A/N: This is for tmmdeathwishraven, who requested LunaPansy and provided the prompt flowers. Hope you like it!

Prompt: 10. Gift

Pairing: Luna Lovegood/Pansy Parkinson

She is a hero.

What are you? You are a coward, a Potter-sacrificing, self-saving coward, and by all rights, she should hate you.

But she doesn't.

Because Luna is not a creature of hate. She's an anomaly, that girl, she's so very different to you that she reminds you of yourself, which doesn't make any sense at all, but it's Luna and things shouldn't have to make sense around her.

Your relationship begins in a graveyard.

It starts with a curt nod, or a mumbled, "Hello," as you pass her. You amble through the freshly dug graves with flowers in your hands and you lay them at the mound of dirt that covers your father's cold body. You bow your head and you whisper to the earth and, from the corner of your eye, you see her watch you.

She says, "How are you?" one day as you're leaving, and you tell her, in no uncertain terms, that you're pretty much fucked because no one wants to associate with Slytherins these days, much less you. She nods as if she gets it, though she couldn't possibly because she's Luna, she's a damn Ravenclaw and she's mental but people love her.

"You wouldn't understand," you hiss.

"Of course not," she says with a sleepy smile. "Everyone has always been lovely to me."

And she's not one for sarcasm, so it takes you a second to remember the jeers of Loony and the shoes strung up on chandeliers in the Great Hall and the whispers and titters when she walked by.

So you just say, "Oh," and she smiles even bigger.

"You know, if you smile, people will think that what they say doesn't matter," she whispers conspiratorially. "And if you smile with the right people, you'll soon realise that what they say doesn't matter."

And she leaves, all flowing dirty blonde hair and flowery robes, and you're left staring at her swaying hips as they carry her away.

One day, you visit the graveyard once again to find your father's grave already adorned with fresh flowers. They sit there, colourful and intrusive, strange and foreign among the darkness that is your father's grave. Your own flowers, pale, pale, lilies, they are nothing now.

Pansies.

You bend down, clean knees burrowing into the dirt, and grasp them in your hands. Your lilies are cast aside unceremoniously.

Clumsy fingers prod and stroke and poke at the pansies, and you don't know what you're looking for until you find it. A small, square card with sloping, scratchy handwriting, tucked in behind the oranges and yellows and pinks.

Pansy, she's written,

You can always count on pansies to brighten up a place, can't you? Consider them a gift. I think your father would love them.

Luna

You feel the corners of your lips tug into a smile and tears spring to your eyes. These flowers, they might well be the best gift you've ever been given.

Your head snaps up, looking towards the gravestone that she always stands at. She's not there, and the stone looks bare without her arms slung across it as she kisses it hello. For the first time, you find yourself wondering who lies beneath Luna's stone, who Luna drags herself through this dark and dreary hell for.

When you rest your lilies across the base of the grave, you read the words Iliana Lovegood and see Loving mother carved beneath and suddenly there's more to Luna than you thought.

But you look at the grave; the grass is green and bright and holds the morning dew like shining diamonds. Your lilies look brighter here, surrounded by such a vivacious green, than on your father's grave. How long has Luna lived without her mother?

Longer than you've been fatherless, at any rate.

You walk away through the damp grass and wonder how you've never noticed the loss of a parent that surely pools in her eyes, as it does your own.

And maybe you just haven't been looking close enough.

A few days later, you return to your father's grave to a different type of intrusion.

Luna sits to the side of the mound of soil, pulling loose the blades of grass in front of her and humming quietly.

"What are you doing here, Lovegood?" you ask harshly, because you're confused and worried and maybe a bit scared.

"Pansy!" she says with a smile, "Come here, sit down."

She pats the grass beside her and you smirk, ready to let the snide remark ("These robes and wet grass?") slip from your lips, but then you remember.

Iliana Lovegood.

You sit.

There is a silence filled only by the tearing sound that the grass makes as Luna pulls it up in tiny clumps, and you watch her fingers work in a steady rhythm, wondering again how long she's spent in this graveyard before you turned up.

"Do you want to talk about him?" she asks without looking up.

"No."

"Okay."

And her fingers never halt, never falter, pulling at that grass and shredding it to pieces. You fold your arms high on your chest, as if covering your heart will make speaking easier.

"He was an idiot," you begin, and only then do her hands slow to a stop. "He followed the Dark Lord and he really thought they'd win. But, sometimes, I did, too."

"So did I."

"Yeah, well, they didn't. And I don't think it matters anymore, because he's the only reason I stuck with that side. He chose for me."

"And if you had been given the choice?"

You look at her, searching her eyes for the judgement, the condemnation you would find in anybody else.

"I'd go wherever he did."

You don't expect her to smile, but she does.

"What?" you ask, perhaps slightly aggressively.

"You love him," she says simply. And then she reaches for your hand and wraps her fingers around yours, and you stare blankly at her fingertips, tinged green from the grass, against your pale skin.

"Tell me about him," she says. "The real him."

You blink.

"He – he loved Christmas more than anything," you say. You're not sure where the words are coming from but it feels good, so you let them come, "I remember one year, when he bought me a toy broom but I was too afraid to try it so he promised he'd show me how. He got on it and he – he broke it in two, right down the middle, and I should've been angry but I laughed and laughed and..."

You sit there, with Luna Lovegood's hand in yours, and you let your eyes chase the sloping swirl of your father's name as you tell her all about him, everything, every memory that is burnt into the back of your eyelids and every secret that he made you keep, because saying the words makes it all a little more real, makes him a little more real, and this is Luna's way of helping you keep him alive.

When the words stop, you wipe tears from your cheeks with shaking hands and lean over to kiss her cheek.

"Thank you," you whisper.

"You're welcome," she says, and turns to catch your lips with hers.

She is a hero, and you...you are a coward.

But she understands you most even when you think she doesn't, and she listens with an intensity that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up in the morning breeze.

She kisses you softly when you need her, and roughly when you need her, and you don't know how you ever managed without her. She gives you pansies when you're sad and surprises you with picnics when you're not, and she pulls you back to Earth slowly but surely.

She should hate you, but she doesn't.

And, really, she's the best gift you've ever been given.