A/N: For Twelve Days of Christmas Style Challenge.
Pairing: Severus/Hermione [my OTP]
"You know," Luna tells you conversationally, as you walk along the edge of the Forbidden Forest with her. You with a book clasped loosely in one hand, her braiding periwinkle flowers together in the most complicated coronet you have ever seen. "Professor Snape isn't half bad-looking."
Your heart thumps in your chest, and you can't help but to stop, whirling her around with shaky hands. You wince as flower petals patter to the ground in a pale blue rain, but she doesn't seem to notice, only looks at you with those placid grey eyes and blinks.
"What, Hermione?" Luna questions, but you can't answer her. Your cheeks colour scarlet and you mutter something under your breath about mishearing. But you know you didn't. You wonder what she knows. Can she possibly know? How can she? No one knows that you've got a crush the size of the giant squid on your Potions professor, do they?
Luna picks up the flowers you've made her drop, resumes her braiding, as she tactfully changes the subject, meandering on about a wandering erumpent and how she is certain it is plagued with blibbering humdingers. You haven't the faintest what she's going on about, but you pretend to listen anyway, nodding dutifully in all the right places. Your boots crunch through the leaves as you wonder yet again where Luna's shoes have wandered off to this time. She claims that nargles steal them, but you're certain that you've seen her Housemates throw them up over a rafter. When you tried to hex them, Luna told you it wasn't their fault, they couldn't help being infested by wrackspurts.
It drives you mad, but it's just Luna, so you try to ignore it, try to remember that starting a Save Luna campaign will not go over well at Hogwarts. Nor will begging Professor Snape to skim your knickers down to your ankles and go to town on you, you remind your burning cheeks and the glaze in your eyes. You've admired him from afar since third year, dismally aware that even were you ages older, he would never look twice at you. The bushy-haired swot, Gryffindor know-it-all, Potter's friend, and all-around thorn in his side. You dream of kissing him, dream of having long chats that are more properly called arguments about this Potions-making technique or that. Whisper to yourself what it would feel like to be Mrs. Hermione Snape. But a whisper of a dream is all it is and all it ever will be, and dwelling on it is foolhardier than believing a Nargle really is nesting in the mistletoe at Christmas-time.
"He looks at you, too," Luna remarks airily when your walk is over, and you have arrived back at the front steps. You stare at her in shock as she skips up them. "Well? Aren't you coming?" she asks, and you follow after her in a daze. It's Luna being Luna, of course, that's all it is, all it must be, but suddenly, you start to think that perhaps, when school is over next year, it might be a worthwhile endeavour to slip down to Professor Snape's office. Just for a moment.