I knew I wouldn't, I couldn't win. I didn't need anyone to tell me this obvious truth. I didn't need to be informed that I would most likely lose yet it didn't push down, extinguish the determination I felt.
It didn't shake my resolve. I couldn't win, I wouldn't win yet I had to do so not for me, not for glory, pride or anything else of that sort.
I needed to win because if I didn't, hundreds of thousands would die. I had to do this because of all of us here except for my mother, I was the only one capable.
Shades of moonlight took shape behind my back, growing from my flesh like thousands of nails being knitted together.
Walpurgisnacht, mother had called the witch above. Walpurgisnacht, the name of the origin of this disaster.
I tightened my grip on my wand, the energy inside of me, the one so deep and vast, so deep and dark that came when I was changed travelled through my veins, through my breath, through my wand.
'Maybe I wouldn't win,' I thought as I pointed my wand at the floating witch above me. It didn't mean that I couldn't try.
"There once was a crooked man, cowardly, the worth of his existence not even equal to a grain of sand yet his words shook the universe."
It was an old tale I once read before, of a poor man acknowledged as equal by an emperor, who could have everything yet refused. It was the name of a fool and maybe being a fool was what I needed to win.
'Your own imagination and your reserves are the only things both limiting and empowering you' I had been told.
It was a fortunate thing that also laid endless possibilities In madness.
The words came out, spoken, chanted by themselves more than anything else.
"Tarnish Diogenes."
A sword, one made of light, made of magic floated before my wand, powered, controlled by me.
It flew like a comet in the night sky, its glow so bright that surely it couldn't, it wouldn't be ignored.
The witch above, Walpurgisnacht turned toward the flying projectile, for the first time since the beginning of her wanton destruction, her laughs dulled, her laugh halted.
Circles of arcane magic, with too many symbols I couldn't understand even though I knew they must have meant something appeared in the direction of the spell.
My blade met those circles and the sky turned azure. It was beautiful, breathtaking. For an instant, it made me forget the destruction happening around me.
For an instant, the world looked like a nascent paradise, like those stories of the god creating at the dawn of time.
The first arcane circle of the witch broke with a sound akin to lightning, the sound almost ear-deafening before crushing against another circle, this time the circle cracking but not bulging unlike the first one, my magic spell fading in blue motes.
At that moment, I felt it, her attention, Walpurgudnacht's attention, attention only focused on me and I wouldn't lie, I felt fear.
'You just need to tell me to help if you want it to stop and I would," I heard my mother's voice whisper in my ears.
'Would you destroy the monster if I asked you?' I said to her while already knowing the answer.
'I would,' she answered me.
She was doing it for a reason I didn't understand, for a hidden purpose or scheme. What made it worse was that even if it had only been one day, I knew her or at least I was sure I did.
She shared her essence with me when she changed me. I hadn't told her but for an instant, I had felt what she felt.
My mother, she wasn't a bad person. I knew it. She may try to hide it behind an uncaring gaze but I knew that she was sad, I knew that she cared and maybe a little too much. Otherwise, she wouldn't adopted what amounted to a worthless stray.
I had touched the soul of the being who chose to give love to a lonely mad girl just because she could.
This is why I had to believe that there was a good reason behind all of this. This was why I wouldn't stop trusting her.
'It won't be necessary,' I told her 'because I'm going to win.'
I felt a surge of pride, one that wasn't mine because honestly, I wasn't totally sure of my chances of winning, of succeeding.
I was Loony Lovegood, the bullied lonely girl with a dead mother, a grieving nearly mad father whose mind was more lost in the could be than the what was.
I pushed down the fear I felt.
I am Luna Lovegood, daughter of Rias, immortal and my mother was watching me.
She believed in me, more than anyone even myself had. She believed that Luna Lovegood could be a saviour. She believed that Luna Lovegood could be a hero.
She believed that I could win and I wouldn't fail my mother!
"I am Luna Lovegood," I shouted my voice too loud, too confident, too sure, so unlike me. I knew that everyone could hear me, that the world itself did.
The power, the magic in me, the one I had gained in my adoption, that I had gained when I was changed, I released it.
The madness that had been both my boon and my curse all those times, the one that had both protected and isolated me.
This madness, I made it real.
After all, she had said to me, my imagination was the only thing I needed and the power beating to the drums of my heart felt for now like an endless stream of energy.
Monsters, pixies, mind-drowning Heliopaths, Blibbering Humdingers, mind-bending Wrackspurts and so many more.
They came in dozens, in hundreds, in thousands!
With unearthly screams and roars, they moved, leaving behind them streams of starlight, their goal slaying the familiars of Walpurgisnacht and helping to protect the defenceless muggles under me.
"And I am going to stop you Walpurgisnacht!"
The only answer from the witch above was a giant bolt of lightning as big as one of Hogwarts' towers.
It blinded the world with its divine fury. It was a magnificent thing that would be worthy of being considered as one of Zeus'.
'Imagine it, Luna. The world is your oyster as long as you can imagine it.'
It felt as if my mom had whispered in one of my ears, as if she was hugging me from behind gently guiding me, reassuring me.
'You are my child and there is nothing you can't accomplish so beloved child of mine,'
The world except the lightning seemed to freeze, every detail becoming apparent, every detail becoming something I was perfectly aware of.
I could count the individual raindrops. I could smell the blood of Those under me as if I had been drenched in it yet there was a feeling of disconnect that allowed me to not be overwhelmed.
My wand lifted softly with the help of my mom, the raindrops evaporating before touching me.
I remember a tale I was once told, about how once the moon was called Theia, how it had been bigger, how it had broken yet with time had become whole again protecting the firmaments from the meteors above.
I wasn't this moon. I was but a girl not older than fifteen but miracles, magic never had to make any sense.
The name of that giant, of that Titan what could be said to be the original name of the moon, I uttered it.
"Theia!" I whispered yet it felt like a shout, like a declaration to the world more than anything else.
My wand morphed, changing, mutating, becoming thicker, longer, more until it looked like a mix of a lance and a magic staff.
Blue covered its entirety, floating imageries of astral concepts surrounding it, surrounding me before I struck above.
My knee bucked under me as if the weight of the world had fallen on my shoulders, the muggle edifice under me cracking, shattering little by little, becoming erased.
It felt like being undone, like being in the stomach of a dragon yet it felt exhilarating, yet it made me feel alive.
I opened the eyes I hadn't realized I had closed. I could still think. I could still breathe and more than that, I could still feel her pride! I could still feel the people my constructs were saving.
All of that would be nought if I gave up now.
"I had already told you!" I screamed the azure glow of magic making itself known to the world, almost replacing the violet of the lightning.
"I AM,"
With a shout, my transformed wand cut through the heavenly's wrath, not stopping, a seemingly endless blade of magic extending
toward her head,
"GOING,"
severing the tip of one of her horns and continuing beyond the firmament before rendering itself in a flash of blue, creating for a brief instant another star in the sky.
"TO WIN!"
I licked my lips
"What do they say?"
I looked into the eyes of the Witch who was looking at me with something I could only deem as hatred "Oh, I remembered," I said with a smile feeling confident that the storm wouldn't make me falter.
"First blood is mine."
scene*
My feet left the ground as my wings propelled me upward, the muggle edifice I was standing on finally crumbling into nothing under me.
Streams of arcane magic rushed at me from above, the world shifting on their path almost like a twisted mosaic, a twisted painting.
My wings were new appendages. It hadn't been more than one day since I had them yet manoeuvring with them felt easier than breathing, almost an afterthought.
The world shook in agony as I moved, something, almost an invisible barrier pressing against my skin before breaking.
The streams of arcane magic moved past me falling with the might of an angry god under me.
Others continued to fall, a stream, a rain of them as numerous if not more than the stars in the cosmos, each one of them as bright, as ominous, as destructive I was sure that the one I just dodged.
The first ray I had dodged had struck the place I had been standing on only instants before but something told me that trying to escape the coming onslaught would only result in hurting those I tried to protect.
'Just imagine it.'
My wand/staff began to shine as I poured into it the energy inside of me, the one that allowed me to bend what should have never been bent.
'I just needed to imagine it!'
If I couldn't dodge it, it just meant that I had to destroy it! It didn't matter the fear I held inside that made it hard to breathe.
It didn't matter that I could see my limbs. shaking. Loony would have done nothing.
She would have let it happen without even trying.
I wasn't her, no anymore. My mother believed in me. I just needed to believe in the her who did.
'I just needed to imagine it!'
I just needed to fight until my essence dried up!
I just needed to be something that wouldn't be shaken at all.
The tip of my wand/staff shone with azure, remnants of dying constellations seemingly forming before it. It reminded me strangely of one of the phases of the celestial body I was named after.
'Names are powerful Luna. They are what make something real. It could even be said that they are what gives weight to them.'
I could feel my mother's presence, a certainty, an assurance that everything would be alright as long as I believed in her, as long as I believed in the Luna she thought I was.
"Luna Dimadiata!" I chanted.
A giant circle, one reminiscent of a half moon appeared just before the arcane rays of the witch could crush against me.
I felt my bones shake as they tried to break the circle I had created. Even though they were tools of destruction, of carnage, I couldn't deny that They were beautiful from so close.
'There is nothing you can't do child of mine if you believe in yourself. There is nothing you can't crush, no obstacles impossible to remove if you believe in yourself, Luna!'
There was nothing I couldn't do if I believed In myself! I needed to be faster! I needed to be stronger!
Behind me, I felt my wings shift, motes of silver blooming from them like a stream of white incandescence.
My second hand joined the other making me grab the wand/staff with my two hands. Above, the circle was cracking under the onslaught of light yet I kept faith because my mother already said it.
'There was nothing that could stop me!'
I poured with restless abandon my magic into my staff, into myself before pushing.
My wings crackled behind me with a sound akin to a boom before the arcane streams of Walpurgisnacht broke, my form pummeling through them.
I continued, my wings making me for an instant feel as if light itself had slowed down before I reappeared in front of the witch, my wand cocked back before I swung.
It smashed into the head of the witch with a sound reminiscent of a church bell, the head of the witch bulging before I threw her away toward the horizon.
I knew The instant after, of how unpleasant she had found it when she launched to me in less than it took me to blink a muggle structure the size of Hogwarts.
It was in my face before I could think about dodging so I didn't. No, instead, I chose to run through it.
It was true that I couldn't avoid it but my height and the fact that it had been created by muggles meant that it was possible for me to navigate through it.
I dove head first into what seemed to be a window, the moving building making it hard to differentiate what was up of what was down.
Shadowy figures, the ones I had seen from above at the beginning with the others, the familiars of the witch materializing and jumping at me simultaneously.
I guess I should have expected Walpurgisnacht to not stay idle and let me so easily off the hook.
A flutter of my wings sent me up, away from them, my legs connecting to what seemed for an instant as the ceiling.
Another flap of them sent me forward, running, my staff first through the guts of one of the familiars of the witch, the movement feeling as if one I had done thousands of times before, my hand leaving the end of the staff I was holding to grab the head of it on the other side of the dissolving familiar that was crumbling too slowly and pulling it out.
My legs more gliding than running as my wings pushed me forward. A familiar opened its mouth, from the inside, what looked like a miniature tempest taking form before it was launched at me.
I crouched, keeping my staff/wand high, magic covering its head as it cut through the attack more easily than Ginny's brother did with a cake, my wings sending my body spinning to separate the head of the familiar with my wand.
The next moment, I pushed with my feet as the world around me turned and what was down and up changed again, my wings sending me gliding on the left, dodging a pole and on the right dodging a wall.
My feet touched a hard surface, red sparks erupting at contact due to friction as I drifted. I turned, my body still moving backwards, my wand turned toward a cluster of familiars before I whispered
"Depulso."
A white light blinded me for an instant before everything in the path of my wand broke, the banishing charm acting more like an explosion, a spell of pure destruction than anything else.
From the corner of my eye, I could see some familiars behind me, charging arcane spells to launch at my back.
I spun on my left heel, grabbing my wand/staff like a sword, the light of the banishing charm still visible before I swung in their direction, walls, glasses, mortar and dark flesh becoming undone and giving me a view of the outside.
A flap of my wings sent me out of the Muggle structure that had clearly become more a death trap than anything else just to be confronted with another edifice.
I didn't make the same error, azure light blooming at the tip of my wand/staff as I wished for it to cutand cut it did, a line of blue peeking in the middle of the Muggle construct before it split like a river cut in two.
My wings sent me flying in the middle of it, my wand/staff directed at the faraway form of the Witch.
An orb of darkness had materialized before her mouth. I acted the moment I saw it, pouring my magic but this time, unlike the other times, focusing it, letting it concentrate before I released it and it was the right thing to do because it was the same thing as Walpurgisnacht did, a scream of despair reminiscent of children being drowned sending a wave of darkness that seemed to swallow the horizon toward me.
Azure and Ebony met in the middle of the sky and reality stuttered, the world shaking as if its end had finally come, the two attacks trying to devour and overcome each other before what happened when two immovable forces met, they tore each other apart into nothing.
The backlash made itself known to all, splitting the clouds in two, shattering every piece of glass that had luckily survived so far and hitting the world under with the the force of an earthquake.
I wasn't unscathed. I was sent uncontrollably flying through the air like a slapped fly, my back meeting something hard before breaking it, everything getting dark for an instant and meeting another thing again and again and again until I was airborne again.
I commanded my wings, trying to regain my balance even if I'm sure that I probably looked like a baby bird learning and failing to fly at best.
What helped me finally stop was my wand/staff as I stabbed it into something and tried to finally stop and luckily, I succeeded.
I had fortunately found an anchor in a muggle edifice that luckily hadn't been yet destroyed due to Walpurgisnacht.
I allowed myself to fall on my knees, stopping myself from completely falling by using the wand/staff to support me. It honestly felt as if I was Ron and I had just run for hours hunted by acromentulas.
"You know, it hadn't even been 4 minutes since the beginning Love."
I lifted the head meeting the green eyes of my mother.
"You were magnificent like I knew you would be. I am proud of you Luna," she told me the words making me want to cry.
It was stupid and probably childish but it had been so long since I heard those words. Even before being changed, even before my brain stopped being broken, even with my father, I hadn't heard those words since Mom's death.
Loony Lovegood, good for nothing. Loony Lovegood that no one truly cared about. Loony Lovegood who hadn't been worthy to be helped.
Even when everything was so different, even when things had seemed so blurry, unreal, those words had hurt, those words had stuck.
Maybe I wasn't so over things of the past. Maybe there were still remnants of Loony in me, the girl who had only wished somebody would care.
"Walpurgisnacht, she's still playing but I think it's going to change soon but you probably already knew that."
I did. After all, I could remember the description given by my mother, Walpurgisnacht, a witch capable of ending the world if she rotated completely, a being who had never known defeat before, who was more a natural disaster than anything else.
Walpurgisnacht was what the wizarding world saw the dark lord as but a thousand times worse.
She cradled my face in her hands, a blinding smile etched on her face "Do you know what it means?
"It means you have to go overtime. You have to break the barrier separating the two of you. You have to become something capable of ending a world-ender."
"I know I need to imagine it Mom but it is hard," I told her and it was. I already felt at my limit, what seemed to be an endless well felt as if it was drying up.
More than that, Mom had already said it. All this time, Walpurginacht hadn't acted as her strongest. She was playing, toying with me.
The hold that my mother had on my head stopped me from looking somewhere else, her gaze seemingly peering and reading through my soul itself.
"Did you forget child of mine? There is nothing you can't do if you can imagine! There are no obstacles you can't remove on your path! You need to imagine it, Luna. You have to stop thinking so little. Reach for the heavens! Reach for the celestial bodies above and grab them, Luna!"
Over the shoulders of my mother, my gaze pierced through clouds and dust layers, through the separations between the cosmos and the earth to stop on the moon.
"You are the moon and what else than the moon would be enough for getting rid of a world-ender?"
I felt my eyes widen as I realized what she meant.
"The moon, you want me to use it."
"Yes. I want you to use it to strengthen yourself. I want you to drink in its cosmic essence. I reincarnated you yesterday and what is reincarnation but a rebirth? Doesn't that mean that I owe you a birthday gift?"
A Giggle escaped me, one born of shock and surprise, one that felt deranged, that felt too much like coming from Loony.
"A moon for a birthday gift?"
It felt as if it was someone else who had spoken due to how shocked I felt. A moon as a gift?
When people said to others that they would offer them only the best, the world itself and the moon and the stars, they were joking, not being literal.
"Of course, is there any more appropriate gift for the child of someone having usurped the Dominion of the firstborn of those who invite of the Kamiyonanayo? A moon for my child. A moon for my Luna. This is the least of what you deserve."
The certainty and assurance in her voice were terrible. It was an ominous thing worthy of being said to be coming from an evil witch in a story yet no words had ever been sweeter to hear.
She kissed me on the forehead before standing, her touch feeling reinvigorating, as if I had just woken up from the most comfortable nap in the world.
"You planned this all since the beginning didn't you Mom?"
I asked her our gazes locked against each other while she stayed silent.
"You're doing all of this for me. You're doing all of this for my benefit. I just didn't see it and probably still don't see most of the pictures. Am I wrong, Mom?"
A half smile came to life on one of the corners of her lips, a proud one.
"You're not," she confirmed, her form beginning to fade, her voice becoming distant. "I told you, only the best for my girl, nothing but the world for my greatest treasure" her voice whispered before disappearing.
Conflicting emotions ran through me making it hard to think, charging my body with what seemed to be an endless amount of dread and joy.
All those people, all those innocent muggles were suffering because of me, because of something my mom was doing for my sake.
What she was doing was wrong. I should be disgusted. I should be angry but I couldn't. I couldn't when what won in my heart was the joy at her care.
This was for me, so it meant that it was only right for me the one to save all of those below. This was my duty to all those people but also to my mother to crush Walpurgisnacht!
I turned my gaze toward the horizon, toward where I knew Walpurgisnacht was and like me she hadn't been left unscathed, her pristine appearance now looking rugged, minuscule but apparent tears present all over her.
I could see, look at her as if she was just in front of me when in reality she was on the other side of the city.
She lacked eyes yet it felt as if my gaze had locked with another. It only confirmed what my mother had told me.
Playtime was over. After all, Walpugisnacht had begun rotating. It was a slow but sure thing that would have been probably missed at first by most.
A being capable of ending the world if it rotated fully. A being who couldn't be allowed to do so.
It wasn't only about this city any more. It was about this entire world I had found myself in due to my mother's will.
Behind me, my wings extended fully, their wingspan seemingly as long if not more than a flying broom.
I tightened my grip on the staff before they sent me zooming, the world moving so fast that it lost shape for my eyes, a hellish pressure surrounding me as if I was being cooked alive as I broke through something.
Pain assaulted my senses, agony streaming from my back as I pushed my wings to their utmost until light itself would slow down for me, until time would wait for me.
I knew I reached my destination even before images came back to my eyes when I became unable to breathe, something burning me and sending pain and agony through my senses.
I opened my eyes to the cosmos, to the planets encircling Sol. I opened my eyes to the vastness of the universe and how little in the end Humans truly were.
By looking down I could see the shape of the continents, what looked like Great Britain, how insignificant it looked, how everything was so insignificant and looked like forgettable blips on a map.
I turned toward where I originally came, toward where I could see Walpurgidnacht, toward Walpurgisnacht who was looking in my direction, uncaring of the destruction around her, the giant Witch continuing her rotation and something told me that if she wasn't stopped or interrupted, she would finish it in the next 3 minutes.
3 minutes. I had only 3 minutes to win and it will be enough. 3 minutes will be plenty enough! There were no other possibilities I could allow.
The moon was different so close, so much bigger and feeling so much real, so much tangible.
The satellite I was named after, the celestial body I was supposed to use to win, the thing that was my birthday gift, I flew toward its surface before laying my palm onto it.
It wasn't truly alive or maybe it was in a way so different that there would still be no difference between considering it dead or alive yet I spoke to it.
"My mom believes that I can do the impossible. My mom believes I can win so please," I begged, no, prayed to the cosmic structure as I connected myself to it, letting the energy inside of me flow through the entirety of the Earth's natural satellite, as I tried to make it mine.
My reserves were drying up more quickly than I thought they would, the moon like a gaping hole in reality only taking and taking to what felt like an eternity.
"For the first time in my life, please allow me to not be a disappointment!"
Breathing was becoming harder and harder, the sun rays feeling as if hot iron was being pressed into my skin and flesh to the point where they were darkening my bones themselves, the energy I gained was finally exhausted making me feel sluggish, making me feel as if I was dying yet I believed, I had to because I knew my mother was watching, because
"For the first time in my life, I want to be able to prove them wrong!"
As if hearing my plea, I felt something unlock, what had felt like a sucking void inversed its paradigm and I became more.
The only thing I could compare it to was when I had been changed yet it felt different because if the first time had been a damnation I had chosen, this time felt like an ascension to the divine.
I felt myself changed by the moon and didn't fight it. I let it drown me into power that felt like pure nectar, I didn't fight as I felt something in my bones click, in my body changing, as I felt my wings shift.
The changes didn't stop at me. I could see my staff/wand, the wood of it seemingly changed, having the same appearance and feel as the moon's surface, its shape becoming slimmer yet still as if not more robust I was sure.
More than that, I could see the moon changing, a spectral glow surrounding making it seems as if was alive.
I felt my clothes shift, knitting back with threads of silver as the damage taken due to Walpurgisnacht was mended back.
To resume it, I felt divine, I felt as if nothing could stop me. I felt for the first time since the beginning of the fight that the odds were on my side!
I turned toward Earth, toward the witch, toward Walpurgisnacht and saw fear in her.
"Let's end this. It had lasted a little too long don't you think? I whispered even if I was sure with total certainty that she had heard me.
There was a weird echo in my voice as I was a dozen people speaking at the same time.
The only answer of the witch was to bend the surface of the Earth, the sky wriggling and turning in ways that could at best only be called unnatural before she sent another lighting bolt but it was bigger than the first one, probably big enough to sink the British Isles I estimated from above. I guess nothing else could be expected from a world-ender.
It moved faster than a monstrosity as such should be capable of doing, illuminating the darkness of the cosmos like a second star as it rushed toward me.
My only answer was to direct my wand/staff towards the coming annihilation. This was the endgame and clad in moonlight, I wouldn't be the one to lose.
The next two chapters are on my p.a.t.r.e.o.n.c.o.m / Eileen715. Don't hesitate to visit if you want to read more or simply support me. Cost less than 5. Comments, criticisms and questions are also welcome and are ones of some of my greatest motivators behind writing