Luna is sitting with Percy Weasley under an outcropping of rock. It keeps the rain at bay as long as there are no wind gusts. Which there is, with increasing frequency. She is sure any time now he'll start banging rocks together again to make fire out of a little pile of wet branches, bark and pine needles.
She's right, and he is nothing if not tenacious.
"Does sap burn?" he had wondered, gathering the stickiest branches he could find. Luna knows water doesn't burn, and she's sure he's using the wrong kind of rocks.
We're as likely to find flint and steel as I am waking up in my bed tomorrow, she thinks, and then she says helpfully, "Maybe we can find some flint when the sun comes up."
"Or quarts." She leans back against the wall. "Tomorrow will bring beautiful, shiny rocks." She nods.
The infernal knocking stops.
"Shiny rocks? Have you lost your mind?"
Luna considers his question for a moment. "I would say here is where your body is, and if your mind is in your body, then here is where your mind is as well."
A stone strikes a tree, then another further away. A rustle of leaves and something settles on the ground with a thump. The darkness is almost complete, but Luna thinks she can make out his prone outline. She presses her back closer against the scraggly cliff wall and hugs her knees. The wind reminds her that her clothes are still wet. Wherever her body is, it's miserable.
Just barely audible over the drip, drip, drip, he asks again, "Where are we? Where have you taken me?"
"As peculiar as it might seem, and certainly our situation is very peculiar, I have not taken you anywhere."
Percy is quiet for a long while, and Luna closes her eyes.
At last, he says, "Are you suggesting something? That I am not here at all in this horrible damp excuse for a cave?"
"That's a lot to explore all at once, and it's late." Luna shifts to find a better position.
Percy shoots up. "Are you saying it's all in my head? Did you drug me rather than abduct me? Am I dying? Am I already dead?" Towards the end, his voice reaches an unflattering falsetto.
Because Luna has considered and eventually discarded death as an answer, and despite her exhaustion, she decides to reassure the raging Gryffindor. She says, "Those are very intriguing questions. I must confess that the possibility of being dead or near death has occurred to me, but the weather is too English."
"You are being obtuse on purpose–" he squeals.
"Percy Weasley!"
"Stop calling me Percy Weasley, for Merlin's sake. Scoldings deserve a full name; that's clear from my mother's use of them–but you are not my mother!"
Luna sighs. "Percy Weasley, I have already answered what appears to be your most pressing questions. I have not brought you here. Intentionally or otherwise, and you are not dead. I am not the obtuse one."
Tiredly, she waves her hand at the sad pile of sticks and whispers, "Incendio." Nothing happens.
"Incendio," she says more firmly, and a little flame borne from necessity shoots from her fingertips and fizzles out on the soggy kindling.
After several more tries, she finally sets Percy's pyre ablaze.