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bookishwenchThis would be my first attempt at Neville/Luna, set during book 7. Written in return for a donation to help Japan.
Author: Meltha
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Through DH
Summary: After the failed attempt to steal the Sword of Gryffindor, Neville and Luna have to serve detention in Hagrid’s pumpkin patch.
Author’s Note: Written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hanshi_woaini who wanted Neville/Luna and gardening, in return for a donation to help Japan.
Disclaimer: All characters are owned by J. K. Rowling, a wonderful author whose characters I have borrowed for a completely profit-free flight of fancy. Kindly do not sue me, please, as I am terrified of you. Thank you.
The Benefits of Stinking Gourds and Hairy Insects in Horticultural and Amorous Pursuits
Scotland was unseasonably warm for October that night, so warm that the three students needed no coats, only light jumpers, as they made their way towards Hagrid’s hut. The stars were out, clear as candles set in the windows of Hogwarts, and seemingly much closer than usual. The moon was simply enormous, at the peak of fullness and hanging high in the night sky like a single apple just out of reach. It would have been a lovely evening if they weren’t serving detention.
“Don’t look so worried,” Ginny said to Neville as they came in sight of the little wooden house. “It’s Hagrid. We’ll be all right.”
Neville continued to frown, though. It had been a good plan. He had been absolutely certain it would work. He wouldn’t have minded getting caught at all if only they had actually managed to get Gryffindor’s sword, but no, Snape had proved too quick for them by half. It was as though he’d been expecting something like this to happen. Still, Neville was surprised that they were only getting detention with Hagrid instead of, say, being hung by their thumbs for a few days in the Potions dungeon.
Luna said nothing, but she was watching Neville with those protuberant eyes of hers. She seemed to blink less than other people, Neville thought, but it was more than that. Something about her gaze reminded him of Dumbledore’s, the way he had been able to look at a person and somehow know what they were thinking.
“It really was a good plan,” she said in her faraway voice. “Don’t blame yourself that it didn’t work. We’ll just try again.”
As usual, her intuition was spot on, but Neville almost found himself surprised that she would be up for another go at the sword after the public humiliation and tongue lashing Snape had poured out on them in front of the whole school. Almost surprised, but not quite. Luna had a lot more courage than most people gave her credit for, and he’d seen that repeatedly in Dumbledore’s Army.
“Better wait a while, though,” Ginny said. “Snape will be keeping a sharp lookout for at least a couple months.”
“Yeah,” Neville agreed. “Maybe after Christmas.”
They continued walking in silence until they reached the door of Hagrid’s house. Neville took it upon himself to rap on it, and it opened at once. Unfortunately, rather than Hagrid’s welcoming face, Alecto Carrow’s sharp profile was lit up by the fire.
“Well, don’t jus’ leave ‘em standin’ on the doorstep,” Hagrid said from behind her, sounding extremely annoyed.
“They aren’t guests, you great buffoon,” Carrow said with a sneer. “They’re here to be punished, and I’m here to be certain you don’t send them off on a holiday instead of giving them something suitably uncomfortable.”
The way she said uncomfortable, smoothing the word out until it took twice as long as usual to say, as though she were enjoying the feel of it on her tongue, was very nearly obscene. Neville shivered with disgust. He also noticed that Hagrid puffed up indignantly at being called a buffoon, but he was obviously making a tremendous effort to hold his tongue.
“You can tell Headmaster Snape that I’ve got plenty o’ work for ‘em to do,” Hagrid said, his eyes squinting menacingly. “I don’ think he’s had any trouble with how I’ve handled the others.”
Carrow glared at him with open dislike, as though she was examining something loathsome beyond words.
“See that you do or you’ll be out of here by morning, half-breed,” she said, pushing past him and the students and striding up the hill in as close to her impression of an elegant lady as she could muster, but all four of them were pleased to note she tripped over her own feet partway up the hill, completely ruining the effect.
“Well, yeh heard what she said,” Hagrid grumbled as he picked up a sack behind him. “I’m sorry, but I can’t let yeh do nothin’ fun like feedin’ the Skrewts.”
Neville silently sent up a thank you to his lucky stars.
“Then what will we be doing, Professor?” Luna asked.
Neville saw Hagrid flush proudly for a moment. Despite the fact Snape had taken away Hagrid’s title as Care of Magical Creatures teacher, Luna still persisted in referring to him as a professor, and the tiny kindness seemed to bolster his self-esteem remarkably. She just had a knack for that sort of thing.
“I’m gonna have to divide you up by what yer good at,” Hagrid said. “From what I hear, Ginny, you’re right good with a well-placed hex. You and me’ll be goin’ after a couple o’ Aragog’s kids. They’ve been causing trouble up near the north end of the forest; caught seven cows from a Muggle farm in their webs last week. We gotta go clear ‘em out, but I don’ want to hurt ‘em none.”
“Right,” she said resignedly, grimacing. While she didn’t share her older brother’s fear of spiders, she certainly didn’t like them either.
“Okay, Neville, you’re decent with plants and such, aren’t yeh?” Hagrid asked, looking like he was none too sure of Neville in any capacity.
“Yes,” he said with as much confidence as he could put into the single word.
“All right then,” Hagrid said. “You and Luna are goin’ teh work on the school pumpkins behind the cottage. There’s somethin’ rottin’ ‘em out from the inside, and we need teh figure out what. They smell like rotten eggs mixed with a good dose of troll bogeys. Took me six days to wash the smell off meself last week.”
As Neville had actually noticed a subtle whiff of something vile as he had entered the house, he wasn’t entirely sure Hagrid had been successful in that endeavor. Luna, however, looked blissfully unperturbed, even a little pleased. Not three minutes later, Neville and Luna were hunched over a pile of unbelievably putrid pumpkins, and Hagrid, Fang, and Ginny were disappearing into the woods, a fading glow emanating from Ginny’s wand tip.
“So, what do you think would cause this,” Luna said, pointing at an undulating brown patch on a nearby pumpkin with the same expression she would use to point at a plate of kippers.
“Could be a lot of things,” Neville said, leaning closer to it. “Might be a doxy infestation, though they usually prefer to stay indoors or underground.”
“Is that all?” Luna said, her face falling. “I was hoping for something a bit more interesting.”
“Like Crumple-Horned Snorkacks?” Neville said, giving her a smile as he knelt down to examine the pumpkins more closely.
“No,” Luna said, smiling back. “Those would never fit inside a pumpkin, even a very large one.”
Neville nodded in agreement, though he had no idea how large she thought they were. A light breeze was picking up, making the night chillier, and he noticed her shiver.
“Cold?” he asked her.
“Bit,” she admitted. “I wish someone hadn’t taken my warmest jumper. It’s one of the first things that went missing this year.”
Neville wasn’t quite sure what she meant by that, but he had his suspicions. Neither one of them would qualify for the top of a popularity contest, but he knew girls could be cruel in ways that most boys could never even dream up. At least when someone called him an idiot or punched him in the nose, it was direct. Girls tended to gravitate more towards slow, drawn-out mental torture, and some of the new teachers seemed to be giving them ideas.
“I’m actually kind of warm,” Neville said, slipping out of his Gryffindor cardy his gran had knit. “Here, you’d be doing me a favor keeping hold of it.”
Luna took the jumper from him, but the look she gave him in return told him she knew he was just as cold as she was. He was happy she took it, though. In another moment, she was kneeling next to him on the ground, turning over a particularly large (and particularly rancid-smelling) pumpkin, paying absolutely no attention to the disgusting white grubs underneath it.
“I think something’s in there,” she said, tapping on the side of it experimentally and then waiting as if expecting a response. “It doesn’t seem to want to come out, though.”
“Mmm,” Neville agreed, feeling unaccountably warmer now that she was closer to him. “Guess there’s only one way to tell for sure. Better have wands out, I reckon.”
Luna nodded as she pulled out her slender wand from behind her ear, its usual resting place. In a heartbeat, she changed from a misty, distant expression to one of total concentration.
“Okay, here goes. Diffindo,” he said, moving his wand in a quick side-to-side motion.
Instantly the pumpkin split open, and a slew of black, furry insects came pouring forth. Luna calmly took a step backward; the only sign that she was even slightly perturbed was her pulling Neville’s jumper a bit tighter around her as she kept her wand high. Neville carefully used a levitating charm to examine one of the small creatures.
“Glumbumbles,” he said with absolute certainty, sitting back on his knees. “They’re mostly harmless unless you drink the stuff in their nests. It makes people depressed. Weird that they’re setting up shop in a pumpkin patch, though. They mostly go for beehives.”
Luna was now examining the insects herself, her face a good deal closer to them than Neville would have felt comfortable with.
“Poor things are lost,” she said, looking up at him with wide eyes. “How do we get them out?”
Neville’s immediate answer would normally have been to kill the lot of them, but somehow, with Luna there, it didn’t seem right to kill much of anything, even Glumbumbles. He tried to remember everything he’d ever read about Glumbumble infestations, but that wasn’t much.
“Any ideas?” he finally asked.
Luna tipped her head to one side thoughtfully, and Neville had the bizarre realization hit him that she was actually quite lovely with her blonde hair shimmering in the moonlight. Actually, it wasn’t so much the idea she was pretty that was bizarre so much as the fact that he was only just noticing this as a swarm of incredibly ugly Glumbumbles were angrily hissing at them and the stench of rotting pumpkin was filling the air so thickly that he was on the verge of passing out. On second thought, considering his life, this was par for the course.
“I have an idea,” she finally said. “We could open all the pumpkins that look like they’re affected, then go into the forest a ways and summon them. That shouldn’t harm them.”
Neville couldn’t find any problem with that, so he set about using the severing charm on several revoltingly pulsating pumpkins nearby as Luna did the same at the other end of Hagrid’s garden. Every new pumpkin opened seemed to increase the smell tenfold, and by the time they were done, his eyes were watering, his nose was burning, and his stomach was lurching violently.
“Okay over there?” he asked, the words coming out sounding decidedly wobbly.
“It’s not a very pretty sort of smell, is it?” she said, walking towards him, and he noticed she did look a little green herself. “The faster they’re in the forest, the sooner we’ll be done.”
She skipped along the path leading to the forest, a movement that seemed both ridiculously childish and oddly endearing to him, and then quite abruptly the branches overhead obscured the moon and stars from sight. Both of them instinctively lit the ends of their wands as they followed the curves of the old trail.
“This is probably far enough,” Luna said after about a minute. “It’s not safe to go wandering deep into the forest on a full moon night. Especially with things the way they are.”
“Right,” he said, stopping on the path. “Not much of anywhere is safe anymore. Still, I think I’d rather be out here with the Acromantulas and Skrewts than in the castle with the Carrows and Snape and the rest of their lot.”
“At least there are some people still on our side,” Luna said, unexpectedly putting a hand on his shoulder, which made him jump. “McGonagall and Flitwick, Sprout, even Slughorn.”
“Where do you think Harry and Ron and Hermione are tonight?” he asked.
It was a thought that was never far from his mind. He was sure that if the Death Eaters had caught them, they’d want to blast the news from the rooftops, but for now their silence was the best news they could hope for.
“I don’t know,” she said, and the dreamy smile lit up her face again, illuminated by a dappling of moonlight filtering through the branches and the soft glow of their combined wands. “I’d like to think they’re somewhere safe and warm, and since we don’t know any different, I’ll choose that.”
“I hope so,” he said, “but I’m not sure anywhere is safe anymore.”
“No,” Luna said, and her smile faded, making him immediately wish he hadn’t said it. “I suppose not.”
Neville wasn’t sure he’d ever seen her look really unhappy before. The weight of the whole world seemed to be crushing her, as though the fantasies she so carefully constructed and believed had crumbled like a sandcastle on the beach. She closed her eyes, seeming to steel herself.
“We should summon the Glumbumbles,” she said, her voice flat and nearly lifeless in its unusual practicality. “Then we’ll clean up the pumpkins, and we should be done.”
“Hey,” he said, really concerned as he touched her shoulder. “It’s going to be all right. I didn’t mean…”
“I know you didn’t,” she said, nearly snapping at him, “but there’s only so many times even I can keep dreaming in the middle of all this, and there aren’t many good dreams left.”
A tear rolled down her cheek, though she seemed unaware of it. Instinctively, he found himself tracing its path with his fingertip. She looked up at him, and something in her expression shifted, became oddly, almost fiercely, determined, and then she was kissing him.
Neville dropped his wand in shock, something he was sure Mad-Eye would have skinned him alive for, but he really didn’t care. Luna’s impulsive nature was something he was used to, but she’d never done anything like this before. Her hands were tangled around his neck, pulling him closer, not that he needed encouragement on that count, and he was deeply grateful that he’d gotten his first kiss jitters out of the way with Ginny three years ago, whose rather thorough criticism of his technique, while embarrassing, had apparently improved his skills remarkably. All he could feel was the cool smoothness of her hands on his neck, the warmth of her lips on his, the whisper of her breath on his cheeks as they parted only to come together again, tighter, more insistent, as though they could kiss away the world they were trapped in and make it the one they wanted.
When they finally stopped, they were both panting hard, and Neville pressed his forehead to Luna’s stealing small, sweet kisses as they both caught their breath.
“That was nice,” Luna said, and he was glad to see her smile return.
“Yeah,” Neville agreed, wishing he could say something more poetic, like how the moonlight was turning her hair to spun gold or how her voice reminded him of the sound of the little waterfall behind his grandmother’s house or how she smelled like…
…well, just now she smelled like putrid pumpkins, but you couldn’t have everything.
“I’ve wanted to do that for a while,” Luna said with her usual candor as she bent to pick up his dropped wand. “I hoped you wouldn’t mind.”
“No, no, no, not minding, not at all,” Neville said, tripping over himself and awkwardly trying to untangle her hair from where it had caught on his shirt button.
“Good,” she said, turning towards the direction of Hagrid’s hut. “I’d like to do it again sometime, maybe in the Room of Requirement so we won’t be interrupted. Accio Glumbumbles!”
As Neville was wrapping his brain around the idea she wanted to kiss him again, in private, in what had rapidly become the most popular student trysting spot in the entire school (second place being held by the abandoned tunnel under the one-eyed witch’s statue), when he was knocked soundly in the head by hundreds of Glumbumbles.
“Oh! Sorry!” Luna said, clapping a hand over her mouth. “I hadn’t thought they’d come quite so quickly!”
Neville tried to say it was no problem, but he had more than a few Glumbumbles stuck in his teeth. It took them several minutes to clean him off before they headed back up the path to get rid of the putrid pumpkin shells. From the darkness of the forest, Firenze shook his head, but he was smiling in spite of himself. No matter what the rest of centaurs thought, he was absolutely sure humans were worth the risk.
Author: Meltha
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Through DH
Summary: After the failed attempt to steal the Sword of Gryffindor, Neville and Luna have to serve detention in Hagrid’s pumpkin patch.
Author’s Note: Written for
hanshi_woaini who wanted Neville/Luna and gardening, in return for a donation to help Japan.Disclaimer: All characters are owned by J. K. Rowling, a wonderful author whose characters I have borrowed for a completely profit-free flight of fancy. Kindly do not sue me, please, as I am terrified of you. Thank you.
Scotland was unseasonably warm for October that night, so warm that the three students needed no coats, only light jumpers, as they made their way towards Hagrid’s hut. The stars were out, clear as candles set in the windows of Hogwarts, and seemingly much closer than usual. The moon was simply enormous, at the peak of fullness and hanging high in the night sky like a single apple just out of reach. It would have been a lovely evening if they weren’t serving detention.
“Don’t look so worried,” Ginny said to Neville as they came in sight of the little wooden house. “It’s Hagrid. We’ll be all right.”
Neville continued to frown, though. It had been a good plan. He had been absolutely certain it would work. He wouldn’t have minded getting caught at all if only they had actually managed to get Gryffindor’s sword, but no, Snape had proved too quick for them by half. It was as though he’d been expecting something like this to happen. Still, Neville was surprised that they were only getting detention with Hagrid instead of, say, being hung by their thumbs for a few days in the Potions dungeon.
Luna said nothing, but she was watching Neville with those protuberant eyes of hers. She seemed to blink less than other people, Neville thought, but it was more than that. Something about her gaze reminded him of Dumbledore’s, the way he had been able to look at a person and somehow know what they were thinking.
“It really was a good plan,” she said in her faraway voice. “Don’t blame yourself that it didn’t work. We’ll just try again.”
As usual, her intuition was spot on, but Neville almost found himself surprised that she would be up for another go at the sword after the public humiliation and tongue lashing Snape had poured out on them in front of the whole school. Almost surprised, but not quite. Luna had a lot more courage than most people gave her credit for, and he’d seen that repeatedly in Dumbledore’s Army.
“Better wait a while, though,” Ginny said. “Snape will be keeping a sharp lookout for at least a couple months.”
“Yeah,” Neville agreed. “Maybe after Christmas.”
They continued walking in silence until they reached the door of Hagrid’s house. Neville took it upon himself to rap on it, and it opened at once. Unfortunately, rather than Hagrid’s welcoming face, Alecto Carrow’s sharp profile was lit up by the fire.
“Well, don’t jus’ leave ‘em standin’ on the doorstep,” Hagrid said from behind her, sounding extremely annoyed.
“They aren’t guests, you great buffoon,” Carrow said with a sneer. “They’re here to be punished, and I’m here to be certain you don’t send them off on a holiday instead of giving them something suitably uncomfortable.”
The way she said uncomfortable, smoothing the word out until it took twice as long as usual to say, as though she were enjoying the feel of it on her tongue, was very nearly obscene. Neville shivered with disgust. He also noticed that Hagrid puffed up indignantly at being called a buffoon, but he was obviously making a tremendous effort to hold his tongue.
“You can tell Headmaster Snape that I’ve got plenty o’ work for ‘em to do,” Hagrid said, his eyes squinting menacingly. “I don’ think he’s had any trouble with how I’ve handled the others.”
Carrow glared at him with open dislike, as though she was examining something loathsome beyond words.
“See that you do or you’ll be out of here by morning, half-breed,” she said, pushing past him and the students and striding up the hill in as close to her impression of an elegant lady as she could muster, but all four of them were pleased to note she tripped over her own feet partway up the hill, completely ruining the effect.
“Well, yeh heard what she said,” Hagrid grumbled as he picked up a sack behind him. “I’m sorry, but I can’t let yeh do nothin’ fun like feedin’ the Skrewts.”
Neville silently sent up a thank you to his lucky stars.
“Then what will we be doing, Professor?” Luna asked.
Neville saw Hagrid flush proudly for a moment. Despite the fact Snape had taken away Hagrid’s title as Care of Magical Creatures teacher, Luna still persisted in referring to him as a professor, and the tiny kindness seemed to bolster his self-esteem remarkably. She just had a knack for that sort of thing.
“I’m gonna have to divide you up by what yer good at,” Hagrid said. “From what I hear, Ginny, you’re right good with a well-placed hex. You and me’ll be goin’ after a couple o’ Aragog’s kids. They’ve been causing trouble up near the north end of the forest; caught seven cows from a Muggle farm in their webs last week. We gotta go clear ‘em out, but I don’ want to hurt ‘em none.”
“Right,” she said resignedly, grimacing. While she didn’t share her older brother’s fear of spiders, she certainly didn’t like them either.
“Okay, Neville, you’re decent with plants and such, aren’t yeh?” Hagrid asked, looking like he was none too sure of Neville in any capacity.
“Yes,” he said with as much confidence as he could put into the single word.
“All right then,” Hagrid said. “You and Luna are goin’ teh work on the school pumpkins behind the cottage. There’s somethin’ rottin’ ‘em out from the inside, and we need teh figure out what. They smell like rotten eggs mixed with a good dose of troll bogeys. Took me six days to wash the smell off meself last week.”
As Neville had actually noticed a subtle whiff of something vile as he had entered the house, he wasn’t entirely sure Hagrid had been successful in that endeavor. Luna, however, looked blissfully unperturbed, even a little pleased. Not three minutes later, Neville and Luna were hunched over a pile of unbelievably putrid pumpkins, and Hagrid, Fang, and Ginny were disappearing into the woods, a fading glow emanating from Ginny’s wand tip.
“So, what do you think would cause this,” Luna said, pointing at an undulating brown patch on a nearby pumpkin with the same expression she would use to point at a plate of kippers.
“Could be a lot of things,” Neville said, leaning closer to it. “Might be a doxy infestation, though they usually prefer to stay indoors or underground.”
“Is that all?” Luna said, her face falling. “I was hoping for something a bit more interesting.”
“Like Crumple-Horned Snorkacks?” Neville said, giving her a smile as he knelt down to examine the pumpkins more closely.
“No,” Luna said, smiling back. “Those would never fit inside a pumpkin, even a very large one.”
Neville nodded in agreement, though he had no idea how large she thought they were. A light breeze was picking up, making the night chillier, and he noticed her shiver.
“Cold?” he asked her.
“Bit,” she admitted. “I wish someone hadn’t taken my warmest jumper. It’s one of the first things that went missing this year.”
Neville wasn’t quite sure what she meant by that, but he had his suspicions. Neither one of them would qualify for the top of a popularity contest, but he knew girls could be cruel in ways that most boys could never even dream up. At least when someone called him an idiot or punched him in the nose, it was direct. Girls tended to gravitate more towards slow, drawn-out mental torture, and some of the new teachers seemed to be giving them ideas.
“I’m actually kind of warm,” Neville said, slipping out of his Gryffindor cardy his gran had knit. “Here, you’d be doing me a favor keeping hold of it.”
Luna took the jumper from him, but the look she gave him in return told him she knew he was just as cold as she was. He was happy she took it, though. In another moment, she was kneeling next to him on the ground, turning over a particularly large (and particularly rancid-smelling) pumpkin, paying absolutely no attention to the disgusting white grubs underneath it.
“I think something’s in there,” she said, tapping on the side of it experimentally and then waiting as if expecting a response. “It doesn’t seem to want to come out, though.”
“Mmm,” Neville agreed, feeling unaccountably warmer now that she was closer to him. “Guess there’s only one way to tell for sure. Better have wands out, I reckon.”
Luna nodded as she pulled out her slender wand from behind her ear, its usual resting place. In a heartbeat, she changed from a misty, distant expression to one of total concentration.
“Okay, here goes. Diffindo,” he said, moving his wand in a quick side-to-side motion.
Instantly the pumpkin split open, and a slew of black, furry insects came pouring forth. Luna calmly took a step backward; the only sign that she was even slightly perturbed was her pulling Neville’s jumper a bit tighter around her as she kept her wand high. Neville carefully used a levitating charm to examine one of the small creatures.
“Glumbumbles,” he said with absolute certainty, sitting back on his knees. “They’re mostly harmless unless you drink the stuff in their nests. It makes people depressed. Weird that they’re setting up shop in a pumpkin patch, though. They mostly go for beehives.”
Luna was now examining the insects herself, her face a good deal closer to them than Neville would have felt comfortable with.
“Poor things are lost,” she said, looking up at him with wide eyes. “How do we get them out?”
Neville’s immediate answer would normally have been to kill the lot of them, but somehow, with Luna there, it didn’t seem right to kill much of anything, even Glumbumbles. He tried to remember everything he’d ever read about Glumbumble infestations, but that wasn’t much.
“Any ideas?” he finally asked.
Luna tipped her head to one side thoughtfully, and Neville had the bizarre realization hit him that she was actually quite lovely with her blonde hair shimmering in the moonlight. Actually, it wasn’t so much the idea she was pretty that was bizarre so much as the fact that he was only just noticing this as a swarm of incredibly ugly Glumbumbles were angrily hissing at them and the stench of rotting pumpkin was filling the air so thickly that he was on the verge of passing out. On second thought, considering his life, this was par for the course.
“I have an idea,” she finally said. “We could open all the pumpkins that look like they’re affected, then go into the forest a ways and summon them. That shouldn’t harm them.”
Neville couldn’t find any problem with that, so he set about using the severing charm on several revoltingly pulsating pumpkins nearby as Luna did the same at the other end of Hagrid’s garden. Every new pumpkin opened seemed to increase the smell tenfold, and by the time they were done, his eyes were watering, his nose was burning, and his stomach was lurching violently.
“Okay over there?” he asked, the words coming out sounding decidedly wobbly.
“It’s not a very pretty sort of smell, is it?” she said, walking towards him, and he noticed she did look a little green herself. “The faster they’re in the forest, the sooner we’ll be done.”
She skipped along the path leading to the forest, a movement that seemed both ridiculously childish and oddly endearing to him, and then quite abruptly the branches overhead obscured the moon and stars from sight. Both of them instinctively lit the ends of their wands as they followed the curves of the old trail.
“This is probably far enough,” Luna said after about a minute. “It’s not safe to go wandering deep into the forest on a full moon night. Especially with things the way they are.”
“Right,” he said, stopping on the path. “Not much of anywhere is safe anymore. Still, I think I’d rather be out here with the Acromantulas and Skrewts than in the castle with the Carrows and Snape and the rest of their lot.”
“At least there are some people still on our side,” Luna said, unexpectedly putting a hand on his shoulder, which made him jump. “McGonagall and Flitwick, Sprout, even Slughorn.”
“Where do you think Harry and Ron and Hermione are tonight?” he asked.
It was a thought that was never far from his mind. He was sure that if the Death Eaters had caught them, they’d want to blast the news from the rooftops, but for now their silence was the best news they could hope for.
“I don’t know,” she said, and the dreamy smile lit up her face again, illuminated by a dappling of moonlight filtering through the branches and the soft glow of their combined wands. “I’d like to think they’re somewhere safe and warm, and since we don’t know any different, I’ll choose that.”
“I hope so,” he said, “but I’m not sure anywhere is safe anymore.”
“No,” Luna said, and her smile faded, making him immediately wish he hadn’t said it. “I suppose not.”
Neville wasn’t sure he’d ever seen her look really unhappy before. The weight of the whole world seemed to be crushing her, as though the fantasies she so carefully constructed and believed had crumbled like a sandcastle on the beach. She closed her eyes, seeming to steel herself.
“We should summon the Glumbumbles,” she said, her voice flat and nearly lifeless in its unusual practicality. “Then we’ll clean up the pumpkins, and we should be done.”
“Hey,” he said, really concerned as he touched her shoulder. “It’s going to be all right. I didn’t mean…”
“I know you didn’t,” she said, nearly snapping at him, “but there’s only so many times even I can keep dreaming in the middle of all this, and there aren’t many good dreams left.”
A tear rolled down her cheek, though she seemed unaware of it. Instinctively, he found himself tracing its path with his fingertip. She looked up at him, and something in her expression shifted, became oddly, almost fiercely, determined, and then she was kissing him.
Neville dropped his wand in shock, something he was sure Mad-Eye would have skinned him alive for, but he really didn’t care. Luna’s impulsive nature was something he was used to, but she’d never done anything like this before. Her hands were tangled around his neck, pulling him closer, not that he needed encouragement on that count, and he was deeply grateful that he’d gotten his first kiss jitters out of the way with Ginny three years ago, whose rather thorough criticism of his technique, while embarrassing, had apparently improved his skills remarkably. All he could feel was the cool smoothness of her hands on his neck, the warmth of her lips on his, the whisper of her breath on his cheeks as they parted only to come together again, tighter, more insistent, as though they could kiss away the world they were trapped in and make it the one they wanted.
When they finally stopped, they were both panting hard, and Neville pressed his forehead to Luna’s stealing small, sweet kisses as they both caught their breath.
“That was nice,” Luna said, and he was glad to see her smile return.
“Yeah,” Neville agreed, wishing he could say something more poetic, like how the moonlight was turning her hair to spun gold or how her voice reminded him of the sound of the little waterfall behind his grandmother’s house or how she smelled like…
…well, just now she smelled like putrid pumpkins, but you couldn’t have everything.
“I’ve wanted to do that for a while,” Luna said with her usual candor as she bent to pick up his dropped wand. “I hoped you wouldn’t mind.”
“No, no, no, not minding, not at all,” Neville said, tripping over himself and awkwardly trying to untangle her hair from where it had caught on his shirt button.
“Good,” she said, turning towards the direction of Hagrid’s hut. “I’d like to do it again sometime, maybe in the Room of Requirement so we won’t be interrupted. Accio Glumbumbles!”
As Neville was wrapping his brain around the idea she wanted to kiss him again, in private, in what had rapidly become the most popular student trysting spot in the entire school (second place being held by the abandoned tunnel under the one-eyed witch’s statue), when he was knocked soundly in the head by hundreds of Glumbumbles.
“Oh! Sorry!” Luna said, clapping a hand over her mouth. “I hadn’t thought they’d come quite so quickly!”
Neville tried to say it was no problem, but he had more than a few Glumbumbles stuck in his teeth. It took them several minutes to clean him off before they headed back up the path to get rid of the putrid pumpkin shells. From the darkness of the forest, Firenze shook his head, but he was smiling in spite of himself. No matter what the rest of centaurs thought, he was absolutely sure humans were worth the risk.
