Chapter two
The Dimmed Moon
September, 1999
The soft wet grass felt so good against her bare feet. The soft wind grazing against her ivory skin was pleasant too. She was humming incoherent tunes as she walked around aimlessly in the meadow, trying to harmonize her sound with the hymn sung by a flock of buff feathered birds nearby.
The sun wasn't even fully awakened yet, its reddish spectrum only peeping up a little behind the hill by the moorland. In that goddamn hour, she was supposed to sleep, cocooned warmly under safety of her woollen blanket. But she just couldn't.
More than a year had passed since the Wizarding War II. Most wizards and witches had moved on from that gruesome war; living a life to the fullest in the so called new wizarding era. But that wasn't the life that Luna Lovegood having. Life would never be the same for those who were so close to the war.
True, in the front, she still had that airy personality and distinct dottiness on her, but sometimes that qualities would immediately replace with a rather vacant demeanour especially when she was alone. And she was alone often enough. As after she graduated from school, she lived alone in her dreary house.
Her father was never the same; aurors said that he was tortured while imprisoned in Azkaban by Voldemort's followers. So often she visited him in Janus Thickey's ward in St. Mungo, relentlessly talking to him in her dreamy voice although his vacant eyes was the only response she got. Maybe Wrackspurts or Blibbering Humdingers were meddling with his brain, they probably liked his head very much as he had a lot of waggish ideas stored there. But it was fine. She would find a way to chase those naughty creatures away and her dad would be as good as new.
Harry and Mrs Weasley concerned about her well-being of course. They even offered her to stay in Grimmauld Place or The Burrow but she declined their offers politely. She liked their places but only for some sort amount of time. She needed the quietness her house provided as she wanted to continue publishing The Quibbler. Also Dabberblimps would infest her house if she let her house vacant for far too long. They were annoying little creatures, messing her house really bad when she left the house to finish her seventh year in Hogwarts. Apparently they liked to live in old boxes as she found so many boxes scattered all over her house when she was back from school on summer. She had to go to the Dart Moor to collect a fresh batch of bobble-joggle berries and scattered it around her house to chase that Dabberblimps away.
Yes, quietness was good. But sometimes she felt that she got too much of it; she felt it constricted her air-flow, making it harder for her to breathe. When that happened, it was her cue to take a barefoot walking to The Burrow or simply apparate to Grimmauld Place. She would stay there for all afternoon, enjoying the loud they provided, then she would be back to her house before the dusk settled. When night came, she was all alone again.
Maybe Wrackspurts also muddled up her brain, as sometimes she woke up screaming in the middle of her fitful sleep. That was the reason why she refused to stay over at Grimmauld Place or The Burrow: she didn't want to cause them any trouble or worry. Those Wrackspurts made her dreaming about the war, especially the time she spent in the dungeons of Malfoy Manor. She probably got infected there! Poor Mr. Malfoy, he didn't even know they were there. She should help him, he couldn't defend himself from a flock of Wrackspurts alone! Yes, she probably should.
Then she continued wandering aimlessly until it was time to feed the chicken.
