As the summer waned and the days grew shorter, Luna watched her mother as she had never watched her before. Her father being disappointed in her stung, but the possibility that there might be some hidden depths beneath Cressida's airy and contrarian surface intrigued Luna. Could her mother have some deep dark secret that might finally help Luna understand her?

In the beginning of her vigil, Luna was blinded by her resentment and anger, which still flared nearly every time her mother opened her mouth. On the surface, Cressida was behaving much the same as usual. She bickered with Professor McGonagall, cajoled her daughter into making prophecies, and resisted all attempts to create any rules, schedules, or indeed any sense of order or regularity at the Circle of Peloresow. She seemed agitated, but then again so did all of the grown ups.

Sirius Black was still at large, and the Ministry of Magic had taken to releasing a trickle of increasingly desperate statements every few days, detailing the exhaustive measures they had taken to apprehend him while simultaneously pleading with the public to remain calm. Luna could feel the anxiety in the air like a thunderstorm. She could sense the others' breathing growing quick and shallow, and their eyes darted as if the escaped murderer might be behind every corner. What's more, Harry Potter also briefly went on the run after an accidental magical outburst put him at odds with the Ministry, and rumors swirled that he had killed his aunt and was going to be expelled from Hogwarts.

But after the bitterness of the argument with her father faded, Luna realized that she had not been looking closely enough at her mother. In quiet moments, when she thought no one was watching, there was a fragility about Cressida, something grasping and hopeful and frightened. The way her lip trembled, the way she gripped her husband's arm for assurance and support, the way she bit the inside of her cheek when she was deciding what to say. Luna realized that the jangling of her mother's bracelets was not just a silly affectation, but because Cressida wrung her hands much more often than Luna had previously realized. But most of all, Luna noticed the fawning, almost relieved look on Cressida's face every time her daughter made a prophecy assuring her that the Circle would continue growing and thriving, that all would be well. Now that she had noticed it, Luna could not unsee these myriad small vulnerabilities, these tell-tale signs that Cressida was not as effortlessly effervescent as she seemed.

The daughter's anger softened to a quiet exasperation mixed with pity. Luna made a concerted effort to pester Cressida less, to put up less protest when her mother pressed her to read the runes or gaze into the crystal ball that Cressida herself was too afraid to use. One day, she even volunteered, entirely of her own volition, to help her mother weave the stupid bloody family tree tapestry her father had forbidden her from calling stupid. It was less than five minutes before Luna found her newfound patience tested.

"I wish you'd let me dye that horrid white streak in your hair," Cressida fussed with her daughter's hair as Luna stooped to retrieve more yarn. Luna could feel her anger bubbling to the surface, but she took a deep breath and remembered the pain and disappointment in her father's eyes. Give her a chance. You have no idea what she's sacrificed for this family.

"No, thanks," she said, with a laugh that she hoped sounded blithe and unconcerned.

"You know, it wouldn't be very hard at all, just a simple charm! We could undo it if you didn't like it, I'm sure," Cressida was setting the pattern on the loom but looking up every few moments at the back of Luna's head.

"Well, that's just the way my hair has decided to grow in, so I'm going to leave it." Luna gnawed the inside of her cheek until she drew blood. She thought her mother was being a tad hypocritical, considering one of the core tenets of the Circle was encouraging the girls to love and accept their bodies just as they were, with all their beauties, quirks, and oddly colored streaks of hair.

"Or we could just cut that strand out, it might not grow back…" Cressida ventured hopefully, fluffing Luna's hair to see if she could arrange it so the dark hair covered the offending blonde.

"Stop it, Mum! Why do you even care so much, anyway?" Luna pulled away from her mother's probing fingers and took her position on the other side of the loom, yanking the warp rather harder than necessary. She was sure her dad must have been wrong when he said his wife wasn't a snob. Cressida could pretend to be enlightened and progressive all she wanted, but here she was, criticizing her daughter's hair for no reason than her own preference.

"My prophecy was about a raven queen, my love. I saw a lady with beautiful shining long dark hair harnessing the power of the moonlight! Not…not this," Cressida gestured at her daughter's mop of unruly hair, which was somehow full of both knots and flyaway strands, and only a dull, rather flat black color with the rebellious streak of pure white at the back.

"Oh, you saw the back of my head in that prophecy of yours, did you?" Luna muttered under her breath.

"As a matter of fact, I did! Don't you remember? At the very beginning of my vision, when I was lost among those awful people melting like candle wax. And I turned my face to the moonlight. And there you were, upon your broom…"

"Yeah, yeah, I know. I've heard the story a million times," Luna said in the monotone that she always adopted when she found her mother's raptures unbearable.

"I know, sweetheart, forgive me. I just never get tired of it. Perhaps you'll feel the same day one day, when you have a daughter of your own to fuss over." Cressida smiled to herself, her fingers flying over the shuttle with a confident adeptness that Luna had to admit was impressive, even though she found weaving tedious.

Luna opened her mouth to say something rude, but all her anger and annoyance seeped out of her and evaporated in the humid summer air. She suddenly felt nothing but exhaustion and resignation. Yes, her mother was shallow, and a hypocrite, and a host of other things. But Luna could do nothing to change that. And Cressida was still her mother. And it felt like Luna had wasted years of her life trying to turn the ocean into the sky for no reason than her own preference.

"Maybe. Anyway, I can't help my hair. Why don't we go back to weaving?" She said in the same flat voice, grappling with the new frontier that had suddenly opened within her. Room for frustration and hurt and anger, but also for love and acceptance and forgiveness.

"If you say so, darling. I would so like to finish it before your auntie comes to visit. I just know she'll love it!" Cressida craned her neck to get a full view of the tapestry. Luna had no idea why her mother's sister should care about a family tree that consisted almost entirely of the Lovegood side of the family, but she was too distracted to ask if her auntie also knew of the family secret and shared in the family shame.

Luna hardly knew what to do with herself. Her mother hummed to herself as she worked, blithely unaware that her daughter was undergoing a profound change of heart. Luna longed to bare her soul to her mother, to put her head in Cressida's lap and explain, ask, apologize, cry, all while her mother stroked her hair without even thinking of telling her to dye it. But she could not bring herself to do it. Everything still felt too new, too raw. And she was not confident that fervent wishing would make such a turn of events at all more likely. No, the pain of opening herself thus and being rejected, or being fobbed off with some throwaway joke or little insulting comment, would be too much to bear. She decided that her only hope of making it through the conversation was distracting both her mother and herself.

"Ginny was telling me that Harry Potter is living in Diagon Alley, and Ron's gone to stay with him until the school year starts. She says Fudge let Harry off with just a warning. Can you believe it?" Luna asked, feeling inclined to indulge Cressida, whose usual rants about the evils of the Ministry of Magic had reached a fever pitch ever since news of Harry Potter's mishap had broken.

"Yes, well, it's no wonder he got off scot-free. He is the Boy Who Lived, after all, and Fudge's little favorite."

"He can't exactly help being the Boy Who Lived, can he? No more than I can help being the raven queen. If Seers would stop going around having prophecies about innocent babies, that would be quite alright with me, thank you very much," Luna tried adopting the fond, teasing tone she used with her friends, fumbling to find her footing in this new terrain of her relationship with her mother. But Cressida continued her rant as if she had not seen Luna's smile or detected any change in her tone.

"But it's the principle of the thing! The trace is hardly conscionable even for enforcing the restrictions on underage magic. Who gave the Ministry the right to surveil my daughter's magical activities? Or my own, for that matter?"

"But you don't have the trace anymore, do you?"

"That we know of! How do we know the Ministry doesn't continue monitoring the magical activity of all witches and wizards, even after they reach their majority? And even if they do only track children, when did I consent to have the Ministry surveil my daughter? I'm sure they have an entire room filled to bursting with the records of every bit of magic done on British soil for Morgana knows how many years!"

"Yes, I suppose that's possible," Luna lied, holding the warp taut as her mother counted her stitches.

"Not so tight, please," Cressida said, and Luna loosened her grip. It occurred to her that like a good weave, the foundation of her relationship with her mother was tension. It was difficult to find the perfect balance, keeping it taut without snapping or letting everything collapse. She wondered if she would ever get it right.

"How does the trace even work, anyway?" she asked. The tension of questions went over better with her mother, she knew, than the tension of arguing. Cressida would rather be asked a question than be questioned.

"Aha! That's just the thing, isn't it? No one knows, exactly. That's the surest sign of a conspiracy if ever I saw one!" Cressida chirped, sounding as happy as a clam contriving new crimes for the Ministry to have committed.

"What, no one knows? Not even…Madam Bones or Professor McGonagall?" Luna could hardly imagine there being anything in the world worth knowing that Madam Bones and Professor McGonagall didn't know.

"I'm sure Cornelius Fudge knows," Cressida said darkly, "But they keep the whole thing very hush hush, of course. It's doubtless only one of the thousands of state secrets locked up in the Department of Mysteries."

"Maybe we could try to figure it out. Start some experiments?" Luna offered. If her mother was enthused by such a project, perhaps it could be an olive branch between them. A truce.

"Perhaps, but it might not be safe, my love. We do not want to tip the Ministry off to the existence of the Circle, or anyone else for that matter. We have to be extra careful, what with that Sirius Black still on the loose," Cressida lowered her gaze to the tapestry as if merely saying Black's name might set the evil eye upon her.

"Oh. Right. Yeah. You're right, of course." They lapsed into silence and worked quietly for several minutes until Luna began fiddling absentmindedly with the loom.

"I know you and the other girls must think it's terribly boring, but weaving is a useful skill," Cressida said.

"I didn't say it was boring!" Luna protested.

"One doesn't have to be a Legilimens to know what you girls think of some of the Circle's more prosaic activities." Cressida gave her daughter a knowing smile.

"Well, it's not as fun as defense and alchemy," Luna admitted, "But I like it. It's nice when there's something Mrs. Figg can do, too." She smiled, pleased with her own nobleness.

"Yes, very true, and kind of you to think of poor Arabella. But it's not just that. Weaving and sewing have been considered women's work for a very long time. For thousands of years, in fact, in many cultures throughout the world."

"I suppose so," Luna conceded, not really seeing the point.

"And in Anglo-Saxon times, women used to be called peace weavers. By marrying and bearing children, they brokered peace and formed alliances that the men never could with all their wars."

"Well that just sounds unfair to me. Why couldn't the wives have gone and fought with the men, instead of being left behind to fuss with looms and babies?"

"Well then who would have done the weaving and cared for the children? Besides, you're missing my point, Luna," Cressida shoved the shuttle rather harder than necessary.

"Well I don't care – " Luna checked herself, "I'm sorry. I meant to say…what did you mean?"

"It's not necessarily unfair, just different. The men thought they ruled the world, with their swords and crowns. But the real work was being done by the women. Who sealed the alliances, who bore the children, who managed the households, wove the clothing, healed the sick? The entire world of women has been buried beneath the world of men, like the warp holding steadfast under the patterns and flourishes of the weft. Not glamorous, not remembered. But necessary."

Luna plucked the strings of the warp. She had never thought about it that way before.

"You know, love, weaving is a useful metaphor for you in particular," there was something stilted and mechanical in Cressida's tone. Luna suspected she had practiced this speech before.

"What, are you going to marry me off to an Anglo-Saxon war lord?" Luna scoffed, thinking of her jokes with Ginny when they were preparing for the first bleeding ceremony.

"Be serious, now. As the raven queen, you have to discern patterns no one else can see. You must keep an eye on both the warp and the weft, the more complex patterns above and what lies beneath. You must take all the disparate parts and find a way to bind them together with a steady hand. And the final product must be seamless."

"You're talking about the prophecy again." It wasn't a question. Everything Cressida said led in one way or another to the prophecy, after all. It was the gravity of her life.

"Luna, can I ask you something?" Her mother's voice suddenly sounded timid, and Luna could see that she was biting the inside of her cheek.

"Of course you can, Mum," Luna said, averting her gaze to look at the name of some long-dead ancestor in the loom's pattern.

"Have you Seen…have you had any prophecies lately…about the Circle?"

"It seems you ask me to have prophecies about little else," Luna hedged.

"Well, not the Circle exactly. About…about the safety of the Circle. Are we in danger? Are there any…intruders coming?"

"What d'you mean? Are you worrying about Sirius Black again?" Luna asked as she picked at the yarn, unspooling the name of the ancestor, unraveling them out of existence.

"Just tell me, please," Cressida's bracelets rattled, and Luna knew she must be wringing her hands.

"Well, can I tell you something?" Luna decided to plunge herself in, to build the relationship she wanted with her mother, to dare to trust.

"Of course. Please. Don't spare my feelings," Cressida said, clearly bracing herself for some sort of disastrous prophecy.

"I haven't really been having prophecies lately. For…for a while now."

Cressida said nothing.

"I don't really know why. Lavender and I have been trying to figure it out, and she thinks it's because there's something so big that I can't See around it. I don't know what that could mean. Lav thinks it means there will be another war. But I don't see a war, I mostly see black, and sometimes your face. I don't know what that means."

"You told Lavender," Cressida interrupted her, "Who else have you told?"

"Just Lavender."

"No one else? Rania, Ginny, Eudora, anyone at all?" Cressida stopped weaving, and the loom vibrated with the silent echoes of the final stitches.

"No, I swear."

"You shouldn't have told Lavender. Her faith in you will be shaken now, perhaps irreparably. But there's no helping that now. What to do, what to do…"

"Mum, what's going on?"

"You must not tell anyone else. Do you understand? You will go to Lavender tonight, and you will tell her that you have somehow overcome this…this block to your Inner Eye. You will tell her that you've had a vision explaining it all, and now you can See again. And tonight…no, that would be too soon. Tomorrow, you will read the runes in front of the entire Circle."

"But I can't even read the runes! I didn't explain it well, it's not just that I haven't been having prophecies. I haven't been able to feel the usual pull when I read the runes or look into the crystal ball or anything else. It's like the instinct has just gone," Luna gripped a spare bit of yarn and wrapped it round and round her finger until the flesh was swollen and flushed pink.

"You know the meanings of the runes, do you not? You can guess at their interpretation."

"I just told you, it doesn't feel the same, even when I try."

"You will act as if you feel it." Cressida spoke with a stony resolve that frightened Luna.

"But that would be faking in front of everyone!"

"And you have been faking in front of everyone for how long, Luna? Weeks? Months? You will continue pretending until your Sight returns."

"But Mum, what does it mean?

"You must tell no one else. Luna, do you swear?" Cressida stood up and came to kneel in front of the raven queen, gripping both her wrists.

"What? Yes, of course, I promise. But isn't it wrong to fake? Why aren't you angry I was lying to you?"

"Of course not, it was the right thing to do. But it's good you have told me now, so we can plan. We will need to decide what you will tell Lavender, and what you will read in the runes tomorrow."

"But I don't want to lie to Lavender!" Luna could feel her lip quivering and hear the whiny pitch of her voice and hated herself for it. If she acted like a querulous toddler, her mother would only continue to treat her like one.

"We all must do things we do not wish to do sometimes. Particularly the raven queen."

"I don't even want to be the raven queen! I just want to be Luna! I'm sick of pretending. This is always your problem, all you care about is me being the stupid raven queen. You never understand…"

"No, Luna, you do not understand. It does not matter what you want. What matters is what has been foretold. It is our duty to make sure that what has been foretold comes to pass. And you are the raven queen, so you will be the raven queen whether you like it or not. And the raven queen is going to tell Lavender that she can See again, and the raven queen is going to make a prophecy in front of the Circle tomorrow. Do you understand?"

"B-but," Luna stammered, trying to break free from her mother's grip on her wrists.

"Or do you want the Circle to fail? Do you want Ginny and all the other girls to have to go back to Hogwarts? Do you want women's magic to be cast into the shadows once more?"

"N-no, of course not," Tears filled Luna's eyes and spilled onto the tapestry.

"Then you will do as I say."

Luna's relationship with her mother changed irrevocably after that day at the loom, but not in the way Luna was expecting. Her revelation at the beginning of the conversation was superseded by the harsh commands at the end. And she did as she was told. She lied to Lavender, she read the runes and gave prophecies whenever she was asked, and she wove the tapestry without protest. They finished the family tree earlier than expected and had several days before her aunt's visit to tidy loose ends and add several little elegant details. When the day of the visit finally arrived, Cressida was all in a flutter. She made a fuss of rolling the tapestry up carefully, with tissue paper pressed between each fold.

"Floo is much too dangerous, the dust and soot will get everywhere. I'll have to Apparate it, but it's so heavy…Perhaps if you side-along Apparated with me, love, we can carry it between the two of us."

"Where are we moving it?" Luna asked in some confusion, "Aren't they coming here?"

"What, to the Circle itself? Of course not!" Cressida's laughter rung out like a tinkling bell. She made it sound like the most obvious thing in the world, that of course Auntie Andie should not be allowed to come to the Circle. Luna had already been made to feel stupid, so she did not voice the questions that were running through her mind. Didn't her mother trust her sister and niece? It wasn't as if they were strangers. And, in fact, strangers had been invited into the Circle when the Safirs, Kohens, Karims, and Chavkins came to visit the Circle for the first time. It was all very odd.

"So, we're bringing it to the Rook, then?"

"Yes, yes, to the Rook. If I hold it with one arm and grab you to side-along Apparate with the other, will you be able to carry the rest?"

"I can do it."

"It's heavy, love."

"I know I can do it." Luna said, in the submissive tone she now used when addressing her mother. Not combative, only cold, devoid of the warmth of anger and annoyance.

"Of course you can, dear. Oh, shall we spread it on the kitchen table? It must be put on display, of course, and I shan't be fussed with moving the whole loom…"

"We can drape it over the mantelpiece in the front room," Luna suggested in a strangled voice. She was being quite literally crushed by the weight of her family history as her mother shifted the bulk of the tapestry onto her shoulder.

"Oh, what a lovely idea! Have you Seen it in a prophecy, my love? No matter. That's very sensible indeed, we shall do that. Are you ready?" Cressida reached for her daughter's wrist, and Luna flinched, remembering the last time her mother had gripped her so.

They disappeared with a crack.

Her aunt and cousin appeared with two cracks at the edge of the Rook's garden. Cressida rushed out to meet them and Luna marched slowly behind with as much dignity as she could muster. The last time she had seen her auntie and cousin had been nearly a year ago, and she hoped to impress them with how grown up she was. Cressida would talk of little else but the raven queen prophecy, she knew, and perhaps it was time to stop sulking and start living up to her destiny.

"Andie, Dora, how lovely to see you! Come in, come in quickly, Luna predicted a nasty storm this morning."

Kisses were had all round, and there was much exclaiming over how tall Luna had grown. Luna saw no change in her aunt apart from a few new crow's feet. Her mother's sister was as dark and practical as Cressida was light and ethereal, with a decided set to her jaw and canny eyes. Her cousin, on the other hand, was as changed as she ever was. Today she looked tall and intimidating, sporting turquoise hair arranged in a jaunty coif and a small hoop pierced through her nose.

"Cool nose ring, Dora," Luna said, leaning in for an awkward half-hug.

"Thanks, little cuz! All my mates call me Tonks, though," Tonks ruffled Luna's hair affectionately.

"Sorry, I keep forgetting," Luna said, suddenly struck with a pang of shyness.

"And speaking of cool, this is very much the thing!" She held up Luna's streak of white blonde hair with an approving nod.

"Oh, please don't wind her up, Dora. That's quite the sore subject around these parts," Cressida rolled her eyes at her sister, who gave a knowing smile.

"Did you dye it?" Tonks whispered to Luna.

"No, it just grew in that way," Luna whispered back, chuffed to be her older cousin's coconspirator.

"Aha! You mean like this?" Suddenly Tonks's hair became jet black, with a white streak identical to Luna's. Luna gasped in great appreciation and Tonks gave one of her hearty chuckles.

"Now, Dora, Luna isn't a Metamorphmagus, so it's not quite so easy for her to get rid of that abominable streak of hers," Cressida chided her niece, but even she had to smile at the two cousins sporting matching hairstyles.

The guests were ushered with unusual excitement into the front room, where the tapestry was arrayed in all its glory. Andromeda first reaction was open-mouthed shock, but then, to Luna's surprise, she laughed and stepped closer to examine their handiwork.

"Well done, Cress! I must say, it's very like the original."

"Ha! I thought you'd say so. Except without being besmirched with the names of all those other people. I thought it would make a nice twist, turning the tables on them by leaving them off our family tree. You and Dora are there, of course, and Ted," Cressida said, pointing out her own miniscule side of the family tree, which only had the three names in addition to her own.

"The…the original? Do you know what she's on about?" Luna asked Tonks, who only shrugged.

"What do you mean the original, Auntie Andie?" She finally got up the courage to ask.

"Oh, our aunt and uncle had this awful tapestry in their house, just like this one, with the family tree going back to the Middle Ages. I'm sure both your mother and I have had our names struck from it long ago. Narcissa always used to say…."

"Andie, hush," Cressida shushed her sister, and her bracelets began rattling alarmingly.

"Narcissa? Like that awful Malfoy woman?" Luna asked.

"You don't know, do you?" Tonks asked with a pitying look.

"Don't know what?"

"Oh, Cress, you still haven't told her? Not even with Sirius…?"

"We won't speak any more about it, thank you very much," Cressida said.

"Sirius? Like Sirius Black?" Luna was beginning to feel rather like a parrot.

"She ought to be told, for her own safety," Andromeda said.

"Well, I don't see why she needs to know. It's not as if we see them," Cressida bristled.

"She's going to find out eventually! Wouldn't you rather tell her yourself now, rather than her finding out some other way? For goodness sake, Cressida, she might read it in the bloody paper…"

"We read nothing but the Quibbler in this house, as you well know. I assure you, the Daily Prophet does not darken our doorstep," Cressida cut her off.

"Or if even one of your friends from the Circle slips up around the child," Andromeda persisted.

"Oh, alright, fine! If you're so determined to tell her, you can do it. But the awful, evil mother will have nothing to do with it, thank you very much," Cressida crossed her arms and turned away to gaze at the tapestry, squinting as if fighting off tears. But she listened to her sister more than anyone else, apart from her daughter.

"Dora, why don't you ask your auntie to show you the family tree while Luna and I go for a walk in the garden?" Andromeda suggested.

"But Mum, I'd rather go with you. Fresh air and all," Tonks pleaded. But a look from her mother set her back towards her aunt, huffing and rolling her eyes as she and Cressida sat down for a nice long chat about Lovegood family lore.

"But why didn't she just tell me?" Luna was pacing so intensely that she had beaten a new path around the foxglove.

"Well, it's not exactly something to be proud of, is it?"

"It wouldn't have been pride to just say, 'Oh, Luna, by the way, you're related to a bunch of Death Eaters.' It would have explained a lot! Like when that prig Draco Malfoy pulled my hair…that was my cousin!?"

"I imagine it just never felt like the right time to tell you, love. In our case, we told Dora before she went to Hogwarts, just so no one would say anything to her, you know. But because that wasn't a consideration for you…" Andie trailed off delicately.

"Anyway, with Sirius on the loose, I really think you ought to be told. For the sake of your own safety."

"Wait, so that's what's been wrong with her all summer! She thought Sirius Black would come here because he's her cousin? But does he even know where we live? Surely he can't know the Circle even exists!"

"I assume so. It's not a particularly logical conclusion, but your mother was never the most logical person."

"She's absolutely barking mad!"

"Now, Luna…"

"Was she always a nutter? Did growing up with Narcissa and Bellatrix just utterly mess with her head?" Luna was ranting, but she did not intend the question to be entirely rhetorical, as she was genuinely curious.

"Well, she was always a bit flighty. And growing up the Seer in a family like the Blacks…it wasn't easy, you know. She let it get to her head and was a jumped-up dolt for quite a few years. Our parents had her convinced she was the best thing since Chocolate Frogs, and she lapped it up. Thought she was the pinnacle of generations of pureblood breeding, the Seer that would steer the house to greatness."

"It's amazing my dad would even be seen with her. What happened? I mean, she's still mad, but it's not like she's a Death Eater or anything."

"Well, exactly. After she met your father, well…perhaps she went a bit too far in the other direction. But it took a lot to admit that she was wrong. She mellowed out an awful lot, and I think she was rather ashamed of what she had become. I give her credit for that."

"What, so she only changed so Dad would like her?"

"That's not quite what I'm saying. Believe it or not, when your parents met, Cressida was the more reasonable of the two! But she loved your dad, and she wanted so much for him to see her as more than her blood purist family. She sacrificed a lot to be with him. Our family of course instantly shunned her, and she was disinherited. But the Lovegoods hated her at first, too."

"Why would they hate her?" Luna asked, entranced by this glimpse into her parents' earlier selves, their lives before they had even thought of their daughter the raven queen. Like all children, she assumed that her birth was the beginning of her parents' lives.

"The daughter of blood purists marrying into a proudly mixed blood family? Your grandmother, who's a Muggleborn, couldn't stand to be in the same room as Cressida for many years."

"So she had no one. No family but my dad." Luna suddenly realized that they saw her father's family even less often than they saw Auntie Andie, Uncle Ted, and Dora.

"And you, eventually. I think after you were born, it smoothed things over a bit with the Lovegoods. And then, once she was accepted even a little bit, she began to imitate them. I think she just wanted to fit in." Andromeda concluded simply, as if were the most natural thing in the world for Cressida to go from a conceited blood purist to a lonely new wife to a raving conspiracy theorist.

"So the tapestry…" Luna said slowly.

"I think she's trying to give you pride in your heritage, the family she wants you to be proud of. But I also think she's still a bit slavishly devoted to impressing the Lovegoods. Even after all these years."

"But if she knows how utterly crap it is to grow up under all that pressure being a Seer, why'd she inflict it on me all over again? It's not exactly a cake walk being me, either, you know," Luna huffed.

"You're not just a Seer, though, are you, love? That prophecy…it changed everything for your mum. No offense, but you're the reason she's gone a bit off the deep end. The responsibility of raising the child of prophecy? I know it's not been the easiest of childhoods for you, but think about what it's like for her."

"Still don't see why she has to go on as she does, like the only thing that matters about me is that stupid prophecy," Luna grumbled, unconvinced.

"I know it's difficult to see sometimes, but she's so proud of you. You're everything she wishes she could be. That's why she has such high hopes for you."

"Then why does she criticize me all the time!?" Luna felt her anger at her mother flare for the first time in weeks. Learning the truth of her mother's background might have been a balm, but it only inflamed her resentment, like a barely healed scab that had been opened again.

"Sometimes we find the most fault with those we love fiercest. She's scared for you, and she wants you to do well. She wants to prepare you for what is to come." Luna crossed her arms but said no more, sensing from her aunt's tone that the conversation was coming to an end.

"We should go back inside, love. I think your prophecy about the rain will turn out true after all!"

"Oh, it wasn't really a proper prophecy. I could just feel the change in the air. But my mum keeps saying it's a prophecy."

"And is she wrong?"

Luna said nothing more, but she thought.

AN: Longer than usual chapter, but it's such an important one! I hope the reveal was a good one. Looking forward to seeing the way this changes the direction of Luna's journey. As always, reviews are very welcome! :)