Drabblefic #3: Neville/Luna, "Coconut Shy"

[gilpins_tales]

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.

Comments

[shiiki]

“They’ll never see it coming,” said Neville. "Or us."

How very true. They did show them!

Very nice little fic, I enjoyed reading! :)

[gilpin25]

Thanks very much. Both for enjoying it and taking time to let me know you did. :)

And glad you liked that line!

[godricgal]

I enjoyed this a lot! Thought you did a great job with Luna, blending what others see in her with how she perceives herself, which must be quite tricky to do. The opening line has to be my favourite. I did like the use of the palm tree, and nice slipping in of the details there. What I want to know is what happened to the coconuts when it came to the crunch. Did Neville accidentally grow a date palm? ;)

Neville and Luna are two characters I'd like to read about a lot more and this was a real treat for a Saturday lunchtime. :)

[gilpin25]

It's really nice to hear you enjoyed this - I think it's definitely my favourite horticultural fic! ;)

I'm glad you liked the opening line as, normally, it's one of the last ones I think of first, but this time things were actually thought of in logical order. Perhaps that was Luna's influence, lol. My feeling with the coconuts (and thanks again for the inside info), is that in DH it either wasn't really a crystal ball that Trelawney felled Greyback with, or about a dozen Death Eaters never actually made it past the greenhouse!

Many thanks for the lovely comments as I enjoyed writing these two. :)

[shimotsuki]

I'm glad I've finally had a chance to read this, even though it has taken a lot longer than I would have liked!

Characterization is always a real strength of yours and is one reason why I enjoy your stories so much. And this piece is no exception. Luna is absolutely positively perfect. In canon, from Harry's perspective, she comes across as vague and odd, unexpectedly perceptive about people, and willing to talk about topics that others avoid. You've tied all that together here, but now that we get to see what Luna is actually thinking, we see that she actually makes a lot more sense on the inside than on the outside! The fact that she understands why people sometimes do think she's odd (like Professor Sprout with the questions) also fits in perfectly, because it's the natural consequence of her turning her perceptiveness on herself.

Your Neville is wonderful, too; (as tegdoh says) I wanted to cheer to see Luna recognizing the beginnings of the Fierce Neville we are all going to see in DH. His mixture of shyness and determination is

[gilpin25]

I'm so glad you think Luna sounds right to you here - not having the books to hand (one day, my new bookshelves will come), and not knowing the lines these two utter half as well as some others I could mention, I did wonder if I was writing more my impression of them than as they really are in the books. I do imagine that Luna's thinking on the inside is a mixture of astute Ravenclaw sharpness and inquisitiveness, jumbled together with the fact that she leaps around from thought-to-thought and tends to say whichever one's foremost in her head at the time. She always seems a very poignant character to me, and I thought she'd probably be very aware that other people do find her strange - and understand the reasons why. (I always think of the scene where she meets Harry while looking for her belongings in OotP

[xfirefly9x]

I love this! So very them, and cute, too! Nicely done. :D

[gilpins_tales]

Aw, thanks very much for enjoying it and letting me know you did!:D