FIC: In Peacetime (Harry/Luna)
To: winterthunder
From: Your Secret Santa

Title: In Peacetime
Author: bsafemydeers
Pairing: Harry/Luna
Rating: NC-17
Summary: With the War's end, Harry Potter is no longer the Boy Who Lived. He doesn't miss the title, but he does miss the boy.
Warnings: None
Author’s Notes: I hope you like it! Happy holidays!



Harry's new peace is only a month old, and he's getting tired of it.

Every day, he has to meet with some new Very Important Person that has just stepped out of nowhere, some Minister of Some Crap No One Cares About. This is the problem with rebuilding the Ministry of Magic himself, with Ron and Hermione. Logically, he knows it will all get easier, especially once his friends get over this phase of making out in every empty nook and cranny that presents itself.

But that doesn't make this part less boring, less monotonous, less soul-crushing. Every thankful, greying witch and wizard shakes his hand and kisses his cheek and says how very happy he must be that it is all over, and how glad he must be that he is no longer the Boy Who Lived. Their favourite is the Man Who Saved the World, or something else in which Harry is a Man who's Done Something Incredible. Harry rather misses the Boy Who Lived, though mostly he just misses being a boy.

Perhaps it would all be easier too, if he wasn't supposed to be marrying Ginny so very soon. A year or two, when Ginny's old enough, of course, and isn't he glad he can finally just settle down with her? Ginny's lovely. Ginny's the bright thought he carried through the War, but having died the once already, Harry's just not sure his ultimate destiny is to settle down with her. This must be what the feminists feel like, he thinks despondently.

The thing about being a hero, the thing that no one told him, is that apparently once the job is done, one isn't allowed to go back. All those same people who shook their heads over Harry's childhood, lost to Dumbledore's plans and an impending war, are the same people who now put the paperwork on his desk and ask him to smile for the pictures.

Hyopcrites.

He tries spending his time with Neville and Luna. They're quite good, he's found, at helping him slip out of the limelight and through the back door and away. It's easy to hand it over to Neville's own heroism, or let Luna start going on about whatever she'd like, and let the other help him sneak out. Despite their insistence that they are not the cool friends, they're good company.

Neville, it turns out, has a blistering sense of humor that is reserved only for those who put a few shots of firewhiskey in him first. His impression of their new Ministry cohorts is a thing of blinding and amazing beauty; Harry could almost weep with gratitude for it. And Luna--

--well, Luna Lovegood has grown up. That's pretty fucking cliche, he's aware, but he doesn't need anything but some good light to see how she looks now. She's all legs and now that her face has caught up to her eyes, she's practically a nymph, his very own fairy queen in the back corner of the Hog's Head. Plenty of people agree, in a isn't it a shame that she's still so strange sort of way. Those people are very pleased with how charitable he is in spending time with her.

They've never had the pleasure of Luna leaning over, the pale line of her cleavage pressing forward in her shirt, whispering something pleasantly distracting about the Tequila Nargles of Mexico against their ear. It makes Harry hard every single time, the hot breath against his skin. She never smells like drink, but like tea and some flower.

Then again, Harry's never seen her drink anything harder than butterbeer.

So it is that when Neville can't make it the first time, Harry isn't heartbroken. He barely drinks too, walking the line between taking the nervous edge off and losing control. Talking about something boring, how Percy wants a certain tile for the Ministry washrooms, he's looking so intently at the smooth arch of her neck that he sees the pink creep into her skin.

"Harry," she says. "This is no good."

"Why not? I think it's-- I think it's good," Harry defends himself.

Luna looks sadly at her hands and at the table. "You're in love with Ginny. You're going to marry her. You'll have wonderful, brilliant children who are above all good."

He gapes at her, because she's right as usual, and the sound of roaring ocean waves is filling up his ears. "There's-- there's no way to know that for sure," he says, suddenly lost and desperate for it not to be true. There's a sickish feeling of betrayal and need and wanting to run.

"Everyone says so," she presses on with a funny little dip of her head, and it occurs to him that this may be the first time in Luna's life she's listened to 'them,' the dim boring people who know What Is Best. "But then you spend a great deal of time with Neville and I, and while I like him a great deal, I really do..."

"What," whispers Harry, and is pulled closer by whatever great magnetic thrum is moving through him.

Luna looks up, her eyes shining so bright, swimming with desperate frustration. "Harry, don't you know I want you? So much, I don't know why it is and I can't make myself stop. I want you so... much," she finishes.

Sitting next to her, he turns so that he can get his arms around her and pull her close, press his face in her hair. She refuses to turn and stares out at the bar as if deeply stricken. She is, he supposes, deeply stricken, because he feels the same way.

He kisses her once, daringly on the neck, and feels her whole body tighten. "Do you love me, Luna?"

Luna doesn't move. "I can't help it," she says. "It just happens."

When she still doesn't move, he lets go.

She pulls away then. "I'm not selfless enough to say no to you tonight, so don't ask. I'm going home to have some pudding. My father is out of the country this week." With a little catch in her breath, she leans back in and steals a kiss from his lips before he can even exhale. "You're not quite all grown-up yet," she tells him. "So you're allowed to be whatever you'd like still, even if it's completely ridiculous."

Luna goes then.


Completely ridiculous is what Harry feels when he's standing on the path up to the Lovegood house, at approximately four-thirty the next morning. Everything is just barely waking up, shrouded in silvery mist and the skies cloudy. It's so much more lovely than it has a right to be.

A quick search of the house doesn't turn up Luna, but he takes his time in her room. He looks for some proof of what he must have missed last time, some clue as to when this had happened. Harry finds that he wants to know if she's loved him all along, or if it's something new and unexpected.

He leans towards the former as he discovers a small book of pictures, strange and obscure shots, often of the two of them. There is one from Slughorn's party, and a shiver races to his fingertips. Helpfully, Luna has labeled it 001.

In back of the house is a forest that Harry believes could hold as many mysterious and unreal creatures as Luna believes in. He pushes into the trees with the deep-seated conviction that the girl he's looking for is there. The trees look as though they're going to grab at him with sharp and winding limbs, but he hasn't felt a scratch.

Harry is not disappointed. On top of a peculiarly angled branch is Luna, in the same lavender and silver dress she'd been wearing earlier, except that it is partially opened and falling down the white slope of her shoulder. Her face is utterly unreadable. "Hello," he manages.

Everything changes with one unsure smile. "Hello, Harry. Have you come to let me down easy?"

"I don't think I have," he answers, steadily nearing her. With her sitting up on the branch like that, he has to look up. Her right leg dangles precariously next to his cheek, and he can feel the heat of her in the early morning.

There are windchimes somewhere, back at the house which is not really so far away as it feels. As they fill up his ears, Harry turns his face and kisses the inside of her knee. She sucks in a breath, says his name in a warning way.

"You always understand me, Luna," he says, his hot cheek against her thigh. "I don't even have to say anything, I think. It's... it's magic. I feel like it's magic."

"I'm not all magic," Luna tells him, dropping her other leg and shifting so she's straight on. Harry is standing with his head between her thighs, more blatantly sexual than anything he's ever known. "I am a person too, Harry Potter."

He doesn't answer that out loud. Instead, he eases her legs further apart and settles his mouth on the what he thinks to be the greatest indicator of her personhood. He hasn't expected that she would have silk knickers, it being a strange thought. But they're soft and wet against his lips, and there's no rasp of fabric when he drags his teeth over their center.

Luna whines a little bit, her head dropping forward. She scoots so her hands can rest lightly on the sides of his head. When he looks up, she actually laughs a little. "Your glasses are fogged up," she announces, and takes them. With a smile, she puts them on, the fog clearing and the glasses magnifying the silver of her eyes.

He can examine her more later, because for now he's concentrated on taste and touch and smell. Easing the silk aside, he finds the hot, sweet lips of her cunt and kisses them chastely. That earns another whining sound from Luna, and all he can do is plunge forward then. Though he's heard rumors that this is not exactly pleasant, giving a girl head, she tastes fine and a little salty, like ocean water, and the slow roll of her hips up to his mouth is amazing. His cock jerks in his trousers, and he rubs his palm over it blindly.

When he finds her clit, he can feel and hear one of her hands leave his face and land on the tree limb, scraping off a little bark. He slides the flat of his tongue over the little nub, and sure enough she is actually trying to fuck his mouth.

"Harry," she whimpers. "Harry, Harry." He looks up and sees her with pink cheeks and eyes shining behind his glasses, chewing on her bottom lip. She's looking down now, further than his face, and he realises she must see him trying to touch his cock. "Take it out," she says. "I want you to..."

One handed, the kind of smoothness only teenage boys know, he undoes his trousers and pulls out his cock, rubbing hard and slow. It's incredibly arousing, he finds, to pull at the same rate as he sucks on her clit. And then he's incredibly grateful that she comes before he does, her whole body getting tight and her cunt suddenly wetter.

"Hand," she gasps, and he gives it to her, watching in slightly blurry awe as she presses his hand between her legs, coating him with her wetness, and then frees him. "Now."

Harry doesn't have to ask and the extra slickness, the smell of her as he strokes himself, sends him tumbling into orgasm within only a few seconds.

It's not all they do, of course, and before the far away church bells strike six, he is fucking her against a tree, her hands scrabbling at the bark and they're whispering hot, quick words into each other's mouths. Her breasts are amazing, rubbing against his chest, when he catches one with his mouth. He's shocked at how many positions they can manage without a single word of design.

She leads him back to the house after, their sweaty hands clutched, and into bed-- "Only for sleep--" and he does.

Harry sleeps in the utter silent peace of her room and suddenly the war is over.