The Woes of Lavender Brown

*****

3: Continuation

Lavender and Parvati ran faster than the Knight Bus getting Hermione ready for her debut on Monday morning. Lavender, readying herself as well, went down to make super-certain that Ron and Harry were waiting for her to come down for breakfast. They were already in the common room, and so was Dean.

"You're wearing your new accessories," he observed, stressing the word to show her he was learning.

Lavender winked. "And my new undies."

"But you didn't buy…" Dean's eyes went as wide as bread-and-butter plates. "Oh!"

"Kidding," she reassured him.

"Bugger," he said with a friendly grin. "Where's Patti?"

"Oh…she'll be down in a tick."

Hermione came first, new hair bouncing neatly in its coiffure. Although Hermione could not wear her new clothes to classes, she could, and had, accessorised to her advantage.

It was a proud victory in Lavender's and Parvati's eyes.

Harry glanced at Patti and Lavender, who were trying not to grin like Cheshire cats. "You two get into the sugar early this morning?" He, clearly, had noticed nothing different about Hermione.

"What's with Patti being in a good mood?" Dean wondered.

"Been up since early," Lavender told him. "She's had time to wake up." Ron was frowning at Hermione unhappily. Parvati and Lavender got her out of there.

"He just stared," Hermione moaned as the portrait hole swung closed behind them. "And glared."

"He probably just thinks you're trying to impress someone else," Parvati told her reassuringly.

"That doesn't help!" she wailed. "I knew this was a bad idea."

"No, that's a good thing," Lavender insisted. "If Ron thinks you have a beau or an interest, he'll get all jealous like with Krum at the Yule Ball that time – yes, we heard the argument as well as the tears, luv – and then there won't be one!"

"I still don't get it."

"Well, see, if Ron's jealous and he acts on his feelings, then it has a happy ending, right?"

"What if he doesn't react that way? That was two years ago!"

"Yes, and last year he gave you perfume for Christmas," Parvati put in knowingly. "Trust me, it works either way."

"Okay," assented Hermione doubtfully.

Ron had stopped frowning by the time the boys had followed them down to the Great Hall. Ginny Weasley put her fingers up to touch Hermione's shiny, shaped curls briefly, stole a glance at her youngest brother, and went back to breakfast, determinedly straight-faced after exchanging knowing looks with her ex-boyfriend, Dean. Ron didn't notice - he was too busy dishing up eggs for himself, Harry and Hermione.

"Pass us the pumpkin juice, would you?" asked Seamus of Parvati. She dumped it in front of him, setting it down so roughly that a little bit sloshed out. Lavender stifled a giggle.

In Potions, Parvati and Lavender commandeered the desk behind Malfoy's. He would be a much longer project, they agreed, but there was no reason not to start on it straight away. Lavender wasn't wearing the new robes, obviously, but she had done her long, honey-blonde hair differently.

Surprisingly, Malfoy noticed even as they filed into the classroom. "Hiding a bump, Purple?" he sneered. Lavender and Patti exchanged smiles.

"Yeah, it looks like something icky landed on your head and stopped there," squealed Pansy Parkinson.

Lavender decided she wanted to reply with a witty comment. "Better than yours, Parkinson. Ever heard of shampoo?" She sniffed in a derogatory manner. "At least I made an effort."

Pansy smirked. "Not everyone has my natural beauty. Poor Lavender - you're always left looking like a try-hard." The Slytherin swept past them to sit with Malfoy.

"At least I haven't been mooning over the same guy for five and a bit years," Lavender sniped, settling at the desk behind them.

Pansy turned around. "What?"

"You, and him." Lavender jerked her head at Malfoy, who was now ignoring her in favour of setting out his Potions kit. "You'll never get him, you know. You're too ugly. Malfoy likes pretty things, don't you, Malfoy?"

Draco twisted around in shock, and he stared directly at Lavender for a second, speechless. Lavender beamed. Not only did she have his attention, she had him in a catch-22. He couldn't say he liked 'pretty things' without insulting Pansy for never dating her, and he couldn't say he didn't like them without insulting himself.

Someone behind Lavender snorted with repressed laughter at Malfoy's blank expression. She didn't have to turn around to know it was Harry.

Snape swooped down on the chatting group. "Potter, you have a joke to share with the class?"

"No, professor, but Lavender just made a good one." Harry was too giggly to think of not dragging her down with him, too. She gave him a wide-eyed look.

"Miss Brown?" grated Snape.

Lavender sighed huffily. "Professor, I didn't know you were so into comedy."

Snape sneered at her. "Detention, I think, might do you some good."

Lavender shrugged. "All right, when?"

"Miss Brown, detention is not a thing to be taken lightly."

"Neither is personal presentation," she told Snape without thinking, still cross with Pansy, "but some of us skimp a little on the shampoo."

Snape looked livid. Too late, Lavender realised the professor thought she was talking about him.

Help came from an unexpected source. Draco laughed once, loudly like he couldn't help himself, and then clapped a hand very obviously over his mouth, eyes stretching above it.

Snape rounded down on him. "You find something funny, Mr Malfoy?"

Malfoy, never a shrinking violet, commented truthfully, "Well, she was spot on with that comment, sir, even though technically I don't think she was talking about you." He even had the audacity to smirk afterwards.

Now, that was a direct insult to Snape, Lavender thought. Snape was positively enraged as he issued the Slytherin prefect his detention for rudeness to a professor. Draco shrugged nonchalantly and handed Snape his homework. "Is it too presumptuous to give you this now, professor?" A vein twitched in Snape's forehead.

Lavender waited all lesson for Snape to explode fully, but he didn't, not even afterwards when he made Lavender and Malfoy stay to assign their detentions. "Tomorrow night, seven o'clock," Snape grated at them. "You will meet me here."

Draco looked confused. "But, sir, I have Quiddi-"

"Perhaps you should have thought of that previously, Mr Malfoy. You may go."

On the way out of the dungeons, Malfoy purposely collided with Lavender, knocking her out of his path, growling, "This is all your fault, Brown."

Lavender tried not to skip as she made her way to Transfiguration.

*****

"Is Vicky coming to visit?" demanded Ron.

"So Snape gave me and Malfoy detention at the same time," Lavender told Parvati at lunch.

"No, he isn't," Hermione snapped back.

"Ooh, that's promising. What are you going to wear?"

"Please don't have this conversation," begged Harry.

"Pass the pumpkin juice," asked Seamus. Parvati dumped it in front of him, not quite as roughly as that morning.

"Seven, tomorrow. He said .‘meet' down in Potions so I don't know that we're staying in the lab."

"Is that Malfoy or Snape?" asked Dean, an odd note in his voice.

Parvati rolled her eyes. "Snape. Duh. What do you reckon you'll do, Lav?"

Lavender shrugged. "No idea. Probably something horrible, like scour the castle for bugs for him to use in his icky potions." Lavender shuddered.

"What do you like less," Dean posed, "mice or bugs?"

"Spiders," said Ron, and that settled that matter. "So who is the new hair for, then, Hermione?"

"Me. It doesn't need to be for anyone else," returned Hermione smugly, then put her back to Ron to talk to Lavender. "Was Malfoy livid?"

"Yeah, he sort of shoved me on the way out." Lavender reached for the ham.

"He did?" Dean snapped indignantly, sharing a look with Seamus, who frowned in fierce agreement.

"No," warned Parvati. "We do not go pick fights because people do nasty things," she reminded the boys. "We've talked about this."

"We have?" said Seamus innocently. "Funny, I don't quite recall.…"

Lavender had the distinct impression Patti tried to kick him under the table, but it was Neville who yelped.

"Oops, sorry, Neville!" cried Parvati. "I'm sorry!"

"Ow," Neville told her. "Ow. Do not do that again, please."

"Sorry!"

"I never got that talk," Harry said darkly. "I can go beat up Malfoy for you, Lavender."

"Didn't you get booted off the Quidditch team last time, Harry?" Dean put in casually.

"Oh, yeah."

"No, there's got to be someone," Ron concluded finally, having thought much and not heard any of what had passed. "If it was just for you, you would have done it ages ago."

"Two responses here, Ronald," replied Parvati tartly. "A) She didn't say just for her; B) People change. Get over it. Hermione has new hair. Deal."

"Can I beat up Malfoy?" Harry asked Lavender hopefully. She shook her head, and he looked disappointed. "Why not?"

"Because you got booted off the Quidditch team last time," Lavender replied sensibly. "Juice this way, please, Seamus."

"Isn't it nice that we're all involved in a conversation at once?" reflected Hermione. "Why don't we do this more often?"

"Because Patti gets confused about who she's meant to be booting," Neville replied sourly.

"I said I was sorry," apologised Parvati.

*****

Detention consisted, for Lavender, of reducing softened moonstones to powder manually while Snape graded papers at his desk and Draco prepared Sleeping Draughts. It was, Lavender decided, whacking the mallet down on the next moonstone, the most fun detention she had ever received. Not only did she get to be incredibly noisy, but she also got to look at Draco Malfoy whenever Snape wasn't watching, and there was something satisfying about making the small stones crack into itty-bitty pieces.

WHACK! went Lavender's spelled mallet. Scritch scritch went Snape's quill. Draco made very little noise, chopping up ingredients and gently stirring the fiddly potion.

When Snape released them, around midnight, Draco looked as tired as Lavender felt, but she bet his arms weren't aching with lactic acid. Oh, well, thought the girl, at least she had made up for missing tonight's run around the lake with Dean (who, true to his word, had been refusing to do the Lavender-imposed .‘chip laps'). In the corridor, safely out of Snape's sight, Lavender shook out her arms. Draco sneered at her.

"Bit too much for you, witch?"

"No. Grateful for the workout, actually. That was heaps of fun. Didn't you have fun?" asked Lavender sweetly.

Malfoy was silent for a moment as they walked up the corridor. "That was a cool comment to Snape about his hair," he said unexpectedly.

"Not a bad follow-up by you, either," Lavender replied equably, expecting it to turn into an insult.

"Nice bite for a Gryffindor. Didn't know there was so much malevolence in your entire house," Draco sniped.

"Careful, Malfoy - that was almost a compliment."

"So what?" he grated hostilely.

"Didn't know there was so much niceness in all Slytherin house put together." Lavender held her chin up and looked at him condescendingly through lowered lashes.

They reached the stairs and Malfoy stopped. Lavender stopped, too, for a moment, not really knowing why. Malfoy seemed to hesitate.

"That was a good call," he offered almost shyly.

"Thanks," said Lavender.

"Spot on with Parkinson, too. I do like .‘pretty things', as you put it, and she really doesn't make the cut. I don't care who you tell that to," he added defensively, flicking his head to get his hair out of his eyes. This late in the day, it was becoming disarrayed. Lavender's fingers itched to straighten it, but Malfoy was bound to react badly if she did.

"I saw you staring at me during that," Malfoy snapped.

"Then you must have been looking back," she returned coolly.

"That doesn't mean anything, you know. I look at Potter, too, but anyone who says I'm attracted to him is going to have an extra dent in their head," he growled.

"I didn't say that."

His mouth tightened, perhaps realising he had revealed more than he meant to.

"You think I'm attracted to you, Malfoy?" Lavender asked flatly.

"Aren't you?" Direct questions he could deal with.

"So what if I am?"

"So what if you are. Doesn't make any difference." Grey eyes flicked down the hall briefly and back to Lavender. "Well?"

"Well, what?"

"Are you or not, woman? I'm not waiting all bloody night for an answer."

Something in Lavender flat-out refused to tell him the truth. "You're very arrogant, you know," she snapped at him, "to think that I would be attracted to someone who insults my friends, harasses my housemates, and is generally a prig to anyone who crosses his path."

"What a speech. I take that as a .‘no'?" Lavender ignored his response and started up the stairs. "Do I take that as a .‘yes'? Brown! Answer me!"

Lavender smiled to herself as she climbed the many stairs to Gryffindor Tower, leaving Draco Malfoy standing alone in the dungeons.

*****

"How was it?" whispered Parvati as she entered their dorm and readied for bed.

"Mmwah-hun-ha," moaned Lavender as she pushed all the throw pillows to one side of the bed and climbed in. It probably wasn't a real word, she mused, but on the other hand, it was a perfect description of her evening.

*****