With the passing of the New Year came the new moon, and Lavender embraced the clarity of mind it provided like she had never done before. She threw herself into her work at the shop, once Brenda reopened after the holidays, and often was gone from home for nearly twelve hours. She came home exhausted every night and often went to sleep with her work clothes on, too tired to remove them. She didn't want a moment to think, because thinking brought back memories and even the good memories were painful.
Brenda loved the enthusiasm, but did express some concern as the days passed and Lavender's feverish working didn't cease. Lavender brushed those concerns and comments aside – she didn't need sleep, she needed to forget.
What she didn't need was any more drinks, and even remembering the headache she had had when she woke up in Hannah's small room in the Leaky Cauldron was enough to make her wince. The hangover potion had helped slightly but Lavender had never been the sort to drink all that much. As such, she had been wildly overestimating what four – had it been five? – drinks would do to her. She had woken up and felt like she'd been run over by a bus, and then was promptly sick all over the floor.
Hannah had come in to check on her soon after that, and when she discovered Lavender moaning quietly in the bed and seen the vomit on the floor she had given her a sympathetic look and started cleaning. Lavender had tried to apologize and Hannah brushed it off by simply saying, "We all have our ways of dealing with our demons."
Maybe working was her new method of coping with her demons. Maybe working had been Seamus's method too. Lavender had had demons from the war too, of course, but Seamus's had driven him fiercely. When Lavender remembered the horrors of the battle, most of her memories were wrapped up with the werewolf who had savaged her, Fenrir Greyback. It had been the worst night of her life, she'd been in more pain than she could imagine, but it didn't haunt her like the battle seemed to have haunted Seamus.
He'd seen his best friend die, seen his classmates ripped and blown apart, and he had taken it all personally. Seamus had always worn his heart on his sleeve. It was why Neville made a better commander of the DA, and why Ginny made a better captain of Gryffindor. Seamus was all rage and fire and passion. Point him in the right direction, tell him to protect his friends, and he wouldn't let anything stop him.
It was one of the things that had endeared him to her. Lavender had felt safe around him in a way that belied the realities of their seventh year. When they would sleep together he would wrap his arms around her and hold her close, close enough that she would wake up with the scent of him still on her shoulders and her neck and in her hair. He made her feel safe without even trying and she had carried that feeling with her through the darkest points of the year.
But now she was alone again, and there was no one to comfort her against her fears. Hannah helped, of course, but Lavender didn't want to bother her. Hannah and Neville had become the people that the members of the DA would fall on when they were struggling, and Lavender didn't want to give them another person to care for. She knew Neville still saw Seamus nearly every day, as they had Auror training together, but she refused to ask about him. There was no point in willingly rubbing salt in her own wounds.
She didn't take off the moonstone, even though every time she saw it she felt like someone had punched her in the gut. With the new moon it had dimmed down to barely a shimmer, easily hidden beneath the high necks of the clothes she usually wore to work. It felt warm on her skin even against the icy wind of the winter and how cold she felt inside.
Finally, Brenda insisted that Lavender took a day off. Despite Lavender's protests, Brenda wouldn't accept no for an answer. So that was why, one morning nearly two weeks after Seamus had gone, Lavender woke up with nothing to do and the light feeling of fear in her belly. What was she supposed to do with herself to keep from thinking?
She started with a run. It was cold and the wind bit at her through her running clothes, but at least the run and exertion and cold focused her. She had run a lot in preparation for the final battle – they all had, because Neville insisted on fitness – but she hadn't done much of it recently and forcing her muscles to comply was good. It did bring back memories of the Room of Requirement turning itself into a gym and track for them and that was bittersweet. They had all been so young and eager, even if Lavender had found herself shaking from exhaustion on a nightly basis due to the regimen they had been put through.
Still, after the first ten minutes of agony she remembered how much she had learned to enjoy running, and her legs took her another half hour before she started to feel too much of a burn to continue. Lavender walked back to her flat at a much more sedate pace, breathing the cold air deeply and wiping sweat off her brow. She did feel better for the exercise, and resolved to do it again the next morning.
Well, perhaps not the next morning, she thought as she climbed the flight of stairs with her legs screaming in protest. The morning after, then.
She set to cleaning her house and doing her laundry. She organized her books on the shelf and tried to harden her heart when she went through the drawers of things Seamus kept. Most of it was gone – he must have come in some time when she was gone and taken his clothes. Still, he'd left a few things. A old sweater she threw in with the rest of her laundry as mercilessly as possibly, trying to avoid the scent of it that wafted gently into her nose. A picture of the Gryffindor boys in their fifth year, which she set carefully aside. Some old candy wrappers, which she tossed.
There was nothing of her, and she wasn't sure if that made it worse or better. She had noticed that he had taken a few photographs of them from the mantle with him when he left, or at least that's what she assumed. The one of them at the Christmas party the DA had held before winter break was gone, as was the 'class photo,' as Colin Creevey had called it, taken in late October of the previous year of all the members of the DA. Lavender had her own copies of the photographs but she had preferred Seamus's versions, as he had carried them with him though the hell of the last year and it had taken all her powers of persuasion to convince him to put them in frames rather than his pocket after the war was over.
Sighing, she fished out her own copy of the class photo, slipping it into a spare frame and putting it up on the mantle. She didn't get out her copy of the one of the two of them at the Christmas party. She knew it by memory anyway – his arm around her shoulder, his lips brushing her cheek as she laughed and blushed in a short green dress. No werewolf scars then, just a light, nearly faded cut across her jaw from where the She-Carrow had slammed her head against a desk with a misplaced Cruciatus. The Christmas party was a good memory but she didn't need to relive it, not without knowing that it would bring back the feelings of confusion and hurt and loneliness.
Once her laundry was folded and put away, Lavender found herself tapping her fingers anxiously as she sipped a cup of tea. For the new moon, she was unbearably restless. Of course, it probably had nothing to do with the moon. But still, she felt the need to go out, to lose herself in a crowd somewhere and be surrounded by people. Not the Leaky Cauldron, not after the last time she had gone there and royally embarrassed herself in front of Hannah. But she needed to go somewhere and it was a Friday night, after all. Maybe she could find a little fun.
She walked over to her closet and pulled out a long sleeved dress and a pair of leggings. Winter did make dressing easier than summer when it came to hiding her scars. The dress was black and fit her mood, the leggings dark purple. Lavender pulled her knee high boots with the silencing charm on the heels over the leggings and then liberally applied foundation and makeup to cover her scars. She kept the moonstone tucked beneath the high collared dress. She didn't know where she was planning on ending up and she didn't want it missing in the morning if she found herself in some scummy pub.
Stepping out her door, she traced the patterns to seal the hexes. It was barely nightfall as she walked away from her flat and towards the entrance to Diagon Alley. There were a number of pubs on side-streets off of Diagon Alley, but more than that, it was the gateway to a number of other streets that the wizarding population frequented. She'd been down Knockturn Alley only once before, on a dare before fourth year.
Tonight she was feeling dangerous. There were a number of back street pubs that catered to the inhuman or the less-desired members of the population. She'd never been to one of the werewolf establishments before but she did know of a few. Maybe she could lose herself there for a night. After all, it wasn't like they could turn her. Lavender didn't know for a fact that she couldn't be made a werewolf if bitten at the full moon, but she did know that a werewolf's bite outside the full moon wouldn't make her a werewolf.
She walked down the side of Diagon Alley until she reached a turn for Knockturn Alley. She didn't travel very far down Knockturn before finding another side street with a sign that said Daggerton Road. Hesitating for only half a breath, she made her way down Daggerton. It was lined with shops of dubious nature, things in the windows that would have made her shrink away had she not been carefully maintaining her image of self-confidence. This was the kind of place young witches got killed if not careful, but Lavender hadn't survived the hell of the previous year to be offed by some nutcase down a dark street.
The place she was heading for made itself known with the number of people around it. It was a Friday night, after all, and she would have been surprised to find an empty pub. Still, the crowd around it was also surprising. Lavender hadn't thought that a werewolf bar would be of interest to most people, and she could almost smell the humans around the Half Moon Tavern.
There wasn't much of an issue getting in. She gave a few men a glare that could peel paint when they looked at her, and whirled around with a snarl on her face when she felt a hand on her bum. Something in her sensed the presence of wolves here and rose to defend itself accordingly, and while it scared Lavender more than a little to be snarling at someone without the full moon around to excuse her for it, it was clearly the right reaction. When she met his eyes he backed off, looking away and raising his hands in a strange blend of human and wolf surrender.
It gave Lavender the confidence to push her way forward to the bar and order a glass of wine. There weren't many women here, and the few there were seemed much older than she was herself. The reaction she'd given to being pawed at was clearly enough to keep most of the men at bay and she was grateful to the strange, wild part of herself that had had that reaction. She sat down at the bar and took her wine in one hand, laying the other carefully in front of her. Everything she did here was calculated. She could feel the stares on her back, eyeing her lithe form. She could count at least six individual scents of different werewolves in the tavern, and while she didn't know exactly what she smelled like to them, she guessed they could identify her as someone with at least a little wolfish blood in her.
Despite her snarls from earlier, it wasn't long before someone approached her. Lavender looked him over blatantly as he walked up. Shaggy brown hair, bright hazel eyes with more than a hint of yellow, a thin mouth quirked just slightly into a smile, and three ragged claw marks running across his face. He made no effort to hide them like she was doing with hers, and as he sat down next to her she felt a hint of shame. Not shame for having the scars; no, for the first time, she felt a little ashamed of hiding them.
"I'm Brandon," he introduced himself, meeting her eyes with something like half challenge, half friendly interest, and complete romantic attraction in them.
"Lavender," she greeted in return, not looking away. If she backed down from a challenge here she'd be eaten.
"That's a pretty name," he commented, taking a drink of his beer.
Lavender shrugged. "I'm a pretty girl."
He laughed at that and they both relaxed a little. She was grateful that she hadn't totally lost her hand at flirting. "That you are," he commented. "What brings you to the Half Moon tonight?"
"I was tired of the Leaky Cauldron. I wanted something a little more my speed. To be around people a little more my type." It was a bold statement but she'd have to be blind to see he wasn't a werewolf.
"You're not a werewolf though, are you?" He asked.
Lavender was surprised with his forward question, but she nodded agreement. "I'm not. I was bitten, but not at the full moon."
"I bet that's a story."
That got a laugh out of her and she winked at him as she took another sip of her wine. "It certainly is."
A few other men tried to approach her as they talked, but Brandon had a glare and slight snarl even better than Lavender's own, which was not really surprising when she thought about it. He was a werewolf, he confirmed quickly, had been bitten at the age of six and could barely remember being human. His parents had cast him out when the full moons got to be too much to bear. He hadn't gone to school because of his condition, and he'd never gotten a wand.
Lavender couldn't contain her shock at that. "Really?" She blurted out, interrupting him. "You've never had a wand?"
He raised his eyebrows at her. "Never needed one. Anyway, not like the wanded would just give one to me now. I'm less than human, and therefore I don't deserve a wand." He said it straightforwardly, so matter-of-fact that it took her breath away. "Most of us don't have wands. There's no shame in that. We get by well enough without them."
He seemed almost defensive and Lavender quickly moved to calm him down. "Of course not. I wasn't thinking... it's shameful that you had no schooling, but that's not your fault, of course not. That's the fault of the Ministry. Werewolves have gone to Hogwarts before."
He shook his head. "Nah, not since the seventies. Something happened with a werewolf there and the Board of Governors were scared. No werewolves since then. That's why Fenrir's pack appealed to so many of us."
The name of the man she feared most in the world dropped so casually into conversation was enough to make Lavender feel like she had been plunged underwater all of a sudden. The rest of the bar dimmed in noise, her ears roared, and she couldn't breathe. Brandon didn't seem to notice. "Were you a part of that?" Lavender asked after a few seconds of silence. She almost didn't want to know the answer. This was the first conversation with someone who she hadn't gone to school with who wasn't staring at her scars in horror she had had in months.
Brandon nodded. "Not like we had a lot of options. Why?"
Lavender stood slowly, setting down her now empty glass of wine carefully and laying a sickle on the bar to pay for her drink. "You get my story after all. Fenrir Greyback was the one who savaged me as I tried to stop him from eating a child." She turned and left the Half Moon Tavern, careful not to run, careful to keep her head high and her heart rate and breathing normal, careful to not look back and admit fear.
She kept that calm, calculated pace all the way back to her apartment before she crumpled down onto the couch and allowed herself to take deep, bracing breaths. Despite her fear she was proud of the way she had handled herself. And also despite the fear, she couldn't help but wonder at Brandon's attitude towards what he had called the 'wanded,' wizards and witches who had wands. She had never heard of anyone being denied a wand unless they were a criminal. How could werewolves be denied wands and schooling strictly on the fact that they were werewolves?
It was enough to make her think, and then she suddenly realized she hadn't thought about Seamus in hours. A small smile without a trace of happiness in it crept over her face. She didn't want to remember, but she didn't want to forget either. All she wanted was to be happy and safe again, and going to a werewolf pub might not be the best option when she next felt like this.
