Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
A/n: So, I've never written about Lavender before, let alone Lavender/Seamus, but I'm still decently happy with this, although it was a little rushed. Reviews are always love :) Enjoy.
Any Kind of Casualty
When she wakes up, the rooms are white and everything is silent and she's sure that she's dead.
Isn't she dead?
But she tastes the oxygen on her tongue and though it's different than the air she tasted on the battlefield, it's Earth's air, it's oxygen, it's something.
And for an instant, just a flickering second before she thanks the stars for her life, she feels a world of crushing regret that she didn't die on the battlefield and leave this broken planet behind.
:.:.:.:.:
They bathe her and dress her and sit her in the white bed where she remains, so catatonic now, and they sing lullabies to her, and whisper, "Sleep, beautiful."
And she hates them, because she's not beautiful, she's a war wound, she's a casualty, and they're pushing the irony in her face, in her broken face, and she wants to slap them, which is what she would have done, before, but now she just crawls under the covers and cries until it's too dark to see even her own hands in front of her face or remember why it is that she's crying, and then she falls asleep.
And soon she'll stop crying.
:.:.:.:.:
She keeps clawing at mirrors and dreams, trying to pull from them the girl that she used to be – no, wait, is – and find her again, because she's gone missing, that innocently beautiful girl who only ever focused on the best way to curl her hair or catch Seamus's attention. But now she's an adult, a girl who thinks and lives only war, who kills and bleeds, and scars; an adult, and that isn't as fun as she thought it would be.
:.:.:.:.:
She's learned that she's terrible at walking down the street these days.
Because suddenly, everywhere she goes there are scars. The sky is full of them, and so are the people and the places, and she wants to know if they're all hurting as badly as her, in this disfigured world that tries to grow and live and be after such a war.
Even the Muggles. The Muggles who look at her and wonder, the children who back away; in her head she's whispering to herself that they have been affected too, whispering not to hate them even though they're looking at her, looking and looking and looking and she can't breathe.
One time, when she's walking down the street, she pretends everyone's looking at her because she's the most beautiful girl they've ever seen and not the most disfigured. It works for only ten seconds, but it's enough to make her walk more confident and the lightest smile grace her eyes.
Afterwards, it saddens her that only the make-believe can give her hope anymore. Afterwards, she looks in a mirror and traces the wounds and decides she doesn't want to go outside anymore.
:.:.:.:.:
Seamus comes to her house one day, after it's been a week and two days since she's been outside. Her house is almost out of food and she's drawing in a sketchbook and he walks in like he owns the place, sure of himself and of her. He looks at her a long moment as she draws and refuses to acknowledge him, and he smiles a half-smile and announces they are going out for coffee this week and there's absolutely nothing she can do about it, because he can perform a marvellous jelly-legs jinx.
And it is sweet. And she is one of those people who would prefer to lie to herself, but she does acknowledge that someone else's presence is a strangely lovely gift. Her house is quiet and dark and empty and it takes being beside someone so full of life for her to realize how isolated she's become. But she is a stubborn girl, focused on her choices and her mistakes rather than Seamus's light-hearted ideologies. "I'm not going," she tells him very simply. "You should leave."
But then, Seamus is, in the most carefully frightening ways, a lot like her. Although his skin is clear – and she hates how she notices that – he is like her. He is stubborn. So it surprises her when he gets up to leave, but she bites her disfigured lip and says nothing. Until he comes right back through the door, never having truly left, with her pile of mail. "What are you doing?" she asks, trying to hide the malice inflicting her tone.
"When's the last time you looked through your mailbox?" he asks her genially.
She shakes her head. She's trying to stay looking at her sketchbook, keep not looking at him – because if she looks, she knows she'll forgive him for showing up, because she knows she'll give in, because a lifetime ago she was in love with those grey-green eyes – but he's too sweet, too simple, too familiar. "Why would I look through that junk?" she asks, trying and failing to keep her voice steady. "I just direct all owls that show up the mailbox. There's no use for mail."
Out of the corner of her eye, she catches his smile like a lightning bug. "I love mail," he says.
She smudges the edge of her drawing purposefully. It's a face – because she can't get faces out of her head these days – but she doesn't know whose it is. She's drawing a stranger and she hates the symbolism of that, so she sets the sketchbook down and bravely looks Seamus in the eye. "You love mail?"
He nods, and something is bright in his eyes now that she's facing him. "Mail is brilliant," he says. "It's how everyone's connected, isn't it? Look, you have so many letters, and invitations to Ministry events, and you haven't even known."
She doesn't mention to him that she knows precisely how long those letters have been rotting in her dusty mailbox, and she doesn't tell him that the fourth one is an invitation to a Ministry Victory Ball. She doesn't confess that she doesn't feel like the war was any kind of victory and that she certainly wasn't going to be there.
She fiddles with her unblemished fingers. "What are you doing here?"
He looks up from her mail with a surprised expression, which she expects. She never used to be so forward or say what she meant. She was one for a careful dance around the questions she meant to ask, and over the years he became used to that, so her bluntness catches him off-guard. He blinks and faces her. "I'm your friend," he says.
She wants to laugh hysterically. She wants to spit at him. "I don't have friends," she tells him and it's true.
He shrugs with a lofty smile and says, "You have me."
She shakes her head, suddenly tired. "Just leave."
He stands calmly, expecting this. He turns hesitantly for just a moment and slowly pushes a strand of her hair behind her ear. She flinches back from him, her torn flesh burning where his fingers brushed her. He smiles a crooked smile. "Goodbye Lavender," he says.
He turns at the doorway, smiling still, while she feels frozen. "Friday," he says. "I'll meet you at the little cafe in Diagon Alley."
When the door clicks shut, she is terribly afraid of the silence, and sits curled in a ball for the next hour.
But one good thing comes from his visit. She doesn't know how it affects her this much, but the next day, she goes outside. She walks down the street. She gets used to the staring again.
:.:.:.:.:
One day, she's in Diagon Alley, and she sees them – the supposed heroes of this new world. And they don't smile or even talk. They're silent and grimacing and look like such shells of people and she learns. She learns that the heroes on the front page of the Prophet which she's finally picked up out of her mailbox, smiling and glowing, are not these people. These are the real heroes, catatonic, suicidal, hopeless. And she knows that they are her, and she is them, and they don't see her, and she doesn't see them ever again, but that's okay because she feels a little better, knowing that every single puzzle piece of life has been destroyed and that there's no such thing as victory.
:.:.:.:.:
She traces the lines of her face, the grid and map of her features, perhaps the only person who has lines of latitude and longitude marking the world of their face.
Her finger hesitates. This one was his right incisor, sharp as it would have been in full transformation under a full moon. It's deeper than the others, the one that defines the rest. She traces it numbly, without feeling the moisture in her eyes or tasting the salt of her tears on her lips. It's all become just a burning these days, the crying, as typical as breathing, as typical as the scars that will forever define her, forever mark her as a victim.
She never wanted to be a victim. All she tried for, all her life, was to be seen as strong and independent instead of a silly little girl even though that was what she was. And now all anyone can see when they look at her is someone so disfigured, someone who needs their sympathy rather than their normalcy, their kindness instead of their honesty.
She's learned in the past few months that she can't stand nice people. She hates them for trying so hard, she hates them for their pretty and ohsoperfect smiles – unblemished and unchanged and completely opposite of hers. And most of all she hates that no matter how much she hates them and how badly she treats them, they never get upset about it, and just feel more sympathy, as if that's all she wants.
:.:.:.:.:
Every day is like breathing in dust. She wakes up Friday after a nightmare she can't remember, but wills herself to be cheerful. Today she is going to lunch with Seamus, which, before, would have been the biggest deal, made her life, but now it doesn't feel like much, just someone to see. But she drags herself there, tries to makes herself sound at least content, and lets him pull out the chair for her and give her flowers. And it's nice, the way their conversation flows, and it fits well, surprisingly. She didn't expect that part, because she doesn't expect much.
And his eyes are a beautiful grey-green (but she knew that, didn't she?) and he touches her arm gently and smiles, and leans in close, and whispers, "This is nice."
And suddenly he's kissing her, just like she always wanted when she was a young oblivious teenager, caught up in things like the way his accent made her giggle and his half smile made her feel butterflies. But she doesn't understand those feelings anymore, they seem silly and empty of meaning, and the kiss doesn't seem like some fairytale, it seems like a formula. One pair of lips against the other, just like hands or feet touching, so why should she feel something, why should it mean anything?
And that's her first kiss after the war, at that nice little café with the bright coloured flowers and the coffee that's not quite hot enough. And it's with Seamus. And she's wanted Seamus for years on end; she's flirted and laughed and smiled at him and he never took notice and she should be dying for this kiss, pulling away with the biggest grin or not pulling away at all, but she does pull away because it doesn't feel right. Because she's not the innocent little girl who cared about things like teenage love affairs anymore, and he's just some guy who she used to want before her world fell apart. And of course it's just too damn ironic that the moment she changes, doesn't need him, is the moment he decides he wants her.
But he's changed too, and he understands when she stands up to leave that a kiss is nothing in this new world whose definition of peace is so dearly linked to its definition of war. He knows that she's not happy or hopeful anymore, that he should have fallen for her then, that he's one battlefield too late. And he knows that he might not be able to love a girl who hates herself so much, who hides all of the time, who slaps the reporter who asks for her photograph for a "war survivors" special. He knows. And that's why he lets her walk away without paying or a backward glance, because he knows she's leaving nothing behind but a piece of childhood and dust-covered memories, which is the same thing as nothing at all.
:.:.:.:.:
Her hands move hesitantly over her own face, uncertain and yet reckless. She feels like nothing more than a body anymore, a ravaged, empty carcass.
The scars are the same. Each time she traces them she only better learns the same pattern of twisting lines, of a lifetime's mistakes. Every regret belongs to a line, every 'if only' that she's whispered since she woke up a stranger. Every word that hasn't made a difference.
She doesn't cry. She's done with crying because she's decided that she's worthless and tears don't change that.
She moves quietly to the mirror in her bathroom. She stares expressionlessly at the monster facing her. She takes her best foundation and smears it on her cheeks. This is maybe the hundredth time she's tried that, and still it does nothing. It only makes her smile savagely.
She is a wreckage and nothing will fix it.
She licks her lips and traces the edge of the mirror with a sharp fingernail. She closes her eyes, inhales, and tries to tell herself for the final time that she is lucky, she is a survivor, she isn't a casualty. Once again, she doesn't believe it. She opens her eyes with a smile like a knife as her fist collides with the mirror.
After all, her arms don't yet have scars, and Lavender Brown has always cared about matching.
:.:.:.:.:
Months go by and she hardly leaves her house. She sits on the floor and counts the number of times she breathes. She doesn't go outside, she doesn't meet anyone, and Seamus never comes back. She doesn't expect him to, and she isn't disappointed. The letters in her mailbox pile up until they stop coming, not that she notices.
Years will pass. The war heroes will grow and learn and give up on holding on to every broken piece of memory. They will stick the war on a shelf and move the fuck on; marry, have children, live their lives. In other words, they will heal.
She will not. She will break every mirror in her house and sit on the floor in the silence, wishing she couldn't hear her heartbeat. She will not meet other people, she will not forgive. She will not give up on her memories, they will be all that she has to keep her clinging to whatever form of sanity she holds. And she will never, never forget.
She will not heal; she will only scar.