Fic - Memento Mori
Title: Memento Mori
(Part 2 of Giving Up These Kisses)
Sequel to Blue in Green
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing(s): Ginny/Luna
Rating: R (for swearing, drugs)
Summary: On the anniversary of Fred Weasley's death, Ginny visits her brother's grave.
Word count: 3200
Warnings: Fluff!
I'd intended for this to be porn and right until the last few paragraphs that intention remained intact. There's clearly something inside me that makes me balk at that though; or maybe it's because good porn is very hard to write and I'm still a little too nervous to try. Either way, I'm rather disappointed to report that this is basically a smut-free zone. Sorry. Instead it hits my default mode, which is rather overwrought, slightly angsty fluff.
Disclaimer: Obviously all the characters and pretty much everything else belong to JK Rowling. This is just for fun!
The opening quotation is from a poem by Mervyn Peake
Unbetad; all mistakes are mine.
“To live at all is miracle enough.”
It loomed.
4 feet tall, 3 feet wide, pale grey granite; yet still it managed to entirely dominate Ginny's vision. She stood, breathing deep and hard, trying to ignore the feeling she got every time she saw it, that feeling she could only describe as being akin to a punch to the gut; sharp, agonising, debilitating.
The words were simple enough.
“Frederick Weasley
April 1st 1978 - May 2nd 1998
Beloved son, brother and friend.
Missed, always.”
Ginny still found it difficult to grasp the import of those words though, refused to accept, in at least a small part of herself, what they truly meant.
She sighed, and stepped forwards, placing one hand on the cold stone before turning and sliding, with her back to it, to the ground.
Ginny swore as the damp of the early morning soaked through her jeans.
“Jesus Fred, you fucker. What sort of a greeting's that, and after I came all this way too?”
Pulling her wand from her bag she dried herself off, accioing a sheet from a nearby clothes-line - hell, she could always return it later, and no one would believe the little boy playing there when he tried to tell them that it had literally flown out of the garden - and sat again, more gingerly this time.
Ginny closed her eyes, felt the cold in her bum and back, and just breathed. Inhale, exhale, repeat and over. The noise of the early morning rush - and the shouting of that child. “Muuum. It flew. Honest” - did their best to intrude on the serenity of the old cemetery, but with little effect. The mostly old and ramshackle stones, standing at all angles in inebriated ranks, flaking and ivy choked; the yews and beeches and sycamores - variously brooding, and joyous in their spring growth; and the twittering of the birds - and Ginny had come close to hexing one of the little bastards after it had greeted her in the least welcoming way imaginable, making her wish that she'd taken notice of the more domestic spells in the magical repertoire - all these conspired to draw down an atmosphere of peace on the place that nothing could shatter.
And Ginny needed peace. God knew that was the first thing she wished for, and the last thing that she ever got.
“Ten years, hey? Fuck. Where did it go?”
Ginny leaned her head back until it bounced gently against the gravestone, sat as she was for a few minutes, just staring into the distance. The morning mist had burned away, leaving a blue, cloudless sky in its wake. It was going to be hot, unreasonably and unseasonably so, and Ginny didn't relish the thought. Magic notwithstanding, her family's expenditure on sun block was pretty eye watering, and it clearly wasn't going to get any smaller.
Ginny smiled, staring at her own hands for a moment.
“Oh fuck it. Do something useful will you?”
She reached into her bag, pulled out a battered old wooden box - a present from Luna, swirling rainbow decorations forming their two names, intertwined - and prised off the lid, still tightly fitting after all these years. Inside were tobacco, papers, lighter, and a block of hash the size of her little finger nail. Ginny slid a nail under the tape sealing the tobacco and reached inside, taking a pinch between thumb and forefinger. Yep. A year old, and dry as dust, but she'd planned for the eventuality and a new pouch of tobacco joined the old in the box.
She began to roll.
Ginny didn't even enjoy smoking the things, could never really see the point, but she enjoyed the ritual of it. It had become a habit now. Every year, on the anniversary of her brother's death, she would sit on his grave and get really fucking stoned.
It didn't help. Nothing ever helped. But, for one morning a year, it was what she had.
She rolled - papers, a little too short, and the glue less than fresh, so it took a little tearing and licking to make a base large enough for her needs; bathe the resin in the little yellow flame of her lighter (blue plastic with the rather chipped and forlorn crest of her Quidditch team) and crumble a thin line onto the paper; add tobacco and roll; lick, stick, roach and light; and for all that she did this only once a year, there was a comforting, comfortable sensation that came with all these steps, a form of physical meditation, perhaps. And as she went through the motions, she spoke, the river of her consciousness barely disturbing the peace around her.
“So, then. Well, I know you've not been up to all that much - sheesh, I don't know why I bother visiting sometimes, you're not exactly the best conversationalist. But, you know, if the mood ever takes you, just chip in. I won't be annoyed, I promise.
“No? Fair enough. Looks like it's all on me again.
“Well, first things, first. Things aren't that great with Harry. And don't you dare say I told you so. Even though I know you did, and if you'd still been around to keep telling me... Fuck it, you know, maybe if you'd been there, it wouldn't have all been so overwhelming. And maybe I wouldn't have been such a bitch. And don't say you don't believe it, because you know it's true.
“What was it you always said? There's only one girl good enough for your little sister. I never got how you knew. It's not like we didn't try to hide it, but you just got it. How did you get it when I didn't? How did you know when no one else had a fucking clue?
“Did you ever try to have an argument with Luna Lovegood? Geez. The most frustrating experience ever. It was like, fuck, I don't know, trying to argue with the birds or something, or trying to persuade the grass not to grow. She'd just stare at me with those bloody eyes of hers and tell me that it was fine, maybe I should sit down, I looked a bit flustered; have some cake. Nothing seems to faze her, you know?
“Fuck. You know what? I was trying to make her fight for me. I should've known that she's above that.
“God, I was so fucking confused. And you were gone, you little fuck. Just when I fucking needed you to kick some sense into me.”
She paused, staring at the spliff poised between her fingers, mesmerised momentarily by the curling of the smoke, the gentle glow, the way that it never, ever burned down evenly. She tore at the little piece of paper that had managed to escape the fire, flicked it away; raised the spliff to her lips and inhaled deeply. She felt the heaviness sink into her limbs as the smoke invaded her lungs, and settled back further against the hardness of the gravestone, her eyes fluttering closed.
“Ron and Hermione aren't doing much better.
“I bet you could have seen that coming a mile off too, you smug bastard. You wouldn't have said anything though, would you? You always did let him make his own mistakes.
"Not like me, god, none of you could ever stay out of it with me, could you? Just cos I'm the youngest. Do you have any idea how annoying that is? 6 older brothers always on my fucking back about something, and only you and George ever had anything useful to say.
"And mum. Always on at me to try harder to make it work. Like he was ever the one. But fuck it. I snagged myself a hero, what mother's not going to love that? Forget that he was never the one I really wanted, he's Harry fucking Potter, what girl wouldn't want to marry him, right?”
She felt the heat of the spliff as it burned down to the roach and, pushing a hole into the soft earth of the grave, buried the butt an inch deep, to join the handful already there.
Ginny felt the change in atmosphere a moment before the crack of a twig alerted her to the presence behind, perhaps a couple of seconds before that familiar perfume reached her nostrils. She stiffened, her heart racing, before she forced herself to relax, wilfully expelling the tension from her limbs.
“Luna. What are you doing here?” She didn't turn; remained with her head resting against the stone.
She could almost feel the slow, quizzical smile spreading across the face of the woman behind her.
“Looking for you, silly. Where else would you be today?”
At the sound of her voice, Ginny relented. It was still lilting; still, as often as not, dreamy, although pain and bitterness and loss had affected even Luna, left an edge - discernible only rarely - that had simply not been there before. Ginny still couldn't deny that voice, though, just as she could deny nothing else about her, had never been able to. Except that once, and that had been a denial she had lived to regret, so many times.
Ginny opened her eyes and turned to look at her visitor, finding it necessary to crane her neck virtually back on itself, and even then she could really only catch the yellow of her hair. She waited for a moment for Luna to position herself less awkwardly, but in vain. She sat up, cursing, and shuffled forward on the sheet. Spinning around on her bum she leaned back on her hands.
Luna's smile - bright, open, sincere - was as luminous as Ginny had ever seen it, and in that moment she felt everything that had been so wrong inside her for so long drain away. Although she had known, deep down, that it had been both wrong and horribly unfair, she had been determined to run Luna off in the most quickest and most brutal way possible. Her resolve vanished in that instant, though, as she saw her standing, dressed in the most unLuna-like manner imaginable - black pencil skirt; white blouse; black pumps; muted, tasteful bag - before her.
Ginny smiled back. It was all she could think to do.
Something - something horribly inappropriate [God. Not here. Not now. Jesus] - twisted deep inside her.
The seconds ticked by as Ginny mentally berated herself. Luna's smile slipped slightly to be replace by the slight quirk of an eyebrow, a quizzical twist of her lip.
The realisation that she was going to have to say something - and soon - dawned on Ginny. How long had she just been sitting there, grinning like an idiot, staring?
God, girl. Say something.
“Hey you.” Ginny felt herself relax now, but there was that feeling, still, the one that she was trying so hard to ignore. “It's good to see you. Sit.”
A rather graceless folding of limbs - and Ginny loved her, if possible, even more for that, that behind these strange clothes she was still the same Luna - and a slight ripping sound (“S'okay. Not as skinny as I used to be. It'll mend”) , and Luna was on the sheet in front of her. So close.
Luna picked up the box that still lay beside Ginny's bag, smiling in remembrance, and rifled through its contents.
“Does it help?”
Ginny grimaced.
“Honestly? Not really. Mostly it just makes me lethargic and anxious. It's just... Oh, I don't know. It's just a thing to do, you know? Something to mark out the day, this day. To set it apart, yeah?” Ginny leaned further back on her hands, closing her eyes.
“I find it hard to stop, you know that. And mostly I don't want to, cos stopping means I just think too much, and gods know, I don't want that. But it's the least I can do really, just this one day. He deserves that, at least.”
There was silence. Opening her eyes again, Ginny watched as Luna picked the roughly rounded little sphere of resin from the box, rolling it in her fingers. She raised it to her nose for a moment ad sniffed. Ginny shook her head in amused disbelief as Luna pinched off a speck and placed it between her teeth, biting down hard. She coughed slightly, using her finger nail to remove the remains if the resin from her mouth, and wiping it on the sheet.
“God, Luna, I love you, but you're such a dork sometimes, you know that?” Ginny said, smiling to soften her words.
Luna smiled back, and winked; became instantly serious again.
“Why do you come here? It's one day a year. What does it change?”
Ginny felt her disbelief returning, tinged with anger this time. She clamped down on it, desperate not to argue.
“It's Fred's grave, Lu. How do you even need to ask that? Jesus. You're as bad as the others.” She took a slow breath, fighting to keep her words conciliatory.
“Look at the place. Do you know how many people come here?”
There was no reply; there didn't need to be. Luna already knew the answer. She leaned forward, gently placing a finger to Ginny's lips.
“Do you feel him? Is he here?” She continued, not allowing Ginny to answer, as certain of the answer to this question as she had been to Ginny's. “Of course you don't. He's not here. He's never been here.”
Ginny stared at her, stunned, unable to respond, as she continued, raising a hand to Ginny's temple - “He's here” - to her heart - “and here.” Her hand lingered on Ginny's chest. “He's not dead, not really. No one ever is, not while there's someone to remember. And when there's not, what does it matter?”
Ginny was frozen, a statue, unwilling to break the moment, as her heart sped against Luna's hand.
“He's with you, Ginny, you know that. You don't come here to be with him, you come here to escape. You come here because you're not happy.”
Ginny was blinking furiously now, utterly determined not to allow release to the the tears that threatened to overwhelm her.
“Fuck's sake, Lu. What are you doing? You know we can't do this. There are too ..”
“Too many people to hurt? And how does this help them?” For a moment, the softness in Luna's face wavered, and there it was, the edge.
Ginny smiled through her tears, a mess of conflicting feelings. “What? You're going to fight for me now? You couldn't have done that ten years ago? Jesus, Lu, what is it with you? Fucking Jesus.
It wouldn't have taken a lot. Christ, I wasn't asking you to fight a duel for me. Just for a sign that you wanted me, you know, that you cared that you might lose me.”
Luna's answering smile was sad.
“Ginny, I married you. Don't you remember? Or did you think that was just a game? Something to while away a Summer's evening?” She raised her left hand, palm inwards, to display the ring she still wore. She reached forward to stroke her cheek, the soft lilt of her voice affectionate. “You poor, clueless girl.”
“Well, yeah. You should know by now that you need to be pretty direct with me.” Ginny laughed, bitterly. “Why didn't you just tell me? Would it have been so sodding hard?”
Something changed between them then. Luna's smile slipped once more; in its place was a look that froze Ginny in place, and simultaneously melted her.
Luna's voice was low, intense.
“I'm telling you now.” She let the hand that still rested over Ginny's heart - and Ginny had almost forgotten it, couldn't believe that Luna had managed to keep it still for so long - slide downwards to palm her breast. Luna circled her nipple with her thumb through the thin material of her top as Ginny's breath hitched.
“Oh fuck.”
Sitting as she was - legs stretched out in front of her, hands supporting her on the ground behind, Luna on her knees beside her - Ginny felt more vulnerable than she had ever been. She stared at Luna, eyes wide, breathing heavily, and waited. Her eyes fixed on Ginny's mouth, Luna leaned forward, lifting her hand from Ginny's breast. Ginny's whimper of complaint - high, breathy and incredibly frustrated - was followed by her left hand, grasping at Luna's right, returning it roughly to its previous position. Ginny squeezed Luna's hand hard, and lifted her right hand from the ground to place it behind Luna's neck and pull her to her lips.
Ginny's miscalculation became apparent a moment later as Luna, unbalanced already and unable to use either of her hands to stabilise herself or support Ginny, toppled forward.
Their two bodies, faces nose to nose, came to rest mere inches from the gravestone. Ginny, breathing hard from more than simple desire now, giggled. Her left hand still holding Luna's right firmly in place, her right at the back of Luna's neck, she gasped, simultaneously managing to laugh and wince .
“Of all the places to break your fall. Jesus, Lu! Also, ouch!”
For all her discomfort, though, Ginny's smile was warm. She wriggled out from underneath the weight pinning her down, finally releasing Luna's hand and, when Luna had pulled it away, replacing it gingerly with her own. Luna watched, a chastened look on her face, a look that was quickly replaced by one of surprise when Ginny pushed her onto her back and straddled her.
Ginny looked down at Luna, whom she had loved from the moment she saw her, and had never stopped loving in the long years since.
“Promise me something, will you?”
Luna looked up at her, ever patient, but now, perhaps, just a little smug. She nodded.
“If I'm ever being an idiot, just tell me, yeah? Don't expect me just to know, because I never do, and I don't want to waste another ten years while I bloody figure it out for myself.”
Another nod, as Luna reached up and grasped the neckline of Ginny's top.
“Also, if you remember any of those spells we used to use at school, you might want to give them a whirl, because this is probably going to get quite loud.”
Luna was smirking now.
“Ginny, you idiot. Just shut up and kiss me, will you?”
Ginny crushed her mouth to Luna's, thinking to herself, in the brief time before she became incapable of lucid thought, that the unhappiness of the last ten years had all been worth it, for this one, perfect moment.
(Part 2 of Giving Up These Kisses)
Sequel to Blue in Green
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing(s): Ginny/Luna
Rating: R (for swearing, drugs)
Summary: On the anniversary of Fred Weasley's death, Ginny visits her brother's grave.
Word count: 3200
Warnings: Fluff!
I'd intended for this to be porn and right until the last few paragraphs that intention remained intact. There's clearly something inside me that makes me balk at that though; or maybe it's because good porn is very hard to write and I'm still a little too nervous to try. Either way, I'm rather disappointed to report that this is basically a smut-free zone. Sorry. Instead it hits my default mode, which is rather overwrought, slightly angsty fluff.
Disclaimer: Obviously all the characters and pretty much everything else belong to JK Rowling. This is just for fun!
The opening quotation is from a poem by Mervyn Peake
Unbetad; all mistakes are mine.
“To live at all is miracle enough.”
It loomed.
4 feet tall, 3 feet wide, pale grey granite; yet still it managed to entirely dominate Ginny's vision. She stood, breathing deep and hard, trying to ignore the feeling she got every time she saw it, that feeling she could only describe as being akin to a punch to the gut; sharp, agonising, debilitating.
The words were simple enough.
“Frederick Weasley
April 1st 1978 - May 2nd 1998
Beloved son, brother and friend.
Missed, always.”
Ginny still found it difficult to grasp the import of those words though, refused to accept, in at least a small part of herself, what they truly meant.
She sighed, and stepped forwards, placing one hand on the cold stone before turning and sliding, with her back to it, to the ground.
Ginny swore as the damp of the early morning soaked through her jeans.
“Jesus Fred, you fucker. What sort of a greeting's that, and after I came all this way too?”
Pulling her wand from her bag she dried herself off, accioing a sheet from a nearby clothes-line - hell, she could always return it later, and no one would believe the little boy playing there when he tried to tell them that it had literally flown out of the garden - and sat again, more gingerly this time.
Ginny closed her eyes, felt the cold in her bum and back, and just breathed. Inhale, exhale, repeat and over. The noise of the early morning rush - and the shouting of that child. “Muuum. It flew. Honest” - did their best to intrude on the serenity of the old cemetery, but with little effect. The mostly old and ramshackle stones, standing at all angles in inebriated ranks, flaking and ivy choked; the yews and beeches and sycamores - variously brooding, and joyous in their spring growth; and the twittering of the birds - and Ginny had come close to hexing one of the little bastards after it had greeted her in the least welcoming way imaginable, making her wish that she'd taken notice of the more domestic spells in the magical repertoire - all these conspired to draw down an atmosphere of peace on the place that nothing could shatter.
And Ginny needed peace. God knew that was the first thing she wished for, and the last thing that she ever got.
“Ten years, hey? Fuck. Where did it go?”
Ginny leaned her head back until it bounced gently against the gravestone, sat as she was for a few minutes, just staring into the distance. The morning mist had burned away, leaving a blue, cloudless sky in its wake. It was going to be hot, unreasonably and unseasonably so, and Ginny didn't relish the thought. Magic notwithstanding, her family's expenditure on sun block was pretty eye watering, and it clearly wasn't going to get any smaller.
Ginny smiled, staring at her own hands for a moment.
“Oh fuck it. Do something useful will you?”
She reached into her bag, pulled out a battered old wooden box - a present from Luna, swirling rainbow decorations forming their two names, intertwined - and prised off the lid, still tightly fitting after all these years. Inside were tobacco, papers, lighter, and a block of hash the size of her little finger nail. Ginny slid a nail under the tape sealing the tobacco and reached inside, taking a pinch between thumb and forefinger. Yep. A year old, and dry as dust, but she'd planned for the eventuality and a new pouch of tobacco joined the old in the box.
She began to roll.
Ginny didn't even enjoy smoking the things, could never really see the point, but she enjoyed the ritual of it. It had become a habit now. Every year, on the anniversary of her brother's death, she would sit on his grave and get really fucking stoned.
It didn't help. Nothing ever helped. But, for one morning a year, it was what she had.
She rolled - papers, a little too short, and the glue less than fresh, so it took a little tearing and licking to make a base large enough for her needs; bathe the resin in the little yellow flame of her lighter (blue plastic with the rather chipped and forlorn crest of her Quidditch team) and crumble a thin line onto the paper; add tobacco and roll; lick, stick, roach and light; and for all that she did this only once a year, there was a comforting, comfortable sensation that came with all these steps, a form of physical meditation, perhaps. And as she went through the motions, she spoke, the river of her consciousness barely disturbing the peace around her.
“So, then. Well, I know you've not been up to all that much - sheesh, I don't know why I bother visiting sometimes, you're not exactly the best conversationalist. But, you know, if the mood ever takes you, just chip in. I won't be annoyed, I promise.
“No? Fair enough. Looks like it's all on me again.
“Well, first things, first. Things aren't that great with Harry. And don't you dare say I told you so. Even though I know you did, and if you'd still been around to keep telling me... Fuck it, you know, maybe if you'd been there, it wouldn't have all been so overwhelming. And maybe I wouldn't have been such a bitch. And don't say you don't believe it, because you know it's true.
“What was it you always said? There's only one girl good enough for your little sister. I never got how you knew. It's not like we didn't try to hide it, but you just got it. How did you get it when I didn't? How did you know when no one else had a fucking clue?
“Did you ever try to have an argument with Luna Lovegood? Geez. The most frustrating experience ever. It was like, fuck, I don't know, trying to argue with the birds or something, or trying to persuade the grass not to grow. She'd just stare at me with those bloody eyes of hers and tell me that it was fine, maybe I should sit down, I looked a bit flustered; have some cake. Nothing seems to faze her, you know?
“Fuck. You know what? I was trying to make her fight for me. I should've known that she's above that.
“God, I was so fucking confused. And you were gone, you little fuck. Just when I fucking needed you to kick some sense into me.”
She paused, staring at the spliff poised between her fingers, mesmerised momentarily by the curling of the smoke, the gentle glow, the way that it never, ever burned down evenly. She tore at the little piece of paper that had managed to escape the fire, flicked it away; raised the spliff to her lips and inhaled deeply. She felt the heaviness sink into her limbs as the smoke invaded her lungs, and settled back further against the hardness of the gravestone, her eyes fluttering closed.
“Ron and Hermione aren't doing much better.
“I bet you could have seen that coming a mile off too, you smug bastard. You wouldn't have said anything though, would you? You always did let him make his own mistakes.
"Not like me, god, none of you could ever stay out of it with me, could you? Just cos I'm the youngest. Do you have any idea how annoying that is? 6 older brothers always on my fucking back about something, and only you and George ever had anything useful to say.
"And mum. Always on at me to try harder to make it work. Like he was ever the one. But fuck it. I snagged myself a hero, what mother's not going to love that? Forget that he was never the one I really wanted, he's Harry fucking Potter, what girl wouldn't want to marry him, right?”
She felt the heat of the spliff as it burned down to the roach and, pushing a hole into the soft earth of the grave, buried the butt an inch deep, to join the handful already there.
Ginny felt the change in atmosphere a moment before the crack of a twig alerted her to the presence behind, perhaps a couple of seconds before that familiar perfume reached her nostrils. She stiffened, her heart racing, before she forced herself to relax, wilfully expelling the tension from her limbs.
“Luna. What are you doing here?” She didn't turn; remained with her head resting against the stone.
She could almost feel the slow, quizzical smile spreading across the face of the woman behind her.
“Looking for you, silly. Where else would you be today?”
At the sound of her voice, Ginny relented. It was still lilting; still, as often as not, dreamy, although pain and bitterness and loss had affected even Luna, left an edge - discernible only rarely - that had simply not been there before. Ginny still couldn't deny that voice, though, just as she could deny nothing else about her, had never been able to. Except that once, and that had been a denial she had lived to regret, so many times.
Ginny opened her eyes and turned to look at her visitor, finding it necessary to crane her neck virtually back on itself, and even then she could really only catch the yellow of her hair. She waited for a moment for Luna to position herself less awkwardly, but in vain. She sat up, cursing, and shuffled forward on the sheet. Spinning around on her bum she leaned back on her hands.
Luna's smile - bright, open, sincere - was as luminous as Ginny had ever seen it, and in that moment she felt everything that had been so wrong inside her for so long drain away. Although she had known, deep down, that it had been both wrong and horribly unfair, she had been determined to run Luna off in the most quickest and most brutal way possible. Her resolve vanished in that instant, though, as she saw her standing, dressed in the most unLuna-like manner imaginable - black pencil skirt; white blouse; black pumps; muted, tasteful bag - before her.
Ginny smiled back. It was all she could think to do.
Something - something horribly inappropriate [God. Not here. Not now. Jesus] - twisted deep inside her.
The seconds ticked by as Ginny mentally berated herself. Luna's smile slipped slightly to be replace by the slight quirk of an eyebrow, a quizzical twist of her lip.
The realisation that she was going to have to say something - and soon - dawned on Ginny. How long had she just been sitting there, grinning like an idiot, staring?
God, girl. Say something.
“Hey you.” Ginny felt herself relax now, but there was that feeling, still, the one that she was trying so hard to ignore. “It's good to see you. Sit.”
A rather graceless folding of limbs - and Ginny loved her, if possible, even more for that, that behind these strange clothes she was still the same Luna - and a slight ripping sound (“S'okay. Not as skinny as I used to be. It'll mend”) , and Luna was on the sheet in front of her. So close.
Luna picked up the box that still lay beside Ginny's bag, smiling in remembrance, and rifled through its contents.
“Does it help?”
Ginny grimaced.
“Honestly? Not really. Mostly it just makes me lethargic and anxious. It's just... Oh, I don't know. It's just a thing to do, you know? Something to mark out the day, this day. To set it apart, yeah?” Ginny leaned further back on her hands, closing her eyes.
“I find it hard to stop, you know that. And mostly I don't want to, cos stopping means I just think too much, and gods know, I don't want that. But it's the least I can do really, just this one day. He deserves that, at least.”
There was silence. Opening her eyes again, Ginny watched as Luna picked the roughly rounded little sphere of resin from the box, rolling it in her fingers. She raised it to her nose for a moment ad sniffed. Ginny shook her head in amused disbelief as Luna pinched off a speck and placed it between her teeth, biting down hard. She coughed slightly, using her finger nail to remove the remains if the resin from her mouth, and wiping it on the sheet.
“God, Luna, I love you, but you're such a dork sometimes, you know that?” Ginny said, smiling to soften her words.
Luna smiled back, and winked; became instantly serious again.
“Why do you come here? It's one day a year. What does it change?”
Ginny felt her disbelief returning, tinged with anger this time. She clamped down on it, desperate not to argue.
“It's Fred's grave, Lu. How do you even need to ask that? Jesus. You're as bad as the others.” She took a slow breath, fighting to keep her words conciliatory.
“Look at the place. Do you know how many people come here?”
There was no reply; there didn't need to be. Luna already knew the answer. She leaned forward, gently placing a finger to Ginny's lips.
“Do you feel him? Is he here?” She continued, not allowing Ginny to answer, as certain of the answer to this question as she had been to Ginny's. “Of course you don't. He's not here. He's never been here.”
Ginny stared at her, stunned, unable to respond, as she continued, raising a hand to Ginny's temple - “He's here” - to her heart - “and here.” Her hand lingered on Ginny's chest. “He's not dead, not really. No one ever is, not while there's someone to remember. And when there's not, what does it matter?”
Ginny was frozen, a statue, unwilling to break the moment, as her heart sped against Luna's hand.
“He's with you, Ginny, you know that. You don't come here to be with him, you come here to escape. You come here because you're not happy.”
Ginny was blinking furiously now, utterly determined not to allow release to the the tears that threatened to overwhelm her.
“Fuck's sake, Lu. What are you doing? You know we can't do this. There are too ..”
“Too many people to hurt? And how does this help them?” For a moment, the softness in Luna's face wavered, and there it was, the edge.
Ginny smiled through her tears, a mess of conflicting feelings. “What? You're going to fight for me now? You couldn't have done that ten years ago? Jesus, Lu, what is it with you? Fucking Jesus.
It wouldn't have taken a lot. Christ, I wasn't asking you to fight a duel for me. Just for a sign that you wanted me, you know, that you cared that you might lose me.”
Luna's answering smile was sad.
“Ginny, I married you. Don't you remember? Or did you think that was just a game? Something to while away a Summer's evening?” She raised her left hand, palm inwards, to display the ring she still wore. She reached forward to stroke her cheek, the soft lilt of her voice affectionate. “You poor, clueless girl.”
“Well, yeah. You should know by now that you need to be pretty direct with me.” Ginny laughed, bitterly. “Why didn't you just tell me? Would it have been so sodding hard?”
Something changed between them then. Luna's smile slipped once more; in its place was a look that froze Ginny in place, and simultaneously melted her.
Luna's voice was low, intense.
“I'm telling you now.” She let the hand that still rested over Ginny's heart - and Ginny had almost forgotten it, couldn't believe that Luna had managed to keep it still for so long - slide downwards to palm her breast. Luna circled her nipple with her thumb through the thin material of her top as Ginny's breath hitched.
“Oh fuck.”
Sitting as she was - legs stretched out in front of her, hands supporting her on the ground behind, Luna on her knees beside her - Ginny felt more vulnerable than she had ever been. She stared at Luna, eyes wide, breathing heavily, and waited. Her eyes fixed on Ginny's mouth, Luna leaned forward, lifting her hand from Ginny's breast. Ginny's whimper of complaint - high, breathy and incredibly frustrated - was followed by her left hand, grasping at Luna's right, returning it roughly to its previous position. Ginny squeezed Luna's hand hard, and lifted her right hand from the ground to place it behind Luna's neck and pull her to her lips.
Ginny's miscalculation became apparent a moment later as Luna, unbalanced already and unable to use either of her hands to stabilise herself or support Ginny, toppled forward.
Their two bodies, faces nose to nose, came to rest mere inches from the gravestone. Ginny, breathing hard from more than simple desire now, giggled. Her left hand still holding Luna's right firmly in place, her right at the back of Luna's neck, she gasped, simultaneously managing to laugh and wince .
“Of all the places to break your fall. Jesus, Lu! Also, ouch!”
For all her discomfort, though, Ginny's smile was warm. She wriggled out from underneath the weight pinning her down, finally releasing Luna's hand and, when Luna had pulled it away, replacing it gingerly with her own. Luna watched, a chastened look on her face, a look that was quickly replaced by one of surprise when Ginny pushed her onto her back and straddled her.
Ginny looked down at Luna, whom she had loved from the moment she saw her, and had never stopped loving in the long years since.
“Promise me something, will you?”
Luna looked up at her, ever patient, but now, perhaps, just a little smug. She nodded.
“If I'm ever being an idiot, just tell me, yeah? Don't expect me just to know, because I never do, and I don't want to waste another ten years while I bloody figure it out for myself.”
Another nod, as Luna reached up and grasped the neckline of Ginny's top.
“Also, if you remember any of those spells we used to use at school, you might want to give them a whirl, because this is probably going to get quite loud.”
Luna was smirking now.
“Ginny, you idiot. Just shut up and kiss me, will you?”
Ginny crushed her mouth to Luna's, thinking to herself, in the brief time before she became incapable of lucid thought, that the unhappiness of the last ten years had all been worth it, for this one, perfect moment.