Lavender Brown looked down at her hands. They had once both been beautiful but now one was covered in the black charred skin. She knew that if she rolled up the sleeve of her dress, she would she the ash flakes continue. They continued up her arm, over her shoulder and down her back, covering the entire left half of her body.
That's why she had taken to wearing the long sleeved, floor-length dresses all of the time. They were the only thing she could guarantee wouldn't show anymore of the disgusting ebony than absolutely necessary.
She looked in the mirror and saw what she couldn't cover up. She turned her face so that the right side, the perfect and still beautiful side showed. If she didn't look straight at a mirror or turn the wrong way she could still pretend that the black flaked skin didn't exist. A noise sounded behind her and she turned her head. It was nothing but she was forced to look at the monster in the mirror.
The left half of her face was disgusting and barely resembled a face. Her eye that once had been described as lovely was now misshapen. The end twisted down giving her the look of always being sad, which she was usually. She couldn't force herself to be happy. Lavender hated to admit it but she had been a shallow girl before this happened. In school she had valued herself by how many boys gazed at her that day. She had purposefully rolled her skirt up so that it was much shorter than the other girls and left her shirt unbuttoned dangerously low.
Now she couldn't even think of the last time a boy had even looked at her without pity or disgust. She shook her head and looked away from the mirror.
Why did she put herself through this? She didn't know what was worse, the time she spent wishing that she could go back to when she was seventeen and beautiful or the nightmares that haunted her.
They had started to haunt her in the day. Every time she went out in public, she thought that she saw her. A flash of curly black hair or the hem of a set of long black robes like she wore. Bellatrix Lestrange was haunting her at night and during the day.
Lavender looked back down at her hand. She remembered the pain of when the curse hit her. It felt like her skin was on fire and she was burning. How many times had Lavender wished that she really had burned? If she had burned that day she would have been known as a hero not a disgusting, washed up war victim.
That's all they were, her generation. They had all been hardened by the war. They had seen their friends and family killed in front of their eyes.
They should have been a celebratory generation who looked more like the shiny muggle celebrities than like Mad-Eye Moody. He was the war hardened Auror and that's all that was left of the Golden generation.
The Golden Trio, that's what they called Harry, Ron and Hermione. They were just as bad off as the rest of us. Worst actually because they had fought Voldemort.
The papers and books called them the Golden generation, an entire age group of warriors. They tried to paint a pretty picture for younger generations, one of brave, fearless fighters, when really all we were was frightened children.
