Cryptomagizoology
"Harry, mate, what are you doing?"
Harry Potter started in his chair in the Gryffindor common room, jolted from what had been, for him at least, an intense and studious focus. He looked up from the parchment he'd been scribbling notes on to see his red-haired best friend, Ron Weasley, looking at him in befuddlement. Poor Ronald must be confused a lot, he's always looking like that, Harry's mind suddenly supplied, a flashback to a recent conversation with a friend, and he had to suppress a grin. He hadn't had the heart to tell her he mostly wore that expression around her.
"I mean, I get you're working on something," he continued, gesturing at the table in front of him. "But isn't this a bit much?"
Harry looked down. It didn't seem that bad to him. He just had a few things; parchment for note taking. Magical theory book borrowed from Hermione. A pair of Charms books, one a textbook from the first year, another a guide on developing new Charms he'd borrowed from Professor Flitwick. A muggle book on physics. A net on a stick. String bracelet with Butterbeer corks.
… OK, yeah, maybe this was a little much. Especially considering all the books were open to relevant pages.
"It's an extra credit project for Charms," Harry explained, looking back up at Ron a little sheepishly. "I'm trying to make Lumos show things outside the, uh," he paused as his eyes flicked to one of the textbooks to get the exact wording. "Visible light spectrum."
"The what?"
Harry put his quill down and gestured for Ron to sit. He did so, slightly warily, taking the chair opposite him on the table. "Do you remember those big bulky goggles your dad was trying to get working over summer?"
Ron brightened and shot him a grin. "Oh yeah! Bloody heavy things. I wouldn't want to strap that to my head. What did he say they did again… Tell you when things were hot?"
"Detect heat," Harry clarified. "They can look in something called infrared, which our eyes can't see. But with the goggles, we can. Sort of. It's used for a lot, like tracking people, finding hidden places, that kind of thing. The other end of the spectrum is less helpful, but it can still let you see things you wouldn't otherwise. I got reminded of your dads goggles, and I thought, why not try and see if I can do the same with magic? Asked Professor Flitwick for some advice, and here I am. Stumped at the moment, though."
"Sounds dead useful," Ron commented. "So what's it really for?"
"… I don't follow," Harry replied, confused. Ron dropped him an expression that clearly said, 'are you kidding me'.
"I mean," he began, an unusually heavy deadpan to his tone, and held up a hand to start ticking off his fingers. "The only place with more books being used is the library, you're trying to come up with a new spell, based on muggle magic, and it's got heaps of uses, if what you and my dad said is true, and you're stuck."
"Right…"
"So why is Hermione over there, looking like she's trying to drill holes through that book with her eyes, instead of over here, acting like she's got the best Christmas gift in years and basically taking over the whole thing?"
Harry turned in his chair. His other best friend was sat by the fire, surrounded by the traditional Christmas decorations that came out a few weeks before the holiday, and was indeed glaring at the book like she was trying to set it on fire with her mind. As he watched, she turned the page needlessly aggressively, and he thought he could hear the minute sound of paper tearing. He felt a little guilty, but only a little. Her reaction was overblown to what he had planned for the spell.
Harry turned back to Ron, who was looking at him expectantly. He sighed and braced himself.
"So I might have mentioned to Hermione that you could also use it to find invisible creatures you can't find in other ways."
Ron let out a loud groan of exasperation and hit his head on the tabletop. "God's sake Harry, not this again…"
"Hey, not everything that's hidden is hidden by magic!" Harry retorted defensively. "Just because me and Luna haven't found anything so far-"
"Right, no, that does it," Ron interrupted, standing up. "Hermione! You were right! We're doing that thing muggles do when one of them drinks too much!"
"Join in?" Harry quipped, futilely.
"He means an intervention, Harry," Hermione replied, snapping her book shut and vacating her chair, crossing the room to the table. She stood beside Ron and folded her arms, turning her best 'mum' look onto Harry. He could never stand up to that for very long and he looked away.
"… Is this seriously all it took to get you two to stop arguing?"
"This is more important," Hermione responded primly.
"Look, mate, I'm not having a go. We were all a little confused when you started hanging out with Luna at the beginning of the year," Ron started, evidently intending to play good cop in this. "But we saw it was good for you, y'know? Hadn't seen you laugh that much since Umbridge got the official boot last summer. But we've started hearing… weird things about you two."
That was an understatement, Harry knew.
His logic in spending more time with Luna Lovegood, the fifth year Ravenclaw girl, was purely altruistic, he'd explained to his friends when questioned. She was still heavily ostracised and bullied, he was sure, in spite of being one of five Hogwarts students to aid him in attacking the Ministry of Magic and fend off the Death Eaters there. She didn't like to talk about her housemates attitude to her, even pretended it didn't happen, but he could tell – her occasional shoelessness wasn't her choice, much as it may seem like something she'd do. He thought being seen with him, the so-called Chosen One (Merlin, he hated that), would convince people to back off a bit.
At least that was the logic he admitted to. While true, he had slightly more selfish reasons to spend his time with the supposedly mad girl – he never felt more able to just be him than when he was with her.
Luna, in some unsurprisingly strange and bizarre way, got him in a way no one else really did. She'd been the only person to really, truly be able to offer any words of comfort about Sirius's death. Before she even met him, she'd backed him in everything he'd said about Voldemort's return and had put her money where her mouth was by joining the DA and fighting with them. And she'd done none of it off the back of his weirdly reverential reputation in the wizarding world, either – she saw him, believed him, not the mythical Boy-Who-Lived. Just Harry. He never had to put up a front with her, she just knew.
If getting support and companionship like that meant the occasional creature hunt, he was more than happy to oblige.
He became vaguely aware that that was what Hermione was now complaining about. He'd been tuning them out for a few minutes.
"… and Dean says he saw you with her by the Black Lake, with a net and her weird eyeglasses on. You said you were helping her look for one of her imaginary creatures! Harry, I know you feel sorry for Luna, but this is going too far! You can't keep feeding her delusions about these things just because it makes her happy."
"How do you know they're delusions?" Harry replied without thinking, then winced. Whoops.
That was almost worth it for the look of pure scandal and horror that appeared on Hermione's face, though, as well as the groan that emerged from Ron. "Please tell me this isn't worse than I thought, Harry. Please tell me you don't believe these things too?"
He paused momentarily, thinking his answer through, before shrugging. "Honestly? I don't know."
"How can you not know if made-up animals are real or not," she practically shrieked, her hands rattling the chair they were resting against, agitated in a way she seldom became. Luna and Luna-adjacent subjects really managed to set her off, Harry had noticed.
"Hermione, 6 years ago I lived in a cupboard and thought my parents died in a car crash. I certainly didn't believe in magic. Then a half-giant kicks my door down, turns a magic umbrella on my cousin and tells me I'm a wizard. Since then, I've fought a basilisk in the middle of a place that people thought only existed in a legend, had to deal with creatures of pure despair that look like the Grim flipping Reaper, seen hippogriffs, dragons, phoenixes, mermaids, giant spiders, sphinxes, become friends with the same werewolf my dad was friends with, and discovered my godfather was a shapeshifter. After all that, I'm not just going to dismiss the idea of things like Nargles or Crumple-Horned Snorkacks out of hand."
His curly-haired compatriot gaped like a fish at him, her mouth opening and closing as she tried to think of a counterargument to that. She undoubtedly would, he had enough faith in her that she could outthink him eventually, but thankfully he was saved from that by Ron piping up.
"Harry, there's a difference between those things and believing stuff that's utter bollocks," Ron drawled.
"Language," Hermione interrupted faintly, still staring blankly at Harry.
"Yeah, yeah. And there's a difference between humouring Loony and standing waist deep in a lake while you both flail around with nets. Mate, you're getting a bit too sucked into this, aren't you? Be honest."
Harry shrugged. "Probably a little. It's not all me and Luna do, though. A lot of the time we just explore the castle and talk. But sometimes she wants to go looking for Nargles, or Wrackspurts. We've all looked for weirder and found it. And God knows I could use the distraction…"
He'd murmured that last part, but evidently not quietly enough for Hermione to miss it.
"Is that what this is, Harry? Escapism?"
"It's part of it," he admitted. "Luna's good at giving me a break from everything. She doesn't buy into the Chosen One nonsense, for a start. It's nice to be able to just… do stuff without having to worry."
He left what he had to worry about unsaid. They knew better than almost anyone.
Hermione's expression became much more sympathetic than it had been. "Oh, Harry… I know it's a lot to deal with..."
"And You-Know-Who has kind of a small nose," Ron muttered, to Harry's grin.
"But it won't get better if you do things like this. You've got people you can talk to people if you're getting stressed."
He didn't feel especially inclined to reveal that he did, in fact, talk to Luna about his worries and fears. Quite a lot in fact. He felt somehow that it was safe to do so. She was bizarre font of wisdom on the subject of his concerns, as well. There was one in particular he kept replaying whenever the fear he was going to get his friends killed reared its head.
"None of the people around you are in danger because of you, Harry. You-Know-Who would come for all of us eventually, for all kinds of reasons. If none of us had ever met you, we'd still be targets, and you'd have cut yourself off from the world for nothing. So stay, eat this pie with me and let's laugh at the Dark Lord who'd never understand why you'd do that."
It had been delivered in a rare serious tone from her, and they'd both gone more or less immediately into a more light-hearted discussion about Quidditch, and the background machinations that went into the league, but it stuck with him. Not least because it reminded him of Dumbledore's own advice about love and companionship being powerful magic.
Harry shook himself from his reminiscence to answer. "Talking about it isn't the problem. I don't really need to vent all that often, I need to do something. Something that isn't related to Voldemort, or the war, or following Malfoy, or any of it. I need to relax, and Luna's honestly the best for that. Hunting for unknown creatures is fun, too, especially when it's just for the sake of it."
"But there's no evidence! And trying to make new spells to look?" Hermione insisted. "You've never done that before!"
"What can I say, I had the idea and it seemed like a good one," he replied with a shrug. "If it comes from creature hunting, who cares? Besides, you can't tell me being able to point your wand at something and see in infrared isn't going to be useful for other things besides looking for Nargles."
Hermione didn't seem convinced, but she did at least seem less agitated. Ron looked oddly thoughtful. Harry sighed.
"I get that you're worried about me. I appreciate it. But I'm fine. I'm just blowing off some steam. Seriously. Think of it as a… hobby. Trying to track down invisible magical creatures."
"You can just use an Unveiling Charm for invisibility," Ron said off hand, then yelped as Hermione punched him in the arm. "Ow! What was that for?!"
"Don't encourage him!" She retorted.
They didn't appear to notice Harry's eyes get wide as he grabbed a sixth-year book from his bag and began flipping through. It couldn't be that simple, could it?
"What! I wasn't kidding when I said I haven't seen him this happy in a while! I don't think he's getting dragged into something daft by Luna, 'Mione, or just going along with it out of pity. We still keep an eye on him, obviously, but if looking for Cacky-Armed Snarkles-"
"Crumple-Horned Snorkacks," Harry corrected absently as he studied one page intently. It actually was that simple. How didn't he see it?
"Yeah, that. If looking for them is getting him out of his head for a bit? All good, I say. Tell me he hasn't been better since he started hanging out with Loony."
"It's just so illogical!" Hermione protested. "None of the things he's looking for are real!"
"And I'm not actually the general of an army when I play chess! So what?" Ron shot back.
"Ron, you're a genius!"
"See, Harry gets it! … Wait, what?"
Harry leapt from his seat and snatched up his wand, pointing it at the wall.
"Lumos discooperiens!"
At the shouted spell, a cone of odd, dark blue light emerged from the tip of it, projecting a jagged circle at the wall. Instantly the solid stone came alive with yellows and greens, all arranged in broad columns and sharp angled turns.
"I just had to add an Unveiling Charm with what I had!" Harry grinned, delighted as he moved the wand around, following the path of one of the brightly coloured tubes in the wall. "Now take a look at that!"
"Are those the pipes?" Hermione asked, her argumentative attitude evaporating rapidly as she looked from wand to wall with an analytical expression. Several other people in the common room, those who'd been engaged in their own activities, or enjoying the show of his two friends having a go at the Chosen One, got up as well, curious at this display of new magic.
"Yeah, I think so. Look, you can see the outline of the cold-water ones as well, they're just fainter."
"Basilisk would have no chance if we'd had this in second year!" Ron crowed, before waving his arm in front of the strange projection, his arm showing up yellow and red. "Cool!"
"And look at this!" Harry said, turning the cone of light onto the floor, where the footprints of the now curious crowd shone, yellow and green on the floor. "You can track the heat from where someone's moved, too!"
For the next few minutes, Harry wandered around the common room, pointing his new spell at all sorts of things as requested by his fellow Gryffindors, Hermione eventually relinquishing her annoyance for her more scholarly nature and following with parchment to make notes. The charm (he'd have to name this at some point, he thought with a groan) had some odd effects, he noticed – for one, it showed things in both infrared and ultraviolet light, and that depending on how he turned the wand. They'd only discovered that when the light had swept over Lavender Brown and discovered her nail polish had fluorescent properties.
It also seemed to have a range limit of roughly twenty yards – pointing down only showed about that much of the pipes and the occasional person striding through whatever corridors were beneath the common room.
Eventually, though, Harry stopped in front of the entrance to the common room, grinning as he looked up. Hanging there, above the door, was a small branch of mistletoe, a long-standing Christmas trap for unsuspecting students.
"And you know what they say about mistletoe, right, Hermione?" He asked his friend, to visible annoyance and a sigh. "They're just infested with Nargles."
"Harry, I'm telling you, fixating on imaginary creatures isn't healthy," she replied as he turned his wand on the plant hanging from the ceiling.
"Luna's right – you really could stand to be more open min-"
"WHAT THE BLOODY HELL IS THAT?!"
Both Harry and Hermione's head whipped around at the horrified shout of Ron, eyes snapping to the mistletoe before their eyes widened. The rest of the students who'd been following the demonstration made varying noises ranging from similar exclamations to the young Weasley, to gasps and screams, to at least one third year girl who declared what had been revealed by Harry's spell to be adorable.
"… Ah," Harry said, somewhat more subdued, his gaze never leaving the mistletoe and the thing atop it. "Hermione, could you go get Hagrid? See if he's got a… tank. Or a cage, or… something. And if anyone knows where the Ravenclaw common room is, could they go get Luna Lovegood? Please? Now?"
"That isn't what I think it is, is it?"
"I don't know, Hermione, what do you think it is? Because it clearly exists, doesn't it?" Harry snarked in reply, moving away slowly from the door.
"Oh, very mature!"
"Ron? Ron, stop shouting and grab my net."
Luna Lovegood skipped through the door to the Gryffindor common room, looking idly this way and that with her large silver eyes and a dreamy smile on her lips. Ginny Weasley followed behind nervously, having shown up at the Ravenclaw common room saying there was an emergency Luna was needed for. She'd refused to say anything else, seeming quite rattled. Even now, the redhead's eyes were locked on the mistletoe as she crept around it, hugging the wall.
"You needn't worry about Nargles," Luna said airily at her friends caution, placing a hand over her cork necklace. "This should keep them away."
To Luna's mild surprise, instead of the usual responses - ranging from outright contempt for her consideration to uncomfortable looks and polite subject changes - Ginny immediately ran to her side, practically clinging to her arm.
That was unusual. Luna had long since accepted the fact that attempting to convince (most) others of the more wonderous and harder to find elements of their magical world was almost entirely pointless. She'd tried, she'd tried very hard in her first two years to prove and argue and persuade that there were creatures as yet undocumented, both far away and close to home, as well as the more shadowy dealings of the Ministry, but it was never to any avail. It actually seemed to make others quite hostile to her, her attempt to share knowledge with them! A distinctly un-Ravenclaw attitude, in her view.
After that, she decided it didn't matter if they believed her or not. She knew that the creatures her father had told her about, and that her ancestors had written about, were real, and she would act accordingly. They would know she was right when she found what the wider world considered sufficient proof. But then here was Ginny, the closest thing Luna had had to a friend until last year, when she'd been solidified as a friend for sure along with several others. Ginny, who Luna knew didn't believe her or her father, acting suddenly as though the cork charm she'd offered to make for many beforehand, with only one taker, was the only thing that could save her. Curious.
Then again, she thought with a smaller, more heartfelt smile, her student had always had a better way with people than she did. Perhaps he had talked to some of his fellow housemates.
"Good evening, Professor Lovegood."
Ah, speak of the devil.
"Good evening, Mr. Potter," Luna replied to the grinning black-haired boy who greeted her, her usually detached voice taking on an air of mock formality. They'd gotten into the habit of acting as teacher and student ever since Harry had jokingly referred to her as Professor when she had gone on an (admittedly lengthy) lecture on the likely habitats and feeding habits of the Snorkack. Since then they'd taken to their roles with enthusiasm, Luna especially – she'd never really had any friends to have in-jokes with until him. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
"Sorry to bother you, I'm sure a renowned magizoologist like yourself must be busy, but I think we need your expert opinion on this one," he explained, the grin never quite leaving his face as he turned his eyes away from hers.
It took a moment for Luna to stop focusing on her protégé lounging on a chair to notice the cluster of people at the far end of the room. Luna turned a quizzical eye to her pupil, who gestured to the seat next to him. She sat, scooching a little closer to watch with him. The majority of the population were clumped together in various groups, watching a glass tank that had been set up against the wall. Hermione Granger was waving her wand and muttering various spells at the tank, visibly frustrated at the lack of success.
Professor Hagrid, his head just barely missing the ceiling, stood next to the tank, talking at length to the nearby Gryffindors about how to contain a creature you've never seen before, interspersed with comments about how Harry had been his best student, so him finding something new is unsurprising, and perhaps Dumbledore would let him take up Care for Magical Creatures again, it's still early in the year. Ronald Weasley was eyeing the tank warily, and also missing a sock for… some reason. No, wait, the sock was in the tank.
Luna was aware in a vague sense of her reputation – that several people found her slightly odd, those who didn't take the time to get to know her, anyway. Which was practically everyone except the boy sat next to her, she reflected, but regardless. Perhaps she was eccentric by most standards, but she was also much smarter than most, and it wasn't difficult for to piece together what was going on. The Magical Creatures Professor, the tank, her being called here, it was all reasonably obvious.
"Mr. Potter," she declared, in a censorious tone belied by her smile. "Have you been doing field work unsupervised?"
"Sorry, Professor, it was an accident, I swear," Harry replied, holding up his hands in surrender.
"Hmmm. Well, I suppose I can let you off this time, as it seems you had some success…?" She trailed off to allow for some kind of explanation. It occurred to her, and not for the first time, that this whole student-teacher dynamic actually made communicating with her Gryffindor friend much easier. She briefly thought she should try it with everyone, but… no. This felt like a thing for her and Harry.
In response, he got up from the chair, leaving the cork bracelet he had been turning in his hand (and didn't Luna's eyes linger on that with a smile for a moment), and wandered over to the tank.
"Do you remember we talked about maybe some of the things we were looking for were invisible by non-magical means? And some muggle devices can see things that are invisible without magic?"
Luna nodded dreamily. Ah yes, less than a week ago, when they'd been planning a theoretical expedition to Ben Nevis in aid of finding a Heliopath. They inhabited high places, largely, although why was still a mystery as there were so few of them still free. She wondered briefly what the current administration was doing with the vast army of fire spirits the previous Minister had been building? Hopefully the poor things had been released by now.
"Well, I figured out how to replicate some of that with magic, started looking around the common room a little and…"
His wand erupted into a cone of cold blue light, which he put up against the tank.
Luna gasped.
"… have we caught what I think we've caught?"
Whatever spell Harry was using obscured the details of the creature that it was now apparent was in the tank. It glowed a soft green under the light, but the outline, the shape and the movement? They all matched everything Luna had been told about them.
It couldn't be much larger than her clenched fist, and its body was shaped similarly. A pair of thin, fairy-like wings beat a rapid, silent rhythm on its back as it floated around the tank lazily, moving to the four corners at a regular interval. Four long, thin arms dangled below it, seemingly lifeless until the creature (and Luna didn't want to say out loud what she was sure this was) approached the walls and they sprang to life, pushing against the glass to stop their flight.
As she approached, silver eyes wide and mouth agog, the creature stopped in its flight and turned to face her. Its arms trembled and tensed, and it backed away from her, retreating to the furthest corner as she stopped her advance. Her hand went to her Butterbeer cork necklace almost unconsciously.
"Well, that settles it," Harry chimed in cheerfully, as Hermione Granger cursed under her breath. "It reacted the same way with my charm bracelet, but 'Mione thought it was just scared of me because I'd helped catch it."
Luna turned slowly to her student, his grin only widening at her expression – he very seldom got to see her completely shocked, she reflected.
"Harry James Potter," Luna intoned, her usual dreamy tone entirely missing. "Have you caught a Nargle?"
"Luna Amalthea Lovegood," he returned. "We have, in fact, caught a Nargle."
The nearby Gryffindors all winced at the subsequent high-pitched shriek, as Luna squealed in delight and flung herself at Harry, wrapping her arms around his neck and clinging tight. Harry staggered slightly under the unexpected weight, but recovered swiftly, his own arms coming around her back to support her, laughter ringing out from the both of them.
"Mr. Potter!" She cried, joy infusing her voice even as she returned to her academic affectations. "Tell me everything!"
"Honestly, not much to tell. Found it hiding in the mistletoe, by the way, so I guess we can say for sure they do that now."
"It was well known," she interrupted sagely. "But confirming behaviour is always good practice."
"… Right. Anyway, I got the spell working with some, uh, help from Ron and Hermione…"
Luna let Harry's explanation fade into the background somewhat. Oh, she was paying attention in case she'd missed a detail or two, but what had happened wasn't hard to figure out. Really, the question was an excuse to watch Harry's face as he happily recounted his first successful magizoological expedition.
Even she would admit that this hadn't been what she'd expected to happen. Luna had been quite pleased when, shortly into one of their now customary walks around the grounds they'd begun around the start of the year, he hadn't bothered to argue with her assertion one morning early in term that he needed to unwind, else the Wrackspurts would never bother moving on from their home in his head. A strong sense of self-awareness expunged their influence like nothing else, and Harry seldom had enough of that. Humility was usually good, but in Harry's case it seemed more like blindness to his own virtues. In any case, he'd admitted that he did, in fact, have a problem with stress that may be exacerbated by Wrackspurts.
So Luna had of course taken it upon herself to help him, by reminding him of the wonder the world could hold whenever she could, in the hopes of relieving the stress the Wrackspurts were consuming. He was a friend, after all. She may even go so far as to say the truest friend she'd ever had. And friends don't leave one another in trouble. It was a principle they both shared, as he himself proved by spending time with her quite visibly. To deter the crueller elements of Hogwarts, she had guessed, which was very sweet of him.
To her delight, he'd taken to it much, much better than many of the other students she'd tried to share her insight with. But when she'd proposed searching the grounds for Nargles and Wrackspurts as an activity to aid broadening his horizons, she hadn't expected him to attack the task so seriously, or so well.
He'd come at the problem of location and study with exactly the right balance of logic and speculation – how to go about finding hidden creatures in the best way with the information they had, where others would simply assume what they searched for didn't exist if it wasn't already well documented. Harry wasn't entirely convinced of their existence, she could tell, but he nevertheless took the search seriously.
Their excursion to the Black Lake had been his idea – Wrackspurts are more active in wet weather, she had said. So perhaps they prefer wet environments, he had supposed, and only become mildly flustered when she'd beamed at him like a teacher at an extremely bright pupil, and they'd immediately taken to the lake. His suggestion of non-magic based invisibility, that he was able to back with muggle 'science', was inspired.
Luna made up her mind.
"… and once it took the bait and stole Ron's sock, I got it in the net and had the wrestle the thing until Hagrid showed up with the tank," Harry finished, a laugh in his voice. "Anyway. Colin got some pictures of it, so I think we should send them off to your dad and write something up for him before we decide what to do with that one."
"You don't want to inform the Daily Prophet?" Luna asked.
"Nah. They can get stuffed. If they want the story, they can buy it off the Quibbler."
Luna smiled widely at him in response. " Thank you, Harry! I'm sure daddy will appreciate it."
He shrugged modestly. "Well, I owe him for publishing my interview last year. This seems like a good way to pay him back. And I think we should let it go somewhere on the grounds?"
"Yes, that seems sensible. In any case, I'm glad you had quite the successful first magizoological adventure!"
Harry tilted his head quizzically. "How do you mean?"
"Harry, you managed to come up with a means of finding Nargles, capture one, only the second one ever caught besides Fargus the Mad in the 1857, confirm some aspects of their behaviour and get documented proof! Any magizoologist worth the title would be proud! I know I am!"
He blushed a little, a smile on his face. "Well… Thank you. But I meant, what did you mean first?"
"For when we go on one of our other planned expeditions after school, of course," she replied, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Which for Luna, it was. They'd spoken of them theoretically, for the most part, but he did so seem to enjoy the work, and he was surprisingly good at it. Why not continue?
To her dismay, rather than agreeing with her like she thought he would, his smile fell, and his gaze drifted to the ground at her words.
"I wish my life could be like that…" Harry whispered, only loud enough for her to hear.
… Oh. Of course. For a moment Luna had allowed her enthusiasm to override memory. Of course he couldn't. His life was dictated by currents he couldn't control. That had been plain to them both for some time – he hated being called the Chosen One, had told her so multiple times, but Luna noted he never actually refuted the basic claim the title implied.
It had to be him who ended Voldemort.
So she laid a hand atop his in comfort and smiled sadly at him. To herself, she made a promise – no matter how long it took, she'd see to it he got the life he deserved, one he chose for his own happiness, not one he had thrust upon him at the whims of fate or dark lords. Harry deserved better than that.
Oh, and perhaps she could do something about the fact she was madly in love with him at the same time.
CHOSEN ONE DISCOVERS NEW SPECIES
Is Harry Potter looking to become the inheritor of the Scamander throne?
"Of course they don't give Luna any credit. Wankers."
"Harry!"
"It's the Prophet, 'Mione."
"… Fine."
A/N: Juuuuust realised I forgot to post this up here. Whoopsie.
In any case, this was fun to write. It was tricky getting the right balance with Harry to where he was aware he has a connection with Luna, but is oblivious as to the actual nature of what that connection is. And Luna of course is entirely aware, and doesn't regard it as all that important. To her, it's just a fact of life. Plus these two just make the most sense to me as a pairing? Like, Harry only really has a developed relationship with Hermione and Luna when it comes to prospective partners (on the female side of things anyway), and I do buy more into Harry and Hermione as siblings myself. But eh, let's be honest, it's the least of Rowling's crimes.