“Lavender, you can’t be doing this,” Parvati says as she brushes her best friend’s hair. It’s long, lands midway down her back, and is the colour of autumn. In the flickering candlelight of the bedroom, it seems to glow. Against her robes, the colour stands out even more. Her robes are black: the colour of the night.
When Lavender turns to face Parvati, she can see her eyes. They are cold and black, and seemingly heartless. Three years ago these same eyes had been bright and filled with joy. Now, they were hardly recognizable. “Parvati, I must,” she whispers. “You know that.”
She gets up abruptly; Parvati steps away, afraid for the first time. Lavender begins to pace the small room. It consists of one bureau, two beds, a narrow, floor-length mirror, and a window. Pausing by the window, she looks out at the London sky.
The entire house is still, which is unusual. Normally there are people coming and going at odd hours of the day and night. But tonight, everyone is already here. In thirty minutes, Severus Snape, her past professor, will come up and to take her to the Dark Lord’s hiding spot place.
She takes a deep breath, and collects herself before turning back to Parvati. “I must do this. Not only can I help save our world, and the Muggle world, I can prove myself to the man I love.” Tears are filling her eyes; she closes them and prays they do not fall.
They stand like that for awhile: a young woman of British-Indian heritage paused, staring into the narrow mirror; and a young woman of British decent, paused, fighting back tears. Who knows how long they stayed there. After a time, someone knocks on the door and comes in, not waiting for an answer.
“Miss Brown, we must leave,” Severus Snape sneers, trying to gain his composure. But it is clear from his eyes that his he is worried for this girl, this foolish Gryffindor who is about to run of her own accord into a pack of rabid wolves.
Lavender practically runs past him, unable to look at her best friend. As soon as she is out of the room and in the hallway, Snape closes the door on Parvati.
Parvati sits and waits, hoping to hear Lavender come up the stairs after chickening out, but to no avail. She fiddles with her hair, squirms around, writes a letter to her sister, and then finally just sits down to wait. How much time passes, she is not sure. All she knows is that sometime after one o’clock, Lavender comes back into the room.
“Oh!” Parvati says, and they both pause, unable to look one another in the eye. After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, Parvati says, “Did you-”
“Yes.” That is all Lavender says before changing into pajamaspyjamas and climbing into bed. Through her thin, white, cotton shirt, Parvati can see a pulsating skull on her left upper forearm.
Lavender Brown is a Death Eater.
Lavender knows that Parvati saw the Dark Mark. She knows that her friend is shocked, not only by the level of her devotion to the Order of the Phoenix, but also by her curtness. Pretending to sleep, so she does not have to speak to her best friend on about the ordeal she had just had to gogone through, Lavender remembers every moment of her meeting with the Dark Lord.
“Lavender Brown, isn’t it?” the Dark Lord asks, and she imagines that his red eyes are glowing. From her vantage point on the ground at the foot of his robes, Lavender manages a soft, but strong, reply.
“Yes, my lord.”
She is allowed up, and moves to stand in front of the armchair in which he sits. For months, she has been practicing for this. Occlumency, Legillimency, the correct replies, when to kneel and when to stand, and where her spot position in the Death Eater circle will be. It has all come led up to this. From here and until Harry beats him, she will be a spy.
He strokes his chin, and she fights the urge to shiver as he probes her mind. Luckily, after her “lessons” with Snape they have chosen the correct amount of memories and thoughts to be in her mind at this time, and those whichthose that are significant enough to share, and those so insignificant that they must be there.
There are memories of her school years, memories of her family, and memories of her friends. Then there are the important memories, the ones of going to Snape and asking to be a Death Eater, and memories of Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Specifically, there is the memory of walking in on Harry and Hermione, and seeing Ron, heartbroken.
The Dark Lord stands up, enraged. “Why do you ask to come into my service when you clearly have feelings for Weasley, the blood traitor?” Before she can answer, he yells, “Crucio!”
There is pain, pain greater than she has ever felt before. But she tries not to scream, and attempts to conquer this feeling. After all, if she succeeds tonight, there will be more if she displeases him. When he finally stops, she is curled up on the floor, and gasping for breath.
“Because,” she pants, trying to get up into a standing position again. “Because they hurt him. I want them to feel the pain that he felt in his heart when he saw them. And I want him to know that I was the one that enabled his revenge.”
Her eyes are blazing, and she needs to prove to the Dark Lord that she speaks true to his cause. “I want to be a Death Eater to kill the Mudblood, and lead you to Harry Potter, so you can destroy him. I want them destroyed, once and for all. Ron is no help to Potter; it is the Mudblood who is. The Mudblood is the secret behind Potter’s success; Ron is just there at the right time.”
He considers this for a moment, and seems to like it. After all, it calls true to his beliefs: pure-bloods live, Mudbloods die, destroy Harry Potter for revenge, and she will sneak behind the backs of those whom she went to school with.
“Congratulations, Miss Brown. You have passed this portion of your test.”