Light danced on the walls of the rook shaped house as the sun gave way to its silvery partner. Inside, three people were gathered around a table, where piles of fresh bread surrounded a large pot of spiced dirigible plum stew.
The discussion at the table was hushed and excited. A child watched as her mother's eyes lit up with purpose, speaking of spells and potions; stringing together big words the little girl could not understand.
When Luna's mother spoke of the secret, she became the sun: glowing with hope, and the promise of a brighter day.
"It could be ready tonight," she said, beaming down at her stew. "There are only a few things left to do, I think. Then it will be done."
"Can I give the rest of the stew to the Gernumblies, Mummy?"
"Gernumblies don't like dirigible plums, or stew, my love."
"They do enjoy worms," her father said, pouring himself another serving of the thick orange liquid, "and the especially nasty types of Bertie Bott's Every-Flavour Beans."
"I'll tell you what, love- there's Bertie Bott's in the cabinet. Why don't you go give them some of that?"
Darkness had completely encompassed her surroundings as Luna sat in the garden, humming to herself as she picked through the beans. The gnomes quickly snatched every one she gave them, and the rest she ate herself, twirling her fingers around a blade of yellowing grass as she chewed.
Her father had left for a nighttime interview with a vegan vampire, and her mother's presence upstairs was made clear by the banging sounds and the colourful wafts of steam making their way through the window.
"Come here, little gnome," Luna said, arm outstretched towards one of the creatures, who stared at her with curiosity from the entrance to its gnomehole. "I won't hurt you. I've got food."
The gnome peeked its head a bit closer, moonlight shining on its potato-like features.
"I wouldn't mind if you bit me for luck, you know," she said softly.
A loud explosion followed by a scream drove the gnome to cower back into its hole, and Luna jumped, beans scattering to the ground. Steam rose thickly from the window now, spreading into the otherwise clear night air.
Luna stared at the window for a moment, paralyzed with fear and confusion.
Then, she ran.
She found her mother sprawled on the floor, broken and pale.
The effects of the potion made her glow, a warm silvery light; the aftermath of the explosion. Soft hair lay like a carpet of golden sunlight, and Luna knelt down to take her hand, which shook slightly, still warm.
"Daddy!" Luna's call sounded throughout the house, repeating the word over and over until she was nearly breathless, shaking with terror. She couldn't leave her mother's side, and her voice was failing her. She called to him until her brain screamed he's not here, and there was something that felt like a stab to her heart- that she was wasting her last words to her mother calling for someone who wasn't there. A new urgency overtook her, and she cried 'Mummy' until her voice faded into a whisper. A tear dripped down onto one of her mother's golden curls from Luna's scared moonlight eyes.
She'd always been a reflection of her mother's light. Now that light was leaving her mother's eyes and as she lay, pale and motionless on the cold ground.
Luna felt her last breath, her last heartbeat.
She collapsed over her mother's body, shaking with silent tears, and wondered how the world was meant to expect another day when the sun had died and it was up to the moon to keep shining.
The next morning was yellow; the sun was beginning to spread its warmth out into the world, the trees rising to it with whispered greetings. The world was yawning, stretching its arms toward what was shaping up to be a beautiful day.
"She's alive. I can feel it."
Luna's fingers were wrapped around those of her father; the only thing she had left to hold on to. Long yellow hair cascaded down her back, and her eyes were watching the sky as if she was cataloguing every shape and colour it had to offer.
Her father stared silently at the freshly dug grave before them, fingers tightening around those of his daughter.
How do you tell a child their mother is never coming back?
"She's here with us," Luna said decidedly. Her gaze stayed fixed on the sky, watching spirits soar before her eyes; they danced grievingly in a haze of freedom and confusion, reaching from their gravestones towards the sun. Every now and then one would swoop down to greet her, and she'd smile knowingly, sadly.
It must be so hard to lose everything, she wanted to tell the creatures of her mind. But that's the price of freedom, isn't it?
She was happy the dead only danced in her imagination; it meant they belonged to her, and so did her mother.
Because she was not a cold body or a gravestone that leaned slightly to the left.
She was not In Memory Of Halia Lovegood.
She was Luna's mother, and she had to be alive.
She had to be.
She fell in love with her mind's wanderings, where her mother's laughter glowed like faint sunlight. She was a heartbeat timed with hers, long nimble fingers following the chanting of spells, putting the finishing touches on supper, a string of gentle words.
"Don't stare at the sun, Luna."
It had been five days since the funeral. Luna's light blue dress was streaked with dirt, her fingers digging mindlessly into the ground as she watched the sky. She'd been staring for hours, collecting proof that her mother wasn't really gone.
The garden gnomes were still hungry. The sun had risen in the morning. Her mother wasn't dead.
It was simple.
"Luna, my love." Her father had never looked as hopeless as he did sitting beside her now, white hair matted and dirty, eyes tired and red.
"She's not gone," was her simple reply, eyes determinedly fixed on a spot right below the blinding sun.
"She is, my Luna. She is."
She'd never seen her father act like this; embracing his wife's death as a final act of loyalty to her. Xenophilius had never been - couldn't be - the honest and practical parent. But now his face spoke the truth neither of them wanted to acknowledge, and it scared her.
"What if she fades away?"
"She won't."
"How do you know?"
Xenophilius put his arm around his daughter and she leaned into him, staring emptily into the air.
She was accepting her mother's loss with more finality every day, as if she'd realized she was losing in her struggle to fill the emptiness that haunted them. Instead, she let it consume her, and darkness wove its way through the house, replacing the golden light that had filled it in the past.
"We won't let her."
Everything felt numb and blind; a child's spirit struggling to be the glowing moon lest she let herself crash with the earth below her.
"Why did she leave?"
"She didn't have a choice, my love."
"Why didn't she finish it like she promised? Why didn't it work?" Her voice was distant. Not dreamy as it often was, but rather, empty. "She wasn't supposed to leave, Daddy."
He did not wipe away her tears but let them fall; rain from the eyes of his moon.
"She gave her life for something she believed in." Xenophilius bowed his head, stroking his daughter's hair.
"Tell me the story again, Daddy."
"Where do you want me to start?"
"From the beginning."
He wiped away the tear that hung at the edge of her eye, drying his finger on the sofa.
"I met Halia in the war," he said, watching the eyes of his little moon widen in anticipation of the story she'd heard so many times. "We were both so afraid, of having to fight. Of dying, my Luna. We were too young... we had too much to lose. Fear made your mother-"
"-Beautiful when nothing else was," Luna completed the sentence with him, having memorized it by heart.
Her mother used to smile when he'd say this. She'd say, "Fear made me brave. I'd never been brave before."
"She decided she'd had enough," Xenophilius continued, "of the fighting, the terror- and that's when she started studying spells."
"Mummy was your first interview."
"Your mother suggested I start the Quibbler. She always said that the voices of peace must be heard above all others. She was braver than I; she held me up when there was nothing else that could. We got married, you came along, Luna... My Luna. And we kept working." He stroked her hair, smiling sadly. "We always wanted-"
"A draught of true peace."
Xenophilius nodded slowly, closing his eyes. "All humans are one, my love. We must open our minds."
The thought of her mother's worst fear rose to her mind, and she let the words escape her mouth. "Will You Know Who come back?"
"I think he will."
"If only she could have done it..." her voice cracked, a lump forming in her throat. "It isn't fair, Daddy."
"I know, my Luna. I know."
Her room was lonely, but it was a sanctuary. It was an escape from the world's constant reminders that she was an Unfortunate, Motherless Child, and it was a venture into her own mind; a place to let herself sink into her sorrow.
She sat on her bed, staring at her toes. Sleep won't come today, she knew; morning was approaching.
The only other time she'd been awake to watch the sunrise was with her mother. It had been a birthday gift- her seventh; more than two years ago now. She'd been asking for so long, and that day her mother woke her just before dawn, and, silent as they could manage, they sneaked down the stairs and out to the garden.
"The Umgubular Slashkilter only comes before the sun rises, to the most quiet and peaceful gardens." Her mother's voice, though factual, had a tone of fantastical excitement to it. "If you raise your pinky and promise to do it no harm, it might let you hold it."
That was the dawn she fell in love with the colours of the sunrise. She never imagined the next time she met those colours she'd be escaping her own grief; sleepless, barefoot, and in her nightgown.
Luna watched her spirits dance through the window. The sun wove its warm welcome into the blackness of the night, and they danced.
She wondered if they were celebrating themselves; the fact that they'd ever been alive to watch the colours of the day shift into a million shades of everything. Do people get tired of the paint-splattered sky, after a while?, she wondered, then decided people who do must have very boring lives. One day, she'd like to become the dead who danced in her mind; still in love with the world.
Or perhaps they were celebrating the living, that those who still breathe can still change the world. It was generous of them, and selfish; to be so kind as to remind her of all the power that comes with being alive, and so rude as to make it clear that it's no longer their problem, but hers.
And perhaps... perhaps they were even celebrating her. Maybe they danced with joy that she could see them, that her mind burst with thoughts, balancing truth and imagination until they became wonderfully indistinguishable from one another.
She thought they might be telling her to follow in her mother's footsteps; to cast the spells scrawled in her messy handwriting on the few pages that hadn't been turned to ashes. Maybe she should try to brew her mother's potion again and if she died, too, it would be for the right cause, and at least she'd meet her mother again, wouldn't she?
But she was too young to know how to cast spells - she didn't even have a wand - and for some reason she felt like there was something else she needed to do. Something important.
Something along the lines of, don't die.
Because there was a future for her, somewhere. A change to make. In minds, and hearts.
Something powerful pulsed inside her; she needed more than to watch the sunrise through her window. She needed to be the sunrise, and at that point it didn't sound even a small bit absurd to her. The morning was so beautiful, and even if she was the moon, all she wanted, all she needed, was a new dawn. And she needed to be its beginning.
With a dreamy determination only Luna could muster, she walked - nearly floated - from her bed and to the window. She pushed open the glass, feeling cold air against her face, and climbed onto the windowsill.
She felt her heartbeat quicken in her chest as she stood, watching the world brighten around her.
I'm not going to fall.
And then she soared into the glowing dawn- a child's magic; a mix of grief and desperation, locked in harmonious battle with an innocent hope. She flew with her mind's spirits in search of the rising sun - still undoubtedly there despite her mother being gone.
The sky was hers. The spirits were hers. The magic had been impulsive, but she was in control of her mind and her surroundings. Power rushed through her in calm surges of freedom.
It was reassurance; that the world was still there and that her mother lived on in the colours that enveloped her, and that she - Luna - was so very alive.
Somewhere in her mind, there was no doubt she'd have to fight. One day. But she was here and she was determined to see the day her mother had dreamt of, and that made her whole; a bit more, at least, than anything she'd been since she'd lost her.
Luna was the moon in the sunlight. She'd never thought she'd find her mother in the morning sky, with the dancing spirits of her own imagination.
Her mother's words rose to her mind, etched into the brightening sky.
Things we lose have a way of coming back to us in the end, if not always in the way we expected.