As the tour progressed, Luna couldn't shake the feeling, rising like bile in her throat, that it was not going well. Worst of all, she knew that there was nothing she could do about it. Despite all her attempts to charm them, the adults remained indifferent, inspecting every corner of the buildings and grounds and peppering her with a clipped staccato of ceaseless questions. It seemed that no matter what answers Luna gave, she was met with only thin-lipped smiles. When Mr. Chaikin asked her about chaperones in the dormitories, Luna swelled with pride at having anticipated this one thing. She informed him that the mothers took turns sleeping in the dormitories to watch the girls. But he only nodded and asked her another question about curfews, to which she had no answer at all.
In the kitchens, Luna received a crash course in kosher and halal dietary restrictions, and promised that the Circle, with their rotating chore wheel, would do their best to accommodate them. In the laboratory, Mrs. Karim sniffed the ancient stores of musty herbs and sour animal components with distaste, and Mr. Kohen ran his fingers disapprovingly over the graffiti of observations, notes, and measurements that had been carved directly onto the tables without ceremony.
Parents and daughters alike seemed enchanted by the library, gasping and lingering over the oldest tomes. Mr. Chaikin even asked in a hushed whisper if he could touch them, with a reverence that puzzled Luna. They were just books, after all. And what right did they have to cluck with disgust at every creaking door, leaking roof, and dusty corner of the Circle, when they seemed to think that dust added romance to the spines of old books? Luna thought it prudent not to point out their hypocrisy to their faces, but had difficulty hiding her disdain for the written word. She barely watched as they flipped through the manuscripts, and eventually asked them not to dally, earning glowers from her guests.
The four girls spoke even less than their parents, and Luna was sure they detested her. Resigned to her fate, she let the forced smile drop from her face like petals on a wilting flower, relieved to sink down, down to a shape that felt more natural. She stopped scanning their faces in search of some fleeting sign of approval, and started observing the whole of each girl with the attentiveness that comes with having no agenda but curiosity. She caught glimpses of them in their posture, their quirks, their gaze, Rachel's nail biting, the way Rania peered through her eyelashes at things her parents criticized. Luna knew what each girl like best by the way her breath caught in her throat in an excited gasp or sigh of appreciation.
And the Circle did have something to offer each girl. Aviva lit up when Luna showed her the rusty orreries and telescopes in the old observatory, and Noura stooped to her knees to feel the soil and burgeoning sprouts in the kitchen garden with a practiced hand. Rania rooted around in the drawers of the wandmaking and alchemy benches in the laboratory with gusto, and Rachel lingered for several minutes after everyone else left the library. Perhaps all was not lost, after all.
Finally, at long last, the party trudged through the mud to the chapter house. The rain had slowed to a drizzle and watery sunlight was beginning to pierce tentatively through the clouds. Cressida was waiting for them, her arms looking noticeably bare without her usual armor of jangling bangles.
"Welcome, welcome! My, you all are positively drenched. How about some lovely hot tea to warm you up?" she summoned a tray with a chipped teapot and a pile of mismatched cups and saucers.
"Perhaps you have an office where we could have a chat while the girls play?" asked Mrs. Karim.
"An office, imagine!" Cressida's giggle tinkled with condescension.
"There's no office, but of course we'd be happy to have a private conversation," Professor McGonagall cut in, shaking each of the adults' hands with an apologetic smile.
"That will hardly be necessary, Minerva. You weren't even supposed to come down today, were you? Who told you the tour was today?" Cressida asked. The air felt barbed.
"It's perfectly necessary, in fact," Professor McGonagall dodged Mrs. Lovegood's second question with a glance in Luna's direction, "Now, if you'd prefer, I can speak with the parents alone?"
That settled it.
—
The girls were shooed out of the chapter house with the vague directive to "go play." Luna led Noura, Rachel, Aviva, and Rania to the copse of trees where the girls of the Circle usually entertained themselves. The air was still chill and damp in the wake of the departed storm. When they reached the grove, they stood without speaking, their arms crossed in front of their chests. A nervous shiver seemed to pass between the girls like they were playing pass the parcel.
The remnants of long-forgotten romps littered the brush, where they had been blown in the wind and soaked in the rain. An old toy broom with horribly twisted tail-twigs, a cleverly-designed paper crown now puckered in the rain, old scraps of fabric used alternatively as costumes and picnic blankets. These playthings looked bereft and somewhat pathetic without the girls who usually breathed life into them: Ginny's laugh, Caroline's whinging, Lavender's sensible peacemaking. Luna stole a glance at the newcomers, who might become her new playmates. They had reached the age when children no longer hurdle with reckless abandon into playing with anyone and anything.
"This is pretty," Noura finally broke the silence, her fingers trailing lightly over the paper crown.
"You think so? My friend Padma made it. She's a really good artist," Luna said with a fond smile, perhaps the first smile all day that didn't feel like an effort, a millstone around her neck. When Noura returned the smile, it reached beyond her dimples to her brown eyes.
"Padma, you say? Is she new to the Circle, too?" Rania asked. Luna could sense the implication buried in the question, the hope. With a name like Padma, perhaps there were others like Rania already in the Circle, girls with brown skin, girls who came from religious families, girls who wore headscarves, girls who had never been to Hogwarts. She was sure they'd rather be receiving a tour from a girl named Padma than a girl named Luna, and she couldn't say she blamed them.
"Oh, no, Padma and her sister Parvati have been here since the beginning, back when the Circle was just a book club. Pretty much all of the girls started at Hogwarts, except a couple of us who were too young. They all left after…well, you know what happened to my best friend Ginny. She's at the Circle, too," There was a moment of silence and uncomfortable shuffling at the mention of Ginny's name. No wonder Ginny prized the privacy and normalcy of the Circle so much – was this how the rest of the world always treated her?
"Are the other girls…like you?" asked Rachel, still averting her eyes.
"What, do you mean are they strange like me?" Luna laughed at their startled faces. Only Rania held her gaze, "I know what you and your parents must think of me, and I know it's silly to even pretend you'll be allowed to join the Circle. But the other girls are simply…remarkable. They're not all as nutty as I am, but if being passionate makes us strange, then yes, we're a strange lot. We each have something that we love, something we want to explore. Seeing their creativity and brilliance, and seeing all they can do given some freedom and half a chance…it's the best part of the Circle."
Her voice wobbled, and she turned away from the others, looking across the fields towards the solitary gatehouse in a vain effort to conceal the tears that were welling in her eyes. She had dithered so much about what the Circle was, how it should work, what it could become, and now she realized with a searing ache that she had lost sight of this, this thing that was the core of everything. Loving and supporting her friends in whatever they wanted to learn, to do, to be.
The other girls were silent, considering this. Noura took a step closer to Luna and seemed to consider reaching out to touch her before thinking better of it. Rania was the first to speak.
"What makes you think our parents won't let us come?"
"What? Er, I just, sort of assumed, I guess," Luna stammered, "they didn't seem particularly happy with the tour, and me, and how we don't really have any rules. Oh, and the meals and prayers. I just assumed they hated it, really."
"Well, my parents did ask if I was going to dye my hair like a skunk when I join the Circle," Aviva said, with a sly smile and a glance at the back of Luna's head, where the bone white strand of hair stood out conspicuously in the tangle of her dark hair. The other girls laughed, but Luna was still processing what Aviva had said.
"When you join the Circle…? Oh, do you mean you might come after all?!"
"I don't see why not. If I say I want to, my parents wouldn't stop me," Rania said, a challenge in her eyes. Just because I wear a headscarf doesn't mean my parents control me.
"Oh, no. It's not that, not at all. I was just so certain I'd bungled the tour, and you all hated me," The confession rushed out of her with equal measures of horror and relief.
"You were obviously nervous, but I think you did a lovely job," said Noura kindly, reaching out this time to pat Luna on the arm with a shy smile.
"It's not really about you or your tour, anyway. This blood magic you spoke of, I want to learn it. And that laboratory is simply to die for," Rania swatted away Noura's platitudes with a brusque wave of her hand. Luna blushed. Apparently these girls were joining the Circle in spite of her tour rather than because of it. She'd make Ginny pay for this.
"Maybe just do brochures next time, or something," Aviva said with a smirk that felt conspiratorial and mischievous, rather than unkind.
"You too, Rachel? You'll think about coming?" Luna turned to the tallest girl, who had not spoken in some time.
"Oh, no, I don't think so. But not because my parents wouldn't allow it. I just don't particularly want to. No offense, it's not just not really my thing," Rachel rebraided her perfect plait with a detached air as she spoke.
"Oh. Well, that's alright. Thanks for coming and considering it anyway, I guess. Has anyone else got any questions for me?" Luna retrieved one of the tattered quilts that had previously been used as a coronation robe, spread it on the ground, and invited the others to sit with her. The grass felt pleasantly dewy under her fingers.
"Yeah. What does Pelorosoo mean, anyway?" asked Rania, scaling the tallest tree in the grove and settling into the comfortable crook of one of the branches.
"Peloresow. It's funny you should ask, Professor McGonagall only figured it out the other day. It's actually an old Cornish word. It means a good witch, a witch of the light."
"Huh," said Noura thoughtfully.
"Well it's a good sight better than Hogwarts," Aviva's lips curved around the word in distaste, like she was sucking on a lemon.
"That's interesting. With the blood magic thing and all. D'you reckon they were doing that defensively, so people couldn't accuse them of doing black magic? Like, no, no, we're not dark witches, we're the light witches," Rania asked.
"Maybe. Or white could mean pure. The oldest form of magic, the purest." Luna suggested. The sun finally burst decisively through the clouds and warmed their faces as they talked. The parents had emerged from the chapter house and were calling for their daughters across the fields, but they pretended not to hear.
Noura retrieved the paper crown from the bush and placed it on Luna's head.
—
"Oi, no fair, you got the best branch last time!" Ginny tugged at the hem of Rania's robes in a half-hearted attempt to pull her new friend out of their favorite tree in the grove.
"I got here first, fair and square! Guess you'll just have to be faster next time," Rania shook Ginny off with a nudge and a laugh before nestling into the bitterly contested throne to read. Ginny settled for a different bough, contorting her body to avoid an inconvenient knot in the wood. She still maintained that no tree could compare to their rowan at home, and Luna agreed.
"Those two get along like a house on fire, eh?" Lavender said with a rueful smile as Ginny started flicking seed pods at Rania, apparently hoping to annoy her into forfeiting the coveted branch. The other girls had settled much more peaceably in the grove, some on blankets and some splaying on the sun-warmed grass to enjoy the first warm, sunny day that felt tinged with summer. Padma had a sketchbook in her lap, Sylvia was plaiting Caroline's hair, and Aviva was tinkering with some rusty old astrolabe she had taken from the observatory.
"Mm," Luna said, fiddling with the string of the velvet pouch where she kept her runes.
"Everyone seems to be settling in well," Lavender repeated, giving her friend a gentle tap on the forearm.
"Oh, I know, I'm glad."
"It's so nice to see everything working out, exactly like you said. What do you think we'll do next? Rania seems really keen on wandmaking, but I also like Professor McGonagall's idea of getting a bit more theory under our belt before we start experimenting," she paused, aware that Luna was only half-listening, watching the way the raven queen's hands fidgeted with the bag without opening it.
"Are you going to do a reading?"
"No. I haven't…listen, don't tell the others, but I haven't really been Seeing anything lately."
"What? I don't understand. You're a Seer, you're the Seer for the Circle. How could you not See?" Lavender's voice lowered instinctively to match Luna's whisper. Secrets match the pitch at which they're revealed, and this secret wasn't bubbling out of her friend in an excited crescendo, punctuated with laughter. This secret was shameful and frightening.
"I had no idea if Noura, Rania, and Aviva would join the Circle. Everyone keeps asking me what we should do next, but I have no idea. I haven't been having visions, and I cast runes sometimes and have no idea what it's all supposed to mean. I know something big is coming, something bigger than the Circle. But I don't know what. I feel like it's right in front of my face, so close that I can't see it clearly."
Lavender considered this.
"So, something big is coming, but we don't know what. There must be a piece missing, something big you don't know. A secret. We just have to find out what it is."
"How are we even supposed to do that? My mum carries on about my gift, but I'm just a kid. We're just kids, Lav. What if it's worse than what happened to Ginny? And what if I can't stop it this time?" Luna's voice broke and she turned away from the others, sure that even glancing in their direction would alert them to the nasal prickling in her throat and furious blinking that were tell-tale signs she was about to start crying.
"We'll do it together. We'll use our independent study time to investigate everything we can, snoop around. Maybe the adults know something we don't. And when we find out what it is, you'll be able to See more clearly."
"How do you know, Lav?" Luna wrung her hands, twisting the battered string of the runes bag around her fingers until they turned white.
"Because I believe in us. Look at all we've done so far, with you guiding us," Lavender's earnestness was both touching and unsettling. Luna's teeth gnawed at the inside of her cheeks. Lavender's unfailing trust in her made her feel more burdened by responsibility than ever before, and she hadn't properly explained how her anxiety felt like a snake coiled inside of her chest, tightening its grip each and every hour of every single day. But Lavender was looking at her expectantly, so she smiled, patted her friend's hand, and stretched out on the blanket, closing her eyes against the glaring light of the sun.
"Thanks, Lav. You always know just what to say."
