Disclaimer: I do not own the original canon nor am I making any profit from writing this piece. All works are accredited to their original authors, performers, and producers while this piece is mine. No copyright infringement is intended. I acknowledge that all views and opinions expressed herein are merely my interpretations of the characters and situations found within the original canon and may not reflect the views and opinions of the original author(s), producer(s), and/or other people.
Warnings: This story may contain material that is not suitable for all audiences and may offend some readers.
Author's Note(s): This piece was written for a challenge in the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry (Challenges & Assignments) on the FFN forum.
The Challenge Information:
House: Gryffindor
Claimed Pairing: Lunar Heroes (Neville Longbottom/Luna Lovegood/Harry Potter)
Day 0x: [Prompt]
Extra Prompt[s]: Hospital [Setting] [5pts]
Word Count: 2504
Tagging Information:
Fandom Tag(s): Harry Potter – JK Rowling
Relationship Tag(s): Neville Longbottom/Luna Lovegood/Harry Potter
Character Tag(s):
Additional Tag(s):
-= LP =-
Phantom Pain
-= LP =-
What if I wake up tonight and you are real?
What if we could find a way to try to heal?
What if there's no stoppin' us yet?
What if the one true love's the only one that you get?
What if there was still a reason not to go?
What if there was still a little bit of hope?
– Marianas Trench, "One Love"
-= LP =-
The Boy curled into the corner of his room. The Doctor didn't like when he tried to hide so he had chosen the corner that could be easily seen from the door's window. It was comforting, having the walls bracing either side of him, and right now he needed that. He trembled there, his arms wrapped around his knees, as he waited for the pain to pass.
The Boy didn't like when the not-his pain came. He didn't like when it was definitely his either, but at least that made sense. It was expected. He could see the damage; he could control it, as much as he could control anything here. But that other pain—the kind that was there but also not. It scared him even more than seeing the Doctor with that satisfied grin on her face. It wasn't usually this bad, though. It was usually just what felt like bumps and scraps.
Not this time.
This time it was like his entire body was screaming, like his back had been cut open again or maybe like the time the Doctor decided to test how he recovered from burns. He hurt and he knew it wasn't his pain. He just wanted…he didn't know what but he wanted it. He couldn't help—he could direct the energy to heal himself, any physical pain that was his, but it wouldn't leave him. That didn't stop him from trying anyway, making the walls of his almost empty room ripple with the power escaping his body but unable to go where he wanted it. The Boy hit his head against the walls behind him, hard enough to hurt in counterpart to the burning & raw feeling of the not-there pain.
It was horrible—worse than any experiment the Doctor had ever tried.
He closed eyes and wished for it all to end.
-= LP =-
No one thought to check on him.
It caused a great deal of outcry when the news broke. Albus Dumbledore had assured them all that their savior would be in good hands, perfectly safe in the loving home of his only relatives. He had told anyone who asked about the Boy-Who-Lived that living with muggles would protect him from those who would seek to avenge the Dark Lord. He had measures in place to keep an eye on the situation. No one thought to challenge a man like Dumbledore, never mind that he didn't really have any right to determine the placement of a child, especially not the sole heir to several of their highest ranked Houses.
No one even realized what had happened until so long afterwards that all leads were cold.
Dumbledore had tried to hide the disappearance at first, spending over a month quietly directing his personal allies in a search when Harry Potter's acceptance letter had come back unanswered. It didn't assuage the public outrage at his behavior when the world had waited for news of the Boy-Who-Lived's Sorting only to discover that it wasn't going to happen. They had waited almost a decade for news and now that news was that the great and powerful Dumbledore had lost their hero. The man nearly lost his positions in the backlash.
With the threat of Voldemort returning—an ongoing rumor that no one questioned any more than they had Dumbledore's assurances about Harry Potter's safety—no one wanted to be the person who actually alienated their only possible protector. After a few years with their own threats and losses—two years in a row losing a first year and then Sirius Black's escape really did a number on morale—and everyone was even willing to trust him again.
Almost.
Lady Regent Augusta Longbottom had spent years in front of the Wizengamot fighting for various protective measures for endangered children. She funneled money from her House (and those whose patronage she had gotten) into research into the occurrence of abuse towards magical children, in both worlds, and the potential backlashes for the soulmates of such children. She faced a lot of resistance. Just as no one thought to check on their savior, no one thought that anyone would sink so low as to actively harm a magical child until the evidence became overwhelming in the contrary. Her main opponent had not been the dark families as one would normally presume as the House of Longbottom had been firmly entrenched on the Light side of that divide for generations. It was Albus Dumbledore, current Chief Warlock for the Wizengamot and his platitudes about family always being the best place for children.
Armed with the awareness of Dumbledore's failure to protect children under his care, Regent Longbottom hammered home her message that not only were magical children at risk but that something needed to be done—and sooner rather than later.
Anyone who had met her grandson would realize that this particular dragon wasn't just a cause for the witch. It was personal. Neville Longbottom was rumored to have the best traits of his predecessors. He had Augusta's dueling skills, the one that kept her a champion in her division up until her retirement when she gained custody of her grandson. He had his mother's deft had with non-standard charms—and perhaps most importantly, he also had his father's skill with the English longsword and protective spells. He was fierce reminder than adversity either made a man or broke him—because there was something driving the boy to desperate heights. He fought like he already knew he was losing both the battle and war for something. The look on his face every time his other's pain raced through his body had many turning away in shame and guilt. No one should ever be so clearly relieved to be in pain, let alone someone so young.
The editor of The Quibbler is the biggest detractor of Albus Dumbledore's opposition to Regent Longbottom's cause. Not a single issue goes by without some mention of possible conspiracy theories involving the headmaster. Just as faithfully, each issue includes updates on the research being done on soulmates and child abuse right alongside uncommon research areas such as creatures (both magical and muggle) and muggle sciences. If The Daily Prophet wouldn't publish the news, chances are that it would show up somewhere in the monthly publication run by Xenophilius Lovegood.
It wasn't until his daughter showed up to set her OWLS under special appointment that anyone realized that that she even existed. Even the Weasleys and the Diggories who lived within five minutes of the Lovegood's homestead had forgotten the tiny blonde child after the sad gossip that went around in the wake of the potions explosion that killed Dione Lovegood. Luna had only been nine at the time, and allegedly present at the time. Rumors flew through the small magical community as the girl sat quietly among the Hogwarts students who were all at least a year older than her, and had all attended the prestigious school hosting the examination.
They expected her to fail.
She didn't.
Then the next week she shocked them again by sitting the NEWTS with the seventh years. A fourteen-year-old looked tiny amid the students who were seventeen and eighteen. She finished early on every test and demonstrated a disturbing creativity during the practical portion. She was efficient and brutal in everything she did. Which scared more than a few people when her academic focus became common knowledge.
She was a healer.
They didn't know what to do with someone looking at the world without even considering that there may be a box to think in, let alone actually doing so herself. Luna Lovegood was not a witch to cross in any manner. After gaining the highest number of NEWTS in the history of the testing, she immediately formed a foundation dedicated to the same cause that Augusta Longbottom had been pushing in the political arena. United under a single organization, the research for the betterment and treatment of abused children and their soulmates flourished quickly.
It didn't take long for people to start realizing that the Lovegoods had similar motivations to the Longbottoms for pursuing the subject. It had taken only one public incident of the bleed-over pain to the almost-of-age witch for the world to realize why Xenophilius hadn't allowed his daughter to attend Hogwarts. The atrium of the Ministry had to be complete rebuilt after Luna's magic had flared out defensively in response to the pain coursing through her body from her soulmate.
The world trembled when it had been the Longbottom heir would managed to contain the wild magic…with his own magic flaring around him, also in response to his other's pain.
Magic had granted the world another triumvirate of soulmates, and somewhere, one of them was in immense and recurring agony.
No amount of placating was enough for Albus Dumbledore to keep his respected positions after that, not after he had had seven years to find their savior and hadn't been able to produce him.
No one dared to whisper that maybe the missing Boy-Who-Lived was also the missing Third of the newly established triumvirate.
No one dared.
-= LP =-
Luna leaned casually against the wall of the hospital. Despite her slight form, she completely hid her kneeling companion from view as he drew the runic array upon said wall. The very air quivered around them like a heat shimmer on the horizon during summer. She knew it was her magic, and that it would be better if she contained as carefully as Neville was doing—that it wouldn't draw unwanted attention before they were ready for it. But it could feel the presence of their other, finally almost close enough to bond and protect, and nothing she could do would stop it from reaching for him.
Even if she had wanted to, which she wasn't certain that she did.
She had spent years feeling him, helpless to ease the pain. The most horrifying part of her mother's messy death hadn't actually been losing the woman. It had been the knowledge that her own broken body had to have been adding to his pain, when he had already gone through so much. She had lost her mother, the beautiful witch who had followed her heart and soul from a tiny Greek island to a much larger island in the North Sea. Her father had lost his soulmate. Yet through it all remained the undeniable truth that her injuries had to be torturing her own soulmate just as much as he had always broadcasted to her.
This rescue had to end with their other in their arms.
Nothing else was acceptable.
"That's the last of them," Neville said as he rose to his feet. As one, the pair moved towards the busy entrance to the building. Slipping around the muggles with their crises was relatively easy.
Luna steeled herself against the familiar sounds of patients in need of healing. They called to her healer training and instincts, but she was a witch on a mission. A muggle research group was housed an upper level of the hospital. Their focus was essentially the presentation and manifestation of magic in humans. Reading how they accumulated the data sets they based their reports upon, Luna was determined that the group be brought down by any means necessary.
The first recon trip, her magic had flared in proximity to their missing Third, and even now, it pulled her forward. It was the same drive that had pushed her through her independent studies and made her one of the most in-demand healers to ever study under a St. Mungo's master-healer. It was the same drive that had pushed her companion to his early mastery of both dueling and warding. It was love and obsession—and in short order, it would be possession.
There was no way either of them would be leaving the hospital without their Third.
Her Vows as a healer did not even twitch as she dispatched the doctor in charge of the experiment. It was not vengeance. It was justice. It would have never been allowed if she and Neville's mission here had been sanctioned at all.
Those same Vows had screamed when they opened the final door of ward and she had laid eyes on the thin man huddled in the corner most visible from the door. She was crossing the space between them before she even registered the way her magic was wrapping around his and how Neville's layered atop of hers. She barely remembered to cast a diagnostic charm before her magic began to heal the injuries that had been paining her for a few days. The spell to produce a written record of the results only followed due to long habit. A hand trembling against her cheek brought her attention back from her work.
"You're real," the man whispered as if he couldn't believe it. "You're really here."
"Yes, my love," she returned with the same volume. "I'm really here, and we're taking you home."
"Home?" He sounded so confused by the word that Luna's heart felt squeezed. "Safe? Not hurt?"
"Yes, oh, yes—so safe, my love," she promised, "and no one will ever hurt you again. Not if we have any say in the matter."
"We?"
"Luna," Neville spoke up from near the door where he had been keeping a look out for threats they may have missed, "I'd really feel better if we were back under Thistlewood's wards. Can he be moved?"
"Yes, but maybe we should—"
"I'm going with you?"
The huddled man had straightened slightly as he asked the question, sounding just a bit stronger and less confused than before. His green eyes flicked from her to Neville, measuring and calculating. The fear of the situation was beginning to fade from his body. In response, his magic began to uncurl from his core. The brush of it against hers, pressing close but not fighting the embrace, made her shiver. She didn't fight the gasp as a tendril of it slipped around to rub at Neville's shielding.
"You're like me," he said as his magic rubbed against first hers and then Neville's. He reached out to grasp her arms at the same time his magic embraced hers. "Not just like me—you're mine. Both of you—you're mine."
"Yes!" Luna agreed, as the intensity of their energy converging swept over her. "Yes, a thousand times—Neville!"
"Hold on, my loves," Neville ordered even as he wrapped both his physical arms and his magic around them both and pulled them into the Receiving Room at Thistlewood Manor. Luna was barely cognizant of the familial wards of the Longbottom Seat reacting to the unexpected wizard. Both her wizards were pressed against her and one of them was weeping as his emotions overwhelmed him.
She had them.
They were safe.
They were safe and she had them where she could take care them.
She was never going to let them go again.