Title: Gibberish
Author: Nephthys Moon
Pairing: Charlie/Luna
Prompt: Shakespeare's Sonnet 18
Rating: PG
Summary: His mum had always liked poetry, and for that, he laid the blame on her head.
Author's Notes: Many thanks to Nyruserra for being the awesome beta she is.
His Mum had always liked poetry. It was on her head that he laid the blame for his insanity in the years later, when the logical part of his brain said that there was too much work to do to be bothering with a wife.
The Battle of Hogwarts had finished three years before, and the world was well and truly getting back on its feet. For himself, Charlie Weasley merely wanted some peace and quiet. It was a lovely summer’s day, and he found himself with a day in which he could do absolutely nothing; a rare occurrence indeed. Donning a battered Muggle baseball cap and the dragon-hide boots he preferred to wear with his jeans and t-shirt, he stepped jauntily outside his little cabin and strode purposefully out into the afternoon.
A few weeks ago, he’d noticed some odd tracks in the woods about two miles from their camp when he was tracking Norberta, and he’d made a note to see what they belonged to if he could. It was warm out, and the walk was a long one, but after about an hour he’d managed to find the approximate area in which he’d seen the tracks.
As he rustled through the bushes, snagging his hat on several branches on the way, he was startled to come upon a clearing, where a girl was standing quite still, looking directly into the sun as it poured through the branches around the little glen, turning everything it touched to molten gold. The girl’s hair was long, falling well past her waist. In the brilliant light of the sun above, it was a shimmering curtain of golden silk, and a line from one of those dreadful poems his mother used to hammer into his head came back to him, and he found himself whispering it to himself.
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate…” he trailed off. There was more, he knew, but at that moment, the goddess in the clearing turned suddenly, as though hearing him, and he got his first glimpse of the angel’s face.
It was – surprising, to say the least. It was pretty enough, but there was something not quite right with the eyes. They were pale blue and slightly protuberant, as though she had been startled as a baby and had never quite gotten over the shock.
“Oh, hello,” she said, her voice vague and distant, as though she were talking to someone in a dream world of her own making. “I was looking for Crumple-Horned Snorkack marks – they’re much easier to see if you stare at the sun for a few moments to burn out the Flibberty Jibbits that like to cloud the vision of people so that they don’t see properly. And now, of course, I must do it again, for I’ve been looking at you instead of the ground.” With this rather incomprehensible gibberish, she returned to staring up at the sun, facing him this time, and Charlie was rewarded with the view of her slender neck thrown backwards, which threw the rest of her figure into sharp relief against the trees behind her.
She was – quite frankly – stunning. He walked over to join her in the clearing, and looked down at her upturned face, fighting the urge to kiss the adorable creature in front of him. Instead, he forced himself to talk.
“Er – my name is Charlie, Charlie Weasley,” he said haltingly, not sure why he was introducing himself, when it was clear the girl hadn’t given a hoot who he was.
“Yes, I know. You’re Ronald’s brother. You were at the wedding several years ago.” Her voice was very matter-of-fact, and still staring resolutely into the sun.
“You know my brother?” he asked curiously, a flicker of recognition going through him as he watched at her. He still didn’t know who she was, but she was familiar in some way, though his mind argued that if there had been anyone remotely attractive at the wedding besides the Delacour women, he would have noticed.
“Of course, we’ve lived down the road from you for years and years. You look much nicer with long hair. At the wedding your hair was so short that your ears looked rather funny,” she concluded. Resisting the urge to check his ears to see if they were sticking out from under his cap, he looked down at her again, suddenly able to place her.
“Luna Lovegood!” he declared triumphantly, having just hit upon the name.
Something in his voice caused her to look away from the sun and towards him. “What?”
“Er – I’ve been trying to place you, you see,” he stammered.
“Oh, yes, well, I’m Luna Lovegood. If you came to look for the Crumple-Horned Snorkack, you’ll need to burn the Flibberty Jibbits out of your eyes first.” She turned her eyes back towards the sun and resumed her determined stare.
Wondering what madness had come upon him, he turned and faced the sun, blinking rapidly. “That ought to do it,” she declared after some minutes. “Now, look at the ground quickly!”
He obeyed from habit and looked quickly at the forest floor, the dark spots on his eyes causing him to see any number of odd shaped markings on the ground. “There!” she shouted, and scurried off to chase the spots in her eyes across the clearing. Sighing in resignation and not a little amusement, he took off after her.
After about a half an hour of trudging through the woods, they were both laughing and winded. He gestured to a fallen log and sat down next to her. He looked down at her as she was looking over at him, and they laughed again.
“Where are you staying?” she asked him suddenly. The vagueness was completely gone from her voice and her eyes were seeing him, he felt, really seeing him for the first time since their encounter began.
“I’ve got a cabin in the camp with the other Dragon Keepers.” He pointed in the direction of his camp.
“Ooh! Dragons! I do like them,” she said wistfully. “Daddy never liked to go looking for them, though – he thought they were too dangerous. ‘Far better,’ he would say, ‘to look for harmless creatures, like the Nargle.’” She sighed.
“Your father is no longer living?” he asked delicately, giving in to a sudden urge to put his arm around the girl and offer her some small measure of comfort. As she nodded in agreement and settled her head upon his shoulder, he suddenly remembered the rest of the poem and recited it softly to himself.
“What was that?” she whispered, looking up at him in amazement.
“Oh, my Mum really likes poetry, so I know lots of it,” he muttered by way of an excuse.
“It was very pretty,” she said. “You really think that about me?”
Charlie blinked – hard. He looked into the sweet, upturned face of Luna Lovegood with that mix of wonder and excitement and just a hint of fear in her eyes and he smiled. “I do.” Her answering smile was so brilliant that he couldn’t resist leaning down and brushing her lips with his own.
As they sat there on the log, not saying much of anything, just staring off into the distance, the logical part of his brain argued that he had no time for this nonsense and that he needed to stop remembering ruddy poetry of his Mum’s and go back to work. The rest of him was quite content to snuggle quietly with the girl in his arms, and leave the work to another day – and, quite possibly, to thank his Mum for her love of the wizard the Muggles knew as William Shakespeare.
