"Neville," she said strain still evident in her voice.
"I'm still here," he answered, his ankles resting on the arm of the lounge. When he'd put out the light he'd felt a flicker of concern that Luna alone in the guest bed might return to the curled ball of tension from the room at the Burrows. If she was talking then she was still alright and so he breathed. She whispered but she didn't need to speak loudly in the small room. He rolled onto his side and stared into the direction of her voice even though all he could make out in the dark was the wooden end of the bed.
"Neville? Tell me about your parents?" she asked softly.
In the darkness he felt cold. His jaw set with tension. Why was she asking about this now? He could feel the words 'none of your business' catch in the back of his throat. He knew that it was not a response he wanted to give Luna. She had never asked things just because or just because she wanted to make fun. She'd never been like the other kids even when they had been kids. However the complexity of such an answer always shut him down and even though it was Luna, who was never cruel, he felt angry at the question and at her for asking it. He didn't sound like himself when he answered. "You were at the Department of Mysteries, you know most of it Luna," it was a dull monotone.
"I know a little," she said. "I never asked because you seemed so worried that I would." She was right, he remembered that familiar feeling of tightness around her something akin to the feeling he had had waiting for Malfoy and his cronies to say something in class or shove him in the halls. Telling himself that Luna, just like Harry, Hermione, Ron and Ginny wasn't about to find his parent's situation funny didn't make it go away. Her patient inattention to it had.
"My parents were tortured to insanity by that woman Bellatrix Lestrange, her husband Rodolphus, his brother and another Death Eater that you might remember, Barty Crouch Jr. It happened after Voldemort attacked and killed Harry's parents. That's why Gran raised me. They were Aurors.
"They sound like very brave people."
"Gran says the bravest. I'm proud to be their son," he added, he did not want to leave any doubt in her mind that his silence on the matter had to do with embarrassment. His parents were brave and good.
"What were they like Neville?"
"I. Uh," no one had ever asked that before. When he was younger he would ask Gran, Grandad and Uncle Algie. Grandad had told him stories but Gran had always said they were very brave and put a swift end to any further questions. Being young he'd thought it was naughty to ask, but now looking back there was a sense of just how complicated grief is when the people you lose are still there and yet not there. His Grandmother didn't seem to know how to talk about her precious son Frank and his dear wife Alice without losing herself in it even if their only child had needed her to try more than anything.
Grandad had died and so had the stories. What he'd been left of his parents after that were a few happy photographs, a lot of Drooble's gum wrappers and the human shells whom he loved but who couldn't love him back. Above all he was left with a strong sense that it wasn't anyone else's business.
"I don't remember." As much as he wanted to keep her talking, to feel safe, to not sink into the dark cellar he wished fervently that she might find another topic. Any topic might do, even the topic of his erection would be better that the maelstrom of troubled emotions that this one set to swirling inside him.
"I think you do remember," she said her voice sounding blunted in his mind. "I think you remember something."
"I don't Luna. I was only about two."
"I remember my mother spinning me around and around by my arms. There was long grass and her dress had a large patchwork pocket on the front… It's not quite the same as other memories. I'm a lot closer to the ground for one but it is a memory… the first one I have of her." She sounded sleepy but certain.
"Luna, I." He was trying to promise her that he had no such memories. His memory had always been terrible after all. He wanted to shut down the conversation like Gran could with a simple tone but then it surfaced, the bath tub. "I remember… a pink tub. It was square shaped, no, I mean, kinda boxy, not rounded like the tub down the hall. And it's set into the tiles like it was part of them not separate. I remember my mum's face, she was laughing and she had foam… bubbles on her nose. It's not much and I don't think it's real." He felt tired. He had never told anyone that before.
"Oh it's real and it sounds lovely," Luna answered him in the dark, she sounded close to sleep.
"You don't talk about your Mum much," he said.
"No. No one's ever asked," her voice became muffled as she turned against the pillows. "And I suppose, like you, I want to keep everything I remember about her for me and no one else. It feels good to share her though. I wonder why that is?" Her lilting voice drifted as she finished the thought. He waited listening to the sounds of her breathing. She didn't speak again.
"Luna?" he asked after a few moments. She did not reply and he was certain she was asleep. She was merely a few feet away and still he missed her sleeping in his arms. "Luna," he said quietly not wishing to wake her but needing to say it regardless. "I'm not mad for you," he sighed, "I'm in love with you."
Me again just wanted to thank all my lovely reviewers and Jadely, Blue and furface, of course, for their recent reviews. I hope if you have got this far you continue to come back to see what Neville and Luna manage next. In the next chapter I'll post another song list for the chapters in case you feel like reading with a soundtrack
