Transmutation, a harry potter fanfic

Disclaimer: Don't own Harry Potter or the characters therein.

A/N: I know what Jo said, that people went their separate ways (and I've known for a long time that Neville/Luna was a sunken ship), but I love this pairing, it just got under my skin. I needed to write this to get back on the HP pony—and this isn't at all the post DH story I was expecting to write. I've read through it a few times but it's still very rough, but I feel I need to post before I talk myself out of it again. Luna's PoV, second person narration, Neville/Luna, post-DH. Read, enjoy, please let me know what you think.

He's not the boy you left behind. Not that you expected him to be. You watched him change for months after all, watched him harden around the edges in a way that half frightened you, half made you proud, and you knew, in all the months you were waiting in the dark, that things were going to be different when you came back. And because your mum taught you that time passes, you're not surprised when you see him—months and months after forcing his hand down when they came to take you from the train—standing along side of Harry and Ron and Hermione and the Order members all the people who used to make him nervous.

And it's pride in your heart when you kiss him on the cheek, after everything is done, but it's surprise when he wraps his arms around you, the movement too bold to be him.

You sit next to him at the funerals. You don't cry at them, not because you're not sad, because you are, it's like a hole in your heart, all this loss, reminds you of mum and makes you feel like pieces of you are missing. It's just that wouldn't help anything at all and it's much more helpful to sit up straight and be there for those who are left.

He visits you the summer after everything is over.

His hair is cut short now, almost entirely gone—the skin has healed though, shiny red patches that were skill pink last you saw them—and you miss the curls, long and dark, as unruly as your own. But his smile is real, and you know he's not a stranger.

You walk him down to the stream and teach him the proper way to call after a whooping terrier. He stares at your bare feet when you wade into the water, asks if you're not cold, because the sun is half hidden by pale grey clouds, but the wind is warm against your skin and you tell him it's a wonderful day.

You show him your favorite trees and he confesses his grandmother never would let him climb. "I think she was afraid I'd get stuck up there and then she'd have get me out". So you show him how to climb them. The bark digs in beneath your nails and scratches the soles of your feet and the sides of your arms, but you don't care because he's right behind you.

On the walk back he point out the plants you've known all your live, calls them by their proper names. He picks a palm's worth of fat black berries that pop tartly in your mouth. You tell him to stay for dinner, but he shakes his head, says his grandmother is expecting him. "Come back soon," you tell him as he leaves, "there's plenty more trees for us to climb."

He writes you two days later. His grandmother wants to meet you, he writes, would dinner be alright. Your father encourages you to go, declines the invitation himself, The Quibbler takes so much work now that there's so much truth to share.

You've meet his grandmother before but you don't mind introducing yourself again. Dinner is quiet and Neville tells you he's got a job waiting for him in the fall. "It's a surprise." He says, smiling boldly and you smile back. "How wonderful Neville! You must have sprinting wib looking over you." His grandmother gives you a look you can't quite make out, but Neville just laughs and concurs.

You both visit Ginny on the same day and the three of you spend your day chasing gnomes in her garden.

You don't throw the gnomes over the garden wall so much as you attempt to talk to them, discuss with them how they might make the best of their living situation but the gnomes are quicker than you.

The sun gets too hot some time after noon and you follow Ginny inside because she burns so easily—you do too but you've never minded the itching and peeling that comes from too much sunlight because your mum also taught you nothing comes without a price.

Ginny is harder to laugh nowadays, and she reminds you little bit of the quiet girl at the back of your class first year, the one who was constantly scribbling away in a notebook. But you know what it's like to lose someone who has been there every day of your life, and you know that it gets easier. You tell her as much while the two of you peel oranges into wedges, and she's quiet for a long time while you toast slices of bread for sandwiches.

Ginny does not cry like the other girls in your dormitory cry. She does not cry over boys and exam grades, not in all the time you've known her. You've seen her cry over her family and her friends, and yes, you saw her cry for her brother, but Ginny is like you and her tears are always treated with frustration.

"I know you don't lie." Ginny says, and that's all you really expected.

You show him your mum's work shop. It was a greenhouse once, and your mum loved the light that came in through the glass panes so she never did bother changing it too much when she set up. There's not much there now, some empty cauldrons, spell books, empty pots. You decided, after coming home again, after finding it as the only thing left intact after everything, that you would fix it. You saw the light, thin and grey through the clouded windows, and you saw the antithesis of your days spent in the dark of a cellar—you are safe here, in the memory of your mother—but you haven't done much yet.

"Ever thought of growing something in here?" he asks you, fingers digging into what's left of your mother's plants. "I know some plants that would really prosper here, if you ever needed some idea of where to start."

There's dirt wedged into the lines of his hands. His pink runs crooked along the rest of his fingers, and you remember how he told you that the Carrows stepped on it and Ginny set it herself. But he's looking at the dirt, running his fingers through it and rubbing it into his palms, and he's the boy who explained all the properties of mistletoe that might explain why nargles preferred it.

"That would be lovely, Neville."

He brings you corn poppies and Nightwillow herb, peppermint and lavender and chamomile. "They all make good teas and are known for medicinal properties," he tells you as he sets about dividing them, "fairly easy to maintain." He makes rows of flowers, red and yellow and white, and you draw up plans inside your head for where they'll go. They stare up at you expectantly; bright faces and tall spines, green and beautiful, and you look on, "Thank you Neville." Because in your memory you can still smell it, the rank of spoiled blood and fear, but you can't summon the memory here, incased in the yellow reflections of sunlight and the smell of peppermint. "Thank you."

He helps you.

You clean your mother's cauldrons and fill them with water; he brings water lilies and irises. He helps you erect a garden inside your mother's glass house and you love it, the feel of grass and brown dirt and growing things beneath your feet. "It's the only way," you insist, "to really experience anything."

His feet are as pale as yours and he seems embarrassed but you just smile and talk about the empty pots that still need to be filled. "There are always daffodils." He suggests, and you nod, walking around flower beds and rows of plants that won't fully wake 'til spring coming. You look back at him, standing there, hands digging into his pockets, toes curling up under his feet, shoulders leaning forward a little, waiting. And there's something so different to him, Neville Longbottom who wouldn't look you in the eye for a week after Harry took you to Professor Slugworth's party, who impossibly, is the same Neville Longbottom who decided you could save Hogwarts even if the hero was missing. "Time passes." You tell him, and he looks at you like it has nothing to do with what is happening. But you know better, because your mother taught you the truth.

"I know." He runs a hand through his hair, longer now, growing back into place behind his ears.

"You can't count on things to stay the same." And it's silly, that you've spent all this time with him and never realized what you were doing until now, looking at his bare feet.

"I know."

"Things change." You tell him, walking back to his side. He looks down at you, eyes blue and impossible to forget, like the flowers whose name begs you to remember. His hand is brown, smelling like damp dirt and the mint he planted, and its cold against the side of your face.

"I know."

"I'm glad we both understand."

Then you kiss him. Wit beyond measure is a man's greatest treasure but the truth is you've been foolish all this time. You didn't see what was right in front of you, in the sunlight of your mother's greenhouse. Because you keep making distinctions between periods, then and now, before and after, but it just keeps repeating, again and again, beginnings and endings, for him, for you, together, apart. And it just keeps happening. It's all the same. The boy he was, the girl you were, the people you both are now, layered together underneath the experiences of your skin.

So you kiss him, Neville Longbottom who brought you poppies, Neville Longbottom who tried to stop them when they came for you, Neville Longbottom who was too nervous to cast a spell the first time in the Room of Requirement. All different. All the same.

He wraps his arms around you and you're not surprised.

End

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