Author's Notes: Oh gosh, here we go again. Looks like I only ever turn up around here anymore to post birthday fanfic for myself, haha… I almost didn't even write anything this year, but then at the very last moment (we're talking, like, 48 hours before the self-imposed deadline, haha whoops) I decided that I just had to write something. The past year has been very difficult for me, and I haven't felt very inspired, but I'm trying very hard to work on that, so I decided to type up a little thing I've had in my head for a while now, about Luna Lovegood, because she is all about inspiring herself and believing in impossible things.

The disclaimer! I own nothing, except the order that I put the words into.

Pairing(s): (none)

Summary: Very few people see the world the way that Luna Lovegood does, but that's alright, because she believes in all sorts of amazing things, whether or not anyone else can see them.

Warnings: (none)

Dedication: This story is for anyone who believes (or wants to believe!) in themselves, and in the everyday wonder of the world around them.

Other stuff: I know it's short, but I also like to think it's sweet. Please enjoy!

.o.O.o.

Among Frivolous Thoughts Are Wondrous Things

.o.O.o.

It was late – the middle of the night, probably. Moonlight was streaming in through the sheer curtains pulled over the windows, combining with the soft glow of the bedside night-light and bathing the room in a comfortingly ethereal misty blue and golden hue of distorted shadows. Branches of the oak tree just outside moved back and forth in a gentle night breeze, and the house occasionally emitted quiet, settling sounds. Crickets and frogs and the occasional nightingale chirped soft sounds from outside, but neither the peripheral movements of the tree branches or the quiet sounds of the summer night were anything out of the ordinary, or enough to cause a disturbance.

Luna Lovegood was not sure why she was awake.

She had been asleep until moments ago, and was not a particularly light sleeper, or prone to restlessness in the night. Laying still, she blinked curiously at the ceiling, trying to puzzle out if she had been having a particularly vivid dream, or if there had been some sort of momentary disturbance from in or outside the house that could have woken her. A minute passed, and then another, and the quiet calm of the night remained unchanged, yet sleep did not make any attempt at returning to her. Sitting up, Luna gazed around her room, finding all of her odds and ends just exactly where they should be, and always had been.

But there was something.

Shifting, Luna drew her legs out of bed, hanging them over the side, and pausing for a moment in thought before coming to a decision and sliding off of the mattress, the wooden floor cold on her bare feet. Disregarding the minor discomfort, she smoothed the bed-wrinkles out of her knee-length nightdress, and padded softly to the window, curious about what this night held that had awoken her. Drawing the gossamer curtains back and tying them open, she pressed her hands to the chilled glass of the window, leaning her forehead against it as well after a moment, in an attempt to get closer to the world outside.

It was a clear night, with a quarter moon hanging high in the sky, and the stars blinking in the heavens beyond, both casting enough light that Luna could see the landscape outside quite clearly enough. The great oak tree blocked a portion of what she was able to see, but out of the rest of the window she observed the vegetable garden, flower beds, and scrubby bushes of her yard. Once more, everything was in its proper place and looking perfectly normal, but Luna continued looking anyway, enjoying the night shadows that made the scene look so differently than it normally did in the daytime.

Just when she was starting to feel sleepy once again, and about to turn away from the window and make her way back into bed – there it was. An unfamiliar shadow moved ever so slightly in a bush near the vegetable garden, detaching briefly and flickering across the moonlit lawn to disappear into a flutterby bush, which quivered sporadically for a moment, before settling down into its normal, gently rippling movements.

Luna smiled to herself, curiosity satisfied. She left the curtains drawn to bathe the room in pale moonlight, and, before she slipped under the covers, gently extinguished the bedside night light.

Although she did not know what was out there, Luna felt endeared to whatever new, small creature was going about its nighttime life outside. Curious of what it could be, but too tempted by sleep to dwell too strongly on hypothesis, Luna drifted off to scattered thoughts of unlikely, wondrous possibilities.

.o.O.o.

The following morning, Luna woke to birds singing in a new day, and golden sunlight streaming in through the window. She smiled, and squirmed around sleepily for a moment, before realizing that today felt important somehow, but unable to place why that would be.

After a moment it came to her – the something from the night before! Sitting up, she glanced to her window, with its curtains still pulled wide, and pushed herself out of bed. Padding across the floor, she peered outside, finding the world outside transformed by daylight, and looking not nearly as mysterious as the night before. She had not expected to see anything out of the ordinary, but she knew that there had been something last night, even if the day held no proof of it. It was just going to have to be a day for exploring.

Luna dressed in a light summer dress pulled over a pair of sheer leggings that stopped just above her bare ankles, and pulled her hair halfway up to keep it out of her face. Grabbing her bag from beside her desk chair, she swung it over her shoulder and skipped down the spiral staircase.

"Good morning!" She called to her father as she crossed through the printing room. Xenophilius Lovegood looked up from the puffing, whirring machinery he was working on and smiled at his daughter.

"Good morning, Luna-bug. Where are you off to so eagerly this morning?"

Luna grinned brightly, snagging fruit out of a bowl on the overladen kitchen table, and putting it in her bag with her notebooks, collecting jars, and luck charms. "I saw something last night, out my window. I don't know what it was, but I'm going to find out."

Her father smiled warmly, encouragingly at the news, over his blustering printing press. "How very exciting, my dear! Do have fun, and let me know if you won't be home in time for dinner."

"I will!" Luna replied, bustling out the door and into the sun.

She spent the morning close to the ground, crawling through bushes and investigating the soft, dusty earth for signs of footprints. Finally, after checking all around the house, Luna found a patch of disturbed grass and dirt on the outskirts of the garden, near the flutterby bush where she had seen the creature disappear to through her window. Pulling out her notebook, Luna carefully wrote down the location, measured the area, and collected a few hairs she found stuck in the lower branches of the flutterby bush.

"Small, furry, brownish-grey." She narrated to herself as she wrote. "Quick. Scurries on all fours, long tail, funny shape near the neck… large ears, or possibly wings."

Satisfied with her examination of the area, and her description that she could remember from the night before, Luna put her notebook back, and took out her fruit to snack on while she followed the thin, winding paths that wandered through the fields surrounding their house, sticking close to the treeline. Keeping her eyes at knee-level and below, she kept a keen eye out for any signs of broken sticks, scattered leaves, freshly scratched dirt, and the occasional fur or feather caught in the bramble – all frivolous, beautiful details that many people would miss, but that Luna picked out with an eager, curious, attentiveness.

"I know you're out there, little creature." She said, smiling to herself, as she hopped over a fallen log, stopping to look inside its hollowed insides, just in case.

The sun was high overhead before Luna knew it, and she was much further from home than she had perhaps intended to wander. She hadn't seen any signs of anything out of the ordinary in quite some time, and it seemed likely that the creature, whatever it was, had remained closer to her home than she had thought. It meant that she had gone quite out of her way to look for it, but that was alright, because Luna had found that it was almost always better to be sure than hasty.

Suddenly, from up ahead, Luna heard a chorus of shouts, and startled in alarm, before realizing that she had managed to get quite close to the orchard at the far end of the Weasley property, which was apparently currently occupied. Curious and friendly, Luna wandered even closer, and as she got up the hill, saw that there was a scrimmage game of Quidditch taking place.

"You're going to have to throw faster than that if you're wanting any chance of scoring, ickle brother!" one of the Weasley twins shouted, as the other laughed and swept by, clutching a beat-up, black-and-white checkered Muggle sports ball.

"You're cheating!" Ron Weasley yelled back, hovering in place with an irritated expression.

"Prove it!" the other twin challenged, seeming to forgo any semblance of upkeeping gameplay properly, as he chucked the ragged ball straight at Ron's head. Cringing, Ron braced for impact, but at the last second Harry Potter swooped in and caught the ball, laughing.

"Close one!" Harry remarked, grinning at Ron. "Come on, we'll split up. They'll have to split up too, to follow us."

"Easy for you to say." Ron grumbled, the toes of his holey trainers scuffing the ground dejectedly. "You've got a broom that actually goes."

"It's alright if your broom isn't fast, if you're clever." Luna put in, and Ron, Harry, and the twins all snapped their attention to her, startled.

"Bloody hell, Luna." Ron exclaimed, recovering first. "What are you doing here?"

Luna smiled, walking forward to join their group, bare toes digging into the soft earth of the orchard. "I was exploring a bit, looking for something I saw last night, and I guess I wandered further than I thought, because here I am."

"Here you are." Ron echoed, giving Harry a sideling look.

"You wanna play?" one of the twins (Luna never could quite tell them apart, but as they were always together, it had never seemed particularly necessary to) asked. "We haven't got another broom, but you could take Ron's, and he could just run around shouting on foot, for all the difference it would make."

"Hey!"

"Oh, no, that's alright, thank you!" Luna said quickly, intervening before the brothers could fight. "I should actually be heading back towards home, before all the clues vanish."

"Right." Harry said, nodding and trying to sound serious, despite his grin. "Makes sense." Ron did a poor job of holding back a laugh at the words, but Luna didn't mind the teasing. Unlike others, Ron and Harry had always seemed a bit fond in their incredulousness over her, and it made her feel a bit like they were all friends. As such, she figured it would be safe to let them know what she was up to.

"I don't suppose you've seen a small, strange little creature scurrying about, have you?" She asked, holding her hands a little ways apart to indicate the size. "About this big, soft looking, large ears or possibly wings? Whiskers on its face?"

"Er…" Harry stuttered, looking to Ron. Perhaps he didn't know whether this matched the description of something he didn't know about, but that other witches or wizards would. Luna thought it must be very curious to grow up without magic.

"You sure you don't mean a rabbit?" One of the twins asked, and the other laughed, clapping his brother on the back. "I'm sure we've got a few of those around here somewhere."

"No, not a rabbit." Luna replied. "But I did wonder for a moment if it might have been a jackalope. Only, those aren't from around here at all. Unless an American brought one over, and lost it, I suppose."

Ron shook his head as if he had no idea what Luna was talking about. He probably didn't, but Luna wouldn't hold it against him – after all, she had no idea about how Quidditch went, but that didn't make it any less real.

"Sorry, Luna – haven't seen anything like that." Harry told her, kindly.

"Well, that's alright." Luna said, smiling. "I'm sure I'll find it anyways. Enjoy your game."

"Yeah." Ron said, as the twins began growing restless and trying to knock each other off their brooms. "You too."

Waving goodbye, Luna turned around and began to head back home, taking a different way back to cover more ground for clues, just in case.

.o.O.o.

In the end, Luna did make it home for dinner, and told her father all about her day's adventures. He smiled and nodded, and encouraged her to keep trying to find her mysterious creature, and Luna thought about how wonderful it was to have someone who believed her and supported her, so she gave her father an extra-tight hug after washing the dishes and before heading up to bed.

That night, Luna left the window open, curtains fluttering gently in the summer breeze. When she woke up in the middle of the night, stars blinking peacefully in the sky at her, she smiled and quickly crossed to her window, peering out into her yard. It took a second, but then she saw a small, furry shape even closer than it had been the night before, rustling about in the flowers by the front porch and investigating the watering can, before stilling, scenting the air, and promptly scurrying off again.

Luna crawled back into bed and fell asleep with a smile on her face.

.o.O.o.

The next morning, Luna woke up bright and early, quickly got dressed, grabbed her bag, and rushed outside to the flowers by the front porch. Something had definitely been there, as patches of flowers were bent at the stems, some with petals nibbled. The lawn didn't quite reach all the way to the house, which left Luna with a perfect ring of dirt to track tiny footprints in, and although they were small, and seemed to start and stop at random, she was able to pick them out all the way around the house to the oak tree outside her window (which had small scratches at the base, and Luna wondered if this creature could climb, or just wished very much that it could). Just in case it couldn't, Luna temporarily abandoned her trail to run back into the house and grab the basket that she had filled with acorns from the tree a few days earlier, placing it by the base of the trunk. She thought it would be very sad if the poor thing wanted acorns, but couldn't reach them.

From there, Luna continued to follow the trail of footprints, which led around the house, and eventually stopped near the door in back that led down to the cellar. Luna gasped in surprise and delight – the cellar door had never quite closed properly, and could easily be jarred open. Was it possible that her creature had gotten in and stayed in? If she went in now, would it be there waiting for her?

Nearly breathless in anticipation, Luna jostled the door open and looked down into the darkness of the cellar. She felt as though there was no way she could actually know, but somehow the air felt different; alive. Luna carefully took each step down the stairs one at a time, dust motes swirling in the air around her, and she couldn't help but feel like there was an invisible pair of footsteps following alongside her own.

Reaching the bottom of the stairs, Luna pulled her wand from behind her ear to light the lamps along the walls. As they glimmered to life, a flicker in the fireplace caught her eye, but she blinked and it was gone.

"Hello?" Luna called out to the shadows. "Are you there?"

There was no answer, and in all honestly Luna had not been expecting one, but figured it would be polite to call out a greeting, in any case.

Luna spent the afternoon searching every corner of the cellar, top to bottom, for any clue of her mystery creature. She found a few disturbances – little scratches, or areas where something soft had brushed whisps into the dust – and often got the feeling that she wasn't entirely alone in the golden, flickering shadows, but she supposed that all that could have been nothing other than mice and her imagination. Still, she felt that there was something.

By the end of the day, when the light coming through the open door at the top of the stairs was no longer golden, but a cool, pale blue, Luna's knees and elbows were black and blue from crouching down on the floor in her search all day. She was disappointed at not finding anything substantial, but her belief and determination were not bruised in the slightest.

"Well, goodnight, then." Luna called down to the cellar, as she extinguished the lights and shut the door. "I'll try again tomorrow."

On her way back to the house, Luna could have sworn she heard a rustling in the bushes alongside her on the path, but every time she stopped to look and listen, so did the rustling. "Alright, then." She said, smiling as she made her way up the porch and into the house. "You're shy, that's okay."

She told her father about her day's search over dinner, and they speculated about what kind of a creature it could be. Her father hadn't seen or heard anything out of the ordinary, but encouraged Luna to keep looking, and to let him know if she found anything. Luna assured him that she would, and headed up to her room for bed. As she was changing into her nightclothes, she glanced at the open window, and blinked in surprise - something was on the windowsill! Heart fluttering, Luna dashed to the window, and found… an acorn.

A single acorn, off to the side, and nearly at the edge where it could easily fall off, and it could have been a coincidence, but she was sure that it wasn't. Plucking it up delicately between her thumb and forefinger, Luna inspected it, but it really wasn't anything out of the ordinary, in and of itself. Still, it was something. On a whim, Luna pulled her notebook out of her bag, ripped out a blank page, wrote a note, and placed it on the rocking chair to the side of her window, the acorn placed carefully on top of the paper.

'I believe in you' the note read, and it was one of the most simple truths Luna had ever written down.

.o.O.o.

The next morning, Luna woke up with the sun, to the sound of the summer birds, and felt as though it was going to be a good day. Rolling over, she held her breath, barely daring to hope, and glanced at the rocking chair beside the window where she had left her note.

Gasping in surprise at what she saw, Luna threw the covers back and jumped out of bed, and was at the rocking chair in less than a moment.

The note was still there, but the acorn was gone, and in its place were several dusty pawprints, a few strands of silky, silvery-brown fur, and one tiny, delicate feather.

Luna smiled. Maybe it wasn't much, but it certainly felt like an 'I believe in you, too.'

.o.O.o.

the end