**DISCLAIMER**: These are Ms. Rowling's toys, and I'm just playing with them. I promise I'll put them back when I'm done! I do quote her a lot, mostly in dialogue so as to retain accuracy.

"We set sail on a winter's day, with fate as malleable as clay." – Joanna Newsom, "Bridges and Balloons"

Prologue: departure
"Luna, time to wake up!" Xenophilius Lovegood's nervous voice sounded outside his daughter Luna's bedroom door.
Luna opened her blue eyes and smiled at her painted ceiling. "Yes, daddy," she answered softly. He didn't reply, only made his way back downstairs, so perhaps he hadn't heard her, but it didn't matter, really. He knew she'd been awake for hours, despite the early time: She had dreadful insomnia.
Luna rose from her bed and folded back the covers, not quite making the bed but making it look neat enough. She wouldn't be sleeping in it until Christmas, anyway. But she stuffed that thought from her mind; she hated thinking of Daddy being alone until then.
Tripping over to her chest of drawers, Luna barely glanced at her reflection before digging around for clothes. Remembering she'd already packed most of the good stuff, she reopened her trunk and pulled out a favorite: bright red overall shorts with a sunflower handpainted on the front kangaroo pouch pocket. She stepped into them and buckled the straps over the long blue t-shirt she'd slept in; she'd be changing into her robes soon, anyway.
"Dad?" she called down the stairs. "Want to help me with my trunk?"
"What's that-? Oh, yes, right away, plum!" Xenophilius came trotting up the stairs in his Wellingtons, squelching mud all over the wrought-iron.
"Daddy," Luna said crossly. "Don't forget to clean this mess when you get home!" I won't be home to do it, she added silently.
He seemed to hear this unspoken addition to her statement, and pulled her close into a warm embrace. "I'll take care of it, my chicken pot pie," was his crinkle-eyed reply.
Luna smiled at her father, then shuffled around him on the stairs. "My trunk, dad," she intoned gently.
"Right you are, Luna," he stuttered, clumping up the stairs to where her trunk sat just inside her bedroom. "Locomotor trunk," he murmured, raising his wand and slowly levitating her trunk down the stairs. Luna followed, eyes on the ceiling, mouth open, watching a moth flutter blindly from wall to wall in the narrow stairwell.