Perched in a comfortable window seat, Luna quietly observed the group of seventh years out in the grounds. From her safe place in the library, it was easy to spot several of her housemates among them. She had been invited to join them, but she had politely declined.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," she murmured, hands pressed delicately against the window. "Then again, if I were you rather than myself… perhaps I would."
She winced as she watched the group attempt to approach the Whomping Willow, several getting struck and strewn across the grass, only to rise once more. She hadn't felt inclined to take them up on their invitation, not sharing their desire to attempt carving their names into the willow. They seemed to think it was important that they be remembered, while Luna couldn't help but wish to be forgotten.
She wouldn't be remembered for her clothes, nor for her jewelry, though both had distinguished and separated her from her classmates. The way she would truly be remembered was in the desperate screams that had been ripped from her throat in Malfoy Manor, and the coppery scent of her blood before she'd been healed only to be torn open once more. And she hated it.
Her shaking hands left the window to clench into fists, eyes squeezing shut as she tried to silence the screams in her head.
She couldn't.
Luna did not want to be remembered. She didn't want Garrick's kind smile or Dean's reassuring hand on the top of her head.
Luna did not want to remember. But all she could see, even now, was Dean's flayed skin and Garrick's pulled nails. All she could feel was cold sweat and hot tears, and blood, always blood, and pleasepleasemakeitstop – and there she was. Luna's eyes opened to gaze upon her.
With a soft smile, and the whirl of a cloak, the screaming began to fade.
Rowena.
It had occurred to Luna that having spontaneous visions of Rowena Ravenclaw as she struggled to hold herself together might be cause for concern. As time passed and her shaking turned into dizzy spells that morphed into real hallucinations of people bleeding from their eyes, Luna found she didn't much care if Rowena was real or not.
What mattered was that Rowena's sweet smile eclipsed the morbid grins of the dead that haunted her. What mattered was Rowena's concern for her, as her ghostly hands pulled softly at her hair and brushed her cheek.
It wasn't like having a friend, Luna thought, since the people she had counted as friends hadn't seemed to notice her change after the war. Perhaps it wasn't fair of her to think that, since they were dealing with losses all of their own – but secretly she knew it was because they had always thought her mad. Loony, they called her.
And maybe she always had been.
But as she sat opposite Rowena in the library, and basked in her concern, she thought she recognized the feeling of companionship at last.
"Having you here is like having another mother," she said quietly.
Rowena beamed at her, ghostly hands clasping her own.
"Someone who accepts me for who I am, and helps me hold myself together."
Rowena's countenance became more solemn as she nodded and moved to sit beside Luna. They had never spoken, but it was enough. Having someone's acceptance was enough. She liked to think that Rowena was the same – finding in her a daughter who wouldn't be petty or jealous of her.
Not a replacement, for Luna would never callously discard her own mother in that way, and she felt that Rowena shared that thought. What they were to each other was a passing ripple in a pond. A vision of what could have been if things were different, better and worse all in one.
They sat on the seat in the library, holding hands, Luna's pale skin luminescent against Rowena's ghostly silver. If a passerby looked particularly closely and saw the faint outline of a woman draped in velvet sitting beside Luna, they shook themselves and swore that it was surely just a trick of the light.
Prompts used: Rowena Ravenclaw/Luna Lovegood, dialogue: 'I wouldn't do that if I were you', song: 'Good News' by Something Corporate, fist