A brief explanation: the next chapter of Muggleborn Chaser is giving me nothing but trouble. Here's something I wrote to take my mind off of it, and see if I could get the words flowing again. It's not the start of a novel-length story, just a new idea and some new characters to work with.
After the chaos of the end of Harry's summer, getting on the Hogwarts Express seemed like a door into normal life. Or, at least, into the kind of life he wanted. He hadn't been Kissed, his wand hadn't been snapped, and he was on his way to Hogwarts, out of reach of Voldemort and his Death Eaters alike. If Ron and Hermione stood a little closer than usual, and they hurried onto the train without pausing on the platform, it was easy to blame the usual Weasley-caused lateness, and not any kind of lingering paranoia.
Once on the train, they found a compartment with Neville in it before they found an empty one. Ginny had gone off with a group of giggling younger girls, Fred and George with a group of giggling older girls, and the four of them were quite comfortable sitting together. They couldn't exactly blame Neville for his perfectly innocent inquiry about their summer, but they did share a somewhat weary look before they started to explain.
The train was barely in motion, and the explanation nowhere near complete, when the compartment door slid open unexpectedly. They treated the invasion with rather more alarm than usual, with Hermione actually grabbing her wand. Ron fumbled for his as well, and when he failed to find it, lunged forward to place his body between Harry and the door. But he seemed to recognize the intruder, and sat back almost at once, though he didn't offer to introduce her.
Harry had never seen her before in his life. She was a small girl, so frail and young-looking that Harry would have supposed her to be a first-year if not for the bronze and blue tie she wore - the only article of her clothing that resembled a regulation Hogwarts uniform in any way. She looked as surprised to see him as he was to see her, but the expression didn't fade, until he realized that she always looked that way. Her hair was either dirty blond or blond and dirty, and her jewelry was rather more fruity that he was used to. "Harry Potter," she said, and her voice was as wispy as she herself. "I would like to have a conversation with you."
His friends all looked at him as if he would know what to do, so he answered. "I guess you've come to the right place, then, uh…"
"Luna Lovegood," she supplied. "I am glad to have found you, but I would like to have a conversation with just you."
Harry was about to consent, but Neville interrupted him. "You shouldn't go anywhere with her."
Harry looked at him with some surprise. "Neville?"
With everyone's attention on him, Neville looked a little sheepish, but his voice was firm. "Well, there are two reasons, Harry. First, since he's back, he or one of the Death Eaters could have her under the Imperius, and she could attack you. Second, the Prophet is always looking for a scandal to pin on you, and she could accuse you of . . . behaving, uh, improperly."
Harry looked at the girl - Luna - with new interest, to see if Neville's accusations seemed even remotely believable, and to see how she would react to them. She still looked surprised, but also a little forlorn. "Your companion's reasons are both good ones, but neither is in fact the case." He frowned at the word 'companion', but she went on. "I would offer to hold our conversation without my wand," and she flicked her head to the left, revealing that it was tucked behind her right ear, "but that just makes the second concern worse, even if it solves the first."
Harry was at a momentary loss, not wanting to believe that the girl meant him any harm, but not really having any way to convince Neville otherwise. He was just starting to get angry at his predicament, since apparently he was so penned in by Voldemort on one side and the Ministry on the other that he couldn't even talk to someone on the train, when Ron snorted. "Oh, for Pete's sake, it's only Loony Lovegood," he said. "She's harmless enough."
The girl nodded solemnly. "Thank you, Ronald," she said, and from there it was just a matter of logistics. Ron and Hermione went to the prefects' meeting, Neville stood guard at the door, and Harry and Luna had their conversation in their newly private compartment.
As soon as they were alone, she plucked her wand from behind her ear and handed it to him. "There," she said. "I don't think I could stab someone, and I'm not strong enough to bash your head in, and nobody would believe me if I said you tried to kiss me, so I think you're perfectly safe now."
He put the wand down on the bench between them and sighed. "I'm sorry it's so hard for us to trust people," he said, and he meant it. "It's just…" and he gave a vague gesture that didn't really encompass all the wrongs that had been done to him over the past four years.
"Do you know anything about Seers, Harry?" she asked.
Her blithe ignoring of his apology threw him off for a moment, and his answer came out a little sarcastic. "Well, I do have two years of Divination."
She waited for him to continue, and when he didn't, she nodded with satisfaction. "Very little, then?"
Harry looked at her with increasing annoyance, but he couldn't really pretend she was wrong, so he dropped his glare. "Not very much, no," he said, trying to soften his voice as well.
"Some Seers say things which turn out to be true," she said, not bothering to ask if he was interested in learning more, "and people expend an awful lot of effort trying to figure out what they mean. That's the kind of Seer Professor Trelawney is meant to be, though I've never heard her say anything that's true at all."
"I have," he interrupted. "Heard her say something true. I mean, the kind of true that you're talking about, not just that it's time for lunch or something."
"Have you?" she said, and when she was actually surprised, the effect was almost comical. "A real prophecy?"
"Too real," he said.
She cocked her head and gazed at the other side of the compartment for a long moment, then refocused on him. "We will have to talk more about this. A real prophecy. How very unlikely. You may find the rest of this conversation to be less interesting that I had hoped." Politeness kept Harry from agreeing with her out loud. "What I was wanting to tell you was that there is another kind of Seer as well. The kind that sees things."
"You mean, like, visions?" he asked.
"Visions," she confirmed, "of things that are true, or of things that may or may not turn out to be true. Futures or possible futures." Her voice grew small, and she looked almost frightened. "I think I may be this kind."
"You have visions?" he asked, almost despite himself.
"I have had three visions," she confirmed.
Harry rubbed his temple. The girl hadn't done anything to make him believe her, and he was tired of strange things happening to him, so he almost asked her why she was telling him this. But she seemed to sincerely think that it was important that he hear, and being rude to her felt downright cruel, so he changed his mind almost in the middle of speaking. "Why...why aren't you telling Professor Trelawney?" It sounded like a stupid idea as soon as he said it, so he added, "Or someone who could help?"
"I don't know what kind of help you think I need, but I wanted to tell you first. The first vision I had came the night after the final task, and you and I were the only ones in it. If it turns out to be important, I didn't want to tell anybody untrustworthy," she explained.
Harry had to appreciate that idea, at least. He was even more tired of being left out of the strange things that happened around him. He nodded, and said, "All right."
She took it as he had intended, as permission to tell him everything. "We were in a huge room with high ceilings, and row after row of shelves. It was dark and scary, and your wand was the only light we had. I feel like maybe we weren't alone, but I never saw anyone else with us. The shelves were full of glass balls, each one on its own little stand, with its own little sign. We walked to a particular row, and walked down to a particular ball, and you read the sign and picked it up. As soon as you did, there was a bright light from the other end of the row. You looked and saw what it was, but I was looking at your face. We had been scared before, but now we were angry and embarrassed and really frightened, like we'd been fooled and placed in great danger. I turned around to see who had lit the light, and that's when the vision ended."
He couldn't help but feel chilled, both by the vision she described, and by the real fear in her voice as she described it. At the same time, it was hard to know if it really meant anything at all. "What's the difference between a vision and a dream?" he asked, looking for a reason to discount the whole thing.
"A good question, since it came to me in my sleep," she said, her voice a little steadier. "I don't dream in color. I have dreams sometimes which are a great comfort to me, and others which remind me of very sad things, and there's always a moment when I realize that it can't be real, because everything is just shades of brown. But the vision was in full color."
He looked at her for a moment, not sure what to say next. "Do you remember anything else?" he finally asked.
"Seers who have visions experience their visions in many different ways. Perhaps as many different ways as there are Seers," she said, not looking directly at him. Harry felt the same flash of annoyance he'd felt when she ignored his apology, but he tried to temper it this time, and decided to let her finish. "Some of them get sight, sound, smells, and even the ability to move around, or at least change their perspective. Some of them get just sight, or just sound- which makes the word 'visions' seem rather imprecise to me. I seem to be somewhere in the middle. All I get is sight and emotion, but I get them very clearly. The shock on your face when you saw the source of the light at the end, and the fear and frustration I felt just afterwards, they were almost overwhelming."
"I'm sorry that happened to you," he said. He felt like a parent trying to comfort a child after a nightmare, an unfamiliar and uncomfortable feeling.
"Being a Seer is a double-edged sword at best," she said, looking straight into his eyes. "But there is something to hope for, at least. Seers who experience their visions more fully find that they are hopelessly vague. They are so difficult to interpret that they can't be sure what they mean until after they've come true. Or failed to come true. Those with more limited visions have more success in finding their meaning before it's too late."
"Stay away from big rooms full of shelves?" he said. He meant it as a joke, but her story had affected him enough that he wound up half-meaning it.
"It's not usually that simple," she said, missing whatever shred of humor had ended up in his voice.
"You said you had three visions?" he asked, hoping that the next two would be less dramatic.
"They seem to come with the cycles of the moon," she said, turning slightly pink as she said it. It was the first time she had seemed embarrassed about anything, and he wondered for a moment if it was because of her lunar name. "The second one was much shorter, and I would have been worried about it if not for the emotions." She paused for a moment, and took his silence as encouragement to continue.
"We were in another big room. It looked like Hogwarts, but it was bigger than any room in Hogwarts except the Great Hall, and it wasn't the Great Hall. We were alone in the room, and we were casting spells at each other, and shielding ourselves. We weren't just standing there, either, we were running around the room and dodging and hiding behind tables and chairs. I think I got hit a few times, but of course I didn't feel it. But I wasn't scared or angry or anything. We were- I don't know how else to say it. We were joyful. We were working hard, and we had a great purpose in our minds, and we were accomplishing something good and worthy. When we finally stopped, you were breathing hard and sweating and smiling more than I've ever seen you smile."
"Anything else?" he asked, a little relieved.
"That's where it ended," she said with a half-shrug. "It was such a wonderful feeling, I was lighter than air for the next month."
He couldn't help but smile too. "If you ever want to practice Defence with me, Luna, all you have to do is ask," he told her.
She turned pink again, and bit her lip. "I'm not sure you'll still feel that way after you hear about the last vision," she said.
His mood sagged with hers. "That bad?" he asked.
"We were sitting outside at night, somewhere in the hills over Hogsmeade. Hogsmeade was burning. There were great big magical flames, consuming the buildings. I could tell which one was Honeydukes, and Zonko's. We were far away, and it was dark, so we couldn't see any people, but we felt like there was nothing we could do. And we were sad- we were so, so sad to see Hogsmeade burn down. I think I was crying, because it got blurry sometimes. You were stoic, but you had your arm around me when I cried. But, as sad as we were, we weren't defeated. We still had hope in our hearts, that we would prevail. I tried to focus on that hope, but I couldn't, I just cried and cried." She wasn't crying as she said it, but there was a note of desperation in her voice.
He looked at her devastated face. "How can we figure it out?" he asked, his own voice a little uneven. "If you're a Seer for real, and if it turns out that's just a possible future, how can we stop it?" He still wasn't sure if he believed she could see the future, but he did believe that she was telling him the truth.
"I don't know," she said. "I've told you what I remember, and I've learned as much as I can about Seers, but they're quite secretive. As far as I know, there's no way to be sure until something happens that either matches a vision, or contradicts it. All we can do is try to prepare."
He leaned forward in his seat. "The only way I can think of to prepare is to practice Defence. And then- can we make the second vision come true on purpose, or make sure it doesn't come true?"
She shook her head. "Nobody really understands the rules of visions. Maybe we can change the future, or maybe we'll just waste our time and energy trying to outrun fate. I think it's worth trying, but I don't know how to be sure we'll succeed."
He was struck by how often she was saying 'we.' "Luna," he asked, not unkindly, "why did you come to me with this?"
She seemed to gather herself for a moment, avoiding his eyes. "He-Whose-Name-You-Mustn't-Ever-Say is back, and he's not going to leave us alone. There's going to be another war, or maybe there won't be and he'll just take over. And I'm ashamed to admit this, but I thought there was nothing I could do to help stop him. I'm hopeless at Defence, and my family's not wealthy or anything. So I thought I could just keep my head down, and maybe they would leave me alone. My family is magical, but we have a bit of a reputation, and nobody would really care which side we were on. I know that it's wrong to think that way, but nobody from either side cares what happens to me, so I thought I could just stay out of it." She looked up at him, and he met her gaze, trying not to condemn her before he'd heard the whole story.
"But now it looks like there is something I can do to help. These visions might turn out to be important, and maybe they'll help you win. And I really do want to help. I don't want innocent people to die. So I came to you partly because you deserve to know about the visions, and partly because I want to help fight. On your side." He saw the fear and determination on her face
"On my side? I'm not sure it's really my side," he said, but before she could respond, they heard shouting from the corridor outside. Harry grabbed his wand and yanked the door open to find Neville shouting at Draco Malfoy, as Crabbe and Goyle looked on.
"-absolutely certain that he doesn't want to talk to you, Malfoy, so if you'll just-" Neville was certainly holding his own, but when Harry emerged, he fell silent.
"Potter," Malfoy said snidely. "I just wanted to make sure you didn't have any ideas about being out of the Dark Lord's reach just because-"
Harry didn't let him finish. "Malfoy, we've been hearing about your father for four years, but this is ridiculous," he interrupted. "Have you even met Voldemort?" The question was a gamble, because he couldn't be sure that Draco hadn't. Draco's face gave nothing away, so he went on. "How do you think he'd feel about you using his name?"
"You'll see, Potter," was all that Draco said, and with a hate-filled stare and a short gesture to his allies, he stormed off.
"Thanks, Neville," Harry said wryly, and held the door open for him. When they both sat down, Luna stood.
"Thank you for listening to me, Harry," she said, with courtesy but also a little distance.
"You might as well stay," he replied, a little confused. "Luna, Neville. Neville, this is Luna Lovegood. She's on our side."
"On Harry's side," she corrected.
Neville gave her a hard stare, and turned to Harry. "Are you collecting followers already?"
Harry was mystified. "Am I doing what? Collecting- Neville, what are you talking about?"
Neville sighed. "Harry, do you know anything at all about the history of magic in Britain? Or the rest of the world, for that matter?"
Whatever response Neville had been expecting, it wasn't a smirk from Luna and some poorly suppressed laughter from Harry. When Harry finally got himself under control, he turned to Neville, lips pressed together. "Four years. I've been going to History of Magic for four years, Nev," he informed his friend.
"Well, you haven't learned anything about the way the world works, have you?" Neville demanded, apparently annoyed that Harry found his question funny.
"Help me out, Neville," Harry requested.
Somewhat mollified, Neville gave him a quick glare, then started explaining. "Look, Harry, you're a powerful young wizard with a mortal enemy and an uncanny knack for surviving. That makes you worth watching. Those are the kind of people who change the magical world, for good or for ill. That's why the Dark Lord is afraid of you, it's why the Minister is afraid of you, and it's why the Headmaster is afraid of you. But a powerful young wizard with an enemy to give him purpose and a history of defying the odds, who begins to gather a group of loyal friends? There's no limit to what you could achieve."
"Especially," Luna said quietly, "if those friends have unique talents of their own." Neville gave her another hard look, and a slow nod.
Harry stopped to think about his friends. Leaving out Luna for the time being, did they really have unique talents? Hermione was very smart, and Ron was, well, Ron, and Fred and George were funny, and Ginny was fierce, and he started to run out of friends pretty quickly after that. The Order had some people with unique talents- he thought of pink-haired Tonks and tormented Lupin. Were they the secret to Dumbledore's success? Just how successful was Dumbledore, anyway?
Neville interrupted his wandering mind. "Well, if that's the way we're saying it, I'm on your side too."
"It's not my side!" Harry protested. "I'm not going to stop Voldemort single-handedly."
"You're not," Luna agreed, "because we're going to help you. And we won't be the only ones."
"I'm not ready to fight Voldemort, guys. How am I supposed to-to do this?"
Neville and Luna shared a look, seeing Harry begin to come around. It was Neville who spoke. "We'll get ready as best we can. Look, Harry, I know there are good people in the MInistry, but the man in charge is Cornelius Fudge, and as long as that's true, they can't do anything about fighting. And Dumbledore-" Harry started to interrupt, but he raised a hand. "Dumbledore is a million years old, more than a little batty, and he didn't do so well the first time around. Gran always blamed him. Who does that leave?"
"Why should that mean me?" Harry asked without bitterness.
"Harry, you've been a symbol your whole life, whether you knew it or not. We grew up hearing about you," he said, indicating Luna, who nodded gravely. "But I know you better now. And when the chips are down, there's nobody whose side I'd rather be on."
Harry looked at them both in turn. He'd never seen this side of Neville before, and he'd never seen any side of Luna, but what they were saying made sense. He weighed his options, such as they were. "All right," he finally said. "I'm not going to let Voldemort win, out of self-preservation if nothing else. And I'm not going to run away. So I guess I'm going to fight. And if you guys are going to fight too, then we're going to be on the same side. So-"
"So it's Harry Potter's side," Luna interrupted. "Only now it's Harry Potter and Neville Longbottom and Luna Lovegood's side."
"Harry, I- I know our parents were good friends, and I always hoped- well. I'm glad we're working together," Neville added. Then he turned to Luna. "It's safer to be on his side, you know. The last time I tried to get between him and a dark lord, his chief lieutenant left me petrified in my own bed."
"That was-" Harry started to protest, then thought better of it. "Not very nice of us, it's true."
Luna was looking at Neville with real amusement. "Ronald Weasley petrified you?" she asked.
Harry let Neville explain, and thought about the conversation they'd just had. What would they do if Luna had another vision? What could they do about the ones she'd already had? What would it mean, to focus his life on defeating Voldemort? He'd spent most of his time at Hogwarts just trying to stay alive. Maybe it was time to start planning.