Title: How to Acquire a Case of Cooties, According to Luna Lovegood
Author: DMitchell1985
Betas: DarthChaosis and Silvarbelle
Genre: Humor : Crack!
Summary: Bites, stings, and licks, Luna Lovegood explains it all!
Rating: PG - for very, very light swearing.
Warnings: None, except the Luna-ness. Okay, there may or may not be a dash of crack included. -cough cough-
Characters: Ginny Weasley, Luna Lovegood
Word Count: 3,519
Author's Notes: The idea of how someone actually comes down with cooties occurred to me about a week ago, and I couldn't help but laugh myself silly. I simply knew that this would be something Luna would say, so here be fic. Thank you VERY much to my talented betas, DarthChaosis and Silvarbelle, for going over this for me. I appreciate it muchly, guys. I am warning in advance that I took some minor liberties with the canon information, but Luna does that all the time! At least that is the story I am going with. –nods- D I hope that FFVII fans will catch the game/movie shout-out. ; D
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Ginny Weasley stared at Luna Lovegood's enthusiastic digging among her tray of Fanged Geraniums through her peripheral vision. She twisted her mouth as she moved her fingers through her own tray and noted the wide berth the other students, even those in Luna's own House, were giving her.
Sure, the girl was a touch odd, to put it mildly, but she never failed to offer to help out where she could. Although Ginny had seen numerous classmates procure and hide Luna's belongings in the light of their Charms classroom and green-tinted space of the greenhouses they worked against soil and ravenous plants alike, the airy blonde had never repaid the students with spiteful acts of her own.
Instead, Luna maintained a serene smile on her face as though she expected her possessions to magically return on their own. In the case of items that went missing in the vicinity of a professor, they usually did with a fair amount of coaxing from the instructors themselves while they lectured the class about private property.
Ginny glanced over at Luna from beneath her eyelashes and furrowed her brow. The girl was now not only digging happily in her tray, she was humming the oddest tune Ginny had ever heard anyone produce. In fact, she was quite certain that she had never heard it before.
She cleared her throat and decided to be the only civil person in the greenhouse today.
"What's that you're humming, Luna? It's beautiful," Ginny lied smoothly. She was aiming to be civil, not entirely truthful.
"It's an ancient Mayan lullaby. The warriors sang it to their enemies to put them to sleep during battle, so that they could harvest their fingers, toes, and scalps for their nightly rituals of feasting and blood letting via the use of leeches."
Ginny's jaw dropped open at Luna's impossible explanation. Ginny was sure that Luna had to be making this stuff up, because she had never heard of such a tradition before. Not even in the faded Muggle History books her father smuggled home from origins no one knew.
Ginny's hands stilled in her tray, giving one of the plants a chance to bite down hard on her right pinkie finger through her dragonhide glove. Snatching her hand away from the plant's teeth, she shook her wrist in an attempt to disperse the throbbing pain. She pulled off her glove and looked down at her finger. She was relieved not to see any hints of blood budding from the spots where particularly sharp teeth had latched on only moments before.
Luna leaned in close to get a look at Ginny's finger before opening her mouth to speak.
"You might want to put some clabbert dung on that before your whole arm starts to swell up. It's the only thing that can counteract a Fanged Geranium bite." Luna pressed her lips together primly and leaned away from Ginny. "If you don't hurry, you'll become contagious."
Ginny was barely able to contain her snort in response to Luna's advice. Contagious? Whole arm swelling? The only thing swollen and potentially contagious was Luna's brain and cracked state of mind.
Ginny scooted further away from Luna and regretted bothering to talk to the Ravenclaw. The blonde might not be all bad, but there was a reason no one willing struck up a conversation with her.
"You're not going to tell Madam Sprout about the bite?" Luna inquired, looking over at Ginny's finger once more as she conked one of her plants with a trowel.
Ginny considered all manner of responses before she settled on a simple 'No'.
Luna shook her head sadly and tsked under her breath. "That's a shame. You've got a nice arm, and it would be sad to see it swollen up to five times its normal size."
Ginny chose to studiously ignore Luna's prattling. What did she know anyway?
As the class came to an end, Ginny gathered up her belongings and headed for Gryffindor Tower. She could hear Madam Sprout's irritated voice behind her scolding the rest of the remaining class about "borrowing" things that were not rightfully their's to touch, as objects noisily zoomed through the air.
Sighing wearily to herself, Ginny thought over her plans for the rest of the day. She had one more class before dinner and then she wanted to get in some extra studying for an approaching Potions test in. She could only imagine Hermione's rampant jubilation at the extra time she would spend in the library that evening, as she would gleefully chalk it up to her own influence. However, Ginny knew that she would have to force her eyes not to roll toward the stone ceiling at the smug grin sure to encompass Hermione's features.
She had just slipped out of the portrait hole and began descending the stairs into the corridor below when the finger the Fanged Geranium bit gave an odd twinge. Ginny raised her hand to eye level and saw that the finger, and the arm it was attached to, did not appear any different than they normally did.
She dropped her arm to her side and continued along the hallway. She wove through the crowd of students, for once glad to be relatively alone for a few minutes. Admittedly, she enjoyed the company of her friends, but it did a person good to have a moment of peace to think about things by themselves. As she turned the last corner to enter the hallway that held the Transfiguration classroom, the finger twitched again. She glanced down once more, only to find that nothing was wrong.
Convinced she was imagining the twinges, she scooted into the classroom and settled down next to Melissa Gainsborough. She smiled at the girl as they both began pulling books, quills, ink pots, and clean rolls of parchment from their bags. McGonagall had made certain to inform them all in the last class that this would a day they were highly encouraged not to miss, for any reason. There would be a significant chunk of notes to be taken and a new lesson that was sure to be on their year-end exams.
Ginny straightened her materials on her desk and turned to talk to Melissa. They speculated about the outcome of the professional English Quidditch season and compared it to Hogwarts' own. In the few minutes it took to exhaust the topic for the time being, Ginny's finger gave its harshest twinge yet.
Having received two false alarms already, she ignored the twitch and made to ask Melissa about what she planned to purchase on their next Hogsmeade weekend. Ere she could form the words, Melissa's eyes widened and her mouth slowly flew open, exposing her tongue and teeth to Ginny's line of sight.
Noting the horrified expression on her friend's face, Ginny finally looked down at her finger. Only, she found that she was unable to do so. Instead, she eyed a bloated sausage that used to be her finger.
The feeling of stretching skin and tingling nerves moved up Ginny's arm as the appendage expanded rapidly. She found that she could only stare down in horror as the arm did exactly what Luna told her it would do.
Jumping up from her chair, she waved her arm wildly and let loose a terrified squeal of panic. This could not be happening! It just couldn't!
McGonagall's eyes left the stack of papers she had been reading at her desk to focus on the commotion in the room. Spotting Ginny's arm, she rushed from behind her desk to Ginny's side.
"Miss Weasley! What in the name of. . ." Professor McGonagall began.
Ginny sputtered helplessly, all the while gesturing to her unfortunate arm.
"Never mind, go to the Hospital Wing, at once," Professor McGonagall finished. "I trust that you are able to find it on your own, even though you obviously could not prevent what you have done to yourself."
Ginny snapped her mouth shut in indignation. How dare old McGonagall assume that she did this to herself! Who did she look like, Fred and George! Her anger deflated slightly at the knowledge that, yes, she did look quite a bit like her older brothers. But, that did not mean she was anything like them in their desire to create as much mischief as magically possible.
She nodded once to stem the outrage that knocked against the back of her front teeth. She would not mouth off. She would not mouth off. She would not mouth off. She still ached in unseen places from the last time she had huffed out an insult within Filch's range of hearing.
Turning to collect her supplies and place them back in her bag, Ginny was surprised to see that Melissa had done so for her. Giving the girl a grateful smile, she swung her bag up onto her left shoulder, pointedly ignoring Professor McGonagall when she asked her why she had yet to leave for Madam Pomfrey's domain.
Ginny walked through the school's halls as quickly as she could without resorting to an all-out run. She tuned out the stunned gasps and remarks the few lingering students made upon spotting her. She wanted to shout at them to mind their own business and go to their classes already, because they were late enough as it was, but she didn't.
When she reached the Hospital Wing, she pushed the door open violently, causing her bag to slide down her arm to the crook of her elbow. Madam Pomfrey whipped away from the forearm burn she been bandaging to face the door.
"Young lady, that is hardly the appropriate manner with which to enter a room. I should make you go right back out into the hall- What have you done to your arm?" Madam Pomfrey's eyes fell to the ballooning arm at Ginny's side.
Nothing, she wanted to shout. Why was everyone blaming her? And why was she so testy? She wrote most of her irritation off to questionable hormones and strode forward into the ward.
Ginny hitched her bag up onto her shoulder and said, "A Fanged Geranium bit me in Herbology. I didn't think anything would happen, so I went on to my last class. The next thing I know, my arm's all swollen up."
Madam Pomfrey huffed lightly and turned back to the task in front of her. "Well, you'll just have to wait. I've got to finish with this one. A little time to think about your actions might teach you a thing or two for next time."
Ginny scowled at the nurse's back and dropped down into a free chair, finally easing her bag to the tiled floor. She waited none-to-happily as Madam Pomfrey finished wrapping the gauze around the boy's arm.
Suddenly, the fifth year shrieked loudly for no reason that Ginny could readily fathom. She looked on dispassionately as Madam Pomfrey helped the boy to his feet before telling him to be more careful in Potions and that the effects of the brew would wear off in a few hours.
Ginny swallowed her sigh of irritation. The room seemed to be getting hotter with each passing minute that she sat in the hard, straight-backed chair. What was it that Luna said about her becoming contagious? Wasn't there something she once heard about infections causing body temperatures to rise quickly to kill off intruding organisms?
She did not have a chance to fully explore the thought, as Madam Pomfrey had sent the fifth year on his way and was now standing beside her. "Let me have a look."
Ginny raised her arm and held it still while Madam Pomfrey prodded the skin and asked her about the bite.
"Well, there's only one thing that'll help you now, clabbert dung."
Ginny's disgust must have shown on her face, because Madam Pomfrey went on. "What do you want, a temporarily smelly arm, or a permanently puffed up one? Besides, didn't Madam Sprout warn you about the dangers of working with a Fanged Geranium?"
Ginny twisted her lips and waited silently as Madam Pomfrey retrieved a jar from her collection that was filled with a dark brown substance, which appeared to be wiggling within its confines, and a glove. She held her breath when Madam Pomfrey pulled on the glove and opened the jar's lid.
The moment the mush touched her arm, all she could think was, "Damn, what do you know? Luna was right all along."
Finding herself freed from Madam Pomfrey's clutches and the smell of the clabbert dung, Ginny considered heading back to class. Opting to go to the bathroom first to take another shot at washing her arm some more, she pushed open the door of the nearest girls' restroom.
She found her latest sigh of exasperation harder to contain when she laid her eyes on the blonde who was humming to herself as she washed her hands at one of the restroom's sinks. She briefly thought about leaving in search of another restroom to use, but Luna spotted her reflection in the mirror and smiled warmly.
"Ginny, what are you doing out of class? Has the bell rung yet, but I didn't hear it?" Luna looked up at the ceiling and restroom walls, as though they held the answers she was searching for.
"Ehrm. No, the bell didn't ring." Ginny paused, not wanting to tell Luna the truth as to why she was such a long way from McGonagall's classroom. Nothing would spur the Ravenclaw's wild imagination on than being proven correct one time. It wasn't as though she could be correct about anything else. Could she?
Ginny lifted her head and approached a sink of her own. She turned on the tap and ran cool water over her right arm's skin before squeezing several dollops of sweet-smelling red soap into her palm. She did her best to ignore the obvious interest Luna displayed in the amount of soap she was using.
"Madam Pomfrey didn't wash all of the clabbert dung off?" Luna asked, cocking her head to the side as she finished toweling her hands dry.
"Sorry, what?" Ginny stalled.
"The clabbert dung. To bring down the swelling of your arm. She didn't wash all of it off?" Luna pressed.
"Why would you think that I would need to. . . Yeah, she washed it off, but I want to be sure, all right?"
"I understand. Clabbert dung is the hardest dung to get off of human skin. That is with the exception of jarvey dung, but even that slides off of hair, fur, and feathers easily enough."
Ginny's head snapped up to look Luna in the face. "What?"
"Jarvey dung. It's handy, but it's a pain to deal with," Luna said airily. "Don't run the water too long, because a family of kelimparts might come out of the faucet and sting you. It's their favorite place to sleep during the day."
Ginny made a sound of disbelief in her throat. This girl truly was cracked.
"Yeah, okay," she heard herself say to Luna.
Luna laughed in a high, long squeal of excitement. "You know, because then your arm would swell up and turn blue!"
Ginny finished scrubbing her skin as quickly as she could manage. Hearing the bell that signaled classes were over for the day, she left a cackling Luna behind to seek out Professor McGonagall and the make-up work she knew she needed to complete.
Once Ginny had her assignments in hand, and had to explain her absence several times over, she made her way to the Great Hall for an abbreviated dinner.
Sitting down between Melissa Gainsborough and Alicia Spinnet, she piled a meal she did not pay much attention to onto her plate. She nodded and patted her friends sympathetically when she was expected to do so as they filled her in on the latest goings-on in their love lives, and the strain it was putting on their school work.
Without any conscious thought, Ginny found her plate cleared and her stomach full. She bid the girls goodbye and left for the library. She followed the sparse flow of traffic that was headed in the same direction and let Luna's words from the restroom play repeatedly in her head.
Don't run the water too long, because a family of kelimparts might come out of the faucet and sting you. You know, because then your arm would swell up and turn blue!
Pfft. Garbage was what that was.
Ginny slinked around the door of the library and chose a table well away from the entrance. She was going to finish the day's assignments if it killed her.
She immersed herself in her schoolwork and missed the sound of a chair's legs dragging on the floor.
"What are you working on?" an alarmingly familiar voice asked.
Ginny glanced up only to see one of the last people she wanted to speak to at the moment. "Homework," she answered shortly and put her head back down.
"Ah," Luna said simply. "So I see that the kelimparts didn't bite you. That's good."
"Yeah, really lucked out there," Ginny retorted sarcastically.
"What are you going to do on the coming Hogsmeade weekend?" Luna implored.
Ginny looked away from her essay on animal transfigurations and returned her gaze to Luna's ever-present grin.
"I don't know. Get a butterbeer at The Three Broomsticks. Why, what are you going to do? Hang out with friends?" Ginny asked to be polite.
"No, I had planned to, but my friend, Rosetta, has come down with a serious case of cooties," Luna said with a straight face.
Ginny snorted and laughed loudly, earning herself an admonishing glare from Madam Pince. She flicked her eyes in the librarian's direction and turned them back to Luna.
"You can't be serious."
"Dead serious. She brought it on herself, too. Pity."
"Really? How so?"
"She has this thing about face-licking. I've told her not to time and time again, but she refuses to listen." Luna paused and shook her head side-to-side woefully. "If only she had listened." She sighed deeply and fixed her bulging eyes on Ginny.
"You shouldn't do it either. You'll come down with the same disease."
Up until this point, Ginny's ability to respond had been greatly reduced to simply sitting across from Luna with her mouth open slightly with an expression of severe disbelief upon her face. She found her voice again and replied.
"You're joking. There is no way that you can be serious. And I haven't been licking anyone," Ginny denied, knowing that she was once again not telling the entire truth. She told herself, in her defense, that she technically hadn't been licking Michael Corner, if Luna has seen them together at all.
"I've seen you at it! You and that Michael Corner in the corner of the courtyard where you'd thought no one would see. You really shouldn't do that. He'll only give you a terrible case of cooties."
Ginny snorted again as she gathered her things. She didn't have to sit out in the open and be subjected to crazy people's ramblings; not when she had a perfectly good common room that she could work in. "Yeah, right. I'll be careful of that." With nothing more for her to say, Ginny left Luna sitting at the table. Cooties. Honestly.
Three days later as she sank down next to Melissa in the Great Hall for dinner, she was immediately bombarded by excited chatter that always signaled a juicy gossip session.
"Guess what!" Melissa shrieked animatedly.
"What?" Ginny said lamely, as she placed chicken, green beans, and a roll on her plate. She was not up for very much gossiping at the moment, since she had not done very well on her animal transfigurations review in class that day.
"You will never believe who has mono!"
"Who?" Ginny pushed her food around on her plate with her fork.
"Rosetta Pierce! I know that I couldn't believe it when I found out, but apparently, she's been spending all of her spare time swapping spit with Cormac McLaggen. He got it from Pansy Parkinson, but no one knows exactly where she got it from. Even though there are plenty of ideas, if you know what I mean." Melissa stopped speaking to wiggle her eyebrows knowingly. "I mean, what are the chances, right?"
Ginny frowned at the mention of Luna's friend. Cooties. . . She gasped sharply, causing Melissa to look on with concern.
"I know that it's shocking, but it's nothing to get that worked up over. That is, unless you kissed Cormac McLaggen, too. You didn't, did you?"
"Of course not, you know who have I have been kissing." Ginny raised her eyebrows meaningfully, in case anyone was listening avidly, under the guise of simply eating their meal.
Melissa raised her own in understanding before resuming her thread of conversation.
Even as Ginny sat surrounded by dozens of students, she could only think of one, Luna Lovegood. She shook her head and smiled. Perhaps she should take her advice after all.
Cooties indeed.
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The End