Title: The Triumph of the Moon
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Ginny/Luna, background pairings mentioned
Content Notes: Established relationship, fluff
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 2900
Summary: Ginny and Luna attend the celebration that marks Luna's triumph as a spellcrafter.
Author's Notes: Another of my "From Samhain to the Solstice" fics, for a request by thady, who asked for a Ginny/Luna fic where Luna is a spellcrafter.
The Triumph of the Moon
"But they will think my dress too tame."
Ginny hid her smile as she arranged the folds of the shining silver-blue gown so that they draped a little more thoroughly over Luna. The dress shimmered like moonlight, now here, now there, almost transparent and then turning into shadow. "No, I don't really think they will, Luna."
Luna stood in front of the mirror and glanced up and down, raising her arms and then letting them fall as if she wasn't sure of the way the gown floated around her. Then she made a soft, reassured noise in her throat. "It flies. It might be a wild thing. They will not think it too tame."
"No, they'll think that you're beautiful, and then I'll have to defend my territory."
Luna stopped fiddling with the dress long enough to glance over her shoulder. "But everyone knows I'm yours."
Ginny leaned forwards and kissed her softly, then stepped back and adjusted her own grey dress. "And I'm yours. But there are people who might think you too beautiful and want to colonize the moon."
"I do not think they could. Because of the lack of oxygen, you see."
Ginny took Luna's arm and steered her downstairs, making sure that she didn't trip over that floating skirt. "Tell me what other problems might happen when people were colonizing the moon."
"The lack of oxygen is still the largest one," Luna said seriously. "But, of course, the moon comes with fierce ginger people who defend it as well."
Ginny caught Luna's eye, and smiled at her. She didn't know for sure if Luna knew the implications of her words and meant them, or if they were only more of the dreamy whirl of nonsense that she spun around herself at all times. Ginny didn't have to know. She only knew that she loved Luna like this, as in all her moods.
"Why are we meeting in the middle of a forest clearing?"
"Because it's the best place for Luna to show off her spells, of course," Ginny said, and gave Hermione a pitying look. "You can be so stupid for a smart woman, Hermione."
That made Hermione splutter and glare, but at least it meant that Hermione was angry at her, instead of Luna. Ginny kept her hand on the small of Luna's back as they glided towards the center of the clearing, a small, dusty one just within sight of Hogwarts. Luna looked around and smiled as the thestrals trotted out from the trees. Behind them came the unicorns, and a single, solitary fluttering creature that Ginny had learned not to look at too closely. It was a nargle, but as Luna had explained seriously, they disappeared the minute they sensed someone thinking about them.
"Can you please not insult my wife, Gin?"
"Tell her not to insult mine, and we're even."
Ron rolled his eyes, but took up his place behind Hermione, and rubbed his hands soothingly up and down her shoulders. Ginny snorted and faced the center of the clearing, where a small stage of gleaming marble had been constructed. It would look better than ever with Luna on top of it in that dress. And Luna glided up the steps in the same way that she had down the stairs in their house, and turned and smiled out over the friends who had come to see her—along with a few reporters and people from the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Ginny wished the crowd was larger. Luna's discoveries were monumental and deserved better attendance.
Then again, she might not have wanted to show them off in front of a larger crowd, which would inevitably contain at least a few doubters.
Luna turned around to face her human and non-human audience. The bickering and talking fell silent. Luna looked for a second at Ginny, and Ginny smiled back and let her love and pride shine through her as if with light.
Luna offered a smile just for her before she began to speak.
"There are creatures that wizards can speak to, because they speak English," she said into the silence. "And there are creatures whose languages we can learn, such as the merfolk. But there has been no true communication among all magical beings, because we have not known what it was like to walk the world on four legs, or with a single horn in the middle of our foreheads, or caring mostly for gold."
"Reckon we could get Malfoy in here to talk about that," Ginny heard Ron mutter. She turned around, and Ron decided it was time to hide behind Hermione.
"With my spells, we can know that." Luna smiled. "I've invented spells of communication that offer us the opportunity to speak in a language that, for example, unicorns will understand, and I've invented spells of empathy that allow us to feel what it is like to have a different body." She hesitated, then added, as if she wasn't sure it was important enough to merit a mention, "I also have spells that can let someone share their pain with someone else, and tell a Healer exactly where it hurts."
Ginny smugly watched Hermione's eyes widen. She knew, as well as Ginny and Luna did, that something like that would revolutionize Healing.
"Let me show you what I can do with them." Luna drew her wand and rested it against her heart for a moment, closing her eyes. "Lux animae unicornis," she breathed.
The light that sprouted from the tip of her wand was that most beautiful thing Ginny had ever seen, except Luna's face; she had cried the first time Luna showed it to her. She watched it swarm slowly into the air, and tilted her head back to watch it with a smile. At that moment, one of the unicorns stepped forwards from among the herd in a movement that had obviously been planned.
Luna slid down from the dais and knelt in front of the unicorn, her hands out. The creature came gently to her, breath whuffling out. Ginny knew she couldn't possibly feel it with as far away as she stood, but she felt warm, rose-scented air anyway.
The light descended and outlined Luna and the unicorn in one great, silvery shimmer. For a moment, Ginny felt as though it was in her mind, too, the mental equivalent of that rose-scented breath. Luna lifted her head and fastened her eyes on the unicorn's. She reached out a hand with an exquisite, trembling slowness.
The unicorn turned to look at Ginny, and the patience and gentleness in its eyes was Luna's.
The light broke then, and the unicorn leaped back from Luna, rearing a little. Its hooves touched the ground in seconds, though, and it gently pressed back up against Luna. Luna stroked its neck. "It's disconcerting to find oneself in another's body even when you're expecting it," she said.
"That's what the spell does?" Hermione sounded fascinated. Ginny relaxed. "It lets you—see through each other's eyes?"
"See through each other's soul," Luna corrected gently. "Yes. We did not actually switch bodies, of course. That would leave us vulnerable to Whooliwhump possession if we did. But for a minute, she believed she was me, and I was in a unicorn's body. I think she was most upset not to have four legs."
"You can speak to unicorns that way?"
"What about thestrals?"
"What are the spells that could allow a Healer to understand another person's pain?"
Luna was laughing like a moonbeam's flutter and trying to answer all the questions at once. Ginny hovered on the side, ready to intervene if it sounded like Luna needed her to, but honestly, at the moment, not thinking she would. Her own, her darling, was so happy and so bright.
"The spells that could allow a Healer to understand someone else's pain are a continuation of the same empathy," Luna said, as smoothly as any academic lecturer. She stood up and spent a moment squinting at the sky. "And we need to wait until the moon fully gets above the trees so I can show them to you."
"Why do the spells depend on the position of the moon?" Hermione asked. Ginny glanced at her sharply, but at least she no longer sounded skeptical. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes nearly as bright as Luna's. "Is it—oh! Does it have to do with the pull of tides on human blood?"
Luna considered her for a moment, eyes nearly as luminous as the moon that was going to rise, and then shook her head. "No. It has to do with the light itself. That is a component in the spells."
Hermione blinked. Harry was the one who grinned and said, "You incorporated the moonlight into your spells, Luna? I knew you were working on that. I didn't know you'd succeeded."
Luna dipped her head in a little bow to Harry. "The moon is in the world with us. Why should it not be present in our spells?"
Hermione still looked as if she didn't understand that, but Hermione's lack of understanding wasn't Ginny's problem. She moved forwards to loop her arm around Luna's. "You should sit down," she said in an undertone, and nodded to the chair that stood beside the platform. "You remember how exhausted you got performing the spells last time?"
Luna thought about it. "Was that exhaustion? I thought maybe that was the result of my soul flying like a dragon."
"It was exhaustion," Ginny said.
"Oh. All right, then. I am sure that you know best, Ginny."
They sat down in the chairs that Ginny had arranged to be here, and although it looked as if a few of them wanted to leap on Luna and wring the knowledge of the spells out of her with their bare hands, they didn't. That might have been because Ginny was there to watch Luna and guard her, of course. But she cloaked everything under sweet smiles.
The moon finally soared above the rim of the trees, and Luna rose to her feet, extending her arms. Ginny put her hand on Luna's shoulder, and felt her wife trembling with excitement instead of fatigue. She slowly eased back until she was only touching Luna to share her joy.
One of the thestrals moved out from the rest of the herd, cantering towards Luna. One or two people in the crowd jumped at the motion of nothing near them, but almost everyone in this clearing had seen death, and they saw what was happening now.
May we use the knowledge to bless each other, this time, instead of wallowing in grief, Ginny thought, her eyes lingering on George for a moment. At least Angelina and his children had brought him most of the way back to life, but right now, he did watch the thestral and Luna with blatant longing.
Luna held out her hand and let the thestral extend its muzzle. Then she nodded and spun a step in place, her gown trailing behind her like moonbeams. That made almost everyone jump. Ginny laughed underneath her breath. Just as Luna saw no need to leave the moon and other aspects of the natural world outside her spells, she saw no need to keep her movements to the "calm" ones acknowledged by society at large as the best way to cast spells.
The thestral mimicked her, raising its wings and prancing in place. Luna came around to face it again and leaned her wand on its face and murmured, "Dolor misericordia."
A long, uncurling strip of white mist bound Luna and the thestral for a moment. Then Luna closed her eyes and began to murmur. "There is an old wound in the left hind hoof. The thestral stepped on a stick that dug deep into her foot and left her unsure what to do. She went to Hagrid, but he couldn't find any bits of wood left in the wound. She learned to walk and run again, but there is still a dull twinge that aches like being stabbed with bark itself."
"So…" Hermione breathed. "We can use that spell to give a voice to people who are voiceless?"
"Yes, people with all numbers of legs and all kinds of skin coverings," Luna said, barely moving her lips. "And the thestral can fly better than any others in her immediate family, but when she lands, her left hind hoof always feels as if it will give. It hasn't, so far, but she fears that it will someday."
She reached out and drew her wand. The thestral leaned towards Luna without a flinch and held her injured hoof up. Luna whispered, "Potente ligo."
The magic that poured out of Luna this time was only barely a spell, shaped by the incantation and her will but nothing else, Ginny knew. The desire Luna had to heal was what mattered. It stabbed deep into the thestral's hoof and grabbed the wound and drew it forth. For a moment, drops of dark blood poured out as the injury was reopened. Then the last of the pain fled.
Luna reached out a hand. The thestral sniffed it and began to dance around the clearing, as lightly as a young fool. Luna bowed again to her before she turned and abruptly sagged against Ginny's side.
"Is she all right?" George demanded, stepping forwards as if he thought Ginny or the thestral had hurt Luna somehow.
"Fine," Luna whispered. "Help me stand up, Gin."
Ginny slid her hands gently beneath her wife's arms and helped her to her feet. Luna leaned against her, trembling. Ginny stroked her hair and shook her head when she saw the way George opened his mouth. "She's fine. But these spells do take a lot out of you." She looked around at the rest of the circle of people and waited, but Luna was evidently going to let her tell it. "And it would take more out of other people."
"Why?" That was Hermione asking, predictably.
"Because not everyone can be as open-minded as Luna," Ginny said, and smiled sweetly at them. "Most people wouldn't think to share an animal's pain at all."
"And so they wouldn't feel anything," Harry muttered, stepping back a little so that he was by Parvati's side. She put an arm around him and smiled supportively at Ginny. "They would be blocked by their own disbelief from getting any kind of report back from the spell."
"Exactly," Ginny said, and kissed Luna's forehead. "No one else could have invented this spell," she added, driving the point home. "It didn't just succeed because Luna is a genius. She had to have the right kind of personality for it, too."
Hermione blushed, but she was eager to ask questions. Ginny permitted a few, before Luna's head became heavy against her, and she said, "Not now. Luna needs to rest. But she's submitted an article that will be published in the Prophet in two days' time."
"Not tomorrow?" Hermione blinked.
"Tomorrow it is being published in the Quibbler," Luna murmured, and stood up, shaking her hair back a little. "Father insisted."
Ginny nodded when Harry caught her eye. It had been hard for her to forgive Xenophilius Lovegood for his betrayal during the war, but he'd done it out of love for Luna. Ginny had to admit that by the time she reconciled with him, she might have done the same thing.
Harry came over to hug them both, followed by Parvati. George clasped Luna's hand and stared into her eyes with a searching look that Ginny didn't understand until he turned to her.
"It can do mental and emotional pain, too?" he asked hoarsely.
And Ginny understood then. If George could share his pain at Fred's loss with other people, they might stop encouraging him to "get over it" and stop fussing that he'd named his son Fred. She nodded.
Luna stood up looking as though weariness had been brushed away from her features. She laid her hand on George's arm. "I will help you," she said, more directly than she usually addressed anyone but Ginny and her father. "It is wrong for them to keep ignoring words you speak. It is like them ignoring the thestral when she tried to tell them where the wound was."
George kissed Luna's hand with a fervency that would have made Ginny jealous if she didn't know better. "Thank you," he breathed, and then stepped out of the way so that Angelina could hug Luna.
In the end, everyone left, and it was the two of them and the thestrals and unicorns in the clearing. One of the unicorns came forwards to place her horn gently on Ginny's shoulder before fleeting back and reentering the forest again. They still wouldn't let anyone but Luna and children touch them for a long period of time.
"I think that went well," Luna said. "Maybe a little bit more water would have helped."
Ginny kissed her cheek and led her towards the Apparition point. "It went perfectly. And you're going to be famous, and you're going to deserve it."
"Oh, dear. Do you think I could persuade Harry to lend me his Fame-Eaters? I don't want to go outside and have people mob me…"
Ginny laughed and Disapparated, her wife in her arms.
The End.