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When Luna Weasley is born, she is called her mother’s golden girl. She’s the baby and the favorite and with six older brothers, she does the only logical thing.
She hides.
She loves to run through the nearby forest, giving names to everything she sees, and when she can’t be outside she gives names to everything she dreams. It’s on one of these journeys that she runs into Ginny Lovegood.
***
When Ginny Lovegood is nine, she watches her mother die. She doesn’t say much after that. Nothing polite anyway. She learns every hex and jinx she can get her hands on.
She fights.
She sticks close to her father and to herself and to the wild lands. She runs until she learns how to fly (her father can’t help but buy her a broom when she asks). And it’s when she’s zooming around one day that she meets Luna Weasley.
***
When she gets to Hogwarts, Luna watches as Ginny gets sorted into Slytherin. That makes sense, she thinks. Need to prove herself, clever and cunning. She’s a little disappointed when she finds herself in Ravenclaw, missing her best friend and her myriad brothers for the first time in her life.
She doesn’t quite fit in there, though, she thinks she wouldn’t fit in anywhere. And she doesn’t find that she misses her brothers quite so much when her things go missing and almost immediately come back.
***
When Luna starts spending more and more time writing in a diary, most people chalk it up to a shy girl away from home for the first time. Ginny notices; Luna’s withdrawn, sure, but she doesn’t write: she draws, she sings. So Ginny tells Ron, and Ron tells Harry and Hermione, and Hermione tells McGonagall.
And later, “You saved my life,” Luna tells Ginny, and squeezes her hand from where she lays in an infirmary bed. Ginny smiles and nods and wonders if she has a thing for people who have gone toe-to-toe with Voldemort and survived.
***
When Dumbledore’s Army starts recruiting, Luna notices as Ginny joins--one of the only Slytherins to do so. She vouches for the scarlet-haired girl to Harry and her brother, and lines up to practice dueling with her.
Luna doesn’t quite see what Ginny hits her with, but her legs can’t move, and she topples onto a cushion. “Are you alright?” the other girl worries.
Luna nods. “I’m glad you didn’t hold back; can you teach me that?” Ginny grins and repeats the words of the curse.
***
When Harry asks for volunteers to go to the Ministry, Ginny shows up without a second thought. When Bellatrix Lestrange calls her a traitor, she just spits in the older witch’s face and keeps fighting, hard and dirty.
When Luna goes down, she nearly loses her concentration and instead loses control, flinging a dozen curses all around her. She lights something on fire that probably shouldn’t be burning. And, improbably, she survives.
“Are you okay?” she asks Luna, shaking her back to consciousness. The dreamy smile is the best thing Ginny’s ever seen.
***
When Bill and Fleur send out invitations, Luna asks for one. Bill shrugs but indulges her--she may have gotten along with Charlie best, but Bill has a lifetime of spoiling younger siblings worth of experience.
She promptly Floos Ginny. “Would you like to be my plus one?” She holds up the invitation, unburning in the magical flame. “I don’t think too many people will stare,” she offers earnestly.
Ginny shrugs. “Let ‘em.” And Luna favors her with her second-favorite smile.
***
When Ravenclaw plays Slytherin, the two friends naturally place a bet on it. “A dare,” Luna decides. “To be named later. Winner’s choosing.”
“You’ve been spending too much time with your Gryffindor brothers,” Ginny teases.
“Why?” Luna asks, eyes all innocent before turning devilish. “Are you scared?”
“Like hell!” Ginny snorts. And now she has to catch the Snitch--the one good thing Draco had ever done, as far as she was concerned, was lose interest in Quidditch this year--because she has an idea about her dare.
And when Ginny lands, Snitch in hand, Luna meets her out on the pitch. “Kiss me?” she whispers past blonde locks. And Luna does.
***
When Ginny finds her way to the Room of Requirement, a lonely Slytherin banner hangs itself among those of the other guerrillas. Pale arms snake out of the crowd and wrap around her. “You’re alive,” Luna pronounces.
“Yeah,” Ginny says. “Couldn’t do it anymore out there.”
Luna squeezes her hand. “Come on, there’s an empty cot next to mine. You can put down your things.”
Ginny blinks. “Yeah, okay. Just like when we were kids having sleepovers.”
“I thought we might get up to something a little more adult than just braiding and ghost stories, Ginevra,” Luna teases her, and Ginny’s cheeks nearly match the red of her hair.