Theodore Nott knew names and faces, but he didn't really know anyone. He never tried to make friends nor did he want to end up in any group or gang. Silence was his companion and it never let him down or abandoned him. If he bothered to get to know someone, they would repay him by leaving – or dying.
That's what he told himself.
Even after the first three kisses.
The first time they kissed, he didn't even know her real name.
Her blonde locks billowing out behind her like a triumphant banner, her grey eyes distant but content, she swept along the corridor to where Theodore Nott stood. He was with Crabbe and Malfoy (two of the people he most wanted to avoid but had to tolerate anyway) in a smaller archway that every non-Slytherin knew they had no right to pass nor even consider approaching.
Nott noticed her before the others could raise objections. Her waif-like form reminded him of the nymphs he had chased off the Nott gardens just last summer. They had vanished into thin air, their voices carried away on the breeze.
Then Crabbe laughed and pointed. Malfoy looked up and snapped, "What's so funny about her disrespecting our space? Go on, Loony, I bet you'd like to go back to that nice room you have a St. Mungo's. You'd be mental not to."
"There is mistletoe up there," she said, eyebrows jutting together as she frowned at the archway above them.
All three boys looked up to see that she was, indeed, correct. Malfoy scowled when he realised she had distracted him. "Fancy a snog, then? Too bad you're not a mudblood or I'd have better excuse for you than this – I don't want to catch your crazy. What d'you reckon, Nott?"
"She's so out of it, she's not worth the effort, Malfoy," Theodore answered with a sneer directed at his companion ("friend" did not apply). "Save it for the Golden Boy."
Loony had stopped floating towards them but her face remained as blankly cheerful as always. She nodded sagely. "That's a good thought. Harry needs a snog so you really should save it for him."
Malfoy's face fired up faster than a dragon's snout. He hissed, "Come on, Crabbe, Nott. Let's go. She'll get what's coming to her." Crabbe dutifully followed his master – sorry, friend – away and kept up a running laughing track at Draco's oh-so-witty put-downs.
Silvery eyes found Nott and froze him there. He'd fallen ankle-deep in snow whiter than Luna's skin and she was the snow leopard – albeit a gaily humming, now slightly cross-eyed one.
"Mistletoe, you know..." she began and, mid-sentence, rose to her tiptoes and kissed him. Her lips were soft and fleeting, a teasing snowflake moist enough to seek with his tongue – but her touch was soon gone. "...it's very dangerous because of the Nargles. That's why I'm wearing these, you see..."
Nott could be forgiven for not having noticed the radish earrings and the strange bobbing necklace before that moment. He stared at her as she drew away, her eyes releasing him as they trained back on the mistletoe. Her expression became one of skewed mistrust as she eyed the festive decoration. He tried to think of something to say that did not make him sound like a confused fool.
"Oh it looks like your friends are gone," Luna said. "You should warn them about the Nargles."
She ghosted back down the corridor, aimless and slow. Nott would say later that he watched the asset below the small of her back, but honestly he drank in the freedom of her unbound hair and her unhurried gait. She turned and smiled at him.
"I won't tell you if won't," she sang in a hushed voice that barely carried.
"What? That you're just as crazy at Christmas?" Nott snapped, regaining himself.
"Oh no. I meant your secret. But don't worry, only the Dabberblimps can hear my thoughts so you might be safe for now. Have you seen a Dabberblimp? They're hard to spot because their usual form makes them look like reeds..."
And she was gone, hidden by a tapestry that guarded one of the many short-cuts throughout Hogwarts. It must have been an enchanted tapestry, because the stitched apples rolled in their bowl and only settled when the tapestry stilled.
Theodore Nott hurried after his housemates, concocting a story in which he used more insults and less tongue.
The second time they kissed, it was almost a year later.
Theodore was hiding in an unlit stairwell and nothing could keep back the inky night that swept in to smother him. Annoyed and disgusted to know that somewhere the Slug Club was cavorting about and celebrating their lack of convicted fathers, Nott had tried burying his tall frame in the library with his dark-haired head tucked into a book about flobberworms of all things, but Madame Pince had still found him when it became late and shooed him out.
Theodore sat on one of the endless steps, leaning back onto his elbows and forcibly digging his palms into the stone to make himself as uncomfortable as possible.
"I hate you," he sneered at the wall, imagining it was his father instead.
"That's not a very pleasant thing to say to a wall," Loony declared, arriving from nowhere to sit beside him. "Walls are infested with Blibbering Humdingers. They think that anything anyone says near them is meant for them and they speak to each other at night when we're not listening, or even during the day because no one remembers to listen to a wall. So all the Blibbering Humdingers will know you're not very nice."
"And what would be so bad about that?" Nott hazarded. When he glanced at her properly, he saw that she was wearing robes that matched her eyes and her ears were naked of any bizarre decorations. Even in the dark, she shone.
She beamed at him. "They'll make the walls close in, of course."
He snorted. "That's crazy."
"Hogwarts has magic walls," she advised him.
She was right, dammit. It was time to change the subject.
"You look kind of normal tonight, Loony," Nott said, pinching a wrinkle in her robes over her knee before smoothing the material out. "What's the occasion?"
"Oh Harry invited me to the Slug Party. It was a bit fun for a while but then it wasn't. The Gloom Pixies must have been invited too. I think one or two escaped and found you."
He sighed. "No. I'm fair gloomy all on my own."
"And what makes Theodore Nott so gloomy without a Gloom Pixie?" she asked, pressing lines into her robes, apparently taken with the idea of messing up her clothes.
"You know my name," he stated.
"Don't you know your own name?"
"Loony, seriously!" Nott slapped the step beside him forcefully in his agitation, then retracted his hand guiltily, but she seemed unconcerned. "What is your name?"
"Luna."
"Suits you."
His hand covered hers and she continued to add more wrinkles to her outfit even with the weight of his dampening palm. After a while, she piped up, "Would you like to kiss me again? It's written on your face and lips. I should wipe that away before your friends see it, don't you think?"
"Why the hell not."
She tilted to one side and closed her eyes. Shaking his head, he leaned over and let his breath play over her lips. Her face did not even twitch. The kiss was warm and loose and he tasted Butterbeer and garlic on her. It just made sense for the two flavours to dance over his lips and he wondered what it would taste like straight, without her.
Probably not as good as this...
Luna's lips lost interest and he saw that she was looking at the wall.
"So that's totally more riveting than me, I guess," he chortled.
"The Blibbering Humdingers know your secret too now. Maybe you should say some nice things so they don't tell everyone?"
And she was gone again, standing up and disappearing as the steps seemed to rise to block her from view. A flash of neon pink appeared at her ankles but it was too quick to discern if it was pink socks or something more mysterious and strange and her.
The third time they kissed, Nott hated himself for even allowing the moment to happen when so much was going on. They'd just reached Hogwarts for his seventh year and dark uncertainty hung over the wizarding world. The thunderous sky heralding the start of term formed an apt setting for the rows of silent students, their heads bowed as though they were attending a funeral instead of school. Anyone not wearing the silver and green was glared at and whispered about and it was perfectly acceptable.
Luna wore a red cabbage leaf under her school hat, which looked horrible with her Ravenclaw robes and seemed entirely out place with her dreamless, shadowed face. He was glad she stood out – it had been so long since he'd seen her and it shouldn't matter because he couldn't feel anything for a Ravenclaw. Mostly...it felt nice to have a face to look forward to seeing.
He snatched her away into that fourth-floor broom closet when the chance presented itself on the first day of class and she just stood there, the statue of a nymph made of marble. He couldn't even tell if she was unhappy with him or if her sadness was aimed at the world they found themselves in.
"I won't tell if you won't," he parodied and winced at how brusque he sounded.
Luna did smile then and the cast of a dream fell over her face. She let him kiss her and walked outside as though this happened all the time. But it didn't happen all the time. He could have risked more kisses from her, but too many people were always around or it just seemed the wrong time. There would be time for this later. There were bigger things than him and Luna happening. Besides, if something happened to her and he liked her too much, then he would feel pain.
So he decided to protect himself. Just until the wizarding world stabilised. Then he would try to see Luna more often.
Not long after he made that decision, she disappeared.
But that time, she had very unfortunate help in doing so. He should have known this would happen. And it hurt. He hated this feeling. He always had.
Theodore would not see her for a long time.
The last time they kissed, it was infuriatingly polite.
Some years had passed since he had seen her, but he sometimes thought of her. Mostly in an infrequent dream or two and never long enough to make him want to seek her out. And yet there she was in Diagon Alley, hunting intently through the apothecary with a basket looped over her arm. The basket's contents ranged from bright orange hibiscuses to shiny egg-shaped objects.
"Luna," he said against the window. Of course she could not hear, so he went inside and repeated it to her, a quiet incantation that grew with power the more it rolled over in his mind.
"Theodore!" Her face lit up and her blonde hair swished about, revealing the cherries she had tucked into her ears, yet somehow she was still able to hear him.
There was something different about her. Her face looked fuller and, though she was as short against him as ever, she seemed to flash out a sense that she was someone to look up to. Then he saw the piece of silver ribbon looped around the fourth finger on her left hand. He smiled in disbelief and his stomach curdled between a warm glow and an icicle of envy.
"You're married," he accused.
Luna looked down at her hand and beamed. "Rolf wanted to give me a ring out of metal, of course, but it is so inconvenient to keep losing such an expensive ring to Grindylows. They're not the hoarding type, but they do tend to get angry if you poke their eyelids while they're sleeping."
"What, no Dabberblimp?" Nott prompted with a grin.
"They don't exist," Luna said calmly. "It's a shame they don't, but there are so many other wonderful things that I can talk about now. And I have pictures of a lot of them too."
This definitely was not the same girl who had told him he was being unpleasant to a wall. Her smile was not as vacant as he recalled, and she was married. What did he care? It had been years since he'd seen her. If he'd really wanted her that badly, he would never have let her out of his sight.
Right?
"It's too late," he realised, then added at her confused expression, "I should get back to the manor. I'm having...company later."
Luna's eyes cleared from cloudy grey to sparked silver. "Bye, Theodore! Make sure you're nice to your company tonight. They can tell everyone your secrets if you're not nice to them."
How could she know that only cold walls awaited him?
She knows more about me than I do.
"Don't worry, I won't tell," she said seriously.
On her way past him, she stopped and gently dropped a kiss on his cheek, barely grazing the corner of his lips. Then she spilled a few coins in exchange for her wares and sprang out of the shop.
Theodore followed her, but of course she had disappeared, like old times.
He passed a flock of caged, screeching owls. Watching them for a while, Theodore entered and purchased one with unusually shifting silver eyes.
He wrote a short letter and sent it.
Luna,
I never said or did things I probably should have. But I guess you know that. I never found out – what's my secret?
Theodore
Her response came two days later while Nott sat in his empty, spartan dining hall:
You wanted a friend.
Do you want to be my friend, Theodore?
Even if he'd never taken the chance to develop what they'd had before, and even if he wasn't the one she had married, it was something special.
Theodore Nott had a friend. If ever the silence got too much, she was only a floo away. He didn't want to expand his social skills to join Luna's group of friends and she understood that. And eventually, because of how much he'd grown with Luna's help, he would find someone just as special to call his wife.
Theodore would never be alone again.