"What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?" –George Orwell

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Interlude: A Luna Story

In which Luna eats chow mein and Hermione and Draco meet a cold welcome...

December 25, 2001

Luna's shoes were white with blue polka dots. She watched her toes move out of sight beneath the tablecloth and then come back again. Back and forth. Her feet swung like pendulums from her knees. She wondered if she could stop them. She wondered if she'd want to.

Back and forth. Her legs were far too long for this game, and so her feet made a clack sound on the wooden floor every time they reached the nadir of their path.

Back.

Clack

Forth.

Clack.

Back

Clack.

Forth

Clack.

She'd been tapping her feet along with the wedding march, which had played about five minutes previous, but now that was over, and the woman sitting across from her's big, lacy hat was blocking her view of what was happening at the front of Wen's Chinese Happy House, which is where Luna was. She busied herself with the tablecloth. Luna knew weddings were beautiful, fabulous expressions of love, but to her they always seemed so boring. She consoled herself with the knowledge that, even if the wedding was boring, when it was over there'd be good food. Luna loved Chinese food.

Neville was sitting on her right, hiding his boredom from everyone except Luna, who knew he was bored because he kept attaching and detaching his cufflinks. Ginny would have been on her left but that, as Hermione was unavailable, she'd been called into service as a last-minute bridesmaid. Luna took the opportunity to slide into her empty seat. Now with the hat woman out of her way she had a clear view to the front of the restaurant, where a red-robed Dumbledore was in the process of wedding a casually-dressed Dean (Luna found it insurmountably funny that Neville was better dressed than the groom) and a giggling Lavender (who was wearing a white, oriental-inspired mini-dress and a tiny white pillbox hat with some netting for a veil).

"You may now kiss the bride." Dumbledore said. Luna felt, for an instant, that if she'd moved sooner she might not have missed the entire wedding. But then they'd kissed and the tables filled with little white boxes of rainbow-fried rice and chow mein, pot stickers and tiny pots of soy sauce, kung-pow chicken and little fried-up crab rangoons. She realized she was far too hungry to be sad at someone else's wedding.

She hadn't been able to eat all day. On the way out of the house a combination of her going too slowly down the stairs and Neville's natural clumsiness had spilled a vase of water on the dress she'd planned on wearing. As they'd planned on getting breakfast on the way there (many plans had been broken in one innocent slip) and they'd been delayed by her having to find something else to wear (she would have worn the wet dress, but that she didn't really like it in the first place) her stomach had yet to be filled. She dug into the pot stickers, not waiting to watch the happy couple make their way to the head table. She felt like the Empty-bellied Erminske, which was saying something. She was about to tell Neville this between mouthfuls of chow mein, but was deterred by her having suddenly gone deaf. That was the only logical explanation for the room suddenly go absolutely silent, and Luna was a very logical woman. She fiddled with her ears for a moment before giving up and turning to Neville, intending to communicate her deafness to him in some way or another. Neville was paying her no mind, however, because his attention, as well as everyone else's, was locked somewhere behind Luna. She followed his gaze. She understood. They were all, naturally, shocked that Hermione Granger was so tan. Luna herself was quite surprised. Who would have thought that a woman with her complexion could get a tan? No matter, she turned her attention to the man beside Hermione. Draco Malfoy, whom Luna had always reserved a special glare for ever since he rejected the valentine she'd gotten him her first year, was not tan at all. In fact, he had a rather bad sunburn. This made Luna happy, but the Santa hat perched at far-too-jaunty an angle on his head made her happier. They were carrying, between them, a large bag, which Luna assumed to be full of presents. This made Luna happiest.

A half-hour later, while Luna was playing with her present, a funny little monkey that ran back and forth over the table when she spun the knob on the bottom, and everyone else was glaring at their unopened packages (everyone except for Dumbledore, that is, who'd opened his and laughed happily at each of the 100 Christmas crackers inside.), they were still yelling in the women's bathroom, 'they' being Molly Weasley, Lavender, Ginny, Parvati, Padma, Dean and Harry (the latter two having been allowed in because no-one was actually doing anything secret inside except for badly hiding what they were yelling about.) Hermione and her date had seated themselves by the door. The hat-woman made a comment about them getting ready for another quick getaway.

"They shouldn't be here in the first place!" yelled a female voice.

"We invited them, it'd be rude to kick them out!" yelled another female voice.

"Think of Ron!" said another female voice. Ron, who was sitting on the other side of the room from Luna, staring glumly into his fried rice, visibly shrunk. Everyone outside of the bathroom resumed pretending not to listen. "He's been through so much already! Now this, ON CHRISTMAS!"

"So you do it!" said a male voice.

"Me? It's not my bleeding wedding!"

"Well, it's is ours!" said a male voice, presumably Dean's.

"So why can't we just go out and take the presents and IGNORE THEM!"

"They don't deserve to be ignored!"
"They don't deserve to give us presents!"

"So we agree?"

"What?"

"Dean will tell them to leave, glad that's settled."

"I will not!"

"And why not? YOU WERE SO KEEN ON KICKING THEM OUT A FEW MINUTES AGO!"

"That's rude!"

"WOULD YOU RATHER HAVE THE REST OF YOUR WEDDING SPENT IN AGONIZING, GUT WRENCHING TENSION!"

"YES!"

"I SAY WE KILL 'EM!" said a female voice.

"THAT'S RUDE!"

"Thank god they can't hear us…"

Malfoy made a show of checking his watch. "Oh, dear, darling! Look at the time!" He took her hand and pulled her up. "I've got a meeting with a watch repairman I'm going to be late to. Bye, all! Smashing party!"

"Merry Christmas!" Hermione waved, she only had one arm through her coat when he dragged her bodily out the door.

"Ho ho ho!" he called; and they were gone.

"Well, Hermione's looking well," Luna said finally, watchingher monkey run back across the table again.