What Can't Be Seen

Luna has always seen things that other people couldn't.

Pairing: Luna/Sirius
Rating: general
Warnings: Potentially not a HEA
Tropes: Ambiguous Ending, Pining, Ghost
Words: 644
Original Release Date: 21 Feb 2020

After the war, Harry opened Grimmauld Place up as a waystation for his friends and the other members of the Order and Dumbledore's Army. Luna was one of the ones to help clean the rowhouse and make it into a proper B&B. Each person had their favourite room—Hermione liked the one across from the library, Neville liked the one with the view of the garden, Ron liked one on the first floor because it was closer to the kitchen. And Luna? Luna liked the room that had been Sirius's bedroom. (She'd long since been persuaded that he was in fact, not Stubby Boardman.)

As she was often out of the country doing research as a Magizoologist, she didn't have a regular home to come home to. (Especially since her father's remarriage.) She didn't mind, because it meant she came home to him.

Every night she spent in Sirius's bedroom, her room, really, at the witching hour, he would show up. Not completely translucent like a ghost but not fully corporeal either. It was enough that he could brush her hair from her face or press his lips to hers. At first, they had just talked but as the years passed and their relationship bloomed, they tried other things. More intimate things. Either he wasn't corporeal enough on those nights or they would run out of time. But that didn't matter so much to Luna. What mattered is that he was there. With her.

What matter was the way he smiled when he saw her, the way mischief would light his eyes if she wore something revealing, the way he said her name.

Once, when the B&B was full and Luna was on the continent, Hermione stayed in Sirius's room. Luna talked with her, hoping that the other woman would bring it up, but if Sirius had been there, Hermione hadn't seen him.

Another time, Luna had to stay in another room of the house. She had set her alarm, which didn't actually help as she was too anxious to sleep, but he did not appear to her then either.

She asked him the next time she saw him, alone in their room, the clock in the hall still chiming, but he didn't know anything about the other people that may have been in their room. He hadn't seen them; he only ever saw her and she was always there when he was.

Luna had promised him once—and only once—that one day she would find the right spell to revive him, to bring him back into the world. She discussed her experimental spells with him but one time she had a close call and had to be taken to St Mungo's. Sirius asked her to stop, told her he wasn't worth it, and she never spoke of it again.

* . * . *

"And then one day, you're Aunt Luna—your namesake—just vanished. Completely disappeared. Aunt Hermione couldn't make sense of her spell notes but we assumed that she died the same way her mother had, by an experimental spell backfiring."

"Did she die before I was born?" Li-Lu asked, shifting on the couch where she sat next to her father.

Harry summoned a photo album and flipped through a few pages as he answered her. "No, she was alive when you were born. We've got a picture of her holding you." He opened the page and turned the album around so she could see it.

In the picture, a pretty blonde woman was smiling dreamily and holding a tiny pink bundle. She was seated and behind her was a man with his hand gently rubbing on her shoulder. The picture had only captured his torso.

"Who's that?" Li-Lu asked, pointing at the man in the picture.

"That's you and Aunt Luna," Harry answered not acknowledging the man in the picture at all.