Fic: Love Is Blind and Everything's Magical (Part 1)
Love Is Blind and Everything’s Magical
Rating: G
Word count: 8,715
Genre: romance/humor; little bit of angst in parts
Ships: NL/LL
Status: Complete
Summary: fter the final battle, Luna finds Neville permanently blinded by a curse. Romance grows.
"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind." A Midsummer Night's Dream: Act I, Scene I
A/N: Written for luna_romance 012. The original is posted herehere.
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After the war ended and the dust settled and people got over the shock of Harry actually killing He-Who-Made-Himself-Hideous-Voluntarily, everyone went home.
And it was weird, going home. Anti-climactic. Strangely normal when normalcy had, for so long, been the most abnormal thing in the world.
Granted, there was a bit of a gap first. A limbo. A wonky, stilted period where people sat down wherever they’d been standing when it ended and looked around at each other in shock. And then there were tears, and reunions, and at Hogwarts, the necessary collection of the dead and wounded.
But after several days had passed, everyone went home.
Everyone, it seemed, but Luna Lovegood. Luna didn’t have a home. Her home had, apparently, been blown to smithereens.
That was the word Ron had used. Smithereens. Luna had thought that a rather interesting word, and once she’d been to see the house for herself (out of curiosity and a hope that some of her clothes, creature-protection jewelry, and other belongings might have survived) she agreed it was an apt one.
Hermione told her it was an Erumpent horn that did it-blew her house to smithereens-when the house was raided by Death Eaters looking for Harry. Luna couldn’t imagine how an Erumpent got into her house, and had decided that the Death Eaters must have been secretly training them to hunt down fugitives. In any case, the house was a mess and Luna had only been able to salvage a few things: her butterbeer cork necklace, one of her mother’s little painted clay tea pots, some of her father’s research papers. Her Dirigible Plum earrings were a complete loss, but she’d managed to harvest some more and had already turned out several new pairs.
After the visit to her house, Luna had tracked down Harry to apologize on behalf of her father. He’d meant well, and she couldn’t bring herself to scold him for his actions in turning Harry in to the Death Eaters because he was a bit lost without her and had been so frightened, but it just about broke Luna’s heart that her dad had nearly caused Harry to be caught. Harry ermed and ahhed and looked really tired, but he understood, because Harry was like that, and then Luna had given him a modified pair of her new earrings (now hooked into the pointed tip of a sleeping cap) because she knew how much he needed them.
Since Luna was essentially homeless, she didn’t go home when everyone else did. Well, actually, she’d tried to go home. While the house was a large pile of rock and broken crockery, etc., the shed had survived, and with it, all the camping gear. She’d lived in a tent for a day and a half before an exasperated Hermione had come tromping through the field to her front flap, cast an emphatic “Pack!” and then refused to return any of Luna’s meager belongings until she’d come back to Hogwarts.
“You’re not living in a tent, Luna,” she’d said. “You can’t be by yourself right now. No one should be by themselves right now. So until your dad comes back from his trip-”
(Luna’s father had stayed long enough to make sure Luna was alright, and then, when he was done hugging her and crying, he kissed his daughter and headed out into the wilderness, too ashamed of himself to face the world.)
“-you’ll be staying at the castle with me. Friends don’t let friends live in a field, Luna,” Hermione had added when it looked like Luna might hesitate.
So, Luna moved to Hogwarts.
On the sixth day after the Battle of Hogwarts (the second after she’d moved back to the castle), Luna appeared in Madam Pomfrey’s infirmary and volunteered to assist with the injured who remained there-the Hospital Wing was largely unscathed, and many students and Order member s preferred to stay in Pomfrey’s care than subject themselves to the tender mercies of St. Mungo’s, which was overrun and whose doctors were overworked and tired.
It was on her third morning as Madam Pomfrey’s assistant that Luna came across Neville Longbottom. She hadn’t seen him since mid-way through the final battle. She’d thought of him since then, certainly-she’d thought about all her friends-but she hadn’t known where he’d disappeared to afterwards and she had no way of finding out at that point. No one knew where anyone was in all the chaos, really. There were lists-lists of the living, lists of the dead, and lists of those who were still missing-so she knew her closest friends were all still alive. Other than that she didn’t know much about any of them, not even the Weasleys, because Hermione was so busy in the aftermath that she didn’t have much time to chat.
Which is why Luna didn’t know that Neville was still at Hogwarts when she started her work in the infirmary. And she didn’t actually know Neville was there for quite some time afterwards either.
On the morning Luna discovered Neville’s presence, she came in to the Hospital Wing bright and early, just like every other day. She started out by checking the potions Madam Pomfrey left brewing over night because they went through medical potions like candy these days and because Luna was very competent at potion making and Madam Pomfrey needed all the help she could get.
While she was stirring the pepper-ups and adding ingredients to the fever-reducers and the blood replenishers, she snuck a few homemade “charms” (some of which were naturally magical and some of which she’d charmed with her wand) out of her pockets and hung them in the all the shadowy corners she could find in Madam Pomfrey’s office. The poor Madam was tired, stressed, and overworked, and she had far more patients than she was used to at one time, all of them more dear to her personally then she was used to her patients being. She was emotionally and physically wrung out. So Luna hung energy charms, and cheering charms, and as many charms as she could make to keep the wrackspurts away.
Then Luna dumped out the vase on Madam Pomfrey’s overcrowded desk and replaced yesterday’s wilted flowers with new ones, bright and happy.
“Never underestimate the power of bright colors in the form of lovely, lightly scented flowers to bring peace and joy to a soul,” Luna murmured, repeating one of the few things she remembered her mother saying to her as a child. She then proceeded to fill the ward with flowers also. She finished her initial round at the far end of the ward, parting the heavy curtains and opening the windows a crack to let in fresh air and healing sunlight.
Only then did Luna turn to the patients. She changed bedding, cleaned and re-bandaged wounds, fluffed pillows, and all throughout kept up a cheerful chatter meant to encourage, distract, and entertain those in her care. By the time Madam Pomfrey came in and the two made a second round of the ward, with Luna carrying and fetching and taking numerous notes, it was nearing lunchtime and Luna set about making sure all the patients got the appropriate mid-day meal.
“Don’t forget, Luna,” Madam Pomfrey said as Luna was making a list of requests for the house-elves, “the patient in bed four is to have no gourd products, absolutely none, for another week; it interferes with the curse he’s suffering under.”
Stephan Lyle, no pumpkin juice, Luna wrote.
“Bed six is about healed enough now to be eating some solid food-be careful with it, though, Luna. Her temper’s still up, and you’re likely to have a spot of trouble convincing her to eat the steak now that she can’t just close her eyes and pretend she’s not eating what she’s eating.”
One half extra rare steak for Lavender, Luna wrote. Feed with patience, and from a distance.
“And finally, the patient in bed seven woke up late last night. If he’s awake again in time for lunch, he gets just a small bowl of chicken soup, and make sure he drinks plenty of liquid.”
Bed seven? Luna wondered. Before she could ask who was in bed seven, Madam Pomfrey turned and hurried back to her office to start a batch of Wolfsbane-for Lavender, just in case-and Luna was left wondering.
"Well, I suppose I won’t know until I bring him his soup,” Luna said to herself. So Luna called for a house-elf.
“Hello,” Luna said when one arrived. “I don’t think I know you yet. What’s your name?”
“I is called Bisky, Miss.”
“And are you a Miss Bisky, or a Mr. Bisky?”
The house-elf wrung its hands. “I is just Bisky,” said the elf.
“Alright, Bisky,” Luna said in a more gentle voice, giving up at the obvious distress in the elf’s voice. “I am called Luna. Or Loony. Whichever you prefer.”
The house-elf just blinked overlarge eyes at her, clearly failing to grasp her subtle attempt at humor.
“I think we’ll be ready for lunch in about an hour, Bisky.” Luna offered the parchment on which she’d listed each of the patient’s individual needs for the midday meal. The elf took the parchment and bowed so low that its ears brushed the floor, and for an instant, the top of one of Luna’s bare feet.
“Oh!” Luna breathed. “Excuse me, Bisky, but do your ears feel cold to you? They feel rather cold to me.” Luna brandished her wand helpfully. “I can fix that if you like.”
“No clothes!” the elf shrieked. “Bisky must not wear clothes!”
“No, of course not,” Luna replied, frowning a little. “Why would you think I’d give you clothes just because your ears are cold?” Luna asked.
“When the misses and misters ears is getting cold, they is putting hats and round fuzzies on theys heads.” Bisky shook its head violently, causing its overlarge ears to flap. “Bisky is not to be wearing clothes.”
“Oh dear,” Luna murmured. She knelt before the elf and took its hands, frowning when those were cold too. “I was only going to offer a Warming Charm,” she told it, gently chafing long elf-y fingers between her own warmer ones. “Is it cold in the kitchens? Are there no heating charms down there?”
“The ovens is keeping the kitchens warm, Miss,” Bisky told her, looking confused.
“Only the ovens aren’t running, are they?” Luna reminded gently. “Because there aren’t enough people here. And we are having an unusually cold spring. Poor things, you must be freezing down there!”
The elf just blinked again, looking anxious.
“Well, here.” Luna waved her wand, muttering a gentle Warming Charm while making a mental note to take a trip down to the kitchens later to address the source of the problem.
The elf just stared at her with wide eyes, did an anxious little dance in place, and then disappeared with a quiet pop.
Luna wondered if the poor state of the castle was allowing for an infestation of wrackspurts. She hadn’t know that house-elves were prone to wrackspurt attacks, but this one’s brain had clearly gone fuzzy.
Shrugging, Luna hurried back to Madam Pomfrey’s office and retrieved a silver train case, then went to visit Lavender.
“Good morning, Lavender,” she said, placing the case on the bed-side table and flipping open the metal clasps. “How are you feeling today?”
Lavender gave her a pointed look. “You’re late, Lovegood,” she growled.
“You say that every morning.” Luna’s tone was bland but an amused smile played at the corners of her mouth as she flipped the lid up on the case and began removing trays from inside it.
“That might be because you’re late every morning.”
“There is no-”
“There is a set time, Luna,” Lavender snarled. “We’ve been over this. One gets up. One prepares oneself to face the day. And then one goes out and actually faces the day. You seem to be laboring under the mistaken belief that makeup is something to be put on whenever one has a free moment and a vague inclination.”
Luna turned and smiled at her newest friend. “It’s a mask, Lavender. And while you don’t need it because you are a lovely, lovely girl, even with the scars, I understand why you feel the need to wear it. But you don’t need masks with me. And no one else is going to see you. Visiting hours aren’t for another hour and a half, remember?”
Lavender only shifted in place and glanced away. “You are hopeless, Lovegood,” she said with a sigh.
“But I’m learning,” Luna stated cheerfully. “I make us both look less like clowns every day.”
Lavender laughed. On Luna’s first day on the ward, she’d come into the room in time to witness an outright shouting match between Lavender and Madam Pomfrey over Lavender’s lack of cosmetics. That afternoon, Luna had used her 15 minute lunch break to trek up the stairs to the mess of Gryffindor Tower and retrieved what she could of Lavender’s belongings. Lavender had cried when Luna had returned the silver train case to her, and then again after Luna helped her apply the makeup inside it.
“I look like a clown!” she’d sobbed, staring at her face in the mirror Luna held out. And she had. Luna didn’t wear makeup herself and really had no idea how to apply it properly.
So Luna quickly borrowed Lavender’s makeup and did her own. It turned out worse than Lavender’s by far, but when she turned to show the bedridden blond, the girl had stopped crying and stared. Then she’d laughed. Then she’d cried again. Luna was just opening her mouth to apologize for having such a heavy hand with the bright blue eye shadow and the equally bright red lip color when Lavender had pulled the other blond into a hug and cried on her shoulder.
When Lavender had sat back to wipe her eyes, most of her makeup was on Luna’s shirt, and the girls were in possession of a tentative new friendship.
An odd friendship, Luna thought as she set about applying Lavender’s makeup with slowly growing confidence, but a friendship nonetheless.
“Are you paying attention, Luna?” Lavender shrilled. “I don’t want to look like a circus employee again.”
Luna laughed, mostly because Lavender hadn’t looked like a clown since that first day. When she’d realized how much the makeup meant to Lavender, and that the girl was unable to put it on herself, Luna had set out doing as much research on proper makeup application as she could, practicing on herself in the evening and applying her new knowledge to Lavender’s face every morning. Every day she got a little better. And every day, when they were done with Lavender’s makeup, Lavender forced Luna to do her own, teaching the other girl everything she knew about technique and color choice.
It really wasn’t Luna’s favorite pastime, but it made Lavender happy. And all Luna wanted was for her friends to be happy.
On this particular day, as on every other, Lavender waited until Luna was busy doing her own makeup under Lavender’s critical eye to chatter at her. Lavender was fond of gossip, and while she didn’t have access to much while stuck in the Hospital Wing, she had particularly keen ears and a good number of visitors to listen too. Any interesting tidbit she picked up was usually shunted right along to Luna the next day.
A movement in the bed two over attracted Luna’s attention from finishing her makeup and half-listening to Lavender’s chattering. It was the patient in bed seven.
Lavender must have picked up on her distraction because she paused, and then, in a much quieter voice, murmured, “It’s Neville, you know.”
“What?” Luna turned to look at the other girl, a little confused. “What’s Neville?”
“The boy in the bed over there.” Lavender motioned towards the mysterious patient in bed seven. “With all the bandages.”
Luna gaped at her. “What?”
“It’s true, I heard Madam P. talking to him when he woke up yesterday,” Lavender confided. “She called him Mr. Longbottom. There’s no other Mr. Longbottom that I know of.”
“But...he should have had visitors. Doesn’t his grandmother know he’s here?”
“Apparently she’s too heartbroken to visit. I guess he’s not been doing too well, what with the coma, and then whatever is wrong with him now.” Lavender reached out and grabbed Luna’s arm when she stood up from the bed. “He’s not responding to anyone,” she told Luna gently. “He woke up, but he won’t speak, not even when asked a direct question. I overheard Madam P. telling McGonagall it has something to do with shock and trauma.”
Luna felt shocked herself. After learning that little bit of information, Luna could barely concentrate on what she was doing. She just couldn’t picture her sweet, cheerful friend being as...sad as Lavender had described him. It didn’t make any sense.
Well, she would just have to find out for herself.
At lunch, Luna saved bed seven for last. In the intervening time, she had to force herself to concentrate and maintain her usual cheerful demeanor as she passed out meals to each of the conscious patients and administered nutrition potions to those who were not. When it was time to move to bed seven, she was surprised to discover that she felt a little nervous.
He was awake, she noticed immediately, stepping up next to the bed and putting the tray holding his lunch on the bedside table. She could tell by how stiffly he was trying to lay still. She read the chart at the end of his bed, looking for any special care instructions. They weren’t hard to find, Madam Pomfrey had written them in red capital letters and circled them with bold, bright motions that practically shouted “pay attention!”
“Do not remove bandages from patient’s eyes for any reason,” Luna read. “Well, that’s easy enough.” She looked for a name in the upper right corner where patient names were usually written, but found nothing. Madam Pomfrey had written a “7” in the space where the name was supposed to be, just as she had for all the other patients who’d been unidentified or unidentifiable at the time they were admitted to the Hospital Wing. Pomfrey only filled in the names later if she happened to remember.
The fact that Neville had been in such a state as to be unrecognizable upon admittance was not encouraging.
Luna put the chart away and turned back to the patient in question. His face was completely wrapped in bandages except for a narrow slit where the mouth was located. His left hand and arm were in a cast-the spell that had damaged his face and his arm all the way up to the shoulder was a type that mixed badly with healing potions such as Skele-Gro. She knew he had other injuries as well, invisible under the thick blankets draped over both boy and cot.
Luna settled herself on the edge of the mattress near the patient’s hip and gently reached a hand out to brush his good shoulder. “Hello there,” she murmured. “Are you awake?” She knew he was, but she thought it might be impolite to ruin his game of pretend.
There was no answer.
“It’s alright if you don’t want to speak,” Luna said after a moment’s hesitation. “But I need to feed you, so if you could just nod or twitch or make a noise for me, I’ll help you eat this lovely warm soup.” She waited a while longer, somehow certain she could get her patient to respond despite his current reticence.
Still nothing.
“Or I can give you this health potion,” Luna threatened cheerily. “It’s really very bitter, but then, it’s not meant to be given to a patient who is awake to taste it. Of course, if you’re not awake, it won’t matter, I suppose...”
After another long silence, patient seven’s head rolled just a little in her direction.
“Oh, good choice!” Luna clapped her hands together softly. A swift pillow-rearrangement, a careful transfiguration of the soup bowl and a nearby quill, and Luna was holding a mug of soup near her patient’s face, angling the quill-cum-straw to the patient’s mouth. He fumbled trying to get a hold of it, but eventually he managed. Luna remained silent as her patient drank his soup, studying the boy and trying to find something, anything, to indicate that her friend was somewhere under all those bandages. Occasionally, he would shift, move his uninjured hand, or tilt his head in such a way that she thought maybe, maybe...
But she couldn’t be sure, and then the mug was empty.
“Good!” Luna praised, glad he’d actually managed to finish it all. She set the mug down, then whispered a cleaning charm over the straw and placed it in a nearby glass. “Now how about some water?”
She held the glass too far from the patient’s face, apparently, because he couldn’t find the straw with his mouth.
“Over here, Neville,” she told him, moving the glass closer and lightly swishing the straw through the liquid in the glass so that he could find it.
His head jerked away at the sound of the name, and he made an anxious sound. If that reaction hadn’t confirmed all of Luna’s fears, the fact that he turned his head away and refused to face her would have.
“Oh, Neville,” Luna murmured, her heart breaking for her friend’s obvious distress. She reached out, hesitated when she remembered he was too injured to hug, and settled for putting her hand on his good shoulder and squeezing. “Shhh, shhh, it’s fine, Neville,” she said, leaning a little closer. “I don’t care what you look like. I don’t care if you can’t see,” she added, knowing blindness was a sure side effect of his injuries. “You don’t even have to talk to me, Nev. Not if you don’t want to. You are one of my dearest friends.” She continued on in that manner for several long minutes until she eventually convinced him to turn back and at least take a sleeping potion. When she left him, he was falling into unconsciousness already, without ever having said a word.
Luna frowned as she carried the lunch tray away.
That wasn’t Neville. That was Neville’s body, but that wasn’t Neville. There was nothing of the sensitive, determined, brave boy with the kind eyes whom she’d once fancied fancying.
That wasn’t Neville, but Neville was still in there somewhere. He was in there, and she was going to find him.
Luna was going to war.
On to Part 2