Disclaimer: Don't own and never will.
AN: ANOTHER entry written for the TamariChan's cross-gen competition.
For Lavender Brown, life was full of surprises.
When she started Hogwarts, she didn't expect to make her best friend on the Hogwarts Express going to the school. But when she met a pretty young Indian girl who was just as nervous of going into Hogwarts as she was, the two of them just clicked straight away.
She never expected Harry Potter to be so...ordinary.
She knew the story of Harry Potter and how he defeated Voldemort as a baby. She knew that he was a great seeker, but he didn't stand out in Hogwarts as much as she expected him to. Although, if she was honest with herself, she was perhaps expecting too much.
Cedric Diggory's dead body with Harry made her feel sick.
She never expected someone to die when they were with Harry. He was supposed to be a sort of protection charm, with dark magic somehow not touching those around him. Especially if half the stories about him were true. And if Lavender prided herself on one thing, it was knowing ALL of the rumours and stories on the Hogwarts.
She believed the Daily Prophet about Harry and Dumbledore at first.
The Daily Prophet was the newspaper of the wizarding world, surely they wouldn't lie? And hadn't Harry liked Cho and with Cedric gone, she was free to be his girlfriend?
Cho Chang was far more broken up about Cedric than Lavender ever believed possible.
She learned soon enough that Cho Chang was a mess when she stumbled across the Ravenclaw seeker crying in the girl's toilets on the third floor.
After the mass breakout of Azkaban, she finally accepted that Voldemort was back.
She didn't want to admit he was back and Merlin knew she didn't think that she was brave enough to face him and his followers. But there was no getting away from it either and although it went against her every instinct, she actually went and joined the DA. Because she might not be big or powerful or brave, but she was determined to do the right thing.
When she broke up with Ron Weasley, she swore that she'd never get involved with another Weasley ever again. They were all a bunch of backstabbing, two-timing scumbags and Hermione Granger was welcome to him!
She fully expected to die when Greyback attacked her, his fangs flashing as he bit and clawed away at her. And she certainly never expected to be saved by Hermione Granger of all people.
And when her fiancée broke off their engagement because she was a werewolf, she was so certain that her heart would never mend that she considered killing herself. It was Parvati who talked her out of it in the end.
When Hugo Weasley began working in the bookstore across the road from her dressmakers shop, she never expected to enjoy his company. But his persistence in getting to know her was flattering and when she got to know him, she found he was a far better conversationalist than his father had been.
When Hugo was her date for a formal Ministry do, it was supposed to be as friends, nothing more. She never expected to end up in bed with him.
She never expected Hugo to stay with her when she transformed into a werewolf, but her actually became an animagus so he could keep her company and much to his surprise and hers, it was a wolf.
And she never expected him to propose. She expected him to get bored of his much older, much scarred lover and fall for someone his own age. But he stayed with her and when he proposed, she was so happy that she thought she would die from happiness. And when she said yes, she meant it with all her heart.
Much to her amusement, it was Ron who reacted far worse than Hermione. But he too eventually came around. It took a LOT of persuading and Merlin knows that father and son threatened one another with hexes and curses often enough. But eventually, Ron Weasley accepted that his son actually wanted to marry his ex-girlfriend Lavender. He even saw the funny side of it.
"I love you, Mr Hugo Brown," she whispered to him as they danced at their wedding reception.
"I love you, Mrs Lavender Weasley," he replied and Lavender chuckled. There was a time when she thought it would have Ron who made her Mrs Lavender Weasley. She didn't expect it in a million years to be his son. But life was good at surprising Lavender Brown it seemed. But as far as surprises went, this one was a really good one, she decided.