Luna Lovegood's Curiosity
Luna Lovegood knew she was insane, and she didn't much mind it. It must be dreadfully boring to be something as common as sane, she thought, before considering that perhaps everyone was at least a little bit insane and in that case, she was both boring and unoriginal. Though the thought disturbed her slightly, she let it linger with her other thoughts, all corralled into a menagerie-like setting in her mind. What nobody realized about Luna was that she was a really quite accomplished Occlumens, because nobody ever bothered to read Loony's mind. It was a good thing that they didn't. Luna's creatures would eat them alive.
But then Luna wondered at the ridiculous notion of a mind eating another mind—what would it even feel like?—and then wondered if it was really ridiculous at all, because if people could eat other animals then why shouldn't minds be able to eat other minds?
Because minds don't have mouths or stomachs to eat with, said one of her thought-creatures, which sounded rather a lot like Hermione.
That's ridiculous, Luna argued. My mind could have a mouth and stomach if I wanted it to.
You're the exception, said the Hermione-thought-creature, fondly and exasperatedly at the same time.
Quite, Luna agreed, before wandering down the sunny paths of her mind and out, to the so-called real world. But if asked, Luna would always argue that her mindscape was just as real as the world outside it, because if she could see it and feel it and live it, it must be real. Otherwise, there would be the distinctly frightening possibility that nothing was real.
Was it that frightening, though, to be nothing but a delusion? The delusion in the mind of a god?
That sounded rather poetic, Luna decided, though it sparked a whole host of questions about if reality was one enormous delusion or a whole group of delusions.
A gaggle of delusions, so to speak.
Luna giggled at the image of Ron Weasley, but goose-shaped.
But she was getting sidetracked. Didn't she have a job to do? Yes, that's right. Professor Dumbledore had pulled her aside that morning and informed her of a curious situation. Apparently, a ritual had gone wrong. Luna could sympathize, as her mother had been killed by a spell creation ritual backfiring on the caster. Something to do with a hormonal imbalance causing her mother's calculations to be slightly off, which Luna thought about as little as possible.
But anyway, this particular ritual hadn't killed anybody, though she had seen George Weasley storming up the castle stairs with murder in his eyes. It wasn't a nice look on him. George looked much better when he was smiling or laughing, so his stormy expression made something inside of Luna twitch. In recognition or fear, she couldn't tell yet.
No, the ritual had brought people back. Harry, and Hermione and Ron too, plus a man that Dumbledore called "Professor Riddle". He had smiled at her when he spoke of the professor, but something in that smile was lying.
Professor Dumbledore didn't like this "Professor Riddle", of that, Luna was sure. And these people weren't their Harry and Hermione and Ron, they were someone else's Harry and Hermione and Ron. That was the part she objected to, really. Because she was mostly sure that they hadn't asked if the dimension travelers had wanted to come to their dimension—really, who in their right mind would want to, though the phrase "right mind" made her giggle (was there ever one state of mind that was right?)—or if the people left behind were okay with them leaving.
Professor Dumbledore, however, hadn't seemed to care when she warned of Finkelfyres. Nobody ever cared when she warned them, no matter how right she turned out to be in the end.
She distinctly remembered saying "Headmaster, do beware of Finkelfyres. They tend to become agitated when their precious people are stolen from them, and they cause aggression in their hosts."
With a twinkly-eyed smile and a wave of a knobby hand, Dumbledore had dismissed her. Luna pouted. She had been extra clear with that one, too, nothing convoluted about it.
Riddle. Like Tom Riddle?
But the headmaster had given her a task, hadn't he? Yes, he had. He wanted her to befriend them, give them a reason to stay. Of course, the second part had gone unsaid, as well as the "give them a reason to fight for us" part, but Luna understood well enough. She was young, not naive. There was a huge difference.
So that was why she was currently descending the stairs to the Great Hall, looking for a distinctive head of red hair. It must be consistent across dimensions, Luna knew, because then nothing would be consistent at all and they should just throw their hands up in defeat at that point.
Throw their hands up, Luna thought, and giggled. The image of Ron vomiting hands instead of slugs was a grotesque one, but amusing all the same.
She finally spotted the trio of students, sans their mysterious professor, sitting at the very end of the Slytherin table. The choice made sense, considering it was the emptiest. She only noticed them because they were under glamours.
The Lovegoods, after all, were historically very good at crafting illusions and therefore had to be very good at seeing through them. Xenophilius was no exception, and her mother, Pandora, had a latent talent for prophecy. Luna supposed the two gifts together made for a queer mind indeed, but she didn't mind.
So when she noticed the telltale aura of magic surrounding three nondescript, utterly forgettable—though not to Luna, as she forgot no one—students sitting at the end of the Slytherin table, as far away from Daphne Greengrass and Pansy Parkinson as possible, she meandered over and sat next to what must have been Ron. His table manners, after all, were as atrocious as they ever were. "Hello," she said peacefully, and held back a laugh when Ron nearly spat out his food. "Luna," he replied, eyes wide. "Luna."
She tilted her head at him. What a strange reaction. "That's my name," she said, smiling, and turned to the other two. Harry was next to Ron and Hermione sat across from them, twirling a fork between her fingers.
"You cut your hair," Luna observed, staring at Hermione. The girl's hand immediately jumped to twiddle with the strands. "A while ago," said the Hermione who wasn't her Hermione, though the argument could be made that the only person Hermione belonged to was herself.
Harry's fists were clenched in his lap. "What are you doing here?" he asked, voice full of false cheer.
"Well," Luna said, "Professor Dumbledore sent me here to make friends. I think he wants you to stay here."
"And why would we?" Hermione asked tartly, letting her hand fall from her hair. "We were dragged here against our will and now we are being kept here, against our will?"
Luna only looked at her. The girl was stressed, she could see, in the tense lines of her shoulders and the hard shape of her mouth. Something had happened to her to make her someone vastly different from the Hermione she had known. As she wouldn't ever know by just staring at her, Luna did the reasonable thing and asked.
"What happened to you?" she wondered aloud, peering at the girl. Hermione bristled immediately, her spine stiffening and all expression sliding off her face. "None of your business, Lovegood," she snapped.
"'Mione," Ron tried, but Hermione rounded on him. "Not a word," hissed the Gryffindor, who stood up. "I'm going back to my room."
She stalked from the hall, temper pulled around her like a cloak. In that respect, the girl rather remained Luna of Sirius—just less "grief" and more "something to prove".
"Sorry about her," Ron said placatingly. Harry's jaw was tight as he downed a glass of pumpkin juice. Not with anger, but something else. It was fear, Luna realized after a moment of studying his face and posture. Fear, an entirely unfamiliar emotion on Harry's face, because Harry had always been one of the bravest people Luna had known.
"What are things like in your dimension?" Luna asked suddenly, ignoring the way Pansy Parkinson seemed to shift slightly in their direction. With her wand under the table, she whispered "Muffliato," and smiled slightly when Parkinson turned away in annoyance.
"Different," Ron goffered, and propped his chin nup on his hand. "So very different."
"How so?" Luna prodded, listening attentively.
"Harry's parents are alive, for one," Ron said, either uncaring or ignorant of the way Harry's face darkened. "And we never had a Voldemort. Grindelwald, yeah, but nothing about these Blood Wars."
Luna tilted her head, considering this information. "Does everyone from here exist in your dimension?" she asked, a theory forming in her mind.
Ron glanced around the Great Hall. "Mostly, yeah," he said, "though I haven't seen a Hermione here, or me."
They haven't told him, Luna realized suddenly. For some reason, the Order had told Ron of the death of Lily and James and their son, judging from how he hadn't brought up this dimension's Harry being conspicuously absent, but not of his own or Hermione's.
She debated over whether or not to tell him with a squirrel-shaped creature in her mind for a brief moment before deciding that if Professors Dumbledore hadn't told him, he probably had a good reason. "True," she said then. Which only served to support her theory.
Luna snapped her fingers. "Moaning Myrtle," she murmured.
"Who?" Harry asked.
"In the out-of-order girls' bathroom, is there a ghost?"
Harry raised an eyebrow and exchanged a look with Ron. Doubtlessly, they thought she was just as crazy as her counterpart in their dimension. Because of icourse they did. It wasn't their fault that their brains ran on linear courses and first impressions.
"No," Ron said slowly.
"Was Hagrid expelled?" Luna asked then.
"Who's that?" asked Ron.
Harry nudged his best friend then. "Isn't he helping Charlie out in Romania? He's a half-giant or something." Ron's face seemed to light up in recognition. "Yeah, Charlie mentioned him once. Is that who—?"
He trailed off, seeing the calculating look on Luna's face, so at odds with her usually dreamy expression.
There's a single point of departure, she thought. A single point where our timelines diverged, and it has to do with Tom Riddle—sometime before Hagrid's third year.
Because in their dimension, the Chamber of Secrets had never been opened. Luna wondered if there was a world in which their Harry hadn't taken the curse meant for Sirius, before pushing the thought away. Wishful thinking had its place, but not in the here and now.
Though perhaps the unicorn guarding the door to her mind would disagree.
"Nothing," Luna said aloud, vowing to tell Professor Dumbledore at her first opportunity. "And what about Hermione?" she asked.
Ron and Harry immediately adopted defensive postures. "What of her?" Ron asked. "You sound way too familiar with her for someone who doesn't have a Hermione in this dimension."
"We had a Hermione once," Luna replied, rapidly calculating that telling Ron about Hermione's death was worth figuring out what happened to her sometime-friend. "She died the same day our Harry did."
Harry let out a breath and ran his hand through his hair in a comfortingly familiar gesture. The strands stuck up in a ridiculous enough picture that Luna couldn't help but giggle, seeing the afterimage through the glamour.
"I'm not used to the idea of being dead," he admitted.
"None of us are," Luna said wryly, wondering if this admission might make Harry and Ron more likely to tell her things. Being so underhanded made her uncomfortable, but she really did want her friends back. She missed Harry. He had been the only person to look at her, really look at her in that peculiar, awkward way he had.
Ron, she supposed, had been alright. Even though he still called her Loony on occasions. And though Hermione had rarely believed her, and tolerated her animals with the sort of long-suffering exasperation you'd give a small child, she had still been a brilliant conversational partner.
"Hermione…" Ron trailed off, pok at his food. "She's going through a rough time."
"And it's not like she accepts help," Harry added sourly. "Won't even tell Ron what happened to make her all obsessed with dueling."
Luna nodded understandingly. "You know," she said, "the Harry of this dimension did that too. I think he was used to doing things on his own."
"Hermione's the same way," Ron agreed.
"She'll open up eventually," Luna replied, before shifting tack. "And this Professor Riddle of yours?"
"He's the defense teacher," Harry put in. "He's taught DADA forever, but you wouldn't know how old he was by looking for him. He's McGonagall's age."
Ron raised an eyebrow at his friend, temporarily taken aback. "Bloody hell," he said, "you're kidding?"
"Nope," Harry said, somewhat cheerfully. The fear lining his body had dropped always somewhat. "I'm really not."
Having not seen Professor Riddle, Luna didn't quite understand Ron's shock. "Is his first name Tom?" Luna asked.
"Yeah, actually," Harry replied. "Does he exist here, too?"
Luna tilted her head in response. "In a way," she said cryptically. "So there's no curse on the defense position, then."
"Curse?"
"We've never had a defense teacher last more than a year," Luna confirmed. "We've lost them to crippling amnesia, being fired, imprisonment for impersonation, and centaurs."
"Centaurs." Ron's voice was flat.
"Centaurs," she chirped. "Except she was horrible, and it was really Hermione's fault that she was attacked by centaurs, so nobody minded so much."
The awkward silence that permeated their section of the table made Luna smile. "I think the one before my first year died," she said offhandedly. "In fact, there was a rumor that Harry killed him. Except he was secretly half-Voldemort, so no one pressed any charges."
"I killed a defense teacher?" Harry asked faintly.
"You did," Luna replied seriously, "and I'm fairly sure the crippling amnesia was your fault too. He was trying to Obliviate you or something, but you got the spell to backfire."
She spared Harry's deteriorating suspension of belief for a moment before deciding to crush it altogether by saying that "And the firing of my second-year DADA teacher was your fault too, though since you caught a dangerous criminal in the process and the firing wasn't really in anyone's control you didn't feel too guilty. My third-year teacher was trying to kill you, like the half-Voldemort one, so his imprisonment was justified."
"You're starting to sound like the curse on the defense position is really just Harry," Ron laughed.
Luna considered this for a second. "You're not entirely wrong," she agreed, "because he attracts trouble like a magnet.
"Used to, at least."
And then they lapsed once more into pensive silence. "Is anything here the same?" Harry asked, sounding mildly desperate.
"Filch is still a mean old bastard," Luna supplied.
Ron snorted. "You're not so bad, Luna," he said, smiling at her.
"For someone who dragged us here across dimensions," Harry added. Luna smiled back at them. "To be fair, that wasn't me," she said. "I'm not technically a member of the Order. They don't accept the underage."
She turned serious for a moment, wondering how much information she was allowed to give them. "Not much here," she said finally, after a long pause, "can be trusted. The Order wants to bring Voldemort down at almost any cost, the rest of Britain is under his control, the ICW is going to maintain a non-involvement policy in our civil wars unless Voldemort extends his reach, and the people here are not the people you know back home."
Harry and Ron considered her. "I can see that last part," Harry said finally. "Because Daph looks like she wants to murder everyone in this room with her bare hands."
"Daph?" Luna asked.
"Daphne," Harry clarified, while Ron tacked on "Greengrass." Ron jabbed a finger in the Slytherin's direction. "She's Harry's girlfriend back home," he stage-whispered, and Harry turned bright red.
"You must miss her," Luna observed.
"Yeah," Harry mumbled. "I tried talking to her, 'cuz I totally forgot I was under a glamour, but she just looked at me like I was a piece of rubbish that grew legs."
"She's like that," Luna agreed. "Not many friends, even in Slytherin. I tried to talk to her once two years ago, but she didn't pay me much mind."
"That's the other thing," Ron said, frowning. "Why does everyone here hate Slytherins? Sure, they can be kinda entitled and most of their political families are conservative, but they're not evil or anything. But there are almost no Slytherin students here."
Luna regarded him with a serious expression. "In that, then, your dimension did things right."
"What do you mean?" Harry asked.
"Voldemort was a Slytherin," Luna said. "And he got most of the conservative families to follow him. The Slytherins missing…" she let her gaze travel over the Great Hall meaningfully, "are probably with their Death Eater parents." This last she spat with more vitriol that she usually ever spoke with.
Harry looked at her with an uncharacteristically soft expression, one she hadn't seen on him before the DA. Before Cedric, really. "What did they do to you?" he asked.
"What they did to everybody," Luna said grimly. "They took away the people I loved."
Suddenly, she couldn't stand sitting here, with people who were her friends but at the same time, were completely different people. She stood up. "I'm sorry, but I have to go," she said. "The Nargles will take my things if I don't put in fresh radishes. I'll be in Ravenclaw Tower if you need me."
She left quickly without sparing the two of them a glance, practically speedwalking out of the Great Hall. Tower first, she told herself, then I go see the headmaster.
Little did she know that she wouldn't make it to the headmaster's office that day, for as soon as she closed the door to her dorm and sat on her bed, she would start crying and wouldn't stop until hours later.
A/N Yeah, I have no excuses. No references in this chapter, but it's extra long to try to make up for my absence. And yes, it's a bit dialogue heavy, but next chapter, the action finally starts. On an unrelated side note, has anyone watched Endgame? I cried. Twice. Please review!
PS: Part of me wants to write either a time-travel Sakura-centric Naruto fic, but I also thing there aren't enough Villain!Deku/Villain!Class 1-A fics in the Boku no Hero Academia fandom. Which would you rather I start work on after I finish In Media Res? Poll up!