First

I was ten the first time I saw him.

Daddy had taken me to Diagon Alley to buy my school supplies. Flourish and Blotts smelled of paper, ink and wisdom. I eagerly tugged at my Daddy's hand and observed all the exciting people around me. Life had been a little lonely since mama was gone and Daddy always worked. It was nice to have a variety of senses.

Everything here was so light and alive, brimming and bustling with excitement and people and movements and sounds and scents. And then she came in.

Everything in the room automaticlly dimmed and banter died down. She moved straight towards the counter. But she was dressed in the most outlandish clothes I'd ever seen. It was a fine, burgundy velvet robe and a dark green silk hat. I found her choice of clothing very refreshing and otherwise.

By her side was a little boy, about my age. He was slightly chubby looked a little out of place with the tall and dignified lady next to him. The galleons she dropped onto the counter jangled against the glass and the witch by the till cringed.

The tall lady left the room as abruptly as she'd entered, draggind the boy by the hand. I caught his eyes – doe brown they were – and he looked somewhat desperate in the position he was in.

'Neville, come on now,' the cool and authorative voice of the lady by him said stridently. I sailed him a smile. It is possible that he might have smiled back slightly before, my Daddy told me later, Augusta Longbottom, yanked him out of my sight.

I was twelve the first time we spoke.

'Just wait here,' Ginny told me. 'I won't take long.' And she'd gone, left through a murky hole behind a drape, one I hadn't known existed. I watched as the scarlet drape softly fell back against the wall to cover the passage. The night was on its peak and I couldn't understand why Ginny'd asked me to come along with her, whatever secret conspiracy she was involved in. Maybe she wasn't as brave as she looked.

I shrugged and wafted my hand against the wall in one of the corridors and started pacing a little towards the downwards staircase.

My heart leaped forwards as I suddenly found myself eye to eye with a man in a fierce, laudable stance. The nobility was rolling off him in waves. He had a hand extended towards me, his expression of bitter determination.

But it was only a picture.

Godric Gryffindor - Founder it read.

Daddy had always said that there was more to a person than meets the eye. He'd said that Godric Gryffindor wasn't all as honorable as it always seemed.

And when was Daddy ever wrong?

I could picture him before my inner eye. A hot night, the wind blowing, Gryffindor full royally aparalled. His sharp, dark eyes boring into the terrified ones of the man he had pinned against a grey brick wall. The wispy moonlight was reflecting off the shiny blade of his prized sword. 'I swear, I don't know!' the man gasped. Gryffindor narrowed his feverish eyes and inched the tip of the blade just a little forwards, so that it was piercing the delicate skin of the man's neck.

'Don't lie to me! Tell me where it is or you will pay!' Gryffindor cried. It wasn't long until dawn.

Squeaking footsteps behind me shrieked me out of my delusion. It couldn't be Filch, I knew, so there was no reason to worry. 'Lumos,' I whispered quietly and pivoted to I could see my opponent.

It was Neville Longbottom. Striped pyjamas, cherub cheeks, tousled brown curls and unsteady breathing – Check.

'Hello, Neville,' I whispered. He looked at me, almost as if frightened. I smiled to encourage him.

'Hi,' he replied uncertainly, before swiftly brushing past me and disappearing back into the shadows. The squeaking of the footsteps were all that remained.

The first time I touched him, I was fourteen.

Unbeknownst to many, there is a piano in Hogwarts. It's in the Ravenclaw tower, because Helena Ravenclaw, the Grey Lady, loves music.

Unbeknownst to even more, the Grey Lady sometimes lets in students of other houses, so that they can play for her.

Unbeknownst to most, Neville Longbottom has a clandestine talent.

It was a rainy afternoon and I was alone, lying face down on my bed in the dorm.

And without a warning, my dorm was filled with the rich, strong, beautiful sound of the piano. I knew, because my mother used to play. I recognized the song instantly.

The Phantom of the Opera.

I closed my eyes and felt an eerie shiver spreading across my back. I found myself in another place, another time. A row of wraithlike, airy sentiments spilled over in my soul.

Then it stopped. My eyelids fluttered open. I furrowed my brows. Where had the music gone? An odd sense of distress clouded my mind as I me feet hit the floor.

I sought the otherwordly melody, padding up the staircase further. Until I found a cryptic litte door at the very top. And I pushed it open to find a sparse lit, dusty room and a tuft of dark brown curls and a T-shirt clad back facing me.

'Neville?' He startled out of his chair, but sighed when he noticed that it was only me. Since Harry had started the DA, the boy was a little more confident around everyone including me.

'H-hi, Luna,' he said and attempted a smile. I saw how uncomfortable it was and reckoned it was because I'd bursted in on him exerting his secret passion.

'You play beautifully,' I told me honestly and shut the door behind me. 'Would you maybe play me something?' Thunderstricken, he stared at me. 'Please?' I added. He wound himself uneasily. I crossed the room and put a hand on his arm. 'Neville, you really don't have to feel uncomfortable around me. I promise.'

'Okay,' he finally budged. I hadn't wanted to push him like that and felt a little guilty. But then he sank down onto the wooden chair and splayed his fingers. 'What should I play?'

'That's your choice.'

And he played. His fingers traveled across the keys so flawlessly that the world seemed to stand still for a quiet moment. I wouldn't know I was holding my breath until later.

Für Elise.

And then, for no reason, the ethereal, insubstantial beauty of the song seemed to catch my heart by storm, tugging at it as if I was Elise myself. Involuntarily, I found that tears started to moisten my eyes. I lost myself in a world where I sat by the window in a chair, in a crinoline dress and perfectly coiffed hair and outside, as the rats skithered along the unruly pavement of the disease-ridden streets, the wayward young Ludwig with with free spirit and wild mannerisms sat at the piano down there and declared his love for me in a melody that evoked unrivaled passion.

When we first kissed, I was in my sixth year.

The unspeakable, clenching numbness overtook again when the dawn broke in and I had to face the day. The remaining of us each had a different way of taking on the anguish we went through every single minute. Not knowing where our loved ones were, not knowing if they were alive or not and not even knowing how long you'd still last.

Colin Creevy, for instance, lived in denial.

Cho Chang had succumbed to drinking.

Ginny Weasley fought the way Harry would have wanted her to, like a brave lioness. And the price was high to pay. Almost everyday, her crippling screams tore through the castle as the Carrows performed the Cruciatus on her.

Neville followed her example. Stupid, heroic Gryffindors.

And I, well, I put on a brave façade. But with each day, the anaesthetics I'd forced around my heart got wearier and wearier.

Until…

'Luna?' I looked up from my book into Neville's open brown eyes and my heart broke for the thousandth time. Why did life have to look this way for us now? Surely this wasn't the end, right?

'Yes?'

'Would you like to go to the Astronomy Tower with me?' He extended his hand in invitations. I smiled and grabbed it. His fingers felt warm and safe as they entwined with my smaller, colder hands.

On the balcony of the tower, it was windy. The Whomping Willow in the distance moaned, creaked and complained as the wind played with it, bending it and whipping it about like it not more than a string. Occionally, in the distance, a flash of lighting and a boom of thunder rippled across the land from afar.

And all of a sudden; nobody could have possible seen it coming, everything darkened and the skies broke apart into an earth-shattering thunder, almost as if the engine deep inside of our stricken world had summoned all its power and thrashed it at us. For a split seecond, the lightning that agleamed the black dove the surroundings into an eerie light, almost blue.

Then it poured. The few seconds I stood awestruck alongside Neville, the canvas of my soul temporarily blank as if the thunder had wiped out everything I'd ever know, flashed past with the blinking of an eye, and everything was back to normal.

Before I could even breathe a sound, Neville had grasped my wrist and dragged me back under the roof where the rain couldn't reach. And even in the instant I'd spent under bare heaven, I'd become soaked.

Almost as if the deepest essence in me had been freed, the wings of a dove soared, realeased from its chains, rippling its way upwards until my entire bdy hummed and tingled. It sang a ballad, before it wafted up into the heavens and faded. My heart pounded against my ribcage, and I knew that those were the other birds that yearned for liberty so deeply.

And then Neville's face was inches from mine, so close that his hot breath grazed my sodden cheek. He was just as drenched as I, and it felt strange as his cold, wet body pressed against mine, as if I'd left myself and was watching from a spot on the ceiling. And I saw a blaze of light to every world, the last one standing, the final straw.

Everything was so surreal as he grasped my face between his fingers roughly, almost as if they were claws and everything sweet and subtle about him turned desperate. And then it all came together, smashing against each other like breaking waves, quenching the darkness at last. Everything that had seethed between us trickled away in a chaste, frantic kiss.

And the dying ember became a fervent flame again.