Written for my 20 Fandoms challenge- hope you enjoy it!
They say the war is outside their walls, but it doesn't feel like it. Hogwarts isn't safe, not for anyone, and Ginny Weasley is scared. Fear, her brother once told her (it didn't matter which one, for any of them could have said it, except perhaps Percy, although you never knew), is a requirement for bravery.
That doesn't make her like it any more. The fear is a hard pit in her stomach that expands any time she passes the Carrows, any time news from the outside makes it in, constantly there and flooding her body, even as she and Neville and Luna keep the fighting going. Her hands tremble when she holds her wand sometimes. No one says anything because her spells hold true, but she knows they notice. The fear threatens to overwhelm her no matter what she does, for she knows Voldemort is out there hunting those she cares about.
The only time it goes away is when she's with Luna.
At first it is hard; their Houses separate them, and Ginny wishes for the first time in six years that she were a Ravenclaw. She and Luna talk in the library, in empty corridors, cringing when they hear footsteps and running when they get too close. They communicate wordlessly during DA meetings, too many people present to ever let them say what they want to each other. They grow close in dark times- what had Albus Dumbledore (so much more than a headmaster, but she had learned that too late to really appreciate that) said about it when Ginny was young and dementors had brought back memories only barely pushed under the surface? "Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light."
The world is dark, Hogwarts is dim, the shadows flickering large and menacing, the halls crawling with the cronies of the Dark Lord, but Luna is light. She is the reason Ginny can keep going, can keep the fear in her body contained, she is the candles flickering so bravely in the pit of hell their lives have become. If she said these words out loud (she has given up on journals) she would stop halfway through in embarrassment, too sheepish to finish what she's saying.
But the Room knows what its visitors need, and it knew when the fear crawling inside of Ginny was too much and opened up a separate room, one where the comforter feels like the one in her bed at home and the fake windows have a fake breeze blowing through them. She cries the first time she lays in that bed, and soon Luna joins her.
At first they sit and study for classes they can't bring themselves to care about, back to back, fingers shaking as they dip their quills in ink they keep spilling. What point is there in studying when their friends could be dead, their world on the brink of destruction? What future can the world possibly hold?
When the thoughts clamor too loudly to even pretend to concentrate on schoolwork, Ginny lifts her head and stares at her Holyhead Harpies poster, because somehow Quidditch is still going on this year, and the Harpies have a good chance at making the semi-finals.
And when that doesn't work she taps Luna on the shoulder and she cries, and Luna holds her, because she is Ginny Weasley and she has an army of teenagers and schoolchildren (oh, some of them are so young, and what if some of them get hurt or worse because of them?) to lead. Luna holds her and tells her that Ron is okay, wherever he is he's okay, Harry's okay, and so is Hermione, the kids whisper of the Golden Trio, that so and so's cousin swears she saw them around London just week, or that they were camping near Stoke-on-Kent only a few days back.
They're okay, Luna whispers, and she says it over and over until Ginny believes her. Luna wipes away the tears trickling down her freckled cheeks and smooths back her hair and speaks the truth, only the truth, in her ears. She speaks no promises, no false platitudes, no silly things from her father's paper, only things that Voldemort cannot take from them.
The kissing is almost an afterthought, but it makes Ginny smile, so they keep doing it.
"This can't last forever," says Luna before they leave the little bedroom. She says it every time, and she believes Luna. Luna doesn't lie, especially not to her. Still, she doesn't know whether Luna means the war or them. Perhaps she means both.
By the time Christmas break comes around, Ginny knows the war is inside the walls if it is anywhere. She can see it on the faces of her fellow students, in the drawn and shuttered gazes of the teachers she trusts the most. No one has given up, but the strain is showing. They are suffering, from the youngest student to the oldest staff member. Luna tells her that they can do this, that Harry and the others will come through. This is hard at home, where she must face Ron, Ron who left them, Ron who was with the Boy Who Lived and didn't believe in him. She still tries to believe Luna. After all, Ron regrets what he has done, and if she knows her brother it won't be long before he rejoins them.
She is happier when she believes Luna, and she doesn't know it, but Luna is happier when Ginny is there to hold her hand.
When Christmas break ends, Luna never comes back. She is too tired to even cry (this is untrue; she cries so much and so long, because how could Luna go too?). The Room of Requirement no longer gives Ginny her little room. She has no one to share it with. She would have to keep going on her own. Fear, as her brother Fred had once said, is a requirement for bravery.
Feedback is appreciated; thank you for reading!