Bathwater

Living in Movie Material

Lavender Brown felt like the world had crashed down around her. 

Again. 

After the war had shattered their country, after it had taken friends and family—after a werewolf had taken chunks of her skin too, Lavender thought what was left would never fit properly together again. On her hospital bed in St. Mungo's, she sat with thick, yellow paste on her missing pieces, terrified, trembling fingers trying to pick up what was left of her life and figure out how she was meant to survive with it. 

Such a vain, ridiculous, starry-eyed girl in the body of a mangled, grief-stricken war hero.  

Lavender never wanted that—she never wanted medals and praise for her bravery. Her courage did not come from a wand and her spell arsenal; it came from her ability to see a world through rose-colored glasses, to daydream about sunshine despite rainclouds, to draw hearts over the names of people worth loving, people others did not deem convenient or right, but she did. 

Because it took guts to believe in people. 

The Healers told her some of the scarring would fade, that she was lucky not to have been contaminated with the werewolf bite, but what was untainted of a girl with mismatched skin, a broken brain, and a shattered identity? 

She spent weeks grieving on that hospital bed, even after Seamus Finnegan had started visiting her. Lavender did not want to see him; she did not want to see the first boy she ever fancied, the first boy who had called her beautiful, who had taken her to her first dance and had wrapped caring arms around her waist, both swaying under melting icicles and dim lights. 

The same boy who had hugged her, head on his chest, when Ron Weasley broke up with her. The same boy who had told her she should never cry for someone who could not see that being loved by her meant knowing they were accepted, flaws and all. 

Lavender would cry into her pillow, thick, yellow paste sticking to it as she begged him to leave because she was hideous, because she was broken, because nothing would ever be the same, but Seamus never left. He would let her sob, but once her shoulders would stop shaking from the force of her pain, he would reach for her hand, his fingers lacing through her trembling ones and whisper you're still beautiful, Lav; you're not broken; you're the best; I miss you; you're strong; you survived Greyback, you can survive anything.  

Such a mangled, grief-stricken war hero wishing she could still be a vain, ridiculous, starry-eyed girl. 

She never felt worse about what she had become when she started looking at Seamus Finnegan and believed she could be Lavender Brown again. 

People had died: family, friends, classmates, but she did not want the grief. She did not want to change, to become someone haunted by ghosts and war. Lavender wanted to leave St. Mungo's and see sunshine, see people smiling, see them loving each other. 

How was she supposed to handle knowing Seamus never wanted to love her? Not in the way she had daydreamed about when she watched him from her hospital bed, his mouth tugged up in a giant grin, chest echoing with a laugh that filled the room. 

Such a vain, ridiculous, starry-eyed girl caught in the body of a bitch.

Lavender never meant to kiss Dean Thomas. 

Yes, she had thought him attractive—in the way she thought everyone had something charming about them that could make them the most beautiful person in the room. She liked how kind Dean's eyes were, how he looked at everyone the same way Lavender did; like they were worth something, like they mattered, but she never saw him as more than a friend. Not when she had been pining after Seamus and then Ron like the hopeless romantic people laughed at.