Interhouse Fest 2016: In the Moonlight, Red (1 of 2)
Title: In the Moonlight, Red
Author/Artist:
Characters: Padma Patil/Lavender Brown
Prompt number: 201
Word Count: 11,478
Rating: T
Warnings: None
Summary: The Wizarding World long thought that Lavender Brown had died. Padma runs into her in the Muggle world.
Disclaimer:The universe and characters of Harry Potter belong to J.K. Rowling.
Author’s Notes: Thank you so much to C for the speedy beta. All remaining mistakes are mine. Thank you so much to the mods as well for being patient and for excellent work on the fest.
Parvati had said, “Padma, I’m trusting you to bake an apple cake for Cho’s birthday.”
Mandy had said, “Padma, for the love of Wendelin, do not just quit your job.”
Only one of them turned out to be right, Padma mused as her ankle boots crushed red and gold leaves along a narrow road.
This was not because of Padma harbouring a blithe disregard for Mandy’s advice. She had taken to heart plenty of Mandy’s advice through the years, because aside from recommending excellent quill brands and Flooing each other at odd hours to squeal over Agatha Shafiq’s latest book, best mates also carefully considered each other’s advice.
During First Year Potions when Mandy had said, “I think we should add just a pinch - just the tiniest pinch - of powdered horn of bicorn,” Padma had added a pinch of said ingredient and they had received top marks. So Padma had shared her mango tarts from home with Mandy Brocklehurst and they had become best mates.
During Seventh Year when Mandy had tearfully said, after a narrow escape from the Carrows, “Don’t move your ankle, please, Padma, please, it’ll only get worse,” Padma had gritted her teeth, accepted that she wouldn’t be able to finish her Arithmancy homework on time after their DA activities, and had not moved her ankle.
Last year when Mandy had suggested, over a jumble of lipsticks in a cosmetics shop, “Want to have drinks at The Unicorn,” Padma had picked a scarlet shade of lippie and spent the evening in said pub, and the night on the rug by the Harpies’ Chaser Valmai Morgan’s coffee table, one sweaty hand gripping the walnut coffee table leg and the other gripping Valmai Morgan’s green-tipped hair.
But last month when Mandy had dramatically wailed, “What about revolutionising the future of banking? Padma, love, what about stocks? What about investment banking?”
“Cho has corrupted you,” Padma had replied, tossing bits of cereal on Mandy’s auburn curls.
Mandy had only brushed off the cereal, lamenting about the wasted Muggle inspiration on Padma as they had finished their breakfast in a coffee shop.
And so halfway through the first decade of the new millennium, after stepping out of the coffee shop and into the sunlit Diagon Alley, overcome by either madness or a rare daring, Padma had promptly strode over to Gringotts and quit her job.
Padma slowed her steps. Daylight was melting away from the sky, turning into the mist cloaking the slick leaf-strewn path ahead. The road forked into two narrow, equally leaf strewn paths, and there were some people around. On the left fork three teenagers in uniforms were ambling home and an old man was walking a dog. On the right fork a lady had just emerged in running gear, jogging past Padma. A schoolboy was bent over beneath a rustling oak tree, tying his shoe laces.
Padma huddled into her crimson cloak and pressed the cake box closer to her chest. Luna had said that this part of Gloucester had a handful of Muggleborns and Half-bloods so the Apparition point had been pushed back to a few kilometres for safety purposes. A girl with some white cords stuck in her ears cycled past Padma towards the right fork, and Padma followed her. Luna had instructed to take the right fork. In this Padma was sure that she wouldn’t be lost.
Padma was still getting used to disappointments. She had been academically gifted, rivaling only Hermione Granger in their year. Dad had often patted her cheek, his hand heavy with gold rings and approval. Mum had frequently packed her extra mango tarts before engulfing her in melon scented hugs. Parvati used to braid Padma’s long hair and tell Padma of how promising Padma was.
How promising. How promisingly lost Padma felt right now.
Arithmancy had been as easy as unwrapping sweets. Padma could do Arithmancy backwards, sideways, and with her eyes crossed. It was Professor Vector who had put in a recommendation for her for Gringotts, smiling over her spectacles at Padma, because of course it was to be expected that Padma would pursue this even after the war. Padma had expected it herself, a map of sorts, precise and tangible and real enough to hold on to. It was economically safe, and practical, and she was more than good at it.
But for the longest time it had been a chore to claw her way up and stagger from her bed every morning. More than once Padma had looked up from her Arithmancy sheets, at the ink stains blotting black on her deep brown skin, wondering what she was doing and seeing no light at the end of a long workday apart from the weekends.
So there had been something equally terrifying and liberating when she had submitted her last impeccable Arithmancy sheets to Nagnok and a copy to Bill Weasley.
Mum and Dad were still grappling with this sudden life choice of hers, but Parvati had been supportive even when reports of Padma’s unemployed days only consisted of dabbling into baking and innumerable trips to the bookshop and the grocery.
For the first time in her life, Padma had no map. There were no precise steps to take. Her future, when not tottering from uneventful to terribly bleak, looked as shapeless and vague as the mist.
Padma glanced at the cake box now, hoping that Cho would like this little surprise.
When she looked up again, the cycling lady had disappeared into the fog. The sky was considerably darker now, more indigo and dangerously close to blending in with the mist, so that it took a few blinks before Padma realised that another person was on the path, jogging to her direction.
Padma would not have paid much mind to the jogger had she not glimpsed at the face underneath the pastel blue cap.
It startled her so badly. Padma’s muscles jolted that she almost dropped the cake box.
Through the dewy russet gleam of the fast falling night, Lavender Brown emerged, very much alive and jogging on a rain-slick path.
Dead people did not jog. Dead people did not slow their jog, casting a curious look on a stiff-shocked figure in the middle of a path.
But Lavender Brown was apparently so very much alive that she gasped out, “Padma?”
It was very cold. Padma wished she had worn her gloves. Her fingers felt ghostly, as if they were someone else’s stiff fingers clutching on a cake box.
The cake box. Padma steeled herself, and she was reorienting herself with her hands when Lavender Brown made a hesitant step forward and Padma felt her muscles shuddering into a shocked recoil again.
“Hey, um,” Lavender Brown said, a hand halfway outstretched, “you look like you’re seconds away from keeling over.”
Padma took in a breath of the cool air. “Yes, well.” She firmly told herself to get it together. She must not drop the cake box. “I’m usually more alert than this. You’re - you are Lavender Brown, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, I am.” Lavender Brown’s hand fell on her side, a crooked little smile on her lips. She was taller than Padma remembered, but that had been years ago when they were little more than kids: when Padma had only associated Lavender Brown with the summer holidays she had spent in the Patil house, sleeping over and painting nails and eating jalebi with Parvati, whilst Padma often sauntered out of their way to Floo over to Mandy’s.
There were other memories too. But Seventh Year memories were a bit of a blur now. Sometimes a specific one would assault Padma in vivid detail and she would break into cold sweat, but thankfully they remained vague.
The memory of everyone thinking that Lavender had died was not vague, though.
“This is,” Padma ventured, a bit feebly, “very unexpected.”
“Yeah,” Lavender said, before beaming, as if they were neighbours having a bit of a chat. “I haven’t seen you around here before.”
A twining feeling of disconcertment and surrealism was crawling up Padma’s spine. It must be the wind whipping past the oak and nut trees curving over their heads. “I’m just visiting someone. Cho Chang, in fact.”
Night had fallen, and the mist was fast turning into shadows.
Lavender furrowed her brows, tilting her head so that half her face was shadowed under the pastel blue cap. “Cho Chang’s living here?”
“No. She’s just having a bit of a holiday.”
They stared at each other awkwardly. Padma had so many questions but she wanted to keep the cake fresh. She just wanted to make sure one thing, though.
“Does Parvati know?”
Lavender bit on her lip. “Ah, no. No.”
The wind that blew was shockingly cold and biting. Padma looked at Lavender’s tank top and cycling shorts with vague worry.
“No one knows,” Lavender added.
Padma nodded. “All right.” It felt like an agreement to a secret.
Lavender smiled an open, easy smile. Padma thought that she should be comforted by it, but she didn’t know how to feel. “Okay. I’m not keeping you any longer.”
“I hope you’re well, Lavender.” Padma had so many questions. “Be safe - on your jogging.”
Lavender’s good-natured giggle followed Padma along the faintly lit path. The moon was mostly hidden and there were no stars shining. Padma reached for her wand, for light, but she kept looking over her shoulder at the gloom of the mists where Lavender had been, until she reached Cho’s cottage.
*
“Padma, this is divine,” Cho gushed, swiftly following it with another forkful of the apple cake. “Oh, Merlin.”
From the sofa Mrs. Longbottom said, “Marvellous cake, my dear. You said you have just been dabbling in baking?”
“Yes, Mrs. Longbottom,” Padma said. Her neck was warm.
“I like the sugar to butter ratio,” was Luna’s verdict. Her apple earrings swung jauntily when she reached for the teapot. “Do have a slice yourself, Padma. It’s delicious.”
Padma had been very precise in her measurements. She plated a slice for herself and stood against the draining board. In the bright light of the cottage lamps, with the lumpy sofa and armchairs and half empty tea pots, and most of the flat surfaces covered with parchments and quills, everything so familiar and precise that Padma felt reassuringly grounded.
It was like the secret in the dark mists never happened.
“How long will you be in retreat?”
“We’ve got another five days, and we’ve got loads of work done,” Cho said. She sidled up to Padma to lay an apple-y kiss on her cheek. “Thank you so much, Paz.”
The three of them were in vastly different interests. Cho was the assistant of Agatha Shafiq’s editor. Mrs. Longbottom was completing a memoir. Luna was compiling her notes on fauna from various places. All of them had met in a knitting club that Luna had organised.
Padma found that she had no use for knitting. She had no use for frills and trifles.
“When is your sister returning?” Mrs. Longbottom said.
“In a month. She says she still has twenty countries to go through.”
“Butterflies,” Cho chuckled. “Parvati is such a darling.”
“I offered her my notes, you know,” Luna said. “Although Parvati is a much more avid observer of butterflies. I never knew that Harry also is.”
That bit was quite surprising, and amusing. Padma remembered Harry Potter’s narrow figure standing on the platform with Parvati, the mellow sun on his brown face and the too-long hair on his nape caught in a tiny tie.
Mrs. Longbottom’s lips were curved behind her cup.
Cho had a fond look in her limpid brown eyes. “That’s cute. I also didn’t know Harry loves butterflies. Reminds me of the time I saw Hermione Granger carrying a massive book on butterflies in the Ministry.”
Padma knew that Harry Potter and Parvati were not seeing each other, just two people brought together again by their inexplicable love for butterflies. She would have spelled it out in precise terms there in the cottage, but she also knew that war had changed a lot of relationships and how they saw one another.
Besides the lot of them grew up, in their own ways. Padma found that her terrific crush on Angelina Johnson was nothing more than a passing admiration nowadays. She found that what she had liked when she was fifteen was very different from what she liked now.
Padma knew that Cho was casually seeing a Muggle guy from London. She steered the conversation there, and they learned terribly fascinating Muggle ways like pens and calculators and cellphones, Sugababes and Pussycat Dolls. Mrs. Longbottom took interest in the keyboards and mused if they would be easier on her cramping fingers. Luna happily rambled about her trips to Muggle record shops with Harry Potter.
They chattered until they were full of cake, and afterwards they sang another song for Cho.
The three ladies also insisted that Padma stay the night because the fireplace was not connected to the Floo Network.
“Best not risk it, my dear,” Mrs. Longbottom said, her bony fingers tight on her copper-tipped cane. “I hear there are wild animals in these woods. Wolves and that sort.”
“No, Luna, there aren’t any Crumple-Horned Snorkacks here,” Cho said when Luna opened her mouth.
Luna looked quite put out. Cho squeezed her arm in comfort.
Padma put away her hoop earrings, choker and necklaces, rings and bangles, as she gazed up at the starless black night through a diamond paned window. As she fell asleep to the faint sounds of scratching quills, Padma thought that the wallpaper had a nicely precise pattern of blue flowers.
*
Padma left the cottage of well-meaning insistent ladies the next morning, nibbling on a chocolate macadamia biscuit from Mrs. Longbottom. She liked the chocolate but it could use another three-fourths teaspoon of brown sugar.
A long way from the merging of the forks, Muggle shops and houses beckoned to Padma with their sheer stodginess. There was a poster of a man kicking a ball on the shop window. The man and the ball were stationary, as if someone had cast a spell on them. Padma was so intrigued by this that she pushed into the shop behind a gaggle of schoolgirls, one of which eyed Padma with clear yet inexplicable judgment. Padma just raised an eyebrow at the girl which sent her scurrying.
The shop lights were inconsiderately bright. Padma blinked, scratching her cheek before shielding her eyes to peer up at the very bright light on the ceiling. Interesting. They were like flat, white lamps.
Padma gradually cheered as she strolled down the aisles, in this very strange shop, with its very strange wares: almost like magic. Feeling benevolent, she decided to purchase a bottle of a wine called Prosecco. She swung out of the shop with the plastic bag swinging by her leg when she promptly bumped into Lavender Brown by the door.
A gasp snagged on Padma’s throat.
Lavender Brown’s sun-bright hair spilled over her shoulder, its dark roots showing. She looked surprised to see Padma as well, and her face looked glamoured. It was a subtle charm, unnoticeable to Muggles but obvious enough to any witch worth her wand. In the morning light she looked more real though no less bewildering.
The metal handle of the door was reassuringly solid under Padma’s suddenly clammy palm. She narrowed her eyes. “Are you following me?”
Lavender Brown scoffed. “I have to get to work.”
Padma hesitated for a split-second before darting back inside the shop where Lavender Brown was grabbing two pens from a rack. “That’s not an answer.”
“Why would I follow you?” Lavender sighed. “I live around here.”
She was wearing that odd Muggle garb, Padma noticed as she watched Lavender Brown walk up to the till. That garb that looked like the love child of a cloak and a robe, except that the black one that Lavender Brown was wearing stopped short on her mid-calves.
Lavender Brown turned away from the till, cast a suspiciously exasperated look on Padma, and said, “Fancy a cup of coffee?”
“I thought you have to get to work.”
“Oh, do come on, Padma,” Lavender Brown said with a little laugh. “You’ve got to stop standing there with that cloak on.”
“What’s wrong with my cloak?” Padma said, and frowned down at the length of crimson which reached down to graze the tiled floor. It was her favourite cloak. It went well with her lippie and hair ribbon.
“It’s too witch,” Lavender Brown muttered, “and you’re in a Muggle area. So - no caffeine for you?”
Padma continued frowning. “You’re very insistent on this caffeine matter.”
“Because it’s early in the morning and you’re Padma,” Lavender Brown said, a smile tugging up the right corner of her mouth. “Parvati used to say you’re less of a scowly cloud after a good cup of caffeine. Also I’m starving.”
“Scowly?” Padma said, trailing Lavender Brown out of the shop.
“After a caffeine dose you turn into, like, a ray of sunshine,” Lavender Brown conceded. “A - marginal ray of sunshine.”
“I’m solemn-faced.”
“Okay,” Lavender chuckled. “Anyway I could always tell you two apart. Red and Pink.”
They ended up tucked in a café, between a frosted glass window and a small ornamental orange plant, its plastic oranges hanging low from plastic branches. Padma wistfully thought of her empty fruit bowl. She needed citrus. But right now her brain needed more sugar so she could take note to acquire Muggle garb when venturing to Muggle areas.
Padma hung her crimson cloak on the back of her chair and tried not to regret wearing only slate-grey pantaloons and a jumper under it. A jumper cut short on the midriff. She eyed Lavender Brown’s peacock blue ensemble underneath the black Muggle lovechild garb, and saw that Lavender Brown was already eyeing her midriff and the crescent ring glinting there.
“Eyes up, lass.”
Lavender Brown met her eyes and grinned. “Now I’m inspired to have my own piercing.”
Padma raised her brows. “Where would you be pierced?”
“In a Muggle place, obviously,” Lavender Brown breezily replied.
The body artist Sophie had told Padma that it was more painful in the Muggle shops, and riskier as well. Padma doubted that it would be Lavender Brown’s sort of scene.
Padma nibbled at her cream cake. It was rich and had excellent ratio of butter and cream, like mild golden sunlight frothing on Padma’s tongue. After taking a fortifying sip of coffee, Padma went ahead and shoved at the elephant in the room. “It’s been so long since we’ve seen you.”
Lavender Brown glanced out the window. “Yeah. It’s for the best, really.”
“What do you mean?” Padma asked, frowning.
With a steady marble gaze, Lavender Brown answered, “Come on. You must see my glamour.”
“Any wizard or witch can -” Padma began, and shut up.
Lavender Brown’s lips twisted wryly. “There you go. But not the Muggles.”
“Brown -”
“It’s fine.” Lavender Brown shook her head. “I’m mostly over it. Have to make the best of it, haven’t I?” She beamed over her cup of Assam as if that was supposed to reassure Padma. For a moment it did, and it looked like she was seeing the Lavender before 1997, unfailingly giggly and intimidatingly chipper and not pretending to be dead.
Padma curled her hand around her hot cup. She almost feared the answer, but she still asked in case she was misunderstanding it. You did not let people think you were dead if you just thought they wouldn’t like how you looked. “How did you - I mean, beneath the glamour. What is it?”
“Greyback,” whispered Lavender Brown.
Padma heard herself suck in a breath. She noted in sudden clarity Lavender Brown’s weather-inappropriate attire from last night. Lavender Brown must have been warm enough. No wonder.
The morning light from outside was turning softer, brighter, and Padma stared as it touched Lavender Brown’s glamoured face. Padma had to tamp down the instinct to recoil. Werewolves were still shunned, especially after the war when the numbers of those affected with variations of lycanthropy had ramped up. Little Teddy Lupin had to have Ministry officials come calling to Andromeda Tonks’ doorstep every month to monitor him to make sure that lycanthropy wasn’t hereditary.
But this was Lavender Brown. Her twin’s best mate. Lavender Brown, whom Padma knew of but didn’t really know, who had played with colourful bubbles in the Patils’ upstairs bath with Parvati and who was a frequent dinner guest in the summers.
Padma breathed out slowly. She cast a glance around the sedate and false fruit-laden café before turning to say in a low voice, “Are you taking Wolfsbane?”
“No need to be clinical about it,” Lavender Brown said, lightly.
Padma scowled just as lightly. “I’m not being clinical. I’m just asking a question.”
Lavender Brown cut up a piece of her chicken pie. “You are. Parvati called it your Swotty Voice. But it’s okay.” She popped the chicken in her mouth and said, “And I do. Take the potion. My aunt in Granada is a Potions Mistress.”
Padma processed this. She tipped two more teaspoons of sugar, in almost identical heaps, into her black coffee. So Lavender Brown was a werewolf, a full one. Bill Weasley with his scars did not let people think he was dead.
When Padma looked up from her measured stirs, she found Lavender Brown peering at her over that stout cup of Assam, eyes amused behind the steam. “What?”
“Oh, nothing. I think I’ve missed you. You were always so very particular.”
Padma clinked her teaspoon twice on the mouth of her cup. “Why are you telling me all these?”
When they were eleven, Padma and Parvati had come to terms with the world-altering fact that they were two completely different people. But that still meant that they tolerated each other’s friends, even though Padma had never really made the effort to get to know Parvati’s, turning up her nose at their constant boy-talk and overly complicated nail art. Padma had been fine with what she’d seen of Lavender Brown back then.
But this was now. She didn’t know the woman sitting across from her. Padma had no reason to trust her. Lavender Brown did not trust Parvati with this secret.
Lavender Brown shifted in her seat, and Padma saw her swallow. “Well, um. I didn’t exactly plan it. It was - a snap of the moment. You already saw me and you must have lots of questions, and you saw me twice so I thought, well, why not.”
“I wouldn’t tell anyone, if that’s what you want,” Padma told her. “I didn’t tell anyone.”
“That’s very nice. I appreciate that.” Lavender Brown beamed at her again before glancing at the clock. “And now I must dash.”
“That’s it?” Padma said, blankly. “You wouldn’t - you wouldn’t extract more promises to keep your secret?”
The smile melted off from Lavender Brown’s face. “Like what? An Unbreakable Vow? A threat to you?” When Padma did not answer, she abruptly grabbed the black Muggle garb from her chair and stood up. “You’ve already given me your word. And I have more pressing concerns than chasing after you to rip out your throat.”
Padma flinched. Lavender Brown gave her one last cold look.
She stayed seated there long after Lavender Brown had strode out of the café.
*
The musical artist Shores was crooning and drawling atmospheric songs from the Wizard Wireless. Padma felt a profound sense of well-being as she stirred the chocolate with the cream cheese that would go in the buns she was baking.
It was an overcast day. Padma paused her stirring to light her pumpkin lamp with a flick of her wand. She picked up her spatula again as the amber glow crawled from the carved frames on the walls to the tottering pile of books on the oven, from the trail of quills on the kitchen table to the discarded silk stockings hanging on the kitchen door’s handle to the jumble of unwashed crockery by her cook book.
Padma’s flat might be quite - cluttered. Well, more like a storm-wrecked site with fetching red stockings draped around. But she still kept her cook book in healthy condition.
She glanced at her page now, rechecking the procedures as she set aside her mixing bowl and started on the buns.
There was something infinitely comforting about baking: about the list of what to put together, and the list of how to put it all together. Sometimes she had to experiment and make amendments to the lists, but having lists at all was a win. Lists were like maps. And baking was rather like Potions only Padma got to have fun having a taste, and if she did it right there was also something comforting about other people liking it. And if she dared she might assemble recipes of her own, and wouldn’t it be great if people liked them as well?
Padma liked that: she liked seeing people viscerally affected by what she had wrought.
Mrs. Longbottom had Owled her to compliment the apple cake again. Apparently Mrs. Longbottom had mentioned this to Andromeda Tonks.
“I devoutly hope that I am not bothering you, Miss Patil,” Andromeda Tonks had said, as dark wisps of her hair had floated in Padma’s fireplace.
“Of course not, Mrs. Tonks,” Padma had assured her.
“My grandson also likes a touch of blue with everything he comes in contact with,” Andromeda Tonks had added. “I suspect it has to do with the blue bubbles his godfather always magic with him.”
Little Teddy Lupin, Padma wondered as she put the chocolate cream cheese in the buns. Who was not a werewolf at all.
But his father had been.
Padma slid the tray of buns in the oven and leaned her hip against the counter in thought.
Professor Lupin had been her favourite, second only to Professor McGonagall. He was patient and kind and mild-mannered, and his classes felt like it wouldn’t be too bad if you made a mistake. If you had made a mistake it had been all right: he would correct you as a teacher and you would learn as a student. Padma had adored him for that. She had learned to see learning in a different light.
And then they had learned that he was a werewolf.
But he was a werewolf all along. All the while he had been adored and admired Professor Lupin he had been a werewolf. They had just not known before. But he had still been Professor Lupin.
Padma bit on her lip. The whispering tunes of Shores washed over her along with a feeling of lousiness.
She could still see Lavender Brown’s easy open smile, and how it had shuttered.
Viscerally affected by Padma’s words, something Padma had wrought.
When the buns finished baking Padma set aside half of the batch so she could charm the flecks of chocolate on them to be blue.
Then she paused in the middle of her pumpkin-lighted cluttered flat, quickly categorising: the buns tucked in the wicker basket with a warming charm, the barely consumed bottle of Prosecco from the Muggle shop, the red silk stockings by the door knob.
It all slid into place in Padma’s mind, and she was grabbing her cloak shortly before dashing out of the door.
*
Now that she had left Andromeda Tonks’ there were less buns in Padma’s basket although there was more nervousness in what she was about to do.
The cold wind prickled Padma’s cheek, whispering through the crooked curve of the oak branch over Padma’s head and making Padma’s red cloak flutter. She shifted the basket on her arm, waiting.
Through the freshly fallen evening, Lavender Brown emerged from the right fork of the road at last.
Padma’s nervousness spiked. She started to feel ridiculous, dawdling here where the roads forked in this Muggle place.
“I thought there was something different,” said Lavender Brown, her face neutral. At least Padma couldn’t see a wide smile beneath the shadow of the pale blue cap. Mist and wind did not appear to perturb Lavender and her blue tank top.
For several alarming heartbeats Padma couldn’t think of what to say. She gripped at the handle of the basket, digging her palm on the cold wicker coils, and blurted out, “I’m sorry.”
Dear Wendelin. Let the mist transform into a hand and smack her now.
Lavender Brown’s head made a sharp little movement, but she remained silent.
“I’m sorry,” Padma rushed out. But before she rambled like what she felt was going to happen she gripped harder at the basket handle. She wanted to choose her words carefully, communicate precisely. She’d never been quite as daring as Parvati when it came to confrontations.
“Look, Brown,” Padma tried again, her voice measured. “I am sorry for what happened at the café. I was being gross. I didn’t - I don’t know how to handle myself when with people affected by lycanthropy. I’ve never had to. But just today I thought about Professor Lupin, and his son, and -” Padma took a deep breath, wishing she could clearly see Lavender Brown’s face - “and I want to learn. I want to be less gross. I am very sorry.”
Lavender Brown took half a step towards her. Padma heard her clear her throat. “Okay, Padma. I forgive you.”
“Thank you,” Padma said.
“Right,” Lavender Brown said, “right.” After a pause she continued, “Are you going somewhere? To visit?”
“Oh,” Padma said, gesturing at the basket, “actually these are for you.”
“Really?”
“I’ve just come from Andromeda Tonks’ Halloween party. I’ve baked a batch for her grandson and I saved some for you.”
This time when Lavender Brown tilted her head, her face was dressed with shadows and a smile. “Thanks. Ah, wait, give me a moment.”
Padma watched her reach to her back and pull out her wand.
Lavender Brown laughed at Padma’s raised brows. “I keep my wand at the back of my bra when I jog.” She swiped at her cap with the same hand holding her wand, revealing her bright hair tied in a knot, and a grin on her face.
She’d just glamoured her face, Padma realised. Padma wanted to assure Lavender Brown that she wouldn’t mind but it struck her that Lavender Brown might.
“We can share the basket,” Lavender Brown said. She approached Padma, and her hand touched the curve of the wicker. “I mean, if you like? There’s a park nearby. We can share the basket in the park. If you like.”
“Yes,” Padma said. “Where’s the park?”
Lavender Brown fell in step beside Padma. A silence fell between them as well. Padma couldn’t tell if it was awkward or not. Padma groped around for a common topic and picked one. “Thank you for accepting my apology. I can’t stress how sorry I am.”
“Yeah,” Lavender Brown said, glancing at her. “Like I said, I forgive you. I’m glad you’re sorry. It was dreadful, to be honest. But it’s nothing I didn’t expect.”
Padma flinched. “That’s terrible, I’m sorry. Look, Brown, if I ever stupidly say more gross things tell me.”
“Okay,” Lavender Brown said, “right. I’m taking you to picnic.”
An autumn picnic, Padma mused. There were first times for everything. Then her brain caught up with the conversation. “A picnic, yes. Like a test?”
Lavender Brown tilted her head, without ever fully facing Padma, so that Padma could still see her frown. “Like a - well, um. No? But maybe. Yes? But like, to catch up properly.”
“I didn’t understand half of what you said.”
They paused in the middle of a slick road, at the mouth of the town. Lavender Brown exhaled and ran a hand through her hair. Her fingers snagged on the knot. “Okay. How do I put this?”
Lavender Brown tugged off the band. Her hair came loose in a fall of tight curls. She ran her hand from the dark roots to the sun-bright tips, frowning in thought. Padma waited.
“Okay, right,” said Lavender Brown. “You know when you use tea bags?”
“Yes?” Padma was quite bewildered, but she believed in diverse expressions. “Sometimes I use tea leaves.”
“Or tea leaves, right.” Lavender Brown nodded. “So the point is when you let the tea steep. That is what we’re going to do. Also it would be nice, because I haven’t talked to any witch from school for years. D’you know what I mean?”
“I - think so, yes.”
“Am I saying it right?” Lavender Brown restlessly tugged at her hair. “You can think of me as the tea bag. Or the tea leaves.”
“All right,” Padma said, feeling the corner of her mouth tug upwards. “I understand what you’re saying.”
“Do you? Thank Merlin.” Lavender Brown resumed walking, and Padma did as well. “Often I don’t get across my meaning well.”
Padma bit her lip. “I’m sure the - er, steeping will help you practise.”
Lavender Brown beamed. “Right? Cleverly said. Yeah, you do get it.”
In the park they found a stone bench at the curve of the stone path. There were no stars tonight, and the moon was hidden but there was a tall odd lamp beside the bench.
“That’s an electric lamp,” Lavender Brown informed Padma. “Street lamp.”
There were quite a few street lamps around here. Padma gazed at the one beside their bench with hesitant approval. “They seem to have sturdy light.”
Lavender Brown laughed. She explained electricity as they opened the basket and out came the chocolate cream cheese buns, still hot, and the couple of red apples, and the bottle of Prosecco. Padma Conjured two glasses for them.
“So as long as there is no power outage,” Padma summarised, “you don’t need to bother with logs or coal or oil. That’s very convenient.”
“A very sturdy light,” Lavender Brown agreed, with Padma’s words, a laugh in her eyes.
“I feel hurt by this mockery,” Padma said, lightly.
Lavender Brown burst out giggling. She set down her half full cup with a trembling hand as her shoulders shook. “You always do that. Be funny with a straight face.” She raised a deeply pink finger. “Oh wait! Be funny with a solemn face. Careless of me.”
“All right,” Padma said, feeling her lips twitch. She wondered how Lavender Brown managed to be always bubbling with mirth, as if with just a shake she could fizz and splash out good humour.
“So what do you do,” Padma said, “aside from being versed in electricity?”
Lavender Brown rolled her neck and shoulders, like Padma often did as soon as soon she woke up. She paused with her face serenely tipped up towards the glow of the street lamp, so that Padma could clearly see the glamour on her face and shoulders and arms. Lavender Brown’s thick lashes were tipped with gold by the lamp light.
Padma blinked.
Then Lavender Brown seemed to remember Padma was there. Lavender Brown quickly half-turned her face away again and fiddled with her cap.
“I work in a Muggle weather office.” Lavender Brown picked up her glass. “I predict the weather.”
“Predict.” Padma couldn’t help but think of kooky Professor Trelawney and that one awful term involving crystal balls.
“Don’t start,” Lavender Brown said. “I know what you’re thinking. It’s not like divination. Or even astrology. It’s all charts and graphs.”
“Muggles can do divination with charts and graphs.”
Lavender Brown laughed. “In a way. I attended a Muggle university, you know. Had to take their O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s first, of course. The exams are named differently. I was older than the usual lot. Mum and Dad had to do some, um, smoothening with my previous records. So, then! I am a very accomplished weather seer.”
“You love being a weather seer,” Padma observed.
“Yeah, very much.” Lavender Brown pointed to the inky black sky over them. “There will be a storm next week. There’s a tropical depression so lots of rain than usual, no stars tonight. I did a graph for the storm’s path and expected deviations.”
Padma was quite impressed, and a little envious. “And it all comes true.”
“Yeah,” Lavender Brown said with a grin. “There’s, like, 60% to 70% chance of predictions coming true. It’s why I love it so much. It’s the weather, after all, so it’s not 100%. And thank Merlin for that if, say, it’s predicted that a hurricane will be hitting us hard in its path.”
Padma didn’t expect Lavender Brown to love charts and graphs, with what she knew of the other woman back in Hogwarts. But then, Padma thought wryly, she also didn’t expect to be a resigned Arithmancer so she had to rid of herself with such judgments.
“It’s a shame that there are no stars tonight,” was all Padma said around her apple. “At least I can properly appreciate this street lamp.”
Padma liked the street lamp’s precise and sturdy light. No flickering, no crackling, no nonsense.
“Yeah,” Lavender Brown said. “I like it better. The street lamp, I mean. It makes for a better moon.”
Padma slowly lowered her apple. “Brown -”
“Don’t you think it’s too formal?” Lavender Brown said, still in her lively voice. “That you call me Brown? Come on, I slept over hundreds of times in your house. We wrestled for a stuffed pony one Easter hols and Parvati had to pull at my hair.”
Padma couldn’t think of anything to say to the moon bit, and it wasn’t any better with this one. “You - don’t want to talk about the street lamp moon?”
“No,” was Lavender Brown’s firm reply. She still had a wide smile, but her eyes were hard. “I’d like for things to be nice.”
“All right,” Padma said, quite taken aback.
Lavender Brown did not miss a beat. “Okay! I call you Padma because I can’t call you Patil, it’s too weird, with Parvati and everything.”
Padma hesitated.
“It’ll be fine,” Lavender Brown said. “I mean you already know my secret, and I already ate buns out of your basket.”
“Buns - my basket -” Padma frowned. “I don’t know. Wouldn’t it be too familiar? We don’t feel too familiar.”
Lavender Brown considered this in two seconds flat before nodding sagely. She took a sip of her wine and gestured at Padma with the glass, as if Padma were the weather chart. “We will be.”
Continue to Part 2
Return to Main Page
Author/Artist:
Characters: Padma Patil/Lavender Brown
Prompt number: 201
Word Count: 11,478
Rating: T
Warnings: None
Summary: The Wizarding World long thought that Lavender Brown had died. Padma runs into her in the Muggle world.
Disclaimer:The universe and characters of Harry Potter belong to J.K. Rowling.
Author’s Notes: Thank you so much to C for the speedy beta. All remaining mistakes are mine. Thank you so much to the mods as well for being patient and for excellent work on the fest.
Parvati had said, “Padma, I’m trusting you to bake an apple cake for Cho’s birthday.”
Mandy had said, “Padma, for the love of Wendelin, do not just quit your job.”
Only one of them turned out to be right, Padma mused as her ankle boots crushed red and gold leaves along a narrow road.
This was not because of Padma harbouring a blithe disregard for Mandy’s advice. She had taken to heart plenty of Mandy’s advice through the years, because aside from recommending excellent quill brands and Flooing each other at odd hours to squeal over Agatha Shafiq’s latest book, best mates also carefully considered each other’s advice.
During First Year Potions when Mandy had said, “I think we should add just a pinch - just the tiniest pinch - of powdered horn of bicorn,” Padma had added a pinch of said ingredient and they had received top marks. So Padma had shared her mango tarts from home with Mandy Brocklehurst and they had become best mates.
During Seventh Year when Mandy had tearfully said, after a narrow escape from the Carrows, “Don’t move your ankle, please, Padma, please, it’ll only get worse,” Padma had gritted her teeth, accepted that she wouldn’t be able to finish her Arithmancy homework on time after their DA activities, and had not moved her ankle.
Last year when Mandy had suggested, over a jumble of lipsticks in a cosmetics shop, “Want to have drinks at The Unicorn,” Padma had picked a scarlet shade of lippie and spent the evening in said pub, and the night on the rug by the Harpies’ Chaser Valmai Morgan’s coffee table, one sweaty hand gripping the walnut coffee table leg and the other gripping Valmai Morgan’s green-tipped hair.
But last month when Mandy had dramatically wailed, “What about revolutionising the future of banking? Padma, love, what about stocks? What about investment banking?”
“Cho has corrupted you,” Padma had replied, tossing bits of cereal on Mandy’s auburn curls.
Mandy had only brushed off the cereal, lamenting about the wasted Muggle inspiration on Padma as they had finished their breakfast in a coffee shop.
And so halfway through the first decade of the new millennium, after stepping out of the coffee shop and into the sunlit Diagon Alley, overcome by either madness or a rare daring, Padma had promptly strode over to Gringotts and quit her job.
Padma slowed her steps. Daylight was melting away from the sky, turning into the mist cloaking the slick leaf-strewn path ahead. The road forked into two narrow, equally leaf strewn paths, and there were some people around. On the left fork three teenagers in uniforms were ambling home and an old man was walking a dog. On the right fork a lady had just emerged in running gear, jogging past Padma. A schoolboy was bent over beneath a rustling oak tree, tying his shoe laces.
Padma huddled into her crimson cloak and pressed the cake box closer to her chest. Luna had said that this part of Gloucester had a handful of Muggleborns and Half-bloods so the Apparition point had been pushed back to a few kilometres for safety purposes. A girl with some white cords stuck in her ears cycled past Padma towards the right fork, and Padma followed her. Luna had instructed to take the right fork. In this Padma was sure that she wouldn’t be lost.
Padma was still getting used to disappointments. She had been academically gifted, rivaling only Hermione Granger in their year. Dad had often patted her cheek, his hand heavy with gold rings and approval. Mum had frequently packed her extra mango tarts before engulfing her in melon scented hugs. Parvati used to braid Padma’s long hair and tell Padma of how promising Padma was.
How promising. How promisingly lost Padma felt right now.
Arithmancy had been as easy as unwrapping sweets. Padma could do Arithmancy backwards, sideways, and with her eyes crossed. It was Professor Vector who had put in a recommendation for her for Gringotts, smiling over her spectacles at Padma, because of course it was to be expected that Padma would pursue this even after the war. Padma had expected it herself, a map of sorts, precise and tangible and real enough to hold on to. It was economically safe, and practical, and she was more than good at it.
But for the longest time it had been a chore to claw her way up and stagger from her bed every morning. More than once Padma had looked up from her Arithmancy sheets, at the ink stains blotting black on her deep brown skin, wondering what she was doing and seeing no light at the end of a long workday apart from the weekends.
So there had been something equally terrifying and liberating when she had submitted her last impeccable Arithmancy sheets to Nagnok and a copy to Bill Weasley.
Mum and Dad were still grappling with this sudden life choice of hers, but Parvati had been supportive even when reports of Padma’s unemployed days only consisted of dabbling into baking and innumerable trips to the bookshop and the grocery.
For the first time in her life, Padma had no map. There were no precise steps to take. Her future, when not tottering from uneventful to terribly bleak, looked as shapeless and vague as the mist.
Padma glanced at the cake box now, hoping that Cho would like this little surprise.
When she looked up again, the cycling lady had disappeared into the fog. The sky was considerably darker now, more indigo and dangerously close to blending in with the mist, so that it took a few blinks before Padma realised that another person was on the path, jogging to her direction.
Padma would not have paid much mind to the jogger had she not glimpsed at the face underneath the pastel blue cap.
It startled her so badly. Padma’s muscles jolted that she almost dropped the cake box.
Through the dewy russet gleam of the fast falling night, Lavender Brown emerged, very much alive and jogging on a rain-slick path.
Dead people did not jog. Dead people did not slow their jog, casting a curious look on a stiff-shocked figure in the middle of a path.
But Lavender Brown was apparently so very much alive that she gasped out, “Padma?”
It was very cold. Padma wished she had worn her gloves. Her fingers felt ghostly, as if they were someone else’s stiff fingers clutching on a cake box.
The cake box. Padma steeled herself, and she was reorienting herself with her hands when Lavender Brown made a hesitant step forward and Padma felt her muscles shuddering into a shocked recoil again.
“Hey, um,” Lavender Brown said, a hand halfway outstretched, “you look like you’re seconds away from keeling over.”
Padma took in a breath of the cool air. “Yes, well.” She firmly told herself to get it together. She must not drop the cake box. “I’m usually more alert than this. You’re - you are Lavender Brown, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, I am.” Lavender Brown’s hand fell on her side, a crooked little smile on her lips. She was taller than Padma remembered, but that had been years ago when they were little more than kids: when Padma had only associated Lavender Brown with the summer holidays she had spent in the Patil house, sleeping over and painting nails and eating jalebi with Parvati, whilst Padma often sauntered out of their way to Floo over to Mandy’s.
There were other memories too. But Seventh Year memories were a bit of a blur now. Sometimes a specific one would assault Padma in vivid detail and she would break into cold sweat, but thankfully they remained vague.
The memory of everyone thinking that Lavender had died was not vague, though.
“This is,” Padma ventured, a bit feebly, “very unexpected.”
“Yeah,” Lavender said, before beaming, as if they were neighbours having a bit of a chat. “I haven’t seen you around here before.”
A twining feeling of disconcertment and surrealism was crawling up Padma’s spine. It must be the wind whipping past the oak and nut trees curving over their heads. “I’m just visiting someone. Cho Chang, in fact.”
Night had fallen, and the mist was fast turning into shadows.
Lavender furrowed her brows, tilting her head so that half her face was shadowed under the pastel blue cap. “Cho Chang’s living here?”
“No. She’s just having a bit of a holiday.”
They stared at each other awkwardly. Padma had so many questions but she wanted to keep the cake fresh. She just wanted to make sure one thing, though.
“Does Parvati know?”
Lavender bit on her lip. “Ah, no. No.”
The wind that blew was shockingly cold and biting. Padma looked at Lavender’s tank top and cycling shorts with vague worry.
“No one knows,” Lavender added.
Padma nodded. “All right.” It felt like an agreement to a secret.
Lavender smiled an open, easy smile. Padma thought that she should be comforted by it, but she didn’t know how to feel. “Okay. I’m not keeping you any longer.”
“I hope you’re well, Lavender.” Padma had so many questions. “Be safe - on your jogging.”
Lavender’s good-natured giggle followed Padma along the faintly lit path. The moon was mostly hidden and there were no stars shining. Padma reached for her wand, for light, but she kept looking over her shoulder at the gloom of the mists where Lavender had been, until she reached Cho’s cottage.
*
“Padma, this is divine,” Cho gushed, swiftly following it with another forkful of the apple cake. “Oh, Merlin.”
From the sofa Mrs. Longbottom said, “Marvellous cake, my dear. You said you have just been dabbling in baking?”
“Yes, Mrs. Longbottom,” Padma said. Her neck was warm.
“I like the sugar to butter ratio,” was Luna’s verdict. Her apple earrings swung jauntily when she reached for the teapot. “Do have a slice yourself, Padma. It’s delicious.”
Padma had been very precise in her measurements. She plated a slice for herself and stood against the draining board. In the bright light of the cottage lamps, with the lumpy sofa and armchairs and half empty tea pots, and most of the flat surfaces covered with parchments and quills, everything so familiar and precise that Padma felt reassuringly grounded.
It was like the secret in the dark mists never happened.
“How long will you be in retreat?”
“We’ve got another five days, and we’ve got loads of work done,” Cho said. She sidled up to Padma to lay an apple-y kiss on her cheek. “Thank you so much, Paz.”
The three of them were in vastly different interests. Cho was the assistant of Agatha Shafiq’s editor. Mrs. Longbottom was completing a memoir. Luna was compiling her notes on fauna from various places. All of them had met in a knitting club that Luna had organised.
Padma found that she had no use for knitting. She had no use for frills and trifles.
“When is your sister returning?” Mrs. Longbottom said.
“In a month. She says she still has twenty countries to go through.”
“Butterflies,” Cho chuckled. “Parvati is such a darling.”
“I offered her my notes, you know,” Luna said. “Although Parvati is a much more avid observer of butterflies. I never knew that Harry also is.”
That bit was quite surprising, and amusing. Padma remembered Harry Potter’s narrow figure standing on the platform with Parvati, the mellow sun on his brown face and the too-long hair on his nape caught in a tiny tie.
Mrs. Longbottom’s lips were curved behind her cup.
Cho had a fond look in her limpid brown eyes. “That’s cute. I also didn’t know Harry loves butterflies. Reminds me of the time I saw Hermione Granger carrying a massive book on butterflies in the Ministry.”
Padma knew that Harry Potter and Parvati were not seeing each other, just two people brought together again by their inexplicable love for butterflies. She would have spelled it out in precise terms there in the cottage, but she also knew that war had changed a lot of relationships and how they saw one another.
Besides the lot of them grew up, in their own ways. Padma found that her terrific crush on Angelina Johnson was nothing more than a passing admiration nowadays. She found that what she had liked when she was fifteen was very different from what she liked now.
Padma knew that Cho was casually seeing a Muggle guy from London. She steered the conversation there, and they learned terribly fascinating Muggle ways like pens and calculators and cellphones, Sugababes and Pussycat Dolls. Mrs. Longbottom took interest in the keyboards and mused if they would be easier on her cramping fingers. Luna happily rambled about her trips to Muggle record shops with Harry Potter.
They chattered until they were full of cake, and afterwards they sang another song for Cho.
The three ladies also insisted that Padma stay the night because the fireplace was not connected to the Floo Network.
“Best not risk it, my dear,” Mrs. Longbottom said, her bony fingers tight on her copper-tipped cane. “I hear there are wild animals in these woods. Wolves and that sort.”
“No, Luna, there aren’t any Crumple-Horned Snorkacks here,” Cho said when Luna opened her mouth.
Luna looked quite put out. Cho squeezed her arm in comfort.
Padma put away her hoop earrings, choker and necklaces, rings and bangles, as she gazed up at the starless black night through a diamond paned window. As she fell asleep to the faint sounds of scratching quills, Padma thought that the wallpaper had a nicely precise pattern of blue flowers.
*
Padma left the cottage of well-meaning insistent ladies the next morning, nibbling on a chocolate macadamia biscuit from Mrs. Longbottom. She liked the chocolate but it could use another three-fourths teaspoon of brown sugar.
A long way from the merging of the forks, Muggle shops and houses beckoned to Padma with their sheer stodginess. There was a poster of a man kicking a ball on the shop window. The man and the ball were stationary, as if someone had cast a spell on them. Padma was so intrigued by this that she pushed into the shop behind a gaggle of schoolgirls, one of which eyed Padma with clear yet inexplicable judgment. Padma just raised an eyebrow at the girl which sent her scurrying.
The shop lights were inconsiderately bright. Padma blinked, scratching her cheek before shielding her eyes to peer up at the very bright light on the ceiling. Interesting. They were like flat, white lamps.
Padma gradually cheered as she strolled down the aisles, in this very strange shop, with its very strange wares: almost like magic. Feeling benevolent, she decided to purchase a bottle of a wine called Prosecco. She swung out of the shop with the plastic bag swinging by her leg when she promptly bumped into Lavender Brown by the door.
A gasp snagged on Padma’s throat.
Lavender Brown’s sun-bright hair spilled over her shoulder, its dark roots showing. She looked surprised to see Padma as well, and her face looked glamoured. It was a subtle charm, unnoticeable to Muggles but obvious enough to any witch worth her wand. In the morning light she looked more real though no less bewildering.
The metal handle of the door was reassuringly solid under Padma’s suddenly clammy palm. She narrowed her eyes. “Are you following me?”
Lavender Brown scoffed. “I have to get to work.”
Padma hesitated for a split-second before darting back inside the shop where Lavender Brown was grabbing two pens from a rack. “That’s not an answer.”
“Why would I follow you?” Lavender sighed. “I live around here.”
She was wearing that odd Muggle garb, Padma noticed as she watched Lavender Brown walk up to the till. That garb that looked like the love child of a cloak and a robe, except that the black one that Lavender Brown was wearing stopped short on her mid-calves.
Lavender Brown turned away from the till, cast a suspiciously exasperated look on Padma, and said, “Fancy a cup of coffee?”
“I thought you have to get to work.”
“Oh, do come on, Padma,” Lavender Brown said with a little laugh. “You’ve got to stop standing there with that cloak on.”
“What’s wrong with my cloak?” Padma said, and frowned down at the length of crimson which reached down to graze the tiled floor. It was her favourite cloak. It went well with her lippie and hair ribbon.
“It’s too witch,” Lavender Brown muttered, “and you’re in a Muggle area. So - no caffeine for you?”
Padma continued frowning. “You’re very insistent on this caffeine matter.”
“Because it’s early in the morning and you’re Padma,” Lavender Brown said, a smile tugging up the right corner of her mouth. “Parvati used to say you’re less of a scowly cloud after a good cup of caffeine. Also I’m starving.”
“Scowly?” Padma said, trailing Lavender Brown out of the shop.
“After a caffeine dose you turn into, like, a ray of sunshine,” Lavender Brown conceded. “A - marginal ray of sunshine.”
“I’m solemn-faced.”
“Okay,” Lavender chuckled. “Anyway I could always tell you two apart. Red and Pink.”
They ended up tucked in a café, between a frosted glass window and a small ornamental orange plant, its plastic oranges hanging low from plastic branches. Padma wistfully thought of her empty fruit bowl. She needed citrus. But right now her brain needed more sugar so she could take note to acquire Muggle garb when venturing to Muggle areas.
Padma hung her crimson cloak on the back of her chair and tried not to regret wearing only slate-grey pantaloons and a jumper under it. A jumper cut short on the midriff. She eyed Lavender Brown’s peacock blue ensemble underneath the black Muggle lovechild garb, and saw that Lavender Brown was already eyeing her midriff and the crescent ring glinting there.
“Eyes up, lass.”
Lavender Brown met her eyes and grinned. “Now I’m inspired to have my own piercing.”
Padma raised her brows. “Where would you be pierced?”
“In a Muggle place, obviously,” Lavender Brown breezily replied.
The body artist Sophie had told Padma that it was more painful in the Muggle shops, and riskier as well. Padma doubted that it would be Lavender Brown’s sort of scene.
Padma nibbled at her cream cake. It was rich and had excellent ratio of butter and cream, like mild golden sunlight frothing on Padma’s tongue. After taking a fortifying sip of coffee, Padma went ahead and shoved at the elephant in the room. “It’s been so long since we’ve seen you.”
Lavender Brown glanced out the window. “Yeah. It’s for the best, really.”
“What do you mean?” Padma asked, frowning.
With a steady marble gaze, Lavender Brown answered, “Come on. You must see my glamour.”
“Any wizard or witch can -” Padma began, and shut up.
Lavender Brown’s lips twisted wryly. “There you go. But not the Muggles.”
“Brown -”
“It’s fine.” Lavender Brown shook her head. “I’m mostly over it. Have to make the best of it, haven’t I?” She beamed over her cup of Assam as if that was supposed to reassure Padma. For a moment it did, and it looked like she was seeing the Lavender before 1997, unfailingly giggly and intimidatingly chipper and not pretending to be dead.
Padma curled her hand around her hot cup. She almost feared the answer, but she still asked in case she was misunderstanding it. You did not let people think you were dead if you just thought they wouldn’t like how you looked. “How did you - I mean, beneath the glamour. What is it?”
“Greyback,” whispered Lavender Brown.
Padma heard herself suck in a breath. She noted in sudden clarity Lavender Brown’s weather-inappropriate attire from last night. Lavender Brown must have been warm enough. No wonder.
The morning light from outside was turning softer, brighter, and Padma stared as it touched Lavender Brown’s glamoured face. Padma had to tamp down the instinct to recoil. Werewolves were still shunned, especially after the war when the numbers of those affected with variations of lycanthropy had ramped up. Little Teddy Lupin had to have Ministry officials come calling to Andromeda Tonks’ doorstep every month to monitor him to make sure that lycanthropy wasn’t hereditary.
But this was Lavender Brown. Her twin’s best mate. Lavender Brown, whom Padma knew of but didn’t really know, who had played with colourful bubbles in the Patils’ upstairs bath with Parvati and who was a frequent dinner guest in the summers.
Padma breathed out slowly. She cast a glance around the sedate and false fruit-laden café before turning to say in a low voice, “Are you taking Wolfsbane?”
“No need to be clinical about it,” Lavender Brown said, lightly.
Padma scowled just as lightly. “I’m not being clinical. I’m just asking a question.”
Lavender Brown cut up a piece of her chicken pie. “You are. Parvati called it your Swotty Voice. But it’s okay.” She popped the chicken in her mouth and said, “And I do. Take the potion. My aunt in Granada is a Potions Mistress.”
Padma processed this. She tipped two more teaspoons of sugar, in almost identical heaps, into her black coffee. So Lavender Brown was a werewolf, a full one. Bill Weasley with his scars did not let people think he was dead.
When Padma looked up from her measured stirs, she found Lavender Brown peering at her over that stout cup of Assam, eyes amused behind the steam. “What?”
“Oh, nothing. I think I’ve missed you. You were always so very particular.”
Padma clinked her teaspoon twice on the mouth of her cup. “Why are you telling me all these?”
When they were eleven, Padma and Parvati had come to terms with the world-altering fact that they were two completely different people. But that still meant that they tolerated each other’s friends, even though Padma had never really made the effort to get to know Parvati’s, turning up her nose at their constant boy-talk and overly complicated nail art. Padma had been fine with what she’d seen of Lavender Brown back then.
But this was now. She didn’t know the woman sitting across from her. Padma had no reason to trust her. Lavender Brown did not trust Parvati with this secret.
Lavender Brown shifted in her seat, and Padma saw her swallow. “Well, um. I didn’t exactly plan it. It was - a snap of the moment. You already saw me and you must have lots of questions, and you saw me twice so I thought, well, why not.”
“I wouldn’t tell anyone, if that’s what you want,” Padma told her. “I didn’t tell anyone.”
“That’s very nice. I appreciate that.” Lavender Brown beamed at her again before glancing at the clock. “And now I must dash.”
“That’s it?” Padma said, blankly. “You wouldn’t - you wouldn’t extract more promises to keep your secret?”
The smile melted off from Lavender Brown’s face. “Like what? An Unbreakable Vow? A threat to you?” When Padma did not answer, she abruptly grabbed the black Muggle garb from her chair and stood up. “You’ve already given me your word. And I have more pressing concerns than chasing after you to rip out your throat.”
Padma flinched. Lavender Brown gave her one last cold look.
She stayed seated there long after Lavender Brown had strode out of the café.
*
The musical artist Shores was crooning and drawling atmospheric songs from the Wizard Wireless. Padma felt a profound sense of well-being as she stirred the chocolate with the cream cheese that would go in the buns she was baking.
It was an overcast day. Padma paused her stirring to light her pumpkin lamp with a flick of her wand. She picked up her spatula again as the amber glow crawled from the carved frames on the walls to the tottering pile of books on the oven, from the trail of quills on the kitchen table to the discarded silk stockings hanging on the kitchen door’s handle to the jumble of unwashed crockery by her cook book.
Padma’s flat might be quite - cluttered. Well, more like a storm-wrecked site with fetching red stockings draped around. But she still kept her cook book in healthy condition.
She glanced at her page now, rechecking the procedures as she set aside her mixing bowl and started on the buns.
There was something infinitely comforting about baking: about the list of what to put together, and the list of how to put it all together. Sometimes she had to experiment and make amendments to the lists, but having lists at all was a win. Lists were like maps. And baking was rather like Potions only Padma got to have fun having a taste, and if she did it right there was also something comforting about other people liking it. And if she dared she might assemble recipes of her own, and wouldn’t it be great if people liked them as well?
Padma liked that: she liked seeing people viscerally affected by what she had wrought.
Mrs. Longbottom had Owled her to compliment the apple cake again. Apparently Mrs. Longbottom had mentioned this to Andromeda Tonks.
“I devoutly hope that I am not bothering you, Miss Patil,” Andromeda Tonks had said, as dark wisps of her hair had floated in Padma’s fireplace.
“Of course not, Mrs. Tonks,” Padma had assured her.
“My grandson also likes a touch of blue with everything he comes in contact with,” Andromeda Tonks had added. “I suspect it has to do with the blue bubbles his godfather always magic with him.”
Little Teddy Lupin, Padma wondered as she put the chocolate cream cheese in the buns. Who was not a werewolf at all.
But his father had been.
Padma slid the tray of buns in the oven and leaned her hip against the counter in thought.
Professor Lupin had been her favourite, second only to Professor McGonagall. He was patient and kind and mild-mannered, and his classes felt like it wouldn’t be too bad if you made a mistake. If you had made a mistake it had been all right: he would correct you as a teacher and you would learn as a student. Padma had adored him for that. She had learned to see learning in a different light.
And then they had learned that he was a werewolf.
But he was a werewolf all along. All the while he had been adored and admired Professor Lupin he had been a werewolf. They had just not known before. But he had still been Professor Lupin.
Padma bit on her lip. The whispering tunes of Shores washed over her along with a feeling of lousiness.
She could still see Lavender Brown’s easy open smile, and how it had shuttered.
Viscerally affected by Padma’s words, something Padma had wrought.
When the buns finished baking Padma set aside half of the batch so she could charm the flecks of chocolate on them to be blue.
Then she paused in the middle of her pumpkin-lighted cluttered flat, quickly categorising: the buns tucked in the wicker basket with a warming charm, the barely consumed bottle of Prosecco from the Muggle shop, the red silk stockings by the door knob.
It all slid into place in Padma’s mind, and she was grabbing her cloak shortly before dashing out of the door.
*
Now that she had left Andromeda Tonks’ there were less buns in Padma’s basket although there was more nervousness in what she was about to do.
The cold wind prickled Padma’s cheek, whispering through the crooked curve of the oak branch over Padma’s head and making Padma’s red cloak flutter. She shifted the basket on her arm, waiting.
Through the freshly fallen evening, Lavender Brown emerged from the right fork of the road at last.
Padma’s nervousness spiked. She started to feel ridiculous, dawdling here where the roads forked in this Muggle place.
“I thought there was something different,” said Lavender Brown, her face neutral. At least Padma couldn’t see a wide smile beneath the shadow of the pale blue cap. Mist and wind did not appear to perturb Lavender and her blue tank top.
For several alarming heartbeats Padma couldn’t think of what to say. She gripped at the handle of the basket, digging her palm on the cold wicker coils, and blurted out, “I’m sorry.”
Dear Wendelin. Let the mist transform into a hand and smack her now.
Lavender Brown’s head made a sharp little movement, but she remained silent.
“I’m sorry,” Padma rushed out. But before she rambled like what she felt was going to happen she gripped harder at the basket handle. She wanted to choose her words carefully, communicate precisely. She’d never been quite as daring as Parvati when it came to confrontations.
“Look, Brown,” Padma tried again, her voice measured. “I am sorry for what happened at the café. I was being gross. I didn’t - I don’t know how to handle myself when with people affected by lycanthropy. I’ve never had to. But just today I thought about Professor Lupin, and his son, and -” Padma took a deep breath, wishing she could clearly see Lavender Brown’s face - “and I want to learn. I want to be less gross. I am very sorry.”
Lavender Brown took half a step towards her. Padma heard her clear her throat. “Okay, Padma. I forgive you.”
“Thank you,” Padma said.
“Right,” Lavender Brown said, “right.” After a pause she continued, “Are you going somewhere? To visit?”
“Oh,” Padma said, gesturing at the basket, “actually these are for you.”
“Really?”
“I’ve just come from Andromeda Tonks’ Halloween party. I’ve baked a batch for her grandson and I saved some for you.”
This time when Lavender Brown tilted her head, her face was dressed with shadows and a smile. “Thanks. Ah, wait, give me a moment.”
Padma watched her reach to her back and pull out her wand.
Lavender Brown laughed at Padma’s raised brows. “I keep my wand at the back of my bra when I jog.” She swiped at her cap with the same hand holding her wand, revealing her bright hair tied in a knot, and a grin on her face.
She’d just glamoured her face, Padma realised. Padma wanted to assure Lavender Brown that she wouldn’t mind but it struck her that Lavender Brown might.
“We can share the basket,” Lavender Brown said. She approached Padma, and her hand touched the curve of the wicker. “I mean, if you like? There’s a park nearby. We can share the basket in the park. If you like.”
“Yes,” Padma said. “Where’s the park?”
Lavender Brown fell in step beside Padma. A silence fell between them as well. Padma couldn’t tell if it was awkward or not. Padma groped around for a common topic and picked one. “Thank you for accepting my apology. I can’t stress how sorry I am.”
“Yeah,” Lavender Brown said, glancing at her. “Like I said, I forgive you. I’m glad you’re sorry. It was dreadful, to be honest. But it’s nothing I didn’t expect.”
Padma flinched. “That’s terrible, I’m sorry. Look, Brown, if I ever stupidly say more gross things tell me.”
“Okay,” Lavender Brown said, “right. I’m taking you to picnic.”
An autumn picnic, Padma mused. There were first times for everything. Then her brain caught up with the conversation. “A picnic, yes. Like a test?”
Lavender Brown tilted her head, without ever fully facing Padma, so that Padma could still see her frown. “Like a - well, um. No? But maybe. Yes? But like, to catch up properly.”
“I didn’t understand half of what you said.”
They paused in the middle of a slick road, at the mouth of the town. Lavender Brown exhaled and ran a hand through her hair. Her fingers snagged on the knot. “Okay. How do I put this?”
Lavender Brown tugged off the band. Her hair came loose in a fall of tight curls. She ran her hand from the dark roots to the sun-bright tips, frowning in thought. Padma waited.
“Okay, right,” said Lavender Brown. “You know when you use tea bags?”
“Yes?” Padma was quite bewildered, but she believed in diverse expressions. “Sometimes I use tea leaves.”
“Or tea leaves, right.” Lavender Brown nodded. “So the point is when you let the tea steep. That is what we’re going to do. Also it would be nice, because I haven’t talked to any witch from school for years. D’you know what I mean?”
“I - think so, yes.”
“Am I saying it right?” Lavender Brown restlessly tugged at her hair. “You can think of me as the tea bag. Or the tea leaves.”
“All right,” Padma said, feeling the corner of her mouth tug upwards. “I understand what you’re saying.”
“Do you? Thank Merlin.” Lavender Brown resumed walking, and Padma did as well. “Often I don’t get across my meaning well.”
Padma bit her lip. “I’m sure the - er, steeping will help you practise.”
Lavender Brown beamed. “Right? Cleverly said. Yeah, you do get it.”
In the park they found a stone bench at the curve of the stone path. There were no stars tonight, and the moon was hidden but there was a tall odd lamp beside the bench.
“That’s an electric lamp,” Lavender Brown informed Padma. “Street lamp.”
There were quite a few street lamps around here. Padma gazed at the one beside their bench with hesitant approval. “They seem to have sturdy light.”
Lavender Brown laughed. She explained electricity as they opened the basket and out came the chocolate cream cheese buns, still hot, and the couple of red apples, and the bottle of Prosecco. Padma Conjured two glasses for them.
“So as long as there is no power outage,” Padma summarised, “you don’t need to bother with logs or coal or oil. That’s very convenient.”
“A very sturdy light,” Lavender Brown agreed, with Padma’s words, a laugh in her eyes.
“I feel hurt by this mockery,” Padma said, lightly.
Lavender Brown burst out giggling. She set down her half full cup with a trembling hand as her shoulders shook. “You always do that. Be funny with a straight face.” She raised a deeply pink finger. “Oh wait! Be funny with a solemn face. Careless of me.”
“All right,” Padma said, feeling her lips twitch. She wondered how Lavender Brown managed to be always bubbling with mirth, as if with just a shake she could fizz and splash out good humour.
“So what do you do,” Padma said, “aside from being versed in electricity?”
Lavender Brown rolled her neck and shoulders, like Padma often did as soon as soon she woke up. She paused with her face serenely tipped up towards the glow of the street lamp, so that Padma could clearly see the glamour on her face and shoulders and arms. Lavender Brown’s thick lashes were tipped with gold by the lamp light.
Padma blinked.
Then Lavender Brown seemed to remember Padma was there. Lavender Brown quickly half-turned her face away again and fiddled with her cap.
“I work in a Muggle weather office.” Lavender Brown picked up her glass. “I predict the weather.”
“Predict.” Padma couldn’t help but think of kooky Professor Trelawney and that one awful term involving crystal balls.
“Don’t start,” Lavender Brown said. “I know what you’re thinking. It’s not like divination. Or even astrology. It’s all charts and graphs.”
“Muggles can do divination with charts and graphs.”
Lavender Brown laughed. “In a way. I attended a Muggle university, you know. Had to take their O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s first, of course. The exams are named differently. I was older than the usual lot. Mum and Dad had to do some, um, smoothening with my previous records. So, then! I am a very accomplished weather seer.”
“You love being a weather seer,” Padma observed.
“Yeah, very much.” Lavender Brown pointed to the inky black sky over them. “There will be a storm next week. There’s a tropical depression so lots of rain than usual, no stars tonight. I did a graph for the storm’s path and expected deviations.”
Padma was quite impressed, and a little envious. “And it all comes true.”
“Yeah,” Lavender Brown said with a grin. “There’s, like, 60% to 70% chance of predictions coming true. It’s why I love it so much. It’s the weather, after all, so it’s not 100%. And thank Merlin for that if, say, it’s predicted that a hurricane will be hitting us hard in its path.”
Padma didn’t expect Lavender Brown to love charts and graphs, with what she knew of the other woman back in Hogwarts. But then, Padma thought wryly, she also didn’t expect to be a resigned Arithmancer so she had to rid of herself with such judgments.
“It’s a shame that there are no stars tonight,” was all Padma said around her apple. “At least I can properly appreciate this street lamp.”
Padma liked the street lamp’s precise and sturdy light. No flickering, no crackling, no nonsense.
“Yeah,” Lavender Brown said. “I like it better. The street lamp, I mean. It makes for a better moon.”
Padma slowly lowered her apple. “Brown -”
“Don’t you think it’s too formal?” Lavender Brown said, still in her lively voice. “That you call me Brown? Come on, I slept over hundreds of times in your house. We wrestled for a stuffed pony one Easter hols and Parvati had to pull at my hair.”
Padma couldn’t think of anything to say to the moon bit, and it wasn’t any better with this one. “You - don’t want to talk about the street lamp moon?”
“No,” was Lavender Brown’s firm reply. She still had a wide smile, but her eyes were hard. “I’d like for things to be nice.”
“All right,” Padma said, quite taken aback.
Lavender Brown did not miss a beat. “Okay! I call you Padma because I can’t call you Patil, it’s too weird, with Parvati and everything.”
Padma hesitated.
“It’ll be fine,” Lavender Brown said. “I mean you already know my secret, and I already ate buns out of your basket.”
“Buns - my basket -” Padma frowned. “I don’t know. Wouldn’t it be too familiar? We don’t feel too familiar.”
Lavender Brown considered this in two seconds flat before nodding sagely. She took a sip of her wine and gestured at Padma with the glass, as if Padma were the weather chart. “We will be.”
Continue to Part 2
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