MORE THAN FRIENDS » l. lovegood

00. new moon

a/n: hi guys! i know it's been almost two years since i've touched this story, but lani has encouraged me to give it another shot! i've honestly rewritten this chapter so many times i can barely count. it's not my best work, since i'm still very rusty but i sincerely hope you enjoy it! 

psa: feeling super clever about the titles. think of it as the luna cycle

00. new moon
occurs when the moon is positioned between the sun and earth and objects are in approximate alignment.  

           GINNY WEASLEY lets herself into the kitchen where Luna is currently staring at the ceiling. "Luna!" she cries, and Luna jumps up, startled.

Ginny hardly ever comes to the apartment anymore, not since Harry. Not since Harry and Ginny rekindled their relationship.

When they did, Luna was left to claw her way out of the shadows. As always. Second fiddle to someone more important. Because Ginny and Harry were practically written in the stars, anyone could see it by the looks on their faces. They were smitten, just as Luna was smitten with Ginny.

Of course, nobody knew. Luna didn't even know, until the battle with Voldemort was over and all she could think about was ginnyginnyginny. Her heart hammered so hard it felt like her chest was going to fall open as she raced everywhere, trying to find her. And then Luna's heart turned into a butterfly when she did find her. She could not afford to give up the girl who made her heart beat like a Bludger and then turned it into a butterfly right after.

But she did anyway. After the war, they moved in together to a tiny apartment in Kingston-upon-Thames, where there were so many afternoons with Ginny's head on her lap as Luna twirled red hair around her finger wondrously. It wrapped around her fingers like a flame. Now it haunts her, winding and twisting around the muggle grocery store around the corner, or the apartments across theirs.

Ginny places a cream-coloured envelope on the granite countertop, "read it!" She demands, her eyes blazing. Fireworks shoot off in Luna's stomach as she takes a glance at Ginny.

With shaky hands, Luna opens the envelope. It read, "Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Weasley request the pleasure of your company—" Stones materialize in her stomach and begin to plummet as races through the letter. They drop, drop, drop and Luna is surprised her knees don't buckle from the weight of them.

How do you break Luna's heart? "—at the wedding of their daughter, Ginerva Weasley to Harry Potter, son of Mr. and Mrs. James Potter."

She drops the letter on the counter. Luna plasters a smile onto her face and then barfs bright green fluorescent barf over the countertop. Ginny doesn't notice, so Luna gathers all the gusto she has and then lets it all out for Ginny. Because she would do anything for Ginny, wouldn't she?

"That's great, Gin!" She shakes the walls so hard they fall, and pushes down the doors and upends every piece of furniture. She makes the windows shatter. Oceans break inside her and something in her chest feels like it's collapsing. She's very sure it's her heart. She makes tornados and storms and she takes the stones out of her stomach and throws them far away, hoping they hit Harry. She is an angry bees' nest.

Ginny's eyes immediately narrow and she stares at Luna intently. They are locked in a staring contest. She breaks away first.

"Luna," she says slowly, her eyes slits. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing, nothing. I think the Nargles are irritating the air. Really, I'm happy for you and Harry!" She watches as her friend visibly relaxed then brightens again, face touched by the rays of the sun. Luna's face is a storm though.

"Isn't it?" She clasped her hands in a very non-Ginny-like way. "And you're one of my maids of honor—" It's a knife stab into Luna's already hurting heart. She wants to cover her ears. She wishes Ginny would just close her mouth. Take the top lip and clamp it down on the bottom and bite her tongue so hard that her brain won't want her to make another sound.

"—Hermione's the other one because it's horrid to choose between the two of you—" The knife twists deeper. Stop talking. Why won't Ginny just stop talking? Why does Ginny want to break her heart so badly?

"—The proposal just happened so quickly, oh, it was just so magical, you should have been there! I had just prepared for an impromptu game against Harry and some friends we rounded up, and I went to shake his hand. But then he got down on one knee—" The knife can't possibly go deeper. Can it?

Luna lets out a giggle, but it sounds more like a strained cough to her.

""Just what's so funny?"

"Only you and Harry would use Quidditch to propose."

"Yes, I suppose we are quite the couple," Ginny concedes. The two women share a laugh and Luna puts the walls back up. Everything would be okay, right?

Wrong. She is so impossibly wrong. She sits in her apartment, folded up like a chair. She breathes in so much gray air. There's no sun to clear up the gray air, because Ginny is her sun. Her sun, stars, trees, flowers. She is Luna's entire world. How can someone you love so much hurt you so bad?

She asks herself this like a mantra, chanting it over and over until she gives herself a headache. It's all very terrible. In her stomach, there's a little ball of rage beginning to grow. How can someone you love so much hurt you so bad? She asks herself again, but this time it's tinted with anger.

She takes her mother's book, the beautiful leatherbound book her mother wrote for her, and flips through the pages like a madman. She desperately turns page after page, looking for the heartbreak cure. It hurts so bad, it takes her breath away. She is hurting so much.

To extinguish unwanted feelings, carry a burnt candle stub in one's back pocket.
(She found a jacket and patched on as many pockets as she could find and then stuffed five candles in there until they were overflowing and she was crying.)

Collect one's tears in a jar and throw it over one's shoulder to change the ways of the heart.
(She cried even more as she picked up the broken glass, and gave herself ten new cuts.)

Consume Ashwinder egg scramble then barf up to reverse lovesickness.
(This one just gave her a stomach ache).

Nothing is working. She takes her mother's book and tears out the pages and rips it up into little pieces. Sobbing, she throws the book across the room. Why does this hurt so much? Why is she so in love with this girl that it consumes her whole and leaves no room for loving herself?

Luna realizes that she ruined the last remnant she has of her mother, and sobs as she tries to glue the pages together. She feels the tears in her throat and her vision blurring. All she wants is to scream and rip her hair out. But she can't muster up her voice, so she holds her breath and grabs her stomach, trying to stop. She's so dizzy and she can't breathe and all she wants is Ginny. She wants to inhale the flowers Ginny smelled like and bury her head in her lap and why did Ginny think it was okay to leave her? Everything comes crashing down and suddenly Luna has to get out of there. She is suffocating, drowning in Ginny.

She torpedoes out of the apartment and the carpeted floor feels like it's cracking under the weight of her shoes. She's near the end of the hallway and everything is spinning around her. She crashes hard, into someone. She barely even registers it. The person deftly grabs her arm and rights her.

"Woah, woah," a deep voice murmurs. She can barely make out the face, her eyes full of tears. His thumb wipes them away.

"Hi," he breathes. "I'm Rolf Scamander."