A/N for the Hogwarts Online prompt of the day, rosemary for remembrance
Lavender for remembrance
As Lavender Brown swans into the room, the crowd falls silent.
Maybe one day, before the war, before she grew up far too fast, this would be a compliment, something to giggle over in her pyjamas with Parvati that night because it meant she was not just beautiful but stunning, and it meant the world to her.
Now, head held high, brown curls cascading down her back, held in place by circlet of rosemary, shimmering midnight blue backless dress matching her eyes to perfection, she is an entirely different kind of stunning.
The once porcelain skin of her back is a mess of scars, raised tissue and angry red lines that curl around her neck and tickle her jaw with their poisonous caress, the vivid blue eyes now shining defiantly instead of sparkling with joy, and the pride etched into her skin as firmly as the scars that she so determinedly flaunts.
She dances forwards with a grace born of eight years of ballet, shoulder back, head up, hips swaying. The chocolate hair is flipped over a shoulder and the scars gleam silver in the light of the fairies, and they're a terrible, mesmerising kind of deadly beauty that sends shivers down a hundred spines.
The chatter starts up again, a little louder now, as the girl is absorbed into the crowd and she accepts drinks and throws her head back in mirth, exposing the silver river that starts at her jaw to pool in the hollow of her collar-bone and drips over her heart.
He watches from the corner, a Firewhiskey clutched in his hand, back against the wall, and he sees the stares that go her way. But the stares are by no means equalled by the gazes that avoid the girl like their life depends on it, and he sees the pain flash across the faces of more than one as their eyes fall on her.
She is a living reminder of what they've lost, and some it makes bitter, and for some (like the lone Weasley hidden in the shadows) the pain is too much to handle, and some choose to steadfastly ignore it in the hope it'll go away.
He snorts. The whole point in this stupid party was to remember.
It's two years after the Final Battle, to the very day. The previous year the wounds were too new, too delicate to withstand such a reminder, and it was hoped that this year the Remembrance Ceremony would be a hit.
It isn't. Two years is no time at all, and the number of teary eyes around the room is testament to that.
And then the boy-who-lived stands up and thanks them for being there, and he makes some sappy comments about the ones they've lost, and Lavender stands straight and proud through it all, and as Harry is just informing them all exactly why they all have sprigs of rosemary in their buttonholes, ("Rosemary for remembrance. Let us never forget.") she feels something pushed into her hair.
Untucking the purple flower from behind her ear she unfolds the paper it is wrapped in, and as the tell-tale scent wafts towards her, she reads:
Lavender for remembrance. Because rosemary is just so clichéd.
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