Get Back
Luna Lovegood walked strangely; her steps were that of a little girl, dainty and definite at the same time. She walked with the grace of a dancer, the aristocracy of a swan and the firmness of a Dementor, never looking down, never looking back. Ginny used to watch her in the mornings and the evenings and the time in-between, because Luna proved you could be a bit strange without putting people's health at risk, and after growing up with Fred and George Ginny needed the familiar comfort of the former without the worry induced by the presence of the latter.
The types of things that Harry, Hermione and Ron got up to were of another order completely, and besides, they didn't count.
"Are you looking at me?" Luna asked one day in the library, after Ginny put her head down on her book and did just that, too tired from study and all the other things to do anything else.
"Well, yes," Ginny told her, and didn't blush, because Luna was not like other girls.
"Thank you," said Luna, and wandered off. Ginny looked at her some more, and picked up her quill. They kissed a week later, nestled amongst the cloisters. It was the end of the school year, after all, and Ginny was old enough to go to Hogsmeade this year. Old enough to kiss, and be kissed.
It seemed sometimes to Ginny that she had lived a life of learning rules. These were typically phrased more in the negative than the positive: a list of don'ts and mustn'ts. Don't wear this, don't talk like that, don't use nasty language, don't swear, don't talk about grown-up things, don't upset your father, don't look at anything if you don't know where its mind is, don't try to be a Quidditch player. Don't be a bad daughter, don't be a bad sister, don't be a bad girl. Don't be interested in boys, and if you are, don't be interested in anyone your brothers don't know or know too well.
Luna lived how she walked; she knew what accepted and expected and simply didn't care. Ginny was restricted, delineated, held down and defined, reduced to what she had and did not have, the fact of her parents' relative poverty trivial to some but deadly important to others, and for better or worse she would always be a Weasley.
They were lying about on the grass; it was warm and sunny, and there was no need for coats or hats or full woollen scarves. Luna has started talking about Harry, as she had just met him; but Ginny hadn't felt like talking, no, not even about Harry, so she just lay there until all of Luna's assumptions and conclusions had dried up. Luna had been reduced to observing the wisps of cloud that hung overhead, and how that resembled a jabberwocky, and that a baldersnatch, and surely that must be a boojum -- but Ginny paid her no heed.
Even the word reduced was wrong; Luna Lovegood would never be ‘reduced' to anything; she did everything of her own free will, and it was someone else's folly to think they were having any real effect on her whatsoever. Not Ginny's, so when Luna fell silent Ginny rolled over onto her side and ignored the gentle crunching of the grass underneath to see what she was doing.
Luna's tie lay neatly folded upon the grass beside her. Her hair was free of any clip or restraint, and she shook it so it created a dirty blonde sea around her neck. Her blouse was completely undone, untucked from her trousers, and she wasn't wearing a bra.
Ginny inhaled very deeply.
"Are you shocked?" Luna asked her, as innocent as Eve in a garden long ago, and cupped one hand around one of her breasts, squeezing lightly. They were small, but Ginny could already feel herself thinking they'd make a very nice handful, and that wasn't an innocent thought at all.
"Yes," she said, not knowing what else she could say. Everyone knew you didn't lie to Loony Lovegood; she could smell them, like you could the earth after rain.
"It's just my body," Luna told her, and lightly squeezed again. Her nipples were pink, and the skin was smooth and pale, like milk or cream or a thousand different things Ginny shouldn't be comparing it to. "Mother says that we shouldn't get hung up on our bodies; they're a part of us, and a wonderful part as well, but there's nothing sacred about flesh but what's in it. She used to go walking around the house naked all the time, and people would often stop by and stay overnight in her room. Father used to watch." She shrugged. "Sometimes he used to join in, I think. When they had sex."
"Right," Ginny said, and was quite proud of the fact she hadn't passed out by now.
"Would you like to touch me?" asked the blonde girl, and without a response she reached over and held Ginny's hand in hers, and pressed it against the cool skin of her chest. "I like to watch, you know," she told Ginny, "I take after my father in that."
Ginny fell in love with her right there and then.
They played, and they talked and laughed and ran and teased and kissed and touched and played some more. In class and out of, amongst the cloisters and the halls, and on the edge of the Forbidden Forest. Luna would always meet her after Quidditch practice, and showed her her lion hat before she showed anyone else, and Ginny ooohed and ahhhed and said it was very grand, and then they both fell to giggling.
Luna always claimed to have done six impossible things each day, and all before breakfast, and Ginny always let Luna tell her what they were, before it was so wonderful to hear about things that weren't real in the strictest sense, because then you wanted them to be and you weren't entirely real anymore yourself.
"From the way you tell things, the world is set up by men and for men," Ginny said crossly, as they ran about the outskirts of the castle. Ostensibly, they were playing tag, but it didn't matter as they forgot who was it as much as they played, and it allowed them to laugh and touch and be merry.
"That's what Mother says," Luna told her calmly, darting out of reach, and didn't seem at all put out by the fact she spoke about a dead woman in the present tense.
"I'd like to be one," grumbled Ginny, and didn't notice the twinkle in Luna's eyes as she leaned forward and kissed her softly on the forehead.
"Let's see what we can manage, shall we?"
It was surprisingly easy; they went off to the Hogsmeade weekend like all the others, and unlike all the others got themselves conveniently lost in an alleyway. Robes were removed and bundled into parcels for easy carrying and easier explanation; breasts were strapped down and more masculine clothes taken out and struggled into. Hair was tied back and up underneath soft baggy caps like those her father wore, make-up removed, and a few simple charms provided the illusion of deeper voices, and adam's apples. Shoulder pads and extra socks came in quite handy (especially when stuck down trousers), and Luna knew a hair growth charm that left them with the beginnings of peach fuzz on their cheeks.
The Three Broomsticks was full of Hogwarts students of course, that was what it was supposed to be; boys and girls drinking pumpkin juice and butterbeer, pouring over things they'd bought, and the loud babble of fond jealousy filled the air. Ginny made sure to pull her cap tight down over her hair to hide her face in shadow, and was surprised by the gruffness of her voice when she ordered two butterbeers and wandered back to the corner table Luna had found.
"They're looking at us," Luna murmured, doffing her head off in some direction that seemed to be behind Ginny. Ginny turned, and so they were. A gaggle of third year girls, some that Ginny recognised and some she did not, were gazing intently at them, and gossiping amongst themselves. Ginny felt her face heat up, and looked back at Luna, who simply smiled, leaned over and kissed her. Luna was slightly, well, prickly, if she was being strictly honest. Not bad prickly, but sort of ticklish, and Luna's mouth was sweet whether she was a girl or boy.
It had been Luna's decision to start the kiss, and Luna's decision to end it, and she looked over Ginny's shoulder to those girls, one eyebrow arched and raised her foamy mug in salute.
The girls fled, and Ginny didn't blame them. Later that night, back at Hogwarts, she heard all about the two boys in The Three Broomsticks, and how they were so awfully good-looking, and how they were also boyfriends, and everyone who heard it gasped and shook their heads at the audacity of the thing.
A few days later Michael Corner asked her out, and Ginny said yes because she didn't want to be thought of as audacious, and actually being audacious was almost as bad.
Winter turned into Spring, and grass wasn't exactly the place for lying about anymore, so Ginny and Luna spent their free time talking in whispers amongst the Library shelves, or sitting on stairs somewhere in the depths of the castle. Luna talked, as she often did whether anyone was with them or not, and Ginny was half listening to her and half thinking about the way Michael held her hand.
"We're doing a feature article in the Quibbler next edition about Hogwarts," Luna announced mid-stream of consciousness, and Ginny started paying attention again.
"It's going to be on the sexuality of the staff and students. Everyone knows that at least fifty percent of Hogwarts alumni go on to be queer; Daddy says it must be something in the water."
Ginny blinked. "...Fifty percent of everyone? What about Harry?" She'd just plucked the name out of the air of course; it was easier to say than say, Ron. Or Hermione.
Luna leaned in, and whispered close to her ear. Her breath tickled against Ginny's skin, and she tried not to feel it. "I have it on very good authority that Harry is taking Remedial Potions from Professor Snape."
"Harry's not that bad at Potions," Ginny said automatically, but she didn't know if that was strictly true or not.
"I know," said Luna, nodding solemnly. "So what do you think they are doing? I hear he ended up on all fours on the floor of Snape's office."
"No!" Ginny exclaimed, and thwapped her lightly on the arm, and they both fell to giggling against the cold, old stone. She never asked Luna about her sources of information, and Luna never told.
They were walking over a small hill, and it was inherently unfair. Harry was taller than her, his legs longer and strides farther, and he had that look in his eyes which clearly stated if necessary he would remove said hill if it got too much in his way.
"Do you think Luna walks strangely?" Ginny asked him, panting to keep up, and Harry shot her a black look because he was rather busy thinking how to save the known world yet again, and he didn't want to deal with silly questions. He would forget about her question; he always did forget anything that got in the way of what he wanted.
"Why would I bother to check if Luna walks strangely, Ginny?" he asked, put out and petulant, which he was most of the time. Ginny looked at him sideways, and was struck by the sudden unshakable fact that both she and Luna made better boys than he did.
"How does Professor Snape walk then?" she enquired, and Harry answered automatically, as if he didn't have to think about the question.
"He pretends to sort of glide, but that's only because he wears his robes awfully long. Probably thinks it makes him look imposing, I don't know," and there she had her answer.