Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.
For Zach. Almost four years, and I still miss you.
It's times like these that she really, really misses her mother. Luna buys into what Hermione never did—that sometimes things just happen, that sometimes there is no logic to explain away a situation. Her mother is twelve years dead, and Luna can't point to anything beyond the senselessness of the universe, the tragedies and chaos of everyday life—it just is. And no amount of "now I understand why" will bring Luna's mother back—no justification or logic will take away this growing ache in her chest. Luna's mother id dead and it would only serve to reason that she would need her now, more than ever.
Luna mourns her mother on a rainy Tuesday in April with sunflowers and daisies on her grave. (The victory is five years old now; Luna can mourn her mother like she mourned the heroes.)
The grave itself stands empty—there wasn't enough of her mother's body left after the explosion, after the accident, to put in a wooden box six feet below. Luna's never really felt drawn to the grave before now; she's always felt closer to her mother in the sunshine, the wind, the trees, the flowers—the everyday things. But Luna needs the concrete realness of a grave, now. She needs a place to anchor herself—needs something to tie her to the ground before she floats away (because she might just float away, to join her mother's spirit in the clouds).
The rain is cold. It feels nice on her skin—she stands in front of her mother's grave quietly, clutching her sunflowers and daisies, her clothes sticking to her like a second skin. Her hair is soaked and Luna kneels in the mud, setting the flowers to the side.
She plunges her hands into the mud at her mother's grave, tries to pull whatever piece of her mother is left there into herself, tries to anchor her flyaway soul to a world that only barely made sense before and makes even less sense now.
She isn't sure how long she sits there—long enough that her knees go numb. It's long enough that the mud coating her to her elbows I sonly mud—long enough to know that the box is only a box—long enough to know that any piece of her mother left behind is long gone, now, washed away with the April rain.
And suddenly, there are arms around her, in the rain and the mud on her mother's empty grave—arms with freckles, that hold her in place.
"It'll be alright," the owner of the arms says into her hair. "It'll be alright, in the end."
It's a lie—one she's told herself for twelve years now—and she's still waiting for things to be alright. But the lie tastes sweeter when it falls from her anchor's lips—if this man can say that things will be alright—if he can see an "alright" in the end, then surely she can pretend at "alright" for a little while longer.
She doesn't say anything—she doesn't need to. Really, in the end, there are no words, no words strong enough for that ache in her chest, for those arms around her, for that voice, that anchor in the rain and the mud on her mother's not-grave. There aren't words, and the silence says more than her words ever could, in the end.
AN: I lost a very dear friend three and a half years ago. I wrote this piece after visiting his resting place a week or so ago. I think that one of the greatest gifts we can give our broken hearts is time, and a good crying spell, and some journaling. This is what came from that. Thank you for reading.