Hi, everyone! I'm mysterious-ticking-noise. I'm a hardcore Neville/Luna shipper, so here's my fic contribution! Don't judge harshly, it's my first.
1-Blast From the Past
It was late at night, or perhaps early in the morning. Luna Lovegood was fast asleep.
She slept in the house she had grown up in, the round black blemish on the hill by the woods, by Bottom Brook. Luna fished for Plimpies there. Very few people appreciated the Lovegood recipe for Plimpie soup.
After it had been blown up by an Entrumpet horn, the Lovegood house, pleasantly rounded and mind-bendingly colorful, had been rebuilt. Luna lived in it alone while her father was abroad searching for another imaginary creature, its existence begging to be proven.
She slept in a bed covered with a bright patchwork quilt. The headboard was curved slightly to fit the wall. Her hair, dirty blonde, was as long and as messy as it had been when she had been a schoolgirl at Hogwarts. Luna's famous, ever-surprised gray eyes were closed.
One arm hung over the side of her bed. On one finger was a diamond ring, glittering in the moonlight pouring through the open window, its shockingly yellow curtains flung open.
Luna was getting married in seven days. Six days, if night had given way to early morning. Her father had known her fiancée's grandfather, Newt Scamander. The grandson was Rolf, a handsome outdoorsy type, who Luna had met at a holiday party. Even though he didn't really show it, Luna's father Xenophilius had told her Newt had said Rolf was enamored of her strange beliefs and knack for honesty. They had gone out several times. Their dates were quiet, on his part. Rolf was a man of thought, not of action, while Luna was both. But he was a nice man, kind, and eloquent when he decided to utter words.
So Luna had said yes to him. All her friends, Hermione and Ron and Harry and Ginny, were all married with their own young children now. Her friends often invited her over to their homes while little James, Harry and Ginny's son, and adorable Rose, Ron and Hermione's daughter, played in the next room.
Luna was used to being an outcast, but seeing her friends happy, in love, and with growing families, made her feel very lonely, more so than when her sneakers were tied to ceilings or her possessions were hidden so long ago at Hogwarts.
She rolled over and murmured in her sleep. She was extremely nervous about her impending wedding. Everything was planned. There was nothing left to do but wait. Luna liked doing things. She liked being busy. That was one of the reasons why she'd so passionately declared existence of all things most thought imaginary.
She didn't really want to leave the house she'd grown up in. But Rolf, in one of his few long conversations with his bride-to-be, had been firm in that matter. He wanted their family to grow up in the Scamander manor with their famous menagerie; the whole family had been logical naturalists, after all.
Luna was still fast asleep, drifting between dream and nightmare. She was at her wedding, and she was ecstatic. A diadem like that of Rowena Ravenclaw's rested on her hair. She was going to Rolf, and he was smiling wide. She turned her head and scanned the crowd. Who was there, on her happiest day?
The pleasant fantasy became a nightmare, a terror. She saw a familiar face. It was not happy for her. In fact, this guest, seated at the very front, was crying. She didn't understand. Why wasn't her guest happy for her? A wedding is said to be a girl's happiest day.
She approached her upset guest, walked right into the row of seats. She opened her mouth to find an answer to why her guest was so miserable.
Then she recognized the face and her stomach turned. He spoke, but she heard nothing. She was panicking. Why was he here? She hadn't seen him in years.
He took her hand, she tried to pull away, but couldn't. He pulled her engagement ring (why was she still wearing it?) and crushed it like dust, and she screamed…
She sat up straight in her bed, her quilt flying off, hot tears mixing with sweat. Luna blinked in the moon's light, grabbing or her hand and feeling the glittering, glimmering ring. Still there. Good.
Luna was panting, suddenly cold. She pulled her quilt around her tightly. Now her feet were cold. Brilliant.
She huffed and stuck her feet in fluffy bright orange slippers. She was fully awake after her nightmare, the details of which were fading fast.
She ran a hand through her hair and sat on her bed. On the night table was a lamp, which had stopped working long ago. There was a photograph of her and her mother from even longer ago. Her mother hadn't been alive for more than a decade. She would never see Luna's wedding or her own grandchildren. The photo was beginning to fade around the edges, a sign of its extreme age.
There were two more pictures on the table. One was the photo Luna and Rolf had taken to enclose in wedding invitations. Their photo-selves were smiling and occasionally staring at each other contentedly.
The last picture was also beginning to fade with age and intense handling. It was a photo of the D.A., Dumbledore's Army, the secret Defense Against the Dark Arts group where Luna had first made friends. The D.A. was like her family; in real life, her family was just her and her dad; neither of her parents had had brothers or sisters, and her grandparents had died not long after her mother. All the members of the D.A. smiled and laughed and waved. She saw Harry, Ginny, Ron, Hermione, Hannah Abbott, Cho Chang, Marietta Edgecombe, the traitor, even Luna herself, with Dirigible Plums hanging from her ears, smiled pensively at her future self.
Luna smiled that same pensive smile as sweet memories flooded to her. Back then, Hermione and Ron fought, and Luna had never thought they'd end up married. Ginny had had many boyfriends, and it seemed that her childhood crush on Harry had been forgotten. And one more face stared out at her.
Neville. Neville Longbottom. A student who was an outcast, not in the same way Luna was. Neville was more clumsy and accident-prone than wildly strange. He was often jinxed and mocked, unconfident in everything except Herbology, or so she heard. Being in the D.A. had given him the confidence he needed, like it had brought Luna true friends.
She hadn't seen him in ages. Not since after the infamous Battle of Hogwarts, in which he'd proven his mettle and became a hero.
Thump.
Luna snapped out of her reverie. What was that?
Whump.
Someone, or something, was making these noises. A burglar?
She heard the stairs creak.
Luna dropped the picture on her quilt and grabbed her wand, which completed her collection of night table decorations. It was long and made of springy, almost yellow wood. She stood and held it tight, in a defensive stance she'd learned at a D.A. meeting in the secret Room of Requirement.
She heard loud footsteps and thought it better to surprise her assailant. She lay in her bed and kept her eyes open a sliver.
The door, painted with butterflies and flowers in neon-bright paint, quietly creaked open. She saw a tall figure enter her room and tip-toe near her.
"Luna?" asked an unfamiliar voice.
She pretended to sleep.
"Luna?" asked the voice a bit louder.
Luna sprang into action. "Expelliarmus!" she shouted.
A burst of red light illuminated the room and sent the unknown figure flying. With a resonating crash, he or she hit the wall.
"Levicorpus!" Luna shouted. Her burglar, or attacker, was suspended in midair.
"I surrender!" called whoever-it-was.
"I don't believe you," Luna retorted. She snatched a wand from the carpeted floor. "You'd better have a good reason for scaring me out of my mind!"
The stranger scoffed. "We both know you weren't scared. You aren't scared of anything."
"You don't know me. You'd better have a good reason for breaking and entering, then!"
"Oh, I do."
"Good," Luna said authoritatively. "Lumos," she directed her wand.
Light burst into the brightly colored room. She waved her wand in the stranger's face. In shock, her mouth dropped open and her wand arm fell to her side, brightening the carpet.
"Neville?"
Ooh, intriguing! The next chapter should be up soon. They all won't be this long, though. Thanks for reading!
M-T-N