Even after the Hogwarts Express was well on its way, students still packed the corridors, trying to find their own compartment, and that included Luna. She had lost track of Albus and Rose, and now wandered aimlessly down the hallway. She was picturing all the famous and infamous scenes--everything from Neville Longbottom's Mimbulus Mimbletonia plant exploding to Draco Malfoy stomping on Harry Potter's face and breaking his nose. Because of this, Luna wasn't watching where she was going, and bumped straight into two people at once.

"Oh! Sorry ..."

The people she bumped into said, in unison, "Pardon us, Miss." And when she looked up at them, she gasped.

She knew exactly who they were--they couldn't have been anyone else. They were twins, with pale blonde hair slicked back, and their faces looking permanently shocked, with enormous, bright blue eyes. Their matching robes were already on. They looked very expensive. The only thing different about them was that the buttons on one's robes were golden, and on the other, silver. They were her favourite character's children: Lysander and Lorcan Scamander.

Luna's face lit up.

"It's so nice to meet you! I'm Luna!"

They gave her matching reproachful looks, but then one of them--the one with the golden buttons--extended his hand, and smiled.

"I'm Lorcan. Lovely to meet you."

Luna looked at him suspiciously--something wasn't right. The twins she had imagined were much more interesting than these two seemed to be. But she shook his hand anyway.

"And I'm Lysander," said the other. "Is this your first time at Hogwarts?"

"You could say that, yes."

"And do you have any friends?"

"Not really ... no ..."

"Not to worry!" Lorcan was so loud it startled Luna. "Come along, we're sure to find a vacant compartment somewhere, and when we do, we can learn all about you, and hopefully form a mutual and beneficial friendship."

He exchanged an eerily perfect and identical smile with his twin, and they made their way down. For Luna, watching Lorcan and Lysander walk side by side was like watching a person walk next to a mirror. She hastened to follow, and they found an empty compartment near the very end of the train.

"Splendid!" Lysander exclaimed, and he and Lorcan sat side by side. Luna sat straight across from them.

"You guys are in Ravenclaw, right?"

They both nodded in unison. At least one thing about them turned out right.

"Just like our dear poor mother," said Lorcan, a sympathetic look on his face. "She's called Luna, too, actually."

"Poor?"

The twins exchanged a sad look, and then gloomily shook their heads. For some reason, none of the emotions they conveyed seemed genuine.

"Has something happened to her?" Luna leaned forward in her seat anxiously.

"She was seen as unfit to raise us," said Lysander. "Our father, Rolf, passed away when we were just toddlers. We suspect mother began to lose her sanity then. Anyway, we had to get her taken away a few years ago. Now we're taken care of at a foster home. It's very lovely there. Nothing like what we've heard about the Muggle ones."

"Luna Lovegood was taken away? Where is she?" Luna Clement was frantic now.

"St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries," said Lorcan. "But we still visit her on holidays. Hasn't made any progress, I'm afraid. Still going on about Blibbering Humdingers, Crumple-Horned Snorkacks, all these preposterous things ..."

Luna couldn't believe her ears. The character she was named after was in a mental ward being treated for insanity, and her two sons behaved as though it was some story they had read in the Daily Prophet last week about some old, distant friend.

"Don't you miss your mother?"

"She stopped being our mother long ago," Lysander replied, and Lorcan nodded in agreement.

"But--" Luna spluttered, tripping over her words in haste. "But she's Luna bloody Lovegood! She was known at school as Loony Lovegood! She's always been that way, and she's a very fantastic and perfectly sane person, at that! Oh, if only Rowling could see her characters now ..."

Luna hid her face in her hands, an enormous throbbing headache suddenly coming to her.

"How do you know about our mother?" said Lorcan, frowning slightly.

Luna dropped her hands, her face turning pink. She couldn't come up with a suitable explanation. She'd have to watch herself in the future.

"... I don't know."

The two of them looked at her so severely with their huge eyes that she thought they were about to kick her out. But Lorcan brushed it off, and Luna relaxed a little.

"Ah, well, you probably read about it in one of the history books. Neither of us have read about it, but some war happened at Hogwarts twenty-some-odd years ago, and our dear mother participated."

"Do you even know what it was for?" said Luna, an edge to her voice.

"No," said Lysander. "Whatever it was for certainly couldn't be a good enough reason to kill people. We hate violence."

"I'll have you know," said Luna, her voice shaking now, "it was to defeat the greatest and most terrible wizard this world has ever known. And they succeeded."

But they weren't listening. Lorcan was smoothing down a kink in his hair using the window as a mirror and Lysander was adjusting his robe so it wouldn't be all wrinkled if he had been sitting on it wrong. Luna had such a strong desire to smack the two of them into making sense, but they were her only friends for the time being, and she needed them. When they were finished, they turned back to Luna as though no time had passed.

"So, Luna," said Lorcan. "Tell us about yourself. Where are you from? What are your parents like? Do you know anything about Hogwarts? Is there anything you would like to know? What subject are you most excited to take?"

Just as Luna opened her mouth to speak, their compartment door slid open. She only barely caught herself from exclaiming the name of who it was--Rose Weasley.

"Hi!" she said brightly, looking around at them. "I'm not interrupting, am I?"

"No! Not at all," Luna said quickly.

But Rose seemed to have forgotten Luna was there. Her attention was entirely on the two boys. And the way she was looking at them made Luna uneasy.

"I'm going round to all the compartments and introducing myself," said Rose, holding out her hand to the nearest Scamander twin. "I'm Rose Weasley. Who might you be?"

Her right foot was popped up on its toes, and swivelling as though she was putting out a cigarette. If Luna didn't know any better, she'd have thought Rose was flirting with them. Where was the intelligence she had apparently inherited from Hermione? Even Ron wouldn't be that friendly!

The Scamander twins introduced themselves to her, but they were purely platonic towards her. Rose leaned against the doorway, making small talk with them, while Luna prayed for an interruption. It came in the form of none other than Albus Potter, whose footsteps could be heard as he ran into view, panting.

"Rose, you've got to help me," he said breathlessly, hunched over with his hands on his knees. Luna hadn't noticed before, but he was slightly overweight. Rose gave the twins a brief, sweet smile and glared at Albus.

"What?" she muttered.

"It's James," he said, looking back down the corridor fearfully. "He's changed Dobby into a snake again, and he's locked him inside Lucy and Dom's compartment."

"Oh, for Christ's sake!"

Rose and Albus disappeared down the corridor. Luna gave one last look at Lorcan and Lysander, who were tutting away, looking highly unimpressed, and followed them. At the very front of the train, James Potter was rolling around on the floor, cackling away, tears streaming down his face. Rose stormed over to him and picked him up off the floor.

"What do you think you're doing?" she shouted at him furiously.

Luna could hear one very shrill, terrified scream coming from the compartment. There was a crowd forming around it. Rose let go of James, and he pointed his wand at the door, still laughing.

"Alohamora."

It clicked open, and he lightly pushed the door. A four-foot long snake slithered out. Rose jumped back, frightened. James shouted another incantation, and the snake turned into a toad.

"Dobby!" Albus cried, picking the toad up and petting its head.

Luna peered inside, and saw a girl with black hair lying on the floor, unconscious, and a girl with curly red hair standing on the seat, shaking uncontrollably. They were Lucy and Dominique Weasley.

Lucy had assumed James would be a prankster, but she never thought it would go this far. It wasn't even borderline rude--it was downright heartless. It was very impressive magic for a second year, however.

"You twat!" Dominique jumped down from the seat and went for James. "You know she has a phobia of snakes! How could you?"

"I was just trying to help her," he said, some snickers escaping him still. "It's about time she got over her fear."

Dominique scowled at him and went back to tend to her cousin. She had only fainted from the shock.

Luna looked at the crowd of students, spotting Victoire near the front. She was stunning, with long, silvery blonde hair, just like Fleur. But her face was kinder--like how she'd imagined Bill's.

Victoire rolled her eyes to the ceiling.

"I can't believe I'm related to them."

Some people in the crowd laughed, and since the excitement was over, they dispersed and returned to their seats.

Luna thought about those last three words in the epilogue, how silly they had sounded when she had first read them. Now, she realized how very wrong they were. All was not well.