Disclaimer: Can you really imagine Rowling writing this?
Notes: This is a birthday present for Indigo Pearl, who wanted a Remus/Luna fic. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Claire! And congratulations for making me write the-pairing-I-swore-I-never-would, though whether you'll be glad you did or not, we'll see.
Please read and review, everyone!~
Luna is his best student, and also, his worst.
At times, he's grateful for her presence. She follows his words as smoothly as the trickling brook follows the course of the land, grasping concepts and facts more quickly than any of her classmates. She's the best kind of Ravenclaw, the best kind of student - eager to learn and open to the possibilities of the world he's trying to illuminate. She shines, but in a good way.
In these moments, he catches her silvery gaze in class and thinks that she must have guessed - yet when asked to name the distinguishing features of the werewolf, she leaves out the most obvious one: he's my Defence Against the Dark Arts Professor. ...She's guessed, but says nothing.
There are other times, however - times when he wishes he'd never let her in. There is only one other student whom he talks to this way - outside of lessons, outside of a teacher's obligation - and that's for an obligation of another kind, the kind of obligation that rears its merciless head when you meet the son of your dead best friend. Luna is... she's different. She's punctured through his weary reticence as though it was never there, but sometimes, her ability to laser through him is unwelcome. He wants to tell her to go, but he can't.
They'll be discussing their favoured subjects, exchanging Do you knows and I think thats, when suddenly she'll become uncooperative, obstinate. She'll take something he's said and dismiss it as an unquestioned assumption - the things that, even at twelve years old with so much ahead of her and so much to learn, she quietly strives against - as easily as he dismisses the hope that there will one day be acceptance of his kind. She reminds him of this hope, but he's not glad of it.
It takes a war and four years apart to get them a time that's different. They snatch it up, eagerly, because so much has changed since they last met - so much for the better, so much for the worse. So much to catch up on, so much to discuss.
"You're different," Luna tells him, no judgement in her voice - just the truth as she sees it. She's no longer his student, and has no reason to keep quiet.
Remus wonders whether he should say the same to her, but thinks it's so obvious it would seem like a fallacy when voiced. Instead, he thinks of all the other things that he could do or say to tell her. Show her. How different she is, for everybody. How different she is, for him.
Instead, he gets up to watch the almost full moon shining through his kitchen window, pushing the idea away as he breaks their gaze.
He's a married man now.