Potter47 Part Two
Crossing the Rubicon "Not a speck of light is showing,
So the danger must be growing..."
Roald Dahl Chapter Fifteen
The Darkness
When you are in complete and total darkness, your eyes do not adjust to your surroundings. They do not sense the little bit of light that is needed to see outlines of shapes, to see the silhouettes of those around you. In short, you see nothing.
You cannot tell whether your eyes are opened or closed; you see no difference between the two. You don't know how far away you are from the wall, from the door, from that broken light bulb that you just know must be there in the blackness above you.
There are two distinct reactions to total darkness. The first would be if you were taken into the darkness; seeing the light vanish before your eyes. Not being able to stop it. Watching the last glimmer of brightness evaporate behind a closing door, feeling helpless, defeated.
The second reaction would be shock; sheer unexpectedness. Your eyes are closed; unconscious. And suddenly you wake up...only to find consciousness darker than your darkest dreams.
And so it was that Ronald and Luna awoke.
"Are you awake?" asked a tentative voice.
"If they are not awake, how exactly do you expect them to answer you?" said a second voice—harsher, colder.
Ronald nodded, which did not have very much effect, as you can imagine.
"I don't—I was asking if they were awake; if they respond, obviously they are."
"We are," said Luna dizzily, clearly only awake by a small bit. She somehow knew that Ronald was, indeed, also awake.
"Who are you?" said the second voice.
"Ronald Weasley," said Ronald quietly.
"Luna Lovegood," Luna informed. "Who are you? You sound familiar."
"Ron? Luna?" echoed the first voice incredulously.
"No, Ronald and—" Luna began, but was cut off by the one of which she spoke.
"Hermione?" Ronald asked disbelievingly. "Is that you?"
"Yes—how did you get here?"
"I—I was in the kitchen—"
"As I'm sure you are always," interrupted the second voice austerely. "Despite how much I just hate to interrupt this touching reunion, I do believe we should try to figure out what is going on."
"Is that Snape?" Ronald said suspiciously. "What in hell is he doing here, Hermione?"
"Well, I was in Logica-Land—"
"What?" said Luna unbelievingly. "You know about Logica-Land?" Of all people, Hermione Granger....
"Logical and...what?" echoed Ronald uncomprehendingly.
Hermione set into an explanation of all recent events, including those that Ronald and Luna already knew about, while Luna protested the fact that they couldn't possibly know about Logica-Land, and for Hermione to stop calling Ronald 'Ron.' Ronald, however, was utterly and completely confuzzled.
"Silence!" hissed Snape. "I believe I'll explain everything, shall I?"
Without waiting for an answer (though one was clearly on the tip of Hermione's tongue) Snape plunged into an explanation that made far more sense than the bits and pieces of Hermione's that could be heard over Luna's interjections.
"Miss Lovegood created a world, Mr Weasley, as you are the only one present who does not know. It is called Logica-Land—though I haven't the faintest idea why—it isn't logical in the slightest.
"For reasons we do not know, Miss Granger and myself have been taken inside this world on more than one occasion. It just so happened that we were both in Logica-Land when the world...shifted, I suppose it could be called. It is not clear what happened, but something is very different. And now we are here."
"And Mum's alive," said Luna.
"What?" said Hermione. "But you said that your mother was—"
"Dead, I know. But now she's not."
"Just another change," said Snape dismissively. "We don't know why everything changed; just that it did."
"But that's why it changed," said Ronald softly, who had been silent for a few minutes—a rare occasion, as Snape would say.
"What?" said Snape and Hermione, turning to him (though he couldn't tell, from the darkness).
"That's why everything's different," said Ronald. "That's why they're all dead..."
"What—who's dead?"
"Harry. Ginny. Bill, Charlie, Percy—"
"Potter is dead?" Snape said incredulously. There was something unusual in his voice—something that was not usually there. Fear.
"I'd have thought you'd be happy," sneered Ronald.
"What?" said Hermione, her reaction delayed from shock. "Harry's dead—Ginny's dead?"
"That's what I said." It was difficult to tell, due to the darkness, but it sounded as though Ronald was sobbing quietly.
Snape turned to Luna. "He said that your mother being alive caused this. Why is your mother alive?"
Luna, who had been just as taken aback as the others at the news, did not answer at once.
"Well, I guess it all...leads back to Logica-Land, right?" she said finally, shrugging unsurely.
"How do you mean?" Hermione asked.
"The Wizard, he—" Luna stopped, recognition blooming. "YOU!" she exclaimed, pointing in Snape's general direction. "You're the Wizard. This is all because of you."
Luna reached into her robes from reflex, grasping for her Harpy. However, it was nowhere to be found.
"Where is it?" she wondered aloud, before realising that she was wearing her dressing-gown, and her Harpy was likely still on her bedside table.
If I even have it at all, she reasoned, thinking that perhaps she had never got her knife at all in this life.
"I would appreciate an explanation for that little outburst," said Snape harshly, backing up into the cell wall.
Luna turned to him, glaring. "This is all because of you. You told me to put the looking-glass on the desk. You said that all would be explained in time. Well, I'd appreciate an explanation myself!"
"Luna, sit down," said Hermione, grabbing hold of her shoulders. Luna hadn't even realised she'd been backing her Potions professor into the cell wall. "Professor Snape didn't tell you anything," she explained. "That wasn't him."
"How do you know, Hermione?" said Ronald suspiciously, joining the rest of them on their feet. "How do you know he didn't set this all up, just so he could kill Harry?"
"Weasley, that is ludicrous—"
"Ron, how many times do I have to tell you—Dumbledore trusts him!"
"Not in this life! And that's not a real reason either! You've been saying that since...what was it, fourth year? Dumbledore trusted Quirrell, Lockhart, Crouch—in my opinion, who Dumbledore trusts just doesn't count anymore."
"Well, I trust him," Hermione snapped back at him. "Does that count?"
Ronald fell silent just long enough for Snape to speak up again: "Weasley, I assure you that I would be the last person alive to kill Harry Potter. Perhaps someday you'll find out why," he said, not very politely. Had Ronald been able to see Snape's face, he would have seen a look that screamed I know something you don't know! in a very mature tone, of course.
They were all silent for a moment, none having anything to say. What was there to say? The wizarding world's hero was dead; as were three of Ronald's elder brothers. Which, he noticed, seemed to have been forgotten by the others.
"How did he die?" asked Hermione suddenly.
"I dunno," Ronald said, shrugging regretfully.
"I do," said Luna, calling attention to herself once again. "You-Know-Who killed him in his first year."
"How?" asked Hermione. "Why did that happen in this life but not in the other?"
"Because Ronald wasn't his best friend in this life," said Luna quietly. "So you three never stopped You-Know-Who from getting the Philosopher's Stone." She had realised that the Wizard hadn't exactly told her all the sides of the story. He had said that Voldemort had not been thwarted. He hadn't said that Harry had died.
"Why wasn't Ron Harry's best friend?" Hermione asked, puzzled.
"Because he was Miss Lovegood's," said Snape, having pieced the puzzle together during his silence.
"What—why was he Luna's best friend—oh." Hermione had clearly remembered that Luna and Ronald had been friends when they were little; Weasley Once Wished to Be Wife would probably have been the foremost recollection.
It was then that Luna noticed that her parents were nowhere to be found.
"Where are my Mum and Dad?" she wondered aloud, looking round in vain; perhaps they were on the floor in the blackness, asleep?
"Your mum and dad?" repeated Hermione bewilderedly. "They only took two people in here. You were with your parents?"
"Well, they were downstairs, but...Ronald was with them," Luna said, stopping in her search of the dark floor. "Do you know where they are?" she asked Ronald.
He shook his head, which again didn't do much. "The last thing I remember was your mum stunning me."
Silence.
"Miss Lovegood's mother stunned you?" Snape asked incredulously. "She must be working for—"
"No," said Ronald, shaking his head once again. "She was saying I needed rest...that I must not have been feeling well, to have forgotten all the stuff I didn't remember."
"Like what?"
"Like everything. About this life, at least."
Silence.
"If your mother isn't one of them, then they must have her as well," reasoned Snape.
"But where? Why aren't my parents here too?"
"Well," thought Hermione aloud, "if they didn't put them here, they could be..."
"Nonsense," said Snape, dismissing the thought. "There are an...ample number of places to store prisoners here. That's why we're here in the first place."
"Where is here?" Ronald asked.
Snape answered, but Luna did not hear; she had just remembered something.
"Welcome to another year at Hogwarts," said Dumbledore happily, or at least in a voice that seemed to be cheerful. "As you likely know, the world you returned to this past summer is not the same one you left at the end of the last."
Luna sat at the Ravenclaw table, watching the headmaster deliver the start-of-term speech, and she felt unbelievably nervous.
Why did I have to be in Ravenclaw? she wondered miserably. Gazing over at the Gryffindor table, she noticed that Ronald did not seem very happy about it either. Then again, no one seemed very happy at the Gryffindor table at all, did they?
"It's really pretty horrible, isn't it?" said the girl next to her; a raven-haired third year whom she didn't know (not that she knew anybody). "What happened to Harry Potter."
"Why, what happened?" asked Luna, glancing briefly away from Ronald, who was now melancholically stuffing his mashed potatoes into his mouth.
No one had told her exactly what had gone on during Ronald's first year to do with You-Know-Who and the boy who lived no longer. Ron had said little on the subject because—at least Luna suspected—he didn't know very much himself. That didn't explain, however, why her parents hadn't told her.
"What happened?" echoed the girl incredulously. "Have you been living in a bubble or something?"
"No," Luna said. Why would I have been living in a bubble? she wondered.
"You're weird. Not to know what happened to Harry Potter...I doubt you're going to fit in round here, Lovegood." And with that, she turned round to talk with her friends, leaving Luna to gaze at Ronald, and for him to occasionally frown back.
What happened? she wondered idly. How bad could it have been?
The memory suddenly faded away, and another took its place.
"Her skeleton will lie in the chamber forever," murmured Ronald for the thousandth time, with bated breath. "Ginny..."
"Someone is bound to get her out," said Luna comfortingly, sitting next to him. They were in the Great Hall, at the Gryffindor table. Under the circumstances, no one cared the slightest bit about Luna being there instead of at the Ravenclaw table. In fact, no one even noticed.
"But how? No one has a clue where the Chamber of Secrets is. Half the Muggle-borns in the school are petrified, or dead. The school is about to close, Luna. How is anyone going to find Ginny?"
Luna thought for a moment, taking a breath. "I don't know. But if she's supposed to be saved, she'll be saved. Don't you believe in fate?"
"Sure, Luna. Whatever you say." Ronald did not seem very convinced.
"Ronald," she said, thinking that perhaps it wouldn't do to have him sulk for the rest of his life. "No matter what happens, you have to deal with whatever you get. If Ginny dies—"
He cast her a sharp glance and sobbed into his dinner. She continued.
"If Ginny dies, you have to believe that everything is going to turn out all right anyway. Everything happens for a reason. If she dies, she was supposed to die."
He continued sobbing, and she could hardly comfort him if she broke down herself, could she? But she was close to doing just that.
"Ronald, just..." I'm not going to cry. That won't help him. "Listen to me for a second."
He looked up at her, wondering what she could possibly say.
"Ginny was my friend. I don't want to lose her any more than you do. But sobbing...that won't help. It's not going to bring her back from the Chamber of Secrets, it's not going to do anything. And Ginny wouldn't want you to cry."
What am I saying? she thought, not really knowing what she point she was trying to get across.
"Luna, you just have no idea how it feels...to lose someone. You've never felt it. You can't imagine it. It's the worst feeling in the world." He sobbed once again. "You try to stop crying after your sister dies."
"I don't have a sister."
"You know what I mean: that you could never know what I mean."
"I could. I do," she said. "I came really close to losing someone. I know it's the worst feeling in the world. But you just can't stop living."
Luna finally thought of how to say what she meant.
"It's not like you'll never see her again."
"How do you mean?" he asked. "'Her skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever.' That doesn't exactly sound like 'Be right back!' to me."
"You'll see her again. And those we love...they never really leave us at all, do they? You can still feel them...still love them."
She noticed the lack of sobbing sounds. He had fallen silent.
"How do you know so much about losing people?"
"I told you. I came really close to losing someone."
Someone important, Luna thought.
"Luna? Luna are you OK?" Ronald poked her on the shoulder, and Luna realised her eyes had been closed. She opened them to find Ronald suddenly visible. Normally, it would not be very strange to be able to see when you open your eyes, but she had been in total darkness, and when someone suddenly sees brightness after total darkness, it tends to hurt the eyes, even if it isn't really that bright.
Thumbing a Ride "Be assured, the wicked will not go unpunished,
but those who are righteous will escape."
Proverbs 11.21 Coming Soon