AUTHOR'S NOTE: Seeing sounds as colors is not something I made up. It is an actual neurological disorder known as synesthesia. People with synesthesia experience two senses at once. Sounds as colors is one of the rarer manifestations, but it does exist, and that's what I've given Luna's mother.

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Luna Lovegood. She is the property of JK Rowling and the Harry Potter Universe.

This story is free from Deathly Hallows spoilers.

Posted also as a chapter in the Reviews Lounge story Rainbow Magic. Check it out!

Hearing the Rainbow

I have always thought it would be the most wonderful thing in the world to be able to see sounds. My mother could do it, and ever since I was a little girl, I wanted to be able to do the same. I wanted to be able to see sounds, to listen to music or voices or any other sound in the world in a swirl of color just like Mummy.

I don't remember how old I was when I discovered that not all adult wizards and witches could see sounds. Though I was disappointed that I wouldn't necessarily grow into it, in my mind, it just made my mother into an even more extraordinary witch.

Long before my legs were long enough to reach the floor, I would sit on one of the tall stools in my mother's workshop while she experimented. She had the strangest collection of objects hung all over her workshop. It looked like what I'd imagine a Scraptoner's nest to look like. Every day, she'd bring in new objects, levitate them, and have me tap them lightly with a crystal scepter. Then she'd tap her notebook with her wand until a small square next to the object's label bore the color of its sound. Then she'd conjure a ribbon of a close match, and it was my job to hang the new object where she directed, in a circle all the way around her workshop.

When I was seven, I asked her if she was trying to collect the rainbow. She held me close and laughed. "No, love," she told me. "Not collect it. I'm trying to unlock it. Now talk to me, love!"

And I would. I would make up songs for her, tell her of all the creatures my father was studying, talk about the flowers I'd found in the woods that day. And she would watch me as I spoke, though she never did tell me why.

My father called me his Moon-child, and on days when my mother was particularly busy, he would take me out and show me all the wonderful creatures he was studying. He would point out where Plimpies had been and show me evidence of a Wrackspurt or a Nargle. When I was very young, I foolishly asked him if they were real.

"Of course they are!" he said, sounding shocked that I would ask. "Why, they're as real as you or me! Just because they don't show themselves often, there are any number of wizards prepared to claim they're all make believe! But they're not," he whispered to me, kneeling beside me. "Luna, love," he said quietly, "Don't you ever let anyone tell you that anything's not real. If you have to see something with your own two eyes to believe it's real, then you're going to miss half of life's wonders!"

Satisfied with that answer as only a four-year-old can be, and believing that my father could no more lie than a Crumple Horned Snorkack could grow wings and fly, I never questioned him again. I would spend my days as a child helping my father chase Snorkacks and Skitnies, and I would spend my evenings helping my mother chase the rainbow. It was always quite enjoyable and I was never happier in my life.

I worked closer and closer with my mother, believing without question or pause that the minute she found the key to unlocking the rainbow, I would be able to see what she could see.

By the time I was nine, I knew her workshop as well as she did, though I didn't understand what it all meant or what she was really trying to do when she said she wanted to unlock the rainbow or why my picture hung in the very center of that color wheel that her workshop had become. I had asked her, but she wouldn't tell me. She became more and more distant, more and more distracted, and Daddy and I saw less and less of her.

Daddy seemed to understand more than I did. And he seemed very sad about it, for some reason. Even showing him the necklace I'd made for mother from Trapdabbles that grew in our garden did very little to brighten his spirits. For a long while, I feared a Wrackspurt attack, but Daddy smiled sadly when I suggested it and patted me on the head.

"No, Luna love, it's not Wrackspurts."

"Then what is it, Daddy?" I asked him. He sighed.

"Oh, my Moon girl, nothing I could ask you to understand."

"But I'm very bright!" I assured him. "Yesterday, I caught a Plimpie all by myself! If I can understand how to catch a Plimpie and track a Skitnie through half a mile of woods, why can't I understand what's happening with Mummy?" I asked.

He held me close then, in a one-armed hug. "Oh, Luna, my dear girl. It is hard to explain. Your mother has been chasing her rainbow for so long . . . it is consuming her being. She can think of nothing else."

"Then she is sure to succeed," I said, thinking him rather silly to be so worried over so simple a thing. Hadn't my parents always told me that the hardest work brings the greatest rewards? "Shall I bring her her tea?" With a said smile, he nodded, so I took the tray and went out to her workshop.

"Mummy?" I called out, but the door was closed, and though I could hear my mother inside, she did not answer me. Gently, I pushed the door open. "Mummy?" I called again.

"I don't understand," she was saying, frantically searching through her journal, snatching at the ribbons hanging from the rafters. "The crystal sounds in three hues . . . and phoenix song in all the colors of fire . . . but the rainbow . . . what makes the rainbow?"

"Mummy?" I asked, working up the courage to step into the room. She was pacing back and forth in the center of the color wheel, muttering wildly. For the first time in my life, I was frightened.

"I must know – I must! . . . Luna . . . the rainbow is in her . . . but how? How?"

"Mother?" I said again, my voice smaller. Still she did not hear me.

"It cannot be just the purity of sound, or the crystal and song would show true . . . there must be more, but what? What?"

"Mummy, I've brought tea," I said, louder.

"I hear it!" she cried. "I see it! I must know!" And with one, sweeping motion, she raised her wand high above her head in both hands and shouted a word I could not understand and did not know.

I screamed, dropping the tray and falling to the ground, my hands thrown up to protect my head from the debris that hurtled down from all around me. But even more horrifying than the shower of broken artifacts and shredded ribbon was the sight of my mother, encased in fire-like light, crumpling to the ground.

"Mummy!" I shrieked, and ran to her. She was lying on the floor, badly burned, staring up at the one item that had not fallen from the rafters – my picture and the rainbow ribbon on which it hung.

"Luna . . ." she whispered, and I knelt beside her, sobbing.

"Mummy, you must be all right!" I said. She shook her head.

"No . . . my love . . ." she said. "I have seen . . . and I must die."

"No!" I screamed. "You cannot die! You cannot! I won't believe it!"

"No," she said, her grip suddenly tight as death on my arm. "Do not say that, Luna. Never say that."

"I won't believe in anything if you die," I whispered harshly through my tears. Her grip on my arm tightened.

"No! You mustn't lose it!" she whispered frantically, looking wildly up at me. "The rainbow . . . it only appears when every possibility is present! To not believe is to lose the rainbow! Luna! You must never lose the rainbow!" The last was hissed in pain and urgency.

"How?" I whispered helplessly, lost, tears streaming down my face. "How can I, without you?" She smiled weakly up and me and relaxed against me.

"Believe," she murmured, eyes closing. "Believe that this is not the end . . . believe that you will see me again . . . believe that you can still hear my voice . . . you must believe in every possibility, Luna . . . if you do that . . . the rainbow will never fade from your voice . . . if you believe in everything, you can never be brought down . . . read my journal . . . it's all in my journal . . . I have always loved listening to you speak . . . it's the only time I have ever . . . heard the rainbow . . . speak for me, love . . . speak . . ."

"I love you, Mummy," I whispered through tears. "And I promise you that I will always believe."

And with a look of serene peace on her face, she died.

At the moment of her death, the rainbow ribbon that held my picture shattered, falling around us like pixie dust.

I have never forgotten my mother's death, nor the promise that I made to her. I poured over her journal for weeks after she died, learning everything she had known, everything she had been trying to find. Since the day she died, I have added my own research to it. Maybe one day, I can find the spell that failed her. Maybe one day, I'll be able to help people see what she could, to show them the sound of my voice in a streams of colors. I know what people call me and I know what they say about me and the things I believe in. But I made a promise to believe in everything, and so I also believe in them, and I find it's not so hard that way.

When I speak, I speak of possibilities. And when others speak, I listen, and I know that everything they say might yet be true. And so, they call me Loony and think me crazy. And I believe it may be true. But I also believe that I am not wrong. I am not wrong to believe what I believe.

Someday I will catch a Crumple Horned Snorkack. Someday I will have friends who will not think I am strange. Someday I will know a world without fighting. Someday I will see my mother again.

Someday I will hear the rainbow.

This story was written as a Reviews Lounge challenge. The Reviews Lounge exists to raise reader participation, and their creed is, essentially, that they do not read stories without commenting. I ask you, please. Take the few moments necessary to do this for me. Thanks!