A/N: Written for the Earth Day Event on The Golden Snitch forum. (Haley, Mahoutokoro, Mizu). Prompt: A character has to use the Bubble-Head Charm in a heavily polluted area. Word count: 430
Luna had heard air described as toxic before, but she'd never imagined it as something literal until she'd apparated and been hit by fumes so great that they were the first indication she had arrived at her destination.
Her stomach twisted in knots, and her despair kept her from being proactive. It wasn't until the air stung and she began to cough that she cast the bubble head charm and purified the air within it. The purification charm had been one she'd researched at the last minute when she'd learned of her mission, and she was thankful she'd thought ahead.
She glared at the abandoned Muggle factory that towered above the landscape. Her boss had tried to explain to her what the Muggles had made there, but it hadn't made sense to her. It didn't matter what the stated purpose had been because the unstated one was the problem. They had kept gradually poisoned the air until it had become impossible for anything to breath. Then the Muggles had left, leaving what life there was to continue struggling to survive.
That apparently didn't bother them much. None of the area's non-magical creatures were the fluffy kinds that could easily be used to drum up sympathy, so they'd been forgotten almost as effectively as the magical ones that called this place home.
Even the magical creatures that Luna had been sent to survey the populations of weren't—or perhaps hadn't been—fluffy.
The surrounding woodlands were an important breeding ground for flobberworms, of all things, and there might not have been any left thanks to the factory. She'd been sent to gather more information about the conditions, so they could come up with a course of action. There was a good chance the Muggle government would need to be contacted, but she wasn't confident that the Ministry would care enough for the flobberworms to push the Muggles on change.
Her bubble head charm allowed her to breathe, but it also obscured her vision just enough to be annoying. Luna scowled as she traversed over the land, looking for tell tale signs of the flobberworms. She should have spotted some already, and the fact she hadn't had her feeling even more agitated than she'd been when she'd first arrived.
When she saw the first burrows that hinted at a colony hiding beneath the soil, she felt her heart stutter, and a small grin appeared on her face for the first time.
She felt the beginnings of hope. At least they weren't all gone. The factory's poison lingered, but some of the worms held on.