Chapter 4 - Crop Circles

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So there I was, a young, vain and naive girl left alone to make her own mistakes. I met Him, agreed to see him again, and again... I soon became completely immersed in this love affair, living for the moment I would uncover the soft heart hidden behind his facade of stone. I was confident I would find it eventually. The beautiful young girls in the novels I'd read had always succeeded in that, so surely I would too! It didn't occur to me that the facade could be true, that a girl could find the heart of her beloved to be every bit as cold as his behaviour.

I began to meet my lover in the privacy of an old house above the sea. It was a house Muggles would call "haunted", positioned on a cliff difficult to reach. I thought the setting was very romantic; without a doubt, He had calculated it to be that way.

There was something very strange about our intimate meetings, something that should have alarmed me straight away. Forgive me for writing about this, dear Luna. I know how embarrassing it is at your age - at any age, actually - to hear this sort of detail about your parents. Believe me, I wouldn't write about it if it wasn't important for understanding how I slowly came to realise that something was wrong.

What confused me was that I could never actually remember our intimate moments afterwards. The time between the moment we would pull into an embrace and the moment I'd find myself lying alone in our bed - he always seemed to have to leave in a hurry - seemed almost blank. I only remembered a vague feeling of romantic bliss, nothing else.

Of course, now I understand the reasons for this. He was not really human anymore, and pretending to be a gentle and passionate lover would be at least extremely difficult for him, if not humiliating and disgusting. It was much simpler to modify my memory of these moments. Magic was something he was perfectly skilled at. Being human wasn't.

You can understand that, once I realised who He was, I was grateful I wasn't able to remember more about our lovers' meetings.

---

In the Weasleys' home the atmosphere was slightly more relaxed than usual - this was one of those days when none of the family members were on duty for the Order, so it wasn't likely that one of the hands on their family clock would suddenly point towards the words in mortal peril. Bill and Arthur were at work, the twins were in their shop, and Molly was reading The Daily Prophet, occasionally checking the roast in the oven and adjusting the temperature with a flick of her wand.

Ron and Ginny were sitting at the kitchen table and helping with the vegetables. They weren't doing exactly what their mother had asked them to: all they had to do was cut the carrots and parsnips into cubes which was, by hand or by magic, a task that shouldn't take more then ten minutes. They had been cutting them for fifteen minutes, though, and had only completed half of the job because they were trying to make the knives carve the vegetables into elaborate animal shapes, which they would then levitate and move above the table. They were not entirely successful: some of the animals didn't have any heads, and tiny pieces of vegetables were covering the table, the kitchen floor and even the ceiling.

Molly Weasley would occasionally glance at her children and smile fondly. Her normal reaction would have been to scold Ron and Ginny, tell them they were almost grown up now and should behave accordingly, and ask them to clean up the mess. She didn't even think of doing that now. A new war had started, she was in the Order of the Phoenix along with her husband and two of their sons, Percy had not contacted them since the Ministry had changed its ways, Fred and George were bound to get into some sort of danger sooner or later... Molly knew that they all might, very soon, miss these carefree moments. It was best to enjoy them while they could.

Needless to say, she was going to make Ron and Ginny clean every bit of the mess afterwards.

"Oh, look! A perfectly good elephant!" Ginny said excitedly, then added in a quieter voice: "I was actually trying to make a swan, but never mind."

"That doesn't count as perfectly good. It even has a beak at the end of its trunk," Ron said.

They were silent for a few moments, then Ron said:

"Dad is probably with Harry right now. Isn't he, Mum?"

"Yes, I think so," Molly answered shortly, waving her wand at the roast in the oven.

"Maybe Dad will invite him here for dinner," he said hopefully.

"Oh, I wish he would!" Ginny said.

Their mother began reproachfully: "I don't think that would be completely safe..." Then she smiled. "But if he does, there's plenty of food for everyone. Unless the two of you destroy these vegetables completely."

Ginny and Ron went back to working in silence, then Ginny asked:

"He hasn't answered any of your letters yet, has he?"

Ron shook his head. He seemed worried.

Ron and Ginny had been spending more time together that summer than ever before. They would either sit close to each other in silence, or play silly games like they did now; they would never talk about the battle in the Department of Mysteries, but they both knew the battle was the real reason they became closer than before. It was reassuring to be in the company of someone else who had been there and fought the Death Eaters. All other people seemed to be living in a different reality.

For the same reason, Ginny would occasionally write to Luna Lovegood and ask her to go for a walk with her. They would walk through the fields around Ottery St Catchpole, talking about seemingly unimportant things. Their conversations didn't flow easily: for example, if they would talk about Quidditch, Ginny would be more interested in the results and the famous players and Luna would want to talk about the conspiracies behind the games. Both girls were kind and friendly, though, and sincerely wanted these conversations to work. Because of that their talks weren't completely disastrous.

And, of course, the reason they really needed to see each other was the one thing they never talked about - the battle.

---

In the Lovegoods' home dinner was being prepared too. It mostly consisted of mushrooms from the forest that surrounded them and home-grown vegetables. The Lovegoods wanted to be in harmony with Nature, and to remain as self-reliant as possible. They never knew when the reason might arise for them to go into hiding.

One of the elves in their employment had returned from the forest to have a chat with them and was now invited for dinner. They were all sitting around the kitchen table, in the middle of which a small fire was burning, a cauldron floating above it. Mr Lovegood was grinding some spices with a pestle and mortar.

"So, you've been to the meeting?"

"Of course," said the elf, "but you know I can't talk about it."

"I know you can't", said Mr Lovegood. He took a small glass jar and added more coriander seeds into the mixture he was grinding. "I just wanted to know if you asked Urg about the interview."

"Yes, I did, and I told him it that would be good for the cause and that he can trust you. He said he'd think about it." After he said this, the elf suddenly blinked and made a movement as if he was going to bang his head on the table, but he restrained himself in time. "Not that I'm saying that Urg was there. I told you no such thing. I never told you anything about the meeting."

"Don't worry, Birch. You told us absolutely nothing. And you know we would never publish anything you don't want us to," Luna said soothingly. She and her father had been hoping for some time that Urg, the elusive leader of a goblin guerrilla group, would decide to give an interview and speak about their cause. Now that the Free Elves have been cooperating with Urg's goblins, they actually had a way of communicating their message to him.

A knock was heard at the window. Luna and her father looked up to see the face of a young wizard wearing spectacles through the glass.

"It's Balthasar Cook," Luna said and got up to open the door. The young wizard rushed in, with a very enthusiastic look on his face. He was carrying a pile of parchment covered with tiny handwriting. He took a seat, looked around and said:

"Hello, Theodosius, Luna. Hi, Oak."

"I'm Birch," the elf said in a hurt voice. "Oak is my sister."

"Sorry," Cook said absentmindedly and looked at Mr Lovegood. "Theo, I have something sensational. I've been doing a lot of research, and I wrote enough material for a whole book. But since you've always been so kind and published my articles, I will give you exclusive rights to print it as a series of articles in the Quibbler."

He placed the pile of parchment on the table, and Luna, her father and the elf leaned eagerly over it to see what the title was.

It said: Crop Circles: Could They Be The Work Of Muggles?

"Why, Balthasar, you're right. This really is sensational. It sounds far-fetched, but I know how much effort you put into your research and I'm sure you found excellent evidence. Besides, I've never really believed in the Mooncalves explanation," Theodosius Lovegood said looking at the first page. "I certainly want to publish it in The Quibbler. But, you know, I can only pay you four Knuts for each article."

"Oh, come on, Theo. This is worth at least seven Knuts."

Theodosius Lovegood shook his head, but before he was able to say anything Luna stood up from her chair and said in an angry voice:

"He told you. He can only pay you four Knuts and that's it."

Luna's father and Balthasar Cook looked at Luna in amazement, and the elf looked as if he was going to hide under his chair, but stopped himself in time. This was so unlike her.

"Alright, alright, four Knuts is fine with me," Cook said quickly and then added:

"I never thought you cared that much about money, Luna."

"I don't," Luna said in a soft voice. She seemed to be surprised by her own outburst. "I don't care about money. It's just that - Dad told you he couldn't pay you more. He told you the truth."

She knew how fair her father was about these things. For the last two years, since she'd started learning Arithmancy at Hogwarts, she'd been helping him with the accounts and she knew that he always kept the price of the magazine as low as possible, and the employees' wages as high as possible. He hardly ever made any profit. He didn't do what he did for the money - he just wanted the truth to reach as many people as possible.

That was the reason she admired him. And that was, as she knew from her mother's letter, the reason her mother fell in love with him. He would never turn his back on anyone in trouble. He never thought twice about helping a pregnant woman who had run away from the Dark Lord...

Luna sat down again, and her father said to Cook:

"It's a deal then. Would you like to stay for dinner?"

Soon they were listening to Balthasar Cook's stories about crop circles, while the fire was flickering and a pleasant scent of spices from the cauldron spread through the kitchen.