Potter47 ~ Prologue ~
Reflections "Two truths are told,
As happy prologues to the swelling act
Of the imperial theme."
~ Shakespeare
"How's my little queen doing?"
The nine-year old spun around, away from the magazine she was intently staring at, yet being far too bored to actually read. "Mum! You're home!"
"I told you I'd be home at four-eighteen," her mother reminded, smiling.
"But it's four nineteen!" the daughter exclaimed. "You're late!"
"Oh, no!" said the mother, staring horrified at the watch on her right hand. "I am late for Queen Luna's tea-party! How will I ever make it up to her?"
Luna giggled at the look on her mother's face. It was a cross between a horrified, wide-eyed look, and a happy, motherly grin. It was quite an amusing sight for the young girl.
"You could clean my room!" Luna suggested happily.
"Not likely, young lady!" called her father, London Lovegood, from the kitchen.
Luna's mother's head snapped up at the sound of her husband's voice. "London?" she called. "What are you doing home?" Her face quirked into a smile.
The tall, brown-nearly-black haired man walked into the doorway that separated the living room from the kitchen, with a dish towel in one hand, drying off a plate the Muggle way.
"I have good news," he said, smiling at his family.
"You always have good news," stated Luna matter-of-factly. "You work at a news magazine!"
"Exactly, princess--" Luna glared at her father. "Queen, excuse me. Exactly. I have good news, and it has to do with the Quib."
"You were promoted!" guessed his wife happily.
"You hear that, guys?" Luna asked her stuffed animals. "Daddy was promoted!"
"No, I wasn't promoted, Cynthia," he told his wife, still grinning. "Better."
Cynthia looked confuzzled. She looked very much like Luna did the first time she had tried to sound out 'Crumple Horned Snorkack.' "What, did old Baxter give you the magazine, or something?" she asked sarcastically.
London was beaming. "Right in one."
"What?" she said, unbelieving. "Don, did you just say he did?"
He looked at her oddly, as if he couldn't quite understand what she had said. "What'd you just say?"
"I said, did you just say he did give you the magazine?" she repeated.
"No, the other part."
"What, 'What?'" she said.
"No!" he said, hurriedly. "You called me Don. You haven't called me that since...well, before we started dating..."
"Shame on you, Mum!" said Luna. "His name's Daddy, not Don." She paused for a second. "Hey! Don, rhymes with Ron! And Ron is part of Ronald!"
"That's nice, dear," said Cynthia distractedly. "He gave you the Quibbler? How--how could he do that?"
"Apparently, the old man's retiring. It's about time too; he must be about...what, one-seventy?"
"Must be."
"He said he likes the way I think. He reckons I'm the right kind of person to run the Quib."
"That's amazing news!" She enveloped her husband in a hug, and kissed him on the cheek. Luna giggled.
"Mum! What about our tea?!"
Cynthia abruptly broke away from London, who chuckled. She practically flew back to her daughter, whipped out her wand, and made tea pour out of it into the two teacups on the living room table, while balancing on one foot.
"Yay!"
Luna and Cynthia sat down at the table and began to slowly, and exaggeratedly properly, drink their tea. Both were chuckling into their teacups, and London was outright laughing. He had returned to the kitchen.
"Dinner'll be ready in ten minutes," he called.
"Honestly, London, why do you insist on doing it the Muggle way?" asked Cynthia in a much stronger English accent than what was her usual.
"Because it's the way I learned to cook, and I'm--"
"--not going to change for you silly witches," Cynthia and Luna finished, rolling their eyes and giggling.
"Exactly!"
"Mum!" called Luna, pulling on her mother's arm. "Can I look into your mirror?"
Cynthia bent down to her daughter's height. "And what do you think you'll see, if you look into this mirror?"
"My face, of course!" Luna said obviously. "Obviously." See. She did say it.
"Aha!" exclaimed Luna's mother. "You assumed!" she said. "What have I told you about assuming?"
"Never assume..." said Luna dully. "Yeah, yeah. But of course I'll see my face. What else would I see in a mirror?"
"Never assume, Queen Luna," said Cynthia seriously. "My mother told me, and her mother told her, and her mother told her. Never assume. It just so happens that this is a special mirror. You won't see your face." She paused, as if to correct a mistake. "At least, you'll probably not see your face. You might."
"Let me see!" said Luna, wishing her mother would hurry up and give in. They wasted so much time, sometimes.
"Alright, alright," agreed her mother. "But be careful!"
"Of course."
Cynthia hoisted her daughter off the floor, and sat her on her lap. Just as she looked at the mirror, Luna saw an image fade away. It had been a blond, teenage witch, and she looked extraordinarily familiar...
"Mum, was that you?" asked Luna, bending her head around to look at her mother.
"Yes," Cynthia said. "That was me, when I was at Hogwarts. The year I fell in love with your father, actually." Luna giggled once again. "So, are you going to look at yourself, or just sit there giggling?"
Luna spun back around, and sat very professionally atop her mother's lap. She gazed into the mirror's depths.
"I don't see anything--"
But then, she did. The grey smoke that had covered the surface of the mirror vanished, and Luna could see what lay beyond it. A field. Stones...she could count twelve of them. Some tall, some fat. Lined up in a row. But wait...one was missing. Her eyes widened.
People came into focus, around the area where the last stone should have been. They were in a rectangle. Around something in the middle. A big box. She could see...she could see her--herself. And Daddy. And some of Daddy's friends. She recognised a feeble looking old man as Daddy's boss--or his old boss, in more ways than one.
But where was Mum?
The view from the mirror seemed to spin around, to fully circle the box. Then it came back around, and she could see herself, close up. She looked...sad. She looked very, very sad. And she could feel it, now, too. Inside her very being. She could feel grief worse than anything else she had ever felt before.
The Luna in the mirror began to cry, and before long, the real Luna was crying as well.
"What's wrong?" asked her mother worriedly.
"Shh..." Luna wanted to know what was happening. Something was wrong. Where is Mum? She wanted to see her mother. If she could just see her, everything would be alright.
Luna realised for the first time...the Luna in the mirror looked just like her. She was the same age; she had the same length hair. It wasn't like when her Mum saw her younger self. This was her.
And then she heard something. A voice. A deep voice.
"We are gathered here today, in remembrance of Cynthia Lovegood--"
"No!"
Luna toppled off of the chair backwards, taking her mother with her. She shrieked as they fell, and she felt her mother's hands wrap around her waist.
"It's alright, Luna. Whatever you saw...it's just a picture. Like one of the ones downstairs, on the mantle. It's not real." But Luna heard something in her mother's voice. As if even she didn't believe what she was saying.
It scared her.
It scared her a lot.