written for hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry (challenges & assignments) july event - lipstick day - dream girl
Ginny was seven the first time she saw the wedding album. She remembers poring over it with her mother, oohing and aahing over the dresses and the decorations and the cake, and laughing at the black-and-white moving photos of drunk aunts and uncles.
"You're going to marry a wonderful man someday," her mother said, beaming.
Ginny tried it on for size in her head (I'm going to marry a wonderful man someday—thought it out, just like that), and it felt distinctly wrong.
She stuck out her tongue at her mother. "I'm never getting married!"
Her mother sighed and ruffled her hair.
It never occurred to Ginny to tweak the scenario in the right way to make her beam like her mother did. She never let herself dream of a girl—let alone a girl like Luna—but that has always been what was right.
On the first day of her fourth year, Ginny finds herself in a train compartment with Harry, Neville, and Luna. For most of the way to Hogwarts, it's a pretty uneventful ride. Harry is pretending not to be upset that Ron and Hermione left him for the prefects' compartment, Neville is messing with his Mimbulus Mimbletonia, and Luna is reading this month's issue of the Quibbler upside down.
That day on the train, when Luna laughs for two minutes straight at Ron's stupid joke, Ginny realizes what unsettles people about Luna. Partly, it's the upside-down niche magazine and the bottle cap necklace, but it's mostly the way she is unabashedly herself.
"Let me read your horoscope," Luna says when things have quieted down again. Ginny moves to the seat next to her and is hit by the smell of dandelions. It's unexpected, and definitely a weird perfume choice, but not unpleasant—like Luna herself, Ginny thinks.
Luna reads aloud the column for Leo; Ginny's apparently supposed to meet a menacing stranger in pink this month. She doesn't have to believe in astrology to find Luna's words intoxicating, ethereal and dreamlike.
Luna finishes reading, but Ginny doesn't move back to her old seat. Classes and homework and Quidditch will steal her away soon enough; she wants to stay inside this dream for a little longer.
"You're my dream girl," Ginny tells Luna, because that's the only thought that makes sense when they're sitting this impossibly close.
Luna kisses her, and then, five minutes later, as if no time has passed at all, she says, "Dream girl. I like that."
Ginny doesn't tell her all the ways in which it's true, but she thinks Luna understands. Luna always has.