There were periods when I felt we were not making progress at all, that all we found were rumours and that our efforts were wasted. At those times, Luna never failed to encourage me and to make me feel enthusiasm. We were travelling in the very boundaries of man's knowledge, she reminded me. Not only did we have to invent our research methods as we went along, but also we had to accept that very often the results we obtained, however correct, could not possibly make any sense until we were able to understand them in a context. I listened to her words and believed them.
At other times, I felt we were rapidly progressing, that we were finally on to something genuinely new and unknown, but she would only shake her head and point me in another direction. I obeyed and together we plunged even deeper into the unknown. She was never impatient, never lost fate in me, but sometimes she made me feel a bit like a child, playing with the tools of her father with no possibility to understand their true purpose. But Luna did see and understand. She was the beacon and I followed.
I think our classmates were a bit worried about us sometimes. It happened now and then that we lost several nights of sleep, staying up with our experiments, and we were gradually removing our presence from the social networks and happenings of the school. Our research taking such a toll on our time, we being so content with our own company, it is no wonder that we did not feel the need for the activities and people that had filled our time before we started to cooperate. And our research was simply to exciting to abandon.
We experimented. I remember the taste of the potion, only partly prepared after known instructions, still linger in my mouth as I allowed my head to rest on the pillow. Luna was bent over me, wand in hand, attentively staring into my eyes. I could not remember at the moment what she was looking for, the potion making me drowsy and my thoughts slow. I do remember that she was asking me something, urgently, and that I did my best to answer her. But my mouth seemed to be unable to form the words. All that I heard, or imagine that I heard was a guttural hissing. But Luna seemed content with this and put a cold hand on my forehead and told me to sleep. The next morning when I woke up my head did ache but Luna seemed even more happy than usual. She told me that we had succeeded, that the experiment had opened up yet another opening for our research. I tried to get the details out of her, what I had revealed when my mind had been relaxed by the potion and her home-made spells. But she could not give me any answers. Not the measurable, objective answers I wanted anyway. I had to work only with her feelings and intuitions, clear for her mind but incredibly vague and airy for me. She watched my work, told me in which direction to head and said that we were making progresses.
At other times she was the one doing the experiments, taking the potion, drifting away to somewhere I could not follow her. I sat by her side, holding her hand, the antidote ready the moment she showed any sign of needing it. At one time for a single, heart freezing moment I thought that I had been too late, that I had allowed her going so far that she would not be able to come back. But then she opened her eyes, their silvery blue with slight difficulty focusing on me and she told me of the marvels she had witnessed.
I have promised, by writing this, to tell the accurate tale of what happened that fateful night and the events leading up to it, and that is what I am attempting to do, withholding nothing and in no way trying to gloss over my own part in the forbidden rites that lead to the loss of my dearest friend. Even so I feel that this narration by necessity becomes annoyingly vague and thin, but yet there is no other way I can possibly write this. The very nature of our research makes it impossible for me to concretely describe our findings, to mediate how significant an observation it was when Luna one morning could declare that she had dreamt of blue the night before, or when I, under the influence of the potions and spells and suggestive incantations, suddenly could hear the sound of stone grinding against stone. The task is of the same magnitude as trying to explain the finest point of magical focus theory for a muggle from the other part of the globe. There are no words available, there is no common platform to build the mutual understanding on. Perhaps that is where I and Luna erred. If we had been moving in a slower pace, building such a platform of understanding, interrupting our research to describe our findings, quantify our data and put it in a context of known metaphysics, then perhaps we could have avoided the fate that were awaiting us. But we did not interrupt ourselves. We pushed on, following not the described knowledge but simply the known knowledge, the clear understanding we both shared that what we were doing was real, and in that way leaving every recognition with what was previously known behind. I don't think we ever looked back.
We had to obtain ingredients for our potions, parchments with the strangest of spells and even more sinister magical objects. One or two times we did steal to obtain what we needed. The potion masters office was ruthlessly looted by us. The restricted section of the library was the goal for many nightly expeditions. But soon it was obvious that the school did not manage to fulfil our needs. Then we turned to other sources. The dreg of the wizarding world, those gathering in the shades of Knockturn ally, those living in the forgotten parts of the muggle world, to those we went with our demands. Gold changed hands and no questions were asked. These were dark times, and there was a real risk that our trade would attract unwelcome attention and be misinterpreted. But we managed to keep ourselves out of trouble, and the politics did not interest us. At one time we had to use force against one of those we were dealing with when he treated to disclose our secret gathering of the resources we so badly needed. He was never missed, his death never reached the newspapers. His kind seldom attracts attention, in life or in death.
At Hogwarts, in the secret study chamber we had set up in an unused part of the castle, our laboratory was growing. We became interested in the properties of living material, firstly plants but later animal flesh and blood. At times I am afraid to say that our study resembled more a slaughter house than anything else. At those times we were fearfully afraid of someone finding out and we renewed our hiding charms. At other times, however, the laboratory equipment as well as the knives were packed away and all that gave away the true nature of our studies was the strange herbs slowly crumbling in the brazier, filling the room with a sweet and intoxicating scent. At those times we usually sat in the sofa, inhaling the fumes and talking with soft voices, trying to describe what we both felt were real. I remember the face of Luna at those moments. So very alive, her eyes alit with a strange glow, her mouth silently moving as she tried to find the word describing what she could clearly see. Never was she as alive as those times in our study.