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Harry woke to the taste of coins in his mouth. He sat up and tried to get his bearings.
Still in Luna's house.
In Luna's bedroom.
On Luna's bed.
Across from a table with a lamp.
He normally wouldn't have noticed the lamp - it was a simple thing: a white, terracotta pot – but it shattered. There was a flicker of light and it went dark. It broke apart into large pieces, falling into a pile. He stared at it. Did he do that? When he was a young boy, still barely in control of his power, things like that happened all the time. He teleported to rooftops. Glass windows vanished. Women inflated like balloons and floated away.
It should have exposed him as a wizard to the whole world. The obliviators took care of it all.
It was surprising how effective they were. He never had much contact with the Obiviator Office when he worked at the Ministry. All he knew was there were thousands of them, they were constantly apparating across the countryside, and they had three day weekends to deal with the stress.
He stood to walk across the room and examine the lamp but stopped halfway to standing. His lap was wet. He'd been hit by the memory so hard, he'd wet himself. No, it wasn't urine. He'd ejaculated in his pants.
How long had it been since he'd had a wet dream? Decades at least. Certainly before he became sexually active. He smiled. There was a pride in knowing your body could still work like a teenager's.
How powerful had that memory been? He scratched the back of his head, uncomfortably. It had been pretty damned powerful.
He'd had made love to Luna at the Battle of Hogwarts in the back of a closet while people were dying only a short distance away. No, "made love" was the wrong term. They'd fucked. It was amazing how powerful hormones were when you were young. So much energy. So much passion. So little common sense.
It had been his first time. Was it hers? She certainly seemed to know what she was doing. He pushed down a twinge of jealousy. It wasn't any of his business if he was her first time. There was no shame in it and, after all; it wasn't even a romantic moment. She'd just done something nice for him, something to help him. He should be grateful.
His mind kept turning back to jealousy, though. He imagined her and Neville, and Ron, and Hermione, and Seamus, and Cho, and Snape, and Hedwig, and every other living being at Hogwarts.
"Stop it," he said, hitting the side of his head with the heel of his hand.
After all, maybe she just read about it. He'd spent some time in the library's Restricted Section looking for potion recipes. Who knew what else there was?
He smiled, guiltily. The thought was absurd, as his sudden obsession was absurd, but at least he'd moved on.
He stood and, clutching the front of his pants uncomfortably, left the room. Outside was quiet. The kids must have gone to bed already. Leaning over the railing, he saw Luna down below. She sat on a barstool, leaning over some kind of writing.
She'd changed her clothes, switching from her casual work attire to a dress. It was dark blue and velvet. It was also, he realized with a warm flush, low cut in the front. He forced himself to look at what she was working on.
It appeared to be a newspaper article, but printed on rectangular, muggle paper. She was marking it with a red, felt pen. He squinted. She was really marking it, scribbling with vigorous motions. Whatever she'd read upset her.
"Luna," he called out to her.
She turned her face up to him, and he noticed she was wearing tiny, black glasses. They reminded him of Rita Skeeter's: black with tiny, jeweled wings. He hadn't seen her in glasses since those absurd ones she wore when they'd first met.
"I had, uh, an accident," he said.
She put a finger to smiling lips. He knew that look, all parents did. It meant "the kids are asleep. Don't wake them."
She put the glasses down and joined him upstairs, following him back into the bedroom.
"Did you wet yourself, Harry?" she said, staring straight at where he clutched his groin.
He decided it was less embarrassing not to correct her.
"I can wash them," she said. "Take your pants off."
He froze. She waited (with barely controlled mirth) for a moment.
"In the bathroom, Harry. There's a robe in there."
He'd forgotten how messy nocturnal emissions could be. He spent a few moments cleaning himself off before putting on her (thankfully) plain green robe.
"Are you okay?" Luna said through the door. "You seemed to be in a kind of fugue state. I didn't want to interrupt you, but it's been over an hour. I was getting worried."
"It was pretty intense," Harry said, balling up his clothes. "I remembered-"
He stepped out of the bathroom and stopped mid-sentence. Luna was kneeling by the table, unplugging the remains of her lamp.
"Did you mean to break my lamp?" she said.
"I'm sorry. I can repair it. The kids are asleep. I could go get my wand, and they'd never know"
She swept the fragments into a small garbage can. "It's a no-magic house. I'll just buy another one. Oh!"
Luna shook her hand. In her haste, she'd cut her finger. Without thinking, Harry crossed the room and took her hand in his.
"It's not too bad," he said, staring at the tiny cut.
Not knowing why, perhaps still feeling the effects of his memory, he licked the cut on her finger. He felt a shudder go through her body, and she yanked her hand away.
"Laundry is this way," she said, hurrying out of the room.
The laundry machine, it turned out, was on the second floor next to the bedroom. He hadn't seen a muggle washing machine since he'd lived with the Dursleys. Aunt Petunia was practically romantic about them. Once a week, she donned rubber gloves and cleaned their outsides, scrubbing them until the chrome gleamed. Harry sometimes wondered why Petunia kept them in the basement instead of on display in the living room.
"You only have one machine," Harry said. "Do you hang them out on a clothesline afterwards?"
"Oh, this is a new muggle thing," Luna said, opening it. "It does the washing and the drying. You don't even need to add the soap or softener every time. It's just in there somewhere."
She gingerly took his clothes from him and put them inside. She closed the washer door with a thunk.
"You remember what happened between us? At the Battle of Hogwarts," she said, not moving, her back to him.
"Yes," he said, taking a step closer. The machine beeped as she pushed buttons. "You took me into the cloak room and tried to save my life."
Luna swore as she made the wrong decision. She pushed the CANCEL button and started again.
"But I didn't save your life," she said, resolutely keeping her back to him. "You went out and died anyway. The next time I saw you, you were lying dead in Hagrid's arms. It didn't matter."
"It did matter," he said to her back. She was still staring forward over the top of the washer. "I went out to die because of you."
With a final beep, the machine started filling with water.
"I don't-" she said, turning back to face him. She made a tiny squeak when she realized how close he was. She quickly regained her composure. "I don't understand. Why didn't you leave? Why did you go die?"
"Because I thought 'She's willing to die for me. She's willing to die so I can go live. How can I let her make that sacrifice for me? I should make that sacrifice for her. For all of them.' So, I went to meet Voldemort. I went to die so you could live."
She was crying. She was crying, and he didn't know why. He thought he was saying something nice. Confused, helpless, he reached out and wiped her tears away with his thumbs. Then, feeling that wasn't enough, he gave her a tiny kiss on the mouth.
And then they were kissing with a crazed intensity. She grabbed him and tried to pull him tighter in, but it wasn't enough. He bit her neck and it wasn't enough. She kicked off her shoes.
It was like they were in the closet at Hogwarts again. She didn't open her dress, like she'd done all those years ago, but her underwear slipped off just as quickly. He lifted her up and found the washer was about the same height as the table had been.
But something had changed. In all those years, he'd lost the ability to perform at will. Coming in his pants had robbed him of that. It would probably be hours before he could again.
Still, in the meantime, there were other things he could do for her.