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Chapter 1: The Language of Angels
"Jeez, I just asked to hand me the salt! What's your problem?" Ron asked with a frightened look on his face.
Ginny blinked and looked around to see people staring at her. She was shouting just now, pointing her wand in Ron's face.
"Sorry," she said in a small voice, lowering the wand. "It's just..."
Ron's expression softened. "Nightmares again?" he asked quietly, leaning closer to her so as to prevent others from hearing.
"Yeah. Didn't have them for weeks, but the moment I sleep in Hogwarts..."
"It's probably dementors," Ron said quickly. "A lot of people didn't sleep well with them around. What was the Ministry even thinking bringing them here?"
"Yeah." Ginny gave Ron a faint smile.
For a few minutes they ate in silence. People soon lost interest in them and resumed their conversations.
"Look," Ron said after clearing his throat. "Do you... want to talk about it? I mean, if it helps?"
Ginny sighed. "Nah, I had enough discussions over the summer. I'll be fine. I think I'll take a walk before the classes start, get some fresh air."
"Oh. Right. Then... want to play chess after classes? Or cards? Or just, you know, hang out with me?"
"Yeah, sounds good. I'll see you then," Ginny said standing up.
Ron caught her hand. "Look, when that dementor was near me, I..." he started to say, but then changed his mind and released her. "Yeah, see you later, sis. Stay safe."
"I will," she said, giving him another faint smile.
She turned to leave, but hesitated. "Hey, Ron? Do you know a girl named Sally-Anne Perks?" she asked.
"No, don't think so," he said after a few moments of thinking. "Why do you ask?"
"No reason." Just another nightmare.
She walked away, sighing at the sight of a bunch of second-year Gryffindor girls sitting together and giggling over something. She didn't know half of their names. Tom's combination of charming conversations and derisive yet funny comments about her classmates has kept her from making any other friends in her first year. And now she didn't know how to enter already formed cliques and circles of friends and didn't know if she should, not with her emotions still so raw after everything that happened.
Tom... Even though he was dead and gone, his influence lingered, like a poison in her veins. Even though she knew intellectually it was not the case, she couldn't look at a stranger without wondering if they would betray her trust like he did should they become closer. She felt powerless, defenseless, and she hated it.
Well, she wasn't going to feel that way for long. Ginny squeezed her bag where a book she took first thing after the sorting feast was concealed. She wasn't expecting the library to be open on the day of sorting, but couldn't resist checking just in case. To her surprise, she was greeted by Madame Pince, accompanied as usual by the rattle of chains. Madam Pince, like the other members of Hogwarts staff, looked at Ginny with pity, which she disliked but wasn't above using on occasion. And so it wasn't long before she had what she was looking for.
The book itself wasn't anything special. It contained no spells woven into its pages - Ginny was very careful to check it with Madam Pince - just plain text that was read and put to use by many generations of students, thus ensuring it was safe for her to do so as well. It was merely a collection of spells that could be used in battle, compiled by the author back when the dueling club was a permanent feature of Hogwarts.
The presence of the book in her bag made Ginny feel better. It was something she could use to arm herself. Of course, she knew it wasn't enough. What Tom did could not be easily countered by a stunner or a hex. She would need to study dark magic—without the intent to use it, naturally, she had to remind herself—to comprehend how it operated and what dangers she should look for, a tricky subject to approach and not a prospect she particularly enjoyed contemplating. But it was a start.
Ginny exited the school and took a deep breath. It was nice to be alone for a moment. While she was glad to have the support of her family, to know that no matter what they had her back, by the end of the summer endless conversations about the incident and reassurances that everything would be fine had become nearly suffocating. She needed some time away from all of this to put herself together the way she wanted, rather than the way people saw her now.
The desire to be alone wasn't new to her. She dealt with stress and problems best by isolating herself and thinking stuff through, a habit which, in retrospect, didn't exactly help her in dealing with Tom, but one she continued anyway. She needed it.
And so she walked to a place where nobody but George and Fred (who'd told her about the secret in the first place year ago) could find her. There was a group of trees near the lake growing so close to each other and with branches so tightly intertwined that none could get to the clearing inside. However, if one were to throw a stone at one of the trees and hit the right spot, an entrance would appear for a few moments, allowing Ginny to climb inside.
To find a blonde girl sitting inside with a big hat in her lap from which she dramatically pulled a slip of parchment.
Ginny's hand went to her wand in anger before she caught herself. It's not like her name was etched there or anything. If this girl found the secret of the clearing, she had as much right to be here as Ginny.
The girl carefully put the piece of parchment among others lying before her and looked at Ginny.
"Hello," she said.
"Hi," Ginny said. "My name is Ginny."
"I know. And I am Luna Lovegood."
Ginny winced.
While her true role in the events of the previous year was unknown to the general public, her abduction by the Heir of Slytherin was not. Before, she had dreams about being captured by a villain only for Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived, to come and rescue her.
Actually living through the story rather soured her to the whole affair and made her draw swords in the hands of captured princes and princesses in her old fairy tales books. Most of them didn't know what to do with them and still waited for their destined loves to come save the day. The exception was a princess called Mally (Ginny suspected a typographical error was involved in her name) who wielded the sword with great glee to first stab the villain and then, on the next page, to kill the royal parents of her supposed love interest and usurp the throne.
So it was no surprise that the reminding of her new-found fame brought her little joy.
"What are you doing?" she asked to distract herself.
"Trying to rediscover the language of angels."
Ginny blinked. "Huh?"
"Once upon a time there was only one language that all sapient beings spoke," Luna said in a lecturing tone. "But then the world broke apart, and the language was lost to mortals. Yet it lingers still in languages we speak today, though less so with each generation as languages change, which is why it's better to use old and dead ones for study. A quirk of pronunciation here, an unusual vowel there. That is how we do our magic: by pronouncing words just right so they resemble the words angels spoke when creating the world and evoke their power. But those are mere fragments of the true language hidden between unrelated sounds. So I break apart words I know contain those fragments and try to find them and combine in new words. My goal here is the complete reconstruction of the language of angels which will lead to the reunification of mankind."
"Huh," Ginny said. "Does it work?"
"Not really. It must be the British accent. It's very far from celestial, you know."
"Wait, how do you explain muggles then? They speak the same languages, but they don't have magic."
"I don't believe in muggles," Luna said in a haughty tone. "They are a superstition."
Ginny didn't know what to say to that. The whole thing was rather surreal and put her somewhat off-balance. Yet it did distract her from her own problems, and while she couldn't bring herself to believe what the girl said, pretending to communicate with angels by saying nonsense words did seem appealing at the moment. Her plans to be alone were disrupted anyway.
"Mind if I join?" Ginny asked after a few moments.
"Sure," Luna said.
No divine words were discovered that day, and Ginny was late to her classes, but she smiled, and her smile was real.
On the next day the reunification of mankind was forgotten in favor of exploding snap. Luna didn't know the rules, to Ginny's surprise. When asked, she explained that nobody ever taught them to her.
"I can play Dead Man's Hand, though," she said.
Ginny promised they would play it some other time.
On the third day of their friendship Luna arrived without shoes.
"Aren't you cold?" Ginny asked. It was a warm autumn, but not that warm.
"I am," Luna said.
"Why don't you wear shoes then?"
"Nargles took them."
"Huh?"
"They take my things sometimes, you know. Usually just place them somewhere it's hard to reach or where they would get dirty, like a tree or a fireplace."
Ginny frowned. "What are nargles?"
"They are tiny creatures that infest humans' heads and make them do their bidding. I mean, nobody would think it's fun to take things that don't belong to them without nargles, right?"
"You should tell the teachers about them," Ginny said, looking Luna in the eye.
Luna smiled sadly. "Nargles have their own language, you know, like angels. 'It's just a prank.' 'Girls will be girls.' 'They need to get witching out of their system.' 'Nobody got hurt.' 'Now apologize and don't do it anymore.' That's what they use to cloud the minds of humans, blind them to what they really see so they would perceive something harmless instead."
Ginny bit her lip. It didn't surprise her that the teachers would be useless. They couldn't stop her from going around killing chickens, and that was when they were really paying attention. But to think they would simply dismiss her... No, that made sense on a second thought. They couldn't be everywhere, couldn't see everything, and compared to what transpired in the castle during the last two years, having to summon a few things now and then to an eccentric girl probably didn't look all that important.
Ginny decided to fall back on the lessons she herself learned.
"Then, you should learn how to defend yourself. I have this book with some cool hexes. I especially like the one that summons bats. Bet they won't expect that."
But Luna just shook her head continuing to smile. "Offensive magic just breeds more nargles. I can scare them away, but more will come and they'll be more vicious."
Ginny stared at her. She felt powerless again, unable to help the first friend she's made in Hogwarts. And if she couldn't solve a problem like that, what worth there was...
"It's fine, really," Luna said, taking out the pieces of parchment from her bag and putting them into the big hat lying before her. "Once I rediscover the language of angels and reunify humanity, there will be no more place for nargles. You'll help me, right?"
Ginny looked at the hat. Two days ago it seemed like a wonderful toy. Now every piece of parchment looked like a curse.
"I... I have to go," she said. "I'll see you later."
She ran without looking back.
On the next day Luna disappeared.
At first Ginny thought she simply didn't come to their usual place, and she couldn't blame her for that. But they had a Herbology class with Ravenclaws that day, and Luna wasn't there, either. She asked the Ravenclaw students where Luna was, but none of them knew.
To be precise, none of them knew who Luna was.
A horrible thought dawned on Ginny. When even teachers failed to remember Luna's name, she headed straight to Professor McGonagall's office and from there to the headmaster's. She didn't want to believe it, but she couldn't afford to deny that her nightmare might be real.
Headmaster Dumbledore welcomed her warmly and offered a cup of tea. She accepted and drank for a minute, amid quiet sounds of various trinkets, the headmaster seemingly content to let her think.
"I had a nightmare a few days ago," she said.
The headmaster nodded, but didn't interrupt.
"About a room hidden at the bottom or perhaps below the bottom of the Astronomy Tower. There was a painting in that room that swallowed a girl, Sally-Anne Perks, who ventured there exploring the castle and killed her over a course of a few years. Nobody could remember her name after she disappeared, nobody remembered her at all. I met a girl, Luna Lovegood. In reality, I mean, not in a dream. She disappeared today or yesterday. Nobody can remember her, either. I think my nightmare can be real."
Headmaster Dumbledore was silent for a few moments, caressing his own cup in his hands.
"Hogwarts contains many mysteries," he said eventually. "Not all of them benevolent. Your concerns may well have roots in reality. You said the room was under the Astronomy Tower?"
"Yes. The entrance is somewhere near the Astronomy class, though. It leads to stairs spiraling inside tower's walls."
Headmaster nodded.
"I shall investigate it. I shall warn you, however, that if you see... Luna again, you should inform me or other teachers and not interact with her yourself. It could be that she is not a victim of the mystery but rather a phantom created by it to lure you into a trap."
Ginny bristled and wanted to leap at the defense of her friend, to say that the ones who tormented her were more likely to be agents of a malevolent force than Luna. But then she looked at the old man before her, his expression grave and concern unmistakable in his eyes, and let out a deep breath. There was wisdom in his words, she had to admit. Wouldn't it be easier to conjure an illusion of a girl rather than alter minds of so many people? She couldn't trust her perception entirely under the circumstances.
Just like before.
She nodded. "Yes, Headmaster."
Dumbledore blinked. "You have to forgive an old man," he said. "It appears my age addled my mind more than I would like to think. It seems I cannot recall what you just said, even though judging by your expression it was something important. Could you please repeat it for me?"
Ginny stared at him in disbelief.
"Headmaster!" she said quickly. "I think... I think your mind was just altered to forget what was said!"
Headmaster's expression changed instantly, becoming sharp, focused and dangerous.
He reached under his table and extracted an old-looking goblet.
"Memories are hard to erase," he said after casting a dozen spells around him. The door to the office shut tight, and the sound the trinkets made became dissonant. "Most memory charms break the connection between memories and the conscious mind, leaving them still intact. I should be able to restore them even if my mind was altered. Please pull me out if you notice any sight of danger."
Then his expression suddenly changed, became relaxed. He blinked at the wand in his hand and the goblet on his table, then looked at Ginny.
"What have transpired here, Miss Weasley?" he asked.
Ginny tried to explain what's going on to Headmaster many time, but each time his memories slipped away, forcing her to restart the cycle. Every time Dumbledore was becoming more and more pale, his hands visibly trembling.
Eventually, he excused himself by saying his age must have addled his body much more than he anticipated and asked Ginny to come tomorrow.
She left the office.
There wasn't anything she could do.
What match was she against someone who could casually rewrite the memory of the greatest wizard alive?
There wasn't anything she should do.
For all she knew it was a trap designed just for her. Luna didn't exist. She was the extension of the nightmare manifested in the real world to ensnare Ginny. And even if she was real, even if she had a family, even if she was Ginny's friend...
There must be something she could do.
Because if she didn't do something, if she allowed Luna to be trapped in that dark place of pale white flowers, if she allowed that woman or Tom to devour her, if she couldn't do anything to make things better, if she was still powerless regardless of what she was doing...
She would break.