A/N: Let's see, notes for chapter two... Umbridge isn't Defense professor in fifth year because the twins didn't go screaming 'Voldemort's back' after the final TriWizard task like in canon. You can make up your own rationale for why her replacement wound up with the position (shouldn't be hard considering Dumbledore's chronic lack of applicants). Also, apologies for the twins' letter writing ability--besides being teenage boys, they're not especially articulate. :) Hopefully they're decipherable anyway.
One reviewer pointed out last chapter that for some reason both the twins' Firebolts were in the Gryffindor dorm. There was a reason for that, of course, very subtle and actually critical to the plot. You see, er... *launches into long, complicated explanation involving the twins' habit of switching places, Quidditch practices, several random other factors and the convenience of flying instead of walking around on certain occasions* ...So yeah. There we go. Now you know. (Darn plot holes.)
Again, review pretty please. :) Everybody who does gets... their own personal shiny review reply (sparkles imaginary. But lots of them!).
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Jackalopes and Jobberknolls
Dear Luna,
That sounds stupid but that's how letters are always supposed to start, right? So... we're okay, yeah, and Sirius is too. Dunno if you heard what happened? Dumbledore said we'll need to take Occlumency lessons next term to cut the scar connection, so we ordered a book on it and figure that's how we've managed to know stuff with one another and share it now so it's always both of us. Useful to have conscious control of it, probably, but just to keep it our control; we're not cutting out one another. Ought to have it learned at least good enough by next term to keep whoever he finds to teach us out. No point in telling grownups we won't do something, especially because they won't let us do it together and it's letting somebody else in our head.
Sirius said he'll get us to his place by sometime after our birthday, but dunno if that'll really work out, and it looks like we're stuck here at least until then, so you'll have to keep us updated on anything important that happens there. Your dad runs a magazine or something, right? Hedwig ought to drop by every now and again just since she gets locked up so much around here, and gets sullen about it. If it's a bother though we'll send her somewhere else.
.
Hello Harry, (that's an acceptable greeting too, or at least it should be since it's acceptable when speaking, and letters are speaking to one another on paper)
Happy early birthday to both of you. I hope you don't mind my sending presents; I hadn't even thought of it until a very sweet little Ashwinder happened to creep out of our kitchen fireplace. It's a pity neither of you were there to talk to it, and that it didn't live long enough to find some way to send it to you, since I'm sure it would have been much happier with you. But I managed to save a couple of its eggs, though they might not hatch with the Freezing Charm I had to put on them to make sure they didn't set anything on fire. If they don't they're supposed to be very valuable as potions ingredients.
I've only heard speculations about the Portkey (and about Harry's disappearance, but I didn't tell anyone, so it's all remarkably silly), and Dumbledore sent everyone home so quickly. There's nothing about you in the papers except your winning the Tournament; the Portkey is just a short mention since no one seems to know why it was there or where it went. That's what Daddy wants to write about, but I'll put him onto something else if you'd rather it not be talked about. I've heard Prophet reporters talk about the right of the public to know things, but I think the right of the private to stay private is more important, otherwise it's just gossip, not news. Most people don't seem to want to know what they ought to anyway.
It sounds perfectly reasonable to me that you can teach yourselves this Occlumency better than someone else can. It's not as if you're not a special case, so you know yourselves better with it than anyone else would. Do you mind if I order a copy of that book too? I wasn't aware of it before, unless I forgot what I knew, and it sounds curious. Daddy might even get more interested in that than anything else, it could be connected to so many things.
Your owl is beautiful. Can she eat crisps?
Your friend,
Luna
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Hello then Luna,
Yeah, she can eat anything. The book's called Behind the Eye of the Beholder, we told Hedwig to deliver it for you if you use that discount owl-order thing.
What happened is Voldemort's back. Moody was working for him all along, put us in the tournament, rigged the Cup and made sure Ri'd get it. It went to a graveyard set up for a ritual to make a body for V; needed one of our's blood, didn't matter which. Wormtail was there. Has a silver hand now instead of a missing finger. Ri tried to mess up the ritual, didn't work, made V mad. Said he was going to call his Death Eaters and they were going to duel, to prove who'd win, but cut him loose to punish him for almost ruining the body first. Ri broke V's wand half-Transfigured and scampered, managed to hide until Ro and Grim found him, flew back with Grim hexing a couple DEs hunting us. Probably killed one. Un-Transfigured Ri while flying, made it back looking like in one piece.
Your dad probably wouldn't want to write about it. Or anybody read about it.
Thanks for the present.
Harry
* * *
"It's a lovely bathroom."
Ri snorted lackadaisically, executed a turn by flipping over underwater, and came back up to stroke toward the other end on the surface. Luna had never seen a bathtub large enough to swim in before. "Old man probably only made me prefect because he thought it'd keep me busy."
"Keep you busy as opposed to what?" Luna remarked puzzledly.
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"So, children. I am given to understand that your previous education in Defense Against the Dark Arts has been piecemeal, and only truly consisted of a smattering of dangerous beasts and curses."
The man that was the new professor smiled, but Luna felt no desire to smile back and no one else seemed to either. It wasn't the kind of smile that invited a response, or made any pretense to be pleasant or sociable as smiles were generally expected to be. It was just an expression. He seemed, by putting it on, to be pointing that out.
"Anything will be considered dark if it has enough teeth or provokes enough screaming. That hardly qualifies it as a Dark Art."
.
Ri shrugged fluidly, diving and turning and rising again, now stroking away from her. "I dunno. Keeping my mind off my terrible experience; keeping me and Ro a little farther apart?"
Luna wrinkled her nose in a frown. "Gryffindor went," she reminded him. Slytherin Harry was the new prefect.
"He knows it was me." Ri didn't elaborate, and Luna didn't ask even though she would have liked to know more about what happened. The twins closed up when pressed; they would only give unasked, and all the adults who knew had probably been pressing them a lot already.
So all she said was, "Your hair looks a bit greasy now it's wet. Come back over here and I'll wash it for you."
.
"The Dark Arts, my children, are to magic as poisons are to potions. Invisible. Intangible. Tempting."
The man's voice was hypnotic, his expression unchanged. Pointing that out too by example instead of with words. Luna had always thought there was much more that could be communicated than only what was restricted to words. She held herself perfectly still in her seat, waiting to decide if this man was dangerous, and better avoided or trustworthy.
"The Dark Arts offer to make things easier, faster, simpler. Offers what every man wants and is restricted from achieving. Wealth. Power. Control."
His unfeeling eyes picked over each of them, impartial, examining, unrelenting, like black marble beetle's eyes. Luna's gaze wandered away out the window overlooking the grounds and Forbidden Forest before he reached her.
"You will hear many pretty speeches about wealth and power throughout your lifetimes, children, but the only matter of any true significance is control."
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"So what kind of special herbal concoction is this stuff, anyway?"
Ri leaned against the tub rim with his eyes closed, floating, while Luna massaged his dark mop.
"It's healthier than all those chemicals they put in your Muggle commercial products. That's quite horrifying, you know, but I like this shampoo idea rather than an ordinary cleaning charm. It might help straighten your hair like you'd like. And I'm working on a version that's also sure to repel nargles."
She smiled, but Ri didn't, which she took to mean he was genuinely relaxing. So she kept shampooing, and considered talking about her experiments with making soap.
"So stupid how they all react to everything." His voice wasn't exactly dreamy, but half elsewhere, and more resigned to the fact than disgusted for the moment. "And insisting so much on Occlumency. Wish they'd just leave us alone."
"Your Head of House isn't helping?" Luna ventured. She'd thought it would be at least a bit of a good thing to have a familiar figure responsible when they'd told her who was teaching them.
"He hates us. He just buries it. We already buried everything; shared it, buried it, fine now. It was bad, it's over. It's not like wizards have half the imagination Muggle torture can make you suffer anyway."
Luna assumed he wasn't speaking from personal experience. She thought about asking just to be sure, then decided that was simply too personal and kept silent. She'd heard of some very nasty things in Muggle history; he was probably thinking about those too.
"Not like being connected to him isn't anything we can't handle anyway." Ri's voice was starting to sound drowsier, with less of the usual guard between mind and mouth. "So many weird dreams... green flashes, fear in dying eyes, the endless corridor... killing people and searching for something. Just dreams."
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"You control enemies with hatred, control subordinates with fear or respect, control friends and family with affection and obligation."
Black marble beetle-eyes. Luna tried to remember what Ministry department he was from, could only recall that he was supposed to be close to the Minister.
"The Dark Arts, children, in fact do not require any spells at all beyond the intent of the human mind... and they are so insidious because they do not even require conscious intent. Manipulation is a fact of human existence and self-interest, avoidable only by being aware of it... but so few are."
Luna stared at his lips as they moved rather than at his eyes. They turned to her unerringly anyway, and she gazed out the window again.
"Take, for example, a pair of children. In ordinary interaction, one may ask the other to lend him a quill, and the other does so. One's motivation, conscious or not, is to not have to fetch a quill himself, the other's is to match the expectations of courtesy. If the first's motivation is unconscious, he may have merely forgotten to bring his own quill; if it is conscious, he may have chosen not to bother, with the knowledge that the other child would provide one for him thanks to the expectations of courtesy. The second child is the same in both scenarios, but when the first is conscious of everyday human manipulation, the second, rather than providing a favor, is being used."
Beetle eyes. Luna looked at the man, not at her classmates, and her thoughts ran ahead following what she knew were his.
"There is danger in one person being aware where another is not; such are opportunities for the Dark Arts to creep in, whisper, linger--and grow. Danger in that often even if the other person is made aware they will reject it, for trust is a powerful form of manipulation. Especially in the bonds that are considered inviolable--between family. Friends. Partners."
Luna thought about Ri and Ro. About how they were magical twins, how Ro had known to a degree what Ri was experiencing, how the Occlumency book had described occasional inexplicable mental marvels. How they had been two of the only boys who could resist the Beauxbatons veela champion's allure since only one of them was ever near her at a time.
"And what lasting, invisible damage is possible in a relationship between one person who is aware and one who is unaware, in a relationship where trust should be unquestioning, in a bond as close as--brothers?" Black beetle eyes, flicking to each of them, forcing them to think. Soft voice, no longer so obviously ensnaring.
How the false-professor's instructional Imperius had failed so quickly on both of them individually; how they were withstanding the teachers' best efforts to invade their inaccurate adamant resistance in Occlumency lessons because one couldn't look into two pairs of eyes at once, and no one had yet thought to try it with them together anyway.
"The Dark Arts' influence is insidious, children."
How they had been so sure even in their third year that their worst fear was that the magical world would succeed in dividing them.
"As exampled by former Death Eaters?"
The other children started; the professor's impassioned eyes pinned the unexpected voice like a butterfly to a card.
Dreamy Luna Lovegood stood and stared back.
"You must agree they're a perfect example, right, Professor, considering how many currently work for the Ministry?"
A fly under glass, trapped in a microscope, but the body didn't struggle and her single-faceted eyes were clear as a polished reflection.
"Any Ministry personnel involved in that period were exempted of knowledge or responsibility, Miss Lovegood."
Luna thought, briefly, of the personal histories assembled in her father's notes in possible relation to various conspiracies and cover-ups. Of the faces Harry had described behind the blank white oval masks that had hunted them in their escape.
"But the Dark Arts' influence is insidious, Professor--it's always made me rather nervous the way the Ministry's appointed executioner always uses such brutal physical tools to kill. That hasn't really been considered civilized for the last century, has it? But didn't the papers of the time report that Walden MacNair was excused because he was proved a victim of the Imperius curse, and could never in real life do the kinds of things he had been forced to before?"
Every other student was staring at her. Listening.
She sat back down, looked at him with calm expectance.
.
"Dreams matter." Luna scooped a handful of water and began to rinse the shampoo out, tickling his ears a bit in the process. "Don't you have Defense in half an hour?"
He grimaced slightly, shifting under her fingers. "Might skip. I think I hate him."
Luna could say nothing to that; it seemed unfortunately easy for Harry to hate all his teachers, even Professor Flitwick. She didn't think the adults in their lives had done much for the twins. At least they had Sirius now (to the degree that he was an adult, from what little they'd told her of him).
"He's subtle," she agreed. "He sounds right about a lot, but even if he is he hasn't taught anything useful if we ever find ourselves at wandpoint someday."
"Brick stupid, with You-Know-Who back," Ri grunted, eyes still closed, as Luna fetched a towel and began rubbing his hair dry. "Trying to make us sitting ducks, the lot of us."
"I heard a rumor that some students want to start another club to try to learn that themselves."
She didn't mention who she'd heard they wanted to lead it. His grimace proved he already knew.
"Well, you are probably the only students in the school who've learned Expecto Patronum and Imperio."
"Like we could actually try that here without getting tossed in Azkaban," he scoffed. "Why should we go to so much effort, maybe even get in trouble, to do all them a favor?"
Luna considered, and laid down a finger for each point she found. "At least for most people, a favor given is advance for a favor returned. With the Dark Lord probably targeting you in future, and the favor you're giving being the means to return it in future..."
He looked up at her through the fingers on his forehead, slightly dubious, but already considering. "Harry Potter's Army? You really think these titches could do it?"
"It will probably take a real situation to see. That's not a very subtle name for a school club, though."
Ri clambered out of the giant tub, and started toweling himself dry from the waist up while water streamed down in little rivulets from his swimming trunks. "Hermione suggested the Defense Association..."
"If it's settled by popular vote, there's already a winner."
He looked wary. Luna smiled.
"It is a good one, in terms of disguising its true purpose. The Harry Potter Fan Club."
* * *
"Sirius is dead," Ri told her hollowly as soon as she found them after her release from the Hospital Wing, not looking at her, knees drawn up under his chin. Ro was staring sightlessly across the lake. "He tripped into the Veil pushing me away from it--I was in Slytherin colors too, he knew it was me. And he didn't even hesitate."
Luna had gone to the Department of Mysteries with them along with the half-dozen other Club members, but they'd gotten separated in the confusion. "It's good to know when your family loves you," she agreed quietly. "Just remember their voices--when it hurts, you're just living 'til you see them again."
"But we barely got to see him. We didn't get to know him." Ro's voice was pained but just as much wistful. "Do I miss what I did get to know about him or what I'll never get to now?"
"He cared about both of us." Ri's had taken on a curiously flat quality. "If we told him he'd've been calling us Ri and Ro even if he got it wrong half the time, but we hadn't yet. And now we'll only get to imagine what that would've been like. We'll never come home to it."
"How do I get used to him just not being there?" Ro whispered. "Why does it feel so strange?"
Luna simply sat and hugged them, and they all stayed that way for a very long time, as the sun slowly sank in the deepening sky in front of them.
Finally Ri stirred and murmured, "Need to go pack our trunks."
Ro seemed to awake as if from a dream. "Train leaves tomorrow?" He blinked, as if surprised of the fact. Luna just squeezed his arm--she could recall many perfectly ordinary things surprising her by simply still being there after her mother's death. When she had lost something so important, how was it that lesser things weren't gone too?
"I'll help you pack," she offered, according to those memories. "You shouldn't have to remember him alone."
"Bloody Dursleys," Ri muttered with a bit more energy. She didn't say a word about language; just thought quietly on what she could do to help them on their way back up to the castle.
* * *
"What happened?" Ri demanded as soon as his brother returned to the Gryffindor dorm, slamming the door behind him. He and Luna probably weren't supposed to be there, but neither of them cared.
"Tell you when there aren't any SPYING EARS around," Ro said through gritted teeth, even though they were the only three in the room.
He didn't speak again until they had settled in a train compartment, Luna having the presence of mind to quietly charm the door Imperturbable; then he finally exploded.
"We can't spend the summer at your house, even if we just don't tell them," he snarled, slamming his fist into the wall. "We have to stay with the Dursleys, for our own bloody protection! He tells us--me--now, why we're there in the first place, after it's too late to do any good! A prophecy... a prophecy..." Tears actually leaked from his eyes, and he punched the wall again when speech failed him. Ri's knuckles were whiteish as he gripped his brother's arm.
"Voldemort killed us because he thought we could kill him," Ro finally went on in a simmering, flat voice. "Our mother's love saved us--so Dumbledore placed us in the protection of that love, with her only other family."
Ri's lips parted in a silent snarl.
"As long as we're there, Voldemort won't be able to hurt us. The Order no doubt will be watching us again anyway. We have to write to them every three days to assure them everything's okay." Both boys looked like they were starting to simmer.
"You'd think that would make them think it might not be the safest place then, wouldn't it?" Luna remarked puzzledly. They both loosened slightly as they looked at her.
"You think?" Ri drawled with biting sarcasm, and she giggled, then sat up with sudden inspiration.
"The point is really that you're safe where the Dark Lord won't find you, isn't it? Why should that have to be where your schoolteachers say?"
The boys glanced at one another, and without a word leaned intently toward her. She turned and smiled up at their large snowy white owl caged on the rack above her seat.
"Are any of our Charms textbooks handy?"
* * *
When the Hogwarts train reached King's Cross station, Luna immediately departed to find her father for a short, remarkably serene conversation and the twins scowled wordlessly at the Order contingent waiting uncomfortably near the Dursleys, who were scowling even harder.
"Write you when we get there," Ri said coolly before any of them could speak. His Hogwarts tie, still on, was red and gold. "Hope you manage to get something productive done this summer with us out of your hair."
Most of the members looked slightly more uncomfortable. Ro didn't help by muttering audibly, "Wardens."
They left, not a word spoken between them and their relatives. Approximately an hour or so later, Harry's owl arrived at Grimmauld Place and took off again promptly as soon as its letter was untied, not even waiting for a treat. Order member Nymphadora Tonks sighed guiltily as she watched the bird wing away before unfolding the paper and scanning the brief note:
All-
Fine. Don't expect to hear much. Check back in three days.
She sighed again and tossed it on the kitchen counter.
Three days later, Harry's owl failed to reappear, and the Order guard that had dutifully set up their posts shortly after the Dursleys arrived home from the station could only report that neither Harry had ventured outside even once and they'd kept the shade drawn in their room. The one member capable of magically seeing through walls took a brief break from his own mission to check and reported that neither brother was present anywhere in the house. It was almost by accident that Tonks picked up the old note, and discovered its message had changed:
Previous still applies. Off to hunt jackalopes. Back September 1st--probably.