The Life of Luna Lovegood
THE EARLY YEARS
The sun was green.
The sky was still blue, but its color was closer to that of a ripe eggplant than to the blue of the clear, tropical sea.
From the moment Luna Lovegood put on her father's blue-tinted glasses, she no longer saw the world as a place defined by scientific boundaries; instead, it was a realm of infinite possibilities, where fantasy was not a dream, but rather a reality.
But, not everyone saw the world as Luna Lovegood did, and this crushing realization came on the first day of kindergarten in Welwitschia Elementary.
To the soundtrack of screaming children running around in their typical five-year-old antics, Luna Lovegood trotted onto the dirt outside Welwitschia Elementary in green satin slippers that her mother had sewn the day before. These slippers prevented her from joining her peers; she could not get her new shoes ruined when her mother had painstakingly made them for her (despite the fact that her mother's only talent seemed to be writing stories.) Instead, Luna sat on the bench watching other five-year-olds run around in circles.
"Oy! Hey, you over there!" came a boyish shout from her right. "What are you doing just sitting there? You should join us!"
Luna turned her head to the right and saw a short, lean boy with blonde hair that was so light that it could have white. On each side stood a rounder boy who were so similar that they had to be twins.
"I can't. My shoes can't get dirty, and the sun isn't green today," Luna replied.
"What do you mean? Shoes were meant to get dirty. Besides, the sun isn't green; it's yellow."
"Nope. Days when the sun isn't green aren't worth getting my shoes dirty."
"…Whatever. You have fun in your corner, weirdo."
With that statement, Draco Malfoy, Vincent Crabbe, and Gregory Goyle ran off to play tag, and Luna continued to sit on the bench, watching other five-year-old scream and play on the playground.
"Um…excuse me?" came a meek, tentative voice from her left.
When Luna looked up to see the owner of the voice, she saw an even smaller boy than before with mousy brown hair in disarray.
"Sorry to disturb you, but you're crying."
Luna had sat so long on that bench that she had failed to realize that tears rolled down her face from the cruel words of Malfoy.
"Oh, I didn't even realize it."
"It's ok. I guess it's perfectly normal."
"As normal as a purple sun?"
The boy was now confused by immensely intrigued by this crying girl who talked about purple suns, and for whatever reason (maybe he secretly wanted this girl to like him), he replied,
"Yeah. As normal as a blue moon."
And that is how Luna Lovegood first met Rolf Scamander, a boy who taught her that there may be people in the world more eccentric than her.