Written for HOGWARTS ONESHOT WARS. I had Lavender Brown, Pansy Parkinson, and reminiscing in old age. Joey's full name is Johanna Riya Khanna, in case you wanted to know, nine years old and daughter of Aditya Khanna and Ashlynn Parkinson-Brown.
"Tell me about your life," Joey said, sitting down heavily at their kitchen counter. Lavender raised an eyebrow as she turned to look at her granddaughter.
"Why?" she asked wryly.
Joey sighed. "Mrs. Jones wants us to write about a grandparent's life. Apparently, this young generation has no respect for their elders, and she intends to change that."
Lavender smothered a laugh. Marissa Jones was a silly old woman, who reminded Lavender a great deal like her own grandmother. She just hoped Joey would never think those words tied to a Marissa Jones one day.
"Were do you need me to start?" Lavender asked, looking at Joey. Joey had her big blue eyes, but she also had her father's olive skin. Her wavy black hair was all Pansy however, and Lavender knew that one day her granddaughter was going to be beautiful one day. More beautiful than she had ever been, nearly as beautiful as her other grandmother, and just as beautiful as Ash.
Thinking of Ash, who also had Pansy's hair and her eyes, opens the crack in Lavender's heart, and she is glad when Pansy walks into the room.
Nearly seventy years old, and just as beautiful as the day of their first kiss.
"What's going on?" she asks, looking between the two of them. They both give her identical smiles. "Just talking about my life apparently," Lavender said with a grin.
Pansy raised an eyebrow. "Oh, darling, I need to hear this," she said as she sat down next to Joey. "Where are you starting?"
"At the beginning," Joey informed them.
"At the beginning," Lavender said, thinking hard. "I suppose that starts with my mother."
"She was a squib, right?" Joey interrupted.
"Yes, to a pureblood family," Lavender said, giving her granddaughter a warning gaze at the interruption. "And my father was a Muggle. I don't think she ever expected magic to appear so soon in her family tree, because she never told my father about her family. She actually told them they were dead. They never got along after they realized the truth, and she ran away from home when she was fourteen years old."
Veronica Leigh Brown had loved her daughter, Lavender knew that, but she had a hard time as Lavender got older and it was clear just what Lavender was. She supposed it would have been easier if she had siblings who were not magical, or if her mother had just been a pure Muggle. But seeing her daughter being opened to a world, her world, the world where her family and her history was, that she was denied, caused wounds that hadn't been able to heal when Lavender was younger. Ernest Brown had done his best to control the damage then, and indeed that helped smooth the path when she was older.
That and the fact that her mother was the only person that didn't act like she was damaged and wrong because she was a lesbian.
Lavender didn't feel any need to mention to Joey though, and Pansy had heard it enough time.
"She lived on the streets for a few years, and managed to save up for university. That's where she met my father, and I was born a few years later."
Joey was writing this all done, and Pansy and Lavender shared an amused smile. She was so much like her mother, but it was times like these that reminded them of Aditya. He had been an amazing journalist, and there was still so much that he could have done. So many he could have helped. And yet he and Ash were both taken from them by a stupid drunk driver, taken from Joey who was finding it harder and harder to come up with her own memories of her parent's.
"So what happened next?" Joey asked as soon as she was done, turning to her grandmother with wide eyes as she waited to hear more. It was like a story to her granddaughter, and Lavender couldn't believe it sometimes.
Her life was a story to be told, filled with romance and drama and adventure and tragedy and humor and so much more.
It was amazing.
"Well," Lavender said with a smile. "I went to Hogwarts and-"
"Got Sorted into Gryffindor, became best friends with Aunt Parvati, met Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger, knew Grams but didn't like her, fought in the war, and got scarred by Fenrir Greyback."
"Alright, smartass," Pansy said with a laugh as she ruffled Joey's hair. She turned to look at Lavender and raised her eyebrow. "I think you need to skip Hogwarts."
"It appears so!" Lavender said with a laugh.
Lavender bit her lip and tried to think. Where should she start? When she woke up and realized she wasn't the pretty girl she had been? When she gained the courage to say screw it to the world and wouldn't let it faze her? When Pansy sat down next to her one day on the train, apologized sincerely for the views she use to hold, and then they argued for hours about every topic under the sun? When they first kissed, when Lavender proposed, when they got married, when Pansy got pregnant through the use of various spells with their child, with their darling Ash, and Lavender could barely keep a smile off her face?
When Lavender became a Healer, when Pansy a teacher, when they were happy, watching their daughter live her life?
How happy they were to watch their granddaughter live her's?
She couldn't leave a thing out. That was her life, and that was what made her everything she was today.
"I hope you have a few hours, Joey. This might take a while."
Pansy and Joey gave identical smiles as they waited to hear the story.