Luna

Harry approached the barrier at platform nine and three-quarters at a brisk walk, his trunk (which had lost its wheels over the summer) on a trolley. The trolley. smacked into the brick wall with a thud, and Harry hit the ground.

He popped back up and wondered what was happening. He seemed to be in the same place as last year.

Harry had liked getting on the platform the first time. A fun puzzle, though puzzle was a little strong. Platform nine and three-quarters, his letter had said. So he'd gone to the space of wall between platforms nine and 10, three-quarters of the way toward 10. He'd half expected even before he'd seen it that it would be like the entrance to the magic alley, so he'd tapped his wand against it.

That hadn't worked, but it had clearly been the right place because most people were looking away from it and even giving it wide berth, forming a choke point in the foot traffic. Eventually, he'd rammed into the wall pretty hard with his shoulder, and had gone a step in, so then he'd backed up, grabbed his trunk, gotten up to a brisk walk, and charged through.

Easy. Except this year it wasn't working.

Shoulder first, he threw himself against the barrier a few feet down, and bounced off, as if it were a normal wall.

Perhaps the entrance had been switched this year and he hadn't gotten the message. He'd sent Hedwig ahead to Hogwarts before he'd left the Dursleys, so he couldn't even send anyone a message asking.

He was about to go give the wall between platforms 10 and 11 a try when a small blonde girl with a bright purple trunk smacked into the barrier. Her trunk fell off the cart and she fell over. It was loud enough that the muggles glanced in their direction, and the girl started laughing.

Harry said, "It's not working."

Still on the ground, she turned her head and looked at him. "You're Harry Potter. I like your bowler hat."

"I like it too," said Harry. He didn't recognize the girl, but that meant nothing. He didn't recognize most people. He knew Ron and Neville, but two others boys shared their room and Harry didn't remember their names. John and Keenin, maybe? Something like that. "This is where we got on last year, isn't it?"

"I didn't. This is my first year." Still flat on her back, she extended her hand and said, "Luna Lovegood."

Harry bent to shake it. "Can I help you up?"

"I like the ceiling," she said.

Harry lay next to her, and it was a nice ceiling. Curving white crosshatching, reminding him both of a coiled vine and of an old cathedral

A man came into view above them. The man said, "Luna, pumpkin, are you alright?"

The girl said, "I'm dandy, Daddy."

Luna's dad wore a green coat with an orange dress shirt. Green and orange often didn't go well together, but these were the right shades, and the man's brown leather pants recalled the hint of brown that mellowed the orange.

Harry liked the man immediately. Harry had seen wizards and witches trying to dress like ordinary muggles and doing a hilariously bad job at it, but this man had tried to dress like an interesting muggle, and he'd pulled it off.

The man said, "I'd lay next to you, sweetums, but we have to get you aboard." The man helped his daughter up and, looking down at Harry, said, "Harry Potter."

Harry rolled to his feet. "How do people recognize me when I'm wearing the bowler hat? My scar is covered."

The man said, "You look so much like your father it's like a seeing a ghost, but with your mother's eyes. You couldn't be anyone else. Besides, you were in The Daily Prophet with Lockhart. Front page."

Luna said, "Daddy and I think it's great what you're doing for the house-elves."

Harry opened his trunk, pulled out a clipboard and self-inking quill, and said, "Hello, Mr. Luna's Dad. Would you like to sign my petition?"

"Mr. Lovegood," he said, and signed the petition. After giving the petition back to Harry, who stowed it, Mr. Lovegood took out his wand, and, surreptitiously, hiding it from sight with his body, tapped at the barrier with his wand.

"There's an odd spell on here," he said. "Harry, back away from the barrier with me. Luna dear, when we're about 70 cubits away, try the barrier again.

Harry backed up with Mr. Lovegood, into the crowd, and Luna came back out of the barrier, laughing. Then went back in. Then came back out.

At Mr. Lovegood's direction, Harry moved closer, and Luna hit the barrier with her shoulder, laughing.

Mr. Lovegood said, "It seems the barrier only becomes impermeable when you're near it. I'll write this up in The Quibbler."

Harry didn't know what that was, so he ignored it. "Can you break the spell?"

"It's not my area. I suspect goblins, or the Red-Crested British Jackalope. But I can get you on the platform. Luna pumpkin, can you get your trunk through and his too? No dear, probably two separate trips. There we are. Wait for us there."

She went through with her trunk, then Harry's.

"Let's get nice close to the wall where the muggles won't be able to notice us. Here we are. Hold on tight."

A twist, and everything went dark and he felt as if he were being squeezed through a tube.

Then he was on his knees on platform nine and three-quarters, the train whistling, students milling. "That's apparition? That's horrible. Wow."

They'd appeared very near to Luna, and she'd run up to them quickly enough to hear. She said, "I like apparition, rather. It's like being wrapped in a blanket. But Daddy says it's a good experience to go through King's Cross."

Harry took a look around. He was there earlier than the previous year, and a steady stream of students were coming in through a lit fireplace filled with green flames.

One of them tumbled out, hit a lamp post, and got up and brushed herself off as if nothing had happened.

Harry pointed. "What is that?"

Luna said, "That's a student. Early teens, female, no obvious non-human ancestry, Hufflepuff by the scarf."

"I mean what the students are coming out of? How are they doing that?"

"The fireplace? That's a floo. They're coming through the floo."

Harry vaguely recalled that he'd read about the floo, or perhaps Hermione had read about it and told him, (those two events were tagged identically in his memory) but he'd been much more interested in apparition.

Harry said, "Why do the ones who look like they got shot out of a cannon don't injure themselves on the lamp post?"

"Charms on the floo so you have a safe exit."

Huh. "Want to sit with me on the train?"

She nodded, and they entered at the first train car, going down, compartment by compartment, until they he found what he was looking for at the very end.

Neville and Hermione, already there, even though Harry was early.

Harry put his hands on Luna's shoulders and presented her to Neville and Hermione. "I found this. It's early, but I think I like her. Her name is Luna Lovegood. She's a first-year."

Luna looked at Hermione and said, "If I had curly hair like that, I'd keep things in it. Better than pockets."

Hermione looked affronted, and Harry laughed. Luna sat, and Neville stretched out a hand. "N-Neville Longbottom," he said.

"Is it really? Relatively long, I mean. Oh, I'm sorry, you must get that question a lot and you don't like it any. Still, would you turn around so I can see?"

Hermione groaned. "Harry. One of you was enough."

#

#

...and on a scale of dementors to crumple-horned snorkacks, how cute would you say house-elves are?" Luna's quill hovered expectantly over the parchment.

Hermione said, "I'm sorry, what magazine did you say this is for?"

"The Quibbler. My father runs it."

Harry said, "Which one's cute and which one's not?"

Ron said, "Dementors are the opposite of cute. I've never heard of a snorkack before."

Harry said, "I'd say house-elves are about halfway between baby dragons and those weird things that pull the carriages."

"Thestrals," said Luna, and wrote that down.

Hermione frowned. She didn't remember anything pulling the carriages at Hogwarts, and she'd taken them three times. Leaving for Christmas, coming back from Christmas, and leaving at the end of the year. They'd moved on their own.

"And do you think house-elves are too small, or are witches and wizards too tall?"

Hermione said, "I don't think size matters."

Luna nodded, "I've always wanted to be mountainous. It would be hard to pick small things up, and there'd be the stepping on towns to worry about, but I'd have such a nice view wherever I went."

Hermione said, "Ask a more serious question."

"Okay. Are house-elves slaves?"

The simplicity and suddenness of that startled Hermione, but she knew her answer. "Yes. Anyone who works without pay is a slave."

"That's not true," said Harry. "Volunteers aren't slaves. Stay-at-home mums aren't slaves. Grandparents who live with you and are retired but do a lot of chores aren't slaves."

Harry looked progressively more disturbed as he continued. "What makes you a slave is if you don't have any choice about it. Right now, the house-elves are don't have a choice, so they're all slaves. Maybe most of them are happy to do what they're doing, like the books say, and would be happy to do it even if they didn't have to. But they do. If we just gave them the choice, even if hardly any of them took it, Wizarding Britain would no longer be a slave-owning country. Right now it is."

Hermione stared at Harry, and Ron, who had been quite ready to get in an argument with Hermione, said, "Sometimes I forget you're not an idiot."

Luna's quill scratched away. "If choice is what makes a slave a slave, aren't children slaves?"

Ron and Hermione were too busy arguing against that for Harry to get a word in edgewise.

#

#

Professor McGonagall said, "Lovegood, Luna," and Luna practically skipped to the stool. She set the hat on her head, and Hermione didn't know whether to root for girl to be put in Gryffindor or not.

She'd seemed nice enough on the train ride, but really, Harry was plenty odd on his own. And she hadn't liked the way Harry had kept looking at Luna. Like she was a fantastic toy.

They couldn't hear, of course, but the girl was talking to the Sorting Hat. That wasn't unusual, but rather than nervously responding, she looked to be happily chatting. As if asking the Sorting Hat about weather and whether 11 was too old for dolls.

Her sorting went on, and the hat wrinkled in a way that suggested annoyance. Hermione was annoyed too. The girl was holding up the sorting.

"RAVENCLAW," the hat at last declared.

Above the subdued cheers of Ravenclaw (of all the houses, Ravenclaw was the quietest) a single voice rang out, saying, "Damn it!"

Professor McGonagall said, "20 points from Gryffindor, Mr. Potter, for your foul language. And see me after for your detention."

Every Gryffindor at the table shot Harry a look of anger, and Harry said, "It'll be nice to talk to Professor McGonagall again."

Dean Thomas said, "Getting an early start on losing us the House Cup, are you, Harry?"

"Are we doing that again this year? The House Cup."

"We do it every year, and you're the biggest reason we lost last year," Percy said, jabbing a finger at him.

"Well excuse me, tall red-head boy, if I don't care about the draperies at the closing feast. Green and silver is a perfectly nice color scheme."

Hermione said, "Harry, it's not about the draperies. Everyone in the school is on one of four teams. Our team is called Gryffindor. And last year we lost. We're all losers. We came in third. And you're the biggest reason why we lost."

Harry's face was pale, his eyes wide, his jaw slack. Horrified, he whispered, "Why didn't anyone tell me about this?"

Ron slammed his own head on the table.

:::
Many have noticed that, through the first two or three books, the blind desire to be 'normal' is bad and oppressive, embodied by the Dursleys. Then Harry spends the rest of the series desperately wanting to be normal. This Harry ain't ever gonna be like that. He will be fabulously, unashamedly himself.

That doesn't mean he's going to believe everything in the Quibbler.

I haven't actually seen any of the movies after number 3 (I don't watch a lot of movies). I was surprised to google Xenopillius Lovegood and see such a cool looking dude. I didn't imagine him that way before, but maybe I will now.

I re-read the first three books much more often than I re-read the last three, so I'm afraid that, though I like Luna, I don't know her that well. But having her and this Harry together... I'm starting to worry about how well it will work. They're odd in some very different ways, but also in some nearly identical ways.

I don't want Harry to be interested in fashion specifically. Rather, he's interested in how things look. That's not a trait I have, so writing it feels anthropological.

I REALLY should not be starting any other projects, but somehow I have 16 thousands words a fic where Tonks is a seventh-year during Harry's first year, and, seeing as she's his closest living magical relative who isn't her mother or a Malfoy, takes him under her wing. I'm tempted to call it "Mentordora Tonks," which would be a crime against the English language, but crime is a part of life and we all have to accept that.