Hogwarts a History – In the dark of the night
Chapter 06 – The road less traveled
…
"Harry! You alright mate?"
"Define alright."
Nothing was broken, not even his glasses, that was probably a good start. Starting from there, everything else was all uphill. Way uphill.
The bridge was gone. He and Luna were at the bottom of a thirty-foot trench with no clear way up AND, let us not forget, they were in the 'FORBIDDEN FOREST' in the middle of the night. Alright didn't seem appropriate to describe the situation.
"Well, that could have gone worse," Luna opined, dusting the detritus from her hair.
"I don't appreciate the optimism Lulu," he was trying to mope after all, and how could he mope if she were going to be so chirpy. "Don't suppose you've got a ladder in that bag of yours?"
The quirky blonde shook her head, "Didn't think I'd be needing one. I was only having a lovely romp around the castle."
"Harry! What're we gonna do?" Ron hollered.
How was he supposed to know? Nothing had gone to plan all night. He was winging it with one wing and an anchor tied round his legs.
"OO! This looks promising."
More ominous words had never been spoken.
While he'd been busy moping, the intrepid adventurer that was Luna Lovegood had been exploring her new surroundings. Adventure lie behind every rock and shrub, or so it was believed. It's unclear who exactly believed this, but it stood to reason they were probably very boring if they were looking for adventure behind rocks and shrubs.
She hadn't found it yet, adventure, but she had found a strange hole leading into the precipice that was their current obstacle.
"Very promising."
Harry was a bit more skeptical of her discovery. "Do you always get excited by strange holes?"
"Don't you?"
"Harry! Whatcha find?"
An escape from the whining, he thought uncharitably. "Looks like it goes in a long way," he said, pushing aside some hanging vines as he peered into the dark tunnel.
"Shall we?"
Did he really have a choice?
"Ron! You three keep going. We're gonna follow this and see if we can't get back up to your level."
"Keep going?"
"Yes."
"All three of us?"
"Yes Ron."
"… are you sure there's no other way to get you up here?"
Oh for Pete's sake! "Just go!"
"He's really not exemplifying the house lions right now, is he?" said Luna as she trotted after Harry into the deep, dark hole.
"It's been a crummy night for all of us," Harry said, lighting his wand which did surprisingly little to help illuminate their surroundings.
"The darkness is hungry," Luna observed.
It was a deep, inky sort of darkness, the kind that sucked light like a slurpy through a straw. Suck, suck, suck.
"I think we need to change it up a little," said Harry, dousing his light.
There was a squeak in the dark, a shuffling of feet and a sudden gasp of surprise.
"Luna. Please tell me those are your hands."
"I think so. Why do you ask?"
"Why are they grabbing my…" he started to ask before thinking better of it.
A cheery blue light flickered to life at a whispered word and Harry filled the dark tunnel with magic flame. Illumination too spicy for the dark to devour revealed a debaucherous scene, the two Hogwarts students stood, intimately close, Harry with his hands where everyone could see them and Luna with… well, let's just say they were harder to see and a bit farther south than was strictly proper.
"Uh, Luna?"
"Yes Harry."
"I think you can let go now."
She could, certainly. But did she want to? Hmm…
Harry released a tense breath when Luna released him. She really had quite a grip. "Thank you."
"They just have a mind of their own sometimes, she weakly excused, paying no mind to the fact it was the same mind that operated all her other parts.
"Well, luckily I have a solution for that," he said, gently taking hold of one thoughtful hand, startling a furious blush from the cheeks of the girl who Loved good.
"Oh my, Oh… oh my! Hold hands that's… I didn't realize you were that kind of deviant Harry. Oh goodness!"
Her blushing babbling made no sense to Harry, which was pretty much par for the course when it came to Luna.
"We should get going."
"Oh goodness. This is all happening so fast."
Shaking his head, Harry trekked on through the strange hole, the flustered, blushing Luna offering no resistance as she was pulled along. At least, no physical resistance.
"Oh goodness. Oh my. It's really not my fetish you understand but… oh my goodness dear!"
"Really Luna," said Harry as he plowed ahead. "It's just hand holding. I thought that was an early relationship thing." Not that he was any experts on the matter, but you heard things.
"You must have been raised in a house of miscreants and perverts," she said, catching a stray thought which turned her level four blush up three notches. "I'll bet you'd even kiss a girl on the—on the CHEEK!"
"Uh, yeah. I guess."
It was possible, he pondered, Luna had grown up in a home, not so unlike his own, where positive expressions of physical contact were few if not entirely absent. It was also possible the girl who's hand held his own in a bashful yet firm grip, was maybe a little crackers.
Or she was just having him on, and he was playing right into her devious little hands. He hadn't dismissed that possibility yet.
"Didn't you once kiss me on the cheek?"
"It's different when a girl does it."
Definitely not dismissing that one yet.
"You know, when I get older, I'm gonna do things to you that'll give you a reason to blush like that."
"I'm rather counting on it."
"You would."
Thoroughly bored with this comic routine, Harry pressed on till he spotted a speck in the distance. A pinhole of light in the darkness.
"You see that Luna?"
"The light at the end of the tunnel? No."
Oh for goodness sakes. "Behave or I'm going to kiss you on the cheek. Both of them."
Ignoring her scandalized squeak, he pulled her toward the pinprick of light which grew larger and larger with every step.
"Looks like it's coming from above."
The hole in the ceiling hung just over their heads at the end of the tunnel curving upward as though it had been dug by some great worm.
It was little work lifting himself out of the hole, and only slightly more to ignore the fact Luna was already standing there waiting for him by the time he caught his breath.
"I need to keep better track of you."
"…" a doubtlessly quippy retort vanished, along with the one to give it, in a fashion very reminiscent of a certain deer.
Before his brain could properly process that information, he performed the same vanishing act. And the simple glade, now empty, looked around wondering where everyone had gone. All that coming and going, no one ever stuck around or asked how it was doing. Rude, that's what it was. Very, very, rude.