Luna traced the darkened moon on her bedroom wall with the tip of her index finger. It didn't even look like a moon anymore, just an ugly, pockmarked brown circle. Her name, emblazoned in her father's boisterous, loopy handwriting was gone, too.
"This could be anyone's room now," she whispered to the moon that had once been hers and hers alone.
"Luna, did you hear me? I asked if you were doing any magic in the room when it happened. Or even in the house? Were you doing one of your experiments?" Professor McGonagall was prodding a different section of the wall with her wand.
"No, I don't think so. I don't think I was even here when it happened. I came home and it was all dark."
"Right," Professor McGonagall said, setting her jaw like she was about to undertake an unpleasant chore, like mucking out the compost heap. Or delivering bad news.
"I mean that could mean anything, right? Maybe the charm only works when the caster is within a certain radius, like a thousand miles or something? Maybe he's gone far enough away that it's stopped working. Or, if you think about it, it's been nearly fourteen years since he first enchanted it, maybe it's just worn off? Or maybe he's trying to send me a message!" Luna tried to trace the constellations on her wall from memory. Was that Orion's belt over there, or his arrow? But no, there was no pattern to guide her through the galaxy anymore, just a meaningless splatter of anonymous stars.
"I'm afraid it doesn't work like that," Professor McGonagall said, placing a hand on her shoulder. Luna flinched.
"But...but then what does it mean?"
"Let's wait for your mother to get here. The owl should have reached her by now." McGonagall reached out as if to pat Luna's head, then apparently thought better of it and pulled away.
Ordinarily when Luna was being deliberately obtuse, she would tap her foot and snap at her. You know what it means, Luna. Luna could practically hear the words in the older woman's voice, like a memory come to life in the Department of Mysteries. But now Professor McGonagall was handling her with kid gloves, her voice so soft and gentle that it hardly sounded like Professor McGonagall at all.
"Now why don't we go downstairs and have a nice cup of tea?"
"No, thank you," Luna said absently, turning back to face the wall, "I think I'll just wait for the lights to come back on."
"Luna, haven't you been listening? They aren't going to come…" she heard the woman take a steadying breath, and her voice softened again, "Alright. The others will be here soon. I'll go get you that tea."
Luna sat with her knees pulled up to her chest and waited. Professor McGonagall's tea grew cold beside her. She heard the door opening and closing with her mother's arrival, and then the wailing started. That went on for a while, until it softened to muffled moaning and then silence. Others started arriving after that, their conversations punctuated by the near-constant whistling of the kettle. When in doubt, as the old adage went, make a cuppa.
A gaggle of hovering women flitted in and out of the room, to look at the stars that had been robbed of their light and to try to talk to Luna. Professor McGonagall, her mother, Mrs. Brown, even Mrs. Figg took her turn sitting next to Luna and trying to spark some flicker of comprehension in her vacant eyes. They all told her the same things: charm efficacy wasn't affected by the distance of the caster; the Eternal Illumination Spell her dad had used on the walls only ended when the caster, well..with the end of the caster's...when the caster no longer…
They tiptoed around it, but in the end they were all saying the same thing. Xenophilius must be dead.
Luna ignored them. She rested her chin on the top of her knees and stared at the universe her father had made for his baby daughter. She waited. The light did not return.
She kept her vigil all night and into the next day. The adults took it in turns to sit in the doorway and watch her watching the wall. After a few hours, they gave up trying to get her to speak to them.
"Lumos. Blimey, it's pitch black in here!" A lit wand appeared in the doorway and traveled across the room. A moment later, the curtains were thrown open wide and the room was flooded with light, the light of the sun, not the moon. It was Ginny.
"Oh, Luna, what have you done to your hair?" her hands flew to her mouth.
"What?"
"You've done it again, look." Ginny got the little mirror emblazoned with seashells that sat on the dresser and handed it to her. There were now two large white streaks in Luna's hair, front and center, framing her face.
"Ah, well. There's no hiding that! You really will be the skunk queen now, eh?"
"Ginny, you don't have to do this," Luna picked at the beds of her nails with the ragged remnants of her fingernails, which she had gnawed down to the quick.
"Do what?"
"They've sent you in to try to talk some sense into me, or get me to eat, or make me feel better, or something." The words rolled off her tongue in a mocking sing-song.
"It's working, isn't it? Listen, you can have me or you can have their mollycoddling. It's your choice."
"I just want to be left alone," Luna huffed, still not looking up from her nails.
"Yeah, well, we don't always get what we want. Stop doing that, you'll draw blood," Ginny yanked Luna's hand away and held it in her own, forcing Luna to meet her gaze for the first time.
"It can't be true, Gin. He can't just be... gone. Where's his body? We have no proof apart from…" Luna gestured at her bedroom wall.
"Luna," Ginny said, her voice softening for the first time.
"And he's been gone for months! Why would it only happen now? Has he just been traipsing around Europe all this time without a thought for his family, and today he happened to fall down a hole and break his neck? It doesn't make sense!"
"No, it doesn't," Ginny nodded.
"What?" Luna had not expected Ginny to just agree with her like that.
"It doesn't make sense, but that doesn't mean it's not real."
"No, you're not listening! You can't just tell me that because the lights in my room don't work anymore, that must mean my dad's dead. That just...it just means nothing at all, that's not proof."
"But it's not just the lights. All the other stuff he's done to this place, it's all gone. Haven't you heard that the big leak in the roof is back?"
"How do we even know that charms work that way? Has it been proven? I need to do some more reading on experimental charms, see if there's another explanation. And I still haven't heard back from some of his friends in Europe! I'll write to them again, they might have seen him. Maybe my letters got lost, anyway, and he's just been in Constantinople or somewhere this whole time."
"Will that make you feel better?" Ginny asked.
"I'm not doing it to make myself feel better!" Luna flapped her arms to disentangle herself from her friend's embrace and stormed across the room, "I can't just give up on him."
"Look, you do what you have to do. But fooling yourself isn't going to make it any easier," Ginny shrugged and headed towards the door.
"Where are you going?" Luna asked, her voice sounding smaller than she had thought possible.
"You wanted to be alone, right?"
"No. No, please don't go. I'm sorry I was rude. I just…" Luna choked out, the rest drowned by sobs. Ginny was right. She had been trying to fool herself, to use the Occlumency trick of twisting her mind until a lie became the truth and the truth became a lie. But much as she tried, she could not feel the clever thrill, the triumphant elastic contortion of all the wrong pieces sliding into the right places. Everything just hurt.
Ginny was back in an instant. She squeezed Luna so fiercely she could barely breathe, rubbing her back and murmuring nonsense to drown out the embarrassing sounds that came with a good, bone-deep cry: the gasping for breath and the snuffling of snot and the hiccups. Eventually Luna rested her head on Ginny's shoulder and they fell into a comfortable silence.
"So has my mum gone completely off the deep end?" Luna sniffled after a few minutes.
"Oh, yeah. But only about as much as you'd expect. Like a totally normal amount, actually."
"Just wait til she sees my hair."
They laughed.
"Hey Ginny?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm really hungry."
"I thought you'd never ask," Ginny said as she helped Luna to her feet. There were other words, words that didn't need to be spoken aloud, but only the wrackspurts heard them.
There was a flurry of visitors over the next several days, countless pitying looks, and even more pasta bakes. The kettle was whistling almost constantly, and by the end of the first week Luna was certain her veins ran with more tea than blood.
Through it all she had to slap a mechanical smile on her face and thank everyone for their condolences and pretend to be only moderately devastated. By the time she and her mother were left alone at the end of each day, Luna was irritable and ready to scream. Sometimes she did.
Cressida was dignified and gracious in her grief, somehow managing to weather her daughter's tantrums, door slamming, and tears with more patience than she had been able to muster on her best days before Xenophilius's death. When she first saw Luna's hair, which was now nearly equal parts black and white, she only smiled and said that it made her look more like Xenophilius. As their grief progressed, their uneasy truce thawed into something warmer and more authentic than they had shared in years. Cressida was always ready to talk, but also seemed to understand when her daughter wanted to be left alone.
Mother and daughter set to work repairing the Rook, finding all the little places where one of Xenophilius's spells had lapsed and left a leak, draught, or squeaky floorboard in its wake. At first it made Luna sad, for she had not appreciated how much magic her father had done to make them comfortable until it was gone. She grieved every charm and enchantment that had been snuffed out with his life, each one a trace of his love and care vanished into thin air. But it also felt good to do something practical, to walk in his footsteps and do the work he had done, to make the house feel like home again.
They also threw themselves into planning more protests with Gwenog. Ever since the protest on Diagon Alley, Luna had participated in the planning from a distance. This was partially because she was still embarrassed that she had been so rude and oblivious about Crouch, and partially because protesting had always been what her parents did. At protests everyone knew her mum and dad; she would always be Xeno and Cressida's daughter, never just Luna. Now the thought of being known as Xeno's daughter made her proud. For the first time, she allowed herself to become fully engrossed in every detail of the planning. Their next action was going to be for Squibs' rights, and Luna desperately wanted everything to go well. It no longer felt symbolic to her, but had instead become infused with an urgency that was both thrilling and frightening.
They usually worked in the front room, but one day Luna shyly invited her mother into the office. Cressida accepted the offer just as tentatively. It had been months since Xenophilius had used it, but this was the first time either of them had entered since the day the lights went out. They found it as it had always been, a mess of books and papers on a variety of subjects, Luna's Elder Wand timeline still tacked to a wall.
"He loved doing Hallows research with you, you know. It was the highlight of his week," Cressida smiled, running her fingers over the keys of Xenophilius's typewriter. It was an ornery old thing, prone to spewing smoke and refusing to type vowels seemingly at random, and he could tame it better than anyone. Luna suspected they were both thinking the same thing: Luna would continue using it for nostalgia's sake, but it would never work properly again. The next time it broke, it would stay broken.
"What's this?" Cressida picked up a scrap of parchment. It was a sketch of a multi-faceted gem in an odd shape. Xeno had scribbled a few seemingly-random words in the margin. Trilliant-asscher hybrid? Better gemological current.
Luna only had to squint at it for a moment to decipher its meaning.
"Oh, he must have been trying to figure out the optimal gemstone cut and faceting to transmit magic. For the resurrection stone, of course."
"Ah, of course," Cressida said. She stared at the drawing for several moments before putting it back and picking up something else.
"He never really told me all that much about what you were doing, you know. It was always your special thing you did together, of course. But maybe I could help you. Just as your assistant. I might even be able to help you with the Cloak. I like weaving more than you do, so if it wouldn't be too much trouble…" she sounded so hesitant that Luna's chest tightened. When had her mother become afraid of her? She took her mother's hand.
"I'd like that."
The visitors had slowed to a trickle and Luna and Cressida were getting used to being a household of two when Narcissa Malfoy turned up on their doorstep. For Luna the long, tear-stained days had all begun to run into each other, and she completely forgot that she and Narcissa had agreed to meet at the Rook for a one-on-one Occlumency session. It was only upon hearing the doorbell ring that she remembered with a jolt and a muttered curse.
"I'll get it!" she called, probably much louder and more enthusiastically than necessary as she ran to the front door and opened it a crack.
"Now isn't a good time," she hissed through her teeth.
"What?" Narcissa snapped, "Do I need to remind you that we have an appointment?" She stuck the toe of her high-heeled shoe into the door and pushed it open further.
"Listen you have to go, I'll talk to you later."
"I know you haven't been taught proper manners, but really. My time is valuable, you know, and there are certainly things I'd rather be doing than...And what have you done to your hair?"
"Who are you talking to out there, love? Don't be rude, invite them in!" Cressida bustled to the door and stopped dead in her tracks when she saw her sister.
"What are you doing here?"
"Oh! Hello, Cressida," Narcissa said, her eyes widening and then narrowing as she realized what had happened.
"You could have just sent a card, you know."
"I...I don't know what you mean," Narcissa raised her hands to the long scar on her face as if to pick at it, then stopped herself.
"And you haven't even brought us a condolence gift, what would Mama say?" Cressida folded her arms in front of her chest and leaned against the doorjamb, shielding her daughter from her sister.
"If this is one of your little games, Cressida, I'm afraid I haven't the faintest idea of the rules," Narcissa had managed to compose herself, and her voice was low and cool once more.
"How dare you show up here, pretending to console us when you only want to gloat?! When you monsters killed my husband! It's not even in the papers yet!" Cressida shouted.
"What? Has something happened to Xenophilius?"
"Don't play coy with me, miss."
"What happened? Or rather, I'm...I'm..I'm sorry to hear that. I assure you I had no idea."
"Well, you've had your fun. Go on, go," Cressida shooed away her sister and moved to close the door.
"Actually, I came for another reason." No, Luna thought. Don't give us away. Foreboding dropped into her stomach, dense and heavy.
"Yes?" her mother's voice was cold and sharp as an icicle.
"Actually, I...I came to ask for help." It was another simple Occlumency trick Narcissa had taught her. Winnow the truth down to its barest essentials, so you're technically being truthful but hardly revealing anything at all.
"You? Ask me for help? That's rich."
"It's the Dark Lord. I'm not at liberty to discuss it here, but…Cress, he's gone for Draco."
"You are sick. How do you manage to make everything about you? You dare to show your face here and talk to me of the Dark Lord when I don't even have Xeno's body to bury? Like I'm supposed to pity you? You've made your bed, Narcissa, and now it's time for you to lie in it."
"I can get you a horcrux." It rushed out of Narcissa's mouth all at once, and she looked surprised at her own words. For better or worse, she had tipped her hand. This was it, her one bargaining chip. Her ace in the hole.
"Go to hell." Cressida slammed the door in her sister's face.
Luna let out a long, low breath that was nearly a whistle. She couldn't say that it had gone well, exactly, but Narcissa had not tattled on her. When she looked up, her mother was watching her closely, her back still pressed against the door.
"I heard you whispering to her, just before I came to the door. What were you saying?"
"What? Nothing."
Cressida cupped Luna's chin in her palms, her eyes searching her daughter's face. She looked more sad than angry.
"I may be a lot of things, Luna, but I'm not stupid."