Written for the Helmet Fest 2008 Luna/June, where my prompt was Lava lamp.
So, I really don’t know where this came from.
Sorry.
Lava lamp **** Hermione didn’t really mean to get a flat with Luna, after they left school. Ron and Harry had already been working, for a year, and were living at Grimmauld Place surrounded by more dirty socks and jock straps than Kreacher could keep up with. Ginny was snapped up by the Harpies as she touched the ground after Gryffindor’s final match and was living at the training camp at Llanfairynghornwy. Hermione started work at the Ministry and wanted somewhere to live, somewhere to escape from the socks, and Ron mentioned that Luna was looking for a place and Hermione found herself trailing after her as she inspected flats for Wrackspurts.
They finally decided on a place on the top two floors of a ridiculously narrow building, two doors down from the Wheezes and above a Palmist. A lounge and a tiny kitchen, downstairs; two bedrooms and a bathroom, upstairs. The ceiling in Hermione's bedroom sloped too sharply for Ron to stand upright.
Which was the main reason she’d chosen it, and let Luna have the bigger room; Ron needed to stand up in Luna's bedroom. Or lie down, at least, judging by the amount of lying down they did on the couch, until Hermione got home from work and cleared her throat and the room.
Hermione's bedroom was full of books and Luna’s was full of Charms and Detectors and fossilised heaven knows whats and Ron’s underwear, but she kept most of the wilder stuff out of the lounge. Just a few tastefully draped things, and a blue lava lamp.
Hermione frowned and bit her lip, before asking her about it.
“A lava lamp?” she said. “Where are you going to plug it in?”
Luna turned her large eyes on her and looked confused.
“Plug?” she said. “Ron has one of his father’s plugs in his Quidditch bag, I think. He was playing with it when we went and watched Harry play. He said it was some sort of plug.”
“No,” Hermione said patiently. “A lava lamp needs electricity to run; it’s a Muggle invention.”
“Oh, Hermione,” Luna chided her. “Surely you, of all people, don’t believe that?”
“Of all people?” Hermione echoed, wondering what she was letting herself in for.
“The Lava Lamp was invented in Dorset,” Luna said. “Daddy used to take me to the Mathmos factory…”
“Mathmos?” Hermione echoed. “Isn’t the Mathmos a seething, evil…”
“The Mathmos factory puts the Charms on the lamps,” Luna explained. “And Daddy is friends with the owner, and she let me Charm this one. I thought you’d know about them, of all people.”
“Of all people?” Hermione repeated.
“Cressida Granger,” Luna said, putting the lamp on the floor, in the middle of the room and muttering a Charm to activate it. “Lovely woman; isn’t she a relation?”
“I don’t find things hard to remember,” Luna sighed. “I’m just so used to everyone being related to everyone else. I really think you should try and find some relations; it's not good to be alone.”
“I’m working on it,” Hermione said, resolutely not thinking of anyone red headed, at all.
“Really?” Luna said. “That's very good news; I told Ron you weren't trying to get him back.”
“What?” Hermione asked weakly. “Luna, you know Ron and I broke up perfectly amicably; I couldn’t be happier that you are together.”
“That’s a strange expression, isn’t it?” Luna asked her. “I’m sure you could be happier. Much happier. You put up a Silencing Charm on your bedroom, when Ron stays the night, and I know it’s not so we don’t hear you, because Ron told me you are a Stealth Masturbator.”
“He said what?” Hermione choked.
“He wasn’t criticising you,” Luna assured her. “He just mentioned it, because I am so loud.”
“I know,” Hermione said, before she could stop herself.
“He’d never say anything bad about you,” Luna said.
“Umm.”
“He never says anything bad about you, and he suggested we share a flat,” Luna went on. “And I do anything he asks me to, in bed, and he’s still thinking of you, listening to us, across the hallway.”
“I don’t listen,” Hermione assured her.
Luna wasn’t listening.
“I really think he’s not going to forget about you until I do something drastic.”
“Drastic?” Hermione echoed.
Luna stood beside her lava lamp and flicked her wand at it.
“See?” she said.
Hermione leant closer, watching the darker shapes rising lazily in the bright blue liquid.
Bright.
And getting brighter and brighter, and she shielded her eyes against the glare.
“Stop it,” she begged, her hands in front of her face. “It’s too bright.”
“I’m sorry,” Luna murmured.
Hermione peeked through her fingers and saw the light was dimming; she blinked rapidly, spots dancing in front of her eyes, and looked back at the lamp.
Which was growing.
The dimmer it became, the larger it grew. Hermione tried to take a step back, as it towered over her, but found her way blocked; turning, she looked up and up into a squashed, furry face.
Crookshanks bent down and sniffed her, carefully, looking confused; Hermione opened her mouth to scream, looking frantically between the giant cat and the giant lamp, just as the latter turned off with an audible snap that ran through her tiny bones and sucked her through the glass.
Luna bent and lifted the lamp with her enormous hands, putting it back on the table just as a knock sounded at the front door.
The booming sound echoed around the liquid filling the lamp, as Hermione came to rest on a dark blue cloud. She watched in disbelief as Luna left the room, to admit her visitor, and she struggled upright to try and reach the glass.
The front door slammed, but the owners of the approaching voices were blocked by a pink triangle the size of a house, as Crookshanks pressed his face up against the glass and miaowed, deafeningly.
“Leave it, puss,” Luna said calmly, scooping Crookshanks up and depositing him in the hall, the door closing in his indignant face as he tried to dash back into the room.
“That new?” a deep voice asked, and Hermione watched Ron’s large feet cross the room, and looked up to see his distorted face peering down at her.
“Mmm,” Luna said, turning the lamp back on with a flick of her wand and catching Ron’s hand to pull him down on the couch. He leaned over her, one hand sliding up her leg and under her skirts as he bent to kiss her neck.
“Hermione out?” he asked.
“Yes,” Luna moaned, tipping her head back. “Quite, quite out; we won’t be disturbed.”
“Excellent,” Ron said, rummaging in his pocket. “There are things I need to do to you that Hermione must never see. I’ll get the lights.”
He clicked his Deluminator and the lights went out, leaving just the pale blue glow.
Hermione felt the liquid in her blue prison warming up and her pillow trembled and started to rise. She wriggled more securely astride it, digging her fingers into the waxy surface, to anchor herself, and gripping with her thighs. She rode it to the top of the lamp, where it hung, weightless, for long enough for her to look over at the couch.
Luna was lying back on the cushions, her eyes closed and her legs spread, as Ron’s head moved between them.
Hermione’s waxen steed bucked as it cooled, nearly throwing her off as it sunk, once more. A rising globule brushed past them, pressing Hermione against the glass wall and she heard Luna moaning as she buried her hands in Ron’s hair and bucked under his mouth.
Losing her grip, Hermione slid off her cloud, following the curve of the glass downwards, through hotter and hotter pulsing waves of pale blue liquid, until her fall was broken by another dark pillow. Unable to sob, unable to breathe, Hermione lay flat on her bed, closing her eyes as she rose, her wax home waxing as it absorbed lesser globes, unable to close her ears to Ron’s voice, echoing through and around her.
“Good girl,” he groaned. “Good work. Need to be inside you, Loo, now.”
Hermione turned her head and opened her eyes, watching as Ron kicked off his boxers and knelt between pale thighs; slipping gently over the side of her cloud as Ron slid gently home; watching them joining together as Luna flicked her wand and the light in the lamp dimmed.
Falling through the cooling darkness and curling up at the bottom of the well, as Ron bellowed his climax and smaller and smaller balls of cooling wax rained down upon her.