Hope
Prompt: [Theo x Lavender] Hope
for gwen-devilliers
Lavender looked up at the ageing white tiles that made up the ceiling of her arid, white room. They differed in size from the cracked white tiles of the floor, and those on the walls, but only slightly. It was a difference she would never have noticed if she hadn't been trapped in the hospital for months.
She had never been to St Mungo's before, not ever, and she wasn't prepared for how bright it would be. The constant light was almost as grating as the endlessly positive attitudes of the healthcare professionals that came in every day to ask her how she was, to apply ointments and to change her dressings.
How bright and how bleak.
The last real colour that Lavender had seen - at least that she could remember clearly - had been the grim, terrifying flash of red as Fenrir Greyback had sunk his rancid teeth into her neck. Lavender wondered if it had even been real, or whether the deep crimson had been conjured up by her mind as an unconscious response to her complete terror.
She had thought she had died at first. Somehow surviving didn't quite seem like the blessing it was supposed to have been. There had been a sense of relief, of course, but then only a long settling blankness.
From the moment Lavender had woken up, everything had been clinical, sterile and quiet.
Lavender had been told about the outcome of the final battle by nurses. They had been kind but impersonal in their delivery of the news, and it had made Lavender feel all the more alone. How were they to know that some of the casualties meant something to her? They only knew her as a broken schoolgirl in a scrubbed white bed. They weren't to know that she had cared for people that were now dead. It wasn't their fault. But she hated them for it all the same.
Her friends came to visit, intermittently, but Lavender found she saved her outpouring of grief for when she was on her own. Tears for those that had fallen and tears for herself. While being in the hospital, she had been afforded precious few dignities; for the first few weeks she hadn't been able to so much as go to the bathroom unaided. Keeping her emotions to herself felt like a victory of sorts. They would see her vulnerable, she couldn't help that, but she would not be weak.
As the weeks went on the time between her friends visits stretched and stretched. There was much to do on the outside Lavender came to understand, to rebuild after the ravages of war.
Lavender tried to be sympathetic, really she did, but it was… hard.
Endless people told her about what had to be done to repair the castle and grounds from the battle and Death Eater possession. She wanted to ask when the team was arriving to help put her face back together, but she never did. Despite herself, she worried it would stop them from coming, the few that bothered at all. So she listened and tried to empathise. She didn't, but she tried.
Lavender moved her legs under the stiff white blanket and thought about summoning the energy to go and see the small flower garden they had on the roof of the hospital. It was a short journey, and yet it could feel endless. The payoff was minimal for the effort, but it was something to do. Another slot of time spent, another infinite pocket closer to being free of the place.
But her legs didn't move towards the door. Though Lavender hated the little room she was housed in, being out of it brought on panic the likes of which she had never felt before. There were too many people, too much noise, too many eyes looking at her.
Once upon a time, she had liked being the centre of attention, craved it even. Feeling gazes on her cheeks had always given her a sense of warmth and admiration, but not anymore. She didn't like why they stared now.
Lavender had been a popular girl all her life. Beautiful she had been called when she was little and beautiful she remained. Lavender had made friends at school, and people had always wanted to hear what she had to say. Girls wanted to be her, and she'd had her pick of the boys. Well, all but one, but she was over that, mostly.
She came to find she wasn't suited to being on her own. She wasn't used to it. She missed the attention. The good kind. She missed being in the centre of a room and feeling all eyes on her and not crippling shame.
Parvati - her one true remaining friend, faithful to the last - had brought her makeup once, and a magazine with new charms for her hair. She had thought it would cheer her up. Lavender had struggled to gather together any enthusiasm, but she had let Parvati work in the braids anyway. She had taken them out as soon as the other girl had left, leaving her hair down covered the side of her face, and her mutilated neck.
Lavender sat in her bed with the covers pulled over her perfectly neatly and looked at the clock. There were only a few minutes left until the end of the regular visiting hours, so it didn't seem like…
A knock on the door pulled her thoughts away from the oppressive silence, and she made a small effort to straighten her back. Old habits died hard. It was funny how in one moment you could crave anything to end your loneliness but then the very next, as soon as a person approached, you could wish to be alone again.
Lavender tried to arrange her features into a smile and looked expectantly, if not excitedly, at the door.
Theodore Nott marched along the seemingly endless halls of St Mungo's and tried not to frown as his shoes squeaked against the over-cleaned floor. He would rather have been anywhere else in the world, apart from prison that is, which was why he had sucked up his considerable pride and turned up for his appointment. If Draco had managed to complete his own version of this hell he was sure he could do the same.
Theo stuck out in his robes made up exclusively of dark colours, and for once, he was glad. While he might have spent most of his time since the war wishing he could thoroughly blend in, to avoid detection, here, in this miserable place, he wanted nothing less than to belong.
They walked past two witches pushing a trolley filled with foul-smelling vials of a steaming potion and it was enough to set Theodore's teeth on edge. He didn't want to be there.
His frustration almost made him turn to the nearest authority figure - his appointed chaperone for his first appointment - and to shake him into understanding; to explain again how he hadn't been a Death Eater, so he shouldn't be punished. But he didn't. Theo had learned months before that no one cared.
There hadn't been a trial, not for him, although they had tried to get one. Theo supposed he should feel grateful for that small mercy, but he couldn't bring himself to. In the end, it hadn't mattered, it was eventually decided that even the unmarked 'associates' of known Death Eaters required rehabilitation. Pansy had referred to them as 'evil adjacent', and Theo had wished he was able to laugh in reply.
He'd been assigned a 'community project' from the ministry's spinning wheel of humiliation and was told it would last for six months - a number seemingly plucked from the sky. Apparently, the time could be mitigated for 'good behaviour'; the ministry pencil pusher assigned to his 'case' had told him as much, all while conveying that he didn't believe Theo was capable of it. Theo hated himself for agreeing.
It wasn't that he thought he would do something stupid like abscond or raise his wand in anger, but Theo didn't believe he was capable of the bowing and scraping that the new regime expected of him.
He had been handed his first file that morning, and he'd felt his heart sink. It had been another sign that those in power did not understand them. Did they believe that just because they had been on the other side, they had no trauma? That it wouldn't hurt them to revisit the worst of the war as well? They must have thought he was devoid of every proper feeling to assign him Lavender Brown.
Theo hadn't known her at school; all he could recall was her house and hair colour, that and what had happened to her. Her fate had become a story whispered around at gatherings, a ghost story for their dark and murky times. Most of them - the survivors - had their own to share, Lavender's was worse than most. By a long chalk. Now he would have to sit by her bedside twice a week until the end of her stay, or the end of his sentence, whichever came first.
His chaperone gave him a cursory nod as they reached room #97, and Theo tried not to scowl. Blaise had told him to go on a charm offensive, to increase his chances of 'early release'. Theo was perfectly aware that charm had never been a ready weapon in his arsenal, and so he had made peace with the somewhat more achievable aim of trying not to be outwardly offensive.
He shook out his shoulders, straightened his sleeves and wished he could do something about the potent disinfectant smell he was sure was burning the hair in his nostrils.
Then, with nothing else left to do, Theo raised his hand and knocked.