hurts a lot.'

Oh, how we laughed.

------------

I am smiling at that memory as I try to raise my head, but moving is agony. I decide to stop moving and that's when I discover that not moving is agony, too. Seeing my own blood on my robes is worrying, but Greyback is charging to attack and I am too dazed to defend myself. Soon there will be no more pain and nothing more for me to worry about. Then, suddenly, someone blasts Greyback and he flies away from me. Before he can regain his feet Professor Trelawney hits him with a crystal ball.

She didn't tell me about any of this in Divination. I wonder why? Why didn't she know about this battle? I'm confused. I decide that it is finally time for me to close my eyes.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

'Don, Don! She's awake!' I hear my mother's voice the moment I struggle to open my eyes. Pink and green blurs slowly resolve into green walls and my parents' faces. Mum is holding one of my hands. I feel Dad's beefy and calloused hands envelop the other one.

'How do you feel, Princess Vanda?' Dad asks gruffly.

Princess Vanda! Merlin, he hasn't called me that for--how long--a dozen years at least. I must be in a bad way.

'Like I've been disembowelled by a werewolf,' I tell him honestly. He starts to cry.

He's my dad, he doesn't cry. He picks me up and dusts me down and hugs me and kisses me better. Why isn't he kissing me better? I want to be better.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I cannot stand. Standing causes the curse wounds to reopen, not that they are fully closed anyway. I am very slowly bleeding to death. Blood Replenishing potions will keep me alive for years, if this is living.

But I'm Lavender Brown. I'm always cheerful so I tell my parents and my friends that I'm fine; no, really, I'm fine, honest. Seamus wants me to know that he's going to stand by me, that he will always be there for me. I tell him that I am likely to be stuck in this wheelchair until I die and, anyway, I was going to finish with him after the battle. But he's a stubborn fool and he does not believe me. He thinks I'm being foolishly noble, and he stays, despite the fact that I tell him that he's the one being foolishly noble.

I go to the funerals and try to convince myself that I am better off than Colin and Fred and the dozens of others who were killed. But am I? Curse scars never heal fully and mine are deeper than Bill Weasley's.

Ron's eldest brother visits me and tries to tell me that things will get better. He must have been gorgeous before he got those scars. I used to be pretty once, too.

And always, Seamus fusses. Why won't he leave me alone? I cannot walk, but that does not mean that I've suddenly become helpless and stupid.

Everyone I meet asks me, "Are you okay?" and I always answer, "Yes," because I am okay. No one ever asks me, "Are you happy?" Okay and happy are certainly not the same thing, and I don't think that I could answer "yes" to that one.

Would I be better off dead? I don't think so; I think that this is better, just.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I apply for a job in the Auror Office, but they turn me down. Harry pleads my case, but I am in a wheelchair so I cannot even take part in the physical tests. Head Auror Robards will not allow me onto the course. I tell the old fool that he couldn't pass the physical himself these days. He needs a stick to walk and he's overweight. Unsurprisingly, that does not do my chances any good.

Parvati visits often; she is training to be a Healer. I think that she wants to find a cure for me. I hope that she can, and I try to survive on that hope.

The ice-maiden visits, too. Susan Bones shares her Auror course notes with me and somehow, for some reason, I become her study partner. I tell her that if she fancies me, she's out of luck because I'm only interested in blokes. She laughs at me.

"Not everything in the world is about boys and sex, Lavender," Susan tells me.

"No, there are clothes and fashion and make-up to think about, too!" I tell her, and she laughs again. We argue about having fun and working hard.

Susan argues with me, how wonderful that is. Not even Parvati argues with me these days and I miss it. Everyone is frightened of offending me.

I am a porcelain figure, dropped and broken and not mended properly. Everyone thinks that I'm fragile. I discover that I can be vile to people, and they take it, because "it's the wounds talking". But Merlin, I miss the friction, the barbs and the jokes and the banter and the flirting. I really miss the flirting. No one flirts with me anymore, not even Seamus.

Susan always argues; we disagree about almost everything from boys to hairstyles. She wore a plait at school, right up until the day she left. Now her hair is in a bun. A bun exactly like McGonagall's, for pity's sake! She's gone from little girl to old maid with nothing in between! But in between our arguments I learn a lot from Susan about Auror work. I can't do any of the physical stuff, but I could pass the rest of the Auror course, I'm certain of that.

I keep trying to fix Susan up with a bloke, but she resists every attempt. She wants to "wait for the right one to arrive." I tell her that boys aren't buses and she should be out there hunting, and having fun while she does. She tells me that she is having fun.

People, even Parvati, start calling Susan my friend; perhaps she is. Susan does not fuss like Seamus. She's blunt and honest and never condescending and she even tells me off when I try to use my wheelchair as an excuse.

She makes me feel better.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Almost two years later, I walk up to Mum and Dad's front door; they are waiting for me. Dad looks worried.

'How are you, Lavender?' he asks.

'The good news is that I've found the cure for werewolf-curse scars, the bad news is that I'm a...'

'I know what you are, Princess.' He interrupts me, because he doesn't want to hear the word. He doesn't want his daughter to say the words "I'm a werewolf." I knew that it would be like this, I was warned.

'How are you, better, or worse?' he asks.

'Better, I think,' I tell him.

He hugs me, and we both start to cry.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Two weeks later I am at a Ministry Ball with Seamus and he's trying to make me feel guilty. He's waited for me for two years. Now that I'm better, he's had his reward, but I still do not want to be his girlfriend. Two wasted years; I warned you, Seamus, I simply do not fancy you, sorry. I've told you dozens of times. You thought that it was "the wounds talking," but the words were coming out of my mouth.

At the ball, I get rather drunk and I meet a handsome and broad-shouldered wizard. His name is Tony, although that no longer matters. He buys me drinks and dances with me and is taller than Seamus (but not as tall as Ron). He takes me home with him and I think that Seamus has finally got the message. Susan tells me that I'm a fool, and Parvati agrees, but they are wrong. I know what I'm doing.

Mum and Dad (especially Dad) are not happy about the headlines, but I'm feeling better, I think.