Chapter Text
Chapter 1: Rebirth.
As death claimed me, I felt nothing at all—only a pallid numbness, a hush where pain ought to be. Yet nothing stung quite like the frustration and anger that followed, as I hovered unseen, watching the world I’d left behind continue on its way.
Family, friends, classmates—all passed over my memory with no more than a moment’s silence. Their lives knit back together, their laughter spilled over coffee and clinked against wine glasses, and not once did anyone pause to remember me, not really. It was a bitter revelation: just how plain and forgettable I had been. Not a ripple left in anyone’s cup.
It broke me, it did. There’s a special cruelty in bearing witness to your own eclipse. No purpose lingered for my ghostly tether, no answer to why death would leave me stranded here, forced to watch other hearts flutter on, gleaming as if I had never mattered.
The ache ebbed, and after a time, the numbness returned. With it came a dull peace that let me drift far from the noise and the ache. I wandered the deep forests and remote valleys, became a wraith among wild things. I saw lakes dusted with mist, and mountains flaring gold at dusk—beauty so fierce it tugged something in me brighter than sorrow.
Then, one twilight, I stumbled upon an abandoned cottage for sale in some quiet pocket of Wales. Something delicate and hopeful stirred. I had died at eighteen—so young, so untried—but what if death had missed me? What life might have grown from the roots of that cottage, had I but lived?
I asked myself the question, and for the first time since dying, felt a flicker of excitement for the ghost of a future that never happened. I floated through the empty rooms, letting my mind paint each space:
“There—” I indicated a sunlit corner—“would be a couch, soft and moss-green, blanketed by throws I’d sew myself.” By the crooked window, a wooden apothecary cabinet for my threads and thoughts. Dreams scattered like starlight on weary floorboards.
By the staircase, I imagined a gallery wall—pictures upon pictures—yet the vision faltered. Whose faces would grace those frames? Only mine? How lonely, how small that future suddenly seemed.
I drifted outside, shaken free from my reverie. A broken mirror rested against the cottage wall, glass cloudy and webbed with cracks. I stared into it, expected nothing. There was no reflection—no hint of my shape—yet I knew, somewhere deep, that I was present.
And, impossibly, I began to cry. I cried for every possibility, for the tender lives I never lived, for the gentle peace I almost found. Grief unspooled and left me hollow, and with that emptying, something settled.
Perhaps this was what I needed, after all—a simple, clean admission that yes, I was gone. That this world, beautiful and painful and vast, would spin on without me.
And in that quiet, something softer swelled—a hush of acceptance, like new grass under morning rain. The ache dulled and faded, and for the first time, being forgotten felt less like a wound and more like a release. Everything, at last, was finished. And I was ready to rest.
--
‘Lavender Brown was a silly, sentimental girl—loud, passionate, and blind even with the truth burning her eyes. That was how I would describe my seventeen-year-old self. Or if you prefer crude words, I was a stupid, fucking bitch.’
--
“Lavender.” My mother’s voice slices into the daydream, sharp as a knife. She stares at me across the table with that familiar curl of disdain. I flinch, mutter an apology, and rise so quickly I nearly topple precious Olly’s dessert pie. I don’t look back. Not at my father’s disappointed silence, nor my mother’s fury rattling the air behind me. I bolt, lock the door of my bedroom, and breathe only when my back hits the wood.
The quiet doesn’t comfort me. My mind sits in a heavy, buzzing numbness. Because I know the truth.
Somehow, impossibly, I’ve come back.
Back before I died.
Back before the Death Eaters marched Hogwarts into a nightmare.
Back before I was torn, bleeding, forgotten.
Back to Christmas, 1997.
I force myself to the mirror.
The girl looking back at me isn’t the one I last remember. Her skin is soft with youth, unmarked by exhaustion. No nights of shivering in a hospital bed. No haunted eyes. Just Lavender—foolish, talkative, clingy Lavender, too desperate for love, too blind to humiliation. The Lavender who thought Ron Weasley was forever when he barely thought of her at all.
Second night of Christmas holiday. Same suffocating ritual with my parents—their gaudy little parties and sharper-than-glass conversations. Every word from them meant to chip away at me until I was no one but their disappointed daughter. Nothing new there.
I notice the bead necklace on the dresser. The ugly, clashing string I’d spent hours weaving with devotion. I sent it already—or rather, I would. A pitiful offering to Ronald Weasley, my Won-Won, the boy who soon would hand me my first real heartbreak, my humiliation. The necklace was always meant to be the beginning of the end.
I wince at the memory, sighing. “Can’t even blame him.” It’s true—I was suffocating. Overbearing. Possessive. Jealous, loud, foolish… but gods, I loved him. I gave him everything—heart, time, every ounce of warmth in me. And in the end, all it did was make me pathetic.
But I am not her anymore. That silly Lavender died the night Greyback’s teeth ripped into her.
This time, I know better.
Perhaps Ron was never my fate. Perhaps love was never my strong suit at all. But fate has granted me this second chance, and I know my purpose as keenly as I know my own name.
I will be remembered.
Not as Ronald Weasley’s embarrassing ex. Not as the girl who squealed too loudly and clung too tightly, only to die another faceless Gryffindor casualty.
No. Lavender Brown will be remembered as Lavender Brown.
I press my hand against the glass of the window, watching the December sky stretch endless into the black. My reflection, so deceptively young, whispers back the truth I already know.
“I’ll do anything.”
The vow is soft at first, but fuses like iron in my chest.
Anything to carve my name into their memories.
Anything to stop that ending.
Anything to keep myself from dying as that pathetic little girl.
And for the first time, I don’t flinch from the thought. If I must make choices that are ruthless, cunning, sly—the kind people whisper about in fear rather than mock in laughter—then so be it. Better feared than forgotten.
This time, Lavender will not die a joke.
--
“Bloody hell,” Ron muttered, flinching as the barn owl dropped its burden into his lap—a lurid, glittery necklace that practically screamed Lavender. Harry snorted at the look on his face. Without a second thought, Ron shoved the garish thing straight out the open window.
“Ronald!” Hermione gasped, half a shriek, half outrage. “That was a gift! She made it herself—what is wrong with you?”
Ron cringed but puffed up in defense, as though the ugly beads were a personal attack on his dignity. “Did you even see it, Mione? Even Aunt Marge wouldn’t wear something like that—and she has no standards.”
Hermione’s glare was sharp enough to cut marble. “That’s not the point! She put effort into it—”
“Effort doesn’t make it less of a death trap for good taste!” Ron shot back, his ears going red.
Harry, wisely, disengaged. He rolled his eyes as the argument spiraled—as it always did—and carried his ink pot and Charms essay to the far corner of the room. Their bickering wasn’t his business. He could only hope they’d figure out their feelings before one of them murdered the other with words.
“Honestly, it’s bloody obvious,” he muttered under his breath, quill scratching on parchment. If Ron and Hermione didn’t get themselves sorted soon, he was going to hex them together permanently.
His quill hovered briefly as an image burst unwelcome into mind—Lavender’s shrill laugh echoing off the common room walls, her saccharine Won-Won! ringing in his ears. The memory made him flinch. “Merlin’s beard,” Harry grumbled to himself, “why do I have to be the Chosen One and still do homework?”
He bent lower over the essay, trying his best not to think of the necklace tumbling into the snow below, and the girl who would eventually come to ask about it.
Chapter 2: Chapter 2: Whispers and Confusion
Chapter Text
“Harry.”
The sound of his name snapped him around, wand-hand twitching, shoulders tense. For a second he almost grimaced—of course it was her. The last person he wanted cornering him right now. He braced himself for tears, dramatics, maybe even an accusation.
But when he actually looked at her, he froze.
Lavender’s eyes were red-rimmed, yes, but dry. Her skin pale, her dark hair in wild tangles not unlike his own. No shrill giggle, no simpering nickname. Just a girl standing there with a small, quiet smile that somehow unsettled him more than tears would have.
“Err—hello, Lavender,” he muttered carefully, as though the wrong tone might crack her open.
She tilted her head, watching him with calm that felt unnatural for Lavender Brown. And then, gently, she asked, “He loves Hermione, right?”
Not a question. A fact.
Harry blinked, stunned into silence. His mouth opened, closed. He had no idea how to answer, afraid of what honesty—or even silence—might do to her. He almost glanced at the nearby window, half-convinced she might throw herself out of it if she broke.
But Lavender didn’t break. She didn’t scream, didn’t wail, didn’t even flinch. Instead, she leaned against the wall, pulled her sleeves up to her face, and gave a low chuckle. “Merlin,” she rasped, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “I knew. He never looked at her like a friend. Not really.”
She smiled again—small, brittle, but determinedly in place. And though Harry wasn’t the most perceptive, even he could see her fighting to rebuild herself in real time. Piece by piece.
“Let me guess,” she murmured softly, gaze on him though her arms folded defensively over her chest. “He threw the necklace away.”
Harry’s throat worked. He started to say something—an apology, a denial—but she cut him off with a bitter shake of her head. “It’s fine. I don’t need the answer.”
Her tone wasn’t angry. It wasn’t pleading. Just resigned.
From where he stood, Harry caught a faint, unexpected note in the air around her—a warm, sweet scent of cookies, the kind that wrapped around you like childhood. It didn’t match the brittle strength in her eyes. It didn’t fit at all. And something about that contrast made his skin crawl with sympathy he didn’t want to feel.
“I—excuse me,” he muttered quickly, the words tumbling out in escape, and hurried down the corridor.
But halfway down, he made the mistake of glancing back.
She hadn’t moved. Lavender stood there alone, facing the window, her posture almost statuesque in its stillness. She didn’t turn when he left. Didn’t watch him go.
He shakes his head and moves on towards the great hall, mind still conjuring up the image of her lonely back.
--
The tears weren’t fake. They’d clawed their way out when she finally accepted it. Ron loved Hermione. He always had. And once the truth was spoken aloud, the tears flowed easily—cathartic, almost cleansing.
But when Potter left, shoulders stiff in that awkward way of his, a ridiculous—yet intoxicating—idea slithered into her mind.
Seduce Potter.
The notion sat there, bold and brazen, and instead of dismissing it, she toyed with it. Why not? Why couldn’t it be her? Everyone expected him to fall into the arms of Ginny Weasley—the perfect fit. Confident. Brave. Beautiful in that obvious, effortless way.
But looks? Looks weren’t everything. And if they were, Lavender could make herself stunning. A touch of makeup, subtle enchantments, the right smile. She wasn’t stupid—not anymore. She had tools, she had hindsight, she had Parvati. Her best friend was an artist when it came to charms for beauty and allure.
Lavender’s lips curled upward. Ginny Weasley might have fire, but Lavender had something sharper. Determination. Hunger. A willingness to make choices others wouldn’t dare.
By the time she left the corridor behind, a plan was already blooming in her chest like poisonous ivy.
--
“Hey!”
Parvati’s face lit up when Lavender slid onto the bench beside her in the Great Hall. She set aside her glossy magazine, eyes shining with delight. And why wouldn’t she be smiling? Lavender felt different already. Heavier. More grounded. More dangerous.
Her best friend hadn’t missed the change. Parvati had all but cheered that morning when Lavender confessed—in that offhand, calculating tone—that she was going to end things with Ron before sundown.
“Good riddance!” Parvati had crowed, pulling her into a fierce hug. “Finally.”
Lavender had laughed—lighter, freer than she’d felt in years. Let Parvati believe it was pure relief. Let her think this newfound “sanity” was just release from a messy boy’s affection.
But deep down, Lavender knew the truth.
This was just the first step.
“So, when’s it happening?” Parvati asked in a singsong tease, snapping her magazine shut.
“In the common room,” I declared simply. Her grin stretched into a knowing smirk. *In front of everyone.*
“And…” she drawled, eyebrow arched, blowing on freshly painted nails, “is it going to be messy-messy?”
I shook my head, to her dramatic groan of disappointment. “Clean cut.” I bit into a chocolate biscuit. “Straight to the point—unlike this relationship.” I muttered the last more to myself, but Parvati still snorted.
By the time her twin swept in, I was already half-listening as they launched into gossip over Zacharias Smith’s latest doomed obsession with Susan Bones. Honestly, sometimes I wondered how the Patil twins hadn’t ended up in Slytherin. Strategy, charm, manipulation—they wielded it naturally.
Raising my eyes, I caught Ron across the hall grimacing at his plate and aiming his entire body *away* from me. Subtle as a Hippogriff in a broom closet.
Potter, though? Potter was watching. Out of the corner of his eye. The second I gave him a soft smile and cheerful little wave, those famous green eyes widened like I’d hexed him. I laughed inwardly—too easy.
---
“Ron.”
I said his name calm, flat. Hushed silence immediately blanketed the Gryffindor common room, sixth- and seventh-years perking up like vultures sensing carnage.
He flinched, muttered something like “Hey, Lavender,” and glued his attention to his book—upside down, of course.
Rolling my eyes, I didn’t waste time. “Let’s break up.”
Simple. Surgical. Done.
The gasps and mutters were delicious, but the crowning jewel was Parvati’s whoop from across the room: “FINALLY!”
She’d assembled a whole entourage to celebrate—Padma, Lisa Turpin, and Hannah Abbott included—“witnesses,” as she put it, to the glorious liberation from “the worst boyfriend of the century.” Her words, not mine.
The next thing I knew, I was hauled into a celebratory riot upstairs: pats on the back, raucous laughter, and a storm of stolen firewhiskey.
“Hermione!” I squealed grandly, throwing my arms around her before she could flee, eyes wide at Lisa’s (purely alcohol-fueled) snake impression on the floor. “Join us, come on.” I waggled my eyebrows, flashing the half-drained bottle.
For once, even Granger looked torn. But then Parvati burped—loud, unapologetic—and the whole room fell silent.
Not for long.
Because clever Padma scrambled up onto the bunk where Parvati was standing, drew a lightning bolt right across her forehead with an ink quill, and shouted: “Our very own Harry Potter, ladies and gentlemen!”
The dorm room erupted into shrieks and cheers, ironclad proof that subtlety was a dead art in Gryffindor. Even Hermione cracked a reluctant smile, though she arched a single, bemused brow as if to say *Merlin help me, they’re all idiots.*
The door locked. The party spiraled upward. Seventh-year girls arrived in a blur of laughter and firewhiskey fumes, and chaos roared like wildfire.
“ALRIGHT PEOPLE!”
Half an hour later, I was standing on a desk, wand raised like a conductor in front of a very drunk orchestra. “Make room!”
“It’s too small,” Susan Bones whined, slurring, pressed shoulder to shoulder with Hannah.
“Exactly why I’m enlarging it,” I purred, giving her a cooing smile. A flick of my wand sent the walls stretching outward with a groan of shifting stone. More cheering followed.
From the corner, Hermione—seven shots in courtesy of Parvati’s ambitious pouring—sprawled across the bed, muttering about wand movements in a slurry voice that only earned her a shower of pillows and giggles.
The party was alive. I was alive.
And this, I thought with a quiet, little smirk into my drink, was how history would start remembering Lavender Brown. Not as the pathetic girl who clung too tightly—but as the girl who walked away with the crowd cheering her name.
--
Hermione groaned, pressing her palm into her temple. Her head pounded like someone had stuffed a herd of hippogriffs inside her skull. Not that anyone around her cared—nineteen girls were sprawled across the cramped sixth-year dormitory in varying states of drunken disarray.
And oddly, despite the throbbing ache between her eyes, Hermione felt…alive. There was something infectious about the chaos, the laughter, the reckless joy. She almost—almost—forgot herself.
Her gaze shifted to the bed beside her. Lavender’s bed.
The girl lay tangled in sheets, hair cascading like a storm over the pillow, still buzzing with some impossible energy from last night’s revelry. Hermione winced as memory surged back: their drunken conversation that still hadn’t left her mind.
“I knew it, you know?” Lavender had hiccupped, bottle in hand, eyes glassy but sharp. “He doesn’t—” her lips curled around a sneer, “—see you as a friend. It was all a ploy to make you jealous or something. Stupid Weasley.”
Even through the haze of firewhiskey, Hermione’s brows had shot up. Lavender knew. And not only knew, but accepted it with a kind of ruthless clarity. No sobbing. No clinging. Just venom giving way to… release.
It hadn’t looked like heartbreak. It had looked like liberation.
Hermione had heard once that certain moments in life forced people to grow, to shed layers of immaturity in an instant. Maybe that’s what this was. Lavender hadn’t looked crushed—no. She looked free.
As though Ron had been chains around her wrists. And losing him meant she could finally stand up straight again.
Later, Parvati—giggling through tipsy tears—had confessed she felt she’d gotten her best friend back. That Lavender’s obsession with love had hollowed her out, stolen her warmth, sucked away the parts that made her… Lavender. But now? Now she radiated something that drew everyone to her again.
Hermione remembered the words she had whispered then, almost in awe: She’s come back. Better than ever.
Her eyes returned to Lavender across the room. She was animated, coaxing Susan Bones into dyeing her hair pink with a charm spell, hands fluttering, laughter spilling out freely. Girls clustered around her, caught in her orbit.
Hermione found herself smiling. Yes, she thought. Lavender was back. And she seemed stronger than ever.
What Hermione didn’t notice—or perhaps didn’t yet understand—was the flicker behind Lavender’s smile. The sharpness in her eyes when she thought no one was looking.
Because Lavender hadn’t just grown. She had changed.
--
For the first time in ages, the Gryffindor girls arrived late to breakfast. Not dragging their feet in sleepy lines, but tumbling into the Great Hall almost hurriedly, snatching toast and fruit mere seconds before the first bell.
Harry watched, brows raised, still half in disbelief after the night before. A raucous party in the seventh-year dorms—girls sneaking in after curfew from both year groups, laughter so loud it rattled the windows, firewhiskey practically flowing. And yes, even Hermione Granger had been there. His Hermione. Harry grinned at the memory of her flushed face when he’d teased her about it that morning. The grin had lasted right up until Ron called her a “traitor” for abandoning the Prefect code, earning himself a satisfying whack over the head with the largest book within arm’s reach.
But all of it—all the whispered gossip, the glances, the knowing smirks at the girls’ table—faded into nothing when Lavender Brown walked in.
Harry nearly dropped his pumpkin juice. Hell, half the hall did.
Her hair was the first thing he noticed, falling in sleek waves all the way to her waist as if liquid sunlight had been poured over it. Not the frizzy, tangled mane he remembered—it gleamed, impossibly smooth, every strand shifting like water with her step. Her skin too seemed brighter, her features softer, her smile calmer but no less radiant. It wasn’t the overbearing, suffocating “Lav-Lav” latching onto Ron’s arm anymore. This was… different.
Deliberate.
She carried herself as if she owned that hall, as though the breakup hadn’t been humiliation but rebirth. Heads turned, jaws dropped, and whispers followed her like a trail of perfume. Ron nearly knocked his plate to the floor staring.
And Harry couldn’t help noticing—though he tried very hard not to—that she was looking right at him when she smiled.
“Hermione,” Dean Thomas hissed, leaning across the table, his cheeks flushed crimson. “How the hell did Brown get so hot overnight?”
Harry nearly choked on his juice. He smothered a laugh into his sleeve, grabbing a biscuit to hide his grin. Out of the corner of his eye, Ron had gone stiff, fork frozen mid-air. His food sat entirely forgotten, as though Lavender had just asked him to sacrifice one of his kidneys.
“Honestly—” Hermione snapped the Prophet open with a sigh, not even glancing up, “it wasn’t overnight. All of us agreed Lavender needed a fresh start after…” She paused, wiggling her fingers in air quotes. “The relationship disaster of the century.”
Dean barked out a laugh. Ron, however, did not.
His ears flushed. He spluttered, croaked something resembling “what the—?!” and slammed his bag shut so violently the cups rattled. A second later, he stormed out of the Great Hall, muttering furious nonsense.
“D’you reckon that means yes?” Seamus said through a snicker, elbowing Dean.
Harry let their chatter fade. He hadn’t heard a word anyway. His eyes were caught instead on Lavender herself—laughing. Not giggling in that high, clingy way she always had with Parvati, but a real laugh. Low, easy, bubbling with something freer.
With a sigh he lets drops the glass, says ‘later’ to Mione and picks up his bag and stalks out of the great hall to find the sulking figure of Ron.
--
“Hey,” I muttered as I slid into the empty seat beside Harry in Charms, flicking my hair back over my shoulder. Out of habit, I cast a quick glare at Parvati—she only smirked and turned her attention toward Theodore Nott, of all people, batting her lashes like she’d been planning it all morning. Well, that was new. I could have bet on her seducing Draco Malfoy because of his gigantic bank account.
I leaned closer, voice soft. “Mind if we partner up?”
Harry glanced from me to Ron automatically. Ron was already mid-row with Hermione, arguing about something or other—the kind of bickering that had practically replaced breathing for the two of them. Harry sighed, rolled his eyes, and slid aside to give me space.
“Sure,” he muttered.
“Thanks,” I murmured, pulling out my wand and parchment.
But even as I copied the instructions, I could feel the way Harry’s posture stayed rigid beside me. The attention I’d been drawing since breakfast wasn’t lost on him—every glance, every whisper, had him bristling like a stray caught in the rain. His suspicion was palpable, a weight between us.
Yet by the end of the lesson, I had done… nothing. Not a giggle, not a fluttering glance. Just quills scratching parchment, wand movements steady, notes tidy and focused.
Harry’s ears burned red before he realized it. Because while she hadn’t so much as looked at him the entire class, he had spent half of it imagining things he really shouldn’t have.
And that unsettled him more than anything.
'It's called taking baby steps Potter.' I thought to myself while leaving the class with a flushed Theodore and innocently smiling Parvati. 'Baby Steps.'
votre_sourire on Chapter 2 Fri 29 Aug 2025 04:03PM UTC
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votre_sourire on Chapter 2 Fri 29 Aug 2025 04:04PM UTC
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ImperialsamaB on Chapter 2 Sun 31 Aug 2025 01:25PM UTC
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