World
By
Child of Evilness and Darkness
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Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. Is that good enough for you? Huh? Huh? Alrighty, kids, you can ignore the crazy lady now…
A/N: I started this a few months ago, but just took the initiative to finish it today. It's not like I expected it to be when I started it, but oh well, it's still okay. I think…
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She's running through the grass, wildly, freely, all alone. She's happy and she's sad and she's living and she's dying and she's laughing and she's crying inside, all at the same time…
And even though it amazes her how much the simple act of running through the Hogwarts grounds heals her soul, it tears her up, too, to know the extent of what it can't fix.
He watches her sometimes. He's considered running with her, but it just wouldn't be him.
Him.
Who is he, anyway? He's the shy boy with the insane parents. He's good for one thing: herbology. But that isn't really him, is it? Surely there had to be more inside his head.
She knows who she is. Or at least, she thinks she does.
She's Luna Celeste Lovegood, odd-girl extraordinaire. Her mother died, but she's okay. She's living, she's breathing, she's running…
…But she's alone. Or, at least, she thinks she is. Souls who find her more than "Looney" are rare, so she keeps the girl behind the blond hair and radish earrings secret.
'It's just me,' she often thinks. 'Me, myself, and I. Alone' And she fools herself into believing it.
But, the fact remains that he's watching her, hovering on the edge of the world she always appears so confident in. Waiting to be invited in, it seems.
But she would never invite him in. Because it's just her. Just her alone in her little corner of the world. Because no one would understand.
Yes, that's it. No one would understand.
But he does understand. It took a while for him to realize it, but he does, and now he knows he does.
So all of a sudden, he's running with her. And it's not just her anymore—it's just them.
Just two people, who, maybe, belong together. Forever. But nothing is forever, as they both know from painful experiences.
But now isn't forever, now is now. Now they can live together and die together, and be happy and be sad together. They can laugh together, they can cry together…
Because sometimes it's nice to be caught up in now. Especially when you have what they have to face. To overcome.
And so they run. And they live and they die and they laugh and they cry and they're happy and they're sad.
But then they stumble.
And they collapse on the ground, and the world comes rushing back to them. Not their world. Their world was a fleeting figment of their imaginations, because no two people had their own world, everyone shared a world. A time. An infinite stretch of everything, and nothing, and space.
And they lie on the grass. And they stare at the sky. It's about to rain, but they make no effort to move. And his hand, covered in warm earth from the plants he's been attending, finds her cool, pale one.
And it's just her, and it's just him.
Together.
And the raindrops begin to fall. Forgetting their falter, she pulls him back up.
And, in the calm, cool, healing rain, they dance. He doesn't know what she's doing, and neither does she, but they know that it's now again, even if only for a few precious moments more.
Until the lightning strikes and the thunder booms and they are forced to flee from their sweet, yet precarious reverie into a place where they both are safe, yet scorned, but they can face the ignorance again, knowing that each has a ray of hope in the other, the hope that they would be together again.
And maybe their world really does exist, or maybe not, but either way, love is alive where no one would have expected:
In them. Just... them.
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A/N: Yay! Luna/Neville-ness! Well that's all for now. Oh, yes, reviews are still greatly appreciated. As if you didn't know.
-Child