- Chapter 5 –
"It took me so long to find you," Luna says, petting the Unicorn when she comes to a stop in front of Hermione. "And when I did, I knew you weren't ready."
"Ready for what?" Hermione asks, and when she speaks, her voice is so gravely and cracked from disuse that she doesn't even recognize it as her own.
"Ready to be properly introduced to this world," Luna says, and her voice is just as wispy and unfocused as it's always been, and yet it fits in so perfectly with this new world.
"No," Hermione responds, because she doesn't know what else to say, and she doesn't want to get immersed in another world when it's hard enough living in her own.
Luna laughs, and turns to pet the unicorn, smiling as it preens beneath her touch.
"You don't have to, you know. But your refusal sounded rather weak to me."
Hermione doesn't know how to respond to that, so when Luna offers her hand, she takes it and allows herself to be helped onto the back of the Unicorn.
"When you make contact with this other world, like while you're sitting on this unicorn, or when you touch what doesn't truly exist, you disappear from our world," Luna says as she leads Hermione through forests and burning villages and lake's and town's that she's never seen before "and arrive in this one."
Hermione remembers when she touched that Kneazle in the backyard and Harry started crying. It was because she had disappeared, and hadn't known it. It was because she hadn't known to stop looking in her world, to stop seeing Harry, and see this other world, that was still so pink and hazy and magical even when she was totally immersed in it.
"What is this place?" Hermione asks when they've been moving along in silence for a while, Luna content to smile happily at the things around her and wait for Hermione to ask her questions, rather than explain all that she knows.
Hermione appreciates this tact, because she doesn't think she'd be able to handle too much information thrown at her all at once.
"It's a place for those who have lost someone very important to them, to go when they're unable to cope."
"Then how come so few people know about this place?"
"Because most people have someone anchoring them to our world when they lose their loved ones. Ron was your anchor, but he's gone. So you don't have an anchor."
Hermione is amazed by the things that she sees in this new world, by how many things can coexist in one world without disturbing one another, or destroying the other's existence. Everything coexists so peacefully, and Hermione doesn't understand.
In one place, she sees two towns stacked on top of each other, and a city on top of them both, and everyone walks around like nothing is out of the ordinary, like there aren't people walking around in the sky above them, or sirens piercing the morning air. She wonders how one fire doesn't melt through the boundaries of one town and into another, or how the smoke doesn't seep past its atmosphere and into the other.
"Why is everything able to coexist here? It's like no one knows anything else exists other than themselves."
"They don't." Luna says simply, and Hermione has to re-evaluate everything she knows.
"It's the job of those who do know this place exists, to explain it to those who are new to it," Luna says when they've been quiet for a while. "When we've been exposed to this world, we're able to sense when something unfamiliar pierces it's walls and arrives in it, and one of us has to do something about it.
"I think they're angry with me for taking so long to come to you."
"Why did you wait so long?" Hermione asks, thinking of the long months of solitude and loneliness she'd waiting through to get to this point.
"Because you weren't ready."
"You said that already. But how did you know I wasn't ready?"
"I visited you. Many times. I thought you were ready when I brought you the flowers, but when I came closer, your aura was still red."
"My aura?" Hermione asks, and she touches her skin as if she'll be able to feel what Luna is talking about.
"Focus your eyes. Do you see my aura? It's pink, like this world here," Luna says, and when Hermione tells herself to see, she does see. "I was waiting for you to be pink, and for that, I had to wait for you to no longer be numb."
"It was you, wasn't it?" Hermione says then, because suddenly, she knows it was Luna in her room that night, breaking her long sleep to comfort her with a washcloth and a warm hand on her cheek. She knows it was Luna who had come to her when she'd woken with night sweats and a fever, and she knew it was because she'd finally broken her long state of numbness.
It wasn't what she'd thought was a dream that had brought her back to life.
"Yes," Luna says simply, and they continue on their way.