Hermione studied Lavender across the heavy wood table. She looked pretty much the same as she remembered; all frills and lace, her hair arranged in cute little curls, her makeup applied with a light hand—or done so well that it looked that way—her mouth curved softly in a little cupid's bow, her eyes glowed in a way that hinted at laughter just waiting to bubble out.
It was disgusting.
"It's good to see you, Lavender," the lie came out easily and she thought Lavender believed it.
"Thank you," Lavender said in her smooth, practiced voice. "I would like to say the same about you, but under the circumstances—" she gestured to the dark, cold stone walls. "Under the circumstances, I'm sure you'll agree that it really isn't."
Hermione's eyes went cold and she stopped feigning politeness. "What do you want?"
"Oh, well, to see how you're doing, of course," she said.
"Of course," Hermione said sarcastically.
"So how are you doing?"
"Oh, I'm just peachy," she said.
Lavender's eyes welled up with tears and she lowered them to look at her hands in her lap. Hermione watched a tear fall with a light plop onto her arm and felt a little ashamed of herself for being so catty.
"I'm sorry, Lavender, I didn't mean—"
"It's not you," she said with a sniff. "It's just . . . I miss him so much, and you . . ."
"I didn't kill Ron," Hermione said tiredly. "I don't expect you to believe me. Why should you? No one else does. But I didn't do it."
"I know you didn't," Lavender said. She smiled kindly at Hermione and wiped her eyes. It didn't smudge her makeup even a little bit. "I know."
Hermione regarded her curiously. The way she had said that, I know you didn't, sounded funny, though she couldn't pinpoint exactly why. "Well, I guess that's one more person I can add to the short list then," she said.
"The short list?" Lavender asked.
"Of people who believe I'm innocent," she clarified. "I currently have one mad ex-Auror, an ex-Death Eater, an ex-best friend, and now you. It's a short list, but a list all the same."
Lavender smiled. "You always were really witty," she said. "I think that's one of the reasons Ron loved you so much."
Hermione sighed. "Lavender, Ron wasn't in love with me. We hadn't even talked to each other in almost a year."
"He was in love with you," she said stubbornly. "He never said it, but I knew. I knew."
Hermione swallowed and suddenly remembered that Lavender hadn't been to any of the hearings or even the trial. Odd, considering she was Ron's girlfriend at the time.
"I could see it in his eyes, you know?" Lavender continued, staring past Hermione's shoulder. "When he made love to me, he always closed them, but sometimes, when he looked at me, when I was cooking, or reading a book at the table, it was almost like he didn't know who I was. Like he was seeing someone else. I knew it was you. I knew it."
"Lavender," Hermione heard her voice shake and tried to stop it. "Lavender, Ron didn't love me anymore. He . . . We didn't part on good terms. He didn't want me. He wanted you."
Lavender laughed and it wasn't a happy sound. It made the little hairs on the back of Hermione's neck stand up. "He settled for me because he couldn't have you anymore," she said roughly. She turned her gaze back to Hermione and she felt her heart still in her chest for an instant. "But he still loved you. It was you he wanted, not me. It was never me. It was you. It was always you—"
"Lavender," Hermione said sharply. She had to cut her off before the woman became hysterical. "Lavender, listen to me. Ron wasn't with me anymore. He was with you. Not me . . . He and I had a fight the night we split up. It was a bad one. He hit me and walked out. I never spoke to him again, and he never touched me again. He was not in love with me. In fact, I'd be willing to bet he almost hated me."
She laughed again in that high pitched, near-hysterical way. "He may have hated you, but he was still in love with you. I saw him look at you when he thought I didn't notice. When we went to parties after the war was over, and at the ceremonies where they gave you all your Order of Merlin—First Class, wasn't it?—his eyes always drifted to you. It was like he couldn't help it." She wiped her eyes again because, though she wasn't exactly weeping, the tears were still running silently down her face. "I would have given anything," she whispered fiercely, "anything, for him to look at me just once the way he looked at you."
"I'm sorry, Lavender," Hermione said. "I didn't know—"
"No, you didn't," she said. "How could you?"
"Lavender, what—?"
"That's why I had to do it, you know?" she said. Hermione felt her breath freeze in her lungs. "Because I loved him so much, but he didn't—he couldn't love me back."
"Lavender, what did you do?" Hermione asked slowly. Oh God, she thought. Oh God, oh God, oh God. "What did you do?"
"I killed him, of course," she said simply. She said it like you might say 'I'm going to the market; I'll be back in an hour'. "I had to. I couldn't stand it anymore. And then . . . and then I made it look like you did it. And that seemed right. That seemed like the way it should be. He loved you, after all."
Hermione didn't know what kind of fucked up sense that was supposed to make, but she really didn't care. "GUARD!" she screamed. "GUARD!"
The door opened so fast that the door slammed into the wall, bounced off, and almost hit the guard as he came rushing in.
"She killed Ron!" Hermione screamed, pointing her finger at Lavender, who rose slowly from her chair looking confused. "She admitted it! She killed him!"
The guard gave Lavender a strange look and lifted both eyebrows.
"Poor thing," Lavender said lightly. "She's lost her mind. She started getting hysterical just a few minutes ago, but really, this is too much."
The guard came forward and unlocked Hermione's chains from the ring on the table and started leading her away.
"Wait!" Hermione screamed. "Wait! Wait! No! You can't believe her! She's insane! She killed him! She admitted it! She told me! Please! You have to believe me!"
The guard took a firmer hold on her chains and pulled her out the door and down the hall toward her cell.
"Let me go! You can't do this! I didn't kill him! Lavender killed him!" Hermione was practically being drug by the chains now. "Lavender, you bitch! I'm going to tear your heart out! Just wait until I get out of here! I'll hunt you down and rip you apart you fucking tramp!"
"Get in there," the guard snarled. He shoved her into the cell without even bothering to take off the manacles.
"Wait," Hermione pleaded. "Wait, sir, please. I—you have to go get her. You have to stop her. She killed him. She told me she did, and I—"
The door slammed in her face.
She clutched her hair in her hands and gave a wordless scream of rage and frustration that echoed in the cell like a fog-horn.
Somewhere the Mother Crier answered her, but he was the only one.