Ron and Lavender break up.
The news itself was rather unsurprising, to say the least. Lavender is perhaps the only one shocked— she stomps up the stairs a bit overdramatically, asking to be pitied, and falls into Parvati's arm like she always does, bawling uncontrollably. She starts to give what Parvati's termed The Speech: "And I mean I knew he felt something for Hermione but I just, I dunno, I thought it'd pass. Aren't I more interesting than her?" And usually, Parvati would oblige; she'd hold Lavender by the hand and whisper all the assurances she needed, but Parvati was tired and she and Ron were over, and maybe she had a little selfish, foolish hope that Lavender could finally look away from Ron and look at her. So she doesn't think. She just does.
She kisses her.
Before she has a chance to register what she's doing, to actually know what it felt like to kiss Lavender, she was stumbling back, Lavender having pushed her off, screaming. Parvati locks herself in the bathroom and cries. They don't speak for a week. It's the longest they've gone without talking since they met.
Lavender manages to corner her after one of their classes and asks her, maybe a bit too loudly: "Do you really think I care that you're a lesbian?" It's the first time Parvati ever heard the word associated with herself. It feels strangely liberating. Later in their room, after they've run out of their daily gossip and the only sound is Lavender's smooth humming, Parvati tells her everything. She tells her about fourth year. The Yule Ball announcement came with Lavender, and seemingly every other girl's, obsession with finding a date. Parvati could not find it in herself to care. She tells her about fifth year. Lavender dragged her to Quidditch tryouts to watch the boys play but the only person Parvati stared at was Angelina. She realized it then. And then sixth year. Her crush on Lavender, a feeling that seemed to have been there since the beginning but she never had the guts to name. She leaves this part out. From then on, things were normal.
Until the summer. Parvati goes home and her neighbors have a new guest. She was tall with light brown freckles and curly hair that fell to her waist. Her name was Imogen. Parvati kissed her under the tree in her backyard. Imogen kissed her back.
"I wish she was still here so you could see her, Lavender," Parvati said, stopping to add on another coat of nail polish. "She had to go back home and she's a muggle. It won't be safe for us to stay in contact. But I mean wow. My first kiss."
Lavender's not a good liar and so she doesn't say anything, she grabs another nail polish color and forces a smile, and then spends all night replaying the story in her head, reimagining Imogen, and each time it hurts a bit more. She was angry. A particular angry. The same way she felt watching Ron look at Hermione. But she wasn't like Parvati. She brushed it off as nothing, trying to return to normal. Nowadays, however, there seemed to be no normal. She noticed things about Parvati she never did before. Or, at the very least, saw them in a new light.
On one of the nights the Carrows torture Padma, Parvati came back late, eyes red from crying, disappointed because Flitwick sent her away. It reminds Lavender of Parvati comforting her as she cried over Ron. She brings it up.
"Don't you remember," she laughs, "how we used to comfort each other over silly things? Like Ron?"
Parvati laughs through her tears. "That was an interesting choice. I mean, sure, he played Quidditch and was better looking but he's still—"
"Ron."
They say it at the same time, and Lavender watches the way that Parvati's face lights up with laughter, feels her smile in her chest.
"And he was in love with Hermione," Lavender said. "You think he's told her yet?"
Parvati looked off to the side, scrunching her mouth up the way she did when she considered something.
"Probably not."
And then they were laughing again, laughing more than the joke was worth, and Lavender was so deliriously happy just for a single moment that she blew all caution to the wind and kissed her. This time, Parvati pushed her off.
"Lavender, what— why are you kissing me?"
"Because I want to."
"But Lavender, I mean— you're— are you"
"I don't know. I think so."
And then she tells her how when Parvati met that girl, it broke her heart. She tells her all of the things she noticed about her. The sleek texture of her hair. The way her nose curves. the dimples when she smiles. The length of her legs. The way her eyelashes flutter out, too pretty for makeup. And when she's rambling about how when Parvati smiles Lavender feels it in her chest, Parvati kisses her back.
It is the best night of their lives.