Hello! So this is my first story for this account, not my first story ever, but it doesn't seem like my heart knows the difference. This little ficlet is in answer to the Words And Titles Competiion hosted on Challnges Forum by Cheeky Slytherin Lass.
One of the words selected for me is Fiction and I instantly thought up of Luna and a little bit of an idea regarding her that has been eating at my toes for a while. The idea was born out of noticing that Luna always seems to know what the other person is feeling.
By the way: This whole thing used to be written in past tense, so if you see a verb or was floating around that shouldn't be there, please tell me. And I must admit that English is my second native language, but not the one I use most frequently, so again, please tell me if you see any mistakes.
And I feel like the word see is overly used but I did want to kept the language simple enough to make it engaging and I don't think that there is another word in English that has the same natural ring to it.
So enjoy! (Or not)
Disclaimer: None of it is mine, the characters and universe belongs to J.K Rowling
A World Of Fiction
Luna's world is not a world of fiction, even if her ramblings make you believe that. In fact, Luna's world isn't all that different from the one that you and I see. It is just... distorted, like looking through a mirror.
Or rather, she sees our world, but she also sees something else.
It all started when she was but a child, she noticed odd colours around people. The colours amused her and soon she started to notice a pattern between the colours and what other people felt or did, and she started to associate colours to emotions soon enough through watching.
You see, where you see smiles and excitement she sees small smiling creatures that hover around the person. She doesn't name those, like she and her father had done with the Nargles or the Wrackpurts, if just because she wasn't quite as good with names as he was and while she knows that her discovery of a new magical creature would excite him immensely, she also knows that he likes to do the discovering, so she waits until he could see them as well.
She also knows when a person is sad, just by looking at them, this time she doesn't see any creature but rather a shadow, one that engulfs the person whole. That is why she knows that Professor Snape isn't as bad as some people said, because no one that was as bad as they said could be so unutterably sad all the time.
Anger came with a red colour and small angry creatures she and her father named Crumpled Horned Snorknacks. They sit upon a person's shoulder, whispering. She sees those quite often at the school.
Fear is orange and it overpowers any other emotion easily. And jealousy is green, like envy and it was accompanied by the presence of small elves that smile maliciously.
Depression is gray, and concern varies between the shadows of sadness and the redness of anger, somewhat purple, but not.
The cloud of angst and fear and Anxiety that we call problems or concerns, she sees them in Wrackpurts, and Nargles are Luna's explanation for a person's malice or mischief as it were the case.
Love on the other hand, is one of the easiest feelings to spot; she just needs to see matching colours around two persons.
She believes that those creatures are angry that she could see them, at least, that in the case of Nargles as they tend to steal her shoes and papers frequently. Wrackpurts too, as they hover around her endlessly, often entering into her ears and making her brain fuzzy so she could not see them. Her head hurt often after that, and she feels bereft, as if something had been taken away from her quite forcibly.
She sees them often when she looks into the mirror, so she avoids it most days and she wears things to make them go away. Those things make her classmates mock her; they call her names, and they say she is crazy. She pretends not to notice, she pretends that it doesn't hurt, but she notices and it hurts.
Harry is the only one to truly understand her; he knows what being the outcast feels like, how much it hurts. He also knows what being the center of unfavourable attention is like. They understand each other, even if Luna's words sound off and his problems are a bit different than hers. They talk often, and she likes to think that they are close. Through Harry she gains other friends, friends that accept her just as she is, even if they don't understand her.
She especially likes looking at him, he has such a nice glow. Gold and green, just like hers, but she doesn't know it, because she doesn't look into the mirror anymore, and she tries to ignore the Nargles and the Wrackpurts. It doesn't work, they still hover and they still hide her shoes and her homework. But this time, she has friends to help her search, so she doesn't mind half as much, and she notices them diminish so maybe she is doing something right.
It is true, she sees things that no one else does. But she doesn't think it is all that extraordinary. It doesn't make her special like Harry. It is lonely, and a bit disconcerting. She sometimes wishes to share something but it dawns on her that they won't understand her. Normally she doesn't mind this last bit, but sometimes, just sometimes, she is saddened by it.
Her world isn't a world of fiction; it is just different, unique. Rather like her.
If it wasn't all that clear, Luna has some sort of power that allows her to see people's emotions, sometimes they manifest in the famous creatures she sees, or a colour or both. She doesn't know it is a power, though she has managed to figure some things out, she doesnt understand that the Nargles that accost her are in fact the 'bodily' manifestation of her classmates' ire or that the Wrackpurts that follow her are in fact her own problems.
So tell me what do you think? don't be shy! that little button down there won't eat you, in fact, it is quite friendly!
So please, with a cherry on top, would you write what you think?