FLUFF! Unbelievably fluffy. I am rather astounded and ashamed to have written something that so closely resembles a marshmallow.
Ronald Weasley kneels on the ground, huffing and puffing and scattering handfuls of dry leaves and pine needles, all in a decidedly half-hearted attempt to breathe life into the fire. Fire, he scoffs. Lone flickering flame would be a more apt description. He wonders - with no small degree of irritation -- how he let Luna Lovegood talk him into this -- watching a meteor shower on this blustery slope when he ought to be tucked into his warm bed, fast asleep.
She muses about the three forces of the universe: magic, gravity… love. He fidgets and feels guilty. It means so much to her, this night.
Luna begs him to put out the fire. "You can't see properly," she says dreamily, squinting up the heavens. "When there are other sources of light - brighter light - you miss things. Sometimes you have to look harder to find what you're really looking for."
He starts to mumble something about it being a "cooking fire" and doesn't she want to eat tonight, but the pleading look in her luminous eyes derails him.
"Aguamenti," he says and douses the flames, plunging them into darkness. The effect is instantaneous - the stars brighten, basking in their own singular glory rather than drowning in a sea of blackness, and Luna scoots closer.
"There, do you see?"
And he sees it, a faint streak of purest light across the canopy of the sky. Half-an-hour ago, when they'd set out for this remote point, he'd have hoped for Something Flashier, some unmistakable sign that would scream "THIS. HERE. NOW." Now he just gathers Luna closer. Sometimes you have to look harder to find what you're really looking for, he thinks with a smile, even if it's right under your nose.
* * * * *
"It's dark," Harry Potter says, stuffing his hands into his pockets and hunching his shoulders against the chill. He can scarcely begin to imagine what business Hermione Granger - his Hermione - has atop the Astronomy Tower at two o' clock on a windy night.
"Not when you've been out here as long as I have," Hermione Granger replies, matter-of-factually. "Your eyes - see - it's the rhodopsin and-there's one, look! Astride Perseus and Cassiopeia." She takes his cold hand in her gloved one and traces the meteor's path through the sky. "Did you see it?"
He shakes his head, his eyes locked on her instead: the silhouette of their joined hands against the star-spangled sky, her eyes, alight with happiness. He hasn't seen her this happy -- with her every care and worry gently wiped away -- in ages.
And then he thinks about Gryffindor courage, courage with a healthy dose of Slytherin opportunism, and slides in, wrapping his arms around her waist and drawing her closer.
"You know, you're right," he murmurs into the crook of her neck, "it's not so dark."
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