What Matters
"Her mother has exploded right in front of her eyes. She pinches herself. Maybe the nargles have messed with her brain more than she thought they did. She pinches herself again." A short fic, involving Luna, her mother, and what really matters. For Alice.
\
The other children are beginning to catch up.
Luna peers behind her shoulder, and her already large eyes seem to pop out of her sockets, because they are so close. And the largest of them, an ugly boy with a gigantic nose, looks ready to kill her. She only prays that she'll make it home in time—she'll be safe inside, with the strong tower structure to protect her. To the tower, she prays, I only have to last a little longer. She runs faster, cursing the fact that they live on a hill.
"Loony Luna!" shriek the kids behind her.
She peeks behind one last time and is pleased to see that they have fallen behind a little bit, unaccustomed to climbing the hill like she is. And then she's at the door, which she forces open and slams behind her.
She's made it. She's safe.
"Back so soon, Luna?" asks her mother. "I thought you were going to the playground to play with your friends."
She stares at her mother, who is absentmindedly stirring a bubbling cauldron. And all of a sudden, Luna feels upset—upset at her mother, for being so strange. The other children always tease her about her strange mother, and her strange father, and how she in turn is strange. Whenever Luna mentions blibbering humdingers or Crumple-Horned Snorkacks, she can hear them whispering about how it's because of her loony mother that she came out so messed up.
Am I really that messed up? Luna wonders. How would she know? If her family is just as strange as they all say…
"Well, since you are back, Luna, do you suppose you could get some plimpies from the river? Be sure to avoid the nargles!"
And then Luna snaps. "No. Mother, plimpies and nargles aren't real, at least not to the playground kids, and if you send me out there, they'll make fun of me!"
Her mother smiles calmly and continues to stir the cauldron. "Well, Luna, if you would prefer not to get the plimpies for me, I suppose I'll get them myself. But you really ought not to be so riled about what the other children think. What does it matter?"
"Mother, you don't understand!" she yells, and she storms upstairs, plopping onto her bed. She looks at the picture of her with her mother on her bed stand. In the image, the two of them are awkwardly hugging, and her mother is wearing her usual dreamy, calm smile. Frustrated, Luna grabs the photograph and puts it in a drawer, where she cannot see it. She wishes she had a normal mother.
She wonders if all Wizarding families are so odd. In the novels and magazines and newspapers she reads, the outside world doesn't seem quite like that. She only wants a friend, but the Muggle children only hate her, and she doesn't know anyone else like her. She knows it's possible for wizards to befriend Muggles because the Weasleys, who don't live too far away and who she knows are wizards, have several Muggle friends.
The Weasleys are also normal, or at least as normal as such a large Wizarding family can be.
She sees a nargle flitter out from other her lamp. They must be messing with her mind, Luna supposes, but then she remembers that, no—she's not supposed to see nargles. No one else does. She wishes she was normal.
And then there is a loud boom downstairs.
\
At first she doesn't quite understand what has happened, except for the fact that her mother has exploded right in front of her eyes, and now, her mother lies in pieces on the bottom floor.
She screams and clutches her stomach.
"Oh Merlin, Luna, your mother, Diana, no—" Her father sobs, and Luna stops screaming and instead stares at her dead mother.
Her mother has exploded right in front of her eyes. She pinches herself. Maybe the nargles have messed with her brain more than she thought they did. She pinches herself again.
"What—will she come back?" Luna asks her father.
Xenophilius stares at his dead wife. "No," he says slowly. "I—I'm going to go send an owl and begin arranging the funeral. Luna, do you have any dark blue garments?"
Luna throws up.
\
She's ashamed.
It's her fault, Luna decides. It must have been. It was because Luna had been angry at her mother when she'd died. Because Luna had refused to get the plimpies. She cries at the funeral in her dark blue dress and bawls so loudly that it must be inappropriate, even for the daughter of the dead woman. Everyone around her is trying to comfort her with words that she hardly hears, because they do not understand.
They don't understand that she killed her mother.
"Poor thing," she hears one of the guests tell her father. "She's only nine."
"Yes, yes," says her father. He sounds far away, though. He hasn't quite been the same since her mother left.
Luna cries harder. If they knew what she'd done, they wouldn't think she was poor.
\
The next day, she goes to school again. She doesn't really feel good, but she's already missed out on a week, and her father, being a magazine editor, is determined that she will finish up her primary education. The other kids are the same as they've always been. They weren't invited to the funeral as it was a Wizard funeral, and they don't know anything about her mother dying, as the Lovegoods aren't exactly the most well-known, beloved families.
"Loony Luna Lovegood! Loony Luna Lovegood!"
Her head hurts. She thinks of what her mother would say, and she breaks down crying in the middle of lunch, and is sent home early.
"Luna, you've been odder lately," says her father when he sees that she's come home too early.
Luna says nothing.
"And not just odder," her father continues. "Thinner. Quieter. Are you sick?"
She still doesn't answer.
"Luna, you can tell me. I know you've taken Diana—your mother—hard. But it's not your fault—"
"It is!" she screams all of a sudden. She's kept it in for two weeks. "I killed her! The last thing I told her before she died was that she didn't understand! And-and I wished that she wasn't my mom and I killed her!" She begins to cry.
Her father stares at her, eyes wide. "No, no, Luna, it's nothing like that. That's silly. You can't just kill people by wishing to. Wishing and doing are two very different things. Now get your head out of the nargles. I-I really don't want to lose you too, Luna."
She snuggles into her father's warmth and cries. "Is it really not my fault?" she asks, muffled.
"Yes," her father answers. A pause. "Now, maybe, you'll be able to make it back to school before your lunch period ends?"
She nods, but first she has to do one thing. She races upstairs and rummages in her drawer until she finds the photo of her with her mother. She puts it on her bed stand, where it belongs. The pair are smiling and hugging tightly now, and it is obvious from her mother's expression in the picture that her mother gives her no hard feelings.
"I love you, Mom," she says quietly.
\
The other children are beginning to catch up.
Luna peers behind her shoulder, and her already large eyes seem to pop out of her sockets, because they are so close. And the largest of them, an ugly boy with a gigantic nose, looks ready to kill her.
But she only gives the boy a smile, one like her mother's signature calm smile, even when he calls her Loony Luna. She remembers her mother, telling her not to be riled up that the other children do not understand, and that it does not matter.
Other things matter more, she decides. Other things matter infinitely more.