Luna skipped through the garden, taking care not to step on any Whappers. She had never actually seen one herself, but her father told her that they liked to stray near foxglove, and Luna happened to be passing through a large patch of foxglove, so she was being extra careful. She reached down and picked a few sprigs of the purplish flowers, and tried to thread them through her long braids as her mother did sometimes, but they stuck out at every angle and several fell out. She was just deciding whether to go down and fish for plimpies, when a huge shattering knocked the breath out of her and she fell forward to her knees. Her heart pounding, she crouched in the foxglove and watched as the glass on her mother's bedroom window shattered, and a cloud of orange smoke wafted out into the air. After the noises had subsided, she ran straight into the house. She could still feel a faint ringing in her ear, but it was blocked by the sound of her father's screams. She ran upstairs and threw open the door. And there, her face blackened with black dust, her robes shredded to pieces, was the body of her mother.
Her father stood beside the corpse, screaming with grief and pain. Luna didn't realise what was going on until her mother's voice, which was usually full of joy, came out in a croak.
'Lu-Lu! Xe! I love you both,' and with that, her eyes fluttered closed and the shallow sound of her breath halted to a stop.
Instantly, Luna's insides shattered with sadness. She couldn't breathe, she couldn't cry, she couldn't feel. The world suddenly seemed cold, numb, dead. There was nothing on the earth but her and her mother's body, rid of life. And then her mother's body was gone, and it was only Luna, in a dark room filled with cold and cruel and menacing laughs. And all she could think was Who will braid my hair? Who will read me stories before bedtime? Who will bake cookies with me? Who will take me to swim in the stream? Who will buy me treats? Who will be there for me? And then she remembered her father. But still, he didn't know how to braid hair, and he didn't know all of Luna's favourite stories, and he didn't know how to bake cookies, and he was usually too busy to take her down to the stream to swim, and he hardly ever went to the shops, and even though he loved poor Luna dearly he was always too busy concentrating on writing or other things to listen to Luna. But as Luna watched her father's body shaking with sobs, she suddenly realised that he may never be able to do anything. He just seemed so damaged, so irreparable…
Two weeks passed. Luna finally accepted the truth about her mother and began to live her normal life again. Her father however, had not moved from Luna's mother's body's side. He sat in a chair there, never eating, never speaking, never even sleeping. Once in a while he would mutter some words and point his wand at himself and his eyes would shoot open, fully awake and alert. Luna didn't know what to do. She was too scared to say anything to her father, but eventually she became so worried that she did.
'Dad.' His head shot around and made Luna jump. When he saw her, he broke down in sobs.
'My Luna! My Luna darling,' he gasped. 'My Luna baby I forgot you were here! I am so sorry my girl, so, so sorry.' And with that, he got up and started to live again. He made a mess of Luna's hair, he didn't tell the right stories, his cookies were almost inedible, he sent Luna off on her own to swim in the stream, he brought her back treats she didn't want, and at times he went off into a daze of sadness where he just sat down and cried. But Luna could see how hard he was trying, so she told herself to toughen up and adjust.
And she's been telling herself those words ever since.