Entry tags:

2008, character: cho chang, character: luna lovegood, fic, pairing: luna/cho

Fic: Egg-Shaped Love (Luna/Cho, NC-17) for redsnake05
Author: la_dissonance
Recipient: redsnake05
Title: Egg-Shaped Love
Rating: NC-17
Pairing(s): Luna/Cho, mentioned Luna/MC
Disclaimer: All Harry Potter characters herein are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No copyright infringement is intended. All characters engaging in sexual activity are 16 years or older.
Summary: Luna Lovegood is the last person Cho expected to see here. She's the first person Cho would expect to do what she does.
Warnings: Adultery (but not really), a passing moment of what could be dub!con, and all manner of delightful sexual acts between women well above the age of consent.
Word Count: ~7800
Author's Notes: I hope this is something like what you were looking for, redsnake05! I loved working with your request, although 'Character development is a kink' is honestly the last thing you should say to me because then you inevitably end up with 8000-word monstrosities like this. Character kink aside, this is supposed to match your kink set #2, "edgy first times" – I don't know if you'd call this edgy, per se, but I did manage to use a bunch of the kinks there. Some suggestions from the other kink sets might have crept in here while I wasn't looking, too; this story was excessively stubborn and bad at listening to suggestions. Alas. In any case, I really, really hope you enjoy! I love basically everything I've ever read of yours and have secretly fangirled you since forever, so am currently sitting on the edge of my seat, nervously biting the nails on my crossed fingers...

And! Many thanks to T and J for being such wonderful, lovely, helpful (and fast!) betas, to A for the emergency last minute read through, and to the mods for graciously giving me an extension. Hugs for all of you!

-o-

"Close your eyes and tilt your head. No, to the right. My right."

"What, like this? Why should I-"

"Shh. Don't move."

"I – oh!"

"There. You can move now, if you want to. And you're welcome, Cho."

"Welcome?"

"See you in the fall, Cho!"

-o-

It took Cho a few minutes to remember where she was when she woke. Something about leaving for her grandmother's funeral worried at the back of her mind; did she still have to go or was she there already? She rolled out of bed and opened the curtains, and the gray light beyond resolved into acres of flat, gray-green rice paddy. Definitely China then; there were no paddies out the window of her London flat.

Cho scrubbed her hands over her face, chasing away the last vestiges of sleep. She was in the process of putting up her hair when the door creaked and her aunt's head appeared in the gap.

"Cho, darling? Oh, so I did hear you walking around. Still an early riser then, good, good," she said, clucking her approval.

"Good morning, Aunty." Cho smiled at the older woman. It was funny. Everything here was exactly as she remembered it, as though she was the only thing time had touched.

"I'll make some congee for breakfast. You like that, yes?"

"Yes," Cho said. Or maybe it was she who hadn't changed, and time in England simply didn't count here.

"Good." Her aunt beamed. "I'll be in the kitchen, then."

Cho told herself to stop being so fanciful. Of course she had changed; a simple look in the mirror would confirm that. She hadn't counted on everything else having changed so little, though, or the on the way it gave this place a strange ability to bring her back to a younger version of herself. She didn't feel thirty-eight here, couldn't even quite remember what thirty-eight was supposed to feel like, though she knew she had felt it at home every day.

Cho took comfort in finishing her morning routine, although she couldn't quite shake the feeling that she shouldn't be able to see herself in the mirror over the sink or that using three kinds of cream on one's face was a terribly stodgy, grownup thing to do.

-o-

A walk into town only made the impression stronger. 'Town' still consisted of little more than a few storefronts and a handful of houses, and Ling's Grocery still brewed and bottled the same nameless cola she had consumed religiously during sticky childhood summers. Cho bought one for old times' sake and retreated to a bench across the street to drink it.

The bottle was cool and dusty in her hands as she opened it, and she wasn't surprised to find it tasted exactly the way it had when she was fifteen. Cho chuckled softly. She had thought herself so worldly then, the summer after her fourth year. That had been before anything – Cedric, or the return of He Who Must Not Be Named, or the war, or her parents. Before she stopped thinking that Luna Lovegood represented all that was dangerous and other in the world.

That summer, she'd been preoccupied with nothing more than a stolen kiss on the stairway at the term's eleventh hour; she'd been so sure it was filled with significance, that she would never be able to forget dirty blond hair and dreamy stares and magazines read upside-down. But in the end it had been easy to forget. Strange stair-kisses were only important, it turned out, until you were back on the train with your friends and out of the wilderness where there was entirely too much time to think. The younger girl had quickly and unprotestingly faded into the background noise of Cho's real life.

The morning sun was already getting warm, and Cho tried to savor the last swallow of her warming drink before she had to get up and return the bottle. She wondered where she would go now that her excuse to sit on the bench was gone. She could go back to her family's house, but by now it would be overrun by cousins and aunts and uncles and relatives unnamed, and she would just get in the way. And the children would be awake by now, the whole maddening hoard of them. No, it was better to stay away.

Unshakeable city habit made her look both ways before she crossed the street, although there was no need. If she hadn't done it, though, she never would have seen the figure vanishing behind the last house, with long dirty blond hair and dusty crimson robes.

Luna! her mind instantly supplied, as though she could have conjured the witch into being by force of recollection alone. Impossible, she countered, shaking her head at her own folly. Luna Lovegood hadn't crossed her mind in years, and here all of a sudden she was seeing her around corners. Still, she wondered who it could have been. The woman definitely hadn't been Chinese, and with the robes – Muggle tourists ventured up here once in a blue moon, but for the stranger to have been a witch as well seemed to be pushing probability to its limits.

Cho checked the sky as she exited the store, divested of her empty bottle and in possession of Mr. Ling's deepest sympathies. She hadn't had the heart to tell him that she had seen too much death, too early, for the wizened matriarch's distant passing to disturb her, or that she was here merely out of duty. The sun had just barely cleared the mountains, and Cho still had hours before she would be expected at lunch. If she waited long enough to go back, maybe they'd have enough things for her to do to justify her presence.

-o-

They didn't, even though they did let her sit in on a meeting with the solicitor whose papers she had already signed, and later let her sit at the kitchen table and chop vegetables while they pretended they didn't mistrust her cooking skills. The funeral itself would be in two days' time, and after that Cho was sure they could settle whatever was left of the estate without her help. She was already eager to go.

There was nothing to do after dinner was cleaned up, so Cho retired early again. The room they'd given her had been hers during the summers she stayed, and from the look of it, it hadn't been used since. A few old things of hers still remained, not important enough to be packed up and brought home when summer was over. Cho picked up the lone book lying on the top of the cupboard. The Mists of Avalon. Cho chuckled. The tome had been assigned summer reading for her Muggle Studies course, but she had never gotten more than halfway through it.

When Cho went into town the next morning she took the book with her. It would be something to pass the time with, anyway. And the longer she stayed in town, the greater her chances of seeing that blond woman again – if she hadn't just been a figment of Cho's imagination.

Cho read on the bench until the sun began to get hot, and then went into Ling's for a cola. The book was surprisingly engaging; she had hardly noticed the passage of hours. The bell above the door tinkled as another customer entered. Cho brought her purchase to the counter and then stopped in her tracks. It was the blond woman from yesterday.

This time there was no mistaking the witch in front of her for an eccentrically garbed tourist or a bit of wishful thinking. She was deeply absorbed in a display of instant noodles, and didn't seem to have noticed Cho.

"Excuse me?" Cho laid a hesitant hand on the woman's shoulder.

"Yes?" The blonde turned around, clutching a packet of noodles, and even though she had been half expecting it, Cho felt a flash of surprise. It was unmistakably Luna Lovegood.

"I believe we went to school together," Cho said, well aware she was using her Grownup Voice. Gods, how long had it been since she had thought of it like that? She held out her hand and smiled. "Cho Chang."

Luna cocked her head to one side and studied Cho for a long minute before her face broke into a smile. "You've changed." She replaced the noodles on the shelf and shook Cho's hand.

"Have I?" Cho was glad to hear someone say it.

"Quite. What are you doing here?"

"Family business; this was where my mother grew up, actually. What brings you here?"

"I ran out of noodles," Luna said, indicating the shelf in front of them. "So I had to get some more. They seem to be out of shrimp flavour though; pity..."

"Oh," Cho said. "You... came to China just to get instant noodles?"

"No." Luna paused for a moment. "Oh! You mean what brings me to this area, don't you? I'm on a survey right now; this is the closest store to my camp."

"A survey?" Cho realized that she had no idea what the other woman did for a living – she had left Hogwarts two years ahead of her, and whatever circles Luna frequented, Cho was not part of them.

"For the next edition of Magical Beasts and Where to Find Them. My husband edits and I do most of the surveying. It's quite fun."

For some reason, Cho felt a surge of disappointment. "You're married, then?"

Luna nodded, positively glowing. "Just two years ago. Rolf is a nice man; we get along really well. Have you ever tried it?"

"Getting married? Once. It didn't work out, though. We were too different..." Cho shook her head and tried to shake her lingering sense of disappointment. What had she been expecting, for Luna to wait around to fulfill Cho's adolescent lesbian fantasies? This was just a normal woman, married to a man, not whatever Cho's overactive imagination had made her out to be.

"Oh, that's too bad," Luna said.

"Yes, it was," Cho agreed absently. She could already sense Luna's attention wandering back to the noodle display, and she couldn't think offhand of any way to prolong the conversation, or any real reason to do so. She hovered awkwardly for another moment, unaccountably reluctant to say goodbye and leave it there. Yes, this Luna was certainly not the Luna of the Ravenclaw tower stairs and hazy summer supposings, but there was something about her that made Cho want to find out who she was now, nevertheless. Surely it couldn't hurt to just...

On an impulse, Cho blurted out, "Look, do you want a soda? There's a bench outside where we could talk, if you don't have anywhere to be."

Luna's attention drifted back to Cho and she smiled brightly. "That would be lovely! Here, help me pick out some of these, and then we can go..."

Bemused, Cho allowed herself to be engaged in a debate on the relative merits of instant noodle flavors.

It turned out that she and Luna could find plenty to talk about, and in between discussions of their lives for the past twenty years, and the merits of Muggle beauty products, and antics of their respective next-door-neighbors, they went back for second sodas, and then again for snacks when the sun reached its peak. Finally, the shadows started lengthening again and Cho regretfully made her excuses to go.

"It's been lovely talking to you, but I feel I've kept you from your work too long." Cho stood up slowly. "But I'll be here for the next couple of days – maybe we'll run into each other again?"

"Oh no, you haven't kept me from work at all!" Luna's eyes sparkled. "Today was my day off. And I have a better idea, because maybe we won't run into each other again. You can come with me on my trek tomorrow. You said you were bored at your family's house, and it would be such fun to have you along."

"I –" Cho stopped. What reason did she have to say no, really? It would be an excuse to get away from the house, and to spend time with Luna again... "Are you sure I wouldn't be an imposition?"

Luna looked vaguely perplexed. "No, of course not. I said it would be fun, didn't I?"

Cho got distracted by the tiny line between Luna's eyebrows and didn't realize until too late that that was a good enough reason to avoid spending a day alone in the mountains with her.

"In that case, I'd love to come with you." The words were out of her mouth before she had a chance to stop them, and for a split second, she considered taking them back. But no. It couldn't mean anything; it was simply echo of an old infatuation. She'd be fine.

"Wear sturdy shoes," Luna advised. "See you tomorrow!" Then she turned on the spot and was gone. Cho stood staring at the place she had been for a moment, then instinctively glanced around to see if any Muggles had seen what they shouldn't. They hadn't.

-o-

Cho realized as soon as she got back to the house that she had no idea what time she was supposed to be meeting Luna the next morning, and that she had no way of asking her. She hated it when this happened. In London, she made it her business to always know when to be where. At least I know the how, she mused. Sturdy shoes.

The valley was still deep in shadows when Cho arrived in the center of town, having risen earlier than usual to prepare herself some trail food and tell a fellow early riser that they shouldn't expect her until dinner. Cho sat down on the chilly bench, spelled her book back to its original size, and set in to wait.

Luna arrived a scant twenty minutes later, not nearly long enough to justify Cho's intense relief at seeing her. It wasn't like she had feared the other woman wouldn't show up.

"Morning!" chirped Luna, and Cho returned the greeting with a smile. Luna smiled back. "You look especially pretty this morning."

"Oh, thank you. This is just whatever I dug out of the bottom of my suitcase; it’s horrible really. I didn’t really pack for hiking."

Luna looked Cho’s outfit up and down as if she hadn’t noticed it before now. "Well, that too, I guess, now that you mention it. But, you know, I wasn’t talking about your clothes in the first place."

"Thanks," was all Cho could think to say, a warmth settling into the pit of her stomach at the words.

"Welcome," Luna said. "We'll take the bus to the trailhead, okay? I've never been there, or else I'd just Apparate us." Luna drew her wand and held it out into the road, and before Cho could ask her what she was doing, a large red and green bus popped into existence at the end of the street and rattled to a stop before them.

"England's not the only one with a Knight Bus," Luna explained.

Cho nodded; of course. Then she caught herself smiling at her reflection in the bus’s window as she followed Luna up the steps, and looked away, feeling silly. Especially pretty today, Luna had said…

Saccharine pop music accosted Cho's ears as she stepped onto the bus, but the handful of other passengers in the vehicle seemed oblivious to it. Luna went up to consult with the driver, and then slid into the seat next to Cho.

She motioned vaguely at the air above their heads. "Cheerful, isn't it? Do you know what they're saying?"

"Hah, cheerful's one way of looking at it..." Cho stopped trying to tune out the music for a second and grimaced. "Cheap love lyrics. You're better off not understanding, really."

Luna gave her an oddly piercing look. "Is there any such thing as cheap love?"

Cho opened her mouth to say of course, but then closed it again, knowing the answer would sound wrong. Surely there was such a thing – the kind of love that when you looked for it, years later, turned out never to have been there at all. Or the kind that made you say all kinds of things, without feeling anything in particular. Or the kind...

"I don't really know... maybe?" She wished Luna wouldn't speak of love like that around her.

Luna just smiled and began to bob her head in time to the beat, as if Cho's half-response had made any kind of sense.

The insipid music didn't sound quite the same after that.

The air was cool and green at the bend in the road where they left the bus, and mossy rocks crowded high around them. Naked mountaintops soared above the trees when Cho craned her neck.

"Are we going all the way up there?"

Luna followed her gaze. "No, not today. Climbing mountains takes longer than you'd think."

Cho smiled and followed Luna as she started up a narrow trail between the rock outcroppings. The first few minutes of the climb were nearly vertical as they scrambled hand-and-foot up the rocky cleft, and Cho found her field of view restricted to the backs of Luna's legs in front of her. Like herself, the other woman had opted for Muggle attire (of sorts) for the trek. She was wearing a pair of tank-like hiking boots, what looked like a purple flowered dhoti, and a nameless garment that was more pocket than vest over a worn t-shirt, the name of the band it endorsed long faded away. Luna had the dhoti hiked up above her knees, and Cho couldn't help but admire the powerful elegance of the other woman's calves, try as she might to reason herself out of it. Objectively speaking, they really were quite lovely.

The air grew crisper as they climbed higher above the road cut, and, Cho fancied as they crested the ridge, thinner. Past the trees the mountains sprawled out around them, and it was nothing at all like London. It was exhilarating.

They stopped for a breather after the first steep ascent, and Cho found to her chagrin that she actually needed it. She had always kept herself in good shape, hadn't she? Luna, for her part, seemed to have stopped merely to take in the view, as if air were completely incidental. She seemed subtly different up here - charged with some current that was barely contained by her skin, perhaps, and she balanced on the balls of her feet as if she couldn't wait to be moving again, or maybe as if the earth had simply loosened its hold on her.

It was only with great effort that Cho pulled her eyes away from her companion, reminding herself that it was impolite to stare. After explaining the charm she was laying at intervals to keep a log of any passing magical beasts, Luna didn't seem much inclined toward conversation, however. Cho wasn't, either, once they started climbing again, so she found herself with not much else to do.

It didn't make sense that the woman in front of her should be more riveting than the increasingly majestic countryside they were hiking through. Who was she, to attract Cho's attention like that? Cho tried to remind herself how anyone else in her place would see Luna Lovegood - just a regular woman (well, as far as that term could ever be applied to her), someone trying to do their job, an old school friend.

Cho looked away again, telling herself to stop being fanciful. Luna had done nothing, really, to deserve this. And she certainly wouldn't want Cho's attention if she knew.

By the time they stopped for lunch, Cho had finally found her rhythm, and was beginning to feel Luna's enthusiasm – or maybe it was the mountains themselves – rub off on her. It was with only a twinge of guilt that she watched Luna shed her pocketed vest and throw herself down in the sun. As Cho bent down to untie her own shoes, she didn't bother to stop herself from imagining that Luna had taken her this far away from civilization for the express purpose of doing terrible, debauched things to her where no one would see. After all, what was the harm in it? She knew it wasn't true, and the sun was so warm, and her legs were so pleasantly limber, and imagination so easy.

Cho kicked her last shoe off and dropped down next to Luna, and they just lay like that for a while, smiling at the sky and not bothering to talk.

"It's really beautiful up here," Cho said, redundantly, after a while.

"Isn't it just?" Luna smiled beatifically.

"Thanks for bringing me up here," Cho said after a pause. "I'm sure I would have been bored to tears if I'd had to spend another day with them."

"And you're not bored spending an entire day alone with me?"

"No – I couldn't imagine ever being bored with you."

"That's a nice thing to say."

"I mean it," Cho said, and realized it was true.

Luna twisted around and regarded her for a long moment. "Then that's an especially nice thing to say. Thank you."

Cho sat up and retrieved her magically shrunken lunch packet. "Do you want any chicken?"

"Oh, but I have some too! What kind is yours?" Luna joined her and there commenced a swap of lunch items that was unsettlingly reminiscent of meals on the Hogwarts express, only Cho didn't think she had ever shared a compartment on the Hogwarts Express with Luna, much less a meal.

"So what are you looking for up here? For the field guide, I mean?" Cho took a bite of the noodles Luna had brought, which were inexplicably delicious for something that came out of a package shaped like a brick.

"Everything, really. This is dragon country, of course, and there are some Demiguises too, but other than the really conspicuous animals, we've no idea what we'll find. The habitats just keep shifting north, you know, because of that Muggle atmosphere experiment or whatever it is they're doing, and we just don't know how it will affect the populations."

Cho nodded in agreement. "Hence the survey."

"Right. For all we know, everything could have changed since the last edition of Magical Beasts. And no guide ever really has all of them, you know, so this is actually a really great opportunity." Luna practically glowed.

Cho grinned; it was impossible not to in the face of that energy, but it felt a bit forced. She wished Luna hadn't used 'we' quite so much.

"So your husband – Rolph, right? – he doesn't go on these surveys?"

"Sometimes. But most of the time it's quicker to split up. We get more work done that way. Right now, he's in... South America, I think, unless he's not anymore."

"Don't you ever miss him?" Cho asked, feeling the perverse need to rub salt in her wound. Or maybe she was just making polite small talk, like any normal person would do.

Luna looked thoughtful. "Not really, no. Because we always come back, and I know he loves me."

"Hm," Cho said. That wasn't what Luna was supposed to say. She was supposed to miss him terribly, so that Cho could feel even worse about how she felt, and then maybe it would be reason enough to stop. As if she needed any more reasons.

"Do you ever miss your husband?" Luna asked. "The one you divorced?"

"No" said Cho without thinking. "Yes. I mean, I get lonely sometimes, and I was never lonely with him. But I don't think that's the same as missing him. We... didn't work out, together."

"You said that before."

She looked at Cho rather more deeply than was comfortable, but she didn't ask any more, and Cho was glad. She didn't really know why they hadn't worked out herself, other than that he hadn't been the person she thought he was, or maybe she hadn't been the person he thought she was. Just like Luna isn't who you think she is, she thought wryly. But at least this time – at what point had it become a time? – she knew it was all in her head, and she wouldn't do anything stupid.

-o-

After lunch Cho followed Luna up the trail feeling that she had escaped some danger lurking in that place, but not entirely sure if she wanted to have escaped it. Of course she did. It was because that thing she'd been half consciously fighting against since – well, before they'd sat down to lunch, to be honest – wasn't a danger to herself as much as it was a danger to Luna, who really did have lovely legs and was a joy to be around, but it didn't matter because she was already taken, and a normal person after all, and Cho knew better.

The trail widened until they could walk side by side, and it seemed to grow harder to keep reminding herself that. Luna kept looking at her, deep, searching glances that Cho had to pretend she didn't notice, because they were too much like the way Luna had looked at her after she’d told her she looked pretty. It was almost as if Luna knew, but she couldn't, of course. Cho avoided the next glance Luna threw her way and pretended an avid, silent interest in the foliage.

Suddenly, Luna grabbed Cho's hand and pulled her off the trail.

"Look! In here!"

It was the mouth of a cave; a large one from the look of it, and within were only the dimmest suggestions of shadowed rocks.

Cho disengaged her hand, wishing Luna knew she shouldn't do that. Not to Cho, anyway, and not here.

"What do you think it is?" Cho asked, shielding her eyes in an attempt to see inside.

"Looks like dragons," said Luna, walking closer to examine the ground. "Maybe Fireballs, but it could be something else."

"Oh? Like what?" Cho eyed the sky, wondering where the dragon was if not in its cave.

"No idea. Only one way to find out!" Luna scrambled up and disappeared into the cave. "Aren't you coming?" she asked, popping back out. "And you shouldn't be afraid of the dragon coming back, if that's what it is. If it does, we can just Disapparate away before it has the chance to see us. I've done it loads of times, always works."

The idea of being caught by dragons didn't seem nearly as dangerous to Cho as the idea of being in a dark cave alone with Luna – what if something should happen? But nothing would happen if she didn't make it happen, Cho reminded herself as she followed Luna. Such a juvenile worry, really.

The light inside the cave was heavier, and the air too, as if both had been filled with dust and were reluctant to move. Cho picked out Luna's blond hair easily as her eyes adjusted. The other woman was kneeling over a large depression in the floor of the cave, and as Cho approached, Luna cast a light charm.

"Aha! It is the Fireball, then. See, you can tell because of the nest."

"This is a nest?" Cho asked. It was a vaguely oval-shaped crater, large enough to take a bath in, with a rounded lip and an interior that looked worn smooth with use.

"Mmhmm. Fireballs only incubate one egg at a time, but they reuse the nest over generations." Luna jumped inside, almost half-filling the hollow, and began to crawl around, holding her wand light close to the edge. "Doesn't look like it's been used in a while; there might not be dragons here after all."

"I'm sorry," said Cho, realizing that she'd been hoping there really would be dragons here for Luna.

"Oh, don't be, an abandoned nest is just as good for the survey as an occupied one. You know they say these are good luck?"

"Chinese Fireball nests?"

"Indeed. If you find one and do -" Luna made a suggestive noise "- in it, and you can finish before the dragon gets back, you have good luck for the next twelve years."

Cho's heart hammered. "Don't make jokes like that," she said. "Besides, it wouldn't work anyway. There's no dragon."

"You don't know it wouldn't work," Luna reasoned. "We could at least try – there are two of us, and here's a Fireball nest, and who knows when an opportunity like this will ever strike again. Twelve years is an awful lot of good luck to pass up."

"Luna, you can't be serious -" Cho took a step back from the edge of the nest.

"Why can't I be serious?" Luna reached out and touched Cho's ankle, an unmistakable caress. "Do you want me not to be serious?"

Cho took another step back, and shivered. "Luna, no. You can't."

"I can, though. I’ve thought about it, and I’ve made up my mind; I really want to. And I’m mostly sure that you do to," Luna said, the whites of her eyes glowing in the half-light.

Cho was transfixed by the gaze, and she should have moved when Luna climbed out of the depression and approached, but she didn't.

Luna put her hands on Cho's shoulders, gently, but Cho stiffened. She pressed her body against Cho's, and Cho could feel the shape of ith all too well through their clothes. She took another step back. Then there was a wall inexplicably at her back when she tried to take another, and Luna was on her again, warm and pliant and what Cho couldn't allow herself to feel.

"Cho..." Luna was saying her name.

Cho squeezed her eyes shut.

"I wouldn't do something if I didn't want to do it," she said and stroked Cho's neck, making her shiver despite herself. "And I want to very much." She touched Cho again, and Cho felt her resolve ebbing. It felt dangerous. "Don't you?"

Cho knew without looking that Luna would be giving her one of those looks, and for a second her resolve slipped. Don't I?

Luna must have felt it somewhere in her body, the unspoken agreement, the momentary loosening of hard lines, because suddenly her mouth was on Cho's, and Cho could feel that she was smiling.

"Good." Luna seemed to melt into Cho, taking her time.

But then something inside Cho clicked. No. It wasn't always this simple; it was never this simple. You could want, but that didn't mean you could have. Luna's lips were seeking Cho's again, and she pushed her away, first gently, then, when it didn't work, roughly.

"No," said Cho, and then louder. "No! You don't know what, and I can't, because I'm not -" She didn't know what she was saying, but she wanted to say something to make this stop, because it wasn't actually supposed to happen. It wasn't safe.

"Please, Cho." Luna was on her again. Cho tried to push her off, but her arms were trapped and Luna was holding tightly this time. She struggled, but there was a growing heat between her legs, and Luna somehow knew, for she dragged Cho down onto the floor, and then Cho was really trapped, pinned under the weight of the other woman's body, and she wouldn't be able to escape without making it worse, without touching her.

Luna's legs seemed to be everywhere. Cho ground her hips up once – maybe she was trying to get away - and oh, it felt good, but she shouldn't, really shouldn't.

"Shouldn't," Cho said, trying to find some leverage against Luna, fight her arms off, pretend that she wasn't still fighting the temptation to rut against the other woman's leg until she found completion...

"Should," said Luna, deftly grabbing one of Cho's flailing hands and pinning it over her head. "Just let go."

Cho whimpered and struggled again, almost managing to free her other hand before it too was caught and pinned next to the first. She stilled, clamping down her will and refusing herself the stolen pleasure of the struggle. Shouldn't, shouldn't, shouldn't...

"Shh, it's okay," Luna said, her breath warm on Cho's face, her hair a mere glint as it fell around them. "I want to, okay? Trust me."

"But," said Cho, every muscle tense. She shouldn't give in. She had told herself nothing would happen.

"Trust me," said Luna. She kissed Cho.

Cho let her. She could taste the memory of their lunch, and something else that she couldn't name. Luna, perhaps.

Cho whimpered again; it was too slow, too deliberate. She couldn't remember anymore why she had been fighting it. This clearly wasn't all in her head; inexplicably, it was somehow in Luna's too. And she wants it, thought Cho languidly. She wants it. And what if she's lying or confused or - There was a small part of Cho's mind that refused to give in even now, but the part that had been waiting for this since the summer Cho was fifteen came rushing in to tune it out.

She exhaled into the kiss.

"All right, then."

Luna felt it, somehow, even before Cho spoke, and she had already released Cho's hands and was unbuttoning her shirt. She looked intent on her task, needy, and Cho felt her desire flare. She ground against the other woman's leg again, knowing that she must look like a horny teenager and not caring.

Her shirt fell open revealing Cho's sensible camisole, and she cursed the common sense that had prompted her to wear so many layers. She needed to feel Luna against her, needed it sooner than now.

"Here," Cho said, scrabbling for purchase in the dusty cave floor to push herself upright. She stripped off her top and reached to help with Luna's, but the other woman was already undressing.

Cho watched hungrily the arch of Luna's body as she lifted the bra and shirt over her head in one motion. Cho hastily stepped out of her own shorts and watched the other woman, naked to the waist, work on unraveling the layers of her dhoti. She ached to reach out and touch Luna's skin, her need a nearly tangible thing that should have been frightening. She watched for a moment longer, daring herself to resist, relishing the near-painful anticipation because she knew it wouldn't last.

Cho took off her own bra, hands shaking, and then she could bear it no more. She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around the younger woman, glorying in the shock of skin on skin as their bosoms pressed together and her arms slid around her back.

The material of Luna's half-unwound garment was scratchy between them and Cho suddenly, urgently wanted it gone. She took a handful of cloth and pulled down, and Luna wriggled, and between the two of them, the dhoti was soon in a knotted heap on the floor, and they came together again.

Cho found Luna's shoulder with her mouth and her legs twined with Luna's as she pressed breathy, open-mouthed kisses into her skin. It just wasn't enough, this delicious slide of dust-soft skin; she needed to feel it more, feel it everywhere. Luna's hands were exploring her body slowly, slowly, and her breath was soft on Cho's neck.

"Luna," Cho gasped as Luna's fingers slid into the cleft of her buttocks. "I need-"

"Come with me." Luna took Cho's hand and pulled her toward the depression in the floor.

The air felt cold against Cho's front where Luna had been a second ago. She tripped as she followed, and curled up with Luna in the hole, her body thrumming with desire. The rock was cool and slightly gritty against her bare back and legs, but smooth. Their bodies filled the space perfectly.

"I've never done this before," Cho admitted.

"Me neither. Isn't it lovely?" Luna traced the line of Cho's arm where it lay along her side.

"No," said Cho. She was distracted for a moment when Luna turned her attention to the dip of her waist. "No, I mean with a woman."

"Oh," said Luna. "Why not?" She looked pensive for a moment. "Well, just don’t let it make you nervous. Do what feels good, and it most always ends up working."

Cho didn't think it would be possible to feel nervous when they were lying so close together like this. She took the back of Luna's head in her hand and kissed her, deeply. Something deep within Cho coiled tighter and she found it difficult to drag herself away from Luna's lips to speak.

"Do what feels good? Like that?"

"Oh, yes," Luna replied, a bit breathless, and then she was kissing Cho back ravenously, in a way that would surprise Cho if bruises didn't show before long.

Their world was lost in a whirl of furious mouths for some time after that, and hands finding soft curves, and legs writhing together, and all the while Cho felt herself winding tighter and tighter.

When they paused for breath, panting, Cho found herself straddling the other woman's stomach, hands on her breasts. Luna's head was thrown back, and her face and chest were flushed beneath their sheen of sweat. Cho licked and nibbled a path up Luna's neck to the corner of her ear and began kneading her breasts again, slowly. Her cunt quivered where it was pressed against Luna's stomach.

"I want to touch you," Cho said, although she had hardly been able to stop herself from doing just that since they had gotten their clothes off.

"Oh?" Luna breathed.

"Mmhmm." Cho pressed one last kiss into Luna's neck before she slid down to rest in the crux of Luna's open legs, leaving a trail of glistening arousal in her wake.

Luna took Cho's hand and guided it between their bodies, hissing when it reached its goal. Cho ran her fingers between the slick lips for long moments, just enjoying making the other woman writhe under her, before relenting and finding the apex of her arousal with sure fingertips. Cho lent all her attention to watching the other woman's reactions, trying to gauge the effect she was having. She had done this before, of course, but only on herself, and she couldn't know if anything was working.

Luna was the very picture of abandon, though, and when Cho brought her other hand down and slipped two fingers inside, she arched up into the thrust.

"You can...ah... you can do four," Luna gasped.

Cho warily worked in two more fingers, marveling at how Luna's wet heat stretched to accommodate her. Then she twisted them and Luna moaned out loud, and all her misgivings were lost.

She found a rhythm that worked with little other encouragement, and before long Luna was clenching around her fingers and curling up toward Cho and grasping her shoulders, pulling Cho close to ride it out together.

"That," Luna proclaimed once she had caught her breath, "that was a good one." She looked Cho in the eye, grinning contentedly. "But you haven't come yet."

"Well, no, but that's all right, you must be tired and -"

"Nonsense," said Luna, cutting Cho off with a kiss. "I've hardly had a chance to do anything yet."

Luna maneuvered around so that Cho was lounging against the side of the dragon nest, legs spread wantonly. She gazed at Cho in a way that made her heart skip a beat, and the curled tension in her gut mounted.

"You know, you were my first kiss ever," she said in a near-conversational tone, as though the information had just occurred to her.

"I – what?"

"That time on the stairs, don't you remember? It was the end of my second year of Hogwarts, so your fourth."

"Yes, of course I remember," Cho said, stunned. "I never forgot. But I never knew it was your first; why did you...?"

Luna shrugged. "Because I wanted to, of course. I think a lot of people wanted to, but maybe not all of them thought they could ask."

Cho smiled, bemused. "I had thought that maybe there was some bigger reason. I couldn't stop thinking of it that entire summer, you know. I thought that maybe – I don't know. But nothing ever came of it, so..."

"Nothing, ever?" Luna rested her hands on Cho's bent knees and began to move them slowly down her inner thighs. "Not even now?"

"But surely this has nothing to do with then," said Cho. And then, remembering. "But you're married, so it can't." She didn't want to talk about the married part, had been pushing it to the back of her mind the entire day, because that meant this was only once.

"Rolph? He loves me, and I love who I will. Always him, but usually not only. I wouldn't have married him, otherwise."

Cho's head was reeling. "And that's... that's okay?"

"Mmhmm. I did say he's a very nice man."

"But still, that time can't have anything to do with, with this time," Cho said a bit breathlessly, the feather-light touches on her legs making it hard to speak.

Luna cocked her head to one side. "Oh, probably it doesn't. But you never know." Luna rested her cheek on the side of Cho's knee and began to leave a trail of kisses down the inside of her leg.

Perhaps if she hadn't, Cho would have found a better response than Oh, and maybe all those unexplained years and years would have seemed more confusing, but the past few days had already felt too much like a continuation of that summer for her to question it much. She does what she wants, Cho thought, and that seemed to suffice, especially since Luna's fingers were getting dangerously close to Cho's cunt and the blood was rushing away from Cho's head to pool in heat inches away from Luna's lazy tracings.

Then Luna reached her goal and the exploration became more detailed, until there were not only fingertips and lips, but a tongue, and fingers that went inside, and once, maybe teeth. Cho trembled, feeling herself already so close.

"Good?" Luna asked, pausing to look up.

Cho could hardly form any coherent thoughts, seeing Luna like that, and she had already forgotten the question. "Gods, you're beautiful," she murmured, which probably wasn't the right answer. But she thought Luna got the message.

The blond smiled and ducked back down, and there was a tongue circling, winding Cho past where she thought something would surely give, and a finger strumming something inside that sent jolts of white-hot pleasure through Cho's core, and more fingers digging into the roundness of her arse.

Cho's feet couldn't get purchase on the smooth stone floor of the dragon nest, and she arched helplessly as Luna brought her to the razor edge of her arousal. Then she did something, or kept doing something, and the tension sprang open and Luna's mouth continued to unravel her as Cho came and came.

Luna came up beside her and wrapped her arms around her as the aftershocks faded. Cho leaned into the embrace, feeling that her borders were still partially dissolved.

"Good one?" Luna asked after Cho's breathing had slowed.

Cho could hear the smile in Luna's voice and smiled back without opening her eyes, imagining that there was nothing beyond Luna's arms and it was just the two of them floating in a dark sea.

"Mm, good one." Cho smiled wider.

"Worth twelve years of lost luck, do you think?"

"Oh, definitely. If not more. Wait, what do you mean? I thought you had to get caught by the dragon."

"No, it doesn't have to catch you, it just has to come back to the cave," Luna mused. "I think now might be a good time to Disapparate."

Cho would have thought the other woman was joking, except she didn't usually make jokes, and her tone of voice suggested some other listener. Cho opened her eyes and saw a rather large, very real Chinese Fireball sniffing their discarded clothes curiously.

"I think we can leave those," Cho whispered. "To the place we had lunch?"

"Yeah," Luna whispered back.

The last thing Cho saw was the amber eye of the dragon as its head swung toward them, and then she was rolling in the green grass with Luna, unable to stop her giddy laughter.

Right after one escapes naked from a dragon turns out to be a really good time for another round, Luna and Cho discovered, and there was really no reason to stop once they had started again. No reason, except to sneak back and steal their wands back from the (now sleeping) Fireball, and then of course that was reason enough to celebrate their survival all over again.

"Do you want to come trekking with me again tomorrow?" Luna asked, as she tried to salvage something wearable from the scraps of clothing they had managed to retrieve along with their wands.

In the sky, the first stars were coming out. "I have to be at the house all day tomorrow," said Cho regretfully. "And I'm leaving for London the day after."

"Right," said Luna, nodding sagely. "Well, it will be nice to be able to get some work done, even if I'd much rather you could stay. I'll probably miss you terribly tomorrow."

"I'll miss you too." Cho laughed softly. "I almost forgot you were supposed to be working. Well, we can always do this again in London, if you want, sans dragon." Cho trailed off, not knowing if the terms of Luna's strange marriage would allow this. She wasn't even sure if she'd want to do it again once she was back in London, back to her real life. She hoped she would.

-o-

"Oh, hi, Luna. Wait, Luna - I think this must be yours, I... found it... in my dormitory. No idea how it got there, but. Um. Here."

"Thank you! That's very nice of you, last year nobody gave anything back and I had to go looking. And I wouldn't have expected it from someone on the Quidditch team, especially; they almost always do what everyone else does. Your name's Cho, isn't it?"

"What? Yes, it is."

"Is it okay if I give you something, too, Cho?"

"I – I guess so. If you want."

"Well, I do."

"Well, fine. Hurry up though; someone might come along."

"It'll be okay."

"Okay?"

"Yeah. Now, close your eyes and tilt your head to the right..."


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