Disclaimer: Not mine.
Chapter Eight: Air, Water, and the Myth of Fire
Author's Notes: Thanks to all the people who waited so patiently for me to catch up with my life and update already. lol. Esp. thanks to all my reviewers you guys are awesome for sticking with me, and giving me such encouraging thoughts. And the anon reviewers, Skye Tain and ShdwKatX, thanks. :)
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Luna, nine years old and quick, knelt at her mother's feet, meditating over her task as her mother saw to hers.
"Child, quicker now, the potion is growing too wild, steal the heat before it gathers enough of it to escape. Gather it with Air as it rises; you are the darkest, coldest of night breezes. Feel the wind singing through your channels, feed that coldness to the potion, and take the heat for your own. You are bigger and wilder than even it. Be the swift, the chaotic gale and encompass its small breezes. You are the darkness, absorb it."
Luna, her small frame hunched over her focus made of black, wind-blown crystal looked up to where her mama was stirring the potion with her wand in one hand and chanting quickly with the guidance of the other.
Already the hours she had spent sitting here gathering up the heat as it rose had sent her dark hair pressing tightly against her face with sweat. Her eyes, dark as the night breeze that burned wildly behind her gaze now, sought out the small plumes of rebellious smoke that was creeping faster as it grew in confidence.
At least the air was clear and sweet near the floor, away from the incense and fumes of the condensing potion. Who knew it could be so hard to condense a charm into a potion? Her mama was an expert with elemental magic, and already she could see her usually calm exterior cracking.
It was hard to be distracted away from the pure amounts of power coursing through her thin form, but was something going wrong? Why was so much heat coming off the potion?
She bent closer over her work and felt the breeze she brought to her storming unhappily against her currents and channels. She looked up through where brunette clumps of hair shaded her face from the feral glow of the potion.
She pulled quickly at the glow, and met the dark eyes of her mama through the bright roar of power rolling fanatically within.
"Quicker now Child! As much as you can." Luna could see her mother abandon her experimentation, and instead focus upon containing what she had brought forth in that cauldron.
Luna called upon the darkness once more, but she felt only more hot and tired as the hours past quickly into the night as the two of them worked frantically against the wild magic that was resisting its constraints.
There was still too much heat for Luna to handle as it rose angrily from its frantic, desperate prison below.
Attracted to the Darkness, the wild magic rushed headlong at Luna, overloading what currents and channels she had and rushing chaotically into her very being.
It surrounded every piece of her as it embraced her own Alliance of Air, and Luna had no choice but remain open to it as it forced itself against her and through her as she fought desperately to send it upon its way outside.
Finally the heated, enraged magic could find no more space in her currents and channels, and could find no more way to make more, and it was then that it rebounded against her and reached its final moments.
Luna could feel the temperature and tension rising exponentially within the small room, but it was a dim sort of awareness through the wild burning of all the power overcoming her senses.
She didn't feel it as the magic spent itself in the easiest way it could, without being willfully forced in another direction, by exploding rapidly away from her. In huge spirals spinning out from where her ensnarled body served as the eye of the storm, it uncurled its energy, its passion, its wildness, and levied destruction against anything standing against it.
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Luna awoke Friday morning before dawn hot and sick with memory, her hands flying up to her face as she felt the ghost of hot vapors burning her from the inside out once more.
Luna shook as she forced her heart to slow and quietly struggled to calm the wild panic that had lodged itself within her so recently reawakened channels. She had come closer just a night or so ago to turning a potion into a charm.
It really had only changed from liquid to air without any true magical change, but she had managed to use a moonlit stone focus so full of the Darkness that it had called wildly to her and actually glowed with its heat. And while the potion still used its water magic, it was doing so based in air. And she had used her own magic to do it.
She had channeled air, directed it, in a way she hadn't managed but dearly wanted to, since that accident when the wild air magic had burned and singed her from the inside out. Her magic was but a pale refection of what it had been for so long, and now she had finally gotten it working again.
The wild darkness that had been her goal, her focus for so long was morphed now, but so was she. And the wild magic was finally churning within her once more.
Luna climbed hurriedly out of bed, dressed, and headed out into the still darkened halls of Hogwarts towards where the first false rays of dawn where streaking across the sky outside.
The experiment may have burned the some of the Darkness from her, bleaching her through and throughout like the sun muted and changed the night's currents come morning. But that didn't mean that she couldn't follow the morphed currents and learn to use the air magic to gather and affect actual magic instead of just using it to let her see the magical currents like she had while turning the phase of the potion…
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Luna layed limp but brimming with suppressed excitement in the cool grass as she watched the Gryffindor Quidditch team head towards the pitch. The weather today was clear and still, with little wind to speak of even at the elevation quidditch was played at.
Wouldn't the Gryffindors want a nice breeze to play in? She could give them at least that. And she could practice with her element. Excellent.
She cleared her head until she felt only the frenzied buzzing of her own thoughts in her ears, and she searched her memory for that long ago used signalment that she used to draw herself into meditation.
Then she felt it, her magic churning within her like millions of small puffs of air that swirled into breezes that forced themselves upon one another to form wind that she gathered wildly, chaotically even, to birth a burning, cold gale for her to gather burning wildly from beyond her pale eyes.
The she brought that swiftness of zooming power up higher where she could feel the first rays of sunlight warming it emboldening it, and stroked that molten mayhem until she let it burst from her hold to course down through the currents all leading now to her wand clutched tightly in her left hand.
She raised it, and using the newly rising sun as a focus, released it, all of it.
Focusing past the slight power buzz that crackled in her ears, she grinned wildly from her prone position in the grass as the world went crazy around her. The grass wiping in a sudden strong breeze, and she could even see tree branches swaying as her breeze reached them in surprise.
Pale yellow hair wiping violently around her, Luna grinned madly up at where the quidditch team was just starting their practice. She hoped they enjoyed her little effort.
Still wild-eyed and happy, Luna headed back to the castle for breakfast, her magic still coursing strongly within her and filling her head with its lofty burn.
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Friday morning after breakfast saw Ginny walking next to manically absent Luna, wishing she was back up high in the air where the wind was even strong now than it was an hour ago, and following a rather small group of sixth years outside to where her least favorite class of the day, Care of Magical Creatures, was being held on the south edge of the forest.
She really hadn't had much choice in the matter, to her unsurprised dismay she hadn't gotten high enough O.W.L.s in her other subjects to avoid taking the class. So she wasn't all that academic. She certainly wasn't like Hermione, she hated the pointlessness of class work sometimes, and it showed.
It wasn't even, she thought as she butted a small stone with the inside of her shoe and listened to Luna nattering on about how excited she was about class today, like she was as slow as most of the people who continued on with Care of Magical Creatures.
She may not be as into magical creatures as Luna was, but she wasn't slow. She just didn't see the point of studying for hours and hours to learn something she'd forget a couple weeks after exams or would never be called upon to use once she was out of school.
So here she was, with some of the silliest Hufflepuffs that Hogwarts had to offer, and Hagrid had Singed Toad-Dragons for them to handle today. Luna at least was the only one excited about that. But then, she tended to get excited about the weirdest and most senseless of things. Like studying with Hermione, which Ginny avoided at all costs unless it was related to hexes. Or Defense.
Luna, the Hufflepuffs, and Ginny settled down cross-legged upon the grass near the edge of the forest. Hagrid had twelve small cat-sized boxes set up behind them. Unfortunately, there was enough so that they would each have their own.
Ginny looked the boxes over carefully as Hagrid started his brief lecture on how one handles toad-dragons. Apparently they would be responsible for keeping these things from death for the rest of the school year. She groaned. They would require extracurricular care.
Luna was taking hurried sort of cramped notes, for once at rapt attention, though it was wasted today on the most useless class offered at Hogwarts.
But it meant that Ginny could copy the notes later on, though she expected to spend a little time later on figuring out what was true and begotten from the lecture, and what parts Luna had imagined up on her own. Peering over Luna's shoulder, Ginny was pretty sure that quite a bit of what was to be found upon her parchment hadn't been mentioned by Hagrid. Lovely.
Ginny sighed. She really wished that Hagrid would just let them get started on whatever they had to do today. What was the point of having a textbook if Hagrid just repeated everything to them in class?
That reminded her, she was behind on her transfiguration reading, and on her nonverbals. Sixth year homework really was just too much. Maybe Hermione could help her later on.
Ginny wanted to get this class started already; maybe then they could get out early. But Hagrid was still going over how to hold the things still. Merlin, how complicated could 'don't drop it' be?
But at least the DA was meeting was tomorrow, and she couldn't wait. She and Ron were going to pass around sign up sheets for the patrols. It was exciting to be doing something useful.
Eh, now Hagrid was talking about how the toad-dragons could spit acidic slime. She cocked her head a bit, seven feet was quite the impressive range for something the size of a cat.
When they finally got the chance to take them out of their boxes, Ginny smiled to see that they weren't dealing with adult toad-dragons, but baby ones that maybe weighed half a kilo.
Hers was an ugly, red and yellow blotchy looking creature, which was a rather drunken mix of salamander and lizard. Not toadish looking at all. She was dry to the touch too, and had four weird, angry-looking wing nubs along her back.
There was no way that these things could fly. That would be hilarious. She would have to take hers up with her on her broom once the thing finally finished its wings, and see how it managed to fly. Hilarious. Ginny loved magic.
Ginny stifled a soft smirk, at least three of the Hufflepuffs had found them to be somewhat cute, spitting slime and all, until Hagrid got to the part where that slime could burn through human skin. But the damn things were smaller than her hand, there was no way they were that dangerous yet.
Knowing Hagrid, these were probably going to be the cutest and sweetest things they'd see all year. But her little baby had just spit up on her dragonhide gloves. It was things like this that made her gloves smell bad.
But Luna liked the sizzling effect of the slime on the magical hide well enough. The strangest things made that girl happy. And it could be worse. Hagrid hadn't mentioned anything about them biting people yet.
Ginny looked over at where Luna was cooing sweetly at her little blotching red and orange thing. Huh. Maybe the two babies could play together. Did Hagrid say they were social?
Only one real way to find out.
She handed Luna her blotchy colored little spitter, and Luna promptly started cooing and fussing over it too. The odd girl was even summoning them little breezes to make them wiggle their nubs in. It looked weird. Ginny went to get some insects that Hagrid wanted them to feed the little things.
And she decided that this was likely to be the best lesson yet this term. Maybe she could train hers to spit on Ron.
Bringing back the grubs and beetles, she found Luna was actually humming to the silly little reptiles. Pocketing her own little creature, she decided that she liked them too.
Wait, did Luna really just reassure her creature that she'd try to find it a Wrackspurts to eat? How exactly would she do that, after all, weren't they supposed to be invisible or something?
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