Chapter Eight — The Moon and the Stars
Story Summary: Both of them still affected by the war, Harry and Luna decide to escape Wizarding Britain and to travel around the world for a year, in which they find out more about themselves and the world around them.
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Serpentine Advice: If you enjoy this story, please consider reading my main story, Serpentine Advice, which covers a Harry Potter discovering and learning from a portrait of Salazar Slytherin in the Chamber of Secrets.
"I feel like the Moon is a very beautiful woman. She's in control." ~ Ravyn Lenae
With their letters duly posted, Harry turned to Luna with a curious gaze. She had been the one to lead him here, and he felt more comfortable in that small magical gallery than he was expecting. People were walking around, as well as all manner of creatures. But they were politely letting the duo be, even if the glimmer in their eyes said that they recognized at least him, if not Luna. He still insisted on keeping his back firmly to a wall, to a point where he could keep an eye out on anyone entering or leaving, but it was shockingly easy to relax in that homely atmosphere. The fountain in the middle was eye-catching, and many people their age were sitting on its edge—a small feline creature was jumping in the water, refreshing itself—, having casual conversations and playing musical instruments he didn't recognize, but the seven buildings around them were more intriguing to both Luna and Harry.
The most boring was the owlery that they had just left after dealing with their correspondence. In the opposite corner of the square, there was a pub of sorts, but it was built in the shape of one of the boathouses that Luna had enjoyed so much, enchanted to look like it was floating atop a shifting pattern of waves. The undulating would appear to be a poor combination with alcohol at first glance, but everyone inside seemed incredibly cheerful and relaxed. Wizards and creatures were all drinking there peacefully, though in separate tables and a climate of mutually enforced politeness, with some resigned commiseration at their shared space. It wasn't perfect, but it was better than the open contempt he saw in abundance back in England. Dobby would have liked it there, he decided, when he saw a house-elf—or at least a Dutch version of one, there were some differences visible even from that distance—exchange something for a bowl of peanuts over the counter.
To their right, there was a garden, protected by a now open iron gate. People were filtering through the gate, and potted flowers and plants hanging from the walls of the two buildings flanking it extended their bodies in greeting like a cat would crane its neck. It took a while for Harry to realize that the store functioned without any employees and that taking the pot would make a small box appear by its side where someone would put the correct amount of coins in. An older wizard tried to grab a yellow plant, and when he didn't deposit the money promptly, its vines clung to small hooks on the wall, unwilling to let go. The man was confused for a second before realizing what had happened, laughed at himself in a self-effacing, slightly embarrassed manner, and put the coins in properly. The plant then relaxed and obediently allowed itself to be carried away with no further protests. Luna seemed vividly interested in the plants and was already walking in that direction when something else caught her attention, stopping her on her tracks.
At first, he thought a menagerie had caught her keen interest, but when she did glance over to it, he only saw disapproval and disappointment. He was confused for a second before he noticed what she had: the store was too small, and the animals inside were too diverse to be outside of a climate-controlled environment, which the store did not seem to have.
"We can find other places," he reassured her, but she kept frowning at the place.
"The Netherlands has a well-earned reputation of being excellent animal conservationists," she explained. "I don't understand why they would allow this. At least the menagerie in Diagon doesn't have any animals that feel uncomfortable in the city's climate."
"Maybe there's charms on those containments?" He suggested.
"That is not a containment; that is a cage," she corrected him with clear anger. "Actually..."
She started walking towards the store with decided steps. Harry began to follow her, but she stopped him with a gesture, wanting to do whatever she was going to do alone. Her growing distance made him uneasy and far more aware of his surroundings, and Luna's absence seemed to call the attention of more people to the fact that the Man-Who-Won in England was among them. No one came over to talk with him, but he did not know if it was because one of his hands was hovering over his wand or if they just were that polite.
Luckily, Luna didn't take long. She came out of the store with at least twenty-five cages, with the attendants of the shop sheepishly helping her to carry them all outside. A few of them were birds, none of them being owls, which she immediately released into the wild. They flew away without looking back, and she looked at them for a few seconds, enjoying their colorful plumage before turning to one of the store employees with a fierce look.
"The book, please," she said politely, but in a tone that defied all attempts at discussion, even to someone who did not know Luna. Harry, who did, was immediately alarmed by how tense and outraged she sounded.
The young man passed a book with many different animals on its front, crawling, sprinting, flying, and swimming in a looping cycle. She looked at each encaged creature, then flowed through the pages until she found the one describing the said animal and made a mental observation. After she was done with all of them, Luna gave the man the book back and wordlessly entered the owlery. At this point, everyone in the square was looking at them, and Harry was in equal measure impressed and concerned by her fierceness. With a warning look sent the shop employees' way, he decided to follow Luna.
When he entered, she was asking the man on the counter. "You sell portkeys for owls, correct?"
"I do, but I already sent your letters via traditional methods," he explained appeasingly.
"I don't care," she responded. "I need twelve portkeys, please."
"T-twelve?" He stammered uncertainly. Luna frowned slightly before responding.
"Yes."
The man nodded faintly and went to collect them. "They're quite expensive, ma'am."
"I don't care," she responded in the same determined tone. She barely glimpsed at the price he wrote down in the note, paying it silently. When Harry tried to peek at it to share the costs, she glared at him and burned it before telling the clerk where to set each of the portkeys, which explained to Harry what she had done with that book. When he was done, she left the store and immediately began to send animals away.
One by one, she would send them either alone or in duos. She did the entire thing in dead silence, with the square as a whole staring at her, transfixed. Luna would attach the portkeys to the animals, either tying them together loosely or putting them in individual species, calm them down with some soothing sounds beneath her breath, and then activate it. The only point in the process where she uttered a single audible word to a human was when she spoke to Harry.
"Could you calm the snake, please?" She asked in the same warm tone she used with him casually, but again with that undercurrent of frustration and tension that had first caught his attention. Knowing that the best he could do was silently comply, he did so, slipping into Parseltongue with only some light difficulty. Some people seemed bothered by the sound, while others showed an earnest academic curiosity that was almost refreshing to Harry, who was used to immediate vitriol regarding the language. The situation was explained to the snake, who accepted the portkey eagerly.
The store employees returned to the store carrying the empty cages after she finished, looking to the ground and not uttering a word. The crowd watching them decided there were better things to do once Luna sent a dry look in their direction, something that again was so unlike her normal behavior that it concerned him. Noticing she was worrying her friend, she relaxed slightly and spoke in a more composed voice, though one with no implicit apology.
"I'm fine, just a bit disturbed," she reassured him.
"Are you sure?" He asked slowly.
"Yes," she grinned slightly, though it wobbled against the tension in her face. She was never a good liar. Witnessing his disbelief, she admitted. "I am very angry."
"Because of the animals inside the menagerie?"
"Twenty-seven wild animals kept in those glorified boxes," she explained to him, her face again darkening in anger. "I expected five, maybe seven, but not more than twenty."
"At least they're back in the wild again?" He suggested, trying to calm her down.
"At what cost? And what about all the other stores in the country that are working around the spirit of the law by abiding by its strict letter?" She demanded, staring him down. Once he raised his hands defensively, Luna looked remorseful. "I'm sorry. It's just very frustrating."
"I imagine."
"I'm not angry with you," she reassured him.
"I know you're not," he scoffed at the notion. "It's just rare to see you this angry, even for me."
"Animals deserve good treatment and respect," she imposed determinedly. "They live, eat, think, feel, and talk just like us," Luna pointed at him, both a reminder of his ability to speak Parseltongue and to emphasize her point about equality. "Putting people in cages within unsustainable living conditions is a crime, so why do they do it with animals?"
"I don't know."
"I understand selling pets or adopting them, and I don't hate menageries, but at the very least, they should treat animals decently," she continued to declare firmly before realizing that she was doing it again and frowning at herself. "Sorry, Harry. I'll stop."
"It's fine," he told her. "We all get passionate about certain things, and it's good to see you fight for something that isn't... you know. The war."
She smiled a bit, happy with his words, but shook her head. "Maybe I can have this conversation with you when I'm calmer? I don't like feeling angry."
"It's a sight to behold," he smirked at her.
"I'm human," she shrugged before looking at a point at a distance. "At least, that's what I think I am. I always thought I would make a most excellent fairy."
"You were just as shiny as them in Slughorn's Christmas party," he conceded with a grin.
"I can spin faster, too," she said, whirling quickly on a single foot. When she stopped herself, she seemed to be slightly dizzy but also happier. "If I ever grow wings, do put me on a Christmas tree, but only if it's at the very top. I wouldn't want to obscure my brethren."
"You would need to shine very brightly up there to be seen," he cautioned her.
"I can wear that dress again," she smiled widely, and he laughed. Her mood was back to normal until she looked at the menagerie again, and frustration bloomed once more on her face.
"Why don't we go somewhere else?" He suggested, trying to draw her attention away. Luna nodded, and they entered the next store that caught their eye, which seemed to be a bookstore.
Calling it a bookstore was a slight misnomer, however. Several particular works were celebrated in glass displays and specialized furniture. Some items had price tags, others didn't, and others still were deliberately marked as not for sale. Harry noted that several of the items in that latter category were marked as such by hand, as though the saleswoman behind the counter had impulsively decided not to sell them. The place was a cross between a compendium and a museum of old books, and none of the works within sight were younger than either Harry or Luna.
"This is wonderful," she said in the same hushed, reverential tone one might use witnessing a great natural wonder, wide eyes scanning one of the books opened in a fixed page behind the glass display. It was in Dutch, which neither could read. But iconography painted the corners, giving the impression of tense meetings between figures of great importance and then a union of wands firing flares in the air in celebration.
"That is an original copy of a book commenting on the signing of the Statute of Secrecy," the old woman manning the counter explained to them in a calm voice. "My grandfather went to great lengths to acquire it, and I remember restoring it with my father as a very young lass at the beginning of the past century." Harry's eyebrows flew up in surprise. The woman didn't look to be a hundred, but there she was. Luna just blinked with heightened interest. "It's one of several old works that are not for sale, but if you wish to read them, you're welcome to. You can change pages by tapping your wand into one of the sides of the display."
Luna tried to do so and was enormously delighted when the pages did change. "How does it work?" She inquired, looking at the glass display with as much reverence as she had looked at the book. The obvious enthusiasm softened the already friendly woman, who laughed in delight.
"It's a family secret, dear," she spoke. If anything, those words only made the speculative part in Luna's brain think harder.
"Would it involve a series of Protean charms, adjusted to read the current page and then flip it?" She asked, frowning at her suggestion. "Or you can float the page a fixed amount and just have it turn at that point?" She changed the page again with her knees bent, keeping her eyes level with the book, only to buzz with a strangely delighted dejection when she was proven wrong.
"Ingenious solutions," the woman chuckled with an indulgent grin. "But it's a fair bit more complicated, I'm afraid. I'd tell you, but you seem like you'd enjoy the challenge."
Luna smiled back appreciatively but did call the woman out on what she said. "You wouldn't tell me anyway, would you?"
"Of course not," the woman scoffed amicably, and they both laughed. "Are you looking for something in particular?"
"Not really," Luna shook her head. Harry had an idea and interrupted her.
"Actually, do you have English or French books on magizoology?"
Luna looked at him with surprise as the woman smirked knowingly for a second before wobbling outside of the protective cocoon of her balcony to scoot over to a clumped corner of the little store, levitating books out of the way carefully before getting a dusty tome from the bottom of a pile. She handed Harry the book.
"French, about a century old, about all the magical creatures found in Western Europe," Luna's mouth hung open, and Harry couldn't help but grin at the sight of her uncontrolled enthusiasm. She made a move towards her coin purse but grimaced when she felt it lighter than she expected, doubtlessly because of what she had done, purchasing all the wild animals and then the portkeys. Her face falling, she discreetly put it back into place. Harry, who had already decided to buy it as a gift, was even more sure.
He grabbed his coin purse, and Luna immediately warned him off. "Harry, those books are too expensive."
Harry blinked at her once and turned to the woman. There was a price tag on the corner of the book. Without looking at it, he asked. "Do you know the price of this one?"
"I know the price of every item in the store."
"Good to know," he smiled. Then he ripped the price tag from the book and burned it to ashes, turning his smile to Luna. "I don't care."
"But Harry—"
"No buts. You spent a lot of your money doing something you thought was right," he spoke firmly, "and I believe in rewarding the strength of people's beliefs."
Luna looked surprised but then smiled. Not one of her beams, but one of the slightly embarrassed, shy smiles, the ones that never failed to make him feel as though he had just achieved something unique and worthy of celebration.
"Thank you," she spoke in a quiet voice, stepping forward to hug him. He laughed and hugged her back, and she melted into him for a few seconds before stepping away, taking the book from the woman with sparkling eyes.
"This is the price," she wrote down in a note away from Luna's eyes. Harry frowned.
"That's not that expensive," he said in a confused frown before he narrowed his eyes at the woman. "You're not charging full price, are you?"
"I'm not? I'm a forgetful old woman," she smiled. "This will do."
Harry shook his head but couldn't stop chuckling. Luna, for once, was too absorbed in the book to notice, which was good for them both. Otherwise, she would have protested until Harry was forced to pay the original price.
"Let's go," he said to her once he finished paying, and the woman had destroyed the note bearing the new price.
"Of course," she grinned, hugging the book protectively against herself.
They stepped into the square once more, with Harry being careful to position himself between Luna and the menagerie. Of course, she immediately noticed what he was doing and looked at him with an amount of fondness so great and obvious that it made his face warm up.
"You've very sweet, Harry," she said in a loving voice. "Thank you, again."
"You deserve it."
Luna looked like she wanted to say something, as her eyes shifted focus between each of his own. She decided to remain silent, choosing instead to turn to the square and look around.
"There's a hotel there," she pointed. "Want to check-in? I'd like to read my book," she said sheepishly before regaining her enthusiasm. "And we can plan trips!"
"Planning?" He asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Well," she said in a slow, slightly high-pitched voice that told him that she knew she was being a hypocrite but didn't care. "I was thinking; we said we wanted to know more of the countryside, right?"
"Yes," he drawled, enjoying that slow way in which she was trying to convince him.
"We can stay in that hotel and use it as a central base," she suggested before blinking and serenely smiling in amusement. "The United Queendom embassy, if you will. The Netherlands is a small country. We can take the bus and the trains to places, even if you don't do any apparition. And we can take cues from this book," she said, patting the spine of the book affirmingly. "I want to see magical creatures! It would be fun to see one of the ones that we released today."
"That you released today. But yeah, sure. It sounds like fun," Harry grinned, liking the idea. Luna smiled widely, grabbed his hand, and pulled him to the hotel, with him laughing behind her all the while.
The next several hours were spent that way, with Luna reading the book and sharing facts with him before making lists of things they would need if they went to each region of the country with magical creatures living in it. When they got hungry, Luna was so interested that she just asked that he order her anything from the meal service, and after sharing a meal with Harry, went back to reading, never stopping to call him to share an anecdote or point out where the book was out of date.
It was astounding and a bit awe-inspiring to witness. Harry had seen people get truly into what they were doing, but they would zone out their surroundings for hours, barely doing anything other than breathing. Hermione was like that. On the other hand, some people could find anecdotes and stories out of everything and would tell them instead of intensely focusing on any given subject even when they understood it deeply. Ron was like that, if you discounted Quidditch, as was Sirius. Luna managed both, fluctuating between Hermione-like focus on the books and Ron-like social enthusiasm to share the things she had found out with him.
As she went into that cycle, Harry poured over a series of maps of the Netherlands that the hotel provided in a small foldable pamphlet, trying to figure out how to get to each of the places Luna had circled as having interesting animals for them to see. His notes weren't overly detailed, but trying to understand a map in a foreign language was challenging enough even if he was just taking loose instructions.
As he jotted down the way to each place, the night began to creep in. Luna got quieter and quieter until he realized she hadn't called him in almost an hour. Frowning, he lifted his gaze from the maps to look at her and was immediately concerned.
The book was carefully put in a nightstand, but she was sitting on the windowsill, facing outward, staring at the sky. As he approached, he noticed that she was looking at her namesake. But her eyes weren't distant as they were whenever she was deep in thought, or appreciative when she looked at something beautiful. They were forlorn, sad, a bit regretful.
"What's on your mind?" He asked delicately, approaching the window gingerly.
"Mum," she spoke shortly before taking a few seconds to continue. "She would have loved this trip so much."
"I'm sorry she couldn't have been here, Luna," he spoke sincerely. She knew that he knew the feeling, and nodded in understanding. He didn't push it, knowing that the ensuing silence was her conscious choice. So he stood there, silently standing by her side as she rummaged through all of the noise roaring through her mind to figure out her feelings.
"For a few years after mum died," she said vacantly after several minutes, still looking up at the moon. "I resented being called Luna. I wanted to be called Star."
Harry wanted to ask why, but he felt that she needed to vent and merely hovered around her, trying to appear as supportive as he could.
"I even asked my dad," her voice wobbled when she mentioned Xenophilius, having still not resolved any of the crucial issues she had with the man, "to start calling me by another name before Hogwarts. That way that everyone would call me by my new name when I started school. But he refused, saying that I was Luna, not Star Lovegood, and that changing my name wouldn't change who I was. But I still wanted to have a new name, and I only stopped wanting it when he admitted that Luna had been my mum's idea."
He remained silent, torn between looking up at the celestial body that demanded all of Luna's attention and looking down at the girl sat by the windowsill by which he stood guard.
"But I can't help but still dislike my name, sometimes," she admitted with a shameful tone, as though she was betraying the memory of her mother by vocalizing her struggles. "I even wrote a poem about it back in Hogwarts. I'd forgotten about it until that day at the Café de Flore when we talked about that literary award. It's been in my mind since."
"Luna, that was weeks ago," he spoke with some lingering hurt. Why hadn't she talked with him about it?
Naturally, she detected the sentiment. "I needed to sort through my thoughts first," Luna conceded with a fleetingly apologetic glance before she looked back at the moon.
Harry nodded, accepting the answer for what it was. "Do you remember the poem?"
"Not the exact words, but I do remember the central point," she spoke in a small, detached voice. Harry wanted to embrace her or grab her hand, but something instinctively told him that staying by her side and solemnly listening would be the best way to let her process her emotions. "The moon is alone in the sky," she whispered.
Harry always thought that Luna's voice was best described as ethereal. It often sounded exactly like he imagined a particularly mischievous pixie would, using that otherworldly lull that only she possessed to make you unsure of the accuracy of her words at first, drawing you into a surprising but harmless prank. But that whisper was different than her usual tone. There was none of her permanent reverence to the wonder at the heart of the world's mysteries, nor her amusement at the silliness of how complex everything wanted to be, nor her boundless enthusiasm for life and the living. It was an embittered sort of voice, hurt and wounded, but still submerged in that magical quality with which Luna expressed herself, which only made its effect more striking. Harry was bombarded with the idea of a Luna who hadn't made friends at school and had to continue living her life facing her greatest fear—loneliness—daily until she finally broke and only spoke in that embittered tone. The consideration made his heart sink, and he twitched to keep himself still instead of barrelling into her with a comforting hug. But she wasn't done, and if he interrupted her before she was, he had the impression Luna would continue to suppress that feeling indefinitely.
"I desperately wanted to be Star," she spoke again, in the same voice she always used when deliberating about something far away. It was a relief to not hear that bitter whisper, but now that it was there, he couldn't unhear it, and he tensed with every word, fearing that bitterness would seep in again. "When my dad refused, I begged him to at least name me after a constellation. Constellations are full of stars, I told him. They're full of friends. He still said no. I was so hurt. I thought he didn't understand, so I told him that I felt lonely and that it was all because the moon is always alone in the sky. But the stars are always with their friends, always in tandem, moving around in an eternally happy and beautiful dance. They like one another well enough to form shapes with them, giving us things to imagine and drawings to make in our dreams. But the moon is too close for imagination. We can see it too well. It's too near us, but just far enough to be beyond reach. We can't go there to know it better, and we don't have to wander far afield to know how it is. So, the moon ends up lonely in the sky."
By that point, her voice was threatening to crack with distress, and even from where he stood, he could see tears pooling in her eyes. That time, he couldn't resist it and took the step to close the distance between them, enveloping her from the back with the warmest hug he could muster. As he buried his face on her hair, he felt her tremble and then sob very softly, as though she was trying to silence her crying in order to not disturb the scenery.
"I was so lonely," she spoke in a broken voice. "I didn't want to be Luna anymore. I wanted to be Star."
"You're Luna, though," he said gently.
"I am."
"Do you still feel lonely?"
"Sometimes." The admission hurt him, but he expected it. He couldn't fix all her problems with barely a month of travel. "But it's gotten a lot better since we began traveling. And if it hadn't been for you, I would have been lonely all those final years at Hogwarts too."
"Do you still want to be Star?" He asked after a period of silent contemplation.
"No," she denied immediately in a soft voice. "I am Luna, now. I like myself."
"I like you too."
"I know."
Harry tightened the embrace until he felt her calm down a bit. She was still vulnerable, that much was clear, but she could breathe without stumbling on her own emotions and didn't seem to be on the verge of a breakdown anymore. Seeing that, he decided to distract her, as she swung her legs to get out of the windowsill and stand by his side, even if she insisted on restarting the hug as soon as possible.
"Maybe we should give the moon a new name," he said. She looked at him with inquisitive grey eyes, and he felt a spark of hope, though the redness there was a reminder of what had just happened. "I think we should call it Luna."
"Luna?" She asked, confused, furrowing her brow.
"You shouldn't be named after the moon. The moon should be named after you."
A grin threatened to break on her face, and she realized what he was doing. Despite being tired, she appreciated his efforts, and craning her head to look at him in a more comfortable angle, asked.
"Why?"
"Well, it's the brightest object in the night sky," he started to speak, feeling his heart speed up in his chest. He didn't know quite where this was leading him, and improvising felt disrespectful to her pain. But, figuring the worst that would happen is that he would make himself look like an idiot in front of Luna, which would only make her laugh, he decided to embrace the recklessness of the thing and plowed on, barely stopping to think as the words spilled out. "So when the world has no other signs of natural light, it glows brighter than everything else, lighting the world in a nice silvery glow. It's always close, and you can rely on it to appear constantly to make your day better. Even though it's close, it changes, it's always fascinating, and never gets boring to see," he turned to the moon, leaving Luna to stare at him as he spoke. "You're wrong to say that no one wants to know how it is up there. People have always been dreaming about what it would be like to be on the moon. Muggles went just because they were curious. Maybe not many people will ever reach it," he conceded, feeling increasingly embarrassed but also thinking he shouldn't stop now that he had begun, "but those who do are very privileged and consider themselves truly lucky. They're humbled, awed, and inspired by it. That's why we should call it Luna."
He refused to look at her, feeling hot to the tips of his ears and mortified with himself. The room was incredibly tense, the air almost tactile with how heavy everything felt around him, and his heart was beating like a jackhammer, to the point he felt himself shake slightly. Wanting to dispel that tension, he decided to continue to speak, forcing himself to sound as jovial as possible.
"And it is also really good with animals, loves a dusty book, knows lots of facts about all sorts of different things, and is very wise. It even has a Queendom!" He exclaimed. Luna laughed, and the tension dispersed.
He looked at her and couldn't remember seeing her so happy. Her eyes were shining silver, so bright and sparkling that it seemed like someone was sending beams of light through a diamond inside her head. She was smiling widely, not in one of her famous full-beam, entire face smiles, but in a deliriously satisfied half-grin, half-smirk that you may see in someone who had just finished writing an epoch-changing paper. Her skin was fairer than usual, a gift from the moonlight above them, making it seem like Luna was radiant herself, a secondary source of light to accompany the larger body orbiting the planet. She exuded joy in a silent scream with every passing second, and it seemed to only increase in intensity as she faced Harry.
The size of her happiness frightened and delighted him in equal measure. His throat moved, and air passed through his vocal tract, but the voice that came out wasn't his own, and he didn't remember giving any commands. "And I think it's rather beautiful too, don't you think?"
They were both equally struck by his words, dumbfounded and surprised. But Luna, as she always would, recovered first. An odd shine entered her eye, an almost hypnotic one, as even as the brightness in her eye dimmed, the intensity froze him in the spot. She leaned over a few inches and kissed him very lightly.
The kiss was equal to the girl that kissed him. Subtle, but with depths that only someone who knew her would ever recognize, delicate but firm, featherlike but weighed with meaning, myriad contradictions that spoke of future, fiction, and prediction, but that he could not foresee, imagine, or predict. He only responded when she was already receding, but she noticed and brightened up even further.
"I have some bad news," she murmured, glancing between his eyes and lips. She put a hand inside her shirt and took out a necklace he hadn't noticed until now, with a mischievous grin fixedly planted on her face, even if the rest of her face showed how sincerely happy she truly felt. On the pendant, there was a single stone he immediately recognized. "I am afraid you are attracted to Lutetian limestone."
Harry froze again, entirely unsure of how to behave in that scenario. Then, she snapped the necklace free with an agile twist of the hands and tossed it in the general direction of her bed. Before he could recover fully, she had already crossed that threshold to kiss him again, holding his head steady in place by gently cupping each side of his face with each of her hands and pulling his own closer. This time, he gained a sense of his bearings more quickly and kissed back sooner.
"Or maybe not," she said in a dazed whisper. Then she kissed Harry again. "Sample size is important in research," she justified quietly before kissing him for the fourth time. "Just for confirmation," she said in an even more distant and weak buzz, barely audible, with less than a fraction of an inch separating their lips. The sixth kiss came without prelude, as did all of the ones which followed.