Luna(tic) (Marauders Era)

40. Counting Seconds in Blinks While Waiting for Rain

Despite what Kendra and Pandora and Remus all kept saying, Luna didn't actually expect James to apologise. It would have been wrong to say she didn't mind this, but it would also have been wrong to say it particularly bothered her.

It had been a long time since Luna had bothered to wait around for apologies. She'd learned long ago that she would be left to keep on waiting. And waiting. And waiting. After all, in her experience, there were only two things that led to apologies: either someone got caught, or someone felt bad. And no matter what the teachers did or said, they couldn't have eyes everywhere so things slipped past. And as for feeling bad? Well. Who would ever feel bad for telling the mad girl the truth?

And so, since no teacher had caught James, Luna didn't particularly expect an apology. Which was why she was more than slightly surprised when, as Pandora and Luna left the library the next day, it was to find James leaning against a wall and looking vaguely bored. He straightened up the moment they saw him, however, and the next thing Luna knew, words she had never expected were falling out of his mouth.

"Hey Luna, can we talk?"

Luna blinked. Once. Twice. Then three times all at once because it didn't make sense. And yet, when she glanced at Pandora, it was to find her friend with a hint of something satisfied in her face and when she looked past her as surreptitiously as she could to catch a glimpse of Sam lurking to the side, he too looked... almost smug. Almost triumphant.

Frowning, Luna looked back at James, who was now waiting with raised brows and a hint of something tentative on his face that did nothing to help the nerves bundling in Luna's stomach. That made her wish she hadn't focused past Pandora. Hadn't met Sam's eyes. Because he couldn't have known, could hardly have noticed, but somehow, it felt like he might have. Must have. If only because she had no other explanation for his expression.

"Sure," Luna whispered after several seconds and as many blinks, the agreement coming less because she actually wanted to talk to him at all and more because she wanted him to stop looking at her like he was waiting for her to do something weird. Like he was looking for proof of what he'd seen the other day. Like he could see all her crazy and was just waiting for it to slip out of the leash she kept it so carefully on.

"Cool," James asserted, glancing around. "Here, there's a classroom down here that should be empty," he added, starting down the hall.

Luna frowned, taking a hesitant step in the same direction, hand still gripping Pandora's, expecting her to follow right up until the moment when her outstretched arm met resistance and Pandora's fingers went lax in Luna's grip.

"I'll see you at dinner," Pandora said lightly when Luna looked back, panic making her eyes wide even as a frown creased her brow.

"What?" she asked, the word sounding less like anything intelligible and more like the squeak of a mouse caught somewhere it shouldn't be.

"Go on," Pandora said, smiling with a kind of easy confidence that made Luna's stomach clench with something almost like jealousy.

But Luna didn't move. Instead, once again, she blinked once. Twice. And before she managed the third or fourth or anything of the sort, James was calling from behind her. "You coming or what?"

Luna whipped her head around to him, caught between the agreement she'd already made and the protection of a friend she didn't want to let out of her sight. Especially not now. Especially not when it left her alone with this boy. With James. Whose last words to her had been the kind of cruelty Luna had grown all too familiar with before Hogwarts. The kind of cruelty she had been so hoping to leave behind. The kind that left her feeling like a puppet dangling at the ends of strings pulled by her own fear. Her own terror.