30. Partings

The cries of shock had barely started before Luna was sprinting out of the door after her friend. People called her back, Hermione's shriek rising above their frightened voices; "Don't be crazy Luna! She'll kill you!" But Luna took no notice. Turning back round to face them she blasted the great doors shut.

She didn't bother calling her friend as she ran over the wide expanse of lawn and away from the school. She already knew where she would be. Sure enough as she approached the forest she saw the flicker of black within the trees. "Ysabell!" she called, panting. As she started forwards again a jet of light shot past her head.

"Luna!" the shadowy figure exclaimed. "Luna, I'm so sorry!" There were tears glinting on her cheeks. "I didn't mean to – oh, I'm so sorry!"

Luna just nodded silently as she stood regarding her friend. "Where will you go?" she asked, at last.

"I don't know. I was just going to get on a thestral and ride wherever it takes me… if it'll let me ride it, that is." she added bitterly.

"You're going by thestral?" Luna queried. Mutely, Ysabell raised her arm up to show her, dripping blood down her robes from where she had slashed it with her wand.

Luna nodded equivocally, as though Ysabell had just shown her a rather uninteresting magazine article.

They stood in silence for a while, listening to the noises of the forest and alert to any movement in the trees. Ysabell's nerves were so on edge that she nearly cursed the first approaching thestral, but Luna grabbed her arm just in time.

The silence grew rather uncomfortable, as Ysabell stood with one arm over the thestral's back, looking at her friend with eyes filled with fear, despair and self-loathing.

"They'll be able to see you, you know." remarked Luna, referring to the fact that everyone who had been in the entrance hall would now be able to see thestrals. Ysabell just shrugged.

"I don't hate you." said Luna sincerely, answering her unspoken question. "I wouldn't have done what you did, but I think I understand."

"But you should hate me!" Ysabell's cry echoed round the woods.

"Shh," said Luna, hugging her. "Not now."

"Will you come with me?" Ysabell whispered into her shoulder.

Luna shook her head. "No." she said regretfully. "I don't think I should. I'll stay here and tell them."

"You will tell them for me, won't you?"

"I promise." said Luna gravely. "I'll write it down and publish it for the whole world to see."

"In the Quibbler." Ysabell finished, smiling just slightly. She climbed onto the thestral's back. "I'll see you again" she said fervently. "I promise I will!"

"Yes" said Luna, softly. She stood back as the thestral shook its wings, and watched as it rose steeply up into the sky, with the young girl clinging to its back.

She stayed there for quite a while, as the wind blew around her. She found herself thinking back to the summer, how she taught Ysabell elementary magic and all those long afternoons by the streams. She thought about Christmas, and all the evenings they had spent curled up by the fire in the Ravenclaw common room. Doing homework together in the library, buying sweets in Hogsmeade, snowball fights and walks in the forest, sunny evenings by the lake… the memories overwhelmed her and silent tears started to trickle softly down her face as she sank to the welcoming forest floor.

After an eternity of memories she stood up and tried to express the tumult of emotion inside her before she returned to the others. A clear, trembling voice rose to the sky, as she sang the song her mother had taught her before she died.

'O poor bird, take thy flight

High above the sorrows of this dark night.'

She gazed for one last time in the direction of the place she had last seen her friend and set off back towards the castle and the circle of faces that anxiously awaited her.