Drabblefic #3: Neville/Luna, "Coconut Shy"
Title: Coconut Shy
Genre: Friendship; General; Pre Romance (am trying to cover all bases here).
Ratings & Warnings: PG
Word Count: 1948
Summary: Luna seeks out Neville after the first ever meeting of Dumbeldore's Army with a somewhat unexpected proposition... Set during OotP.
Author's Note: For calyndra, who wanted Neville/Luna and the prompt palm tree. With thanks to godricgal for essential palm tree info. First time ever writing these two and rather worried about it, even though they were fun. Feedback is always appreciated. :)
Coconut Shy
Luna found Neville after the first DA meeting had ended by the simple expedient of imagining what a Crumple-Horned Snorkack would do in similar circumstances. Not that Neville would head for the dense jungles of Borneo, of course, but the habitat in which he felt most at home seemed likely.
And, indeed, there he was in the Herbology greenhouse. With a fork in one hand and a small pot containing what looked like-
She frowned because she certainly didn’t expect to see one of those here.
“I’ve found you, Neville.” She smiled, pleased with the success of her reasoning.
“Er, hello.” For a moment, he didn’t look that glad to be found or to see her do the finding, but then people who thought they wanted to be alone were liable to have those sort of expressions. Rather nervously, he added, “I didn’t know anyone was looking for me. Er, why are you looking for me?”
“What are you doing?” she asked with interest, nodding at the pot in his hand.
“Oh…nothing.”
“No, you were doing something. That’s why you’ve got that pot in your hand.”
“Er…” He put the pot down quickly behind some others. “No, it’s nothing. I’m just messing around with an idea I’ve had. Did you want me for something, Luna?”
“Yes.” She craned her neck, trying to see round him as, height-wise, they were more or less on a level. “Isn’t that a-?”
“Luna. What did you want me for?”
“Mmn? Oh, yes. I thought you might be feeling a bit down after the meeting.”
“A bit…” He stopped.
“Well, up and down,” she added, to be fair. “More down than up? Only no one wanted to partner you, did they? But then you did get to duel with Harry, and you did quite well against Ron even if you were absolutely hopeless against Hermione.”
He blinked.
“Only that’s how it was for me. A bit up and down, I felt.” She looked round the greenhouse with interest. “Professor Sprout still hasn’t got rid of that ash tree she’s growing, I see. I keep telling her that danger follows if you break a branch from it, and that she shouldn’t wear so much blue as it’s unlucky, but she doesn’t take any notice. I’ve been keeping a crooked Galleon under my pillow to compensate for it all. We’ve had so much trouble keeping Defence Against the Dark Arts teachers, and I wouldn’t like Professor Sprout to have an accident because who else could handle a Venomous Tentacula or put dragon dung compost to as many uses as she can?”
Neville seemed to be doing some more blinking. Luna realised she’d said quite a lot without giving him chance to reply so she waited politely for him to catch up. They didn’t know each other very well, after all. In fact, mostly what she knew of him, was that he cared about things others would scoff at (like his toad and his list of prohibited fungi), that he worried a lot and apologized a lot, especially when his grandmother was with him at King’s Cross, and yet sometimes, like today at the meeting, a fiercer, much more determined and stubborn Neville took over.
She listened to the rain lightly tapping on the glass panes above her head and thought that everyone was such a mixture of different parts and maybe he was more than most.
“No, nobody did want to partner me,” Neville said at last. “Whereas you had Justin Finch-Fletchley to duel with.”
“Only because Ginny Weasley told him he had to.” She didn’t want Neville missing the point because he looked as though he might be by the way his cheeks were reddening rapidly. “I don’t think he’ll want to next time. Did you know that if Expelliarmus hits someone right on the head it makes all their hair try and fly off?”
“Er, no.”
“No, nor me.” She sighed. “I like it when spells do unusual things, but Justin didn’t seem to like his hair standing on end. That is a member of the Monocot family, isn’t it?”
“Huh?”
“In the pot.” She pointed at it because all the feet shuffling Neville had been doing had enabled her to see it clearly at last. “It’s a little palm tree!”
An odd mixture of expressions flitted across his face amongst the bright red patches. “You know what it is?”
“Of course.”
“Do you know a lot about them, then?”
“Oh - no. No, I don’t.” She shook her head, regretfully, because she didn’t want to disappoint him, but then you had to be honest about these things otherwise you were only pretending. “I get confused with the differences between palm trees and cycads. Which is a bit annoying as I know it’s something simple to do with the roots and cones and the coconuts and dates, but I can never get it quite straight in my head. I know cycads are evergreen, gymnospermous and dioecious, but that’s not going to get me very far. I keep meaning to ask Professor Sprout about some of these things, but when she asks at the end of a lesson if anyone has any questions she apparently only means one at a time. Most teachers do that, I find, and I think they ought to say, 'Has anyone got only one question?' That way we’d all know what they want. Don’t you think?”
She smiled at him brightly, hoping to encourage him to say something in reply as there seemed to be a bit of a gap in proceedings.
“Prof - Professor Lupin,” Neville hesitated as though making his mind up about something and then continued. “He used to - well, I - I had trouble remembering spells sometimes, and there were things I wanted to ask him about to make sure, you see. He used to say that he mustn’t make me late for my next lesson, but that if I wanted to come and find him at the end of the day I could ask him whatever I wanted to.”
Luna nodded. “He was a much better teacher than people like Hagrid. Even though he wouldn’t take me seriously when I told him that keeping a Grindylow in his office was asking for trouble as the Blibbering Humdinger likes to snack on them.”
Neville smiled then, rather shyly, and she wasn’t quite sure what at, but he’d got a nice smile and she was pleased to see it at last. It would have been awful if he really had wanted to be alone and not just thought he did.
The smile reminded her why she’d come to find him.
“I don’t have anyone who’d want to partner me at the next DA meeting,” she said simply. “Ginny would, but she’d do it because she’s nice, and she’d feel she ought to, and there are other people she likes much better. And I was thinking that Harry can’t keep partnering you as he’s got to teach us, and Ron and Hermione have each other. So I thought perhaps it would be good if we teamed up.”
“You…you’re, er, you’re saying, you want to partner me?”
“Oh yes.” She nodded emphatically.
“Why?”
It was a sharp-sounding question for Neville and the bright red blotches were back in his face again, but he didn’t take it back. She liked this Fierce Neville, he was very honest and daring.
She took her time answering because it seemed important to get this right.
“I want to help fight,” she said, staring straight at him so he could see she was in earnest. “But I’m not very good at doing things quite like everyone else does. Like the dueling didn’t go quite as I thought it would, but I still believe I can help. It might have to be in a different way to everyone else, though, I think. I thought you might be the same, that’s all.”
He stared back at her, wide-eyed, and she added, “Your gran and your parents-”
“My parents?” This was sharper still.
“I expect you want to make them proud. I know I do my mother. She was an extraordinary witch and I feel very sad about her sometimes, but I know she’d tell me to do something I believed in because that’s what she always did.”
There was silence apart from the gently falling rain.
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” she shrugged, trying to show him that she knew people thought her a bit odd sometimes, and being Neville - even Fierce Neville - he probably wouldn’t want to say this. Being polite all the time must make things terribly awkward if you ever wanted to say no.
But he didn’t look awkward. He looked-
“Yes,” he said firmly. “I’ll be your partner. I’d…I’d like that a lot.”
And she got the shy, honest smile again, only much wider this time, which let her see that he was really, truly pleased about this, and she found herself smiling back at him because she was as well. Even more than she'd expected.
He was looking at her with something different in his eyes. “Perhaps you’d like,” both feet shuffled around on the wooden floor again, but he carried on, regardless, “to help me with this?”
This was the tiny palm tree. He placed the pot on the table in front of her.
“What you said about doing something different to help,” he cleared his throat. “I was trying to think what I was good at and how I could use that. This is going to sound mad-”
She looked at him and raised an eyebrow slightly, hoping he’d get her meaning that mad and she were passing acquaintances and had nothing to fear from each other.
He was looking down at the pot again, but she could see his shoulders shake slightly so she knew he’d got the joke. “I’ve been trying to grow one of these for ages as I thought it would cheer everyone up to have a palm tree here, even if it always has to live in the greenhouse. If you care about plants enough-” he broke off to stroke a gentle finger down what she knew was his favourite, the prickly-looking Mimbulus mimbletonia, and it gave a tiny little crooning sound, “-they’ll do amazing things for you, sometimes. Then there’s the coconuts, you see.”
“Coconuts?” She frowned.
“Yes. One day this tiny fellow here will be big enough to have coconuts, and, well, Professor Lupin taught me that you could put useful little spells on almost anything if you thought hard enough about it.” He sounded all determined again. “Say Hogwarts got invaded one day. I know it sounds daft, but after what happened with the Dementors - anyway, I thought it would help even if only one person got taken out by a coconut landing on his head.”
She thought about this. Saw he half expected her to laugh at him, but she was really thinking that when she was able to go on an expedition to find a Crumple-Horned Snorkack, coconut milk would probably come in very useful indeed in the jungle. And there were so many uses for the shell afterwards…
“I like it,” she said.
Another smile, this time with a bit of pride mixed in with the determination.
“They’ll never see it coming,” said Neville. "Or us."
Luna laughed. While she was doing so, he joined in with her, and she wondered if she’d found a friend at last or even something a little more. Someone who understood. And that if she charmed those coconuts the brightest of deep sea blues for him, then they were going to be doubly unlucky for whoever they landed on.
Genre: Friendship; General; Pre Romance (am trying to cover all bases here).
Ratings & Warnings: PG
Word Count: 1948
Summary: Luna seeks out Neville after the first ever meeting of Dumbeldore's Army with a somewhat unexpected proposition... Set during OotP.
Author's Note: For calyndra, who wanted Neville/Luna and the prompt palm tree. With thanks to godricgal for essential palm tree info. First time ever writing these two and rather worried about it, even though they were fun. Feedback is always appreciated. :)
Coconut Shy
Luna found Neville after the first DA meeting had ended by the simple expedient of imagining what a Crumple-Horned Snorkack would do in similar circumstances. Not that Neville would head for the dense jungles of Borneo, of course, but the habitat in which he felt most at home seemed likely.
And, indeed, there he was in the Herbology greenhouse. With a fork in one hand and a small pot containing what looked like-
She frowned because she certainly didn’t expect to see one of those here.
“I’ve found you, Neville.” She smiled, pleased with the success of her reasoning.
“Er, hello.” For a moment, he didn’t look that glad to be found or to see her do the finding, but then people who thought they wanted to be alone were liable to have those sort of expressions. Rather nervously, he added, “I didn’t know anyone was looking for me. Er, why are you looking for me?”
“What are you doing?” she asked with interest, nodding at the pot in his hand.
“Oh…nothing.”
“No, you were doing something. That’s why you’ve got that pot in your hand.”
“Er…” He put the pot down quickly behind some others. “No, it’s nothing. I’m just messing around with an idea I’ve had. Did you want me for something, Luna?”
“Yes.” She craned her neck, trying to see round him as, height-wise, they were more or less on a level. “Isn’t that a-?”
“Luna. What did you want me for?”
“Mmn? Oh, yes. I thought you might be feeling a bit down after the meeting.”
“A bit…” He stopped.
“Well, up and down,” she added, to be fair. “More down than up? Only no one wanted to partner you, did they? But then you did get to duel with Harry, and you did quite well against Ron even if you were absolutely hopeless against Hermione.”
He blinked.
“Only that’s how it was for me. A bit up and down, I felt.” She looked round the greenhouse with interest. “Professor Sprout still hasn’t got rid of that ash tree she’s growing, I see. I keep telling her that danger follows if you break a branch from it, and that she shouldn’t wear so much blue as it’s unlucky, but she doesn’t take any notice. I’ve been keeping a crooked Galleon under my pillow to compensate for it all. We’ve had so much trouble keeping Defence Against the Dark Arts teachers, and I wouldn’t like Professor Sprout to have an accident because who else could handle a Venomous Tentacula or put dragon dung compost to as many uses as she can?”
Neville seemed to be doing some more blinking. Luna realised she’d said quite a lot without giving him chance to reply so she waited politely for him to catch up. They didn’t know each other very well, after all. In fact, mostly what she knew of him, was that he cared about things others would scoff at (like his toad and his list of prohibited fungi), that he worried a lot and apologized a lot, especially when his grandmother was with him at King’s Cross, and yet sometimes, like today at the meeting, a fiercer, much more determined and stubborn Neville took over.
She listened to the rain lightly tapping on the glass panes above her head and thought that everyone was such a mixture of different parts and maybe he was more than most.
“No, nobody did want to partner me,” Neville said at last. “Whereas you had Justin Finch-Fletchley to duel with.”
“Only because Ginny Weasley told him he had to.” She didn’t want Neville missing the point because he looked as though he might be by the way his cheeks were reddening rapidly. “I don’t think he’ll want to next time. Did you know that if Expelliarmus hits someone right on the head it makes all their hair try and fly off?”
“Er, no.”
“No, nor me.” She sighed. “I like it when spells do unusual things, but Justin didn’t seem to like his hair standing on end. That is a member of the Monocot family, isn’t it?”
“Huh?”
“In the pot.” She pointed at it because all the feet shuffling Neville had been doing had enabled her to see it clearly at last. “It’s a little palm tree!”
An odd mixture of expressions flitted across his face amongst the bright red patches. “You know what it is?”
“Of course.”
“Do you know a lot about them, then?”
“Oh - no. No, I don’t.” She shook her head, regretfully, because she didn’t want to disappoint him, but then you had to be honest about these things otherwise you were only pretending. “I get confused with the differences between palm trees and cycads. Which is a bit annoying as I know it’s something simple to do with the roots and cones and the coconuts and dates, but I can never get it quite straight in my head. I know cycads are evergreen, gymnospermous and dioecious, but that’s not going to get me very far. I keep meaning to ask Professor Sprout about some of these things, but when she asks at the end of a lesson if anyone has any questions she apparently only means one at a time. Most teachers do that, I find, and I think they ought to say, 'Has anyone got only one question?' That way we’d all know what they want. Don’t you think?”
She smiled at him brightly, hoping to encourage him to say something in reply as there seemed to be a bit of a gap in proceedings.
“Prof - Professor Lupin,” Neville hesitated as though making his mind up about something and then continued. “He used to - well, I - I had trouble remembering spells sometimes, and there were things I wanted to ask him about to make sure, you see. He used to say that he mustn’t make me late for my next lesson, but that if I wanted to come and find him at the end of the day I could ask him whatever I wanted to.”
Luna nodded. “He was a much better teacher than people like Hagrid. Even though he wouldn’t take me seriously when I told him that keeping a Grindylow in his office was asking for trouble as the Blibbering Humdinger likes to snack on them.”
Neville smiled then, rather shyly, and she wasn’t quite sure what at, but he’d got a nice smile and she was pleased to see it at last. It would have been awful if he really had wanted to be alone and not just thought he did.
The smile reminded her why she’d come to find him.
“I don’t have anyone who’d want to partner me at the next DA meeting,” she said simply. “Ginny would, but she’d do it because she’s nice, and she’d feel she ought to, and there are other people she likes much better. And I was thinking that Harry can’t keep partnering you as he’s got to teach us, and Ron and Hermione have each other. So I thought perhaps it would be good if we teamed up.”
“You…you’re, er, you’re saying, you want to partner me?”
“Oh yes.” She nodded emphatically.
“Why?”
It was a sharp-sounding question for Neville and the bright red blotches were back in his face again, but he didn’t take it back. She liked this Fierce Neville, he was very honest and daring.
She took her time answering because it seemed important to get this right.
“I want to help fight,” she said, staring straight at him so he could see she was in earnest. “But I’m not very good at doing things quite like everyone else does. Like the dueling didn’t go quite as I thought it would, but I still believe I can help. It might have to be in a different way to everyone else, though, I think. I thought you might be the same, that’s all.”
He stared back at her, wide-eyed, and she added, “Your gran and your parents-”
“My parents?” This was sharper still.
“I expect you want to make them proud. I know I do my mother. She was an extraordinary witch and I feel very sad about her sometimes, but I know she’d tell me to do something I believed in because that’s what she always did.”
There was silence apart from the gently falling rain.
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” she shrugged, trying to show him that she knew people thought her a bit odd sometimes, and being Neville - even Fierce Neville - he probably wouldn’t want to say this. Being polite all the time must make things terribly awkward if you ever wanted to say no.
But he didn’t look awkward. He looked-
“Yes,” he said firmly. “I’ll be your partner. I’d…I’d like that a lot.”
And she got the shy, honest smile again, only much wider this time, which let her see that he was really, truly pleased about this, and she found herself smiling back at him because she was as well. Even more than she'd expected.
He was looking at her with something different in his eyes. “Perhaps you’d like,” both feet shuffled around on the wooden floor again, but he carried on, regardless, “to help me with this?”
This was the tiny palm tree. He placed the pot on the table in front of her.
“What you said about doing something different to help,” he cleared his throat. “I was trying to think what I was good at and how I could use that. This is going to sound mad-”
She looked at him and raised an eyebrow slightly, hoping he’d get her meaning that mad and she were passing acquaintances and had nothing to fear from each other.
He was looking down at the pot again, but she could see his shoulders shake slightly so she knew he’d got the joke. “I’ve been trying to grow one of these for ages as I thought it would cheer everyone up to have a palm tree here, even if it always has to live in the greenhouse. If you care about plants enough-” he broke off to stroke a gentle finger down what she knew was his favourite, the prickly-looking Mimbulus mimbletonia, and it gave a tiny little crooning sound, “-they’ll do amazing things for you, sometimes. Then there’s the coconuts, you see.”
“Coconuts?” She frowned.
“Yes. One day this tiny fellow here will be big enough to have coconuts, and, well, Professor Lupin taught me that you could put useful little spells on almost anything if you thought hard enough about it.” He sounded all determined again. “Say Hogwarts got invaded one day. I know it sounds daft, but after what happened with the Dementors - anyway, I thought it would help even if only one person got taken out by a coconut landing on his head.”
She thought about this. Saw he half expected her to laugh at him, but she was really thinking that when she was able to go on an expedition to find a Crumple-Horned Snorkack, coconut milk would probably come in very useful indeed in the jungle. And there were so many uses for the shell afterwards…
“I like it,” she said.
Another smile, this time with a bit of pride mixed in with the determination.
“They’ll never see it coming,” said Neville. "Or us."
Luna laughed. While she was doing so, he joined in with her, and she wondered if she’d found a friend at last or even something a little more. Someone who understood. And that if she charmed those coconuts the brightest of deep sea blues for him, then they were going to be doubly unlucky for whoever they landed on.