Night Will Come
a/n: okay so i'm terribly sorry if this comes across as awful to you because i haven't even gotten it beta'd yet sadface. anyway. this was written for hpfc's backstroke swimming competition thingy.
one
Luna Lovegood watched with interest as her mother stirred the little golden cauldron. "What's going to happen, Mummy?" she asked, leaning over the table so she could see better. "Is it going to make green smoke come out of my ears like last time?" She giggled. "That was funny."
Her mother laughed, glancing up from her cauldron. "No, dear. This time we'll see if we can make some nice soup."
Luna's face fell, but brightened again as she said: "Is it the Squigglewart soup you wanted to let me try?"
"Yes, Luna," replied her mother, smiling at her. "Could you please pass me that cookbook, dear, and open it to the Squigglewart page? I need to see what the next step in making this is." She pointed to a large brown cookbook by Luna's elbow.
Luna flipped open the book carefully and traced her finger along the index. She turned to page 213. "Here, Mum."
"Thank you." Her mother bent over the page, frowning slightly. Her long blonde hair fell over her shoulders, and Luna stared at it, wishing she could touch it. She hoped that one day her hair would grow as long as her mother's. "Hmm..." murmured Mrs. Lovegood. "I'm not sure whether that's four or five clockwise stirs," she shrugged, "but what harm would it do?" She turned to Luna. "What do you think, honey? Four or five stirs?"
Luna shrugged.
"Oh well, I'll stir it four times first." She circled her wand around the cauldron slowly, then paused at the fourth stir. She looked into the cauldron. "There, I think -"
Bang.
Luna watched, wide-eyed, as her mother was thrown across the kitchen. Her own face was caked with what had been in the cauldron before the bang, but she didn't care. She ran quickly to where her mother had landed: in the corner of the kitchen, on the cold, marble floor. "Mummy!" she said, shaking her as hard as she could. "Mummy!" There was a small pool of blood forming near her mother's head; her eyes were closed and she did not look good.
She never responded to Luna's cries.
Day meant light. Day meant good. But soon the night would have to come.
From that day onwards, Luna could see Thestrals.
two
Xenophilius Lovegood watches his daughter play around with Sprites in the river. He is leaning against the bridge as he smiles at the sound of her laughter, because it's the only thing that will make him forget now. And after he's forgotten, everything comes crashing right down again until it feels like he has to sit down; the weight of the pain is unbearable. A night will not and cannot go by without him getting into bed with a heavy heart.
The place where his wife used to sleep is now no more. It's now stacked full of books on the one thousand and one uses of fairy saliva and all the mythical creatures of the world. All the books she planned to read now replace her because it's so much easier for Xenophilius to lose himself in them. He spends most hours listening to Luna's laughter as she splashes around in the river or reading all those books.
But when the night comes, he curls up in his bed and shivers. He can't crack open another book, because he doesn't want to lose himself again. To lose yourself is good when you want to forget, but people always forget too much.
Xenophilius is worried for his daughter. He knows she misses her mother. He can see it in the way she stares mournfully out of the window as she eats her meals; Yvonne was always the one who cooked her food and made her laugh. Sometimes Xenophilius thinks it's sick that she died because of a little food experiment gone wrong. And he is right: a brilliant woman like his wife should have died a hero's death. Instead she was killed because she misread an instruction.
Xenophilius waves goodbye to his daughter on the train, smiling as he watches her blow a kiss to him and yell "I won't let the Wrackspurts get me, Daddy!"
He walks away as the Hogwarts Express goes out of sight.
The night is coming. Luna will be gone for a long time. He hates it, he absolutely despises is; Luna was the one thing who would make him smile, but now he would have to live on his own.
As Xenophilius closes the door behind him, he tries to forget.
three
One day, Luna will come home from Hogwarts with a heavy heart. She will be confused, because this emotion she's feeling, it's something she won't let herself feel - sadness. Sadness, she will think, is something that should never be felt, because the only time she felt sadness was when her mother died. And she will honor her mother's memory by never being sad about anything other than her death.
But sometimes she will not be able to help it. Sometimes she won't be able to help feeling sad when Pansy Parkinson uses a Severing Charm on her and cackles and Luna's blood pours out of a gash. Luna will, of course, examine the gash with interest - if a Trumpite managed to worm its way into the cut, she will be healthy for the next five years. But when Pansy leaves, Luna will be sad. It won't wash over her like happiness does when she talks to Sprites; it will be a quiet, persistent feeling at the back of her mind.
She won't like it, but it will be there.
Luna Lovegood will be strong, though; she will hold her head high and (pretend to) be happy.
Her father will be proud.
She will grow to be a great woman; a key to Harry Potter's victory against the Dark Lord and a great wizarding naturalist. She will marry a man who will understands her. They will be happy together.
But she will always have a little thing in the back of her mind called sadness.
And she will always have her father.
They will spend hours talking to each other, trying to think their way through their lives. As much as Luna's husband will try, he will never touch her heart in the same places that Xenophilius will. He will be the only one who knows what she is going through - they both will seek to have happiness and to forget.
Nobody will ever understand that because all they will want to do will be to remember, like so many others. Memory, as so many people wrongly think, is a gift. Only a precious few humans know how great the gift of forgetting is, and Luna Lovegood and her father will be two of them.
The night will come, but they will have each other.
a/n: please don't favourite without reviewing. i appreciate that you enjoyed my story enough to put it on your favourites list, but it would really be quite nice if you left a review as well.
the changing of tenses in each section was done on purpose.