A/N: This is Beater 2 of the Chudley Cannons checking in for the Finals Round 2 of Season 5 of the QLFC.

My letter is L: Lavender Brown, The Leaky Cauldron, Lethifold, Letters

Prompts: 2. (color) blue, 7. (word) scream, and 12. (sound) gasp

Word Count (before A/N): 1,199 words

I am not JK. This is her world, not mine.

Summer would be far from warm—at least that's what Lavender thought as she wrapped her frozen hands around a steaming cup of chamomile tea. It was raining, the tiny drops beating against the windows of the Leaky Cauldron like a stampede of mice running down the length of the building.

plink plink plink plink

Lavender looked away from the crying sky, her eyes shifting back to her table, where a litter of letters lay splayed out around her tea, their own words stained with tears. She was waiting for the writer of those letters now, who would undoubtedly make her want to hide upon sight of him. Because he would tell her where to go when it happened.

And it was going to happen, wasn't it?

That's what the letters had told her—Healer after Healer, specialist after specialist, all positive that it was coming. This month. This weekend.

Tonight.

Lavender shook her head, her eyes instead focusing on her tea, spirals of steam dancing from the herbal liquid meant to sooth her, her fingertips blue against the hot cup.

She always felt sick now. Always cold. Nothing made her feel warmth anymore. It was as if a piece of her had died when it happened, and now she was letting a beast live inside her, filling the void left behind.

But she wasn't letting the monster stay, not really. The monster—that beast—it killed off some important part of her to make room for itself. It had burrowed its way into her veins, infecting her like a virus, staying like a squatter. An unwanted permanent guest.

Like a cancer.

Lavender closed her eyes, willing the world to disappear, wash away in the growing storm, and let her have maybe one last moment of calm and clarity before reality took hold of her. Before it began.

Because it hadn't happened, not yet, not until the full moon. Until it did happen, Lavender could live in the dream world where the scars on her body were just scars and the screams she stifled each night were of joy and not sorrow.

But it was happening tonight.

She would become something so unbelievably outside herself, so other, that it made her already cold limbs freeze and her heart drop into the pit of her stomach. A lead weight rocking around inside, throwing her off-kilter with every step she tried to take.

What made it worse still was that she would be none the wiser. She wouldn't even know who she was when the beast came out to play.

Lavender picked up one letter.

Ms. Brown, we're sorry to inform you…

Another letter.

Lavender Brown, age 18. Tested: Positive…

And another, and another, and another.

…suffering from lycanthropy…

…common English werewolf…

…first full moon this month…

…a changing, like a metamorphosis, but darker somehow…

…cold hands for a while. But it's a minor symptom that will go away with time…

…but hey. At least you're not a Lethifold!

That last one had been from a girl in a support group of people infected with the lycanthrope gene. Her name was Rani Bahl and she liked to find the humor in everything. Unfortunately, Lavender was still trying to cope with it all and the humor fell flat. Really flat. Like Howler-level flat.

Rani had not written since.

"Anything else, love?"

Lavender let out a little gasp, her hands gripping the edge of the table. She looked up into the waitress's face and grimaced.

So cheerful. So full of hope.

"I'm good," Lavender slowly released the table, her knuckles bone-white from her grip.

"You sure?"

"Yes."

The waitress clucked at her as she turned to leave, probably ticked that Lavender had kept a table for so long without buying anything but tea all day. But Lavender knew that the waitress would get over it. She wasn't waiting for a Ministry official to whisk her away to some remote location so she could turn into a werewolf.

Lavender was.

It had to be remote, too. And unknown. At least for the first time, because it was better if she didn't recognize the smells around her. The Ministry had told her so in another letter, detailing how they would send someone to fetch her like a lost puppy and drive her—blindfolded—to some far off place. This ensured her family's safety as well as her own. Could Lavender even begin to imagine what would happen if she got out into the Muggle world?

Chaos.

At first Lavender thought it was a sick joke. There was a potion she could take that would lessen the effects, right?

There was. But the Healers and the experts and the specialists and the Aurors had a method. She couldn't take the potion the first few months because she had to be observed. Some werewolves were able to master their animal state in the early months, and she should give it a try.

Fenrir Greyback had mastered it. No one said it out loud, but Lavender thought about it constantly. That's why she had to try, too.

The door of the Leaky jingled open, revealing a tall, grey-haired man in Muggle clothes. Auror Topher Hobbs. He stepped in and brushed the rain water off his shoulders. When his eyes landed on Lavender, he moved to join her.

"No, no," he put up a hand, "we don't have to leave just yet. You should finish your tea."

Lavender sat back down in her booth. She began to collect her letters anyway.

"How have you been?" he sat down across from her.

"Not well," she said.

"As expected."

Lavender set her hands in her lap, clutching the parchment pages in her fists.

"Everything changes after tonight, doesn't it?"

Auror Hobbs smiled. "Not necessarily."

When she didn't respond, Auror Hobbs continued: "I know things seem bleak now, but give it time. You learn to live with the things you're dealt in life."

"Good to know," her own voice sounded flat and hollow to her ears.

"You going to drink that?"

"No."

"Then are you ready?"

"No."

"Then let's go."

Auror Hobbs stood, motioning for Lavender to take the lead. When she stood, she could feel her heart sinking again, a ship lost at sea inside her stomach. It was real now, wasn't it?

When the door opened out into the Muggle streets of London, Lavender could just make out the hint of the moon, a shadow of what it would become, and she had to steady herself. She grabbed Auror Hobbs's wrist and he led her to his car, her blood starting to boil inside.

"Are we too late?" she asked when they were both inside.

"No. There're still a few hours left. But the moon, it's calling you. That's what you feel."

For the first time in a long time, her hands felt warm. Hot, actually. Tentatively she placed the blindfold around her eyes as Auror Hobbs began to drive. Her mind became chillingly blank, her focus on one thing: no matter where Auror Hobbs turned or where he stopped, Lavender could feel the moon watching her like a giant eye. The monster's eye.

And it was calling her home.