Little Lost Things by goddess_of_ether

Rating: G
Genres: Romance
Relationships: Ron & Luna
Book: Ron & Luna, Books 1 - 7
Published: 28/08/2007
Last Updated: 28/08/2007
Status: Completed

The morning of Dumbledore's funeral, Luna Lovegood packs away her returned stolen items and
considers both the coming year and the companionship of the confusing boy that is Ronald Weasley.
Oneshot/Birthday!Fic




1. Little Lost Things
---------------------



**Disclaimer:** I do not own, or else that, that *thing* calling itself an epilogue
would have cement shoes at the bottom of the Thames.

**Author's Note:** Yes, I should be updating *Denial*. But I have good reason: this
is a birthday!fic for EverVengeful, my totally amazing best friend. The woman puts the `fun' in
`funkyadelic'.

This is set the morning of Dumbledore's *cough*FreakinBastard*cough* funeral, but said event
has already occurred in my timeline. I was intrigued by the way Luna talking in the films about
people stealing her things as “all being in good fun”, and I seriously wondered if she could be
that delusional.

Obviously, I decided not.

And since EverVengeful asked for Ron/Luna for her birthday . . .

Here you go.

~

Little Lost Things

~

The Ravenclaw girl's dormitory was silent to the point of obscenity. Diamond-paned windows
were propped open to diffuse the musty air - such as one expects of an old castle on the brink of
summer - but no sound came from the grounds framed by the mahogany windowsill, no breeze to flutter
the dusky navy hangings over the neatly made beds.

It was unnaturally neat, for a room housing teenage girls. The heavy trunks, overflowing with
robes, spare bits of quill, and reference books were gone from the base of the four-poster beds;
the small bags of powder puffs, lip glosses, and eyeliner were cleaned from the tops of the bedside
tables. In fact, a slight blonde girl and the odd arrangement of knickknacks lying across the bed
on which she perched were the only non-school-issued objects in the room.

She moved softly enough that when she fingered the topper of a crystal perfume bottle, the
bright yellow fabric of her shirt barely crinkled. For a moment she looked at the empty bottle, the
look on her face inscrutable, before picking it up and settling it into the lumpy leather shoulder
bag at her feet.

Following it was a single earring built of a series of oblong, milky green stones wrapped in
thick silver wire. They spluttered a weak glow as they disappeared into the warm darkness of her
bag. Next was a thinly striped wool shawl of purples, pinks, yellows, and greens, each row ending
in a brush of unraveling fringe.

Finally, a series of books; *Area 51: Revenge of the Crumple-horned Snortnacs*, *The
Divination Conspiracy*, *What the Ministry Doesn't Want You to Know about Rubella
Wethersfield*, and *All the King's Horses: a Comprehensive Analysis of the Curse of
Assylvian Meadow Fleas*.

Her lost things. She'd put up sheets of parchment for them a week ago, listing everything
that had disappeared during her fifth school year, along with two books she still hadn't gotten
back from third and fourth year. When she woke that morning, early so she could dig out a soft
black skirt that she'd last worn to her aunt Rubella's funeral, they were sitting on top of
her trunk, the abashed pile of objects of obscure interest taken over the past school year from
Ravenclaw's foremost object of obscure interest.

One hadn't been returned at all.

Luna Lovegood sat on her neatly made bed, looking between her crossed ankles at her leather bag,
and told herself that it was probably lying forgotten by its kidnapper in a dusty corridor of the
school. She had found earrings in the mortar between stones before, and shoes looped over cast iron
light fixtures; it wasn't an unusual practice for her lost things to be found in the strangest
of places.

But . . . everything was different now. Luna had known, ever since a be-speckled boy had erupted
out of an endless maze telling of the rebirth of darkness, that times were changing around her. She
knew that next year, when she returned to Hogwarts as a sixth year student, the corridors, the
students, the professors, would be different. War was building around her, and Luna knew that
Hogwarts would be a ground of contention; the attack only days ago had proven that the darkness
coveted Hogwarts School. Luna knew determination when she saw it, and she saw it in the same
be-speckled boy, out on the lawn breaking the heart of Ginny Weasley. He would not let Hogwarts
fall undefended.

In all likelihood, he would not be back for the coming school year. Luna had observed, quietly,
that he seemed to be preparing himself for not returning; Hermione Granger hadn't been to any
of the professors, as she went every year the night before leaving on the Express, to ask about
extra reading for over the summer. If the Trio left, then the protection of the school would be
left in the hands of the DA's remaining members. Luna's quiet friend, Neville Longbottom,
had the potential, for all of his stumbling, to be a capable leader the coming school year.

Admittedly Luna and Neville had been objects in the minds of most of Hogwarts for their six
years attending school there. They were more object than human, the loony girl and clumsy boy who
were looked at with obscure interest and occasional pity. Neville had potential inside of him, a
Gryffindor courage that would show itself in the coming year; Luna knew that. But they didn't -
and wouldn't - understand her, and she was just as much a lost little thing in their eyes as
the pendent and perfume bottle that had been belonged to her mother.

Luna was quite acclimated to being lost. When she was little, her father would lose her at times
in the crowded aisles of Flourish and Blots, or the Ottery St. Catchpole market. She learned to
stay very still when he disappeared, to look for the odd creatures that went unnoticed by the adult
shoppers around her, until he found her a hour or so later. He would be disheveled and absentminded
as he reproached her for vanishing.

Neville better understood her strangeness and penchant for seeing things when others were too
busy to do so - he listened, while the others didn't, or only pretended to - but his
grandmother's protective grip was tight enough that he had never had time to become lost
amongst grocery shoppers with pitying glances.

“Luna?”

She started quietly at the sound of a hesitant voice, and found herself looking at Ronald
Weasley. She felt a little warm flush of recognition for the fact that he had found his way past
the question at the entry to the common room.

“Hullo,” she said after a moment's pause consideration of whether or not to query as to why
he had come up to the dormitories in the first place. He was here, and his reason would come
eventually.

He looked around the room for a moment, his tall shoulders hunched in the doorway. As his eyes
flickered to the bathroom door, his ears burst into a lovely shade of maroon. Finally, his eyes
settled on a spot above her left shoulder, and he asked, in a peculiar, strained voice, “Are you
taking the train?”

“Yes,” she replied, not attempting to catch his eye, choosing instead to simply watch him. He
was a strange boy, Ronald. There was something in him that was lost, just like her - as though he,
too, had been forgotten by his parents in the Ottery St. Catchpole market.

“Erm,” he said, and then repeated it. He shuffled his feet for a moment, and then his eyes came
to rest jerkily against hers. Luna had noted previously that their eyes were a similar shade, but
hadn't appreciated the fact before. There was something - not just the color - about his eyes
that gave her the feeling that she was seeing her own reflected back at her. “Do you want help
carrying stuff out?” he finally asked, and blinked his eyes away to the fall of the bed hangings
behind her.

“The house elves already took my trunk,” she replied, her hands reaching to pull her small bag
into her lap. She made the observation that he was skirting whatever it was he came there to say,
but once again decided that it was not worth voicing. “It's very nice of you to offer,” she
continued, and stood.

“I can, take that,” Ronald offered hesitantly, his body folding into itself even as he pulled
his left hand out of the pocket of his slacks.

“I'm fine,” said Luna, and then asked, sliding her bag over her shoulder, “Why do you make
yourself smaller?”

He automatically spluttered a protest, but then stopped speaking for a moment, considering the
answer. It made Luna appreciate her original assessment of Ronald Weasley; he was a strange boy who
thought more often than most people assumed from his faulty grades and lack of appreciation for
homework. Luna was a Ravenclaw, and she knew that intelligence couldn't always be shown in
schoolwork. She began to leave the dormitory and he fell into step with her, still considering. “I
guess,” he finally answered slowly, “it's because everyone around me is small in
comparison.”

She accepted this slowly. “Harry isn't small,” she pointed out as they arrived in the empty
common room with its huge windows looking out over the grounds. As they passed the statue of Rowena
Ravenclaw, Luna reached into her bag absentmindedly to ensure that the sketches she had made for
her father of the diadem were still inside. Ronald had halted at the doorway, waiting for her, and
together they passed out onto the staircase sticky with summer heat. They made it to the bottom of
the staircase in silence.

“Harry makes me feel small.” It was said in the voice of a little lost thing, someone like Luna
who had been lost and found enough times that the newness of the Sickle had been rubbed off. His
eyes caught hers as they turned a corner, and Luna could see her reflection again, the part of her
that could feel lonely even as she sat in a train compartment full of people.

“Here.”

He held out his hand, the one that had been fisted in his pocket during their entire exchange,
and in it was her missing gold pendent, the tiny glass bottle of ashes lodged into the crease
between his index and middle finger. The chain, looped around his fist twice, and deep enough that
the flesh rose on either side of it like mountain tops, was blinding for a moment as it caught a
flash of sun from a nearby window. “This is yours, right?”

She unwound the light chain from his hand, slick with beads of moisture and flecked on the back
with pieces of lint. She waited until she had slipped it over her head and settled it against the
dip in her collarbone before replying. “Yes,” she said.

They reached the entrance hall again in silence, and they slipped together past Filch, who gave
them a cursory run with his Sneakoscope before sniffing and turning to glare at three giggling
Gryffindors. They walked into the flash of sunlight and murmuring of classmates together, two
little lost things.

~

Whaddya think? A plausible missing scene?

And god, knowing what happens in the future definitely assists when writing reflective pieces
ruminating said future.

-->



