Chapter Text
"I'm the most frightened when I'm happy." George circled her lightly with his arms in return. "Luna, this morning I was so happy. You are so wonderful, and I began to feel like ideas shone again, but I'm also just waiting to be devastated. And I don't think I'll be able to stop waiting for that."
"You don't have to stop," she breathed, though there was a pain in her chest she didn't quite understand. "You just have to fight it when it tells you to run away. You run away from the precious things in life, that way. I've seen it happen."
She'd held onto him because she hadn't been able to hold her father when he had run-- she'd been running then, too. She had been old enough to wonder about her father, but she'd closed her mind to it, because she had to believe he was as wise and good as the mother she'd lost. He hadn't been, and she still wasn't. But she was trying. And she wouldn't run away from this, not after seeing the way he could look at her.
She drew her arms back from around his shoulders, and as he straightened she caught his face in her hands. Her palms felt the fair stubble that was almost unnoticeable on his face, and she noted the redness of his eyes right along with their intensity on her face.
"George Weasley," she said, "you're breaking my heart. I stay up until 2 am to prove I'm not cracked up from my little bit of a brush with war, and here you are, all a mess because Ron's as inconsiderate as always of other people's feelings. All that effort spoiled."
He chuckled weakly.
"Are you really going to let Ron cracking off ruin your day? Or are you going to call Hermione at the Ministry and find out what's going on?"
He'd been, probably, about to kiss her. He'd been, almost certainly, sure she would let him. But she was right that until his mind was eased, it wouldn't feel safe. And if something was wrong, it would be ruined.
So he held her hand, and they went into his lab together, and he put in the earplugs and spoke Hermione's office fireplace.
"George?" She frowned at him, dark rampant hair shoved back into a comb that held it away from her face. "What is it?"
"Ron just apparated out of here looking upset. Is everything OK?"
"Oh." She looked irritated. "He must have forgot that Hugo has a half-day at school, and that he was meant to be crossing guard. I sent him an owl earlier to make sure he remembered. If he worried you, I'm sorry--there's a teacher who has been very nasty about his forgetfulness, and he probably doesn't want me to know he forgot again."
She peered at him. "You were upset."
"I was just a little startled. Sorry to interrupt you, Hermione, I'll get going."
He pulled the earplugs out. Luna was being patient in her way of slightly abstracted inattention that immediately got under his skin, wanting to claim that drifting focus onto himself. Her eyes came to his almost immediately, though. The sun from the skylight made the delicate blonde of her hair form a frame around her, the yawning dark of the cabinet behind her like a portrait backdrop. The slight smudges under her eyes, staying up to prove herself to him, formed inverse moons. Like the delicate bruising of a love mark, there was an irrevocable physical truth to them.
"Luna, can I kiss you?"
"The shop is not locked downstairs," she said, apologetically.
"I can't bear to close shop outside normal hours. When too many things in Diagon Alley are closed it brings back bad times, doesn't it? I don't care if small hooligans steal everything I have down there, I'm not going to let them steal this moment from me."
"Is it a moment of courage?"
How was it she asked things outright other people were embarrassed to think?
"Yes," he said.
"Then I think it should be rewarded," she said, and stepped into his arms again.
The pressure of her lips was a benediction and the echo of a future. The gentle scent of vetiver and menthol that always seemed to emanate from her became a taste of honeyed tea and bare skin.
She was not a deft kisser, and he startled her at first when he leaned in to taste her mouth, so he eased back. Cradled her head to ask for her trust. Got lost for a moment finding the trail of vetiver in her hair, at the tuck of her jaw. Was rediscovered in a gentle, hot moment of Luna's mouth on his neck, her hands linking tighter to keep him to her.
It had been a long time since he'd kissed someone mostly for the fun of it. A frighteningly long time. Some parts of his mind wanted to race ahead but he was glad to linger in this one moment, aware of a world that could be bright. Of one he could live in.
Through the open cabinet door, very distantly, came the sound of the shop doorbell. He placed a soft kiss on her temple. Stole one from her lips again. Put his lips to her forehead to get used to being parted.
"I thought you might not be serious about letting the little hooligans do their damage," sighed Luna.
"I'm much more scared of having to explain to Rhodie what we've been doing--or worse, my mother. I didn't tell her what the final word was on Ron."
At that moment, Ron burst into the laboratory, saying, "Sorry, George, Dad had just got a tip on something in Nocturne that he wanted me to help with--"
He looked stunned, and before he could form any words that would embarrass Luna or annoy himself, George said, "You are late to your son's half-day crossing guard duty."
Ron yelped and apparated away.
There was a gentle rocking from Luna against his chest…she was laughing.
And she looked up at him with her unreasonably large, light eyes with a fondness that he was pretty sure could lead them both one step at a time out of the dark.
"The real menace in your life," she said, "is not the return of Death Eaters, but the nosiness of your family."
"Do you not have to deal with that? I guess you only have your dad."
"Oh, certainly I have similar trials. The letter from my father I ignored last night will probably have quite a bit to say about me engaging with the wizarding mainstream in your shop, exposing myself to the toxic aggregations of cryopiskies."
"You should probably cut ties with me," he said, with a dramatic sigh. "I have one incredibly nosy sister, and two amazingly opinionated sisters-in-law you will have to deal with. And two of them are your friends, so that will be even worse."
"Are you implying you are not friends with your sisters-in-law? That will make them very downcast."
After a beat, he said, "Luna Lovegood, was that a joke? Or a threat? Was it both?"
"I think that's what Ginny said about me coming to work here," Luna said, with a dazzling smile.
And since the only hooligan barging into the shop had been Ron, George allowed his impulse to kiss her for it gain sway.
"Oh," she said, pushing him away for a moment, "I had an idea for the algae. There is this trick for transfiguring plants involving pixie teeth, and Professor McGonagall--"
"Luna, I physically cannot handle you solving the topiary pet problem for me right now. Please tell me sometime later, possibly in sixty years when our romance has grown a little cool."
Luna subsided, mainly because he was kissing her again.