Lavender Brown

From Fanlore
Jump to navigation Jump to search

This article is about the Harry Potter character. For the fan writer see, LavenderBrown.

Character
Name: Lavender Brown
Occupation: witch, student
possibly a werewolf[1]
Relationships: Ron Weasley (ex-boyfriend)
Parvati Patil (best friend)
Seamus Finnigan (Yule Ball date)
Hermione Granger (roommate/classmate)
Harry Potter (classmate)
Sybill Trelawney (favored professor)
Fandom: Harry Potter
Other: born c. 1980
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

Lavender Brown is a secondary Harry Potter character. She is a Gryffindor in Harry's year and is one of Hermione Granger's roommates at Hogwarts. She briefly dated Ron Weasley.

Canon

Lavender is a minor character in the first five books. She is the best friend of Parvati Patil, and the two of them are characterized as rather silly and shallow. This is in contrast to the more pragmatic Hermione, with whom they share their dormitory. When the students in Harry's year start taking Divination in the third book, Parvati and Lavender become devoted to it and idealize Professor Trelawney. At the same time, Hermione grows to hate Divination, again emphasizing how different she is from her dorm mates. In the fifth book, Lavender initially doubts Harry's story about Voldemort's return, but she later joins Dumbledore's Army.

In the sixth book, Lavender's prominence increases when she dates Ron for a few months. As a girlfriend, she is portrayed as annoying and clingy. She refers to Ron as "Won-Won," amongst other cutesy ways of expressing her affection. Ron eventually gets sick of this and starts deliberately avoiding her. By this point, Lavender can tell that their relationship is on the rocks and grows jealous as she sees Ron reconciling with Hermione. Eventually, Lavender declares that she's breaking up with Ron, much to his relief. After that, Lavender essentially returns to being a background character.

In the seventh book, she is attacked by Fenrir Greyback during the Battle of Hogwarts. Her fate afterwards is not clear in the book, but in the movie, it's made explicit that she died.

Controversies

Uncertain fate

During the Battle of Hogwarts at the end of Deathly Hallows, Lavender falls from a balcony and is attacked by Fenrir Greyback. Because Lavender is described as "feebly stirring" after being saved by Hermione[2] and is not mentioned among the names of people who died, it is assumed that she survived the battle. However, the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 film depicts Lavender as dying. The Harry Potter Wiki considers the films to be canon, so it states that Lavender "died from her injuries" because the books do not explicitly state that she survived; this statement often causes confusion and is much debated.[3]

Pottermore further stirred up the debate over Lavender's possible death when it released Lavender's "fact file" on the redesigned site in September 2015. Initially, the fact file stated "Death: 2 May 1998", but almost immediately this was changed to "Presumed dead, 2 May 1998" (emphasis added). This caused much confusion among fans, and after a week all mentions of a possible death were removed.[4]

Though Greyback is a werewolf, Lavender was bitten when he was in his human form, as Bill Weasley was in Half-Blood Prince. Because Greyback had not transformed at the time of the attack, it is generally thought that Lavender would not have become a werewolf herself, but, like Bill, may have developed some wolfish behaviour such as a liking for very rare steaks.[5]

Whitewashing

Lavender Brown was basically written out of the first five films, with her never speaking any dialogue or being identified onscreen. However, Jennifer Smith was credited as playing her in the third film. In the second film, she was played by Kathleen Cauley, who was not even credited. Both actresses are black, leading to the popular fanon that Lavender is black, which is never specified in the books.

After being absent from the fourth and fifth films, in which she was essentially replaced by Padma Patil, Lavender returned for her prominent role in Half-Blood Prince. For this film and the rest of the series, she was played by white actress Jessie Cave, which was criticized as whitewashing. Some argue this change was for the best because the storyline necessarily involves Lavender being portrayed as a repulsive girlfriend, which might not have made for the best representation. Moreover, the same film features Ginny Weasley failing in a relationship with Dean Thomas, and it could have looked really bad to have two mixed-race relationships failing in the same movie. There are also those who argue that Lavender being white is more canonical, since the sixth book contains a line that indicates Ron and Lavender's skin is about the same color.

Fandom

Lavender Brown is often portrayed as a secondary character in HP fanworks, sometimes even acting as the antagonist for Hermione Granger or other main characters.

Common Tropes, Themes & Storylines

  • Werewolves - Lavender dealing with being a werewolf or dealing with some "wolfish behavior" popped up after DH was released.
  • Infidelity - this is common way to break Hermione/Ron up was to have Ron cheat on Hermione with Lavender (or other characters).
  • Break Up - sometimes interchangeable with the above trope, common way to get Lavender together with a character or that character with someone else if it's dealing with the canon Lavender/Ron break-up.

Shipping

Rarer pairings for Lavender also exist: Lavender/Charlie, Lavender/Rodger.

Fanworks

Fics

Arts

Vids

Other

Archives and Communities

Recs:

External Links

Resources

References

<references>

  1. ^ Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Fenrir Greyback attacked her in the last Battle, it's currently not known if she would be a full werewolf like Remus Lupin or only have some wolfish behavior like Bill Weasley has since his attack by Greyback.
  2. ^ J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, "Chapter Thirty-Two: The Elder Wand" (2007).
  3. ^ Accessed 22 August 2014. See e.g. Talk:Lavender Brown/Archive 1#Death.
  4. ^ Lavender Brown, Archived version on Pottermore. See also Lavender Brown lives? Pottermore removes ‘Death’ section from character’s profile at Hypable, 29 September 2015.
  5. ^ At Your Service by faithwood is one example of this in fanfiction.
Retrieved from "https://fanlore.org/w/index.php?title=Lavender_Brown&oldid=2405032"