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Be The Gryffindor

Notes:

Written for PaulaMcG for the Rarepair Shorts Winter Exchange. Sorry it took so long to post on AO3.

Goodness how I love Neville.

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He didn’t tell her. 

He wanted to, but after everything that had happened that day, Harry returning and dying, Neville slashing the sword of Gryffindor through the snake, Fred dying...his want to tell Luna how he felt just didn’t seem as big as others. 

And now he worried he was too late. After all, school was over. Neville was done, and Luna had one year left. She’d be at Hogwarts next year, and Neville started his fellowship with the Janus Thickey Ward as early as June. 

If he closed his eyes and focused, he could hear her breathing just three cots over. The lot of them had decided to spend one last night in the Room of Requirement together, it’s walls slightly ashed and the air smelling thickly of smoke. Something had happened in this room earlier, Neville was sure, but Harry, Hermione and Ron had left with the Weasleys, their own grief overwhelming them before they could explain what happened.

He normally would cast a room freshening charm, but the magic inside the castle was depleted. Too many charms and curses had lit up its walls that evening, the walls barely withstanding the onslaught. Professor McGonnagal thought it would return by morning, but for the night they only had each other, their sticks haphazardly cast near the door.

Thank goodness the cots had remained, their pillows and blankets and positions aligned just as they had been that morning. Neville was closest to the door, wanting to be first alerted should any danger striked while they were sleeping. Seamus held the cot next to him, then Ginny, and then Luna. 

Still, Neville could pick out Luna’s light breaths from all of the errant noises in the room; he’d focused on them enough nights to recognize her slumber. Most of the time he found he couldn’t quite go to sleep himself unless he was certain she was sleeping too. It relaxed him, almost like the tiny toad stuffy he slept with every night as a child. Almost like feeling bubble gum wrappers in the pocket of his trousers. 

The temperature was dropping, despite it being on the cusp of summer. He realized with a start that the air inside the castle had never felt overly warm, nor overly cold. It was always perfect, whether he was wearing robes or a scarf or jeans and a shirt on weekends. 

But tonight, the stone walls were echoing the nightly chill, and Neville shivered beneath the thin blanket that had kept him cozy just that morning. He had shed the bloody cardigan right after the demise of the Dark Lord, and he knew it sat folded in his trunk. Still, it needed a good scrub before he could wear it again. He couldn’t bear to part with it; the worn threads had belonged to his father, after all. 

So all he had to sleep in was a white t-shirt and his pants, thin and short but covering what needed to be covered. His socks were blessedly keeping his feet warmer than the rest of his body, but without a second blanket, Neville knew he’d be shivering soon.

He turned to his side, hoping to fall asleep quickly and dream through the oncoming bitter chill, but before he could even close his eyes he felt the corner of his cot dip unexpectedly. He could feel the warmth of a second blanket spread across his lengthened body, and before he could turn back around, delicate arms wrapped around his chest.

“I’m cold,” Luna whispered into his ear as she pressed her body against his spine. “Many animals combine their body heat to stay warm in the winter, so I thought we could try that.”

“N-norse,” Neville muttered, embarrassingly combining his two immediate responses. “I mean...no, of course not. Erm, that makes sense.” He tried to stay incredibly still as Luna shifted on his cot, making herself comfortable as her hands found their way to Neville’s chest. They were like tiny infernos through his shirt, and Neville wanted to lean into the warmth. Instead he held his breath, scared that any tiny movement would make Luna realize she was better off snuggling against someone else. 

“Oh, wonderful!” she exclaimed, her voice barely peeking over the surrounding snores. “I figured if I were cold, you probably were too. You’re only wearing pants, after all.”

“And a shirt!” Neville exclaimed, louder than he should have. A couple of the surrounding breaths stopped, but resumed after a moment or two. 

“Yes, and your shirt,” Luna laughed quietly, the sound sending tingles across Neville’s skin. “I’m already feeling so much warmer. Are you?”

Neville felt like he was on fire; not only were Luna’s hands hot against his thinly veiled chest, but his face was flushed so much that he could feel his cheeks burning red. Luna was everywhere; her breath against his neck and ear, her soft breasts pressed into his back, the front of her thighs touching the back of his, her hips...her hips…

He really couldn’t think about the curve of her hips aligned with the curve of his own. 

“I’m-” Neville started to respond, but the sound ended with a gasp as Luna’s hands began to move. Her fingers started dancing across his skin like ice skaters across the black lake, twisting their way in circles around his pectorals, his nipples, his, oh, his navel. Before he knew it, they had danced their way to the hem of his pants.

“Because if you’re still cold, I know of a way to make you warmer.” Luna’s breath was barely a whisper, hot against the lobe of his ear. Neville couldn’t move; it was like he had been hit with a Petrificus Totalus all over again, not by the tip of Hermione’s wand but by the soft brush of Luna’s touches as she skipped closer and closer to the most tender part of his body. 

The same part that was anything but as soft as Luna’s caresses. In fact, he was quite sure his cock had never been quite as hard as it was at that moment. His entire body flushed crimson as the tips of her fingers grazed the thatch of hair that sat right above his hardened length. 

“Perhaps my hands can warm you up?”

Neville couldn’t believe the soft whisper in his ear. He had never been touched there, by anyone else but his clumsy hands with a shitty lubrication charm that Percy had taught his bunkmates during fourth year. He’d only kissed one person, and she was two bunks over, blessedly still in a deep slumber. 

Luna’s delft fingers skated their way lightly over his shaft, and Neville shivered in response. “Or I could use my mouth?” she said, before nibbling at his earlobe. Neville gulped as her fingers tapped across the head of his hardened cock, continuing their dance across his skin. “I need you to say one way or another, Neville.”

He wasn’t sure he could. His brain could only focus on the fact that a girl, the girl he’d been dying to confess his love to just earlier that day, while the castle and their friends crumbled around them. 

“C’mon, Nev. Be the Gryffindor I know you are.”

Neville hadn’t always felt like a lion. He assumed the house had taken him in just like his grandmother had; because of his courageous father. It wasn’t until the sword chose him, until the Chosen One chose him to finish out the task and slay the final horcrux that Neville had felt even close to the tapestry on his house’s walls. He finally knew what it felt like to roar. And roar he would.

“I want your mouth, Luna,” he admitted, his body shaking. “I want everything, your love and your future and your children one day, but right now I want your mouth.”

He could feel Luna’s lips smile against the back of his neck before she shuffled under their two blankets. “Good boy,” she murmured, her voice barely audible through the thick cloth, before pulling his hard cock into her mouth.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Neville knew he’d do anything to keep Luna Lovegood in his life. Even if he had to keep the air of their home magically cold enough to need two blankets, so they’d always have to snuggle for warmth.

Thank goodness for lost magic and almost lost love.