Not a professional, and definitely not the owner of Harry Potter.

Written by third Chaser of the team Tutshill Tornados.

Round 3: Truth or Dare

Prompt: Truth that is a love confession

Note: I didn't use the optional prompts because I wasn't obliged to; fanfiction messed up at the worst time possible so our team's prompts didn't get locked.

Love Conf-actions

1989

"Take care, sweetie," the woman said, a smile on her face even though she was half-buried under the rubble. "I love you." Those three words could have been a whisper of the wind, but the blonde girl who stood there with tears in her eyes understood them all the same.

That was the last time someone had told the girl they loved her. She had been nine, then.

1992

The eleven-year-old loved her father, she really did, but the haircut he had given her — or had attempted to, at least — had not worked in her favour on the train ride. She resolved never to get a haircut again.

As everyone disembarked at the Hogsmeade station, she still felt alone in a crowd; she was still a loner, the same as she had been when she stepped on the train at King Cross.

She couldn't help but admire the train station as it illuminated up brightly in the moonlight, and the half-giant gamekeeper had to call out to her and point to the boat three boys were already sitting in. The boys seemed to know each other — perhaps they had become friends on the train, she mused — and didn't bother to introduce themselves when she said, "Hello, I'm Luna Lovegood," as she stepped into the boat, preferring to snigger into their hands instead. She didn't find anything funny, and none of the boys was polite enough to let her into the joke. Luna just shrugged and sat down.

It was not much later that the castle came into view, and while everyone was busy oohing and aahing over how majestic it looked, she caught sight of a Blibbering Humdinger. She pointed it out to the three boys, two of whom seemed disinterested.

The third, however, looked into the direction she was pointing in,and Luna smiled.

"Where is it?" he asked.

"By that cauldron-shaped rock," she replied, lowering her voice to a whisper as they neared the creature.

"I can't see anything there," the boy said, trying to get a glimpse over the other boy's shoulder. "What is it, by the way?"

"A magical creature, of course."

The boy leaned back and squinted at her. "There's no creature with the name Blibbering whatever. Are you messing with me?"

"Blibbering Humdinger exists!" she replied, adding, "My daddy knows so, too," for good measure. She turned back to look at the said creature that was now perched upon that cauldron-shaped rock.

"Well," the boy said, turning his nose up when Luna turned to him, "my grandfather is Newt Scamander, and if a creature with that name existed, he would have told me." With that, he turned to the other two boys, deeming the conversation concluded.

At the sorting, the boy who was the grandson of Newt Scamander joined her at the Ravenclaw table. She thought their eyes met for a fleeting moment before he turned away, and for some reason, he sat himself at the farthest available seat from her.

It took Luna almost a year to come to the conclusion that no other student could see the creatures that vere visible to her. Hagrid could perhaps see the Thestrals, from what she had gathered when she had watched him feeding them, but even he didn't seem to notice the nargles that had created a huge nest in his beard.

But when someone called her 'Loony' for being able to notice the creatures they could not see — because she was different — it did not hurt any less. Though, she never said anything in response to those who teased her; she didn't want to hurt anyone back.

Sometimes, walking through the crowds, she caught the eye of the boy who she had sat in the boat with, who had stopped meeting anyone's eyes since Christmas in their first year, and she wondered if he was shunned, too, because he was different.

1998

It had been pressure from all of the wizarding world that had forced Luna and Neville together. Two months after the war, one of the reporters had brought back the faces of 'The Ministry Six,' as they had been dubbed when they broke in the Ministry that fated night almost two years prior to the actual war. Some other reporter had then pointed out that two couples had been already formed — that it was a matter of time before the third one would come to be.

And it had happened. Neville was wonderful to her. They used to spend hours in greenhouses as he told her; they used to walk along the forestline, telling the other about their day, or simply enjoying the symphony that the forest emitted; they used to walk hand-in-hand through the village of Hogsmeade, laughing and chatting, trying hard to escape the black-cloud that still hung over the wizarding world, months after the war.

Those three months had been beautiful, but one day Neville found Luna sitting by the lake, staring at the sun as it dipped below the horizon, bathing the waters of the lake in pinks and purples. There were tears streaming down her cheeks; she turned to the boy who had squatted by her side and asked: "Amosagittis flutter around them when Harry kisses Ginny. They laugh when Ron and Hermione hold hands. Why then, Neville, don't I see them when you and I sit together?"

Neville smiled at her, it was a sad smile, and a teardrop was starting to bead at the corner of his eye. He leaned forward, ignoring his leaking eyes, and wiped her cheeks. He then wrapped his arms around her and let her go.

She met him again in Christmas holidays. Most of the students had been staying over for the vacations to help with the still-incomplete reconstruction of Hogwarts. Luna had been helping in the repair of stands at the Quidditch Pitch. Face smeared with dirt, she made her way to the Ravenclaw common room to get cleaned up before dinner — she hadn't minded the dirt, to be honest, but Hermione had insisted — when she found him standing at the door to the common room, trying to answer the riddle.

"Hello, Rolf Scamander," she said, pulling out her wand from behind her ear as he turned to face her.

"Hello, uh…" his face turned red as he looked from the knocker and back to her, not meeting her eyes. Luna laughed.

"Your answer to the riddle is correct. The Nargles seem to have jinxed it, though. Let me." Luna undid the jinx with a flick of her wand and repeated Rolf's answer; the door opened, and she entered, the boy following closely behind.

"What are Nargles?" he asked, and Luna smiled.

"Something you will perhaps see, one day."

After that day, the pair had had run-ins all year, even outside of the classes they shared. By February, they had coupled up for work in the one subject they both shared love for, Rolf looking past the creatures no one but Luna could see, and she looking past how he never met anyone's eyes.

In their last Care of Magical Creatures class, it was Luna who turned to Rolf and asked if he would like to go around the world to study the magical creatures along with her, and he agreed. And if Luna could see the flock of Amosagittis coming nearer out of the corner of her eye, she didn't say anything.

2003

It had been five years since they had started working together when Rolf asked Luna to marry her. It hadn't been ceremonious, really; the pair was working in Japan, documenting the creatures that inhabited that country, when they had run into a Kappa, no cucumbers at hand to save them from the beast.

"If we die today, I just wanted to let you know that I want to marry you," said Rolf.

Later, when they had escaped almost unscathed, Luna asked him what date he had in mind, leaving him gaping at her.

The marriage was organised soon after they returned to England. It was one of a kind, really. Luna wore a dress she had made on her own — the dress itself held all the colours of a rainbow because that was how bright she believed her life had been after she met Rolf. The tiara was made of unicorn horns; it was the one her mother had worn when she wedded her father, and Luna could almost feel Pandora Lovegood's presence as Ginny, her bridesmaid, delicately placed the tiara atop her head.

The most special moment for the couple, though, occurred when Luna walked down the aisle. As Rolf's eyes met hers, she let him see the flocks of Amosagittis that fluttered around in their little, bright-red dresses, cupid-bows in their hands and grins on their faces. She let him see the dozens of other invisible creatures danced and sung as she walked towards him, and she smiled at the awestruck expression on his face (which the bug-reporter Rita Skeeter later claimed had been his shock at seeing Luna's dress).

Their eyes did not leave the other's for the whole ceremony.

Later, when Rolf asked her, she replied, "I've known you're a Legilimens for years, Rolf Scamander." She met her gaze with his and let him see how much she trusted and loved her, no words needed.

"I love you, too, Mommy!"

Luna had been nine when she last told anyone she loved them, and that was okay.