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Ginny lay awake in her bed, arms folded behind her head as she stared at the canopy. She could hear Hermione’s snores from the side, and smiled a little. She’d only shared a room with Hermione since coming back this year, since the students who’d never had a proper seventh year were folded in with people who—
Well, didn’t have a proper sixth year, either.
Ginny sighed and turned her thoughts away the war. Merlin knew she had spent almost every day this summer thinking about it, whenever she glanced at Fred’s empty place at the table. She wanted to think about something else.
Like Luna.
Drifting through the summer, Ginny had somehow drifted into Luna. She’d simply shown up at the Burrow one day, and Ginny had assumed that Harry or Ron had invited her over. She sat at the table next to Ginny, and often accompanied her to the garden to toss gnomes or tend the vegetables, and sat below reading a book when Ginny played Quidditch with the others.
Ginny wasn’t even sure how she had glanced at Luna one day and noticed her. What the sunlight did to her pale hair, and the way that her eyes bulged a little more when she turned the book upside-down, and how her hands looked long and slender as she played with a necklace of dried stems she wore.
But she had known she wanted to spend more time with Luna after that. She’d sat with her at every meal, and spent more time on the ground with her reading instead of playing Quidditch. Luna might not have noticed.
Except that, one August about a week before Hogwarts would resume again, Luna had laid down her book and turned to stare at Ginny. “What are you doing with your life?” she asked.
Ginny had flushed and shaken her head a little. “I don’t know yet?” she tried to offer. “I thought I might play Quidditch. But it would depend a lot on what teams had a Seeker spot open, and what—”
“I don’t mean your life. I mean your life. Right now. Right here.” Luna had leaned forwards challengingly, and even in that moment, Ginny had got distracted by how her hair slid and danced down the side of her neck.
“I don’t know what you mean, Luna.”
Ginny hated saying that, because it so often made Luna retreat and stop speaking, but now, all Luna did was sigh. “It’s a simple question. It’s your life. You should know it better than anyone else. What are you doing?”
And Ginny had shaken her head again, caught between annoyance that she didn’t understand what Luna was talking about, pleasure that Luna was speaking with her, and a conviction that the question was important, more important than she knew.
The next instant, Luna had given her a polite but vague smile, and gone back to her book as though her attention had never been distracted from it. Ginny had leaned back on the grass and worked her hands together behind her head and watched the sailing clouds and spent a lot of time thinking.
Did she want to play Quidditch? It was what she’d done in the past, but there was no reason that she had to make her future a picture of her past.
She had thought the same thing when Harry had looked at her one Hogsmeade morning as if he wanted to ask her to come to the village with him. Ginny had smiled at him and waited a minute, because it was possible he just wanted to go as friends, and she wouldn’t mind doing that. She did consider Harry a friend.
In the end, he’d turned back and joined Ron and Hermione. He might be shy. He might be wondering if she wanted to go at all, when she hadn’t asked him. Or he might think that they didn’t need to hurry anything, and they could wait.
And Ginny was fine with all those things, but it didn’t mean she was going to wait around forever.
She sighed when she realized where her thoughts had gone, and shook her head a little. More and more, she wanted to think about Luna, and not Harry. She wanted to be friends with Harry, not a future wife or a girlfriend.
Ginny might want to be the one with the girlfriend instead.
*
Golden light was already washing the inside of the room, the sun peeking over the Forbidden Forest. Ginny rolled over to watch it. She’d try to grab a nap today. It was Saturday, so at least they didn’t have classes.
A bird’s chirp rang out, and Ginny smiled a little. She might have been annoyed if it had woken her up, but as it was, it was pleasant to lie here and listen to the first song of the dawn chorus.
The chirps built on each other, and rang up to a trilling crescendo, as if the birds were determined to compete with each other. Ginny wondered idly what kind of birds they were. Luna would probably know, at least if anyone had ever written an article linking them to a conspiracy theory.
Could I accept that she’s always going to be like that? I wouldn’t want to have a girlfriend that I only tolerate, and I’m always rolling my eyes at her behind her back. That wouldn’t be good for me or Luna.
Ginny frowned thoughtfully. No, she didn’t want to do that. Maybe she should spend some more time thinking about this, holding back if necessary, to make sure that she wasn’t hurting Luna.
A sharp tone cut through the noises of the singing birds. Ginny blinked and lifted her head. Was someone’s owl flying around and scattering the little ones?
The tone repeated itself, and then settled into a steady crooning noise that was really like no bird Ginny could remember. With a guilty glance at her roommates’ beds, she stood up and walked over to the window. At least all of them had their curtains closed, and Hermione’s snores remained steady. That made it less likely Ginny would disturb them.
She opened the shutters, and glanced down. The base of the Tower was awash in dried grass, since it was already the middle of October. She was a little surprised that she’d been able to hear the birds so well, in fact, since there weren’t trees closer than the Forbidden Forest for them to sit in.
Then her mouth fell open, and stayed open.
There was a new, half-circular, low stone wall at the base of Gryffindor Tower, which must have been Transfigured or conjured into existence. And sitting on top of it were five golden-red, small, four-footed creatures with enormous fluffy wings and beaks that seemed to take up their whole heads.
Luna was standing in front of them. She tilted her head back and smiled up at Ginny. Ginny was certain she was smiling, and she was certain it was Luna, despite the distance between them. She hastily snatched up her wand cast a spell that would make the vision appear closer and clearer.
Luna either recognized the wand motions or somehow otherwise knew when Ginny could see her. She nodded to her and turned to face the red-gold creatures, raising her wand. She didn’t cast a spell, though, just waved it back and forth like someone conducting a concert.
The red-gold creatures burst into song.
Well. Song of a sort. They whistled and squeaked and warbled and trilled and leaped between note and note, and one of them boomed like a frog at the most disconcerting times. They clapped their wings and rose into the air with bounces, and then drifted back down, floating like spiderwebs. Ginny, with her enhanced vision, could see the way that two of them tilted back their heads, singing their hearts out, while the rest sometimes scuffled with each other, paddling with paws and pecking at each other with their sharp beaks. But they always came back and joined in the song.
Ginny leaned her elbows on the windowsill, smiling hard enough to break her face. She had no doubt this serenade was for her. Luna was brilliant, and how long she must have worked to train these creatures and make them sing in some semblance of music…
No one had ever done something this wonderful for Ginny before.
Luna waved her wand a few more times, and then stepped back from the wall and stood there with her head tilted back and a majestic expression on her face. The creatures bounced in place, and the three in the middle spun around and around on what looked like one paw each while the singers on either end deepened their voices and cast their song higher and higher into the air. The music wavered and then blended into magnificent notes that were definitely not human.
The song ended with all the creatures facing Ginny and Gryffindor Tower, and then they stretched out their wings and bowed gracefully. Well, with some grace. One of them fell over.
Ginny began clapping wildly, while Luna looked up and smiled at her in what seemed like simple happiness. The red-gold creatures were scuffling among themselves again, poking each other with their beaks and uttering what seemed like hisses of complaint.
“Ginny? What are you doing?”
That was definitely a complaint, behind Ginny, in Hermione’s sleepy voice. Ginny let the charm that had seemed to bring Luna and the creatures closer fade from her eyes and turned around with a guilty smile. “Sorry to bother you, Hermione. Go back to sleep. I’m just going out for some fresh air.”
Hermione stared at her with bleary eyes and looked as if she would have questioned Ginny more closely if it wasn’t so early in the morning. Then she rolled back over and buried her face in the blankets.
Meanwhile, Ginny crammed her feet into her trainers as fast as she could, tossed a robe carelessly over her pyjamas, and raced down the stairs.
*
Luna was still waiting when Ginny got outside the Tower, sitting on the stone wall that she’d Transfigured or conjured, swinging her feet back and forth. But the red-gold creatures had flown away.
It didn’t matter. Ginny had seen them. And heard them. She came towards Luna feeling as if she was about to float off the ground, her heart was thrumming so hard with joy. It could lift her all on its own.
“Did you like them?” Luna’s voice was soft and breathy, and she seemed to be looking slightly past Ginny.
“Yes, I did.” Ginny grabbed Luna’s hands and held them between hers. “What were they? I’ve never seen them before.”
“Nargles.” Luna gave a long sigh of satisfaction. “It took me a long time to persuade them to become visible and sing, you know. Most of the time, they would rather fight wars instead. They have a long one going with the Heliopaths.”
“Do they? Then I’m even more honored that they came to sing to me.” Ginny jumped up on the wall beside Luna and turned around so they were sitting leg-to-leg, hip-to-hip, side-by-side. Luna’s eyes widened a little, and she looked directly at Ginny this time.
“What are you doing, Ginny?”
That question was pretty direct, too. Ginny bit her lip, wondering if she’s misunderstood the gesture Luna had made with the Nargles. Maybe she had only meant that she liked Ginny as a friend, after all.
But then Ginny told herself not to be so stupid. No, Luna hadn’t simply meant that, and it was disrespectful to her to think she had.
Ginny reached up and slowly, deliberately, slid her hand into Luna’s hair. Luna blinked and stared at her.
“Do I have Nargle poop on my head?” she asked. “They try, but they’re not always careful. Our cleanliness standards don’t really make sense to them, you know. They have nests they keep clean, but for them, there’s inside the nest and outside the nest, and everything outside the nest is really the same.”
Ginny felt a burst of fondness, and let it fill her face and eyes. For a long moment, Luna seemed to stop breathing. She was waiting, but Ginny didn’t know if they were waiting for the same thing.
She decided it didn’t matter, and leaned forwards and kissed Luna.
Because, no matter what uncertainties might hang between them or how much they had different perspectives on things, Ginny was certain of one thing: she did want to kiss Luna.
When their lips touched, Luna gave a sudden full-body shiver like a deer seeing a hunter, and clung for a moment to Ginny. Ginny stroked her hair over and over again, and felt the strands slide over her hands, hotter than the sunlight. And Luna’s mouth. Soft and warm and yielding, and then her tongue curling out like a question mark.
Ginny gave that question an answer that left Luna half-lying down on the stone wall, her hands braced behind her as though she was trying to keep from slipping over. Her breath was rushing, now, and a very fine tremor had spread throughout her body.
And she was kissing Ginny back with equal intensity, to the point that Ginny thought she’d probably slip and fall in a minute.
Finally, they had to part or start coughing for lack of air. Ginny kept leaning in the same awkward position, though, staring at Luna as she rested her hands on her shoulders. Luna stared back, blinking only once in the warm minutes that passed over them.
“Oh,” Luna said. “I didn’t know you would do that.”
Ginny bit her lip, taken back to uncertainty again. “You didn’t want me to kiss you?”
“I thought you would kiss me for a minute,” Luna said. “And then I thought we would go find a bed and remove all our clothes.”
Ginny snorted before she could stop herself, and turned her head a little to the side so she could lay her ear over Luna’s heartbeat. Only that unbalanced them, and they fell off the stone wall to the ground that was luckily only about half a meter below.
Luna blinked up at the sun, before turning to look at Ginny. Ginny smiled back at her.
“I’d like to date you and be your girlfriend,” Ginny said. “And have you be mine. And then, yes, I’d like to find a bed and take all our clothes off.”
Luna appeared to give this grave consideration. Ginny snuggled up to her and waited patiently for Luna to make up her mind. She was sure that it was going to be a yes, although probably not a yes in the exact words that anyone else would have used to accept what Ginny was saying.
“Okay,” Luna said. “We should be girlfriends. And go have breakfast. And kiss before dinner. And lunch. And go visit the thestrals. And be in bed without our clothes tonight.”
“That’s a good plan,” Ginny said. She stood up and held out her hands, and Luna rose and took hold of them again. For a moment, her eyes did focus on Ginny, bright with something that might have been hope or fear.
“Do you think,” Luna began, and stopped. Ginny waited. “Do you think people who don’t like Nargles will say mean things about them?”
“I think that I’ll kick their arses if they do,” Ginny said.
“Oh.”
“I know the Bat-Bogey Hex, after all.”
“Oh.”
“Do you want to go to breakfast first?” Ginny held out her arm for Luna to take, but Luna didn’t take it.
“I want a kiss,” Luna said. “Here. And then in the Great Hall. And then at breakfast. And then in the library.”
Ginny grinned, and leaned forwards to do what they both wanted.
The End.