Chapter Text
That spring would continue to shine, ever vivid and real, a part of Cho.
Back then she was twenty-three, and new-found love illuminated her life's most mundane moments. Like the evening in May when sunshine still reached her bedsit above Quality Quidditch Supplies and she came home to find her flatmate – her partner, yes, amazing as it was – levitating a map and dancing with it around the room.
Some locks of Luna's hair had escaped from the bun held up only by a quill after she'd pulled her wand out of it. While swirling, she didn't avert her wide open eyes from the parchment, which was undulating and displaying region after region in a quick succession. The flashes of green, yellow-brown and blue seemed to mesmerise Luna, but Cho found the sight of her even more fascinating.
Luna looked as childish and competent, and as dreamy and determined as when Cho had paid proper attention to her for the very first time. The first time they'd danced together. When Luna, only a third-year and shunned as a weirdo, had turned out unexpectedly capable of finding solace and joy and also sharing it with someone as confused as fifteen-year-old Cho. On the snow-covered Quidditch pitch, she'd asked Cho to teach her partner dances. And Cho had learned that touching a peer tenderly did not have to involve such disconserting tension that had upset her at the Yule Ball, in Cedric's arms.
Now there was some tension present, of course.
While dancing to inaudible music, to the rhythm her wand was giving to her map of Europe, Luna must have heard Cho enter. She leaped to their bed and flopped down on her back while keeping the map afloat above her. Tilting her head so as to stare at Cho, she placed her left hand on her own breasts and started fondling herself.
Cho went to sit on the edge of the bed and stroked the damp strands of hair on Luna's temple. "Hey, love."
There was unusual restlessness in Luna's gaze, which now went on shifting between Cho and the map. The luminous eyes roamed over her body as well as over the elongated shape of an emerald island – a form resembling a horny, swift-tailed creature aswim in a dazzling azure sea.
Since February they'd maintained a harmony despite the difference between their desires. They'd found it suddenly and right after Cho had learnt that there were such creatures as asexual people – human amoebas, they called themselves – and that she herself was one of them.
Only Luna could make her believe that an intimate relationship between an asexual and a bisexual witch could work. Only because they had become close friends soon after the war, when they had both found direction in their adult lives. They'd enjoyed coming across each other at friends' gatherings, and started going on outings together, as they shared a love for nature. And Luna had shown that the incredible creatures she alone believed in could turn out to be real.
But ever since Luna completed her Magiornitology research report, she seemed less satisfied with their domestic routines and they mismatched acts of tenderness.
"You want something different?" Cho had learnt – from Luna, perhaps – to blurt out uncomfortable truths. And assumptions, too. To dare find out she was right. "Travel? You miss South America?" And other loves?
"No. There's something here that's calling to me. Not so far. At the edge of Europe." Luna grabbed Cho's hand, laced their fingers, and reached up to touch the map with their fingertips. “You know I planned two more weeks of watching birds around Montrose, but...”
For a moment the parchment showed the whole eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea, and when it zoomed in on the beast-shaped island again, Cho was able to name it.
“You want to see Crete! I'm going to have a couple of weeks off. Just tomorrow's match and then nothing before the training season.”
“The winter visitors are gone. And all passing migrants, not only Rainbow-Footed Geese. And it's a great opportunity now to travel and find some bats for a change.”
Cho took it for granted that Luna meant a great chance for the two of them to travel together.