Just Like Jesse James

Again, I lay in my bed, staring up at the ceiling "Hello, darkness, my old friend," I muttered, thinking about the song lyric as it rang true; darkness truly was all I had left. Night after night of meaningless, alcohol-fuelled sex. I'd left all my friends behind, hiding myself in a bottle and a muggle desk. I abandoned all memories of the wizarding world after my final year at Hogwarts, and if not for Dumbledore's insistence I teach, I would have kept it that way. Still, I had some naive hope that the job would give me closure, bring me back to the place where I could stare back in the face the looming menace of my conscience.

However, any personal victories I had in mind had since vanished as she dominated my mind. Luna was all I could think about, and I began to see her face imprinted upon the stucco as her smile just before she kissed me was freshly etched in my brain. She was there, so much so that when I finally went to the bar, all I could hope for was to see her there, but alas, she never came. I couldn't believe my mouth when I turned down a real stunner, all for the hope of seeing a fifteen year-old again.

It hurt, feeling so much attachment to someone, let alone a minor. It wasn't the desire for a one night stand, and that's what troubled me. I couldn't fall in love with a child, let alone one I was supposed to teach. I was in quite the predicament, so I returned to the one place where there were no troubles, a bottle.

I hadn't drank something away in a long time, but I needed to remove the image burnt into my mind, and if that meant burning everything around it until all that remained was a vast, charred wasteland, so be it. Shot after shot, I downed, but even when I reached the point where the room spun around me and I could barely tip the bottle of Jack, I would close my eyes and see her.

I began to suspect it may have been a prank. Maybe she, for some reason, thought it would be funny to literally put her visage on my eyelids, not knowing I'd already been entranced by her airy, dazed aura. I checked, even ringing up St. Mungo's to see if such a curse existed. It didn't. What I had was the worst possible sickness I could have, worse than my alcoholism or the occasional infection from a partner who'd been in some unsavoury places. I was infected with pure, unbridled, unconditional love for Luna Lovegood.
**********************(scene break)**********************
When the day came at last to set off, my apartment was little more than a few boxes I'd yet to stuff in my enchanted briefcase In my only clean pair of presentable muggle clothing, I hugged goodbye to my dear, elderly landlady before setting off.

Once in the clear, I apparated into a stall of the King's Cross men's room allotted specifically for apparation. I opened the door, locked it again with a tap of my wand as I went, and rushed to platform 9 3/4.

I found myself overwhelmed, just as much as I was that first day when I had no idea how to get to the platform. I was so far disconnected from the wizarding world that I nearly forgot how to move through the barrier.

I made it, though, and saw some familiar faces. McGonagall greeted me with formality; I was her colleague now, and it was a little disorienting for her. Of course, Snape said nothing to me, resenting that Harry Potter of all people got the position he'd vied for so long. While the transfiguration teacher had a lot more noticeable grey in her hair and her face was much more touched by age, Snape looked just as he had when I left Hogwarts.

Students and their parents also scurried around, and I kept an eye on the crowd at all times, trying to find Luna. I had to see her again, had to talk to her. I needed to find out what that kiss meant, if it were deeper than just a moment of weakness, because I had to put an end to any ideas she had. We couldn't possibly go anywhere beyond a student-teacher relationship, for not only the sake of my job, but her safety.

Resigned to having to wait, I stepped onto the train and entered one of the staff compartments. There sat Ron Weasley.

I sat down with just as much of an awkward, shy silence as I had all those years ago. We hadn't spoken since shortly after we graduated, and I had no idea what to say after seven years apart.

"'Lo, Harry," was all the redhead could muster. He didn't know either, but he at least tried. He was my friend, even if I didn't want to admit it.

"How's Hermione?"

"She's on guide duty until we depart. She'll be in here soon, though, she has a lot she wants to talk to you about." Both of them had accepted positions at Hogwarts a few years earlier, Ron replacing Professor Flitwick as charms teacher, and Hermione teaching arithmancy.

"I can imagine," Harry muttered, "It's been a while."

"Harry, listen, Dumbledore's given you a chance here, and you should take it. Start over, start living your life, and-Harry, what is that?"

"A little pick-me-up," I said, unscrewing my flask and taking a nice, long swig.

"You're drinking? On the bloody train? Harry, we haven't even left the station yet."

"Exactly, I need something to keep me awake until we start moving."

"This is bloody great," he moaned, and our conversation died right there, and it was for the better.
**********************(scene break)**********************
"You have got be kidding me."

Hermione hadn't changed a bit. Still as bossy as she was back in the day, except now we weren't kids. We wouldn't get points taken from our house, she had no control over anyone, and yet her first words to me were shrill and condescending.

"Your whipping boy said the same thing," I said, putting away my flask. The train was moving now, blazing down the English countryside. I had a few solid hours of scolding from Hermione to look forward to. Joy.

"Harry, you need to stop this. I understand that you feel responsible for what happened, but-"

"Don't you ever tell me how I feel, Hermione. You haven't spoken to me in seven years, but the first thing you say it me is that you know how I feel and that what I'm doing is wrong. We aren't children now, there's no prefect badge that gives you the right to lord over me. So keep out of my fucking business." This was going to be a more painful ride than I thought.

"Harry, I only want to help-"

"Fuck it, I'm out of here." I stepped up and outright walked out of the compartment and right out of the staff section. I didn't storm, didn't slam anything, just walked away. I wouldn't let Hermione win this time.

I wandered down the train, pretending to be on rounds, and enjoyed the sight of the first years all worried at the sight of me. I didn't smell too strongly of alcohol, and I could walk and talk fine, so nobody was any the wiser.

My eyes continued to scan the compartments until I came upon one that, save for one girl, was empty. Luna sat by herself, lying across the bench with the latest Quibbler upside-down. She was alone, content in the solitude even when around her were people her own age. And yet, I saw her at a club with a bunch of teenage wizards. What was going on?

I almost forgot about that as a row of trees vanished from the window, radiant sunlight pouring into the cabin, running through her soft hair, shining like strands of molten silver streaked with gold. Looking intently at the book, she again lost herself in her own world, aware of what happened around her, but thinking it all but a mere half of reality. Oddly enough, she wasn't wearing any shoes, or even socks. Her bare feet swayed back and forth as she read her father's insane, rambling tabloid.

I opened the door. "Do you mind if I come in?"

"Oh, no, it's fine, professor."

I stepped in and sat down. "Please, just call me Harry. Professor sounds too strange."

"Alright then, Harry."

"Why aren't you with your friends from the bar?"

"Why aren't you with the other professors?"

"I have some issues with a few of them, from back when we were students.

"I have a few issues with them, from right now, while we're students."

"What do they do?"

"It's not what they do. It's that they think I'm nuts. I'm the weird girl with the radish earrings reading books upside-down by herself. Looney Lovegood."

"You're not crazy."

"Says the grown man whose breath smells like a bar rag," she said nonchalantly. Never did she look up from her book as we spoke, her eyes still glued to the pages as she somehow lived in two worlds and seemingly functioned on all levels in both of them.

"You can smell it?"

"I can, at least. I've always been good at smelling things, one of the reasons I'm so looney. I can smell stuff nobody else can."

I didn't know what to say, so we sat in silence, though somehow, it didn't feel awkward, like sitting with Ron. The silence felt right, as though our solitude somehow benefited from being near each other.

"Just go ahead and ask," she finally said when her issue was finished. She slipped it into her bag and, finally, she looked at me.

I didn't ask. I didn't know what she wanted me to ask...hell, I didn't even know what she said. All I could think about was the pair of eyes on me. They seemed grey, but what they lacked in colour they had much more in radiance. Her eyes seemed so enchanting, just as dreamy as her expression. Again, the sun shone through, her eyes turning a bizarre silver in the brilliant light.

"Fine, don't ask, I'll just tell you. You saved me, Harry. You're my hero, my knight in shining armour, and I want to run far away with you, and get married." Her voice was heavy with sarcasm, laid on so thick I snapped out of my daze.

"Luna, I-"

"I'm joking," she laughed. "But really, it was a moment of weakness. You saved me from a potentially bad situation, walked me to the port key...it was sweet, and I gave you a goodnight kiss as a thank you, but it just went wrong somewhere."

I didn't know what to say. I was relieved, now not having to worry about hurting her or the potential for serious trouble, but at the same time, my heart sank. As much wanted it on a practical level, I wanted a different outcome on an emotional level. For the first time in my life, I felt like I may have been in love, even if it was with a fifteen year-old who, as of the next day, would be my student. Years of chasing love down a bottle and endless dead ends and one night stands, and this could have been my liberation.

"But, I still consider you a friend," she said, again pulling my from my thoughts. "I can relate to you on some level, and we're both loners. What do you say we spend some time together every now and then? I really like being around someone who doesn't call me Looney, and talks to me like I'm a person."

"I'd love to," I said, and we remained in the cabin the rest of the trip, talking as the daylight faded and turned to dusk.

Eventually, it came time to change into our clothes. I just lazily threw my robes over my current clothes, but Luna wanted to get rid of all that muggle stuff. With amazing candour, right before my eyes, she closed the curtains and began to change. Right in front of me.

It was hard to keep still as she undressed, stripping down to her underwear, a matching bra and panties set, white cotton. When she turned around to fold up her clothes, showing me her cute butt in the tight cotton, I nearly lost myself. I looked away, trying to think of anything other than the sight before. How could she do this? She was changing unabashedly right in front of me.

Was she really changing? She didn't actually take out her robes. Instead, she turned back around to me. "Do you like what you see, Harry?" Her airy expression changed to a sly, seductive smile as she climbed onto my lap. "I lied about wanting to be friends. I want to be so much more than that, don't you?"

She didn't let me answer. Instead, she kissed me deeply, her tongue slithering into my mouth as she began to grind her barely-clothed body against mine. She unclasped her bra, tossing it aside as she presented to me her small, budding breasts. "Go on, take a lick. I know it's not as big as you're used to, but they're all yours, I promise."

I leaned in, enticed by the small, but still fairly round, breasts, bringing my tongue to her nipple and-

"Wake up!" I heard. I nearly fell onto the floor of the cabin as Luna laughed.

It was all a dream? I looked up to see Luna in her robes, looking at me with amusement as I lay totally disoriented on the floor.

"You fell asleep a little while ago, but we're almost there, now. You should really get your robes on, we'll be there soon."

"Yeah," was all I could muster as I sat up and put my robes on over my clothes. It was all a dream. She hadn't done any of that.

Now, nowhere was safe from Luna Lovegood and her mystique. Even in my dreams I obsessed over her.