Title: Inside-Out
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters: Luna Lovegood
Prompt: 004. Insides
Word Count: 666
Rating: G
Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns all. More's the pity.
"Mommy? What does 'love' mean?"
Fortunata Lovegood looks down at her daughter, her eyes huge and unblinking in the pale moon of her face. She smiles, indulgent, and temporarily abandons her experimenting to kneel on the cool stone floor next to five year-old Luna.
"Well," she says, and stops almost immediately. How does one explain the concept of love to a child? Aren't they supposed to sort of…well…just know? She's never had to raise a child before, with no younger brothers or sisters to look after and no friends with children, either.
Luna gazes up at her, so small and startled looking, and Fortunata feels her heart cave in, beating warmly against her sternum. She does the best she can, and it must be enough, because her daughter is still here, still well and safe and alive.
"Love," she says. "Is when you see someone or hear someone, or even smell someone, and just those little things make you feel all twisty and turny…" She punctuates these words with darting pokes at her little girl's sides, and Luna squeals, halfheartedly trying to bat the offending hands away. Fortunata smiles and carefully tucks locks of bright blonde hair behind Luna's tiny ears. "…inside. But it's not a bad twisty-turny feeling. It's sort of like…Oh, I suppose it's sort of like flying with Daddy when we go to the market."
Fortunata knows that Xenophilius is still young and daring at heart, even though disappointments weigh heavily on his shoulders and age him faster than usual. She knows that, when he takes Luna to the market on their should-seat-four-but-doesn't family broom, he does loop-de-loops and whirligigs and tries to make this solemn, precious child laugh.
"So love is a good thing?" Luna's hand travels stealthily up the front of her jumper, the thumb popping into her mouth. Fortunata pulls it away, chuckling.
"Yes, sweetheart. Love is a very good thing. Even if it makes you feel like your insides are trying to get out, it's a very, very good thing."
Nine years is such a short time, Harry thinks, and reaches up to try and touch the mural on Luna's ceiling. Him, Hermione, Neville and Ginny and Ron…The painted chains seem so close, but he is still quite short, as far as teenage boys go, and his hand closes on empty air.
He turns to look at her bed and notices, quite by accident, the journal poking halfway out from beneath it. He crosses the room and kneels beside the dusty bed, pulling the book out and opening it. The spine creaks and more dust floats serenely down, but the last entry is easy to find. It opens naturally to that page, looked at over and over again by bright, solemn blue eyes, traced with delicate, probably ink-stained fingers. There is no date, but there is a small sketch of himself, his scar almost comically miniscule and his eyes huge and fathomless. His hair is shorter, so it must have been from sometime last year. Before this whole mess got out of hand.
Beneath the picture, Luna's neat, slightly curvy penmanship has faded not at all, and he reads it, heart beating a staccato rhythm in his ears.
'I like to be with him. I like to hear him speak, and I like it when I can touch his arm or his shoulder and no one looks at me strangely. I like the way he smells, even though boys mostly smell like sweat and rubbish.
I even like the way that he makes me feel when we are alone; he doesn't touch me or treat me any differently, and he doesn't say that he likes me or wants to hold my hand, but even so, when we are alone my stomach gets all twisty, and I am turned inside-out.'