Written for the QLFC Season 6, Round 1
Team: Wigtown Wanderers
Position: Seeker
Position Prompt: Write a pairing you've never written before.
Word Count:2347
Beta(s): DinoDina
Chapter 20: Little Broken Birds
Sounds seeped in first. Murmurs, whispers, and then something louder. No, not something louder; it simply became louder. Louder and louder, until she thought that someone had used an Amplification Charm to intrude upon the foggy exhaustion smothering her.
Hushed voices. Soft whistles of breath. Shuffling bodies adjusting themselves in their seats. She heard the distinct squeak of a chair - plastic, cushion, something that scraped like skin dragged over a padded surface - and then whoever it was who had been disrupting her quiet paused.
The smells came next. Slowly, just as the sounds had, but then in an overpowering flood of pungency and fragrance that roiled together in a good-bad cloud that had her shrinking from the flavours that assaulted her. The saltiness of sweat. The muck of dirt. The tang of something citrusy, the sharpness of soap, the cleanliness of sterility.
The feelings - a hard mattress beneath her, a pillow under her head made softer by the contrast - and the tastes that rode upon the coattails of the smells. It was all overwhelming, like an assault upon her every sense, and for a moment she could only shrink into herself in pitiful hiding. For a long, long moment… until Lavender finally opened her eyes.
What she saw wasn't the ceiling that, detachedly, she knew she should have beheld directly overhead. It wasn't the glaring brightness of light that was too radiant to have come from candles, to be anything but magical. What rose before her eyes was far worse and scrambling over itself in such a riot of colours and memories and sensations that, for a split second, she couldn't even discern what it was that she saw.
When she did, she moaned and squeezed her eyes shut once more.
A man. A tall, fierce, hulking man. His teeth bared, his eyes darkened and pupils blown. The puff of his breath into the cold night air hissed through his lips like smoke from an engine, and when he saw her, when he swung with heavy head and heavy shoulders in her direction, those lips drew into a cruel smile.
She felt as much as saw him charge. She felt as much as saw the swipe of his hand, the flexing of claws, the moment that the baton of his arm disappeared with proximity to smash into her face. Whimpering, Lavender curled upon herself. It was only a memory but it hurt, ached, up to and then beyond the moment she'd slipped beneath the shrouding, cloying blackness of unconsciousness. She knew, could feel, could taste the blood that pumped from the mauling tearing her cheek apart. She could see, could feel, the skin parting beneath the blow, could taste the stink of his breath as he sunk those overlong, curved teeth into her cheek.
It hurt. It hurt, pierced, sliced, broke -
"Lav?"
Breath catching amidst her gasps, Lavender froze where she'd barely noticed she had rolled onto her side, huddling upon herself. Her fingers trembled - she knew, could feel it - and clasping her hands together didn't steady them even slightly. Blinking into the moderate darkness of which she'd sunk, the darkness that the thin sheet she'd slid beneath didn't really offer with any effectiveness, Lavender twisted towards the sound of her name. She stared at the sheet-swathed mattress, at the hidden person just beyond.
"Is that…?" she whispered.
"Yeah. It's me."
"Are you…?"
"What?"
Lavender swallowed. Her hands trembled violently, radiating vibrations through the thin mattress beneath her, and she didn't even try to ease them. Squeezing her eyes closed again - against the memories, the pain, against the fear that welled at the sound of that familiar voice - she took a shaking breath.
"Are we dead?"
No reply met her words. Not for a long pause that stretched and hung, deafening in contrast to the shuffling, the murmurs, the shifting in seats and scuffle of footsteps along the length of the room that Lavender could hear only too loudly. Why was it so loud? It was almost as though her ears were attuned to every breath of noise, and it was horrible.
When the stasis was broken, it wasn't with words. The mattress behind her sunk with the weight of a body and Lavender flinched. She flinched again when a hand, small and warm, settled upon her shoulder, and once more when that hand eased around her to instead wrap her in an embrace from behind. The trembling in her own hands rippled throughout her entire body, and the quivering of her lips would have silenced any attempt that Lavender made to reply.
She didn't need to. Words weren't necessary. The press of her friend's warm body, the unhesitating contact, spoke more than she could ever have explained. With a deep inhalation, Lavender absorbed the familiar florals of perfumed soap that wasn't entirely erased by the tang of sweat and dirt.
"No, Lav," Parvati murmured into her ear. "We're not dead. You're safe now."
Lavender still couldn't speak. She couldn't have uttered a reply if she'd had any. Instead, a sob tore from her and she curled upon herself more tightly, knees drawing to her chest as she slid further beneath the thin shield of the sheet.
She wasn't dead. She hadn't been killed. Just as importantly, neither had Parvati; the warm weight of her pressed tightly against her back was indication enough of that. That was good. It was good, was good, was good… But she still hurt. Her face stung, a searing burn that seeped across her chin and down her neck, and muscles that shouldn't have pained her in such a way, had never done so before, protested to the simple act of lying still.
"Lav?" Parvati asked.
Lavender's sob hitched.
"Lavender, it's okay. It's okay now."
Another sob, this one bumbling and tripping from her lips in a flecking of spittle that Lavender only detachedly noticed. When the tears had begun to fall she didn't know, but she couldn't stop them.
"Lavender, please…"
"It hurts, Parvati," she managed, her voice a hoarse croak. "It hurts."
"What does?" Parvati asked, her soothing, comforting voice abruptly sharpening in concern. Her arms tightened where they clung to Lavender. "Lav, where? Where does it hurt?"
"Everywhere," Lavender moaned pathetically, curling further upon herself and her knees tucking fully to her chin. That was when the sobs became uncontrollable.
She hurt but it was more than just the wounds that split her skin. It was more and far worse, for it couldn't be mended by Healing Charms. It was the fear that still thrummed through her on a tangible, electrical level. It was the horror of watching Death Eaters flow through the magical shield that had surrounded the school and the grief that tore violently through her as she saw friends, professors, younger students shot down by viciously bright spells. It was all of that and yet none of it, for if Lavender were to describe what was truly wrong she couldn't have said.
She just hurt. Just hurt, and it was just everywhere.
Parvati didn't ask again. Maybe she realised that Lavender couldn't reply, that she didn't have further words to use for something she couldn't understand herself. Parvati had always known Lavender, had known her perhaps better than Lavender knew herself. She was the one who helped her with her homework before Lavender even asked, though Parvati was hardly any better at her own studies. She was the one who'd giggled and first admitted that she thought Professor Firenze was 'very dashing for a centaur', and Lavender had readily agreed. She was the one who picked Lavender up after Ron had so cruelly dumped her. She was the one…
Parvati had been the one who screamed. She'd screamed when that man, that creature, that werewolf had leapt upon her with murder in every line of his body, and though Lavender couldn't remember anything beyond that, she was sure that Parvati had been the one to stand by her side when she'd fallen.
Just as she was then. Just as she likely always would be.
Still shaking, still sobbing, Lavender pressed herself backwards into Parvati. As if instinctively, Parvati's arms tightened further around her. The whisper of her breath warmed the sheet atop Lavender's head. The warm touch of lips that grazed against the side of her cheek - her painful, scarred cheek that protested the gentle touch - was indescribably comforting. Like a stopper in a bottle, it was as though her simple presence managed to stem the flow of every emotion within Lavender that spilled forth.
With a trembling struggle, Lavender twisted in Parvati's arms. Her face burned as her cheek - her scarred, shredded, broken cheek - pressed against the linen sheets, but she didn't care. Wrapping her arms around Parvati in turn, uncaring of the stained and filthy smears that erased whatever colour Parvati's shirt had once been, she pressed herself against her.
Warm. A warm body. More than that, it was Parvati. There was nothing, no one, that Lavender would rather cling to when she felt herself falling apart. Even if Parvati's own hands shivered as if afflicted by a chill where she sunk her fingers into the folds of Lavender's own matted shirt, it helped. Just a little, but it helped.
Not that it lasted long. Lavender regretted the moment that Parvati shifted, that she moved and drew away from her slightly, and she couldn't quite withhold the urge to cling to her. For whatever reason, whatever horrible reason, everything smelt, sounded, felt, looked, far too bright and loud and pungent, and in the midst of her heavy-headed misery, Lavender hated it. She didn't know why the world seemed to be wreaking havoc upon her senses, but she hated it.
Except for Parvati. Her warmth. Her smell. The sight of her. It didn't matter that Parvati's soap, the same soap she'd been using since first year, seemed to have tripled in concentration to pervade even the smell of sweat, exhaustion, and grief. Lavender didn't want her to leave. Never. She didn't want to be alone.
But Parvati didn't leave. Of course she didn't, and Lavender might have known that had she any remaining sense with which to think. Though Parvati edged away from her slightly, her grasp upon Lavender's torn shirt remained, and she went only so far as to slither down beneath the protective weight of the thin sheet draped over Lavender's head. As had so often afflicted her that year, as had been demanded of all of Hogwarts' students, not a hint of a smile touched her lips where they'd once bubbled with joy at every turn. So much had changed in barely a handful of months. So much lost.
Lavender didn't care. She latched onto the sight of Parvati, of her long face still smeared with dirt from a battle that Lavender didn't even know the outcome of. It took less of an effort than she'd thought it would to shove every fear, every pain, every memory of the horror's she'd seen from her mind and trace the familiar features of Parvati's face with a stare that she couldn't bring herself to break with even a blink. Her nose, straight and a little long. Her eyebrows, perfectly defined in a way that never needed charming and that Lavender had always been secretly envious of. The hollows of her cheeks that hadn't been that way before seventh year, and the downward tilt of her lips that had once only ever smiled. With each line, each stray hair that Lavender's gaze latched onto, she felt her shakes ease just slightly.
Parvati's eyes, large and dark and similarly unblinking, regarded her back. Like a mirror, she traced Lavender's face in turn, drifting with a keen, almost obsessive attentiveness that wasn't as unfamiliar as it should have been. When her eyes drew towards Lavender's cheek, her cheek that burned and protested even more with how fiercely she pressed it into the mattress beneath her, a distinct glassiness welled in Parvati's eyes.
Lavender didn't care. Abruptly, despite it all, despite how the notion of being deformed and scarred would have likely once horrified her, she didn't care. And yet, clinging to Parvati, she couldn't help but say, "It's disgusting."
Parvati's eyes darted back to meet Lavender's own. "What?" she whispered, the hush of her voice amplified just slightly by the muffling confines of the sheet-tent.
Lavender swallowed thickly. Even that hurt. "My… my face. It's…" She paused, cringing from the resurfacing of memory, the werewolf's flying attack, the terror that had gripped her. "It's hideous."
"Lavender," Parvati whispered.
"I'm… I'm broken."
She didn't mean her face. As soon as the words left her lips, Lavender knew that she wasn't speaking of her face at all. The trembles threatened to arise once more and, squeezing her eyes closed against a resurgence of tears, she tightened her hold upon Parvati even further.
Only to snap her eyes open as Parvati's fingers curled around her unmarred cheek. Her own tears had surfaced, welling and dribbling down her cheeks at an angle that drew strange lines through the dirt streaking her face. Her lips trembled as her hand dug into Lavender's hair, clasping the back of her head.
"No, Lav," she whispered, her voice so choked it was almost lost. "You're still beautiful. You're always beautiful."
Her lips were still trembling when she rested them gently against Lavender's, or maybe that was Lavender shaking herself. She didn't know. She didn't care. Everything hurt, aching on a level far deeper than skin and muscle and bone, but the point of contact, that breath of warmth from Parvati's kiss as it settled like a perfect, delicate butterfly upon her lips… From that point radiated a smothering warmth that seemed to hold it at bay. Just briefly, and just a little.
Drawing in Parvati's breath as Lavender sunk into her kiss, into the weight of understanding and really knowing that for a moment they were both okay - that was enough. For Lavender, just for a second, that was enough.
A/N: I'm maybe thinking of potentially extending this into a multi-chapter. It kind of hooked me. Thoughts? Suggestions? Please let me know with a review. I'd love to hear from you and as always, thanks for reading.