A/N: Same situation with the previous two stories, except this one was written for annearchy and her prompt was `radish earrings' with a Ron/Luna pairing. This is the result!
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The first time he noticed her he was seven and she was six. His mum had been shopping in Ottery St. Catchpole's market and she had stopped to talk to a tall willowy woman with long blonde hair. She held the hand of a girl who looked almost like her duplicate if it weren't for her slightly protuberant eyes and curious and frank stare.
"Hello," she said softly.
He looked around him just to double check she was actually talking to him and not someone over his shoulder. "Hello."
"I'm Luna Lovegood, who're you?"
"Ron Weasley?"
A small grin quirked her lips. "Don't you know your name?"
He shifted on his feet nervously, glancing up at his mother who was laughing at something the other woman, who he guessed to be Luna's mother, had said. "Er, yes?"
Luna giggled softly. "You're odd, just like my dad."
"And you aren't?" Ron retorted, inwardly wincing. At seven he wasn't quite as up on his quips like the twins or Charlie.
Luna merely smiled, her eyes probing his in a frank and direct manner that unnerved him. "No, I'm perfectly normal."
His mum grabbed his hand again, the two women bid their farewells and they went opposite directions. Ron could still feel the girl's stare boring into his eyes even after they had returned home.
The second time he saw her, he was ten and she was nine. He wore black robes without understanding why and his mum and dad spoke in hushed whispers even at home. A tall reedy man met them at the door and ushered them inside the quiet and somber house. It was just him and Ginny with their mum and dad, everyone else was at Hogwarts.
He wasn't sure why everyone was so quiet, but it looked to him by the fantastical paintings on the walls and the neat odds and ends around the house that solemnity was an uncommon thing here. He wandered through the house holding Ginny's hand while their mum and dad talked to the reedy looking man and the other darkly dressed people milling about.
They found her in the backyard watching the wind play with a rainbow whirligig ornament. "Hello Luna," Ginny murmured sitting next to the blonde girl.
He stood behind them feeling a bit awkward about it all. "So where's the funeral?" he asked trying to lighten the mood.
Luna turned slightly and blinked up at him owlishly. Ginny whipped her head around frowning, her red plait flying.
"It was a joke," he muttered feebly.
Ginny merely rolled her eyes. "It wasn't a very good one. Didn't you hear mum and dad? Luna's mum died."
He flushed and stammered an apology while Luna merely looked up at him, her gaze less frank than the last he'd seen it. After making a complete fool of himself because no he hadn't listened to mum and dad, he'd been too busy reading a Quidditch magazine, he beat a hasty retreat. He couldn't look Luna in the eye for the rest of the day.
He supposes he would've seen her again at her sorting had he and Harry not been trapped in Snape's office after the "Whomping Willow Incident" that he liked to keep from trying to remember. But as it turned out he didn't see her until the train trip to Hogwarts at the beginning of his fifth year.
He almost hadn't recognized her. Her hair was longer and a bit darker, she was taller, and wore strange things he didn't remember her wearing at the funeral like radish earrings and a pin saying something about Crumple Horned Snorkacks. Despite all those general differences that come from growing up, it was her gaze that made her seem a different person than that little six year old girl. Gone was the frank assessment to be replaced by a dreamy haziness that Ron found both more disturbing and alluring.
While everyone in the cabin spoke, he watched her through the reflection in the glass. He could see her even though she had her face buried in an upside down Quibbler. Her gaze seemed halfway intent on the page before her and every time she moved her head, the little radishes bobbed absently.
"Do you like them?" she asked softly, looking over the top of the page at him.
Her blue eyes seemed oddly focused for all the distance they seemed to convey. He gulped and looked hastily away. "Er - yes?"
Luna smiled hazily and a little throb of . . . something good (want? need?) and not good (regret? loss?) clenched somewhere in his chest. It was overwhelming to him and it would take him another two years and a full on war to fully realize what those feelings he'd first felt on the train meant.
By then he'd grown from a teaspoon to a full cup, maybe even, if he pushed it, a half a quart. Or something. He was never good at measuring or cooking anyway. Because when he noticed her the last time before he pledged to notice only her for always, they were laying in bed, his head on her chest, her hands running through his hair, her fingers scratching absent runes on his scalp. "Why radish earrings?" he asked abruptly, his soft voice rumbling through the lazy morning.
"Radishes are the vegetable of love," she murmured back.
He lifted his head and looked up at her, watching her expression closely. "You're having me on." Luna's joking was more subtle than Harry or Hermione's, but after all this time he was getting pretty good at reading her.
"Of course," she replied immediately, the twitch at her lips growing into a full grin. "But they did their job. They got your attention."
"Love, you've always had my attention," he murmured, leaning up to kiss her softly.
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