Semi Charmed Life

By: Provocative Envy

###

(make a move)

Cormac McLaggen first sleeps with Luna Lovegood on a Thursday.

To be fair—and he's a Gryffindor for fuck's sake, his sense of fair play is…well, not great, but certainly better than a Slytherin's—he doesn't remember who she is, at all, when he approaches her at her booth in the Dragon's Breath and offers to buy her a drink; he just sees a slender blonde girl with big blue eyes and a wicked nice arse and, honestly, he's done a lot worse at the Dragon's Breath—especially on a Thursday.

And if he's a bit too drunk to pay attention to the warning signs—she's got a necklace strung with cinnamon-dusted pumpkin seeds and blithely informs him that it's both a healthy snack and an excellent remedy for a knargle infestation, almost as good as holy water—and if she's a bit too pretty to immediately kick out the morning after—mile-long legs and creamy-soft skin and a seemingly nonexistent fucking gag reflex—

Really.

Really.

It's hardly his fault.

###

(boys will be boys)

He's taking a rejuvenating post-practice shower in the stadium locker room when he begins to wonder why her name had sounded so familiar the night before.

"Oi! Flint!" Cormac calls out as he soaps up his lower abdomen; he used to have an ugly pink scar slashed from the left side of his rib cage and down to his navel, leftover from the war, but he'd had too much absinthe after a scrimmage with the Monaco national team the previous winter and gotten a fucking enormous black lion tattooed over it. The lion—Rick, Cormac called him—he roared sometimes. Girls liked to pet him, liked to try and make him purr, but he never did. Rick was a stubborn little bastard.

Cormac frowns.

Luna Lovegood, he thinks suddenly, might have actually managed the impossible, though—because he can recall a brief tickling sensation and the breathtaking sight of her delighted, infectious smile—

"What the fuck d'you want, McLaggen?" Flint demands, sounding just as gruff and angry and annoyed as he always does. "I've got a fucking engagement party to get to. Fucking Malfoy. No—fucking Granger, shit, like the craziest fucking thing to come out of that bloody war needs its own fucking party—"

"Yeah, I got invited to that, too," Cormac interrupts, stretching out the muscles in his upper back and leaning against the tiled shower wall. "Do you know someone—ah—a girl—d'you know a girl named Luna Lovegood?"

Flint scoffs and Cormac can hear the metallic scrape-bang of a locker door slamming shut.

"Loony Lovegood, yeah," Flint replies. "Ravenclaw, I think. A few years behind us in school. She's close with Saint Potter and that whole lot, y'know—our saviors."

Cormac rinses off his arms and steps out from under the spray of lukewarm water.

"Loony Lovegood?" he repeats, incredulous.

"She's fucking weird," Flint says. "Owns the Quibbler, believes all that harebrained shite written in it; I met her last year, Malfoy has lunch with her on Tuesdays—he's the one who put up the capital so she could start publishing again. They're friends, he says. World's fucking backwards now, mate, swear to Christ."

Cormac scratches at the dark purple bruise Luna had left at the base of his neck, right above his collarbone; her lips had been rosy and lush, and her teeth had been small and sharp, and he's pretty sure that he'd had three of his fingers worked into the wet-hot clutch of her cunt when she'd done it.

"Think she'll be at that party tonight?"

###

(tip toe)

He sleeps with Luna Lovegood for the second time on a Friday.

There's an open bar at the Malfoy-Granger clusterfuck—several Weasleys are moping fairly obviously from the edge of the mahogany paneled dance floor, and Lucius Malfoy is drinking straight from a two-liter bottle of firewhiskey—so Cormac can't be blamed for his vodka-fueled decision to drag Luna away from some American fucker whose last name sounds an awful lot like salamander and directly into an empty powder room.

He can't be.

Similarly, he can't be blamed for the way he rips her dress—a lacy red toga type sheath that'd been knotted over one shoulder and had a bizarrely frayed hemline, like it'd been nibbled on by a litter of baby kneazles—and he can't be blamed for the way he lifts her onto the marble countertop—knocking an undoubtedly priceless antique porcelain soap dish onto the floor in the process—or the way he drops to his knees and spreads her thighs as wide as they can go—which is wicked fucking wide, bloody hell—

He hadn't gone down on her the night before, which he reasons now is an almost criminal offense that he needs to rectify posthaste—because, honestly, he's fucking good at it. He's good at lots of things, of course, things like quidditch and Charms and picking out perfectly ripe avocados; but he's really good at this.

And so he fits his mouth over the center of her cunt, presses his thumb against her clit, uses his tongue to circle and sweep and flick, flick, fuck—she tastes salty, and musky, and he can feel her fingernails digging into his scalp, guiding his head, and she's making these sounds, high-pitched and helpless, and his cock is about as hard as he thinks it's ever been and she's fucking dripping down his chin, cunt so wet that he slurps and he sucks and he swallows—and when she comes, she comes hard, back arching and thighs tightening, and he can't even help the low, gravelly groan that gets stuck in his throat, can't help the hand he snakes down to undo the zipper on his trousers, can't help how he gasps at the feel of her twitching around his cock when he finally pushes in—

Really.

Really.

He can't help it.

###

(i want it that way)

It's a Saturday when he sees Luna Lovegood again.

She's sitting outside of Florean Fortescue's in Diagon Alley, sharing a gigantic and spectacularly colorful ice cream sundae with another girl; Luna's speaking animatedly, waving her spoon around, and—yeah, she's wearing lipstick, a vivid splash of bright neon pink accentuating the swooping upward curve of her mouth as she offers the other girl a dreamy smile.

Cormac hovers in the doorway of Quality Quidditch Supplies, his new case of broomstick polish tucked under his arm.

He's flummoxed.

He considers walking up, saying 'hi', asking if she's busy, inviting her for lunch if she isn't—because isn't that what he's supposed to do now that he's slept with her twice? One-night-stands are his specialty, he's fucking famous for them, but whatever he'd done with Luna at the Malfoy-Granger party had officially turned this whole fucking thing into a two-night-stand and those—well, he doesn't know the rules for those. For example: are there rules? If he wants to perhaps make it a three-night-stand, does he have to take her out to dinner first? Will she expect him to send her daily mid-morning owls and buy her a toothbrush to store in the bathroom at his flat and refer to himself as her boyfriend when they're seen together in public?

He shakes his head.

He squints into the sun, brow furrowed.

He hears her laugh and has to bite down on the inside of his cheek to curb his own answering grin.

He wonders if the Loony part of her name is contagious.

###

(speed trap)

He sleeps with Luna Lovegood for the third time on a Sunday.

It's different than the other times—it's rough and confusing and he flips her onto her hands and knees halfway through, wrapping a tangled length of her hair around his wrist as he fucks her from behind; his crimson silk sheets are bunched between her knuckles, her toes curled and the nape of her neck exposed, and he wastes a couple of seconds marveling at how unbelievably delicate she looks like this, her waist tiny and her shoulder blades jutting out—

She'd been on a fucking date the day before.

He'd been standing in fucking Diagon Alley, practically planning their fucking wedding by his standards, and she'd been flirting and giggling and probably twisting fucking Maraschino cherry stems into fucking knots with her fucking tongue.

He grits his teeth and reaches around her hips to rub her clit.

She whines.

He smirks.

"But you were with a girl," he'd said, dumbstruck.

She had paused while removing her blue satin bra.

"Yes," she'd replied easily, blinking up at him through the impossibly thick fringe of her dirty blonde lashes, "I was with a girl. My sexuality is very fluid, Cormac—I don't believe in labeling or compartmentalizing my desires."

And he hadn't known what the fuck to say to that, not when he'd been so distracted by the thought of her with another girl, and especially not when she'd unclasped her bra and he'd been instantly reminded of how very fucking much he likes her tits—but there had been an unpleasant swirling surge of something in his stomach as he'd realized that it wasn't her date's gender that he'd really wanted to object to, no, nothing as simple as that—

His jaw clenches.

He fucks her faster.

He'd been jealous, which was ridiculous, and stupid, and ridiculous.

Really.

Really.

It didn't make any sense at all.

###

(curtain call)

"What the fuck's your deal today, McLaggen?" Flint snaps, shoving past him as the rest of the team trudges into the locker room. "You get Confounded by Granger again when none of us were looking?"

Cormac snorts and tears off his gloves; sweat is beading across his forehead, mixing with the grass stains and gummy streaks of mud—he'd fallen off his broom twice, missed more goals than he'd bothered to count, and he was fucking sore.

"Bad day, I guess," he replies shortly, collapsing on one of the changing benches. He strips out of his practice jersey and tosses it in the vague direction of his locker. Rick-the-lion yawns sleepily as the cool air hits his skin.

"Bullshit," Flint retorts, crossing his arms over his bare chest and eyeing Cormac with thinly veiled disdain. "You played like a fucking Weasley. Who died?"

Rick-the-lion growls.

Cormac sighs.

"Luna Lovegood is using me for sex," he confesses, scrunching up his nose. "I don't even know how it happened. I don't even know how it started."

Flint's expression—usually so stony and aggressive and implacable—actually flickers with astonishment.

"You're fucking Loony Lovegood? Since when?"

"It's Luna, not Loony—but—since two weeks ago? I picked her up at the Dragon's Breath—"

"Oh, gross—"

"—she was there to interview this shady fucking nutcase who claimed to have photographic evidence of that—that big American hoax, y'know, Bigfoot, or whatever—"

"—but what were you doing at the fucking Dragon's Breath, shite—"

"—and she's…she's pretty, I didn't remember her from school, I was mostly sure I hadn't slept with her before, and she was into it, right, so it seemed like a good idea—"

"—scraping the bottom of the fucking barrel, mate, Christ, the Dragon's Breath—"

"—slept with her again at Malfoy's, literally, at Malfoy'—"

"—don't actually clean the bathrooms there, Pucey told me—"

"—she talks about a lot of shit I don't understand but, y'know, so did Granger, and I spent most of seventh year trying to get in her knickers—"

"—dad said to just bring your own utensils if you don't want to get food poisoning—"

"—and she's really, I don't know, really different—"

"—didn't drink anything on tap, did you—"

"—don't think she actually cares if she sees me again, she never asks me to owl when she leaves—"

"—heard about this tapeworm the size of a fucking basilisk living in his small intestine—"

"—be fine with it, honestly, but I just—why wouldn't she want to see me again, y'know, like, what's wrong with me—"

"—that pub's a fucking cesspool, though, seriously—"

"—exactly, nothing's wrong with me, every other girl I've ever shagged has wanted seconds, thirds, fourths, right, I'm fucking brilliant in bed—"

Cormac abruptly shuts his mouth.

Flint grimaces as if he's in pain.

"Look," he begins, tilting his head back to glare at the depressing cinderblock ceiling. "Look. Mate. This isn't Hogwarts, you're not fifteen anymore, if you want to fucking date Loony Lovegood she isn't going to figure that out by sucking your cock. You've actually, y'know, got to say it out loud."

Cormac scowls.

"I didn't say I wanted to date her."

Flint's gaze turns withering and impatient.

"Oh? So, what, you just want a fucking lifetime subscription to the fucking Quibbler, then?" he drawls sarcastically, slinging a towel around his neck and sauntering towards the showers. "Piss off, McLaggen. And get your shit together. Fix this. Doesn't matter how many Seekers I knock bloody unconscious if you can't guard the fucking goalpost."

###

(addicted)

He sleeps with Luna Lovegood for the twelfth time on a Monday.

He spends most of his morning elbow-deep in the guts of a fucking Hagrid-sized pumpkin, sifting through stringy orange pulp for the tear-shaped ivory seeds—he has to owl his mum for detailed instructions on how to roast the bastards, and he has to go to an out-of-the-way backwoods apothecary to procure a last-minute bulk-order of ground cinnamon, for fuck's sake, but by the time Luna emerges from his fireplace and dusts off her magenta linen shorts, waist-length blonde hair tucked behind her ear and beside her wand—well, his irritation dissipates at the sight of her, only to be replaced by a fucking startling burst of nerves and indecision and adrenaline.

"Are we in a relationship?" he blurts out, before wincing. "I mean—no. We're in a relationship. I'm—stating that. Firmly. Right now. You and I—this is a relationship."

To her credit, she remains categorically unfazed by his inability to construct a proper sentence; she merely studies him for several disconcerting seconds and sniffs the air in obvious confusion.

"I was under the impression that it was customary in conventional male-female relationships for the female to initiate the inevitable conversation about monogamy. Hermione said that it generally occurred around the one-month mark, preferably following an unspecified sex act so that the male was more emotionally malleable—was she incorrect? Am I late? Is that cinnamon?"

He stares.

She sniffs again, looking thoughtful.

And then he pounces, more or less, backing her into the bookshelf he had tucked alongside the white oak mantle—most of his books are quidditch-related, but he'd noticed that a thousand-page encyclopedia on the theoretical creation of enchanted fungal spores had appeared after Luna's last visit—and hikes her legs up around his hips, planting a sloppy series of open-mouthed kisses along the wings of her clavicle, nipping at her skin, kneading her arse and cupping the mound of her cunt through the fabric of her shorts and grinding his erection into the space between her thighs like he has any hope of alleviating the pressure there without actually fucking her—

"Cinnamon?" she pants, eyes focused and intent and serious in a way he's never seen before, not from her.

He licks his lips.

"Yeah," he says, voice faltering. "You said—better than holy water, right?"

She hesitates, genuine surprise coloring her features, but then she smiles and it's slow and serene and just the tiniest bit playful—

She does something complicated with her wand and wordlessly vanishes their clothing and it's simultaneously the sexiest and most terrifying experience of his life because he fucking forgets, sometimes, that she's just as brilliant as Granger, just as capable of outsmarting him, and he feels a lazy thrill of satisfaction as she straddles his naked lap on the sofa and sinks down on his cock and rocks forward, backward, her hands gripping his shoulders and her breasts slightly swaying as she brushes up against his chest, and she rides him just like that, touch gentle and pace unhurried, quiet, intimate, and he doesn't expect to come as quickly as he does, doesn't anticipate how his orgasm practically sneaks up on him, like lightning in a thunder storm, but he registers the stuttering of her hips and the rippling warmth of her cunt as she chokes out a breathless, broken string of syllables that are probably—hopefully—his name, and he squeezes her waist and feels his cock jerk inside of her and he's fucking done.

Really.

Really.

It's as close to perfect as he suspects real life can actually get.

###

(turn it up)

He agrees to have lunch with Luna and Granger and Draco Malfoy on a Tuesday.

It's fucking horrible.

###