Disclaimer: I make no claims of owning the characters and am using them for non-profit purposes.
Notes: Written for the Wands of the Woods challenge on govtstoletoad on LJ, using the prompt "blackthorn." Beta and britpick by the lovely senjism on LJ.
They took her at the birth of winter. He remembered, even years later, how she had been breathing on the window and doodling in the frost just before they came, how afterward the sunlight sliced through the lines her fingers had made. He remembered how quickly the curses and hexes reached his tongue, unused only because Luna herself forced his wand down to the seat. He remembered that she'd pressed his hand so firmly that the fabric left ridges and bumps in his skin.
He remembered that it was the only time she'd ever held his hand.
She was the linchpin of the new D.A. leadership, to his mind. She calmly settled disputes between himself and Ginny with her third vote and usually managed to reign them in when one or the other -- usually Ginny, in his unbiased opinion -- was about to go off half-cocked.
Everyone's nerves were frayed, and Luna settled disputes amongst the members just as calmly as she did for the leadership. It was impossible to argue with someone whose reasoning was "think of what a nargle would do in this situation, and then do the opposite," if only because the rest of them had yet to pin down what a nargle was. She somehow got copies of The Quibbler smuggled in to her and brought hope of the resistance outside the walls of Hogwarts when morale was at its lowest. She made them believe that everything would be all right in the end, and whenever someone lost faith, she believed it all the more for them.
She was unflappable and beautiful even if no one else could see it and untouchable and gone.
He'd managed to hold himself together over the hols, more out of shock than lack of grief, but the ride back to Hogwarts had brought everything back in gut-wrenching detail. Neither he nor Ginny had said much on the train, but Ginny's face paled a little more every time she glanced at the empty seat beside him, until her freckles stood out in sharp contrast to her skin. Gone, he thought with each glance. Gone.
That word echoed with his every crunching step, building into a throbbing beat until he was running toward the Forbidden Forest, heedless of such trivia as ferocious creatures, Death Eaters enforcing curfews, and his own need to breathe. Running until he forgot the blurring in his eyes because he'd forgot to see.
He stopped only when he crashed into one of the blackthorns on the edge of the forest, tearing jagged holes in his clothes and his hands. The corpses of leaves, tattered and rotted into gray webs, stretched through the branches and snagged on the thorns, matted red where his blood had seeped into them. The thorns themselves gleamed in the dwindling light, a gaping maw where his flailing arms had snapped away the smaller branches. A flock of birds rose from the bushes in a burst of yellow and black, and once they were gone everything was dead, dead leaves and dead wood and Luna was probably dead as well.
Neville dropped to his knees, his fingers scrabbling at the packed, icy dirt until they met something solid and warm. Momentarily distracted, he realized that it was his D.A. Galleon, which must have fallen from his pocket on impact.
His first instinct was to throw the Galleon as far into the forest as he could. First Harry, Hermione and Ron, now Luna. How long could the D.A. go on, losing important members and leaving nobodies like him in charge? But as he raised his hand to fling the coin away, he noticed the writing along the rim and realized that the warmth of the coin had not been lingering body heat. I'm alive.
It had to be from Luna. Neville raised his face just as one last bird poked its head out of the hole he'd broken in the blackthorn tree. "She's alive," he told it, and his laughter drowned out the bird's trilled response about a little bit of bread.
His hands shaking, he sent a message back, the question that had repeated in his mind since she'd been taken. What do I do now?
Fight them, came the response, but it remained only a second before another message took its place. Outlast them. Neville's grimy fist clenched around the coin.
Fight them he did, though he bore her second instruction in mind as well. He fought them by outlasting them, defying them and taking the abuse without a whimper, finding a way to lead the DA from exile, keeping his head high and his shoulders straight in the bleakest moments. He fought them with his mind and his body and his plants and in the end, with the sword of Gryffindor.
After, victory seemed like a dream, with claps on the shoulder and eager requests for him to tell his tale again and again, as if they hadn't just seen it all play out. The only thing missing was Luna, and equally dreamlike, the crowd around him parted and she was there, leaning over him. "Well done," she said and kissed him on the cheek.
"You too, Luna." He wanted to say more, but his tongue felt leaden in his mouth and he was too aware that a blush had spread over his face and neck as soon as Luna kissed him. On the cheek, he reminded himself. Just a friendly peck on the cheek. Luna stood there for a moment longer, then smiled a bit quizzically before walking away.
As he watched her go back to the Ravenclaws, who welcomed her with cheering instead of jeering, he wondered if she had worked her way to Lestrange on purpose or if it was sheer accident, though he also wondered if Luna did anything accidentally. He wondered if she knew what it meant to him that she fought Lestrange to the best of her abilities. He wondered if she knew how terrified he'd been when he glanced over and saw her fighting that madwoman.
Most of all, he wondered why telling Voldemort to shove it was easier than telling Luna that he fancied her.
Still feeling heady and drunk off his success, Neville had volunteered immediately when Harry organized a group to hunt down the rest of the Death Eater support worldwide. The best defense was a good offense, or something like that. Neville wasn't sure how well he remembered anything, up to and including his own name, after months of staying in monotonous hotel rooms to do boring surveillance in the hope that this time their information was good, in which case there would generally be a battle to the death. Neville began to seriously doubt his sanity when those became boring as well.
This time his colorless day had been spent in Sweden, so he could add numb fingers and toes to his list of annoyances. All he wanted was to take a long, hot shower and collapse into bed for the night before the cycle began again.
The last thing he expected was to unlock his door and open it to the sight of his room bedecked with red and green and gold, with pine hanging in the air and tinsel winking from every corner. He blinked several times, but the scene didn't change. In the midst of the dazzling array and equally dazzling with tinsel twisted in her hair, Luna sat cross-legged on the floor with place-settings for two spread out in front of her on a plaid tablecloth. Cranberry sauce jiggled in a dish, gingerbread men waved from their plate, and the scents of fruitcake and plum pudding rose above the pervading pine. He didn't see sprigs of mistletoe hanging anywhere, but that was hardly surprising, considering the decorator.
He stood with his mouth hanging open for a few moments before bursting out with the first thing that crossed his mind. "How did you get in here?"
"Oh, this is one of the places Dad and I stayed while we were hunting for Crumple-Horned Snorkacks. The owner was very fond of Dad back then, as I recall, and she thought it was very sweet when I told her I wanted to surprise a friend for Christmas, so she let me in," Luna said, pouring something into glasses with no apparent recognition of Neville's shock. She held one of the glasses out to him. "Would you care for some eggnog? It's my dad's recipe, with flindalger eggs to make it stronger."
Neville blinked again, then accepted the glass with a small shrug as he sat down in front of her. He took a sip and then set it aside, his eyes watering. Whatever flindalger eggs were, they were apparently at least ninety proof, and he didn't think that getting plastered with Luna would help his cause any. He hadn't seen her out of her school robes often, and he was already far too interested in the sight of her legs from ankle to knee and the discovery that she had a faint tan line a couple of inches below her collarbone which peeked into view if she leaned forward far enough. The last thing he needed to do was loosen his tongue enough to share that information.
If she was offended by his reaction to the eggnog, she didn't give any sign of it; she merely pushed another pitcher toward him instead. "I asked Ginny to ask Harry where you'd be tonight. The owner of this place knowing me was just the universe helping me out. Dad got invited to a Christmas party this year and I could have gone with him, but I didn't want you to spend Christmas alone. No one should ever spend Christmas alone. Even last Christmas, I wasn't alone." A bit of Luna's eggnog sloshed over the rim of her glass and over the back of her hand. In one deft movement, she put the glass down and tilted her hand to stop the eggnog from dripping, then licked the milky fluid off her hand.
Neville shifted his legs and swallowed a few times before he could speak. "I -- I'm glad you're here. I hadn't even realized it was Christmas. The days have sort of blurred together lately." He blushed a little, thinking of how stupid that made him sound.
"Things blur together for me often, as well. Days are such an arbitrary way of measuring," Luna said, nodding. "Are you enjoying traveling around? I can't wait until school is over, even though it's very difficult to study for my NEWTs when I can't find any newts on the grounds for some reason. I might want to look into that. Preventing students from doing well by removing the necessary materials sounds like a Ministry plot. I suppose I could just Transfigure someone into a newt. They'd get better." She leaned forward as she spoke, twisting the ends of her hair around one finger. "Anyhow, I have a few trips already planned for after, to follow up evidence that Dad's never got the chance to examine personally."
Neville concentrated on her question rather than the part about the newts, recognizing that as the sort of thing that was wonderful because it was part of who Luna was, but that he'd never fully understand himself. He thought that her explorations would be far more interesting than his own were turning out to be, but he couldn't think of a way to say that defeating evil wasn't all that exciting after all without sounding cowardly or whiny. "It's all right, but I'd rather be home. It'll be nice to be settled again." He grinned, remembering that he did have good news to share. "Guess what? Professor Sprout has decided to retire, and they want me to replace her! She's staying on until I'm done here, and she agreed to let me consult her when I need to. It's rather overwhelming, but I'm excited too. I think I'm going to love teaching, and it's such an honor to be chosen fresh out of school. Me, Neville Longbottom, Herbology Professor. It's incredible, don't you think?"
Luna pulled back and stared at him for a moment with a blank face, seeming to droop. Her expression impaled him; he couldn't understand why she wouldn't be happy for him. But perhaps she was just as surprised as he had been when the owl had arrived, because a beat later she leaned over and threw her arms around his neck. "How wonderful for you! You'll be a good teacher, don't worry. I'm sure of it. Ravenclaws can tell about good teachers." She sat back again, to his dismay, but her shining smile made up for the loss of contact a little. "You're a very nurturing person, and you know your plants. It's not every fifth-year who has a healthy Mimbulus mimbletonia. It produced a lot of Stinksap, so it must have liked you, too."
Her praise made him feel warm down to his toes in a way that even the honor of being chosen to teach hadn't, and he affected a deep interest in the food she'd brought to cover his confusion. Luna fell quiet and picked at the food as well, but the silence felt comfortable. Neville's mind spun a fantasy of a future Christmas, of Luna and he having a similar meal in their own dining room, the lack of mistletoe being no reason not to lean over for kisses between bites. She'd have tinsel in her hair again, because Neville liked it and would have asked her to wear it, and the candlelight would cast a golden glow on the curve of her jaw, and there'd be nothing stopping him from sliding the top of her robe down her shoulders when she leaned over to kiss him, so he could see more than just a tan line...
Luna shoved him out of his daydream with an abrupt clap of her hands. "It's time for you to open your present now!"
Neville glanced between their uncleared plates and half-filled glasses, wondering what had prompted her to decide that it was time to open gifts, but he didn't question her. She pulled a flat box from under the bed and handed it to him. He took a moment to examine the wrapping paper, which was covered in drawings of Christmas trees with flickering candles and mistletoe with glittering clouds moving around it. "Did you make this yourself?" he asked, admiring the detail on an ornament hanging from one of the trees.
"Yes." Luna flapped her hands around, but Neville wasn't sure if that indicated excitement or a Wrackspurt attack. "Go on, open it!"
He peeled away the paper carefully, both to preserve the wrapping and to delay his actual contact with the gift. He was sure that anything she gave him would have been selected with a great deal of thought, if the handmade wrapping paper was anything to go by, and she certainly wouldn't give him anything with the intent to harm. She was Luna, though, and the possibilities of what she might consider an appropriate Christmas present were enough to give anyone pause.
When he lifted the lid off of the box, however, he was surprised to find that the contents didn't leap out at him, dance around the room, or even sparkle. They did shimmer on the other hand. He ran his fingers over the smooth material of the gloves Luna had given him. Dragon-hide. He'd needed a new pair for a few years, but Gran had insisted it was a ridiculous expense for his "little hobby" as long as his old ones still fit. These were much nicer than his old ones too, stitched with dragon sinew and jointed to move like a second skin. "Wow," he breathed, finally looking up at Luna's beaming face.
"They're very good protection against smaller biting animals." He could have sworn that her smile dimmed, but that might have been his imagination. "I suppose you won't need them for anything like that. They should work well against thorns and nipping plants and bubotubers as well, though."
"I'm sure I'll get a lot of use out of them. Thank you very much." Neville's jubilant grin faded into a frown. "I'm sorry. You got me a great present, but I don't have anything for you."
Luna just continued to smile and shook her head. "That's fine. You've already given me a gift just by sitting there. Spending time with friends is the best Christmas present I've ever had."
The weight of her sincerity settled around Neville's shoulders in a cozy blanket. He cleared his throat. "Yeah. Yeah, I think you're right." He reached over and squeezed her hand, deciding in that moment to try to take a cue from her and enjoy what he had when he had it. "This is the best Christmas I can remember."
Neville's first major purchase after returning home was the down payment on a small cottage in Hogsmeade. Although his relationship with his grandmother had changed radically for the better, he didn't want to spend the holidays living with her, as if he were still a child, and although he had quarters in Hogwarts during the school year, he wanted to live in a place that didn't feel transitory. The cottage needed some work, but it was close to the school and it was his.
With all of the organizing and planning he had to do before he started teaching, he hadn't had the time to work on his personal garden. There was one plant he'd considered too important to wait, however, and the blackthorn he'd transplanted from the edge of the Forbidden Forest thrived under his living room window with minimal care. He tended to come outside and crouch beside it as he read the latest letter that arrived from Luna, as he was doing at this moment, since it made him feel closer to her when he did. He didn't understand why he associated the blackthorn bush with Luna, other than the fact that he didn't understand and that itself was like so many other things about Luna that he loved without understanding.
The letters started coming the summer after Luna left school. According to her, she hadn't had anything exciting to say before that, but Neville thought he would have liked receiving them even if they said nothing important. He'd been disappointed to discover that Luna's "few trips" actually meant that she was spending all of her time traveling, demolishing his hopes of spending more time with her now that he was settled in one place again, but the letters helped. He treasured every doodle in the margins and chatty digression, even though he often didn't understand what the digression was about. He tasted victory every time he did understand one, and he'd felt a certain smugness at discovering that Luna's letters to Hermione and Ron were shorter and more factual.
Her letter didn't mention anything about returning home soon, so Neville thought he could be excused for falling backwards at the sound of a cheery greeting in her voice coming from behind him.
Luna peered down at him with a concerned expression. "Is that a way of saying hello that you learned while traveling? Should I do it as well?"
"No, you startled me. Hello is just fine." Neville clambered to his feet, half-smiling as embarrassment and delight warred for his attention.
Luna nodded, unfazed. "Right. Hello, Neville. Hello, blackthorn bush. Hello, scribbling lark. Hello, Neville's new house."
Neville burst out laughing as the bird she'd greeted sang out a reply. "I'm sure they're all pleased to make your acquaintance." Delight won out with a grin that felt stupid even to him, but Luna only smiled back dreamily. "I missed you," he said.
"I missed you too." Luna laced their fingers together. "You're going to show me your house now." It wasn't a demand, nor was it a question; it was simply what Neville had been thinking, stated before he realized he was thinking it.
He led her inside, glad that he'd been keeping the place tidy in case his grandmother decided to drop by. He set his breakfast dishes to washing while her back was toward him as she looked around the living room, and other than that minor detail, he thought he put in a good showing for a bachelor just out of school. Luna called out a cheerful greeting to each room as he took her around, not that there was much to take her around.
"There's not a whole lot to the place, sorry," he said as they reached the end of the short hallway. "The guest bedroom is on the right here, though it's not much of a bedroom without a bed in it, and my bedroom is on the left, and that's all there is."
"I'm glad it's small. I don't much care for mansions any longer. This is just right. Hello, guest bedroom!" Luna said, poking her head into the room.
Neville's stomach gave a funny lurch at her words, but she blithely continued before he could give his feelings much thought. "I think you should paint this one pale yellow and green and lilac. Those are nice springtime colors, and they work for either one, if you care about the way most people associate gender and color."
Neville blinked. "What?"
"Really, Neville, just because I don't operate by society's rules doesn't mean that I don't know what some of them are, at least. Knowledge of the rules is necessary to intentionally break them. Hello, Neville's bedroom!" Rather than just peeking into the room, which was bad enough, she flung the door open and dashed right in.
Any thought of protesting that she hadn't answered his question, or that she shouldn't go into his bedroom, for that matter, died as he followed her into the room and saw that she'd sprawled out on his bed. Her robes had pooled around her knees, offering him another view of her legs, and they clung to her body more, accentuating the firm curves of her breasts and hips. Luna Lovegood. On my bed. His libido thought that was a very good thing indeed.
Luna sat up a few minutes later and snapped him out of a fantasy that involved far fewer clothes than were currently upon their persons. "Would you like me to paint the ceiling? It's rather bland right now. I think I could finish by Christmas, so that could be my Christmas present to you this year."
"Um, all right." Neville scratched his right ear as he looked up at the ceiling. It didn't look any more bland than any other ceiling he'd seen in his life. He wasn't sure what color Luna would think more interesting, nor why it would take two weeks just to paint a ceiling, but it wasn't as if he spent much time staring at his bedroom ceiling anyhow.
Luna turned a brilliant smile on him that made him glad he'd agreed. "Wonderful. I'll start tomorrow."
Neville was less glad he'd agreed when he found out that Luna intended to keep him locked out of his own bedroom until she finished "to keep it a surprise," and he had mixed feelings about her inviting herself to stay for the duration to make sure he didn't peek.
On the one hand, he didn't mind having her there in a general sense. He preferred to eat dinner at home, away from the crowd of noisy students, and coming home to find it waiting on the table and accompanied by pleasant conversation was something he could get used to. He put up a token protest, saying that she was his guest, but she informed him that she would cook and he would do the dishes, and that was that.
She also spread out two sleeping bags on the floor of his guest bedroom and told him with great enthusiasm that it would be almost like a sleepover, and she'd never got invited to any sleepovers when she was younger. Neville wasn't sure what sleepovers were supposed to entail, but as Luna's version involved drinking too much hot chocolate, telling him stories about her travels that she hadn't included in her letters, and listening with rapt attention as he told her what had gone on in his classes that day in return, he decided that he rather liked them.
On the other hand, it was maddening trying to fall asleep with her inches away, close enough that if he just reached over he could touch her. Close enough that if he rolled just a bit, he could kiss her. Her hair spread out during the night and tickled his nose when he woke up in the morning. Sometimes one of her hands ended up on his arm or chest as she moved in her sleep, and Neville allowed himself a few moments to enjoy the contact before moving her hand gently so she wouldn't be embarrassed when she awakened. Not all of his night visits to the bathroom were brought on by the hot chocolate.
Once classes let out for the hols, his awareness that Luna was in the house, behind that closed door, made concentrating on any task difficult. He caught himself nearly making disconcertingly Snape-like comments on his students' essays as he spent Christmas Eve grading, trying to keep his mind from wandering to whatever Luna was up to in there. She'd said she thought she would finish sometime that afternoon, and his anticipation mounted by the second.
"I'm finished now, you can come in!" Luna called out in a sing-song voice, and Neville dropped his quill and all but ran to his bedroom door. It was already open, and Luna stood in the middle of the room, braiding a lock of her hair in the midst of his drop-sheet draped furniture.
"Do you like it?" she asked without glancing at him.
Neville stepped into the bedroom and looked up. His jaw dropped. When she'd said "paint the ceiling," what Luna had meant was "turn his ceiling into a painting." The ceiling was now covered with lifelike depictions of various plants and animals, many of which he'd never heard of before. He only knew what they were because of the delicate words looping around each picture, giving the name and sometimes a small fact or two about it. It would take him hours, days, to absorb the whole thing.
"It's beautiful, Luna," he said, uncomfortably aware that "beautiful" wasn't the right word at all, and he pulled her into a tight hug so she wouldn't see the tears forming in his eyes. "Thank you."
He spent a lot of time staring at his bedroom ceiling, after that.
The next year, Neville was no less surprised when Luna showed up at his doorstep on the first Saturday of December, but he didn't fall on his bum this time. Her arrival being announced by a knock on his door rather helped on that front.
Her unexpected visit did leave him with the conundrum of what to do about dinner. He just hadn't felt like going out to get groceries in some time, and with access to Hogwarts' meals and no one to feed but himself, he hadn't had to.
His frantic search of the kitchen under the guise of making tea turned up a jar of olives, three shriveled mushrooms, and a chunk of moldy cheese. So much for making a good showing for a bachelor just out of school.
After brooding about the situation over two cups of tea, Neville gave it up as a lost cause. At the next lull in their conversation, he said, "Say, you want to go down to The Three Broomsticks for dinner?"
Luna nodded. "That sounds like fun. I should change first, though." She pulled a knapsack out of her pocket, enlarged it, and headed for his bedroom to do just that.
Neville swirled the dregs of his tea and brooded some more, though the subject of his brooding had changed. If only he could ask her on a real date that easily. It wasn't so difficult just to ask a girl out when there wasn't any romance involved, like when he'd asked Hermione and then Ginny to the Yule ball back in fourth year. With his romantic hopes looming over him, all of that fabled Gryffindor courage flew right out the window and winged off in the direction of China for good measure.
Luna finished changing -- apparently red robes with golden polka-dots, daisy earrings as large as his palm, and one black sock and one yellow were more appropriate for going out in than orange robes with green triangles, the ubiquitous dirigible plum earrings, and matched blue and silver striped socks -- and Neville stood up and spontaneously bowed and gestured toward the door, just to see if doing so would make Luna laugh. It did.
As they left the house, the wind snatched the door from Neville's hand and slammed it shut. Luna spun around to face him and a yellow bird -- what had Luna called it? -- a scribbling lark fluttered out of the blackthorn. "Oops," he said, blushing.
"It's all right. I'm sure the door will forgive you eventually." Luna grabbed his wrist and swung their arms in wide arcs as they walked toward The Three Broomsticks. Every so often, she did a little half-skip, leading Neville to believe that she'd be skipping instead of walking if she were on her own, and he wondered how she managed not to trip when she was looking straight up. He admired the lines of her neck and his fingers itched to smooth down the fine hairs that the daisy petals ruffled as they brushed her skin.
They drew a few stares as they went through town, but Neville walked with his shoulders back and his spine straight. Then Luna half-skipped again, and he decided that just walking wasn't enough. With Luna at his side, anything was possible. He imitated her skip, and she turned to him and laughed, and soon they had skipped the rest of the way to The Three Broomsticks. Neville paused for a moment to catch his breath, amazed that he hadn't stumbled once, then opened the door for Luna.
She lackadaisically surveyed the crowd inside, then patted Neville's arm. "I'll get us a couple of butterbeers while you find a table, all right?" She began threading her way to the bar without waiting for an answer.
He scanned the room for an empty table. As he moved toward the first one he spied, a girl cut him off by stepping directly in front of him. "Neville Longbottom?" she asked, blinking at him rapidly. Neville wondered if she'd got something in her eye.
"Uh, yes?" He scratched the back of his neck, unsure if he should know her from somewhere.
"This is so exciting." She pressed further into his personal space and trailed a finger up his chest. Neville let out a strangled squeak and cringed away from her touch. "I've always wanted to meet you, after hearing how brave you were during the war," she said in a throaty voice.
Oh, no. She was one of those girls. War groupies, Harry and Ron called them. Those two didn't have to worry about them so much, as their off-the-market status was widely known as well as who exactly had taken them off the market. Most women had enough of a sense of self-preservation not to want to tangle with Ginny Weasley, soon to be Potter, or Hermione Granger-Weasley.
Neville had no such shield, and while spending the first year after the war away from Britain and not going out much helped, he still dealt with more uncomfortable situations like this one for his liking. He took a step back, but the girl followed him.
"I'd love to get your autograph, but I think you'd prefer that we went somewhere a little more private than this, considering what I'd like you to sign," she purred.
"I, um, th-that won't be necess -- I mean, I'd r-rather not -- "
He jumped at the sensation of a small hand tucking into the crook of his arm. "Here's your butterbeer, Neville." Luna held up her other hand, two bottles of butterbeer dangling from her fingers by their necks. He took one, grateful for the interruption.
"Who are you?" the girl in front of him demanded.
Though Luna merely smiled at the girl, Neville felt her prickle up, like she was growing thorns. It was a very Luna type of observation, but Neville decided it was appropriate that he was finally having Luna-type thoughts about Luna herself. He also thought he ought to defend her, but she spoke before he did, and her words nearly made him bite his tongue in half. "I'm Neville's girlfriend, Luna Lovegood. And you are?"
"Whatever." The girl tossed her head and started blinking at Neville again. "So how about that autograph, Neville?" she cooed. Neville tensed, but stopped short of actually stepping behind Luna.
Luna's eyes tracked something high and to her left, though Neville couldn't see anything there. She casually pushed her hair behind her ear, making Neville wonder how she managed to do that without knocking her wand out of place, especially with a butterbeer bottle in her hand. In a sweet, calm voice, she said, "I spent most of the final battle fighting Bellatrix Lestrange, though I think taking out Alecto Carrow before that was more satisfying. You've heard of both of them, I'm sure? If you want autographs from war survivors, I'd be happy to give you mine." Her smile grew wider, until Neville could see the points of her canine teeth.
The girl finally wilted back at that. "Um. That would be nice, thank you." She rummaged through her handbag and pulled out a piece of parchment and a quill. Luna and, after a nudge from Luna, Neville signed the parchment, and the girl left, taking a path that left a wide distance between her and Luna.
He waited until the girl was well out of earshot before chuckling and looking down at Luna. "Not that I don't appreciate the results, but when did you take up lying?"
Luna continued to watch some point near the door as Neville's admirer weaved her way toward it. "I'm glad that I wasn't wrong about your wanting to get rid of her, but if I had been, I would have explained further. I didn't precisely lie. I'm your friend, and I am in fact female, if you hadn't noticed."
His imagination must have been acting up, because he thought he heard an undercurrent of reproach in her voice toward the end. Imaginary or not, it threw him enough that he blurted, "Yes, I've often noticed."
She looked at him then, her face showing no reaction to his words. His face, on the other hand, scorched as her placid gaze seemed to bore through him, and his palms flashed between hot and cold. Luna seemed to be waiting for him to say something more, and he did have more to say, didn't he? He was a Gryffindor, a war hero, the destroyer of Voldemort's last Horcrux. He'd been battered and bruised by Death Eaters and Voldemort himself had tried to kill him. The worst Luna could do was turn him down. He opened his mouth to speak.
Turn him down, shred his heart, never speak to him again, resign him to a life of sifting through war-obsessed groupies in the hope of finding a single decent woman. That was all. Neville's mouth snapped shut. Still, how hard could it be to tell her that he fancied her and wanted this to be a real date? He knew her better than to think that she really wouldn't speak to him again, and that was the worst of the lot. And she was waiting for him to say something, when he'd all but let it slip already, so mightn't that mean she fancied him too? He opened his mouth again, but Luna cocked her head at that exact moment, and his mouth closed on its own as he startled at the sudden movement.
She patted his arm with the hand she'd threaded through the crook of it. "That's a very good impression of a Crimson Treefish, but aren't we going to find a table?"
"Er. I'm glad you liked the impression. I've been perfecting it just for you," Neville mumbled. They were standing in the middle of a pub, holding sweating bottles. Of course she'd been waiting for him to say something. "Yes, let's find a table."
Neville wasn't sure how he ended up flat on his back in his front yard with only a thin blanket between him and the frozen ground, supposedly watching the stars but actually watching Luna out of the corner of his eye. Or rather, he knew how it had happened -- Luna's first act upon showing up on his doorstep, unannounced as usual, was to drag him outside as she proclaimed a desire to look at the stars in Scotland again -- but why he had readily agreed to join her, that was the mystery.
"Do you believe in fate?" Luna asked, her voice drifting in a languid manner that made Neville feel no particular urgency to answer.
"I don't think so," he finally said. "People make their own choices, for good or bad."
Luna hummed and gave a slight nod. "There is that, but those choices aren't made in a vacuum. I think there's something greater at work as well, a backdrop for everything we do. Just think." She rolled onto her side and took a deep breath.
"If the Earth wasn't this distance from the Sun, liquid water wouldn't have formed. If liquid water hadn't formed, we wouldn't have plants. If plants didn't produce oxygen and serve as food, animals wouldn't have formed. You'd probably be very bored, too. If animals hadn't formed, I would be very bored, except that I couldn't be, because humans wouldn't have formed and then I wouldn't exist. If humans hadn't formed, magic wouldn't have formed. If magic hadn't formed, my mum wouldn't have been experimenting with spells and died. If my mum hadn't died, I wouldn't have been able to see the thestrals and suggest riding them to the Ministry that night. If I couldn't see things like thestrals, I might have had more friends, though I'm not sure why you never had more friends. You're perfectly wonderful. If we'd had more friends, we might not have kept checking our Galleons. If we hadn't checked our Galleons, we wouldn't have gone to fight when the Death Eaters first attacked Hogwarts. If we hadn't fought them the first time, we wouldn't have shown the rest of the students that even the ordinary students could fight back and wouldn't have had the support to start the D.A. again. If we hadn't started the D.A. again, you wouldn't have had the chance to prove that you're as true a Gryffindor as has ever lived. If you hadn't proved you were a true Gryffindor, the Sorting Hat wouldn't have brought you the sword, and if it hadn't brought you the sword, you wouldn't have been able to kill Voldemort's snake, and if you hadn't killed his snake, he wouldn't have died."
Luna flopped onto her back again and traced the stars in lazy circles until her finger stopped abruptly, fixed upon one reddish point of light. "So, if the Earth was just a little closer to Mars, little in a relative sense of course, none of that would have happened. Fate."
It wasn't often that he was treated to the entire stream of Luna's thought processes, rather than just the end result, or if he was lucky, the beginning as well so that he could try to trace the path himself. As she spoke, he had given up all pretense of watching the sky and lifted his head to watch her full-on.
He could have been happy doing nothing for the rest of his life but watch Luna speak. He loved to catalogue every nuance of her movements, sure that they were one of the few things he would never forget: the way she tilted her head and jutted out her chin just slightly when she made a point, the way her fingers fluttered when she was too deep in explaining something to notice them, the way she looked calm and serious when she made a joke, unless you looked closely enough to see the needle-fine crinkles around her eyes and mouth. When she frowned, there was something in the quirk of her lips that still made her seem a little happy. When she smiled, there was something in her eyes that made her seem a little sad. The sadness was relatively new, as the first time he had seen it was when she came back from her imprisonment.
He wanted to blast that sadness into shreds, wanted to see her smiling with nothing but joy in her eyes again. He wanted to smash anything that would put the sadness back, beat it into dust and carry her off somewhere that he could always protect her. He wanted...
He let his head fall back to the ground with a thump, but he watched his breath freezing into clouds rather than the stars twinkling above them. He was in love with a unique, caring witch who visited once a year and never once showed any romantic inclination toward him. He was in love with Luna Lovegood. Not just a passing fancy. He didn't need the stars to tell him that he was doomed.
Neville didn't spend his time pining after Luna. Neville did anything but pine.
He'd finally given in to the attempts of Hermione and Ginny to set him up with someone, though he'd only made it to the second date with one of the women they'd found. He'd even taken up the last one on her offer to take him home with her -- and the outcome of that encounter, complete with scornful commentary on his wand skills and inability to remember names, was the reason he hadn't ventured out on a date since. It had nothing to do with his feelings for Luna, and especially nothing to do with the knowing, sympathetic expression on Hermione's face when she'd commented that he seemed to "have a thing for blondes."
He was so utterly not pining, in fact, that he was going to get rid of the blackthorn bush. The damned thing was spreading, as blackthorn tended to do, and it would overrun the yard if he wasn't careful. Though it might have made more sense to start by pruning away the smaller branches and work his way down, Neville instead seized one of the largest branches and began hacking all the way down by the root. He ignored the indignant squawk and explosion of yellow as he disturbed the rest of yet another of those scribbling larks. He ignored the thorns scratching his face and arms. He would be rid of the blackthorn and nothing would get in his way.
A familiar voice shrieked from behind him. "What are you doing?" He turned and was stricken by the expression on Luna's face. She looked both upset and lost, and even though he didn't understand why he'd caused that reaction in his usually light-hearted friend, Neville felt ashamed that he had. She seemed to be calming now that he'd stopped, at least, though she still looked confused. "I thought that you liked that tree. It was the first thing you planted here."
In the face of Luna's questioning, Neville couldn't remember what had possessed him to come out here and chop away at the blackthorn, especially in some sort of mad frenzy. "I do like it. I just -- " He stared at the long branch in his hands, searching for a reasonable explanation for his behavior. "It's for your Christmas present. It's supposed to be a surprise," he said as an idea took shape in his mind.
"Oooh, that's different." Luna recovered completely at his excuse. She turned to the blackthorn. "Thank you for giving a piece of yourself for my present. That was nice of you." She patted the nearest branch, then jerked her hand away slightly. "Ouch," she said in a mildly curious tone and sucked on her forefinger.
Neville watched her with rapt attention until she removed her finger from her mouth and turned to him. He pretended to be very interested in a piece of snagged yarn on his jumper, but he could feel her studying him. "You're hurt," she said.
"It's nothing, just a few scratches."
"It's not nothing. You got hurt for me. Go inside." Without waiting for either agreement or argument, Luna seized his arm and urged him toward the door.
Neville felt another twinge of shame for lying to Luna, but it wasn't exactly a lie anymore since he was going to use the branch for her Christmas present now. Either way, he wasn't ashamed enough to protest when she unshrunk her knapsack and dug out her first aid kit to heal his wounds. Not so much because the scratches hurt too badly, as he'd suffered worse in his life, but because her fingers were cool and soft on his face and her touch made parts of him heated and decidedly not soft, while her gentle scolding about not wanting him to get hurt doing something nice for her warmed the rest of him in a different way. Even though she went off on a tangent about blood-sucking smirflorins in the middle of it. Especially since she went off on a tangent about blood-sucking smirflorins in the middle of it.
He was nowhere near as artistically inclined as Luna, but he managed the spells to strip the blackthorn branch of its thorns and sand it smooth capably enough. He even borrowed a book on Ancient Runes from Hermione and burned several protective patterns onto the satiny surface, black on black. Luna was pleased with her new walking stick, if the way she'd jumped up and thrown her arms around his neck upon receiving it was any indication.
Her next letter related her encounter with a creature whose name Neville couldn't spell even when he was looking directly at the words, let alone pronounce. The name wasn't important anyhow, it was the fact that it was deadly and aggressive and Luna had stumbled and dropped her wand while fleeing from it. She hadn't dropped her walking stick, however, and when it cornered her, she was able to channel enough hexes through the blackthorn branch to turn the tables. She insisted that she hadn't wanted to hurt the "poor thing," but none of the defensive or transfiguring spells she'd tried had worked. According to her, she owed her life to his very thoughtful and timely Christmas present.
Once Neville recovered from his heart palpitations, he added "fertilize blackthorn more often" to his to-do list.
Neville was still not pining.
He was in love with a woman who might never love him back, though he liked to think that she would if he ever managed to tell her how he felt. It wasn't just nerves that stopped him from telling Luna how he truly felt about her now. She was special enough to deserve to be told at just the right moment, to have a perfect memory of the first moment of their relationship if she did feel the same way about him, and he was patient enough to wait for that moment.
He wasn't interested in any of the witches who threw themselves at him, nor the ones his friends nudged him towards. If he ever found one he fancied, he would let things take their course. Just because he hadn't, it didn't mean he was pining.
He had a good job, good friends, and took great joy in his students. He was, for the most part, happy and fulfilled. If he sometimes wished he would wake up with blonde hair spread out on the pillow next to him, if he sometimes wished he had a child of his own to look forward to taking to Hogwarts, well, no one had everything they wanted.
He sat by the blackthorn, leaning back with his arms behind him so that he could tilt his face up to the pale sunlight as he thought about Luna. He didn't have a new letter today, but this still was the best place to come and just think about her, of what had been and what was and what might yet be.
She had shocked him in a recent letter by stating that she thought perhaps her father had been mistaken about some of the creatures he believed existed, as she'd come upon a few too many mundane explanations to ignore. When he'd first met her, he'd wished that she didn't believe so many strange things; now he found himself worried that the world had managed to repress the most irrepressible mind he'd ever known. To his relief, her next letter contained references to several animals he'd never heard about nor could find in any book about magical creatures, of which he'd bought several in an attempt to keep up with Luna's expeditions.
A familiar scent, a mixture of blueberries and talcum powder and salt air, registered just before pair of arms wrapped around his neck from behind. He didn't startle as his thoughts flowed into reality, instead bringing his hands up to squeeze the forearms of the person to whom that scent belonged. Luna. He wasn't sure if it was his preoccupation that allowed her to approach unnoticed, or if she'd just been walking that quietly.
Luna giggled in his ear. "You always let strange girls come up behind you and give you hugs?" she asked, releasing his neck and plunking herself down on the ground beside him.
"Just the one," he said, grinning at her.
Luna airily returned his grin. "Good. I'm strange enough to be getting on with, I think." Her gaze drifted away from Neville. "Look, your scribbling lark is back," she said, pointing to a gap in the blackthorn's branches.
"I doubt it's the same one, but if it is, it's a regular visitor by now." Neville watched the bird hunker down and ruffle its feathers several times, as if it was shivering. "It takes a very special sort of bird to keep coming back even in the winter, when there's no fruit or foliage for it on the trees," he mused.
Luna shook her head so vigorously that her hair swirled around her face in gold and silver streams. Strands of it clung to her lips, and Neville shifted a few times as he stared at the lush, moist contours of them. "That's not it at all. It takes a very special tree to attract birds when there doesn't seem to be anything there for them. Scribbling larks are usually more social in the winter, so that is a very special tree, to draw one out by itself."
"Hmm," Neville said, not entirely convinced. He didn't see anything wrong with their not seeing eye-to-eye on the minor details of the world, and the point was hardly worth arguing, so he turned the conversation to the recent discovery of a living flottsweed plant when it had been thought to be extinct for centuries.
He came home the next day to the sight of a large ginger cat trying to get at the bird and only getting a faceful of thorns for its trouble, while the bird held its ground and twittered at the cat in a distinctly mocking fashion. He had to admit that Luna might have a point.
After his plants died or hibernated, except those in the greenhouses, Luna floated in to fill the gap. He had come to anticipate her unexpected visits as the bite of winter entered the air, to count upon her voice ringing out behind him or an unpredictable knock on his door. She had always arrived by Christmas if not on it, but she was Luna after all, so he told himself not to worry when Christmas came and went without her. As the weeks ticked by, however, he became more and more despondent. Her letters reassured him that she was safe, but they didn't hint at any reason that she would be so late in visiting, either.
When she finally showed up on his doorstep on a late February night, the first words out of his mouth were, "What took you so long?" He wanted to kick himself.
Luna's expression remained serene. "This is when I felt like I ought to come home."
Neville couldn't think of an unselfish answer for that, so he just nodded. "Well, it's lucky you're here now, in a way. I can show you your Christmas present while it's flowering instead of just telling you about it."
"I believe in fate, not luck," Luna corrected him, but she smiled. "You got me flowers?"
"Not exactly. Come on, I'll show you. We'll have to go up to Hogwarts, though."
After they reached the castle, he led her towards an open area behind Greenhouse Six. "I was trying to crossbreed St. John's wort with Datura magica to enhance the mental healing properties, especially for dreams and madness." He didn't bother explaining the reasons behind his research; Luna would understand. "Between the rhizomes of the St. John's wort wanting to spread out and the moonflowers needing to touch moonlight for energy, the plants didn't do very well in the greenhouse. They thrived all right once I planted them outdoors, but that breed will only flower during the summer. I wanted to lengthen the amount of time the flowers would be available, so I hit upon the idea of breeding in the blackthorn to create a second strain that would flower earlier."
A couple of minutes later they rounded the corner of the greenhouse. A carpet of glowing white flowers, stretching their faces toward the winter moon, spread out before them. Luna audibly sucked in a breath and halted.
"These are the result. I named it Datura luna. Lovegood's Trumpet." Neville had a hunch that his expression was stupidly smug, but he didn't care. "I didn't get you flowers, I made you flowers."
"Oh, Neville." Luna crouched down and swept her fingertips over a few of the flowers. She looked up at him, smiling without any sadness lurking in her eyes. "They're for healing people's minds, you said?" He nodded, and the next thing he knew he was staggering back with a double armful of Luna. "Oh, Neville. This is the nicest thing... it's the nicest thing."
Neville twirled her around a few times, giddy off of her glee, before setting her feet on the ground again. "You're welcome," he replied.
Luna hopped back a few steps and flung her arms about in broad gestures as she spoke. "I think you should try crossbreeding the Giant Squid and the Whomping Willow next. That should make an underwater plant that thrashes around when threatened, creating a whirlpool. Everyone knows that Elder Fhtagnites can't stand whirlpools. You could call them Wiquids, since they'll be holding a great evil at bay."
Neville chuckled low in his throat. He was good at his work, but he had yet to perform any miracles. Rather than dismissing her idea out of hand, he slung his arm around her shoulders and said, "How about I see if I can have it set up as a joint research project for the Seventh Year Herbology and Care of Magical Creatures classes? It would be interesting to see what some interdisciplinary cooperation could produce."
Luna's gaze meandered to some point in the distance. The glow of her flowers and the sparkle of starlight glimmered in her eyes, silver on grey, and the light turned her hair into a waterfall of frost. It was almost the right moment, almost, and then it shattered when Luna crouched down to touch the flowers again and spoke. "Yes. Yes, it would be interesting."
Neville turned Luna's latest letter over and over in his hands. The parchment was still crumpled from balling his hands into fists when he'd read five words halfway down the page. Rolf and I got married. The words made his stomach roil, even though he'd read the letter several times already, and he read the paragraph that followed them yet again to reassure himself. He was in his living room rather than out by the blackthorn, but it seemed like a sacrilege to read this letter out there.
We had it annulled the next day, of course, since neither of us were in our right minds when we did it. Rolf thinks we were attacked by erosian faebugs, but I think it might have had more to do with all of the pulque we drank during the celebration the tribe we were staying with threw before we left. They brew it themselves, and it's stronger than the kind we're used to. I don't want to get married for real until I find a Stridulous Polliwoggle, though, and certainly not to Rolf. He's very nice, but we think too much alike and our minds trip over one another. I'd prefer someone more grounded. Balance is important.
Neville set the letter aside and buried his face in his hands, shaking. He'd almost lost her. He knew that technically he'd never had her, but somewhere in the back of his mind he'd ended up thinking she was his, that everyone in the world -- including her -- knew that fact and would patiently wait for him to speak up, that he was the only runner in the race and all that mattered was that he reached the finish line eventually. He was used to thinking that the secret of how incredible Luna was belonged to him and a small group of friends, and that the secret of her beauty and desirability was his alone.
The news of her marrying someone else, accident or not, shook him with the realization that anyone she met might see it, might see her the way he did. Any day, any minute, she might meet someone dashing and exotic who swept her away in a sparkling moment, unlike plodding, boring Professor Neville Longbottom who had reached the high point of his life at seventeen when he cut off a snake's head.
A knock on his door disturbed his misery. He tried to ignore it, but the person on the other side continued to knock, rapping out rhythms that he thought resembled snatches of Christmas carols. "Your lights are on, so I know you're in there. You might want to turn them off if you're hiding from nargles and door-to-door salesmen. But I brought you lots and lots of presents this time, so let me in!" a voice, Luna's voice, called out in sing-song.
Neville collected himself and pushed himself to his feet. Before he opened the door, he pasted on a smile, which smoothed into a real one at the sight of her face.
Luna had indeed brought him "lots and lots" of presents. Amongst them were a few cuttings and a handful of seeds she thought he'd find interesting, as usual, a small statue of a harvest goddess that she said would make a good paperweight -- Neville decided it would make a better book-end on his shelves at home, as he didn't want to have to revive any first-years who saw it while visiting his office and passed out -- and a necklace strung with an object from each place she'd visited in the past two months, including a red corn kernel, a ticket stub, and a broken seashell. He tied it on as soon as she handed it to him.
The last thing she pulled out of her knapsack was an earthenware jug. "The tribe sent some of that pulque I wrote you about with us when we left, but I thought I'd give it to you instead."
Neville felt a mad urge to smash the jug against the wall. It was a gift from Luna, though, and he didn't want to try to explain his irrational behavior, so he just stared at it instead. It was painted with designs that might have meant something to the native South American wizards who gave it to Luna, or they just might be decoration. Luna would know. So would Rolf.
He wasn't sure what to say, given the complex reaction he was having to a simple alcoholic beverage. Finally he looked up. "Thanks. So, you want to drink this and go tie the knot?" he joked weakly.
Luna pursed her lips, as if she was actually giving his words serious consideration. "No. Like I told you, I don't want to get married until I find a Stridulous Polliwoggle, or until I can disprove all sightings of it I suppose, and I'd hate to have our marriage annulled."
Neville's heart stuttered in his chest. One thing he knew about Luna, the one thing he'd understood about her for as long as he could remember, was that often what she didn't say was just as important as what she so plainly did say. The trick was figuring out exactly what it was she wasn't saying, and then what that meant. "Yeah, me too."
He swallowed thickly. Would she welcome hearing how he felt, how he'd felt for years, coming on the heels of her declaration against getting married? Did it mean she didn't want a relationship at all? If she hadn't said that, he would know what to do, what he needed to do before it was too late. Was this her way of asking him, or of telling him how she felt? He rubbed his throbbing temples.
The silence stretched between them for another minute before Luna launched herself onto his sofa, landing with a bounce, and tugged him down next to her. "You were telling me in your last letter about the Cobblesworth boy having trouble with his daffodils beeping instead of honking. Have you got him sorted yet?" she asked, and Neville relaxed.
The comfortable conversation made him forget, for a while, his earlier distress. In fact, he didn't have the slightest unpleasant thought on his mind as they said their goodbyes.
Then Luna fixed him with an implacable stare. Being skewered by those usually dreamy and unfocused eyes flustered him enough, and that was before she spoke. "Do you have a girlfriend?"
Even as used to Luna's bluntness as he was, the question blindsided Neville. "I -- no, I d-don't. I've dated some, but it was never very se-serious and there ha-hasn't been anyone since -- " Since I stopped fighting being in love with you. "I m-mean, that is, none of them w-were ever like y -- right, none of th-them were right. For me," he finished, acutely aware that he was stuttering and stumbling more than he had since his fifth year.
Luna simply continued to stare at him, her gaze seeming to go around him and over him and through him, all at once. His skin prickled like a thousand ants crawling over him and he forgot to breathe, then forgot that he'd forgot. Finally, in the tone she used when she answered what she thought was a particularly obvious question, she said, "I promise I won't marry anyone else while I'm away." With a sharp crack, she Disapparated.
As if the sound was a counter-curse, Neville drew in several gasping breaths, the shock of oxygen making his eyes water. Luna hadn't said she loved him or even fancied him. She hadn't said she wouldn't marry someone else when she wasn't away. She certainly hadn't said she would ever marry him, either.
And yet, he couldn't shake the feeling that he'd just been proposed to -- or rather, had a proposal accepted that he couldn't remember making.
Neville strolled up and down the aisle, checking his students' re-potting techniques and doling out words of praise, encouragement, and amiable correction where appropriate. "Well done, Mr. Cobblesworth," he said, and the boy smiled back proudly. His essays had always been good, and his practical work had improved considerably after Neville decided to tell his class about some of his own worst Herbological disasters, including the time he'd dropped an armful of pods from a particularly tall strain of puffapods right on top of Professor Flitwick and the time he'd sprayed Harry Potter with Stinksap.
"All right then. Your homework for today -- " he chuckled at the stifled groans around the room " -- is to thoroughly enjoy the Hallowe'en Feast. Class dismissed."
Neville whistled as he walked to his office to do a spot of grading before the Feast. He saw someone leaning against the wall as he approached. The figure was wearing what looked like layers of satin scarves in a riot of colors, wrapped and knotted together to form something like a dress. He tried to guess what her costume was supposed to be, and he became so engrossed in his thoughts that he was almost on top of her before he realized that it wasn't a costume at all. It was Luna.
She grabbed his arm and yanked him into his office, kicking the door shut behind her. "Look, Neville, look. I found them. The Stridulous Polliwoggles." She held up her other hand. On her palm rested a -- something. Neville assumed it was a Stridulous Polliwoggle.
It reminded him of a toad, except that he'd never seen a neon pink toad with antennae that terminated in puffy balls that looked like candy floss, nor one whose lips stretched back to reveal rows of jagged, iridescent lilac teeth. He fervently hoped that Luna didn't want him to house her find in Trevor's tank.
She nestled the Stridulous Polliwoggle in her hair and looked up at him with a more serious expression than he could ever remember seeing on her face. "Still no girlfriend?"
Neville shook his head dumbly, then stood straighter as the situation sank in. She had found her Stridulous Polliwoggle, which thrilled him in its own right. Furthermore, it meant that the obstacle to telling her was gone. "No. No, but I'll have one if you'll be my girlfriend." He dared to brush the backs of his knuckles across her cheek. "I love you, Luna. I have for years."
"I know." Luna reached up, cupped his face in her hands, and brought their lips together.
It shouldn't have been the perfect moment. Neville had dirt smudged on his robe and under his fingernails from class, and the Stridulous Polliwoggle might jump out of Luna's hair and bite him, and anyone might drop by his office and walk in on them. But he had told her, and she kissed him, and it was perfect after all.
Their lips moved together tentatively at first, slightly awkward as they learned how to fit together, but soon they relaxed and the press of their lips felt as natural as a heartbeat. Luna's lips parted and she sighed into Neville's mouth, and he breathed in her sigh. Her hands slid down his back as he skimmed his tongue just past her lips, and suddenly she made a choked noise and wrenched away. She brought her forefinger to her mouth and sucked on it.
"What?" Neville blinked, uncertain of what he'd done wrong and terrified that she'd changed her mind. Then he realized that he still had on his belt with various gardening tools attached for easy access during class. Luna must have found one of the sharp ones the hard way. He rubbed the back of his neck. "Oh, sorry."
Luna smiled around her finger, then took it from her mouth and shook her hand a few times. "Of course I'll be your girlfriend," she said. "I love you, too. I thought you'd have figured that out by now."
Neville tossed his belt onto the chair facing his desk, drew Luna back into his arms, and looked down at her. "If you knew I loved you and you loved me too, why didn't you say anything before? Why now?"
She tilted her head. "Because I found the Stridulous Polliwoggle and you still want to and I still want to and even though I want to see everything in the world, something keeps bringing me right back here."
Neville's forehead creased. "Something bringing you here? Like Fate?" he asked, thinking of that past conversation when she'd explained her views on how outside influences affected people's actions.
Luna tilted her head the other way. "I was thinking something more like you."
"Luna." Neville caressed her cheekbones with his thumbs, choosing his words more carefully than he ever had in his life. He didn't want to insult her. He never wanted to insult her, but especially not now. "I don't always understand what you say. Sometimes it doesn't matter because I understand what you mean, and sometimes it doesn't matter because I understand later on, and sometimes it doesn't matter because it really doesn't matter what you said, just that you said it at all. But this time, I think I really need to understand what you're saying, so can you please try to explain it in a way that I will?"
Luna smiled, another one of those smiles that didn't have any sadness hiding in her eyes. "That was lovely, Neville. I'll try, but you might have to ask me questions. We'll figure it out together.
"Now where to begin." She drummed her fingers on her chin several times. "I've no intention of not going on more expeditions. There are plenty of other things to find and places to see, and I -- don't like feeling caged. I'd thought, at first, that you might want to come along, but you wanted to put down roots so soon after. Then I needed to find out if you'd be strong enough to let me go, especially without knowing when or if I'd be back. You've always been brave and strong, but there are different kinds of strength, and some kinds let you do things that other kinds don't."
"Why couldn't you have just told me so?" Neville strove to keep the frustration out of his voice, as this was the most irritating question for him. He would have waited patiently for her -- he had, in the end, without any assurance of her affections -- but having something to hold on to would have made the wait easier.
He might not have kept all of his frustration from showing, since Luna spoke even more slowly, hesitating over every sentence. "That wouldn't have been fair. If you found someone to be happy with, who would be willing to set down roots right alongside you, I wanted you to have that. I needed to be sure this was what I wanted too, of course. As for that, the sex was nice, but it lacked love. On the other hand, we got experience that will make sex with each other better, right?"
Heat crept up Neville's neck, but he didn't want to interrupt her when she was in the midst of twisting around her thought processes for him. She even ticked her points off on her fingers. He hoped he'd never have to ask her to do this again.
Luna continued, though Neville thought she must have seen his blush, by the way she raised one pale eyebrow at him. "The last time I was home, I was certain, and it seemed that you'd ended up waiting for me after all. I knew I was very close to finding the Stridulous Polliwoggle or determining what people were seeing instead, so I didn't want to be distracted by a new relationship, and you're very distracting to begin with. I wanted you to know you weren't waiting in vain, though, if you were waiting." She hesitated longer, then went on. "If you'd said you wanted to be with me before, I would have tried to explain. Since you didn't, I thought it could wait until you did, or until I was ready."
Hearing her perspective, Neville couldn't remain annoyed, however much he didn't quite agree. He thought that her visits home could have been put to better use. Her greater experience didn't frighten him, and he knew that Luna wouldn't leave in a huff if he mucked things up. She'd waited too, in her own way, and she was candid enough to tell him precisely how to please her better the next time, and he would learn. Still, he thought he should warn her of how little he knew, and he cleared his throat. "Letting me date other people didn't work so well. I only got past the first date one, and I, uh, only had sex with one person, and that was an utter disaster."
Luna blinked once, slowly. "That wasn't what I intended, not at all," she murmured. Then she brightened. "But that means I owe you ten years worth of sex. That will be fun." As if to punctuate her statement, she pulled him into another kiss.
There was no tentativeness about this kiss. Luna ran her tongue along his lower lip and he responded by twining his tongue with hers. He slid his hands from her shoulders down her satin-clad back, leaving one splayed on the small of her back while the other slithered up her side. He reveled in the sleek glide of the satin and the soft sweep of her hair over the backs of his hands, in the knowledge that she was his to touch. She wanted him to touch her.
Her hands crept into his hair as the kiss deepened, and her fingers tightened when he circled his thumb over her breast. He swallowed her gasp, then gave back one of his own when she shifted her leg between his. Her nails scored hectic lines down his back and she wriggled her hips against his leg.
Dimly, he wondered where the Stridulous Polliwoggle had got to, then decided that he didn't care.
He rocked against Luna's body with small, frantic jerks of his hips, and Luna clutched his bottom and began pulling him against her more firmly. The kiss grew more and more sloppy as demanding jolts of pleasure radiated from his groin to the rest of his body. Luna was whimpering deep in her throat and pushing back into each thrust of his hips, so he didn't think she minded.
He fingered one of the knots on her "dress." He imagined untying them one by one and revealing her skin inch by inch. His body declared that a very good idea. Then he imagined spelling them all loose at once, every bit of her visible in one flutter of fabric, and his body declared that an even better idea, this time.
He groaned and slid his lips away from hers, trailing them along her jaw and down her neck. "I think," he said between kisses on her collarbone, his voice hoarse, "that we should start on those ten years you owe me right now."
He had intended that as his cue to take her to his rarely-used quarters or even back home if they could wait that long, but before he could continue, Luna drew her wand. After one efficient flick, he heard the lock click behind him, and after another, the messy sprawl on top of his desk piled itself neatly on the floor. "I always knew you were brilliant, from the first time I met you," Luna said as she pulled him toward the desk and unfastened his teaching robes at the same time.
Neville grinned. He didn't have the slightest idea of what he was getting himself into, and he expected that just when he thought he did, Luna would turn everything upside down again. What he did know was that he was going to enjoy every minute of it.
As Neville's consciousness filtered in, he realized that he had started reading creature names and facts off their ceiling as soon as his bleary eyes opened. This was not an unusual event. Though Luna had never mentioned his doing so, he had been slightly embarrassed about it until the morning a few years ago when he'd caught her mumbling about the growing seasons for dittany, agrimony, and gillyweed while she awakened.
He rolled on his side to give his wife a good-morning kiss, but her part of the bed was empty and cold. Ah, yes, that was right. She was leaving for Zimbabwe this morning. He yawned and stretched from his fingers to his toes, then hauled himself out of bed.
Neville heard Luna rummaging around in the living room, so he padded off in that direction. She was fastening the clasps of her knapsack when he entered. He wrapped his arms around her from behind and rested his chin on her shoulder. "All ready to go?"
"Yes." Luna turned in his arms and hugged him snugly. Neville pressed his lips against the top of her head, breathing in the scent of blueberry shampoo. After a few minutes, she slowly pulled away. "I've got to catch my portkey. I'll miss you."
"You plan to be back before winter this time?" he asked, tugging at a lock of her hair teasingly. He never wanted Luna to feel that she was on a schedule, not when she'd made it so clear that she found the idea unacceptable, but this was part of the give and take between them. Luna gave him a rough idea of how long she'd be gone and let him know if it turned out that she'd be later than that, while he never let on when he worried, nor made more of a protest than writing "I miss you" in every letter he sent her. The time they had together was all the more precious due to Luna's travels, and he rarely regretted trading seeing her every day of the year for the six months or so of being made to feel like the most important person in the universe -- and attempting to do the same for her -- that he had instead.
Luna rubbed his forearm a few times before reclaiming her hair and turning to shrink her knapsack. Pocketing it, she said, "I'll be home within a few months, by the middle of the summer hols, I think. Maybe earlier. I'm sure I'll be showing by then, and it will only get more difficult to be out in the field as the pregnancy progresses. Then I suppose I'll be home for at least a couple of years straight, but that's all right. If it's waited centuries to be discovered, it can wait that much longer on top of them." She stood up on her tiptoes, kissed him quickly on the lips and, after a cheerful "I love you!" as if she hadn't dropped a bombshell in his lap, Apparated away.
He stared out the window at first, blankly, because a scribbling lark weaving its nest near the roots of the blackthorn outside was far easier to comprehend than Luna's words. A piece of grass here, a bit of moss there, a mat of blonde hair and a few strands of brown, a scrap of purple and yellow fabric...
Neville didn't realize he was smiling until his cheeks hurt.