summary: despite getting lost in a rainforest and hallucinating about insects crawling up his spine, harry thought it was a pretty good vacation :: harry x luna, post-hogwarts, not canon-compliant
a/n: this is so late, lol. i finished the story like,, yesterday, but i forgot to edit it and post it… i'm so scatterbrained sometimes it hurts. :/ anyway, this is for newt, my lovely ravenclaw buddy on my team in the houses competition. hope you enjoy it!
contests: pre-round challenge, houses competition
disclaimer: i don't own harry potter.
of piranhas and untouched magic
words: 1434
In hindsight, letting his girlfriend pick out their vacation wasn't the best decision.
It wasn't as if Harry didn't trust her—he would trust Luna with his life, after everything they'd been through—but sometimes, they ended up in sticky situations due to her inclinations towards obscure magic.
Getting stuck in the Amazon forest to find a rare clan of fae was a great example of such a situation.
"Luna, you do realise we're completely lost in an enormous forest with predators around every corner—ouch!—" he hissed, swatting away a mosquito the size of a small marble from where it'd bitten his arm, "—and we have no means of escape because you insisted we don't bring our wands?"
Luna just blinked, her blue eyes luminous in the damp darkness of the forest. "It would interrupt with the fae's magic and I would rather not anger them—they're known to be quite vicious if provoked."
Great, Harry thought bitterly. Just what we needed, a bunch of rabid faeries. If they even exist, that is.
Harry usually wasn't sceptical of his girlfriend's claims of the existence of outlandish animals and plants (which were ridiculous even by magical standards), but after trudging through the rainforest for two days straight on an almost empty stomach had made him bitter and unbelieving of Luna's claims. They'd had to stray from their group of tourists to find the so-called faeries and had soon gotten lost despite Luna's insistence that she was just following her gut. They had strayed deeper and deeper into the jungle until they reached the very heart of the Amazon—dark, wild and unwelcoming. Luna was unperturbed—like she always was, but Harry felt like he was slowly losing his mind, expecting piranhas to snap out from solid earth and jumping at every little whisper or rustle.
"Well, we have to come across someone in this bloody place—if my map's right, there's a little settlement up north. We should make it there by nightfall if we're quick enough. Come on," he said, offering a hand to Luna. She didn't take it.
"I told you, Harry," she said in a voice of infinite patience that grated on Harry's nerves. "The trail leads southwest—they're close, I can feel it. Magic is… powerful here. Can't you feel it?"
No. No, he couldn't.
"Luna…" he began, his teeth gritted. He'd never been so frustrated since her argument with Hermione about will-o-the-wisps. Luna had won, of course—she was a Ravenclaw, after all—and Hermione had made snide comments about it for weeks, while Luna wore an air of quiet smugness. She was competitive, even if she didn't show it often. The ensuing drama had been enough to make Harry pull his hair out.
"No, Harry. You've got to trust me on this," Luna said, her voice losing a bit of its dreaminess. Uh-oh. That wasn't good. "Is that what it is? You don't trust me?"
Harry had learnt, over the years, that Luna had a deep fear of her loved ones not trusting her, not believing in her. Her classmates and friends had dismissed her for years and it had seeded a nasty weed of self-doubt in her otherwise optimistic character. Harry was always afraid of her festering in that uncertainty and often reserved his opinions about her more… eccentric theories to himself. He couldn't bear to see her hurt.
"Luna, you know I do. But getting out of this place alive is more important than finding a bunch of glowy creatures which might not exist at all. You must see my logic behind this, love. We can't risk our lives for this," Harry told her, almost pleading her to see reason.
"I… I…" Luna sighed, resting her head against the bark of a fallen tree. There was silence for a while, as Luna stared unseeingly at the green foliage of the canopy and Harry studied the wistful expression on her face carefully. "Do you know why I wanted to find the Dinshencha, Harry?"
Harry sat beside her, praying that no bug crawled up his arse. "Nope. Why?"
"My mum used to tell me stories about them. Every night, without fail, she would tell me about all the creatures she'd met and the adventures she'd been on to find them. The Dinshencha had been the hardest to find for her, too. She spent days in this place, almost covering the entirety of the forest before finding them. But when she did… she used to tell me it was the most surreal experience of her life. Like experiencing the purest form of magic. It sounded so fascinating to me… and my mum had promised me that she'd take me to see them one day. And well, even if she isn't around, I want to fulfil that promise as best I can." Harry nodded, watching as the colours of the twilit sky peeked out through the shade of the leaves. There was nothing to be said. Nothing would sound right, then.
They sat in silence for as long as they could, watching as small monkeys darted past high above them and cicadas buzzed in the shrubbery, hidden from view. It wasn't prudent to stay in one place for so long, Harry knew. But neither of them were willing to move, and Luna looked almost at peace their.
Trust. She'd asked him to trust her. And he would.
As the sun had almost set, Luna stirred beside him.
"Harry…" Her voice was a whisper.
"What?" Harry asked, quietly. He scanned their surrounding quickly and his eyes were immediately caught by a glimmer of light behind a few trees to his left. "Oh…"
Luna nodded, her curly hair bleached of colour in the darkness. "Come on, before we lose them."
"Luna, no, they could be… hostile," he trailed off weakly, as she dragged him determinedly in the direction of the light.
The light got brighter and brighter as they followed its direction, encompassing a larger area and bathing the forest in an eerie glow. Harry did not feel endangered in its warmth though. If this was magic, it felt… friendly, almost.
Luna quickened her pace, almost breaking into a run as they watched the dense collection of wood fade into fewer and fewer trees. The light was almost blinding when he stumbled into a clearing covered with coarse grass. However, Luna's hand tightened into a vice-grip on his arm and pulled him back, hissing, "Stay back, Harry."
He blinked to get used to the light, having spent two days in the relative shade of the forest. As his eyes adjusted, his mouth dropped open in awe, unable to form words to describe the spectacle before him.
About a dozen, tall figures danced around each other elegantly, ribbons of pure white-blue magic trailing around them. They seemed to be made of light, with dark gimlets for eyes and white silk for hair. They never touched the ground, floating in a seemingly random choreography that entranced Harry completely. It was rather like the Veelas' dance, but somehow far different. They were much more ancient… primal, almost. Magic in its purest form, Luna's mother had said.
He believed her.
And as soon as the light had appeared, it was gone, the Dinshencha fading into the wildflowers. Harry blinked and looked over to Luna, who had a dreamy, ecstatic smile on her face. He kissed her forehead, hugging her close.
"That was beautiful," he whispered.
"Yes, it was." A pause. "My mum was right, wasn't she? I just… wish I could've talked to them, maybe. Wished I could've watched them for a little while longer. Got something for the magazine."
Harry squeezed her arms. "To me, it felt like their magic was untouched, untainted by any other magic. We should keep it that way, don't you think?"
"You're right, of course." She looked back, a little ruefully at the now-deserted field. "We should go back to the base."
Harry raised an eyebrow. "In case you didn't listen to me rant before, love, we're stuck here, with no wands and completely lost. How do you suggest we get back to camp?"
Luna looked unbothered, smiling enigmatically. She fished out something from her tattered pack. "Using this of course." It was a small golf ball, wrapped in rough cloth. A Portkey, probably. "The guide gave it to me before we left. In case of an emergency."
Harry gawked at her. "And you didn't tell me this… why?" He spluttered.
"Guess it slipped my mind," she said glibly, laughing as Harry grumbled about how she could've spared him a few heart attacks and snakes slithering up his spine.