don't waste your time on me
you're already the voice inside my head
-i miss you, blink182
She'd never hurt like this before. It was all so new. Not when Seamus kissed her in fourth year at the Yule Ball, then left her under the mistletoe to ponder her first kiss. Not when Parvati stopped talking to her in second year because she was Muggleborn. Not when her mother called her a disgrace and a freak when she got her Hogwarts letter. Never.
And now, just because of him, it felt like there was a gaping hole in her chest, spilling scarlet blood onto the Gryffindor common room's rugs as she stared blankly into the roaring, blazing fire that illuminated the empty, circular room.
"He'll always love me more, 'LavLav'."
Damn that Hermione Granger for stealing away her WonWon.
-:-
It's a year later and, as she's slowly waking up in the ruins of the battle, caked in dried blood and her neck wrapped in thick, white bandages, she sees a familiar face standing above her. Hermione Granger looks no better than how Lavender feels, covered in dirt and bruised.
"Lavender," Hermione murmured and grabbed her cut hand, squeezing it tightly as the two girls' eyes locked, brown orbs that have seen much too much pain meeting blue brimming with crystal tears. In that moment, they shared something incredible. Something nobody else could've possibly understood, not even the ginger boy who had begun their hatred for each other.
Lavender and Hermione stayed like that for a long while, hand in hand, immersed in comfortable silence. There was nothing to be said. They simply knew, and when Ron wandered in hours later, just as scruffy and dirty as Hermione, something clicked as the warmth of Hermione's calloused fingers left Lavender's hand and she and Ron strode out of the Hospital Wing, Ron's hand replacing Lavender's.
She thinks, as she lies in the Hospital Wing in the middle of the night, ivory moonlight streaming into the spacious room through the broken glass walls, that this might be the beginning of everything getting better.