Author: bimupp

Chapter: One

Pairing: Hermione Granger/Luna Lovegood

Disclaimer: Nope, I don´t own anything. They´re all J.K Rowlings characters, Im just playing with them

Rating: G

A/N: Remeber that reviews are love and they give my sometimes sleeping muse a good kick in the butt!

Warnings: Chapter one and two are unbetaed, but chapter three and all following it have been betaed.

Hermione had never really glanced twice at Luna, even though her butterbeer cork necklace was hard to miss, not to mention her less than ordinary personality.

Apart from the very awkward episode on the Hogwarts express where Hermione inadvertently insulted her father, Luna managed to somehow blend in to the general "Hogwarts business" background. At least, she used to.

Sometime along the five years that had passed since they last saw each other, Luna had changed just enough for Hermione to notice it straight away.

She found it hard to define; a new swagger in Luna's steps maybe, radiated a new air of confidence.

Sitting on the red couch in the corner, Luna's legs casually rested in Padma Patil´s lap. She didn't seem to mind at all, quite the opposite in fact. Padma was smiling happily at Luna and gently caressing her neck.

"They must be really good friends", Hermione thought innocently, they were housemates in Ravenclaw after all.

Right then Ronald Weasley interrupted Hermione's pondering.

"Hermione, are you coming? I thought you said that you wanted a drink."

"Yes Ron, she answered. I'm still thirsty. I think the bar´s this way."

Hermione took Ronald by the arm and led him through the vast circular ballroom towards the bar.

The Hogwarts graduates reunion party was just about to kick off, and a couple of people had started dancing.

Other party goers were busy mingling and picking up on old acquaintances and a group of mostly former Slytherins stood gathered around the bar.

Hermione saw it fit to elbow her way through them, to their obvious dismay.

The "m-word" was uttered a couple of times, and ignored by Hermione but unfortunately, not by Ron.

He instead saw the opportunity to ask the latest offender, who happened to be Vincent Crabbe, if he had a problem.

Seeing the crimson colour of Ron's face and noticing the flexing muscles under his dress robe, the usually thuggish Vincent wisely chose to answer his question with the words

"Nothing, sir."

"Crabbe showing Ron respect?" Hermione thought as she let a quick glimpse of a smile grace her face. "They must be throwing snowballs in hell today." Together with an astonished Ron, she arrived at the bar.

Like Luna, Hermione had changed since her school days.

At the mere age of 22, she had succeeded in becoming second in command at the Auror Headquarters, ranking over Ronald Weasley as well as others.

As a fully trained and highly accomplished Auror, her self-esteem was at its highest and she immensely enjoyed the fact that her muggle parents finally were proud of her.

Although they didn't understand all the levels of her work or status in the magical world, they understood status itself, and the many benefits of a high salary.

The third part of the golden trio, Harry Potter, had settled on a successful career playing professional quidditch. Now he was away on a pre-season training camp in western Poland, and therefore could not attend the party.

"Lucky him," Hermione thought, shivering with cold.

It was unusually chilly for an early September evening, even with the humid standard of British weather.

She was standing smoking outside on a small ball room-adjoining balcony alone, leaning at the sill and gazing at the full moon hovering above the horizon. Music, shouts and talking seeped from the open balcony door into the night. The party was at its peak, it seemed, but it was still quiet outside. Hermione was vainly trying to ease her shivering by inhaling and exhaling the toxic cigarette fumes slowly, and holding the tiny but at least hot ember close.

"Smoking damages your lungs, you know," a dreamy voice called to her from behind.

"Yes Luna, I know. Not to mention that it probably causes further holes in the ozone layer, diminishes the birth rate of Cornish pixies and destroys the lungs of Crumple-horned snorkack babies, doesn't it?" Hermione said with a sarcastic smirk.

She should have known better, this was Luna Lovegood here and sarcasm and other kinds of petty meanness just pours off her like water onto an umbrella.

"Well, the holes in the ozone layer aren't cigarettes but muggle hair spray," Luna replied.

"At least it used to be until they banned the most dangerous ones in the early nineties or so. The fumes do cause birth rate problems with the pixies but they have to live in a household with a chain smoker for ages for that to be really hazardous, and I'm not sure at all about the Crumple-horned snorkack babies. When my father and I went to Sweden a couple of years ago we managed to take a couple of photographs of both adult and baby snorkacks but we never did get the chance to talk a Crumple-horned snorkack expert there. Just locating a herd and waiting to have a proper glimpse of one of them, and succeeding to get a picture, took almost the entire summer holiday. It was well worth it though, it turned out to be their mating season, we had no idea about that until we saw the first tiny baby, and it was the most amazing experience of my life!"

"Um, eh," a subdued Hermione managed to mutter out. "That "The Quibbler" issue must have sold really well then?"

"Oh, off course! We had to make almost more copies of that one than the one with the interview with Harry Potter."

"We?"

"Yes, I work at the paper too now. Co-editor with my father actually," she said proudly.

"I see. How nice," Hermione said absently. She still hadn't come over the shock of hearing that the Crumple-horned snorkacks, the mythical creatures known as the world's ugliest deer breed, actually was a real, living and breeding animal and not just a fabric of fiction.

She had to see those pictures she thought, had to buy that old "The Quibbler" issue.

"Do you want to see the pictures?" Luna asked fittingly.

"Oh yes please, very much!"

"Come with me then, I live just a couple of blocks from here. Grab my arm and we'll apparate!"

"Wait a minute Luna, I came here with Ron, I'll need to tell him that I'm leaving."

"No need to bother Hermione. I saw him just before I came out here for some air. He was viciously snogging Hanna Abbott in the corridor with the toilets."

"Oh dear, well alright then."

And she grabbed Luna by the left arm and seconds after they both experienced the unpleasant compressing feeling known by apparaters everywhere. And then it was over.