Harry Potter - Series Fan Fiction ❯ "Because She Told Me To!" ❯ Neville's Discovery ( Chapter 1 )
[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]
By: Roo the Roo 
Neville accidentally sees something he wasn't meant to see... and as a result begins noticing things he normally wouldn't have.
Non Anime: Harry Potter - Series Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Fantasy / Hentai / Drama | Type: Yuri | Uploaded On: 08.26.2007 | Pages: 6 | Words: 8.0K | Visits: 1.6K | Status: Completed
Neville accidentally sees something he wasn't meant to see... and as a result begins noticing things he normally wouldn't have.
Non Anime: Harry Potter - Series Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Fantasy / Hentai / Drama | Type: Yuri | Uploaded On: 08.26.2007 | Pages: 6 | Words: 8.0K | Visits: 1.6K | Status: Completed
This story is a revision, and slight rewrite, of my first completed multi-part fanfic, that I wrote last year, before the title of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" was even revealed. It takes place during "Half-Blood Prince" and, as of this revision, is also compatible with DH, even if the events of that book happen after the events of this story.
Slight warning before we start: There's a lot of sexual content in this story (most of it female/female) -- but it's not a romance. Shippers will be disappointed -- and most likely, people looking for out-and-out porn will be disappointed as well. I've tried to write a story where sex was a part of the plot, and at the same time tried to speculate a bit on how sex fit in with the wizarding world, such as we know it.
I'm trying my utmost to stick to the tone and "feel" of J. K. Rowling's universe -- but I also try to add my own personal touch to it, and I definitely go down a few pathways here that JKR would have ran away from at top speed.
Consider yourselves warned.
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"BECAUSE SHE TOLD ME TO!"
Chapter One:
Neville's Discovery
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It was really a coincidence that Neville got involved all.
In truth, he had never really considered himself to be all that close to Luna Lovegood -- well, he supposed she was nice enough, but she was also a little too excessively strange -- although they had seemed to strike up a sort of vaguely-defined friendship after the big battle against the Death Eaters in the Department of Mysteries. Still, as he had his classes and she had hers, not to mention her being in Ravenclaw and all, they hadn't really spoken much to each other over the course of the first month back at Hogwarts.
But then came the day that changed everything. Even years later, when Neville thought back to this year, he could easily pinpoint the exact day when the events started to happen for him, and his relationship to Luna would change forever.
It was a cold and blustery Sunday morning in the beginning of October, just after breakfast, when Neville made his way from the Hogwarts castle and down to the greenhouses to see how his Mimbulus Mimbletonia was doing. About halfway there, he discovered that Trevor, true to his habit, had escaped from his normal place in Neville's robe pocket and gone off on another of his "expeditions."
Sighing slightly and hoping that Trevor hadn't gone too far off this time, Neville set out to look for his toad.
It was then he saw Luna Lovegood coming running up the path. Maybe this was what caught his attention more than anything else; it was rare to see Luna actually run. Mostly, she walked along slowly, as if being in a hurry was something that happened only to other people, or she skipped. She certainly didn't run like she had You-Know-Who himself after her. As Neville watched, her robes fluttered around her in the wind and revealed two bare legs, free of any kind of shoes or even socks.
"Hi, Luna," said Neville uncertainly, wondering just what she was up to this time.
She stopped right in front of him, breathing heavily, and flashed him a bright, if somewhat teeth-clattering, smile. The wind tussled up her long hair and made her look even stranger than usual.
"Er, not that it's any of my business," said Neville. "But isn't it a little late in the year for walking barefoot? Aren't you cold?"
"Oh, yes." Luna nodded, clearly trying to keep her teeth from clattering more than they already did. "Very cold. That's why I'm in rather a hurry to get back inside." She began hopping from foot to foot.
"But..." Neville paused, attempting to make some kind of sense of the situation. "Why go outside with no shoes in the first place?"
"Well, I rather had to, you know." Luna balanced unsteadily on her right foot while rubbing the left with her hand.
"Did someone steal your shoes?" said Neville, remembering vaguely that Harry had once mentioned (not without a certain anger) that some of the other Ravenclaws liked to steal and hide Luna's things just for fun.
"Oh, no. She just told me not to wear them."
Neville paused again, feeling that his attempts to make sense of any of this weren't very successful at all. "Who did?" he finally asked.
But Luna didn't answer. She just shifted over to her left foot, hiking her robes slightly up in order to rub her right foot as well, and as she did so, a gust of wind caught her robe and briefly lifted it up much higher than she had probably intended, and gave Neville a big start.
She was naked underneath her robe.
Neville felt his cheeks burn hot and his mouth run dry. He blinked several times, but the robe had already fallen down again and covered Luna up, and what was more, she simply continued rubbing her foot, unaware that she had, however briefly, been completely bared for him to see.
"I, er, you...?" he began to say, but then realized that there was absolutely no way for him to finish that sentence.
Luna put down her foot and looked at him, a slight hint of concern in her otherwise dreamy eyes. "Was it a Wrackspurt?" she asked, her teeth clattering harder. "There's been a lot of them around lately, making people's brains go all mushy. It's happened to me as well. I think they're breeding."
Neville fought to regain control over his voice. "L-Luna!" he managed to say. "Er, y-you, you're going to catch a cold if you walk around with no ... shoes!"
She beamed. "It's so nice of you to be concerned for me! I'll go and put some shoes on later, I promise, but I have to finish my round first! Speaking of which, I had better start running again..." With that, she pushed past him and ran off.
Leaving him to stand there, flustered and confused, with his heart suddenly beating three times as fast. Merlin's beard! his mind screamed. I just saw her --!! The image had etched itself in on his inner eye, and even though he had only seen it for a second or so in real life, it was surprisingly detailed in his head; from the roundness of her hips to the dark blonde curls covering her --
He slapped himself, hard, in order to get his mind away from the thoughts that were suddenly pressing on, thoughts that he really shouldn't have about his friend.
It helped, but only a little.
Had Luna gone completely mad now? Walking around stark naked underneath her robes... oh, and in this weather? He knew that she had always been eccentric, but surely even she had to see that... and here at school, too! Neville swallowed and hoped for her sake that she wouldn't run into a teacher.
Forcing himself not to think about a bare Luna, and only partially succeeding, he set about looking for Trevor again.
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After fifteen minutes, he had mostly managed to get his mind back on track.
He'd found Trevor cheerfully hopping around down by the lake, and given the giant squid (whose tentacle emerged from the water to give him a cheerful wave) a timid nod before he'd scooped his toad up and returned him to his proper place in the robe pocket -- and with Trevor recovered, he could set out for his original destination again: Greenhouse Number Three, the current lodgings of his beloved Mimbulus Mimbletonia.
He wasn't thinking about Luna at all, really, when he approached the greenhouse and heard the muffled voices coming from within. He didn't even give it much of a thought that there were voices coming from the greenhouse at first; after all, the greenhouses were open to everybody, even if it was rare for anyone else than him (and sometimes Professor Sprout) to bother taking the trip down here on a Sunday.
But then, before he could enter the greenhouse, he suddenly stopped dead in his tracks. He recognized one of the voices -- even if the glass walls made it hard to make out the actual words, the tone that was used made it absolutely clear that it had to be Luna Lovegood in there.
Immediately, and quite without his consent, his mind replayed the sight of her naked form.
Neville clutched his teeth and felt like kicking himself. And here he had just been able to get his mind off Luna, too! The way this was going, he'd never again be able to see or hear her without picturing her naked! What would she say if she knew that?
All right, Neville, calm down, he told himself, suppressing the urge to run away and return sometime later when Luna wouldn't be there. She doesn't know. Unless she's a Legimliens or something, which I doubt, she'll never know. Not unless you tell her. Which you won't.
With this encouraging thought, he peered in through the glass walls to see if he could see who was in there with Luna.
The greenhouse looked completely empty from where he was standing, but the voices continued... Were they, for some reason, hiding?
Whenever he thought back on this moment afterwards, Neville couldn't say just why he did what he did next. He was usually not one for snooping -- his Gran had taught him from an early age that private conversations were not meant to have audiences -- but there was something that made him forget all that. Sneaking up to the glass wall, on the side where he would be sheltered from the wind, he started digging in his pocket (the one without Trevor) for his Spynoculars.
The Spynoculars had been a gift from the Weasley twins, one of the few gifts that Neville had ever received from someone outside his family. Almost two years earlier, after the party for Harry in Gryffindor tower where Fred and George had tricked him into eating that Canary Cream and temporarily turning into a giant bird, they had taken him aside, thanked him for "helping them test out their product" and given him the Spynoculars "as a small token of their esteem." Of course, the way they had kept "casually" asking him how the Spynoculars were working over the next few months had clued him in that the real reason they had given them to him were to test them out as well. Still, Neville had thought it was a nice gesture, and perhaps because he had hardly ever received any presents from his fellow students before, he had taken to carrying them around in his pocket, even if he hardly ever used them anymore.
In short, the Spynoculars were a smaller, cheaper and much less advanced version of the Omnoculars Neville had seen both Harry and Ron with. While they couldn't record or repeat what he had been looking at in slow-motion like the Omnoculars could, the Spynoculars had one big advantage: You didn't have to look directly at whatever it was you wanted to see. You could be looking through them and have a perfect view of what was going on behind your back, for example, or use them to look around corners, or other places it would be difficult for you to view otherwise. (Neville had once, out of curiosity, used them to look up his own nose, and had promised himself never to repeat that particular attempt.) They couldn't see through walls or solid objects, but since the greenhouse had glass walls, this particular limitation wouldn't be a problem.
Finally having managed to fish the small, magical binoculars out of his pocket, he brushed off the pocket-lint and placed them to his eyes.
At first, as he focused on the inside of the greenhouse, he saw only the usual familiar plants, not a trace of Luna or anyone else. But maneuvering the view of the Spynoculars, he could see one -- no, two -- shadows against the lower wall. It seemed like Luna and her unknown companion had placed themselves in between the larger plants in the upper corner of the greenhouse, which would, despite the see-through glass walls, make them almost impossible to spot for anyone looking in from outside.
Neville wasn't even thinking anymore, it was completely automatic that he maneuvered the view further to take a good look between the plants.
And then, he nearly fell backwards as he found himself staring directly at a girl's bare bottom.
It was Luna's, he realized, struggling to maintain his balance and pulling the view back a little to reveal the rest of the girl. There was no mistaking the long, dirty-blonde hair. The Ravenclaw girl was lying, naked as the day she was born, draped over the legs of an older girl that Neville didn't know. She was rather pretty, with long, dark hair that somehow contrasted quite nicely with Luna's dirty-blonde, and she was, right before Neville's widening eyes, just beginning to spank the naked Luna.
The sound of her hand against Luna's bottom was muffled greatly by the glass walls of the greenhouse, as was the girl's voice when she spoke, only a few words clearly audible to Neville: "-- my naughty little -- aren't you?"
"Yes!" came the answer, loud enough to be perfectly clear even through the wall, and then the girl pulled Luna's head up and kissed her, long and deep. From her somewhat awkward position, the younger girl responded to the kiss as well as she could, before being let go and falling limply down, bottom high up in the air.
The dark-haired girl grinned and said something that Neville couldn't quite hear before resuming the spanking -- going at it much harder than before, if he was to judge from the considerably louder swats, and the soft, almost inaudible whimpering from Luna...
Around the sixth swat, Neville finally snapped out of his stunned shock, removed the Spynoculars from his eyes and turned around, running away from the greenhouse as fast as he could, his heart thumping furiously in his chest and his mind in a state of complete chaos.
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Nevil le had no idea how he had ended up in the Room of Requirement, but thankfully it proved to live up to its name and be the exact thing he needed right now: A quiet place where he could sit in privacy and clear his mind for a little while. For now, it had taken the shape of a small, but cozy room, with no furniture except an overstuffed chair and a small table in one corner, underneath a window that was, as far as Neville could tell, bewitched to show a calm, serene beach motive.
After removing Trevor from his pocket and placing him on the floor where he could hop around as much as he liked, Neville sat down in the chair, swallowing several times and trying to fight the fierce blush he could still feel burning on his cheeks -- and the even more fierce discomfort he began feeling in his nether regions as he thought back to the scene.
He was a bad, bad person, he thought. That scene had obviously not been meant for his eyes, and yet he had gone out of his way to view it -- and what was even worse, now he was sitting here alone and getting horny by thinking back on it. Neville had been brought up to respect women (Gran had definitely seen to that), and he was hardly being respectful at all in any of this.
It was just that -- he just hadn't imagined that Luna -- well, he had never suspected that she liked girls 'that way.' Or was into being spanked either.
He knew, mostly thanks to overhearing late-night conversations between Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnigan (who frequently talked about girls in such intimate detail that Neville found it horribly embarrassing), that there were girls like that. Dean had even showed him a Muggle magazine once, featuring still-standing pictures of girls in the altogether who did... various things with each other. It had taken nearly two hours before Neville's face returned to its normal colour, and after that he hadn't quite looked at girls, or Dean for that matter, the same way.
Oh, of course he saw the attraction of sex, but... For the life of him, he hadn't been able to figure out why anyone would get off on being spanked. Didn't it hurt? But he had finally accepted it as another case of people being different.
But Luna? Even though she was about as different as they came, it had never crossed his mind to think of her in any kind of sexual situation, much less with another girl. But now... a lot of highly sexual images were flashing for his inner eye, all starring Luna.
He slapped himself to get his thoughts away from that subject. It's none of your business, he told himself sternly. It's definitely none of your business that she is, probably right now, naked and having her arse smacked by that other girl and having all sorts of other thing done to her that --
Neville slapped himself again for letting his mind run away with him. His mind took revenge by suggesting to him that there were probably some people out there who liked being slapped like this as well, and that maybe, just maybe, somewhere in this very castle there might be someone
at this very minute who sat all alone and slapped themselves because it excited them sexually!
Neville grabbed a pillow that, typically of the Room of Requirement, just happened to lie within reach, pressed it to his face and let out a muffled series of frustrated screams, startling Trevor who crawled and hid under the chair.
Feeling a little calmer, he put the pillow away and tried to think through the entire thing one more time.
Okay. So Luna was attracted to girls. That was fine, perfectly fine with him. But why had she and that other girl chosen the greenhouse, of all places to, um, act on their attractions? And why had Luna gone outside with nothing on underneath her robe? If it was all to get naked in the greenhouse... surely even she would have realized that it would have been better, not to mention less cold, to wait with getting undressed until she was actually there in the greenhouse?
For that matter... Was she even allowed to do either of those things?
"I need a copy of the school rules," he muttered -- and of course, there right next to him was a rolled-up piece of parchment.
He unrolled it, and was slightly surprised to find how impossibly long it was. He hadn't even been aware that there were this many school rules. How many of them had he broken without being aware of it?
It took some time, given the sheer number of the rules (and Neville wasn't entirely sure he hadn't messed up and read the same paragraphs twice a few times), but he finally found the rule he was looking for, the one about sex on Hogwarts grounds.
Sexual relationships between students, said the rule, is strictly forbidden and punishable by loss of House points, detentions or, depending on the circumstances, even expulsion. Sexual relationships between students and teachers -- (now there was a disgusting thought) -- will be punished by the immediate termination of the teacher's employment and the expulsion of the student. Sexual relationships between any human and non-human -- (even more disgusting) -- will result in the expulsion of the human in question, combined with a longer stay at the psychiatric ward at St. Mungo's Hospital.
That answered that, then. At least, Neville thought, that was one rule he was completely sure he had never broken. But, as he just had seen, that didn't mean other students might not have broken them. There were a lot of romances going on among students, after all, surely some of them decided to --
He shook his head. No, it was better not to think about that. But at least this helped him make up his mind about what to do with his newfound discovery about Luna. If he told anyone, she would risk very strict punishments, and Neville had no wish to see her expelled. It would be better to keep it all to himself and not tell anyone; if it ever came out that she... that she...
And now he was blushing again. And seeing the entire scene in his mind. And feeling that certain part of his anatomy acting up again. He'd go mad if this kept up.
But all in all, he was relieved that what seemed to be the right thing to do for once also was the easiest. He was pretty sure that he would have died of embarrassment if he'd had to actually tell anyone.
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For the next few weeks, Neville managed to not think too much about Luna -- greatly helped by the many other things he had on his mind.
Above all else, there was schoolwork -- the N.E.W.T. level classes were taking up a lot of time for everyone and even more time, it seemed, for Neville, who had never been the best or students. (Thankfully, Hermione Granger was usually willing to help him revise his homework, and she had a way of explaining things so they were a little easier to understand.)
But there was also that horrible affair with Katie Bell during the term's first Hogsmeade trip; in which Katie had somehow managed to get herself Imperiused and almost killed, and was now at St. Mungo's Hospital with no word as to when she would recover enough to return to school. Neville had never really known Katie all that well, but she had always seemed like a pleasant sort, and he couldn't imagine who'd would want to kill her, or why. He had made a point to check his DA coin at least once every day after that, just in case Harry would decide to start the DA meetings again, but this never happened. And somehow, after the conversation he'd had with Harry on the Hogwarts express at the start of the term, Neville didn't really want to be the one who brought it up.
In short, there were so many other things to occupy him that the thought of Luna only occasionally showed itself -- and then it was usually only when he happened to meet her, in the corridors or the Great Hall (and he always managed to act quite normally around her when he did), or late at night when he couldn't sleep, and the thoughts just forced themselves on him... but those times, he always did his best to forget afterwards. They were very disrespectful and made him feel incredibly guilty.
Still, and he didn't know whether this was the result of his guilt or not, but whenever he did see Luna, he had began... noticing things about her. About her, and about that other girl -- whose name, he had found out, was Claire Savelle, a seventh-year Ravenclaw. Things that were so glaringly obvious now that he couldn't understand how he could have missed them before. Or, for that matter, how everyone else could be missing them now.
The way Luna would suddenly become shy and avert her eyes whenever Claire looked at her. (Luna had never averted her eyes for anyone that Neville had seen before, not even at Professor Snape when he was at his most horrid.)
The way Claire seemed to be nearby wherever Luna was; she always sat next to her at dinner, and could often be found "casually" standing around in the hallways when Luna walked around the school.
Not to mention the way Luna had started acting even stranger than usual. Twice more, Neville spotted her walking around naked underneath her robes (luckily, he managed not to comment either time, although it took a long time for him to stop blushing), and once he had seen her being hauled off by Claire to parts unknown, with no explanation.
Well, no stated explanation, anyway, although he could certainly make an estimated guess. After which he would furiously tell himself to stop blushing so much.
But the worst was that one time at dinner, when Neville happened to glance over at the Ravenclaw table and saw that Luna, instead of eating, was staring off into space with an even more glazed look than usual. He might not have questioned this if he hadn't noticed that Claire, sitting right beside Luna, was only using one hand to eat. The other hand was underneath the table, and judging from the position of her arm it was right in Luna's lap.
...Oh wait. She wasn't, was she? Right here at the dinner table?!
But then he saw Luna let out the smallest of gasps and sit up just a little more straightly.
Neville was so startled and embarrassed that he drove his face straight down into his mashed potatoes.
The next thing he knew, he was surrounded by laughter and jeering from his fellow students. "Forget your table manners, Longbottom?" -- "There's a man who enjoys his food!" -- "Neville, aren't you getting enough sleep?" That last one was Hermione; concerned as always. He managed to dodge the questions, quickly raised himself and ran out of the Great Hall, tripping twice because he couldn't see very well with the mashed potato in his eyes.
Oh well, at least he had managed to draw attention away from Luna and Claire. He couldn't believe that nobody had noticed them! Were they trying to get themselves expelled?!
After having stumbled, half-blind, down the hallways for a while, he managed to find a bathroom where he could wash the mashed potatoes off himself.
What were those two girls thinking? Especially Claire; she was the one who had... had... Don't blush! he scolded himself, looking sternly at his own potato-covered face in the mirror over the sink. You've been doing more than enough blushing lately, now it's time that you start thinking instead! It's obvious that someone has to!
He took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down before turning the tap and splashing the surprisingly ice-cold water over his face. The cold was a good cure for his blush, he discovered; as he grabbed a towel to dry himself he found that he'd gone back to his normal colour again.
Now that he was a little calmer, and the blush was gone, he could think.
There was, now that he was thinking about it, something wrong about this entire situation. And it wasn't the fact that the relationship between Luna and Claire was painfully obvious to him, yet nobody else seemed to notice it -- he wouldn't have noticed it either unless he had known, and Luna wasn't exactly the most popular person in Hogwarts, so people might not pay too much attention to what she did, or just brush any extra strange behaviour off as "just Luna being Luna."
No... what was really wrong was that now that he thought about it, and during all those little moments he'd noticed between the two girls, he hadn't seen Luna smile. Not even once.
It was ridiculous, really. He was perfectly aware that he had the world's worst memory, but he still felt that he would have remembered if he had seen her smile. But he hadn't, not since that day in early October when she had smiled at him and called him nice for being concerned about her. He felt a little pang of guilt at that; in his opinion, he should have been more concerned about her and less about himself and how the situation had made him feel.
Still... Not that Neville had any experience to speak of, but weren't people in love supposed to smile a lot and be very happy? They weren't supposed to... to... well, whatever it was Luna and Claire did, that wasn't it. So maybe this wasn't just "Luna being Luna" after all, or even "Luna being in love"... Maybe it was something else.
Maybe it was something bad.
For a moment, Neville envisioned Claire as a Junior Death Eater who had placed Luna under the Imperius curse and made her do all sorts of (Don't start blushing again!) things for her. But maybe that was taking it a bit too far... Neville was fairly certain that there weren't any Death Eaters at Hogwarts.
There was something Luna had said about it, though, wasn't it...? Something that might help explain everything... but every time he tried to think back to the moment, the sight of Luna's (don't blush!) nakedness tended to drown out most of the other things, and he couldn't remember what exactly it was she had said.
Neville sighed and wished that he'd been Hermione Granger. Hermione would have remembered everything. She would also have known exactly what was wrong, and what to do about
it. She wouldn't have spent several weeks trying and failing to ignore everything, she would have gone and done... well, he didn't know exactly what she would have done, but it would have no doubt been something very clever, and would turn out to be precisely the right thing to do.
But he wasn't Hermione. And he didn't dare ask her for help either. She was so busy these days, and... and... well, he just couldn't tell her that he had seen Luna having (Don't blush!) things done to her. This wasn't the sort of thing you could talk to a girl about... not even Hermione.
He briefly thought about his other friends, and what they might do.
Ron Weasley was the easiest to imagine; he'd probably fly off his handle in some way and go off to confront Claire Savelle and ask her what the hell she was doing to Luna.
Harry Potter was harder to predict, but maybe he'd have used that Invisibility Cloak of his to spy on Luna and Claire until he was certain whether Claire was doing anything bad to Luna or not.
Ginny Weasley would definitely talk to Luna about it; she was straightforward like that.
Ginny's boyfriend, Dean Thomas, would probably decide that it was none of his business anyway, maybe just refer to the events of those Muggle magazines of his, and not get involved.
As for Seamus Finnigan... Neville shook his head, perfectly able to imagine Seamus's face as he made lewd jokes about girl-sex and completely failed to take any of this seriously.
And somehow, he couldn't picture either Lavender Brown or Parvati Patil taking enough of an interest in Luna (or him, for that matter) to take any course of action, but maybe they'd try to use Divination to find out the answer or something...
No, none of this was helping any.
Neville was just... Neville. He didn't have any talents in finding things out or doing heroic things. But Luna was a friend. Maybe not a very good or close friend, but a friend nevertheless. And, Neville thought as he remembered the battle at the Department of Mysteries, he was not going to stand by and do nothing if a friend needed help.
Maybe he was mistaken, maybe her relationship with Claire was perfectly happy -- but if it wasn't, and something happened to Luna because of it, he would never be able to forgive himself.
He'd find some way, he decided, giving his mirror-self a nod to boost his confidence a little. He may not be brave, smart or talented, but he would find a way. With that, he walked towards the bathroom door and pressed the door handle.
Just then, he heard a giggle from outside which made him let go of the door handle and take a few steps back. He'd have recognized that giggle anywhere now; it was Claire Savelle.
Was Claire outside the bathroom together with Luna?
Neville's mind raced; what would he do? He could go out and confront them both right now, of course, but... no. He fumbled in his pocket for his Spynoculars instead. Luckily, the door had opened just a little, and he would probably be able to use the Spynoculars to look outside and spot whatever the girls were doing.
Pressing them to his eyes, Neville quickly adjusted the vision and found that he could see the outside just fine. The Hallway was empty, apart from Claire Savelle, of course, who was in the middle of a passionate kiss with --
Hold on. That wasn't Luna. Neville could recognize the curly red hair and the still-present, if faded, acne behind heavy layers of make-up... It was Marietta Edgecombe, the Ravenclaw girl that had sold the DA out to Dolores Umbridge last year!
Neville was so startled that he fell backwards, landing on the floor with a loud THUD. Before he could raise himself, the door flew open, and the two girls were peering in, looking at him with red and flustered (and in Marietta's case, acne-filled) faces.
"Longbottom?" said Marietta, as if she had expected someone else. "What are you doing?"
"Nothing!" Neville squeaked. "I just, I, I thought I saw a spider!"
"Maybe it was the same spider that caused you to try eating with your nose at dinner?" said Claire with a smirk.
"Yes!" It wasn't much of a reply, but it was the only one Neville could think of. He got to his feet, hoping the girls wouldn't notice the Spynoculars he was clutching in his hand as he pushed past them and out the door. "Excuse me -- got to -- find some spider repellent!" he managed to say before storming off.
He had to find Luna.
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Almost half an hour of frantic searching later, he found her in the Great Hall, still sitting at the Ravenclaw table and in pretty much the exact same spot she had been sitting at dinner, reading an old issue of The Quibbler. (Although how she managed to read with the magazine upside-down was way beyond him.)
"L-Luna," he panted.
"Oh, hello, Neville," she said seriously, looking up from her Quibbler. "Your face looks much better without the mashed potato on it."
If this had come from anyone else, Neville would have thought they were making fun of him -- but Luna was different. "Thank you," he muttered, sitting down opposite her while catching his breath again and wondering where exactly to begin.
"If you wanted a second helping, I'm afraid you're too late," she continued, looking at him with a grave expression. "All the food is gone by now."
"Then why are you still sitting here?" Neville asked.
"Because she told me to," Luna answered simply, turning the page of The Quibbler without looking at it. "Luckily I had an old Quibbler to read so I wouldn't get bored. It's quite a good issue, you know. Have you read it? It's the one with the article about how many Muggles really know all about magic, but pretend that they don't because they write these books about --"
"Wait" Neville exclaimed as the memory, quite suddenly, appeared in his mind. That was it! That was the missing memory he hadn't been able to locate before, the very first hint that something had been wrong!
"Wait for what?" said Luna curiously.
"Because she told me to!" said Neville and felt like kicking himself. How could he have ignored this the first time around?
Luna raised an eyebrow. "She told you to do something as well? Why?"
"No... That was what you said to me back in October, when you weren't wearing shoes because she had told you to! Luna -- who is 'she'? It's Claire Savelle, isn't it?"
There was a brief pause, and then Luna nodded slowly.
"You do a lot of things she tells you to, don't you?" Neville continued.
"Yes," Luna answered, for some reason sounding a little suspicious.
"Why?"
"Because she told me to."
"You're doing what she tells you to because she told you to." Neville took a deep breath and glanced around the Hall to make sure nobody were listening. "Luna," he said in a whisper. "You're -- you're --" (Don't blush!) "--you're, er, WITH Claire, aren't you? I mean, you've... you know..."
Luna looked at him. Then, she gave a small sigh and closed her magazine, stuffing it down the front of her robe. "All right," she said in a resigned voice. "So how many times do you want to fuck me? I'm not really used to doing it with boys, you know, but if we get in some practice I could probably get quite good at --"
Neville sputtered. "What are you talking about?!" He tried to say it as a whisper and a shout at the same time, resulting in a low-pitched squeal that sounded a lot like Crookshanks that time Neville had inadvertedly trodden on his tail.
"Well," said Luna, as if it was self-evident, "isn't that how these things go? You know an embarrassing secret about me, and now you want to fuck me in exchange for you not telling anybody."
"Luna...! That's not...!" Neville had to sit down and take a few deep breaths before he could continue. "Luna, I'm not going to blackmail you into..." (Don't blush!) "...into doing that with me!"
"Oh," said Luna, sounding surprised. "Why not?"
"Because I would have to be a horrible, horrible person to even consider anything like that."
"Oh."
"Yes!"
"You don't even want me to suck your --"
"NO!!" (DON'T BLUSH! DON'T BLUSH!)
"That's probably a good thing then. I've never done that before either. Maybe I would have done it wrong." There was obvious relief on Luna's face as she said this.
It was a good thing there were never that many people in the Great Hall at this time of day. If any of Neville's friends had been present then, they might have grown concerned and came over to them to see what was wrong. As it was, the few who were there to see Neville repeatedly beat his head against the table merely assumed he was doing some sort of reprise of his dinner stunt with the mashed potatoes, and went on with their own activities.
"Doesn't that hurt?" Luna finally asked.
Neville raised his head and groaned. "Luna," he said. "Why did you think I would come here to blackmail you?"
"Well," said Luna, "she told me that it might happen."
"Claire told you that I would--?!"
"Oh, no!" said Luna hurriedly. "No, no, no! She didn't tell me that you would do it. Your name wasn't mentioned at all. And I'm really glad that you didn't, I mean, you always seemed like a nice person, and not the blackmailing sort at all. But she told me to not tell anyone what we were doing, because if any boys found out, they'd all use it to blackmail me."
"And you believed her?!" said Neville, wondering silently how gullible (or how distrustful of boys) it was possible to get.
"She sounded very certain when she said it," said Luna. "So I agreed that I mustn't tell anyone unless I really wanted to have sex with them as well." She paused. "I mean, fuck them. She told me to use the word 'fuck.' "
"Well, I don't know where she got that idea," said Neville, trying to ignore the casual use of the word fuck. "But, er, Luna... the main thing was... I mean, it's horrible to be the one telling you this, but, well, you deserve to know that..." he took a deep breath. "She isn't being very faithful to you and just now, I caught her kissing Marietta Edgecombe in the hallway."
"Oh."
Neville wasn't sure what reaction he had expected, but that wasn't it. "...is that all you have to say? 'Oh'? Aren't you, you know, angry?"
"No." She gave him an odd look. "Why would I be? Claire and Marietta have been girlfriends for almost three weeks now. They're always off somewhere and kissing. Sometimes they even do it in my bed, which I don't think is very nice of them at all, because then it always takes ages before I can go to bed, and I end up having to sleep in a chair in the common room."
"...Marietta is Claire's girlfriend?!"
"Yes."
"But... I thought you and Claire were... I mean..."
"Oh, I'm not her girlfriend. I'm just her naughty little slut."
"You're her WHAT?!" It would almost have been funny if it hadn't been so shocking. Neville was almost certain he'd heard it wrong.
"Naughty little slut," Luna repeated slowly, as if to make sure he got it this time. "She calls me that, you know. When she grabs me and touches me in all the nice places and my body goes all tingly and then my cunt --"
(DON'T BLUSH!) "Yes, thank you, I get it!" Neville glanced around hurriedly to see if any other people had heard this tirade. Nobody were staring, at least, so they were probably safe for now, but if she was going to continue talking like that, it was only a matter of time before... "Maybe we should talk about this somewhere else?" he suggested.
"Claire told me I shouldn't go anywhere." said Luna matter-of-factly.
"Well, you shouldn't have to listen to Claire," said Neville. "She's treating you horribly, even I can see that now!"
"But the sex is nice... " Luna murmured. "So it's not that horrible. Besides, a naughty little slut should do as she's told, shouldn't she?"
It was only sheer willpower that stopped Neville from starting a second round of banging his head against the table. "Luna, you're not just a..." (Don't blush!) "...naughty little slut! If she tells you to do something you don't want to do, then you shouldn't do it, no matter what she calls you!" Suddenly, he remembered some of Harry's words from first year, and added: "You're worth twelve of her!"
"Oh? Why?" Luna got a vaguely interested look on her face.
Neville almost sighed. The 'you're-worth-twelve-of-that-idiot' argument had seemed so much more convincing when it had been Harry who said it. He decided to take another line of Harry's, from much more recently: "Well, she wasn't in the Department of Mysteries, was she? She didn't fight Death Eaters and tell the world about You-Know-Who! You're practically a hero, Luna!"
Luna seemed to think about it. "I'm a hero?"
"You are."
"Are you quite sure you just don't want to get me somewhere private so you can blackmail me into fucking you?"
"No! I -- I don't!" Neville stuttered, but only for a moment. "I promise I won't blackmail you into anything. Wizard's honour!"
"All right, then." She actually smiled at that; the first smile he had seen from her in ages. "We can talk in the Room of Requirement. Claire is going to want to punish me, but if I'm a hero I should be able to take it."
He didn't know what to answer to that.
------------------------------------- -----------------------------------
Author's notes: And that's the first part of this story -- in the next chapter we'll get the story behind Luna and Claire's relationship. Needless to say, it's not a particularly healthy one.
It would be naive to think that no sex ever happens between students at Hogwarts -- after all, the place is full of hormonal teenagers. But it would be equally naive to think that sex between students was allowed at Hogwarts... just looking at how, in Order of the Phoenix, boys are kept out of the girls' dormitories would sum up the attitude there.
Like previously stated, I'm trying to keep the slightly whimsical tone of JKR's wizarding world here, even if I'm including some darker undercurrents and writing about things that the original books could never have included, being children's books and all. If I've managed... well, that's up to you to decide, dear reader!
Slight warning before we start: There's a lot of sexual content in this story (most of it female/female) -- but it's not a romance. Shippers will be disappointed -- and most likely, people looking for out-and-out porn will be disappointed as well. I've tried to write a story where sex was a part of the plot, and at the same time tried to speculate a bit on how sex fit in with the wizarding world, such as we know it.
I'm trying my utmost to stick to the tone and "feel" of J. K. Rowling's universe -- but I also try to add my own personal touch to it, and I definitely go down a few pathways here that JKR would have ran away from at top speed.
Consider yourselves warned.
"BECAUSE SHE TOLD ME TO!"
Chapter One:
Neville's Discovery
---------------------------------------------------- --------------------
It was really a coincidence that Neville got involved all.
In truth, he had never really considered himself to be all that close to Luna Lovegood -- well, he supposed she was nice enough, but she was also a little too excessively strange -- although they had seemed to strike up a sort of vaguely-defined friendship after the big battle against the Death Eaters in the Department of Mysteries. Still, as he had his classes and she had hers, not to mention her being in Ravenclaw and all, they hadn't really spoken much to each other over the course of the first month back at Hogwarts.
But then came the day that changed everything. Even years later, when Neville thought back to this year, he could easily pinpoint the exact day when the events started to happen for him, and his relationship to Luna would change forever.
It was a cold and blustery Sunday morning in the beginning of October, just after breakfast, when Neville made his way from the Hogwarts castle and down to the greenhouses to see how his Mimbulus Mimbletonia was doing. About halfway there, he discovered that Trevor, true to his habit, had escaped from his normal place in Neville's robe pocket and gone off on another of his "expeditions."
Sighing slightly and hoping that Trevor hadn't gone too far off this time, Neville set out to look for his toad.
It was then he saw Luna Lovegood coming running up the path. Maybe this was what caught his attention more than anything else; it was rare to see Luna actually run. Mostly, she walked along slowly, as if being in a hurry was something that happened only to other people, or she skipped. She certainly didn't run like she had You-Know-Who himself after her. As Neville watched, her robes fluttered around her in the wind and revealed two bare legs, free of any kind of shoes or even socks.
"Hi, Luna," said Neville uncertainly, wondering just what she was up to this time.
She stopped right in front of him, breathing heavily, and flashed him a bright, if somewhat teeth-clattering, smile. The wind tussled up her long hair and made her look even stranger than usual.
"Er, not that it's any of my business," said Neville. "But isn't it a little late in the year for walking barefoot? Aren't you cold?"
"Oh, yes." Luna nodded, clearly trying to keep her teeth from clattering more than they already did. "Very cold. That's why I'm in rather a hurry to get back inside." She began hopping from foot to foot.
"But..." Neville paused, attempting to make some kind of sense of the situation. "Why go outside with no shoes in the first place?"
"Well, I rather had to, you know." Luna balanced unsteadily on her right foot while rubbing the left with her hand.
"Did someone steal your shoes?" said Neville, remembering vaguely that Harry had once mentioned (not without a certain anger) that some of the other Ravenclaws liked to steal and hide Luna's things just for fun.
"Oh, no. She just told me not to wear them."
Neville paused again, feeling that his attempts to make sense of any of this weren't very successful at all. "Who did?" he finally asked.
But Luna didn't answer. She just shifted over to her left foot, hiking her robes slightly up in order to rub her right foot as well, and as she did so, a gust of wind caught her robe and briefly lifted it up much higher than she had probably intended, and gave Neville a big start.
She was naked underneath her robe.
Neville felt his cheeks burn hot and his mouth run dry. He blinked several times, but the robe had already fallen down again and covered Luna up, and what was more, she simply continued rubbing her foot, unaware that she had, however briefly, been completely bared for him to see.
"I, er, you...?" he began to say, but then realized that there was absolutely no way for him to finish that sentence.
Luna put down her foot and looked at him, a slight hint of concern in her otherwise dreamy eyes. "Was it a Wrackspurt?" she asked, her teeth clattering harder. "There's been a lot of them around lately, making people's brains go all mushy. It's happened to me as well. I think they're breeding."
Neville fought to regain control over his voice. "L-Luna!" he managed to say. "Er, y-you, you're going to catch a cold if you walk around with no ... shoes!"
She beamed. "It's so nice of you to be concerned for me! I'll go and put some shoes on later, I promise, but I have to finish my round first! Speaking of which, I had better start running again..." With that, she pushed past him and ran off.
Leaving him to stand there, flustered and confused, with his heart suddenly beating three times as fast. Merlin's beard! his mind screamed. I just saw her --!! The image had etched itself in on his inner eye, and even though he had only seen it for a second or so in real life, it was surprisingly detailed in his head; from the roundness of her hips to the dark blonde curls covering her --
He slapped himself, hard, in order to get his mind away from the thoughts that were suddenly pressing on, thoughts that he really shouldn't have about his friend.
It helped, but only a little.
Had Luna gone completely mad now? Walking around stark naked underneath her robes... oh, and in this weather? He knew that she had always been eccentric, but surely even she had to see that... and here at school, too! Neville swallowed and hoped for her sake that she wouldn't run into a teacher.
Forcing himself not to think about a bare Luna, and only partially succeeding, he set about looking for Trevor again.
After fifteen minutes, he had mostly managed to get his mind back on track.
He'd found Trevor cheerfully hopping around down by the lake, and given the giant squid (whose tentacle emerged from the water to give him a cheerful wave) a timid nod before he'd scooped his toad up and returned him to his proper place in the robe pocket -- and with Trevor recovered, he could set out for his original destination again: Greenhouse Number Three, the current lodgings of his beloved Mimbulus Mimbletonia.
He wasn't thinking about Luna at all, really, when he approached the greenhouse and heard the muffled voices coming from within. He didn't even give it much of a thought that there were voices coming from the greenhouse at first; after all, the greenhouses were open to everybody, even if it was rare for anyone else than him (and sometimes Professor Sprout) to bother taking the trip down here on a Sunday.
But then, before he could enter the greenhouse, he suddenly stopped dead in his tracks. He recognized one of the voices -- even if the glass walls made it hard to make out the actual words, the tone that was used made it absolutely clear that it had to be Luna Lovegood in there.
Immediately, and quite without his consent, his mind replayed the sight of her naked form.
Neville clutched his teeth and felt like kicking himself. And here he had just been able to get his mind off Luna, too! The way this was going, he'd never again be able to see or hear her without picturing her naked! What would she say if she knew that?
All right, Neville, calm down, he told himself, suppressing the urge to run away and return sometime later when Luna wouldn't be there. She doesn't know. Unless she's a Legimliens or something, which I doubt, she'll never know. Not unless you tell her. Which you won't.
With this encouraging thought, he peered in through the glass walls to see if he could see who was in there with Luna.
The greenhouse looked completely empty from where he was standing, but the voices continued... Were they, for some reason, hiding?
Whenever he thought back on this moment afterwards, Neville couldn't say just why he did what he did next. He was usually not one for snooping -- his Gran had taught him from an early age that private conversations were not meant to have audiences -- but there was something that made him forget all that. Sneaking up to the glass wall, on the side where he would be sheltered from the wind, he started digging in his pocket (the one without Trevor) for his Spynoculars.
The Spynoculars had been a gift from the Weasley twins, one of the few gifts that Neville had ever received from someone outside his family. Almost two years earlier, after the party for Harry in Gryffindor tower where Fred and George had tricked him into eating that Canary Cream and temporarily turning into a giant bird, they had taken him aside, thanked him for "helping them test out their product" and given him the Spynoculars "as a small token of their esteem." Of course, the way they had kept "casually" asking him how the Spynoculars were working over the next few months had clued him in that the real reason they had given them to him were to test them out as well. Still, Neville had thought it was a nice gesture, and perhaps because he had hardly ever received any presents from his fellow students before, he had taken to carrying them around in his pocket, even if he hardly ever used them anymore.
In short, the Spynoculars were a smaller, cheaper and much less advanced version of the Omnoculars Neville had seen both Harry and Ron with. While they couldn't record or repeat what he had been looking at in slow-motion like the Omnoculars could, the Spynoculars had one big advantage: You didn't have to look directly at whatever it was you wanted to see. You could be looking through them and have a perfect view of what was going on behind your back, for example, or use them to look around corners, or other places it would be difficult for you to view otherwise. (Neville had once, out of curiosity, used them to look up his own nose, and had promised himself never to repeat that particular attempt.) They couldn't see through walls or solid objects, but since the greenhouse had glass walls, this particular limitation wouldn't be a problem.
Finally having managed to fish the small, magical binoculars out of his pocket, he brushed off the pocket-lint and placed them to his eyes.
At first, as he focused on the inside of the greenhouse, he saw only the usual familiar plants, not a trace of Luna or anyone else. But maneuvering the view of the Spynoculars, he could see one -- no, two -- shadows against the lower wall. It seemed like Luna and her unknown companion had placed themselves in between the larger plants in the upper corner of the greenhouse, which would, despite the see-through glass walls, make them almost impossible to spot for anyone looking in from outside.
Neville wasn't even thinking anymore, it was completely automatic that he maneuvered the view further to take a good look between the plants.
And then, he nearly fell backwards as he found himself staring directly at a girl's bare bottom.
It was Luna's, he realized, struggling to maintain his balance and pulling the view back a little to reveal the rest of the girl. There was no mistaking the long, dirty-blonde hair. The Ravenclaw girl was lying, naked as the day she was born, draped over the legs of an older girl that Neville didn't know. She was rather pretty, with long, dark hair that somehow contrasted quite nicely with Luna's dirty-blonde, and she was, right before Neville's widening eyes, just beginning to spank the naked Luna.
The sound of her hand against Luna's bottom was muffled greatly by the glass walls of the greenhouse, as was the girl's voice when she spoke, only a few words clearly audible to Neville: "-- my naughty little -- aren't you?"
"Yes!" came the answer, loud enough to be perfectly clear even through the wall, and then the girl pulled Luna's head up and kissed her, long and deep. From her somewhat awkward position, the younger girl responded to the kiss as well as she could, before being let go and falling limply down, bottom high up in the air.
The dark-haired girl grinned and said something that Neville couldn't quite hear before resuming the spanking -- going at it much harder than before, if he was to judge from the considerably louder swats, and the soft, almost inaudible whimpering from Luna...
Around the sixth swat, Neville finally snapped out of his stunned shock, removed the Spynoculars from his eyes and turned around, running away from the greenhouse as fast as he could, his heart thumping furiously in his chest and his mind in a state of complete chaos.
Nevil le had no idea how he had ended up in the Room of Requirement, but thankfully it proved to live up to its name and be the exact thing he needed right now: A quiet place where he could sit in privacy and clear his mind for a little while. For now, it had taken the shape of a small, but cozy room, with no furniture except an overstuffed chair and a small table in one corner, underneath a window that was, as far as Neville could tell, bewitched to show a calm, serene beach motive.
After removing Trevor from his pocket and placing him on the floor where he could hop around as much as he liked, Neville sat down in the chair, swallowing several times and trying to fight the fierce blush he could still feel burning on his cheeks -- and the even more fierce discomfort he began feeling in his nether regions as he thought back to the scene.
He was a bad, bad person, he thought. That scene had obviously not been meant for his eyes, and yet he had gone out of his way to view it -- and what was even worse, now he was sitting here alone and getting horny by thinking back on it. Neville had been brought up to respect women (Gran had definitely seen to that), and he was hardly being respectful at all in any of this.
It was just that -- he just hadn't imagined that Luna -- well, he had never suspected that she liked girls 'that way.' Or was into being spanked either.
He knew, mostly thanks to overhearing late-night conversations between Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnigan (who frequently talked about girls in such intimate detail that Neville found it horribly embarrassing), that there were girls like that. Dean had even showed him a Muggle magazine once, featuring still-standing pictures of girls in the altogether who did... various things with each other. It had taken nearly two hours before Neville's face returned to its normal colour, and after that he hadn't quite looked at girls, or Dean for that matter, the same way.
Oh, of course he saw the attraction of sex, but... For the life of him, he hadn't been able to figure out why anyone would get off on being spanked. Didn't it hurt? But he had finally accepted it as another case of people being different.
But Luna? Even though she was about as different as they came, it had never crossed his mind to think of her in any kind of sexual situation, much less with another girl. But now... a lot of highly sexual images were flashing for his inner eye, all starring Luna.
He slapped himself to get his thoughts away from that subject. It's none of your business, he told himself sternly. It's definitely none of your business that she is, probably right now, naked and having her arse smacked by that other girl and having all sorts of other thing done to her that --
Neville slapped himself again for letting his mind run away with him. His mind took revenge by suggesting to him that there were probably some people out there who liked being slapped like this as well, and that maybe, just maybe, somewhere in this very castle there might be someone
at this very minute who sat all alone and slapped themselves because it excited them sexually!
Neville grabbed a pillow that, typically of the Room of Requirement, just happened to lie within reach, pressed it to his face and let out a muffled series of frustrated screams, startling Trevor who crawled and hid under the chair.
Feeling a little calmer, he put the pillow away and tried to think through the entire thing one more time.
Okay. So Luna was attracted to girls. That was fine, perfectly fine with him. But why had she and that other girl chosen the greenhouse, of all places to, um, act on their attractions? And why had Luna gone outside with nothing on underneath her robe? If it was all to get naked in the greenhouse... surely even she would have realized that it would have been better, not to mention less cold, to wait with getting undressed until she was actually there in the greenhouse?
For that matter... Was she even allowed to do either of those things?
"I need a copy of the school rules," he muttered -- and of course, there right next to him was a rolled-up piece of parchment.
He unrolled it, and was slightly surprised to find how impossibly long it was. He hadn't even been aware that there were this many school rules. How many of them had he broken without being aware of it?
It took some time, given the sheer number of the rules (and Neville wasn't entirely sure he hadn't messed up and read the same paragraphs twice a few times), but he finally found the rule he was looking for, the one about sex on Hogwarts grounds.
Sexual relationships between students, said the rule, is strictly forbidden and punishable by loss of House points, detentions or, depending on the circumstances, even expulsion. Sexual relationships between students and teachers -- (now there was a disgusting thought) -- will be punished by the immediate termination of the teacher's employment and the expulsion of the student. Sexual relationships between any human and non-human -- (even more disgusting) -- will result in the expulsion of the human in question, combined with a longer stay at the psychiatric ward at St. Mungo's Hospital.
That answered that, then. At least, Neville thought, that was one rule he was completely sure he had never broken. But, as he just had seen, that didn't mean other students might not have broken them. There were a lot of romances going on among students, after all, surely some of them decided to --
He shook his head. No, it was better not to think about that. But at least this helped him make up his mind about what to do with his newfound discovery about Luna. If he told anyone, she would risk very strict punishments, and Neville had no wish to see her expelled. It would be better to keep it all to himself and not tell anyone; if it ever came out that she... that she...
And now he was blushing again. And seeing the entire scene in his mind. And feeling that certain part of his anatomy acting up again. He'd go mad if this kept up.
But all in all, he was relieved that what seemed to be the right thing to do for once also was the easiest. He was pretty sure that he would have died of embarrassment if he'd had to actually tell anyone.
For the next few weeks, Neville managed to not think too much about Luna -- greatly helped by the many other things he had on his mind.
Above all else, there was schoolwork -- the N.E.W.T. level classes were taking up a lot of time for everyone and even more time, it seemed, for Neville, who had never been the best or students. (Thankfully, Hermione Granger was usually willing to help him revise his homework, and she had a way of explaining things so they were a little easier to understand.)
But there was also that horrible affair with Katie Bell during the term's first Hogsmeade trip; in which Katie had somehow managed to get herself Imperiused and almost killed, and was now at St. Mungo's Hospital with no word as to when she would recover enough to return to school. Neville had never really known Katie all that well, but she had always seemed like a pleasant sort, and he couldn't imagine who'd would want to kill her, or why. He had made a point to check his DA coin at least once every day after that, just in case Harry would decide to start the DA meetings again, but this never happened. And somehow, after the conversation he'd had with Harry on the Hogwarts express at the start of the term, Neville didn't really want to be the one who brought it up.
In short, there were so many other things to occupy him that the thought of Luna only occasionally showed itself -- and then it was usually only when he happened to meet her, in the corridors or the Great Hall (and he always managed to act quite normally around her when he did), or late at night when he couldn't sleep, and the thoughts just forced themselves on him... but those times, he always did his best to forget afterwards. They were very disrespectful and made him feel incredibly guilty.
Still, and he didn't know whether this was the result of his guilt or not, but whenever he did see Luna, he had began... noticing things about her. About her, and about that other girl -- whose name, he had found out, was Claire Savelle, a seventh-year Ravenclaw. Things that were so glaringly obvious now that he couldn't understand how he could have missed them before. Or, for that matter, how everyone else could be missing them now.
The way Luna would suddenly become shy and avert her eyes whenever Claire looked at her. (Luna had never averted her eyes for anyone that Neville had seen before, not even at Professor Snape when he was at his most horrid.)
The way Claire seemed to be nearby wherever Luna was; she always sat next to her at dinner, and could often be found "casually" standing around in the hallways when Luna walked around the school.
Not to mention the way Luna had started acting even stranger than usual. Twice more, Neville spotted her walking around naked underneath her robes (luckily, he managed not to comment either time, although it took a long time for him to stop blushing), and once he had seen her being hauled off by Claire to parts unknown, with no explanation.
Well, no stated explanation, anyway, although he could certainly make an estimated guess. After which he would furiously tell himself to stop blushing so much.
But the worst was that one time at dinner, when Neville happened to glance over at the Ravenclaw table and saw that Luna, instead of eating, was staring off into space with an even more glazed look than usual. He might not have questioned this if he hadn't noticed that Claire, sitting right beside Luna, was only using one hand to eat. The other hand was underneath the table, and judging from the position of her arm it was right in Luna's lap.
...Oh wait. She wasn't, was she? Right here at the dinner table?!
But then he saw Luna let out the smallest of gasps and sit up just a little more straightly.
Neville was so startled and embarrassed that he drove his face straight down into his mashed potatoes.
The next thing he knew, he was surrounded by laughter and jeering from his fellow students. "Forget your table manners, Longbottom?" -- "There's a man who enjoys his food!" -- "Neville, aren't you getting enough sleep?" That last one was Hermione; concerned as always. He managed to dodge the questions, quickly raised himself and ran out of the Great Hall, tripping twice because he couldn't see very well with the mashed potato in his eyes.
Oh well, at least he had managed to draw attention away from Luna and Claire. He couldn't believe that nobody had noticed them! Were they trying to get themselves expelled?!
After having stumbled, half-blind, down the hallways for a while, he managed to find a bathroom where he could wash the mashed potatoes off himself.
What were those two girls thinking? Especially Claire; she was the one who had... had... Don't blush! he scolded himself, looking sternly at his own potato-covered face in the mirror over the sink. You've been doing more than enough blushing lately, now it's time that you start thinking instead! It's obvious that someone has to!
He took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down before turning the tap and splashing the surprisingly ice-cold water over his face. The cold was a good cure for his blush, he discovered; as he grabbed a towel to dry himself he found that he'd gone back to his normal colour again.
Now that he was a little calmer, and the blush was gone, he could think.
There was, now that he was thinking about it, something wrong about this entire situation. And it wasn't the fact that the relationship between Luna and Claire was painfully obvious to him, yet nobody else seemed to notice it -- he wouldn't have noticed it either unless he had known, and Luna wasn't exactly the most popular person in Hogwarts, so people might not pay too much attention to what she did, or just brush any extra strange behaviour off as "just Luna being Luna."
No... what was really wrong was that now that he thought about it, and during all those little moments he'd noticed between the two girls, he hadn't seen Luna smile. Not even once.
It was ridiculous, really. He was perfectly aware that he had the world's worst memory, but he still felt that he would have remembered if he had seen her smile. But he hadn't, not since that day in early October when she had smiled at him and called him nice for being concerned about her. He felt a little pang of guilt at that; in his opinion, he should have been more concerned about her and less about himself and how the situation had made him feel.
Still... Not that Neville had any experience to speak of, but weren't people in love supposed to smile a lot and be very happy? They weren't supposed to... to... well, whatever it was Luna and Claire did, that wasn't it. So maybe this wasn't just "Luna being Luna" after all, or even "Luna being in love"... Maybe it was something else.
Maybe it was something bad.
For a moment, Neville envisioned Claire as a Junior Death Eater who had placed Luna under the Imperius curse and made her do all sorts of (Don't start blushing again!) things for her. But maybe that was taking it a bit too far... Neville was fairly certain that there weren't any Death Eaters at Hogwarts.
There was something Luna had said about it, though, wasn't it...? Something that might help explain everything... but every time he tried to think back to the moment, the sight of Luna's (don't blush!) nakedness tended to drown out most of the other things, and he couldn't remember what exactly it was she had said.
Neville sighed and wished that he'd been Hermione Granger. Hermione would have remembered everything. She would also have known exactly what was wrong, and what to do about
it. She wouldn't have spent several weeks trying and failing to ignore everything, she would have gone and done... well, he didn't know exactly what she would have done, but it would have no doubt been something very clever, and would turn out to be precisely the right thing to do.
But he wasn't Hermione. And he didn't dare ask her for help either. She was so busy these days, and... and... well, he just couldn't tell her that he had seen Luna having (Don't blush!) things done to her. This wasn't the sort of thing you could talk to a girl about... not even Hermione.
He briefly thought about his other friends, and what they might do.
Ron Weasley was the easiest to imagine; he'd probably fly off his handle in some way and go off to confront Claire Savelle and ask her what the hell she was doing to Luna.
Harry Potter was harder to predict, but maybe he'd have used that Invisibility Cloak of his to spy on Luna and Claire until he was certain whether Claire was doing anything bad to Luna or not.
Ginny Weasley would definitely talk to Luna about it; she was straightforward like that.
Ginny's boyfriend, Dean Thomas, would probably decide that it was none of his business anyway, maybe just refer to the events of those Muggle magazines of his, and not get involved.
As for Seamus Finnigan... Neville shook his head, perfectly able to imagine Seamus's face as he made lewd jokes about girl-sex and completely failed to take any of this seriously.
And somehow, he couldn't picture either Lavender Brown or Parvati Patil taking enough of an interest in Luna (or him, for that matter) to take any course of action, but maybe they'd try to use Divination to find out the answer or something...
No, none of this was helping any.
Neville was just... Neville. He didn't have any talents in finding things out or doing heroic things. But Luna was a friend. Maybe not a very good or close friend, but a friend nevertheless. And, Neville thought as he remembered the battle at the Department of Mysteries, he was not going to stand by and do nothing if a friend needed help.
Maybe he was mistaken, maybe her relationship with Claire was perfectly happy -- but if it wasn't, and something happened to Luna because of it, he would never be able to forgive himself.
He'd find some way, he decided, giving his mirror-self a nod to boost his confidence a little. He may not be brave, smart or talented, but he would find a way. With that, he walked towards the bathroom door and pressed the door handle.
Just then, he heard a giggle from outside which made him let go of the door handle and take a few steps back. He'd have recognized that giggle anywhere now; it was Claire Savelle.
Was Claire outside the bathroom together with Luna?
Neville's mind raced; what would he do? He could go out and confront them both right now, of course, but... no. He fumbled in his pocket for his Spynoculars instead. Luckily, the door had opened just a little, and he would probably be able to use the Spynoculars to look outside and spot whatever the girls were doing.
Pressing them to his eyes, Neville quickly adjusted the vision and found that he could see the outside just fine. The Hallway was empty, apart from Claire Savelle, of course, who was in the middle of a passionate kiss with --
Hold on. That wasn't Luna. Neville could recognize the curly red hair and the still-present, if faded, acne behind heavy layers of make-up... It was Marietta Edgecombe, the Ravenclaw girl that had sold the DA out to Dolores Umbridge last year!
Neville was so startled that he fell backwards, landing on the floor with a loud THUD. Before he could raise himself, the door flew open, and the two girls were peering in, looking at him with red and flustered (and in Marietta's case, acne-filled) faces.
"Longbottom?" said Marietta, as if she had expected someone else. "What are you doing?"
"Nothing!" Neville squeaked. "I just, I, I thought I saw a spider!"
"Maybe it was the same spider that caused you to try eating with your nose at dinner?" said Claire with a smirk.
"Yes!" It wasn't much of a reply, but it was the only one Neville could think of. He got to his feet, hoping the girls wouldn't notice the Spynoculars he was clutching in his hand as he pushed past them and out the door. "Excuse me -- got to -- find some spider repellent!" he managed to say before storming off.
He had to find Luna.
Almost half an hour of frantic searching later, he found her in the Great Hall, still sitting at the Ravenclaw table and in pretty much the exact same spot she had been sitting at dinner, reading an old issue of The Quibbler. (Although how she managed to read with the magazine upside-down was way beyond him.)
"L-Luna," he panted.
"Oh, hello, Neville," she said seriously, looking up from her Quibbler. "Your face looks much better without the mashed potato on it."
If this had come from anyone else, Neville would have thought they were making fun of him -- but Luna was different. "Thank you," he muttered, sitting down opposite her while catching his breath again and wondering where exactly to begin.
"If you wanted a second helping, I'm afraid you're too late," she continued, looking at him with a grave expression. "All the food is gone by now."
"Then why are you still sitting here?" Neville asked.
"Because she told me to," Luna answered simply, turning the page of The Quibbler without looking at it. "Luckily I had an old Quibbler to read so I wouldn't get bored. It's quite a good issue, you know. Have you read it? It's the one with the article about how many Muggles really know all about magic, but pretend that they don't because they write these books about --"
"Wait" Neville exclaimed as the memory, quite suddenly, appeared in his mind. That was it! That was the missing memory he hadn't been able to locate before, the very first hint that something had been wrong!
"Wait for what?" said Luna curiously.
"Because she told me to!" said Neville and felt like kicking himself. How could he have ignored this the first time around?
Luna raised an eyebrow. "She told you to do something as well? Why?"
"No... That was what you said to me back in October, when you weren't wearing shoes because she had told you to! Luna -- who is 'she'? It's Claire Savelle, isn't it?"
There was a brief pause, and then Luna nodded slowly.
"You do a lot of things she tells you to, don't you?" Neville continued.
"Yes," Luna answered, for some reason sounding a little suspicious.
"Why?"
"Because she told me to."
"You're doing what she tells you to because she told you to." Neville took a deep breath and glanced around the Hall to make sure nobody were listening. "Luna," he said in a whisper. "You're -- you're --" (Don't blush!) "--you're, er, WITH Claire, aren't you? I mean, you've... you know..."
Luna looked at him. Then, she gave a small sigh and closed her magazine, stuffing it down the front of her robe. "All right," she said in a resigned voice. "So how many times do you want to fuck me? I'm not really used to doing it with boys, you know, but if we get in some practice I could probably get quite good at --"
Neville sputtered. "What are you talking about?!" He tried to say it as a whisper and a shout at the same time, resulting in a low-pitched squeal that sounded a lot like Crookshanks that time Neville had inadvertedly trodden on his tail.
"Well," said Luna, as if it was self-evident, "isn't that how these things go? You know an embarrassing secret about me, and now you want to fuck me in exchange for you not telling anybody."
"Luna...! That's not...!" Neville had to sit down and take a few deep breaths before he could continue. "Luna, I'm not going to blackmail you into..." (Don't blush!) "...into doing that with me!"
"Oh," said Luna, sounding surprised. "Why not?"
"Because I would have to be a horrible, horrible person to even consider anything like that."
"Oh."
"Yes!"
"You don't even want me to suck your --"
"NO!!" (DON'T BLUSH! DON'T BLUSH!)
"That's probably a good thing then. I've never done that before either. Maybe I would have done it wrong." There was obvious relief on Luna's face as she said this.
It was a good thing there were never that many people in the Great Hall at this time of day. If any of Neville's friends had been present then, they might have grown concerned and came over to them to see what was wrong. As it was, the few who were there to see Neville repeatedly beat his head against the table merely assumed he was doing some sort of reprise of his dinner stunt with the mashed potatoes, and went on with their own activities.
"Doesn't that hurt?" Luna finally asked.
Neville raised his head and groaned. "Luna," he said. "Why did you think I would come here to blackmail you?"
"Well," said Luna, "she told me that it might happen."
"Claire told you that I would--?!"
"Oh, no!" said Luna hurriedly. "No, no, no! She didn't tell me that you would do it. Your name wasn't mentioned at all. And I'm really glad that you didn't, I mean, you always seemed like a nice person, and not the blackmailing sort at all. But she told me to not tell anyone what we were doing, because if any boys found out, they'd all use it to blackmail me."
"And you believed her?!" said Neville, wondering silently how gullible (or how distrustful of boys) it was possible to get.
"She sounded very certain when she said it," said Luna. "So I agreed that I mustn't tell anyone unless I really wanted to have sex with them as well." She paused. "I mean, fuck them. She told me to use the word 'fuck.' "
"Well, I don't know where she got that idea," said Neville, trying to ignore the casual use of the word fuck. "But, er, Luna... the main thing was... I mean, it's horrible to be the one telling you this, but, well, you deserve to know that..." he took a deep breath. "She isn't being very faithful to you and just now, I caught her kissing Marietta Edgecombe in the hallway."
"Oh."
Neville wasn't sure what reaction he had expected, but that wasn't it. "...is that all you have to say? 'Oh'? Aren't you, you know, angry?"
"No." She gave him an odd look. "Why would I be? Claire and Marietta have been girlfriends for almost three weeks now. They're always off somewhere and kissing. Sometimes they even do it in my bed, which I don't think is very nice of them at all, because then it always takes ages before I can go to bed, and I end up having to sleep in a chair in the common room."
"...Marietta is Claire's girlfriend?!"
"Yes."
"But... I thought you and Claire were... I mean..."
"Oh, I'm not her girlfriend. I'm just her naughty little slut."
"You're her WHAT?!" It would almost have been funny if it hadn't been so shocking. Neville was almost certain he'd heard it wrong.
"Naughty little slut," Luna repeated slowly, as if to make sure he got it this time. "She calls me that, you know. When she grabs me and touches me in all the nice places and my body goes all tingly and then my cunt --"
(DON'T BLUSH!) "Yes, thank you, I get it!" Neville glanced around hurriedly to see if any other people had heard this tirade. Nobody were staring, at least, so they were probably safe for now, but if she was going to continue talking like that, it was only a matter of time before... "Maybe we should talk about this somewhere else?" he suggested.
"Claire told me I shouldn't go anywhere." said Luna matter-of-factly.
"Well, you shouldn't have to listen to Claire," said Neville. "She's treating you horribly, even I can see that now!"
"But the sex is nice... " Luna murmured. "So it's not that horrible. Besides, a naughty little slut should do as she's told, shouldn't she?"
It was only sheer willpower that stopped Neville from starting a second round of banging his head against the table. "Luna, you're not just a..." (Don't blush!) "...naughty little slut! If she tells you to do something you don't want to do, then you shouldn't do it, no matter what she calls you!" Suddenly, he remembered some of Harry's words from first year, and added: "You're worth twelve of her!"
"Oh? Why?" Luna got a vaguely interested look on her face.
Neville almost sighed. The 'you're-worth-twelve-of-that-idiot' argument had seemed so much more convincing when it had been Harry who said it. He decided to take another line of Harry's, from much more recently: "Well, she wasn't in the Department of Mysteries, was she? She didn't fight Death Eaters and tell the world about You-Know-Who! You're practically a hero, Luna!"
Luna seemed to think about it. "I'm a hero?"
"You are."
"Are you quite sure you just don't want to get me somewhere private so you can blackmail me into fucking you?"
"No! I -- I don't!" Neville stuttered, but only for a moment. "I promise I won't blackmail you into anything. Wizard's honour!"
"All right, then." She actually smiled at that; the first smile he had seen from her in ages. "We can talk in the Room of Requirement. Claire is going to want to punish me, but if I'm a hero I should be able to take it."
He didn't know what to answer to that.
Author's notes: And that's the first part of this story -- in the next chapter we'll get the story behind Luna and Claire's relationship. Needless to say, it's not a particularly healthy one.
It would be naive to think that no sex ever happens between students at Hogwarts -- after all, the place is full of hormonal teenagers. But it would be equally naive to think that sex between students was allowed at Hogwarts... just looking at how, in Order of the Phoenix, boys are kept out of the girls' dormitories would sum up the attitude there.
Like previously stated, I'm trying to keep the slightly whimsical tone of JKR's wizarding world here, even if I'm including some darker undercurrents and writing about things that the original books could never have included, being children's books and all. If I've managed... well, that's up to you to decide, dear reader!