Chapter Three:
Nuna (Luna/Neville)
Luna sits in the darkened corner of a cold, abandoned hallway. The current focus of her attention? Getting her sneakers down from the top of an arch. Again.
She pulls off her swirling glasses, taking another look. "Wingardium Leviosa,' Luna whispers as she waves her wand steadily, and the shoes float down to her. Quickly lacing them on, Luna stood and gracefully leaned down to pluck up her in-progress copy of the Quibbler.
Looking around, her moonlight toned hair shining in the nighttime softness of Hogwarts, Luna made towards Ravenclaw Homeroom.
And from down the hall, Neville slowly and quietly escaped from the pillar he had been hiding behind for two hours, ever since Luna had walked down the hallway and saw her shoes. He hadn't meant to watch her as she sat there, or to get pins-and-needles from sitting there so long. But she had just…drawn him in.
Like she always does, Neville thought.
His infatuation with her had started his second year at Hogwarts. While everyone else had been freaking out about the giant snake wandering the halls, Neville had been cursing himself over his performance last year. Sure, Dumbledore had noticed him, but he had been paralyzed and still had close to no friends.
He was going to do better that year. It was my main goal, Neville remembered. But when everyone else had decided to help Harry and his friends, the redhead and the smart girl, Neville had been left behind. No mates, no special place at the lunch table, no homework meetings.
And then he had met her.
A blonde, lithe girl had been crying in the hallway. Students were passing by her, uncaring or not even noticing she was there. He had taken one look at her and felt vastly uncomfortable—but then he realized that she was probably as much of an outcast as him. So he'd sat down next to her and hesitantly put his hand on her shoulder.
Her head had snapped up, and her eyes were almost glaring. But then the girl had broken down into tears again, her white-blonde hair falling over her face. "I really miss her," she whispered, her voice like a warm breeze.
"Who?" Neville asked, their conversation ignored by most of the hallway.
The girl wiped her eyes on her sleeve and pushed back her hair, which had—until then—been covering her Ravenclaw tie. "My mother," she whispered.
Neville was on thin ice already—he didn't want to risk asking what had happened. Instead, he stuck out the hand that wasn't on her shoulder and said, "I'm Neville Longbottom."
The girl almost giggled at that. "Your last name is Longbottom?" He let her laugh, even felt a smile on his face, just because it was so much better than her sobbing her heart out in the hallway. When she had finished laughing, the girl wiped her eyes again and stood.
"Thank you, Neville Longbottom." Her voice was gentle, so, so gentle. The girl had almost finished floating into the mob of the hallway before she replied to him. "My name is Luna—Luna Lovegood."
And with that, the girl had melted away into the sea of students like a ghost.
Neville spent the next few years watching for her around school. Sometimes he would catch glimpses of her—at least, he thought it was her—in the hallway, in the library, or reading on a bench out in the courtyard. She sat there like a white-blonde ghost, her vivid blue eyes tracing a line back and forth across a page of words. And he would spin around, realizing that she had been there, to find her gone.
Until last year—when Snape had taken over the school and everyone was cowering in terror. Nevil had found her, crying in that same space, and had sat down next to her again. Luna smiled at him, a sad twist of her mouth, those tears staining her face glimmering in the half-light like forgotten stars. "Don't you wish," her whispery voice broke, and sob interrupted her sentence.
"Don't you wish," Luna whispered, "that we could all be kids again, back in our first year of Hogwarts, with our friends and family?"
"Yes," Neville whispered, and held her close as she sobbed into his shoulder.
She linked her hands around him, stifling her cries in his shirt. "I don't want people to die, Neville," Hearing his name, spoken with such sadness and hurt and regret, made him want to cry as well, to pour out the pain until his body was racked with sobs. But he had no answer, no concrete thing to hold onto, to give to Luna to help her.
So he just held on.
It was only a few weeks after that, when Luna had been called back to her house by her dad. A few weeks after that was Neville told Luna had been taken by the Dark Lord. He'd feared the worst. Every day, he would replenish a tiny shrine with flowers, since he wasn't allowed to go outside and make a grave. The flowers were given to him by house elves, since they could go out to get supplies. He had been so deliriously glad to find out he had been wrong.
After the war, after the bloodshed and the tears and the graves, Neville had sought out Luna. He remembered the day lividly, where he had looked for her in the courtyard. He wandered around, walking around the fountain and turning just enough to spot Luna's reading bench—
-and the two people sitting on it.
One was tall, with long, dirty blonde hair and dark green eyes. For a second, Neville thought it was a girl. But he could hear a deep-throated laughter come from the man. And he knew that way the git was wrapping his arm around Luna's shoulder—it was territorial-like, a simple gesture that spoke to all people, "This one's mine."
But that one had been Neville's, at least his dream, for his entire childhood. At first as a friend, but during that dark year at Hogwarts, and after the war, as… something more.
What bothered him most was he didn't even know this guy.
Neville summoned up all his rage, all his self-pity, all… this. He sent it in the most hostile glare he had ever had, or seen.
And it fell flat.
"God, Neville, what's going on?" Ron, his face pitying, spun his head around as soon as Neville came in the Gryffindor homeroom.
"Nothing," he replied, shifting the pack on his shoulder and making for the dorm room upstairs. He didn't want to hear Ron's boasting—of how he wasted all his time with a girl that could've made his life heaven by going out, drinking, and having affairs. And after all of that, Ron complained and whined when Hermione had left him for Draco—who, Neville had to admit, had changed quite a bit from the prissy pretty Princess he had been first year.
"'Cmon, spill it, ya git," Ron said, not unfriendly, but definitely drunk.
"I said, nothing," Neville spat.
The Gryffindor boys started trying to pull Ron back, but the Head Boy was having none of it. "Neville, what's bloody going on with ya?" he teased.
Neville socked him in the face.
Running upstairs, away from the redhead clutching his bloodied nose, Neville flung himself onto his bed. He rustled through his pack, pulling out a sketchbook and quills, and painted a picture of the hurt and betrayal, the anger and the guilt on a single page of paper. When he looked over what he had drawn, it was a wavy curtain of hair, sparkling eyes—
Oh bloody hell, Neville thought, and tossed the picture of Luna to the floor as he tried to shove thoughts of her out of his mind.
He still remembered that day, and it drove him nuts. He could get so close, so near to her, to reach out and put his hand on her shoulder—but never close enough, for that boyfriend was so near, so close to her, closer than he would ever be…
He found her in the hallway again.
She was crying—had been, in fact, for a couple of days now. Each time, he passed her with the rest of the crowd. He tried to convince himself that she didn't have anything on him. He tried, he tried, he tried…
And eventually failed.
It was the fourth day of avoiding her, and he couldn't take it anymore. He dumped his books down beside her on the bench and sat on the other side, careful to maintain a bit of distance. But his walls broke, again, because he could see the tears falling silently to the polished floor. The floor where blood had been spilled, where family and friends had given their lives.
He moved his books to the floor and hugged her.
Luna squeaked, and Neville had to laugh at that, even though the tears in his eyes. Soon, they were both laughing, a happy sound that echoed through the halls. Neville really wished he had told her before, back when the school was being invaded and everything went to hell.
He hadn't found her in time, because when he did find her it was proclaimed that Harry was dead, and after that, Neville had to go after the snake. And that memory brought back others, as fresh and painful as the day they happened—the dead piled along the halls, the castle in shambles, friends covered with debris—Neville's laugh died in his throat, and he unconsciously he tightened his grip on Luna.
"What's wrong, Neville?" Luna asked, struggling in his hold.
He shook his head regretfully, a slow movement. The tears that had sprung to his eyes slipped down his cheeks, and he found he was blushing, ashamed to show weakness to the person he knew was already shattered beyond repair.
But Luna simply wiped the tears away, and, so swift he nearly missed it, gave him a peck on the cheek.
He loosened his grip just enough for her to wriggle free. "Thanks, Neville," she whispered, and slung her back of books over her shoulder. Her boyfriend walked down the hall and saw them, and for a second, a glimmer of regret flashed over her face.
"I would've picked you," Luna said quickly, her voice merely a breeze of wind. "I would always pick you." Was it a promise?
So pick me now, he thought, but didn't say anything as she slowly walked away.
Neville slowly reached inside himself, looking at the fractured remains of his heart. And slowly, carefully, he took her words and used them to piece his heart back together. It would never be really fixed—no, he had suffered too much loss for that—but it was full again, loving again.
He took that promise, sentence, whatever it may be, and wrapped it around himself. He would make sure that somehow, Luna would be his. He would take it up with her ever-present snogging chum if he had to.
She had to keep her promise.