"Luna? My Luna?"

Luna opened her eyes blearily to her dad's worried face. His forehead was wrinkled, crinkling in the middle. His mouth widened, a slight shift to the right to form a lopsided smile, and his eyes curved at the sides forming semi-circles within his circular glasses rims. His hand brushed gently against her silvery-white hair, circling his finger round and round to wrap the strands in a tight little bundle.

Luna, however, didn't take note of any of this. She was too busy staring open-mouthed at the baby flying dragon next to her father, ignoring even the tiniest bit of spittle dropping from her mouth. Its pointy ears stiffened and its nose sharply turned in her direction, gazing at her with wide, chocolate colored eyes. Luna squeaked in surprise, letting loose a high-pitched noise she didn't know she could make.

"Luna?" Xenophilius said. He glanced at where she was staring, eyes passing over the dragon.

"Dad, get away from there," she gasped, wrenching away from her father. "There's a dragon." She pointed to the thing that was now dancing on top of Xenophilius's head, blatantly flaunting his thin, spindly wings at her. The dragon's greenish-brownish mouth wiggled at her in a taunt. Luna felt her blood rise at this stupid act of mockery.

Xenophilius frowned, an eyebrow rising in disbelief. He looked at where his daughter was staring but his eyes passed over where the dragon was before.

"It moved to on top of your head."

Luna carefully pointed a finger at the dragon who perked up at the sight. It scuttled on top of Xenophilius's towards Luna's direction, crawling closer with its sharp nails.

"Eek!"

She scrambled backwards as the tiny dragon leapt from her father's head onto her bed sheets. Its nails dug into the cloth, leaving just the tiniest bit of tears. Her legs jerked awkwardly, hitting the bed frame—she would regret not looking at that earlier—but twisted back just in time to avoid the snappy little lizard's dagger-like teeth.

"Luna!"

Luna froze. Xenophilius was staring at her with a curious look.

"There's a…a thing."

Her dad squinted his eyes at her, then at where she was looking. Luna's eyes crinkled as she realized Xenophilius's eyes traveled to and fro from where the dragon originally was and her, skipping—skipping over the fanged beast. Her heart jumped at that.

"You can't see it." It was a whisper, a strange kind of whisper where Luna's voice floated breezily into the air but still managed to sound hurt. "Am I dead? Do you see me?" She waved in front of her father's face, scooting as close as she could before the barrier named puny beast barricaded her path.

Xenophilius's mouth twitched but his eyes kept moving back and forth between the two spots. Hesitantly he reached out a hand and flapped his fingers, wriggling them in the air. His mouth tugged downward slightly but moved his hand, still wriggling. It went further down and down, closer and closer to the beast, until it stopped inches away from the opening of the monster's mouth. Luna watched the tiny figure breathe in and out slowly, emitting loose puffs of air that Xenophilius didn't seem to feel. Then—

"Bloody hell!"

A shrill sound shot through the air as the dragon blew fire out of its mouth, steam whistling as it shot out of the creature's mouth at high speed. Xenophilius jerked back in shock, the other hand clutching the other in pain. Luna grabbed the dragon's mouth, hooking her finger around to drag it backwards, and wrenched it away from her father.

Then she wondered how she had done that with the fire still spewing out of its mouth.

Slowly she unclenched her hand and stared at the blemish-less skin. It still itched underneath the skin, worming its way to the rest of her hand as though it was molasses, but she couldn't notice anything externally wrong with her hand.

She looked up to find Xenophilius clutching his own hand—and it was red. Not only a slight tinge of red, it was scarlet, clearly burning away at his hand as she found her father attempting to avoid whining out in pain.

"Let me see that."

"Wait." Xenophilius looked his hand and to the spot where he had been burned. "Is there a really a creature in here?"

For a moment, Luna was struck between two phases. On one hand, she could completely deny that she was seeing little monsters that sprouted wings and fire and therefore avoid what she was now predicting to be a very long, very awkward conversation with her father. On the other hand, she could accept that she was seeing and feeling things much differently from her father, including a moronic piece of skin and bones that kept on flapping its wings frantically beside her as it tried to edge away from Xenophilius, and ensure she was in the right state of mind.

"Yes."

Luna pointedly ignored the pitiful creature bumping its head repeatedly into her arm.

A few seconds. Then—

"What."

It was a calmer reaction than Luna had been expecting. Xenophilius was known for flinging his arms back and forth, shattering vials of her mum's potions left and right. He was known for musing to himself with hymns and lullabies at all hours, wandering around with strange notions of the neighbors and Muggles that lived a stretch of road away. And the rumors he made up, they were fanciful, barely there in evidence, written out by the mysterious Rule of Three—

Rule of Three. She made one, he made two, where was…three?

Her mum. Where was she?

Had she forgotten so quickly? In her hurry to understand the things that were…in front of her? The swirling mass of colors, the yellow, the silver, the blue, did it matter which way she was going, the twisting and turning inside the circular cage she had been kept in with those monsters, those monsters with their pointed ears and evil cackling that echoed in her faint memory?

She glanced down at the creature whining against her, panting from the frustrated whimpers as it nudged hard against her kneecaps. She hadn't seen these creatures before that strange mixture of light, hadn't seen the—oh, what was the darn thing called again?

"You see the Other Side."

It was a statement, a quiet one made unlike the any other her father had ever told her before.

Luna stared at the aged wrinkles in Xenophilius's face. They seemed to understand what she was feeling, odd confusion and anger that her mum hadn't sent her off with a calmer message. "How'd you know?"

"I heard the screaming right before Pandora passed through the Veil."

He reached out for Luna's hand, rubbing it lovingly. His eyes looked downcast.

"But…can't you see it too?"

Xenophilius kept drawing circles into Luna's arm, silent.

"So you can't see this thing that's eating my arm."

Xenophilius yelped and stumbled backwards. "What THING?"

Luna smiled, the type of slow smile that hid her thoughts from everyone but her. The creature nuzzled against her leg, comfortable and warm. What a strange thing, she thought. A Blibbering Humdinger.