Title: Eclipse of the Moon

Summary: ... Neville should have loved Luna like Luna loved him.

A/N This is set after the Deathly Hallows, when a summer fling between Luna and Neville goes drastically wrong. These are Luna's thoughts, three years later, when Hannah walks down the aisle in her place.

Luna blinked away tears and ducked her head. Fiddling with her radish earrings (symbols of better times, she thought) she tried to smile at a glowing Neville, standing just next to her (so close...).

She tried not to hum along a funeral march to go with the wedding song currently playing in the background.

The doors flew open, and there were intakes of breath from across the church. There was a round of applause in which Luna did not take part in, and slow footsteps echoed off the walls.

Luna could hear the snap of photos in front of her, where Parvati Patil was eagerly clicking her camera, saving memories of the blushing bride.

She couldn't bear to even look in the traitor's direction, and instead focused on the crowd. Neville's grandmother was beaming and trying to hide it, and Mrs Abbot was dabbing away tears.

So this is what a wedding is like, Luna thought absentmindedly, smoothing down the front of her lilac dress. It was rather like a funeral. People gathered in a churchyard in their finest dress, dabbed away their tears and vaguely wished it was them.

"Doesn't she look beautiful?"

No. No, she didn't look "beautiful". She looked horrifying, like the personification of evil. Why weren't people flinching and looking away at the mere sight of her?Luna wondered angrily.

She was angry because it should have been her up there.

Luna Lovegood should have been wearing a white, eccentric dress with her lucky radish earrings, with her blonde halo of hair lazily braided down her back. She should have been clip-clopping down the aisle with her father on her arm, blushing as Neville stared at her with unabashed wonder and awe.

Neville should have loved Luna like Luna loved him.

As the doors softly closed, Luna caught a glimpse of the threstrals that pulled the carriages. She wondered if Hannah could see them too. But of course, they had all seen death. Too much.

"Somebody's going to love you, darling, like nobody's ever been loved before. You're going to give him a run for his money, of course, and then walk away into the sunset, Luna. You're going to be so happy. I promise you this, if nothing else."

"But don't you love me, Mummy?" Little Luna asked.

"Of course I do, my darling. But somebody special is going to love you even more." The blonde gazed down at her beautiful, innocent, and so easily tainted child and sighed.

"I promise ma lune."

Luna realised that she had been staring at the church door now for about four minutes, and she could almost see the nargles buzzing about her head. She abstractly brushed them away, and sighed as a thestral neighed at her, its cold, dead eyes strangely unnerving, despite the fact that Luna had been able to see them for the past twelve years.

As Hannah Abbot, a beautiful ex-Hufflepuff with blonde hair, walked down the aisle in her place, Luna wished she couldn't see the threstrals, because they reminded her that her heart was dead.