Fic: Bella Luna, soft R [Neville/Luna]
This is birthday ficlet for uhm... my birthday, from me to my flist. Because I love you, I really do ♥!
TITLE: Bella Luna
AUTHOR: sappholococcus
RATING: light R
PAIRING/CHARACTERS: Neville/Luna, Alice/Frank, Xenophilius Lovegood
SUMMARY: The moon, to Neville, has always been much more than a light in the sky.
DISCLAIMER: Neville, Luna, and their world belong to JKR and her publishers. Lyrics and title belong to Jason Mraz. Only the plot belongs to me.
WARNINGS: het, flangst, implied violence and somewhat gory descriptions of the aftermath, character death, outdoor sex, song!fic, DH SPOILERS
AUTHOR'S NOTE: A dedication to my flist, and to the full moon last night which just so happened to coincide with my birthday :D
.:.
Mystery the moon
A hole in the sky
A supernatural nightlight
So full but often right
A pair of eyes a closin' one
A chosen child of golden sun
A marble dog that chases cars
To farthest reaches of the beach and far beyond into the swimming sea of stars
Neville used to associate the moon with good things. The full moon especially; even the story Harry told about Remus turning into a werewolf couldn't keep him from appreciating the full white globe, shining and brilliant in the sky.
It always reminded him of his parents.
There was the time they'd been Floo called in the middle of the night because 'Alice and Frank Longbottom have gone missing'. Young as he was, Neville had panicked and insisted on going with his Gran when she went to the hospital, and what they found was quite possibly his favourite and saddest memory from his childhood.
Alice was dancing in the brightly lit yard, gray hair flying behind her and hospital gown floating around her knees. Frank, unable to stand on his feet for very long, sat and watched. It was possibly the clearest his father's eyes had ever been, and his mother's smile lit up the night as surely as the moon above.
No one ever found out how they'd gotten out of their room, much less their ward. Not to mention the locked door out to the yard, and the fact that they didn't have wands.
Neville had never been more proud to be his parent's son. From that moment on, he could not help hoping that they really would get better, for surely if they could still break wards and locks and dance and smile there couldn't be anything permanently wrong with them.
But the next time he went to visit, his mother's hand still shook as she handed him gum wrappers, and his father didn't even open his eyes.
.:.
After the war, he felt closer to his parents than ever, even though they were growing farther and farther away. There was something... something that he had never understood about Harry either, something about standing up to Voldemort all alone, that made you feel sort of awed at your own daring and amazed that you were still alive.
And after Voldemort was dead for good, it turned into a firm belief that nothing could ever go wrong again: at least, nothing that the hardy survivors couldn't fix.
Until the full moon.
It was the middle of summer. Neville had gone up to his uncle's cabin to get away from responsibilities for a while, and it was a much-needed break.
He considered it a lucky chance to finally be all alone with nothing to do on the full moon, so that he could lie out on the roof and stare up at the sky and let himself remember. Not just his parents, though he had been thinking about them a lot: the Healers had said that it was amazing they were still breathing, and he was trying to come to terms with the idea of their death. Of losing them, really losing them for good.
The moonlight felt like the warmth of his mother's smile. He basked in it, closing his eyes so that his imagination could conjure her happy face, and he had almost dozed off when he heard the scream.
It was unlike anything he had ever heard, even during the war. It was a scream like what he imagined the Mandrakes to sound like without earmuffs, the kind of sound that could rip you in two. But it was also the sound of someone who was being ripped in two.
Neville immediately sat up and looked around, uncomfortably aware of being completely exposed to anyone that might choose to look up at the top of the house. The scream came again, then was cut off with a gurgle that could only mean one thing. With rising horror, Neville realised that he was too late.
In the morning, he went looking in the woods, wand out and ready to defend himself if whatever the thing was attacked. There was no body, not even the pieces of one. All he found was blood.
There was so much blood. The trees were dripping with it, the ground was soaked with it, as if some horrible monster had torn out the heart of a very large animal and juiced it like one might an orange or a lemon to make a cool summer drink.
When he saw the claw marks, Neville was physically ill.
.:.
A cosmic fish they love to kiss
They're giving birth to constellation
No riffs and oh no reservation
If they should fall you get a wish or dedication
May I suggest you get the best
For nothing less than you and I
Let's take a chance as this romance is rising over before we lose the lighting
Neville threw himself into his teaching job. He loved teaching, loved the innocent, carefree faces of his students and even the mindless tedium of grading papers and tests. It made him feel like the world truly was normal again, despite the dark side of nature that would probably never truly be eradicated.
He was not even sure that trying to eradicate any part of nature was a good thing. The darker creatures killed, and if he killed them, did that make him better or worse than them?
It was a dilemma Neville tried not to think about, though it was very hard when Luna -- who was teaching Care of Magical Creatures -- insisted on discussing the pros and cons of animal nature with her students.
"They kill for food," she could be found saying to a cluster of students, usually seated on the sprawling lawns in front of the castle, or down by the lake. "We kill for food. Does that make us murderers?"
"You don't really think we're that bad, do you?" Neville asked her once. "As animals, I mean."
Luna had smiled that brilliant, knowing smile of hers and leaned in to kiss his cheek. "I used to think that humans were a lesser evolved species," she'd said thoughtfully. "I wished that I could have scales, or the ability to fly."
She'd paused for a long moment, until Neville wasn't sure that she was going to fully answer his question. And then she'd thrown her arms around his neck and whispered in his ear, "But it's people like you that make me very, very glad I'm human."
Neville turned bright pink and disentangled himself, thoroughly embarrassed by the praise and the warmth in Luna's eyes. Still, she did not stop smiling, and when he'd tried later, stumbling over his words, to apologise for running away, she'd simply shaken her head.
"That's alright, Neville. I understand."
When the owl came to notify him that his parents had passed away, he found comfort in Luna's arms.
.:.
Luna and her father had rebuilt their house brick by brick, until it was exactly the way it had been before. Neville had been called to help with the gardens, and he'd even been allowed near the Dirigible Plum tree because, as Xenophilius had said, "It needs fixed, and plants are not my specialty. Have at it, dear boy, and there'll be Plimpie soup for lunch!"
"He's a little bit odd," Luna had said matter-of-factly, when her father was out of earshot. "I think they tortured him."
Neville felt a little twinge of sympathy, even though he had noticed anything off about Xenophilius at all.
He was still well enough to go on long trips with his naturalist buddies, none of whom Neville had ever met. Luna described them broadly as a 'blur of shaking hands and big, big smiles, all of them with longer names than the last'.
On these occasions, when they did not coincide with the school year or school responsibilities, Neville went to stay at Luna's house. It was odd at first to sleep beneath a huge painting of his own face, to be watched by his friends' motionless eyes, but when he buried his face deep enough in Luna's neck he was able to forget. And after a while, he began to find it comforting.
Each time he Flooed his Gran -- still very much alive and even more intimidating with each new wrinkle -- she asked him if he was engaged yet.
.:.
You are an illuminating anchor
Of leagues to infinite number
Crashing waves and breaking thunder
Tiding the ebb and flows of hunger
You're dancing naked there for me
You expose all memory
You make the most of boundary
You're the ghost of royalty imposing love
You are the queen and king combining everything
Neville should have known that he could not avoid the moon forever. He had not looked at the night sky in ages, not wanting to think about all the animals that waited for the moon to cycle just so and turn them into a creature of the hunt. He didn't want to think about the bloody tracks they left, or the pain that their victims had to go through only to become one of them.
As his luck would have it, however, Luna was fascinated by the moon. "It's in my name, silly," she scolded him when he'd asked why, and said nothing more on the subject.
It happened that on one of his stays at Luna's house, the moon was full, burgeoning with possibility. Neville was trying to figure out how to ask her to marry him, and despite his anxieties about the moon, it really was a rather appropriate time to propose.
"Why are you kneeling in here?" Luna asked before he could say anything, her laughter overriding any chance he might have had at a reply. "Neville, come on, we've got to go outside!"
"But--" Neville managed to protest before her long hair flew out behind her and hit him in the face. "But Luna--"
When he could see again, they were out in the backyard, and Luna's clothes were gone. All coherent speech caught in Neville's throat and choked him to silence as he watched, entranced.
Her body was lean, still muscular and slim like a child's, but taller and curved in just the right places. The flare of her hips shone as she spun in the night air, moonlight caressing creamy skin, making Neville ache to run his fingers over it.
She danced towards him after a long moment. Neville was so fixated on the sight before him that he barely even noticed when his own clothes vanished, and then he was on his back on the disorderly lawn and the long grass was prickling his skin.
"Neville," Luna said breathily, touching his closed eyelids with light fingertips, "Neville. Open your eyes."
He hesitated, afraid of the memories that would well up in him at the sight of the sky. Afraid, especially, that they would be the bloody ones -- his mind was already back in the forest -- and that he'd start crying in front of her and she would never, ever want to marry him.
"It's alright, you know," she whispered, and then the slick heat of her body was enfolding him, wiping all of the horror from his mind. Her voice took on a deeper, throaty sound, mixing with a moan that Neville barely realised was his, and she leaned in to kiss him. "It's alright."
Neville opened his eyes, and saw the moon.
It was almost hidden behind Luna's head, a soft halo, lighting the fly-away blonde waves and turning them into gold. He gasped to see it, and then Luna smiled, dazzling him.
"Marry me," he panted, not even sure what he was saying. "Luna, please... please marry me."
He could barely see anymore, even though his eyes were still open, and that might have been because of the tears or it might have been the way Luna's hips were rocking against him, a rhythm as steady as his heartbeat. A slight darkness fell, and Neville shivered with apprehension. Then Luna's whisper came clearly out of the night from somewhere near his ear, breathless with happiness and pleasure.
"I will, Neville. Yes, of course, yes."
The sounds that drifted up to the moon that night were certainly not screams, and the moon -- the pure, white, unblemished moon -- smiled down, moonbeams making love to strong, healthy earth.
TITLE: Bella Luna
AUTHOR: sappholococcus
RATING: light R
PAIRING/CHARACTERS: Neville/Luna, Alice/Frank, Xenophilius Lovegood
SUMMARY: The moon, to Neville, has always been much more than a light in the sky.
DISCLAIMER: Neville, Luna, and their world belong to JKR and her publishers. Lyrics and title belong to Jason Mraz. Only the plot belongs to me.
WARNINGS: het, flangst, implied violence and somewhat gory descriptions of the aftermath, character death, outdoor sex, song!fic, DH SPOILERS
AUTHOR'S NOTE: A dedication to my flist, and to the full moon last night which just so happened to coincide with my birthday :D
.:.
Mystery the moon
A hole in the sky
A supernatural nightlight
So full but often right
A pair of eyes a closin' one
A chosen child of golden sun
A marble dog that chases cars
To farthest reaches of the beach and far beyond into the swimming sea of stars
Neville used to associate the moon with good things. The full moon especially; even the story Harry told about Remus turning into a werewolf couldn't keep him from appreciating the full white globe, shining and brilliant in the sky.
It always reminded him of his parents.
There was the time they'd been Floo called in the middle of the night because 'Alice and Frank Longbottom have gone missing'. Young as he was, Neville had panicked and insisted on going with his Gran when she went to the hospital, and what they found was quite possibly his favourite and saddest memory from his childhood.
Alice was dancing in the brightly lit yard, gray hair flying behind her and hospital gown floating around her knees. Frank, unable to stand on his feet for very long, sat and watched. It was possibly the clearest his father's eyes had ever been, and his mother's smile lit up the night as surely as the moon above.
No one ever found out how they'd gotten out of their room, much less their ward. Not to mention the locked door out to the yard, and the fact that they didn't have wands.
Neville had never been more proud to be his parent's son. From that moment on, he could not help hoping that they really would get better, for surely if they could still break wards and locks and dance and smile there couldn't be anything permanently wrong with them.
But the next time he went to visit, his mother's hand still shook as she handed him gum wrappers, and his father didn't even open his eyes.
.:.
After the war, he felt closer to his parents than ever, even though they were growing farther and farther away. There was something... something that he had never understood about Harry either, something about standing up to Voldemort all alone, that made you feel sort of awed at your own daring and amazed that you were still alive.
And after Voldemort was dead for good, it turned into a firm belief that nothing could ever go wrong again: at least, nothing that the hardy survivors couldn't fix.
Until the full moon.
It was the middle of summer. Neville had gone up to his uncle's cabin to get away from responsibilities for a while, and it was a much-needed break.
He considered it a lucky chance to finally be all alone with nothing to do on the full moon, so that he could lie out on the roof and stare up at the sky and let himself remember. Not just his parents, though he had been thinking about them a lot: the Healers had said that it was amazing they were still breathing, and he was trying to come to terms with the idea of their death. Of losing them, really losing them for good.
The moonlight felt like the warmth of his mother's smile. He basked in it, closing his eyes so that his imagination could conjure her happy face, and he had almost dozed off when he heard the scream.
It was unlike anything he had ever heard, even during the war. It was a scream like what he imagined the Mandrakes to sound like without earmuffs, the kind of sound that could rip you in two. But it was also the sound of someone who was being ripped in two.
Neville immediately sat up and looked around, uncomfortably aware of being completely exposed to anyone that might choose to look up at the top of the house. The scream came again, then was cut off with a gurgle that could only mean one thing. With rising horror, Neville realised that he was too late.
In the morning, he went looking in the woods, wand out and ready to defend himself if whatever the thing was attacked. There was no body, not even the pieces of one. All he found was blood.
There was so much blood. The trees were dripping with it, the ground was soaked with it, as if some horrible monster had torn out the heart of a very large animal and juiced it like one might an orange or a lemon to make a cool summer drink.
When he saw the claw marks, Neville was physically ill.
.:.
A cosmic fish they love to kiss
They're giving birth to constellation
No riffs and oh no reservation
If they should fall you get a wish or dedication
May I suggest you get the best
For nothing less than you and I
Let's take a chance as this romance is rising over before we lose the lighting
Neville threw himself into his teaching job. He loved teaching, loved the innocent, carefree faces of his students and even the mindless tedium of grading papers and tests. It made him feel like the world truly was normal again, despite the dark side of nature that would probably never truly be eradicated.
He was not even sure that trying to eradicate any part of nature was a good thing. The darker creatures killed, and if he killed them, did that make him better or worse than them?
It was a dilemma Neville tried not to think about, though it was very hard when Luna -- who was teaching Care of Magical Creatures -- insisted on discussing the pros and cons of animal nature with her students.
"They kill for food," she could be found saying to a cluster of students, usually seated on the sprawling lawns in front of the castle, or down by the lake. "We kill for food. Does that make us murderers?"
"You don't really think we're that bad, do you?" Neville asked her once. "As animals, I mean."
Luna had smiled that brilliant, knowing smile of hers and leaned in to kiss his cheek. "I used to think that humans were a lesser evolved species," she'd said thoughtfully. "I wished that I could have scales, or the ability to fly."
She'd paused for a long moment, until Neville wasn't sure that she was going to fully answer his question. And then she'd thrown her arms around his neck and whispered in his ear, "But it's people like you that make me very, very glad I'm human."
Neville turned bright pink and disentangled himself, thoroughly embarrassed by the praise and the warmth in Luna's eyes. Still, she did not stop smiling, and when he'd tried later, stumbling over his words, to apologise for running away, she'd simply shaken her head.
"That's alright, Neville. I understand."
When the owl came to notify him that his parents had passed away, he found comfort in Luna's arms.
.:.
Luna and her father had rebuilt their house brick by brick, until it was exactly the way it had been before. Neville had been called to help with the gardens, and he'd even been allowed near the Dirigible Plum tree because, as Xenophilius had said, "It needs fixed, and plants are not my specialty. Have at it, dear boy, and there'll be Plimpie soup for lunch!"
"He's a little bit odd," Luna had said matter-of-factly, when her father was out of earshot. "I think they tortured him."
Neville felt a little twinge of sympathy, even though he had noticed anything off about Xenophilius at all.
He was still well enough to go on long trips with his naturalist buddies, none of whom Neville had ever met. Luna described them broadly as a 'blur of shaking hands and big, big smiles, all of them with longer names than the last'.
On these occasions, when they did not coincide with the school year or school responsibilities, Neville went to stay at Luna's house. It was odd at first to sleep beneath a huge painting of his own face, to be watched by his friends' motionless eyes, but when he buried his face deep enough in Luna's neck he was able to forget. And after a while, he began to find it comforting.
Each time he Flooed his Gran -- still very much alive and even more intimidating with each new wrinkle -- she asked him if he was engaged yet.
.:.
You are an illuminating anchor
Of leagues to infinite number
Crashing waves and breaking thunder
Tiding the ebb and flows of hunger
You're dancing naked there for me
You expose all memory
You make the most of boundary
You're the ghost of royalty imposing love
You are the queen and king combining everything
Neville should have known that he could not avoid the moon forever. He had not looked at the night sky in ages, not wanting to think about all the animals that waited for the moon to cycle just so and turn them into a creature of the hunt. He didn't want to think about the bloody tracks they left, or the pain that their victims had to go through only to become one of them.
As his luck would have it, however, Luna was fascinated by the moon. "It's in my name, silly," she scolded him when he'd asked why, and said nothing more on the subject.
It happened that on one of his stays at Luna's house, the moon was full, burgeoning with possibility. Neville was trying to figure out how to ask her to marry him, and despite his anxieties about the moon, it really was a rather appropriate time to propose.
"Why are you kneeling in here?" Luna asked before he could say anything, her laughter overriding any chance he might have had at a reply. "Neville, come on, we've got to go outside!"
"But--" Neville managed to protest before her long hair flew out behind her and hit him in the face. "But Luna--"
When he could see again, they were out in the backyard, and Luna's clothes were gone. All coherent speech caught in Neville's throat and choked him to silence as he watched, entranced.
Her body was lean, still muscular and slim like a child's, but taller and curved in just the right places. The flare of her hips shone as she spun in the night air, moonlight caressing creamy skin, making Neville ache to run his fingers over it.
She danced towards him after a long moment. Neville was so fixated on the sight before him that he barely even noticed when his own clothes vanished, and then he was on his back on the disorderly lawn and the long grass was prickling his skin.
"Neville," Luna said breathily, touching his closed eyelids with light fingertips, "Neville. Open your eyes."
He hesitated, afraid of the memories that would well up in him at the sight of the sky. Afraid, especially, that they would be the bloody ones -- his mind was already back in the forest -- and that he'd start crying in front of her and she would never, ever want to marry him.
"It's alright, you know," she whispered, and then the slick heat of her body was enfolding him, wiping all of the horror from his mind. Her voice took on a deeper, throaty sound, mixing with a moan that Neville barely realised was his, and she leaned in to kiss him. "It's alright."
Neville opened his eyes, and saw the moon.
It was almost hidden behind Luna's head, a soft halo, lighting the fly-away blonde waves and turning them into gold. He gasped to see it, and then Luna smiled, dazzling him.
"Marry me," he panted, not even sure what he was saying. "Luna, please... please marry me."
He could barely see anymore, even though his eyes were still open, and that might have been because of the tears or it might have been the way Luna's hips were rocking against him, a rhythm as steady as his heartbeat. A slight darkness fell, and Neville shivered with apprehension. Then Luna's whisper came clearly out of the night from somewhere near his ear, breathless with happiness and pleasure.
"I will, Neville. Yes, of course, yes."
The sounds that drifted up to the moon that night were certainly not screams, and the moon -- the pure, white, unblemished moon -- smiled down, moonbeams making love to strong, healthy earth.