This was written for the Hunger Games Competition on the HPFC (Word: abandoned, Emotion: empty, Dialogue: "I wouldn't do that if I were you.", Setting: St Mungos, Genre: Angst), and for Samantha.

Word count: 4291

The Price of Love

'You say the price we pay for love is loss.
I say the price we pay for love is love.'
- "Match", Brynn Saito

Lavender is sitting against a wall in an abandoned classroom when Harry finds her. She found this place in her first year by accident, and ever since it's kind of been her refuge when life at Hogwarts gets too much.

She hasn't been here in a while now – last year with the OWLs she barely had any time to herself, let alone to miss her family, and with the DA she had had a purpose and another place to escape when she needed to, and this year had been spent with Ron so far.

She needs it now, though. Ron broke up with her, and even if she sort of saw it coming, it still hurt. She feels raw inside, like someone reached in and scrapped out everything. She feels like she shouldn't hurt anymore, but apparently life doesn't work that way because she does.

Dear Merlin, how she hurts.

She doesn't see Harry approach but she hears his footsteps. She leaves her head against her knees, hoping that if she doesn't acknowledge him he'll just go away. He doesn't.

He slips down against the wall until he's sitting next to her, his knees cracking as he folds his legs.

"I'm sorry Ron's been such an idiot," he says, and somehow the words are enough for her to let out a half-strangled laugh, her tears starting again.

"I thought you didn't badmouth your friends?"

"Well, Ron wasn't very fair on you, was he? Besides, he fine now, and you clearly aren't."

"That's nice of you," she comments, and she lets it hang out in the air, finding herself unable to tell him anything else. She almost wants to be angry at him, but he hasn't done anything to her, and she doesn't think they're close enough friends for her to rant at him.

He's not Parvati, with whom she'd complain for hours, or Dean, who's willing to listen to her if she agrees to pose for him. Thinking of Parvati hurts though.

The words come out nonetheless, almost against her will.

"You know, Parvati told me I was being foolish when I said I wanted to go out with Ron. She said it would only end in tears, and I told her she was wrong because I didn't want to believe it. I just…" She reaches to him almost involuntarily, as if contact would make him understand. "I like him, and I just wanted this to work. I wanted us to work."

She doesn't say why they didn't work, but Hermione's name hangs heavily in the air, the words unsaid but still somehow potent.

Harry snorts, and Lavender somehow finds the strength to glare at him.

"I think we all saw that," he states drily, and she blushes, looking everywhere but at him. So sue her – maybe she went a bit overboard with the gifts and signs of affections, but Witch Weekly said that it was important to remind of your loved ones that you loved them.

She's not really in the mood to argue though, even if having someone there she can talk to is already doing wonders for her. It seems like she's finally managing to sort out her feelings, even if they're not very pleasant ones.

"Do you think there's something wrong with me?" She asks suddenly, turning her head back to face him. "I mean, I tried, I tried so hard to make us work, and we did. We were good, great even. I did everything right, I just, I can't, I don't…"

She can't breathe, she realizes. Somehow, her words have caught up in her throat and now she feels like crying again, only she's literally just spent hours doing that – just how many tears can she have left in her body? The room feels too small, and there's no air. Why is there no air?

"…ender… Lavender? Are you alright?"

Harry's hand is rubbing circles on her back, and she's taking deep breaths. Filling up her lungs has never felt so good, and Merlin, she's pathetic, getting so worked up over a boy. As her mother would say, there are plenty of fish in the sea, she'd find one she'd like soon enough. And yet… And yet Ron had been so sweet, and being with him had felt right.

She had felt alive kissing him, like she was on top of the world.

"I really like him you know," she whispers, and it sounds like a confession, only it isn't, it can't be, because he's not hers anymore and she has to let him go.

"Yeah, well sometimes liking someone isn't enough." Harry's voice is bitter as he says this, and she doesn't have to look at him to picture the wistful look on his face. It's probably mirrored on hers right now.

"Weasleys, right?"

He lets out a startled laugh, and before she knows it, they're both laughing so hard they can barely breathe. It's a good kind of breathlessness though, and she almost feels alright then.

They stay here until curfew is long gone, commiserating about their love stories gone wrong, even if their problems are completely different.

There, in that abandoned classroom at Merlin knows what hour, they share a kinship their other friends can't understand.

She doesn't mind, and she has a feeling Harry agrees with her.

After all, it is kind of nice to have something you can keep to yourself once in a while.

.x.

They don't mean to keep their friendship a secret. It just sort of happens.

Harry's busy doing Morgana knows what to fight of You-Know-Who when they're not in classes or doing homework, Ronald and Granger usually not far behind him – yes, calling her roommate by her last name and her ex by the name he hates is kind of petty, but she never pretended to be above such things – so they can't exactly spend much time socializing anyway, but they manage.

He leaves snacks by her elbows when she's working too long and she sneaks him her Charm notes when something inevitably happen to his, and sometimes they share exasperated glances over Ronald's lack of manner at the table.

They meet up sometimes in the corridors, and he asks her how she's been and when she says fine she's mostly not lying, and when she questions him on his relationship with Ginny he answers her truthfully, which she appreciates.

They don't mean to keep it a secret. It's just that somehow no one notices, and they don't feel the need to tell anyone.

.x.

He's one of her first visitors when she ends up in St Mungo's after the Battle of Hogwarts, as people have taken to calling it.

The Healers have told her the scars marring her body might never leave, but that she's lucky to be alive.

'Lucky'. Like it was something to be proud of. Like she should be proud of outliving so many of her friends, people she had spent the last seven years with, people she had bled for, been tortured for.

She had laughed and cried with those people, and it seemed like just yesterday they were all if not alright then alive. So so alive.

There's a tray of Potions by the door, and they're ones she's had to become really familiar with in the last year. By now, she knows exactly the right amount she'd need to take to just fall asleep and never wake up.

After all, anything has to be better than this empty feeling inside of her where her happiness once resided. She doesn't even have it in herself to be happy that they won, because it doesn't feel like victory.

Not when she still sees the faces of the dead staring back at her every time she closes her eyes, asking her how she escaped this when they didn't.

This is how Harry finds her, her hand stretched toward the vials.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you." His words may sound detached, but his tone is all but that.

She retracts her hand and sits back on her bed. "And what would you have me do then? Stay here until they let me out, and then what? Find a job, be normal? Please, we both know that normal is out of the picture for me now."

Would he too try to tell her that she got lucky?

"Come on Lavender, I thought you knew me better than that by now."

"I said that aloud, didn't I?"

Harry almost looks amused as he nods.

She sighs. "It's all they say you know. How lucky I am to be alive, to not be a werewolf, but I don't feel it. I feel dead inside, and empty, and I don't think I'll ever even want to be alright again."

He sits on a discarded chair, facing her. He looks pensive as he answers her, almost as if he was trying to order his thoughts as he explains them to her.

"It's not luck," he scoffs. "People died for us, Lavender, died so that we could keep on living this life. Not for us, not until we feel like we can, but for them. Saying it's luck just cheapens that."

He gets it. Of course he does – the Healers don't, they weren't there, but Harry was. He's been involved in this since he was a baby, of course he understands the cost of this war.

"We owe those people our lives, and that's why we've got to keep on fighting. For them."

Her eyes drift back to the Potions, almost wistful, but she drags them away, focusing on Harry.

"I guess we owe them quite a debt then," she quips, and for a second she almost feels like her old self.

"Yeah." Harry's smile is a bit different from what it used to be. His eyes are more guarded now, and there's a pain there that hadn't been there before. She can guess at what put it there – she's heard tales of how Voldemort finally went down – but she won't ask. "I guess we kind of do."

A companionable silence settles between them, and even if they don't speak much until his visit ends, Lavender feels like they said everything they needed to.

"It may sound kind of cheesy," he starts as he goes to leave the room, "but there's a light at the end of this tunnel, and I swear to you it'll be worth it."

"Sounds like you found it."

His eyes sweep over her once, almost speculatively, before he answers. "Yeah, I think I might have."

He sends her flowers the next day, to brighten up her room.

She's allergic, but it makes her laugh.

.x.

Harry shows up on her doorstep once a week. There's no real regularity to it, no rhythm Lavender can find, but he comes every week without fail. She's always there when he does too, even if she barely spends any time in her own apartment these days, preferring to hole up at work whenever she can.

[She asks him one day – how is it that he always seem to know when she's home?

"Are you actually keeping tabs on me?" She half jokes, setting down drinks and food as he settles into her couch like he belongs there.

Harry sends her a blank look, but she's known him for far too long to be fooled by him. Once, it might have worked, but she has spent too much time in his company not to realize when he's trying to hide something.

"Would it really bother you if I did?" He finally asks her, and he looks almost shy about it.

She doesn't even have to think about her answer. "Of course not."

And isn't that just perfectly healthy of her. She should say that it did. After all, here he was, using some probably barely legal means to keep tracks of her activities instead of asking her when he could visit, like any sane person would.

She should be suspicious, be warier of him, but this is Harry, the man who had shown up with the only flowers she was allergic to when she had been at St Mungo's and had spent hours apologizing afterward, the friend who had helped her dry her tears when she had been sad. She can't begrudge him for his peculiarities, not when he accepts hers so readily.

"It's fine," she continues. "I trust you."

He smiles and flicks a spoon full of ice cream at her face, and from then on it's an all-out war.

(She wins.)]

At first, she thought he only came to check in on her, see if she hadn't made any 'mistakes', hadn't had any 'accidents'. That'd have been sweet of him, but overbearing and annoying, and she could have found a way to be rid of him easily enough.

He didn't treat her like she'd been about to break though, not like Parvati or the Healers did. When he looked at her he seemed to see strength and courage, and even if it didn't make any kind of sense to her, she was grateful for his visits.

She gets it now though. She was his escape. She still is in a way, even if he's not running from the same issues, nor for the same reasons.

"Girl troubles?"

"Uugh," Harry groans. "Don't even get me started me on that. I swear there are some days she just wants my death."

Lavender hides a smile in her mug. This is what made her understand, or rather who. Ginny Weasley.

Ginny is Harry's girlfriend. They have been dating for almost three years now – or two, if you considered that they had officially been broken up during the Year-We-Never-Speak-Of, which she didn't because they had clearly still been together even if they weren't, you know, together – and to Lavender it appears that they fight a lot, or at least disagree on a rather important number of things.

Once, on his unscheduled visit to her home, he had raged for ten good minutes about the stubbornness of redheads, and it had taken her an entirely unfair amount of time to realize that he wasn't talking about Ronald.

"Come now, I'm sure that's not true. You know she loves you." Honestly, Lavender is kind of jealous. Not of Ginny – well, maybe a little bit. Harry's a great guy, and anyone would be lucky to have him, but what she envies the most was the relationship in itself. The love and trust that comes from it, the kind of happiness she had experienced once, back when she had been dating Ronald – that's what she missed the most.

"Yeah… Yeah, she does."

"You don't sound convinced."

"It's not- I mean…" Harry sighs, and runs a hand in his hair, clearly frustrated. "I love her, and she loves me, I know that, but it's complicated."

"Isn't it always?"

That seems to draw a smile out of him, even if it doesn't last for long.

"I think it used to be simpler. Or maybe we were different people then. I just don't know."

There's a moment of silence then, and it's only broken by the noise they make while drinking hot chocolate. And maybe it's what Harry just said, about relationships and people changing, and 'it's complicated', but there's an instant where she swears she saw the world more clearly than ever before. It's the kind of epiphany that comes oh so rarely and always takes you by surprise, and it almost makes her choke on her drink.

"Oh Merlin, I'm your mistress!"

Besides her, Harry splutters and coughs, clearly caught by surprise.

"I'm sorry, but what?" He somehow manages to choke out.

"Don't you see? You sneak out to see me and you haven't told your friends about me – they don't even know we're friends! I'm the other woman," she concludes.

She can feel Harry staring at her as she panics inside. He opens his mouth several times, but he can't seem to find any word to say. She understands. After her outburst, she doesn't quite know what to say either.

She steels herself and turns to face him, ready to apologize for all the trouble that she's caused him and Ginny – she's a secret he shouldn't have to keep, and she can see now that it weighed on him, even if he can't – but the moment their eyes meet, they both burst out laughing.

It's a little hysterical, and probably a bit forced by the end, but for the life of her, she can't stop. This whole situation is ridiculous, and if anyone had told her a year ago that she would end up here, laughing on her sofa with Harry Potter over an inexistent adultery relationship between them, she'd have sent them to St Mungo's.

Harry leaves soon after that, and she could have sworn she saw a flash of something in his eyes before he Apparated out of her doorstep.

Something like regret, or maybe like a promise.

.x.

He doesn't show up the next week, or the week after that, and Lavender is definitely not worried. Not even the slightest bit. Not at all.

Alright, so maybe she Fire-called the Ministry to check that nothing had happened to Harry, and maybe she's taken to maybe the Prophet again. Just in case. After all, Harry is a celebrity in their world, no matter how much he hates it. If anything happens to him, it'll probably make the front page.

He's safe though, and she tries to tell herself that it's what matters. She doesn't care if he misses a couple of his usual trip to her place. It's probably a sign that things are fixed between him and Ginny, and it's not like those visits were ever planned anyway.

Still, it kind of hurts. She's felt like hitting herself ever since he left, because putting herself in the role of his mistress probably wasn't the smartest thing to do or say, even if it's kind of true, and she wants nothing more than to take those words back and act like nothing ever happened.

It's not her fault she fell for him, just like it's not his fault he doesn't feel the same way. She just wishes something was possible between them, even if it seems like she just ruined all of her already slim chances.

Which is why she's so surprised to learn that he broke up with Ginny from the Prophet three weeks after he left her apartment.

He shows up at her door within the hour. That doesn't surprise her.

Lavender wants to be angry at him. In fact, she spends the hour between reading that article and his arrival carefully planning all the things she's going to yell at him.

And yet, somehow, the words that come out of her mouth when she opens her door are "Will you go out on a date with me?"

When he laughs she almost slams back the door on his face, but his next words stop her.

"You know, I kind of had a plan for that already, and you just ruined it."

She feels her lips stretch into a smile as she gestures him inside.

"Do I even want to know what it was?"

He contemplates the option for a moment before shaking his head half dejectedly.

"Hm, probably not... I may not have thought it all the way through yet."

She barely manages to hide a shudder. Harry is one of the sweetest and nicest men she knows, but he's really bad at planning anything. He has terrible luck, and most of the time the stories he shares with her leave her in stitches, even as he tells them with the grimmest voice.

"Well, you do have a habit of not thinking things through. Sorry," she adds as an afterthought, even if it is true.

He plops down in his usual place on her sofa, looking suddenly older than his years.

"I did think about this you know. I've been thinking about it for a while, and I think we could have something. You were right, and I was hanging onto Ginny because she felt safe. Being with her meant I didn't have to worry about what I'd do next, and I guess I kind of also wanted to see if I could go back to the life I had before. It wasn't normal by any rate, but it wasn't this…"

"Crazy?" She suggests with a smirk.

"Yeah, crazy. That's definitely the right word for it."

She hums in agreement as she settles down next to him.

"You know, you still haven't answered my question," she asks after a moment of silence.

She can feel him stiffen. "No, I guess I haven't."

"So, what's it going to be? You, me and some cheesy Muggle movie? Or do I have to go by myself?"

"A Muggle movie? Are you actually admitting that you like them, Miss Brown?"

Lavender tries to fight off the blush. She truly does. However, Harry's twinkling eyes quickly tell her that she was less than successful.

"Well, I guess they're not so bad, Mr. Potter. Besides, I figured you'd appreciate the freedom from your groupies for a night – they'll probably give up as soon as you leave the magical part of London."

"Don't be so sure," he deadpans, but he's smiling so she knows she's right. "They can be pretty bloody stubborn at times." His smile widens, and his eyes look so green for a moment her breath catches in her chest. "I'd love to go out on a date with you, Lavender Brown. If that's what you want, of course."

Her answering smile feels so wide it must look painful, but she feels elated, like she could take on a hundred Death Eaters and win. "Of course it's what I want. I'm the one who asked you, remember?"

"How could I ever forget?"

They agree on Friday night, seven pm. He doesn't kiss her as he leaves, but their hands linger in each other's the entire time he's here, and the goodbye feels different this time.

It's clear that they're both excited for this.

(Later, they'll talk about Ginny. He's told her most of the story before, but that happened in bursts and snapshots, little strokes of a brush that never quite managed to paint the whole picture.

Now that she has it though, she wonders how she ever managed to miss how unhappy Harry had been while she had been trying to build back her life.)

.x.

They never get to tell their friends. One day that she's at his place – a change she insisted on - Hermione drops by to tell Harry that Ronald finally proposed to her.

She walks in on them and her face then will probably remain in Lavender's most treasured memories. Yes, it was that funny.

Strangely enough, or perhaps not, she doesn't even feel the slightest bit of envy toward the bushy-haired young woman. She used to think that she'd never get over Ronald, but somehow Harry sneaked up on her when she least expected him, and now… Well, now he's all the love that she needs in her life.

"Congratulations!" Harry's voice breaks the awkward silence once they rejoin in his living room, and Lavender quickly echoes the sentiment.

Hermione still looks shocked, but she seems to be shaking it off.

"I guess I should have known," she finally says, but Lavender gets the hidden message in the menacing look her former roommate sends her. It says 'hurt him and I'll make you regret it'.

That's okay. She's not planning on it.

"I guess I should probably leave you two to it then. It sounds like you have some catching up to do."

"You don't have to leave-" "-Really, you shouldn't let me bother you, I can come back later." Hermione and Harry say at the same time.

"It's perfectly fine, I should definitely get going anyway." It's not true, and by Harry's frown he definitely knows it too, but he doesn't call her on it.

With a quick wave of her wand she gathers he stuff, and not five minutes later she's ready to leave.

"Are you sure you don't want to stay?"

She shuts him up with a languorous kiss, taking pride in how uncomfortable she can make Hermione in just a few seconds.

"Yes," she stresses. "I'm sure. Stop by my place when you're done, I'll make dinner."

"You mean you'll burn dinner and I'll try to salvage it."

"Isn't that what I just said?" She retorts with a smirk.

He laughs and she swallows it down with one last kiss before taking her leave.

He mouths an 'I love you' by the time she gets to the door, and she mouths it back as she Apparates back to her place, her heart so full of joy it almost feels like it's about to burst.

.x.

"You're invited to the wedding," are Harry's first words after he kisses her hello.

"Really?" She asks incredulously. "They're inviting the ex-girlfriend to the wedding?"

"Well, considering the ex-girlfriend is the current girlfriend of the best man, I don't think they have a choice."

"Besides," he adds with a mischievous tone – and sweet Morgana, now she's almost scared of what he'll say next. She's long learned to be wary of him and his ideas when he gets that tone – "I'm sure you'll be a great help in crafting my speech for the big day."

She laughs and he kisses her, and behind them, in the kitchen, the food burns.

(That's alright though – Harry's a much better cook than she is anyway.)