- Luna -
Because year eight, as everyone has started to call it, is unique, and because the war is over, there will be a spring ball when the blue anemone stops blooming, and the white ones cover the ground like a blanket. We will dance for love when the white flowers reach your ankles like a memory of snow, like a promise of wading through summer water.
I'd pick them and put them in a vase, but they wilt too fast; instead, I lie among them and look at the budding trees. I like the shiny, light green coloured leaves that break through just to die by frost in the early morning; along with the leaves, the buds birth translucent creatures that will die, just like moths, before the next sunrise.
I will go alone to the ball, and Draco Malfoy will have Astoria Greengrass on his arm. She's such a beautiful woman. She doesn't believe me when I say she has the most unusual aura. I don't mind going alone; who am I to stand in the way of a new love? It's breathtaking to watch them look at each other. They orbit each other uncertainly in the face of absolute certainty of a happy ending.
Hermione Granger has stopped whispering unkindnesses to Draco. Instead, she's shrunken in on herself. Her aura has changed from scarlet with golden streaks to a sickly brown. I have tried forgiving her for her bitterness, but she just scoffs and leaves. Today I will dance. I will make myself a bobbin and wind up the vitriol breaking her spirit.
The war haunts her. I overheard her talk about nightmares. We all dream, but there are remedies for that. Dream catchers, spiders who spin the finest nets and their almost lovers, magpies who adorn the traps with their stolen treasures. You have to see them to believe they exist, I suppose. Hermione always does insist on empirical evidence for every curiosity not found in a book.
Draco doesn't even notice the absence of Hermione's poison, so engrossed is he in his adoration for Astoria, and she, I believe, is almost as taken with him. She isn't entirely convinced that the swoop in her belly means anything, or maybe her secret keeps her on her guard. Instead of kissing him, she lies with me among the still-blooming blue anemones. She lies and says it's nothing; it's my imagination when I ask about her hidden thoughts.
Draco looks at her askance every time we return from the Forbidden Forest, but she pretends not to notice that he wants to be invited. I won't do it; he knows already, and he's too scared to watch me dance.