- Astoria -
I rush to see her whenever I can in her odd rock house in Ottery St Catchpole. She still lives with her father in the infernal bang, bang, bang of the printing press that puts out that terrible rag of hers.
Oh, I mustn't be so dismissive. How can I convince her I'm…
I have promised myself to read it so many times, and every time I do, I throw it in the bin before I've finished the first page. And I admit I admit it! I cannot bear Draco laughing at me, no matter how loving. When he found me surreptitiously reading the Quibbler last night, the affection in his voice was like that of a child.
"Astoria," he mumbled, "Astoria, Astoria." Then he kissed me on the head and went to the Ministry.
I love him, but sometimes I feel so small.
Luna never laughs at me. She raises me up. With her, my spine stretches all the way past the treetops to the clouds. When I talk with her, her eyes are on my face. When I pause, she nods and tells me, "how interesting. Please go on." When I at least reach my conclusion, my voice hoarse, and my breath barely able to fill my lungs; she is still, for a long time, deep in thought. Her eyes leave my face and stray out the window across the windswept plain that stretches almost all the way to the horizon.
A cow moos, and she turns to me and says something utterly inexplicable about the distance diricawls can apparate. "They can't fly, you see."
"Most creatures can't fly, Luna."
"Birds who cannot fly want to nothing as much," she sings softly and stretches her arms out. She twirls and dances and flaps her wings futilely. It should be silly. She should look like an oddball in a house full of crazy, lethal-looking contraptions, but her flightless dance is heartbreaking. You can tell that the diricawl used to own the skies, used to claim the colour blue for themselves, but now they are fallen, condemned to forever waddle through grassy hills and thorny bushes.
For creatures who once soared so high that they could warm their feathers against a blazing sun on frozen winter days, the earth we walk on is a prison.
Their highest wish, their only desire, is to return, so they throw themselves into the air and, with a bang, appear just beneath the lowest hanging cloud. From there, they glide clumsily back to this dirty punishment that's life.
Today I tell Luna about Draco and how I can't stand her father's publication, but instead of telling me about the excruciating insanity caused by the song on the fwooper - the whole issue of the Quibbler is devoted to it - instead of telling the story of betrayal that birthed such a lonely being she kisses me.
I fall into her arms as if I belong there, and I forget that I'm already in love.