Disclaimer: I own nothing.
A/N: Yet another challenge one-shot! Random moments involving Luna and snow, for the Weather Challenge.
She loves snow, loves seeing the world covered in glittering whiteness, loves being outside when it's freezing and there's no one else around. People who notice this for the first time just think she's being the crazy girl she's been for several years, but it started so long before that. It's just part of who she is.
Her first memory, her strongest memory of her mother involves snow. She was small, around three or four, when her mother taught her to make snow angels. Then the sweetness of the memory is ruined, as those dreadful boys from near the village, the red-haired twins, happen across her house and mistake her bright blue coat for a snowball target. That is her first memory, period, and she dislikes the ending.
Fast-forward a few years later – she's seven now, already crazy in a way that only she can be. She's already alone, but not usually lonely. It's a few weeks after Christmas, and half a foot of snow covers the ground. Naturally, she is quite happy about it. It's still snowing, and she goes out and dances in it, reveling in the cold whiteness.
Seven more years pass. She grows and begins to resemble a willow tree – reasonably tall, with pale hair and haunting blue-grey eyes. She's fourteen now, so unsure of nearly everything, but she knows there are people who care about her, that she belongs where they are. She's not alone this time; her friends are near her, having a snowball fight. Though they know that she's watching and doesn't want to get hit, one of them misses and throws a snowball at her face. She acts like nothing's happened, the way she usually does, and makes a comment about the boy's bad aim. Inside, though, she's fairly angry that, out of everyone, the one who accidentally hit her was the one she rather liked.
Over the next four years, everything in her world changes. She nearly dies several times, she becomes more open and more alone at the same time, and she finds herself, for lack of a better opportunity, getting a job at the Prophet, even though she hates that newspaper. She isn't the girl people always said she was – she's just not sure who she IS.
It's New Year's Eve, and she's at a party and wishing so badly that she could leave. There are lots of people she knows, but everyone else is paired off and she isn't. Out of desperation, she slips out the front door and debates whether or not she could leave. And it starts to snow. The cold slices through her sweater and jeans – of course she wasn't wearing proper party clothing – but she stays put, a human statue reliving the best and worst things that had ever happened to her.
"Are you okay?" She feels a hand on her shoulder, turns around, and sees the boy she has loved for several years, the one responsible for the snowball incident. She hadn't realized that he was there.
"Fine," she replies, tongue-tied for the first time in a long time. "I didn't know you were here."
"I was about to leave," he says. "What are you doing out here alone?" He's curious, and she knows that he doesn't want anything to happen to her, even though there are few places safer than the one where they stand.
"Debating whether or not I should stay," she says, her voice barely more than a whisper. "I really don't see why I'm here; I'm not paired off and I hate parties."
He looks at her carefully and starts to worry. She looks paler, more fragile than she usually does, as though the cold has affected her. Not knowing what else he could do, as she clearly doesn't want to re-enter the party, he pulls her close to him, holds her safely.
She has now got a new memory, a good one involving two of her favorite things – snow, and HIM.