After the attacks at the Quidditch World Cup, Luna's nightmares were haunted by the smell of smoke, the taste of dirt, Draco Malfoy's face, and the Dark Mark hovering in the sky. In the following weeks, Luna felt like she was trying to run through water. Everything was harder than it was before; even breathing took effort. Luna worried that she would always feel like she had lost a part of herself in that burning tent and in the mud of that clearing. Even the smallest things reminded her, constantly pulling her back to the one place she wanted to leave utterly in the past. Her chest tightened at even the faintest whiff of smoke, and she could not bring herself to dig for earthworms or work in the garden with Noura because the smell of soil made her want to throw up.
One day during defense drills, Ginny landed on her ankle the wrong way and cried out in pain. Luna froze, Lavender burst into tears, and Padma and Parvati clutched each other. They tried to drown their panic in laughter that was too loud and too quick, but Luna knew that Ginny's shriek had transported them all back to Dartmoor. She knew that like her, they had seen the burning tents and heard the screams and smelled the smoke.
Luna knew the other girls who had been at the world cup returned to the ordeal in their dreams, too. Nearly every night, one of them awoke crying or shouting. They all usually remained silent during these sudden awakenings in the dead of the night, especially on nights when the acrid scent of urine filled the dormitory. The sounds of stilted breathing, muffled sobs, and whispered vanishing spells and cleaning charms were enough for the girls to know they were not alone as they all pulled the covers under their chins and tried to decide which was worse: memories or nightmares.
Luna was already finding it difficult to recall what life had been life before her every hour, waking and sleeping, was wracked by flashbacks. The rest of her life seemed like an immeasurably long time for a twelve year old girl to imagine, but she suspected her wounds from that August night would never fully heal. And even more frightening than the reminders of what had happened was the anticipation of what was to come. The image of the Dark Mark seemed to be seared onto Luna's eyelids, for she saw it every time she closed her eyes. It did not take a Seer to understand all that it presaged. She understood with a searing ache that the dark times were not just in her past, but in their future, too. And if the Quidditch World Cup had only been the beginning of whatever was coming, how would they survive? How would she survive?
But the worst part was not having the nightmares or seeing the fear on her friends' faces or worrying about the future. The worst part of all was that there was no justice. The Ministry of Magic claimed they did not know who was responsible for the attacks. The aurors apparently opened an investigation, but nothing came of it. No one was arrested or even brought in for questioning, at least according to The Daily Prophet. For all Luna knew, Draco and Lucius Malfoy had gone dragon hunting with Cornelius Fudge as if nothing had happened. Sometimes, on the rare occasions when her dreams were not filled with fire and Death Eaters and weeping Muggles, Luna dreamt of Azkaban as it had appeared to her in her visions about Sirius Black. She saw a row of empty cells, one for each of the Death Eaters she had seen on the moor who still walked free.
Nowhere in magical Britain felt safe anymore. Fear and paranoia about another attack infected even the smallest wizarding villages, including the remote corner of Devon occupied by the Circle of Peloresow. Much like when Sirius Black had dominated the headlines, the women and girls of the Circle gripped their wands tighter and looked over their shoulders more often. However, unlike when Black first escaped, there was a streak of anger and resentment at the core of the fear. Anger at the Ministry for allowing this to happen, resentment that the Ministry would frame an innocent child to cover their own incompetence. Even the most tolerant among them would never forgive the Ministry for "all that unpleasantness with poor Harry," as Mrs. Weasley called it.
Luna and the other girls did not hear the full story of what had happened until they were all safely back at the Burrow being fussed over by Mrs. Weasley. Apparently in the commotion of hiding from the Death Eaters, Harry, Hermione, and Ron had also been separated from Percy and while wandering in the dark, had ended up in the vicinity of the man who cast the Dark Mark. In all the confusion, Harry had lost his wand, which was found when Ministry officials were inspecting the area. Barty Crouch had gone so far as to accuse Harry of casting the Dark Mark and had apparently been on the verge of arresting the three children before Mr. Weasley intervened.
If Mr. Weasley had not arrived just in time, as Mrs. Weasley so often reminded them, Merlin only knows what would have become of them. They could have been locked up in Azkaban or worse, so eager was the Ministry to find a culprit. Everyone at the Circle agreed that the Ministry clearly cared about finding a culprit, any culprit, in time to make the headlines of the next day's The Daily Prophet more than they cared about ensuring they apprehended the right culprit.
As the summer heat reached its peak and then gradually ebbed away to make way for the damp chillness of a wet autumn, the specter of the accusation against Harry lingered. Mrs. Weasley fretted that he would be an even more prominent target for harassment at Hogwarts, whether it be malicious teasing by Malfoy and his cronies or well-intentioned, curious badgering by the rest of the students. Luna did not know Harry particularly well, but she only entertained the possibility that he might have been the one who cast the Dark Mark for a few moments before concluding that it was so unlikely as to be well-nigh impossible.
For one thing, it was obvious to anyone who spent more than ten minutes with Harry that he had been raised by Muggles and was an almost total newcomer to the wizarding world. Not only was he ignorant of portkeys and undetectable extension charms, but he had almost no conception of most of wizarding history, even the parts he had been so instrumental in shaping. Before the attacks at Dartmoor, he had never heard of Death Eaters, let alone the Dark Mark.
What's more, his parents gave their lives to defeat the Dark Lord. The Dark Lord had orphaned him, and Harry had spent most of his life living the consequences of his parents' choice to defy him. What could possibly compel him to change sides now, to ally himself with his parents' murderer? But most of all, there was Harry himself. As timid as clueless as he was, there was also something unflinching about him. Luna suspected it was the magic from his mother's blood sacrifice. The blood running through his very veins was imbued with love, protection, sacrifice, and defiance. She thought his blood would not allow him to betray that legacy, even if he had wanted to.
The Ministry of Magic, however, had apparently come to a different conclusion about Harry, and rumors continued to swirl, stoked by sensationalist articles in The Daily Prophet. The Weasleys also came under suspicion when Mr. Weasley asked too many questions about the Ministry's response to the disaster, particularly the sudden and unexplained disappearance of the Ministry's security personnel and the tampering with the communications system. Mr. Weasley was threatened with demotion after receiving a poor performance review, and one day when he was coming home from work, he caught a strange man sneaking around just outside the reach of the Burrow's protective wards. No one slept soundly after that, not even the girls who had not attended the world cup, not even the adults.
The Ministry, Cornelius Fudge and Barty Crouch in particular, had already fallen inestimably in Mr. and Mrs. Weasley's esteem by Halloween. The opening ceremony of the Tri-Wizard Tournament, when by some freak accident Harry Potter's name was selected for the competition, proved to be the final straw. It was preposterous, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley said, absolutely unforgiveable that Professor Dumbledore and no fewer than three Ministry departments would allow a fourteen year old boy to compete against seventeen year olds in a dangerous competition where his life might be forfeit.
Once the spark of suspicion is ignited, other long-buried grudges and resentments can resurface and easily be turned into kindling, until soon the entire world is illuminated by your distrust. Once people grew suspicious of the Ministry's deficient response to the attacks, it was not a difficult jump to believe that the Ministry had known about the attacks in advance. From there, it was not so far to suspect that the Ministry may have even orchestrated the attacks to incite fear and grab more power for themselves. With proof that Mr. Weasley was being punished at work for asking inconvenient questions and then proof that someone was spying on the Weasleys, the natural conclusion was that it was the Ministry following him. And if the Ministry was so quick to surveil their own employees, who was to say they weren't all being watched, and had been for some time? These no longer seemed like conspiracy theories, not in a world where children were tortured and expected to risk their lives right under the Ministry's nose.
Luna and her mother were no longer the butt of jokes for their beliefs about Dumbledore, Fudge, and the Ministry of Magic, because the other girls and women of the Circle were all equally disillusioned. Professor McGonagall was the only one who made any semblance of effort to hide her disdain for Dumbledore and the Ministry. She rarely spoke, but Luna could tell from the way McGonagall blanched and pressed her lips together that she agreed with their criticisms, particularly of Dumbledore. When she did speak, however, Professor McGonagall confined herself to drawing the younger girls as far away from the precipice of total conspiracy as she could manage. She always asked probing questions, challenged them to look for proof, and reminded them that when they heard hoofbeats, they should assume it was horses and not thestrals. The most ordinary explanation might not be the most exciting, but it was almost always the most probable. So when the girls waxed poetic about the dastardly schemes of Fudge and the Ministry conspiring to burn Dartmoor to the ground, she reprimanded them. It might not be as thrilling, she reminded them, but they should accept that the attacks had most likely been a mistake. A horrible mistake, of course, but an oversight rather than a deliberate plot.
That riled the girls, particularly those who had witnessed the horrific events with their own eyes. What McGonagall failed to understand was that it was easier to accuse than it was to admit that the Ministry might have simply made a mistake. Because admitting that the Ministry had perhaps not been behind the attacks after all would be tantamount to admitting that they were so ineffectual that even with all their security measures and teams of hitwizards and networks of surveillance, they still had not known. And if the Ministry of Magic in all its power could not prevent something like that from happening, then the Ministry certainly could do nothing to stop the return of the Dark Lord.
How were the mothers supposed to protect their daughters? How were they supposed to protect the Circle? How were any of them supposed to sleep at night, or go on learning and experimenting and doing anything but curling up into a ball and waiting for the Dark Lord to come knocking, to kill and torture and bring another war? It would be just as bad as the last, if not worse, and the entire world would be just as powerless to stop him, except this time there wasn't an infant Harry Potter to save the day. It left them all painfully aware of their own vulnerability in a way that felt physically uncomfortable, and many of them rubbed their temples and clutched their chests when McGonagall scolded them. No, it was easier to accuse and to hate than to openly accept what they already knew to be true.
But sitting on the laurels of having her views come suddenly into vogue did not make Luna feel any safer, and that was the problem. She didn't know when she would ever feel safe again. Even the cloistered safety of the Circle felt tainted. If the Ministry was watching the Burrow, that meant the Rook was likely being surveilled as well. And that meant they might be trying to find the location of the Circle, if they hadn't already found it. If the Ministry had managed to breach the Circle's defensive wards, how would they even know?
Luna worked harder than ever in the defensive magic circle and begged Mrs. Brown to run hours of extra drills with her, imagining that every mannequin was a Death Eater and every dueling partner was a Ministry crony. Ginny and Lavender took turns rubbing the knots out of her muscles at the end of each day. Yet she still pushed herself to exercise harder and longer, as if being slightly more muscular would make any difference at all.
And her interest went beyond combat and personal defense. Luna also became obsessed with magical security, protective enchantments, and wards. She asked her mother, Mrs. Brown, and Professor McGonagall to check and recheck the shields in place at the Circle over and over again. After Mrs. Brown adding yet another protective charm to the suite of security measures did not assuage Luna's anxiety, the adults stopped humoring her and insisted on checking the protective enchantments only once per day.
Luna took to pacing the perimeter of the Circle along the border where she knew the wards were, ignoring the throbbing, tugging protest of her overworked muscles, throwing stones from one side to the other, waiting for the occasional tell-tale shimmer that would set her anxiety at ease for a few more minutes. She understood in theory why protective charms were mostly invisible, but she didn't see why there shouldn't be some sort of visual assurance that everything was working, visible only to those being protected and not by outsiders or Muggles. If the protective spells were powered by blood magic, it would be a faint purple glow. Luna had always found it a calming, reassuring sort of color, and she liked to imagine the fields around the Circle enveloped in a faint purple mist.
"I've been begging them to let me experiment with using blood magic for wards for ages, ever since the…well, you know," Luna cleared her throat. It had been nearly three months, and she still could not mention the Quidditch World Cup without getting the unpleasant nasal prickle in her nose and throat that was a tell-tale sign she was about to cry.
"They won't let you?" Tonks asked, having the good grace to look away and pretend she hadn't heard the catch in her cousin's throat. They were sitting in the girls' favorite copse of trees, bundled up in old blankets and eating apples.
"No, they keep saying that if I'm so worried about the security of the Circle, I shouldn't tamper with it just for some experiments," Luna nearly dropped her apple as she did an impression of Professor McGonagall's words, air quotes and all.
"Well, it wouldn't have to interfere with the existing wards. Couldn't you do your experiments in a different field somewhere and then if they worked, put them in place at the Circle proper?"
"I tried to tell them that! I think they're just worried it'll mess something up or backfire or something. To be honest, I don't think they want me to know how it all works, all the different shields and how they fit together. I keep asking for them to show me when we do perimeter checks, but…"
"Perimeter checks? That's smart. Was that your idea?" Her cousin asked, and Luna nodded and smiled with pride.
"Everyone always says that Defense Against the Dark Arts is your strong suit…" Luna began shyly, "Would you mind doing a round with me?"
"Great idea, little cuz! I might as well make myself useful since I'm not good for anything else," Tonks said with a self-deprecating smile. She had failed her auror entrance examination yet again and Andromeda, sick of her daughter's sulking, had sent her to the Circle as a last resort.
Even with the change of scenery, Tonks had spent most of the first week sleeping in the dormitories and taking long walks alone in the fields. But she was beginning to come out of her haze, and she allowed Luna to tempt her out of the dorms with offers of snacks, company on her walks, and the gratifying sort of devoted attention one gives to a beloved older cousin. Tonks had even begun asking questions and showing interest in the Circle.
Now she perked up at the mere mention of doing a perimeter inspection, sitting up straighter and beginning to bounce one of her feet rapidly against her shin. It was the first time Luna had seen her genuinely excited about anything since her arrival to the Circle of Peloresow.
"Don't be silly. I always sleep best when you're the one sitting guard in the dormitory," Luna confided. It was now her turn to avert her gaze in embarrassment as she folded their blankets and scattered their apple cores for the birds.
"Well, now," Tonks stood up and shuffled her feet, but Luna could tell she was pleased because her freckled cheeks were tinged pink. Then, to deflect attention away from the compliment, Tonks said "You know, it's supposed to be better if more than one person does perimeter checks, anyway."
"Really? Why?" They were walking towards the outer fields now, stamping their boots to keep their feet warm. Tonks retrieved her wand from her pocket and twirled it casually. Luna, seeing this, took her pine wand out as well, although her grip was rather stiffer and less practiced than her cousin's.
"Well, the buddy system isn't just for bathroom breaks at school. Two people is always better than one. When you're inspecting a perimeter, you want to have someone to watch your back in case of ambush."
"Ambush?" Luna repeated, gripping her wand tighter in her hand and glancing around as if expecting an invading army to materialize out of thin air in the middle of a field in rural Devon.
"Not that an ambush is likely in this situation!" Tonks said quickly once she saw Luna's stricken face, "Sorry, I've still got my studying cap on from preparing for those damned auror exams. Anyway, there's another reason, too, although it's really more of a theory. Theodosia Trimble reckons that depending on the core of your wand, different people can detect different vulnerabilities in defensive systems."
"Wait, really? That's so cool! What's the core of your wand?"
"Phoenix feather," Tonks said, tossing her wand into the air and catching it with a suave flourish before handing it to Luna for examination. It was made of some kind of dark wood; Luna hadn't yet experimented with enough wand woods to be able to identify most of them on sight alone.
"Mine's dragon heartstring," Luna held out her own wand, but Tonks only glanced at it and nodded in appreciation without taking it, "Now we just need to find someone with unicorn tail hair. Lavender has a cedar wand with a unicorn tail hair core, I'm pretty sure. So like, if we went and got Lav, what's the sort of stuff her wand could detect that we wouldn't be able to?"
"Hold on, now. It's not exactly been proven. Some people think Trimble's overstating her case. It might just be that different people have different natural strengths, which leads them to be attracted to wands with certain cores. Then that correlates with their being able to notice things they know the most about when they're reviewing magical security systems. You're more likely to pay attention to things you're good at, after all. So some would say it's not really the core causing it, just different people's magical dispositions and capacities being reflected in different ways."
"But humor me, just theoretically. So, for instance, wands with unicorn tail hair are meant to be better with charms, right?" Luna waited for an affirming nod from her cousin before continuing, "That would mean they might do better at checking the protective enchantments that are charms, as opposed to curses or something else?"
"That's the theory, anyway. Wait, hold on," Tonks stopped and held up a hand. She stood in place for several seconds, and then began retracing their steps. They were passing along the edges of a string of identical fallow fields. The borders of each field were delineated with outcropping of hedges and small trees, their naked branches striking brown lightning bolts against the slate-gray sky. It was cold even for November, and Luna stomped her feet again. The chill seemed to rise like mist from the ground, creeping into her shoes and numbing her toes the moment they stopped walking.
"What is it?" Luna asked, her fingers tightening against the rough surface of her wand. Her eyes darted towards the nearest hedge. Had she heard a branch snapping, seen a pair of darting eyes?
"That's odd. Do you hear that buzzing?" Tonks wasn't looking towards the bushes at all, instead circling in place and squinting at thin air.
"I don't think so?" Luna strained to listen. At first, the only thing she could hear were quiet animal sounds that might have been the wind, a November symphony of burrowing and rustling and blustering and autumn insects. After her ears adjusted, though, she could hear something, just on the edge of her hearing. It was so faint that it might have been the sound of a fly buzzing from several feet away.
"The buzzing usually comes from friction between two clashing shields. Let's see…" Tonks pointed her wand at a spot that looked no different to Luna than any other surrounding patch of air and ground before muttering a few incantations. For a moment there was a humming noise, then two pulses of blue and green light cascaded out of Tonks's wand. They slowly spread through the air like swathes of paint and formed two curved walls. The place where the green and blue lights overlapped was vibrating.
"Aha! These two shields are rubbing against each other and it's creating that buzzing, see?"
"Yeah. But what's the problem? It's barely making a noise."
"The noise itself isn't really the problem; it's just a symptom. It means that it's a spot of weakness, almost like a crack in a wall. If it's not fixed, the two magical shields will keep clashing. Eventually they'll rub against each other so much that they'll begin to wear away at each other."
"So there would be a gap there, like a hole in the wall?" Luna pointed to the spot where the blue and green shields met.
"Exactly. And it would be invisible, too, so it would have probably taken a while before anyone noticed. That's why it's important to use your ears just as much as your eyes when you're doing security checks."
"So how do we fix it? But wait, also: how do we prevent it? Lots of places have multiple shields in place at any given time, right? Like the Ministry! Does it just constantly sound like there's a swarm of bees wherever they go?"
"Well, it's sort of hard to explain. The magic is most powerful at the point where the spell is cast. It's almost like…okay, it's like you've put a candle on the ground, just there, right? And the candle is casting light over a certain radius. Everywhere that falls within the light of the candle is protected by the enchantment, but the magic itself is emanating from that one central point where the magic is strongest, the candle itself. And if you cast too many spells too close together, you get this tension because the core, strongest points of magic are too close together. It's like if you stacked five candles on top of each other, that wouldn't be the most efficient way to light this whole field, yeah? You'd want to spread them out at regular intervals to maximize the amount of light between each candle," Tonks smiled to herself, clearly pleased with her candle metaphor.
"So to answer your questions. It was most likely caused by different people casting multiple shield charms and not keeping track of the points of origination – that's like where you put the candle - of the whole system. You can't just have your security be scattershot, everything's got to be integrated, tracked, and tested," Tonks gave a neat nod to her head as if she had finished reciting her Latin declensions. Luna wondered if she had had to prepare an answer about this for the auror examination.
"So it's like if my mum put up that shield charm ages ago," Luna gestured to the blue one, "and then after the Quidditch World Cup, Mrs. Brown decided to put up another one to make us all feel safer, and she cast that one," she pointed at the green light, "but she didn't realize the previous charm had been cast so nearby?"
"Mhmm. And look where it is. It's a pretty logical place to want to cast a shield charm. Pretty close to the entrance, but not right out front. It's a bit hidden. It seems like a natural place. And that's the problem. Multiple people thinking they're being clever, but really they're just weakening the whole system."
"So how do we fix it? Recast one of them in a different part of the perimeter?"
"That's part of it. But it also looks like you guys are using a lot of charms. Like a lot. That's another thing – if you use a lot of defensive magic of the same type, you're more likely to run into issues like this. The risk of magical erosion wouldn't be as great if say, one of these charms was this close to a runic ward or a curse or something else. If I were you, I'd diversify your methods in a major way."
"Runic wards?" Luna asked. She'd never heard of such a thing. Tonks waved her wand and created a small pulsing ball of yellow light that hovered in midair above the spot where the two shields collided, flagging the spot for later review. She gestured for Luna to follow her so they could continue their perimeter inspection.
"Have you not been learning about them? I assumed that would totally be your bag. You use runes for divination, don't you?"
"Yeah! I wonder why we've not been learning about them."
"Not everything is a big conspiracy, little cuz," Tonks gave Luna's shoulder a light punch, "Shield charms are the most common and the easiest to do, by far. Curses are pretty controversial, so I bet that's why you haven't been using them here."
"So the runic stuff, how does it work? Do you pick, like, runes that represent defense?"
"Sort of. You basically pick a sequence of runes that represent the sort of protective magic you need, and then you create glyphs of each of the runes. It's a different type of magic, I can't quite explain it. I can show you, though."
"Oh, could you? I would love to learn. I've also been wondering if blood magic could be used for warding. Have you heard anything about that?"
"Blood wards? I don't think so, but you mentioned it before. That sounds rad. What's your idea?"
"Well, I was wondering if you could use blood to like…create a magical border. Like putting a barrier on the ground and sealing it with a line of blood."
"Very cool. Like salt sprinkled over the doorway. Old school," Tonks nodded approvingly.
"But now that you said that thing about rune wards, I'm wondering if blood could be drizzled over the runes to seal the magic."
"We should try it!"
"Really? That'd be so amazing. But my mum, Professor McGonagall, and Mrs. Brown said I'm not allowed. Professor McGonagall said she would make me write an essay about a topic of her choosing, and you know what that means," Luna glanced towards the cluster of Circle buildings. The squat rectangular windows of the dormitories looked like Professor McGonagall's spectacles, peering out at the grounds in search of mischief and all manner of misdeeds. Tonks tutted sympathetically. It wasn't so long ago she had been one of McGonagall's students herself.
"Who said we needed their permission just to experiment? Like I said before, we can throw up some wards in a field to test and take them down easily enough. All in an afternoon's work. No one would need to know," Tonks winked.
"Really? Thanks, Dora – I mean Tonks. This is why you're the coolest," Luna did a happy jig as Tonks stopped again to mark another spot where two shields' points of origination were overlapping.
"It's also probably why I wouldn't have made a good auror. I can't just follow the rules or do as I'm told. Too much of a rebel," Tonks put so much emphasis on the last sentence that Luna assumed she was quoting feedback she received from the aurors verbatim. She said it good-naturedly enough, but Luna knew it was a sore subject for both Tonks and Aunt Andie.
"Well if you were an auror you'd have to work for the Ministry. At least now you get to hang out with us and use your powers for good."
"What greater good is there than catching dark wizards?" Tonks kicked the ground beneath the floating orb of yellow light before trudging along the perimeter to continue the patrol.
"Anything's better than being Fudge's personal police force," Luna shrugged.
"Yeah, well. A few months ago I would have disagreed with you, but now I don't know. Even I have to admit it all seems pretty dodgy. I don't blame you for being so vigilant about defense."
"I know everyone thinks I'm paranoid. But after what happened…" Luna paused to take a shaky breath, "I just keep thinking, there has to be a better way than what everyone else is doing. There has to be more we can do. Like, I'm sure the Ministry has a bunch of top secret security magic they don't tell anyone about."
"Your idea of blood warding is interesting. That would be something more," Tonks pointed out, although she did not deny that the Ministry had likely forgotten more about magical espionage and security than most people would learn in their entire lives.
"Yeah, but we don't know if it will actually work or not. And I keep trying to find something else, something we can do now. But having a Secret Keeper doesn't seem like a good answer. Putting all that trust in one person. And then if they die, everyone they've told becomes the Secret Keeper? It's essentially putting an expiry date on the secret, and we can't just move the Circle after the Secret Keeper dies. Besides, what if someone stumbles upon us and needs help, or someone wants to visit the Circle before deciding they want to study here? I wish we could just have like…a list of requirements, and if you don't meet the requirements you can't get in."
"Like what?"
"Like you can't get in if you're not a woman! You said yourself there's hardly any women aurors, so that cuts out most of the Ministry cronies who would be creeping around here."
Tonks didn't say anything for several moments as they walked.
"I, er, actually wanted to talk to you about that," Tonks gestured towards a large boulder with a mostly smooth surface. They could just about fit if they pressed close together and tucked up their knees.
"What's up?" Luna asked. She was only half listening, her mind on elaborate defensive magical systems.
"Well, all this…women's magic stuff," Tonks hedged. They could see their breath in front of them; Luna had once thought it was a pleasant sensation, like being able to breathe in air and breathe out clouds, but now it just looked like smoke to her. She threw the blanket back over their legs and waited, unsure what she was supposed to say. After she didn't speak for several moments, Tonks continued.
"It makes me a bit uncomfortable, if I'm being honest."
"Uncomfortable? Why?" Luna stopped thinking about runic wards and the cold, turning to face her cousin. She hadn't been sure what she was expecting Tonks to say, but certainly not this.
"I don't know if I'm a woman," Tonks shrugged.
"I…I don't understand. How can you not know?"
"How could I know, being what I am?" Tonks gestured to herself. Today she had short red hair, a dusting of freckles across her face, and a lanky, thin physique. She could easily be mistaken for the seventh Weasley son. When Luna thought about it, Tonks had always had what her mother called a "boyish frame," not like a typical woman. But then she had to ask herself what that meant. What did it mean to be a typical woman? And what did it mean that Tonks, who was a metamorphmagus, chose to give herself this boyish body most of the time?
"Wait, does that mean that you've made yourself…given yourself a…you know," Luna glanced pointedly between Tonks's legs under the blanket.
"Psh, as if you wouldn't, just to see what it's like! It's one of the fun things about being a metamorphmagus, the changes most people can't see," Tonks smirked and ruffled Luna's hair.
"Woah," Luna had never considered this possibility before, "What's it like?"
"It feels different," Tonks shrugged, "But also sort of the same, like I'm still me, you know? Which just makes me wonder even more. Like am I anything at all? If I can make myself look like anything, make myself be anyone, and deep down I'm still me, what does it matter how I'm a woman or a man or something else?"
Luna considered this. She had spent her entire life being told that being a woman was the most important thing about her. She had never not felt like a woman. But what did it feel like, to be a woman? Did she only feel like a woman because she'd been told her whole life that was what she was?
"So, um, yeah, I'm not sure if I really belong at the Circle, with all this womanhood is sacred stuff. And that's what I wanted to ask you about, not just for me. But because I think I know someone who might be interested in coming to the Circle."
"Another auror school drop out?" Luna smiled.
"Not exactly. Her name's Andrea. Andrea Goldstein. We met at Hogwarts. I sort of took her under my wing, I guess you could say. Cor, she must be a fourth year now," Tonks whistled under her breath in that way grown ups have of marveling at the passage of time.
"Cool. So maybe she remembers Lav, Sylvia, and the others who were at Hogwarts."
"Yeah, exactly, I think it wouldn't be too much of an adjustment. But then with some of the stuff that goes on here, I'm not so sure. All of the womanly magic stuff your mum goes on about. I think it might scare Andrea away a bit."
"Why would she be scared? That's what most of us like about the Circle."
"Well, you see, Andrea's like me, sort of. She's a girl but she's been told her whole life that she isn't a girl, because everyone thinks she should be a boy. And the parts of the Circle that you and the others like, all that faffy stuff, it doesn't exactly make people like Andrea and me feel okay being here."
"But…I don't understand."
"You don't have to understand it's just the way it is. Andrea is allowed to feel whatever she wants to feel." A crease appeared between Tonks's eyebrows. Luna was shocked to see that her cousin looked disappointed in her, like she had expected a different reaction and Luna had let her down.
"No, no, not about that. I mean, you should get to decide what you are. But I don't understand why she wouldn't like the Circle. As long as she feels like a girl and says she's a girl, I don't see what the problem is."
"Well, a lot of the stuff about wombs and first bloods and uncovering ancient womanly magics. It's basically saying you have to, you know, have those parts and have a cycle and all that to be a woman. And Andrea doesn't have that. And what about me? I have the parts some of the time but I don't really know that I want to be worshipping my own womanhood when I don't know if I feel like a woman most of the time. Do you think the nuns who ran this place back then would have let someone like me and Andrea in?"
"Well, guess I don't know for sure," Luna diligently avoided her cousin's hard gaze and blew on her knuckles, which had gone stiff with cold.
"But we can guess, can't we? You just don't have to rub it in so much, is all I'm saying. Like are you even sure that this magic is really women's magic? Just because the women of the Circle were doing this magic doesn't mean it was only women's magic. And even if it was, does that mean only women can do it now? Everyone has blood, right?"
"Apart from vampires, I guess," Luna smiled shyly and looked up, hoping to see Tonks return her smile, or at least for the hard edges of her clenched jaw and squinted eyes to slacken.
"Even vampires have bodies. And isn't that what your special magic is really about? Blood and spit and hair and bone. The stuff that makes us human, not the stuff that makes us women. I dunno, cuz, I've been watching things since I've been here, and that's what it seems like to me."
"I guess. But there is something special about it being women's magic! Women usually didn't have wands or other fancy gear, so they just had to use what they had around them. And Lily Potter proved the powerful magic a mother's love and blood can make. And menstrual blood is particularly potent…"
"I'm not saying it's not! Or that any of that isn't true. But why can't other people learn, too? Why can't you just teach anyone without telling them how to be a woman?"
Luna hadn't thought about it that way before. She thought of the thin, pale medieval women in the stained glass in the chapel, and how she didn't see herself reflected in that narrow definition of womanhood. She didn't want to inflict that on anyone else.
"Anyway, just think about it, okay?" Tonks patted her on the knee, threw off the blanket, and stood up, stretching.
"Well, maybe we could invite Andrea and see what she thinks?"
Tonks shook her head and smiled sadly.
"No, I don't think so. I can't put her in a situation like this unless I'm sure she's going to be okay. She's been through a lot of stuff, you know? I have to protect her."
"I understand. Sorry," Luna said. But she hated that Tonks thought she was someone Andrea had to be protected from.
"Hey, I think someone's calling for you," Tonks said, helping Luna to her feet. It was faint, but there was a chorus of voices calling her name and the thudding of feet on the frost-hard soil.
"Over here!" Luna called, "By the big boulder!"
Ginny, Lavender, Padma, and Rania came running and, once Luna was in sight, doubled over to catch their breath and nurse their stitches.
"Where have you been?" Ginny wheezed.
"Perimeter check," Tonks shrugged apologetically.
"What's going on?" Luna demanded. Foreboding spread like icy tendrils through her chest and twisted round her heart.
"We've been looking for you. Lavender's received a letter and it's...it's bad," Padma panted, nudging Lavender forward. Lavender's face was flushed and tear-strained, and she clutched a piece of parchment that fluttered in the wind.
"It says…it says I've been caught doing underage magic. Oh, Luna, they say they're going to snap my wand!"
AN: Thanks so much for reading! This chapter was difficult to write, but I hope it was worth the wait. As always, reviews are very much appreciated! :)