Songbirds and Silk

"You're color," he told her hazily one evening, swaying as he sat until she gently guided his head against the wing of the armchair so she could have a better look at his bruised face, the clotting mess of a cut on his temple. She'd told the sixth-year girl who'd taken possession of Seamus as soon as he and Neville had collapsed inside the common room to shove off, pulling him over to the chair in the corner with a possession he would have appreciated more had he not been in the haze of head injury.

"I'm color?" she prompted gently, in the clean white tone of the responsible healer humoring her patient, but smiling Lavender as she met his eyes for a moment. Something occurred to her, and she laughed a little, stemming off to wince in empathy as she brought the wet rag to sponge the wound on his head. "Lavender, Brown, ha, yeah, like I've not heard that before—the nasty little boys in my primary called me Lavender Bruise…once the teacher taught us all that 'Lavender' was really the color purple with a sneaky name."

He wanted to tell her no, that Lavender was the wrong shade for bruising (and didn't he know, he was an expert on all the different shades of bruise), and that she wasn't just Lavender Brown, she was the rainbow. She was scarlet bravery and gold defiance and rose beauty and songbird voice and silk hands and… even the tears she cried as he pried the nails out of the desk (out of her hands, but he tried not to think about that) weren't grey—they were red, like the blood that ran down her desk as she sat in quiet, Lavender defiance ("If you won't raise a wand like a witch, you won't raise a hand, either!') like the blood that wicked through the snow white bandages like the Gryffindor badge it was. He wanted to say a hundred different things to her, but he didn't have the words, they wouldn't funnel down to his mouth, his head was getting grey and it was leaking into his vision and, wait, shit, songbirds and silks weren't colors and fuck did that hurt.

He could hear her scolding, stay awake, Seamus, just for a few—and he wanted to listen to her because it was black, where he was going, and that was even worse than grey. He felt her lean in, her hands on his face, and with a breath in her perfume faded the black to grey and rose and lavender, like twilight, and he fell asleep.

Love you, he thought (or thought he thought) and Seamus missed the lovely blush that stained Lavender's cheeks at the quiet words barely (but very certainly) whispered at the edge of consciousness.

This was originally the end of Gone Grey, but I didn't like it there, the tone was too different. In truth, I think I like what I made out of this scrap a little better. :)