Chapter 2 A way of coming back
He was certain they would have stayed there until his legs had fallen asleep and he had soon followed but the way the castle started to get quieter and quieter as the sun rose in the sky had disconcerted them both. Luna adjusted her weight from the crook of his arm and looked up at him. "Neville Longbottom, I should think there are things that we are needed for" she rocked her knees together absently as the lethargy of indecision descended on Neville for the first time in months. She lent in as she did when confiding that the room was full of wrackspurts or nargles and finished her thought as if she could read his mind, "Don't worry there will be plenty of people to tell us what to do".
People to tell him what to do. Adults with a sense of purpose and morality for so long he'd been pretending to be one of them, holding together their little resistance and reassuring school children that Harry would be back and then they'd know for certain how to fix it. Oh Merlins saggy right…. It felt ridiculous now that he'd had that much faith that Harry, the guy who slept in the bed three beds down from him, the guy who was the same damn age as him was going to show up and fix everything if he could just keep everyone's morale and training up till then. But then they'd all believed. It was for the best that they had who could count how many would have died, would have been lost if they hadn't but it should have crossed his mind that Harry may well have been just as lost as he had been. Since Luna had been taken from the Hogwarts Express at Christmas and then Ginny hadn't returned at Easter he'd been left alone to hold up the heavens for the rest of them.
He rolled his head back against the sooty sandstone and stared at the ceiling trying to determine its distance with no colour change to fixate on. Luna twisted her fingers into his, "You've done so well but it's okay to be done now." Her rough lips pressed in the hollow of his clavicle where his cardigan had been frayed before she stood up brushing at her purple trousers in the hope that the battle might be rubbed away. She was so small, he realised as he looked up at her otherworldly features from the floor, so easily picked up and smashed against the rocks and yet, as she held out her hands for him to balance on, so very strong.
"How did you get to be so strong?" he asked almost by accident
"Am I so very strong?" she asked before answering her own question "Oh I suppose in much the same way you did."
"I'm mad for you Luna" He said in a rush in case by leaving the room he'd forget the desperate need he'd had to tell her.
"What an odd thing to say" She said placidly "I'm not entirely sure what that means"
"It means…" he searched, he struggled, she had as always disarmed and stupefied him. "Oh it means…" he groped. But there is was again that half smile, that glimmer in her eyes, so he kissed her and prayed that the Ravenclaw would forgive the lack of definition.
"I should speak to Professor Flitwick about staying in the Ravenclaw Tower; Hermione said that Daddy lost the house when the Death Eaters attacked it. I should stay somewhere he can find me when he's out of Azkaban"
Luna never seemed to acknowledge that he had kissed her at all. She might very well go on letting him kiss her until one day she didn't and he would never know why. Mad for her was exactly what he meant, a growing insanity from the moment she'd asked who he was so many years ago and Ginny had almost spitefully declared that he was Neville Longbottom. She terrified him, there was such a risk in Luna Lovegood. She was not firmly planted in the ground as far as he could see. How else could she have one foot in such flights of fantasy and yet see things that were so true.
She made him feel strangely blessed that she had been within reach for the last few years, an airy voice asking how his day had been or a small hand slipping pressed dirigible plums into his potions books to prevent invisible creatures from making things any worse. Without meaning to he had taken the risk. But without meaning to he had taken a lot of risks since he'd come to Hogwarts a chubby, toad loosing eleven year old.
Luna still surprised him when she skipped from the room.
Pushing his body forward he followed her yet again. They had had a plan right until Harry came back and then the plan was to follow Harry. Neville had just followed the plan. Now that the plan was done and the world was as open as the holes in the castle walls, he felt the plan should be to follow Luna, Luna at very least appeared adept at being in a world wide open.
She disappeared from view and it caught his breath in his throat. For a moment he was on platform 9 and ¾. Ginny was standing in front of him, lips fixed in grim determination, red hair swung across her face, hands on his chest and just enough pressure in those hands to hold him to the spot as Luna was pulled from the train.
Neville shook himself. He wasn't there, she wasn't gone. Moving as quickly as he could with a dodgy ankle and any number of cuts and bruises he turned the corner and caught sight of her pale curls dancing round the next. He made a decision, there would be no battle induced madness, he would hold no truck with war related insanity. Being mad for Luna was as much madness as he was going to take.
"Oh for Merlin's sake, Luna!" he called. There was a dispirited groan and bitter mumbling from the walls as various painted figures in levels of dismay took umbrage at his cry. She was back within a moment pink cheeked under the grime. "Just… don't dash off like that okay?"
"I'm coming back. " She declared
"You've said that before" he spoke without really considering the words. "It's not the same now"
"Nor am I"
He felt his face flush with embarrassment, "No, I suppose not"
Her expression shifted from its sudden coldness to her more familiar kindness. "We are all changed Neville, but it is not necessitated that we change for the worse. It's a new day, I have a new wand and a new world to explore, those are good things. Yes?"
"Well, yes of course, I… yes."
"Good, after all we can't keep living our lives like bad things will keep happening, what kind of life would that be?"
"A bad one?" he asked quickly made uncertain by her schooling tone.
"Something like that, come now Neville, you won't have lost me just because you can't see me"
"But I did" he insisted unable to prevent the childish pronouncement from escaping him. He was so very tired. "And I couldn't stop it"
"My mother always said things we lose have a way of coming back to us in the end, if not always in the way we expect."
"You are never what I expect" He sighed
"How very uninteresting that would be" she said simply before tucking her hand into his and tugging him forwards. Despite her reprimands she seemed to know that leaving him again would be cruel.
