Author's Note: I do not and never will own Harry Potter.
Written for the Occasion-a-Day Competition/Challenge. September 4 prompt: write about the mother-child relationship of characters of your choosing.
She knows that she marches to a different drummer, but at least her mother marches with her. Luna's dreamy-eyed and barefoot, but Pandora always takes off her own socks to traipse through the back lawn with her, or to dabble her toes in the brook and point out the water sprites frolicking downstream. Xenophilius loves her, too, but it's not quite the same. He teaches her of Nargles and Wrackspurts by candlelight, his finger dancing down the page for her delighted eyes to follow, but it's Pandora who tries to go out and find them for her, pulling Sickles from behind her ear and exclaiming a Nargle must have put it there, Xeno, did you know they exhibited this behaviour?
When Luna is eight, her mother calls her over, bidding her to momentarily abandon her paper village, full of paper witches and wizards and mermaids submerged in a watercolour lake.
"Would you like to learn how to make earrings, Luna?" Pandora asks, and Luna nods eagerly, clambering up onto her designated chair, the one with extendable legs so she is always at just the right height for the table. Pandora asks her what she'd like to make into earrings and isn't surprised when Luna points to the radishes in the vegetable bin.
"I have to shrink them a bit," Pandora cautions, but Luna only nods eagerly. A few charms later and the preserved radishes fall into Luna's impatient hands. It takes almost half an hour and more wire and hoops than she wants to think about, but it seems like only a moment has gone by before Pandora's is carefully threading the new earrings into her daughter's ears.
"They look beautiful," Pandora says, hugging Luna tight. The radishes bob gently, reflecting lamplight.
"Will they last forever, Mum?" Luna questions. Pandora kisses the tip of her nose.
"Of course they will," she says.