After leaving school early to go outdiscovering great creatures in the unknown wizarding world, Luna returns home having discovered nothing. She feels disheartened, she feels low, she feels as if she's ruined her life for a silly dream. With no NEWTS getting a job will be difficult. But after finding out Luna's situation, Neville writes a reassuring letter to Luna, telling her that taking chances is never a bad thing, even though the outcome can be and that there is always time to change things.

Dear Luna,

Try to think of life and its chances like grains of sand pressed between your palms. With every mistake made or chance not taken a grain of sand will slip through your fingers and fall to the dirty earth where it is too small in itself to be picked right back up again but with every grain of sand you drop, there's still a million left in your hands.

As time went on for me personally, I lost track of the wrongs and rights and everything merged into beautiful colours. If only it had been so a while back, in my seventh year of Hogwarts.

A couple of weeks before Christmas that year, the friendship that held Griffindor together decided to host a Secret Santa. People would choose a slip of paper out of a hat containing a name, which they would buy a present for. Hermione Granger had embraced me in a friendly hug on that Christmas Day, admitting she had run short of money; she had brought a large, expensive present for her parents. The most heart-stopping of presents that year came to the bushy-haired girl from her boyfriend, Ron Weasley... it was clear to the shocked Griffindor audience what Ron had gotten his girl this year as he got down on one knee and offered a ring.

Sometimes I wish I could've have taken chances like Ron Weasley did and sometimes I was glad I didn't. I told Hermione once of how I felt and she had giggled... she was flattered sure but nowhere as near as she was with Ron and it was with this man that you could see true happiness, not like the strained type I had seen from her that day I spilt my heart out.

Later, when the snow had thickened, people ran outside and began to throw snowballs at each other. I didn't; the thought of Ron's proposal and Hermione's acceptance of it made me feel more rejected than ever, perhaps one of the largest confidant stoppers in my life, besides what happened to my parents. Instead I stood and watched for a while and then headed back up to the Common Room. Ginny and Seamus were sharing passionate kisses under the mistletoe, I glanced at them for a second and smirked and slowly climbed the steps to my Dormitory.

A few months after, when it came to June, I found myself once again in the shadows. It was as if the world had forgotten me as I saw Harry and his friends return to Hogwarts late at night, blood staining their warrior clothes. Couldn't they remember me in the fifth year? Couldn't they remember that I wanted to help as much as they did? I know I was being selfish, for it was the next morning that the press announced Voldemort had been defeated but I felt that I should have been one of the first to know... how could they leave me behind?

Time went on and I grew older but still at this point, little wiser. Ron and Hermione finally got married but such bliss did not last long. Have you ever had one of those arguments, perhaps one that starts over such a small thing and see it turn into a blazing row until everyone has forgotten why it started in the first place? I was the only one who could remember why Hermione and Ron had divorced. I laugh at it, though I know I shouldn't.

Hermione had promised to bake chocolate chip cookies for a Ministry Party and Ron was very proud that his wife would be taking over a large responsibility; after all, Ron had a high place in the Ministry himself and definitely wanted a top-notch wife. However, poor Hermione forgot to over- look the fact that she had never baked cookies before and burnt each and every one to a blackened crisp. The rest was a blur... Ron at first found it funny and then a week later he was claiming Hermione was conspiring against him.

Their divorce never really surprised me. Such a girl as Hermione was not born to be a mere trophy wife. She soon went off on her own path and became on of the fastest earning women in Britain. And Ron carried on with job for a while, till someone bigger and better came along and took it from him, leaving Ron bankrupt.

As for Harry, it was a mystery. A year after the defeat of Voldemort and his pretty shiny plaque that labelled him a Hero he virtually disappeared. Sometimes newspapers reported on a random citizen seeing him in North England, sometimes as far as Australia... though most doubted it was he. Many people said a Deatheater had killed him.

I guess I shouldn't be sad but I am.

One of the things I've learned is that one of the biggest mistakes is trying to avoid them. You learn from your mistakes so that when the time comes you can recognise a good chance and take it. I may have fought, ate and talked with the three but I wasn't one of them and I never could be when I was always putting myself down or avoiding life by standing in the shadows. Sometimes I did feel I had a part, like in fifth year, in the Department of Mysteries but I let the after-taste of several mistakes get the better of me and it made me yet again, cautious.

Still, now I know... I may have let millions of chances slip by me before but not now. Oh god, not now.

So, Luna, I hope I have taught you something. That it is not better to be safe than sorry. Take a chance on life and maybe, just maybe, life will take a chance on you. And don't worry, if there's one thing I can be sure of, it's that you'll be fine.

Your friend, Neville Longbottom.