Xenophilia: attraction to foreign peoples, cultures, or customs.
April 17, 1990
"That was you, Mummy?"
Luna Lovegood turned wide, silvery eyes on the woman across the table from, dressed in a long lab coat with small grapevines weaving through her braid of thick, dirty blond hair. The image of the little girl with neat curls and a starched white pinafore beaming out of the old picture Luna held in her hands was impossible to reconcile with this woman.
Lara Lovegood laughed and scooted around the table to sit beside her daughter and look nostalgically at her childhood self.
"Mm-hm, that was me. Would you believe I used to dress just like my sisters and play the violin, too? Everyone who knew me expected for me to work in an office."
"But, Mummy, you do work in an office," Luna pointed out.
"Experimental charms only calls itself an office," her mother said, smiling. "Really it's a a frontier surrounded by a bunch of stuffy offices."
"Daddy says you come from the land of the white-picked-fences," Luna informed her mother, wrinkling up her nose.
Her mother laughed again. A sweet, carrying laugh that Luna loved. It sounded like wind chimes, she thought.
"I do," Lara Lovegood agreed. "And it's not a bad place. It isn't bad to be ordinary, but I've always liked extraordinary. It's good to look at things and people and places that are different from you with a mind wide open." She smoothed her daughter's hair and kissed the top of her head. "You remember that my pretty little loon."
She stood up from the table with a sweep of her long coat, paused to wave to her husband puttering around the garden, and disappeared down the stairs to her charms laboratory to keep working on her latest theory.
A/N: And how could I not focus on the Lovegoods with this word, hm? :) Anyway, a few people have suggested a story about Luna and her mother, so there you have it. I hope you liked it! A million thanks to every single person who reviews this story! You guys are brilliant!