Chapter 1: Lovegood House
Luna Lovegood patted her hands, clad in enormous mooncalf-hide gloves, together and smiled at the row of newly-planted dirigible plum saplings. They were only about as high as her shins and just starting to open their vivid orange blossoms.
"Daddy!" Luna called. "I finished planting the dirigible plums."
No one answered.
Luna pulled herself up to the open window - the red paint had only just finished drying - and peered into the dark house. Her father's new desk was an elm monstrosity carved from a single trunk and sanded smooth on the top so that the rings of the tree's many years showed. His bust of Rowena Ravenclaw sat to one side of a mess of papers, inexpertly repaired with spellotape. Long cracks rand down her cheeks, and her nose seemed off somehow.
Her father was not in his study.
Luna dropped her gloves into an empty planter on the front steps and walked into the house. It was very different from the rook-shaped house where she and grown up, though it was still rather cylindrical and rested on the same foundation. The first floor was divided into equal thirds like slices of pie, and where the rooms came together, a spiral staircase wound high into the upper floors.
"Daddy?" Luna said again, her foot creaking on the first step. The house remained silent.
Perhaps he had accidentally fallen into a Roving Vortex. Luna was not sure whether to be terrified or excited for him. She herself was certainly scared - according to her father, no wizard who fell into a Roving Vortex had ever returned. Luna tore up the steps two at a time, calling for her father the whole way.
"That you, Luna?" she heard his voice shout from the pointed room at the top of their turret of a home.
"Daddy!" she cried. "But what are you doing in the attic?"
Through the remaining stairs, Luna could see a patch of clear blue. Had he somehow blasted a hole in the roof?
"You'll… ah…," her father said, plainly flustered, "you'll have to come see. Oops!"
There was a heavy metallic thud as Luna popped her head into the room. The ceiling above her was blue as the sky outside, and at first she thought it may have been enchanted like the one at Hogwarts, but then she saw that one side of the ceiling was covered with a mural of six people in Hogwarts school robes posed with their wands crossed like swords and the word "Heroes" painted in shimmering gold below them. Despite the slightly lopsided faces, Luna recognized Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, Neville Longbottom, Ginny Weasley, and a figure at their feet that she realized with a pang of sadness was Dobby the house-elf. In the center, Luna herself stood, wand raised triumphantly and a silvery aura around her that seemed to pulsate.
The real Luna's wide gray eyes roved to her father. Xenophilius Lovegood had moved Luna's bed from the room one floor below that they had shared during the construction. He was now perched precariously on the top of Luna's bedside table which he had put on top of the bed and which rocked back and forth while Xenophilius waved his wand.
"Accio paint pail!" he cried, and as he lowered his wand to point at the bucket of enchanted paint, he noticed Luna. Staggering for a moment, Xenophilius let the bucket sail past him and clatter against the wail, spilling gold over Luna's already paint-spattered bed.
Her bed, in fact, was not the only thing in the room covered in paint. The floor seemed to be dusted with confetti. Xenophilius's maroon robes and pale face were streaked with black, blue, and a shade of crimson that matched the Weasleys' hair. Dry paint held his long white hair together in clumps.
"I must say, my dearest Luna, that I wasn't expecting you to finish so fast with the dirigible plums." Xenophilius's eyes were suddenly stern. "You didn't use magic, did you?"
"Of course not!" Luna knew the consequences of using magic to plant a bush that had so much of its own magic. More than once as a child, she had found herself rising out of her chair with dirigible plum poisoning, and pleasurable though it sounded to float up to the ceiling, it was accompanied by severe nausea that lasted for days.
Xenophilius sighed and looked at the picture, one hand catching in his paint-matted hair. "What time is it, my dearest doweling?"
Luna drew her wand and said, "Sciturus tempus!"
Shimmering letters appeared where she had waved it. They read, Three fifty-four.
Xenophilius squinted at the letters, muttered the time under his breath, and started, almost tumbling from his perch.
"Great gargantuan gorlocks, Luna! We're going to be late! Portkey at 4:05!"
Luna swept the time away with her hand and smiled at her father. "My bag is already packed. Let me clean my room, and I'll meet you downstairs."
"C-clean - " Xenophilius seemed unable to speak for a moment. Then his eyes widened, and he sprang lightly to the floor. "Luna Persephone! You aren't supped to be doing magic at all! You won't be of age until October!"
She twitched her mouth to one side. "Hmmm… I've used magic outside school so much. I must have forgotten. Mmmm… Tergeo!"
Instantly, the splotches of paint that covered the bed and floor evaporated. Xenophilus blinked his bulbous eyes and nodded hesitantly.
"Yes, my dove," Xenophilius stammered, stumbling down the stairs "I'll get ready to go."