Turning Tides

Chapter Two: Luna

By: Saadie

Summary: And really, Harry has Voldemort to thank for this one. Being the first and probably only person to be a living Horcrux and survive its removal turns out to have more cons than pros. Now if only Harry can survive it and the new world he must adapt to in order to survive, he might just actually end up thanking Voldemort for helping him find a place to belong to.

Disclaimer: I don't feel very rich right now so I must not own Harry Potter or One Piece. Alas, that is the lot life has given me. I shall content myself with fanfiction.

A/N: This chapter is dedicated to my first reviewer, un4getabl3mem0ries. Thank-you very much for staying with me through all these years (:

"Yes Harry Potter?" she answers calmly, moving to sit at the edge of his bed.

"Luna, what-what are you doing here?" he scrambles to sit up and face her.

She blinks at him slowly, "I came to see you Harry, the Nargles told me that you have an infestation of Fizzlewing Gloombees in your hair so I came to check. You really do have a lot of them, Harry. Did you know that the longer you're alone when you have Fizzlewing Gloombees in your hair, the faster they breed?"

"Luna, what are Fizzlewing Gloombees?" he asks even though he knows the answer won't make any sense to him.

"They're little creatures that fly around gathering sadness until they lose their wings. Then they settle on the nearest person and live in their hair until their wings come back. Of course it's no good for the person they live on, they get all sad and mopey because their head feels all heavy and they don't know why. Does your head feel very heavy Harry?"

"No, not particularly…..is there any other reason that you're here Luna? You said something about me having to leave?" Harry prompted, trying to get Luna back on topic. Merlin knows he loved that girl but she could get so confusing so quickly.

"Oh, that." She blinked once before her face stilled, becoming uncharacteristically serious. "Harry if you stay here you'll forget yourself within the year."

Harry's throat constricted, his mouth felt dry and his tongue heavy in his mouth even as he forced himself to speak, "A-a year? How do you know Luna, Merlin, no one else knows what's going on. How do you-"

"I used to have a sister Harry."

It was barely more than a whisper in that silent room but the statement itself seemed to resound so loudly. Not quite a secret, just a fact that was never mentioned, one that hadn't been said for so long until finally when spoken it seemed to fill up the whole room. She held his gaze even as he stopped mid-sentence, mouth still open. He could tell that there was still so much that was left unsaid, that that one sentence was at once both a statement and an admission of guilt. And yet it was still much more than that, he could hear the regret in her voice, the pain that she carried with her even now and he wondered how none of them had ever seen this side of Luna. His mouth snapped shut and he waiting, couldn't bring himself to interrupt her now, didn't want to say anything that would make her regret telling him this.

"Her name was Diana and she was my twin. When we were younger we went everywhere together, did everything together – we were each other's everything. But then when we were six, almost seven, we got into a fight. It was our first fight and our last fight; I can't even remember what it was about. But what I do remember is I was so angry with her that I decided…..I decided I didn't want to be a twin anymore." Luna paused to take a deep shuddering breath, eyes downcast, "I snuck outside at night after everyone was asleep, and under the light of the full moon, I clumsily did a ritual to separate myself from Dia. The next day we both became violently ill. Two days afterwards my hair became lighter while her's darkened. I thought that that was it; finally I would be my own person even if only in looks. A week later my fever broke and I slowly started to get better…but Dia never got better. We watched for days with bated breath, hoping for the fever to break. But it never did and she got thinner day after day, at times when she was awake, she wouldn't recognize us."

There was a pregnant pause, neither party moved even an inch. The sound of crickets serenading their loved ones, heedless to the tension in the room, was the only thing breaking the silence.

"Luna? What happened?" Harry ventured cautiously.

She didn't reply for a moment, before she turned towards the window, eyes looking far away from here, into another time, another place. "Twins are a part of each other, everyone knows that. You look at how Fred and George were, even Padma and Parvati were like that privately. And like how George feels like there's a part of himself missing, when I broke that bond, I ripped away a part of Dia…."

Harry stared at Luna with wide-eyes, to think that Luna had done that to her own sister as a child because she didn't know what her actions would do, how much pain must she have carried in her heart until now?

"We weren't Dia and Luna anymore because I had been selfish in my anger and now my sister was paying the price. Being the aggressor, I broke the bond in such a way that a part of Dia became mine. So I never got sick beyond getting used to the bond not being there anymore. Afterwards, Mommy told me that we had to send Dia away, at least for a little while. She told me that if Dia went there she would get better, that the magicks there could heal her soul, that in that place, our mother's touch was strong enough that it would keep her soul together until it did heal. Do you know why I'm named Luna, Harry? My sister was Diana and my mother Selene. All the females of our family are given to the moon, we're her children, not like lycans are, but we're her's all the same. So that's where you have to go too, Harry, you have to go to where the moon is the strongest is if you don't want to lose yourself. If you give yourself to the moon Harry, she'll keep you whole."

He was silent for a moment before he hesitantly asked, "Where is that, Luna? Where did you send Dia?"

Luna gave him a small smile, "Another world, Harry, another place that's not here. Mommy called it the Great Blue*, that it was a place where the oceans ruled, and our mother controlling the tide is strongest there. Will you do it Harry? Will you give yourself over to the moon and take her for your mother?"

Harry clenched and unclenched his hands. Was this the only way? He still didn't understand half of what Luna was saying, he only knew that he wasn't the first to lose himself in such a way, that Luna's sister had been the same before him, that they had sent her away and if he went too, somehow, he'd be better. But could he really leave everything here behind? Did he have the strength to start over again or would he rather spend his last days here in the comfort of what was familiar to him?

"How long do I have to decide, Luna?" he finally asked.

She offered him an apologetic smile, "It has to be tonight, Harry. The ritual must be done under the full moon, at the very moment mother reaches her peak. If we miss tonight, we'll have to wait for another cycle. For that long, the amount to which you'll lose yourself, Harry, it's not something you can afford."

Harry froze, conflicted by the sudden onslaught of information. Was there really no other way? Mindlessly, he reached for his wand and silently cast a Tempus charm. Glowing red strings slowly untwisted themselves from the tip of his wand to form the numbers 22:30. Two hours from midnight, did he have enough time to make this sort of choice? No, it wasn't nearly enough time to make a choice tantamount to deciding whether to live or die. But he was used to such choices; his life had been littered with them, those split-second decisions that could mean life or death for himself or others.

"Time is ticking, Harry Potter, you must make your choices now."

His mind whirled so quickly it was almost dizzying. A stuttered breath, a clench of fists, a sharp exhale. Dare he agree to this? If he took this choice into his own hands would his life finally be his to live, unhampered by fate and prophecies and the schemes of crazed war leaders or governments? He took another deep breath, steeled himself and opened his mouth to reply.

AN: That took longer than I had hoped it would, I apologize, I was initially going to crank this one out after my midterms. It's also shorter than I would have liked but continuing it just ended up really awkward so I ended up cutting it. I promise to have the next chapter out within two days LATEST, I'm so sorry about the wait.

As always, comments and REVIEWS are much loved!

Saadie