A/N: No copyright infringement is intended, no profit is being made. I hope all of you Ron/Luna fans out there enjoy this... I'm so sick of Ron being portrayed in fanfiction as either jealous or stupid, and I think a lot of authors out there a little afraid to go near Luna. Please review, and if you have any good Ron/Luna recommendations, please leave them. Enjoy.
It was three in the morning and Ron was hungry.
That day's Quidditch match against Ravenclaw had lasted seven solid hours in the pouring rain until Harry, to the great relief of the handful of fans who had stuck it out, finally snatched the snitch. Dumbledore had the house elves hold some dinner for the players, but when they got to it at a quarter past ten, everything had developed a fine outer crust. When Ron accidentally elbowed a steak off of the serving platter as he reached for the filmed-over gravy, it bounced twice before stopping to rest in a small dust bunny. He had grumpily gotten up, mumbled a "G'night" to his slightly confused teammates, who had rarely seen the read head refuse comestibles, and slopped off: muddy, cold, and wet to the prefect's bathroom.
He wasn't sure if it was the late hour, the unappetizing fare, or the fact that he was bone tired but food had never been further from his mind. All he could think about was getting out of his drawers that were still soaked with rainwater, and into a nice, clean, soapy shower. When he finally returned to Gryffindor tower at well past eleven thirty he dutifully put on his pajamas, even though the steam from the shower had left him feeling fresh, invigorated, and irritatingly awake. Harry was tucked away between his sheets, snoring softly, as were Neville and Dean. Seamus was out, probably with Lavender, and the dormitory was in what Hermione would have called a 'soporific mood.' The light snores, and the soft moonlight, and the warm blankets all should have, and usually would have lulled Ron to sleep in an instant, but for the past month or so Ron had been having no small amount of difficulty in that department. The dreams that had so plagued Harry on and off for years had come back, but this time, instead of suffering through Occlumency lessons with Snape, or running the risk of Voldemort baiting him, as he had with Sirius, Harry had made the executive decision to ignore whatever the snake-eyed fucker was trying to tell him.
"No way we're going to do this on his terms," He had said in a hushed voice as he, Hermione, and Ron walked down to retrieve the supply of Dreamless Sleep from Madame Pompfrey, " I will not be an open book to him."
And for Harry, it seemed to be working remarkably well. He was in fine fiddle, his training with Dumbledore was going swimmingly, and although he admittedly (but realistically) believed his upcoming graduation from Hogwarts to be the pivotal point in this war, he accepted his destiny with a smile and a shrug: sporting an almost "Well… someone's got to do it" attitude. He would wake in the mornings refreshed and ready to face whatever the world, and more importantly the world's villains could throw at him.
Unfortunately for Ron, Harry was the only one oblivious to his dreams. Ron would be awakened at all hours by moans of pain, and muffled shouts from the canopy next door. If he padded over to check in on his friend, he would inevitably see his pale face twisted in consternation, his scar stark and red against his sweat-coated, almost iridescently pale skin. But if he gently shook him awake, a groggy Harry would and ask, oblivious and innocent,
"Wha's wrong? You OK? You look worried."
Ron would shake his head and put on a brave face. Once he even lied and said that he had had a dream about acromantulas that needed hashing out. Every now and then one of the other boys would be awakened as well.
"Shut up, Potter, I need me beauty sleep!" Seamus had said the other night as he had thrown a spare shoe at Harry to wake him up.
"Hm?" Harry mumbled. "Sorry, musta been dreaming… Wonder what about?"
And they would all go back to sleep, all except Ron, who knew exactly what Harry had been dreaming about. He'd heard him mumbling of battle and death, pain and loss long before Seamus had woken up.
Dreamless sleep, Ron had realized, is nothing more than a few memory charms laced into pumpkin juice. Harry would continue to dream, clueless to the horrors that plagued his sojourns into the night-time realm. The moment he woke up he wouldn't remember a thing.
So that night, as Ron lay in bed, still damp from his shower, he wasn't surprised to hear the sound of Harry beginning to fight off some unknown foe. He slowly got up, and barefoot, went to open Harry's curtain. He had gotten good at this over the past month.
"Harry," and a gentle shake on the shoulder was enough to rouse him from his dream, but not enough for him to wake up completely and demand to know why he had been woken up. Harry briefly opened his eyes before turning over, safe for another half hour or so, Ron guessed.
He returned to his bed where he lit his wand and pulled out last week's Charms notes. There would be a mock NEWT practical exam on Monday, and it wouldn't hurt to get some cram time in. At about one thirty Seamus stumbled in, hiccupping loud enough so that everyone woke up a little bit and mumbled "keep it down!" and "did you say hello to Lavender's breasts for me?" After a short communal giggle and an easy second 'Goodnight," they were all sound asleep again.
With Seamus' interruption, Ron only had to wake Harry up another two times before he was sure he was out cold. He didn't know much about sleep cycles, all he knew was that for the three hours or so in the dead of night, Harry's eyelids would stop twitching, and the dreams would cease. Usually this is when Ron would pass out, getting in as much sleep as possible before the pre-dawn dreams began. Tonight however, as he stood next to Harry's four-poster, his stomach made an audible Ggggrrrowlsquissssh kind of noise.
It was three in the morning and Ron was hungry.
He fumbled around in Harry's foot locker for a minute before finding what he was looking for, stuck his wand in his sweatshirt pocket, and padded silently towards the door.
Outside of the portrait hole, he lit his wand and looked down at what he was holding,
"I solemnly swear I am up to no good,"
Only once on his way to the kitchens did he have to pause, and let Mr. Norris's dot turn the corner before he continued.
Before tickling the pear, he took a deep breath, hoping to the gods that Dobby wasn't the night elf on duty. He didn't think he could stand a conversation concerning nothing but accolades and sworn fidelity to Harry Potter when he knew all Harry wanted was to be left alone. Luckily, when he went in all he saw, sitting on a stool by the fire at the far wall was a very intoxicated Winky.
She didn't even realize he was there until he was more than half way across the room.
Hic "Who's there? Oh, Mr. Wheeze… Wheeeze… Wheezy."
He knelt down, and righted one empty bottle of butterbeer that had been discarded at her feet, and pulled the one she was currently nursing out of her hands.
'Why don't you go sleep it off, Winky"
"Nope!" hic "I gotta wait 'til the cooks get here. Keep you hungry, hungry, kids away," She was poking at his chest, her squashed-tomato nose level with his.
"As a Hogwarts prefect, I order you to go sleep it off,"
She looked away dejectedly as she slumped off her stool and towards the door.
He called after her,
"Listen, I'll be out of here by five-thirty when the cook elves show up, OK?"
She looked at him and shook her head with a much wiser expression on her face than Ron would have expected from a pissed house elf,
"You always are, sir."
When the door shut behind her, he made a bee-line for the pantry, deciding to start small and build his way up. He grabbed a box of butter cookies, and some tea bags before heading to the enormous, and ever burning wood stove to put a kettle on. He had just bitten in to a cookie when he heard an unmistakable giggle. Someone had just tickled the pear. He ducked down behind the table as whoever it was stood by the now open portrait hole, and said in a soft voice to the pear,
"Well, aren't you bubbly tonight?"
He realized even before he saw her that it was just Luna, and she would probably not care a whit if he was breaking curfew in the kitchens. But he had already committed himself to hiding, and something about admitting that he had hid in the first place seemed more embarrassing than just continuing to
hide. He was actually a little surprised that she didn't notice him, he was pretty sure that the space between the bench and the table would be more than enough to revel most of his torso, but as she walked into the room, she didn't give a second glance in his direction. Instead she went straight to the center table, where a small vase of dead flowers sat, plucked them out of their water, and replaced them with a small bouquet that hadn't noticed before. She tossed the dead ones into a bin before going to the ice boxes and emerging with a cardboard carton of blueberries. She sat about half way down the other side of Ron's table, facing the fire, and leaned onto her elbows as she plucked out one berry at a time and ate it.
Soon, Ron's knees began to ache from being bent on the cold stone, and he had the desire to just stand up and pretend as though squatting on the floor in complete silence for ten minutes before announcing your presence in a room was completely normal. Unfortunately, that is when his kettle began to whistle. He looked from the stove to Luna and back, silently wishing that it would just shut up. However it's long, low, insistent whistle kept going.
After about thirty seconds, when the water began to bubble from the spout and plop out onto the stove top with loud hissing noises, he heard Luna softly clear her throat, and without looking at him say,
"Ronald, I believe your kettle is hot."
He stood up, and as he fetched his kettle, he tried to pretend as though squatting on the floor in complete silence for ten minutes before announcing his presence was completely normal.
"Oh, hey Luna," he walked to where his cookies sat abandoned on the table top. "Um… tea?"
"Mm, yes. Thank you."
As he poured her a cup, he finally just asked,
"How did you know I was there."
"Well," she said matter-of-factly, " I could see you."
"Oh, I thought you would have said something if you saw me hiding, I was jus-"
"Oh! Is that what you were doing? I thought you were avoiding me."
"No. I just didn't want to be caught breaking curfew."
"Well I'm happy to hear you weren't avoiding me in particular… Hm. I suppose I'm breaking curfew as well." Her almost non existent eyebrows were knitted in a most uncharacteristic expression of worry. She was obviously just realizing this, and for some reason he laughed.
'What are you doing down here at this time of night, anyway" the red from his ears was quickly vanishing as he sat down across from her and put his cookies in between them,
'Oh, there are some very nice elves that make sure all of Hogwarts' produce isn't infested with Humbolt's Scumteria, and as a thanks, I usually bring flowers down here about once a week for them. Brighten things up, you know."
She popped another blueberry into her mouth before offering him the carton,
"Completely contaminant free,"
He smiled again and took a little handful.
"How about you," she inquired as his stomach made another loud noise,"
"Actually, what with the game today, I kind of missed dinner… and lunch," he said, just realizing that the later was true… and that may have been a first.
"Ooh, yes, you did marvelously up there: Only let four goals in! Still, it's a shame we didn't win. But never mind that, you must be hungry!"
And with that she got up from the table and headed back towards the pantry.
As he got up to follow her, he noticed for the first time that she, like him, was in her pajamas. She had on bright blue pants with an intricate flame pattern on them that reminded him of the Goblet of Fire from fourth year, and looked as though they might be fuzzy. Below that were slippers that much resembled the feet of a large bear. And as she turned to him, holding in her left hand an entire frozen turkey, and in her right, a box of fettuccine, he noticed that her cherry red tank top had a small row of shell buttons going half way down the middle.
"Carbohydrates? Or Protein?"
He brushed passed her, smiling, and said, "Oh, we can do better than that."
"Ok, but I like late night noodles."
"Fair enough. But how about…"
And he rummaged around for the next few minutes, periodically coming back to where she stood in the center of the small room to pile more ingredients in her arms.
With everything piled up on the counter by the stove, Ron began pulling pots and pans and utensils out, and Luna interestedly took inventory,
" Noodles, grape tomatoes, kalamata olives, anchovy paste, garlic, capers, butter, olive oil… Are you sure this will taste good?"
"Yeah, penne putanesca, it's the best."
She was hopping up to perch on the butcher's block across from the stove.
"You cook often, then?"
"Well, as one of the youngest, Mum always had me help with dinner, and since I started coming down here… I don't know, I just like playing with flavors."
She carefully watched him put the water on to boil, and before popping one of her blueberries into her mouth, said,
"I trust you."
He concentrated on cooking for a while, forgetting that Luna was there, and just enjoying the creativity and well, frivolity, of being able to make good food, as he had so frequently in these late night kitchen trips the past few months . So when he turned around, wooden spoon in hand, to find Luna standing directly behind him, he jumped in surprise.
"Can I help?"
"Well, everything's pretty much ready…" she suddenly looked much more disappointed than he would have liked.
"But do you want a salad too?" She nodded, and as he walked back to the ice box, he said,
"Good, than while I do that, you keep an eye on the sauce and add about three tablespoons of those capers."
He hadn't left her alone at the stove for a minute when he heard,
"OW! Cockbuggerfuckall!"
And turned to see Luna's lips locked firmly over a spot just above her wrist,
"It splooshed me," she said, the words muffled through her forearm.
He quickly flicked the burner off as he said,
"Let me see,"
He gently pulled her arm towards him and saw a pretty angry sauce burn. He held her thin, pale wrist in both hands and gently blew on it before running a finger over it, and feeling what would soon be a blister rise against his fingertip. He guided her over to the butcher's block, and without thinking lifted her up to sit where she was before. With a murmured 'accio' he had the aloe plant that had previously been sitting high up on a nearby shelf by her side, and was tearing a small part of a leaf open and rubbing it on the burn.
He breathed out a little giggle,
"Why does it not surprise me that you are no good around hot, viscous liquids?"
She stilled his hand and took the leaf from him.
"Oh, probably because I am hopelessly and irretrievably spacey."
He took a step back, a little uncomfortable at how comfortable he felt just them, and went back to his salad.
"Well I guess you'll live, but I would stay away from sauces for at least three months."
Her laugh, an almost irritatingly high downward scale of perfect "hee-hee-hee-s" had never seemed incredibly special to Ron before, but for some reason, the fact that his not even remotely witty joke had elicited this wonderful sound from her was making him grin ear to ear.
"Well, it hurt like a mother-fucker, but it did taste quite nice." She said as she absentmindedly bent down to lick the remaining spatters of sauce from the crook of her arm.
Ron resolutely fiddled with the already finished salad, as he tried not to look at the small valley where her two breasts met just above the little row of buttons.
Five minutes later, with the food brought the table, and some butterbeer retrieved from the ice box, the two were seated quite comfortably across from one another.
"You could do this you know." She said
"Huh?" He had a large bite of salad hanging out of his mouth, and as he methodically chewed the lettuce leaf into his maw, he reminded Luna strongly of a Brontosaurus, or some other large, contended, slow-moving herbivorous dinosaur that had so fascinated her as a child: Seemingly magical creatures that had somehow worked their way into Muggle consciousness.
"Cook. You could cook. You are very good at it."
"I…Harry and I always talked about going into Auror training together."
"Oh. I just thought you would want to do something you're passionate about."
He had the same feeling that he had been getting from Luna since they had first met: that she seemed to know things about him that even he wasn't quite sure about yet. He thought briefly about challenging her with, "and what exactly does that mean?" but as he took another contemplative bite of his pasta, he found that he already knew exactly what that meant.
If they all managed to get through this war unscathed, and if Voldemort was defeated, he knew that he wouldn't want to be holed up in the Ministry, having to deal with politics and red-tape. Yes he was passionate about battling the forces of evil right now, but that was because the forces of evil were directly liked to Harry's wellbeing. He was passionate about protecting his friends. Battling the dark arts was simply a part of the job description when it came to helping Harry through the next few months… after that though, he wasn't so sure. Harry's safety was worth his life; a noble theory , or intangible idea of justice just didn't seem like a good enough cause to die for.
Sitting across from him, Luna was contentedly eating her meal, completely unaffected by his prolonged silence. Her bright blue flame-covered leg was bent up on the bench, and she gently rested her bottle of butterbeer on her knee after taking a sip. She must have noticed him looking at her.
"Ronald."
"Hm?"
"It's past four o'clock. Why aren't you asleep?"
He looked at her for a moment, took one last bite of pasta, and put down his fork.
He wasn't sure why, but he found himself telling her everything. He had been carrying around this little secret (which the more he talked and the more she looked at him, with those big, sympathetic, blue, x-ray eyes, the more it seemed like a not-so-little secret) for so long it all just sort of pooped out.
"…and it's not like I can tell Harry, I mean, he's got so much to worry about already. But you should hear some of the things he says, I mean really twisted things, Luna. The other night he was on about someone named Dawlish, and how he deserved what he got, and how punishment was pleasure: work to be proud of or something. And it's just so fucking hard to pretend in the mornings that everything is alright. I see him during those dreams, and he's so obviously feeling something, you know, something really painful, and I can't even get him a glass of water, or even just say, 'hey It'll be alright,' because he thinks it's alright. And I can't tell Hermione, 'cause she'll want to tell him, and she can never understand, she has never been able to fucking understand that there are some things that just don't have answers. And I just wish I could stop him from feeling that, and it's just like, at night, he isn't Harry anymore, it's like sharing a room with fucking HIM."
He exhaled. And when he looked over, Luna now had both knees up, and her arms were wrapped in a tight hug around them. Her head was resting on them, eyes brimming as she looked at him. She sniffed very loudly once, and wiped away a few tears before she said,
" I suppose we should clean up."
He nodded brusquely and got up with his plate and the salad bowl and headed toward the large stone sink. He was still a little shell-shocked at his abrupt confession, and more than a little relieved that Luna didn't immediately badger him for possible resolutions, as Hermione would have done, for morbid details as Harry would have done, or for insights into his own personal psyche and emotions as any member of his family would have done. He was elbow deep in soapy water, and Luna had just deposited the last of their dishes beside the sink when she quietly came up behind him, and put a supportive hand on his shoulder blade. It stayed there for just a second before both her arms slowly encircled his torso in a solid hug from behind. He felt her head rest on the hood of his sweatshirt for a moment before she pulled away, and the next thing he knew she was much too far away, and tossing their empty bottles into the recycling. He at least had the presence of mind to dry off his hands, but other than that, he was acting solely on instinct. He crossed the kitchen in just a few long strides, and
picked her up easily as his lips crashed up into hers, and her legs locked around his waist, and his hands supported her weight from, in his mind, their most appropriate position on her bum.
"They are fuzzy," he mumbled briefly before walking them over the butcher's block, and diving in for another frantic and curious kiss.
"Hm?" she asked into his mouth
"Pants. I was wondering…" he kissed her again, "before," and again, "if they were fuzzy,"
And that laugh felt even more incredible than it sounded.
He spent a very frustrating few minutes trying to undo the buttons on her tank top, which left her keeled over on top of the butcher's block laughing loudly, and him, very much red around the ears, trying to figure out if that meant that their little snog-fest was over. She righted herself, stilled his hands, and said,
"They're just decorative. I suppose this would be much easier," She softly guided his large, slightly inexperienced hand up under her shirt, over her smooth stomach to rest on her small breast. She intertwined her fingers behind his neck and before pulling him in for another kiss said,
"I suppose that's what you were looking for?"
He guessed that verification would have been superfluous… or he would have if his brain could form any thought other than 'OOOH. BOOB."
Don't ask me what snapped Ron out of his euphoric reverie long enough to realize that the clock read exactly 5:25, but snap he did.
"Shit!" he said. Luna disentangled her one slipper-less foot from around his leg, where they lay on the butcher's block to allow him room to hop down.
"What?" she said, as she carefully righted her shirt, and ran a hand through her now completely hopeless hair.
He was retrieving his sweatshirt and undershirt from their respective places on the floor, where they had been tossed, "We've got to go. Cooks arrive any minute."
She glanced at the clock, and as she found her slipper under the stove, said,
"Ooh, follow me!"
His head was sill stuck in an armhole of his sweatshirt when he felt her grab his hand and lead him away.
"Wait, wait," he stopped them and pulled out the Marauder's map just inside the portrait hole,
"Where are we going."
"Out."
"The Main entrance?
She nodded.
"All clear,"
And they scurried off, giddy… just as teenagers who had been up all night making out should be.
She began leading them across the lawn, through the usual low-lying fog of morning, at a bit of a run, and Ron suddenly became supremely aware of his lack of shoes. It was the morning of the first day of March and the frost lay thick over the grass.
"OOH, it's cold, let's go back in."
"No, we'll miss it. Take these," and she kicked off her slippers, and started off again.
"Miss what? And there's no way I'm taking your slippers, you'll freeze!"
She was jumping from foot to foot, shivering in her little tank top, but still doing so in the general direction of the forest.
"Oh, for Merlin's sake," and Ron slid his feet into the slippers, and crouched down so she could climb onto his back.
She curled her knees up under his armpits and pointed their way to a large tree right at the edge of the forest. It was an ancient oak that had unusually low branches that seemed to just invite being climbed. She scrambled off his back, and barefoot, made her way up the tree with him hot on her tail.
His head finally poked through an especially thick bramble of branches, and he saw her sitting on an enormous limb leaning back against the trunk. There wasn't room for them to sit side by side, so he wedged himself in behind her, and she reclined against his chest.
The pearly grey dawn and the bare trees in the fog left the world looking as though someone had sketched it in black and white.
"Luna, what are we…"
"Shhh."
But suddenly, as the sun began to peek over the top of the horizon, the sky was alight with more pinks and oranges, muted by the fog that was rapidly burning off, than Ron could have ever imagined.
He let it get all the way up, bathing the forest in dull morning light, before saying,
" S'beautiful."
She just leaned her head back against his chest in response.
"Luna, what's going on here."
She turned her head and looked up at him.
"Here?" she gestured between them…
"Or here." She looked out over the forest and the world that lay beyond.
He nodded his head at the later.
"Out there, what the hell's going on?"
"Oh, I don't suppose I know for sure. But I guess we'll get through it."
He smiled and wrapped his arms tighter around her.