The cover shot of the first October 2007 issue of Witch Weekly magazine commanded attention: a busty blonde, leaning against the side of a bright red Muggle convertible, wearing a short Muggle skirt which showcased excellent legs in high-heeled designer shoes. As the reader watched, the cover model crossed her arms defiantly and raised both her chin and her eyebrow. The headline blared: WITCH, WEREWOLF AND WAR HERO? Meet the REAL Lavender Brown!
Lavender had disappeared after the War. Many had seen her attacked by Fenrir Grayback and struggling to move afterward - in the confusion, people seemed to believe he'd drug her body away. In reality, she'd apparated home. Groggy after hitting her head in her fall from the balcony, and bleeding from wounds on her left cheek, neck and arm, she could never afterward say how she had managed the apparition without splinching herself.
Her parents, not knowing her injuries were caused by a lycanthrope, summoned a private Medi-Witch when she'd refused to go to St. Mungo's. She did not know how to tell her parents about the werewolf attack, and was just hoping against hope that what she feared wasn't true.
As a result of the prompt medical treatment, her concussion was resolved and her blood was replenished. Her scars were minimized to some degree but could not be fully eradicated. Frustrated with the lack of complete success, the Medi-Witch cast additional diagnostics which revealed the changes in her blood chemistry. "You're a werewolf!" she'd exclaimed, backing away hastily.
Even as her eyes welled, Lavender could still see the horror that her parents felt written on their faces. With a detached admiration, she also saw that the reaction did not stop her father from reacting quickly. "Obliviate," he said firmly, raising his wand as the Medi-Witch spun to head for the door.
After thanking the confused Medi-Witch for her time and seeing her out several minutes later, Gideon and Evanelda Brown returned to hug their daughter carefully. They could see Lavender was too overwrought to talk, and since they felt much the same themselves, they gently kissed her and went to bed, after telling her that everything would look better in the morning.
Lavender couldn't bring herself to examine her wounds in the looking glass, and the news that she was now a werewolf seemed too painful to bear. She had always loved beautiful things. As shallow as it sounded, she had always been proud to think of herself as one of them. Despite knowing she had bigger issues to worry about, she wasn't sure she could handle not being pretty. She finally sobbed herself to a fitful sleep.
She woke when the cold light of day began to dawn and steeled herself to summon a lunar calendar. The next full moon was scheduled for May 11th. It was May 3rd, and time to consider what she knew about lycanthropy. It was sobering to realize how few facts she had.
She did not understand how Greyback could have been in wolf form when he attacked her after her fall from the balcony since there had not been a full moon the prior night, but she knew that he had been. Even now, alone in her room, she felt terror anew at remembering those horrible yellow eyes in a hairy face right before he'd attacked her with fangs and claws. She had passed out after being attacked and was not sure why he had not killed her - she could only assume he had somehow been distracted by another combatant.
She knew that she would change on the night of the full moon, but was not sure if this would happen at dusk or at moon rise. She vaguely remembered Professor Lockhart stating that the Homorphus Charm could force a werewolf back into human form. She was not completely sure this was true, but if it was, she was unsure how to cast it. There were some wandless spells, but it wasn't like she would be able to talk when she was a wolf.
She'd heard there was a potion Professor Snape had brewed for Professor Lupin that had allowed his mind to remain human during the change, and there had been rumors there was a secured spot at Hogwarts where he had gone for each full moon. She recalled this with a sense of relief.
'I have to find Professor Lupin,' she thought. 'Thank Merlin I know someone who has already been through this.' She would find him as soon as possible today, but first, she needed to talk to her parents.
Trying not to cry again, she bathed, dressed, and headed down to breakfast, never once going near the mirror.
Ninety minutes later, it was not even 7:00 am but she was already emotionally exhausted from conversations with her parents that had been both tearful and circular. The Daily Prophet's blaring headlines informed her that Voldemort had been defeated at last. She had no time to read the articles but her father told her that the remaining Death Eaters were in custody and that Hogwarts was in need of extensive repair. The small, aloof portion of her brain not completely consumed with her own troubles faintly registered pleasure that Harry, Hermione, Ron and Professor McGonagall had survived, as their dazed but happy pictures on the front page attested.
She told her parents she had to go out, and sent a message via the enchanted galleon to Professor Lupin to meet her at Hogwarts. It was early, but with a baby at home, she thought it unlikely he and his wife would still be asleep.
She apparated to the Hogsmeade tunnel which would take her to the Room of Requirement. Before entering, she thought firmly of the room she wanted to see. When she went in, she was disappointed not to see the Professor waiting for her.
The room, though empty, looked much the same as she had left it the night before. Since it clearly had been missed in the Battle, she could not figure out why it stank of smoke. Mentally shrugging, she opened the door to the seventh floor corridor cautiously, casting a Disillusioning spell on herself as she exited.
She headed toward the dungeons, thinking she might as well search the Potions lab on the off chance any helpful werewolf potion would be labeled in such a way that she could recognize it. The detached, logical portion of her brain informed her that Snape would have destroyed these potions before he let the Carrows into the castle, but she had to check.
She was shocked at the damage she saw in most of the corridors, and the still silence of the castle was unnerving in itself. When she made it to the first floor, tremors beset her as she saw where the balcony had been blasted away, remembering how that had sent her to the floor of the Great Hall, where….
'NO,' she told herself firmly, 'you are not going to think about that right now!'
Cautiously, she peered down to ensure no one was about. When she saw all the bodies covered in white sheets laying on the floor below her, she dropped to her knees, hands covering her mouth in shock.
"Finite," said a familiar Scottish voice behind her, and suddenly she was no longer Disillusioned. "Miss Brown? Lavender?" the voice said.
Whirling while simultaneously trying to stand only resulted in tripping over her day robes and dropping her wand. She fumbled for it like a wild thing, even as Professor McGonagall bent to hand it back to her. She snatched it away and made it to her feet. 'Don't back up, don't back up,' she chanted mentally, trying to force herself to remember the balcony rail behind her was gone. Somewhat hysterically, she briefly entertained the thought that perhaps she would get a happier ending if she fell a second time and dashed her brains out on the Great Hall floor.
Sensing that the girl was panicked, Minerva retreated a few paces to create some space between them. She spoke soothingly. "It's all right, my dear. Everything is all right."
The sound of that lie snapped Lavender's thin thread of control and suddenly she was sobbing, on her knees on the floor once again, wand clutched to her chest as she cried. "I-I need P-Professor L-Lupin," she finally choked out. "Do you know where I c-can find him? H-he was supposed to meet me here."
The frozen look on her Head of House's face sent alarms ringing through her brain. "Oh, my dear," Minerva said. "I have very bad news."
She was sidearm-Apparated back to the Room of Requirement as Minerva explained that the wards which had previously prevented Apparition inside Hogwarts were temporarily down. Having learned from Neville the night before how the room worked, Minerva concentrated on what she needed and paced the corridor while Lavender watched. When they entered the room, they found comfortable furniture, a crackling fire and a pot of hot tea, though the room still stank of smoke.
Once they were seated, Minerva gently broke the news of Remus's death. "Why did you need to see him, my dear?"
Though she had cautioned her parents to tell no one of her lycanthropy, her shocked despair at the unexpected news had the whole story tumbling out. She saw the horror and pity on her Head of House's face, then watched silently as Minerva visibly pulled herself together. "Well!" she said. "I knew Remus Lupin since he was a schoolboy. Let me tell you what I know about lycanthropy."
Minerva explained about the Wolfsbane potion and the Shrieking Shack. After summoning a book about lycanthropy from her personal collection, she left Lavender alone to peruse it while she departed for the Lupins' home. She returned an hour later with several bottles of Wolfsbane and the recipe for the potion written out in Professor Snape's hand.
"Shortly before Albus died, Severus gave Remus several bottles of Wolfsbane in stasis and a copy of the recipe. He said then that Voldemort could kill him at any point and that he did not want his own afterlife spoiled by stories of Remus chewing up the populace on his account."
She winced at her poor wording choice on seeing the look of horror on Lavender's face, and hastily continued, "Severus and Remus were never friends, Miss Brown. In any event, Severus told Remus that the stasis bottles were an experiment, and that if the experiment was successful Remus would not need to bother him every month. It was successful and Severus went on to make Remus an additional year's supply. This is what is left."
She sighed. "Now of course I realize that he knew we would all turn on him after he killed Dumbledore, and that he would not be able to supply the potion after that. He did not want Remus to be helpless."
Seeing Lavender's stare, she told the girl of Snape's death and about the apparent fact that he had been Dumbledore's man all along, something she was still trying to come to terms with herself.
Lavender was barely listening as she tried to process the fact that she was going to have to go through her first change on her own and that she would be out of Wolfsbane in four months' time. She'd passed Potions, but a cursory review of the potion recipe told her that her skill level was nowhere near what would be required to brew it successfully. 'And the bludgers just keep getting hit my way,' she thought.
Seeing her pupil's misery, Minerva quietly said, "I know it feels very grim now, Miss Brown, but your friends will help you through this. They will be so happy to find out you're alive. There was a report that someone had seen Greyback carrying your body away, and…"
"NO." Lavender spoke harshly. Minerva stopped talking out of sheer shock. "No one is to know I'm alive, Professor." She was on her feet, wand pointed and hand surprisingly steady. "Obliviate."
Knowing from the Medi-Witch experience that her former head of house would lack awareness for the next few moments as she mentally adjusted to the spell, Lavender quickly Disillusioned herself again. She grabbed her teacup, Minerva's book, the Wolfsbane recipe and the potion bottles before slipping silently from the room. Minerva would doubtless wonder why she had chosen to take a cup of tea alone in the Room of Requirement, but she would never suspect Lavender's involvement.
Shaken by her own nerve, she went home and informed her parents she was leaving the UK and that she wanted everyone to think she was dead. In vain, Gideon and Evanelda tried to get her to change her mind.
"How can I stay? she said passionately. "You know the prejudice against werewolves in Great Britain. And I won't be a figure of pity and f-feared, I won't." Her chin rose even as her voice broke slightly. "They will probably tell you today that I'm missing and assumed dead. Have a funeral, that's fine. But don't tell anyone I'm alive."
Exhausted, her father just stared at her. "Lavender, you're 17 years old. Where do you think you're going to go?"
Smiling faintly, scarred chin in the air, Lavender replied. "That's easy, Daddy. We have money. I'm going to Paris."
After hearing her plan, her father dispatched a trusted house elf to Paris to purchase and furnish a remote flat, with instructions to modify it with a hidden steel-reinforced, sound-proofed panic room that would lock behind her when she entered it and which would not unlock once she entered for 30 hours. Once she moved, she would furnish the panic room with a small refrigerator for her Wolfsbane and a few bottles of water, a small bathroom, a few books, and a comfortable chair, and a pallet on the floor. She wasn't quite sure what Wolf Lavender would need or want but figured she could adjust the furnishings for Month 2 if needed.
She hid in her room while Ministry officials and Minerva McGonagall visited her parents to announce her probable death. Listening to her parents sob on the floor below, she thought it was probably a relief for them to have a reason to cry openly. 'They've been trying to stay so strong for me.'
She caught up on The Prophet articles, stunned to read of over fifty Light deaths during the final battle. For some reason, reading about Colin Creevey hit her the hardest. She hadn't known him well, but he had been so young. "What was you even doing there, Colin," she muttered, wiping away a tear. She'd thought all the minor children had been smuggled out.
Three days later, on May 6th, the Parisian flat was ready and her father had completed the transfer of both galleons and francs to bank accounts in the name of Lavender Marron.
"I'll find a job, Daddy," Lavendar said softly, as she prepared to leave with their house elf to be popped straight into the new property. "I don't expect you to support me forever. I just need to get through this first couple of months."
Gideon crushed her in a hug. "Don't be absurd, Lavender. And we will see you soon enough."
"Lavender, are you sure you don't want me to come with you?" Evanelda looked as if she had not slept well in days, which was probably true. She could not believe her precious only child was prepared to face a frightening, probably painful change on her own.
Lavender hugged her mother. "I'm sure, Mother. At least until we know whether the Wolfsbane is successful, it's better for me to be alone." Dammit, she had tears in her eyes again. She didn't think she had cried this much in her life. Whispering, she added, "I wouldn't be able to stand it if somehow I hurt you."
Her mother's eyes dropped but not before Lavender read the plain message in them. She already had. The knowledge made her heart ache, but it did not change her mind.
"Sunshine," she said to the elf she'd named when she was three, "I'm ready."
And with a faint pop, they were gone.