Clashes in Hogsmeade
Parvati had worried about Hogmeade for nothing. Of course Lavender was in on it, the homework could wait. Ron had asked her furtively after breakfast if she wanted to go there with him, but she had declined. "We can all meet together at the Three Broomsticks at lunchtime," she suggested, ignoring his disappointed look. This was really going far too fast for her now, besides, she had hardly seen her friend during the week.
It was drizzling gently as they left for Hogsmeade. On their way, Parvati informed Lavender of Hermione and Ginny's reactions to her flirtation with Ron. "Good heavens!" she exclaimed, rolling her eyes. "What do they imagine just because I was on his lap! It was harmless!"
"I wonder if Ron felt the same way," Parvati mused.
"Well, I guess he kind of liked it," Lavender said dryly, and both girls giggled.
"But keep him at a distance," Parvati warned. "It would be mean if you raised his hopes. Unless, of course, you really want something from him!"
"Urgh!" Lavender shook herself. "Hermione's right, I really only go for older ones! And where were you in between with Harry?" she then asked in a teasing voice.
Parvati gave her a strange look. "Getting the beer you knocked back afterwards!" she finally returned.
Lavender remained silent. She had already had a lot to listen to from her friend and various other Gryffindors at breakfast; she was getting fed up. Why did everyone have to make such a fuss when a girl let a boy caress her head in a harmless way? They're all just jealous! she finally shrugged it off.
Once in Hogsmeade, the friends leisurely strolled the streets, browsing the shops and buying a few small things, mainly utensils for school and sweets in the honey pot.
"Oh look, aren't they cute?" exclaimed Parvati when they were almost out of the shop. Lavender turned around and found her delighted friend standing in front of a cage of young rats—a special promotion, because normally, one could get animals only in Diagon Alley.
"Oh yeah! Crookshanks will appreciate!" she said dryly.
"Do you think this kind of crap will happen to me again?" said Parvati, slightly insecure. "I'd love to have a little rat again!" she murmured and held out her finger to a young black rat with clever beady eyes.
Lavender rolled her eyes. It was well known that Hermione's cat, who had been residing in their chambers since the third grade, tolerated absolutely no other pets next to him. Parvati's first rat had been killed after just one month, and the little tabby kitten she had tried in fourth grade she gave with a heavy heart to her twin sister in Ravenclaw after a few weeks.
Lavender had made no effort to get a pet in the first place. Since the death of her dwarf rabbit Binky, who had died lonely and alone in his cage at home with her parents, she no longer wanted to set her heart on an animal. She only owned a beautiful barn owl, which she almost never got to see at Hogwarts.
"Have you quite finished?" asked Lavender impatiently, bouncing on the balls of her feet. "You can't buy it anyway!"
"I'll be right there!" cried Parvati and immediately turned back to the rat. "My god, you're so cute …"
"I'll go outside then!" Shaking her head, Lavender turned towards the exit and almost ran into Padma, who had just entered the shop, flanked by her two friends Lisa and Mandy. She was wearing a shiny red sari today, and had conjured up a complicated braided hairstyle that made her look even taller than she already was.
"Oh!", Lavender called out. "Sorry …"
"Hello," Padma said with raised eyebrows. She had imperceptibly stepped back a little and eyed Lavender out of Parvati's velvety black eyes.
"Hello," Lavender replied sheepishly, awkwardly waving her paper bag of groceries around, which missed Mandy's knee dressed in a nylon stocking by a hair's breadth. It's always so weird, she thought to herself. After so long, she still hadn't really got used to talking to Parvati's twin sister—perhaps because it happened so rarely. Padma looked exactly like her friend, the eyes, the same sharp features, the hairline …, she also sounded like Parvati; but still she was so … strange. And Parvati, despite identical height, would never manage to look down on someone in such a way that they suddenly felt like a crawling insect.
"Yeah … Parvati's over there, by the way," Lavender said, uncomfortable as always in Padma's presence, and made a flapping arm motion in her friend's direction, sweeping a jar of sweets off the shelf. The jar luckily survived the fall, but the sweets were all over the floor. "Oops!" made Lavender, bending down, completely blushed, to pick up the sweets again.
Padma slightly pursed her thin lips before asking Lavender, "Is this supposed to be a grind? Or why don't you use magic for that?"
And without another word she went over with her entourage to Parvati, who was still crouching in front of the rat cage and had forgotten everything around her—not even the loud bang from the glass had startled her—and tapped her insistently on the shoulder with a pointed finger.
Lavender couldn't understand exactly what they were talking about, as she was still stuffing the crackling sweets back into the jar, under the reproachful looks of the shopkeeper. But she saw the two dissimilar sisters facing each other, Padma in her flowing sari, Parvati with her double-bun hairdo in baggy white trousers and a light-coloured hoody jacket. And Padma was obviously talking Parvati out of the rat buy, as could easily be seen from her teacher-like gestures and Parvati's pinched expression.
Poor Parvati, Lavender thought. But Padma certainly has a point there. The poor creature wouldn't have survived three days with us. After she had finally put back the filled up candy jar, she considerately preferred to wait outside. Parvati certainly couldn't use any spectators now, and Lavender decided not to pester her friend with questions afterwards. More than stupid remarks she wouldn't earn anyway.
A few minutes later, Padma and her friends left the shop, and Parvati followed shortly after— without a rat, of course, but with a long face. As soon as her sister had disappeared into the next shop, Parvati fished three chocolate frogs out of her bag, ripped them out of their wrappers and stuffed them into her mouth all at once. Lavender's pious intentions were gone. "So, what did she say?" she asked curiously, taking her friend's arm, who was chewing vigorously.
"Wha—?" asked Parvati, pretending to be uncomprehending. "Wha wash she shupposhed to shay?"
"Well, because of the rat!"
With a curt movement, Parvati disentangled herself from Lavender and swallowed her meal of frustration. "Nothing!" she replied brusquely. "Let's go or we'll be late for the Three Broomsticks! I thought you had a date!"
When they entered the restaurant, it was already quite crowded. All the tables were occupied and people were standing around, eating or talking animatedly. Lavender at once started to get claustrophobic; she hated crowds like that, which Parvati had no sympathy for at all today: "Don't make such a fuss! Look, Harry and Ron are sitting over there. Looks like they've been saving seats for us!"
Relieved, they pushed their way to the table; Lavender could hardly wait to get out of this heat-emitting tangle of people and, in her impatience, managed several times to punch into some soft body parts that got in her way. One of the victims suddenly turned around as if stung by a tarantula, and none other than Draco Malfoy was staring angrily into her eyes. "Are you completely crackbrained?" he began in a scathing voice.
"Oh, I'm sorry!" apologised Lavender automatically, but Parvati called back irritated over her shoulder, "No, she's not sorry!"
Oh, do we have to do this now?, Lavender thought. Actually, Parvati was the more reasonable of the friends, but she really was in a bad temper today; in fact, she had been in a funny mood for days, if Lavender thought about it. And when Draco showed up, there was no stopping them anyway. The two simply couldn't pass each other without provoking each other, although there had already been violent clashes in the last few years.
Now Lavender could see his face contorting in anger. "Who asked you, you filthy mudblood!" he roared, snatching his wand from his robe. Immediately the voices around them quietened, all eyes were on Draco, her and Parvati.
"Watch your language," Parvati retorted belligerently.
"Why should I, you little foreign bitch?" said Draco in a drawling voice. "I can talk as much as I want here, and you—" he pointed the wand at her, "why don't you wipe the chocolate from the corner of your mouth first?"
Crabbe and Goyle, standing fat and stolid behind Malfoy, started giggling stupidly, a few bystanders grinned, too.
Parvati's hand automatically went to her mouth and she turned bright red. But she quickly regained her composure. "And you learn how to wipe your ass without daddy first!" she fired back.
Most people laughed and Draco's lips narrowed in anger. "Watch it, you—" he began in a shrill voice, hurling an incredibly coarse expletive at Parvati that had to do with her origin. "Such inferior scum like you are really lucky to be allowed to breathe the same air as me!"
"Pfff … I'd love to do without that!" Parvati was in her element, her dark eyes glittering. Lavender, on the other hand, again felt the well-known claustrophobia rising within her. Couldn't Parvati be regardful of that for once?
Draco pursed his lips contemptuously. "Then get lost, you disgusting bitch!" he yelled at Parvati. "There shouldn't be anything like you here anyway!"
"And what about you?" she asked with a sneer. "I mean, have you done anything to be pureblood so far, you pathetic little weenie?"
Draco turned pale with anger. "What was that?"
Parvati repeated with relish, "Pathetic—little—impotent …"
"Petrificus Totalus!" shouted Draco in a cracking voice, pointing his wand at Parvati.
The latter, however, was quicker and sent the curse back to its sender. Draco, for his part, ducked swiftly, and the Body-Bind curse hit Vincent Crabbe, who was standing behind him, toppling over to the side like a felled tree and making at least as much noise.
Parvati slapped her hand over her mouth and began to giggle unrestrainedly.
I can't believe it!, Lavender thought; it was really getting too much for her. There was a lot of pushing and shoving around her, and suddenly she saw Severus!
He must have been sitting at a table somewhere the whole time, and apparently wanted to check on things. She didn't think twice, but grabbed her friend's hand. "Run!" she shouted, and Parvati fought her way to the exit with Lavender without question.
Outside, the two began to run for their lives, shrieking with laughter. Hogsmeade was forgotten for the day and Lavender was only thinking marginally of having stood poor Ron up again.
Parvati and Lavender spent the rest of the weekend in their common room, which they wisely only left at mealtimes and with company. They wanted to give Draco time to cool down; besides, they were not overly keen on running into Severus Snape, who certainly did not like the fact that they had annoyed his little protégé.
"What was he doing there anyway?" wondered Parvati as she and Lavender had spread out on one of the tables with their school supplies in the early evening. "Since when does Snape go out?"
"Maybe Severus had a date?" pondered Lavender, her eyes growing wide at the horrible thought.
Parvati snorted with laughter; obviously she found the idea absurd. "And if he had one, do you think he would sit down with his flame in the Three Broomsticks, of all places, so that the whole school would know about it?"
Lavender breathed a sigh of relief.
"But if we really have disturbed him on a date, there's bound to be a lot of trouble waiting for us …", Parvati groaned and wrapped a strand of hair around her finger.
"Or for Draco," Lavender said. "After all, he sent the curse! Didn't you hear about the Malfoy thing?" she asked Ron, who was sitting at the table a bit away from them, tinkering with his Defence Against the Dark Arts essay—only then did she remember that they had had a date!
Ron looked up from his parchment. "Not until Snape appeared on the scene and Malfoy got upset about you! But it's nice that we're actually talking about it," he said, slightly disgruntled.
"I'm sorry," Lavender said, looking apologetically at Ron with her head cocked. "But the shock is still in my bones, you know? I hadn't remembered at all that you two were waiting for us …"
"It's all right," Ron murmured, and Lavender noticed with a mixture of astonishment and delight how nervous her look made him. "The way he was acting, I'm sure, it wouldn't have been any different for me …"
"Now tell us more about what was going on," Parvati interrupted him impatiently.
Ron didn't need to be asked twice and, giggling, reported how, after the girls had escaped, Malfoy had jabbered on about them at Snape in his shrill voice— "… honestly, the whole pub was listening! Super pathetic!"
"And how did Snape react?"
"Not at all," said Ron. The Potions Master indeed couldn't think of anything better than to let his godson's outpouring rush past him with his typical poker face— "… why didn't he just tell him to shut up? Malfoy made such a fool of himself!" —before finally releasing poor Crabbe from his ticklish situation, examining him briefly and then striding off without another word.
"Where to?!", Lavender immediately asked.
Ron shrugged his shoulders. "In the back, I think—what might he have been doing there?" he asked with a broad grin. "Does anyone here even care?"
"Uh-um," made Lavender and Parvati quickly asked, "And then, what did Malfoy and co do?"
"Left! Crabbe no longer looked quite fresh somehow …" Ron chortled. "But the swear words Malfoy used—my mum would've washed my mouth out with carbolic soap for that!"
At Parvati's insistence, Ron repeated them, making his cheeks turning slightly pink and the girls' ears cringe.
After that, Lavender gave her friend a good telling off: "Did you have to do that again, Parvati? I think, you underestimate him a bit. I've never seen him so full of hate!"
"Malfoy is a weakling," Parvati said with a shrug. "Without his gorillas, he's just a little wimp!"
"But he is never without his gorillas!"
"Oh, they're super retarded. I'll take on them any day!"
"You might!" Lavender replied. "But what about me? By the time I even get my wand out, I'll be petrified, deep-frozen or whatever!"
"Besides," Ron interjected, "Crabbe and Goyle for sure weigh a whopping twohundred pounds each! Don't forget that, please! I'm really worried about you both!"
"Okay, Daddy!" That was all Parvati could think of and she pulled her school books towards her with a brusque movement.
Lavender sighed and set about her homework as well. It was the first time at all since school started that she let this unpleasant subject get to her. The essay for Defence of the Dark Arts had to be finished by tomorrow morning, and after that, they had Potions, which was top priority! Of course, she started with that first, and thoroughly—she could concentrate very well if her life depended on it. Or something like her life.
She conscientiously reworked the material of the last lesson and prepared herself for the potion she would put on tomorrow; the first time she had ever looked at a recipe before being confronted with it in front of her cauldron. Afterwards, she highly motivated completed the rest of the tasks Snape had given them.
Then she went on to the essay for Defence Against the Dark Arts, where, however, she lost interest after the third sentence and let Ron persuade her to play a game of chess.