Thirst for Power
School: Beauxbatons
Theme: The Three Broomsticks
Special Rule: Incorporate the colour purple and the meaning behind it in your story: Power
Main Prompt: [Character] Lavender Brown
Additional Prompts: [Emotion] Anticipation, [First line] "Looking back, [s]he could not tell you how [s]he got here"
Year: 3
Word count: 1298
A/N: Lavender is OOC here. While in canon, it seems that she is mostly annoyed by Hermione; here, she hates Hermione, her hatred fueled by jealousy.
Looking back, she could not tell you how she got here. Sure, the premise of the plan was simple enough, but for the life of her, Lavender Brown could not tell you how everything had deviated from the original idea so greatly.
Lavender had a... predilection towards gossip, you might say. She had always believed in the power of information. Not information from books though—she was not Hermione Granger, who had oh-so-much to learn about how life really worked. No, she was talking about the power of blackmail.
It was astounding how a simple threat to reveal a person's deepest, darkest secret could change everything. Everything. Except there was one problem—she could never find out any dirt on Hermione Granger, no matter how hard she looked. It was as if she was pristine, as though she had never done anything wrong. It was unnatural, that's what it was.
Lavender had long despised Hermione Granger. Ever since their first day at Hogwarts—no, not even Hogwarts, they had first met on the Hogwarts Express, after all—she had absolutely detested her, with her bossiness and holier-than-thou attitude. People talked about love at first sight, but this—this was hatred at first sight.
She had long anticipated being able to take Hermione Granger down. For so many years, all of her dreams had been about humiliating her, about ruining her so thoroughly that the stupid little Muggle-born left Hogwarts.
For years, she had tried. Little things at first, like making fun of her lack of knowledge about the wizarding world. But that only pushed little-miss-perfect deeper in the stacks of books. And her constant bragging of how much knowledge she had amassed only got worse.
It was bad enough at the beginning. But as they grew, Hermione only tried to do more, proving that she was smarter in every way. Every moment of the day was spent in the library. And it hurt Lavender somewhere deep in her heart. She was not the silly fool that Hermione thought she was. She really did care about her grades, and it hurt a lot to be put down like that. So she hid it. No one ever knew about her desire to succeed in her classes—most thought she was an empty little bubble-head.
And that was exactly how she portrayed herself. The Sorting Hat had considered sending her to Slytherin, and with good reason, too. She turned her attention towards her looks and her image, the one place where she might possibly outdo Hermione. But it didn't seem to affect Hermione as she just turned her nose up at Lavender's care for her appearances.
So Lavender pursued other things—information and the power that you get with the right type of information. Sure, now she was thought of as an empty-headed gossip, but if she could only find blackmail on Hermione...
But that was precisely the problem. It seemed that Hermione had never done anything even slightly wrong in her life. No matter how hard or deep Lavender dug, nothing turned up. Only Hermione's relationship with Viktor Krum had even the slightest bit of scandalousness woven in, but everybody knew about that anyway.
And then, in September, she discovered something. Something that made her heart pound with excitement. This was the moment, at last. This was how she would finally be able to crush Hermione like the annoying fly she was.
Ron Weasley was a fool, honestly. How could he not have noticed that Hermione fancied him? But then again, it could probably be written in plain sight, and he would still remain oblivious. The idiot. Even so, that only worked to her advantage.
Now, she just had to wait for the right moment. For months, her blood boiled with excitement. She followed him, making sure to start a conversation with him from time to time. She attended Quidditch tryouts and cheered him on, despite not having an interest in the sport at all.
He might have been a fool, but he was a lovable one. Honestly, she could begin to understand why Hermione would be attracted to him. He was cute. Charming, in his own way. Even while completely clueless and bumbling around hopelessly, he was cute.
Lavender sighed. When she had decided to pursue Ron Weasley as a means of getting even with Hermione, she never expected this to happen. She never thought she would—dare she say it?—fall for him too. But she did.
The weather outside of Hogwarts got steadily cooler, as autumn turned into winter. Gryffindor's game against Slytherin approached. Before heading down for breakfast, Lavender examined herself critically in the mirror. She had worn her lucky purple cardigan. With luck, if Gryffindor won, Lavender would be able to approach Ron during the afterparty. She smiled at her reflection, anticipation building within her. Her heart pounded with excitement. Poor Hermione Granger never stood a chance.
The match passed by in a blur. She didn't really notice what exactly happened, her nerves at finally executing the plan showing, but one thing was for certain—Ron was playing crazily well. He saved goal after goal, and Lavender cheered for him until her throat was hoarse.
After the game, Lavender made her move. The partying, raucous Gryffindors had filled the common room with sounds of laughter and joy. Finally, Lavender managed to get him cornered, alone. Her heart pounded so loud that she was sure that he could hear.
"Butterbeer?" she asked sweetly, fiddling with her amethyst bracelet nervously. Say yes. Please say yes. Anticipation built within her. All of her plotting came down to this. She'd waited for this moment for months.
"Sure," he said, taking the bottle from her.
They slipped into easy conversation about the game. Lavender smiled as she listened to Ron recount his daring saves, time and time again. He was just so passionate about the game; it was impossible not to get caught up in his excitement.
As he came to the end of one of his tales, Lavender leaned in, closing the distance between them. Their lips met, their noses bumping into each other awkwardly.
Lavender giggled nervously, leaning in again. This time, it was as if an explosion of passion had taken place. Ron kissed back, hesitantly at first, but then with more and more fervour. And boy, was he an amazingly good kisser.
As they pulled back for breath, Lavender whispered, "Want to go somewhere a bit more private?"
Ron nodded, the two of them walking hand in hand. As soon as they exited the common room, into the draughty peace of the corridor outside, their lips met again. Stumbling into an empty classroom, they jerked away from each other abruptly as they realised that they were not alone in the room.
Hermione Granger had conjured a flock of small birds around her, like the show-off she was. Taking a closer look, Lavender realised that she was crying. She felt a rush of satisfaction. After all these years of plotting and anticipation, her dream of taking down Hermione Granger had finally come true.
This was what she had worked for for so many years. This moment was what she had anticipated and looked forward to all these years. But then, why, when she finally had it, did she feel so empty? So unworthy of pride and happiness?
The plan had started off so simple. It had evolved into something so complex. When Lavender had first started plotting, at no point had she ever imagined falling in love along the way. She had only dreamed of taking down Hermione Granger. How on Earth had all this happened? Why had she let her thirst for taking Hermione down go so far?
Shaking off those feelings of doubt, she forcefully pushed those thoughts away and turned to Ron. "Coming?"