A one-shot for the 34 stories, 106 reviews challenge on the HPFC forum.
Round Nine: Harry/Luna.
Dedicated two ways: to echoing noise, who inspired me to choose this pairing, read this, reassured me that I hadn't killed Luna's spirit and besides is an awesome lil' being, and to Mistical Ninja, whom I thought about while writing this... for some reason. LOVE TO YOU BOTH.
"What do you think of light?"
There was a pause and he waited, silent, with bated breath.
"It's pretty and warm," came her voice in the darkness, sweet, delicate and precise, "it's needed. Without light, you waste away... you die. The Nargles love light," she pondered. "They even emit their own, at times."
"Really?" And he was grateful for the smile that slowly spread on his face. "How about darkness?"
"It's needed too," she said gravely. "It's rest. Balance. Safety and secrecy – it's the place where you can reunite with yourself, or hide if you want. But it's addictive, also, and it makes you feel like you don't need the others. Like you can own the world, in the privacy of your own mind."
He gave a tiny, slightly amazed laugh. "Fascinating," he breathed.
"You know what is really nice with you, Harry?" she said serenely. "I always know that you're not quite mocking me. That it's meaningful, and important, and not stupid. But at the same time, a bit funny. I love knowing," she mused, "feeling the balance."
He nodded, his throat suddenly tight.
Luna Lovegood was an oddity of nature, remarkable, disturbing and really, really pretty.
Pretty in a strange way, she was no Ginny and she was no Veela, her hair was always messy and her eyes just a bit too wide not to scare most people off, but she was... something real. Luna. In the post-war daze where everyone seemed ferociously adamant that they were alive and that they had won – only to crash down in grief when they just couldn't anymore – in this world of sharp edges and loud laughter and devastating pain that everybody wanted to hidehidehide, Luna was something off like she had always been, a breath of fresh air. Luna was unsettled and unsettling with an incredible sense of balance that made her so delicately illogical. Luna was a weirdo with crazy ideas and a timeless wisdom in her eyes that brought the still-excruciating memory of Dumbledore to the surface. He should have been appeased. He should have been happy. With Luna he didn't have to be anything but himself, himself with her, something simple, potentially beautiful.
She was pale like the moon, clear-clear eyes and pale-pale skin and fair hair and – rosy lips, so soft – and her smile had the arching, faraway grace of the moon, fuller and fuller as she exposed herself to him in all her candid purity, until her lips were at his and the moon was fogged into nighttime, in a secret intimacy of her breaths meeting his and the mystery of her, offered, yet elusive. She had been Loony Luna, unknown and bizarre, she had been a friend and now, in-between the frantic beating of his heart and the twisted mess of his thoughts, she became everything.
It wasn't something complicated. It wasn't edgy and tense and full of expectations and he didn't have to dance around her feelings and his, it just wasn't like that. She was light and darkness, nourishing and safe for his messed-up soul to rest with. She didn't ask of him what he couldn't give, she just took what he was and it made her content. They felt right together. Intimately, deeply right, something so real it hardly seemed possible.
(maybe it was a dream)
Everything was quiet.
No whisper around him, no danger, no anguish. Peace was reigning here and then, his wide eyes searching the darkness frantically, trying to take it in, to find an anchor for his whirling, tormented mind. He'd been dreaming again.
Luna stirred by his side, a cool hand finding his thigh and resting there. Sporadically she squeezed his skin, a calm, surely-paced rhythm, until he found his heartbeat echoing her moves and thus slowing down. He breathed in, filled his lungs with warm air, with the soft scent of her that clung to their sheets, and dared, again, to shut his eyes. Her hand moved north, caressed his stomach lightly, the touch almost a mother's in its ever-so-soothing tenderness. She wasn't pitying him, wasn't worrying for him. Luna knew the essence of nightmares and the shadows of grief and anger, and in the same breath, the same heartbeat she felt his torment brushing against her, took it in and provided relief in response, as the moon provides gentle light to trace the darkness that shapes her into what she is. Luna had her own dreams, her own struggles, her own screams in the dead of night, he'd heard her call for her father, for Mr Ollivander, wailing, crying. Yet she felt his heartache nearly as clearly and keenly as her own, and with an eerie, natural grace, reached out.
She made everything fall into place, sharp and harsh or cool and gentle. She made it right – somehow.
It had been three months.
Harry paced the room fiercely, anxiety gnawing at his chest, tearing at his lungs, drowning every other thought. Three months since he had lost all sense of direction, since the fallen had given their lives – for him. Three months already and the wounds felt raw, perhaps because he could not bring himself to let them heal in peace. Three months and he wondered how he would be able to live through a true anniversary. People celebrating, mourning, moving on. Time passing. He realized he'd never really known nor acknowledged Halloween as the day of his parents' death, and something twisted in his stomach. Perhaps he would forget. He was terrified to.
"When did your mother die, Luna?" he called thoughtlessly, glancing up at her.
She looked up from the piece of parchment she'd been toying with, with a serene smile that unsettled him. "It was in the summer," she said. "July. It was very hot. It was the season of peaches and lilies. There was a nice scent floating all over the house."
She had a faraway look on her face, but then she smiled again, acknowledging him.
"I don't really know the date," she added. "But I recall what she was wearing. A coral pink sundress. She had a flower in her hair. My father and her, they'd been debating for a while and I wanted to go run outside..."
She trailed off.
"We'll never forget," she simply said.
He looked into her face, into her eyes and at her pink little mouth, and through the anger and uncertainty, he thought he was alive.
The notion always seemed troubling, sometimes painful, sometimes absurd. In this very moment, it felt like something to be grateful for.
Luna tapped her wand to the little piece of folded parchment, once. It flew out of her fingers, paper wings brushing his cheek as it passed before whirling above them, twirling as though alive. He followed it with his eyes.
His heartbeat quickened like a frightened bird's, wings flapping nervously against his lungs.
Luna smiled. His expression didn't mirror hers, but they both reached forward at the same time.
"What the..."
Harry remained dumbstruck at the sight in front of him. Luna was standing there, staring at him thoughtfully, a little bundle of blankets in her arms.
"Mrs Tonks needed someone to babysit," she chirped, dancing forward, "I thought it might be nice for the little prince to officially meet his godfather."
Immediately, Harry felt nearly nauseated with self-disgust. "I should have..." he started.
"Hush," Luna interrupted, "would you stop the dramatics? You should have, nothing. He's been all fine and merry. Mrs Andromeda might look a little bit too much like Bellatrix, but she's nothing the same to innocent sweethearts." She bounced the child on her arm. "Besides, babies can feel one's anxiety, you know?" she added conversationally.
"So you reckon I should keep away?"
"I reckon you're ready now to say hello to Mr Pretty-face here," she sang with a step forward.
He met her in the middle of the room and leaned against her shoulder to behold the little one in her arms. Teddy Lupin's tuft of hair was a vivid shade of purple today, but his curious little eyes were of Tonks' warm brown, widening comically as they took in Harry's face. He reached out a slow, somewhat wary hand, brushing against the baby's cheek. The child gurgled and his eyes turned green. Harry gasped and Luna giggled.
"That's right, he's saying hello," she said.
She leaned her head a little, blond hair tickling tiny Teddy's face, and he slowly turned blonde in response before pulling on a strand of hair. Harry was watching, silent.
"I've always wanted siblings," she told him randomly.
He swallowed. "I've never thought about it myself, to be honest..."
Harry looked down at the little boy with now jet black hair, green eyes and the blurred hint of something disturbing on his forehead. He smoothed down his hair and took a deep breath as Luna handed him the child. He felt warm and soft, accepting, and along with his tiny weight came a huge feeling of responsibility. Meeting Luna's eye, he thought he somehow felt ready to shoulder it – to embrace it.
She kissed his cheek, her breath fluttering against his skin, a caress made of heat and gentle trust.
"So you're going then?"
She rolled over and straddled him, eyes shining and hair tickling his face.
"I think you know that."
Slowly, he placed his hands on her waist, searching her gaze.
"You wouldn't need to. For the Quibbler... for your research..."
"Yes, I need to." She laughed. "Besides, should the Carrows be taking my last two years of school from me?"
Astonishingly, he found himself smiling before her mouth crashed against his. She tasted of strawberries, salt and timeless days in the late summer. They broke away gasping.
"Will you think of me?" he breathed.
"I will be quite busy with my studies," she said seriously. "But yes, certainly I will. I'll write."
"Good. I'll think of you all the time."
She laughed at him softly, nuzzling his neck.
"At the start, perhaps. But then you'll be busy building yourself again..."
"You did that already."
"No. And I wouldn't have. That is your job and no one else's. I just helped you find the will to do it."
She scrambled up on her elbows and looked around. They lay in a meadow close to her father's home. The world was breathing around them. She was smiling as she started speaking again:
"Perhaps when I come back you'll be Ginny's all over again. Perhaps you'll have fallen for someone else. Perhaps you'll need to stay alone for a while. Or perhaps I'll find someone else I want to be with. Or perhaps, simply, we'll reunite."
He traced a finger along her arm. "Luna... you make things sound so simple..."
"They are. They're natural."
"I would never... forget you."
"I know you won't."
"Then why do you say these things?"
"Because they're true and you need, you have to hear them." She was smiling still, she hadn't stopped. "You need to understand that you have to learn to be free, now. Harry, don't you see us as set in stone. Ever. We never have to be set in stone again, you never have to be meant to do things. Things and feelings will happen to us, we'll make our choices. All we have to do is be happy."
She touched his scar, then his cheek with a cool fingertip.
"You and I found each other at the end of a war. We'll be together if we want to, for other reasons and for no reason at all. I know it's not reassuring. But it's freedom. Freedom is a big thing. It's scary."
He kissed her hand.
"I don't know if I've ever been truly free."
"Well, now seems like a good time to start learning."