Author:
Emmie
Title: Letter to A Friend
Fandom: Harry
Potter
Pairing(s): Ginny/Luna
Rating: G
Continuity: 4th year
for the girls
Author's note: Meh, I don't like this. Like a lot of
my Ginny/Luna fics, it's something that had to come out, but I don't
think I did it justice. Oh well.
Disclaimer: They don't belong to
me.
Ginny doesn't sleep. It is a problem she has dealt with since childhood, or so her mother would say. When she was small, she would stay up begging for one more story, one more drink of water; the usual child's requests taken to a new level. As she grew older, she learned it was easier to simply turn the lights off, the radio on, and breathe deeply when her mother peeked in to check on her. Everyone else got a lot more sleep, and the rest of the family all but forgot about the days of Ginny's insomnia.
Hogwarts has done little to disencourage Ginny of this behavior. Though not prone to nighttime wanderings like some of her peers, she finds ways to fill sleepless hours spent behind drawn curtains, wand lit, or, occasionally, in the deserted common room. It is, she has found, an excellent way to keep up with homework, and manages to pull quite good grades, though she often as not half-sleeps through the classes.
Mostly, though, Ginny writes letters. Usually more like notes. Silly little things about who looks like a hippogriff's backside and so forth. She slips them into the bags, pockets, whatever is available of her classmates'. Sometimes she even signs them. Her mission thus far has been to make Hermione Granger laugh dead in the middle of Arithmancy. Alas, Hermione has learned not to read scraps of parchment pulled from between the pages of Numerology and Grammatica, at least not during class. She has quite a good collection of them in her trunk, though, that are excellent for a laugh.
Every so often, though, something in the hour, the moonlight, the privacy, inspires Ginny to more serious exploits. Tonight she stares down at the words she has written. The starslight gleams on her still-wet confession, her heart poured out in black ink on the parchment. It is too long, rambling. Ginny breathes in night air and feels as though the very moment comes with it and she can taste the night, the insanity, which, obviously, is what is inspiring her to do this. Exhaling, she picks up the quill again, her hand shaking, and gets to the point:
I think I'm in love with you.
In fact she does not think but knows, and has for some time, but cannot bring herself to put it quite so boldly. Signing the letter, she taps it once with her wand, and it rolls itself into a tight scroll, tied with a blue and red ribbon. Another tap and the scroll disappears - a spell that Ginny has only just learned, but it is far too late to go to the owlery, and by morning her courage will have vanished. She oinly hopes it has found its way safely to its destination.
Finally exhausted, Ginny rolls over and, barely remembering to extinguish her wand, falls into a deep sleep for the first time she can remember.
Next day, everything seems a little worn around the edges. Unreal, because Ginny knows she could never have done what she did, yet it is all she can think about. Finally she spots her intended walking ahead, and, unable to wait any longer for a reaction, hurries to corner her quarry.
Not that it's terribly difficult, because Luna is walking alone as usual.
"Luna," Ginny says, catching up to her, slightly breathless (from the few steps' run, she tells herself). Luna fixes her with a typical dreamy look, as Ginny nearly melts on the spor. "Did you, er, I mean, um...well?" Ginny sputters, finding that as hard as saying what she really means in writing is, it's about a hundred times more difficult in person.
"What?" Luna is still looking at her, slightly puzzled now. Ginny does her best to pull herself together.
"I, um, I sent you a letter. Last night. Did you..."
Luna blinks. "I didn't get a letter," she says, slowly, pleasantly. "Was it important?" Eyes wider than usual, meant to convey interest, but all Ginny can do is stare at them.
"N-no," she says finally. "Just...one of those things I write, you know. Thought it might...be good for a laugh." And she flees, in the full knowledge that she will never again dare to mention this, that they will, at best, remain friends. Always friends, never more. The more Ginny tries to tell herself she doesn't care, the more her eyes fill with tears.
Ginny doesn't write letters anymore. She simply sits up at night, curled up in the corner of her four-poster bed, hugging her pillow to herself, thinking, unaware that in another tower of the castle, someone else is not sleeping but instead reading over and over a worn letter that she never had the courage to respond to, for fear of having the one thing she wants more than anything else in the world and losing it, her fingers brushing over shimmering black ink, now faded, her blonde hair pulled back with a red and blue ribbon. Twin lights shine from two windows as two girls mourn what they could have, should have, never will have.