The day had not progressed well.
Due to Harry's method of persuading the She-Hulk to appear, he was not in her good books. Any time that he appeared only seemed to anger her more and she was very quick in getting up and raging after him. Of course, him vanishing so quickly before she could get her great green hands around his neck didn't help matters in the slightest. And, of course, that meant that whatever progress Bruce had managed to achieve in the intervening time was completely undone.
It also meant that Bruce was in it by himself. The original plan was for them to 'tag team' helping her, breathing exercises and meditation exercises, rotating them to find what worked best.
Jennifer's frustration steadily mounted as the day wore on and the longer that she'd been stuck in her altered form. Currently, she was off trying to use up some of that excess anger by throwing chunks of dirt and rock as far as she possibly could.
Seeing her otherwise occupied, Harry appeared as if from thin air.
"Don't do that!" Bruce hissed, startling to the side away from Harry. "And where have you been anyway?"
"I've been here," Harry replied. "I was disillusioned with sound and scent masking charms in place so that she couldn't sense me."
"This isn't working," Bruce said, gesturing to his cousin a couple of hundred metres away. "She seems to be getting somewhere, calming down and losing that anger, but she doesn't change back."
"I've been contemplating that very point," Harry said. "She was like this for days last time, wasn't she? And we worked out that it was stress as much as anger."
"Your point?" Bruce asked.
"I was wondering whether the problem is that she's not letting herself go, letting herself get really angry but bottling it somewhere instead of releasing it all," he suggested.
Bruce considered that for a few minutes.
"It makes sense," he finally said. "But how would we get her to really let go?"
Harry grinned at him. "You're not going to like this."
Bruce stared at him for a moment before comprehension dawned and he started waving his hands in denial."
"No. Uh uh. Absolutely not," he exclaimed.
"I think it could be the only way," Harry stated calmly. "If you like, I could help things along."
"No. You know that's not necessary. I can change anytime, all I have to do is let go," Bruce replied.
"And that's what we want Jennifer to do, let go. Perhaps having two Hulks interacting will let her do that," Harry said.
"I'll think about it," Bruce finally replied.
ooo00ooo
Lavender waited until the plane was all but empty before even getting up from her assigned seat. Glancing up and down the aisle, she saw that she was in no danger of having people need to get past her or to even come up and start talking.
After waking in the Hogwarts' Hospital Wing the morning after the Battle of Hogwarts, it'd taken Lavender only a few moments to remember what had happened to her. And then it came back in a rush – she'd been bitten and scratched by a deranged Death Eater. The identity of exactly who that was was subsequently given to her by Bill Weasley, her once-boyfriend, Ron's eldest brother. Fenrir Greyback, a werewolf, albeit in his human form.
Bill had spent a long time with her, helping her to come to terms with the physiological changes – the fact that she preferred her meat all but rare now, her temper was much closer to the surface, especially around the full moon, and the odd fact that her nails seemed to grow twice as fast as they once did.
Bill's wife, Fleur, helped her with the scarring. One side of her face and down her neck had been badly scratched up by Greyback's fingernails and, being made by a cursed being, were impossible to heal by magic. For someone like Bill, those scars were, for the most part, ignored, being seen as battle scars. For a girl to have them, though, that was a completely different matter.
For Lavender, the scars that were on her face for everyone to see made them uncomfortable. It reminded them that she had been attacked by a werewolf and usually, there was only one outcome of being attacked by a werewolf – the attacked also became one, assuming they survived. Thus, she was considered dangerous to be around; a dark creature that needed to be avoided. And while most people that she encountered understood the difference, that ingrained fear was too much for most to counter.
Every time that Lavender looked into the mirror, she completely understood what those people felt. She knew that she was hideous now, with her monstrous appearance. Thus, why she'd taken to keeping her fringe long and allowing it to cover as much of her face as possible.
Making a living for someone in her condition was next to impossible; no one wanted to employ her, unlike Bill who was able to fall back on his curse breaking skills and be rehired by the goblins, who simply didn't care what he looked like as long as he brought in the gold.
She'd tried. Really, she had. But her once greatest asset, her outgoing personality had been all but destroyed along with her good looks and the way that she was treated. Her other greatest asset back at Hogwarts was her ability to know everything about everyone and she'd put that to good use, writing stories and articles for the paper. But, even not being able to see her, the stigma that was now attached to her name persisted and her pieces were more often than not rejected.
.
.
.
📖For everyone who wants to read it in full📖
👇🏼It will be available on my Ko-Fi👇🏼
‼️ko-fi.com/skyarc/shop‼️
—————————————————————
✅Subscribe now if you want to get all the PDFs available on my page.✅