Photographs and Memories three: greet the day

Characters: Luna.

Word count: 504

Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, and I make no profit from this fan-written fiction.

Gen, spoilers for Deathly Hallows, but set during Chamber of Secrets (book canon, but with a nod to the movies). With thanks to rayslady for looking over this. This ficlet is part of the 'Photographs and Memories' collection of ficlets, set in the following fandoms: Swallows and Amazons, ER, Harry Potter and Sky High.


greet the day: shallowness

Luna woke herself early the day before returning to Hogwarts after her first Christmas holidays. It wasn't to pack, for her trunk was mostly done, and besides, there wasn't any light for it. It was to see the day in. Wrapping her blanket around her, she dragged a seat to her window and looked ahead intently. The familiar shapes of the valley below, leading on to rolling hills, weren't quite visible yet, but she could sense they would be soonish.

She'd nearly stayed up to see the dawn of the new year, but there had been lots of dancing and she'd fallen asleep downstairs, waking late in her bed. This was her last chance for months and months; she didn't believe the rumours that the school would be closed. The sun was grudging at first, but Luna was patient, and her reward was a view of her stomping grounds at first light to take with her back to school.

"Thank you, that was wonderful," she told the sun, and then stretched, leaning backwards to gaze at the ceiling. She knew she needed to do something about the gnomes she'd painted there last year, she'd known it all holidays. Perhaps over Easter she could paint the Hogwarts Thestrals. They might let her draw a sketch of them, but she needed to find precisely where they lived.

Nodding, she rose and went back to her bed to return the blanket, not needing its warmth any more. The empty frame caught her eye, lying flat by the side of her bed. She couldn't dither any more. She had two pictures that would fit. One would stay, the other would return to Hogwarts, safe in her History of Magic textbook with the others - like the one of her mother dancing at the doorway to their house, obviously pregnant - pictures that Luna sometimes took out at night and smiled at in silence. The book was one of her few things not to disappear over the term. Her socks and comb had come back before the holidays, but Luna was still glad she'd put the pictures there, even if she'd only done it for moral support for when she listened to Professor Binns promulgate centuries of cover-ups from the Ministry.

Her mother was in both the pictures that fit too, and Luna took her time again to look her fill. In one of them, all but Luna's legs was hidden behind the Quibbler and she was sitting in her mother's lap. Her father had his arms around them both. In the other picture, it was just her and her mother in an embrace. Luna liked looking at these pictures, just to check she was remembering rightly.

Luna made her choice, and set about putting the photograph in its frame. Once she'd done so, she nodded at her younger self and her mother. They waved back, as the waft of a Lovegood special leaving day breakfast rose from out of the kitchen for the second time in Luna's life.

Fin.

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