I was reading through past fanfiction and came across this one, which was buried in the middle of a collection of stories written for the QLFC. I decided that this needed more love, and so it will now be its own oneshot.
Teacups and Choices
He should have been happy.
After all, the war had ended with his side victorious, he had a stable job and was looking to be promoted soon, his magical abilities had taken a boost, and he was with his wonderful soul-bonded, soon to be officially married.
So why did he always feel like something was missing?
It had taken a surprisingly short time to get over the war. Perhaps it was to be expected. He had never had much PTSD, not even in 5th year after Cedric died, or 6th year after Sirius. And of course, his soul bonded had helped him along, just like Ron and Hermione had had each other.
He still had nightmares, of course, ones that woke him up at night, leaving him breathing faster, sweat crawling over his body, his blankets damp, but nothing like when he had been a horcrux. And after discovering his soul bond with Draco Malfoy, he had rarely slept alone, which helped the nightmares.
Discovering that he was soul bonded to Draco Malfoy had certainly been a surprise. But they exhibited all the signs - they'd had a schoolboy enmity that had faded as they grew up, they had mastered each other's wands, they had saved each other's lives, they were constantly thinking about their soul bonded, they were opposites in more than ten different ways, they fit in the other's arms, and most importantly, soon after they had kissed (it had been a drunken accident the night after the war had ended) their magical cores had expanded, especially Harry's.
Ginny had been disappointed, of course, but she couldn't deny the soul bond. Harry thought about her, every now and then. She had joined the Holyhead Harpies soon after the discovery but wrote regularly to Hermione. Hermione, naturally, had thought the soul bond was nonsense even after books confirmed it. But Ron had reminded her that prophecies and therefore Fate existed, and grudgingly she had accepted their partnership.
And Draco's mother had taken to Harry like, well, the mother she was. Harry had discovered that she was a very interesting conversation partner, though when she had started talking to Hermione (which had effectively changed her opinion on Muggleborns) he hadn't been able to understand a word.
Harry and Draco, for their part, had been blissfully happy, though a voice in Harry's head whispered that that due to the end of the war and not their relationship. Harry was accustomed to ignoring it. He was happy, his life was perfect, and he loved Draco.
None of this, of course, explained why he was currently on the doorstep of Luna's unusual house, seeking her odd perspective and un-straightforward but often practical advice.
Luna's house looked completely ordinary at first glance, expect for the fact that it was painted silver and upside down, the tip buried in the ground, though a chimney did stick out on the top and there was a slanted door in the roof-that-was-the-first-floor. A white fence surrounded it, protecting her garden of diringle plums or whatever she grew. Pushing open the gate, there was a neat if blue path leading to her blue-and-silver splashed door. A bronze statue of an eagle, its wings outstretched, beak open wide, was in the fountain, water spurting out of its mouth to splash into the pool. Bird feed crumbs were all around it. The house had eight round windows, two on each side, painted the colors of each house. Planters stuck out from all of them, keeping to the color scheme. On the top of the house was a garden of violets. It was beautiful, peaceful, and so completely Luna that Harry immediately relaxed as he pulled the string that rang a bell.
Footsteps sounded, pattering down, and then the slanted door swung inwards to reveal Luna.
Luna's eyes lit up when she saw Harry, making him feel immediately welcome and ashamed to not have come earlier. Luna had always had that singular ability to make people feel warm and uncomfortable at the same time. "Come in!"
Harry ducked to enter the slanted door and walked in, stopping short when he realized he was standing on a platform. Luna leapt nimbly down onto a blue rail jutting out in the sharp part of the roof and ran to the middle. Then she turned around and waved at Harry.
"Coming?"
The first time Harry had visited Luna in her house, he'd plummeted down onto the rail and lost his balance, falling into a box with his legs splayed out. Luna had laughed and shown him how to do it properly before letting him in. Now, he took a cautious step to the edge, before hopping off and landing with a thud, one foot in front of the other, his knees bent. He would never be able to do it as well as Luna.
Balancing precariously, Harry followed Luna as she led him across the railing to a pair of ropes. The slanted area was filled with boxes and brooms and mats and a few welcome signs hanging neatly, but Harry had never found out what was in them. They reached the ropes. There were two, hooked onto the floor and disappearing up a hole just wide enough for a person. One of them was knotted, while the other wasn't. There was another hole next to both of them with a bouncy mattress under it. Harry knew that Luna jumped down that hole to get out - he preferred carefully maneuvering down the rope.
At least he didn't need the knotted one like Hermione did. Luna, on the other hand, jumped twice on the mattress before springing up and disappearing into the hole. Harry shook his head. One day he would figure out how she did it. Until then, he was satisfied with the unknotted rope. It only took him a minute to climb the three or four meters up and then he grabbed the edges of the hole and pulled himself up.
Her floorboard was clay with a carpet on one side. She had no chairs, but cushions and beanbags embroidered with flowers were scattered around. The walls were painted pale blue and blended in perfectly with the windows. In cracks in the floorboard grew plants, twisted trees and flowers until half of her living room looked like a veritable garden. In the kitchen there was a side that was an actual garden growing in a huge pot with tomatoes on this side and cucumbers on that, shaded or lit appropriately with a spell. The rest of the kitchen was so clean Luna ate on the floor when she felt like it, though there was a table and padded chairs in this room.
Luna was already at the stove when Harry entered the kitchen. She was humming to herself and watching quaint teapot with vines on its side that was whistling in the stove. When she saw Harry come in she turned off the fire and took the teapot gently over to Harry, pouring the dark liquid into two cups. Harry sat down as steam rose from the teacups.
"So, what's wrong?" Luna asked as she sat down across from him, taking her own cup.
As usual, Harry was struck by Luna's perceptiveness. "How did you know that something was wrong?" He wasn't so bad at Occlumency that he wouldn't have at least known about a mind invasion.
"There are Nargles over your head," Luna explained.
Harry gave her a look.
"And besides, you only visit me alone when you need advice or comfort," Luna said with a smile, making Harry wince guiltily.
"Sorry," he muttered.
"No, I'm always glad to help others get rid of Nargles," Luna said. "I'm thinking of founding a society - WAN, or Wizards Against Nargles. Do you think Hermione would help me?"
Harry, in the middle of taking a sip, choked. Instead of pounding him on the back like most people would, Luna serenely lifted her wand and gave a half-twist. Instantly, Harry felt his throat clear and even the burning fade.
"Thanks," Harry said, taking another sip. He'd acquired a taste for Gurdyroots after Luna had explained that it was better with sugar. She'd been right. He considered her question. "Nah, I think Hermione would be more concerned with equality issues."
Luna nodded approvingly. "I think you're right." Harry's shoulders relaxed at the slight praise and Harry realized how tense he'd been lately. "Now, why are there Nargles around you?" Her eyes narrowed and she suddenly swatted something near Harry, making him flinch back reflexively. War and Auror training had made him paranoid.
"Don't do that!"
Luna just smiled at him.
Harry attempted to hold her gaze, except warnings instantly began filling his mind. She could be reading your mind, a voice that sounded very annoyingly like a combination of Mad-Eye and his Auror trainer said. Harry brushed it off. Luna didn't need Legilimency to read his mind.
"It's just - Draco - and the war - and rebuilding - and - and - I just don't understand why I'm not happy!" Harry burst out.
"I'm not the Umbugular Slashkilter," Luna reminded Harry. He wasn't sure what that was, but it was a fairly obvious prompt for him to start from the beginning.
And Harry did. He talked for 15 minutes straight, the words feeling oh so good as they tumbled out of his mouth. Luna was an excellent listener, nodding and looking sober at the right moments.
"- and I just don't understand! I'm soul-bonded to Draco, so why aren't I happy, why do I keep thinking about Ginny?"
Harry stopped short suddenly. "Did you put something in my drink?"
"Just Gurdyroots and sugar," Luna said, not that Harry felt reassured. For all he knew, Gurdyroots were compulsive substances. "Why are you so scared about caring about Ginny? You kissed her. And she really likes you still, you know, she just won't tell you because she's scared. Personally, I think she has Nargles as well."
Heat flared in Harry's cheeks, tingeing them with red from shame and frustration. "Well…yeah…but I'm soul-bonded to Draco, not Ginny. I don't understand, it doesn't make sense!"
Luna tsked, or at least did the Luna-version of it. "Why does it have to make sense?"
"Of course it has to make sense!"
"Nobody knows how Penelines fly through walls - they don't even have wings - but that doesn't stop them from doing it."
"Pene - what? Never mind." This was Luna, after all.
"What does Hermione think?" Luna asked, to Harry's surprise.
"Well, she doesn't believe in soul-bonds, of course, but that's ridiculous, no offense to her. Everyone says they exist. I love Hermione and all, but sometimes she's so stubborn, even when everyone around her says otherwise."
"Everyone isn't always right," Luna said softly. "Everyone thinks that Mandrakes can't talk, but when muffled in soil, it's possible to understand their screaming. Everybody said that you were a raving lunatic, but you weren't." Luna smiled. "That's why I like being a nobody."
Harry took a moment to process her words before being hit with flabbergasted-ness. "You don't believe in soul-bonds."
"No," Luna said as got up and left.
Harry sat there, mouth agape, not even calling her back, as he tried to figure this out. First Hermione, and now Luna, who believed in the most impossible things. What if - he gulped, but then charged bravely forwards, What if soul-bonds really didn't exist?
Then why did I save Draco? One voice in Harry's head reasoned.
Basic human decency, another retorted. Unless you were under Gabrielle's thrall when you saved her? And in love with Cedric when -
Stop!
The voice obliged, thankfully.
What about the magical expansion, though?
The voice seemed to do a mind shrug. Ask Hermione, I bet she could figure it out.
But we are soul-bonded, we have to be! Our souls are obviously linked! Draco commented on my fainting and always knows when dementors were near.
Who doesn't know when dementors were near you?
Harry's soul-bond supporting voice began another question, but at that moment Luna walked back in happily, holding a battered copy of the Quibbler. Its front page was half torn off, the inside ones bent and dog-eared, but it was in reading condition.
"I found it!" Luna said as if Harry knew what she had been looking for. She flipped open the Quibbler to an article with the headline "The Truth About Power".
Harry read on. At first he did it just to satisfy Luna, who was looking at him with eager eyes, but then he was truly fascinated. Contrary to popular belief (the Quibbler never had been mainstream), the article claimed, nobody was magically more powerful than anyone else. It was all just a matter of communication to the wand, control, and physical health. Like most of the Quibbler's articles, this one oscillated between nonsensical and plausible. He tapped it with his wand and it duplicated.
"What do you think I should do about Draco, then?"
"Ignoring the soul-bond, do you love him?" Luna said simply.
"Yes. No. I don't know!"
"You should figure that out, first," Luna pointed out.
"But I have to be soul-bonded to him!" Harry said, his voice rising. "How can I not be? All those signs - what about my new abilities to do magic?"
Luna gave him a mildly exasperated look and reached up to pull a Nargle out of his hair. "When you lost your connection to Riddle, you stopped having to fight him all the time."
Harry gaped at her. "That makes sense. And Draco?"
"The war ended."
"So I'm not soul-bonded to Draco," Harry said slowly, trying to pick some order out of this chaos.
"That's not what I said," Luna contradicted.
"What?"
"I don't believe in soul-bonds, but others do. You shouldn't change your opinion so much just based on what people say. But if you don't love Draco, then you don't love Draco. A soul-bond shouldn't hold you back." She tilted her head sideways. "And if you do, it shouldn't be because of a soul-bond."
"Do you think I love him?" Harry asked in a whisper.
Luna twirled her blonde hair with a finger. "I don't know," she said, looking at him. "I couldn't love someone I nearly killed, hated, and suspected, but some people can."
"Ron and Hermione," Harry said drily.
"But I don't think your situation is like Ron and Hermione's. All good friends argue, and they've learned how to see the other person's side, though it took them long enough. You and Draco hated each other, and then one day you got drunk and kissed, and suddenly you had to be in love," Luna said in an uncharacteristically matter-of-fact way.
Put that way, Harry could suddenly see what she meant. His relationship with Draco had been so taken for granted. Neither of them had actually thought about the love aspect or the fact that they had hated each other for over 6 years- they had been soul-bonded and that had been enough. But there had always been that I'm-being-forced-to-love-you aspect to it that had been too much like the I-have-to-kill-Voldemort-because-of-the-stupid-Pro phecy that Harry had always fixated on until Dumbledore had explained to him the difference between being forced to do something and doing something because you want to, even if you're forced anyways.
"What should I do?" Harry asked.
Luna smiled at him. "I think you know," she said, taking another sip from her teacup and emptying it. Harry stared down into his own half-empty teacup, no longer steaming.
Or was it half-full? Harry eliminated the dilemma by draining the teacup, the drink still warm. There. No more half-full or half-empty questions that Hermione reveled in. Just an empty teacup, sitting there, a few drops of tea gracing the bottom.
First, Harry had a maybe-not-really soul-bonded to talk to. And after?
Maybe it was time to talk to Ginny again. Ginny, with her passion, with her fiery hair, with her temper, and her soft lips, her steadfast confidence and understanding.
This time when Harry left, he jumped down the hole like Luna and let the mattress catch him.