#ticklish luna

[bookishtickles]

Okay but imagine if Luna straight up asked people to tickle her because she totally would

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Starved for the Silver Touch of Starlight

NONE OF THE FICS THAT I’M POSTING BELONG TO ME. THEY ARE A SERIES OF TWELVE WRITINGS BY @evanescent-sensations, WHO IS LEAVING OUR COMMUNITY. THIS IS HER TRIBUTE.<3

Summary: After being chosen by the Goblet of Fire to participate in the Triwizard Tournament, Harry Potter needed some time to think. Buzzing with nerves and drowning in worry, he’s joined by Luna, who, per usual, somehow manages to make things just a little bit happier. Warnings: Tickling, fluffity fluff with fluff on top Word Count: 2,254 A/N: This was requested by @mysteryfaerie77, tHANK YOU! Harry and Luna are sunchildren too pure for this world and they are my secret addiction so thank you for giving me an excuse to write them!  Also, Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! (Sorry about the atrocious title!)

Harry sat somberly under the midnight sky, trying to calm his breathing and quell the nerves that were setting him on edge without reprieve. Life had gone horribly awry in the last twenty-four hours. The Goblet of Fire just had to spit out my name, didn’t it? he thought miserably. Just had to go and ruin everything. Now, Ron was angry with him, most of his fellow students were either disappointed in him or obnoxiously interested in ‘how he’d done it’.

Harry sighed. As horribly pretentious as it sounded, he had not asked for this life. Had not asked to be ‘The Boy Who Lived’. Had not asked to have the insurmountable weight of Voldemort’s impending death on his shoulders. Had not asked to murder a professor, or save Ginny from a giant snake in a chamber that should not have even existed, or nearly have his soul stolen by a dementor, and he certainly had not asked to compete in a ruddy contest that was so dangerous that he literally could not back out since some stupid cup spewed out his name.

“Are you okay?”

Harry turned to see Luna Lovegood standing with her hands folded in front of her, clad in white pajamas that were adorned with polka dots. The moonlight shone through her hair and made it look like spun silver, or perhaps white gold and cast shadows over her gentle features. Had it been anyone else, Harry probably would have jumped, but Luna’s gentle voice was a harmonious susurrus to his ears, and she herself was a sight that relieved some of the ache and anxiety buried deep within him.

“I could hear worry from all the way inside the castle,” she explained, approaching him slowly and sitting down beside him on the damp grass. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Harry grumbled. “’Everything’ comes to mind.”

“Harry,” Luna placed one of her hands over his as she settled in beside him, “I believe you. I don’t think you put your name in that Goblet. You’ve got too many swatsums around you, and you can’t lie with them around.” Her shining gray-blue eyes were wide and filled with an innocence that Harry saw very rarely, save when he was with her.

“Thanks, Luna,” he said with a regretful sigh. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound cross with you. I’m just so…nervous, d’you know what I mean? My stomach’s all…I don’t know…”

“Fluttery?” She suggested. Harry nodded. “Oh, those are called ribbles! I used to get them loads,” she consoled.

“Are they, now?” In spite of himself, Harry smiled. “You don’t happen to have a cure for them, do you? Because, quite frankly, they’re rather annoying when there are more important things to worry about.” Important things like avoiding death, avoiding mortal injury, and avoiding Ron at all costs, he thought. Unhappiness and discontent sank down to the pit of his stomach like a brick. He wondered, for a fleeting moment, what it must be like to be Luna Lovegood–to be so carefree and aloof, so eager to believe in fantasies, so beautifully naive and so easy to desperately want to protect. He wondered if anyone else knew how envious you could be if you looked at her for too long, or how entranced. He wondered if she knew.

“Well, of course there’s a cure!” Luna scoffed–Harry had not known Luna had the ability to scoff. It was strange to hear such subtle indignation in her voice. “Mind you, it only works on some people…”

Harry glanced over at her, eyes alight with curiosity and amusement. “Is that so?”

“Yes, it is,” Luna replied dreamily. She turned her head to face him, and their faces were so close that their noses very nearly touched. Harry resisted the urge to lean forward and kiss her, even though she looked like a polished diamond in the starlight, shining brighter than anything in the drapery of space overhead. “Do you want me to get rid of your ribbles, Harry?”

He tried his hardest not to let any inkling of a laugh out; he did not want her to think that he would patronize her. “Sure, Luna, if you’d like.” Suddenly, her hand shot forward and came to rest over his torso, and her fingers quickly went to work, skittering over his stomach. Harry curled inward, definitely-not-giggling and pushing the rogue hand away. “Lunahaha!”

“You asked me to cure you, Harry,” Luna chided softly. If Harry had not have known better, he could have sworn that a slight smirk was tugging at the left corner of her lips. “I’m only complying!”

The sensation was unfamiliar to Harry. He seemed to recall seeing a similar affect being inflicted between a few schoolchildren when he had attended school with Dudley–oh, how he shuddered at the memory of those days–but had never felt it for himself. He was so rarely touched even now, save when he spent time at the Weasley’s, that he had not even thought of the idea for years. He seemed to remember it being called, ‘tickling’, but he could not be sure.

At his silence, Luna hesitated. “Are you all right, Harry? You seem to have gone somewhere else, but your body is still here.” She risked a poke to his side, and Harry jumped.

“I’m fine,” Harry answered, pressing a hand to the back of his neck and blushing slightly. “Are you positively sure that that is the cure?”

“Harry, did you see just there? You were a poet and you didn’t know it,” Luna observed with solemnity. “Yes, I’m certain this is it. Don’t you trust me, Harry?”

“You know I do,” Harry answered. A small smile graced Luna’s lips.

“I’m glad.” Luna sneaked one of her arms around Harry’s back so that she could scribble at both of his sides at once, pulling him back when he squirmed away in the midst of his giggling fit. Yes, he was sure of it, the word was tickle and what she was doing tickled and Merlin’s beard, was he ticklish. When he moved to push her hands away once again, she squeezed the soft flesh of his sides just below his lowest ribs, and Harry let out a noise that he absolutely would not admit was a squeal. “So many people don’t trust me, you know. They think I’m loony.”

“I know-hehehehe! I nehehehehever thought th-AHAHAT, Luna!” Giggles came interspersed in his speech as Luna’s slender fingers tripped their way up the sides of his ribcage. When he clamped his arms down, she simply moved the maddening sensations to his stomach, where her fingers spidered skillfully over his sensitive torso.

Luna’s expression brightened when he managed to say the words with semi-coherency. “I know, Harry. That’s one of the things I love about you. You don’t tease me for believing in what we can’t see.” She paused for a moment, tilting her head thoughtfully, before scooting over so that she was behind him, propped up on her knees. When Harry turned to face her, she stopped him. “See, I can prove that there’s a way to know that things are there, even if you can’t see them,” she continued. “You already know what I have to do to cure your ribbles, Harry. So you know what my hands are about to do, don’t you?”

If anything, Harry could not help but realize, what Luna was doing was making the so-called ribbles much,much worse. Her breath, which came in light zephyrs, swept against the nape of his neck and made him want to scrunch his shoulders. Anticipation bubbled up inside of him like carbonation in a soda, and a broad, goofy grin was plastered to his face.

“Y-Yes,” he stammered, doing everything in his power to ensure his voice did not betray him, despite how tense the rest of him was–every nerve was coiled like a cobra ready to strike, prepared to alert him to the ticklish sensations to come. As seconds ticked on and those sensations remained absent, the bubbly feeling grew until Harry was ready to curl up on the ground and laugh even though no one was touching him.

“So you know precisely what could happen at any moment, and you know that my hands are capable of making that happen, even if you can’t see them at the moment?” she questioned further.

“I do,” Harry murmured bashfully.

“Precisely!” Luna chirped, and then proceeded to wrap her arms around him and hug him tightly against her as her fingers danced artfully over his stomach, leaving no inch of skin untouched. At first, they scritched chastely over his pajama shirt, but shortly, her hands swooped under to poke, tickle, and pinch at the bare skin beneath. Harry cackled and squirmed against her, giggling wildly at each new technique and blushing profusely when he heard her laughing along with him in small huffs just beside his ear. Her shockingly-long fingernails traced a path just above his waistline, walked teasingly up his sides, and then dragged downward, drawing ten ticklish lines over his belly. When she pressed her fingertips more purposefully into his skin and vibrated them, his laughter went silent, and at last, Luna relented, opting to hold him snugly and nestle her face into the crook of his neck, smiling as she did. “Are you cured, Harry?” she asked, just for good measure, he presumed.

“I–hehe–I think so,” he responded breathlessly. But it was more than the ribbles that had been cured, he knew; the anxious fear that was eating away at him was gone, at least for the moment, and he dared to hope that tonight, he might actually sleep without a nightmare of the grueling tasks to come. Gratitude rushed over him in a massive wave. “C’mere, you,” he offered, patting the spot beside him and extending an arm so she could nestle in beside him. Luna eagerly accepted, curling up beside him like in an almost cat-like fashion and sighing contentedly when Harry gently threaded his fingers through her thin, wispy hair. They sat in silence for what could have been minutes or hours (or eternities, for all Harry could have cared), looking up at the stars and huddling against one another when the chilly night wind urged them to return to their dorms. It arguably could have been peaceful and silent forever, if Harry had not decided to enact a little bit of revenge-slash-gratitude-induced tickles, trailing his fingers over her sides just enough to feel her twitch against him.

“Do you have a case of the ribbles, Luna?” Harry asked, pulling her a bit more tightly against him before she could float away. (She had a habit of doing that, and possessed an odd talent for just…disappearing from his side when something else beckoned for her attention.)

“I always do when I’m with you, I think,” she admitted. Harry did not miss the playfulness in her tone.

“Well, I’ll soon fix that,” Harry vowed. He utilized the hand wrapped around her side to tickle her there, and put his other hand in front of her over her stomach to scribble and tickle to his heart’s content. Admittedly, he adored Luna’s laugh–it was such a rare thing to hear, and so undeniably precious. When she truly, unabashedly laughed, it gave a certain clarity and diction to the sound of her voice than any other time. She seemed to crash down from her dreamland in the clouds when she giggled, but not in an unpleasant way. Not to mention that whenever he poked a spot just over her hips, Harry coaxed from her a squeak that was so endearing that he could barely convince himself to draw his hands away.

“Hahahaharry,” she managed to get out once he stopped, “we should probably go inside.”

“We should,” Harry agreed, pressing a kiss to the side of her head, “but do we want to?”

“No,” she admitted, “but we should.”

“All right, then,” Harry said, grunting as he pulled himself to his feet and offered her his hand, which she graciously accepted. Both of their faces were laden with grogginess, but they were also free of worry for the moment, and for that, Harry would be eternally thankful. “Luna Lovegood, you are a very special person.”

“Harry Potter,” Luna smiled as she laced her fingers with his and tugged him in the direction of the castle, “so are you.”

And the most special thing of all was that Harry knew that she did not mean he was special because of his birthright to battle Voldemort, or his lightning-shaped scar, or his popularity that spanned over the entire wizarding world. She meant he was special just because he was himself. Just because he had green eyes and a gentle side that she could bring out unlike anyone else and a smile that she admired unlike any other person’s. Just because he was him.

Harry squeezed her hand a little tighter. The entirety of Hogwarts might be against him, but if Luna was for him, that was enough.

Luna smiled as she sleepily skipped toward the dorms with Harry in tow. There were no such things as ribbles, but there was such a thing as Harry Potter being in need of cheering up. Perhaps Luna had used her usual entrancing ideas somewhat to her advantage, but she figured that by now, Harry knew, and he did not seem to mind. Maybe, Luna thought to herself, we should diagnose each other more often.