After breakfast, we met with a procession of hungover Gryffindors outside of the Great Hall. I got a few high-fives from the least affected, but most of them looked at me with either jealousy or anger.
"They don't seem happy to see you," Luna said while still pressed to my side as we walked.
"Considering what the twins said, it's probably because I skipped whatever lecture they had to endure," I shrugged. "So, what do you want to do today?"
"Oh! How about a tour of the castle?" Luna excitedly asked.
"That seems great!" I said, pulling her for a quick kiss before turning to Fleur and Ginny. "How about you girls? Up to show me around?"
Ginny rolled her eyes, "No, I'll have to deal with the drama my brother caused last night, or at least try to stop things from getting worse."
I'd heard during the party that Ron blew up on Hermione over something. I hadn't paid that much attention to it but it must have been serious for Ginny to decide to fix his attitude.
"And I want to watch Ginny make him suffer, he was very inconsiderate when he asked me to the Ball," Fleur nodded at Ginny.
"Inconsiderate?" Ginny snorted. "He humiliated both you and himself with that stunt. And I only haven't given him a talking to about that because I was too busy preparing for the Ball, so thanks for reminding me."
They shared vicious smiles with each other and I was suddenly very happy with the fact I wouldn't be present to witness whatever they'd do to the guy.
"Well then, I guess we'll see you at lunch," I said, letting Luna lead me away from them.
"So, where do we start?" I asked her.
"Well, we are already down here so the grounds should be a good place to start," she said. "You'll love it, mornings outside the castle are always beautiful!"
The snow-covered grounds were indeed beautiful. The almost-frozen lake, the thick forest, and the mountains in the distance. All things I didn't pay attention to earlier that day when I went to Xeno's now standing center-stage to the whimsical ambiance that was Hogwarts.
By the time we finished our loop around the castle, plenty of students were participating in what was shaping up to be a massive snowball war.
Luna barely paid them any attention, guiding me back inside the castle to show me the wonders hidden there.
And so we went, Luna showing me places of interest and introducing me to paintings she made friends with for each floor.
Of course, with the size of Hogwarts, we were barely halfway through the castle when lunch came, so we leisurely made our way back towards the Great Hall.
Or that's what I thought, but instead of stopping on the ground floor, she led me down another flight of stairs hidden behind a door by the entrance hall, where a broad stone basement corridor, brightly lit and decorated with food-themed paintings, was.
Approaching a painting of a bowl of fruit, she tickled the pear, which giggled and turned into a green door handle.
As she turned the handle, I couldn't help but marvel at how creative her people were at making hidden entrances, because who the hell would even think about tickling the paintings when looking for one?
The opening door revealed an area just as big as the Great Hall, with four tables of the same size and in the same position as the house tables up above and a fifth one in place of the faculty's. Around them, short creatures were in a flurry of movement, constantly bringing new dishes to the table or taking away empty ones, but their main focus was around the stone walls, where countertops and stoves full of pots and pans were in frantic use, some of them were tending to a large brick fireplace behind the faculty's table on the other side of the room.
After a few moments, one of the creatures approached us, its large head on a thin frame, big, bulbous eyes, and pointy ears would have been off-putting if it wasn't for the earnest look on its face.
"Hello, Miss and Sir! I is Tilly, what is you liking today?" The creature spoke, the weird, broken English taking me a second to translate.
"Hello Tilly, we would like a picnic basket with lunch. Only finger food, please." Luna said, smiling at the creature.
"Right away Miss!" The creature said before hurrying off.
I turned to her with an eyebrow raised, the question clear on my face.
"They're House-elves. A peculiar race that 'serves' our kind. Their magic is different in that not only do they not need wands, but they also don't need specific spells to use it, just intent," she said, indicating the elves doing all sorts of magic around the room with a snap of their fingers.
"Makes sense, they don't need wands or spells if their magic makes whatever they want to happen a reality," I nodded. "But, how did they get to be 'servants'? They seem pretty powerful."
"We don't have records of how they came to be as they are today. But from their desperate need to work and their subservience to witches and wizards, it is not hard to guess what happened," she said quietly, looking at the elves sadly.
"The subjugation of an entire species," I nodded with a grimace.
We stayed in silence after that, watching the elves do their work for the hungry people in the Great Hall until Tilly returned with a picnic basket big and full enough to feed a football team.
With a quick thanks I took the basket from the elf's hands when our hands brushed each other.
The feeling was that of a weak electrical current, barely more than a small vibration at the point of contact, but it was enough for the elf's bulbous eyes to widen more than they already were and for his jaw to hang loose.
Guessing what he noticed, I put a finger to my lips and made a small shushing sound, giving him a wink and quietly saying, "It's a secret," with a smile.
Tilly's face grew serious, "Then I is keeping it!" he said before popping away.
With that done, I turned to a bewildered Luna, "So, where did you plan on having this picnic?"
"Only you, Alex," she said with a shake of her head and a small laugh before grabbing my hand and turning back to the door. "Let me show you, Hogwarts has a place for that."
Back on the grounds, off to the side of the castle in an area I barely paid any attention to during the tour, there was a small courtyard with a few stone tables and benches dotted around.
It didn't have the same charm it would've if in any other season, but it was still a beautiful place for our picnic.
It was also obvious Luna had skipped this part of the tour on purpose.
As we sat down and started eating, I pondered how to broach the subject of my reduced cooldown and the fact that I wouldn't be able to use it because I'd be spending the next six months in an unknown world, nevermind my fight with Odin and why I needed to go to the that specific world in the first place.
I'd thought of omitting everything and just saying that I'd come back in July, but I liked her too much and I wanted our relationship to succeed. I knew from my parents that communication was one of the backbones of a relationship and keeping secrets from her right at the beginning didn't bode well for the future.
As our eating slowed down, I took Luna's hand in mine, sighed, and said, "Luna? We need to talk," while looking into her eyes. They widened for a second before concern took over her face.
"What happened, Alex? The girls said that you only heard that from your boyfriend when the relationship is ending," She said, a note of vulnerability taking over her voice.
"Relax, I'm not letting you go that easily," I said, pulling her in for a quick kiss before hugging her. "But I have to tell you what's been going on back home and what I'll have to do this next year, and now is the only time we sat down to talk by ourselves."
"Ok," She said, straightening her hug for a second before pulling back to look at me.
"I… fought a Heretic God, Odin, to be precise," I started, knowing she was not going to like to hear how that went. "He dominated the entire fight, and I was pretty sure I was going to die at more than one point."
I stopped to gather my thoughts. That fight wasn't something that I liked to think about.
"I won in the end, but it was clear that I was nowhere near ready for that level of combat, and even with the Authorities I got from Odin, I didn't feel particularly confident about my chances against another one," It was hard to admit, but until Doni stomped some sense into me I simply wasn't thinking about how to fight against Gods effectively. Odin should have been a wake-up call, and in a way it was, but it also hit my confidence pretty badly.
I unconsciously massaged the scar Odin's spear left on the upper-left part of my chest.
"What happened, Alex?" She said, looking me all over to see if she hadn't missed anything.
"This," I said, pulling my shirt out of the way for her to see the scar.
She gasped, her hands covering the lower part of her face and her eyes wide with shock.
"I had thrown everything I had at him, but nothing was working, I managed to get some distance by apparating away, so he threw his spear at me, so fast I only really noticed when I was already impaled by it, and I only survived because he didn't want to kill me," I finished and Luna was there, hugging me for all that she was worth, her tears soaking into my shirt.
I hugged her back as I felt some moisture in my eyes, but that was only the wind.
We stayed that way for a while. Luna reassuring herself that I was there and that I was fine, and me basking in the comfort of her arms.
After an undetermined amount of time, we separated. Luna used a tissue she had to finish drying her puffy red eyes before fully recomposing herself.
"And what happened next?" She asked, her voice still a little shaky.
"After that I trained, I learned what I could about my new Authorities and I worked hard on mastering everything I could from the books Severus gave me, but…" I trailed off, embarrassed about the next part.
"But?" She pressed with a small smile after noticing my embarrassment.
"But then I met one of my siblings, Salvatore Doni, and he smacked some sense into me," I said.
"And what sense was that? You act perfectly reasonably," she said, tilting her head in confusion.
"That's the thing, I'm a Campione, being reasonable is unreasonable for us," I shrugged. "In my case, he helped me move past the block I had against just stomping my enemies into nonexistence."
She raised an eyebrow, "I didn't think you had a problem with that?" In the World Cup, she meant.
"Yeah, I was holding back there too," I nodded. "It's just that the difference in power was so great it didn't matter."
Noticing the discomfort on her face at the topic, I said, "Anyway, he ended up convincing me to get a sword, so I can always have a reliable weapon if needed."
"Oh! What kind of sword?" She asked, her eyes lighting up at the thought.
"No idea," I shrugged. "Considering my status, a sword I'd be properly able to use is extremely rare to find back home, so we tried to see if my Authority could come up with one, the same way I did to get to your kitchen the day we met. Luckily we got a perfect match, but all I know it's that it'll probably be Japanese."
"And you're going right after your cooldown resets after leaving here," she said with a nod. "How long will you be there?"
"Yeah, that's another thing I wanted to talk about, my cooldown to come here was reduced by half after I got back home, so I'll only stay until a few days after the New Year," I said, Luna's previous enthusiasm dimming from the knowledge that I wouldn't be around for much longer. "And the cooldown for where I'm going is six months."
She pulled me back into a hug again, the knowledge that we probably wouldn't see each other for the better part of the next year weighing on her.
"Hey, it's ok, with our new relationship I thought I'd come back here first. So that we can see each other right away and with the added bonus of being able to test out how my Authority operates when it comes to multiple different worlds." I said soothingly.
She looked up at me, "You promise?"
"I promise," I smiled. "And if it works, we'll also have our necklaces to talk during that time."
"Well, it better work! I don't want to spend the next six months without talking with my boyfriend!" She said with a pout.
"Believe me, I don't want to spend that amount of time without talking with my girlfriend either."
It was the first time we used the terms, the first time we called each other that, and the first time we concretely established what our relationship was.
Obviously, that meant we spent the rest of the day grinning like looms.
That night, I sat at the edge of the Astronomy Tower while leaning on a pillar, smoking a cigarette, and enjoying the cool breeze after Luna went to bed when I heard someone climbing up the stairs.
After a few moments, Severus came into view, approaching to stand beside me.
"Nice night," I said, letting the last bit of ash fall before I vanished the cigarette butt.
"Indeed," He answered cooly.
I felt as if I was being observed, the same feeling I had periodically throughout the day, but I guessed it was only whatever intelligence guided Hogwarts's magic and I hadn't noticed before because of my nerves before and during the Ball.
With a shrug, I turned to him, took a shrunk box from my jacket's pocket and gave it to him, "Your present."
He took it slowly, and from the corner of my eye, I caught his confused expression.
"I like to think that I treat the people working for me right, a Christmas present isn't that big of a deal, especially since I already had these on hand," I said.
"I see," he said, opening the box to see the vials of blood and other fluids the researchers back home had gotten to see if they helped in wand-making.
"These are all from Divine Beasts. I figured they'd be better served in your hands figuring out if they have any use in potions than whatever the mages back home would use them for," I explained.
"Thank you, Alex," Severus said, stowing the box in his robe's pocket. "Now, I've heard that you plan on breaking into the Department of Mysteries?"
"Yeah, I'll probably go there tomorrow so I can spend the rest of my stay here relaxing," I nodded.
"And what will you do there?" he pressed.
"Just check in on the Veil and see if my Authority works with it, why?" I asked.
"I may have a request for you to do while there," he said.
I sighed, "What do you want me to steal?"
He snorted, "Steal? Nothing," he leaned forward, giving me a viscous grin. "I want you to smuggle something in."
A/N: And that's that folks! This is probably the last chapter in a good long while that'll focus on Alex's and Luna's relationship. Relationship stuff will still happen, but chapters focused solely on that will be rarer.
How do y'all think that I handled things?
Like my writing? Want to be able to read a full four chapters ahead? Then check me out on P a treon . com (slash) NickKane.