A/N Hi guys, this is my first fanfiction and I'm really excited about it. I've had this chapter written for over a month, but I haven't published it because I was waiting for a friend to read it over and give me feedback. Unfortunately she's a clutz and lost the copy I gave her, so I thought I'd just go ahead and post it. I hope you like it! ~MaryLouise1996
Circumstances
Chapter 1
Luna rolled over in bed and pulled the covers up further. She reached over to the other side of the bed, but it was empty. Of course it was empty. It had been for six months now. She sat up suddenly, frustrated. She was frustrated with herself, frustrated with the way her life was going. She swung her legs over the side of the bed, picked up her wand from her bedside table and summoned her slippers, which she had left by the sofa when she came to bed in the early hours. Pulling them onto her feet, she dragged herself out of her tiny bedroom and into the all-in-one living room, dining room and kitchen. It wasn't very big either, but the tiny one bedroom flat was all she could afford on her equally tiny salary. Even with her wages, she had to supplement it with the gold left to her by her father. And that was already beginning to look diminished. She could barely afford to eat, and yet she still worked her arse off every day of the freaking week, waitressing in a restaurant in Diagon Alley. She began to feel the tears well up behind her huge blue eyes again, and blinked furiously. Not again. She padded into the kitchen to take her mind off the way her life was turning out, and popped a piece of three-day old bread into the toaster. A fabulous muggle invention, toasted the bread just right, on both sides. Much easier than doing it by magic, especially now. She looked around her flat and took in all of the other eklectic appliances that it was fitted out with, seeing as it was a muggle residence (cheaper than anything owned by someone magical). There was something in the corner called an -um- a television, which was a big metal box with a glass face that moving pictures appeared on when you pressed the big button to turn it on. And you could control it from the sofa with the television wand (as she liked to call it), changing the picture and making it louder and quieter. Very clever, these muggles. They certainly knew how to make life easier for themselves, even without magic. The eklectic lights were certainly simple enough, especially since she could flick the switches by magic, and they didn't make her body feel drained like using the magic inside of her to keep lights on did. Using any magic at all made her feel drained these days. She told herself it was her wand; Mr. Ollivander had been frail when he had made her new one. But she knew that it wasn't. The wand had been as good as her old one; better even, until- No. She wouldn't let herself think about that. Not now. Not yet.
Luna shook the silvery hair that she had inherited from her mother off her shoulders as she spread jam over her toast – her mother's own special recipe – and walked over to the small, worn wooden table that was pushed right up against the wall, folding her frame into the single chair. Her long thin legs were paler than ever, seemingly glowing underneath her old pyjama shorts with golden stars actually sparkling from them. They were left over from when she was a child, and reminded her of the good times. Her spindly wrists poked out from the ends of the hugely oversized white-and-blue striped bed shirt that used to belong to her father, where she had rolled up the sleeves. The shirt dwarfed her entirely, almost covering the shorts that hung off her hips. She unrolled the Daily Prophet that she had bought earlier in the week, using the tips she earned at work. She didn't usually earn big tips, either because people thought her odd or because her service hadn't been great. She couldn't usually concentrate brilliantly, and it wasn't unknown for her to forget which tables she was serving and put plates down on the wrong table and walk away without realizing. She blinked down at the front page for the hundredth time that week and saw the familiar face attempting to duck behind his newspaper. The headline read "AMAZING MR. POTTER DOES IT AGAIN" and was accompanied by a driveling dialogue about exactly how long it took to catch the latest death eater, how much of a fight they put up, how many back-up aurors Harry took with him and what he ate for lunch the day before. As Luna saw his embarrassed face ducking behind the paper again and again, she felt a rush of warmth towards him, but it was quickly chased out by the dead weight that continued to sit on her heart. When was the last time she had spoken with him? Or any of them for that matter? She sighed. It was her own fault, and she knew it. After- after it had happened, she had refused contact with any of them, ignoring their owls, not going along when the whole lot of them met up, not trying to hold contact in any way. She couldn't. It was too painful. They had all tried, really hard, to keep in contact with her, but she'd pushed them all away. Even Ginny. After a few months they had all but given up, now only sending a half-hearted owl once every couple of months. The only person who still persisted in contacting her regularly was Mrs. Weasley, who sent an owl almost every Saturday, inviting her to lunch with them on Sunday. She never went, only feeling obliged to send a polite but neutral note back, refusing the invitation. Bless her though, Molly still hadn't given up.
A gust of wind flicking over the pages of the paper announced the arrival of an owl. Luna's huge, startled eyes snapped upwards to find a big tawny owl, with a round white face and sleek feathers, perched on the cooling device muggles called a 'fridge'. Her eyes softened at the sight of her friend's owl, and she slipped over to release the scroll of parchment from Hermione from the owl's leg. She tossed the letter over onto the table she had been sitting at and absentmindedly wandered over to re-open the window that had slammed shut after the owl's arrival. She looked expectantly over to the owl, and was surprised to see that, rather than fluffing up its feathers ready for flight, Hermione's owl had simply hopped over to the toaster and was attempting to catch some crumbs in its beak. Luna heaved a sigh and picked up her old friend's letter. She had a feeling that it would explain the owl's strange behavior.
"Luna, I have no doubt that you have no intention of replying to this letter, but if you would at least hear out what we have to say I think you may change your mind. I hope you will change your mind. The last couple of years has been challenging, to say the least, for all of us, and while I know that some have undoubtedly taken it worse than others I don't believe the distance that you have been attempting to place between yourself and the people who care about you can be doing you any more good than the worry it is causing us."
The writing was entirely word perfect, and had clearly been drafted several times in order to get it that way before being sent.
"I honestly don't go a day without thinking about you, none of us do, and the only reason that we know you're even still alive are the empty messages that you send Molly, refusing her now desperate invitations to lunch. We need to hear from you Luna, the real you, not the blank messages and the serene face. We need to be able to help you. You have refused to speak for us for six whole months now, and it's gone on long enough. I know the break up was hard on you, but your silence has been even harder on us. Especially Ginny. The end of the War was supposed to bring everyone closer, bridge the gaps put there by the evil, but within our friends and family it has only served to push us further apart.
"We miss you, Luna. We miss your boldness and your quirky nature and your ramblings about crumple-horned snorkacks. But mostly, we miss you, and we need you back in our lives. Please, please think about it."
Luna's eyes because misty and she quickly wiped her impatient, shaking hand across them. As she read the final sentence of Hermione's letter, she smiled slightly (only slightly) at the fact that she had been right to think that it would explain the owl's unusual behavior:
"I have told Flamel, my owl, not to leave without a reply from you.
All my love, Hermione."
Luna heaved sigh that was so big it was a miracle that it didn't break her frail body into a thousand pieces. She knew Hermione was right, but that didn't make it any easier to read the cold harsh truth like that. It seemed right that it should come from Hermione. After all, Luna had been the one to pull her out of the deep depression in the months after the War that had threatened to engulf her. No one, not even Ron, had been able to get through to her, but for some reason Luna, with her understanding eyes and ability to say what everyone else had been thinking, had caught Hermione's attention and given her something to grasp hold of and get herself better. Why, why had Hermione had to mention it? "The break up." Like it was some huge, major event. Which it was, obviously, but only to Luna. She sighed and rummaged in the drawer of her old, heavily spellotaped chest and sifted out a handsome eagle quill from times gone by and a piece of parchment. The parchment was old and had marks on it here and there, but she cleaned it up, siphoning off the dirt with a quick "scourgify". She walked past her threadbare couch, picked up her crusts and dropped them in front of the owl – Flamel, as he was called. As she walked back past the paper on the table, an advert on one of the back pages that the paper had opened to as the owl flew past caught her eye. It was for a cheap wizarding travel company, specializing in world tours. Luna grinned as an idea formed in her head, and moving the newspaper off the small, worn table, she dipped her quill in the pot of purple ink that she kept on it and started to write her note back to Hermione.
"Hermione, It was so lovely to hear from you, but I can assure you that I am perfectly brilliant. I have recently been victim to a particularly nasty infestation of Wrackspurt, and as a result have been rather distracted lately. I do hope you can forgive my rudeness.
"Another reason for my absence has been in that I have been working very long shifts in order to save enough money for a world tour. I plan to visit Sweden especially, to search again for the Crumple-Horned Snorkack, but also plan to visit sites of particular magical importance, something I am sure you would be most interested in. I think you will agree that a trip away from here is something I most certainly need, if only to escape this thoroughly irritating Wrackspurt infestation.
"All your love sent back, as I am sure you must need it, Luna."
She attached the note to Flamel and watched him fly away, carrying the little note of purple lies with him. She groaned at her own inability to face her problems, turned away and got changed for work. Staring into the tiny mirror in her small bathroom, she fixed her normal airy expression onto her face, the one that had been there without question until that fateful day. This face was the face she knew, that face she wanted back, rather than the tired, sad, empty expression that she caught herself with so often when she woke up in the morning. She struggled into her coat, turning up her collar against the cold wind that she knew would soon greet her, and turned on the spot on her doormat to apparate to the restaurant that she would spend the rest of the day waiting on tables, being shouted at for not waiting on the right tables, and spilling drinks behind the bar. With a faint pop, she disappeared.
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