By Lux of Luna
Glimpses into the early life
of Miss Luna Lovegood.
Original story material is the property of the fanfic author; other material of Rowling, et al. falls under the usual disclaimer. Opening quote from Carmen Possum (anon.,19th c.). End quotes from OotP (Rowling) and PoA (Kloves).
The night was lit by lux of Luna,
And 'twas a nox most opportuna
To catch a possum or a coona;
For nix was scattered o'er this mundus,
A shallow nix, et non profundus.
Mr. Langrenus Lovegood of Ottery St. Catchpole, Devon, sipped the last of his morning cup of hot water.
Like most adults, he would have preferred a stimulating cup of coffee or tea at this hour, but the missus forbade it, saying the caffein made him nervous.
"You'll want to come with me, of course, Luna! Quite a historic personage, and he lives right here in Devon."
Miss Luna Lovegood, aimlessly stirring the last of her bowl of muesli, wasn't so sure. "Oh, Dad. He won't be any more historic for meeting me."
"Still, it's an opportunity to take a impressive photo -- an 8-year-young witch, sitting at the feet of the most ancient living magician. What a contrast! You'll be on the front page of the next Quibbler. Why, he's the man who discovered the Philosopher's Stone, source of the Elixir of Life!"
"Yeah, and Mum says he never shared it with anybody but his wife."
"Tut, tut. Flamel did many a great thing, and you'll want to meet him."
"Oooh... okay. I wasn't doing anything today, anyway."
It was pre-dawn, and fairly stormy, so no one would notice their overland flight, however slow it might be. Luna climbed on her father's broom, a sluggish old hand-me-down that most wizards would have gladly traded for a newer model. Mr. Lovegood joined her, and the broom coughed and wheezed its way out of the barn, with bits of its straw falling off as it went.
Luna was pleased when her Dad released control and let her steer the broom for a few miles. He felt that any wizard-child should be fully trained in self-sufficiency, confidence and general knowledge of the world by age 15, so he had started early -- by letting her read the Quibbler, for one thing, but also by doing little magical tasks around the house, on her own. Already, she was quite good at Scourgifying the pots and dishes after a meal, and neatly Reducting the lawn without beheading the flower bed. (She could also make the chickens dance a hula, but that wasn't on her father's charm agenda.)
Luna attended the local public school. Her teachers found her to be smart, self-starting and outgoing. Her name would have suggested her "Loony" nickname regardless. With that as a starting point, anything unusual about her became "odd" for teasers. It didn't help that her hair seemed uncombable, and that her family was raising her in an old stone house, rebuilt from a Druid ruin, with no electricity or phone. Most of her friends found her to be quite normal -- but then, she was only eight years old so far.
If they had ever found out that she fancied herself a practising witch, she never would have heard the end of it.
Luna kept the flight of the stubborn broom straight and level, and her Dad only took command when they were about to land at the Flamels' farmhouse, on a hill near the Devon coast. Luna's landings still involved about three teeth-rattling bounces, and he preferred to land standing up.
Mr. Lovegood did a Translating charm so he and Luna could easily understand the Flamels' medieval French, and they could understand an 8-year-old's slangy English.
Perenelle Flamel, looking elderly but spry, greeted them at the kitchen door and welcomed them in. She asked Mr. Lovegood what he normally drank at breakfast. "Coffee straight up, thank you," he said, winking at Luna before she had a chance to answer "hot water" for him. She smirked, and winked back.
"Nico will be coming down to breakfast soon," said the old lady.
"Fine, Madame Flamel. My daughter Luna has been looking forward to meeting him and you."
"Please, call me Nell. And what would you most like to know from an old lady, dear?"
"Let me think," replied little Luna. "Um... if you had put money in the bank when you were my age, how much would it be worth now?"
Nell laughed. "More than we could ever count, if I had done so. Alas, I had nothing as a child. Money mattered little, once Nico discovered how to turn mere paving stones into gold!"
"Oh. Yeah, I forgot."
"An excellent question, though. Do you do well in school?"
"Yes'm. I'm near top form."
"Good for you. Luna! What a beautiful name -- the source of the earth's light in the darkness of night. And what do the other children call you?"
"Well... some call me Loony."
"Oh, how affectionate it sounds. Almost like the French, Lune. Should I call you Loony?"
"Um... I prefer Luna, actually."
"Very well; Luna it is. And what can I get you to drink? We press an excellent grape juice here."
"That would be fine, thank you. Or water," she added, winking at her father.
"You little diplomat," he whispered.
Nell returned with their cups. "I imagine the other boys and girls would be most surprised to find that you were a magician, Luna."
"Sometimes, I almost wish I could tell'em, but of course I can't. Some might think I have great fun -- and others would think it was really weird, or evil."
"Fun, weird or evil -- of those three, I would have to judge you as fun. And pretty, too! As the wolf said, 'What big eyes you have!'"
"'All the better to see you with, grandmother,'" said a beaming Luna, completing the fairy-tale quote. The six-century-old lady purred and hugged the little girl.
You needn't know more about her visit. We've glanced at this moment only to see her as she was. As you can tell, she was hardly the Loony Luna we've heard of, and yet it's the same girl. It took a most haunting experience, a year later, to change her noticeably.
-o-
Mrs. Ivy Lovegood seemed preoccupied with the piece of black cloth.
"What is it?" asked Luna, aged nine, peering over her shoulder.
"A find," answered her mother, fingering the edges. "It was buried in the dirt under the house. Father dug it up, with some other old whatnots. It could be fifty years old, or a thousand."
"Wow. Wasn't this place Druid? Do you suppose they made it?"
"Who knows. Seamless, except for this big seam at the un-raggedy end. You know what? I'll bet that was for a curtain rod. This was a curtain, or a wall hanging of some sort."
"Eww. Who'd want black curtains on a window!"
"It's quite long, and the old building had hardly any openings. Maybe it's not for a window. Hmm. Out of curiosity, let's see if it fits..." She took to the stone doorway at the front of the house, and held it up. "No; that's almost the right length, but not it. The middle sags on the floor. That's odd. Why would they make the middle longer?"
"Umm... if the doorway was round, like a hobbit's?"
Mum laughed. "No hobbit doorways here, Luna, sorry. Although... wait a minute." She dashed toward the back of the house, with Luna chasing after her.
The other stone doorway had been a mystery to begin with. The back wall was against a hillside when they arrived, and it had a boarded-up doorway. They opened it, expecting a cave, but instead, it led nowhere, facing only more dirt and rock. Her father had dug away at the hillside to add a pantry, and the doorway now led there.
"See?" said Mum. "It's a rounded arch. So, if I hold the longest part up in the middle of the doorway... presto! It's just right! And it's raggedy from dragging on the ground. It's an old veil for this very doorway."
"But -- if there was a hill behind it, then where did it go?"
"Good girl. You're thinking. Finish the thought. Answer your own question. Why a doorway that leads nowhere?"
"But doorways always go somewhere."
"Okay. Now some guesses, and a conclusion. Come on."
"Umm.. well, maybe it was a tunnel, and it caved in."
"Good. Or?"
Luna thought hard. "Or... it's a portkey of some sort?"
"There you go! But some sort of ceremonial portkey, to some place very special, or they wouldn't have done it up like a doorway, and it wouldn't have been in this inner room . I wonder where it went?"
"You never know. It might be like a test, where you go someplace with dragons you have to fight, or lots of swordsmen."
"Oh, maybe. Only one way to find out, and that's to peek behind it."
"Are you sure it's safe?"
"Come now, Luna. Where's your spirit of adventure?"
"It runs away from me sometimes. I don't know, Mum. I'd be scared."
"Let's try anyway."
Mrs. Lovegood examined the doorway and found two angled slots in the sides. She thought it over and concluded the curtain rod should be about a half- inch diameter, and curved to fit the arch. She wondered what the ancients would have used, and decided on wicker. She found a willow branch of the proper length and diameter, tried it for size, and it fitted. She threaded it through the seam of the veil and mounted it in the doorway.
"There," she said proudly.
"Now what?" asked Luna.
"We try it! At a distance, of course." She took out her wand, held it at arm's length, and pushed back one side of the veil.
They saw the pantry.
"Ho hum," said Luna.
"Oh, don't give up yet. Alohomora!"
They peered around the edge again, and still saw the pantry.
Mrs. Lovegood was not to be dissuaded. "Reveal your secrets!"
Pantry.
"Activo!"..."Initio!"... "Portem abrio!"
Pantry. Pantry. Pantry.
"Humph. Maybe I hung it backwards."
"Or maybe it was just a caved-in tunnel, after all."
"No, I still suspect there's magic involved. Let me reverse it... there."
Charm. Pantry.
Several more spells were attempted. Charmpantry; charmpantry; charmpantry.
"Well, there has to be an answer, Luna, and I'm going to find it."
"Maybe it's broken."
"Maybe building the pantry has changed it somehow. I wonder if I have to stand on the pantry side to say the charm? That might do it."
"I'm scared. Maybe we'd better wait a few minutes for Dad to come home."
"What's to be scared of? So far, it just hangs there and does nothing. This is a fascinating little conundrum. Let me try it from the pantry side. Get out of the line of fire, okay?"
Luna stepped back behind a chair, while Mrs. Lovegood pushed aside the veil and stepped through.
Luna waited. She didn't see Mum's wand pushing it aside. She didn't hear any charms being invoked.
"What happened, Mum? Did you get scared, too?"
There was no answer.
"Mum?"
Nothing stirred.
"Mum, are you alright?" Whereupon Luna set out to follow her mother...
and tripped on the chair leg...
and fell through the veil...
except, she didn't hit the floor. She didn't hit anything. The room became very bright, then settled down to where she could make out details.
Clearly, Luna wasn't in the pantry.
Most importantly, her Mum was nowhere in sight.
Her father's answer to problem situations was always to fully, unblinkingly observe. It was a strange scene. She was in a corridor of leafy vines. She could not see the end in front of her, because it curved. Outside the vines was only white light.
There were voices. From the echoes, she thought they were in a large room. She couldn't hear Mum among them; there were so many. It was like an orchestra tuning up, an orchestra of murmurers all saying different things. Were they speaking to her? Mum? Mum, are you there?
The white light, from above on one side, wavered like sunlight at the bottom of a lake. If she was in water, she had no sensation of wetness, chill, or lack of air. She could not tell if she was breathing.
She looked down -- and was scared at what she didn't see on the ground.
She didn't see her feet. Nor her legs. Nor any of herself.
There was no Luna Lovegood in this place. She was just a location in midair where there was a Luna-awareness.
What would her father say? 'From observation comes the guess, and then conclusions, and success.' She was not pleased with her conclusions. This room isn't in our house, she thought. This isn't a portkey. This isn't time travel. Then, a very clever guess: It's not a happy place.
Mum did a bad charm. She shouldn't have come here. She made a mistake.
And I made a mistake to follow her.
This place -- it's death, isn't it?
Not a heaven-death, either. It's a nowhere-death.
Mum walked in here, and she died.
And now, if I'm here...
then I must be dead, too. Or dying.
Her mother had stepped through, and must have been drawn down this corridor toward... what? The voices? Those voices must be dead. And Mum's with them! Does she want to be with them, or are they bad? If she wants to come back, will they let her? Are they holding her? Will they hold me?
She willed to move forward in the corridor -- but couldn't. Strange. Why can't I move?
She thought about it, and concluded that her earthly body mustn't have gone through the veil completely when she fell. She was slumped across the entrance.
She looked behind. The corridor curved away in that direction, too, but it was not empty. A short distance behind her, floating in mid-corridor, was a large, dark, shapeless spot. She felt it had to be some sort of gate. Was it the way she had come, passing through it from life? Or was it the way to the next step -- an even-more-nothingness death?
Was the spot waiting for her to do something?
She had no real choice. Once I rescue Mum, if I want to take her back home, the only place I can go is into that spot. No matter what it is, I need to take her there.
But I must move around to find her. Maybe it's a simple immobilising charm holding me, and I can lift the charm with magic. Even if I can't see or feel, if I can reach my wand... rats, no! It's in my back pocket, outside the veil! Oh, I must learn to keep my wand where I keep my head, so they're always together.
And if I move away from the spot, will it stay where it is? What if Mum walked one way, and the spot moved the other way, and she couldn't find it again? If I lose sight of it, we shan't ever escape..
Mum! I'm here! Please come to me! Help me! We've got to leave!
Then she felt herself moving... drawn...
What is this?
tugged backward down the curving corridor of vines...
No!
ever faster,
I can't go there yet!
toward the black spot...
I have to look for Mum!
swiftly now, whooshing through the gateway,
into blackness.
The voices faded.
The blackness around her gave way to a familiar golden redness, with a multitude of tiny flecks of light and colour. Little transparent things floated in front of this background. Think, Luna. Where have I seen this before?
After a moment, she decided what it was. She was looking at the inside of her eyelids.
Conclusion: I'm in my body again.
She thought her body might be moving, but not of its own volition. She gradually began to recover her other senses, and felt the source. Someone was slapping her on her back.
With one hard slap, she began coughing repeatedly, her lungs exhaling water, as though she had drowned in the otter pond. Her father's panicky voice came to her. "Luna! Can you hear me? Say something!"
"Dad," she coughed, and uncurled herself, gasping deeply. "Dad."
"It's alright, Luna. You're back. You'll be right now."
"Portal... bad. Mum.."
"You're in no danger."
"But, Mum is..."
"You're in one piece. You'll be fine."
Oh, Mum!
-o-
There was, of course, no funeral as such. The town was told Mrs. Ivy Lovegood had died suddenly while visiting her sister, and the remains had been cremated. The Ministry devised a certificate that satisfied the local recorder.
The Ministry thought it wise to remove the entire artifact -- the ancient stone doorway as well as the raggedy black veil -- to London for study. The gap was walled up, and a new doorway created to the pantry in the far corner.
Analysis of the water from Luna's lungs and soaken clothes told them nothing.
The doorway and veil were isolated in an old lecture hall, deep within the Department of Mysteries. The finest scientists in magicdom came to examine it and test it. Nothing ever came out. Test objects were placed halfway though the door frame, but not for long; as if a hand drew them in, the objects were always lost to the veil. As much as the great minds yearned to see the room on the other side, and hear the voices more distinctly, not one was found brave enough to repeat Luna's experience.
One thinker theorised that she had survived because she had an equally desperate reason to be on each side of the gateway. If she had upset the delicate balance by moving either way in the corridor, the spot-portal would have gone away, and she would have been drawn into the world of the voices.
It affected Luna deeply. It affects all those who come back. It was though she now understood Death, and was saddened at its finality, but no longer feared it. The lucky accident called Life meant much more to her; she now felt there must be a heavenly purpose in her being here a second time, but could not conclude yet what it was.
She viewed the world around her in a dreamy sort of disconnected way; life was solid and fairly predictable, especially the more muggular parts of it, compared to the unknown of the drowned room and the corridor of death. The important was often silly; the silly was often interesting. She chuckled at the paltry things that most people treasured. She felt she saw more in life than others, and saw a beauty in people and objects which most others missed, and did not fear to point them out. Why buy fancy-shaped earrings when fancy-shaped radishes grew in the garden? Does a tin pendant or a chain of plastic seashells make a more stylish necklace than a shiny chain of bottle caps, or a length of flowery vine?
Flamel didn't share; life is short.
All of that, of course, is more than any child consciously thinks about. It just happened. Basically, Luna Lovegood became the unblinking, ever-curious and somewhat loony life's-observer that she did.
-o-
The hare munched grass; the girl munched chocolate.
In the dappled shadows of the cherry-tree forest, the hare foraged outside its burrow, content with the presence of a scraggly-haired onlooker sitting nearby. The girl made no moves that might disturb things. She just stared intensely, studying the hare, as though to not miss a thing about it.
Then something large and screaming swooped low, and the hare instinctively ran for its haven nearby. The girl giggled, and concluded that she would find it less interesting to sit observing what was now a plot of hareless grass.
She stood up and wandered out of the darkness of the cherry-tree wood, plucking a daisy to count the petals. She walked up behind the red-haired girl who was sitting a few yards away, in the sunlit field near the orange grove, watching the noisy boys flying above the field on brooms.
"You're a witch, too."
The startled redhead recovered. "Uh... yeah. You?"
"Of course. That's why I said too. I'm Luna Lovegood. And you're Gin Weasley."
"How do you know my name?"
"I've seen the boys here lots of times before, and I know they're Weasleys. One called you Gin, and one called you Sis. So, you're Gin, and you're a Weasley. Gin, Weasley."
"Oh. Well, that makes sense. But call me Ginny. So you were watching them?"
"No. I was watching a hare eat grass. But I was listening to the boys. The hare wasn't saying anything."
"They usually don't."
"Some do. Then the hare was startled when one of your brothers flew by, and he split for his burrow. I had to laugh at that. A split hare! Get it?" Luna giggled again.
Ginny pondered her. "Sorry, no."
"It doesn't matter. Will you be at Hogwarts when I go next year?"
"If my parents can afford it. It'll be my first year. I really want to go. If I go, I hope I'll be in Gryffindor. The Weasleys have all been there."
"Then you have bravery most of all. I have wit instead."
"Wit -- like telling jokes?"
"No," she replied, unblinking. "Wit is being wise and clever. 'Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure,' my father says. We watch how things happen, and if we can't figure it out, we might make a good guess. From that, we reach conclusions. That's the clever part."
"So what house is for guessers?"
"For wits, not just guessing. Ravenclaw. I wonder where they'll put Harry Potter."
"The one in the books? Why, will he be at Hogwarts?"
"He'll be 11 this year. Nobody does the math, or it wouldn't surprise everyone so. Do you know where he's been living? Rumour has it Harry Potter has been kept locked up all these years. Perhaps he's in the Tower of London, wearing a mask so no one recognises him, and they slide food to him under the door."
"I wouldn't think so," sniffed Ginny. "He's like a hero. The Ministry must have him at Buckingham Palace, or some place, and treat him royally!"
"You're thinking of the Queen's Harry. Harry the wizard wouldn't be there --unless you think the Ministry is run by good people."
"Um... my father works for the Ministry, thank you."
"I'm sure he's not one of them, though, right? My father writes about them a lot. He puts out the Quibbler."
"Oh. I know what that is. My brothers bring it home sometimes. Or, I should say, I know what it looks like, but I haven't read it."
"Why not?"
"Um.. to tell the truth, I only see it when I clean out the canary cage. It's not too pretty by then."
"You don't save back issues?"
"Well, like I said, the canary, y'know. But I see some of the stories on the cover. It's usually 'Snotcats ate my little sister' or something."
"Snorkacks. They're from Scandinavia. Some people still think they don't exist. That's what they said about Nessie, too!"
"Whatever. Oh, I hope I get to meet Harry Potter!"
"Mind my words. He'll be a starved little kid who's been kept locked up for ten years."
"Go on!" said Ginny, doubtfully. "He'll be like a secret weapon. He'll be strong, and know a zillion charms."
"Hullo, only 67."
"Huh?"
"67 petals on this daisy, unless I lost count. I thought there'd be more."
Ginny looked quizzically, then shook her head and smirked. "Luna, you're funny."
"Funny odd or funny ha-ha?"
"Um... both, I think. In a nice way."
"Oh?" Luna thought that over. "Okay. Since it's nice."
Two very different 10-year olds found they could bond.
-o-
"And anyway, it's not as though I'll never see Mum again, is it?"
"Er – isn't it?" said Harry uncertainly.
She shook her head in disbelief. "Oh, come on. You heard them, just behind the veil, didn't you?"
"You mean…"
"In that room in the archway. They were just lurking out of sight, that's all. You heard them."
Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times,
if one only remembers to turn on the light.