A/N: Inspired into being by the Circular Stories Challenge (which asks that they first and last line be pretty much the same) and Chocoballs in owluvr's Honeydukes Competition (write a romance).

Dedicated to the wonderful yellow 14, who inspires not only me, but most of the HPFC forum, to "keep writing". Hope you like it, m'dear!

[Also, I forgot to mention in the last chapter that my Snarry fic is up - your mother's eyes. So if any of you are as sick and perverted as I am... ;)]

Prompt: 27. Graceful (Has anyone else noticed how the prompts are becoming less and less relevant as this collection goes on? I should fix that.)

Pairing: Luna Lovegood/Padma Patil

Nobody ever wonders how the staircases move.

I never wonder how they move, neither of us do – we just sit there in the middle of the night and let them dance and twirl gracefully, taking us with them, and never, ever wonder how.

We spend those nights sprawled out across the bottom steps, Luna with her back arched awkwardly and her arms slung back, me with my head nestled into her neck and my lips against her collarbone.

Tonight, the sky is dark and the moon is slung high, casting shadows through the windows above us. The staircases are spinning, moment by moment, and the shadows dance across our skin.

"Do you believe in God?" I ask, but I know Luna thinks we are too young to believe in anything but love. She only stares at the ceiling, saying nothing.

"Do you believe in magic?" I ask this time, but my voice is quiet and shy and I feel my breath, warm, caught against her skin.

"I don't need to believe in magic," Luna says confusedly. "It just...is."

"What if magic is love?" I ask. "What if love is magic?"

Luna smiles, dreamy eyed. But then there is a creak, and a shift, and we are spinning again, grabbing onto the stair rails and holding tight. The stairs move slowly, deliberately, and we watch the paintings and portraits and night-sky views through dusty windows as they flash by, and I swear, this is the closest thing to magic I have ever felt.

"Magic," Luna says when we have stopped, "can be used for evil, or by the wrong people. I don't think the same is true for love."

"No," I say, and then I am kissing her softly, tenderly. "No, I don't think so either."

Silence, except for the sound of her breathing and my drum of a heartbeat.

"I'll miss you, Luna," I say quietly, whispering it like a confession to a priest, as if no one should ever know but her. She looks at me and I see in her eyes a phantom of hope, but neither of us dare mention it. It is too much to hope that we will both come back here, that the war will end, that we will come out the other side with our limbs linked like chains and the other's name in our every exhale.

"We'll be fine," she says, and her smile is genuine and perfect and I want to believe her, I do, I do.

It is then that we are spinning gracefully again, and I think perhaps the staircases know when our hearts are beating through our chests and love is filling us like balloons or buckets, ready to burst or overflow, and I am kissing her so sweetly that it almost hurts.

The thought dies as Luna's hands find my skin and I forget how to think.

We are still spinning, still kissing, still loving, but we do not wonder why or what or how. There is no time in life for questioning good things. They happen and we smile and we accept them; they will happen regardless of the whys and the hows and we know this.

After all, nobody ever wonders how the staircases move.