Luna woke up suddenly, chilled in the early morning light. She hadn't realized she'd fallen asleep. Does anyone ever realize they've fallen asleep? she wondered. She couldn't figure out what had awakened her.
The voice came again, low, "Are you still there?"
Then she remembered her friend the werewolf and rushed back around the bush she'd been hiding behind. He was a man again, huddled in blood-stained tweeds against the bars of the cage. His hands were covered with dirt, and there was a patch of turned-up dirt right where he could reach through the bars; he must have been burying whatever rabbit bones were left.
"I was afraid you'd run away—or had never been here at all," he said hoarsely. "I thought maybe I'd dreamed you, just at the time when I was coming back human. You're a sort of dream-like person. And I always want companionship the morning after, and there never is."
Luna put her hand through the bars and touched his shoulder. He recoiled from her.
"Don't! I'm—filthy."
"I know why you're filthy, though."
"Please—would you—" He held out his hands.
Luna took out her wand and said, "Catharidzete," waving it over his hands, and the dirt was gone. She did the same to his face.
"And please—up in the tree, a bag—"
"Accio bag," she requested, and it fell down to her, soft and shapeless.
"There's extra clothes."
"Don't you want me to let you out now?"
"No! It may be daylight, but it's still the full moon. I expect at least one more night of this, possibly two, and I can still turn in the daytime. It's happened before. See, my wand is there." He pointed to a small heap of leaves and twigs, just where he could reach through the bars. "Once I know the fit has completely passed, I use it to fetch the keys and release myself and have a thorough wash. But I'd rather change now, because—" He looked down at himself and shuddered.
Luna crammed the bag through the bars. He pulled out more tweeds.
"If you please—do you mind—" He made a twirling motion with his finger.
"Oh," Luna said. She turned her back to him and stared off up the mountain.
"That was a Greek spell," the man said as he struggled into his clothes in his cramped quarters. "That's unusual. I've only heard Latin ones."
"I like unusual things," Luna said.
"I believe you. What was that book?"
"What book?"
"The one where someone was enchanted with a chair to believe he turned into a serpent?"
"Oh. A Muggle book about a quest to find a lost prince. It's part of a series."
"Maybe I should try those when I'm done with Rita Skeeter's preposterous books."
"I found them to be extremely good books," Luna said.
"Rita Skeeter's?"
"No, the Muggle series. There's a lion who's in charge of everything, and after I read them I was always looking for him to be calling me into his world. Who knows, maybe he still will." She smiled dreamily to herself.
There was silence. She looked behind herself. The man was dressed, sitting and staring at her.
"Did I only dream it, in that half-man, half-wolf state in the early morning, or did you send a silver rabbit to me?"
"It was a hare. My Patronus."
"I eat rabbits! Raw!"
"And my name is Luna. That makes us even, don't you think?" She reached inside the bars and took his bloody clothes, laid them out on the ground, and began to use Catharidzete on them.
"You don't have to…" His voice died away. There was no snarl about him this morning. He seemed reduced, smaller, perhaps also younger than she'd thought. "Luna. Why is that your name?"
"Because my father liked the moon, and there was such a big one shining when I was born. My last name is Lovegood."
"Lovegood?"
"My father was the writer and editor of The Quibbler." She looked at him from under her pale eyelashes. He put a hand over his face.
"Oh, no."
"Don't worry about what you said. It was true. I used to believe implicitly in all my father's theories. I used to think of six impossible things before breakfast. Now I can only think of five." Her voice was sad. "I'm wiser now, a little."
"Is he still alive, your father?"
"Oh, yes. But he doesn't run The Quibbler anymore. As you said, it became 'sensible' during the War, and it did a great deal of good, but afterward it was too sensible, and he gave it up to Lee Jordan to run. Now he's writing a book about the Deathly Hallows." She folded up his clean clothes and put them in the bag, sat down on the ground in front of the cage. "And what is your name?"
He raised an eyebrow. "Rolf. Brilliant name, what? It means 'noble wolf.' My parents practically wished lycanthropy on me."
"But you said Remus Lupin did it."
"I suspect him of it. He was the only werewolf we knew ourselves to be acquainted with at that time. Who else could have done it?"
"He wouldn't ever have done it on purpose. He wasn't like Fenrir Greyback, who loved being a werewolf and wanted to make everyone else into one. If he'd ever thought he did this to another person, he would never have forgiven himself."
"I know," Rolf murmured.
"He's dead, you know. He died in the Battle of Hogwarts. He was one of the bravest men I ever knew. I saw him die."
"Oh, yes…you said you fought Bellatrix Lestrange—in the battle?"
"Yes," she said calmly. "Professor Lupin was fighting a Death Eater named Dolohov who used some kind of spell I'd never heard of to kill him, and when Tonks—his wife, you know—saw it she went flying at Dolohov, but Bellatrix got in the way and killed her. She was Bellatrix's niece, and I often heard Bellatrix talking about how much she hated her. That was when Hermione, Ginny, and I all went after Bellatrix together. And she was better than all three of us. Ginny's mum saved all of us. She was rather wonderful. I think maybe you shouldn't interfere with people when their mothers are around."
"How did you hear Bellatrix talking about this…Tonks? Did you know the Lestranges well?"
"Not at all. I often heard her talking when I was locked up at Malfoy Manor," Luna said matter-of-factly. "You know, when Voldemort was holding court there."
Rolf choked, "You were there?"
"Of course I was, when they kidnapped me because of The Quibbler and my father. But I should think you'd know about all this. There must have been a hundred or a thousand books written about it already."
"I haven't had much opportunity for serious literature," he muttered, "between my profession, my affliction, and people chasing me out of town. They don't understand that when I'm human I'm a perfectly nice guy."
"I can tell."
"How can you tell?" he challenged her. "I'm not even fully human right now."
"You lock yourself in a cage far away from people two or three days out of the month, and you smeared yourself with rabbit blood so you wouldn't be tempted to attack me."
"I didn't know you'd seen that…"
He looked so uncomfortable she changed the subject. "But if you're English, where were you during the War?"
Now he looked down at his hands, equally uncomfortable. "Everywhere but in England. My father died at the beginning, and his last wish was my promise that I would stay away from it. I think he was afraid that if the Death Eaters won, they would force all werewolves to join their ranks, and if the right side won, they would assume all werewolves had joined their ranks. So he made me promise. He wouldn't die until I promised, and he was in great pain. So I promised, and then what could I do? Break my father's last wish? One of the things that lets me know I'm human is those little things like honour and faithfulness. So I decided that if I couldn't help in England, I'd help elsewhere. I've made contacts all over the world, and if we'd lost, I'd have been able to start a foreign, underground resistance immediately. But mostly I stockpiled potions ingredients and wand materials in case we lost access to regular supplies. Turned out we didn't need them after all, so I wonder if I was deluding myself." He shrugged.
"Not at all!" Luna cried. "It was so close—we were so close to being in a place where we'd need them—and who else would have thought of such a thing?"
"Well…it was sort of a natural idea. I am a magizoologist and naturalist, after all."
"Are you?" Luna beamed at him. "So am I!"
"Ill-met by moonlight, then."
"Well-met," she contradicted. "I have been in the Himalayas all summer and never met another English person, much less a wizard, much less a wizard who shares my profession. There aren't many people who want to do what we do."
"True, true. Imagine willfully missing out on the dragon's egg berries."
There was distinct humour in his voice, and Luna laughed. "I still haven't found any of those."
"Well, then, you'd better go get some."
"I will. And maybe I'd better go down and tell my guides I haven't died. They're used to me disappearing for a day or two, but if they hear about werewolves in the region… Well, they know I can take care of myself. There was a bit of a kerfuffle about it at the beginning of the expedition, though."
"I can imagine. Well, go then."
"You're always telling me to go away. But I'm coming back. I don't care if you want me to or not. I've never been very good at blindly obeying people."
"I noticed," Rolf said dryly. "I—don't mind. I never knew…"
"What?"
"How comforting companionship was. Especially someone who's interested rather than afraid."
"I would have made the whole expedition just for this," she assured him, and collecting her things, she sped away up the slope.
The dragon's egg berries were perfect. Even the eagerness to get back to talking to a werewolf couldn't dampen the excitement at finding a plant Regulus Moonshine insisted was extinct. The mother plant hissed and spat burning poison at her, but it couldn't hurt her through the long dragonhide gloves, and she plucked a single berry, white with brown speckles, the size and shape of a robin's egg, and gave it a careful tap with her little hammer. It split open with a gush of steam. She let it cool just slightly and scooped out the soft red flesh with a small spoon. It was like a warm, fruity custard, two tiny bites per berry. Who would have thought a dragon planet could have such a gentle inside? The heart, or pit, she threw as far as she could.
"I don't have the same range as an iron-feathered hawk," she told the plant, "but I can at least do my part to perpetuate your species." The hawk, her guides had told her, was the only animal that ate the berries, and they were the only plant matter it ate. It was impervious to the plant's poison and carried the hearts far away, its iron-clad stomach strengthened by the berries' flesh.
She plucked the rest of the berries and put them immediately into her warmed container, and with a tiny vial she captured some of the poison. "You never know when a poison might end up being a cure for something. Thank you for your eggs," she said with a slight bow to the plant and hurried away back down to the clearing.
She had been half-afraid that her new friend would have run away or disappeared or never been there at all, but the cage was still solidly in the clearing, and the man was curled up in a light-brown bundle, sleeping, which made her realize how sleepy she was herself, after her mostly wakeful night.
I'll go down to the camp later, she told herself and put her things under the tree and her head down on one of its roots. She always slept well near trees. They liked her.