I. Luna Landing
By: Calliope Confetti
Hogwarts, May of 1974
With his head heavy with thoughts of Lily, Severus slipped out of bed and donned a light jacket over his nightclothes, before managing to exit the castle undetected and venture out into the night. He had integrated these regular night walks into his routine, motivated by unrelenting insomnia, unable to lie awake in his bed, tossing and turning through yet another sleepless night. For reasons he failed to understand, Lily had been drifting further away from him all year, which left him replaying their every interaction in his head, struggling to pin down where it all went wrong. These night walks assuaged some of his anxiety; the forest stimulated his senses and carried him back to the present, keeping him from obsessing over the past, at least temporarily.
The thin crescent moon hid behind the clouds, shrouding the grounds in darkness, leaving him walking blindly in the Stygian night, so he withdrew his wand and proceeded through the labyrinth of trees with "Lumos" lighting the way. He breathed in the pollen-fresh, moss-rich air of spring-time and listened to the crickets' chorus, both of which calmed him and banished some of the more troubling thoughts from his mind.
When reached a familiar clearing, he watched his steps to avoid tromping through the budding bluebells until he finally reached a well-worn path of flattened grass and leaves; he sighed and surveyed his surroundings, freezing when he saw a white glow amid the trees on the far side of the field. Wary of approaching the mysterious light, he craned his neck and stood on his toes, trying in vain to get a better look.
In all his walks, he'd never seen such a strange thing, and after a few minutes had ticked by, curiosity overcame caution and bade him to discover the light's source. On light feet, he moved in that direction, unaware of the bluebells being squashed under his boots. From a few yards away, he could make out the silhouette of a person sitting on the ground. The hair on the back of his neck prickled and his instincts urged him to abandon the mission, but whatever the person was doing, it didn't seem nefarious, so against his better judgment, he called out to the figure in the dark. "Hello…?"
A female figure, discernible by her waist-length hair and feminine dress, stood and brushed off her skirt before walking towards him. Oddly, his presence didn't startle her; on the contrary, she welcomed him as if she'd been waiting for him all the while. Her skin, white as a sheet, glowed pale as a specter—if not for her bright clothes, she could pass for a ghost, which would have taken their meeting from weird to otherworldly.
"Hello, Severus," she greeted him by name while he struggled to remember hers. "Vale…?" he guessed with upward inflection.
"Close, my name is Pandora, but you can call me 'Vale,' it's my surname so it suits me just the same."
In school, he had noticed her at meal times and in the halls; it was impossible not to notice her, really. Even now, atop her pale blonde hair, she wore a silver circlet with a crystal pendant charm sparkling on her forehead and earrings made of what looked like beetle wings. Although he found her mildly enchanting and her eyes reminded him of the reflection of a winter sky in ice, they mostly disquieted him and lent an eerie air to an already strange encounter. She stared at him with wide eyes, framed by doll-like lashes that made them appear even wider, giving her a look of perpetual surprise.
When Severus failed to take his turn to speak, she smiled and moved back to her original position, sitting on the grass, returning to task as if he had never interrupted her. "What on earth are you doing?" he asked blithely, since they had seemingly made it past the pleasantries.
"Oh, I'm waiting for the Lunas to arrive," she replied, speaking as if her answer were crystal clear instead of incredibly cryptic.
"Beg pardon?" he asked.
"Actias Luna," she replied, before she seemed to notice his blank stare, with his eyebrows traveling further up his forehead with her every word. "Luna moths," she clarified, jumping up to show him her setup, a fairly primitive one. She'd strung a clothesline between two trees to hang the sheet—her bed-sheet, she informed him, even though he didn't ask—which she then pulled back to reveal the hand-held flames dancing in a glass jar, providing her illumination.
"Ah." he paired his staccato reply with a lift of the chin, finally following what she was saying, although he remained generally perplexed.
"A budding lepidopterist, are you?" he asked with a smirk.
"No, I don't pin them and put them under glass. That's cruel. I like to observe them in nature, doing the things moths do," she explained.
Because she came across as so sincere, he clenched his teeth against the sarcasm longing to make an appearance. "Have you seen any tonight?" he managed.
"Yes, one earlier, but she flew away after a time. They like this time, in the early morning." Her talk of time reminded him of the fact that he was outside after hours, with the clock tower's hands nearing three in the morning.
Even though she wore a short skirt, she sat with her legs crossed in an unselfconscious, distinctly un-ladylike way, before grabbing her sketchbook from her schoolbag. "See, I started drawing her." She held her sketchbook over the bottom half of her face, so that only her haunting eyes could be seen above its wire rings. Although he was unsure of what exactly he'd expected, her work surprised him—while he mostly thought he'd be met with a page of amorphous scribbling, she'd drawn the outline and used colored pencils to fill in one of its wings so realistically that it looked like it could fly off the page as soon as she finished the other.
"Very good." Her undeniable talent earned her a rare but forced acknowledgement from him. "Are you going to finish it when the next one comes along?" he asked curiously.
"No," she said simply, "I will start over. I like to capture their individuality."
As he progressed through his mental menagerie, he couldn't—for the life of him—think of another creature that rivaled the perfect symmetry and the painstaking uniformity of a butterfly or a moth; it was as if they'd all been cut by nature's Ellison machine. In spite of this, he refrained from further comment.
"Well," he sighed, altogether vexed by their meeting, "I'd best be getting back to the castle. Good luck to you."
"Don't you want to see one, Severus?" The earnestness of her inquiry gave him pause, but he declined, "Your drawing will suffice. Good night."
She flashed him a smile, her prominent lips so pale they looked bloodless. "Wait!" she cried, waving her arms like she was attempting to flag down an aircraft.
He stopped mid-step and his shoulders slumped as he sighed again and, for reasons he couldn't articulate, he returned to the glowing sheet and the glowing girl.
"Look," she grabbed his arm and pointed towards the sheet. A Luna had landed. The fire created an ethereal back-light effect, lighting up the moth so that it glowed luminescent green, sparkling like peridot, like the sun shining through a panel of stained glass. The moth opened and closed its wings before it finally stilled, splaying them like a paper fan, showing off its delicate markings.
"He is stretching his wings," Vale informed him, even though her commentary seemed rather self-explanatory to him. Curiously, she still held onto his arm, and he also wondered how she'd determined the moth's gender with such confidence.
Begrudgingly, he finally admitted to himself that the experience was worthwhile, while the moth sat poised with a grace and an elusive light that film and canvas cannot capture. Vale stared at it excitedly, with child-like wonder, like she was experiencing the sight for the first time. Suddenly, she let go of his arm and plopped back onto the ground to set to work on her next sketch, her pencil moving deftly about the page.
With her engrossed in her drawing, Severus realized one could only stare so long at a moth; he'd already stared at it so long it broke the bounds of normalcy, so he shook himself and turned on his heel to walk away.
"Goodbye, Severus," she bade him farewell, and he held up his hand in a curt wave, without pausing or turning around, as he pressed onward, back to the castle. When he reached the portcullis, he entered quietly, attempting to evade Filch, who muttered to himself as he stood on a ladder, cleaning a light fixture. A sleeping Mrs. Norris yawned and stretched her paws before curling back into a ball of sleep, opening one eye at him before deciding he wasn't worth it. As he descended the staircase en route to the dungeons, he had a fleeting thought that made him laugh under his breath—is there a Mr. Norris? He slipped easily past Professor Slughorn, chuckling when he saw him slumped against the stone wall, sleeping upright, sounding like a sleeping dragon as the roar of his snores filled the quiet corridor.
After admonishing him for his blatant disregard of curfew, the subject of the Slytherin portrait prompted him for the password. Severus spat, "Ouroboros," forcing his way past the portrait before it had even fully opened to allow him passage. When he finally fell into bed, he entered a dreamland forest, where Luna Moths clung trees instead of leaves, numbering in the thousands, all of their markings replaced by a haunting set of wide eyes, and when he woke up, he couldn't pin down whether he'd categorize it as a simple dream or a nightmare.