He's sketched her before, back in Hogwarts with the unsteady hand of a teen and the broken tips of pencils. Back when they were innocent and back when things were good, back when school was primal and living was a casual concern - life and death were smaller matters, not like loving Seamus and Parvati or losing house points. And he drew her in charcoal for a graduation thing, when his hands were defiantly more controlled and her emotions were much more intact. And at that time they thought they knew everything, but it was all plans that enevitably crumbled.

And then he painted her, in his fury and anger and confused time. She apparated just to his flat cos he was so desperate and she modeled for him the third time. His anger was relented on the canvas in the abstract forms of colors and misfangled shapes. And he cried and she cried too, because they wanted to be innocent and they just couldn't anymore. Not then, not ever again. That had been the night they'd gotten word of Hannah and Justin's deaths, the night filled with too many questions and a loathe of the dark that was rapidly fighting all their friends. And paint splattered on the canvas and their clothing (which fell off confused minute after confused minute) and their skin (so much more skin, every little bit a fragment of their hatred dissapearing and all that was left was them, just them) and in their hair (his hand streaked green through her brown locks as her fingertips sprinkled red on his shaved head) and on his bedsheets (he slid her down easily as she laughed in irony at the sheets, which were scarlet, for he always was a Gryffindor boy.)

And awkwardness set in with a unsettling comfort. It never happened again, the sleeping together, one more night pardoned to a war's influence. And they lived together with Parvati and Padma and Seamus and friends because living alone in drafty apartments just wasn't right. And the room mates would occasionally slip between the sheets with one another just for warmth, and they hung out and talked like the old days. Though, unnerving as it was, they lived each day wondering if it'd be there last, if by some twist of fate they'd be some of the expanding numbers of fallen soldiers. The war was seeping in through their lives in this uncontrollable way, and underneath all their fun times, the imminent threats of death were omnipresent.

She could tell he was still an artist by the way he shaved, with the cream applied just so and the razor slicing in the most accurate of ways, pinging against the sink toremove excess cream. And he could tell she was still a model by the way she ate her breakfast, freezing ever such moments and accentuating even the basic of things. They were just reflexes to them.

They spent nights in the spare bedrooms of Grimmauld Place, watching as their Light faught a war, watching Ginny slip through meetings and Ron and Hermione stumbling together in one bed, night after night, and Harry's fierce passion as his anger gave way that no matter how much they tried, the Dark always knew their next moves. The Dark was always there, there were always killings, and that meant somewhere, amongst them, there was a traitor.

And then they learned of the worst, and it had been just a routine mission and they'd been sitting around the house trying to juggle apples when it'd happened. The Dark had known and attacked and for some odd reason, that meant the the ones who went out the door this morning wouldn't be coming in any doors anymore. Parvati, with her blond curls tumbling, had gone out the door this morning. Seamus, with his impish grin, had gone out the door this morning.

So she came to him, with lips that were cracked and dry, with eyes still shellshocked and a body that lagged. Her lips hung from her teeth and she was a ghost, a skeleton of the Lavender he knew. And he wasn't any better off, his hands sliced in places where he'd tried to shave with his perfect strokes and failed. His eyes gaunt and dark, shining. Losing someone, having them ripped from them as a casualty of a war, was this pain that seared them everytime they intook air. She gripped his bloody hand in hers, the blood seeping from his palm to hers and sliding down her pale forearm - she didn't care, but she'd always been squemish around blood.

And they held one another, blood still seeping from his hands. And he withdrew a pencil, much like the one from their school days, and with feeble hands, sketched her face. The shadows, the shining eyes, the darkness shrouding her was all in his drawing, shaded much darker than the light, attempted perfection, strokes he had used. His strokes were choppy but her edges were made soft, an acurate portrayl of her on a piece of paper - blunt and truthful and comfortable with the gloom that set in to replace their innocence.

This sketch was the last thing left to remember Dean Thomas, with a skrawl of his signature and drips of his blood randomly on the page. The last thing to remember Lavender Brown, her once-warm smile not gracing this edgy recollection of her.

The war is over, their lives are over, but her picture - the dark, blunt masterpiece of death - remains.

Author's Note: Ahh. I didn't like the ending! If you're confused, haha, sorry! This CAN BE a followup to 'Arts,' cos I mention him sketching her in the beginning with pencils, as he did in 'Arts.' Lavender and Dean died, in case you didn't get that... Oh! And the betrayer I mentioned, it was Ginny. I wrote a whole alternate ending to this with Ginny finding the portrait, but I HATED it, so this was better. But betraying!Ginny is like, the COOLEST character in cannon. Eat it. I just want to close by saying I 3 you, Zay!

Review, please!