For the Fortune Cookie Challenge at HPFC. "You will find your love sooner than you think." and "Door." Enjoy!
"Mum! Mummy! Muuuum!" Luna called, bounding across the back yard to where her mother stood. Her mother stopped mid-incantation and turned. The flowers at her feet wilted.
"Yes, dear?" she asked.
Luna regarded her mother solemnly. "Do you love Daddy?"
Cassandra took her daughter's hand. "Yes, I do." she said. "Why do you ask?"
"Oh." Luna shifted. "No reason. What else do you love?"
"Umm, let's see. I love my Charms, and sunshine, and rain, and, let me think, umm... you!" She grabbed Luna around the middle, drawing a shriek from the five-year-old, and began tickling everywhere she could reach. Luna squirmed in her arms, squealing with laughter. "Stop-Ahahahahaha-stop! Eeeeeee! Mum! Mum! Eeeeeeek!"
Laughing, Cassandra dumped Luna onto the ground, where the little girl scrambled breathlessly to her feet, still giggling. Luna stuck her fingers into her mother's side and waggled them, but Cassandra didn't squirm. "Sorry, dear," Cassandra smiled. "I'm not ticklish."
"What?" Luna cried. "Why not?"
"I'm just not- probably because I'm your Mum and you like tickling so much." Cassandra sat down on the grass and pulled Luna into her lap.
"Oh," Luna pouted. "That's not fair."
"Maybe not," Cassandra agreed. "So, what do you love, Luna?"
"I dunno," the five-year-old shrugged. She picked at the grass absently. "You. And Daddy. And Nargles, even though they take my socks."
"Yes, they took my radish earrings the other day. Have you seen them?" Cassandra asked, a shrewd gleam in her bright eyes.
"Weelllllllll..." Luna said sheepishly. "I mighta borrowed them when I went to play with Aggie."
Cassandra laughed. "Keep them, love." She twisted back toward the flowers and murmured, "Orchideous Renewus!" And the wilted flowers perked up.
"Why do you love Charms, Mum?" Luna asked, spreading out her legs on the grass.
"Because-" Cassandra paused as she considered the question. "Because I'm good at it, and it's exciting when I get a new charm right, even if it is dangerous when I get one wrong."
"Oh," Luna pouted. "I don't have anything like that."
"You will find your love in time, Luna," Cassandra said serenely.
"Yes, but when?" Luna demanded, giving an impatient little squirm.
"Sooner than you think, dear," Cassandra grinned, leaning over Luna and pinching her cheek affectionately.
Luna completed the finishing touches on her wall mural and stepped back to survey her work. A dirty-blonde little girl with a bright smile on her face was holding hands with a woman who looked very much like her. They each stood on either side of the the threshold of a large, ornate door. On the girl's side of the threshold was a flowery backyard that Luna knew by heart. On the woman's side, everything- except the woman- was shrouded in brightly-colored mist.
"Done?" Luna asked the empty air, tucking her hair behind an ear with paint-smudged fingers. She paused, head cocked as if she were listening to something. "Not quite..." she murmured.
Luna reached out and brushed the exquisitely-detailed face of the woman with one of her cleaner fingers, then started and stared as if she had spoken. "Indeed," she agreed. "Sooner than I thought..."
And Luna left the room in search of glittery gold paint with which to write as much.
Marlicat