Title: Mutual Mysteries
Disclaimer: If you think I actually own any of the HP characters, you probably need to do some serious re-thinking. All of the characters belong to JKR, I'm just letting my fancies run wild here.
Summary: Despite all they've been through together, Neville and Luna don't understand each other. Mild Neville/Luna ship, though I tend to see it as gen.
Neville didn't quite know how to deal with Luna. In some ways, they were closely linked. Both outcasts from the general run of the others in their years. Both friends of Harry. Both members of the DA. They had both been there at the showdown in the Ministry. They had both answered the call on the night when Dumbledore was murdered. In the final showdown, they'd stood together against the Death Eaters, supporting each other and compensating for each other's weaknesses without blinking. And they both had tragedy in their past. Her mother, his parents.
In some ways, he guessed, an outsider might think that they would be bonded closely, that they'd understand each other more intuitively than anyone else around would. Instead, he felt more distance between them than he did between himself and any of the others. The person who seemed to come the closest to understanding Luna was Harry, and that only partially.
And yet, in the rounds of ceremonial honors and congratulations, in the banquets and award ceremonies which were held to, "Honor the heroes of the fight against the Dark Lord," he and Luna were constantly paired. On some level it made sense, Ron and Hermione were a couple, as were Harry and Ginny. He and Luna were the odd ones out again.
If nothing else, it had made for interesting dinner conversations, as Luna required no prompting to go off on a long tangent about the latest rumor about any mythological creature or insane theory. It had also proved useful in scaring off any number of pompous Ministry officials, trying to worm their way into Harry's good graces by making nice with some of his friends.
But in some ways Luna Lovegood was as much of an alien presence to him as she had been his fifth year at Hogwarts, and he doubted that would ever change.
Luna was not an idiot or oblivious, much though others around her might wrongly assume so. She knew that her peers considered her to be flighty, or odd, or just obsessed with being different. And perhaps there was something to the popular opinion. It was just that the ordinary subjects had been explored so thoroughly, they bored her. She wanted to discover new things, not endlessly rehash old information.
Neville Longbottom fascinated her. She couldn't explain it logically, but she'd found something intensely interesting in him since she'd met him when she was fourteen, even when she'd had a crush on Harry. Perhaps it was simply the fact that in his own way, he was as isolated from his peers as she was from her own. Perhaps it was because she thought that there was a part of him that was hidden from the rest of the world, and she never had been able to resist a mystery. Whatever the cause, she'd been studying him for years, trying to understand how all the pieces of the puzzle fit together.
She'd seen him grow over the years, lose the insecurity that had been so much a part of him as a teenager. He knew now that he was strong and capable, and that he had been indispensable in the last battle. That confidence had changed him, and perhaps she was the only person who wasn't surprised at the man he'd become.
But even though none of them had expected the man he now was, the rest of the world still viewed Neville as an open book, something that was easy to understand and dismiss. And even though she'd anticipated his growth, Luna couldn't begin to imagine all that he was now, or all that he would become in the future.
He was as much of a mystery to her now as he was when she'd first met him on the train to Hogwarts, and if she studied him for the rest of her life, she thought he always would have dimensions beyond her understanding.
He still fascinated her.