Written for: QLFC Round 7
Team: Kenmare Kestrels
Position: Chaser 2
Prompts: The Next Karate Kid (1994)
(emotion) envy
(word) aftertaste
(genre) angst
Word-count: 1,018 (excluding notes and title)
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Sunflowers
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Julie-san, fighting not good. But if must fight ... win.
— Sergeant Kesuke Miyagi ("The Next Karate Kid")
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Her mother used to plant sunflowers by the dozen. And one day, aphids infiltrated. They attached themselves to new, fresh growth, and the sunflowers wilted and died. Luna's mother had gazed out at the garden, a picture of melancholic nostalgia.
Luna had joined her. She had enjoyed the sight of those yellow flowers, so strong and bright, as if in denial to all things typical. "How do we get rid of them?" she'd asked, and her voice had been young and sweet.
"Oh," Pandora Lovegood had sighed. "It does no good to fight. This is only natural, child."
Luna had believed her mother, then, as she had believed in so many things.
But that was then. And this is now.
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My, but the years slip away fast, just as her mother had slipped away into the land of the dead. One day here, and the next gone.
All the sunflowers are dead, now.
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Her slippers are gone. She stares at nothing, for a moment, and she doesn't know what she's thinking, even though she's Luna; so she has to know what Luna is thinking — isn't that funny? It doesn't feel funny. It feels … it feels sad, she decides, and scrubs at her eyes. "It's the Nargles," she whispers. It has to be. Nargles have oval-like bodies, with tiny little legs, and they're always taking away important things.
Just last week, the Nargles had stolen her papers. But it doesn't matter. It does no good to hunt them down and fight them. So she gathered Butterbeer corks slowly, and carefully, and threaded them together with melancholic sadness, but the cork necklace doesn't work, and the Nargles keep taking things, and she is just like her mother, isn't she?
Ah, Loony Lovegood, she hums. What good is love when it hurts this much? The thought leaves a strong, bitter aftertaste, but she washes it away with daydreams and the memory of her mother's lullaby.
She misses the sunflowers.
She misses Mum.
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"There is no such thing as a Nargle," Hermione says, and her voice is insistent and pushy. Her nose is thrust up in the air; her eyes pierce Luna; and her eyebrow is raised perilously high.
"You just can't see them, Hermione," Luna offers delicately. "Not everyone can see them. Maybe you're just not looking properly."
Hermione's eyes flash. "Don't give me that, Luna," she snaps. "I've researched extensively, and I'm quite certain I'm correct." The girl softens, abruptly. "I just want to help, Luna. Who is taking your things? Tell me. I can help. We'll go to Professor McGonagall, and she'll make sure that those who are responsible are held accountable for their deplorable actions."
Luna smiles, and for a moment — just one — she is not dreamy. "There is no point."
Hermione scoffs. "Of course there is. Justice is a very valid point."
Luna shrugs and stares off into space.
Hermione sighs and shakes her head. "I can't make you listen to me," she says finally, "but I can admit this …" She sucks in a breath of air. "I envy you, Luna." She sounds sincere. Her fists are clenched; her stance wide; and her eyes are unusually dark and stormy.
Luna's gaze flickers to Hermione, as light and quick as a hummingbird. "Me?" she can't help but ask.
Hermione nods. "There is something very honest in fighting for what you believe in, whether that be Nargles or House-Elves."
Luna turns away, and sees — not a dream — but reality. "I don't fight."
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Voldemort doesn't come in a wave. He'd been there, before. He had been waiting. He does not spontaneously appear in 1998, like some ghost, no matter that the public had refused to acknowledge his existence previously. So when he attacks, it's not a wave … but the wind, just as natural and ever-present.
She doesn't know what exactly changes (what makes her change). I don't fight. But there is a girl on the ground. This girl has blood on her pretty brown skin, and her pretty brown eyes are wide open, and her mouth is gaping, with saliva pooling at the edges.
This pretty girl is in Ravenclaw. And if Luna's honest with herself — just this once — this is one of the girls that stole her things. And now she's dead. The Nargle is dead.
Time slows around her. Nargles look like aphids. Hogwarts is her garden. She is not her mother.
Perhaps it is not natural, the way her mind forms these connections — perhaps it says something about her, that she reaches for her wand and prepares a curse with her lips …
But she's Loony Lovegood. For once, the thought is not bitter, or pained.
She mourns the loss of the pretty brown Ravenclaw girl. It does no good to fight, or to die, but if fighting is a must to protect her home, then that is what she must do.
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"Reducto," she says, and the man explodes into a fine spray of bloody mist. She does not scream the word "Reducto". She whispers it, almost. It's gentle — that whisper — and calm, with the weight of intention. The wizards and witches around her (her classmates … schoolchildren, she thinks absently) are spitting out curses, as if they do not know what it is that they are doing. As if they do not understand. This is a fight, and she doesn't know if they're aware of the gravity of all this killing, even though she knows so many things. And then she's not thinking anymore — she's fighting. Her throat burns — it honestly burns — not because of her torrential spell-casting, but because of suppressed tears. Forgive me, Mum.
She has killed her mother all over again. She has killed her in her memories.
This is her fight.
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So yes, Pandora Lovegood had sighed, "Oh. It does no good to fight. This is only natural, child," and Luna had believed her mother, then, as she had believed in so many things.
But that … that was then. And this is now.