It was I who first found the references to the old wizard, whose name I now curse, in the most forbidden of all books in the library. A necromancer of the blackest kind he had been thrown out from Hogwarts when his gruesome experiments had been known and his laboratory had been sealed up. I read the description of his deed and I marvelled. How close he had been the same path me and Luna were now following. Misguided and without the refined knowledge we in this modern age poses, he had perverted his findings and made nothing but petty parlour tricks compared to the true potential of that certain lore. How well we could have used those results of his. I showed this to Luna and she agreed. Here, at last, were something we could use to obtain the knowledge and understanding we had hunted for so long.
Knowing fully well how easy it is to hide something at Hogwarts, even during the long centuries, we reflected that his laboratory could very well still be intact. Many were the spells we used, many the maps and books we sought for aid, but all in vain. If this vault was still at Hogwarts, its presence eluded us. We tried - I tried - to obtain more information about the necromancer himself and his work, but all for nothing. A few times I found small references to his name, all insignificant and of no value, and a growing feeling inside me said that the deeds of this wizard had been erased from the pages I was reading rather than never included in the first place. Needless to say this only made my curiosity greater.
Many were the sources the used. I tell you now, in shame, that we encountered some of the darkest wizards of that age with our questions, we consulted books that would never have been allowed into the libraries of Hogwarts, however well guarded, and the dark rituals we used to speak with those who had lived before us makes me shudder when I think of it. But such were our disposition at this time that we never once questioned the means needed for us to obtain the answers we so craved for.
Along with the whispered hints about this long dead necromancer and his deeds and his heirloom, we came across, I dear not even say rumour, such was the vagueness of the fragmented stories we heard, but rather a rumour of a rumour, about a book.
A book forbidden by muggles and wizards alike since it was written in far away Arabia at the dawn of time. A book containing the secrets of death and beyond death as well as beyond what human beings ever were meant to know. A book which never even the most power hungry dark wizard would touch, however desperate for a weapon against his enemies. A book that could help me and Luna on our quest for true knowledge.
It was I, again, who in my faithful library after a Olympian search started to find the clues. The absence of the paragraphs that should have been in some of the more obscure books. The lack of certain registers and lists. I showed this to Luna and she agreed with me. There was a chance, however slight, that this book had once been at Hogwarts, and that the necromancer who was now occupying a large part of our woken - and sleeping - life had once made use of it.
In dreams and in visions we hunted these eluding fragments of the past with ruthless energy. By means opened for us by our research, means that I doubt any other living witch or wizard at that time could have made use of or even understood. Inhaling the strange fumes and lulled to trance by the soft incantations from the other's mouth we roamed wide and far in the unearthly, eerie land that are the dreams and many strange encounters we had. As the sun rose over Hogwarts we walked by the lake or in the forest, talking about what we had seen and drawing our conclusions.
A few months after we had directed our research towards this old necromancer and this strange book, we found our time for the study being annoyingly limited. The teachers as well as our class mates were taking an increasingly large, if yet misguided, interest in our health and social life and seemed to be of the impression that we were lonely and unhappy. Thus we suddenly found ourselves in the focus of a large number of attempts of being socialized with. Some of these were amusing and actually of some interest, such as the guided Hogwarts tour some of the ghost organized for our respective houses (they made a point of separate me and Luna at those occasions). Others were downright annoying, such as when the boys of my year dragged me to Quidditch-practices or pointless Hogsmede visits. But we put up a good front and did not complain. And we made a point of not being seen together as much any longer. Our nightly sessions were held only irregularly and when we were sure of not being guarded. Of course this put a highly inconvenient inhibition on our research and I can't enough emphasis how frustrating it was, knowing that we were on the right track but not being able to follow it properly. Luna was even more vexed than me about these interruptions, but now it was my turn talking to her about patience and about not rushing into things. We had worked too hard to allow unknowing commoners like these to destroy our research, I said, and we would give them no reason to limit our freedom further. She agreed, grudgingly, and we did our best not to alarm our class mates.
Separated we still tried to pursue our nightly dream quests, but I soon learned that without Luna by my side it was all but impossible to descend even to the most shallow levels of dreamland. I doubled the dose of potion and forced my mind down the stony staircase that marks the entrance to that strange land, but hardly had I begun my travel until I was dragged back to the waken world. I could have screamed in frustration, and perhaps I did because one night I was awoken by the girls sharing my dormitory, pale and worried in the moonlight. I calmed them by saying that I had had a bad dream, but the day after I got many glances from them and their friends. I understood that I had to relax my efforts for a while.
Luna was more successful. Dream travel has always come easier for her, after all, and she was more used to make her mind do her bidding. She told me one day by lunch how she had for just a fleeing moment encountered the shadow of the man we were seeking. By seeing her he had taken flight, but she knew now what realms he roamed and she was full of confidence that she would be able to find him again. I saw the glow in her eyes and I realized that she was right.
And so it was. Not fully two weeks later - two for me totally wasted weeks devoted to my schoolwork and keeping my classmates concerns at arms length - Luna summoned me, urgently telling me that she needed a nightly session, badly needed to share with me what she had learned. We had not been in much contact these weeks, not wanting to alarm those who still suspected us, but I could see that she had been working hard. She constantly looked tired, her silvery eyes darker than usual. She had always been thin but now she was downright skinny. Her normally golden hair now hung lifeless and faint on her shoulders. Her normally so calm and graceful movements through the crowd of the school, as a gentle stream floating past a beautiful meadow, was now replaced with a nervous energy, emitting from inside her and affecting everything she did. I expressed my concerns for her health but she only shrugged it off. We had far more important things to deal with, she told me. The very same night we were to meet in our secret study, the study which had now been sealed up for months, and there we would perform an experiment bolder and potentially more rewarding than anything we had done so far. There was no time for her to explain herself in deeper detail, the pupils of the school being everywhere around us, but she stressed again the importance, the overwhelming necessity for me to be there, whatever stood in my way. I was a bit taken aback but I promised her to attend, promised her that nothing would be able to stop me. She was content and we went separate ways. I turned to watch her as she left the great hall. Probably it was only my eyes who played me a trick, but for a moment, just for the split second of a heartbeat, I could swear that I saw my friend Luna Lovegood enclosed by a bright burning light, unlike any other flame I have ever seen either in this realm or in my dreams. No one else seemed to notice it though.