Selene was excited; she had been working on a special project for the last four years and the months spent gathering vital ingredients and preparing the necessary equipment were about to come to fruition.

Mrs. Lovegood was something of a veteran experimenter, having spent much of her life tinkering with various magical instruments and devices, and she was adept at utilising her vast creativity to improve existing gadgetry and invent her own. This experiment, however, ventured away from machinery and out of Selene's comfort zone: Selene intended to manufacture an edible substance that would temporarily enhance one's already existing positive features and put one in a creative mindset and her husband, Xenophilius, was very enthusiastic.

Luna, her little daughter, was also noticeably excited about the prospect of watching another of her mother's experiments. At seven, she was intellectually curious and enjoyed nothing more than spending time listening to Selene telling her about the values of knowledge and open-mindedness. This was good, as in turn Selene's biggest pleasure was watching the child that took so much after herself drinking in the knowledge she herself wished she'd had access to as a little girl.

"Xeno, could you and Luna stand a bit further back? You know how dangerous some of these ingredients can be," Selene said calmly, and her husband went to sit down on the opposite side of the square room as Luna drifted serenely after him. Selene judged that as they were by the door, if anything were to go wrong they'd be able to get out quickly. She expected everything to go smoothly, but she was always careful to be as safe as possible as she had heard stories of things going wrong with other people's experiments. For example, only a few years ago there was a story about some poor old alchemist who had attempted to recreate Flamel's legendary philosopher's stone and had ended up with a monstrosity that turned everything it touched (including the inventor) into sawdust.

"Okay," Selene said. "It's time to start the machine." She tapped the complicated-looking contraption with her wand and it immediately whirred into life, complete with turning cogs, whistling pipes and spinning jars. "And now for the nine vital ingredients! Luna, darling, could you throw me that small bag by your chair? Thanks, love," she said, as the small girl bent down, picked up the brown leather pouch and tossed it across the room. Instead of catching it, Selene waved her wand and the pouch hovered in the air in front of her. She waved her wand again and several tiny, orange beads flew out of the levitating pouch and hovered in mid-air.

"What are those, mummy?" Luna asked, watching the small beads dance in the air with an expression of greatest curiosity. Xenophilius grinned, and Selene knew why: he was just as pleased as she was that Luna was taking such an interest in the project.

"They're dried, rolled billywig stings, darling," Selene said, smiling. "The base ingredient in this experiment, they provide a lighter-than-air sensation helping the blood-flow to the brain, increasing a person's capacity for brilliance." She flicked her wand and the stings flew into the largest spinning jar, where they rattled around noisily. Selene then pointed her wand at the large cupboard in the corner of the room, and a number of brilliant scarlet spheres zoomed out of the cupboard and into Selene's outstretched hand.

"I know what those are!" Luna exclaimed. "Ashwinder eggs! I've seen you freezing the ones we sometimes find behind the sofa!"

Xenophilius smiled proudly at his daughter. "Well remembered, my dear Luna!" he cried. "We'll make a great naturalist out of you yet!" Luna grinned up at her parents happily.

"You're right, my darling," Selene said. "Ashwinder eggs, for love, truth and beauty. A very important component in this experiment." Again, she flicked her wand and the eggs soared into the rotating jar, which then tipped out the contents into a particularly small, golden cauldron with a purple flame underneath. Selene then reached into her pocket and drew out a small skein of long, silvery hair. She grinned at the confused expression on Luna's face.

"Mummy," Luna asked, "Is that your hair?"

Selene laughed, for the hair did indeed look rather like her own long, fair tresses. "No, love, it's demiguise hair, for transparency and clear thinking. It's what invisibility cloaks are often made out of.

Xenophilius looked smug. "But not the cloak of invisibility!" he piped up. "The cloak of invisibility was made by death itself out of the mucus of the crumple-horned snorkack."

"Yes, Xeno, we know," Selene said. She herself was interested in the Deathly Hallows but even she thought that her husband often went a bit over-the-top about them. She plucked half a dozen hairs from the silky skein and put the rest back in her pocket, and then dropped the hairs into the cauldron and waved her wand over the concoction. Yellow sparks started flying from the cauldron and Selene saw Luna sit up straighter to get a better look.

Selene walked over to the window and made a noise that sounded like bird song. After a minute, a brilliantly lime green bird appeared on the windowsill, singing softly, and Selene gently plucked a feather from its plumage.

"Mummy, why did you just pluck one of Perilene's feathers?" Luna asked, as the Lovegood's pet fwooper took off and flew back towards the copse a few hundred yards behind the house.

"Fwooper song is well-known to cause eccentricity after a while. The feather in the mixture will inspire creativity and different ways of thinking," Selene responded. She dropped the bright green feather into the golden cauldron and the mixture started popping. Selene was surprised, her calculations had suggested it should hiss at this point. No matter, even the best inventors were occasionally wrong in theory.

Xenophilius reached inside his pocket and withdrew a small bottle of a clear liquid. "The gnome saliva, Lene," he said, as Selene pointed her wand at it and it flew out of her husband's outstretched hand and towards her.

"Thank you, love," Selene said, holding up the bottle so Luna could see it clearly. "Gnome saliva, for exposing hidden talents!" She took the stopper off and poured the contents into the cauldron, which violently fizzed over the sides of the cauldron. "Oops!" Selene exclaimed, pointing her wand at the fire, which had turned green. "Heliotropify!" The flames went back to purple, and Selene reached into another of her pockets, drawing out a tiny blue feather.

"A jobberknoll feather, for memory," Selene declared, dropping it into the bubbling mixture. After all, you can think up all the theories you like, but if you don't remember them, what's the point?" Luna nodded her agreement.

Once again, Selene walked over to the cupboard in the corner and took out a number of small, black spheres. "Runespoor eggs," she announced, dropping them into the cauldron, "for mental agility." The mixture was now foaming uncontrollably. Selene reached into her pockets again and took out a gold coin. She dropped the coin in the cauldron, and Luna frowned.

"Mummy, why did you just drop a perfectly good galleon into the cauldron?"

"Because, love, it's not really a galleon. Leprechaun gold, for a good sense of humour," Selene said. "Finally," she continued, taking the tiniest bottle from the smallest cupboard that was always kept locked, "phoenix tears, for wisdom, healing and courage." She divided the mixture in the cauldron into three, putting each third in a different spinning glass jar and sprinkling one drop of the phoenix tears into each.

Suddenly, the machine holding all of the jars started whining, as the empty cauldron spat and popped. Selene was terrified, the contraption was not supposed to shoot off sparks. The jars containing the mixture melted and the substance slopped all over the floor, burning through the floorboards and threatening the very foundations of the building.

"Xeno!" Selene shouted over the din. "Take Luna and get out of here! I'll try to get this under control." She registered the alarm in her husband's eyes but there was no time to be concerned as the contraption had now burst into flames and was smoking profusely. Luna started crying, and Selene felt horrible. What if the little girl never saw her mother again? Xenophilius picked up Luna, gave Selene one last fleeting look, and bolted out of the door.

Selene heard the shout of "I love you, Lene!" and her precious daughter wailing before hearing the familiar pop of disapparition and for a moment her mind went blank with panic. This sensation only lasted a second, but she suspected that even this second was too long to waste. She frantically waved her wand muttering incantations, praying that it would make some difference.

As soon as Xenophilius and Luna were over the threshold, Luna felt her father twisting around and felt the uncomfortable sensation of something like being squeezed through a narrow rubber pipe. After a couple of seconds, she opened her eyes and saw that they had ended up in the copse a few hundred yards behind their house, far enough to be out of danger but also to see what was going on. Luna could see that the roof of the house was on fire, so it had evidently spread, but surely her mother was alright? After all, everybody knew how to perform freezing charms, and even Luna aguamenti was pretty standard magic that everybody knew.

Immediately after this thought had occurred to Luna, there was an almighty BANG and the house's four walls blew apart, as the roof and first floor collapsed. No, she thought, this isn't happening. However, the sobs of her father told Luna all she needed to know, and it was obvious to the two remaining Lovegoods that Selene had not made it. Luna felt her father's arms closing around her as fresh tears filled her eyes, and they stayed huddled together in the copse overnight as the fwooper sung mournfully.

The next day, Luna and Xenophilius returned to the ashes and rubble that were all that remained of their once beautiful house. They spent the day searching for any possessions that may have been unharmed, but all they could find that weren't soot and ashes were three small, orange, radish-like objects.

"Daddy," Luna said tearfully. "Aren't these what Mummy was trying to make?"

"You know, darling," Xenophilius responded, "I do believe they are. How on earth do you think they survived?" Luna shrugged her small shoulders, and pocketed the small radishes. "I can't fix this," Xeniphilius said unnecessarily. "Luna, we'll have to move house. Maybe somewhere in England? You've only known Irish countryside, maybe it would do you good to be somewhere different."

Luna screwed her eyes up. "Yes, daddy," she said, as she started crying again.

A month later, the Lovegoods moved into their new house in the Devon countryside, near a small village called Ottery St. Catchpole. The first thing Luna had done when they arrived was to bury the small orange plants in the soil by near the door and paint a sign to hang on the gate, as a reminder of what her mother had created, and how much the discovery had cost the Lovegood family. Many years later, the sign was still hanging on the same gate.

"Keep Off the Dirigible Plums."

Author's notes: Thank you for reading! Bonus points for anybody who can tell me why I gave Luna's mother and the pet fwooper the names I did? (It helps if you know a bit about the Latin and Ancient Greek languages, and some astrophysics.) (HINT: What's a periselene?)