Prompt: Luna Lovegood starts a dance class in Hogsmeade after the War
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She knows her legs are different know.
They are her legs, because she can wiggle her bare toes and bounce on the balls of her feet. She can feel silk skirts flutter around her legs and they are her legs.
They aren't her legs though, because they're ruined with violent red scars that ripple against the pale flesh. They are rough against her, and they are strangers to her. They are cracks against her existence, and she tries to stitch them shut and simply forget and move on, but she can't. They are engraved and sliced open, and isn't it just so surreal?
It's exactly three days after the war, and the Boy-Who-Lived is missing, and somewhere Hermione Granger is searching for parents who will no longer recognize her. Ron is rusted and trying to map out his family, and bridge the broken branches of the family tree.
Diagon Alley is in ruins. Stores are smouldering wreckages, and she steps over the broken glass and rusted nails and tries not to remember what it looked like when it was alive and happy. Instead a sobbing woman kneels over a husk of a body dragged from the ashes of one of the older buildings and she can catch sight of the hazed mess of Weasleys Wizard Wheezes.
Her skirt swirls around her ankles, and suddenly she's surrounded by people with gaunt faces and heavy hearts. They are murmuring names and trying to find ghosts, and somewhere in the drone of skeleton people she can see Cho Chang with her wand clenched tight in her hand.
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They go for tea two days later, and they sit quietly.
Together they are blue and bronze, with years stretched between them. She has the look of grieving burned into her bones, and this wild strength against her spine.
It's quiet in the tea shop, surrounded by streaked windows and quiet faces. Hogsmead is dull, grey fog sinking low over the town and cloaking them from the world. Cho has green tea with two sugar cubes, and Luna has Earl Grey black and bitter.
She's wearing leggings and boots, but she can still feel the burn of the scars against her flesh. "I never said sorry." Cho says quietly.
"For what?" Luna blinks, feeling lost and confused. She fidgets with the pink mug, placing it diagonal from Cho's red mug.
"I stole a pair of socks once. Black with grey hearts."
The woman looks ashamed, and it's silly. They've survived a war, and she's apologising for a pair of socks stolen from her trunk.
"Don't be. I never really liked them."
She smiles with her teeth, and maybe they understand each other a bit more than ever.
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Neville helps her clean the shop up. She's twirling around with a broomstick, and he's fixing up the windows.
She's purchased a shop with her father's money, but it's her own. Luna will make a home on the upper floor and open the windows wider and wider. They play old records until the notes have seeped into the grey walls and it vibrates through the wooden floors.
She and Neville hack at the cupboards until they no longer exist, and the heave the shelves out and burn the remains. The rooms are empty and blank, and it's sort of like a blank slate.
The floors are dark and glossy, and the ceiling is high and mighty.
She paints the walls canary yellow and the ceiling Ravenclaw blue. She remembers cellars with dark corners and heavy chains, and a woman with angry black hair and spells that sank into shadows. She remembers black fire and dead bodies, and the winter settling deep into the cellar.
Neville's quieter now, with sad eyes and she remembers the hero that lifted the sword and fought against Voldermort.
He's sort of like a blank slate too, now that she thinks about it.
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She doesn't sleep often, and finds herself knotted into bed sheets and trying to pretend her legs aren't monuments to the war and she wasn't sealed beneath the ground like a grave.
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She paints a sign herself. Its bubble gum pink and she uses a spell that her father favoured to make the words glitter.
Harry stops by, and she can taste the ozone. He's unsettled and raw, and everyone looks to him for answers he doesn't have.
"How have you been?" She smiles at the man. His forehead has the strike of lightening and death carved into it, and he has the look of age and misery pressed into his bones. "You've been away for quite a while."
He gives her a smile, slight and small. "I've been better, Luna. Went home for a few days. How have you been."
His eyes are sharp and bright green, and he's quiet but strong. He was there, she remembers. He was there, and he liberated her from that cellar that tasted like dead butterflies and roses tossed onto coffins.
"I've been better."
She smells burning flesh.
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She wakes up screaming.
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She wears a long woolen dress and thick stockings, and she tries not to search her reflection for those angry scars.
She can hear a woman laughing, making her bones hollow and lungs heavy.
Luna tries not to cry, and she tries not to plead for forgiveness. She keeps her pantry stocked, and some evenings she is hunched over the counter eat crackers one at a time, trying to feel full.
It doesn't work, because all she feels is this sickening emptiness.
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Cho stops by one afternoon and helps her seal the mirrors to the wall. The room is transformed into glossy reflections and is unfolding through the looking glass.
Cho breaks down crying, all long legs and crescent eyes that bleed this utter misery that is swallowing their entire world whole.
"He never got to see the end of it," she sobs, hands grasping onto the metal bar. "He died before it even began, and never got to see the end."
Luna's boney arms are wrapping around Cho's narrow frame, and she tries to remember the valiant seeker that claimed the skies without hesitation. "He was the beginning." She tells Cho, and she hopes it will help.
Cedric was washed away by a green light, with no thoughts other than trophies and victories-and isn't that the best way to die?"
"I killed three men," Cho tells her quietly, her hands clenched. "It was war, and they were going to hurt people. But I killed them."
She understands.
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Draco comes by with a bouquet of dandelions and roses, and leaves them just inside the door.
The flowers smell like ashes and sacrifices, and the red roses look like bloodstains.
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She burns the flowers and scatters the ashes, but she can't escape the emptiness that threatens to burn her alive.
Black fire dances from the wand, snapping and crackling at her flesh. She can't escape and the world is caving in, and the room is shrinking and it's like she is in a coffin. Like she has always been in a coffin and never seen the world, and it doesn't make sense.
She's Looney Lovegood with the crazy necklaces and strange newspapers, and why is she here alone with this woman burning her flesh.
She screams and begs, and all she can smell is burning flesh.
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Hermione returns empty handed, and she's just in time. Neville spent the morning helping Luna nail the bright pink and glittery sigh to the storefront, and she opens her doors.
Harry arrives and Ron follows. Lavender's face is raw and Padma limps along beside. Dean and Seamus are like ghosts, Dean's left arm metal and unreal. She welcomes them all in brightly, and suddenly Draco steps carefully into the threshold.
He is like a jungle, secret paths woven into his veins, and thorns and vines clinging to his skin like armour. She falls silent and terrified, and he watches her the way a mouse does a cat. "Hello."
She doesn't smile but doesn't frown, but jumps to Neville's side.
They're all wounded and ruined, and they can't hide it.
Harry's the savior with nothing left to save, and Hermione's parents simply do not exist any longer. Ron reels from his family crumbling apart, and Lavender's face has become savaged and ruined.
They are lost and warped, but Luna can't run any longer.
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Luna Lovegood's Dance Class
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She swirls across the floor, her skirt flaring out and everyone can see her naked legs ruined by the past. She falls into step with the music, and the world is falling still. Cho arrives, all dark stares and strong shoulders, pulling Harry onto the dance floor and forces him to find the rhythm that Luna leads.
One by one they all follow suit, and something happens.
Lavender and Dean fit together like puzzle pieces and Seamus drags Hermione onto the floor. The room is getting fuller and fuller and Ron is dancing with Padma the way he should have all those years ago.
Neville grabs her by the waist and suddenly she is together and not lost, and they dance around and around.
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They're not fixed.
They're getting there.