For the @hogwartshousesnet slytherclaw versus gryffinpuff

Luna Lovegood could see thestrals. It didn’t bother her, most of the time, until Ginny Weasley told her she could see them too.

For the girl who had been named after the moon, thestrals were a fact of life. For the girl who had hair the exact shade of phoenix feathers, it had not. Ginny Weasley was a lot of things (fierce, sassy, pretty enough that she made Luna’s stomach dance whenever she saw her) but she was not accustomed to death. 

She explained Colin Creevy’s body, its still, pale form lifeless at the bottom of one of Hogwarts’ many staircases. She explained her mother’s wand movements and the burning hot coals she saw alight in Molly’s eyes as she cursed Bellatrix to oblivion. She explained that some part of her loved the duel, and that she was so–so confused.

They’d both seen Sirius Black fall behind the curtain. But this–this was brutal and a piece of glass that cut everyone with jagged edges. This was war, and this was when Ginny Weasley realized that she could see thestrals, and tears began to shatter the freckled girl’s resolve.

Luna Lovegood didn’t like to see Ginny cry. It was as unnatural as the sun being snuffed out. So she wrapped her arms around Ginny and wiped away her tears with fingers as gentle as thestral fur, and they fell asleep together, holding on so tight that it was impossible to let go.

That was the first time Luna Lovegood ever kissed her girlfriend, another girl who had looked death straight in the face. It tasted like chocolate frogs and tears, like a beginning mixed with an end.

They were a new phoenix that rose from the ashes of the old, and they were a beginning within an end.