Written for the QLFC, of course, for the semi finals for the Falcons. Had to write about a minor character having to say goodbye to someone, and I've always loved Luna, so here's this. :) Warnings: canon character death, sadness
The first time Luna snuck into the workshop to watch her work, she was five. Five years old, with those big pale eyes boring into her. She loved those big pale eyes, just as she loved her little pale daughter.
"Luna," she said, sticking her wand behind her ear. "Love, it's late. You should be in bed."
Luna shook her head. She didn't speak much, this daughter of her and Xenophilius. Instead she listened and learned and her mother thought that that was even better.
"Do you want to watch?" she asked.
Her lovely daughter nodded, curls bouncing. She got the color from Xenophilius and the curls from her.
She found out later that Luna was having nightmares, of shapes in the dark and shadows in her mind. Luna was special, she could feel it, and if it made Luna feel better to stay awake and watch her mum make light shoot out of her wand, so be it. Light should always balance out the dark, in whatever way it could.
Not every night, she was not so eccentric as that, but once or twice a week. Once or twice a week, every week, for years. And Luna's mother learned something about her daughter.
Not only was she special, she was brilliant.
Most self-respecting adults would be embarrassed to tell others that their best work had come from collaboration with their six, seven, even eight year old daughter. She was self-respecting, she always had been, but she always gave credit where it was due, all the way up to the registration for every new spell she made. Luna Lovegood, she always wrote, right under her own name.
Luna Lovegood. Xeno had wanted to give her one of his family names, but the Lovegood family names all sounded like horrible diseases. Well-named horrible diseases, but deadly nonetheless. So she'd picked her favorite thing in the world, other than Xeno and her rounded, large stomach. The moon. What an allure it had. It was always drawing her in, and the full moon was the worst. Xeno was always calling her a wanna-be werewolf, until she told him to stop.
That's what started her on her big project, her last project. It wasn't fair, she thought, that some people had to suffer on her favorite nights of the year. It wasn't fair that she couldn't sit outside and gaze at her third favorite part of being alive and simply enjoy it without worry and fear.
She called it the Lunar Project, after her daughter. She watched her every step of the way, rarely saying a word. Her daughter's silence on the whole thing was unsettling, and so she asked her one evening, "You don't approve?"
She hoped for a yes. She'd tried to raise her daughter the right way, to not hate others for the hand fate had dealt them. She worried about Xeno sometimes though, that he gave in too easily, that his quirks and his eccentricity were all to hide some strange inner fear.
"I'm scared," her daughter said, twisting a quill in her curls. "I'm scared for you."
She kissed her daughter of the forehead then, love blossoming in her heart. "I love you, Luna, and I will never leave you. Making these spells is my life, darling, and I know what I'm doing."
"Do any of us ever really know what we're doing?" asked Luna solemnly.
She smiled. "No," she replied. "You're right. I was lying. But I try my best."
"You once told me that to learn you can't always be safe."
She sighed. "You caught me again. I cannot promise I will never leave you. But I can promise one thing."
Trust was etched in every pore of her daughter's face. "What is that?"
"I will never let you get hurt," she said, and she meant it.
After that, Luna was calmer, although worry still lurked in the corners of her mind. Luna had dreams full of strange creatures. She knew things, small things, but things she shouldn't know. If she was scared, there was a reason.
Or she was a small girl whose mother did dangerous things. She continued the Lunar Project. Getting werewolves to help was the hardest part. They trusted few and were very suspicious, as a rule, and she couldn't blame them. A werewolf had to carve his own way in the world, and often they did it with blood.
One nice young man, tired and wan and between jobs, helped her though, and her spells progressed. Someday, it might take years, she could have a cure for lycanthropy. A real cure. A real solution, not just half-hearted Ministry offices and deep stemmed prejudices.
Sometimes she wondered. If it was going to happen. If it was even possible. People had spent their whole lives on this, whittled away their entire existence testing one method after another to find the root of the- she hesitated to call it this- curse.
But then her wand would spark and things would change, hope would flare, and she'd continue on.
That's what ended it, a spark.
"Mum, watch out!"
Her head whipped from her notes back to her wand, which was beginning to let out sparks. Green sparks, bright vivid green, the color of a coiling snake. Green was danger. Green was trouble.
The sparks were getting larger, bigger, more violent. They burnt her hand where the landed. She tried to stop it, channeled all of her energy into her wand, but nothing could stop it, it was too late. Her hand was beginning to go numb as the wand vibrated. Her fingers began to smoke. Luna was not screaming. Luna was staring instead, and those pale orbs had tears in them.
"I made you a promise," she said, her voice pure steel. She grasped her wand hand and pulled it to her chest, tucking in on herself and rolling away from her daughter, lifting her head so that she could see her precious love one last time."
"Luna," she said, speaking to her daughter as she stood there, transfixed, tear tracks down her face. "I love you. Never forget that."
Luna nodded. "I love you too, Mum."
"Don't ever lose what makes you special," she said, voice breaking as the sparks burned a hole in her chest. "Don' ever stop believing, not in what truly matters."
"I won't, Mum."
"Goodbye, love."
"Goodbye, Mum."
The wand burst, bathing her in green light. It incinerated her and the table next to her, but Luna didn't even get a scratch.