Luna came to visit them at the Burrow before the wedding. Despite walking a long way from her home near Stoatshead Hill on the other side of Ottery St Catchpole, she still managed to skip her way up the two track lane leading up to the Burrow. Hermione watched her from her place against the fence leading to the garden, abandoning her book to wonder how Luna could manage this muggy heat with her long blonde hair down and that long-sleeved shirt on. Dusting off her own more weather-appropriate clothing, she stood and made her way to Luna, who stopped to share what looked like a radish with an errant garden gnome.
"Harry, Ron, and Ginny will be angry with you if they catch you feeding them," Hermione said, trying to hide a fond smile. "Mrs Weasley wouldn't let them go out to the paddock until they de-gnomed the garden."
"Oh, hello, Hermione," said Luna. Her fingers dodged the gnome's sharp little teeth, leaving the gnome to gnaw on her boot. "I find de-gnoming fun when I get a chance to do it, though recently a Jarvey burrowed around our porch, so there hasn't been much of an opportunity."
"I'm sure if you were discreet about it, they'd let you de-gnome the Burrow for them if you enjoy it so much. They're quite magnanimous like that." Hermione hoped Luna knew she was joking. She'd have to hurt Harry, Ron, and Ginny if they actually considered putting Luna up to it.
"I'd rather not brave Mrs Weasley if I was caught doing their chores for them."
"True, she can be scary." Hermione's mind wandered briefly to fourth year when Molly Weasley thought she was a 'scarlet woman'. "You think the Weasleys would like your Jarvey?"
Luna gently pried the gnome away from her boot and swung it in wide circles over her head. With a soft grunt, she let the gnome fly. It landed somewhere in the reeds outside of the property with a painful thump. "Not really," she said eventually.
There was a short silence in which Hermione fidgeted under Luna's wide-eyed gaze, and she felt curious. Not the usual curious in that she wanted to go running to her portable library. It was more of the oddness and unfamiliarity sort of curious. The Alice sort of curious. She often felt this way around Luna, as if Luna's presence opened the ground beneath her feet and dropped her in her own personal rabbit hole where Crumple-Horned Snorkacks, heliopaths, and Blibbering Humdingers actually existed, living off of moon frogs and the like.
"You really are a problem-solver... you also have freckles," said Luna.
Hermione blinked. Luna's face came closer to better examine the smattering of freckles on her shoulders, her breath ghosting on the skin bared by Hermione's wife-beater.
"Harry and Ron joke that I'm becoming a Weasley by association," Hermione said, with a weak laugh. "But I just like to read outside in the summer."
"Did you know that it's the Chepspills that cause freckles?"
"Chep-what?"
"Chepspills. They're really tiny like Wrackspurts but they're attracted to the skin of people who sit around outdoors a lot and who take good care of their skin."
"Ron doesn't pay any particular attention to his skin from what I can tell and yet he's possibly the most freckled person I know," said Hermione warily, not willing to start an argument.
"Sometimes colonies of Chepspills just expand through families. They can be awfully lazy like that."
"Oh... okay." Hermione nodded compliantly, and eyed Luna's finger as it traced a pattern out of her freckles. Her touch was like a breeze, as airy as Luna herself, and her fingertip felt salaciously cool against her sun-heated flesh.
"Centaurus, how fitting."
"I have Chiron on my shoulder?"
Hermione watched as Luna began to trace it out again, but soon found her eyes fluttering shut at the slower, more deliberate touch. Her thumb grazed Hermione's neck in such a way that couldn't be accidental, the way the pad pressed here and then there, the nail running up the curve of her neck. Hermione felt another hand on her opposite shoulder and she dropped her book to follow the cool, night-ish length of it until she found herself pulling Luna closer to her.
"You're awfully bold with your eyes closed," Luna observed. Hermione knew her wide grey eyes stared, regarding her as if she knew things that Hermione didn't, or if she knew something she wasn't supposed to know. Her lips, Hermione knew, would be teasing, gently teasing, a Wonderland sort of smile that Hermione's eyes were drawn to from across the Great Hall. Luna's arms wound round Hermione's shoulders and for an instant Hermione was ashamed that she knew the younger girl's face so well that she could watch her expressions in her mind's eye. It seemed stalker-like, not bold at all.
"Luna, this isn't too f-" Hermione started.
But Luna's lips were on hers so quickly that everything after 'too' was lost an in an unintelligible mumble. Before Hermione could recover from the surprise and actually participate, Luna pulled away with a quiet laugh. Hermione finally opened her eyes again and tried to fight down the blush welling in her cheeks, but kept her eyes locked on Luna's, willing the boldness Luna saw in her to the surface.
When Luna stopped laughing, the boldness came a little easier and she closed the distance between them once more. She had a dreamy way of kissing, a strange and leisurely way of starting a motion then switching halfway through as if that had been the plan all along. Hermione savoured the slowness of each pass of her tongue, for each thrill seemed to reverberate through her. Everything about Luna Lovegood, now that she thought of it, reminded her of wind. The way her tongue moved over hers like a gust combing through a field of golden grass in the dead of night, her breath and the whispering of their clothes between them the same.
Again, Luna came away first, the absence of her soft lips jolting Hermione out of her airy dream and back into the muggy heat of reality, where they stood by an old and creaky fence. Crookshanks came bounding out of the field chasing what seemed to be the same gnome Luna threw before, and beyond that Hermione could hear her friends shouting and whooping in the paddock beyond the orchard. She smelled the dirt in her own clothes, Luna's sweat from her long walk, and Mrs. Weasley's love pouring into a delicious dinner. But all she could bear was Luna. All the rest was too much for her senses and all she wanted to do was find a place to hide with Luna and dive back down the rabbit hole to the dream where she could focus on the things Luna made her feel.
Hermione swallowed and picked up her book, not entirely sure what to do next. She hadn't ever been kissed like that before, and her after-kiss etiquette was quite rusty. Luna seemed to sense her uncertainty however and she took up Hermione's free hand and led them down the path to the paddock.
"Do you think Ronald has any constellations in his freckles?" she asked. "I know Ginny has at least one on her left cheek that might be Cassiopeia but I'm never able to get close enough to be sure..."
"I don't know," admitted Hermione. "I never thought to look before."
"It's a shame I can't stay over until after the wedding. Dad doesn't want me going too far out of his sight, you see, so until his business takes him away, I'll be unable to get close to Ron and Ginny for about a week."
"Is it that much of an interest for you?"
"I adore freckles and astronomy. We're all galaxies, Hermione, and while I'm eager to explore the depths of yours, I've been curious about Ginny and Ron's constellations for far longer."
There was something about Luna's earnest reasoning that got to Hermione. "While... while I can't promise anything regarding Ron, confirming Ginny's Cassiopeia should be completely possible."
"You would do that for me?" Luna's look of surprise lasted all but a second, but Hermione's eidetic memory seemed to paste it on the surface of her eyes, so the image kept replaying over and over. Hermione Granger surprised Luna Lovegood.
She nodded and smiled. Luna squeezed Hermione's hand and Hermione's heart felt ready to burst. For the first time she found herself wanting to know something absurd, so she decided that she would go hunting for constellations in her friends' skin to the best of her ability, awkwardness be damned, if only to appease Luna's curiosity.