Redivivus [ l.b ]

4.

Rowan walked out to the garden, where Lavender was already picking up potatoes for his aunt. There was a sense of relief again and all he wanted was to tell everybody he knew that mourn for her that she was alive but at the same time it was that feeling that he needed to keep it a secret for as long as he needed too.

"You look pretty creepy when you keep on staring at me like that, Sprout."

"You remember me?" Was the first question that slipped out of his mouth. Rowan mentally gave himself a face palm and a kick on the behind. Lavender nodded and smiled, just a bit.

"Parvati wouldn't stop talking about you." Rowan felt his cheeks heat up just a little and cleared his throat. Lavender started to hum as she walked by him, not saying another word. "Pomona?" He walked back into the house just to find it empty with a small note on the counter. Lavender looked over at him and followed his glare. Setting the basket of potatoes on the counter, Lavender slightly read the note and started to wash the potatoes. "Well don't continue to stand there, Rowan. Help me out." The two silently peeled the potatoes, Rowan asking himself why they couldn't just use magic to do it for them but never asked the girl about. The humming was the only thing that broke the silence a few minutes later, Lavender's attention never leaving the potatoes or the peeler. Her scarred hands wrapped around the potatoes and her eyebrows tightly knitted.

"So where did you go?"

"I have been about almost everywhere until I landed here." Rowan looked down at his own mess and sighed. "How about you?"

"Stayed with my parents. They wouldn't let me out after a very long while."

"Must have been nice." Rowan nodded but lifted his gaze right at her again, wondering where she had gone if it weren't for her parents' house. "Did you go back to Hogwarts?" Rowan nodded and shrugged.

"I did. Felt odd, especially when Harry Potter isn't in school and one can finally have a normal school year."

"Did Parvati go?" Rowan nodded.

"They both did. Although I have to be honest with you, Brown. They looked,"

"Different?"

"Yeah. Different, guess I was just use to seeing you around the girls" Lavender nodded and put the peeled potatoes in a pot she had magically filled with water. "You look good though." Lavender looked up. "I mean, not good as in good looking, I mean not saying that you're not pretty... I don't mean it that way, but like... "Rowan stopped talking before standing up and turning his back to her. He gathered his thoughts, not wanting to seem more of a moron than he was already showing. "What I meant is that..."

"I look everything besides good, Rowan. I'm nowhere near that spectrum right now."

"You've been with my aunt for how long?"

"A few months now."

"Then I'm more than positive that you looked worse before than you did now." Lavender nodded and sat back on the chair before pulling her hair to a ponytail. It was no insult, but the way that his aunt had described her during that phone call, he knew that staying inside a home was doing her well. Rowan could clearly see her scars, and how they went from her ear to her mouth, another one from her hairline to her mid-cheek. There was another one around her neck that looked just like his. He felt his hand go up to his neck.

The silence was killing Lavender internally. All she wanted was to ask where she could find everybody and tell them she was okay and alive as much as she could say to her friends, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. Instead Lavender stared at the faint scars that Rowan had around his neck, it wasn't until at that instant where she could really see why Pomona had gotten her nephew to get her talk to someone her own age. There was no possible way that Greyback had attacked more than one student that night. She knew that the moment that she saw the man, she had run towards him. Lavender didn't know where he had come from and she silently pleaded that Rowan was not like her. It was a curse for trying to be someone's hero that had gotten her and would never wish it on the people she saved. Pomona apparated back into the house which took both teenagers by surprise. Rowan had fallen from his seat, Pomona grinning as she dusted off her apron.

"Excellent. Rowan will you be staying for dinner?"

"I think I might have to go home, Aunt Mo. Mum might get worried." Pomona hugged her nephew and kissed him on his forehead before he turned to wave at her. "Lavender?"

"Yes?"

"What do you say we go around town and see someone that knows to well about the..." He points to his neck and then his face. 

"Who would we be seeing?"

"Remember Bill Weasley?" Lavender looked at him confused. "I'll be here tomorrow." Then he was gone. Confused, she sat on the couch trying to remember who Bill Weasley was. It was common sense that he had to be Ron's older brother. At least one of them.

"Pomona?"

"Yes?" Lavender fixed the sleeve of her shirt, trying to find a way to lay out the question gently but the topic was no gentle topic.

"Why does Rowan have scars?"

"Well." Pomona wiped her hands on her apron and turned her heel to look right at her. "He had the same fate as you, just not as..."

"Grave. Does he transform?" Pomona shook her head.

"No, that was luck for him, but he was attacked. He has werewolf tendencies, just like Bill."

"Were there other students that were attacked by..." Lavender stopped herself from saying his name. It was worse than saying the name of Voldemort before his defeat. The name brought nightmares and hallucinations, a face and teeth she would never forget.

"Yes. There were many that were attacked by him, dear. None of them as lucky as Rowan and yourself."