Disclaimer: I don't own J.K. Rowling's characters of Jason Robert Brown's lyrics.

Stars and the Moon

I met a man without a dollar to his name
Who had no traits of any value but his smile

Despite what some of her classmates thought about her, Lavender Brown was not entirely superficial. She was, however, a teenage girl intent on enjoying that status. In her mind, that meant kissing a good number of boys.

She'd decided one day that Ron Weasley was quite taken for granted. Sure, he wasn't famous or rich like Harry Potter, or determinedly brilliant like Hermione Granger, but he was quite cute, especially when his ears turned pink when he was embarrassed. Lavender had decided that she ought to kiss someone so cute, and probably ought to kiss him more than once.

Not right at first, but after a bit it was quite nice to kiss him. He was a bit thick about picking up on the universally accepted signals that meant that she wanted him to kiss her, which made her have to kiss him more than she would've liked, but what he lacked in recognition he made up for in enthusiasm. Ron was tall, and reasonably popular, and had gorgeous eyes. She'd done well to snag him just when she did. There was little possibility of any kind of future for them, but she wasn't one to look to the future that much, except in Divination. Lavender liked living in the present. That way you knew where you were.

"I'll give you stars and the moon and a soul to guide you
And a promise I'll never go
I'll give you hope to bring out all the life inside you
And a strength that'll help you grow
I'll give you truth and a future that's twenty times better than
Any Hollywood plot."
And I thought, "You know,
I'd rather have a yacht."

Lavender knew that one of the surest signs of success as a teenage girl was inspiring jealousy and outright hatred in other girls. She felt herself rather successful, judging by the tension between herself and Hermione, to say nothing of the chilly atmosphere between her boyfriend and Hermione. Lavender had never disliked Hermione, but she could come off as rather... superior at times, couldn't she? Thinking that because she was so brilliant and so bloody knowledgeable about everything that she was better than other people, who maybe didn't care as much about books as they did about boys. There was a reason Lavender hadn't been sorted into Ravenclaw, thank you.

But novelty only lasted so long, and even blind envy couldn't keep a relationship going for too long past its bitter end. She hadn't been happy to give it up—all right, she'd been very upset about it—but there were little lies she could tell herself to make it hurt less. She could always remind herself of the fact that he's poor and could never provide the kind of life Lavender had always pictured leading, where she didn't have to work, but spent her days shopping for expensive clothes and occasionally working as a model when she wanted to, not because they needed the money. Her husband would have to be from a good, upstanding family (like the Weasleys, a troublesome voice in her head said), not one with seven children and a house falling down round their ears. He would have to be handsome, tall and strong, with deep eyes and a smile that would melt ice (like Ron). Her husband would have to make buckets of money and buy her diamond bracelets for absolutely no reason whatsoever, and cover their house in rose petals on her birthday, and be sensitive and romantic yet still strong and tough. She told herself that her husband would have to be near perfect, and that she deserved nothing less; and if she told herself often enough, she just might believe them.

Telling herself such things didn't help when she saw him look at Hermione like there were no other stars than the ones in her eyes. Just like he always had.

And I thought, "My God—
I'll never have the moon."