Hey again everyone, it's been half a life-age since i've uploaded anything so i thought i'd get back into the creative swing of things. Sorry if it's terrible or difficult or anything, this is only a prologue and so no speech is involved just yet- you'll have to make do with description and action :) hope you like my take on Luna's character. x Once again, if i owned the harry potter universe i wouldn't be writing this, i'd be having all sorts of fun down in the slytherin common-room. x
Italics- written word, usually Luna's notebooks x
I forgot my homework again... which is typical seeing as I stayed up all night catching up. After so little sleep you'd think I'd be out like a light on the table, but I can never fall asleep during the day... or really at night either. I just drift in and out of touch with reality now and then.
Professor Snape was never one to be forgiving, but I think he realises I'm exhausted. And besides, Ravenclaws are known for their genius, not for their ability to lie. He sounded muffled, and his face moved too slow.
I could barely hear him.
Luna's face remained smooth and expression-less as the class wore on. The class passing in a sideways blur, her page filling with detailed notes regardless of her waning attention. Movements around her went at super speed and her eyes remained glassy, hair falling in silent ripples about her face.
Scratching of quills were the only sounds which reached her ears save for the positive thrumb of life from the castle walls, voices and human movements muffled and unimportant.
Ring of bell, scrape of chairs, rumble of chatter and a smile graces her fair features. She rises and floats from class, books clutched to her chest. She'd embroidered her robes, on the inside, and her shoes matched... but not in colour. Today was blue and a deep purple, matching the subtle colour across her eyelids, blue at the lashes and purple glitter to the edge.
Outside of the class, her head is pounding with the matched thronging of a hundred excited voices, each similar, each not quite identical to the rest. Each voice buzzing with a shallow-breathed and dull worded ignorance, and their own noise.
Sharp elbows dig into her ribs and force her sideways, away from the door to the damp-scented dungeon she'd just passed through. Catching the book that had fallen from her stack quickly with the opposite hand, she swung to the side and kept her footing. Matching tap as each foot lightly touches the ground again, in a step that would make any dancer sigh. Her hair rose and fell about her face and she stared blankly at the now empty corridor surrounding her. Students up ahead poked pointed noses over their shoulders to cackle at her from behind pink-taloned hands.
Allowing her hair to first settle over her shoulders, where it rippled like sunshine on water, Luna slowly set off after the others. Her fluid movements made her seem more of a phantom in the empty corridor than a typical stressed student.
Trailing a hand along the wall, she breathed in the silence that the students had left behind for her. An elegant, open rose fanned out underneath her tracing figure, in imaginary lines, vines and leaves casting off and following her as she continued slightly faster. Reaching a turning left, her nail scraped to the edge of the wall and off- the harsh sound echoing off the walls in the heavy silence, a small crumble of stone and dust followed it. Her nail was stained slightly grey and broken. She smiled still.
Her imaginary rose faded into the back of her mind, and then completely, as she climbed the tiny winding staircase she found there. The portrait hanging mere centimetres from the staircase alcove chuckled slightly, shaking his curl covered head before sliding back into place over the space. The only evidence of Luna having been there was a sprinkle of dust on the corridor floor and a smiling portrait stroking slowly at a knee-length beard.
Noise assaulted her ears as Luna twisted past a suit of armour, standing to attention beside the stairwell. She was two corridors away from the great hall and a low vibration from the hundreds of raised voices was a gentle caress rather than deafening. Grinning lightly, she clicked her heels together and saluted the polished metal man, which mimicked her movement before stepping back to fill the space in front of the stairwell- effectively blocking the alcove from view.
Luna turned into a small corridor, walked quickly and determinedly directly ahead of her and turned the doorknob into what appeared to be an abandoned classroom. Sudden silence filled her own body then as even her breathing stopped. This room was a sad one... she noted to bring herself back here once she had eaten to solve the castle's problem. She stroked the palm of her hand over the cracked wood of the door-frame before striding across the tapping, echoing floor.
She allowed her magic to coo at the castle room's own cracked and dull magic, no doubt a comforting gesture. The magic in this room was a sore point for the castle, where the collective thoughts and feelings of all who had used it had become too much for the old walls and runes to contain. The magic gave the castle almost an entity, it had the ghosts of feelings written into the runes by uncontrolled and wanton magic over the years, where within students had been training to contain this magic. Luna twirled lightly through the centre of the room, humming a few notes to a nameless tune.
The opposite door, past the scattered and dusty tables, and single empty cupboard, seemed in better condition than the rest of the room. So much so that they seemed out of place entirely. Luna took a single breath of the dusty air once more, and strode through this next door with a confidence nobody else ever saw.
On the other side, this door looked like a broom closet with a broken hinge. Luna closed the door and patted it lightly, earning a shiver from the wood that tickled at her fingertips like electricity. Luna definitely would be back later.
This corridor was filled with the steady stream of students, heading in a river to it's mouth at the doors of the great hall. The scent of pastry and gravy drew the gentle trickle of students downhill and through the doors. Luna easily stepped into the throng and flitted lightly between the assorted students, reaching the opposite edge of the stream to part off towards her house-table. A golden-crusted pie sat directly in front of her favourite seat and she giggled at the house-elves' thoughtfulness. And immediately dug-in.
So what? Being a genius is hungry work.
Another argument as breaking out over at the Gryffindor table, not that it was unusual. The air around Harry and his friends positively throbbed with their anger and magic. Harry looked tired, but Hermione and Ronald were red-faced and talking animatedly, gesturing in random directions in jerking and near violent movements. It made Luna's head throb in time.
Harry met Luna's eyes, his rolled excessively. Luna smiled serenely at him and nodded, before levitating the nearest Treacle Tart to rest to his right, returning the wink and chewing happily. The throbbing lessened then as Hermione smiled gratefully over at her too, while Ronald scowled.
For a moment, Luna was terribly lonely. She looked as her fork, coated in thick gravy and flakes of pie-crust, working at stuck food in her teeth with her tongue.
A final swallow and she stood, arranging her napkin into an intricate origami bird before leaving the table again. Many eyes had watched her enter, and again many watched her leave. The stares and whispers came in waves, where she could go weeks unnoticed until a new rumour or issue of the quibbler is circulated around the castle. This time it was only stares.
I've found another room in need of comfort, there are broken hearts there too. i'll find a way of helping hogwarts to stay patched up. Sometimes i wich someone else could have the same sensetivity, so i wouldn't have to work this hard alone- surely Dumbledore can tell how broken the magic is here. magical beings always need love and care, a grooming now an again- a scratch to take off the old, dusty and scaled skin to make way for new.
the ghosts help too- though myrtle may need a bit of a fixing first...
be honest, how terrible was it... i send love
xx