Written for The Golden Snitch; Canopus, Aurora Academy.
Challenge: St Chocolate's Day
Prompt: Giri-choco (friendly), #7 — Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown
Lavender sat on her bed and stared down at the paper in her hands. This was it: the moment of truth.
She and her flat mate/best friend/romantic interest had been dancing around one another for ages. After the war, she had decided not to return to Hogwarts for her final year. Instead, she and her best friend, Parvati, bought a flat in muggle London. Lavender had received a lot of letters from concerned parents about her lycanthropy, but she had written a single letter back and duplicated it.
Why did they assume she was a werewolf?
Just because Hermione Granger blasted Greyback away from her during the battle didn't mean that she was one. True, she did have some wolvish tendencies, such as the craving for raw steak as the full moon drew near, but it didn't mean she turned into a monster every month!
(Technically not true; all girls turn into monsters once a month. It just isn't the slobbering, howling kind.)
She and Parvati had figured out that they were attracted to people of the same sex in their third year.
It had taken a bit longer (read: another five years) for Lavender to realize she liked Parvati.
Now, at age twenty, she was going to give her friend a valentine. That wasn't the hard part, though. The handmade, carefully-crafted, red and pink missile would tell Parvati clearly about Lavender's feelings for her. And if Lavender handed it over, maybe their close, friendly relationship would turn into something more.
A knock sounded on her door.
Lavender startled, and looked around frantically for a place to put the valentine. Finally she set it in her lap and folded her hands over it casually.
Parvati opened the door and peeked through. "Can I come in?" she asked. Lavender thought she sounded a bit nervous, although it also could have been her own emotions bleeding through. She tried to calm her racing heart.
"Uh, yeah, sure," she answered, then cursed her squeaky voice.
Parvati stepped through and closed the door. "Here," she said, holding out a heart-shaped box covered in light pink wrapping paper. "They're chocolates. From Japan. Your grandfather was Japanese, wasn't he?"
Lavender nodded, and took the box with trembling fingers. "Thanks," she said softly, holding the chocolates as if they were made of glass.
The Indian girl smiled and said, "They had two options, so I got the one I thought you'd like best."
Lavender looked down at the neatly-wrapped box. "Thanks," she said again. She handed over the valentine. "Um...I made this for you."
Parvati grinned and took it. "Thank you!"
She didn't look at it.
"Go on," her friend encouraged. "Open them!"
Lavender did so, carefully, so as not to rip the paper. It was a habit of hers from family Christmases long ago. She used to save the paper and use it again for a relative's birthday later on. She turned the box over to look at the label, and her heart broke.
Giri-choco, it read. For friends.
"Don't you like them?" Parvati asked, cultured voice now taking on a worried tone. "They're the right kind, aren't they?"
No! Lavender wanted to scream, They aren't!
But she didn't say that. Instead, she smiled again and nibbled on one half-heartedly.
"I wanted to give them to you now," continued Parvati, "because I have a date later and didn't want to forget."
That was just cruel. First she broke Lavender's heart, then she stomped on the pieces.
"With whom?" Lavender asked, congratulating herself on her steady voice.
Parvati's face lit up. "Oh, she's just wonderful!" She described the girl — Jade — in great detail, then wished Lavender Happy Valentine's Day again, and walked out.
Lavender sat on her bed, motionless.
Forty-five minutes later, she heard Parvati call out, "Going out! See you tonight!"
She didn't respond.
Another half hour later, she got up as if in a trance. Down the hall she went, to Parvati's room, and opened the door. On her desk across the room laid the valentine, unopened, the bubble letters on the front taunting her.
As if, she could hear them say. As if she'd want you!
She walked over, picked up the paper, and tore it to shreds.
Like my heart, she thought humorlessly.
She walked toward the door, dropping the pieces of childish colored paper into the wastebasket as she went past.