At some point they had lain down and continued to talk. Neville felt that most of it had been a lot of rot really. Always moving around the edges of things and avoiding the painful centres, they'd talked and talked and at some point in the long night she had fallen to sleep. It was half way through a thought and he'd considered that she was only pausing in the phrasing of it before he'd realised her grey eyes were closed and her soft features relaxed.

It was not the most comfortable of positions, the small of Luna's back pressed into his abdomen in a way that was not the most conducive to sleep in a 17 year old male. His arm was tangled beneath her so that he dare not move for fear he would wake her. Despite the heat of her body against him and the graceful curve of her neck where her hair flared away on the pillow he felt calmer than he had in days if not months. Somewhere between watching the soft breaths escaping her pink lips and the way her leg curled around his own he fell back to sleep.

It was the dawn through the large infirmary windows that woke them both. Neville's arm was asleep beneath her body but she had turned in her sleep curling into the space beneath his chin. He licked his bottom lip thoughtfully, glad that Madam Pomfrey was not standing at the end of the bed disapprovingly as he had imagined she might be when he had drifted off. What exactly he was doing with Luna Lovegood coiled sleepily around him was not a question he could answer. Not by any coherent means most certainly. He suspected that if it were not for a giant wizarding war that had tangled them both up he would not have to come up with any answer, things would proceed as he was sure such things had proceeded between witches and wizards for centuries upon centuries. Of course, he reminded himself, had that wizarding war never happened who could be sure he would be the same person he was right now. An equally confused thought struck him as hard, and who could be sure Luna would be the same person, he wasn't even sure she was the same person from one moment to the next.

Luna shifted; he looked down to find she was awake. "It's morning" she said

"It is" he answered

"I slept"

"We both did, for a while at least"

Neville was suddenly very aware of where his hands were and assured that he couldn't up and move them without conveying his embarrassment or some kind of insult to the girl inside of them. It wasn't like he didn't know how this sort of thing worked. The DA had got quite hormonal, to be frank, both times they'd been enlisted. But, he reflected, they were always other people's hormones, or rather other people's hormones actually achieving something. Seamus and Lavender's intensity had got, well, intense for those few weeks they were all claiming sanctuary, it had been educational and excruciating. He'd always felt not quite good enough to inflict his practice at being a teenage boy on someone else. Then of course there'd been a rebellion to organise and though Michael, Anthony, Ernie and Seamus seemed to think there was time for both, Neville had thought he had quiet enough to be getting on with thank you very much.

"There seems to be quite a large thought going on behind those eyes." Luna didn't blink enough when she said perceptive things. And then Luna was taken and why would he want to hold anyone else this close. "And there it goes again"

"Ah, yeah, just thinking" he coughed

"Oh, I should move, your poor arm. You don't have to tell me the thought if you don't want to" She sat up, pulling her knees into chest and looking back over her shoulder at him.

He had a craving to pull her back down on to the bed beside him, touch her, every inch of her, verify that she was indeed real, there and happy to let him do so. He shook the urge from his mind.

"Honestly, Luna I couldn't explain it, not if I was sat here for a million years." He drew himself up to sit with her grateful that the stiffness of sleep wasn't exacerbated by a head wound and numerous bruises any longer.

"One of those thoughts, the kind that twist and turn in your mind like an ouroboros?"

"A what?" it was too early in the morning.

"Ouroboros, the symbol of the snake eating its own tail, I often find those thoughts go round and round eating themselves until you find a way to get it to cough up its tail."

"A snake, it's always a snake" he groaned

"Or a dragon" she said kindly

"Luna Lovegood, I could kiss you" he chuckled running his hands through his own hair in a mad attempt to look human again.

"That would be nice" she said dreamily. She could do that, could Luna, stop him in his tracks with one little utterance. Funny how the thought of Luna wanting him to kiss her made him all blank and unfocused inside. He raised an eyebrow in incredulity. She lent in and touched his lips to her own, abruptly he focused again on the parting of her lips and the moist breath between them, the way her tongue met his and then very quickly the cough of disapproval from the once again crisp Poppy Pomfrey.

"Mr Longbottom. Miss Lovegood. It may need some repair but this is still a school and this is still my ward. Kindly disentangle yourselves. Miss Lovegood you can return to Ravenclaw Tower."

Luna slipped from his grasp as though she was made of silk, dancing across the flagstones abandoning him to his mortification.

"Right, um, Good Morning Madam Pomfrey?" he tried.

Luna reappeared like a pixie between his bed's hangings. "Neville," she said smiling and little humbled by Madam Pomfrey "You might need this" and from somewhere about her person she produced a familiar blue toothbrush.

Just wanted to interrupt here at this point to thank you all for reading this little piece of nonsense. Truth be told I could stop here as here is as good as any point, but I find myself enjoying writing again so maybe I won't. I hope you have been enjoying it as much as I have. x