June 5, supper: Down to Hogsmeade

[backuphero]

Neville could have gone back to the house at Grimmauld Place for the night. He could have gone home to Gran. He could have done a lot of things, before showing up for the Order meeting in McGonagall's office the next morning. But he was beginning to understand the magnitude of what he had taken on, and he had a lot more to do before he could

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[greattreasure]

Luna was sitting at a table in the Three Broomsticks, reading a muggle newspaper. Right side up for once.

Her brow was slightly furrowed, and she tried to block out the nervous conversations and general clatter around her. This was important. If she found something helpful, she'd go right on her way to to tell someone who could do something about it.

If she didn't, that was all right. She had a whole stack to get through.

[backuphero]

The Three Broomsticks was just as comforting as Neville remembered it being, though perhaps a bit more subdued than it had been a few months earlier. The war affected everyone, after all.

He was just about to claim an empty table for himself when he spotted a familiar head of hair, peeking out from behind an unfamiliar newspaper.

"Luna?" he said, when he'd nearly reached her side. "I thought you went home, after the... the f-funeral."

[greattreasure]

Luna looked up, blinking slightly at the arrival of Neville. How odd. She would have said the same of him, had she noticed him first.

"Home doesn't need me like here does." She motioned that he could have a seat if he only moved the papers first.

[backuphero]

Neville put his own books on a spare corner of table first, before moving some papers carefully to find himself a seat. Someone else he might have politely declined and gone back to that empty table, alone, but this was Luna. If he wasn't welcome, she wouldn't have suggested that he was.

"Home doesn't need me like here does, either," he agreed with her. "Um. What are you doing?"

[greattreasure]

"Looking." She tilted her head at him again, frowning just slightly. "Sometimes people forget Muggles have eyes too."

She nodded towards his own books. "What about you?"

[backuphero]

"Reading," said Neville vaguely, stroking his fingers down the cover of the topmost book. "I've got a lot of things to learn yet, if I want to help out in this war." He studied the paper in her hands and realised it was, in fact, Muggle. As were the others. "Have you found anything?" he asked her after a moment.

[greattreasure]

"Nothing except a lot of complaining. Muggles don't seem to like not having money, power or love."

She reflected on that for a moment. "But I doubt highly that any cream designed to enlarge things will do much but shrink bank accounts."

She had been reading a few tabloids, you see.

[backuphero]

Neville blinked at her a few times, but didn't offer an opinion on the subject. "I was on a Muggle street yesterday," he told her instead. "In London. Only mostly they didn't look like they had money, power or love on that street."

[greattreasure]

"Then they clearly had been buying some of that cream."

Luna looked up, frowning a bit at Neville. "You still look very tired."

[backuphero]

Neville chewed on his lip a little. He was very tired, and hoped that maybe soon he would find the time to rest, once things got sorted out a little, once people started to get used to what life was going to be like, now.

"I might have got out of hospital a little early," he admitted to her. "I didn't like it much, I couldn't do anything while I was there."

[greattreasure]

"You still have to look after yourself. If you got out and just got sick again, you'd do even less."

Luna had that way of hitting the nail a little too firmly on the head.

[backuphero]

Neville gave her a little, faintly guilty, smile, and pushed his books away. He wouldn't need them right now. "I'm glad you're still here," he said, honestly. "I can't imagine not seeing you all summer, and maybe even longer if Hogwarts doesn't open again in September."

[greattreasure]

"That won't be an issue," Luna said matter of factly, looking back at the papers.

"I won't be leaving."

[backuphero]

"You... won't be leaving?" Neville repeated uncertainly. With Luna, that could really mean a great number of things. "Won't be leaving this spot? Or Hogwarts? Or...?" He wasn't sure what other options there were, but he was sure that Luna would be happy to inform him.

[greattreasure]

Luna looked at him slightly confused. "Leaving the battle."

They both knew what she meant.

[backuphero]

Neville nodded at her solemnly, and as Madame Rosmerta joined them for a moment to ask what he would like, Neville requested the stew he could smell simmering in the back and a bottle of butterbeer, thank you very much.

"Luna, would you like anything? You've got to be getting thirsty, all that... uh, reading."