AN: Qudditch prompt, Rolf/Luna, 914 words
She never exactly expected it. Then again, love wasn't exactly on Luna Lovegood's radar. She wasn't one to get excited at the sight of a boy or a girl although she did have crushes aplenty-not that any of them returned what she felt.
In fact, she remembered the horrified looks on their faces. The crowing of their friends behind them, the red in their faces. Luna "Loony" Lovegood might've seemed like some ditz that never let anyone touch her, some stargirl, but even a star on Earth can be hurt. Even a stargirl has feelings.
Naturally, it was indeed surprising that after all this time, she could find Rolf smiling especially wide for her, always doing small favors for her, favors that most people would just call acts of friendship.
"Don't be a fool," Luna murmured to herself in the dark of the night when it was just her and the stars. "He can't possibly love you back. It's just the Wrackspurts in your head. Or the Nargles making him do it. The site's been full of them since the Christmas party."
Yet it felt like an attraction beyond the stars. She gravitated towards him, walking by him for no other reason than to say hello, like the earth and the moon saying hello when they passed in orbit. It was like they were saying without words, "Wotcher person who I happen to work with. I know it's going to be you."
Stargirls do feel love, after all, despite some people who believe quite ironically that love is beneath them. It's quite the opposite, actually. Stargirls, starpeople to be exact, are all-loving in their very nature, looking on the earth with a love as constant as themselves glowing above despite being lightyears away.
With time ticking away, they got closer and closer, like the moon grows closer to the Earth, impatient in waiting for their love to reunite with him. As did Luna, by the next year, completely free of her doubts. She began returning favors. A cup of tea here. A spell to fix the office because damn magiczoologists seemed to live in a zoo, not an office building near the great zoo everyone loved. A gift of a favorite treat or those muggle objects Rolf loved to collect.
They weren't free from the audience at Hogwarts that always thought Luna was odd, strange, weird, a freak (even more so for a witch). Whispers haunted the corridors when they came into orbit with each other, waving and smiling hello without the words. ("I know it's going to be you-do you know too?")
"Lovegood's gone loony for Scamander," Patil whispered with a smirk. "Poor Rolf. He's got enough to deal with as is. Could use to be without that lovesick puppy."
"I know," Finch-Fletchley would reply in a much louder voice. "It's like he can't tell the poor thing to go away."
"Hello, ladies and gents, what are we talking about?"
Startled by Rolf's surprisingly deep voice for his skinny-dare we say petite?-build, the two jumped and were silent.
"That's what I thought," he said merrily. "And for a moment, I thought you were speaking badly of our best animal charmer this office has seen in a century. My mistake."
He began to walk away, but stopped Finch-Fletchley.
"If I heard you talking about Luna like this again, there will be more than words," he hissed.
For once, Finch-Fletchley understood why everyone in the office was so afraid of the famous legacy of Newt Scamander.
That was when you began to see them together more. They arrived in each other's orbit more, staying there for a while, maybe for a chat about each other's art (Rolf was a painter who loved to put make some of Luna's sculptures into beautiful moving watercolor that made her gasp in delight) or they sat in silence, filling paperwork and occasionally looking at one another like they saw the stars in each others' eyes.
They probably did, for that matter. Luna may have been a stargirl, pure light in human form, and Rolf may have been the earth's form, molded from the clay with the knowledge of light, but even clay has the earthen fire of the sun (which is scientifically the same thing as a star) holding him together with hopes and dreams.
Sometimes Patil would spot them in some muggle park on the way to pick up her sister in St. Mungo's, laughing and rolling in the grass and flowers until their paint-stained clothes had become grass-stained as well. Or perhaps Finch-Fletchley would see them when he was on an outing to the zoo with his muggle cousin, seeing them coo over ordinary animals that seemed mundane to him, but were fascinating to them.
Of course, everyone in the Magizoology Department saw the proposal. For one, Luna refused to go near the mistletoe (something about pixies or Nargles or the like) but Rolf was able to help her go by them. (According to Luna he had a natural resistance to Nargles-quite fascinating!)
It was during the office Christmas party, under said mistletoe, that he pulled out a ring with a diamond shaped like a star that shined twice as brightly.
"Luna Pandora Lovegood," Rolf said, down on one knee like a prince in muggle fairytales. "Will you marry me?"
"As long as we're in orbit, yes," Luna answered, with a kiss on the cheek.