Rating:
PG
House:
The Dark Arts
Ships:
Ginny Weasley/Harry Potter
Characters:
Ginny Weasley Luna Lovegood
Genres:
Character Sketch Angst
Era:
The Harry Potter at Hogwarts Years
Spoilers:
Philosopher's Stone Chamber of Secrets Prizoner of Azkaban Goblet of Fire Order of the Phoenix Half-Blood Prince
Stats:
Published: 07/31/2006
Updated: 07/31/2006
Words: 7,033
Chapters: 1
Hits: 678

After Noon

Daphne23

Story Summary:
During one long summer day at the Burrow, Ginny considers Harry, Tom, Percy and diabolical tables as she tries to decide whether or not to insist on coming Horcrux-hunting; Luna makes a surprising contribution. Essentially gen, though slight H/G-ness.

Chapter 01

Posted:
07/31/2006
Hits:
678


[ADDITIONAL DISCLAIMER: The quotes at the beginning and end of this fic are from Marvell's 'To His Coy Mistress'.]

'Had we but world enough, and time...'

* * *

  1. Ginny

Ginny didn't think much of summer.

She was perched uncomfortably on the vast, upturned cauldron that'd been abandoned in a corner of the Weasley garden since before any of them could remember, looking out over the grass, and hoping that the rusting bottom hadn't become so fragile that she would fall through it altogether. It was about two o'clock, and this had been the only cool patch she could find, shaded by the purple buddleia, which had been rampaging so outrageously that they had overgrown the entire wall, towered up to the ceiling of the house, and were now threatening the broom shed. The rest of the garden was hot and bright and still, and unnaturally quiet, as if the air was too heavy for noise to carry. She tore handfuls of tiny flowers from the nearest patch of buddleia and wished that there was more wind today - even a breath of it, just enough to ruffle the curtains in Fleur's room where Ginny'd just emerged from her final fitting for her bridesmaid's dress, just enough to knock a couple of pins awry on the dressing-table, and to put that look of pinched, puckered concentration on Fleur's face as she put a hand up to check her hair.

Summer made her feel contrary. What a word - like something out of the old Muggle children's books that Mum'd used to read to her - but it suited. She wanted to hiss. And then she wanted to smack herself for sitting there vandalising the flowers when so much was happening in the world outside, for sitting there petty and sulking because she had nothing to do.

But that wasn't fair, she thought crossly, and kicked the side of the cauldron with that familiar hollow clang (Molly Weasley had long used the same sitting place for 'time-out' for her misbehaving children, and on some summer days ten or so years ago it had been possible to judge the state of affairs within the Weasley household, and particularly within its only daughter, from the number and ferocity of the clangs coming from this area of the garden). She thought, I let Harry break up with me, not because he was right to think I'd be any safer if we did - for goodness' sake, the whole school knows we've been going out, and I'm a Weasley, and Tom's marked me, even if Voldemort hasn't yet - but because I wanted to let him believe I would be, because I didn't want him to worry about me so much. He's got enough on his shoulders already; I don't want to add even more. It'd been the way he'd looked when he'd come to her after Dumbledore's funeral, alone and heavy and so sad, that had made her go along with it, even though she hadn't expected, when he'd first taken her aside to speak to her, that he'd been going to tell her anything more than that he was off to do something else outrageously dangerous. The second request had been a shock, realising he'd found another way to be Even-More-Noble, but she'd been Ever-So-Noblest in her turn, and gone along with it, and so she ought to feel very pleased with herself, but instead she just felt -

She kicked the cauldron again.

Maybe it was partly because it was summer. She'd always been more reckless, louder, more intense, more-whatever-she-usually-was in the summer, and she blamed the sun, it made her itch, she burnt as soon as she looked at it and she'd already had a bloody problem with blushing anyway. Take last summer for example, she hadn't been able to sit still, she'd wanted to prance and run about everywhere, and snipe at Phlegm (she didn't use the name out loud now, but couldn't resist sometimes still saying it to herself). She'd been horribly irritable, and probably irritating in her turn, but she'd had to do something to make herself feel better. Even during the uncomfortable summers when she'd still been silent and shy around Harry, the sun had exacerbated everything. She'd never just been able to stumble a little when he walked into the room, or knock something sideways slightly, no, she'd had to jab her entire elbow into the butter dish, or on one memorable occasion, crash directly into a towering stack of plates that had just been floating sedately towards the breakfast table, under the control of her mother's wand. She'd sulked in her room then, thinking, well, if I have to be clumsy, I might as well be properly clumsy, and said even less in Harry's presence at least half due to temper than to shyness.

But then she'd always had her moments back at school as well, although things were colder, and calmer, and simpler there. It still made her smile and wince simultaneously to think of how, at the end of a long and frustrating Transfiguration lesson in which she had attracted a large dose of McGonagall's sarcasm, she'd pointed her wand at her desk and whispered, "Diablo!" and it'd sprouted horns and a forked tail and shied away shiftily (as far as a desk could) from the crucifix around the neck of the girl sitting at the desk behind her. Luna, who had been sharing said desk with her, had collapsed in one of her most violent fits of laughter yet, thankfully helping to divert some of McGonagall's wrath, although she had still dragged Ginny with her to her office (which smelt horribly of brimstone for the rest of the day) to sprinkle liberal amounts of holy water over the desk until it creaked painfully and reverted to its normal self. When asked for explanation Ginny didn't admit to having invented the spell herself - it had been a joke, that so far only worked on objects made of wood and the odd pencil sharpener or two, but she felt the teachers might regard her in an even more dubious light than they did already if she confessed. As it was she could already read the simple equation in their heads that went '(Fred Weasley x George Weasley) + Female = Ginny (Weasley2)

But I'm not like Fred and George, she told herself, drumming out a tune with her feet on the metal, I have a sense of -

Of -

Well, I'm just not, that's all.

She didn't understand, now, why at times she couldn't resist doing things like that. They were always far more trouble then they were worth. (Zacharias Smith + crashing into commentator's podium = simply stupid, though most enjoyable before the headache had kicked in. She really shouldn't have taken up Arithmancy on Hermione's advice, she'd never get equations out of her head now.)

She shook her head and tried to turn her thoughts back to what she had originally been considering. It was hardly different - for the few days they'd been back from Hogwarts, she'd been able to think of nothing else, which wasn't really surprising, as the others spent almost all their time closeted together in one room of the house or anything, discussing things that she mustn't know about, because she was in enough danger already. All she got was politeness and friendliness, from Harry even more than the others - he was making a special effort, but it simply wasn't enough. If she knew what exactly they were facing, she might be able to help them. Had they even considered that? Well, Harry wouldn't've - it had taken him months to ask her about Voldemort and possession, and she'd been the only person that could possibly have been of any help there. And even now - she hadn't learnt much from Tom through the diary, he'd always been extremely careful, but he'd let one of his memories slip once, and she remembered it with exceptional vividness, because it had been so frightening. When the Dementors had boarded the Hogwarts Express at the beginning of her second year, she'd relived the memory all over again, although it was Tom's memory, not hers. (Perhaps because that was what she feared most; that a lot of her memories were Tom's, and not hers.) Tom had been making some sort of plan, he'd been searching for something, terrified it would go wrong, terrified it would go right, trying to perform some spell on the diary that would mean he'd never be extinguished. She didn't understand it, though she remembered his greed, his fear, but perhaps it would mean something to Harry, and he wasn't letting her help him.

Ginny swung her legs once, and suddenly, stood up. She'd known there must be a good reason for sitting out here in the middle of the day, getting sweatier and crosser and more uncomfortable on the rusting cauldron. She'd decided what to do. She would simply have to find out what Harry, Ron and Hermione were planning, and present them with a fait accompli; I know, so I might as well go with you, now, mightn't I? She knew they were planning to flit off somewhere after the wedding, that much was obvious. And she didn't want Harry to worry about her, but neither did she want it to be his funeral - and she thinking it was her fault - because something she could've done might have helped him. After all, you never knew when a Bat Bogey Hex or a diabolical table might come in handy, did you?

Suddenly wanting to break into a loud and tuneless song, she gave the cauldron one more kick, and winced; it was sturdier than she'd thought. And then, all at once, a droning, boring, familiar voice came into her head; "Just look at the cauldron in the garden... quite ancient now, of course, but the bottom must have been at least four inches thick when new... they just don't make them like that these days..."

The last summer he'd been at home.

"Shut up, Percy," she said aloud, and began to walk quickly back towards the house, noticing that the sun was already past its zenith.

* * *

  1. Ginny, Harry, Ron & Hermione

Ginny had assembled her usual weapons.

She had been half-heartedly (though it was only now that she admitted it to herself) trying to spy on their conversations for the last few days. Firstly she'd tried simply spellotaping small wedges into various doors so that they would stick slightly open, hopefully unnoticed by her targets, then moved onto Extendable Ears, and, when she realised they were using some form of muffling spell, attempted a counter-charm, Audiam, although she was having difficulties with it; last time she'd just managed to magnify the buzzing in her ears. So, with wand, spellotape and Ear safe in her hands, she set about her first task, that of finding which room they had taken over this time. It didn't take her long to discover that it was Ron's, for there was a ring of silence surrounding it that seemed impervious to the sounds from the rest of the house, the mutters and prattling of her mother and Fleur, the sound of her father's voice from downstairs, speaking to Bill, who was still convalescent. She frowned as she observed it from a safe vantage point, lingering outside the door of her own room. (The door still read G N N Y in pink letters which she'd irremovably fixed to it when aged six - an early flare-up of magic in response to her mother's refusal to put them up herself ("You'll only get bored of them!") - and tried to claw off when aged eight, although only the I had shifted.) It was as if they'd placed some sort of extra shield around Ron's door, which might well be impervious to all her methods of attack. Still, she was determined to try, and she whispered "Go!" to the Extendable Ear and watched it crawl quickly along the carpet.

The Ear had no sooner reached the edge of the door then it was expelled, rather neatly, and hit the wall with a defeated thump. Ginny flinched backwards, but apparently the shield charm hadn't alerted the three within, because nothing happened - not even the slightest sound or movement. She reeled it back in again and waited for a moment, fidgeting with the roll of spellotape, knowing that she couldn't use that method either. The only option left was Audiam, and she would have to be even more careful than before if it was to work. She stood very still for a moment, clenching her fists slightly, wishing that she didn't have to do this. But then she took a breath, and told herself that she only wanted to find out what danger they were going into, and that she had a right to know, and that if they spoke about anything else she would not listen to it. She might be using Fred and George's tricks, but she wasn't Fred and George - and then a picture flashed into her mind of a brother with a shining Head Boy badge, looking at her with slight disappointment, a little surprise - I wouldn't have thought it of you. But was it Bill - who she could hear laughing downstairs at this very moment - or Percy? Ginny tightened her fists and screwed her eyes shut, then opened them both and moved silently along the corridor.

By the door, she whispered the spell, and perhaps it was the painful pricking in her eyes, perhaps it was the dryness of her throat, but it worked immediately and perfectly. The first voice she heard was Harry's.

" - I'll have to go to the Dursleys right after the wedding. We'll have to, I mean. I haven't got much time left until I'm seventeen now."

"But Harry - " That was Hermione. "Didn't Dumbledore ever tell you - what happens when you don't have that protection any more?"

"Yeah," Harry said, and Ginny listened from her uncomfortable, half-crouched position by the door, closing her eyes and forgetting already exactly what she was meant to be listening for. "Well, no, not exactly, but it's obvious, isn't it? Once I'm of age and now Dumbledore's not at Hogwarts, there's nowhere I can go that'll be safe for me, is there? But I knew that anyway."

There was a silence, then Ron said, "Not much time, then."

"No," Harry said.

Another pause, then Hermione said, tentatively, "Harry - have you spoken to Ginny recently?"

Ginny almost stepped away from the door, knowing that she shouldn't be listening - but they still might say something more about where they were going - and perhaps Harry would say he was going to tell her, and then she wouldn't have to spy at all -

"Of course I have," Harry said shortly. "We speak every day, we're getting on fine. Look, she understands - "

"Yes, I know, I just think - well, you never know what could happen, that's all, and it's just, it seems to me, while you've got these few days, you should - "

"Look, Hermione," Harry said - he wasn't shouting, he sounded cross, but he wasn't shouting - he was already more different than Ginny had realised. "It's none of your business."

"But if you think it's too dangerous - "

"Hermione, leave it," Ron said.

"But -"

"It isn't the time."

"Well, if everyone keeps on saying it's never the time, nobody would ever do anything - "

"Well, I reckon that's better than barging your way into things - "

"What do you mean, barging?"

"Look, stop it," Harry said, and at the sound of his voice again, Ginny's spell cut out; she found herself jumping away from the door, straightening up again, and a moment later, running as quietly as she could back to the garden. She tried not to let even a single tear slip; she stared up into the sky as if that would set this fixed, horrible look upon her face, and make sure she didn't collapse and cry. She ran right down to the bottom of the garden, and at last crashed directly into the high thick hedge that marked the border, unbroken except for a small gate.

She shouldn't have done it; she shouldn't have tried to spy on them at all. She should simply have waited until they'd finished talking, and then gone to Harry and told him directly that they needed to talk, that it wasn't fair on either of them to keep her artificially in the dark, that she wanted to help him with what he had to do. That was exactly the sort of thing she would have expected of herself; that was how Ginny Weasley behaved. So why had she been cowering in corners, messing about with spellotape? She was in the right, she knew she was; so why was she so reluctant to talk to him?

Ginny disentangled herself from the hedge and began heartlessly dismembering it.

* * *

  1. Ginny & Luna

"That seems rather cruel," somebody said.

Ginny could not see the speaker, who must be standing on the other side of the gate, but she didn't need to; she took her hands away from the hedge, deciding that it could retain a few more of its leaves than she had originally intended, and said "Oh, hi, Luna." She paused. "You're a bit early, the wedding's not till Wednesday."

"Oh, I know that," Luna said serenely, "but I felt rather in the mood for talking to someone when I woke up this morning, and Daddy doesn't count, so I thought I'd pop over here. It isn't often I feel like that, you see, so I didn't want to waste it."

Ginny went over to unlatch the gate, considering as she did so that it was strange that the Weasleys had never spent more time with the other wizarding families who lived nearby, not even before they'd all started school. She couldn't remember playing with many other children of her own age except her brothers - it'd been one of the reasons why she'd been so upset when Ron had first gone to Hogwarts and she'd faced a year alone. Of course, in her case, Cedric had always been too old and Luna too odd and Sally and Jenny Fawcett so often away - and now Cedric was dead and the Fawcetts fled permanently to France and Luna was, well, still odd, but definitely more companionable than she had been when she was younger. They'd gotten a lot closer over fourth and fifth year, especially fifth, beginning with that unfortunate desk incident, and now Luna had learnt to deal calmly with Ginny's occasional fits of temper and Ginny had learnt to expect anything -

  • Or perhaps not quite.

"Luna, what on earth do you think you're wearing?"

"I'm not quite sure," Luna said, lifting up her hands, her flowing sleeves drooping down almost to her waist, bracelets slipping down her wrists. "When I woke up this morning I felt very medieval - as well as wanting to talk, of course - and Daddy said at breakfast that he did too, so we're having a medieval day today. We have them every once in a while. I'm not sure all the things I'm wearing are exactly right for the fourteenth century, though, what do you think?"

"Well - " There really was nothing to say about the long, red, ridiculously-embroidered robe that Luna was wearing, complete with pointed shoes, a bronze circlet on her head, and complicated braids in her hair. "Aren't you boiling?" Ginny finally managed.

"Oh, no, I cast Cooling Charms on the dress before I put it on, so it's really only my head that's getting too hot," Luna said, tugging at the circlet. "I do hope I'm not bothering you, though. If you're busy with the hedge I can always go away again. I have an awful lot of battlements to put up before dinner, so I can keep myself quite busy - "

Ginny didn't ask. "No, of course not, come in," she said, thinking that, although a conversation with Luna was perhaps not what she most needed at this particular point, she couldn't turn her away when she was looking so hopeful and eager. Luna swept grandly in through the garden gate and immediately sprawled herself down on the grass, her spindly legs looking rather odd when sticking half out of the folds of the dress.

"Oh, you do have a nice garden," she said, looking approvingly around at the towering buddleia, the patches of dandelions scattered among the overgrown grass, and the pond that was filled with thick green smile and the remnants of broken objects.

"Thank you," Ginny said, sitting down herself.

"So why were you attacking the hedge?" Luna asked with interest. "Did you think it had Creeping Designs on your house?"

"Well - no," Ginny said, beginning to pluck up pieces of grass; she just couldn't keep her hands still at the moment. "I was thinking about something else - " She had it on the tip of her tongue; she hadn't told anyone at school about the real reason for her and Harry's break-up, obviously, as it would have destroyed the entire point of it, but she suddenly felt that she could tell Luna, that she needed to tell someone. She tried to work out how best to approach the subject, but before she could do so, she suddenly found herself bursting out with, "Do you think I'm too reckless and - and unreliable?"

"No," Luna said, looking at her with the greatest surprise. "I think you're very nice."

Ginny smiled, twisting some more grass through her fingers. "Yes, you said. Well, you announced it to the whole school, actually - "

"Oh, so I did," said Luna, frowning as if considering something. "It was very odd having everything I said magnified like that, you know, I kept on forgetting that everyone could hear everything I was saying, and I do just say things to myself sometimes. But I did enjoy it, even though everybody thought I was terrible. Well, expect for your brother, that is," she added with an air of preciseness, "or so he says, anyway."

"Ron?" Ginny said. "You've never said he was very nice, though, have you? You just said he was funny, but he could be a bit unkind sometimes - Harry told me."

"Yes, I believe I did," Luna said, staring pensively over Ginny's shoulder.

"And you're right," Ginny said, thinking for a moment. "That's why I thought you'd be right about me, as well... But I don't think I am just nice."

"Well, no," Luna said, concentrating again, "You can be funny, too, and sometimes you can be a little unkind. But you're also very nice."

Ginny sighed. "You could say that about any of us, I suppose. All the Weasleys, I mean." She paused again. "Except Percy - He's not funny - and he's not exactly unkind - but he's certainly not very

nice -" Her voice went sharper. She remembered the fury she'd felt at Percy for hurting her mother so badly, the anger that had lasted so long she'd tried to fling mashed parsnips at him when he'd turned up for Christmas, although, whatever she'd claimed afterwards, she didn't think they'd actually found their target. She'd been pleased with herself at the time, but now she felt a little guilty. What had been the point, after all, what good did it do anyone, to be flinging stuff at him? She should have behaved the way that she would have expected of herself - if she'd had a chance to speak to him, she should have told him sharply and concisely exactly what she thought of him, and let him feel ashamed of himself, instead of just letting him think he was more in the right. But then, was that the sort of thing she would ever have done? She never thought before she acted any more.

Had she always been like that?

"I don't really know what I am like," she said aloud. The twins grinning after flinging parsnip-fuelled missiles, Percy's outraged and painful face.

"Surely it's more fun that way?" Luna said, wriggling slightly as she spread her skirts out so they covered the widest radius of the lawn possible.

"Well, not if - " She never knew what she was going to do next, and that frightened her. And sometimes she found it difficult to remember what she'd been like before her first year at Hogwarts, if she'd been much the same or not. Tom'd tried to influence her, even when he had no need to directly control her. It must've been a bit of fun, a game for him, as there'd been no profit to be got out of it - not out of silly little things such as tempting her to try out mad ideas that entered her head, encouraging her in her anger against all forms of authority. Yes, Percy is terribly annoying, isn't he? You shouldn't have let him give you the Pepper-Up potion, Ginevra, it lets them win again, don't you see? And your mother's the same, with her cooking lessons and hand-holding - you shouldn't just quarrel with her, you should stand your ground. Since her first year she'd become more and more notorious for her occasional acts of rebellion, even if she'd never been nearly as bad as the twins... and surely that made her unpredictable - unreliable - untrustworthy? You have an interesting name, Ginevra, Tom had scrawled as she'd been trying to decide how to rid herself of the diary, even as she slammed it shut a moment later.

"Sometimes I'm not sure if anybody should trust me," she said.

Luna stared at her for a moment - always a particularly unnerving experience. "That's very silly of you," she said.

"Look - "

"Is this something to do with Harry? Because he's being very silly as well," Luna added as an afterthought.

Ginny bent her head and stared at the grass. "Yes."

"Well, then, I think that you should speak to him and I think that if he doesn't want to speak to you you should just talk anyway."

"It's more complicated then you think."

"Well, then you'll just have to talk to him in a complicated way."

Ginny smiled and leant forward - surely now she should give Luna the full story, and see what she made of it. But just as she was about to speak she heard her mother's voice from the house, appealing for her help with the cooking. In annoyance, she got to her feet, doing a few stamping dance steps to work out the tension. "Sorry, Luna," she said, "I have to go help with the dinner."

"Oh, well, if you do ever want to talk - " Luna said, gathering up her skirts.

"I do," Ginny said, and then she had a brainwave. "Why don't you come back in about an hour for dinner? Mum won't mind."

"Oh, yes, I would like that," Luna said, "I'd like it very much." She did a twirl, energetic enough for Ginny to have to step out of the way of her flying hem, and ran for the Weasley garden gate. "I'd better get back and spend some time with Daddy," she said, "he's spent all day magicking the moat, but I'd love to come to dinner, I certainly will."

"Where did you get all those clothes and things from?" Ginny asked in amusement, watching her go.

"Oh, most of them were my mother's," Luna said as she unlatched the gate, "Well the bracelets were, and the crown. She used to often have medieval days too, in fact Daddy and I hardly ever had them until she died, you know - I suppose it's a way of thinking about her, without getting too miserable and gloomy about it. Well, I do have to rush now, I can hear Daddy singing." She closed the gate behind her and set out across the nearby field, over which the faint sounds of 'Now welcom somer' could be heard drifting from the Lovegood residence.

Ginny waved and headed for the kitchens; where she stood, the sunlight was as hot and steady as ever, but in the lower half of the garden, the shade was already spilling over the wall.

* * *

  1. Luna & Ginny

Luna returned from her newly-built castle at about six o'clock, humming to herself as she made her way across the rutted field. While trying to get the drawbridge to work (they hadn't used it for nearly a year and the mechanism had gone a bit rusty) and hoisting the banners, she had been concocting a plan in her mind, and now she had it fully worked out, although it was one of her sort of plans, which meant that it relied on an awful lot of things happening in exactly the way she imagined they would, which didn't often occur. She wasn't really a very scheming sort of person; most schemes just made her wonder why on earth people put so much time and effort into them, when they were just hurrying along things that might come to them easily enough anyway, if they waited. But now there really wasn't that much time, and everything was really rather worrying, and if there had ever been a moment for her to scheme, this was it.

She jumped over a rather deep puddle near the watering trough, glad that although she had left on the circlet, the bracelets, and the long red dress, she had changed her fragile shoes for some rather more practical walking boots. She was looking forward to dinner, she thought happily. It would be very nice to see Harry, Ron and Hermione again, and to meet the other Weasleys properly, and also she hoped that there would be something good to eat, not toasted blancmange, which was what her father always produced, quite against the laws of nature or of cooking, when they were having a medieval day.

For a moment she wished that she'd left the circlet and the bracelets behind as well. They were both so very heavy, made of what seemed to be solid bronze, and they felt horribly sweaty in this heat, even though it was gradually ebbing as evening approached. But no, if she was having a proper medieval day, those were the last things she could take off; they had been worn by either her mother or herself ever since Celia Lovegood had found them at the bottom of a box of old papers and manuscripts she had bought second-hand at a wizarding jumble sale. Luna rearranged the circlet, pushed the bracelets up her wrists and went on.

She did wonder what it was, exactly, that Harry was trying to keep from Ginny - of course, it must be something to do with Voldemort, but that didn't help one bit; it seemed to her that everything was something to do with Voldemort nowadays. Even their medieval day, today - it had been only six months since they'd last had one, back in the Christmas holidays, when they never usually held them so close together. And when Daddy had been putting up the first battlements she'd noticed him weaving extra protective spells into the mesh, though she hadn't said a thing, not even when he'd said "We could leave these up for a while, couldn't we, Luna? They're good ones this time, they should stay up for more than a day." She'd only nodded and concentrated on the complicated hex she'd been trying to tie to the drawbridge, even though she still wasn't sure whether it would really start rotating like a top if anybody suspicious stepped onto it. Or whether it would if anybody stepped onto it at all.

One thing was certain, though, the moat would soon be very fashionable.

The Weasleys were extremely kind to her when she finally arrived, after they had got over an initial show of surprise at what she was wearing. Luna had expected them to find it a little odd; she knew the dress was from an era at least a few hundred years later than the jewellery, and it must be funny to see them matched together like this. She must try to make herself a different dress, when she knew more about it. She managed to speak to Harry, Ron and Hermione after the meal, just as she had wanted to, then slipped out into the garden after Ginny, who had seated herself on a large cauldron under a tangled jungle of pretty purple flowers.

Luna sat down on the grass and said, "I've thought of a way for you to work out how to say all those complicated things to Harry."

"Have you?"

"Yes, it's quite similar to the way I did my Quidditch commentary."

Ginny stared at her in disbelief, but Luna continued to explain; "All you have to do is pretend that you're speaking to him even though it's only me that can hear you, and explain yourself properly, and then all your thoughts will make better sense to you, at least that's how it's supposed to work."

"And in what way does that relate to your Quidditch commentating?"

"Oh, it's exactly the same principle, but the other way round - I pretended that I was talking just to myself, even though a lot of people could hear me. Daddy says it's the best way to stop yourself from being nervous. He's done a lot of public speaking, mostly on Snorkacks, you see."

Ginny sighed. She said, "I haven't even told you why Harry and I broke up in the first place."

"Well, it only works if you don't mind telling me," Luna said thoughtfully.

Ginny sighed again, and explained.

When she'd finished, Luna nodded several times, then said "Well, now all you have to do is tell Harry why he's being silly."

"I'm not talking to you as if you're Harry, I'll just feel stupid," Ginny said sharply. "I'll just try and explain what I mean."

"All right then," Luna said. "Can I sit on the cauldron?"

Ginny glared. "Why?"

"Because it's been shown that if people can walk around and fidget and stamp, they think an awful lot better, and I expect with you it's especially true, even more than a normal person," Luna said.

Ginny opened her mouth - possibly to let Luna know that she really had no business flinging around the word 'normal' - but in the end seemed to decide that it wasn't worth the effort. She relinquished the cauldron, which Luna hopped onto happily, stood up, and said, "Well, it's pretty simple, really. Harry doesn't want me to be in any more danger than I already am, and it makes him feel better, for now, if he thinks he's doing something that makes it less - especially if he makes himself unhappy in the process, because that's even more Noble, you see. And if you want to save people properly, you have to be Noble." She paused. Luna watched her eagerly. "Because that's what he's trying to do, I think, he's trying to save me before there's even anything solid to save me from, and I wanted to let him do it because I thought it'd make him feel better, for a while, at least - "

"But I think that's just putting it off, when I think about it properly. If he's going to go out and do stupidly dangerous things, then I want to go with him - I mean, even if it all works out okay, what does he think it'll be like for me, if he comes back with everything sorted, and I knew I'd let him risk himself even more than he had to, just for a bit of peace of mind about me? Because I could help him out, if I was there. It's not that we even have to get back together, that's not the point at the moment - but I just don't see the point in waiting for something in the future that might never come -"

She took a few breaths, and added quietly, "And I don't think I'm too reckless, or unreliable, or untrustworthy. I mean, I've done stupid things - everyone does - but I think I'll do less of them, if I trust myself not to - that doesn't sound right, does it, but it's true."

She'd finished, and punctuated the moment by stalking back towards the cauldron. Luna clapped enthusiastically, and said, "You see, I knew you were right, and you were just being silly before - there does seem to be an awful lot of silliness around at the moment, doesn't there?"

"Silliness or nobility," Ginny agreed. "Or Gryffindor spirit. It depends what you want to call it."

"Pomp may have passed but wisdom will last," Luna put in with just a hint of smugness.

"Oh, for goodness' sake," Ginny said, swiping at her playfully, "you know that Rowena Ravenclaw never said any of that rubbish really -"

"Knowledge, not facts, or genius shall lapse."

"Oh, never mind," Ginny said, sitting down with a thump on the grass. "Anyway, Luna, I'd like to hear what you suggest I do now, because now I've got it all out once, I'll never be able to say it like that again, and I don't suppose you recorded it so I could just play it back to Harry and he could hear it himself - "

"What if he did?"

The two girls turned just in time to see Harry Potter emerge from the depths of the buddleia, looking slightly pale, his hair full of bits of leaf and flower, but grinning rather widely. He disentangled himself from the last of the stems and shook himself off, bits of plant flying everywhere, and came over to stand by Ginny, placing a hand on her shoulder.

She appeared to be completely lost for words. "How - "

"Oh, spellotape," Harry said, with a somewhat irritating smile. "Extendable Ears. Listening spells! But also -" he pointed at Luna " - accomplices."

"You - " Ginny gasped, though Luna hardly thought that she had the heart to be furious, "you - you -"

"Ravenclaw?" Luna queried.

"More like Slytherin," Ginny shot back.

Harry's hand tightened on her arm, and she turned to face him. "Look, Ginny - " he said, and seeing the tense look on his face, Luna felt she could be quite certain that any underlying silliness had finally been dispensed with.

She found that an opportune moment to go and investigate the other end of the garden.

* * *

  1. Luna

She was sitting happily by the hedge, investigating some rather interesting-looking fungi that were growing in its shadow, when she saw Ginny and Harry walk past, holding hands, and open the gate and go out of it, seemingly unaware of her presence. She smiled. She was glad she'd been able to help - it was a new feeling, to be useful - and she'd spared this hedge quite some damage as well, not to mention that nice cauldron.

She took the circlet off her head and put it down on the grass. It really was getting too heavy to be borne. She liked to be able to see it, too, shining slightly in the few small patches of sunlight that still remained, smooth and unmarked and giving no sense of what it had been through. It had been with her mother in her workshop when she died; Luna knew, because they'd found it afterwards with the jumble of things that had been blown across the room when that piece of magic had gone wrong. Neither she or her father had ever managed to work out exactly which spell her mother had been attempting that day. Everything else in the rubble had been broken, even other things made of metal had been bent or twisted, but this had emerged curiously untouched - a reason Luna liked it, because it showed that something always survived.

She glanced to the side of her, seeing that Ginny and Harry had completely vanished. She frowned slightly, wishing, for a moment, that they had thought of telling her, too, what was going on. She might have been helpful, as well, although she certainly couldn't have made a speech on the subject as well as Ginny had, and she had yet to invent her own hexes. Still, she supposed, with the way things were going, she would find herself involved soon enough.

She picked up the circlet and turned it over and over in her hands, liking the feel of the metal against her skin. About halfway around its inner circumference, her fingertips hit something rough. She frowned, and held it up to what was left of the light; the sun glinted off its surface, and she could see that there was a small design etched into the metal. She looked more carefully; yes, she was right, how funny, and she'd never noticed it before - it was a tiny eagle, perfect in every detail, wings outspread just like the one on the crest, and enamelled in blue against the bronze.

A sudden crash from the kitchens made Luna jerk and look up. The sky was still blue, but the shade was deepening and spreading in patches across the garden. The place where she sat was still brightened with a little sunlight, the top of the hedge lit a dark and vivid green, but on the path through the gate, where Harry and Ginny had gone, the shadows had already covered the ground.

* * *

'Thus, though we cannot make our sun

Stand still, yet we will make him run.'