No, I do not own the Harry Potter franchise, though I do own copies of all the books and films. The people who do own the Harry Potter franchise are JK Rowling, Bloomsbury, Warner Bros. and a few other publishers. Thank you to JKR for letting us play about in the sandbox of the Wizarding World
Here we go with Chapter 9. Thanks for all the reviews, as always it has been fun reading what you all think. Please keep them coming, knowing that the story is liked inspires me to keep it going.
I'm introducing another character here; an old fan favourite. You know her, you love her, no story ever seems complete without her, its LUNA!
Harry: The Forgotten Brother.
Chapter 9: Luna
The Head of Creature Liaison; that was her job title. The Head of Creature Liaison; that is what she was. Her department, as the title suggested, aimed to set up communications between Wizarding society and various magical creatures from around the world, including, but not limited to, Centaurs, Goblins, Vampires, Giants, Trolls, Werewolves, Sphinxes and Merpeople. It was a tough job, but Luna Lovegood loved it, and could not think of anything she would enjoy doing more. The people that she worked with were some of the best, and the amount of progress they had made in the past five years alone was outstanding.
Why in the past year alone, they had, acting on the behalf of the Forbidden Forest Centaur herd, successfully persuaded the Minister for Magic to allow the Centaurs more area in which to roam. In return the Centaurs had promised to make peace with the Forest Trolls in the area, and to try and pave the way for Luna's department to communicate with them, which was crucial preventing them from joining with Lord Voldemort, like around sixty percent of the Mountain Trolls of the area had already done.
Open up communications and keep them on side; that was the job of Luna's department. Even if that just meant keeping the creatures neutral in the war, the effort involved was worth it.
There were, of course, downsides. Like right now, with the situation with the Hobgoblins of Yester Castle in Scotland. These Hobgoblins once followed Sir Hugo de Giffard, known as the Wizard of Yester; a powerful warlock and necromancer. To most of the world, both magical and mundane, Yester Castle was now little more than a ruin deemed worthy enough by the Muggle world to be named a Scheduled Ancient Monument by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, but apart from that it held little significance. Luna and her team, however, knew different. Through extensive research, they had found that, like Hogwarts Castle, people saw what those inside wanted them to see. If Muggles got too close to Hogwarts, all they was a moldering ruin, and the same went for Yester Castle.
Sir Hugo de Giffard may be long dead, but the descendants of the Hobgoblins who served him still remained there, and it was to them that Luna had sent a team in the hopes of opening up talks with them. The team had been led by one of Luna's best operatives; Sally-Anne Perks, and contained Fay Dunbar, Morag and Katherine MacDougal, Wayne Hopkins and his brother Carl, Stephen Cornfoot and his sister Louise, and Ritchie Coote. They were the best that Luna could give to the situation, and yet they had failed to set up any form of communication.
According to the report that Luna was now reading, the Hobgoblins had been hostile from the start, and after three days of trying, the group had been forced to retreat with Katherine, Stephen and Ritchie injured. Given how the Hobgoblins, themselves necromancers, had begun a ritual to raise dead bodies from the grave, Luna could not hold the decision to retreat against the team. The last thing that she needed was her people getting killed.
Luna knew from past experience that for now it would be best to retreat and regroup. They would have to leave the Hobgoblins alone for at least a few months before trying again. Any sooner would guarantee hostility. They would have to keep an eye on the place however, even if only to make sure Lord Voldemort did not make a successful play for them; Hobgoblins with the ability to raise many Inferi from their graves in just a few minutes was the last thing the Wizarding World needed Voldemort to have.
Luna set Sally-Anne's report down on her desk and then rubbed her eyes wearily. Seriously, she did love her job, but she was often left wondering why every peace treaty and/or pledge of allegiance could not be as easily obtained as getting the one from the Satyrs of Greece had been. Just once she would like a mission to be as easy. Just once.
A knock on her door interrupted her thoughts, and she looked up and called for the person to enter.
It was Padma Patil.
Luna smiled serenely at her "Good evening, Padma. I didn't realise that you had come back from India."
"International Port key dropped me off at the Ministry about fifteen minutes ago." replied Padma, eyeing the mess of papers and reports on Luna's desk "Not caught you at a bad moment, have I?"
"No, no" replied Luna, hurriedly trying to sort the mess on her desk into some sort of semblance of order "Just going over a few reports, that's all."
Padma leaned down and picked up a sheet of parchment that had fallen to the floor. Noticing the writing, she asked "Hobgoblins of Yester Castle."
"Hmm." Luna grumbled "We've been trying to recruit them, or at least get them not to join Voldemort."
Padma chuckled and said "Luna, that's always our job. You're not having a lot of luck with them, I take it?"
"No," replied Luna "They're still heavily devoted to Sir Hugo de Giffard, even so long after his death. They did not take too kindly to the arrival of the team I sent up there to negotiate. But I've had enough of Hobgoblins for one day. How was India? Did you have any luck?"
Padma gave a smile "India was lovely, as ever. But as to luck, I'm afraid I'll have to give you a bit more bad news. The Monocoli people wanted nothing to do with us, and it is impossible to communicate with either the Occamies or the Nagas without someone who can speak parseltongue, and we could find no one with that gift."
Luna's brow furrowed in confusion "But I though speakers of parseltongue were more common in India, and that the trait was an admired one, rather than despised as it is here."
Padma nodded "That is true, of course, but perhaps I should rephrase what I said; we could find no one with the gift of parseltongue who was willing to work with us. Of Indian descent I may be, but the Wizards and Witches over there can tell that I was born and raised here in Britain. As such, they viewed me as someone not to be trusted, and that made meeting with someone as admired as a parselmouth impossible. For some of the looks I was getting, I might as well have been the British Minister for Magic wandering around the streets, spouting off his usual, highly offensive waffle."
Luna nodded; a thoughtful expression on her face. Magical Britain's relationship with Magical India was at an all-time low, thanks to berks like Cornelius Oswald Fudge and his ilk. Rather a shame, really. And not at all helpful for Luna's department, either.
"Well," said Luna "I'm pretty sure I know where I can obtain the services of a parselmouth, so a return trip might be in order soon. As for the Monocoli people…" she trailed off, unsure as to what to suggest with regards to the curious, virtually unknown race of single-legged people.
Padma nodded and then continued "I do have some more news though. Whilst searching for the Monocoli, we came across these."
She reached into her robes and pulled out a collection of photographs, which she handed to Luna. The blond witch's pale eyebrows rose up high as her pale blue eyes widened in surprise.
"Well that's interesting." she remarked, before looking up to meet Padma's eyes "But these pictures were clearly taken in the daytime."
"They do not transform, so they do not rely on the moon." replied Padma.
"They're like this the whole time?" asked Luna, receiving a nod from the Indian witch.
Luna looked back down at the photographs.
"That's very interesting."
After looking through all the photographs, Luna turned her attention back to Padma.
"How many are there?"
"We counted six." answered Padma "But it was obvious that there are more, somewhere. When we got back to the town after our unsuccessful meeting with the Monocoli and asked around. Apparently they are poached in the same way that their non-magical counterparts are poached by the Muggles."
"Would they be approachable, do you think?" queried Luna.
"Possibly." replied Padma "Though, seeing as they don't transform, we'll need a way to speak to them in their language."
"Felidspeak." Luna muttered, and Padma nodded.
After a few moments of silence, Luna stood "Alright, we'll worry about that tomorrow. You go home and get some rest; I'll go and convince our parselmouth to make a trip to India."
Padma smirked "Well, don't go getting too distracted by his flickering tongue tonight. Oh, who am I kidding, you get all the fun out of him that you can, and then give him my address, would you? I could do with his talents tonight."
Luna rolled her eyes at her long-time friend as she gave a wave of her wand to pack everything away before slinging her work bag onto her shoulder.
"I'll see you in the morning, Padma." she said, heading towards the door.
"Was that a 'yeah' or a 'no' on the sending him my way?" Padma called after her.
"Good night, Padma." Luna called back.
Padma grinned as she watched her long-time friend and colleague leave. Luna Lovegood certainly had come a long way from the spacey girl who had first entered Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and wizardry twenty years ago. That was due in no small part to the wonderful group of friends that had happily taken her under their wing. Padma was proud to be able to admit that she was amongst that group, having been one of the first to be swept up into it when it first formed back in her first year. Luna, like Padma and a good number of others had flourished in that group, and it was in that group that Luna first met her serpent-speaking boyfriend.
With a wistful sigh, Padma left Luna's office, silently wishing that she could hurry up and attract the attentions of Mr Right.
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The front door opened and Luna Lovegood stepped inside. She set her bag down by the door as she shut it behind her and then walked through the cosy living room and into the kitchen, where the tantalising aromas of dinner filled the air. It smelled like they were having lamb tonight.
Suddenly a pair of arms wrapped around her from behind and a pair of lips pressed against her neck.
"Welcome home, my Moonbeam." the voice of her boyfriend spoke into her ear.
Luna grinned at his behaviour "And a very good evening to you too, Harry."
A/N: And I'll stop things there. I get the feeling that some of my reviewers won't like this turn of events, but bear with me, everything will be explained eventually. Sorry for this taking so long to get out, but I've been a little stuck for inspiration on this story, no matter how much the many fantastic reviews helped. Also those little things called ideas for other stories keep jumping in the way every time I sit down and try to write this. As such, I now have many half-formed first chapters waiting to be developed further on file. You can look forward to reading some, if to all of them… some when… someday… at some point in time.
