Neville stared out into the stars that night. He knew that he shouldn't have been up this late, especially with the Carrows around the castle, searching for children to hurt, but the night sky was always calming to him. He felt as long as he could keep contact with one of those stars, someone he loved would always be with him.
As he looked harder at the sky, he thought that he saw a face in the stars. The stars that stood for eyes were shinning bright, and he had a thought flash through his mind. He gently pushed it away. There was no way possible that he could see her face in the stars, but as he turned his attention to the moon, he saw that that too had a beautiful blonde's face shinning back at him. Again, he tried to push away the thoughts of it being her, but nothing worked. The craters of the moon now shone to him in a way that only her beautiful blue eyes ever had. He just could not believe that he was seeing her in the moon.
Neville shook his head again and turned back to his bed. He needed to get some sleep before their meeting with the D.A. the next day. Ginny was intent on the new children learning as much from the older ones as possible, so that they too could stand against the Carrows.
As he leaned into his pillow, thoughts of a beautiful blonde floated all over his dreams...
Luna leaned against the windowsill in her Ravenclaw dorm. She knew it was dangerous to be up and about this late, but she couldn't help it. She couldn't sleep knowing that there was that much danger in one place in the world.
She looked up at the stars. In them, she saw faces; the faces of her friends. Ginny, Harry, Hermione, and Ron were all there, but their faces were smaller in comparison to one that she could not quite make out. She knew that she recognized the face, but it was a stronger face than one that she had spent a lot of time with. He looked more grown up, but she could still tell it was him.
Her eyes drifted to the moon. She had always been fascinated with it; it was something different that even in the magic world, they could not explain. It was a mystery to her, but even more a mystery was the fact that the face she saw in the moon was his. His eyes bore right into her soul. The brown eyes that she knew so well; the eyes she loved.
Luna lost herself in the moon. In his eyes, she lost herself. When she did snap out of it, she found herself sitting now on the sill, trying to touch them. Slowly, she lowered herself from the sill onto the floor, sitting in the light that was coming through the window. As she sat there, she fell into a deep sleep. Dreaming about him, a certain someone with those eyes.
The next night, all of the students slipped one by one into the Room of Requirement. There were close to fifty of them now in there, and truly, the Carrows did not really care where the children were in the castle, as long as they were still there, and not moving all about.
All of the students were gathered, close together, trying to heal the others bruises and cuts, caused by standing against their new management. Neville stood at the front; Ginny to his left, and Luna to his right. While there were others from his year still at school, he was the leader. He wasn't really sure if it was simply because he was the other possibility that the Prophecy was about, or if it was just because he was willing to take Harry's place. None the less, he was going to keep these students safe.
"Okay... Um... Will everyone please listen to me for a minute?"
All attention was turned to Neville. All eyes were on him, and for a minute, he forgot what he was supposed to be saying. "Um. Well, I guess we all know why we are here... Today, we are going to work more on disarming, and, well, while most of us can do it now, there are still a few that need help, and Harry always told me that learning to disarm is one of the most important things that a wizard needs to know when going into combat... So... let's get to it, then!"
As Neville was speaking, the room transformed around them to fit what Neville was describing. There were several different stations set up. The easy, non-moving stations for the beginners or the ones who were having a fair bit of trouble, moving all the way up the stages until it came to one that would move and dodge, shoot spells, and disappear like a real Death Eater for those who were either too arrogant to know they weren't that good, or the ones that really were that good.
Neville watched as they all spread out like normal. All of them went to the stage that they thought they were at, and in a few minutes, the groups changed, depending on what stage they were really on. Neville did not watch the students long, because he was more drawn to the window that had suddenly appeared in the Room of Requirement. He knew that he was sub-concisely been thinking about the face he had seen in the moon, but he didn't know that would cause a window to form in the wall.
He started to walk over to it, when he saw the face. She wasn't just in the moon, the stars, or his head, she was really there. Right in front of him.
Luna had known that she had loved Neville for a while, but she wasn't quite sure how to go about this, seeing as she had only really found out that she had friends a few years back. As she stood looking out the window that had formed, she thought about him. Was he the one who had conjured the window, or had she? Both of them were obviously taken by the moon's beauty, but she had no idea just what he was seeing at that point in time.
"Do you love the moon, too?" she asked as she walked over to him. Neither of them looked at each other, but Neville choked out a "yeah".
"It always fascinates me how no one really knows why it is there. People can guess, but no one really know why. Don't you find it curious?"
"A bit..."
They stood there in silence, neither talking, but both knowing the other was seeing them in the face of the moon.
"Neville... I..." Luna started to say, turning toward him as she said it. Unfortunately, she was cut off by a figure coming down the picture tunnel towards them.
"Hold that thought, Luna. I will talk about this later with you, I promise, but now, Aberforth needs us, so I have to go. I promise, Luna!" he cried as he ran through the tunnel to the Hog's Head.
Little did Luna know that later, would mean during the worst war that either of them could imagine, and that when he said that Aberforth was in trouble, he didn't just mean the trouble of getting his goat caught by the Snatchers. He meant trouble that would turn both of their lives for the worst, before the light could be shed.
The battle seemed to rage on for hours. Everyone fighting their hardest for what they wanted, and what they knew needed to have happen. Everyone fought for their lives, but not just for that. There was fighting for family, for friends, but for most of all, there was fighting for love. After hours of hard fighting, Voldemort made the announcement that he would give them an hour to grieve their dead before he would come and attack for the death if Harry didn't turn himself in.
There were those who thought he should have gone in the first place, but by this time, everyone was going to fight to keep him alive, no matter what happened.
They had both fought gallantly, and neither could be more proud of the other. During the battle, Neville had pulled Luna aside and told her how he really felt. He had told her that he loved her, and that he was pretty sure that he had always loved her.
They sat together in each other's protective embraces as they watched everyone cry now that the battle was officially over. They had both shed tears for Fred, Remus, Tonks, Colin, and everyone else who had died, but now was a time for them just to be with the other.
After a time, Neville and Luna rose from where they were sitting, and went to the Ravenclaw Common Room. They sat on the bench by the window and looked out at the moon.
"You know, Luna, it was by looking at that moon that I realized that I loved you, and it was by knowing the moon was there above me tonight that kept me strong. Knowing that moon was above me, was like having you watch over me. I guess you could say that I fell in love with you by the moon. It does sound a bit mental, huh?" Neville asked with a slight chuckle. His arm protectively around her, rubbing her arm.
"That does not sound mental at all. That sounds like someone who is in love."
