Chapter 1 : Back for Good
George was busy tallying the day's sales in the corner desk when a brown owl swooped through the door that his best friend Lee was in the process of closing for the day, and dropped a rolled parchment in front of him. "What the…" he left the sentence unfinished as he recognized the seal attached to the document in front of him. It bore the image of a half-moon intertwined with half a heart. It was Luna's personal seal.
He quickly whipped the scroll off the desk and into the drawer, thinking to hide it before his friend could see it. He needn't have bothered for Lee had noted the pallor on his friend's face and had already guessed correctly from whom the message had come. Sighing loudly, he left the door open so the owl could exit after George had fed it. That done, he walked towards his friend after locking the door behind the departing owl. "Aren't you even going to open it?"
George didn't answer. He never did despite Lee's frequent prodding. And because he knew how stubborn his friend could be, Lee just shook his head and asked instead, "Are you joining us for dinner later?"
"Not this time." George answered without looking up from the ledgers in front of him.
"Well, if you change your mind, we'll be at the Leaky Cauldron until 10." Lee offered just before he apparated out of the shop.
At his friend's exit, George gave up the pretense. In truth, the numbers had all bled together and had ceased to make sense after he'd seen the scroll. And before he could stop himself, he had already opened the drawer, revealing not one but countless other scrolls bearing the same seal… all of which remained unbroken.
And just like all the other times that this had happened, the image in the portrait across the desk shook his head in frustration. "Bloody hell, George! How long are you going to keep this up?"
"Until it stops." George wasn't even fazed at the censure he heard in his twin's voice.
"What if it doesn't?" Fred asked his stubborn twin.
"It will." George answered as he started to close the drawer. But not before, he ran a fingertip reverently on one of scrolls, almost as though he was unable to prevent himself from doing so and whispered softly, "…it has to." Because while he had remained steadfast in his refusal to read her letters all these years, he didn't know how much longer he could do so. As it was, he was barely hanging on.
"Luna!" a familiar voice squealed loudly across the field as the blond-haired girl emerged from the London Airport, having travelled from the States using that muggle technology they called an airplane.
"Ginny!" Luna quickly ran towards her best friend just before the two girls embraced warmly. "I missed you!"
"I missed you too." The redhead answered. "Goodness, I almost didn't recognize you." She added as she noted the absence of the almost waist-length silver-blonde tresses that had previously identified her to friends.
Luna fought the urge to run her hand through her now shorter and darker hairstyle self-consciously. "I felt like a change…" she offered quietly.
"I'll say!" Ginny commented, also noting the other changes in her friend's appearance. Gone were the radish earrings and the perpetual dreamy expression in her eyes. Also gone was the almost ethereal look she had sported once before. Instead, what stood before the redhead was an older, more sophisticated, if not more jaded version of her best friend. She wasn't quite sure if she liked this development though.
"You like?" Luna asked as she twirled in front of her friend, striving to sound more confident than she felt.
And because Ginny heard the hesitation in Luna's voice, she realized that despite the changes, she was still the same girl she had been before her departure for the States five years before, and so sought to reassure her, "I like!"
Luna walked into the house not knowing what to expect. She was a little surprised to find that nothing had changed. Not even the wards that they had placed around the property just before she left Britain to go half-way across the world for her studies. She had known from Ginny that he hadn't been staying here during her absence, and so had expected things to be covered with dust at the very least and the gardens overgrown with weeds and riddled with gnomes. But everything was clean of dust and she hadn't seen a single gnome in the garden. Nor were there any moss in the fountain out front as was expected of a property that had been neglected. That he had somehow taken the time to maintain the place in her absence, gave her hope, foolish though it probably was.
Sighing loudly, she set about moving her things into the master bedroom to settle in for the night.
George didn't know why found himself standing where he was. He had planned to join Lee, Angelina and Katie at the Leaky Cauldron that night but found himself apparating here instead. Although he had refused to live in this house, he had hired a freed elf who lived nearby to maintain the property, and would sometimes spend the night. He never could figure out why though, it's not as though they had lived here together after…
Sighing loudly, he set about moving towards the master bedroom to settle in for the night.
He must have been more tired than he thought because he didn't even think to turn the lights on as he crept into the bedroom. Instead, he disrobed in the dark and made his way towards the bed in his boxers. He knew from experience that the bed would be warm – for the elf he had hired had always taken care to put a spell for this on the bed knowing his penchant for appearing without advance notice.
Placing his wand on the side table, he didn't bother to turn the top sheet down before he lay down on the bed, sleep claiming him almost immediately, as was norm, whenever he found himself in this room during the last five years.
Luna almost woke up when she felt a shift in the bed. But having taken a light sleeping draught earlier to help her body get used to the time zone change much quicker, she only snuggled further towards the new source of warmth in the bed, not knowing that come morning, she would find herself face to face with the past she had striven to outrun five years before.
