(no subject)
Luna knows about rejection. She knows about being put aside for something more interesting or exciting, for someone else, for anything. She also knows that it’s not her fault; she can’t help it if nobody else understands about the things she says, and the things she feels. Luna suspects that nobody understands quite how much she does feel things.
Ginny learns a lot about rejection. It isn’t something she’s ever experienced, really, until Harry gallivants off into the stormclouds, and leaves her at Hogwarts. Everyone says how noble it was of him, to make her stay here out of danger, but Ginny knows the truth. She knows that Harry doesn’t trust her, not really, not like he does Hermione, and Ron. It hurts.
In the bedraggled world of Hogwarts sans Harry Potter, Luna starts carrying her plate across to the sparsely populated Gryffindor table. The first time she does it, Ginny barely even glances at her. The second time, Ginny sighs. The third time, she gives Luna a small, resigned smile. Luna smiles back.
Ginny misses Luna, when she is sitting alone in front of the Common Room fire. She finds herself starting to work out how many hours it will be until she can see Luna again, feel the comforting presence of her stillness, her quietness. Ginny shakes her head, her thick red plaits jumping. She moves away from the fire.
Luna spends a lot of time wondering what love really is. Her mother loved her father, but her mother is gone now. Harry loved Ginny, but Harry has gone now too. She thinks that maybe Neville Longbottom is starting to love her, but she doesn’t encourage him. It’s a complicated business, Luna thinks.
One morning, before Luna has arrived, an owl drops a tightly folded letter on Ginny’s plate. She feels her insides twist. The handwriting is familiar: black and erratic, spiky. Ginny opens the letter and starts to cry.
Luna knows that Ginny loved Ron. It’s another kind of love, Luna thinks, as she sits with Ginny’s wet eyes against her chest, and her arms around Ginny’s shaking shoulders. Luna wonders why love always seems to end this way.
Ginny feels as if her already-battered heart is going to break, at last, as it’s been threatening to do for so long. But as much as she wants it to, as much as she feels like dying right here and now, it seems as if she can’t. Luna won’t let Ginny out of her arms.
As Ginny raises her tear-stained face, Luna thinks that perhaps she’s found another sort of love. Not the sort that suddenly washes over everything in its path, like her mother and father’s, and like Harry and Ginny’s, but the sort that grows, gently, unobtrusively, until something pulls the stopper from the bottle and it all flows out. Luna lowers her face, and kisses Ginny.
Ginny knows a lot about acceptance. She knows that Luna doesn’t mind if she still wakes up in tears every morning. She knows that the sun always rises, and the sun always sets. She knows that there are some things Voldemort can never take away, because they are things he can never touch. Ginny learns some more about love. She learns a lot about Luna.
Luna knows a lot about Ginny. She knows about the way ordinary red hair can turn to threaded copper in the firelight. She knows a lot about the way Ginny’s mouth says yes. She knows that there are twenty seven freckles on Ginny’s left hand, thirty two if you include her wrist. Luna learns that despite the war - because of the war - maybe love isn’t so complicated after all.