Fic!

[rillalicious]

So the hpvalensmut reveals were posted today.

First of all, my amazing gift art was done by venturous1. If you haven't seen it yet, it's Teddy and it's hot and gorgeous and it's really explicit (not kid or work safe at all): Do You Like Your Valentine?

And this is what I wrote, for sweetcarolanne, who had the most amazing prompt. I seriously fell head over heels in love with this as I wrote it, and it's one of my favorite things I've ever done.

Title: Her Life in Dreams and Wakefulness
Pairing: Gabrielle/Luna (Gabrielle/girl!Giant Squid)
Rating: R
Word Count: ~4200
Summary: The first time she has the dream, Gabrielle is sixteen years old.
Disclaimers: I own nothing you recognize.
A/N: Special thanks to ellensmithee, thistle_verse and zagzagael for the read-throughs and beta, and for listening to me ramble about this.





At Sixteen

The water is cool, but it doesn't make her shiver. Her feet dangle from the edge of the pier, knees raised, soles dry. She slips her toes in first.

Now she is in to the ankles, and the water lifts her feet back to the surface. She pushes down harder, her calves now submerged. She is too buoyant to sink.

Something ripples between the waves. She watches it draw closer, long limbs waving toward the surface as it twists beneath the water. She presses down on the pier, lifts her body, and lowers herself further. She's not afraid. She won't drown.

It isn't just the water that supports her. Thick, pulsing fingers lash softly at the soles of her feet. The lake begins to swallow her. As the back of her head reaches the water, golden hair spreading out like a halo, she wakes.


The first time she has the dream, Gabrielle is sixteen years old. She has been visiting Hogwarts castle as a guest at the commemoration of the fifth anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts. She watches the giant squid break the surface of the water.

"I like to call her 'Bess'."

Gabrielle jumps. Luna Lovegood is too close to her ear, staring off at the lake over Gabrielle's shoulder as if Gabrielle isn't there at all.

"Ze squid?" says Gabrielle. Fleur has taught her the English word for it. Squid. She likes the way it feels in the back of her throat when she says it aloud.

"Yes. Bess." Luna hums. "Dress. Press. Less. Mess."

Gabrielle turns to look at her, but there is only a breeze. Luna has already moved on.


She spends the next three days at the Burrow. The entire Weasley family is there, children and husbands and wives. Gabrielle is quiet, thoughtful, and Fleur teases her mercilessly that Harry Potter has stolen her tongue. But Gabrielle isn't watching Harry Potter. She is watching his wife.

When Ginny turns her head, red hair scatters over her shoulder and across her cheek. Gabrielle sees it all in slow motion. She watches Ginny outside, flying with her brothers and Angelina. Victoire is playing at Gabrielle's feet. Ginny is earth and wind and fire, while Gabrielle feels as if she is made of water alone. She is fascinated, enthralled, and she can't stop watching, though she's not entirely sure she knows why. One word surfaces as she watches Ginny Potter skid to a graceful stop and dismount her broom. Someday. Someday she will be what Ginny is: solid and tangible. Too often, Gabrielle feels impermanent. Translucent.

After dinner, Gabrielle takes Victoire by her small hand and dances her through the sitting room and up the stairs, into the waiting bed in the room beside her parents. When she descends the staircase again--the quaint, sweet, uneven staircase in Molly Weasley's modest home--she is thinking about that far-away voice so close to her ear. Ginny is standing at the bottom of the stairs, waiting to pass, and Gabrielle can feel her ears going pink.

"'allo, Ginny."

"Good evening, Gabrielle," Ginny says cheerfully. "Is Victoire sleeping now?"

"Oiu. She was very tired."

"I'll bet. She's been running in circles. You're very good with her."

"Merci." Gabrielle wants to return the compliment, to tell Ginny that she's an amazing flyer. She doesn't.

"Fleur told me you're going back to France tomorrow. Have a safe journey," says Ginny. "Harry and I are leaving in the morning, too." And, after a moment's pause. "You should write to us sometimes. We do think about you."

"You do?" Gabrielle wishes she'd had something more graceful to say.

"Of course. We're sisters, you and I," Ginny says, and she leans in and presses a kiss to the corner of Gabrielle's mouth.

At night, when Gabrielle crawls beneath the soft, threadbare sheets, she presses two fingers to that place on her lips before falling asleep. She dreams of the lake at Hogwarts.



At Eighteen

The dream is deeper now, and she is fully submerged. Bess is wound around her like a living embrace. She can feel those thick fingers everywhere, wrapping her up like a gift. She doesn't have to move. Bess is stroking her, coaxing her, breathing for her.

She spreads her knees, wraps her ankles around one long tentacle.

The din beneath the water grows louder. Great waves are rushing past her ears deep in the womb of the lake. She can hear them crashing on the surface, so much like the waves at Shell Cottage. Maybe Bess is everywhere at once.

One slippery limb slides up the inside of her thigh.

Bess rolls her over. She shudders, opens her eyes. The water is the most glorious blue she has ever seen. In the hazy distance, the sun glows above the surface like a pearl.


Gabrielle wakes up with a girl in her bed. A girl--no woman--with dusty blonde hair and luminous eyes like pools of water. Like the sea.

Like Hogwarts lake.

"Shell cottage is a lovely place to wake up in the morning. Don't you agree?"

Gabrielle gathers the blankets around herself, bunching up the lacy edging of her nightgown as she scoots back on the bed.

"What do you sink you are doing?" she demands.

Luna squints her eyes and tilts her head to the side, concentrating intently. Finally, she smiles. "There they are."

"What?"

"Your wings. I can see them now."

"You can... what?"

"All angels have wings," Luna says. "Everyone knows that. Even people who don't read The Quibbler."

Gabrielle lowers the blanket only a sliver and watches as Luna extends one long finger to trace the line of her collarbone. She shivers.

"Why are you in my bed?"

"The guest bed," Luna corrects. "It's dreadfully dull to wake up alone every morning, don't you agree? Though Fleur was terribly vexed the morning I woke between her and Bill."

An unexpected giggle escapes Gabrielle's lips, and she drops the blankets to cover her mouth.

"You laugh like a little girl," Luna says, and upon Gabrielle's quick shift to anger, "as if you've never had cause to truly be sad."

Gabrielle feels ashamed, spoiled. Gilded.

"I was very sad when ze werewolf attacked my sister's 'usband," she says curtly.

"Of course you were," says Luna. "But that was Fleur's pain, not yours."

She holds up a hand, palm out, as if waiting for something, and Gabrielle doesn't know why, but she presses her own slender hand against Luna's. She doesn't know what to say now.

"I 'ave been sad," she says.

"You don't have to justify it," says Luna. "I think I would like very much for you to never truly be sad." She presses her fingers against Gabrielle's, and it almost feels like a kiss. Then she pulls back the covers.

"Come. I'll help Fleur make breakfast. She is not nearly as fond of honey on eggs as she ought to be. It wards off all manner of trouble, you know."

Gabrielle, bewildered, follows.


At Nineteen

The lake has frozen over. She looks up at the fractured clouds drifting somewhere far beyond its solid surface. Everything in the real world is frosted and distorted. Down here, below, there is only the dull sound of water, and she is safe, warm in her lover's many arms. She doesn't need Bess to breathe for her anymore.

She breathes the water now, through her skin, through parted lips, through legs spread across a swollen, writhing tentacle. She shudders, arches, long fingers map her body all over, and the world beneath the surface breaks apart too.

'I can scream under the water,' she thinks, and she does. And the sound is beautiful, like music bursting from every rolling wave. Bess strokes her throat.


Luna comes and goes with maddening inconsistency. One moment she's here, tucked up behind Gabrielle on the sofa and braiding lotus petals into her hair, and then she is gone and Gabrielle's small flat is empty, even with Gabrielle still in it. When Luna does stay, she has taken to making up the sofa like a bed, and sprawling out upside down, with her feet upon the pillow. She tells Gabrielle that she once read a Muggle story in which the heroine slept just like that, and Luna has done it ever since.

Gabrielle doesn't understand.

She doesn't understand Luna when she speaks, though the words are all quite clear. She doesn't understand where Luna goes when she leaves, or why she shows up when she does. Gabrielle doesn't understand what she feels when Luna is around. There's a warm little spark inside her that bounces around deep between her hips and spins bright coils of lightning around her heart and sits on the back of her tongue, stealing all the graceful words away.

Luna is sitting cross-legged on the counter, a notebook on her lap, sketching out some creature with the head of a bird, the body of a mermaid, and long feathers that trail into the water below. Feathers that twist beneath the water like tentacles.

Gabrielle worries her bottom lip, abandons the tea kettle and glides over to Luna's drawing.

"A flittering three-gilled nixy," Luna says absently. "Only one has ever been spotted before, by a drunkard in Wales, so you can imagine that he wasn't well believed. I'll be the next to spot one, though. Then they'll have to believe it, when it's printed in The Quibbler."

Gabrielle never quite knows if the things Luna draws are real or not. Somehow it doesn't matter. With her fingertip, she traces the feathers, cheeks flushing in shame or arousal or apprehension as dream memory washes over her. Luna's fingertip comes to rest on Gabrielle's pale pink nail, and slowly Luna traces a path up Gabrielle's finger, following the delicate map of bone to her wrist. It's the most pleasing thing Gabrielle has ever felt.

Then Luna's lips are on hers and the fragrance of Luna's hair closes around her like curtains and Gabrielle realizes that there are many wonderful things that she has never felt before.

She wants to feel them all.


At Twenty-One

'Oh, Bess', she whispers. A slippery smooth tentacle caresses her cheek, slides down her throat. She drifts just below the surface of the water. She can feel the surface weighing down on her like a skin, as if it's fighting to keep her below.

She turns in Bess's many arms, rides one tentacle toward shivery, perfect completion while another slithers up between her breasts, stroking the spot where her heart beats out a watery pulse.

Bess's heart beats beneath the water too, and it sounds like the steady thrumming of a drum.



"When we grow old," says Luna, "we will do this every day at three in the afternoon and not a moment later." She raises a miniature teacup in Gabrielle's direction. The cupcakes, so small that Gabrielle can rest one securely on the pad of her thumb, glitter with golden icing, lighting up the table like pirate's treasure.

"Three?" says Gabrielle.

"At four o'clock, all the proper old women are out on their swings. Unless we don't wish to be proper, and I rather think that is a distinct possibility to consider."

Gabrielle thinks that every possibility is worth considering with Luna.


Luna rolls across the bed in the weak, yellow light of a February afternoon, splaying her fingers as she reaches out for Gabrielle. Luna's fingers are nimble and quick and dance over her body in a way that reminds Gabrielle of her dreams. She loves to let Luna undress her. Luna's mouth is warm and wet over Gabrielle's breasts, and two of those clever fingers are sliding up inside her. Gabrielle spreads herself out beneath Luna, five-pointed like a star, the light inside her flickering brighter as Luna kisses a path down her stomach.

This is love, Gabrielle thinks, this warmth that radiates from Luna, melting her, forging her.

Luna's lips are sweet and soft, and they travel a winding path over Gabrielle's skin with the utmost care. Luna explores her, as if she is on one of her infamous expeditions. Now, another finger inside her and now--oh, now--Luna's tongue is tracing soft circles in such lovely places. Places that Gabrielle has only been touched in her dreams. Gabrielle draws in one shuddering breath after another.

"Luna," she whispers. "Luna..."

"You taste like dessert."

Gabrielle laughs, and the laugh breaks apart into soft quick sighs, and when she comes it feels like the lights have gone on everywhere.



At Twenty-Four

This time she is dreaming of sleep. Bess has her wrapped up warm and tight. One tentacle is wrapped around her breasts while another slides soothingly between them.

Every wave washes through her, rocking her, carrying her through the sleep-soaked crest of her ecstacy.


Luna is wound all around in some gauzy thing and Gabrielle, who should know better now than to take Luna at face value, is dressed up as per the instructions she was given. She is frills and bows and light pink chiffon with black polk-a-dots and daintily puffed sleeves. Luna says she looks like a package waiting to be unwrapped. Luna says that unwrapping the gift is her very favorite part.

"Oui," says Gabrielle. "It is ze best part." Sometimes Luna just makes sense.

"Hold this," says Luna, and she twirls across the room, a spool of thread unwinding, so furiously that Gabrielle is dizzy just watching.

Underneath, Luna is wearing lace. Lace, that barely covers her breasts, with the warm brown of her nipples showing through in delicious contrast. Lace, wrapped around her hips in a strip so narrow that it is nothing more than a thin belt.

"My love, my love, my love," whispers Luna, and Gabrielle is dizzy all over again.

Luna's skin is soft and cool in the February chill that creeps through the old bones of this house. Gabrielle's flat is on the third floor, with a small balcony that overlooks Paris, and the glass paned doors let in more draft than sunlight on days like this. At first, Gabrielle complained, but Luna has taught her how to create her own warmth. Gabrielle slides down Luna's body, arms wrapped around her, cheek pressed against Luna's bare skin. She lifts the the thin lace band and presses her hand to the back of Luna's thigh, guiding Luna's knee over her shoulder. Luna is warm and soft and wet on the inside, and Gabrielle has learned to hum little rumbling sounds that make Luna shiver all over.

Later in bed, when they are both wrapped in lace, Luna strokes Gabrielle's hair and kisses winding paths all over her body, starting at one temple and ending at the other.

"It's an expedition," says Luna. "I want to discover the sounds you make when I play you with my lips. Like an instrument."

The afterglow quivers all around them like the view from the bottom of the lake.


At Twenty-Seven

Her ankles and wrists are wrapped tightly in Bess's tentacles, arms pulled up overhead, legs spread wide. She is open, vulnerable, safe. Safe with Bess always, beneath the water. Despite her safety, she wants to breathe. She wants to feel air on her face. She wants her hair to catch the wind and rise like shimmery-gold ribbons on the breeze.

One tentacle winds around her waist, sliding across her skin, eliciting a shiver from deep in her spine. Another slaps the back of her thigh. She pulls on her wrists and Bess holds tight. Something slippery smooth slides up inside her and she arches, all in slow motion, the clouds so far above bursting as she does, the smooth surface of the lake dissolving as the raindrops splash down.


They are at Hogwarts together. Luna was visiting the Herbology professor and now Gabrielle is pressed up against the cool glass of the greenhouse, and they are all alone.

"Let's play 'naughty professor'," Luna whispers in her ear. "We'll pretend that I teach Herbology and have caught you being very good."

"Very good?"

"Oh yes. Very good. Which means," Luna slides her hand down Gabrielle's side, to her bum, and pulls her hips away from the glass, "that I must be very bad." At that, she smacks Gabrielle's thigh sharply.

Gabrielle gasps. "Very bad."

"You've got it," says Luna.

She takes Gabrielle by the shoulders, turns her, and bends her over a table. Luna flips up Gabrielle's skirt, crinoline and satin spreading out over Gabrielle's back, and tugs her knickers down to her knees. The air is cool, and her wetness only amplifies the chill, making her shiver, making her wetter still.

The first swat is sharp, and it tingles straight through to the center of her. Gabrielle squeaks. The next one starts to burn, and Gabrielle can imagine the pink glow of her skin growing redder with each swat. She reaches out, braces hands on the table, rolls her hips and pushes back against every smack of Luna's hand. Luna skates the smooth surface of her nails over Gabrielle's skin and the next swat is sudden and unexpected. Gabrielle presses her thighs together, so wet she can hardly stand it, then spreads her legs wide.

Luna's strike is lower this time. The tips of her fingers hit that achingly sensitive, slippery-wet spot and it sends Gabrielle's head reeling. She cries out. More, more, more. Oh, please, how she needs more of this. But Luna pulls back.

"Hmm," Luna murmurs, tapping one fingertip to her cheek. "Would the very bad professor stop right now?"

"No." The word is a whisper but it fills the greenhouse. It is a plea and a command all at once, and the only syllable Gabrielle can force from her lips.

"Okay," says Luna, unexpectedly agreeable.

It only takes that last smack, the perfect clap of Luna's hand against Gabrielle's sensitive cheeks and she arches, tight and tense and screaming so loudly that the glass walls vibrate in response.

When she can finally breathe again--and it is as if she has forgotten how because the whole world is still swimming--Gabrielle finds her voice.

"And 'ow do I punish ze naughty professor?" she asked, smoothing down her skirt, knickers still dangling around her knees.

"You are a resourceful young witch," Luna says, clear eyes looking right into Gabrielle. "I'm sure you'll think of something."



At Thirty

Bess is lifting her this time, driving her through the water and up toward the dancing, cloud-spotted sky above the surface. She can feel the waves coming down on her, pushing against her, holding her in. And part of her wants to stay with them. For all her dreams of surface, there is the fear of up above, because she doesn't know what happens next. She squeezes her eyes shut, lowers her chin to her chest, then throws her head back, facing upward. Facing the unknown world that spreads beyond the lake.

Then the crash, and water spilling everywhere.

She gasps, and there is air.

She breaks the surface.


The ceremony has all of Luna's flair and irreverence. The Delacours are properly horrified by the ensemble of squealing gnomes introduced to sing the wedding march. Victoire laughs aloud and everyone stares. Fleur's lips are drawn into a tight line, but Bill is laughing too.

The room goes quiet when Gabrielle enters. Her dress is stunning, and she knows it, brocade ivory satin with glittering white sequins that sparkle like icicles along the train. Luna made her wings. They are not Luna wings, but Gabrielle wings, feathered and floating and elegant, and she feels as if she really might just fly away. She hears the whispers of 'angel' as she walks by, and she blushes in pleasure. Luna is standing on the dais, waiting for her, the long tails of her white tuxedo jacket littered with bright yellow daisies. Her top hat is gold, as is the cane she holds, and on anyone else it would all be quite ridiculous, but to Gabrielle, it's so perfectly Luna that it takes her breath away.

Luna's vows are sweet and lyrical, like a song. A song that tells the story of them, from Luna's first memory of Gabrielle (long before Gabrielle's first memory of Luna). Gabrielle thinks it all sounds quite made up, as if their story is a thing of dreams. Her slender fingers clutch Luna's hands tightly.

When it is Gabrielle's turn to speak, her words are carefully chosen, precise and eloquent, just as she has practiced them a dozen times before.

They dance until Gabrielle can't stand another moment in her heels, and then Luna whisks her away by thestral, and she almost loses her wings somewhere above the Atlantic Ocean. They honeymoon in the Bermuda Triangle, in a place that Gabrielle is half-sure will prove to be fictional until they actually arrive. And even when she's inside the hotel, with staircases fanning out all around her like she's standing at the base of a cockle shell, she wonders if this place has sprung entirely from Luna's imagination.

The bed has four posts that wind upward, waving toward the ceiling like long, enveloping arms. Gabrielle lies in the center of the bed and gazes up at them, at the ceiling painted bluer than the sky, bluer than the impossibly blue water outside, and smiles as Luna's mouth begins painting pictures all over her skin.


At Forty

The lake is murky, like a cloudy memory, and she's been swimming in circles for hours. Her arms are heavy, like weights, and her legs feel leaden and weak. She thinks she will sink and be done with it all, but when she finally slips beneath the water, she remembers what home is.

She is welcomed back into Bess's long, needy arms. They tumble down through the water together in a tangle, and every part of her is stroked and loved and touched. She moans, and the sound grows louder. She can feel the current vibrating with her voice, and then the sound is inside her head...

And she wakes. Still moaning softly. She stifles herself with a gasp.

On the pillow beside her, Luna begins to stir.

"They're delicious, aren't they?" Luna murmurs.

"Hmmm?"

"The dreams."

"Ze dreams? Which dreams?"

"Mmm," Luna hums sleepily. "The squid dreams." And then she is sleeping again.

Gabrielle slides her arm around Luna's waist, presses her lips to Luna's shoulder, and sleeps.


In the morning Luna makes the coffee and Gabrielle spoons in heapfuls of sugar. Luna's coffee is always bitter with herbs intended to ward off some malevolent creature or draw good fortune into their lives. Gabrielle has grown used to preparing her coffee too sweet. She curls in her chair at the kitchen table, beside the sunny window, a pair of Kneazles the color of spun gold winding a path around the table legs and cooing for their breakfast.

Luna is talking about The Quibbler in an enthusiastic sing-song and Gabrielle is half-listening, distracted by the way Luna's lips quirk to one side as she speaks, the way the sun glints off the golden crown tipped to one side on Luna's head. Long ago Gabrielle stopped asking about Luna's accouterments. She has learned to simply enjoy them.

Halfway through the conversation, Luna stops talking. She climbs onto the table, pushes Gabrielle's coffee aside, and spreads her knees wide. Luna's robe is orange and feathered, and Gabrielle pushes it up over the soft pale skin of her thighs.

"I sink we 'ave 'ad enough talk of Snorkacks for today," says Gabrielle, and she leans down to swipe her tongue up the inside of Luna's thigh, the taste sweeter than all of the sugar in her morning coffee.


At Seventy-Two

She is sixteen and sitting on the end of a long, stone dock. Her feet dangle just above the surface of the water. She scoots forward and one toe breaks that shimmering plane. She watches the ripples vibrate outward, spreading over the mirrory surface in even waves. There is something down there, something waiting to welcome her with many open arms, and she finds herself craving that slippery-tight embrace.

Off in the distance something surfaces, and recognition slowly brings the form into focus. Bess.

She slips off the dock and into the water, and then she swims.


Moonlight makes Luna's silver hair shimmer, and Gabrielle strokes it. They are old women now, though Gabrielle's veela blood has kept the wear of age from creasing her temples and lining her forehead, the way it has with Luna. Every line on Luna's face is beautiful, and Gabrielle wants to trace them all. She still craves her lover's embrace. She wraps herself around Luna, arms and legs entwined, their shared breath making the stray lock of hair over Gabrielle's cheek skim across her skin, tickling her lightly.

Luna kisses in her sleep. Gabrielle can't remember when she discovered this, but she found it instantly enchanting. She raises her chin, brushes the line of her jaw over Luna's lips, and a soft row of kisses blossoms across her skin. She shivers. Luna's eyes flutter open.

"I was dreaming of a holiday," she says.

"Oh?" says Gabrielle.

"Yes," says Luna. "I'm up for an adventure. It's been terribly long since we've had one."

Luna's fingers map her hairline and it ignites sparks straight down to Gabrielle's toes, even after so long.

"Where would you like to go, my Luna?"

"I'm thinking Scotland," says Luna, and she stretches out languidly in Gabrielle's arms. "I rather feel like taking a swim."





{END}