![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lomonaaerenTitle: Gifts From the Exploding Beezings
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Ginny/Luna
Content Notes: Slight angst, humor, ignores the epilogue
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 3600
Summary: When Luna gets her article on the Exploding Beezings rejected from The International Journal of Magical Zoology, Ginny offers to help her edit it. Learning about Luna wasn’t the point of the exercise, but Ginny’s glad it happened anyway.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” fics this year, for thady’s request: I'd love to see Ginny/Luna, with friendship between other characters (basically they have a life and relationships other than between them). I'd love to see them in a professional setting and the other being proud of them. It'd be interesting to see Ginny as something other than a quidditch player/reporter, but it is not a must. Happy autumn!
Gifts From the Exploding Beezings
“Why don’t you tell me more about the subject of the article?” Ginny asked as she turned over the pages that Luna had given her. What she saw made her frown. Apparently the magizoologists at the journal Luna had submitted her article to hadn’t bothered to comment on its strengths or weaknesses. The pages barely had markings other than the ink of Luna’s words.
Ginny didn’t care how strange the subject must have seemed to them. They had a job to do, and they hadn’t done it.
Luna sipped happily from the cold tea that Ginny had given her. For some reason, she wanted cold rose tea every time, and it wasn’t Ginny’s responsibility to tell her no. “Exploding Beezings live in Cornwall,” she explained in a faint voice. “Of course you don’t see much of them, because they explode after they lay their first clutch of eggs.”
“That must make it difficult for the babies,” Ginny commented, peering at the sentences. Yes, some of them were long, but that wasn’t reason enough to reject the article out of hand.
“Oh, no. You see, the memories of the ancestral Beezings are passed down to the children while they lie dormant in the eggs. So they hatch knowing how to hunt and float on the wind and all sorts of other things.”
Ginny paused over the first page. She thought she had found one problem. The introduction was a huge paragraph without any of the marks that would have indicated where the introductory section should be separated from the rest. “What do they look like? Are they predators? Since you said they hunt?”
“They hunt new opportunities,” Luna said, her voice breathier than ever. She was leaning over the table, and Ginny gave her a concerned look. Sometimes Luna forgot to eat when she was really in the depths of her research. But then Luna looked up with a brilliant smile, and Ginny relaxed. “I was only thinking of how to describe them.”
“Go on.” Ginny turned over some more pages. Yes, there was another enormous, page-devouring paragraph, and then someone had marked a long passage with a single scratch of ink after all. Why? said the neat note next to it.
“They’re brilliant yellow, and they float on the wind like scraps of color,” Luna murmured. “They’re hunting for new ideas they can admire. They find ideas before they can manifest in the minds of humans.”
Ginny stopped looking for mistakes and sat up. “Really?”
“Yes.” Luna reached out and flipped through a few pages until she came to one that was covered with Arithmantic calculations. “I proved it. This shows how.”
Ginny tried to study it, but had to admit within a few seconds that she was lost. She had never taken Arithmancy at Hogwarts, and then, well, she hadn’t had a need for it as either a Quidditch player, a Daily Prophet reporter, or now, as a professional editor. “I’ll have to let Hermione look at this.”
Luna smiled. “Do that. I haven’t seen her in so long.” She hesitated. “How much will I have to pay you for you to edit it?”
“For you, free,” said Ginny firmly, and pretended not to see the way Luna looked at her from under her hair. “Believe me, it’s going to be a breeze next to the student summer essays that I look over when they’re about to head back to Hogwarts.”
“But—those essays are easy.”
“You wouldn’t know it.” Ginny stood up. “I’m going to Floo Hermione, and she’ll probably suggest going out to Diagon Alley to meet. She thinks I spend too much time out of the ‘fresh air.’ Do you mind coming along?”
“With you and Hermione there? And the lack of Wrackspurts around you? No.”
Ginny nodded. Sometimes a person who had bullied at Luna at Hogwarts wanted to come up to her and use her as an easy target, but most now knew better than to tangle with a Weasley and a war heroine. “Then let me Floo her.”
*
“I am conditionally accepting the existence of Exploding Beezings for the purposes of reading this article,” Hermione said, brushing some hair out of her eyes and nearly making one of the servers drop his tray when she hit his elbow.
Ginny rolled her eyes, caught the server’s glance, and smiled a little. Luckily he nodded and went his way instead of drawing his wand. “That’s all right, Hermione. We’re conditionally accepting that you can share your expertise and still act like a nice person at the same time, after all.”
Hermione half-glared at her. Ginny only gazed back innocently. George never seemed to feel much like teasing these days, even now, so Ginny had to take over. And teasing her sister-in-law was so much more fun than doing it to random strangers.
Hermione finally sniffed and said, “Well, anyway, the Arithmantic calculations are correct.” She smiled at Luna in the reluctantly impressed way that Ginny had seen her show Ron when he rolled out of bed before noon on a Sunday. “They’re very impressive.”
Luna smiled back at Hermione, and hers was the normal, ordinary kind of smile that Ginny loved seeing. “Thank you, Hermione.”
“You could become a professional Arithmancer if you wanted,” Hermione went on, her voice quiet but pressing. “You could do readings on people’s presents and their finances and their futures and their magical strength, and I’m sure they would all be correct…are you listening to me, Luna?”
“Hmmm? Oh, yes, Hermione. The beetle was trying to tell me something, but I think the message is delivered now,” Luna said, turning away from the small beetle that had been crawling on the window of the Leaky Cauldron.
Hermione looked about ready to spit like a cat. Ginny only smiled behind her bottle of butterbeer. Luna would never want to be a professional Arithmancer. Studying creatures and communicating with them was all she had ever wanted to do.
Not that Ginny wasn’t proud of her for what she had achieved. Luna had wandered further and into more dangerous territories than she had ever heard of anyone doing, and now she had achieved Arithmantic calculations that impressed even Hermione.
Sometimes, Ginny wished that she could show that pride in a way Luna would notice. But she couldn’t, so she concentrated on asking, “Do you think it will convince the journal when she resubmits her article?”
“I,” said Hermione, and then twirled a piece of hair around her finger and went silent.
Ginny raised her eyebrows and waited. Luna was coaxing the beetle to walk onto her palm, and seemed to have mostly succeeded.
“I don’t know that you should resubmit the article,” Hermione finally said, her voice low and measured. “The rejection letter sounds pretty positive to me. And while the calculations are impressive, it took me an hour to understand them. I’m not sure the journal has anyone among its readers who have that kind of expertise.”
“So, wait, Luna can’t get it published because she’s too smart?” Ginny demanded, infuriated.
Something delicate touched her wrist, and she looked over to see that Luna had handed her the beetle. “Don’t shout and gesture,” Luna said. “Larvae of the Burning Moths don’t like that.”
It was an ordinary black beetle as far as Ginny could see, but she placed her hands in front of her so that it could walk from palm to palm, and listened to Luna calmly explain things to Hermione.
“There’s one line near the end of the letter,” Luna said, turning the parchment around as if she wanted to make sure that it hadn’t disappeared in the last hour. Then again, Ginny thought, Luna was used to living around creatures that would do exactly that kind of thing. “Yes, there it is, see? ‘We wish to see this article back when you have some proof of Exploding Beezings.’”
“But that basically means never, Luna,” Hermione said, sounding like she was trying to be kind. “They don’t think you do even with all your numbers and proof. They don’t want to see the article again.”
“No, it means when she has proof,” Ginny said. “And I know someone who can help us get proof.”
“You do?” Hermione blinked and nearly smashed a server in the nose with her elbow again.
“Of course,” Ginny said. Hermione’s surprise was a bit irritating, but Luna’s wide eyes and shining smile were gratifying, and she was the one Ginny spoke to. “Lavender Brown.”
*
“Yes, yes, come on and get the staring over with.”
“None of us are going to stare at you, Lavender. All of us have seen you since the war,” Ginny pointed out. She understood Lavender’s self-consciousness about the werewolf scars on her face—and slicing down her neck and disappearing under her shirt onto her shoulder—but it was a bit much to go into it with three women who had all spent lots of time around her.
Lavender snorted and picked up her camera, caressing it with fingernails that might or might not be a bit chalky and wolf-like. “All right, Ginny. So where are we going around here to photograph these Exploding things?” She twisted back and forth, the shimmer of defensive spells coming to life on her robes.
Ginny had to admit it was probably a good idea, given the presence of things that exploded, although it wouldn’t do much to protect Lavender if she fell over the looming cliffs in front of them. They weren’t far from Land’s End, although in a place that spells had persuaded Muggles to overlook for hundreds of years, and the sound of the sea below them was as faint as a flock of doves.
“Over here.” Luna was walking the very edge of the cliffs, her blonde hair floating behind her in a breeze that seemed to come up particularly to snatch at her. Ginny caught her breath for more than one reason, and hurried up to walk at her side.
Luna smiled at her and then handed her a bright yellow hat. “Put this on. Exploding Beezings like yellow. It’s the color of happiness.”
Ginny jammed the witch’s hat on her head and ignored the way that Lavender snickered behind her and Hermione sounded like she was having difficulty clearing her throat. It had been years since she’d worn even a regular black pointy hat, but she would have done a lot worse than this for Luna. “Will they come near us when there are so many humans here? They might have got used to you, but us?”
“The ones who are about to explode will,” Luna said with complete calmness. “They like to share their final moments on earth with other creatures. See?”
And she lifted her hand and pointed, and Ginny’s gaze snapped away from her face to the bright yellow smears floating on the wind.
Lavender swore, and then the camera started clicking away. Ginny smiled. No one was better than Lavender at shooting good pictures in startling situations. Ginny had worked with her frequently when she was still a Quidditch player, and Lavender’s photographs could show the exact moment of a Snitch capture or a Bludger’s impact with someone’s broom.
The smears came closer, and Ginny smiled again as she saw that one of them had a huge red crest on its snake-like head and gigantic blue eyes. Luna lifted her hand. The Beezing saw her and arrowed towards her.
The other one drifted more slowly towards Ginny. This one didn’t have a red crest. She wondered what the difference was.
“The ones with the red crests are the ones who lay the eggs,” Luna said, without taking her eyes from the one in front of her. It started to coil around her hands, and Luna laughed softly. “And this one says hello.”
“You mean the ones with the red crests are the females?” Ginny asked. The one still in front of her looked as if it didn’t know whether she was trustworthy or not. She tried to smile. It just made the Beezing shy backwards.
“The ones with the red crests lay the eggs. There are more than two sexes, Ginny.”
Ginny turned around to answer, and she was just in time to see the one in front of Luna explode. Luna opened her mouth a little, and some of the yellow globs went into it. Hermione made a gagging sound. Ginny stared.
“It’s right to accept a gift given,” Luna said, wiping transparent yellow stuff off her cheek, and sounding so much like Mum that Ginny gave a shocked giggle.
The one in front of her exploded just then. Ginny tried not to flinch and duck, because she didn’t want to hurt Luna’s feelings—or the Beezings’ feelings, oddly enough. Luna gave a soft gasp. “It’s in your hair, Ginny!”
“You just had it in your mouth, though.” Ginny wasn’t brave enough to taste the explosion, but she managed to brush it off her hair and neck perfectly calmly.
She found Luna staring at her with an intent, utterly still gaze. Ginny tried to smile back, but she was a little nervous. She didn’t know what that meant. Should she have tasted it after all?
“I have some great pictures!” Lavender announced cheerfully.
“Should you have eaten what they gave you, Luna?” Hermione asked. “I’m sure that it’s not sanitary.”
“Neither are some of the gifts your children have tried to give me,” Luna retorted, so on point and with her eyes so sharp that Ginny let out another giggle. Luna came forwards and slid a hand through her hair, taking out a glob that Ginny must have missed. “Ginny.”
“What is it?” Luna still had that utterly clear look in her eyes, and Ginny wasn’t sure that she’d blinked since they first began looking at each other.
Luna looked down at the transparent yellow stuff on her fingers for a long moment. It was already fading. Ginny felt better about her impromptu shower, knowing that. And it did support what Luna had said in her article about some reasons that so few people knew about the Exploding Beezings.
“Thank you for being here,” Luna said finally, looking up.
Ginny shivered from shock for the third time in five minutes, but this time, she felt no urge to giggle. Something she had wanted to see for a long time was looking at her out of Luna’s eyes.
“Ewww!”
And of course Hermione had to utterly ruin the moment by screaming as a Beezing exploded in front of her and showered her with yellow goo. Ginny sighed and turned away to deal with the mess as Hermione simultaneously tried to wipe herself clean and screamed as if she’d witnessed a murder.
Something caught and tugged softly on her hand, and Ginny looked over her shoulder to see Luna still staring at her with those clear eyes. She smiled a moment later and ducked close enough to whisper into Ginny’s ear, “We should talk when we get home.”
We. Ginny licked her lips and felt her heart lift and fly about like it was going to explode, too. “We should.”
Then she really did have to go help Hermione wipe the yellow dripping stuff off her shoulders, but she did it with patience and a light heart.
*
“Do you think this is going to get my article published?”
“I can’t say that for sure.” Ginny shook her head and made sure that the last of the photographs Lavender had taken was securely fastened to the page. Magical creature journals insisted on the originals of all pictures. At least they had made copies before they started to send this off. “Some of those comments on the original made me think it was just the subject matter and not the writing they despised.”
“But we’ve done the best we can.”
“Yes, I’m confident of that. The pictures are great, and you accepted all my editorial corrections. I don’t see what else we could have done.”
Luna nodded, and picked up the article to turn it around. “I hope that no one will go into Cornwall and hunt the Exploding Beezings.”’
“You’ve described their habitat pretty well, but it’s a generic enough description that no one should.” Ginny paused. “Are you all right, Luna?”
“Why?”
“Because you sound so subdued.” And you’re focused, Ginny added in the privacy of her own head, but she didn’t want to say that and hurt Luna’s feelings.
“I’m nervous that I’m going to muck this up.”
“I told you, I don’t think the journal editors will—”
“Not that.” And then Luna laid down the article in the middle of Ginny’s kitchen table and lifted her head, and that same clear look was in her eyes that had been there in Cornwall. Ginny swallowed and felt the fluttering of the pulse in her throat that beat like a hummingbird’s wings.
Their cups of tea had long since stopped steaming, but there still seemed to be a mist hanging in the air as Luna pushed her chair back and stood up, walking around the table towards Ginny. Ginny stood up to meet her. She wanted this so much, and she was also scared that she would fuck this up.
“We’ve known each other for so long,” Luna whispered. “And you haven’t turned your back on me or walked away.”
“I haven’t helped you as much as I—”
“You’ve let me take some of my own risks and you helped me when I asked for it.” Luna hesitated. “I think that’s an important part of being a friend. I’m not sure.”
Those last words were so sweet that Ginny smiled and leaned in to offer the first kiss. Luna’s sweetness deserved it. Luna clung to her shoulders like she was strangling, and Ginny drew back to kiss both her cheeks and then her throat. Luna’s own pulse was fluttering.
“It worked.”
“What did?”
“The gift the Exploding Beezing gave me. It was a gift, and it means that another gift has come to me.”
Luna’s voice was full of wonder, and Ginny kissed her on the tip of her nose and then claimed her lips again, and the air was full of the drifting mist she had imagined and full of the joy that only came from being with Luna.
*
Ginny urged her way through what seemed to be half of everyone she knew in the Leaky Cauldron, and nodded as she saw someone urgently waving an empty mug. “Yes, I have more Firewhisky,” she said as she sat down next to Ron. She waited just long enough for his eyes to brighten, and then added smugly, “You can’t have any,” and took a long drink of hers.
“Gin.”
“What Muggle drink?” Luna asked, appearing next to her chair.
Ron sighed and went in search of his own alcohol. Ginny looked up and kissed the bottom of Luna’s chin. “Congratulations again on the article being published.”
“They said the pictures were unbelievable, but they published the article anyway.” Luna looked thoughtful as she sat down next to Ginny and stole a sip of her Firewhisky, but Ginny didn’t mind that. “I don’t understand that. Why did they publish the article if they don’t believe in Exploding Beezings?”
“It’s just an expression, Luna.”
Luna made a small face. “All right, but I don’t understand it. They say things like that, and then they do contradictory things. That’s one reason I prefer creatures, you know. They always do what they mean.”
“Yes, I know,” Ginny said, touched. Luna said things like that, things that allowed a glimpse into her unique soul, all the time, but Ginny liked it every time.
“And some people do say what they mean.”
Ginny smiled and leaned her head on Luna’s shoulder, looking around the pub. Technically, this was a celebration of Luna’s article, but it had already turned into a dart-throwing contest off to the side, and an argument about philosophy between Hermione and Dean at another table, and Harry fending off a witch who didn’t believe he was happily engaged to Charlie. Harry caught Ginny’s eye and rolled his own. Ginny just smiled sweetly back at him and sat there with Luna.
“I was thinking,” Luna murmured, “that my house is a little small for my research notes.”
“Oh?”
“And your house is a little small for all the books that you edit.”
“Yes, you’re right.”
“So perhaps we could go live in a cave with the Crumple-Horned Snorkacks.”
Ginny kissed Luna on the nose again and said earnestly, “I don’t think they would like that much. Perhaps we could get a house together, though.”
“That would also work. How clever of you to think of it, Ginny.”
Ginny stroked Luna’s hair, and thought of how much more she felt when she was with Luna, big and open-minded and generous-hearted. And intelligent, even.
Luna smiled at her again with those clear eyes, and Ginny had to steal a kiss, and they ended up slipping away from the party early, but Ginny didn’t think anyone would begrudge them that.
She was as happy as an Exploding Beezing, and that was saying something.
The End.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Ginny/Luna
Content Notes: Slight angst, humor, ignores the epilogue
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 3600
Summary: When Luna gets her article on the Exploding Beezings rejected from The International Journal of Magical Zoology, Ginny offers to help her edit it. Learning about Luna wasn’t the point of the exercise, but Ginny’s glad it happened anyway.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” fics this year, for thady’s request: I'd love to see Ginny/Luna, with friendship between other characters (basically they have a life and relationships other than between them). I'd love to see them in a professional setting and the other being proud of them. It'd be interesting to see Ginny as something other than a quidditch player/reporter, but it is not a must. Happy autumn!
Gifts From the Exploding Beezings
“Why don’t you tell me more about the subject of the article?” Ginny asked as she turned over the pages that Luna had given her. What she saw made her frown. Apparently the magizoologists at the journal Luna had submitted her article to hadn’t bothered to comment on its strengths or weaknesses. The pages barely had markings other than the ink of Luna’s words.
Ginny didn’t care how strange the subject must have seemed to them. They had a job to do, and they hadn’t done it.
Luna sipped happily from the cold tea that Ginny had given her. For some reason, she wanted cold rose tea every time, and it wasn’t Ginny’s responsibility to tell her no. “Exploding Beezings live in Cornwall,” she explained in a faint voice. “Of course you don’t see much of them, because they explode after they lay their first clutch of eggs.”
“That must make it difficult for the babies,” Ginny commented, peering at the sentences. Yes, some of them were long, but that wasn’t reason enough to reject the article out of hand.
“Oh, no. You see, the memories of the ancestral Beezings are passed down to the children while they lie dormant in the eggs. So they hatch knowing how to hunt and float on the wind and all sorts of other things.”
Ginny paused over the first page. She thought she had found one problem. The introduction was a huge paragraph without any of the marks that would have indicated where the introductory section should be separated from the rest. “What do they look like? Are they predators? Since you said they hunt?”
“They hunt new opportunities,” Luna said, her voice breathier than ever. She was leaning over the table, and Ginny gave her a concerned look. Sometimes Luna forgot to eat when she was really in the depths of her research. But then Luna looked up with a brilliant smile, and Ginny relaxed. “I was only thinking of how to describe them.”
“Go on.” Ginny turned over some more pages. Yes, there was another enormous, page-devouring paragraph, and then someone had marked a long passage with a single scratch of ink after all. Why? said the neat note next to it.
“They’re brilliant yellow, and they float on the wind like scraps of color,” Luna murmured. “They’re hunting for new ideas they can admire. They find ideas before they can manifest in the minds of humans.”
Ginny stopped looking for mistakes and sat up. “Really?”
“Yes.” Luna reached out and flipped through a few pages until she came to one that was covered with Arithmantic calculations. “I proved it. This shows how.”
Ginny tried to study it, but had to admit within a few seconds that she was lost. She had never taken Arithmancy at Hogwarts, and then, well, she hadn’t had a need for it as either a Quidditch player, a Daily Prophet reporter, or now, as a professional editor. “I’ll have to let Hermione look at this.”
Luna smiled. “Do that. I haven’t seen her in so long.” She hesitated. “How much will I have to pay you for you to edit it?”
“For you, free,” said Ginny firmly, and pretended not to see the way Luna looked at her from under her hair. “Believe me, it’s going to be a breeze next to the student summer essays that I look over when they’re about to head back to Hogwarts.”
“But—those essays are easy.”
“You wouldn’t know it.” Ginny stood up. “I’m going to Floo Hermione, and she’ll probably suggest going out to Diagon Alley to meet. She thinks I spend too much time out of the ‘fresh air.’ Do you mind coming along?”
“With you and Hermione there? And the lack of Wrackspurts around you? No.”
Ginny nodded. Sometimes a person who had bullied at Luna at Hogwarts wanted to come up to her and use her as an easy target, but most now knew better than to tangle with a Weasley and a war heroine. “Then let me Floo her.”
*
“I am conditionally accepting the existence of Exploding Beezings for the purposes of reading this article,” Hermione said, brushing some hair out of her eyes and nearly making one of the servers drop his tray when she hit his elbow.
Ginny rolled her eyes, caught the server’s glance, and smiled a little. Luckily he nodded and went his way instead of drawing his wand. “That’s all right, Hermione. We’re conditionally accepting that you can share your expertise and still act like a nice person at the same time, after all.”
Hermione half-glared at her. Ginny only gazed back innocently. George never seemed to feel much like teasing these days, even now, so Ginny had to take over. And teasing her sister-in-law was so much more fun than doing it to random strangers.
Hermione finally sniffed and said, “Well, anyway, the Arithmantic calculations are correct.” She smiled at Luna in the reluctantly impressed way that Ginny had seen her show Ron when he rolled out of bed before noon on a Sunday. “They’re very impressive.”
Luna smiled back at Hermione, and hers was the normal, ordinary kind of smile that Ginny loved seeing. “Thank you, Hermione.”
“You could become a professional Arithmancer if you wanted,” Hermione went on, her voice quiet but pressing. “You could do readings on people’s presents and their finances and their futures and their magical strength, and I’m sure they would all be correct…are you listening to me, Luna?”
“Hmmm? Oh, yes, Hermione. The beetle was trying to tell me something, but I think the message is delivered now,” Luna said, turning away from the small beetle that had been crawling on the window of the Leaky Cauldron.
Hermione looked about ready to spit like a cat. Ginny only smiled behind her bottle of butterbeer. Luna would never want to be a professional Arithmancer. Studying creatures and communicating with them was all she had ever wanted to do.
Not that Ginny wasn’t proud of her for what she had achieved. Luna had wandered further and into more dangerous territories than she had ever heard of anyone doing, and now she had achieved Arithmantic calculations that impressed even Hermione.
Sometimes, Ginny wished that she could show that pride in a way Luna would notice. But she couldn’t, so she concentrated on asking, “Do you think it will convince the journal when she resubmits her article?”
“I,” said Hermione, and then twirled a piece of hair around her finger and went silent.
Ginny raised her eyebrows and waited. Luna was coaxing the beetle to walk onto her palm, and seemed to have mostly succeeded.
“I don’t know that you should resubmit the article,” Hermione finally said, her voice low and measured. “The rejection letter sounds pretty positive to me. And while the calculations are impressive, it took me an hour to understand them. I’m not sure the journal has anyone among its readers who have that kind of expertise.”
“So, wait, Luna can’t get it published because she’s too smart?” Ginny demanded, infuriated.
Something delicate touched her wrist, and she looked over to see that Luna had handed her the beetle. “Don’t shout and gesture,” Luna said. “Larvae of the Burning Moths don’t like that.”
It was an ordinary black beetle as far as Ginny could see, but she placed her hands in front of her so that it could walk from palm to palm, and listened to Luna calmly explain things to Hermione.
“There’s one line near the end of the letter,” Luna said, turning the parchment around as if she wanted to make sure that it hadn’t disappeared in the last hour. Then again, Ginny thought, Luna was used to living around creatures that would do exactly that kind of thing. “Yes, there it is, see? ‘We wish to see this article back when you have some proof of Exploding Beezings.’”
“But that basically means never, Luna,” Hermione said, sounding like she was trying to be kind. “They don’t think you do even with all your numbers and proof. They don’t want to see the article again.”
“No, it means when she has proof,” Ginny said. “And I know someone who can help us get proof.”
“You do?” Hermione blinked and nearly smashed a server in the nose with her elbow again.
“Of course,” Ginny said. Hermione’s surprise was a bit irritating, but Luna’s wide eyes and shining smile were gratifying, and she was the one Ginny spoke to. “Lavender Brown.”
*
“Yes, yes, come on and get the staring over with.”
“None of us are going to stare at you, Lavender. All of us have seen you since the war,” Ginny pointed out. She understood Lavender’s self-consciousness about the werewolf scars on her face—and slicing down her neck and disappearing under her shirt onto her shoulder—but it was a bit much to go into it with three women who had all spent lots of time around her.
Lavender snorted and picked up her camera, caressing it with fingernails that might or might not be a bit chalky and wolf-like. “All right, Ginny. So where are we going around here to photograph these Exploding things?” She twisted back and forth, the shimmer of defensive spells coming to life on her robes.
Ginny had to admit it was probably a good idea, given the presence of things that exploded, although it wouldn’t do much to protect Lavender if she fell over the looming cliffs in front of them. They weren’t far from Land’s End, although in a place that spells had persuaded Muggles to overlook for hundreds of years, and the sound of the sea below them was as faint as a flock of doves.
“Over here.” Luna was walking the very edge of the cliffs, her blonde hair floating behind her in a breeze that seemed to come up particularly to snatch at her. Ginny caught her breath for more than one reason, and hurried up to walk at her side.
Luna smiled at her and then handed her a bright yellow hat. “Put this on. Exploding Beezings like yellow. It’s the color of happiness.”
Ginny jammed the witch’s hat on her head and ignored the way that Lavender snickered behind her and Hermione sounded like she was having difficulty clearing her throat. It had been years since she’d worn even a regular black pointy hat, but she would have done a lot worse than this for Luna. “Will they come near us when there are so many humans here? They might have got used to you, but us?”
“The ones who are about to explode will,” Luna said with complete calmness. “They like to share their final moments on earth with other creatures. See?”
And she lifted her hand and pointed, and Ginny’s gaze snapped away from her face to the bright yellow smears floating on the wind.
Lavender swore, and then the camera started clicking away. Ginny smiled. No one was better than Lavender at shooting good pictures in startling situations. Ginny had worked with her frequently when she was still a Quidditch player, and Lavender’s photographs could show the exact moment of a Snitch capture or a Bludger’s impact with someone’s broom.
The smears came closer, and Ginny smiled again as she saw that one of them had a huge red crest on its snake-like head and gigantic blue eyes. Luna lifted her hand. The Beezing saw her and arrowed towards her.
The other one drifted more slowly towards Ginny. This one didn’t have a red crest. She wondered what the difference was.
“The ones with the red crests are the ones who lay the eggs,” Luna said, without taking her eyes from the one in front of her. It started to coil around her hands, and Luna laughed softly. “And this one says hello.”
“You mean the ones with the red crests are the females?” Ginny asked. The one still in front of her looked as if it didn’t know whether she was trustworthy or not. She tried to smile. It just made the Beezing shy backwards.
“The ones with the red crests lay the eggs. There are more than two sexes, Ginny.”
Ginny turned around to answer, and she was just in time to see the one in front of Luna explode. Luna opened her mouth a little, and some of the yellow globs went into it. Hermione made a gagging sound. Ginny stared.
“It’s right to accept a gift given,” Luna said, wiping transparent yellow stuff off her cheek, and sounding so much like Mum that Ginny gave a shocked giggle.
The one in front of her exploded just then. Ginny tried not to flinch and duck, because she didn’t want to hurt Luna’s feelings—or the Beezings’ feelings, oddly enough. Luna gave a soft gasp. “It’s in your hair, Ginny!”
“You just had it in your mouth, though.” Ginny wasn’t brave enough to taste the explosion, but she managed to brush it off her hair and neck perfectly calmly.
She found Luna staring at her with an intent, utterly still gaze. Ginny tried to smile back, but she was a little nervous. She didn’t know what that meant. Should she have tasted it after all?
“I have some great pictures!” Lavender announced cheerfully.
“Should you have eaten what they gave you, Luna?” Hermione asked. “I’m sure that it’s not sanitary.”
“Neither are some of the gifts your children have tried to give me,” Luna retorted, so on point and with her eyes so sharp that Ginny let out another giggle. Luna came forwards and slid a hand through her hair, taking out a glob that Ginny must have missed. “Ginny.”
“What is it?” Luna still had that utterly clear look in her eyes, and Ginny wasn’t sure that she’d blinked since they first began looking at each other.
Luna looked down at the transparent yellow stuff on her fingers for a long moment. It was already fading. Ginny felt better about her impromptu shower, knowing that. And it did support what Luna had said in her article about some reasons that so few people knew about the Exploding Beezings.
“Thank you for being here,” Luna said finally, looking up.
Ginny shivered from shock for the third time in five minutes, but this time, she felt no urge to giggle. Something she had wanted to see for a long time was looking at her out of Luna’s eyes.
“Ewww!”
And of course Hermione had to utterly ruin the moment by screaming as a Beezing exploded in front of her and showered her with yellow goo. Ginny sighed and turned away to deal with the mess as Hermione simultaneously tried to wipe herself clean and screamed as if she’d witnessed a murder.
Something caught and tugged softly on her hand, and Ginny looked over her shoulder to see Luna still staring at her with those clear eyes. She smiled a moment later and ducked close enough to whisper into Ginny’s ear, “We should talk when we get home.”
We. Ginny licked her lips and felt her heart lift and fly about like it was going to explode, too. “We should.”
Then she really did have to go help Hermione wipe the yellow dripping stuff off her shoulders, but she did it with patience and a light heart.
*
“Do you think this is going to get my article published?”
“I can’t say that for sure.” Ginny shook her head and made sure that the last of the photographs Lavender had taken was securely fastened to the page. Magical creature journals insisted on the originals of all pictures. At least they had made copies before they started to send this off. “Some of those comments on the original made me think it was just the subject matter and not the writing they despised.”
“But we’ve done the best we can.”
“Yes, I’m confident of that. The pictures are great, and you accepted all my editorial corrections. I don’t see what else we could have done.”
Luna nodded, and picked up the article to turn it around. “I hope that no one will go into Cornwall and hunt the Exploding Beezings.”’
“You’ve described their habitat pretty well, but it’s a generic enough description that no one should.” Ginny paused. “Are you all right, Luna?”
“Why?”
“Because you sound so subdued.” And you’re focused, Ginny added in the privacy of her own head, but she didn’t want to say that and hurt Luna’s feelings.
“I’m nervous that I’m going to muck this up.”
“I told you, I don’t think the journal editors will—”
“Not that.” And then Luna laid down the article in the middle of Ginny’s kitchen table and lifted her head, and that same clear look was in her eyes that had been there in Cornwall. Ginny swallowed and felt the fluttering of the pulse in her throat that beat like a hummingbird’s wings.
Their cups of tea had long since stopped steaming, but there still seemed to be a mist hanging in the air as Luna pushed her chair back and stood up, walking around the table towards Ginny. Ginny stood up to meet her. She wanted this so much, and she was also scared that she would fuck this up.
“We’ve known each other for so long,” Luna whispered. “And you haven’t turned your back on me or walked away.”
“I haven’t helped you as much as I—”
“You’ve let me take some of my own risks and you helped me when I asked for it.” Luna hesitated. “I think that’s an important part of being a friend. I’m not sure.”
Those last words were so sweet that Ginny smiled and leaned in to offer the first kiss. Luna’s sweetness deserved it. Luna clung to her shoulders like she was strangling, and Ginny drew back to kiss both her cheeks and then her throat. Luna’s own pulse was fluttering.
“It worked.”
“What did?”
“The gift the Exploding Beezing gave me. It was a gift, and it means that another gift has come to me.”
Luna’s voice was full of wonder, and Ginny kissed her on the tip of her nose and then claimed her lips again, and the air was full of the drifting mist she had imagined and full of the joy that only came from being with Luna.
*
Ginny urged her way through what seemed to be half of everyone she knew in the Leaky Cauldron, and nodded as she saw someone urgently waving an empty mug. “Yes, I have more Firewhisky,” she said as she sat down next to Ron. She waited just long enough for his eyes to brighten, and then added smugly, “You can’t have any,” and took a long drink of hers.
“Gin.”
“What Muggle drink?” Luna asked, appearing next to her chair.
Ron sighed and went in search of his own alcohol. Ginny looked up and kissed the bottom of Luna’s chin. “Congratulations again on the article being published.”
“They said the pictures were unbelievable, but they published the article anyway.” Luna looked thoughtful as she sat down next to Ginny and stole a sip of her Firewhisky, but Ginny didn’t mind that. “I don’t understand that. Why did they publish the article if they don’t believe in Exploding Beezings?”
“It’s just an expression, Luna.”
Luna made a small face. “All right, but I don’t understand it. They say things like that, and then they do contradictory things. That’s one reason I prefer creatures, you know. They always do what they mean.”
“Yes, I know,” Ginny said, touched. Luna said things like that, things that allowed a glimpse into her unique soul, all the time, but Ginny liked it every time.
“And some people do say what they mean.”
Ginny smiled and leaned her head on Luna’s shoulder, looking around the pub. Technically, this was a celebration of Luna’s article, but it had already turned into a dart-throwing contest off to the side, and an argument about philosophy between Hermione and Dean at another table, and Harry fending off a witch who didn’t believe he was happily engaged to Charlie. Harry caught Ginny’s eye and rolled his own. Ginny just smiled sweetly back at him and sat there with Luna.
“I was thinking,” Luna murmured, “that my house is a little small for my research notes.”
“Oh?”
“And your house is a little small for all the books that you edit.”
“Yes, you’re right.”
“So perhaps we could go live in a cave with the Crumple-Horned Snorkacks.”
Ginny kissed Luna on the nose again and said earnestly, “I don’t think they would like that much. Perhaps we could get a house together, though.”
“That would also work. How clever of you to think of it, Ginny.”
Ginny stroked Luna’s hair, and thought of how much more she felt when she was with Luna, big and open-minded and generous-hearted. And intelligent, even.
Luna smiled at her again with those clear eyes, and Ginny had to steal a kiss, and they ended up slipping away from the party early, but Ginny didn’t think anyone would begrudge them that.
She was as happy as an Exploding Beezing, and that was saying something.
The End.
