First of my sequel stuff! I should start by saying that this is not actually a sequel to The Accidental Vessel. It's just an alternate POV for some of the stuff that happens then.
Well, it's sort of a sequel. Most of it is stuff that takes place during events in tAV.
Seriously, though, how could I resist writing Luna?
Also features some of my headcanons on what Gabriel and Michael would look like to her. From what Supernatural showed us in s9, angelic true forms are basically light, so I'm still kind of working around the constraints of a vessel. And when Luna first sees Gabriel it's still before he got all his power back, so that's another factor.
Anyway. Enjoy.
(I don't own Harry Potter or Supernatural, but I think at this point I've said that enough times that you guys get the point).
The first time she sees him, Luna wonders why no one else seems to notice him.
She is eleven years old, she hasn't even been sorted yet, and she can't stop staring at the definitely-not-human being at the table.
Why doesn't anyone else say anything? She's seen things no one else could see before, but this was an entirely different kind of creature. There had never been anything this big that had gone unnoticed, treated as completely normal by everyone else.
Whatever it was, he looks like he's squeezed into a space that is far too small for him. But neither his dreadlocked friend on one side or the girl absorbed in a conversation with her friends on the other seem to be having any issues with space.
They don't seem to think there's anything unusual about whatever is in between them.
At some point, a girl next to Luna digs her elbow into Luna's ribs. "Don't stare," she hisses. "Even if it is Harry Potter."
Luna nods, looks down at her plate, and wonders how that magical creature has managed to so thoroughly fool everyone else.
Harry Potter is human.
Whatever is sitting at the table is not Harry Potter.
A little later in the year, she wonders if he's there for some nefarious reason.
It's easy to believe - he (Luna's not sure if he's a he, but she doesn't want to call him 'it') may glow, but it's not a soft glow and it illuminates the bones in his face and body in a way that's reminiscent of a Halloween decoration. She wants to stare, but the outright inhumanness of whatever-he-is makes her shy of lingering around him too long.
It would be the perfect position to cause trouble. Harry Potter has money, fame, influence. Everyone is convinced that this impostor is the savior of the world. He could do whatever he wanted. She's the only one who knows to be worried about this possibility.
But he's going to school and doing work, and even though someone's been Petrified Luna knows magical creatures, and she thinks that if this one wanted to cause trouble he wouldn't freeze people.
He looks more like the kind who burns.
Dad had given her a journal several years ago, to write down the things she saw. She started out describing them as best she could - with all the limits of a six-year-old's vocabulary. Now she draws them, even if she isn't very good and the descriptions are still necessary.
She's getting better, but he is beyond her artistic ability to capture. At least at the moment.
Luna studies him anyway, jotting down little details. She looks at the not-eyes, shining too brightly in her view to make out even the pupils. She looks at the glow that comes out of his mouth whenever he opens it, lighting his teeth from the back but not doing anything to shift the shadows that the sun casts - for whatever reason.
She looks at the way it looks like there's a star trapped inside his body, the way the glow pokes through even two or three layers of clothing - no matter how muffled, it's always there, with the faint shadow of bones coming with it.
She looks at the arch of light over his head, the curve of what might be wings and are tattered enough at the bottom to be not-quite-feathery, the hint and promise of more than just two every time he moves and they shuffle with him.
She looks, and can almost see the hint of an ordinary human shape.
Luna wonders if he knows that she can see through his disguise.
The summer after her first year she convinces her dad to take her to a nearby Muggle town, and the first thing she does is go to the library to find out what kind of magical creatures they might know about, because this is nothing that was ever in her textbooks.
The librarian is very helpful when she asks about it.
"What kind of mythology are you looking for, dear?"
"I don't know," Luna says. "I was looking for one winged being in particular, but I don't know where it might be from."
"Greek, maybe? They've got Harpies."
"I don't think so."
The pattern continues for a while, until the librarian finally says: "Well, I don't know, dear. Is it angels you're thinking of, and not mythological creatures?"
"What are angels?" Luna asks curiously.
What she gets in return is a long story about Christianity, and she's only paying attention to some of it. The librarian believes in angels wholeheartedly, and tells her that they're guardians of humanity.
She talks about wings and halos, and Luna thinks she's found her answer.
Luna can't be sure that the not-Harry-Potter is an angel, of course, but it sounds like the closest to what she sees.
The librarian tells her that when angels show themselves to humans, they say, Be not afraid, and Luna thinks she understands why.
(She also wonders if this means there's a God, like the Muggles think).
If angels are guardians, then the one pretending to be Harry Potter is not a very good one. He'd waited until the end of the year to deal with the Petrifications.
Maybe he's simply a poor guardian and Hogwarts is his practice run.
Near the end of the summer, Sirius Black escapes.
When she gets back to school the angel looks, impossibly, brighter. Shadows are thrown more starkly from the light source inside him, and there's even more light escaping through any opening in his face - mouth, nose, eyes, ears.
Luna wonders what it means, and then wonders how much brighter he can get if he already outshines the collective glow of the candles in the Great Hall.
Everyone thinks Black is trying to kill Harry Potter, but the angel doesn't look worried. He doesn't need to be, from what Luna's been told of angels. He's not even really Harry Potter, but that doesn't matter since no one but her knows.
Still, when Halloween rolls around and Black manages to break into the castle, she hopes the angel actually does something about it this time.
She sees him a little later in the year and pauses in the hallway, never mind that she's got a class to get to. He looks dimmer and unhappy, wings drawn in tight at his back and the tips dragging on the ground. His friend - Michael, Luna knows - doesn't seem to notice.
Like always.
Maybe his disguise makes him better at hiding his emotions, and Luna's seeing through that too.
She wonders what an angel could be unhappy about.
Luna considers writing him a 'Feel Better' card, but decides it would be too forward.
She befriends a girl named Ginny Weasley, and Ginny tells her halfway through the year that she doesn't remember what happened to her last year.
"I know Harry did something," she says, "but I can't remember what."
"That's alright," Luna says, "it was probably just the trauma."
(Or angelic interference).
She asks Ginny what he's like, and Ginny shrugs, blushing furiously.
"I've never met him properly," is her excuse, and Luna leaves it at that.
At the end of the year, it turns out Sirius Black is innocent.
Luna thinks that the angel was probably involved.
Her third year, Hogwarts hosts the Triwizard Tournament.
They select the champions on Halloween and Luna knows she's the only one who sees the flash of surprise and anger on the angel's face, wings flaring repeatedly like he's testing the boundaries of some bond.
She doesn't envy whoever put his name in that cup.
(She wonders why the name Harry Potter would bind him).
There were nasty whispers about him, how he'd 'stolen' the title of Hogwarts champion from Cedric Diggory. They're even in her own House, even though Cedric is a Hufflepuff. Everyone seems to be looking for an excuse to dislike 'Harry', except for Michael and a girl named Hermione who Ginny had told her about.
Ginny drags along another Gryffindor boy on one of the days she and Luna usually meet up, introduces him as Neville, and insists that since he doesn't have anyone he regularly hangs out with he should be friends with them.
Luna smiles at his sputtering and tells him that he really needs to watch out for Wrackspurts. They're all over his hair, and she can tell he doesn't know what she's talking about.
He brushes a hand through his hair and knocks a few of them loose, and she smiles.
She's having a bad day (her shoes have gone missing and she knows who took them, but she's not brave enough to ask for them back so she borrows a pair from Ginny. Her ink spills everywhere on a completely stable surface and everything is worse than it usually is) when she's asked to go get 'Harry' for a champion's interview and suddenly she's more nervous than irritated or upset.
She's never officially met the angel before.
He's nice enough when interrupted, and seems quite glad of an excuse to leave the lesson he was in the middle of. Luna feels like, this close to him, she should be getting waves of heat off of him. Where uncovered skin would be he looks like he's made of liquid metal, like drops of mercury are going to drop off the tips of what look like fingers (but have an echoing afterimage of something older and wilder around them) and onto the floor.
He's even brighter than last year, and it looks wrong that the sun is still managing to cast shadows when something as bright as he is in the hallway.
(None of the shadows touch him).
His wings are clearer to her - because of the proximity, maybe - and they're not quite feathered but if they were Luna thinks they would be quite tattered. There are bits that stick up like pieces of hair that just won't go where you want them to, curls of metal on a typewriter broken to pieces by a stray spell.
They're as blue-white-light as the rest of him seems to be, hidden under what probably looks like a human, but for the first time Luna notices that his hair is black as pitch and reflects the light of himself so oddly that it looks like a night sky.
He asks her, eventually, what he's supposed to be going to.
"It's called the weighing of the wands," she tells him, which was all she had been told. "I'm sure they'll want to take pictures or something." She knows there's cameras and a woman she knows works for the Daily Prophet.
"Great," the angel sighs, seeming strangely irritated for a heavenly being who's supposed to be above such human things, at least from what Luna knows. "Just what I felt like doing today."
"I'm sure it will be fine." Luna tells him. Maybe it's because she feels like she could use some reassurance herself, that she gives him some, but it doesn't seem like it does much to help.
"Right." They're in front of the door she was supposed to take him to, but now that she's this close she doesn't want to give up the opportunity and decides to take a risk that will probably ensure she sees him again.
"Oh, and Harry?" She knows that's not his real name.
"Yeah?"
"You should probably take better care of your wings."
The angel freezes with his hand on the doorknob, and when he looks at her it's less that he looks shocked and more of an impression she's not quite sure how she's given.
She smiles at him, confidence rising - she can take an angel off guard like this. "They're not in very good condition," she says. "I doubt you can fly like that."
She turns (she can tell his eyes are still on her) and goes back the way they came, humming to herself.
Maybe it's not that bad of a day after all.
He asks her to the Yule Ball.
He asks her to the Yule Ball.
Luna's never been asked to anything before - not that anything had really come up that someone could have asked her to, since she's only gotten permission to go to Hogsmeade this year. But she's only a third year and she gets to go because an angel asked her to a dance.
Ginny is going with Neville and everyone else thinks she's going with Harry Potter and she's never gotten so many stares that were jealous instead of mocking.
She sends her dad a letter and tells her about it and he sends back money so she can go into Hogsmeade and buy something nice to wear. It comes with a letter full of encouragement and Ginny insists on going down into Hogsmeade with her.
"I'm sorry," Luna says in the shop. "I know you liked him."
Ginny snorts. "I liked the idea of him. I've got my head around that now. I mean, yeah, he's handsome, but I'm not going to be a jerk about it just because he asked you and not me. Here, try this on, I think you'd look nice in blue."
There's a letter on her pillow the day winter break starts.
It has her name on it in unfamiliar, angular writing, and it looked like it was jotted down in a hurry.
It's from the angel.
He's gone for break - he cites family emergency and manages to make it sound incredibly urgent without ever explaining exactly what the emergency is.
Luna thought it might be a joke, since she saw him in the common room a minute ago, but then she gets to the part where he says he's left a double at Hogwarts, a fake-him, so that no one wonders where he's gone and she still has a date for the ball.
The second half of the letter is mostly apologetic, a even more hurriedly scrawled P.S. saying he hopes she still has a decent time, and it's signed Gabriel.
Luna thinks of archangels, of the other stories she looked up in the few books Hogwarts has on Christianity, of the terrifying power they're supposed to wield and what they've done with it.
She thinks maybe it's not so bad that he isn't there in person.
The ball - and the 'double', the not-Gabriel - is the first time she gets a look at what everyone else must see.
Ginny's right - he is pretty, but his hair's not nearly as black and his skin is darker than she imagined. The scar forks across his forehead, pale and as jagged as real lightning.
"If you're an illusion," she asks quietly, masked by the chatter around them, "then how can we dance?"
Not-Gabriel grins at her and links their hands together. "Perfectly solid," he says. "You don't need to worry."
"Or is it just the illusion of being solid?" Luna questions (it's lighthearted, but she's honestly curious) and not-Gabriel laughs loudly enough to attract attention.
There are butterflies in her chest - a kaleidoscope of them, or maybe three kaleidoscopes. The dance itself is a whirl of movement and muscle memory, and she's suddenly glad for the dance lessons that everyone got beforehand.
She's in her dress and she's wearing homemade beaded jewelry in blues and silvers and she's very glad that she didn't listen when Ginny tried to persuade her to buy heeled shoes. Not-Gabriel is wearing something that's not quite robes and not quite a suit and the thought crosses her mind that it suits him in a way that's not just the right kind of color.
Not-Gabriel dances well, like the steps to a waltz have been ingrained into him. Luna asks him, once they've finished and are allowed to step off to the side, where he learned.
"You'd have to ask Gabriel," he says.
"You don't know?"
"I only have some of his memories," the double says, grinning. "I'm only meant to replace him 'till the end of break, after all. I don't need to know everything."
"Does it bother you?" Luna asks.
"I'm not technically alive, you know," is his reply. "I wasn't made with the capability to be bothered by it."
Luna's not sure what she thinks of that, but it gives her an odd feeling all night.
Ginny asks how it was, the next time she sees Luna.
"It was nice," Luna said. "No one's ever asked me to anything before. Did you have a good time with Neville?"
"He was really sweet," Ginny says.
"Do you like him?" It's honest curiosity - partly, but Luna feels like that's where the conversation is leading. Girls talk about who they like with each other, right?
"Not like that," Ginny says.
"Why did you go with him, then?" Luna pretends she knows what Ginny means by that.
"He's nice," Ginny says, shrugging, "and I don't think he would have gone otherwise. I wouldn't have been able to."
Luna's not sure where to go with the conversation, and Ginny seems to sense that, because she switches the topic to her older brother Charlie who works in Romania and hasn't ever dated anyone and is apparently content with just being around dragons for the rest of his life, and how he drives her mum crazy with how long his hair is every time he visits, and in the back of her mind Luna wonders about like-liking someone and the other things the girls in her dorm seem so obsessed with being able to do.
The end of her third year is mired in chaos as, apparently, Lord Voldemort rises from the grave, and everyone finds out about Gabriel not being Harry Potter.
She sees only glimpses of him - he's brighter than ever, and now some shadows do shift away from him, and his wings are so blinding that it's almost like looking at the sun with the weakest possible shading charm.
His wings have always been his biggest tell for her to decipher her emotions, which comes in handy in her fourth year.
She wasn't planning to tell anyone what had been happening to her in Umbridge's detentions. Complaining would just land her in more of them.
But she ran into Gabriel in the hallway.
It's partly the still-sensitive pull on the back of her hand and the fear that he might burn her that makes her flinch. But all Gabriel's hand feels like on hers is feverishly hot, dry skin, not metal (liquid or otherwise). It's a bit of a visual paradox.
His mouth is pressed closed so that less light escapes from between his lips than usual, and his wings are flared wide and bristling and Luna knows he's angry.
He heals the back of her hand in an instant, and it's not that Luna isn't grateful, but for once Gabriel actually looks like the terrifying presence that archangels are supposed to be.
The things of all the other girls in her dorm go missing - little things, the kind of things they take from her - and all of her missing belongings are piled on top of her trunk the next morning.
Luna doesn't doubt who was involved, and when she brings it up - subtly, she doesn't know whether it was meant to be a secret - during her new Runes class Gabriel grins like it's the funniest thing he's ever heard, and doesn't correct her when she blames the Nargles.
She knows it was him.
When Umbridge ends up in the hospital wing, transferred to St. Mungo's only days later, she knows that was him, too.
It's a little terrifying to think that this being's power was used to cause someone so much harm over a few scratches on the back of her hand.
Luna wonders (hesitantly) what he might do if something worse happened to her.
(She also wonders why he cares so much).
She goes with him to the Department of Mysteries and ends up in a fight. Luna had not counted on Death Eaters, hadn't expected it, but her wand was in her pocket and when they shouted curses she shouted them back on reflex.
His daughter is a surprise - she's surprised angels can have children - but Luna listens to the bickering between them and Gabriel's insistence - almost paternal - that she go back home.
The daughter doesn't go back.
She's not an angel, but she's not human, and when Luna looks at her she can see nothing of the being's left side.
When his daughter's helmet is knocked off, she sees why, and pities her for a second.
(Death, even if it is only half of the body, is not something she would want anyone in Gabriel's family to be burdened with).
Then Luna sees Gabriel's face (not stricken, not surprised, just furious for a single second and then very, very tired and regretful) and the pity is replaced by sympathy.
She doesn't ask how it happened.
The battle is over and the Order is gathered, pretending they don't see the way Bellatrix is slumped on the floor after Gabriel threw her away from his daughter - not human, and not alive either, Luna thinks, not all the way - but not everything has been fixed. Michael is slumped against Hermione with one hand to nir head and voices coming from places ne can't identify.
Luna doesn't know what it is.
She doesn't ask why Gabriel looks at Michael in a way that seems almost fearful.
In her fifth year, she comes back and finds that Michael is brighter and even more alien than Gabriel.
Gabriel, it seems, is now avoiding Michael as much as possible and Luna wonders if he's truly afraid of this other angel, or if there's something she doesn't know that happened between them.
Maybe it's both, she thinks.
She talks to Hermione a few times and lets the Gryffindor girl vent, about how they'd spent an hour refusing to acknowledge each other's presence on the Express, how Gabriel isn't trying to breach the distance between them and Michael isn't trying either, how she wishes they would just get along again.
Luna doesn't understand friends who refuse to look at each other (she is too used to Ginny and Neville and their casual banter, unconditional acceptance) but she understands what Hermione feels, and tries to help.
She doesn't see much of Gabriel that year, and mostly aside from schoolwork she's with Ginny and Neville, and both of them are nervous and wishing that someone would restart the D.A. because Snape, for all he knows and that she guesses he knows of the Dark Arts, is not a good teacher.
They're all worried about what Voldemort is doing and what he might be doing.
There are sporadic attacks, families killed and the murderers never found, and Luna knows there are some days where no matter who she asks no one will remember seeing Gabriel or Michael or be able to tell her where they went.
For two angels who dislike each other so much, they seem to do things together more often than they refuse to be in the same room as the other.
Luna wonders if it's just because of the Death Eaters, or something else.
(She tries not to think about what might be dangerous enough to force two archangels - bearers of power that's unfathomable to human beings - to work together).
Their new transfiguration teacher aide is an angel.
At this point, it's barely a surprise that yet another one has shown up at Hogwarts.
Luna wonders if McGonagall knows, and sees the sideways glances the professor gives to her helper when the other students are bent over their mice or beetles or nearly-there teacups.
There is a fight at the end of the year.
Death Eaters are flooding Hogwarts, students are terrified, barricaded in the dormitories, and Gabriel comes crashing into the middle of it with Michael only a minute behind him.
They weren't together, and the only explanation Gabriel gives is a crushed golden cup that looks like it used to have a badger on it.
Michael killed seven people just by landing, and ne rushes off to the Astronomy tower as soon as Gabriel tells them about the plan.
Someone is trying to have Dumbledore killed, and has nearly succeeded.
Gabriel shoves a map into her hands, where the people move across it as they move in real life and it has every one of Hogwarts's secret passages on it. She runs behind Muriel and Balthazar, not quite as intimidating as the other angels she's seen but not any less inhuman.
She can see wings flared, both of them with more than just two, blue-white-light that glows impossibly bright from hands and halos when they lash out at someone. They save three students from curses that are deflected back at whoever sends it, and then the Death Eaters are running and Muriel flies ahead of them to block the gate.
Balthazar leaves her there without even glancing at her, as if humans are below his notice.
(Luna hadn't seen what he'd done with the Death Eater they'd forced to answer their questions, and she wasn't sure she wanted to).
Luna knows that Gabriel was the one up in the Astronomy tower. Michael has said as much, but ne hasn't said why, and there's a set to his face that makes her think ne's not telling her something
She doesn't ask Gabriel if he let either of them die.
(Dumbledore is not the only one at the foot of the Tower, and Snape has lingering traces of blue-white-fire that's not tangible or visible except when Luna looks very closely, and she thinks that he must have been pushed).
Voldemort dies in Diagon Alley.
Gabriel does not linger on the cobbled streets longer than a minute or two.
She knows it was him, knows the difference between regular magic and the traces Gabriel leaves behind. But there are still people being killed, words in languages that no human has ever spoken painted in blood on walls, and Luna doesn't need to see their faces to know that the two archangels are worried.
Maybe even afraid.
But they still barely talk to each other, and Luna wonders if they will be able to fight whatever is threatening them.
Gabriel is gone.
So is Michael.
As far as Luna is aware, of the force that mustered earlier that night not a single angel remained in Hogwarts. She doesn't know where they've gone. The smallest one, with wings and eyes that were more blue than white, had told her it wasn't human business.
But it feels wrong, sitting in Ravenclaw tower, listening to the rain pound down on the windows and roof, and simply waiting.
When Luna sees Gabriel in the hospital wing she has to leave almost immediately, because she can see the split in his Grace or whatever else it is that makes up him, and it's wrong, it's so wrong that it makes her nauseous and she doesn't know how Michael stands it.
The expression on Michael's face, when she comes back in (carefully not looking at Gabriel), makes her think that maybe ne doesn't. Aziraphale, hovering in the background, is not looking at Gabriel at all and is examining one of the shelves of potions with such a stiff posture that he has to be distracting himself from Gabriel, on a bed not five feet away.
Lying on the bed, eyes closed (the light underneath them does not shine through) and not moving.
Gabriel is unnaturally still in a way that makes the wrongness even more obvious - he is always moving in some way, animated gestures and ruffling wings, but not now. He is as dim as he had been in her first year, and it's only contrasted to how bright he had been when she'd last seen him that Luna realizes that that was wrong, too, even if she hadn't realized it then.
Next to Michael, he is very nearly a shadow, and his wings slump over the edge of the bed and pile in what looks like a heap.
Luna counts six, the two innermost ones messier and frayed-looking, but she takes no joy in the fact that she finally knows how many there are.
She carefully picks her way around the not-feathers, the faint traces of light on the floor, not wanting to cause Gabriel any further harm. Hermione looks confused, but she listens when Luna tells her where not to step.
Hermione doesn't look pale, her skin is too dark for that, but she does look shocked and upset and it's the one thing that's common between all of them.
Neither of them stay for long. Luna doesn't think she can, not when she can't look away from her friend, laid open and still. It's too wrong.
Hermione can't see what she does, but she seems just as eager to leave.
(It's possible that Hermione senses the same wrongness she does).
She doesn't see him wake up.
Term is over and Luna has to go home, where her father pushes gently about how she's quieter than normal, but she smiles at him and then goes up to her room and lets the smile vanish.
Her art skills have grown, since she was an eleven-year-old girl, and Luna gets out the paints her father had bought her and utterly fails at capturing what she had seen the year before.
She does not try to paint the bones shadowed from inside - it's too strange, to difficult for her to try, but she still fails.
It is canvas and Muggle paints, not a hint of magic in any of it, but Luna treats the paintbrush like a wand and the third try has a little more of a ethereal glow about it and a blacker, galaxies-and-constellations mop of hair that brushes where shoulders might be on a normal person.
(He'd worn his hair long at the Yule Ball).
A newspaper comes that claims that the dead body of Harry Potter has been found, and Luna paints the forked lightning scar and green eyes crinkled in a laugh, and waits for someone to come and tell her the truth.
She does not see Gabriel after that.
Hermione has seen him only once, at Harry Potter's funeral. She tells Luna what he said, how he was still in London - or at least in the country. She tells Luna how he held his arm against his chest like he was keeping something in, and moved carefully.
She tells Luna about blond hair and amber eyes and pale skin, and Luna paints some more and smiles more honestly at her father.
Hermione tells her what Gabriel told her once, about Loki and children and family ties broken for a long time and nearly beyond repair, and Luna understands why he was so uneasy around Michael.
Only a little bit, though.
She doesn't presume to fully understand anyone nonhuman, especially not someone like Gabriel.
She wonders if Gabriel will mind if Hermione tells her, and figures if he ever comes back to get upset about it she'll just tell him that it wasn't like he was around to ask.
Luna is a little hurt that he never comes by to her, and tells herself that to an angel even a century is not a very long time, and he might have forgotten completely how different humans see it.
She paints, and helps her father with the Quibbler, and lives.
She's sure that she'll see him again.
Eleven years later, Lysander writes home about a fellow Hufflepuff boy with curly hair and eyes like amber and a weird hesitation over perfectly normal things, and Luna smiles to herself.
She thinks Gabriel had better drop by, if Lysander is going to befriend one of his family.
Lil bit of a hint of what's to come...I dunno when, though.
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