Written using the following prompts from the Quidditch Supplies Mystery Box #1:
[character] Luna Lovegood, [object] Time Turner
Word count: 1135 (excluding A/N)
Amends
Under the cloudless blue sky was a picturesque countryside. There was a river that hummed along, tiny colourful houses scattered the far end of the scenery – but the most striking thing was the peculiar castle-shaped building on the other end of the river. Flower pots containing weirdly bright plants stood on the window sills of the house and in the garden were trees laden with round orange fruits that one could hardly see anywhere else. Smoke issued from a chimney at the top and a soft clattering and rumbling noise could be heard from the inside.
Suddenly, a young girl of about eighteen appeared out of nowhere by the river, breaking the silence of the afternoon with a whooshing sound. She had large protuberant blue eyes that gave her a perpetually surprised look and a long mane of straggly golden hair that she had tied in a ponytail. A small red flower stuck out from behind her ear and she looked as though she had radishes hanging from her earlobes.
The girl blinked and looked around, surveying her surroundings. Then she took the thin golden chain around her neck and tucked it under her robes. Autumn was about to end, and the nip in the air made her shiver and pull her cloak tighter around herself.
With a deep breath she started to walk towards the house. She opened the gate very quietly and pulled out a slender wooden stick from the inside of her cloak.
"Alohomora," she whispered, pointing the stick at the front door. There was a soft click and the door creaked open. A man with long unkempt hair sat at a rickety table in the first room, scribbling fiercely on a notebook, a large printing machine chugging behind him and producing parchment after printed parchment. Like the rest of the house, strange objects hung from the walls and ceiling and more of them stood inside the cupboards and on various surfaces.
The man must not have seen the girl enter or if he had, he chose to ignore her. Most probably it was the former, because he did not turn around to look at her when she almost tripped over a toy lying on the floor – making no noise, fortunately.
The girl sighed in relief and tiptoed up the stairs, the clattering noise from before growing louder by the second. She reached a room on the second floor and peeped through the crack between the door and the wall.
There were two people inside the room. One of them was a rather pretty woman in her late twenties and the other, a little girl who looked strangely like a younger version of the intruder. She was seated on a small chair with a notebook in her lap and she was busy sketching something on it. The older woman bustled about the room, muttering to herself. Occasionally she picked up a book or two, turned to some specific pages and scanned them with her keen silver eyes.
"Mum," said the little girl, looking up from her drawing, "what are you doing?"
The woman smiled fondly at her daughter. "Remember that spell I was talking to you about last night? I think I have found a way to tweak it a little to make it more useful."
"Really?" the girl said excitedly, "You are so clever, Mummy." Then she sighed, "I wish I didn't have to wait two more years to go to Hogwarts, then I'd be making spells just like you!"
Pandora approached the girl and patted her hair lovingly. "Time flies, my love. You'll be on the Hogwarts Express before you know it. Trust me, even I cannot wait to see you go to Hogwarts – I'm going to be so proud."
The little girl smiled brightly up at her mother and nodded. At this, the other girl – the one at the door – sniffed and her eyes turned glassy. She had to be fast, she could not afford to wait much longer and at the same time, she had to be extremely careful.
The woman inside the room turned around, and on her desk was a small cauldron. Immediately, the potion inside it turned from a calm pink to an angry, bubbly red. The little girl's eyes widened and so did her mother's.
Now this was familiar.
The intruder pulled out her wand quickly and turned around to point it at the wall. "Reducto!" she whispered, her voice trembling.
There was a deafening sound as the wall crumbled down and the little girl screamed inside the room. The intruder gasped with relief when she heard the woman cough a little and say, "I'll go check."
She emerged out of the room with her wand at the ready. The man from the ground floor rushed up the stairs to join his wife. "The w-wall?" he stuttered. "Woah," exclaimed the little girl, who had come outside to see the wreck.
Almost immediately, there was a second blast from inside the room and the woman spun around, her hand on her chest. "I knew I went wrong somewhere," she whispered when she saw that the cauldron had exploded and the potion had ruined all her notes and documents.
"Pandora," said the man, "you and Luna could have been killed if you'd been inside the room now."
Their daughter gasped and clung to her father. The invisible intruder could not agree more with the man.
She wiped her cheeks, unable to help the giddy smile on her face as she watched the woman hug her daughter tight, the man looking affectionately at the two of them.
It was getting late. She took out the Time Turner from the inside of her robes and turned the tiny gold hourglass twice. With another whoosh, she had vanished from the place - and no one else had noticed a thing.
She appeared again at the riverside, the scene only slightly different from before. She took off her Invisibility Cloak and ran towards her house. Her father, the scruffy-haired man, was tending to the Dirigible plum tree in their garden.
"Hello, Luna," he said, spotting the girl. "You're just in time for supper."
Luna frowned. Nothing seemed to have changed. "Hi, Daddy," she said cheerfully, nevertheless.
She entered the house to find it quiet. Her heart jumped when suddenly, she heard a familiar, but long unheard voice.
"Luna, are you home?"
A woman appeared at the foot of the stairs. She looked much like Luna.
"Mum," she whispered croakily.
"Moon, is everything alright?" the woman asked, looking worried.
Moon. That was what her mother used to call her. Luna let out a strangled sob and rushed to her. Pandora wrapped her arms around Luna with a laugh.
"Everything's perfect, Mummy," Luna whispered into her mother's shoulder.