Chapter Three
The Book
"So your brother goes to school here?"
Ginny laughed bitterly. "Brothers three, four, five, and six... One and two already graduated."
Luna looked wistful. "That would be lovely."
"Are you joking?" Ginny scoffed. "It's a nightmare!"
"You must never be lonely."
Ginny shook her head, but looked a little less angry. "It's hard, being the youngest. Never really anything special, anything I could ever want to do would have already been done six times. I am the only girl, though," she reasoned. "Better than nothing. Are you getting anything from the snack cart?" She bounced her knee up and down excitedly as the cart approached the door. "I love cauldron cakes. Mum never buys them anymore, not since Charlie went off to Romania."
"Oh, I don't eat cauldron cakes." Luna responded solemnly. "Did you know they're made by enslaved goblins? It's really awful."
"...Sounds it. Well, it doesn't matter anyway, Mum packed me a lunch." Ginny dove into her knapsack for her lunch, but came up with a small black notebook. "Well that's weird. I don't remember packing this. I don't even think it's mine." She flipped through the first few pages. "Empty. Mum probably gave it to me to 'record all of the wonderful memories of adolescence' or whatever she was going off about at the station."
"I always keep a journal." Luna said sagely. "I see things all the time that I wish I could remember later, but there's so many things that I sometimes forget one or two. So I write them down."
"Nothing interesting ever happens to me." Ginny frowned and shoved the journal back into her bag, pulling out a crumpled brown paper bag instead. She peeked inside and grimaced.
"Maybe things do happen, but you just forgot because you didn't write them down."
Ginny thought this over for a second, and then shrugged her shoulders. "Dunno."
"Is Charlie one of your brothers?" Ginny nodded through a mouthful of her sandwich. "I wish I had a brother or a sister, really." Ginny looked pained for a second, then stuck her hand back in her bag and pulled out the black book again.
"Here." She held it out to Luna. Luna took it in her hands and brushed her fingertips along the worn leather. She felt a dark chill creep up her hands and arms and right into her chest. She gasped softly. "It's very nice..." she said, politely.
"Take it. S'yours." Ginny said with a bright smile. "I'll probably never use it, and this way you can write down all the stuff you'd want to tell a sister. You could even give it back to me, and we could write back and forth. If you wanted to, I mean." Luna shivered. This was not a nice journal. She didn't like it at all.
"No thank you." She said, struggling to form a smile. "I have one from my mother." Ginny's face fell, but even though she felt bad, Luna couldn't help but breath a sigh of relief when Ginny took the book back and put it back in her knapsack. "I'm sorry," Luna added as an afterthought.
"It's all right. Guess I'll just have to write in the dumb thing myself." She laughed, and Luna smiled, already feeling much better.
"Do you know anything about Hogwarts? With all your brothers going there?"
"Oh, loads! When you get there, you have to put the Sorting Hat on and it tells you which house you'll be in. I know I'll be Gryffindor, but wouldn't it be funny if I were something awful, like Slytherin? Bet Mum would send me a Howler. Percy wouldn't even talk to me. Then the food just appears on the table, anything you could possibly want. Then you go to your House dorms and, well, you sleep, I guess. We take all sort of classes like Charms and Defense Against the Dark Arts and then Potions with that ugly old Professor Snape. Oh, and flying classes, too!" Ginny suddenly got very quiet. "I think...maybe...I'll try out for the Quidditch team. I know I won't get on, but Harry did it last year and he was only eleven, too... just... don't tell anyone, okay?"
Luna nodded mindlessly, her head still reeling with everything Ginny had told her. For every answer, a thousand more questions. She wondered what her father would do if she got sorted into Slytherin. He probably wouldn't send a Howler...but she had always loved the snakes in the garden behind their house. What if she got sorted into Slytherin and Ginny wouldn't talk to her anymore? What if Ginny's mother sent her a Howler? Well, she most likely wouldn't do that, as they had never met and that would be very rude... Ginny excused herself to change into her school robe, and Luna stayed seated, drifting through thought. She had just come to the conclusion that she would be satisfied with whichever House she was placed in, under the belief that the hat would know better than she did, when Ginny came rushing back into the compartment, red faced and breathless.
"My stupid prat of a brother isn't on the train!"