But I Won't Do That

When Harry reached the upstairs hallway, it took him a minute to remember which room was his. As he opened the door, a slim light at the end of the hall caught his attention. Harry hesitated, but finally drew his wand and walked silently toward it.
The light proved to be coming from the ceiling; a faint rectangular glow showed the outline of a hatchway, probably leading to the attic. The hatch looked as though it hadn’t been closed completely. So why didn’t I notice the light before? Harry wondered.

Unbidden, Harry remembered Draco’s cryptic remark about Luna, and shivered. Of course, the attic might not even have access to the roof, and he had no reason to think Luna was really inclined to…

The folding stairs magically extended to the ground, and Harry climbed cautiously into the attic. There was a faint magical glow, barely enough to see by, and Harry muttered “Lumos” for a bit of illumination.

The attic was clean, obviously having been spelled to keep the dust away. Boxes and trunks were piled neatly against the walls, and a pile of rolled-up rugs lay in a corner. And another soft light delineated the shape of a second trapdoor, undoubtedly leading to the roof. Rain was falling steadily through the opening.

Harry was beginning to sweat with nervousness. It can’t be, he told himself firmly. Draco probably opened these just to scare me. Carefully he walked over to the ladder leading to the trapdoor, and climbed slowly up. He was halfway out of the hatch, his hair already beginning to dampen, when he saw Luna. She was standing on the edge of the roof in a nightgown, her arms spread wide and her face lifted to the sky. The rain had soaked her to the skin, and the wind made her sway precariously, bringing her dangerously close to toppling over the edge.

“Luna!” Harry shouted frantically over the rush of the wind, hauling himself onto the roof. “Luna, no!”

At the sound of Harry’s voice, Luna spun, startled. Her feet slipped out from under her, and with a frightened shriek she started to fall… “No!” Harry shouted, pointing his wand. “Levitus Mos!”

Luna hung almost vertically, suspended in midair over nothing. She stared wide-eyed at Harry as he literally shook with the effort of maintaining the Levitation Spell he hadn’t attempted for years. Slowly, agonizingly, he made his way toward her; seeming to sense that Harry needed his concentration, Luna remained silent. When Harry reached her, he slowly reached out with his other hand and grasped Luna’s bare foot. Because of the Spell, Luna was light as a feather, and Harry pulled her back until she was completely over the roof; then his efforts finally failed, and Harry and Luna hit the wet surface of the roof together.

“Harry?” Luna said softly, raising herself up and wincing; she’d dropped from a height of three feet, and had bruised a few places.

“Luna, are you okay?” Harry asked, terrified.

“Of course I am,” Luna said calmly, crawling over to Harry. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Harry just stared at her. “You- Luna, you can’t do it! I’m sorry for what I did, but killing yourself isn’t the answer! If you need me to leave again, I will, but please, don’t-”

“Kill myself?” Luna looked genuinely puzzled. “Why did you think I was trying to kill myself?”

Harry’s mouth opened and closed a few times before he could formulate an answer. “You were- You’re up here, standing on the edge of the roof!”

“Yes, I like it up here. So close to the sky, like you can almost touch it.”

“It’s raining!”

Yes, it is.” Luna looked concerned. “Are you all right, Harry? It doesn’t bother you, does it?”

“Well, no, but…Luna, why are you up here?”

“I was enjoying the rain. It’s so nice, much better than a shower, although it does get rather cold.”

Oh, I am going to kill Draco, Harry thought furiously. “I’m so sorry, Luna,” Harry said softly. “I’m just paranoid…if I hadn’t opened my big mouth you wouldn’t have slipped and fallen at all.”

Luna’s lip was trembling. “Did- did you really think I had reason to want to kill myself?” she whispered.

“Uh… I…” Harry was about to say no, but he couldn’t; after what he’d done to her, Luna had every reason to be disturbed, even suicidal, even if Harry didn’t want to admit it. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “Yeah, I figured you did.”

“Oh- oh, Harry!” Luna wailed, clutching Harry’s drenched shirt and burying her face in his neck. “Harry, I’m so, so sorry…”

“Sorry? Wh-what do you mean?”

“I f-failed you, Harry!” Luna wept hysterically. She clung to Harry, her entire body shaking with her sobs. “I wasn’t g-good enough-” She paused to gulp in a lungful of air- “I wasn’t good enough to make you stay!”

“What?”

Harry gaped as Luna dissolved even further into her mire of guilt. “I knew what you were going through, Harry!’ she cried. “I knew, and I didn’t give you enough to h-help you! If I’d been a better f-friend, than you would have come back after you beat Voldemort!”

“No!” Harry yelped, unable to believe what he was hearing – Luna thought Harry believed she should have killed herself for failing! “No, Luna, it wasn’t like that!”

“I’ll make it up to you, I swear,” Luna continued, not hearing him. “We can start now, I’ll do anything you want, just tell me, Harry! Tell me how to do better, please!”

“Luna, stop!” Harry begged, pulling Luna up and forcing her to meet his eyes. “Luna, the only one who did anything wrong was me! I’m the one who forced you to want to help me.”

“B-but the Charm is gone and I still want to help you…”

“That’s because you’re a good person!” Harry ground his teeth hard, trying to find the right thing to say. “Luna, you didn’t fail. No, listen, you didn’t! What I needed was confidence, enough to beat Voldemort, and I got that. I only didn’t come back because I thought all of you would hate me and want me dead for what I’d done! It wasn’t because you hadn’t tried hard enough – Merlin, the main reason I destroyed the Charm is because you were wearing yourself down to nothing! I saw how badly it was draining you, and I didn’t want you to be permanently hurt!”

“Really?” Luna sniffled. “I thought you just couldn’t b-bear to be near us any more…”

Harry fought back a sob of his own. “Every day I was gone,” he said softly, “every single day I missed you, Luna. Every day was one constant regret that I’d hurt the people I loved. I- I almost killed myself a few times, thinking of you and what I’d done.”

Luna was studying Harry intently. “Why didn’t you?”

“Because-” Harry had to avert his eyes. “Because I wasn’t done being punished.”

“That’s a very pessimistic attitude.”

Harry smiled weakly at the very Luna-like statement. “I thought that Hermione’s reaction was telling of how you’d all react.”

“It was, at first,” Luna admitted. Her face was still red from crying but she was much calmer. “But we got over it. At least, mostly. Ginny still seems rather upset.”

Harry felt his heart twist sharply. “Yeah, I noticed.”

“Harry, do you really mean that? About what you got from us?”

“I knew you were giving everything you had, Luna,” Harry said, taking her hand and squeezing. “I can’t believe you thought I was disappointed in you.”

“I was just certain that because I’m a bit, you know, unusual, that I’d done something wrong and ruined what we were trying to do.”

“Unusual?” Harry glanced around the roof, and then back at Luna. She was soaked to the skin, her hair plastered to her head, and Harry noticed that her nightgown had little pictures of some creature Harry could only assume were Crinkle-Toothed Snorebacks or some such thing. “I hadn’t noticed.”

Luna looked at him seriously. “Really? Because most people think I’m pretty strange. Don’t you remember?”

Harry couldn’t help but chuckle. “Luna, of course I remember, but I always thought you simply had a different way of looking at the world. It was a lot nicer than the way the world looked to everyone else. It always uplifted me to be around you; you made me feel like maybe everything wasn’t as horrible as it seemed.”

Luna smiled brilliantly and hugged Harry. They stayed like that for a while, just enjoying the closeness and the sound and feel of the rain. Harry’s thoughts were racing, and eventually he asked, “Luna? Does Draco- Is he ever cruel to you? Teasing you and stuff?”

Luna pulled back and looked at Harry in surprise. “Not at all, Harry. He’s actually quite pleasant to me, which I’ve thought was odd since he and Ronald seem to dislike each other so much. But Draco’s never been anything but polite to me. Why?”

“Oh…I ran into Draco downstairs, and he said something…he put the idea in my head that you might be, er…” Harry sighed. “He said ‘Do me a favor and stop Lovegood from jumping off the roof.’ And when I saw you up here, I thought…”

“How odd,” Luna said, and considered what Harry had related. “I suppose he was a bit worried about me, that’s all.”

“What? How do you figure?”

“Well, he asked you to look in on me, so that means he’s concerned. It’s not his fault he misinterpreted why I come up here.”

Harry wasn’t quite sure what to make of that – it seemed too obvious for the Slytherin. He resolved to corner Draco the next day and get to the bottom of it. “Well, I guess that could be right,” he said, putting the matter temporarily aside.

“Harry?” Luna said hesitantly. “Will you go and speak with Ginny?”

Harry jerked in surprise, and his heart began pounding wildly. “What? Right now?”

“Yes. I’ve been a bit worried about her. She’s seemed very on edge; and there are some strange stories about her going around, that seem a bit far-fetched, even to me.”

“L-like what?”

“Oh, that she did some inappropriate things while tracking down Death Eaters,” Luna said offhandedly. “I don’t really believe that, but Ginny has been very aggressive the last few years.” She turned and looked pleadingly at Harry. “Please? Every time I try to ask her about it she just calls me Lulu.”

Harry gasped. “She doesn’t!”

“Oh, it doesn’t bother me. I’ve known Ginny for years, she and Fred and George used to call me that all the time. It was sweet, like a nickname, and they were never mean. But still, she won’t say anything to me now.”

“What makes you think she’ll talk to me?” Harry asked desperately.

“Because you’re Harry,” Luna said simply.

“I- I don’t know if I can, Luna…”

“Why not? I know she punched you earlier, but I’m sure Ginny still cares for you…she used to talk to me all about how much she liked you, you know. Why couldn’t you just talk to her?”

“Because I love Ginny, Luna!” Harry took a deep breath and let it out slowly, but it did nothing to stop him from shaking. He’d finally admitted aloud what he’d never told anyone, what he hadn’t even admitted to himself. “I mean, I’m in love with her. I have been since…since the Department of Mysteries, at least, and I still am, even after all this time. And I just…I don’t think I can face her. Not after what I did.”

“I wondered…I knew you went to her first when you needed someone, not Hermione or Ron. But that makes sense now.” Luna sat up on her knees. “Well, Harry, it sounds to me like you need to talk to her more than ever. How else is she going to understand how you feel?”

“B-but…”

“And besides, if Ginny wants to talk to you, you really won’t have a choice, so she’ll find out eventually,” Luna said in a matter-of-fact way. “So you might as well get it over with.”

Luna did have a point – there was no way Harry could stop Ginny if she got it into her head to use Legilimency on him. Harry swallowed. “O-okay, Luna. I’ll try to talk to her. I promise.”

“Thank you, Harry,” Luna said brightly. “And thank you for not being mad at me.”

Harry gaped for a moment. “Luna,” he finally said, “today has been the best and worst day of my life. The fact that you’re not mad at me makes me happier than I’ve been in four years.”

Luna smiled and stood up. “I’m glad, Harry. I think I’m going to go to bed now. Are you coming to bed too?”

Harry was a bit nervous that Luna was inviting him to go to bed with her until he realized she was just being Luna. “I think I’ll try enjoying the rain for a bit.”

Luna nodded as though she’d known he would say that. “Try standing on the edge over there,” she suggested, waving at the spot where she had been. “The view is lovely.”

“Thanks, Luna,” Harry said as she leaned over and kissed his forehead. “Good night.”

“Good night, Harry,” Luna said, and headed down into the house.

After a moment Harry stood and walked carefully to the edge of the roof. He stood where Luna had been, and raised his face to the sky. The rain pushed his straggly hair back, revealing the faded lightning-shaped scar that had been the bane of his existence since before he could remember. He stood for a long time, wishing the rain could also wash away the scar, and everything it represented; all his hateful past, and the mark of his curse, leaving him as he’d always wished he could be – just Harry.