Written for The Originality In Your Favourite Pairing Challenge on HPFC. I have a few fav pairings with Luna and chose to do this one.
I don't own anything.
If Luna had been asked what it was she liked most about Cedric Diggory, it would be his ability to believe. Not his good looks, Quidditch toned body or charming, white-teethed smile (yet that seemed a close second if the fluttering in her stomach whenever it was directed solely at her was any indicate).
It was his belief, his absolute faith, that made her love him. The sole friend of her lonely childhood.
He never deserted her. Not when she came to Hogwarts and was christened 'Loony Lovegood'. Not when the Fawcett sisters from the village in Ottery St Catchpole tried to lure him away, turn him against her. And not even when his own housemates turned against him for his being associated with her. The crackpot daughter of the even wackier editor of The Quibbler.
"Don't need them anyway," he'd said after dragging her away from their stares. "I have you. I've never been surer than now that you're my only true friend."
And he'd hugged her so tight she actually felt safe. She didn't pull away like when her father occasionally decided to depart from the world in his head and show her some belated affection. No, she hugged him back, held on tight.
The remembrance of his whispered, "I believe in you. Always," in her ear never fails to make her break out into a wide smile, her stomach fluttering like a swarm of devilish fays had been released within.
Even now when she's lying on the floor of the Astronomy tower, one of his hands buried in her hair and the fingers of the other entwined with hers with his body curved around her like a missing piece of a puzzle her smile widens.
His nose nudges the curve of one of her ears. "Wanna go down, yet?"
"I wish time would slow and this moment could last for a lifetime." A yawn escapes her, unbidden. "Perhaps if we found a colony of Gnibbering Lexies, they'd be so kind as to help us." His body curled around her side is as much a source of warmth, in the cool night air, as his arm across her stomach. He squeezes her hand in his gently. The slightly calloused pad of his thumb stroking her hand is making it hard for her to concentrate. There is heat pooling in her stomach, and she'd wonder if she was getting ill but this always seemed to happen when she was around Cedric since she started her third year and he his sixth.
He presses his lips to her neck and she doesn't bother to hold in her sigh. "And where could they be found?" Despite the teasing, light note in his voice she knows he's genuinely curious – one of the few who actually are – so she tells him.
His curiosity is what she also loves about him, and always had, truth be told.
"You can see them too." The neighbours' son – friends of her mum's, or at least the other mum is – must have at least a year until starting Hogwarts, and yet he stood under the clump of mistletoe above the kitchen doorway in his house, staring at it in some sort of fascination.
His wide eyes lock onto her's. "Y-yes. What are they…? Luna, right?"
She nodded and moved to stand beside him, alternating her widening eyes and smile between the mistletoe and the boy beside her. "Nargles. Pesky creatures as my dad's told me. They often i-infest," the word is strange on her six year old lips, "the festive plant."
The boy – Cedric's eyes are still round as they turn to her when she explained a bit more about the creatures. They're a nice colour, she cannot help but notice. Grey, what she supposes her own eyes are – and those of her mum – but different.
A good different.
Her happiness and excitement at knowing someone not of her own blood who can see the elusive creatures dimmed. She remembered the Fawcett sisters from the village and their cutting comments and laughter whenever she went there to deliver special editions of The Quibbler. "You do believe me, don't you?" He can see them too, but it doesn't mean he believed a word of what she just said about them, and where they'd come from. It's like with her mother, she who doesn't truly believe no matter what her husband had told her, had claimed to have seen with his own eyes.
A crease appeared between his eyebrows, not unlike when her mother would hear her repeat whatever her dad had told her nearly word for word, she realised with a sinking feeling in her stomach.
"I-I do," he straightened (as if his body had been anything other than ramrod straight) his eyes tearing away from hers to the mistletoe and creatures within. His eyes bore into hers again as he said firmly, "I believe you, Luna."
She smiled again, as if she'd never stopped, and walked through the doorway, mindful of the mistletoe above. Once in the kitchen she turned, mildly surprised to see Cedric still standing on the other side of the doorway looking at her. Then, eyes on the mistletoe he edged forward, and before she could blink, had kissed her cheek. Eyes wide and still unblinking she watched him step around her and enter the kitchen.
"'S what you're s'posed to do, isn't it?" He gave her a tiny lopsided smile as he filled a goblet with some 'unspiked' pumpkin juice that was just for the children at the small gathering at the Diggory's.
She smiled as she remembered what mistletoe was to people who didn't 'give a hoot about creatures made up in the damaged mind of her dad' as the oldest of the Fawcett sisters had put it. "I think… I think I'm going to like you, Cedric Diggory." He blinked twice, then his answering smile seemed to her even brighter, and warmer, than the weak winter sun.
"Thank you," She says, twisting to press her lips to his.
He didn't even have to ask 'what for?' as he already knew.
Thank you for being there for me.
Thank you for never leaving me alone when I succumbed to tears of despair.
Thank you for ending that farce of a relationship you'd had with Cho when you overheard what she said about me to her friends (but maybe not thank you for threatening to hex her into next Sunday even if that also had the bonus of her not playing against you the next day in the match).
And best of all thank you for believing…
"There's no need to thank me. I would have done it anyway." And she knows he's not just talking about always being there for her.
When she smiles she wonders if there is any truth to how other people say someone is smiling so wide their face might split. She really hopes not; she quite likes her face as it is. And so does Cedric if the way he's snuggling against her is anything to believe.
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