Monthly Challenges for All
Challenger: Magi Silverwolf
Challenge: Neurodivergent; Ravenclaw MC
Word count: 1,191
Beta: Aya Diefair
Legend: Wrackspurt means confusion/social interaction, Nargle means being overwhelmed, Crumple-Horned Snorkack means love ('the one').
People were weird. Luna knew this for a fact and she generally found them incomprehensible. Her mother had tried to help by attempting to create a replica of Rowena Ravenclaw's lost diadem to help Luna understand. It was Luna's fault her mother had died. That was the day she understood why people stopped functioning when they lost a loved one.
She and her father figured out how to continue on without Pandora. Slowly, they readjusted to life. Xenophilius helped his daughter understand the world without the aid of Ravenclaw's diadem. Everything was given a name by her father, a physical presence. It was hard to understand things that were only vaguely defined. He taught her about the Nargles, Wrackspurts, and the ever-elusive Crumple-Horned Snorkack.
He made her a necklace of butterbeer corks to help her when the Nargles swarmed around her. The corks helped distract Luna when it all became too busy. When the noises were too loud, the sights too overwhelming, or the textures too strange. Whatever the Nargles threw at her, the corks helped ground her.
He taught her how to focus on something else when the Wrackspurts muddled her brain. Happy thoughts worked the best, they caught her attention far more than any other. The confusion that Wrackspurt-infested people gave her was beaten back by the thoughts she kept inside her own mind. When the Wrackspurts tried to enter her head, all they found was a wall of happy thoughts that Luna understood. There was no confusion to be found in them.
Xenophilius learned with Luna how to cope with the strangeness of the world surrounding them. When Luna turned eleven, it was with great trepidation that they agreed she would attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The school was an unknown to Luna but she wanted to see the place her parents had met, where they had met their Crumple-Horned Snorkack.
The months leading up to September were full of figuring out even more ways to deal with whatever Hogwarts would throw at her. Luna's father made sure that Luna had extra cork necklaces. Just in case she lost one somehow, there would always be another waiting in her trunk. He reminded her every night when he tucked her into bed to think of things she understood to fend off the Wrackspurts.
Hogwarts was…strange. It was also loud and full of idiots. Luna had been sorted into Ravenclaw as she and her father had expected. They had not expected Ravenclaw House to be so riddled with Wrackspurts. All around her people were acting in strange and confusing ways. It was not the silence she was accustomed to.
Instead, there were clusters of people chattering loudly about inconsequential things. Favourites were being proclaimed and either being agreed upon or disputed. Luna stood in a corner fiddling with her corks and trying to take it all in. She jumped slightly when a voice came from her left.
"Why are you hanging out in this corner by yourself? Surely you'd prefer getting to know your dorm mates?"
Luna shuddered slightly, her grip on a cork tightening. Go into the swarm of people covered in Wrackspurts? There could be nothing worse in Luna's opinion. Already, the Nargles were eagerly flying about her.
"I'm fine here," she replied quietly. The concerned prefect shrugged to herself and went to rejoin her friends.
Luna watched her for a few moments. There was so much touching happening in that group, and in the others as well. So many claps to the back, grasps on the upper arms, handshakes and hugs between people only just meeting. How could everyone stand it? Luna swept her gaze around the common room once more before quickly fleeing to the hopefully quiet dorm room. Once there, she found her bed by locating her trunk at the end of it.
Barely able to stand the action and the time it took, Luna grabbed her toiletry bag and brushed her teeth quickly in the adjacent bathroom. Finally, she was able to change into her pyjamas and curl up under her blankets. She huddled there in silence, watching her fingers as they ran over the surface of the butterbeer cork she was holding. Luna knew that just outside was a maelstrom of emotions, talking, body language and people; but here in her dorm, it was quiet.
So went the pattern from then on. There was hardly a moment when Luna wasn't fiddling with her necklace. She found quiet places that people rarely frequented to retreat to when the Nargles grew too much to bear. Her Housemates teased her for being strange and stole her things.
She was only grateful that they never hid her necklaces. Whenever she couldn't find something where it should be, it was only her necklace that could calm her down. Luna learned to cope with items missing, she didn't care much for shoes anyway. If her school books went missing, she had all the information stored in her mind and she could always go to the library if she forgot something.
Luna coped with life at Hogwarts. It was hard, and she only survived by using her quiet spots, but she did it. She had to learn magic, and this was where she had chosen to do so. She had no choice but to keep pushing through, no matter how hard it got or how many nights she spent crying because she didn't understand all the people around her.
She knew that if she left Hogwarts, she would forever be annoyed at herself for failing at doing what normal people did. Everyone went to school and most British magicals went to Hogwarts, it was normal. If Luna could make it through the seven years of boarding school, she knew that she could do anything. And if she encountered a hurdle, all she would have to do was remind herself that she had survived the completely alien environment that was Hogwarts. She was sure that the pride from that would help her continue.
When the Christmas holidays came around, Luna threw herself into the arms of her father and held on tight. It was good to be home. He made Gulping Plimpy stew that night and they ate in silence, happy to have the other next to them again.
"I did it, Papa." Luna said quietly later that night as they watched the stars.
"Yes you did, my Luna. I am so very proud of you and I know your mother is too."
Luna smiled. She was proud of herself as well. Even with all the Nargles and Wrackspurts that had surrounded her, she had survived intact. She had allowed the corks to drown everything else out, fought back swirling confusion with happy thoughts. It had been tough, but she had made it. And that was something to be proud of.
She knew that she could return to Hogwarts after the winter break and keep plodding on. She had done it before, she could do it again. All the Wrackspurts and Nargles in the world couldn't stop her. Perhaps one day, she would even find her own Crumple-Horned Snorkack.