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Disclaimer: "Death Note", "Harry Potter", and all canon characters and characteristics remain the property and rights of their respective owners. All I own is the writing itself, and any original features and / or attributes portrayed within said writing.
A/N: Written based on a discussion at LiveJournal's capslock-dn! This is my first time writing for either fandom, and I hope I did these characters justice. But not enough justice to make L suspicious. Just enough to be considered a decent human being. :D I know it's canonically inaccurate that Mello and Matt are still at the orphanage only a year before this story's epilogue, but I couldn't think of another way to include the entire cast while making it fit. So...in this story, Luna's interaction inspires Near to the point of becoming head of the SPK two years earlier than in canon and Mello doesn't run away until then? Yeaaaah, that makes a lot of sense...anyway, reviews are highly appreciated!
I--I
It was a gentle winter in England.
Having just returned from her first year at Hogwarts, Luna Lovegood spent her holiday touring the country with her father, on the hunt for multiple creatures Newt Scamander's Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them seemed to have overlooked by mistake. Today, the determined duo was following an interesting lead received in an anonymous letter to The Quibbler's editor: rumour had it a particularly mischievous flock of Blargnits settled into a few buildings in Winchester and made an entire estate of muggle orphans forget their names.
Terrible creatures, Blargnits were.
The easiest way to isolate one was for an unaffected witch or wizard to properly introduce themselves to the afflicted individual and have them feel enough at ease to return the gesture; the Blargnit would be forced to leave the moment their host's name was called for, and when you got rid of one, others in the colony had the habit of following.
So while her father was posing to the caretakers as an interested parent, Luna was instructed to explore the area and see if she could speak with any of the poor unwells there. Although she succeeded in inching her way outside the designated visitor boundaries and into the main sleeping quarters, it appeared as if all the children were busy playing outside in the freshly fallen blanket of snow.
Luna was searching the second floor of dormitories when she saw it: a hint of light spilling through an entrance left slightly ajar, located on the right-hand end of a long hallway lined with closed doors.
As she reached the room and raised a hand to knock, a pair of older children whipped around a corner and began dashing down from the opposite side of the hall. From the split-second glance she had, Luna managed to distinguish a blonde young man with a chocolate bar sticking out from his mouth and another boy tagging closely behind him, the latter wearing a striped shirt and...goggles?
Could he have been a Quidditch player?
Without a second look, the sweets addict bumped Luna aside during his charge down the hallway.
"Damn it, hurry up!" he scowled, paying little attention to the stranger. "Roger said grades are supposed to be posted today!"
"I'm hurrying, I'm hurrying..." the second one replied, listless. He glanced behind him as he ran. "Oi, new girl. Don't bother inviting that guy outside. He won't come no matter what you say to him."
Before Luna could explain her purpose (let alone ask for their names), the two turned another corner and disappeared from sight.
She sighed inwardly before turning back around, thankful she didn't need to persuade the resident to leave his room altogether. She just needed him to tell her his name.
How hard could it be?
Luna tapped a light fist against the door, waiting for a short 'come in' before letting herself enter.
It was a blessing she decided to watch where she stepped.
The hardwood floors were covered in thick lines of dark, polished plastic, all part of a highly intricate track layout which spanned to reach every obscure crevice of the room. The toy railroads Luna was accustomed to seeing were almost always enchanted (seeing as a wave of a parent's wand was all it took to get them running), but this bizarre contraption appeared to be one of those 'motorized' counterparts that muggles used something called 'electricity' to operate.
It was amazing how so many people managed to cope without magic.
Fumbling with a complicated mess of wires extracted from a small, hollow box not meant to be reopened, the lone occupant of the room was found sitting in a far corner still wearing his pyjamas, resting his cheek boredly upon a folded knee.
Eyes pitch black and hair as pale as the snow.
"You're quite lucky, you know, being able to wear night garments at two-thirty in the afternoon," said Luna. "They're considerably more comfortable than everyday clothing."
Near paused for a moment. A wandering thought regarded the statement as an odd way to introduce oneself, yet the notion was discarded soon after as unimportant, considering the presence of the individual herself was unimportant to begin with.
He spent the next minute or so carefully twisting the rest of his stripped cables together, before folding them back into their original container and snapping the black case shut. The instructions might have claimed the trains couldn't go any faster, but that was nothing more than a challenge to prove the manufacturers wrong. Anything can be enhanced with a little effort, after all.
Realizing he hadn't heard his visitor's voice again for a while, Near turned around, only to find the intruder now kneeling beside him, the tip of her nose mere centimetres away from his own. The girl's wide, argent eyes cast a hazily bemused stare at him, radiating the strange aura of a person somehow both present and absent at the same time. She had wavy, dirty-blonde hair whose length fell just past her shoulders; she also seemed to be wearing a wooden stick of some kind behind her left ear.
The girl tilted her head in curiosity, blinking for the first time in twenty seconds.
"Little boy, do you remember your name?"
Near became incredulous towards the condescending title she dared to use on him (she couldn't have been older than he was, if not younger), yet he showed no change in expression. Instead, he returned his attention to his track-laying, tempted to but refraining from uttering a sarcastic 'no' in partial annoyance and overall bitterness towards the question.
"Oh, that's too bad..." she pouted, looking dejected. "It looks like the Blargnits did get here before us..."
Focusing on his task, the indifferent youth ignored whatever nonsense was coming from the girl, being reminded that an unhealthily overactive imagination was a 'common trait' shared by 'normal' children of his 'age group'.
Near had witnessed countless outsiders roaming around the estate, all of whom he dropped from mind the instant they walked out the front gate, none of whom he ever laid eyes on again. Seeing as he had memorized the names and faces of every regular in the building, he assumed this young stranger was yet another one of those prospective siblings: the daughter of an adult (or pair of adults) who visited the orphanage to explore the possibility of adopting another child. Fortunately, the House's top five students weren't allowed to be taken; the administrators would concoct some feigned excuse, and the family in question would be swept off to meet another talented orphan with far less investigative potential.
The artists and musicians charmed parents so easily--they were always the first to go.
The visitor remained on her knees whilst she observed the floor, her fascinated gaze tracing every corner of the magnificent structure until it met the far left side.
"Would you like me to help you finish this circuit?" she offered. "I promise to be careful."
Near sat with his back towards her, examining the alignment of another train segment as he held it up in the air. "Use the longest piece first, followed by the matching turns. Make sure the quarter track is the one nearest the end, and pay attention when you insert the accelerator--it'll snap in half if you slide it in the wrong way."
"Hm...I'd think a 'please' or 'thank you' would suffice."
"Please try not to break anything."
"Fair enough."
She shuffled over to the opposite side of the room, where seven neatly stacked segments were all that kept the incomplete track-line from reaching the small station.
"My name is Luna, by the way," she said. "It's a shame you don't remember what yours is, I would have very much liked to know."
'I know who I am,' he thought, repressing a scoff. 'Why would you need to?'
"I suppose it's easier that way, though."
Shutting an eye, Near lifted the piece and ran a thumb down the length of the thin rail, checking for any discrepancies on the smooth metal plane.
"What is?" he murmured.
"Forgetting," he heard her reply, alongside the small clicks of track-setting that bounced off the walls of the otherwise quiet room. "It's easier to become whoever you want to be when you don't have a name to follow you along. Without that, you can grow and change yourself around with a flick of a Nargle's tail! That's much harder to do if everyone remembers who the person attached to your name used to be." She sighed. "Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I'd forgotten my name..."
Near lowered his arm and eyed his temporary assistant, who was now arranging the pieces in the precise order with which he advised.
Forgetfulness wasn't the same as concealment. He was expected to hide himself until he became suitable for the title he strived for--a name in this place was something earned step by painstaking step, not a freedom taken for granted like the rest of the world had the privilege of. That was the way it worked around here, the way things have always been.
She was mistaken in thinking life was simpler this way.
"It's easier to grow with a name than it is to grow into one," he said plainly, glancing at the underside of the segment in his grasp.
"Maybe. You know, you're calm for someone who's forgotten who they were."
"I didn't forget."
"I'm sorry?"
Twisting a curl of his chalk-stained hair between his fingers, Near used his other hand to snap the final piece within its place, joining his section of the track with Luna's. The more silent he was, Near realized, the more she pressed for conversation: although he was under no obligation to respond, he deduced talking to this girl would be the fastest way to make her leave.
"My name," he replied, sounding halfway between weary and bothered. "It's N."
"Wait, how can you be sure?"
Just as he was about to strike her with another skeptical glower, he found the girl nearly tripping over herself to reach him, rushing to grab the apathetic hand tangled within his bangs to hold it gently within her own; she seemed to be more intrigued by the current state of his fingers than she was the fact his 'name' was only a single letter long.
"An infestation of Blargnits spot their victims' nails purple," she huffed. "I didn't even see it fly away...how disappointing, daddy would have dearly wanted to interview one."
Near drew his hand away from Luna's grasp.
Shame on her idiot father for encouraging such childish behaviour.
"Oh, well. The point is you remember."
'I hadn't forgotten,' he thought with determination, turning to start flipping switches on the station's main control panel. 'Stupid girl, how can I remember something I've never forgotten?'
The reprogramming Near forged into the main wiring worked like an expected charm. The two car lines sped in diametric directions across the lengthy railroad, up and down, over and under, multiple times faster than any responsible children's toy manufacturer would have ever considered allowing. The trains looked as if they were to crash into one another at one point on the northeastern end (under the desk behind its left foreleg), but the latter car would finish crossing the intersection a split second earlier than the first. Just as planned.
Finishing this project was a satisfying achievement, a constructive activity which allowed Near to slide through three and a half hours of solitary boredom with more ease than any other trivial pursuit. It was much more entertaining than going outside and having to deal with the 'normal' children, all of whom may have received outstanding grades but played on a far less-developed emotional plane than he. Being better than the norm would be his ticket out of this place, and on the pathway to gaining the recognition he knew he was capable of deserving.
(That man's recognition.)
Just a little more research, and it would be his and his alone.
"You don't look like an N."
Near guessed the expression he gave next asked her to repeat herself.
"You don't look like an N," she said, enunciating slightly. "You look much more like an S. Or a V."
He shifted his focus back to adjusting the settings on the control panel.
"Come to think of it, L would suit you rather nicely as well."
Near froze in place.
"Yes, yes, that's why your name doesn't fit..." Luna whispered, looking up at the ceiling as if she'd stumbled upon a life-changing revelation. "It's because you're two letters ahead of yourself. But don't feel badly about it, we're all ahead of ourselves one way or another."
Two steps ahead of himself? Near wasn't ahead of himself, he was ahead of his time. L was the original, the goal everyone in the institution aimed for. Originals can never be copied, but they can be improved--Near would not only earn the title, but surpass his predecessor in every way imaginable by correcting the flaws, by refining the positives, by being two steps ahead.
...what were the odds she would choose that letter?
(Four percent, of course.)
"Oh, look. It's snowing."
Speechless, the boy simply sat and stared, watching whilst Luna gazed fondly out the window as if giving thanks for each flake of frost that drifted by.
Hers was a different kind of innocence, the sort of open-mindedness the effects of maturity had the defining habit of stripping away. Near lost his naiveté years ago, he'd made sure of it. How was this girl able to maintain her own and still manage to make sense? It denied all forms of logic to even consider it possible. She must have been a fluke.
She must have been.
"Well, I should be going, then. Daddy's calling me."
That was funny, he hadn't heard anything.
The expression on Near's face almost turned desperate as he saw Luna rise to her feet and head straight for the exit. He wasn't certain what purpose the gibbered sound which escaped him next was meant to serve--it was somewhere between the words 'wait' and 'hold on'--but he hadn't the time to regret allowing himself to be so stupendously incoherent.
The unintelligible chatter, be that as it may, served its intent as Luna stopped her hurry and twirled around. "Pardon?"
Unwilling to risk a second verbal absurdity, Near kept quiet as he crawled over to the box of toys hidden in his closet and started digging, eventually discovering what he was looking for and returning to stand and face the slightly shorter girl. He held out the small object passively between his fingers, avoiding eye contact as his other hand found its way within his hair once again.
It appeared to be some kind of...blank puzzle piece.
"A gift?" she gasped, her eyes brightening as if she'd never seen anything of the sort before. "For me? How wonderful! I only wish I had something to give you in return..."
Near kneeled down and sat cross-legged on his former spot on the floor.
"It's fine," he muttered shortly. "I don't want anything."
"But it's customary!" insisted Luna. She ignored his subsequent silence to think for a moment. "This might take some planning...would you mind if I got back to you next holiday?"
He lifted his shoulders, shrugging off the question with disregard.
(She wouldn't be back next year.)
Near hadn't watched Luna walk away, but he could hear the smile in her voice.
"Happy Christmas, L."
He waited until she left the room before he set the trains on again.
Finding the capacity to succeed L didn't mean Near would be forgotten; it was impossible to change into another while disregarding one's own character completely, for it was that character which with one first drives himself to change. This was the mindset he chose to accept.
Then again, no one had ever spoken to him so directly before, let alone brought him to challenge what he once believed was best for himself. She implanted a fear within him, a sense of dread warning that if he continued down this path, there was a damn good chance he'd lose himself somewhere along the way.
He once underestimated the aptitude of his own imitation, but now, he knew better.
Whenever he completed his game and found the last piece missing, he'd remember the stranger who visited his room Christmas morning and what she once told him. She'd be proven right when he found the need to prove her wrong; only through remembering, would his puzzle be completed.
Because he wasn't someone who deserved to be forgotten.
Now, neither was she.
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A year later to the day, a young woman carrying a present elaborately wrapped in silver and white would return to the orphanage in Winchester, asking kindly for a snow-haired boy named N. The keepers at the front desk would mention something about him being taken in and transferred to a confidential location, a hidden place where not even the orphanage itself had a reliable method of contacting him.
Her heart would sink, though her expression would remain unchanged.
She'd fondle absently at the puzzle piece tied around her neck and apologize for taking their time.
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