This was written for the Hunger Games Competition (Word: fervid, Character: Ollivander, Pairing: ParvatiLavender, Setting: Florean Fortescue's, Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Subject: Divination).
Word count : 1566
tea leaves never lie
One day, the tea leaves told Parvati that she'd get her heart broken by a red-headed man.
She looked at Lavender and saw the way her best friend might as well be drooling over Ron Weasley, and she thought that it might already be too late for that.
You see, Parvati never actually meant to fall for her best friend. It just sort of happened. Somewhere in between their first giggle shared over Granger's bookish looks and their shared love for Divination, Parvati had decided to stop fooling herself and admit that she might want more than friendship from Lavender. Not that she'd ever admit it to anyone else.
Still, it was nice to imagine the way Lavender's eyes would light up from the inside should she ever return her feelings.
However, these days it seemed like that fantasy was moving further and further out of her reach, and she had to stand by as the girl she loved fell for someone else.
It would almost be funny – how many guys had she laughed at for doing the very same thing? – if it didn't hurt so much.
.x.
Parvati would probably always remember the day she first got her wand. It wasn't a perfect day, but at the time it had seemed that way. They had stopped for ice-cream at Florean Fortescue's, and her father had teased his daughters about where they would go next in their shopping trip.
Padma, ever the cleverer one, had guessed immediately, and even through her usual calm demeanor, Parvati had been able to see that her twin was as excited as she was.
Parvati couldn't remember a time when she had eaten so quickly, and then she had almost dragged her parents to Ollivander's, a fervid kind of anticipation burning in her stomach.
The shop was everything she had expected, and Ollivander himself had been weirder than even her own expectations had led her to believe – and those had been based on plenty of tales from older wizards and witches – but getting her own wand meant she would gladly spend a thousand years in this shop with the strange old man if that was what it took to find it.
She only tried two other wands before she found the one that filled her with warmth and a peaceful kind of elation, but her sister went through at least a dozen before sparks shot up from her wand.
She tried not to show her pride at being better than her sister at something for once, but the playful glint in Ollivander's eyes told her she wasn't very successful, and she knew her parents weren't fooled either.
She would always remember that day, not because it had been perfect or because it had been one of the most important days in her life, but because she had felt such a rare mix of emotions she had thought she could call that day the crowning moment of her childhood – if not her life.
It paled in comparison of what she felt for Lavender though. Finding her wand had been like finding a part of herself she hadn't known she had lost – the joy was the one of meeting an old friend, the warmth the one of a parent's embrace – but loving Lavender was different.
It was a fire that never went out, its flames a warm constant in her chest, stroked by every glance and conversation shared with the other girl. It was a bottomless pit in her stomach, gnawing at her insides whenever something threatened Lavender's happiness, and yet somehow filled with butterflies whenever Lavender smiled.
On the best days, it felt like flying without the need for a broom, like falling from the top of some ravine knowing someone would catch you, like the sun on your face on a hot summer day or seeing the first snowflake in winter.
It was beautiful, it was breathtaking and best of all, it was hers.
On the worst days though, it felt like nothing would ever be warm again, like Dementors had taken hold of her heart and squeezed, squeezed until all that was left were ashes and pain, jealousy a bitterer mistress than she had been led to believe.
It was what she felt every time Lavender asked her for help catching Ronald Weasley's attention, and by Merlin himself, she had learned to hate that very name.
Other would call her mad for submitting herself to such pain, but honestly, she just couldn't bring herself to let go. Lavender was everything to her, had been the center of her universe for too long now, and trying to change that would be like getting rid of the sun and telling the planets to keep orbiting – it wasn't possible.
Lavender was blind, and in love with a boy, and Parvati's heart ached and ached and ached.
.x.
"Let's do a séance," Lavender told her one day, her eyes bright and hopeful, the smile on her lips showing just a touch of madness.
Parvati just blinked. In four years, she had had a long time to get used to her friend's eccentricities, and she had long since began to suspect that she would never be able to refuse anything to Lavender if she asked, but that didn't mean her friend's requests didn't surprise her from time to time.
Like now.
"A what?"
"A séance. It's a Muggle thing. Like Divination really, only with more contacting ghosts and long lost ancestors. My aunt says it's mostly rubbish, but Professor Trelawney says it's worth a shot if we do it right. Besides, I thought we could ask for the answers to Binns' next exam," she added, a playful smirk on her lips, and yeah, Parvati couldn't refuse her anything.
The 'right way', as it was, seemed to include an absurd amount of scented candles, as well as more research than they typically needed for any kind of schoolwork. It was tedious, but also terribly enlightening, and Parvati didn't really mind the research if it meant spending more time with Lavender.
They did the séance at midnight, in an abandoned classroom, because the only thing every piece of information they had managed to find on séances seemed to agree on was the fact that a quiet environment was the key to success.
Nothing happened, and they spent the night holding each other hands, humming a low sound that may or may not have been the latest Weird Sisters' song, as rose-scented candles burned slowly in the background.
Lavender's face was cast in shadows, and she looked so beautiful then that Parvati fell just a tiny bit more for her.
.x.
One day the tea leaves told her she would know great suffering before she reached peace and contentment.
She thought, 'I don't want peace, I don't want contentment. I want a love that burns as bright as the sun, and lasts as long as the stars in the night sky. I want to feel everything until I can't take it anymore, and then do it again the next day.'
In her next cup of tea, she could have sworn the leaves were laughing at her.
.x.
The thing was, at some point Parvati had come to hate Ron Weasley so much that she thought she could have killed him, and that honestly scared her a little.
She had been able to stand it when Lavender had been happy – it made her sick, but if Lavender was happy then she was happy – but now her friend was crying her eyes out, and everything in the world was wrong, and it was because of the stupid redhead.
What came after the tears was worth though, and almost enough to make her wish for the tears to come back.
Parvati had known for a long time that her friend had some issues with the way their fellow students saw her – as if she was just a dispensable pretty but rather dumb girl – but they had never gone to the point of self-pity before.
It was heartbreaking, to see the girl brought so low by a love everyone had known was doomed from the start, and all Parvati could do was hold her friend tightly and tell her it would pass.
It felt wholly insignificant. After all, when had her own feelings ever passed?
Lavender fell asleep some time after that, her hair tickling Parvati's nose every time she tried to breathe, and it took only a small flick of her wand to close the heavy curtains of the bed they were sitting on.
"You," she whispered softly into the brown her underneath her lips, "are worth everything."
And despite the awkward position she fell asleep in, Parvati had one of the best night of sleep she ever had.
.x.
One day, the tea leaves told her that the key to happiness was within reach if she only dared to take a chance.
She turned to Lavender and took a deep breath.
"Hey Lav, how would you like to go out with me on the next Hogsmeade weekend?"
"Only if you tell me what your teacup said," Lavender answered, and oh, this was what hope felt like.
"Nothing I didn't already know."
Parvati smiled, and Lavender smiled back, and that day Parvati felt like she knew all the answers to all the questions she had never asked.