Chapter 68: Reconcile Later in Life

"Thanks for listening, Nev," Luna sighed, as she rose from the small table where she and Neville Longbottom, her Hogwarts colleague and close friend, were sharing a spot of tea in his greenhouse. Immediately upon standing up, she held a palm to her woozy head, drooping her chin onto her chest. "It helps…."

Watching her, Neville sighed as he drifted into her, laying a comforting hand on her shoulder. "It's going to be OK….." Once she had peered up into his eyes, he gave her his best, most confident smile. "You'll see."

Luna smiled weakly at him. "You always have known how to make me feel better…."

Neville flushed. Secretly, he was pleased that Luna placed such value in him. If anyone knew how to make others feel better, it was Luna herself. When they had been growing up, she had always seemed to be unbothered by such problems that Neville had never considered her as having any.

He sighed. Though, considering the hits his best mate had taken, even the most unflappable person would be left shaken.

The blood curse epidemic – what was known in the Muggle world as COVID-19 – had taken something from just about everybody. Sometimes, that something was untangible, like a feeling of independence and freedom, the sense of being safe in your community. For others, something tangible and precious had been taken. That something was the lives of hundreds of thousands of individuals, both magical and Muggle alike. Back in the States, the numbers were at nearly a million.

Among the claimed dead had been Rolf Scamander. His passing had left his wife a widow, and a single mother of teenage twin boys. The Professor of Field Studies had struggled on, though Neville had felt his heart go out to her as he had seen that a tiny bit of the light that was Luna had gone out of her.

He could sympathize. It wasn't as though the Professor of Herbology and Head of Gryffindor House hadn't experienced his own fair share of disappointments: he and Hannah Abbott had called it quits on their marriage a couple of years before; the divorce had been amicable, yet still stung.

Watching his best mate, a woman he had always cared for, heading for the greenhouse door, Neville suddenly felt a bolt of Gryffindor courage surge through him. Racing after her, he caught her arm, turning her back by the elbow. At Luna's quizzical look, Neville gazed down at her with the emotion of wasted years and a love that, in all those years, had never completely dissipated.

"Nev….?"

"I'd never forget you, Lu. It should have been…. You were the one that got away." He flushed with surprise at his own boldness.

Luna looked at him, her gaze both at once solemn and bemused. Neville held her stare, the confidence in his voice now growing.

"It should have been you."

Luna hesitated and peered, gazed into his eyes. Finally, she took a deep breath and stepped into him, looping her arms around his neck. She peered deeply at Neville, her best mate, her childhood lover, the godfather to her twin sons. "It still can be…" she murmured.

Neville's eyes widened. He bent close to her, in his stare a question. Luna just softly beamed up at him, even as her heart thundered in her ribcage from the exhilarating terror of, after several years living as a widow, maybe there was….

"You won't run?" Neville asked, the fear of being rejected again lacing his voice.

In answer, Luna drew her lips close so that they were a hair's-breadth away. "I'm not going anywhere," she whispered.

Neville beamed, and with shared smiles, the pair of colleagues embraced and kissed.

It was a kiss of apology, of second chances, and of deep, deep love, even after all these years.

When they sensuously broke apart to catch their breath, Neville was grinning dopily. He groaned aloud. "Merlin, I've missed you …."

Their snogging turned hot and heavy now, and a practical half of Luna's brain tried to cry out in warning that it was too soon, too fast. The fact that she was back where she knew he had always wanted her to belong, with him, drowned out the fact that it was she who had left him to explore and find herself, all those years ago, eventually marrying another man and having children by him.

Now, perhaps that journey of discovery was complete. Perhaps she had discovered that the person she was meant to be was the one who had remained at her side even after she had broken his heart. Any person would be lucky to have one love in their life. Luna now could see she had been blessed with two.

They broke apart again sensuously, with Luna nearly bent back over one of the workbenches. Her silvery, expressive orbs had grown dark with a lust that matched Neville's own, even as she was now prettily biting her lip.

"Wait," she murmured. "Not here."

He groaned madly and was just preparing to say sod it and take her over the potting table, right there in the soil and all, but Luna was squirming back onto her feet and taking him by the hand, dragging him to the greenhouse door.

"Come with me….." she murmured low.

The kisses had quickly deepened, and it had only been Luna's cleverness and good sense that had told her that maybe she and her fellow professor shouldn't give into their love and lust and passion where their students, or Godric forbid, her sons, could see.

Luna guided him with purpose far enough off the Hogwarts grounds where they could Disapparate properly. Emerging at her childhood home of the Rook, Luna began to tug her lover to another greenhouse, this one round the back of the property.

Xenophilius Lovegood was perched in a rocking chair on the chess-piece shaped house's front stoop, a spread of newsprint in front of him while smoking a pipe. He didn't even lift his head at the approach of his only daughter.

"Hullo, dearest. Back so soon?"

"Morning, Papa. Never mind us – Neville and I will just be in the greenhouse making love." Luna stated this breezily even as Neville felt himself choke in shock.

For his part, Xenophilius didn't even flinch. "That's nice, love…." he murmured absently.

The pair slipped into the greenhouse and the door had scarcely hissed shut behind them before Luna was snogging Neville desperately. Gripping her soft bum in his fists, Neville lifted her onto a worktable and clambered on top of her as Luna, writhing in pleasure beneath him, spread her legs for him.

Hands trembling as he worked to free his cock, Neville swiftly mounted her and mated with her.

They now coupled in frantic sexual intercourse, the conjoining of their bodies harkening back to the hottest, the heaviest months of their relationship when they were teenagers, in the months after the Battle of Hogwarts. Kissing her bruisingly, Neville heard, felt Luna groan into his mouth.

"Huhhhh… Uhhhhhhh – Uggh! Errrrrr… Ohhhhhhh….. N-Nev….. I'm….. I'm going to cum, darling! I'm going to c-ahhhhhhh… Ahhhhhhhh… AHHHHHHHHH…. AHHHHHHHHHHH!"

He brought her to dizzying orgasm, his beautiful Ravneclaw arching her back as she came hard against him. Neville groaned like a brute as he jerked into her aching wet folds, grinding against her to find his own completion. He vaguely wondered if this was why they called making love Playing The Beast with Two Backs.

When he finally ejaculated inside her fluttering walls, a dazed Luna encircled her arms about his shoulders, pulling him close as her voice lilted into song:

"Ahhhhh, sweet mystery of life, at last I've found thee….!" Neville growled, groaned into the swell of her breasts, now peeking out from under her blouse that he had parted like curtains before feasting. He kissed her pebbled nipples, weighing her tits – the size of mangoes – in his palm. Her boobs which were voluptuous and had once been filled with a mother's milk. "Ahhhhhhh, I know at last the secret of it all!..."

"Lu? ….. Will you marry me?"

They were both still spread-eagled on that worktable. There were flowers and dirt tangled in Luna's blonde hair, and in all his life, Neville had never seen anyone so beautiful.

Propping herself up on one elbow, Luna looked at him. She took a deep breath. "Well…. maybe we should ask…."

"…. The twins?" Neville chuckled. Giggling, the pair shared a chaste peck on the lips. Neville nearly choked when Luna deepened it, winding her limbs about him even as she whispered sultrily into his mouth her answer:

"Yes."