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The man in Apartment 4B was attractive. Hermione had warned Luna when the younger girl offered to stay with Crookshanks in Hermione’s apartment while she traveled to South America for the summer on a Masters trip. Her neighbor, she said, was tall, buff, a bit stand-offish, and ultimately kept to himself.
She was right.
For the first few days, when Luna was settling into 4A, everything seemed fine. She saw him at the bank of mailboxes near the front door, where he sent a smile so dazzling that Luna ran up the stairs to their floor before either of them even said Hello . That night, she thought of that wide smile and a pair of piercing blue eyes in between her sheets in the guest bedroom.
Everything changed that weekend, when she went to the laundry room located in the basement of the building. Hermione had told her each apartment had a square shelf, neatly labeled, where residents could keep their laundry items. She noticed Hermione’s detergent and fabric softener running low, so after she did a load of laundry, she replaced it with new bottles.
After two weeks, Luna noticed the bottles were much lighter than she expected. She frowned at it, making a mental note to keep an eye out. She sat on an armchair, editing articles. Just under an hour passed when the door to the laundry room opened and in walked the handsome neighbor. Luna kept her head down but watched as he carried a large basket in, whistling as he set himself up at one of the washers. He turned and grabbed laundry detergent.
From Hermione’s shelf.
How dare he! Luna thought, watching in anger as he used detergent and softener that wasn’t his. So she cleared her throat. “Ahem.”
He spun around. When he saw the tiny blonde, he gave her a wide smile. “Well, hello there. Are you new here?”
“No, I mean, yes, but –”
“I’m Marcus,” he told her while he turned back to pour the blue-colored detergent into the wash. “And you are…”
“Luna,” she answered sharply. “You are –”
“Like the moon? That’s pretty.” He dumped a load of clothes into the wash and turned it on. “Which apartment are –” A beeping sound filled the room. Marcus unclipped the pager from his belt. “That’s me. Hope to see you around, Moon Girl.”
And then he was gone, leaving the bottles atop the washer.
It continued for weeks. They would pass each other briefly, Marcus attempting to charm her, and Luna’s anger flaring. Every time she saw him in the laundry room - and she wasn’t stalking him, just vigilant about his washing - he would use the soaps she bought. Even if he was short on cash - she learned he was a medical student still - he easily could have asked for some detergent rather than steal it.
She tried all that she could think to get it to stop. A note taped above the shelf that said, “Please stop using this detergent,” but it was ripped when she came back to it. Luna even tried putting her name on the bottles but it was to no avail. The man just kept using what wasn’t his.
So one day, she took the half-empty bottles on a day she knew he was working - he tended to overshare with her - and added blue dye into the laundry detergent bottle and unscented bleach to the fabric softener. It was a Thursday, she’d already done her own laundry, and she knew Marcus would do his either on Friday or Sunday, the two days he managed to have off.
Nothing happened on Friday except that Hermione arrived back home, tanned and tired but happy. She and Luna caught up over a take-out dinner of Chinese food, and Hermione couldn’t stop laughing when she learned what Luna had done to the bottles. Though Luna was packed and ready to move back to the home she shared with her father, Hermione insisted she stay until Sunday so they could find out what happened with Marcus.
Around 3 pm on Sunday, screaming could be heard coming from the laundry room in the basement. Doors opened all the way up to the fourth floor, with neighbors peering down the staircase to ask what was happening. Marcus’ booming voice yelled out, “Are you fucking kidding me?!”
He slammed the laundry room door behind him and stared up the center of the staircase, growling at everyone looking down, though Luna was quick to duck out of view. Hermione called down to him. “Alright there, Marcus?” His answer was another shout and then he left the building.
The girls waited about 20 minutes before making their way down to the laundry room. There, they found a pile of bleach-stained clothes in the trash bin. They giggled before getting rid of the evidence.
Two days later, Hermione called Luna to tell her she saw Marcus leave for work in a set of hospital scrubs that looked tie-dyed. The day after, Luna visited Hermione, and arrived just as Marcus was coming home from his hospital shift. She bit her lip to stop from laughing, but then called his name just as he was unlocking the door to his apartment.
“Hmm?”
“Don’t be so blue, Marcus,” she said in an amused tone. “It’s just clothes.”
Hermione, with perfect timing, opened her door. Luna ducked in and slammed the door shut in time for the two of them to hear, “Seriously?! Of course it was you! MoonGirl! LUNA!”