(HP, Marietta/Luna & Luna/Cho) as means the moon
Title: as means the moon
Author: crazylittleme @ vnilla
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Marietta/Luna, Luna/Cho
Rating: Hard R to NC-17, I'd say.
Disclaimer: I own nothing!
Author's Notes: For rillathegrape in hpvalensmut, may you enjoy! And somehow I subconsciously incorporated Valentine's Day into the fic. For the win!
--
There's sweet sixteen and quinceanera if you go abroad, but nobody ever likes being fourteen. Most people don't like being fifteen or sixteen either, but at least then they can pretend.
--
Flashback: Four years.
Languorous, read Luna, and put down the book to taste the word in her mind, let it melt on her tongue like chocolate. From context she guessed it to be a drowsy sort of word, a nap without fear of any of the particularly nasty creatures written of in The Quibbler. Still, she supposed she ought to look in a dictionary, at least to see what others thought of it. Luna was often disappointed by dictionaries; they seemed to have no sense of the weight of words at all. That was why she had decided to write her own.
She had just gotten the dictionary and flipped to the L's when an older girl sat down in front of her, cross-looking and curly-haired. Her fingernail skittered over the word livid. "I've been assigned to be your Charms tutor," the girl muttered, slamming her books down on the table. "My name is Marietta. I know yours is Luna."
"But you aren't very good with your schoolwork, are you?" Luna asked, cocking her head to one side. "I've heard people wondering why you're in Ravenclaw. Of course, they don't talk to me, just around me."
Marietta went red, but jerked her chin up as if to show she didn't give a toss what any mere first-year thought. "Professor Flitwick said it would be a way to memorize the basics over again and help you at the same time." And then, almost as an afterthought, "And of course he's worried because you don't have any friends, and he sees that I have so many. You might want to pay attention to more than books and that magazine."
Luna added a picture of Marietta next to the word catty. Felt a bit pleased with herself at discovering so apt a word, Marietta with her haughty air and green eyes and the lurk of wildness somewhere underneath the domesticated Hogwarts robes and the ribbons in her hair. Like any sensible cat person, she did not hold their pride against them, just learned the right way to stroke their fur and scratch under their chin. Nothing to it.
She removed her wand from behind her ear. "Wingardium Leviosa!" Marietta's quill hovered before her, almost close enough to tickle her open mouth. "I expect we'll be starting with the friendship lessons, then."
Of course she could do spells--her mother was a quite clever witch, after all. But what sort of daughter wouldn't play around with the wand movements a little?
--
There is a reason that the word girl fits so subtly into the word curve. It's like this--
c(g)ur(l)ve
--a definition of sorts.
--
Flash forward: three years.
The sixth-year girls' dorm is silent; everyone else has gone to Hogsmeade and most of the first- and second-years are outside playing in the snow, unconcerned with things like Valentine's Day. There are candles lit (pink ones), and Marietta is the one who invited Luna up here.
Nevertheless, as she leans in to kiss Luna, she says, "I'm not like that, you know."
Luna runs a comforting hand through Marietta's hair in response, only to have the best of intentions go astray, or in this case tangled up in curls. She has a feeling that Marietta likes her inexperience, though--she turned out to be a surprisingly excellent tutor, and Luna the poor student, not believing in the practical application of her lessons on How to Make Friends and How Not to be So Bloody Loony, Honestly. Luna unsnarls her fingers curl by curl, watching the pieces of hair spring back into place and Marietta flushed and faintly smirking, a cat's contentment--cruel.
Kissing is wet. Nothing she has ever read has mentioned how wet it is, perhaps because then it would sound unpleasant, but it's wonderful and wet inside her mouth and between her legs and that's just getting started, just barely touching, Marietta's graceful hands gripping her thighs and the taste of strawberries between them. (It had been the "innocent" offer of one such fruit that set up the rising action leading to the climax--climaxes, Luna hopes, and giggles into the kiss.)
"Only a child laughs at times such as this; it demonstrates a lack of experience." Marietta is severely pleased at the opportunity to lecture.
"Only a fool is serious about grave matters," Luna replies, not about to let this one slide.
Marietta sighs and pushes Luna back against the bedsheets, pins her there as she would a butterfly, were she inclined to do anything so uncouth as collection dead insects. Red-gold hair falls about Luna like autumn--it is always the hair that everyone notices, the hair and the curves and not much else, certainly not the alarming shapes underneath the smooth skin of her face, squares of betrayal and triangles of doubt. Luna sees and knows and does not interfere with the way of things, for this is how it must be and will be and her own definition of traitor is not quite the same, in the end.
A long, long silence falls, Marietta's hands hot and cold upon her body at the same time, motivated by a greed self-contained and having nothing to do with Luna after all, but she finds it's all right. Somehow the mood seems right, painted and poisonous and poised, everything of Luna's bared and nothing revealed, Marietta dressed (overdressed, even) for the occasion, as if layer upon layer of cloth were protection against being like that. "I like that," Luna murmurs, recycling some of the words from yestersecond's thought to create something entirely different. She's not quite sure what "that" is; she wonders what Marietta will do. Or not do.
She tosses her hair (such a typical gesture, that) and places a hand over Luna's mouth, then thinks better of it and kisses her instead, kisses to silence, to suffocate whatever might be said. Luna has lost robes and tie and blouse and bra but wears her dignity in her hair, in her eyes, in the (still mostly straight) lines of her body. She slides a hand under Marietta's skirt but it is slapped away--so much for that, then.
Lust is a heavy and hissed word, serpentine and cold.
Luna cannot tell Marietta that she's got it wrong, that her sides are not very ticklish but the undersides of her arms are, that she wants kisses with a bit of teeth to them, that she wants the leg between her legs to move just there to the left, that she wants anything, that she wants wants wants. There is something to be said for Marietta's lessons--they teach her that she is lonely, that she has ever been alone in a sea of faces. Lonely Loony Luna Lovegood. Does she love good? Ungrammatically, but she enjoys breaking a rule every now and then.
"I," she begins, as Marietta puts a tongue in her ear of all places, but then the leg does shift and she's coming, too soon, too soon, gasping and then crying a little, though she is usually not given to such emotional displays, so up in the clouds do mind and soul dwell. Luna knows this, prefers sky to ground and its risk of rocks.
Off Marietta goes, to the vanity to adjust her clothes and brush her hair and make a point of wiping off one leg. Luna pulls all of her own clothes on all by herself, drying her eyes with a bedsheet, leaving that much of herself there. Things look normal by the time Cho Chang bursts through the door, weeping up a storm and denouncing the name Harry Potter to the heavens, Marietta the sympathizing friend patting her on the back and agreeing with every word.
They do not even notice Luna until she asks whether Harry might have fallen pray to a Snayhopper, they're very common at this time of year and love to cause mischief for couples.
Marietta rolls her eyes and tells her she can leave now, so she does.
--
The sensual hides in the most everyday of words--press, for example. Journalists and laundry, but oh, so much more than that. The press of two bodies, of palm on flesh, of lips to lips. The weight of another's world against your own. Say it aloud, slowly.
Puhrrressss.
--
Flash forward: three years.
Luna will dance at Marietta's wedding, the only wedding where the bride will insist the veil be kept on, that the groom kiss her through it. Poor Marietta, she will never get over the scars, unearth the secrets she will continue to hide from herself. The groom will be some poor well-meaning fellow who owns a little business in Muggle London. Marietta will, at nineteen, be sick to death of magic.
Luna will dance alone, resisting the urge to make a sarcastic toast to the newly wedded couple, for the war will have added a few edges to her airiness, even though she still makes remarks that will cause Ron to laugh and say, "Oh, Luna, never change."
Luna will dance until Cho Chang stumbles into her, tipsy and weepy, the hem of her bridesmaid's gown ripped, escort nowhere in sight.
"Think of all the people, all the people not here, all the people who are gone."
Cho will still count her losses on every available finger; there will be more after the war is over.
"Think: we could be dancing now. Don't you want to?"
Luna will lead Cho on a merry jig through the graceful one-two-three strains of a waltz, missing all the right steps but somehow finding the beat, twirling her partner up and down and then close. Luna is like that, a certainty that will echo throughout past and present and future, sending its not-so-secret susurrations around and back again. Cho will stop crying and start laughing, will have done so much growing up that later on--later on...
The moon will climb high in its heaven and the stars will peep softly and then the rainclouds will roll in, driving Luna and Cho to seek shelter as sheets of rain fall down and down. "Bedsheets," Luna will say, coy to the point of self-parody, and Cho will nod shy assent, giving way to the slide and slither of clothes only as noisy as the pattering of drops outside.
They will both have scars from the war. Their hair will be shorter, Luna's oddly yet pleasingly layered, Cho's still hacked off near the neck by a (mostly) dodged curse. Cho will be angular and athletic and somehow like a ballerina; Luna soft and luminous as the name implies, rising over Cho's horizons.
"Tell me what you want."
"To forget."
Luna will wait.
Cho will change her mind.
"To remember."
Luna will start off slowly, a brief pressing of lips to each of Cho's fingers, a playful nip at one wrist, then a tickling of the feet because after the war, Cho will fall to sadness and sighing altogether too often for anyone's liking. There are those who will still think that Luna Lovegood is a bit dotty, but even they will concede there is a sort of wisdom to her--a method to her madness, if you will, and they will.
The rain will fade to a light drizzle and Cho will lean up and kiss Luna, kiss her as though she contains every flavor of ice cream, every last color of a Monet painting. Time will stop for them and was is will be all come together and have a bit of tea for a millisecond wrapped up in eternity. It will mean more than just a kiss; it will mean no longer alone to both of them.
Their lips will part and then Luna will part Cho's legs, Luna will as Luna wills, and she does and it all will be simpler than it sounds, she making paths of kisses down Cho's belly and pausing--no, staring--at the intersection of Cho's legs, the dark dark hair and the labia and the heat, the heat of it all. Cho will throw her head back and moan low in her throat because she can feel Luna's gaze upon her, tangible like the subtle play of fingers.
Luna will say, "You're beautiful."
Cho will say, "I know," and find, wonderingly, that she does.
Her tongue will dip and swirl and cross its t's and dot its i's, perform the caress of soft ink upon pages, a sketch and a metaphor and real, poetry in (e)motion. Oh oh oh will be the noises that Cho makes, thighs pressed so tightly against either side of Luna's head, compressing her thoughts until she feels they may explode like firecrackers and then Cho will, arching her hips forward until she is all Luna will smell and taste and feel.
When Cho will return the favor, Luna will close her eyes and follow the stroke order, laugh as Chinese characters appear on the insides of her eyelids. She will not need to ask what it means; she will intuit it, process the calligraphy through the inner workings of her hearts until at last it will make perfect sense, spell out a literature previously unknown to her. Luna will open her eyes then and say Yes yes yes because she never got the opportunity to say No no no. Cho's fingers will be thin (have always been thin) and yet still enough to grasp Luna's as she comes, over the moon, quite a feat for a lunar girl.
The rain will start up again as they fall asleep in one another's arms.
--
The word beginning is drawn out enough to fill both the start and the middle of the story, and then there is end, inherently perfect for the proper conclusion. Be ginning end.
Author: crazylittleme @ vnilla
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Marietta/Luna, Luna/Cho
Rating: Hard R to NC-17, I'd say.
Disclaimer: I own nothing!
Author's Notes: For rillathegrape in hpvalensmut, may you enjoy! And somehow I subconsciously incorporated Valentine's Day into the fic. For the win!
--
There's sweet sixteen and quinceanera if you go abroad, but nobody ever likes being fourteen. Most people don't like being fifteen or sixteen either, but at least then they can pretend.
--
Flashback: Four years.
Languorous, read Luna, and put down the book to taste the word in her mind, let it melt on her tongue like chocolate. From context she guessed it to be a drowsy sort of word, a nap without fear of any of the particularly nasty creatures written of in The Quibbler. Still, she supposed she ought to look in a dictionary, at least to see what others thought of it. Luna was often disappointed by dictionaries; they seemed to have no sense of the weight of words at all. That was why she had decided to write her own.
She had just gotten the dictionary and flipped to the L's when an older girl sat down in front of her, cross-looking and curly-haired. Her fingernail skittered over the word livid. "I've been assigned to be your Charms tutor," the girl muttered, slamming her books down on the table. "My name is Marietta. I know yours is Luna."
"But you aren't very good with your schoolwork, are you?" Luna asked, cocking her head to one side. "I've heard people wondering why you're in Ravenclaw. Of course, they don't talk to me, just around me."
Marietta went red, but jerked her chin up as if to show she didn't give a toss what any mere first-year thought. "Professor Flitwick said it would be a way to memorize the basics over again and help you at the same time." And then, almost as an afterthought, "And of course he's worried because you don't have any friends, and he sees that I have so many. You might want to pay attention to more than books and that magazine."
Luna added a picture of Marietta next to the word catty. Felt a bit pleased with herself at discovering so apt a word, Marietta with her haughty air and green eyes and the lurk of wildness somewhere underneath the domesticated Hogwarts robes and the ribbons in her hair. Like any sensible cat person, she did not hold their pride against them, just learned the right way to stroke their fur and scratch under their chin. Nothing to it.
She removed her wand from behind her ear. "Wingardium Leviosa!" Marietta's quill hovered before her, almost close enough to tickle her open mouth. "I expect we'll be starting with the friendship lessons, then."
Of course she could do spells--her mother was a quite clever witch, after all. But what sort of daughter wouldn't play around with the wand movements a little?
--
There is a reason that the word girl fits so subtly into the word curve. It's like this--
c(g)ur(l)ve
--a definition of sorts.
--
Flash forward: three years.
The sixth-year girls' dorm is silent; everyone else has gone to Hogsmeade and most of the first- and second-years are outside playing in the snow, unconcerned with things like Valentine's Day. There are candles lit (pink ones), and Marietta is the one who invited Luna up here.
Nevertheless, as she leans in to kiss Luna, she says, "I'm not like that, you know."
Luna runs a comforting hand through Marietta's hair in response, only to have the best of intentions go astray, or in this case tangled up in curls. She has a feeling that Marietta likes her inexperience, though--she turned out to be a surprisingly excellent tutor, and Luna the poor student, not believing in the practical application of her lessons on How to Make Friends and How Not to be So Bloody Loony, Honestly. Luna unsnarls her fingers curl by curl, watching the pieces of hair spring back into place and Marietta flushed and faintly smirking, a cat's contentment--cruel.
Kissing is wet. Nothing she has ever read has mentioned how wet it is, perhaps because then it would sound unpleasant, but it's wonderful and wet inside her mouth and between her legs and that's just getting started, just barely touching, Marietta's graceful hands gripping her thighs and the taste of strawberries between them. (It had been the "innocent" offer of one such fruit that set up the rising action leading to the climax--climaxes, Luna hopes, and giggles into the kiss.)
"Only a child laughs at times such as this; it demonstrates a lack of experience." Marietta is severely pleased at the opportunity to lecture.
"Only a fool is serious about grave matters," Luna replies, not about to let this one slide.
Marietta sighs and pushes Luna back against the bedsheets, pins her there as she would a butterfly, were she inclined to do anything so uncouth as collection dead insects. Red-gold hair falls about Luna like autumn--it is always the hair that everyone notices, the hair and the curves and not much else, certainly not the alarming shapes underneath the smooth skin of her face, squares of betrayal and triangles of doubt. Luna sees and knows and does not interfere with the way of things, for this is how it must be and will be and her own definition of traitor is not quite the same, in the end.
A long, long silence falls, Marietta's hands hot and cold upon her body at the same time, motivated by a greed self-contained and having nothing to do with Luna after all, but she finds it's all right. Somehow the mood seems right, painted and poisonous and poised, everything of Luna's bared and nothing revealed, Marietta dressed (overdressed, even) for the occasion, as if layer upon layer of cloth were protection against being like that. "I like that," Luna murmurs, recycling some of the words from yestersecond's thought to create something entirely different. She's not quite sure what "that" is; she wonders what Marietta will do. Or not do.
She tosses her hair (such a typical gesture, that) and places a hand over Luna's mouth, then thinks better of it and kisses her instead, kisses to silence, to suffocate whatever might be said. Luna has lost robes and tie and blouse and bra but wears her dignity in her hair, in her eyes, in the (still mostly straight) lines of her body. She slides a hand under Marietta's skirt but it is slapped away--so much for that, then.
Lust is a heavy and hissed word, serpentine and cold.
Luna cannot tell Marietta that she's got it wrong, that her sides are not very ticklish but the undersides of her arms are, that she wants kisses with a bit of teeth to them, that she wants the leg between her legs to move just there to the left, that she wants anything, that she wants wants wants. There is something to be said for Marietta's lessons--they teach her that she is lonely, that she has ever been alone in a sea of faces. Lonely Loony Luna Lovegood. Does she love good? Ungrammatically, but she enjoys breaking a rule every now and then.
"I," she begins, as Marietta puts a tongue in her ear of all places, but then the leg does shift and she's coming, too soon, too soon, gasping and then crying a little, though she is usually not given to such emotional displays, so up in the clouds do mind and soul dwell. Luna knows this, prefers sky to ground and its risk of rocks.
Off Marietta goes, to the vanity to adjust her clothes and brush her hair and make a point of wiping off one leg. Luna pulls all of her own clothes on all by herself, drying her eyes with a bedsheet, leaving that much of herself there. Things look normal by the time Cho Chang bursts through the door, weeping up a storm and denouncing the name Harry Potter to the heavens, Marietta the sympathizing friend patting her on the back and agreeing with every word.
They do not even notice Luna until she asks whether Harry might have fallen pray to a Snayhopper, they're very common at this time of year and love to cause mischief for couples.
Marietta rolls her eyes and tells her she can leave now, so she does.
--
The sensual hides in the most everyday of words--press, for example. Journalists and laundry, but oh, so much more than that. The press of two bodies, of palm on flesh, of lips to lips. The weight of another's world against your own. Say it aloud, slowly.
Puhrrressss.
--
Flash forward: three years.
Luna will dance at Marietta's wedding, the only wedding where the bride will insist the veil be kept on, that the groom kiss her through it. Poor Marietta, she will never get over the scars, unearth the secrets she will continue to hide from herself. The groom will be some poor well-meaning fellow who owns a little business in Muggle London. Marietta will, at nineteen, be sick to death of magic.
Luna will dance alone, resisting the urge to make a sarcastic toast to the newly wedded couple, for the war will have added a few edges to her airiness, even though she still makes remarks that will cause Ron to laugh and say, "Oh, Luna, never change."
Luna will dance until Cho Chang stumbles into her, tipsy and weepy, the hem of her bridesmaid's gown ripped, escort nowhere in sight.
"Think of all the people, all the people not here, all the people who are gone."
Cho will still count her losses on every available finger; there will be more after the war is over.
"Think: we could be dancing now. Don't you want to?"
Luna will lead Cho on a merry jig through the graceful one-two-three strains of a waltz, missing all the right steps but somehow finding the beat, twirling her partner up and down and then close. Luna is like that, a certainty that will echo throughout past and present and future, sending its not-so-secret susurrations around and back again. Cho will stop crying and start laughing, will have done so much growing up that later on--later on...
The moon will climb high in its heaven and the stars will peep softly and then the rainclouds will roll in, driving Luna and Cho to seek shelter as sheets of rain fall down and down. "Bedsheets," Luna will say, coy to the point of self-parody, and Cho will nod shy assent, giving way to the slide and slither of clothes only as noisy as the pattering of drops outside.
They will both have scars from the war. Their hair will be shorter, Luna's oddly yet pleasingly layered, Cho's still hacked off near the neck by a (mostly) dodged curse. Cho will be angular and athletic and somehow like a ballerina; Luna soft and luminous as the name implies, rising over Cho's horizons.
"Tell me what you want."
"To forget."
Luna will wait.
Cho will change her mind.
"To remember."
Luna will start off slowly, a brief pressing of lips to each of Cho's fingers, a playful nip at one wrist, then a tickling of the feet because after the war, Cho will fall to sadness and sighing altogether too often for anyone's liking. There are those who will still think that Luna Lovegood is a bit dotty, but even they will concede there is a sort of wisdom to her--a method to her madness, if you will, and they will.
The rain will fade to a light drizzle and Cho will lean up and kiss Luna, kiss her as though she contains every flavor of ice cream, every last color of a Monet painting. Time will stop for them and was is will be all come together and have a bit of tea for a millisecond wrapped up in eternity. It will mean more than just a kiss; it will mean no longer alone to both of them.
Their lips will part and then Luna will part Cho's legs, Luna will as Luna wills, and she does and it all will be simpler than it sounds, she making paths of kisses down Cho's belly and pausing--no, staring--at the intersection of Cho's legs, the dark dark hair and the labia and the heat, the heat of it all. Cho will throw her head back and moan low in her throat because she can feel Luna's gaze upon her, tangible like the subtle play of fingers.
Luna will say, "You're beautiful."
Cho will say, "I know," and find, wonderingly, that she does.
Her tongue will dip and swirl and cross its t's and dot its i's, perform the caress of soft ink upon pages, a sketch and a metaphor and real, poetry in (e)motion. Oh oh oh will be the noises that Cho makes, thighs pressed so tightly against either side of Luna's head, compressing her thoughts until she feels they may explode like firecrackers and then Cho will, arching her hips forward until she is all Luna will smell and taste and feel.
When Cho will return the favor, Luna will close her eyes and follow the stroke order, laugh as Chinese characters appear on the insides of her eyelids. She will not need to ask what it means; she will intuit it, process the calligraphy through the inner workings of her hearts until at last it will make perfect sense, spell out a literature previously unknown to her. Luna will open her eyes then and say Yes yes yes because she never got the opportunity to say No no no. Cho's fingers will be thin (have always been thin) and yet still enough to grasp Luna's as she comes, over the moon, quite a feat for a lunar girl.
The rain will start up again as they fall asleep in one another's arms.
--
The word beginning is drawn out enough to fill both the start and the middle of the story, and then there is end, inherently perfect for the proper conclusion. Be ginning end.