Disclaimer: If I had three wishes, I'd use the first one to own Harry Potter. But until that happens everything in this belongs to J.K Rowling
Written for QLFC, Round 2: Friends Are The Family We Choose For Ourselves
Position: Chaser 2 - Ravenclaw x Ravenclaw friendship
Prompts:
5 (style) third person present tense
11 (word) derivative
13 (spell) immobulus
Word Count: 1,919
This was an interesting one to write, having never written either Luna or in the present tense, but I'm happy with how it turned out in the end I think. Thank you so much to Nasim (natida) for turning it into something legible instead of the mess I originally had!
Enjoy :)
On nights when the moon hangs low and bright in the sky, Luna likes to creep past her slumbering roommates, out of her dormitory and down into the common room.
They constantly complain about her strangeness as it is, and she doesn't think they would take kindly to her opening the curtains and staring at the moonlit sky. It's one of her favourite things to do; she likes thinking that she is one of the few who appreciate it, so unlike the sun which is loved by everyone. For her, the fact that no one notices it is what makes it so beautiful.
She can't help but feel a pull dragging her to the windows, like a rope in the pit of her stomach, when she knows that the moon is big and bright and there to be admired. That's the case tonight, its light winking at her through the crack in the curtains until she can't bear it any longer.
Pulling her blanket around her to protect herself from the November chill that seeps out of the stone walls to claw at her bare legs, she stumbles down the stairs, yanking the heavy drapes back to reveal the sky. She sighs in contentment, hops up onto the windowsill and pulls her duvet close around her until it feels like she's wrapped up in a cloud. It brings back memories of when she was little and her mother used to tuck her in, making sure none of the cold air could break the barrier of the patchwork quilt she had made.
Hearing the door squeak open, she snatches at her wand; as always, it's tucked behind her ear. This is another thing that often earns her sniggers and pointing in the corridors, but she wishes they could have seen her reflexes just now. She doesn't think anyone else could have pulled out their wand quite as quickly if theirs had been tucked into a pocket somewhere. Whereas hers was now in the air, and in a flash trained on the door that the noise had come from.
The way the door is angled is very inconvenient, she decides. It's bad enough that she has chosen to sit at a window on the same wall, but she also realises she is sitting on the side towards which the door opens. With a sinking feeling, she knows that she won't see anyone coming through until they are already in the room. She mentally kicks herself. This is the kind of thing they always warn people about in the meetings with the remaining members of Dumbledore's Army. Neville or Ginny would have thought about this, and Harry certainly wouldn't have made this mistake. She wonders for the thousandth time this week what her place is in the D.A. "Harry did a great job, and Ginny and Neville are just as good," the small voice in her head pipes up. "All you really do is keep up morale." A single tear glides over her cheek, silver in the light of the moon.
Blaming the crying on fear, and ignoring the voice as usual, and the fact that her hand is shaking from being so tense, she strains her ears for any sounds. From behind the door, the tip of a wand emerges. The room is dark, yet the wand isn't lit.
She can tell that this person is expecting an attack, and her arm rises a little bit higher. The rest of the wand appears agonisingly slowly, until a hand becomes visible. In the low light, she thinks she can make out its nails; it must belong to a male. And judging from the stains she has come to know as blood all over the hand and forearm that she can now see, this person has recently been in a fight.
She doesn't know what makes her do it: why she picks fight over flight – Merlin knows it's not her usual style – but something inside her lights up.
Whatever the light is, it makes her jump up, duvet flying off her, and run the couple of steps to the door. She rounds it to face the figure, shouting the first curse that comes into her head.
"Immobulus!"
She recognises the boy just as the flash of blue hits him square in the chest, his face a mask of surprise. She notices as well, with a feeling of terrible guilt settling over her, that his wand arm is half-lowered, and that he'd clearly recognised her even if she hadn't.
"Michael, I'm so sorry. It would be very helpful if you didn't go sneaking around the tower though." Pausing for breath, she realises this may be a tad hypocritical, but she supposes he can't argue anyway. "Why are you covered in blood?"
His eyes dart back and forth in fear, or confusion, or anger, or perhaps a combination of all three, and she realises with a jolt that he can't answer her. "Oh right, sorry." She's unsure what the best course of action is, she's not used to dealing with situations like this at three o'clock in the morning.
She knows she can't just leave him stuck in the doorway. She and Michael Corner may not talk much at meetings, but he happens to be one of the few people left in the castle who she knows she can trust, and he deserves more than to be left frozen in a doorway. Not knowing whether a counter curse to the spell exists, let alone what it might be, she does the next best thing. Using her wand to levitate him, she manoeuvres him across the room and positions him above the large blue sofa by the fire, so that when the charm wears off he'll at least fall onto something more comfortable than the floor. She momentarily considers lighting the fire, but quickly decides against it, not wanting to attract any more attention. Instead, she runs and gets the abandoned blanket from the floor, draping it around his body like a cape, tucking it under the arm that remains at his side.
She perches happily on the floor under the sofa, satisfied by what she has achieved. His body towers above her, blanket already sliding off his shoulder in the draught that sweeps across the room every so often.
After a couple of minutes of silence, she notices him blinking rapidly at her. Once he knows he's got her attention, Michael stares pointedly at a spot by the door. Following his gaze, she lights her wand and scans the area. She notices a small silver key on the floor, bloody fingerprints pressed all over it. She retrieves it and places in carefully in the pocket of her night robes. He seems satisfied by this, and she settles herself on the opposite sofa, legs tucked under her in a position that the rest of the world would not deem comfortable but which she has always found oddly soothing.
They stay like this for the next two hours, opposite in every way. One stands tall above the sofa, the other sits curled into herself like a cat. One talks almost without breath, the other remains as silent as the grave. One is perfectly still, while the other has her hands flailing around, acting out the stories she tells him in miniscule detail to pass the time.
Although it's impossible for him to respond, Luna finds she can understand him. When she tells him how Rufus Scrimgeour is actually a vampire – a derivative of an idea her father has written about in The Quibbler about how all Ministers for Magic were non-human – his eyes move as if he is rolling them, although they also sparkle in amusement. When she tells him about her plans to go off and find the Crumple-Horned Snorkack after the war, she notices his eyes glaze over, his eyelids become heavy and his gaze drop. She changes the subject when she sees that look, knowing from experience that people do not enjoy these conversations even when they are capable of mocking her or even being able to escape. Instead, she tells him about her plan to steal the Sword of Gryffindor from Snape's office along with Neville and Ginny, and his eyes shine the most she's seen all night.
The sun is beginning to rise, casting an orange glow over the room and making them both squint, when Michael finds he can move again. It begins slowly, just a finger being able to twitch and then his left knee being able to bend. All of sudden, his body relaxes and crumples, and he lands in a heap on the sofa with a loud thump, the blanket fluttering down after him and covering him, muffling his groans of pain. Luna lets out a small giggle, lighter than her usual airy laugh.
When he extracts himself from the blanket, he tosses it back to Luna with a grin on his face.
"Thank you Luna, and I mean that. I mean, not for making me unable to move or cursing me in the first place, that wasn't cool. But thanks, y'know, for not abandoning me there. And for the blanket and the sofa and all that stuff. You did a really good job of keeping me company." He could see the smile on her face growing with every word. "By the way, that was some great spell work to even cast that, I was frozen less than a second after I saw you, I couldn't have defended myself if I'd tried. I guess that's why you're in charge of the D.A. and not me. You're doing a great job of it as well, especially with the whole sword thing. I would never have thought of that. You can keep the key, it might help," he finishes, nodding towards her pocket.
She slips her hand in, and feels for the tiny key, still covered in dried blood.
"Oh, right, the blood," he states simply, as if he'd completely forgotten about it. "It's not real, not this time at least. I know you and the others are really busy with the D.A. and stuff, but me and a couple of the others wanted to do more. So we've been sneaking into the dungeons to free students the Carrows have locked up down there. There have been a couple of close shaves, so we thought we'd better learn to blend in a bit. When we're covered in blood they can walk straight past us without blinking, they're so used to it. It's disgusting." Luna notices his hands are balled up into fists by his sides, and he takes a moment to stop and breathe. "But anyway, the key unlocks any door, just place it over the handle. It might take a few minutes, but it's better sometimes than the light from using spells. I'm gonna get a bit of sleep before breakfast, but thanks again, Luna."
With that, he heads up the stairs to the dormitories and leaves Luna stunned on the sofa. Stunned at the key, stunned at what he's been doing down in the dungeons and stunned that he's said she's a good leader for Dumbledore's Army.
She glows with pride, a smile spreading across her face. She gathers her blanket, and settles herself back on the windowsill. The moon may be gone, but she's content to watch the sun rise. Although the unrecognised perfection of the moon is beautiful sometimes, she thinks, it's nice to be appreciated.