Wake I.

While in no way discounting the dramatic changes and challenges Astoria experienced over the course of her pregnancy, Draco felt he too was turned inside-out by those nine months.

The first trimester brought celebration, dizzy excitement and planning logistics for this next chapter of their lives.

It was the second trimester that Draco wasn't expecting. Memories of his own childhood began to float, unbidden, to the surface of his mind. He'd always known that his parents loved him. But as an adult, he could also see how badly they had led him astray. So much emphasis on material things and dominating those around him. And so much prejudice and paranoia that Draco knew he would have to continue internally dismantling for decades to come. Could Draco ever feel fulfilled without material luxury? Could he ever have relationships that weren't calculated and founded on ego or distrust? In all his life prior to the war, Draco had only glimpsed friendships that weren't shaped primarily by politics. His marriage with Astoria was healthy, but she was an adult who wouldn't be too strongly influenced by his faults. What might happen to an impressionable child for whom he didn't know how to be a good role model? Draco could flawlessly teach etiquette, scholarship, and athletics. But what of everything else? The most important things…

Throughout, Draco did his best in caring for Astoria, bringing her food, drink, pillows, headache potions, and more. And she did her best to help soothe his nerves. She found books on parenting, and they had lengthy discussions about the things he read. She assured him that he was not the same person he had been as a teenager. All of this did help, but Draco still worried. The third trimester was both agonizingly slow and far too quick.

His mind didn't fully calm until he cradled his newborn son in his arms. It wasn't complicated, this love that he felt. His family just needed him to be there. Present. Attentive. Draco could do that. And if (when) he made a mistake, he would muster the strength to ask for their forgiveness.

Wake II.

- April 11th -

I'm so dumb. So many hours researching and working to become an animagus, and I didn't think about the possibility that my form might be aquatic. Thank goodness I asked Liz to monitor the dormitory for me and that she thought to levitate me into the bathtub once I was gasping and unable to turn back due to panic. If not, I'd be a goner.

- April 15th -

Figuring out what fish I am is harder than expected. Eventually had to ask to borrow a camera and have Liz take a picture of me that I could study later, compared with the dimensions of the bathtub.

- April 22nd -

I am a tuna?! Why do I have to be a fish that people love eating?!

- April 24th -

Victory: have gotten access to the prefects' bathroom/pool! Spent a while figuring out which tap was plain cold water and not magical suds, but now I can practice swimming around and doing tricks. The feeling of water moving over my scales is incredible - I could do this all day!

- May 26th -

I'm bored of being stuck inside. There are only so many flips out of the water I can do, and only so many times that it is fun to make waves and slosh water across the floor around the bath. But I'm also terrified of trying to go out in the lake. What if the giant squid and/or the merpeople eat tuna?!

Wake III.

Luna had spent countless hours taking in the portraits of Hogwarts. She admired the array of colors, subjects, mediums, and styles. She engaged the more introspective portraits in discussion about what they liked or disliked about their backdrops and those of the other portraits in the castle, as well as whether they could remember the process of being painted.

She tried using what she had learned to make paintings of her own. She enjoyed playing around with different kinds of paint, and eventually got to the point where she could really bring the images in her mind onto the page. Reading every book on illustration animation from the Hogwarts library allowed her to direct everything from clouds to human subjects to abstract shapes, in increasingly advanced movements. She learned that the spell required less magic and concentration if she sketched out a few intermediate images of how the movement should look. She then struggled for a while to add sounds in sync with the visuals, but eventually figured that out too. It was easiest to record her own voice. But sufficient concentration also allowed her to pull a sound from her imagination and pair it with what was happening on the page.

The biggest challenge so far was breaking the barrier between her illustrations and external stimulus - the books were quite vague about the mechanisms by which paintings could see, hear, and feel. (She hadn't run across any mention of paintings being able to smell or taste, which she found rather sad.) So far, Luna's paintings could respond to variation in light, sound, and touch, but didn't appear to discern differences in shapes and visual texture, pitch and timbre of sound, nor temperature and texture of touch. She wasn't sure whether she needed to be casting additional spells, adjusting the spells she already had, or teaching the paintings manually by continuing to expose them to different types of stimulus.

As her creations became more complex, Luna began to wonder about the sentience of paintings. Was there some crucial step she was missing, to truly bring her creations to life? Or were master artists just so good at mimicking real life that observers couldn't tell the difference? Surely they couldn't have manually specified the portraits' reactions to everything? Maybe there were general rules of speech and behavior that could be tailored for each painting? This led her to another rabbit hole of thought, which was that unless there was some way of capturing the objective essence of a person, place, or thing, paintings would always be more a reflection of the perspective of the artist than of reality. She amused herself with wondering how the portraits in the castle would have made their subjects feel, if they were based on real people and those people got to visit the portraits. She also reflected on how sometimes it might be best to minimize the animation of a painting, so that an observer could appreciate the inner mystery of the subject.

...

After some of her preliminary works that she had left in her dormitory had been ripped to shreds - probably by some hormonal Nargles - Luna scouted the castle for a more secure studio. Eventually, some portraits she had befriended guided her to a small room hidden behind the frame of a perpetually slumbering bat. The room was dark until Luna figured out the spell to project what looked like a window to the outside. It also occasionally smelled like incense, being a floor below Professor Trelawney's classroom.

Over the years, Luna's studio came to feel more like home than anywhere else at Hogwarts. She kept the majority of her paintings, some on canvases in addition to those on parchment. She never brought anyone else to her studio, but did give a few paintings to those she thought would appreciate them. After Hagrid lost Buckbeak (thankfully to escape instead of execution), she made him a portrait of the hippogriff soaring among the clouds. She warned him about the Nargles' affinity for ripping up paintings, so he agreed to keep the painting stored in a drawer except for when he wanted to take it out and look at it. When Ginny made the Gryffindor Quidditch team, Luna gave her a painting of a girl with bright red hair performing daring broom stunts in the sky. She'd never been in the Gryffindor dormitory, so she didn't know if Ginny had listened to her about keeping it stowed. But her friend continued to tell her that the painting brought her good luck, so she assumed it had survived.

...

A few months after the Battle of Hogwarts, Luna contacted Professor McGonagall and asked if she could come check on her studio. The Headmistress didn't know what the young woman was talking about, but gave her permission to visit the castle. On the arranged day, she met Luna in the entrance hall and explained where reconstruction was still occurring. Luna thanked her, and shyly invited her to see the studio. Curious, Minerva agreed. Following her former student up to the tower and through the bat portrait, the Professor's jaw dropped at the combined studio and gallery she found herself in, brightly illuminated by sunlight even though she knew there weren't windows at this height on the tower. Her feet carried her around the room, following the progression of Luna's paintings from what were clearly her first year work through to the most recent.

Minerva had had so much to do over the past few months, leading the rehabilitation of Hogwarts, searching for new faculty, and presiding over the development of new programs to address but not overwhelm students with the realities of the war their country had just endured. She was one of the people that everyone looked to for strength and continuity. She hadn't allowed herself to break down. But now, this reminder of the simultaneous wonder and struggle involved in growing up brought tears to Minerva's eyes.

Author's note: Thanks for reading! Here's a bit about me:

During elementary school, I adored the Harry Potter books (read the series 7+ times). My friend and I memorized all the spells, carved our own wands, and practiced dueling. Over a decade later, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, I discovered the rich library of online fanfiction and plowed through a bunch of stories, which also helped relieve stress during my first couple years of grad school. This summer, I finally decided to try my hand at writing. I was always impressed, but now have even more respect for this community knowing how much time and effort it takes to create even a relatively short work. Kudos to everyone on here!