Disclaimer: All recognisable characters belong to J.K. Rowling. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Author: Chips
Pairing: Harry/Lavender
Warnings: het: male/female relationships, adult language, violence, peril, character death—not main character, sexual situations, and AU.
Summary: Though they have never shared more than twenty words before their fifth year at Hogwarts, Lavender Brown and Harry Potter have always shared a silent connection—an understanding of sorts—that what someone shows does not always reflect who they truly are. The night before they're scheduled to take their O.W.L.s, Lavender has a vision of a black grim dying. She decides to stop that from happening, because she knows what Sirius's death would do to Harry. In return, he protects her reputation and they find themselves breaking through the barriers and masks, where they can just be themselves. Enemies beware: Harry and Lavender are ready to do whatever it takes to protect one another.
Among the Colours: Part The First
Lavender Brown had always found it ironic, really, that Harry Potter's best friends were Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. For all that they claimed to know him, they didn't—not really. Sure, they knew the small stuff: his favourite colour, what he ate for breakfast, his favourite class . . . but they didn't know him.
Strangers, acquaintances, they could figure those same things out from all the way across a room without any difficulty.
She could count on one hand the number of times she'd talked to Harry before the start of the year. But just because they'd never really spoken to each other, didn't mean they didn't understand each other. Both she and Harry were experts at making people see what they wanted to see, at letting people make assumptions based off little to no information.
It was all about perception—what could be shown, and what must be hidden.
To the majority of the school, Harry Potter was a spoiled prat who always got his way. People assumed he was treated like a king, that his relatives worshipped at his feet. She wasn't sure how anyone could be blind enough to believe that, but they did.
It had only taken her five minutes in Harry's presence to see what so many others missed. His childhood hadn't been pleasant. She knew he hadn't been physically abused—that would leave different signs—but she'd bet her crystal ball that he'd been neglected. His eyes . . . they belonged to someone who'd never been told they were loved, who'd never had a kind word spoken to them, who thought they were worthless.
It manifested sometimes, in a physical way. He would hide away from his friends, often near her, and they'd just sit silently. If her presence could help him in the smallest way, then she'd offer that comfort freely.
When she'd come to Hogwarts, she'd had plans, detailed plans about what her life would be like. She was going to be the top of her class, Head Girl when the time came, and she'd fall in love and find a respectable husband. Those plans had all flown out the window the moment she met Harry and saw what he needed.
No one else seemed to understand him—not even their Head of House or the Headmaster. His closest friend, Ron Weasley, was too thick to see that Harry needed more than he was offering. And Hermione Granger, well, Lavender hated her. For all the girl claimed she was a genius, she wasn't—not where it really mattered.
Harry didn't need someone to mother him, someone to bully him into doing his work. He needed someone who would sit silently and let him be himself, let him escape from the pressures of his life, if only for a moment.
So she became that person for him.
Lavender was the top female student in the year, but no one other than she knew it. They all thought she was too busy painting her nails to understand the assignments, that she was too busy gossiping about boys to study, and that she was too busy shopping through catalogues to write a proper essay.
She'd spent the last five years supporting Harry to the best of her ability, and she wasn't going to stop now, not when he needed her the most.
Everything had started changing in third year, when she'd taken him the pieces of his shattered broom—the first real present he'd ever received. And, as the others talked around his bed, she seemed to be the only person to notice how much pain was in his eyes.
It might've been foolish, could've ruined the mask she'd crafted, but it was the right thing to do. She'd squeezed Harry's foot through the blankets, aureate eyes locking with green, and she'd seen it then—gratefulness and understanding.
In the months following that incident, Harry had visited her little corner of the common room at least once a day. He'd sit beside her, sometimes with homework, sometimes without, and say nothing, because there was nothing to say that the silence didn't say for them.
Fourth year had been the hardest on her, because it was hardest on him. She'd known that he hadn't put his name in the Goblet of Fire, and that's why she'd had to leave the common room when Ron and Hermione and so many others tore into him. She'd stormed to her empty classroom and thrown curses and hexes at the wall for over an hour.
They claimed to be his best friends, to protect him from harm, and they damaged him more than Malfoy and Snape combined.
Once she'd calmed down, she'd returned to the common room, the plush red velvet armchair, and Harry's side. Again, they said nothing. There was no need to, when their eyes spoke for them.
When Harry fought against the dragon, she started shaking. She was still shaking hours later as she curled up in her armchair, staring into the fireplace across the room. The fire . . . the fire. She didn't stop shaking until Harry wandered into her corner and set a hand on her knee. Their eyes locked and a small, tremulous smile appeared on her face, unlike the haughty and flighty ones she usually wore.
For a moment, just a moment, her mask vanished completely, and she let Harry inside. He squeezed her knee once, carefully, and then nodded, letting her know he understood how rare such an event was, and then wandered back over to his best friends, who were yelling for him.
And that, she could pinpoint that as the moment she simultaneously fell in love with Harry Potter and decided she hated Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley. They didn't deserve forgiveness, but he was too noble, too kind, too afraid of being alone to not forgive them.
She hated that he felt like he didn't have a choice.
It didn't take long, less than one day, for Rita Skeeter to surpass Sybill Trelawney as the person she hated most in the world. Trelawney made a mockery of Lavender's craft, her true Sight, but she knew Harry laughed off the death predictions. But Rita, she mocked and tarnished Harry's memories, and lack thereof, of his parents, which was unforgivable.
After that, Lavender found herself spending an increasing amount of time with Seamus Finnegan. She didn't enjoy his company, not really, but she wasn't above using him to mitigate the gossip that got out. She protected Harry as best as she could from the students by claiming the title of "Gossip Queen," and he needed more help that year than he had in second year.
When the Headmaster announced the Yule Ball, she immediately agreed to attend with Seamus. She didn't have feelings for him, never would, but she knew she couldn't go with Harry—they both did—because Hermione would harass them about it and make life miserable for weeks.
That didn't keep Lavender from teaching him to dance, nor did it keep her from hating her best friend, Parvati Patil, for weeks when he asked her to accompany him. However, when he kept stepping on Parvati's toes, she couldn't help but smile. He was humiliating himself, and it could only be for her sake.
He allowed Parvati one dance, and one dance alone. And it made her feel horrible and petty that she was glad he shunned further offers, even though she could see the pain on Parvati's face. She briefly wondered if relishing in her best friend's pain made her a monster before discarding the thought. It wasn't Parvati's pain or humiliation that pleased her—it was Harry's indifference to Parvati.
It almost seemed like a silent declaration that Harry loathed his inability to dance with her. . . .
The dance lessons had been silent, late at night in her classroom, except for the music. Still they'd learned to speak without words over the years, and she'd seen in every line of his body that he would have asked her if he could, just as she'd surely shown that she'd wanted to go with him more than anything.
That was the last night he let Hermione come between them, much to her relief.
"It wasn't true."
Three simple words that meant the world to her, accompanied by his hand on the back of her neck, then sliding through her fine honey-blonde hair. She released the breath she'd unconsciously been holding in a sigh of relief.
Ron Weasley wasn't what he'd sorely miss. She hadn't lost out to someone who'd betrayed him.
What Lavender Brown considered to be her greatest failure was Voldemort's resurrection. She'd had a vision the night before the final task, of Harry and a rat that was missing a toe. The rat looked identical to Ron Weasley's, identical to what her Boggart became. The rat had appeared in several visions since she'd begun getting them.
The rat killed a bumblebee, cut off its paw, hurt Harry, and then there was nothing but laughter and pain.
It had been intense, powerful, and she hadn't mastered Occlumency yet, so the mental exhaustion pulled her under, not freeing her until it was too late to speak with Harry—too late to change what would happen.
And happen, it did. Cedric Diggory died, and Voldemort returned.
She'd never thought anything could block her Sight, but she'd been proven wrong mere hours later. Mad-Eye Moody was actually Barty Crouch Jr. an escaped Death Eater. That eye, that cursed magical eye had almost cost her Harry's life for the second time in one day.
Disgusted with herself, Lavender sat on the couch before the fireplace long into the morning, plans for the summer racing through her head. She'd master Occlumency so that something like this would never happen again.
Her hands curled into fists so tight that her long, lacquered nails cut into her palms, almost drawing blood. And then the pain faded as her hands were forcibly uncurled by larger, stronger, tan hands that were rough against her soft, smooth skin. She didn't need to look up to know who those hands belonged to; she'd studied them often enough over the years to recognise them at a glance.
Sighing, she relaxed and leaned her head against his chest as he wrapped an arm around her shoulder in a loose hug. The silence was heavy, pressing down on them, weighted with their knowledge of the events that'd happened in the past day. But, at the same time, it was comforting, bearable, because neither of them faced it alone.
She pressed closer to him and vowed that her summer would be useful to him.
She mastered Occlumency that summer, as she'd intended. And she was exceedingly grateful she had when she read the rubbish the Prophet printed about Harry. It took all her newfound skill to compartmentalise the hatred so she wouldn't kill Skeeter or burn the Daily Prophet to the ground with gray magic, perhaps Fiendfyre.
Each year at Hogwarts was worse, more painful than the previous one for Harry, and, in turn, her. What possibly hurt most was the knowledge that he'd rather be at Hogwarts, a place of suffering and betrayal than with his Muggle relatives.
Lavender didn't bother defending him to anyone, because she knew he'd be upset with her if she did. Defending him would result in detentions with Umbridge—the pink toad—and her hand getting torn open with a Blood Quill, as Harry's did. Almost no one respected Harry's wishes, and she refused to join the ranks of those who didn't.
So she kept her mouth shut and healed his hand as best as she could when he got back from detentions and met her in the classroom she'd claimed as her own.
When word spread that he would be teaching a defence group, she winced—not because she didn't have faith in him, but because she knew Hermione was pushing him to do it. In the end, he agreed, and the glance he threw her when she walked into the Hog's Head for the initial meeting let her know why he had.
They could interact freely at these meetings without anyone being the wiser of their past interactions.
And that was when she realised that Harry Potter was in love with her, though they were happy to keep their feelings a secret, not even needing to voice them to each other aloud. It wasn't time for that, not yet.
Girls approached him: purebloods, beautiful, wealthy. He was fifteen now, less than a year away from gaining the Potter Lordship—along with countless vaults, properties, and priceless heirlooms.
He rebuffed them all—one after the other—even Cho Chang, the one girl gossip said matched Lavender in looks and lineage.
She knew that they often got funny looks when they sat in silence. The boys probably thought something was wrong with Harry since he wasn't hitting on the 'sexiest' girl in Gryffindor. And the girls would giggle or glare, depending on whether they thought Harry and her made a good couple or were jealous of their closeness.
Lavender would readily admit that she was vain, but then, she had every right to be. She'd gotten the best genes from both sides of her family, the perfect pureblood daughter. At fifteen she was tall, almost five-ten, and her legs seemed to go on forever—at least that's what she'd heard the Weasley brothers talking about on more than one occasion. Her waist-length hair was honey-blonde, as deep and warm as her aureate eyes. Her skin was smooth, like peaches, but a smattering of freckles leant character to her face. And, though she was a pureblood, she wasn't someone who'd magically alter her appearance. She was who she was, and that was it.
And maybe, just maybe, that was what the boys found so 'sexy.' The lack of pretention, the lack of make-up and glamours, the rawness of her beauty, she thought as she stood before the mirror in her pyjamas. The pyjama bottoms hung low on her hips, clinging to her curved bottom and fit thighs. The matching tank-top was low-cut, and clung to her skin, showing off her ample breasts and flat stomach.
She heard Hermione snort behind her and resisted the urge to grind her teeth together. There were some things that Hermione would never understand, and this was one of them. Yes, she was vain—admittedly so. However, a witch's magic strengthened when she was in peak condition. Magic could become ill, just like flesh could, and Lavender prided herself on never having been ill.
Witches died when they became too overweight, because it poisoned their magic, weakened it. . . . She sighed. Along with a loving husband, Lavender wanted children, and to that end, she kept herself as fit as possible: eating right, duelling, exercising, anything to make her dreams become reality. Well, the dreams that weren't visions of death anyway.
"You look beautiful, Lavender," Parvati said.
She smiled at her best friend in the mirror. Parvati knew, she understood, what Lavender wished for, as did the other girls in their dormitory. Hermione seemed to be the only one who didn't grasp the subtleties, which Lavender had come to expect over the years.
"Better than last week even," Adara Boot, one of her two other roommates said.
"I dare say you're in better shape than Pansy Parkinson. She must be jealous," Lacerta said with a wink. "She must be worried she'll lose Malfoy to you."
Adara and Lacey Boot were sisters, but not twins—even though they were in the same year. Lacey had been born at the end of September and Adara in the middle of August the following year, just making the list for incoming first-years in 1991. They were Terry Boot's cousins, half-bloods, and the other two girls she'd shared a dorm with since she was a first-year. They'd never been particularly close, but they understood the pureblood traditions and why they were so important to her.
"You want Malfoy?" Hermione asked, mouth open and moving soundlessly after that question.
Lavender sighed and rolled her eyes. What a ridiculous question! She'd never been interested in anyone other than Harry, not that Hermione knew this, of course. Lavender knew that Hermione and Ginny were plotting to get Ginny and Harry together. The two girls didn't understand, could never understand what he needed, and it disgusted her that they intended to convince him Ginny was the girl for him.
"I want Malfoy as much as you do, Hermione," she replied as she walked over to her bed. It was different than the others in the room. Oh, it was still a four-posted bed with down pillows and a down mattress, but the hangings and comforter weren't identical to the other girls'. Lavender was proud to be a Gryffindor, but that didn't mean she had to sleep in a bed decked out in red and gold, did she?
Her hangings and bedding were identical to the ones she had on her bed at home. The sheets were a pale lavender, flannel at the moment, soft and comforting. Her hangings were a deep royal purple, embroidered with constellations in silver thread that illuminated the room at night. She knew Hermione thought the bedding was ostentatious, had in fact told her that on more than one occasion, but she didn't care. She wasn't the type of person who'd forgo comfort and familiarity for the mundane—to fit in.
And yes, it might seem vain of her, but honestly, she thought that Hermione was jealous. Perhaps, on some level, Hermione realised that she was inferior to Lavender in every way, but refused to recognise this. That—the possible bitterness—was what Lavender believed kept Hermione from being happy. She foolishly always wanted more, something better, just like Ron Weasley, never noticing that what she possessed was more precious than anything else.
"I hate Malfoy!" Hermione said as she closed the book she'd been reading and set it on her nightstand. "He's a—"
"We know, we know," Parvati said as she rolled her eyes and climbed into bed.
"We've heard it all before," Lavender muttered before closing the hangings and setting a Locking and Silencing Charm on them.
She sighed and rubbed at her temples, which had been throbbing for the past several hours now. She knew the signs, had been familiar with them since she was thirteen and reached her physical maturity, unlocking the Sight.
"What I wouldn't give for one peaceful night of sleep." Groaning, she stretched out, toes spreading apart and feet arching. She settled back against the pillows, fluffed exactly how she liked them, and drifted off to sleep.
The vision started as soon as she went under.
There were balls, glass balls, but not quite crystal balls like they used in Divination. A mountain of them, rolling across the floor, breaking, not breaking, flowing in waves down black marble corridors. In the mountain of glass balls—no, orbs—a black dog, a large, scruffy black dog was swimming.
It reminded her of the past summer, when she'd visited Lacerta and Adara in Muggle London and they'd eaten at a place where little kids played in a large tub of coloured balls. However, for all the similarities, it wasn't remotely similar. The dog wasn't laughing and smiling, it was drowning, got buried under the orbs, and then it fell still. There were no more struggles, no barks for help, just silence—an unbearably painful silence.
And then there was laughter, cackling, horrid laughter. . . . Harry screamed.