Chapter 6: 2 November
It is the night of the first Quidditch Match of the year. Gryffindor beat Slytherin 200 points to 20, with Harry catching the snitch in record time, right under Malfoy's smug, up-turned nose. The entire team wants to head up to the common room and party with all the food they can nick from the kitchens and all the firewhiskey they can drink...but Harry wants only to see her. Could she see any of the match out her window? Or were the individual players too far away to make out? Could she hear the commentary, the final score, the roar of the crowd heading back up from the pitch? It seems she must have, because when he enters the room, she pulls him into her arms, whispers "you were brilliant," and lets him kiss her. Then she is slipping out of her tight black dress. He watches the silky material gather around her waist as her back faces him, shiny and exposed...He feels the way he used to around Cho Chang, except it's stronger in a way..and the things he wants to do with her...it's the stuff of daydream charms...
"Hello, Harry. Is the DA meeting again?" Harry stopped still in his tracks, the daydream leaving his thoughts as quickly as if it'd been magically wiped away.
"Luna!?" The blonde was there sure enough, standing beside Barnabus the Barmy wearing her radish earrings and an expression of the most serene confusion.
"You, Ron and Hermione have been coming here loads again...The Grey Lady told me."
"Did she?"
"She did. I was wondering if the DA was back to having meetings." Luna wasn't moving. She kept looking at him with her wide eyes, always having the habit of inserting herself into conversations and situations in the bluntest of ways.
"Luna, it's not like that. Honestly, we-" He broke off when he heard what sounded distinctly like a cat's low growl drawing nearer. Mrs. Norris.
"Students out of bed, my sweet?"
Filch sounded far too close for Harry's liking-probably coming up the corridor.
"Luna, c'mere-" He didn't have time to think. He grabbed Luna's hand and thought as desperately as he could about the Room of Requirement and the place they were keeping Bellatrix until the door materialized before them. He heard Filch's footsteps clattering just around the corner when he pulled Luna into the room and let the door shut behind her.
"This is the Room of Lost Things, isn't it?"
"Luna, I need you to keep a secret. It's very, very important." He thought for a second that maybe he could get away without telling her-that maybe they could hide, for just a few moments until Filch passed by, and then leave the room...he could make up some story to keep Luna from thinking the DA was back...but he felt horrible inside about betraying Luna's trust like that. Hadn't she risked her life to try and save Sirius, a man she thought, up until Harry told her otherwise, was a convicted killer? And hadn't she initiated the publishing of the interview that brought so many over to Harry's side about Voldemort being back when all the other papers sided with the Ministry?
"I'm alright at keeping secrets, I suppose. I would tell you some of the best ones I've kept-and for how long-but then I wouldn't be very good at keeping them anymore, would I?"
"No, but the thing is...Ron, Hermione and I have been coming to this room for the past few weeks but it's not for the DA...we met someone during the last trip to Hogsmeade and we brought her here to keep her safe, because right now, if she leaves this room-or if anyone knows she's here-she'll die and the lot of us will likely be expelled-and probably arrested, honestly."
"Arrested? For trying to keep someone safe-who is it? Is it that witch the Ministry of Magic has been threatening because she's been accusing Rufus Scrimgeor of being a vampire? Because that's not an accusation, Harry, that's true." Luna was starting to move down the rows of shelves as she spoke, glancing at this and that hidden there by centuries of Hogwarts students.
"No-no, it's nothing like that. This is someone who has done a lot of bad things, but she doesn't remember them, so right now it's like she's innocent-even though she isn't-and we don't want to remind her of any of the things in her past until we know what to do...I'm sorry, I'm not making sense, am I?" Harry cut himself off, realizing simultaneously that he was rambling and that Luna was focusing most of her attention on an ornate comb shaped like a ladybug she'd picked up off of a nearby table.
"Luna, please, this is important-"
"I know," she said, but kept on walking ahead all the same. "I don't have to be looking at you to be hearing you. Kind of like how Ron Weasley can look right at you and not hear what you're saying at all….some people are the reverse of that-oh, Bellatrix Lestrange!"
They'd walked straight through the invisible barrier around Bellatrix's little room. And there she was, looking again different than she had yet-not that Harry had expected her to still be wearing the orange dress. This time, she was sitting on the couch under the window, writing something in a little notebook bound in black leather with what appeared to be a raven's feather quill. Her hair was a little wet and hanging in a messy ponytail over one shoulder. Her robes tonight were lavender.
"Oh! You've brought someone!" Bella shut the journal and got to her feet, but looked otherwise unconcerned.
"I'm Luna. Harry says we're friends. Pleasure to meet you, Ms. Lestrange," said Luna. And with that, she held out her hand for Bella to shake. That was the surprisingly unsurprising thing about Luna. She had a way of always being able to shock you with the things that for her, were the most natural of reactions.
"The pleasure is mine, Luna-but please, if you are a friend of Harry's then you may call me Bella. The whole Ms. Lestrange bit makes me feel like some stuffy old crone. And I'm not old enough for that yet." Luna smiled and Bella had an amused glint in her eyes that seemed to indicate to Harry that she wasn't put off by the surprise new visitor. He crossed into the room and sat next to Bella on the couch while Luna sat across from them in the chair and then they were all just looking at each other.
"Would you like to play a game, Ms Bella-I imagine the boredom must get really horrid up here," said Luna.
"It does. You're very perceptive," said Bella with one eyebrow raised and (Harry thought) a curt glance over at him.
"No, Harry can sometimes just be really unobservant-part of what makes him so charming, I expect."
Harry wasn't meeting either of their eyes, but heard Bella laugh in that musical way that was so nice. "Right then. What games have you got?" he said-never knowing what to expect when it came to Luna.
"Oh, I was just thinking Exploding Snap or something. I've got a deck in my bag."
And so they played a few rounds of Exploding Snap, the wizarding card game in which players tried to choose pairs of matching cards out of a series, faster than the other players and before the cards exploded. Bella won the most, which she considered ironic because while she couldn't remember the past several years of her life, she could remember where all the cards featuring Hebridean Blacks were when they were all upside down in a lineup. Harry singed part of an eyebrow lunging for a matched pair of Hungarian Horntail cards that exploded in his face, and Luna seemed too preoccupied with studying the artwork on the cards and their apparent symbolism to be concerned with matching any at all.
Eventually though, this too got boring, and then they were all looking at each other in silence again.
"Wrackspurts got you?" Harry had to admire Luna's nerve.
"What?" asked Bella.
"Wrackspurts! They're invisible creatures that float around and make your brain go fuzzy!"
"Well that makes sense, then...my brains been all sorts of fuzzy lately," she replied, with that amused look in her eyes again.
"I've got tarot, too-if you'd like a reading. The cards are great for helping you gather your thoughts," said Luna, who then proceeded to pull another, distinctly different, deck of cards out of her bag. She took them out of a battered purple box that had a mermaid on the front of it.
"Oh come on," Harry couldn't help but scoff. "You're learning that rubbish in Trelawney's class, aren't you?
"Oh no, I've got Firenze this year-and besides, this is different. It's a special deck, left to me by my mother and it's not nice of you to call it rubbish just because you may not understand it yet."
"Oh Harry, let up. It's all in good fun and besides, what harm can it do if I don't remember hardly anything about my past anyway? Anything that might give me answers, I'll take. Even this."
Luna slipped the cards out of their box and began shuffling them like a pack of playing cards. She split the them into four piles in a horizontal row and a fifth pile isolated from the others. She flipped them over one by one to reveal the top card on each.
"This Court card...this is you, Miss Bella. It's the Queen of Wands. The Queen of Fire." Luna pointed to the top card on the fifth pile...a woman with dark hair in an orange dress. Bella in her orange dress on Halloween.
"And this one represents your recent past. We've got the seven of swords-that's betrayal-and that's the eight of swords-that's some sort of oppression and interference-see how the swords in the picture are all crossing each other? This is probably because of what happened to you-you lost your memories-someone you trusted took them from you and now you feel trapped, not by Harry or the Room of Lost things, but by the situation. You don't know what to do and you feel a little helpless...hence the crossed swords." Bella looked down at the cards and frowned.
"But over here in the center...Here's where you are currently," Luna continued. "The 10 of Cups. Satiety. You're happy right now, you feel like you belong here with us." 10 golden goblets overflowing with light, set against a red and orange background.
"And this one here on the end is for the near future-ace of cups. That's new beginnings-especially for new relationships-look at how the cup in the picture looks like it's exploding out the top with all different colors and patterns? My mother always liked that card. She told me it means the way into the soul...that part of us that sees beauty and trust in other people."
"Your mother told you that?" asked Bella. Something about her changed just then. There was a sort of...intensity and power about her that was off-putting. It reminded Harry of that night at the Ministry and he put his hand around the handle of his wand just in case he needed to draw it quickly.
"She did." Luna nodded as she started to pack the cards back into their box.
"You must have a good mother," said Bellatrix.
"I did have a good mother. At least, I think I did."
"Did? What happened to her?"
"She passed away when I was nine. She was the Queen of Cups whenever we pulled the cards...very artistic and did a lot of inventing...one day, one of her invented spells went badly wrong...and…" Luna trailed off. Harry watched the interaction between them, but neither woman said anything for a good long while. Everyone was thinking. And then…
"What, has the wrackspurt got you?" said Bella with a thin smile, and they all laughed until Luna got to her feet.
"Well, as I'm sure Mr. Filch is gone and you two probably want some time alone-I'm going to get going. And don't worry. I won't give away your secret-I can tell that Harry really cares about you."
"Luna...are you sure? I can walk you out, if you'd like," said Harry. He knew how hard it was for him to talk about his own parents or about Sirius when the topic was thrown on him so unexpectedly. He couldn't imagine it was any easier for her.
"Thanks, but I know the way. Could we maybe hang out again? It was nice. Like being with friends." This was another of those sentiments that Luna often expressed to which Harry never knew how to respond.
"I am your friend, Luna," he said.
"And I guess I'm your friend, too...for what it's worth given the fact that Harry's other friends seem to be afraid of me for reasons I don't even understand. Maybe I used to be really horrible and terrifying before all this...Maybe I still am." Bella said it all with an air of total sarcasm and jest, but she was so close to the truth it was making Harry nervous. How much did she know? And could Ron be right? Could she really have been playing them all along, just waiting for the right moment to strike? If Luna was thinking the same thing, she didn't show it.
"Don't pay attention to other people, then. Just trust yourself. And for what it's worth, I think you're a good person, Ms. Bella. And you're really very pretty. You've got thestral eyes."
"Harry, is everything alright? You're awfully quiet. I was just saying you should bring her again...it was fun." After Luna left, Bella had actively tried to start conversations with Harry, but he couldn't shake the feeling that perhaps he'd gotten himself and his classmates into a situation more complicated than anything they'd faced before...and he had no escape plan if things got out of control except going to the staff who would go to the Aurors and the Ministry..which would land he, Ron and Hermione (and now Luna, too!) in Azkaban for sure...for harboring one of the most wanted prisoners in the wizarding world…Feeding her, taking care of her, healing her wounds...
"Harry!" Bella's hand was on his shoulder. "Please. Tell me...was it something I said? Or are you still reeling about that tarot reading?"
"Why would I be reeling about that? It was about you, not me."
"Because you haven't looked me in the eye since she pulled those cards...you're acting just like Ron and Hermione...all skittish, keeping one hand on your wand like I'm going to hurt you any second...I want to know why! Why am I trapped her...being held prisoner by...children...while half my damn body is cut open and huge gaps of my life are just missing from my memory...just...why?!" She took a deep breath and tried to lean her head against Harry's shoulder, but he quickly shook her off.
"What do you want to be that close to me for, I'm a child, remember?"
"I didn't mean that. You know I didn't mean that...You're the most mature and sincere person I've met in, you know, the memories I do have...but I am frustrated. You said you would tell me and I just...don't know how much longer I can stand to wait."
