"I don't like that painting", Levy announced to Gray. "I don't like any of the paintings in Hogwarts. Call me a Muggle but pictures shouldn't move."
"Even in the Daily Prophet?"
"Yes." She was standing firm. "You see something moving out of the corner of your eye and it startles you."
Levy and Gray were back at work in the Savage Stairwell, cleaning up the damage from the Battle of Hogwarts. The hallway stunk of cleaning products and bad air circulation. "How long do you think it's going to take us to finish this stairwell?" Levy asked.
"I don't know. The worst spots were at the top, then here, and that one level area near the bottom, so maybe we're halfway done? Another couple of weeks maybe."
"But we're getting near the end of the term. We have a lot more schoolwork coming up."
"You do. I'm pretty well set. Anyway, you've got to be happy that Flitwick isn't here the whole time. What is it with the two of you?"
"I don't know."
"You get along with all the other teachers. You're like the perfect student."
"I don't know about that - I made a fool out of myself in front of Professor Gammell."
"That rune thing? You could have saved our lives. He was just trying to keep everyone calm. Anyway, you're perfect for this place."
"What do you mean?"
"Just the setup. Back at Fairy Tail we all had different magic that we wanted to study, and Gramps helped us along. Here we have a lot of teachers and we're learning everything. You want to know everything, right?"
"I liked Fairy Tail and Master Makarov too."
"Yeah, but there's a difference. I just want to learn ice magic. If I never learned anything else, I'd be fine. So for me, it's all about transfiguration class. I mean, Defense Against the Dark Arts is nice too, because it's Gramps, and there are a lot of things I might need to know in a pinch. But you, you can learn anything here. Hogwarts is good for you."
"I'm mainly interested in word magic, runes, that kind of thing. I'm really looking forward to Professor Gammell's class next year. But I do like learning different things. I've been doing really well in Herbology. Professor Sprout says I'm a natural, but I think she's just impressed by my family name."
"See that? Most of us are here for one thing. Natsu has fire spells, Elfman and Lisanna have beasts. What about Lucy? She seems more like you."
"Well, she is a big reader like me, but her main interest is Astronomy. She wasn't able to take it this year but she's getting a bunch of introductory classes out of the way."
"Not me. I'm a third-year student, taking a normal third-year classload. If I missed something, I missed it."
"Well, you've got your Quidditch, too. I know that keeps you busy."
"Yeah. It's my only chance to move around. That, and cleaning duty."
"You should hang out with your teammates more."
"They're boring", Gray grumbled. "They take Quidditch too seriously. It's nice to see Erza every once in a while, though. Man, is she tough. No one can score against her. She's the best player in the school. I wish Natsu was on the Gryffindor Quidditch team. I've love to go up against him."
"He's only ever been on a broom that once. Remember that? I've never seen anyone throw up that much."
"No one ever has. That was the record."
"How about Eve? Have you spent any time with him?"
"A little. He does ice magic too. We both have yeti hair wand cores. His wand is a pine. Mine is spruce. They're both cold-weather woods."
"He seems like he's looking for a friend."
"He's looking for a wing man."
"Wing man?"
"A guy to help him pick up girls. That's all he ever does. What are you doing, anyway? Are you trying to find me friends?"
"I just worry about you sometimes. I've got Lucy. You don't really have a guy friend."
"You, me, and Lucy have each other. That's fine by me. I'm not very sociable anyway."
/
Levy was walking through the common room reading the Daily Prophet when she noticed Luna sitting alone.
"Hi, Luna. Did you see this?" she asked, pointing to the headlines:
HARRY POTTER HEADING BACK TO HOGWARTS
The headline was deceptive, though; the actual article told of his plan to return to Hogwarts for the upcoming graduation.
"Yes, I saw it. It should be quite an event. I believe they're going to turn it into some kind of commemoration of the victory."
"You're mentioned in the article, you know." Levy searched. "It says that…here…Potter is 'particularly interested in the graduation of Hermione Granger, Luna Lovegood, and Ginevra Weasley, all of whom have been romantically linked to the audacious Auror.'"
"You know, you shouldn't believe anything Rita Skeeter writes. She's a puppet of the Flint family. Well, more of a marionette, really, but with full control of her arms."
"So, you and Harry were never…"
"We are friends."
There was something touching about the way Luna said that. Not "just" friends, as if friendship were something incomplete or to be apologized for. They were friends. She made it sound like an honor. Levy hoped that Luna considered her a friend.
"You must be excited about seeing him again."
"I am. But with the NEWTs coming up I haven't had much time to think about it. And we're going to have more Applied Magic sessions in the next few weeks to get the castle ready, I'm sure. We should have been more thoughtful when we were destroying it."
Gray walked by, naked.
"I believe that Gray's penis has gotten bigger over the past year", Luna said to Levy. "It's difficult to be sure, though. It looks different every time. But I think that overall its size has increased. Interesting device, really."