A/N: Third and final chapter. Thank all you guys for reading and reviewing! I don't own Harry Potter.
Later that night, not nearly as drunk as he thought he should be, Rolf walked back to his room at the inn. As he passed by Luna's room, he thought he heard something very similar to sobbing.
Not completely sure why, he knocked on the door and calmly asked, "Luna? Are you okay? Can I come in?" He heard a muffled Alohomora and the door unlocked to reveal Luna crouched over her desk, her normally dreamy eyes red and filled with tears.
"Luna what's wrong?" Rolf came over to her and examined what she had been looking at.
"Letters." Luna explained as he picked up one of the pieces of papers, "Letters of the people who sighted the Warble. They all seemed to have heard of the Warble before they saw it. Rolf, I think—" She looked up at him as though she was in pain, "Rolf, I think all these sightings were actually of Mocking Beasts! Look-" She picked up one letter, "After reading in your esteemed paper about the Winged Warble, I went out searching through the forest looking for one. They're all like that, they had been specifically looking for the Warble, so that's how a Mocking Beast would have appeared to them. What if that means—" She took a gulp of air, "What if that means that there is no such thing as a Winged Warble?" She began sobbing again.
Rolf put a hand on her shoulder which he hoped was comforting, "Luna, before today, no one believed in a Mocking Beast. No one had ever heard of one before, but look at the creature on your desk." She looked up and smiled to see Little Rolf curled on top of one of the letters, looking quite at ease.
"But what about the Crumpled-Horn Snorcack? What about Wrackspurts, or Nargals? Do you really believe they all exist? Honestly?"
Rolf was on the threshold of saying that he believed it was at least possible in order to spare her feelings, until she said, 'honestly.' She had always been honest with everyone, to the point where no one in the village liked her. He could at least afford to give her the honest truth.
"No, personally, I don't think any of those creatures exist, but Luna," he took a deep breath before continuing, "There are so many creatures that no one else has discovered before. Maybe, even if you don't find a- a Snore Axe or whatever, you can find other creatures, like the Mocking Beast." He smiled and then said, "Who found those tracks in the dirt, that I thought were Jobberknoll? Who found the excrement, which I could never have recognized? Don't you see, you were able to figure out that this little guy was a creature no one had discovered yet, not me. And I bet you could find other creatures the same way."
She smiled up at him and wiped the tears out of her eyes. "Thank you. That was a very nice thing to say, but I wouldn't have figured out what a Mocking Beast was if you weren't there. The only way was that we each saw two different things, so I knew it had to be an illusion. I would have just thought it was a Warble and moved on if you hadn't been there."
He patted her on the back a moment as he couldn't think of what to say, until an idea came into his head, and before he could give it enough thought, he had blurted it out, "Hey, how about we be research partners? We could go out into the wilderness together and look for other creatures no one has discovered yet."
She looked at him with the same level of astonishment as he felt at his own words. "I'd like that," she said. Her normal dreamy-eyed smile returned to her face, and Rolf realized how pretty she looked when she was like that. "I'd like that very much."