A/N: Written for the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizadry, year 1 Hogwarts Orchestra. Prompts used: priest, bear, ball, hand, madman, chocolate, tacos, vanilla, burrito,
The Reincarnations of Luna Lovegood
1.
Luna was a strange girl. Worse than strange. At one point the villagers had thought her possessed. They'd called the priest.
There had been nothing to exorcise though, nor cure. Or the priest hadn't been able to find anything. He confessed he wasn't perfect, that it could be a demon beyond his prowess to contain.
The villagers did the only thing that could protect them. They killed her, spearing her like they would a bear. And then they'd left her body to the flies.
2.
Luna was a girl who hand-made balls from sheep skin and twine and gave it to the children to play when their parents weren't looking. They treasured those balls, and they treasured Luna. They grumbled when their parents kept them from visiting her. They shouted when they told Luna to stay away. They shut their ears when others called her a witch. They giggled at her stories – the stories that made others run in terror.
They cried at her funeral too, a funeral that they made for her because nobody else would. Everyone else had killed her, trying her to the stake and burning her along with the Village Healer, calling her witch and phantom and washing their hands of her blood.
They were the last to forget her too, but they did forget, once the carnage had passed, because the adults were so tight-lipped and they were at the age where they couldn't remember things they ceased to hear.
3.
Luna was a girl they'd shut in the madhouse. That killed her.
It didn't kill her outright, but it took her freedom away, her life. She was dressed in plain white rags, and shut in a white room. She was bound when she was restless, and isolated when she craved company. She forgot her parents quickly, and even her invisible friends were lost in time.
She became a hollow shell, wasting away from starvation and lack of care, some years before the hospital learnt how to deal with people like her.
4.
Luna was a girl who enjoyed chocolate on her tacos but vanilla burritos. She didn't seem to notice the odd stares she got every time. And the world had grown a little more accepting too. It didn't kill her straight away, but it didn't accept her either.
She managed to live till adulthood, but she had nothing worth living for. She withered away, like the tall trees in her garden that tried to keep on living in a world that just didn't care. Only her invisible friends cared, but they couldn't enjoy chocolate tacos and vanilla burritos like she did. They couldn't taste avocado ice cream and banana sandwiches. And she eventually lost her taste for them too.
5.
Luna was a girl that became a hero. She'd started off strange and shunned – the girl who read the Quibbler upside down or had tried to befriend the Squid – but she'd had the fortune of making friends: great friends. She'd had the fortune of loving people, and being loved by them, and finding something worth both living for and defending.
For the first time since the endless cycle of reincarnation began, Luna was able to die a happy old woman with a legacy and a bloodline that continued on.