Ch. 4:
Luna saw the man, the dog, Sirius Black, fall. She heard Harry's scream just as all went into blackness.
When Luna woke up, Harry was elsewhere and some mediwizard was waking her up. She looked around and saw Death Eaters being bound together and taken away to the North Sea, to Azkaban. That gladdened her considerably. She saw the whispering curtain and remembered Sirius falling, falling. She got up and walked steadily towards the viel. She saw movements and knew it was Sirius trying to find a gap to walk through. She would have to help him. It would not be proper to let someone just keep pushing the curtain forever.
But just as she reached out to pull the viel back, a wizard tackled her to the ground. She felt rather frustrated by the whole situation. Here she was trying to help someone and she got tackled by some wizard. When she caught her breath, the wizard spoke.
"Are you bloody crazy?! No one who went in there has ever come out! In fact, I believe someone just fell through there. If you were here, you saw it, so why the bloody hell were you trying to go in there?!" the wizard said, rather red in the face after his lecture. He was wiry, thank goodness, since he just tackled her. He stood up and brushed off his long robes that were too short for his astounding height. Luna got up huffily, but the wanted effect was lost since she only came up to his chest.
"The man you speak of, the one who fell through, was a friend of mine. If you had let me be, I oculd have helped him." She glanced at the veil. "Now he's gone! Deeper behind it. You scared him off. Now I just know I'll have to wait forever to find him again. Now shoo!!!" The man lumbered off. Luna knew she would forever remember him as the lumbering giant, if she remembered him at all. She walked off to find someone to talk to.
Luna had been talking to Hermione a lot over the past week. Hermione, though she tried to hide it, usually found Luna frivolous. Luna knew it, but, like many things, chose to ignore it. hermione and she had spent a lot of time in the library, finding reasons to get permission for books from the restricted section. Nothing really helped. Everything said the same thing. The veil was an unsolvable mystery. Luna and Hermione put thier heads together. They wanted to save Sirius. Hermione wanted to save him for Harry, and Luna wanted her friend back. They developed a plan that would begin the week before Hogwarts started again. They planned weekly trips to the library to perfect this plan and see if they could find anything different.
School ended with Luna and Hermione running to catch the last carriage from the library. They said thier farewells and wrote down dates for trips to the library near Luna's home. Hermione would be staying at the Weasley's home for most of the summer. Operation Big Black Dog was being set to launch.
A/N: And that is where I shall leave you, but only for a while. This 'Operation' was a stroke of genius. The story was headed in a whole other direction before this little idea planted itself firmly in the plot.
I hate holidays. Today is Thanksgiving and all I have to say for myself is that I ate shamelessly and am now sitting in a teddy bear robe of my mother's and mismatching socks, freezing my behunkus off, writing this lovely update for you. Well, ta. Me mum is buggerin' me to get off and clean my room. What a nuisance.