Just As Sane As I Am: A Harry/Luna Fansite

FAN FICTION

Off the Record
by Ladyknyght

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“It’s back,” Luna exclaimed as she approached him. Even dressed in muggle clothes, she was still the same old Luna with her wand behind her ear and butterbeer necklace. “I’m so glad.”

“Hey Luna. What’s back?” Harry asked, confused as he generally was in Luna’s presence.

“Well... when you were dating Ginny, your aura was all wrong, you know? I don't think your karma approved. I can’t say as I blame it either. It was this horrible sickly yellow-brown, looked like infected flobberworm pus.” Luna puckered her features in disgust. “Of course, it’s back to normal now,” she reiterated with a wide smile. “It’s a much healthier shade of green-blue, like the waters of the Mediterranean at dusk or the wings of the moonflower faery. Your aura merely reflected what it knew wasn’t right.”

Aghast, Harry stopped in the middle of the lane that served as the main street of Ottery St. Catchpole. “What would you know about it, Luna? Being with somebody?” he asked none too sweetly.

“I would be happy to discuss the matter with you, Harry,” she responded in her dreamy voice. “But not in the middle of the street. Muggle cars do happen by here quite frequently and faster then they should.” Luna left him standing there. Her long, blonde hair draped down her back like a cape as she made her way onto the side of the road. When he finished gaping at her, he finally ambled over. Luna looked at him with a mixture of amusement and pity. “For someone stuck in between our two worlds, you seem to forget the hazards of both.” She laughed a little at him and then turned serious.

“Ginny is my friend. You are my friend. But, that doesn’t mean I don’t see your faults. When you were with Ginny, you may have seemed happy, but something wasn’t right. It wasn’t just your aura. You weren’t right. Neither was Ginny. I liked you both a lot less.”

Criticism from Luna Lovegood? Harry wasn’t used to Luna being anything but supportive of him. He was confused. He was annoyed. What did she know anyway? “I thought you would’ve been happy for us?”

“Be happy for something so wrong? Harry, that doesn’t make sense.”

The airiness of her voice didn’t hold back her matter-of-factness of her tone.

“Wrong?” he shouted. He refused to be lectured on the subject of relationships by a girl who’d never had a boyfriend. “What do you know about it, Luna?” he hollered. “Nothing. That’s what! You’ve never had a boyfriend or dated anyone! When you do, then you may criticize me!”

Luna’s face lost her normal dreamy expression. For a moment, he thought she was going to be angry. Instead she gushed out laughing.

“Luna!”

She wrapped her arms around herself and doubled-over she was laughing so hard.

Beyond frustrated now, Harry turned and stomped away. “I’m going back to the Burrow. See you at the wedding, Luna.”

“Oh Harry,” she said, trying to control her laughter. “Wait…I can never take you seriously when you yell like that. You look so… silly.” After another few deep breaths, she quit laughing, rubbed the tears in her eyes and stepped up to him. “Harry, you may know me better than most people. But you know nothing of me.”

“What the bloody hell does that mean?”

“I am not a braggart. I find that a lacking quality in other people. I will share something with you on the understanding that I am not bragging, but merely sharing something friend-to-friend. Do we have an agreement?” She held out her hand for a shake.

“That sounds rather official.”

Luna’s hand stayed extended. “I’ll consider it a verbal contract between us. My father has people sign a waiver when he interviews them for the magazine. Both parties understand what is to be discussed and how the information will be used. I don’t want any misunderstandings between us, Harry. And everything I tell you is ‘off the record’, meaning I will tell you things and you may not repeat them. Well, normally it would mean you can’t report it, but I don’t think that’s an issue here. Do we have an agreement?”

This formal, professional tone coming from Luna Lovegood was disconcerting. She must have accompanied her father on business many times to get that air about her. What could she possibly have to say that would necessitate a verbal contract between them? This was Luna Lovegood, for heaven’s sake. He had no idea what to expect.

“Yes, Luna, we have an agreement,” he affirmed as he shook her hand. “You are not a braggart.”

“And?”

“And I won’t repeat a word of it.”

She smiled then. “Good.” Luna gently gave his arm a little nudge and they continued to walk, turning toward a small park with a swing set. Carefully, she took her wand from behind her ear. “Here,” she said, handing it to him. “I trust you with it.” Luna sat down daintily on the plastic seat, arranged her tie-dyed skirt just-so and began to swing. Harry placed her wand in the same pocket as his own and took the swing next to her but didn’t move.

As she swung to-and-fro, she intently watched the sky or studied the low line of the hedgerows. He watched her.

Something must have caught her attention because she smiled. It seemed to him that she smiled at nothing. But, Luna noticed things others did not.

He continued to watch her. The way her legs shot out and then he saw her back.

Again: Her long legs and her slender back.

Again: Her long, firm legs and her swing-tossed hair that reached her waist to her slightly rounded hips.

“Harry, do you know how many cultures I’ve been exposed to?”

“What?” He shook off thoughts of curves and legs. “Err… no. Besides, here and well, maybe Sweden.”

Luna laughed. “Yes, there are those. British, Irish, Scottish and Welsh have their similarities. Each place has a unique-ness to it with such fascinating things to see and experience. You know I’ve been to Sweden tracking snorkacks with Daddy last year. But, I’ve also been to Russia, Poland, Austria, Italy and France. Let’s see, I’ve also been to Turkey, Greece, parts of China, Australia, Egypt and Argentina. Oh, and Mexico. I wasn’t even born here, you know. I was born in Tibet. Momma was studying spell work and wand movements that we don’t do here and Daddy was learning about the Tibetan Blue Mountain Dragons and other beasts up that live high up in the mountains. We lived there and in India for a good deal of my young life. Momma didn’t even want to come back to Britain. But, Daddy insisted when I needed to start my education.”

“Wow.” Harry stared at her. It was hard to swallow, yet it explained quite a bit. He had a million questions for her. But, now was not the time. Hermione would love to get in on that conversation, but she wasn’t allowed to know. “I had no idea you’ve been so many places. Hogwarts is the farthest I’ve ever been.”

“Oh yes, you should see my International Floo Pass,” she giggled. “I’ve touched every continent but one. I’m rather proud of my extensive travels. I have owl-pals with friends from all over the world and I keep in contact with them.” Luna stopped pumping her legs on the swing and allowed herself to slow. Her voice got lower and softer, as if she was sharing a great secret. “It shouldn’t surprise you that the kids call me ‘Loony’? I didn’t grow up here. I don’t share the same experiences or values. I don’t understand them much better. The difference is that I try to be understanding of them. They do not offer me the same courtesy.”

That was the first time Harry ever heard Luna speak negatively about the way others treated her. It had always amazed him that Luna took other people’s bad behavior with such grace and serenity. He never could. Maybe it was because she was raised so differently that it allowed her to be a better person in the face of other’s cruelty.

“You know, I’m going to be sixteen soon and I still haven’t spent a straight twelve months in this country. My summers are always spent abroad. In fact, Daddy and I are leaving for Japan after the wedding.”

Luna finally came to a stop and looked into Harry’s eyes in her particular, non-blinking way that makes him want to squirm, but he made an effort not to.

“Just because I’ve never dated anyone from Hogwarts doesn’t mean I have never dated.” Luna stopped and smiled. Her eyes were still dreamy, but her lids drooped a little and there was something deeper too. She blushed a bit at a memory she alone could see. “Or been kissed, for that matter.”

Luna? Kissed? He couldn’t gather his mind around the concept. Kissed? By who?

“We went on a date, Luna,” he blurted.

“Harry, you took me to a party as a friend. As glad as I was that you asked me… and as wonderful a time as I had with you... it wasn’t a real date. Was it?”

What she said might have been true at the time, but it stung a bit to hear her say it now. He certainly hadn’t kissed her. Who had kissed her?

One-by-one, Harry saw pictures of Luna’s parted lips as she kissed some guy in a beautiful foreign place. Luna kissed a suave guy dressed in a sport’s coat on the Eiffel Tower. Another guy with olive skin kissed Luna while each sat on horseback on a mountain somewhere. Surrounded by the ruins of some ancient site, Luna and another guy kissed on a picnic blanket. Harry’s head began to pound from the pressure. Luna and some other guy kissing on a large stone structure. He saw another guy wearing a hat by a stream when they were supposed to be gathering water, but stole a kiss instead. What the hell, Potter! Each image had some idiot’s mouth on Luna’s. Each image required a harder shake to get rid of than the preceding one.

He knew, just knew, each guy was the wrong guy.

“Harry?”

Thankfully, Luna’s voice made the pictures go away. “Huh?”

”Wrackspurts hibernate this time of year, Harry. Are you alright?”

Harry gave his head a final shake. He really had a headache now. “Yeah, fine. You were saying?” As he guided Luna back on topic, he thought maybe he shouldn’t have. This was something about Luna he never expected.

“Well, if you’re sure.” She paused then, looking more intently into his eyes like she was trying to read if he was telling the truth. “My experience, though limited as it is, does show me that what I saw between you and Ginny wasn’t the least bit romantic. That is how it should begin; with a bit of romance. Can you honestly tell me you romanced Ginny? Tried to woo her in any way?”

“Woo her? What are you talking about?”

“Court her?”

“Court? Luna, no one talks like that anymore.”

“Oh dear,” she sighed, “maybe romance is more of a foreign concept.”

Completely offended, not just as a man, but an Englishman, Harry jerked himself off his swing. “Is not!”

“Well, did you share anything with her? Apart from the snogging all over the place and strutting around like a peacock?” She paused to laugh. “Have you ever seen a peacock strut in its natural environment? It is quite humorous to watch.”

“I do not strut!”

“So I’ve been told.” Luna grinned and got up from the swing. “May I have my wand please? I’m going to leave you now, Harry. I think you need some time to think.”

After returning the wand, Harry watched the gentle sway of her skirt as she walked away. Try as might, Harry couldn’t stand not knowing. He just couldn’t. “Luna,” he shouted. When she stopped and turned, he asked, “Who did you kiss?”

This time when Luna smiled it was full of sly mischief. A look he never expected to see on her face. “That is extremely ‘off the record’, Harry, and none of your business.” She waved and giggled as she continued on her way.

The End