Disclaimer: I do not own the original canon nor am I making any profit from writing this piece. All works are accredited to their original authors, performers, and producers while this piece is mine. No copyright infringement is intended. I acknowledge that all views and opinions expressed herein are merely my interpretations of the characters and situations found within the original canon and may not reflect the views and opinions of the original author(s), producer(s), and/or other people.

Warnings: This story may contain material that is not suitable for all audiences and may offend some readers

Author's Note(s): This piece was written for a challenge in the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry (Challenges & Assignments) on the FFN forum.

The Challenge Information:
House: Gryffindor
Claimed Pairing: Lunar Heroes (Neville Longbottom/Luna Lovegood/Harry Potter)
Day 05: Not Seeing Color Until Meeting One's Soulmate
Extra Prompt[s]: Birthday
Word Count: 1705

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Something Just Like This

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"Where you want to go? How much you want to risk?" - "Something Just Like This" by the Chainsmokers

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Harry's favorite color was blue. He loved all shades of it, but his favorite was this particular one that the sky turned during the summer and there wasn't a storm inbound. It reminded him of something, but he couldn't remember what. The color made him happy, despite only seeing it when he had to take care of the outside chores on the hottest days. He would happily drown in that color a thousand times. To Harry Potter, the freak of Little Whinging, blue meant love freed from all tethers.

There was just one problem with having a favorite color.

He wasn't supposed to be able to see any color.

That was just not the way the world worked. Everybody knew that colors only showed up when a person met their soulmate—the one person in the entire universe who was perfect for them. No one really knew why the world worked like this, and really, did that even matter? The fact of the matter was that everyone spent years seeing the world in shades of gray and then in one wonderful moment, the world would change into brilliant color. That was how it was supposed to work, and that was how it did for everyone else.

Except for Harry, freak extraordinaire.

It wasn't even all of them, either. Harry had check against one of those books of colors that were designed to help newly united couples. His colors were limited to blues and greens mostly, but most of the ones labeled purple he could see as well. It was frustrating, because he couldn't even conclude that he met his soulmate before coming to Privet Drive. The colors didn't fade either.

He was just broken, as freakishly defective as Aunt Petunia always said he was. Whatever the reason, Harry was stuck with half the color spectrum and no reason why. When Hagrid revealed that magic was real, Harry thought that maybe it was a wizard thing, like the magic spells or potions. No such luck, which is exactly how Harry's life went. Harry decided before even reaching Diagon Alley that he wasn't going to share his freakish ability if he could help it and maybe someday he'll meet someone who will give him the other half so that it wouldn't matter.

He had to luck out eventually, right?

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Neville had always been good with plants. It frustrated his Gran to no end. She had wanted him to be like his father and interested in sports. But for Neville, there was nothing better than being surrounded by the leaves of a healthy and thriving plant. He didn't mention to Gran why the leaves comforted him, how much he loved the green when it was rich and strong. To him, green meant love everlasting and he wanted to stay as close as possible, especially when things were at their darkest.

The only person he had ever told was his mother. Neville wasn't certain that it counted, given his parents' condition, but his mum was the more responsive of them. Her smile when he had whispered about how green was his favorite color was reassuring, especially when it didn't fade a smidge when he followed with his concern about the large amount of gray that the world still was. He didn't understand the framed picture that she had forced him to take, but he took it despite Gran's frown.

Those pictures were supposed to make his parents more comfortable staying at St. Mungo's but every time Gran returned it, Alice would press it into Neville's hands before they left. The captured birthday party now rested undisturbed on his nightstand, Lily Potter caught in an unending loop of trying to stop Harry Potter from rubbing cake in Neville's hair. It wasn't until he met Harry Potter on the Hogwarts Express that he realized what his mother must have been doing.

The two Potters had eyes that were his favorite shade of green.

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Luna had always been fascinated by the idea of color. She loved listening to her mother explain the subtle difference in the shade of the potions she made and how important that could be. They would spend hours discussing how color worked in the world, pouring over the color books that Dione had marked with real world examples long ago. Luna dedicated herself to memorizing how each color looked in its gray monotony, adding her own careful notes after she got good enough with a pen to write clearly.

Her father was the romantic of her parents. Xenophilius loved sharing the tale of how he had been walking through the crowds of Diagon Alley, when he had been knocked down by a crowd surging away from a bludger which had escaped the quidditch supply store. Luckily, a very beautiful witch had cushioned his fall even as she made the world explode into a cacophony of color. At this point, her mother would always shake her head before chiding him that a person couldn't hear color. Luna would then have to suffer through them trading increasingly implausible crossovers of the senses until one of them would give in and kiss the other one just to make it stop.

She would give anything to suffer like that again.

The first time that Luna realized what her mother's death had truly cost her father was a month after the funeral. Luna found him sitting at their butcherblock kitchen island with her mother's favorite teacup clenched in his hands. He had looked so lost, so broken. When he raised his gaze to meet hers, Luna could see the shimmer of tears. His voice cracked when he spoke the thing that had gone unsaid in all the stories and discussions about the colors and soulmates.

They can be lost.

In the wake of a soulmate's death, the colors fade. Eventually, all of them dim back into the gray they were before…all except for one. That one color was different for everyone, apparently, and unpredictable because it didn't have to be someone's favorite color or signify how they died.

Luna spent hours cuddled up with Xenophilius and her mother's color books in the days and weeks following the morning she had walked in on him with the mug. He shared story after story of his adventures with Dione, one for every color he lost. Her father's kept color wasn't the Hogwarts purple of her mother's favorite mug, as he had been hoping. It turned out to be a bright lemon-yellow to match the disastrous custard he had tried to make for their first-month anniversary.

The first color that Luna ever saw was red. Specifically, it was the distinctive red of the Weasleys' hair. For a moment, Luna had been terrified that the universe had decided to make Ronald or Ginny her soulmate. Then the body laying beneath her wiggled in protest of her still laying on it. Shifting around let her straddle the boy who was staring at her like she was the world's largest dirigible plum. Under her gaze, his cheeks turned a color that was similar to the red she had noted in Ginny's hair. Unable to stop herself, she traced the stain with her fingers.

"Pink," she murmured to herself as her mind sorted out what she had studied over the years. Luna frowned as she dragged her thumb beneath the boy's left eye. It was still the strange not-gray that meant it was supposed to be a color but was hidden. The boy distracted her from pursuing the thought by grinning up at her. Ginny growled nearby.

"Your dress is so bright," he told her. "What color is it?"

"Yellow," Luna answered before blinking as she finally recognized him. The off feeling she got from his eyes intensified. "You're Harry Potter."

"This is the first time I've been glad that someone knew who I was before I introduced myself. What's your name?"

"I'm Luna, Luna Lovegood. I'm very glad to meet you, Harry."

"Not as glad as I am to meet you. Do you want to—um, could we go for ice cream? Would you like that? Or there's the Leaky up the way—I just…" Harry trailed off before he reached up to cup her cheeks. He dragged his own thumbs along her cheekbones as he stared into her eyes. She almost missed his whisper. "I always thought they'd be blue."

The realization hit her like the bludger that had knocked her father into her mother. If he knew what blue was but not yellow, then it made sense that she wouldn't be able to see the famous green of his eyes yet. She knew those stories by heart, the tales of the people who only got a portion of the wheel. Luna gave Harry a grin that he only tentatively returned. Feeling giddy, she rubbed his nose with her own before giving it a peck.

"Who knows? Maybe our other does," she told him. Harry looked confused for a moment before the realization blossomed over his face. The grin turned unrepentantly happy.

"All this time, that's been it?"

"Most likely,"

"Oh, Merlin, you're going to be one of those annoying couples—"

"—who communicate in half-sentences, aren't you?"

"Disgusting, Har-bear." Before she could really catch up with the newcomers, a Weasley twin was laying on their back on either side of Harry, who was valiantly trying to glare at both of them at the same time.

"Oy, you've no room to talk," Harry protested. "Not when you toss your sentences between yourselves."

"Never stopped us before, has it, Gred?"

"Nope, not in the slightest, Forge."

"So…we sensed mischief afoot—"

"But all we found was you laying here beneath our neighbor."

"Speaking of which, do we need to have a talk, young man?"

"They grow up so quick."

"Good thing Ronnikins never will."

"Very true."

Luna shared a look with Harry who had just resigned himself to the ongoing indignity of the position. She gave him another peck to the nose before turning her attention to the twins with a smirk. They'd find their other by Christmas. She was certain of it.

"Oh, boys, we need your help to find someone…"