(Untitled)

[waningred]

Who: Luna and Ron
Where: One of the abandoned rooms at Order HQ
When: 19 March 2002, evening
Status: Complete

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[goldluna]

Luna bent at the waist and inspected the bottle cap that had knocked against her toe before coming to a stop. She picked it up between her finger and thumb turning it to check the front and back. "This will do quite nicely."

She crossed the room and climbed up onto the cabinet that Ron was seated on, drawing her knees up so she could rest her chin on them. Since Ron had returned she'd not had much of a chance to spend time with him. Part of it because she wasn't sure how to be a friend to him without making him feel bad.

Oh she'd done things like remember his birthday (a nice pair of fuzzy blue socks that actually matched) and she'd spent hours trying to mix just the right colour for his hair. No one knew of the mural quite yet, but she was getting close to finishing it. And now that Gabriel had come along, things would be easy because she could add in the cherubic face of the little boy.

"Are you not lonely here by yourself, Ronald?"

[waningred]

Snorting in wry amusement, Ron went back to gazing absently at the Thestrals. He wasn't ignoring Luna by any means. Right now he just didn't feel up to being scrutinised with those big searching eyes of hers as he attempted to stamp down the sad, sour emotions he knew were moored far too close to shore for comfort.

"It's by my own choice, I assure you, Loo--" Ron broke off with an embarrassed cough, letting his words die a hard death. Bugger it all. He'd very nearly slipped and called her Loony.

Finally tilting his hooded head away from the window, he observed the girl beside him. Not intending to have company tonight, he had chosen to only light a few candles and their weak, flickering illumination cast odd shadows on the walls and across Luna's face.

"Why aren't you with Harry?" he abruptly asked, diverting the conversation away from himself for the moment.

[goldluna]

Luna peered at Ron for a long moment. It had been a long time since anyone had called her Loony that she'd almost forgotten that it was the name whispered behind her back for so many years. But she didn't react to it because it certainly wasn't anything horrible. And he looked like he hadn't meant it.

But to answer his question...

"Well because I'm with you and Harry isn't here," said Luna simply as if that was the most logical answer to his question. It certainly was obvious to her at least.

She leaned forward and took the bottle from him, not letting him protest the action. She held it up to the weak light and peered at the label before holding it under her nose and taking a sniff. She squinched up her face and held it back to him.

"That smells terrible. Are you certain it makes you feel good?"

[waningred]

"Well... yeah," Ron replied, stating what he considered to be quite obvious. "Why else would a person drink it?"

Snagging the bottle back, he took a long pull of his bitter, then shrugged. "It's just the hops you're smelling." And all the other mundane ingredients he couldn't be bothered to remember that somehow, once brewed, turned into a mind-numbing concoction. "You do get used to the taste after a while..."

The brooding expression he wore turned thoughtful after a while. Sitting in the dark getting pissed suddenly seemed like a very pathetic thing to do. Unless one had a partner in said drinking, that is.

"Help yourself," he said, nudging the sack forward.

[goldluna]

"I do not know the answer to that question." Her voice lost its dreamy quality. She looked out the window and watched the Thestrals for a moment. They were such lonely creatures, though she tried very often to make sure that they knew people knew they were there.

"Sometimes you don't get used to a bad taste. The rats never got appealing."

The pause and silence between them was thickly awkward and very briefly Luna considered leaving Ron alone. Perhaps he didn't want a friend, though she very much thought that he needed one. That he, like the Thestrals, needed someone to acknowledge that he was there and that they cared for him.

Ignoring the sack he'd pushed close to her, Luna shifted enough and then reached across the space and combed her fingers through the strands of red hair that wasn't tucked in under his hood.