Lavender Brown has always believed in fairy tales; loves them even.
Late into the night she and Parvati pour over her old childhood bedtime stories, squealing over how romantic it would be if this happened or that. Ultimately, it is way to avoid thoughts of war, thoughts of mudblood and pureblood and the most unpleasant of all, Voldemort. These things make Lavender think of darker things, things that make her question her future in this glorious fairytale world, a world she has only ever dreamed about; and to think a small, personally addressed letter had brought it all to her at the tender age of eleven.
Eventually she sticks to her fairytales of white knights, fire-breathing dragons, castles and fairy princesses, nothing ever goes wrong in them and she really likes the little facets of perfection and beauty.
Ron Weasley helps her forget about the war too. She likes to believe, selfishly so, that Ron will be her knight in shining armour; he will protect her from this fairytale world that seems to be slightly wrong each day, slightly off in ways she refuses to notice. Either way it wouldn't do to worry, or so her mother says.
She likes kissing Ron. He's passionate, and clumsy and so gentle when he needs to be that it's beautiful, like a fairytale. He makes her feel so…extraordinary and she for once can almost feel as if everything is right. When she's alone and without the company of Ron, she tries not to think that he may not be her knight, but someone else's. In the end she convinces herself that that's just daft, and continues to thumb through her fairytales.
They're in an abandoned classroom now and they fumble for clasps and buttons, they've never done this before, gotten this far. She ignores the slight awkwardness and the tinge of worry and wrongness she feels because this is how it is supposed to be, this is how it is going to be. This is…right.
As quick as lightning Ron thrusts into her and she gasps, it hurts like hell, but Ron waits and she knows that it will get better, it has to. She calms and they continue and she is almost consumed by this real life fairytale, this fantasy when she hears it. He is whispering something, so low that she almost hopes, almost believes she is mishearing it, but only almost.
Oh Hermione!
She tenses, but does not acknowledge the slip and Ron thinking she has climaxed, follows. She ignores it and they hold each other for awhile. Everything was…is perfect. As she walks back to the dormitory she ignores the burning behind her eyes, it must have been all the damn dust, she surely isn't upset, isn't heartbroken. She ignores the constriction of her throat, how hard it is to breathe, to even think.
Long after, while she lies in her dormitory, listening to the soft puffs of Pavarti's breath, she gazes at Hermione's empty bed and contemplates and contemplates and contemplates. Slowly, she pulls her trunk out from under the bed, and gathers a well cared for cloth bag filled to the brim, into her arms. She descends the stairs, careful not to make any noise and finally reaches the common room. She sits in front of the fire for a while, gazing into the smouldering flames, hoping and wishing and then she just stops. She is very tired. She stands to leave and then without a moments hesitation tosses the cloth bag into the fire, the flames tear into the bag and she feels empty.
She crawls into her bed and shuts the hangings, eyes closing in a tired resignation she drifts off.
The next day Parvati asks her for her collection of fairytales, she wants to show them to one of her Ravenclaw friends.
Lavender shrugs, she doesn't know and either way she doesn't care. She tells Parvati it doesn't matter, fairytales aren't real anyways. It's time to grow up, she tells her scathingly.
Lavender Brown really hates fairytales.