Her mother was at her most beautiful when she was inventing. A black oily substance was smudged across mother's face and her hair was tied back in a sloppy blonde bun. Luna watched with awe as her mother's gentle fingers tinkered with her invention, making adjustments where needed and occasionally smearing some of the black goop onto the gears she was enchanting. It was comparable to a great artist slaving away over their greatest masterpiece with all of the care and dedication required. This gadget would be mother's greatest masterpiece.
Luna sat perched on a stool, waiting anxiously for any instructions her mother might give. She fiddled impatiently with her pigtail, twirling it around her pointer finger like thread around a spool. Whether in the basement where her mother stashed her creations or in the kitchen cooking plimpie soup, Luna was her mother's helper. Father often joked that Luna was her mother's second pair of arms. Mother would laugh and ruffle Luna's hair affectionately, calling Luna her apprentice in workshoppery.
"Luna-dear?"
Luna's head shot up like a dog that caught the scent of a squirrel. The sparks were dancing like a halo of light around her mother's head. They lit up the pale contours of her face and made her hair glint silver. Her mother's attention didn't waiver from the mess of gears and wires when her daughter hurried to her side, latching onto her sleeve like a security blanket.
Luna tugged lightly on the sleeve. "Yes, mama?"
Her mother spoke in a whisper, as if afraid her invention would blow to pieces if the volume rose above a stealthy tiptoe. "Would you fetch me the screw driver from the kitchen?"
Luna lit up at the prospect of helping her mother. "'Course I will!" and sprinted for the basement steps, stumbling the first step and catching herself on the second. She'd almost made it to the top when she heard it; a sharp cry rang up from the basement. Luna turned to ask mother what was wrong when something hit her and the force of the blow sent her sprawling. Blackness close in on her like a blanket being thrown over her head.
She wasn't certain how long she was unconscious, only that it hadn't been a terribly long time because when she checked the watch that dangled from a chain on her neck, it was still a little after noon. Her head was hazier than the time she'd tasted her father's fire whiskey and her stomach was just as stormy. Then clarity rushed back to her like a punch to the gut.
"Mama!"
She thundered down the steps, anxious to see her mother at the bottom, using her wand to sweep up the floor, desperate to hear her mother laugh jovially and say "Near miss there, moon-baby, but we'll get there in the end. Let's clean this up and then I'll go whip us up some hot cocoa." and then Luna would ask if there would be marshmallows and she'd giggle "Of course, Luna-dear, of course." and pull her in for a hug.
Instead, what Luna found was a mess of catastrophic proportions. The floor was smeared with ashes and the over turned table was scorched. Chunks of metal littered the floors and bits of paper fluttered to the floor in the aftermath of the explosion that turned them to confetti. The old set of vanishing cabinets in the corner had a wrench lodged in one of the doors. The stool that Luna had sat in all morning was in pieces. At first glance, there was no sign of her mother.
"Oooh..." a faint moan emitted from behind the table. Luna's heart skipped. She approached the table like she would a wild animal, cautiously and prepared to leap back at a moment's notice. She stood on her tiptoes and peered over the table, fingernails digging into the wood until a splinter dug into her skin.
Her mother lay spread eagled across the tiled floor, her hair fanning beneath her like a cape. There were scarlet burn marks on her cheeks and blood dripped through a tear in the ratty Muggle tee shirt she insisted on wearing when she tinkered. Her opaline eyes flickered weakly open and fastened onto her young daughter.
"Luna..." her voice was weaker than a baby bird that had fallen out of its nest before it was ready to fly. Luna threw herself to her mother's side, latching onto her hand instead of her sleeve. The hand lay limp and pale in her grasp.
Luna's voice was pleading. "Mama... "
Giving Luna's hand a soft squeeze, Luna's mother's eyes slipped shut. The silvery sparks that usually wove around her mother's head like magical fireworks were becoming fainter and fainter until at last they sputtered out.
"Mama!" Terrified and confused, Luna bawled like she hadn't bawled since she was a baby. Her shoulders shook, her throat ached, and tears coursed down her cheeks faster than she could produce them. Luna keeled over and vomited on the floor before collapsing into her mother's side.
Hours later, when he returned from his job at the village paper, that would be how her father found them. His wife's lifeless body cooling in the demolished basement with Luna curled by her side, fast asleep. He'd rush forward and take his wife's pulse, crying out in anguish when there was no tell tale thumping against his fingers. He'd then check his Luna's pulse and relief would flood him. He'd scoop his baby into his arms and hurry up the stairs, unable to look back at his wife because if he looked back, this harsh reality would become real.
By the end of the week, Luna's eyes would finally have fluttered open. Her father would hover around her as if the moment he let Luna out of his sight she would disappear. One of his ties to the earth had been snipped callously away, and now he was forced to reorient himself until his daughter was his sole reason for living. As soon as Luna was able to crawl out of bed and walk around the house, her father packed all of their worldly possessions into an undetectably enlarged trunk. He sold the twin vanishing cabinets, which his wife had adored, to a smuggling squit named Mundungus Fletcher at a lower price than they were worth. They moved to Ottery St. Catchpole into a house that they christened the Stone Rook. The Lovegoods would only return to their former house one last time, to bury their mother and wife in the back garden among the asphodels. Before she left the house that she'd lived in since she was a baby, Luna picked on of the white, star shaped asphodel blossoms. She would close it between the pages of a book to preserve it, just like her mother taught her to.