Archive of Our Own

• Wake up

There's just something about Luna today, Ginny thinks. Something about Luna that makes Ginny think... he.

Luna's wearing the same pair of washed-out blue denim overalls she wears on days when she seems more like a she, with a droopy-soft, yellow-striped collared shirt underneath, sleeves rolled haphazardly up to the elbows. Her hair is in a loose bun, her brow furrowed as she tries to scrub something unnameable off a chipped plate in the kitchen sink of the house they share with far too many other ex-Gryffindors to ever keep it clean.

Ginny can't really place what it is about Luna that transcends the feminine in this particular moment. Luna, of all people, who at other times is so very femme. It seems unfair, Gin thinks, that no matter what Ginny does she's only ever been she; the girl child of the Weasley bunch. It was the first thing her mother ever loved about her, though. She's not allowed to try and shed it, is she.

And besides, it's not like she's any keener to be he. She doesn't— Merlin, doesn't want to transfigure her bits or grow a horrible moustache like Percy's or anything like that. She just wants to be free of the expectations.

"I don't think that's coming off," she calls to Luna as she spells the last of the other washing-up dry and puts it back where it belongs.

"It won't if I don't try," Luna sing-songs, her surprisingly strong arms working over the painted china surface more and more frantically.

"You're going to crack it," Ginny chuckles. "What'd you burn onto it, anyway?"

"Some of that new Alihotsy honey Greg's bees made for us."

"Yikes, alright," Ginny laughs. "If you've turned it that shade of brown I think it's time to break it off and put the rest of the plate in the mosaic bin."

Luna's shoulders relax. "I suppose you're right," she sighs.

They'll be able to do a whole garden path with bits of the crockery they've have to discard soon enough, between Luna's moments of kitchen distraction, Seamus' microwave experiments (when they finally found a spell to lock him out of their existing microwave, he came home with a brand new one), Ron's ability to blacken water itself onto the bottom of a pot, Neville's absolutely smashing relationship with their glassware, and Ginny's occasional carelessness. There are only so many times a Reparo can stick the same bundle of shards back together. Luckily it's all cheap stuff, and the mosaics are fun.

Everything's fun with Luna, really. Ginny doesn't know if Luna likes girls, but Ginny likes Luna, whatever she is.

• Eat breakfast

It's breakfast time and Ginny almost can't remember how she ever questioned Luna's girlness. It's the lipstick; it must be. All gold and glittery, matched perfectly to her eyeshadow. Or maybe she's wearing the lipstick on her eyelids too? Ginny's short-lived attempts to learn about makeup never felt like they were getting her anywhere. Not like running until her lungs burned (a little less each time), or flying until she locked her fist around the beat-up copper snitch she bought for two sickles at a pawn shop on her first ever Hogsmeade visit.

"You look nice," Ginny says brightly.

Luna lifts her red, pineapple-print skirt out wide and gives something like a curtsey. The well-stretched neck of her oversized t-shirt slips off her shoulder in the process, and Gin tries to look away when she catches sight of a pale pink areola. She really does try. It's not what good housemates do, perving on each other. Of all things, Ginny just wants Luna to be able to feel completely safe and comfortable somewhere.

"Are you frying mushrooms?" Luna asks, sniffing the air and then mulling it over like she's tasting a fancy wine. "And... zucchini fritters?"

"And there are hash browns in the oven," Ginny grins. Hash browns are Luna's favourite.

"Oh, thank you!" Luna claps her hands together enthusiastically. "I'll set the table. How many of us are here?"

"Harry, Nev, and Ron, at last count," Ginny replies. "Seamus is at Dean's—don't know why he doesn't just move in, but whatever—and Hermione's with her parents for the weekend."

Luna gathers up five mismatched plates and five sets of slightly-to-very bent cutlery.

"Do you want some of the nice coffee from Zabini's?" she asks once she's laid them around the table. "I feel like a morning walk, and I want to tell Blaise and Greg hello."

Ginny groans at the thought. "Fuck, yes please. You're a treasure."

"I'll be back in a jiff, then!"

Once Luna's left, Gin opens the curtains a little wider to compensate for the sudden loss of brightness in the room.

• Have a snack

"Want another liquorice wand?" Ginny offers, holding the box out from where she's sprawled across the couch to where Luna's sprawled somewhat more elegantly across the shag pile rug. Her legs are kicked up behind her as she lies on her front, reading the latest Quibbler.

"No thanks. Harry's helping Ron cook tonight, so I'm saving my appetite."

Ginny takes another wand for herself before she puts the box down. "It's still Ron," she snorts. "I'm not betting all of my hunger on his culinary skills. Not one of us inherited Mum's."

"I rather liked Ron's mozzarella and lettuce frittata," Luna says thoughtfully.

Ginny sticks her tongue out in disgust. "If you can call that oozing mess a frittata."

"He was very careful not to burn it."

Ginny can't help but smile. "You're too nice," she says.

She's become very used to saying this. Living with a horde of boys isn't easy, and living with Hermione isn't much better. Living with Ginny herself can be tough, she knows. But Luna always has something kind to say. Some way of half-filling a glass the contents of which have been spilt all over the scratched old coffee-brown floorboards.

"Everyone here is nice," Luna counters. "You're very nice, Ginny. I know sometimes you're not sure if you are. But you're my best friend and I wouldn't want to live anywhere else."

"You're my best friend too."

It's good, what they have. Really good. Even if Ginny doesn't get to kiss Luna the way she's always tempted to do, doesn't get to wrap herself around Luna in bed and run her hands all over her. She can't be ungrateful.

• Drink coffee

Ginny didn't like going into Zabini's at first. It was weird, buying her coffee from former Slytherins. Who knew what they might slip into it?

Their coffee really is good, though. Blaise's summers in Italy taught him a thing or two, and the first time he scribbled Jimmy on the side of Ginny's latte cup did a fairly good job at breaking the ice between them. He's a hilarious motherfucker, acting all suave and dignified when he's actually a big dork who gets much too excited about his blends. Ginny has been force-fed far too many of them to count.

"Nope," she says, making a face as she swallows the latest one. She's already forgotten what he said it was. It tastes a bit like hangover potion, in Ginny's opinion. "I hate it. Give me my milky vanilla syrup abomination, coffee man." She makes grabby hands at the large takeaway cup he's already prepared for her.

He sighs theatrically, says something about how his fine goods are wasted on her, and hands it over.

"Is that Ginny?" Greg's voice comes from in back, behind the racks of crusty bread. He emerges, covered in flour. "Sorry, had to get the scones out of the oven before I came to chat."

"Ooh, scones. What flavour?" Luna asks.

"Flour," answers Greg with a challenging look.

Gregory Goyle is a man who bakes by the book, but this doesn't seem to bother Luna. She's as excited about plain scones as she'd be about some inventive flavour. Especially when they're Greg's scones. Greg's scones are really fucking good.

"Reckon we could get any of those?" Ginny puts on her seductive-persuasive voice.

It'd never actually work on Greg, who is biannual-antiquing-holidays levels of gay, and spoken for by Harry's ex-bastard Muggle cousin of all people, but the overtness of it does always turn him a bit pink in the face.

"Might have some spares," he says, and then holds up the hand that's previously been hidden behind the counter. In it, he's already got a brown paper parcel from which wafts a stronger concentration of the heavenly fresh-baked scent that fills the whole shop. He lays a tiny sample pot of homemade jam on the counter too.

Since they're well equipped for a picnic in the park across the road, that's where they go.

"I've been meaning to ask," Ginny says, emboldened by the first flush of caffeine through her, "you know how you're always saying gender isn't real?"

"I certainly do. Nargles and Dabberblimps yes; gender no. I'm afraid people made that one up."

"Right. Well, I was wondering if people can be kind of... both genders. Just from time to time. For instance. Do you always feel like a girl?"

Luna chews the mouthful of scone she's taken. They reach their favourite park bench and sit down. Ginny loves the way Luna's ankles tangle with hers as they sit with their knees tilted inward towards one another.

"People can be whatever genders they feel like," says Luna eventually. "Personally, I don't mind what people think of me as. I'm not very attached to the idea of being a woman or a man. I'm only attached to being me."

"So if someone called you 'he', you wouldn't be offended by that?"

"Not at all. It's just another pronoun. He is as good as she is as good as they—and there are some other pronouns too, though most people find it easiest to stick with the familiar ones."

Ginny mulls over the idea of other pronouns. Clearly people have thought this through before, if they've come up with ways of getting around having to call someone he or she. It's not just Luna being an individual; it's something that, maybe, less fearlessly creative people could do too.

"Sometimes I want to think of you as he," Ginny says. It's strange, confessing it. She takes another long sip of coffee. "Some days, or weeks, or even just moments, it seems to fit slightly better."

"You can call me he, then, if you like."

"Okay." Ginny is overcome with the strange urge to thank Luna, so she does.

"What about you?" Luna asks, looking right at Gin with those big, round, earnest eyes that make her feel naked. Not in a humiliating way, and not in a sexy way either. More like a... streaking down a deserted, windy beach into the waves kind of way. It unlocks her somehow, when she and Luna have their full attention trained on each other.

"Huh?"

"Is there something you'd prefer me to call you?"

Luna is very patient.

Ginny's heart is racing. She doesn't want to lie and say she's happy being she. But she doesn't know yet whether the idea of being something else is realistic for her. What would people think if she told them? What would her Mum say?

Luna lays her hand gently on Ginny's knee, and she breaks like a cracked dam.

"I don't feel like a woman," she whispers. "I never felt like a girl either, really. Not like I wanted to be one, anyway. But I don't want to be a man either, so I don't really know what to say I am. I'm not cool about it like you are. It always... it aches a bit when people get me wrong."

Luna's hand leaves her knee and rises to tilt her chin upwards. Ginny hadn't realised she'd dropped away from Luna's gaze, staring blankly between the slats in the park bench to the patch of dirt and cigarette butts beneath.

"What about 'they'?" Luna suggests. "Sometimes people think it's confusing, that it makes you sound like multiple people, but I like it. It's nice and neutral and it's a word everybody already understands."

They. It makes Ginny think of a name she can't place as either masculine or feminine, or someone she hasn't a name for at all—an "oh, I'd love to meet your friend, will they be coming to the Christmas party?" It's an interesting space, that. Pre-certainty, before she knows how to categorise someone. It makes Ginny uncomfortable to know that she does that, even when she doesn't like it being done to her.

"I can try using they and them for you if you'd like, just to see how it feels?"

Ginny nods. "I really have no idea what to expect," she confesses.

Luna shifts closer on the bench, so that the whole lengths of their thighs press together, and rests her head in the crook of Gin's neck.

"You don't have to know yet; that's why you feel it out."

Gin wraps an arm around Luna's shoulders, tangling her fingers in loose bits of blonde hair. She can do this, she thinks. She can do it if it's Luna doing it with her.

• Understand yourself

Ginny doesn't have a computer of their own, but Harry keeps his on a desk in one of the common rooms, and he always lets them borrow it. Gin steals a chair from the dining table and seats themself in front of the screen, waiting for it to finish its flashy start-up sequence, picking impatiently at the edges of the clicky buttons on the mouse.

They do a little searching, though the internet here is horribly slow they've never enjoyed doing research, computerised or otherwise. If they decide they want to really pursue this topic, they'll have to ask Hermione whether she'd like to look some things up for them. Ginny does find a few pages that back up what Luna's said, though: people using words like "genderqueer", although still most of the discussion centres around men who grew up being called girls, and women who were raised to be boys. The in-between is less acknowledged, but it does exist—a space that goes around and between these two options, like the sea surrounding two islands. When they think of it that way, it's easier to believe there's no reason they have to make their home on either one of them. They can swim, after all.

Gin and Luna are just taking a loaf of banana bread out of the oven when Harry comes into the kitchen and begins the process of spilling over-milked, over-sugared tea all over the bench.

"That smells really good," he says as he shuffles around getting his ingredients.

Harry has a lot of at-home days. Pyjama days where he pretends he's invisible and doesn't have to act like a person. It's how he recharges, Gin's figured out. They don't understand, personally, because they've always found that spending some energy is the best way to gain some more, but there are more destructive ways of coping. Putting giant marshmallows and chocolate frogs in the microwave, for instance. Gin loves Seamus, but they really won't be crying too hard when he finally ditches the share house to shack up with his boyfriend.

"Want some, Harry?" Luna offers, because she's just a good person like that.

"Oh, no, it's not finished yet," Harry murmurs, but he looks longingly at the bloody cake tin.

"It's finished, you pillock," Ginny says, grabbing a knife to hack off the end of the still very soft banana bread, then summoning a plate to put it on. The plate glances off the edge of the benchtop and the three of them wince in unison, but it doesn't chip, and all's well that ends well.

"Thanks Gin, thanks Luna," Harry smiles.

"Hey," Ginny asks before he can escape back into his hermit cave, "do you want to come to the park with us? Get a bit of sun?"

"Yes! That's a lovely idea," Luna enthuses. "And Gin was saying they might go flying, too. You two could keep each other company in the air since I don't like the way brooms' magics affect my aura at this time of year."

It's started to feel natural to Ginny, but when Harry pauses, they freeze.

"Who might go flying?" Harry furrows his brow.

"Me."

"Yeah, but who are you going with?"

"Just Ginny," Luna takes over. Ginny can feel their hands shaking just a little bit. They set the knife back down on the bench before they can drop it into the top of their bare foot, or anything. "And you, if you'd like to join them."

"Them?" Harry repeats. His brows take a questioning leap up his forehead as he turns to Ginny.

"I'm, er, trying something out," Ginny explains. Merlin, they shouldn't feel like their whole body is vibrating just having a conversation in the kitchen with their sleepy, reclusive dork of a housemate, and yet here they are. "A different pronoun. Luna suggested it, because I— because I don't really like it when people think of me as a girl."

"Oh," Harry says, a bit dumbly. He visibly turns the concept over in his head for a minute.

Gin's never been so terrified, somehow—not even when they were at war with curses flying left and right, and the likes of Bellatrix Lestrange coming after them. War was impossibly hard, but it was also easy; fighting Voldemort and the Death Eaters Ginny knew what the right thing to do was, and nobody that mattered to them judged them for doing it. This, though... the thought that the people they care about might not want to know them the way they want to be known... it's a very different kind of scary.

"Okay," Harry concludes. "Do you still like to be called Gin?"

"Yeah," says Ginny. "'Course. That's my name."

"I just meant... well, it's a girl's name, isn't it?"

Ginny has decided how they feel about this already, luckily. "It's my name," they say firmly. "That means it's whatever gender I am."

"What gender are you?" Harry asks, sounding a bit more awake and alive now that he's curious. "If you don't mind me asking."

Gin shrugs. "I reckon my gender is not having a gender. If man and woman are islands then I'm the sea."

"Right. I guess that makes sense," Harry says, a bit dubiously, but no more so than when he accepts some explanation of charms theory from Hermione that's going to take a few hours longer to really sink into his brain.

"You're okay with it?" Gin doesn't really want to ask this, doesn't want to create an opening for disagreement, but they have to know.

"I love you, Gin," Harry says. "You know that, yeah? So if the sea's who you are then I love that."

Ginny can't help flinging their arms around Harry's shoulders. His mug rains sticky liquid and then red china across the kitchen tiles all around them both.

• Pet cats

Ginny, Luna and Harry are lying on a tartan mat under a tree, watching the busy people who cut across the grass to get from one bordering street to the other. They wear suits, mostly, although some are dressed for jogging. It's lunchtime, so all the office workers are getting their precious hour of fresh air.

Gin's glad they're going into Quidditch when the next season starts up. They'll never be short on air.

"Hello pretty." Luna's cooing interrupts Gin's reverie.

They turn their head to see Luna petting one of the least pretty cats they have ever seen. Its absurdly fluffy white fur has leaves and twigs caught in it, and its shrouded facial features are small and squished-looking. It purrs deeply when Luna scratches it—so that, at least, Ginny finds a bit endearing.

"Tiffany!" someone yells. "You're supposed to be the responsible one you grumpy ball of mattress stuffing, get back here!"

Ginny has a suspicion that the squashy cat's name is Tiffany. It fits, somehow. The creature looks prissy and spoiled.

When they look up and find none other than Pansy Parkinson looming over them, glaring at the white furball, Gin knows they're right.

"Parkinson," Harry's saying.

"Potter."

At least Gin doesn't have to be the centre of attention when it comes to snooty ex-Slytherins. Poor Harry makes a nice buffer—although Gin did befriend Blaise all by themself.

"Pansy," Luna says, much more mildly. "How are you? I assume she's yours. She's very lovely."

"Lovegood. Yes, that's Theophania. Don't let her near your food; she has the appetite of a dog but the constitution of a faerie."

"Fae are actually capable of digesting a wide range of substances which would be poisonous to most other creatures," Luna says.

"Don't feed my cat, Lovegood."

Theophania—Tiffany—wanders away from Luna soon enough anyway, evidently bored of her petting. Stuck-up little thing, Gin thinks, and then hopes to Merlin they're not jealous of Pansy Parkinson's cat.

Tiffany rubs up against the legs of Parkinson's trousers—jeans, Ginny notices with interest—and is joined by two more cats: one of those hairless ones that look like house elves, and a bony-looking one with a straw-gold coat and deep scratch-scars that run precariously close to its eyes.

"Are they all yours?" Ginny asks.

The hairless one loses interest in Parkinson's ankles and stalks over towards Gin. They put a hand out, beckoning it. It's a very weird little thing, but Ginny finds they really want to know what it feels like to touch.

"Yes, they are," Parkinson replies. "That one's Acantha. I wouldn't pick her up, Weasley. She will claw you. She can smell Gryffindors."

"The emblem of Gryffindor is a cat," Ginny points out, and bends down to rub their thumb across the brainlike surface of Acantha's head heedless of Parkinson's warning. Acantha hisses and Gin decides to make it a quick pat, but they get away with it nonetheless, tossing a smug look at Parkinson afterwards.

"This old lady," Parkinson reaches down to pick up the golden cat with the scars, "is Sekhmet. She's a purebred kneazle, unlike the other two. I nearly named her Potter when I took her in, but the poor thing didn't deserve such an awful fate no matter how rude and messy she is."

Harry makes an indignant noise, and Gin starts to wonder whether they're going to have to break up a fight before Harry's irritation morphs into laughter.

"You really almost named you cat after me, Parkinson?" he asks.

Parkinson rolls her eyes, but she's caught, and she doesn't deny it.

"Purebred kneazle, not cat. The scars on her face reminded me of someone."

"I've been thinking I'd like to get a cat myself, actually," Harry says, much to Ginny's surprise. "If my housemates are okay with it, or I move, or something."

"And what, you're going to name yours Potter too? Such vanity."

"Maybe I'll name it Pansy."

"You wouldn't dare."

"I might if the cat's mean enough."

While Harry and Parkinson bicker, Tiffany and Acantha drift back over towards Luna. Ginny shuffles closer as well. Acantha climbs over Ginny's legs with her piercing claws out, while Tiffany curls up on top of one of their (thankfully closed) lunch containers.

"I'd like to have cats in the house," Luna says.

She looks so happy getting Tiffany's white hairs all over her navy stockings that Gin can't help but agree it'd be nice to have this all the time.

• Gossip a little

"Do you keep in touch with Pansy Parkinson?" Ginny asks Blaise.

It's a quiet morning, so he's sipping his own coffee and leaning lazily against the counter.

"Haven't heard much from her since school," Blaise shakes his head. "She's been in France with Draco for a couple of years."

It's shockingly satisfying to be able to offer gossip on Blaise's own schooltime housemates, and Ginny grins slyly into their coffee before saying: "Not anymore."

"Do you keep in touch with Pansy?" Blaise asks, his dark brows lifted, creasing his smooth dark forehead right up to the neatly trimmed edges of his short, fuzzy hair. He's a pretty man, Gin's thought since the first time they came into Zabini's, the first time they really noticed him. While Gin isn't sure that pretty men are what they're looking for now, they can imagine a past version of themself developing quite a crush.

"Definitely not," Gin laughs at the ludicrous suggestion. "But I saw her in the park yesterday, walking her cats and kneazle. Luna and Harry were there too; they can back me up on it."

Blaise stares hard at them, interrogating, and Ginny stares back.

"You're not kidding?" asks Blaise, finally. A bit of the usual joviality is gone from his eyes, and his mouth is a tense line. Gin doesn't like it.

"If we see her again we'll march her over here in a body-bind if we have to," they promise, and Blaise offers a weak smile in response.

It's only later, once Ginny's home, that they realise it's possible that, since they've been living abroad together, Pansy Parkinson's reappearance also signals the return of Draco Malfoy to England.

• Receive visitors

Parkinson's grizzled old kneazle reminds Ginny very much of Crookshanks; it's the cleverness, the constant air of hostility. The opportunism. This is what Ginny notices the most when Sekhmet follows them in through the front door as they return from their morning run.

"What the hell?" they ask the kneazle, which for all they know probably does understand them perfectly well. It hurries away from them when they reach down to grab it, scampering through into the living room.

Luna's there, draped in oversized, mismatched flannel pyjamas. Luna seems very in between today, transitory, hovering somewhere between masculine and feminine as if waiting to see which way they fall in the end. They're reading, one leg tucked up under their butt on the settee while the other taps an erratic rhythm against the floor.

"Oh! Hello there," they say when Sekhmet bolts in their direction and leaps up onto the seat beside them. "You're really not supposed to be on the lounge, but I suppose if you sit on me then it doesn't count."

"Luna," Ginny groans, but even their frustration comes out affectionate.

"I'll Scourgify everything after," Luna promises, and Gin can't really see a problem with that, they suppose.

"Fine, but if Neville gets allergic you're paying for the extra fifty boxes of tissues. Budge over," they drop down onto the couch next to Luna.

"You're all sweaty," Luna points out.

Gin shrugs. "You're Scourgifying the couch."

When Sekmet exhibits no desire to leave, Ginny begrudgingly suggests they contact Parkinson. They draft a very brief letter and ask Guin, the house owl, to deliver it to her wherever she is.

About twenty minutes later there are six heavy, impatient raps of the doorknocker.

"I'll get it," says Ginny, since Luna's really absorbed in their obscure magazine of the week.

"Lovely," Luna mumbles, clearly not processing.

Sure enough, Pansy Parkinson is on their doorstep. She looks a bit haggard, a bit puffy under the eyes, Ginny thinks.

"Come in, I suppose," Gin says, stepping aside and ushering her into the foyer.

Parkinson sweeps an appraising eye over everything as she makes her way through to where Luna and Sekhmet are settled on the couch. Ginny watches her cataloguing the house plants, the rescue furniture, the homemade lampshades, the dog-eared quidditch posters on the walls, the dried flowers in amorphous mosaic vases.

"What incredibly lesbian lives you two lead," Parkinson says dryly.

That familiar itch creeps across Ginny's skin as they wonder whether it's worth correcting Parkinson. Worth the effort of it.

"We're not lesbians," Luna says before they've come to a decision. "Gin's not a girl. There isn't a gender that fits them." Luna sets their magazine down on the slightly uneven little table next to the couch.

Ginny doesn't know whether Parkinson is assuming they're lesbians together or not—but Luna doesn't seem concerned with ensuring she realises they're not together. Gin's not going to clarify either. They'd much rather live in this moment, in which someone believes Gin and Luna are a couple, and Gin can pretend it's true too.

"Oh," Parkinson says slowly. "To each their own, I suppose. I don't pretend to understand much of this mad world these days."

"We're not mad," Ginny steps in front of Luna. They had quite enough of the Loony Lovegood jibes long ago, and there's no way Parkinson's coming into their house only to pull the exact same shit. "We're just as sane as you are."

Parkinson looks hard at Ginny for a moment, soaking up their angry glare, and then cracks up laughing. "Merlin help you, then," she cackles. "If that's true then I'm terribly sorry to say you both lost your minds years ago."

"Laugh all you want. But don't come into our house and insult us both."

Parkinson looks like she means to argue, but the air leaves her suddenly and she sags. Her face looks grey and tired.

"Yes. I really shouldn't," she sighs. "I didn't mean to accuse you in particular of madness, just... never mind. Th- thanks for finding Sekhmet. I was worried—not that she was lost, you know, she's far too clever for that—but I thought—well, maybe she'd finally come to her senses or something,"

Ginny frowns. Beside them, they can see Luna doing the same.

"Would you like a cup of tea?" they offer.

"Have you got any coffee?" Parkinson asks.

Gin goes to check the cupboards, but it looks like Neville's mixed the last of it into the soil around a weird caffeine-addicted plant he's just acquired. It is at least printed on the shopping list in Neville's large, rounded letters.

"Nope," they declare. "We can go to the café, though."

Parkinson agrees, and the four of them proceed to Zabini's as she mutters under her breath about "Gryffindor hospitality". (Apparently this applies not only to former Gryffindors but also anyone who spends time around them, and so catches Luna as well.)

Blaise greets them all with cups of sample coffee. Parkinson takes one eagerly and tips it back, actually seeming to enjoy it.

"Not bad, Zabini," she says. "You could be a bit more generous with the portions, though."

"Not my portion," Ginny puts in with some urgency.

"I'll just have camomile, please," says Luna.

Blaise performs his customary eye roll. "Heathens," he says. "It's good to have someone with taste around at last, even if she has neglected to contact me in any way for almost a year and only come to visit when dragged in by—" he eyes Sekhmet, who's circling Parkinson's ankles, "the literal cat."

"Don't start," Parkinson snaps.

"I don't know what I could possibly be starting."

"How about we head off?" Luna whispers in Ginny's ear. Their hand slips into Ginny's, and Gin nods, ready to do whatever Luna wants so long as they don't let go of their hand.

• Dispel doubts

"Do you think Parkinson thought we were a couple?" Ginny asks as they pick through bits of broken kitchenware and start arranging them into the first stretch of a little garden path. Ginny passes Luna the yellow and brown pieces whenever they come across them; Luna kindly forwards the blue ones to Ginny for the patch of sky-inspired tiling they're working on.

"Maybe," says Luna. "Does it bother you?"

"No," says Gin. And they're not lying, really—it doesn't bother them in the slightest that someone might think they're with Luna. That's fine—brilliant, even. It does bother them that this can be thought about them when they don't get to live in the wonderful truth it would be.

This afternoon there's a distinct masculine energy about Luna. When Ginny told him this he simply nodded wisely and said, "that makes sense," though Gin doesn't know whether that's because of the Nargles or the stars or what.

"Ugh, I wish that spotty plate was one of the ones we've broken," Ginny says, shifting some mug pieces around, trying to place the curved ones as flatly as possible. "It'd make for the perfect gradient in this bit."

"I can go and smash it for you," Luna offers.

"Better not," Ginny grins. "But I think I'll serve Neville his dinner on it tonight just in case."

"That's nice of you. He'll feel much better about things if he drops it and you can tell him you wanted it to be dropped anyway," says Luna, once again crediting Gin with more generosity than their motives actually involve.

"Does it bother you if people think we're together?"

"Why would it?"

"I don't know, the same reasons you thought it might bother me?"

Luna shakes his head and streaks a bit of soil through his long hair as he raises his hand straight from playing with mosaics in the dirt to comb through it.

"No," he says, firmly. "I thought maybe you'd want to date someone, and them thinking you were with me could get in the way. But almost everything I'd want to do with a partner I already do with you. I'm perfectly happy like that."

Gin's head spins a bit. They try to keep rummaging through the bag of bits, but they keep forgetting what the colour blue even looks like. They only remember when they look at the colour of Luna's eyes—and as a consequence the sky they're laying out starts to turn greyer to match, like there's a storm arriving although the moon is still beaming brightly behind the clouds.

"What more would you want to do with a partner?" Gin asks, before they can stop themself. "What can't I give you?"

Luna stops and looks at them, and Ginny's thrown off by the singular focus of his attention. It's not usually how he works.

"It'd be quite nice to have someone I could have sex with," he says candidly. "Someone to kiss. I do enjoy kissing."

Ginny can't help but wonder who Luna's kissed before, and when, and how, and— and why these people weren't them. Maybe it's literally because they never asked.

"You don't want to do that with me, though?" Ginny asks nervously.

They can be as brave as the next Gryffinor, but they've never felt as fearless as Luna. The difference is really very significant; Ginny has always been so conscious of expectations, beholden to them even while they set out to defy them. Luna isn't bound in this way. Luna just lives according to his own standard like it's simply the way of things, rather than a revolutionary act.

"I didn't think you wanted to do that with me," Luna replies. And there's...

There's something hiding in his voice that isn't usually there. Something that suddenly seems to mirror Ginny's own feelings, their own hesitance. Like Luna really didn't think Ginny would want him like that, like he too was just insecure enough not to come out and ask. Like he's been conscious of what Ginny thought of him all along, even if everyone else's opinions slide off him like water off a duck's back.

"Do you... do you want me to want it?" Ginny asks.

"Want to go to the cinema with me tomorrow night?" says Luna, like that's an answer to Gin's question.

"Like a date?"

"Do you want it to be a date?"

Ginny scowls. "You can't flip it on me like that. You're a schemer, Luna Lovegood; you may fool most people but not me."

Luna sighs. "I'd like it to be a date if you'd like it to be," he says. "But if you don't, then please don't feel like I- like we can't still..."

"Lu," Ginny says, so unsettled by the display of anxiety that their own disappears beneath the need to fix it. They reach out with one of their grubby hands and leave a smudge along the edge of Luna's face, across his lower cheek and jaw. "Yes."

• Have fun

The film Luna's chosen is called The Road to El Dorado, and Ginny is thoroughly enjoying themself. This isn't always guaranteed when Luna's choosing (especially when they're going somewhere that shows foreign films. Reading subtitles tends to give Ginny a headache, make them fall asleep, or both).

Also enjoyable is the way Luna laughs, loud and carefree. Sometimes she laughs along with the rest of the crowd in response to a joke that resonates, but this isn't always the case. Movie nights with her have reduced Gin's instinctive cringe at making noise in an otherwise hushed theatre.

They buy huge buckets of popcorn, and smuggle in thermoses of hot chocolate without magically concealing them, because the thrill is so much better doing it the Muggle way. About halfway through, Luna's head tilts down onto Ginny's shoulder, that soft golden hair tickling the bare skin of Ginny's arm below the sleeve of their t-shirt. Gin wonders whether this is the moment to tilt their head just so and initiate a kiss—but Luna keeps laughing at the movie, eyes dancing with the reflections of the bright animated shapes, and it seems wrong to interrupt.

They walk home, wands ready in the sleeves of their jackets (if Luna's large knitted shawl thing counts as a jacket). It's early yet, and people are still arriving at the restaurants they go past. They stop for gelato even though it's chilly; Ginny orders mango, and Luna combines green tea with passionfruit.

There's a park—more a patch of grass between streets, really, but there's a bench there, and some trees and struggling flowerbeds. The pair of them wander through it slowly, licking at their desserts, making wild guesses about the lives of the people who pass them by, and giving sympathetic attention to the wilted flowers. Luna slides her wand out, nods for Gin to stand guard and then risks breaking the Statute of Secrecy to cheer the little plants up, adjusting their soil and providing water to those that need it. It's just so fucking Luna that Ginny can't pretend anymore.

"I'm kind of dying to kiss you," they confess. It doesn't matter that it's awkward—they're restless inside their skin with wanting it now now now and will stumble clumsily towards the goal if that's the only way to reach it. They really don't know how they've waited this long. They've been friends with Luna for years—but now it's something they might actually be able to do, and it's as if a switch has flipped.

"I'm pleased to hear that," says Luna, tongue darting out over her pale pink lips, presently flavoured with green tea.

Ginny draws closer.

"Can I...?" they ask.

Luna darts forward and presses herself up against Ginny, only narrowly avoiding a chest covered in mango gelato. She wraps the hand not holding her now-dripping waffle cone around the back of Ginny's neck and pulls them in.

She tastes, as expected, like sweet, cold green tea gelato.

• Love and be loved (an epilogue of sorts)

There have never been more chairs around the table at the Burrow, and it's clear that Molly is loving it. Luna swings her legs off the high stool she's borrowed from one of the cupboards, enjoying the way its uneven legs make it rock beneath her. From this perch she can look down at the tops of the heads of nearly everyone else at the table (Bill is still a bit tall, and Arthur, George and Angelina are simply too far away).

"Has everyone got a plate?" Molly calls over the raucous chatter that fills the room.

"I haven't," Pansy calls back, unafraid to match the Weasley clan for volume. She's overcome her anxieties about being around Gryffindors quickly, Luna's pleased to say.

Molly floats (with some force; Luna would personally go so far as to say she flings) a plate high over the table towards Pansy. Ginny extends an arm in front of Pansy, though, and snatches the plate out of the air before Pansy can catch it. Their reflexes have always been admirably sharp. Luna likes that in a person. The ability to respond easily, to adapt. She knows Ginny has adapted to a lot lately.

"Oi, Gin," Ron says loudly from a few seats away, leaning past Hermione to look at his sibling. "What was Blaise's excuse this time?"

Ginny lets out one of their beautiful, wild laughs. They're such happy sounds, with just a hint of danger underneath, as though they're always thinking up a diabolical plan in the back of their mind.

"He said he had to go to Paris for macarons. Too delicate to ship via vanishing cabinet, he claims. Draco backed him up, of course."

"As if he needs Parisian macarons," Pansy rolls her eyes. "He works with Greg! Poor thing must be mortally offended by it all."

Greg is too engrossed in a discussion with Neville to hear himself being discussed. Harry and Dudley are arguing about something just across from them, and Weasley-Delacour kids are squealing and mashing food beside them, so there's a fairly solid wall of noise to divide them.

"I'm sure he doesn't take it too personally," Luna muses. She knows Greg is confident in what he likes, nowadays. "He probably just told Blaise he's an idiot."

"Hope so," Pansy raises her glass to that, even though it's only filled with water.

"Reckon Malfoy's the real reason he hasn't given in and come along to lunch here yet," says Ron. "The harder Harry tries to get the old git to join us the harder he refuses."

"Speaking of idiots," Ginny grins. "Should we take bets on how long they'll take to get it together?"

"We started making those bets in fifth year, Weasley," says Pansy. "We can negotiate your late entry to the pool if you'd like."

"Food's ready!" Molly narrates the arrival of about twelve huge platters laden with all kinds of beautiful-looking pastries, decadent salads, roast potatoes. It all smells divine. She's observed Molly's kitchen practices a few times to try and learn, but Luna's never been great at following recipes. She thinks Molly likes that she shows an interest, though; Luna always gets to indulge her feminine side when she's around Gin's mum. Molly may not have given birth to any daughters, but she's collected several from all over the place and made them all feel welcome.  

Surprisingly, it's Pansy who Molly likes having in the kitchen the most. Pansy is a good cook—apparently her parents had once put her on a diet by forbidding the house elves to make her any snacks outside of mealtimes. They hadn't thought to forbid their daughter from ordering several dozen recipe books, buying ingredients, and using the kitchen herself, however. Pansy's strawberry panna cotta is one of the best things Luna's ever tasted; she especially likes to eat it with mint fairy floss, which is one of her own specialties.

Luna likes to watch while everyone jumps to load up their plates. Their enthusiasm is invigorating—and there's always so much food that there's no danger of Luna missing out by being patient.

Still she looks down to find that Gin has tipped several spoons of her favourite potato salad onto her plate, and is cutting her a generous slice of the leek tart.

"Thanks," Luna smiles. She's so happy to have Ginny—she always has been, since they first met at Hogwarts and Ginny didn't care that Luna was unusual in the same way that most other people did. But now Gin knows just how much Luna loves them, and to Luna's delight, she is loved by them just as much.

Neville smashes the first plate as he darts out of his seat in effort to get closer to the gigantic pie up the far end of the table and trips over one of Dudley's feet in the process.

Hermione vanishes the mess in a flash, and performs a swift Reparo on the plate. It holds (the plate clearly hasn't been broken as many times as most of the ones at home have) and Neville takes it back, throwing a sheepish "Sorry" at Molly and Arthur, who are already waving away his concern.

"Don't you worry about it, son," says Arthur. "Though if we could perhaps leave the next one broken, I'd appreciate the chance to try out my new hot glue gun."

"Don't do it until I'm finished linking the pensieve to the video camera, Dad! If I don't get the memory in the right format I might not be able to add it to my compilation of hilarious home videos!"

"There will be nothing hilarious about it," Molly says firmly.

George only grins. "That's what you said about the leaf blower."

Luna's attention is returned to her immediate vicinity by a tapping on her side, just over her ribs. Ginny's prodding her with an insistent finger.

"Want some grape juice?" they ask, raising the carafe of sparkling, pale golden liquid up to illustrate.

"Yes please," Luna holds out her cup. There's still some butterbeer in the bottom of it, and she thinks the combination has the potential to be marvellous. "Thank you."

"Got to watch out for my girlfriend or she'll go hungry in a place like this," Ginny winks, and passes the juice on to Hermione.

"I'd be fine," says Luna, "but I like that you care about me."

"So much," Ginny nods, and their smile is suddenly private and intense. They lean over to take Luna's hand and kiss the back of it gently, since Luna is too high above Ginny's chair for a kiss on the lips. Luna likes hand kisses, anyway. They're super underrated, as Gin puts it. They make her feel like she's special, important, almost like royalty. A prince or princess, as the mood takes her.

"You lovebirds make me sick," Pansy says, through a mouthful of spinach. She doesn't look very sick to Luna. She looks quite content, casting her eyes to the floor every so often when Crookshanks and Sekhmet sneak into the room ready to make mischief together.

Ginny looks equally content, surrounded by their ever-extending family and the friends they've inducted along the way—Luna is certain that her own aura must be as bright as anyone's here, she's so happy. Everybody knows who Luna is, here, and nobody's tried to change any of it. They know the same about Gin. And everybody thinks they're a couple now, and everybody's right.