Lovelocks

Lovelocks

"What about you?" Ginny asked, her fingers dancing tarantellas through what Luna's mummy always called her Lunar Jungle of Hair.

"Me?" Luna asked, though if the truth were told she was thinking about anything but herself; she was thinking of red hair and dragon flame, freckles and smooth fingers and Snorkack horns. "What about me?"

Ginny's grin was audible, even over the April breeze and the trees' whispers about invading the lawn. "That's what I asked, Loony. What about you?" She knotted off one delicate lovelock plait and began gathering hair for the next. Their revising lay forgotten on Luna's robes. "Here you've been putting up with me whinging on and on about Harry and loneliness and randiness since the summer and all I've ever heard you talk about is the role of man-in-the-moon marigolds in the mating rituals of Rocksports."

"Wrackspurts," Luna murmured, feeling the fine, firm fingers passing over her scalp. Fine, firm fingers, she thought. I'll have to write that down.

Ginny worked in silence for a moment, and Luna's mind wandered--it was nice to let it wander, really, since it was so full of thoughts so often; it wasn't easy being as driven as Luna sometimes--and she found herself thinking about Ginny's most recent letter from Harry. It had been from Ronald, actually--none of Ginny's letters from Harry actually came from Harry, since the whole point of her staying at Hogwarts had been an attempt to give the very false impression that they didn't care about each other--and it had said almost nothing aside from wishing Ginny a happy Easter, but it had smelled of the North Sea, and Luna had wondered if perhaps Harry, Ron and Hermione were engaging the Selkies in their fight against Voldemort, which Luna thought was a rather good idea, since everyone knew that Voldemort was deathly afraid of aquatic mammals.

"Come on, Luna," Ginny said, insistent, "I want to hear your secret longings. I know you've got them. You had a crush on Ron, after all."

Luna was not terribly interested in sharing her secret longings at the moment. "Ronald turned out not to be terribly nice," Luna said, seeing the broad, freckled face that she had fantasized about for years. "Though I rather think that that was because he was fighting against his heart's desire."

Ginny laughed. "True enough. I wander if they're still bickering all of the time. They probably drive Harry spare."

That thought inspired another contemplative silence. Ginny's fingers worked quickly; she was almost halfway through another plait. Mesmerizing.

After a minute and a half, Ginny asked, voice heavy, "Neville?"

"Do you mean for me?" Luna asked. "Oh, no. He's a very good friend. I asked him to have sex with me after your brother's wedding last summer, but I think I rather terrified him."

Ginny snorted.

"Besides," Luna continued, "he and Susan are kissing each other now and they're both thinking of having sex with each other, and I don't think either one of them feels confident enough to share. They've both been coming to me for advice."

"Poor Luna," Ginny sighed, and Luna's heart swelled. Brash and bold as Ginny was, she was capable of great empathy; that was one of the things about her that Luna loved the most. "Everyone coming to you. I'm sorry. What about Teddy Nott? He's turned out to be a lot more pleasant than I would have thought. You've spent a lot of time talking with him."

Nodding, Luna felt her hair pull against Ginny's fingers. "Yes, he is rather nice, in a surly sort of way. And his hands are terribly soft. He likes boys though, and I don't think that I could ever fall in love with someone who looks so much like me. It would seem rather peculiar."

"I hadn't thought of that," Ginny said with a giggle. "He does look a bit like you, fluffy dirty blond hair and all. No one has your eyes, though," Ginny said, and again Luna's heart expanded. Could it pop? "Come on, Luna, tell me. You can't tell me there's not someone you want. You can't tell me you don't have someone you're desperately longing to have touching you."

"I have someone touching me," Luna murmured before she could consider not murmuring it, and a new silence settled over them, there beneath the old beech tree below the castle. Luna was no stranger to silence--it was an old friend of hers, one in which she wrapped herself comfortably for days at a time. This silence, however, smelled of fear and Luna did not like it, not one little bit, but she could not find words to fill it. She could only hope that Ginny had heard the words but not the intent. I always believed that I was brave, she thought. I've fought Death Eaters. I supported Harry when everyone thought he was raving. I told Daddy that Mummy had died without crying. I pointed out to Professor Snape that his teaching methods left a lot to be desired and that Pepper-up Potion is better with a drop of oil of cinnamon mixed in before the hellebore. The Sorting Hat told me that I had more to learn in Ravenclaw, that I already knew how to be a Gryffindor. Why does my tongue feel as if it were made of wet clay?

"Luna." Ginny's voice was quiet, and Luna hated her friend's empathy now, because she knew her friend had heard her, had understood what she meant and not merely what she had said. Empathy and courage were wonderful attributes in a friend, but perhaps not just at that moment. "Luna, look at me." She tied off the second lovelock.

Against her will, against her better judgment, which she knew most people didn't believe her to possess, Luna turned towards her friend. The pit of her belly roiled like an underdone potion. Bright brown eyes arrested her own, and Luna knew that she was lost, that she had been found out. "Oh," she said, "don't hate me, Ginny. Please, don't hate me."

"I can't hate you, Luna," Ginny said, her face serious as it so infrequently was--sad, amused, angry, frustrated, but never serious except... "What possible reason could I have to hate you?"

Luna tried to speak again, wanted desperately to believe that Ginny hadn't really understood, though Luna knew she had. She couldn't form words.

"Do you fancy me, Luna?"

"Only, you've got lots of friends, you see, so perhaps losing one doesn't seem such a great price to you, but I've got only you. And Harry. He said that we were friends. And Neville, I think, though as I said I think that I--"

"--terrify him. Yes. I think you do a bit, but that doesn't stop him from being your friend, Luna. Neville is terrified of most of the things he likes most. Luna." Ginny's voice was even and low, but Luna could hear a warble of emotion beneath the calm that let her know that her friend was being Brave, and that was far more terrifying than Death Eaters or Professor Snape--which rather amounted to the same thing, she realized--and so she wished that the bell would toll over the grounds, announcing dinner. "Luna. Look at me."

Flicking her eyes back from the front door of the castle to those bright eyes, Luna found herself once again struck dumb, and so she pleaded with her eyes, pleaded that Ginny not force them to face this, because if Luna were forced to admit to Ginny as she had to Neville and to Ronald that she loved her, that she dreamed of her touch and her taste and her scent, and if Ginny were to react with as little enthusiasm as the two boys had, then Luna might just go as mad as everyone already believed her to be. "Please," she managed to say.

Ginny leaned forward, and for a moment Luna hoped against all of her terror that Ginny had taken her plea for encouragement rather than fear, but instead Ginny reached up and took hold of the tiny copper lovelock that Luna had plaited in front of Ginny's ear, and she took hold of the two that she had just plaited into Luna's hair. "I promise you, Luna. You are my best friend. I trust you. I would die for you, and you are one of very few people I can say that about." Her fingers began to braid the three plaits together--one red, two blonde.

Luna felt as if her lungs might burst. She wanted to pull away, but her hair was now joined to Ginny's and so she could not leave. Taking a deep breath, Luna focused on the fingers that were carefully and precisely threading their plaits together, gently, irrevocably.

"Ginny," Luna whispered, "I really do think that I would expire if you were to become as upset with me as you did with Michael and with Dean and with Harry. I don't think that I could bear it."

Ginny concentrated fiercely on the strands of hair, chewing on her lip. "Are you going to tell me I'm wrong to feel good about doing well at something? Or shove me around as if you knew what I needed better than I did?"

"No."

"Well, then, you're not Michael or Dean." Ginny knotted off the tripartite plait. "I was never really angry with Harry, you know that. And Dean and I are friends again. Michael is a git, but you never could be."

Luna could feel Ginny's breath on her own mouth. A thrill of panic raced back through her. "Ginny--"

"Shhh."

Luna Lovegood believed in many things. She believed that Crumple-horned Snorkacks were the answer to the coming pandemic of potion-resistant Dragon Pox. She believed that Rufus Scrimgeour's inability to admit to his vampiric nature would be the undoing of the Ministry during his tenure as minister, but that it would lead the way to a new rapprochement with demi-humans and other magical beings in the years to come. She believed that Harry Potter truly was the savior of the wizarding world, and she was proud to count him as one of her very few friends. She believed that most Ginnys were girls but only one girl was Ginny Weasley.

She did not believe in kissing. Oh, she acknowledged its existence, but like dancing it seemed a pointless exercise, a rather sloppy surrogate for sex. If one was going to engage in something like sex, one might as well simply have sex. She had tried to explain this to Neville that night at Bilius and Fleur's wedding reception as they shuffled stiffly on the dance floor. She had merely meant it as a theoretical conversation, but had found herself suggesting to her friend that they skip the preliminaries and retire to the Burrow for something a bit less ersatz. Neville hadn't been able to talk to her again until after Halloween.

Luna Lovegood couldn't believe the sensations that Ginny's small lips her eliciting in her. She could not begin to believe the way that Ginny's tongue seemed to be drawing Luna's vital organs out of her abdomen.

She decided, with the shock of new belief, that if kissing could do this then sex might kill her, and perhaps it was just as well to start this way.

Ginny's mouth stopped searching Luna's for a moment, and Luna found that she had wrapped herself around her friend, legs entwined, arms around Ginny's body, fingers laced through the fine flame of hair. A joy that seemed both familiar and utterly unforeseen thrilled through Luna. "Ginny?"

"Hnnh?" panted Ginny.

"I think I have better advice for Susan and Neville now."

"Oh," Ginny said, bright eyes blinking.

Searching out that sweet mouth once again with her own, Luna reveled in an overwhelming sense of connection.

Love-locked.