Author's note:
Since we can only ever see everything from Harry's perspective, I decided to create a piece of work from Luna's perspective. As you can see, it's called "Luna Mea" (or "My Moon") and will be the first story in a trilogy. What I attempt to do here is create an aligned story that will follow Luna through Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I will begin when Luna enters the plot and end when she leaves, and add scenes to fill in the plot and get to know her better. The less detailed the books are of Luna's presence, the more freedom I will have with including my own details.
Copyright disclaimer:
This is a work of fiction. All rights and ideas belong to J.K. Rowling. If you ever notice ideas being stolen from other authors, please let me know. I will most likely not even be aware of this. This applies for the entire story.
Thankfully, I will be writing from a perspective where it might be a little odd to include references of, say, Star Wars.
"Hi Luna. Is it okay if we take these seats?"
Luna looked up. In the compartment doorway stood Ginny Weasley, a fourth-year like her, beside a plump, round-faced boy Luna only knew to be a Gryffindor like Ginny-and Harry Potter. Luna stared. She couldn't help it. She only nodded.
She knew Ginny had thanked her, smiling, but she couldn't take her eyes off the dark-haired boy with the lightning scar. He took a seat opposite her, looking uncomfortable.
"Had a good holiday, Luna?" Ginny asked.
"Yes", Luna said, still transfixed, but trying to snap out of this state. "Yes, it was quite enjoyable, you know. You're Harry Potter," she blurted, a little embarrassed at her usual forthrightness.
"I know I am," he answered. Luna detected a definite note of discomfort, and perhaps a little weariness. The other boy chuckled.
Happy to look away from the fifth-year opposite her, she turned to the other one. He was, she noticed, holding a toad. "And I don't know who you are", she added, even blunter. Luna hoped they didn't think she was being impolite.
"I'm nobody", this boy answered. He seemed a little perturbed. But Luna noticed no offence in his expression.
"No, you're not," Luna's classmate said, rather sharply. "Neville Longbottom - Luna Lovegood. Luna's in my year, but in Ravenclaw."
"Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure," Luna almost sang, as she always did when her house was mentioned. Having nothing better to say anymore, she raised her upside-down copy of The Quibbler and continued to read, but her eyes took nothing in. Rather, her ears were tuned to the conversation being spoken beside her.
"Guess what I got for my birthday?" the boy-Neville-asked.
"Not another Remembrall?" Harry Potter guessed. It seemed to be an in joke.
"No. I could do with one, though, I lost the old one ages ago...no, look at this..."
There was some silence as Neville seemed to dig around his luggage. Luna resisted the urge to look.
"Mimbulus mimbletonia," Neville said with not a small amount of pride.
What is that? Luna wondered, but held her tongue, and still didn't look up.
"It's really, really rare," Neville continued. "I don't know if there's one in the greenhouse at Hogwarts, even. I can't wait to show it to Professor Sprout. My Great Uncle Algie got it for me in Assyria. I'm going to see if I can breed from it."
"Does it-er-do anything?" his classmate asked.
"Loads of stuff! It's got an amazing defensive mechanism. Here, hold Trevor for me..."
Against her will, Luna looked up. This was quite possibly her most interesting trip on the Hogwarts Express so far, and that included the Dementors searching the train in her second year. Trevor-who was, apparently, the toad-was held in Harry Potter's grasp, as his owner took out a quill and held the Mimbulus mimbletonia-it looked like a small grey cactus with boils with boils rather than spines-and then acquitted one with the other by stabbing his quill into his pot plant.
It immediately gave off what Luna recognised as a vast quantity of Stinksap in a most dramatic-and therefor unpleasant-manner. The dark green, rancid manure-smelling liquid left no inch of the compartment untouched, and only Ginny and Luna had had the hands free to cover their faces-but, Luna found to her annoyance, The Quibbler was now unreadable.
"S-sorry," Nevile gasped. "I haven't tried that before...didn't realise it would be quite so..."
Poor Neville, Luna reflected. She never paid much attention, but what she recalled of Neville (which wasn't a great deal) was a surprising amount of mishaps. He must have to apologise a lot. She wondered how often he apologised when he didn't have to. Before she could form a sympathetic response, Harry Potter spat (not out of rudeness) a mouthful of Stinksap out of his mouth.
"Don't worry though," Neville added nervously. "Stinksap's not poisonous."
That much, Luna knew, was true, but she made a mental reminder to ask her father in her next owl how much Nargles Stinksap could attract. Since she couldn't read her magazine anymore, she stared out of the window. It was rather grey.
The compartment door was opened by Cho Chang, who, Luna recalled, was a Ravenclaw, two years above her, and Seeker for her house Quidditch team. She also remembered her as Cedric Diggory's girlfriend. "Oh...hello, Harry," she said in an unnaturally nervous voice. "Um...bad time?"
"Oh...hi," Harry Potter only said rather blankly.
"Um..." Cho quite literally cast around for convenient conversation subjects, but evidently couldn't find any that would not be rather tactless. "Well...just thought I'd say hello...bye then."
Her now impressively pink face turned away as Cho closed the door and departed, whilst Harry Potter, evidently dejected, slumped back into his seat and groaned. Luna smiled a little.
"Never mind," Ginny now said bracingly. "Look, we can easily get rid of all this. Scourgify!"
Thank you, Ginny, Luna thought with a smile as she returned to the ancient runes section, attempting to decipher this formidable spell (it turned your enemy's ears into kumquats) in the mess of the article. It was almost a little frustrating.
The compartment door slid open again. This time, it was opened by a boy whose freckled face and blazing red hair identified him as Ginny's brother, and a girl with bushy brown hair that Luna could only remember from seeing in the library (on more than one occasion).
"I'm starving," the boy immediately said once entering the compartment. He seated himself beside Harry Potter and digested a Chocolate Frog's head. His eyes were closed. He seemed thoroughly exhausted.
"Well," the girl said, taking her seat in a disgruntled manner, "there are two fifth-year prefects from each house. Boy and girl each."
"And guess who's a Slytherin prefect?" the boy said, his eyes still closed.
"Malfoy," Harry Potter replied at once.
"Course," the boy said with bitterness and finished a Chocolate Frog, taking another.
"And that complete cow Pansy Parkinson," the girl added with certain viciousness. "How she got to be a prefect when she's thicker than a concussed troll..."
"Who are Hufflepuff's?" Harry Potter inquired.
"Ernie Macmillan and Hannah Abbott," the boy answered.
"And Anthony Goldstein and Padma Patil for Ravenclaw," the girl added.
"You went to the Yule Ball with Padma Patil," Luna blurted, remembering. And the girl had gone with Viktor Krum. Luna still didn't know her name. Wasn't the boy's name Rolf, or Roland?
The boy in question now stared at her with surprised blue eyes. "Yeah, I know I did."
"She didn't enjoy it much," Luna informed him with suppressed relish. "She doesn't think you treated her very well, because you wouldn't dance with her. I don't think I'd have minded," Luna thoughtfully added, a little embarrassed at blurting that out. "I don't like dancing very much."
Quick, Luna, she said to herself aggressively, don't say another word and hide behind The Quibbler before your mouth runs away with you. She knew she wasn't very good at the casual banter the other five had mastered effortlessly.
"We're supposed to patrol the corridors every so often," the boy now told Neville and Harry Potter. "And we can give out punishments if people are misbehaving. I can't wait to get Crabbe and Goyle for something..."
"You're not supposed to abuse your position, Ron!" the girl remonstrated sharply. Ah, Luna said to herself, that's what is name was.
"Yeah, right, because Malfoy won't abuse it at all," the boy-Ron-retorted with a measure amount of sarcasm.
"So you're going to descend to his level?"
"No, I'm just going to make sure I get to his mates before he gets mine."
The girl sounded exasperated. "For heaven's sake, Ron-"
"I'll make Goyle do lines, it'll kill him, he hates writing," Ron visibly fantasised. He mimed an illiterate gorilla looking like he was asked to write out the first sixty numerals of Pi. "I...must...not...look...like...a...baboon's...backside..."
They all laughed, but Luna in particular found this hilarious. It had been a while since someone had made her laugh. She almost fell. When she emerged, gasping, she looked at Ron. "That was funny!"
Tears of laughter swam before her eyes. "Are you taking the mickey?" Ron asked, frowning.
She shook her head. "Baboon's...backside!"
Everyone was looking at her as though she was a lunatic. Everyone but Harry Potter, it turned out. He had picked up The Quibbler from where it had fallen. "Can I borrow this?" he asked with extreme eagerness.
Luna, incapable of speaking more than two syllables at once, nodded. She took two deep, calming breaths, and stared out of the window. After a while, she felt the startled gazes on her turn away, and she watched the Muggle towns pass by, but her ears were once again attuned to the conversations that occurred beside her. The girl with the bushy brown hair, it turned out, was called Hermione, and she, Ginny and Ron and the rest of their family and Harry Potter had spent the summer together. Neville had, on the other hand, spent the holidays with his grandmother. The Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle they had referred to were Draco Malfoy, the son of Lucius Malfoy, a former school board member, and his cronies Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle, who Luna now could remember bullying people, although they left her alone.
"Anything good in there?" Ron queried, as Harry Potter folded the magazine, an odd expression on his face. It seemed to be amusement, perplexity, astonishment, and faint interest.
"Of course not," Hermione answered for him with scathe so evident Luna snapped to attention, furious. "The Quibbler's rubbish, everyone knows that."
Luna glared at the Gryffindor prefect. "Excuse me," she said in the iciest tone she could muster. "My father's the editor."
"I-oh," Hermione blushed. Usually, when people assumed it was family pride, they "forgave" one another. If it was a purchase from complete strangers, they called it "bad taste." Luna didn't know which she detested more. "Well..." Hermione continued, aware she was embarrassing herself further, "it's got some interesting...I mean, it's quite..."
"I'll have it back," Luna demanded. "Thank you," she added, snatching it out of Harry Potter's hands. She riffled back to page fifty-seven and turned it upside down again. She thought that would be the end of the case, but unfortunately for her the compartment door opened and Luna's pale eyes looked into the disdainful visage of Draco Malfoy's.
"What?" Harry Potter challenged with surprising ferocity and aggression.
Malfoy smirked. "Manners, Potter," he drawled threateningly, "or I'll have to give you a detention." At this, his chest puffed out proudly. "You see I, unlike you, have been made a prefect, which means that I, unlike you, have the power to hand out punishments."
"Yeah," Harry Potter snapped, "but you, unlike me, are a git, so get out and leave us alone."
His friends laughed. Luna couldn't comprehend the humour. Malfoy's lip curled, but a spark of anger flickered in his strange grey eyes, and his smirk was momentarily displaced. "Tell me," he sneered, "how does it feel being second-best to Weasley, Potter?"
"Shut up, Malfoy," Hermione snapped.
Malfoy appraised her, tense and upright as she was. "I seem to have touched a nerve," he noted. "Well, just watch yourself, Potter, because I'll be dogging your footsteps in case you step out of line."
"Get out!" Hermione commanded in return, standing as she did so.
With not a small amount of sniggering, Malfoy gave Harry Potter a final malicious glance before departing with Crabbe and Goyle in his wake. Luna boiled with inexplicable rage. She watched Harry Potter and Hermione exchange significantly nervous glances, and made up her mind. She left the compartment, the door closing firmly behind her.
It being the last carriage, there was only the bathrooms to one side of them. Thankfully, the girls' bathroom was vacant. Before Luna entered, however, she turned and watched Draco Malfoy's swaggering back further along the corridor, and she seethed. How dare he, to come in and goad in such a manner! How dare this intruder abuse his undeserved position in such a manner!
Resolutely enraged, Luna took her wand out from behind her left ear. She quickly double-checked to see if the bathroom door obscured her from view. This wouldn't satisfy her fury, but it might pacify it a little. Besides, it would be amusing to watch. She smiled grimly and pointed her wand at Malfoy's sleekly blond head. "Aguamenti," she murmured.
There was a yelp from Malfoy and a small amount of titters nearby. She watched in self-satisfaction as the back of his school robes was now drenched in a good deal of ice-cold water. He pirouetted in mid-air, looking for the culprit.
Luna slammed the door behind her.
It was raining as the Hogwarts Express slowed to a halt at Hogsmeade Station. Ron and Hermione, as prefects, were to oversee the traditional reassembling of luggage, and thus left again, also leaving behind Hermione's cat and Ron's owl. "I'll carry that owl," Luna offered eagerly to Harry Potter, as Neville stowed away Trevor, "if you like."
"Oh-" Harry Potter began, startled, handing her the cage, "er-thanks."
The shuffle out of the compartment separated Luna from Neville, Ginny and Harry Potter, and so she only had the owl for familiar company. He was a troublemaker, it seemed. Throughout the journey, he had been the cause of almost all rackets that happened in the compartment. From what Luna had gathered, as an observer, was that his name was Pig. She should ask Ginny what his proper name was. She also wondered whether he was actually used for sending letters. Surely not, though Ron seemed to have little tolerance for the lovely thing. But surely even Ron wouldn't be so cruel as to send "Pig" off with letters to his friends. He appeared to be incapable to carry a parchment of standard density and size.
The rain stung Luna's cheeks as she exited the train and moved along with the crowd, and she immersed her senses in this familiar situation, the night wet and dark, the student body, reasonably nourished on snacks yet eager for the feast in the Great Hall jostling forward, pressing in around her, for once forgetting that she was Loony Lovegood and not shunning her, but rather steering her forward towards Hogwarts. There were voices, apologies, thanks, banter and the call "First-years line up over here, please! All first-years to me!"
Luna's attention was now singularly focused on the owner of that brisk female voice. This was unusual. She had gotten so used to Hagrid's presence at the station that Professor Grubbly-Plank's excited thoughts. Where was Hagrid? If Professor Grubbly-Plank was here, did that mean that she would be taking Care of Magical Creatures in his stead? Not that Luna minded, she had only managed to cover barely two creatures last year, and Flobberworms (for an unprepared class, Luna assumed) had been extremely dull and the Blast-Ended Skrewts (that ridiculous whole-school project) had been utterly terrifying. Luna stroked "Pig" who hooted merrily. He was gorgeous, cute thing, and Luna resisted the impulse to take him as her own.
Instead, she kept an eye out for his carer. There was a surprising shortage of the combination of flaming red hair and freckled skin, but Luna noticed several auburn heads, a red curly head next to Cho Chang's, and two identical seventh-years with the exact same description (If they're Weasleys too, Luna said to herself, how many are there altogether?) walking side-by-side beside that Gryffindor who always took the commentary for Quidditch matches. At last, she found Ron again, talking to Harry Potter and that Hermione, who was taking her cat back from Ginny. Moments later, "Pig's" owner shouted something to Hermione and Ginny, who headed for a vacant coach, Ron and Harry Potter trailing behind, still talking. Luna caught up with them. "Here you are," she said, relieved, then addressed Ron whilst handing over "Pig's" cage. "He's a sweet little owl, isn't he?"
"Er...yeah..." Ron gruffly began formulating a response, "he's all right," he finally managed, then immediately changed the subject. "Well, come on then, let's get in...what were you saying, Harry?"
"I was saying," Harry Potter continued, as they approached the newly occupied (by Ginny and Hermione) coach, "what are those horse things?"
Luna and Ron turned towards Harry Potter, perplexed. "What horse things?" Ron asked.
"The horse things pulling the carriages!" Harry Potter explained, now seeming a little impatient. Of course, Luna realised, he's never seen a Thestral before.
Ron, however, could not see the Thestrals. He frowned. "What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about-look!"
Luna continued onwards as Harry Potter whirled Ron around to be face-to-face with the Thestral. It won't do any good, she wanted to say. Harry Potter still wasn't comprehending this. Which, of course, was natural, given that the Thestral closest to them was a mere three feet away. Luna wanted to laugh, but wondered when she should intervene. Ron was staring at nothing, and visibly so. "What am I supposed to be looking at?"
"At the-" Harry Potter began, but Luna knew that he would reach the conclusion soon, "there, between the shafts! Harnessed to the coach! It's right there in front-"
He stopped. Luna was relieved to see the realisation in his eyes. "Can't...can't you see them?"
Ron was by now truly bemused. "See what?"
"Can't you see what's pulling the carriages?"
Alarm began to creep over Ron's face. "Are you feeling all right, Harry?"
Luna tensed. She remembered her second year, when she saw the Thestrals for the first time. Are you okay, Luna? You're seeing things, Luna. There's nothing there! Nothing's pulling the carriage, Luna. It's pulling itself, as always. Are you sure you're okay? There wasn't anything in your lunch, was there? Oh, you didn't eat? Could that be it? Did you have any serious accidents on the holidays?
She'd insisted that she was fine, that those weird things were right in front of their noses, but the only thing they'd been convinced of was her questionable mental state. She remembered Collin Creevey whisper to his friend, "She's gone loopy." He'd laughed and called her a lunatic and a madwoman and inspired the nickname "Loony". Of course, none of her classmates were as close to her as Ron was to Harry Potter. The boy who was seeing Thestrals now only weakly managed "I...yeah..." and Ron forgot the matter, shrugging.
"Shall we go in, then?" Ron asked his friend, although he was clearly still worried.
Luna took one more step towards Harry Potter as Ron began entering the coach. "It's all right," she reassured him. "You're not going mad or anything. I can see them, too."
"Can you?" Harry Potter asked desperately.
"Oh, yes," Luna answered sympathetically. "I've been able to see them ever since my first day here. They've always pulled the carriages. Don't worry. You're just as sane as I am."
Luna smiled faintly at Harry Potter as she entered the coach, but she felt a little pang of hurt at the expression he'd attempted to hide from her. Clearly, her last comment hadn't been reassuring.