Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or Luna Lovegood.
Phase One: New Crescent.
A keen observer will notice something weird about the Quibbler. Weirder, I mean, than the obvious.
All other self-respecting newspapers house themselves in big cities, such as London. Where the news happens, where the news goes, that is where journalists set up shop. But not X. Lovegood and P. Lovegood, née Ollivander, founders of the Quibbler. Why?
You are a keen observer, and now you want an answer. The answer begins in the October 13, 1987 issue, back when the Quibbler was rooted in London.
In summer and fall of that year, the Quibbler ran coverage on Death Eaters who had never been captured, or were still walking free. Not exactly a popular subject, especially with the Malfoys and Notts of the world. Even the everyday people did not want reminders. Leave it in the past. It's almost Halloween. Put out something fun, for Circe's sake.
But the Quibbler was not concerned with what everyday people thought they wanted. The Quibbler was founded on the notion of Truth. The more people know, the more they could protect themselves, help one another, the more magic we can all weave.
This day's report focused on Fenrir Greyback. It published his whereabouts, his methods. An artist's sketch. Greyback, the article said, was a Muggle, born under the name Robert Parker, with no magic except that which the full moon gave him.
Published October 13, 1987.
You might say, come off it, everyone knows the Quibbler is full of utter codswallop. To which I reply, this was before the Quibbler's staff shrank and declined. This was when the Quibbler was respectable, with reporters who would travel far to seek out the heart of the matter. At any rate, the report, although not widely read, was scrupulously accurate.
A week later, on an unreasonably cold autumn night, Greyback did something unheard of. He entered central London, went right to Marylebone. He found the Lovegood's home, and under a waxing gibbous moon, he stole their daughter away.
)O(
Another question from the keen observer. Not—not Luna? Was there another daughter, a sad lost girl, one never spoken of by the living Lovegoods?
No, I mean Luna. Luna whom you've met at Hogwarts, Luna with her wand behind one ear and a paintbrush in her pocket, Luna with no friends.
How is it, then, that Luna lives in the world of people? Odd though she is, she's manifestly not feral. She doesn't live in the woods, and if she eats vermin no one in Ravenclaw Tower has reported it.
The answer is, Pandora, her mother, went into the woods and got her back. She and her husband called in every favor they had to track Fenrir. When they traced him, Xeno whipped up a powerful Deflecting Draft, and Pandora soaked her black cloak in the cauldron. When she wrapped the cloak round and stood in the shadows, she was damn close to invisible. Into the woods she went, and five days after Luna's capture, Pandora emerged again, scratched and hungry, with her daughter in her arms.
But she was too late. Luna was infected.
So that is why the Lovegoods moved out of London. You know as well as I do, parents of werewolf children will likely go distant—say that they have no child, leave the afflicted to beg shelter from the moon—or terribly overprotective. The Lovegoods fell into the latter camp, but, as Luna said in later years, "it could have been worse."
They bought a house in the countryside, with thick walls and a nice, deep, soundproof cellar. All work with correspondents on the Quibbler turned into owl post. They ignored pleas from Pandora's family, saying that St. Mungo's ward was expensive but they would pay for it, why not take Luna there?
Likewise they ignored notes from Mrs. Weasley, who lived across the way and had a daughter just Luna's age, and maybe the gels could be playmates. Mrs. Weasley knew nothing of Luna's condition. Eventually the notes stopped.
Luna was six at the time. At that age, the transformations nearly killed her.
Xenophilius her father had always been good at potions, but you need to be rather more than "good" to master the Wolfsbane Potion. Xeno toiled to improve his skill, and in the meantime he made a milky potion at every waxing gibbous moon, full of sleep. He asked Luna to drink it while still human. It was so sweet it made her gag, but she drank it to please her parents.
The dosage of this medicine wasn't always precise. In the cellar, Luna would sleep, transform, and startle into wakefulness. She would stagger around and perhaps sleep again. But the potion did most of its job.
House, cellar, and potion. Those were the Lovegoods' methods for basic survival. What more could be done?
Ah, that was the question that plagued them by night.
It was about this time that Xenophilius' interest in the Deathly Hallows turned into a mania. After all, what are the Hallows exactly? A wand that can cast any spell; a stone that can break the hold of time; a cloak that lets light pass through, without touching or harming the one inside.
Xeno read about the old faith of the Hallows, the people who met in secret, each carrying a pebble or a branch or a meter of cloth, and they would meditate on the nature of death and time and all that rubbish, helped along by smoke and fumes of certain herbs. And Pandora, let me tell you, she did not care for this at all.
Pandora would groan when she saw the books out again. "Those old rites won't help us, we could search all our lives and never find the Hallows—"
"Then we'll make our own!" Xenophilius would reply. He would gesture to the dilapidated secondhand loom in the corner. "We'll get Demiguise hair, and I'll make some potions, and—"
"You don't understand, you're just addressing the symptoms, not the disease itself!"
"At least I'm trying!" Xenophilius would yell back, louder than he meant.
"You think I'm not?"
And this was when Luna would slip out of the house, into the overgrown garden or the fields beyond. As long as she kept her house in sight—that was fine, and it was visible quite a long way away.
Picture a pale little girl. Her hair already has a little grey, but it doesn't show too much in the blonde. She walks listlessly through the grass. Sometimes she plucks flowers and weaves them into loops, garlands, just keeps her hands busy. She doesn't carry a wand—too young—but it's okay. Nothing wild will hurt her.
Luna was not slow—far from it—but her mind grew slantwise, spiralwise. Without her conscious control, her mind developed tricks to shield itself from the horror of full-moon memories, to let herself process things. Her mind turned into a mirror, reflecting itself back and trying to make sense of things backwards. She slept a lot, and dreamed even while awake.
Somehow, though, Luna would always know when Pandora had missed her. Luna would turn back homeward and Pandora would be there at the back step, waiting, to give her girl a warm hug.
Her hands—Pandora's, that is—were always stained with ink. Pandora was writing letters by the heap. I don't mean just with the Quibbler's people—no, I mean with Rubeus Hagrid, and with Madame Pomfrey, and Filius Flitwick, and with Albus Dumbledore himself. Pandora, who couldn't bring herself to speak to her birth family, told these people everything about Luna's condition, and more than that, she told them that Luna was a bright girl, intelligent and curious, and Pandora would move heaven and earth to make sure her daughter got the education she deserved.
"They say that a werewolf graduated Hogwarts less than a decade ago," she wrote to them. "Give my Luna the same opportunities. That is all that I ask."