A/N: I had this plot bunny and it wouldn't leave me alone until I let it out. I don't have an update schedule, but promise I never abandon a story, ever. The words flow when they flow. It's going to be a dark one, with mature themes and not so nice behaviors, especially from those we've grown to love as the embodiment of light and fluffy. My aesthetic portrays the fantasy for my two main characters. I hope you enjoy :)
Legal: I own nothing except the plot, and appreciate the sandbox JK Rowling created and has let us all play in.
Chapter 1
She hated her classmates, the whole effing lot of them.
It wasn't a minor annoyance, or even a simmering anger that she felt toward those in her year, regardless of their house.
No, it was hatred, of the purest kind and of the deepest shade — like molasses melting in the sun it saturated her blood, a part of her with every pulsing heartbeat.
She'd grown up amongst the Pureblood elite, not an equal or sacred like most of their peerage, but accepted in kind due to Pandora.
Due to the Avery blood that ran through her veins, and therefore her daughters.
But, after her mother…
Well, there was no reason for the upper crust to suffer the oddity and unsuitability that was her father any longer.
And so, they were cast aside, held aloft with polite distain.
Never outright rejection. No, that was not the way of things.
Rather, the subtle kind of dismissal that permeates the psyche and erects barriers impervious to any physical weapon or means of destruction.
They became social poison, and her dad became more entrenched in his eccentricities as the sands of time sprinkled downward.
She hadn't noticed their withdrawal. Not at first.
It had taken over a year for her to realize that in the cloak of grief she'd wrapped herself in, she'd lost all contacts with those she'd previously associated.
The owls had stopped days, weeks even, after her mother perished.
The teas, the gossip, the indulgent interest… everything became arid where once there was vitality.
When social events dictated their presence, she saw the glances. Heard the whispers. Saw the chasm of proximity widen.
Felt them pierce her, felt her soul bleed with every cruel, disinterested, false interaction.
And when she did, naive confusion turned to anger turned to hate.
And hate took root in the dark fertility of her soul.
She felt her sprouting, fledgling hate lick the wounds inflicted by their forked tongues and barbed words and seal them shut.
Felt the heat of her anger and loss and hatred infuse down into her marrow, forging a skeleton stronger than one cored with goblin-wrought adamantium, more resilient and flexible than elven-mined vibranium.
She'd risen, invisible to all but herself, from the ashes of her peers disregard and her mother's death and her fathers ignorance and passive neglect; a Phoenix reborn in shadows rather than in the light of the flame.
Her father, bless his heart, was never an attentive parent and after her mother's death, went off the rails entirely.
If it wasn't for Mrs Weasley—and to an extent, Ginny—Luna wondered if she'd even have survived past the age of ten.
Or she'd have allowed herself to implode, to self destruct.
She'd never have imagined that she'd be grateful to a blood traitor, but knew the woman's kindness was the only tether restraining what she knew ran alongside the blood in her veins, bursting to be let free.
Neither her nor her daughter knew how tightly Luna pruned back that which grew wild within, as Pandora had always provided the shield of perceived pureness of heart and deed.
Upon her death, Luna had picked up the mantle and forged her own shield, continuing the facade.
And now, as she walked the hallowed halls of Hogwarts, a first year Slytherin-by-blood, wearing robes trimmed with Blue and Bronze and housed in a nest of stone, she burned.
Let them all call her Looney.
It didn't matter.
She hid in plain sight, had for years; her chosen mask that of the dotty almost-orphan.
Chose to make her voice ethereal, her eyes wider than presumed normal and to use a spell to reduce the need to blink.
It was all very off putting and pedantic, yet the spell-work of her mother's creation so rudimentary that she was almost insulted on her classmates and their family's behalf that they believed their eyes and assumptions so readily.
Let them look and assume, she mused, resting for a moment against a battlement between the arithmancy tower and the serpentine corridor, overlooking the greenhouses.
Assumptions were the downfall of the ignorant, or so mother had always said.
Her stomach fluttered.
She knew something they didn't, something they couldn't even begin to imagine, had been put into motion.
Something that made her blood sing in anticipation. Anticipation for a day where her mask could fall and they'd all be dust at her feet.
Her lips twitched into a small smile as she remembered what she'd been shown in the library earlier.
As comprehension had dawned as she'd sat across from a flush faced Ginny, listening to her natter away, the red heads mouth still peppered with ink from where she'd bitten the end of her quill in thought.
She'd looked like a spotted owl, all blotchy skin and uneven hair and ears too small for her head.
The closest thing to a friend Luna had.
Ginny hadn't even realized her predicament until she'd wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and spread the ink.
"Oh blast it!" Ginny'd cried, and Luna had silently handed her a folded tissue from her school sac; the name Ginny sewn along the hem.
The tissues were an experiment she'd created the previous summer, a mix of her fathers printing press parchment added to some potions she'd discovered in her mother's closet, simmered together in a silver cauldron found in the top most attic of her house.
Who knew a soothing potion, typically used for ones nerves, would be effective in turning reprintable parchment into the softest and endurable handkerchief imaginable.
With the added tea tree oil she'd thought to include before sealing her cauldron and setting it to simmer, came the bonus of it never soiling or needing to be laundered.
She'd made one for herself, and one for Ginny that she carried around with her for whenever they got together.
She'd never understood how Ginny, continued to be so emotive. So… messy—physically and emotionally. Maybe it was all the coddling, from her brothers and parents alike.
"Thanks Luna," she'd smiled and blushed, and it had taken all Luna could do not to roll her eyes at her friend.
"When will you learn not to bite the nibs! You'd think after the twins prank this summer you'd have stopped!"
Ginny had sighed.
"I forget when I'm… when I get too caught up in my thoughts." She'd then laid down the quill and leaned forward.
"Want to know a secret?"
Luna has glanced around at the library and was relieved to see her usual tormentors were absent. No one was close enough to hear Ginny—the girl had done her own visual appraisal before speaking—but Luna always stayed vigilant of her surroundings.
"Of course." She had said, mirroring her friend in learning forward.
"I found this… this book. A blank journal, mixed within my school books. I was originally going to owl mum and ask about it when I realized but… I'd already written my name inside."
"So?" Luna had asked. She wondered where he book had come from, as it was unlikely Mrs. Weasley has purchased it. They weren't exactly bleeding galleons, and anything superfluous to the reading list wasn't a likely addition to their cart.
"When I wrote my name… it all disappeared." Ginny had whispered.
Luna had felt a stir in the pit of her stomach. A fluttering of something she couldn't identify, though it was pleasurable rather than off putting.
"Disappeared like, the whole word gone? Sank into the page?" Ginny had nodded. "What happened once it disappeared?" Luna had kept her tone even, her face neutrally curious.
Inside her blood had hummed in anticipation.
"Words appeared. A greeting. A name." Luna had sucked in a breath and Ginny had rushed on. "And… well, I know dad would wack me upside the head for doing so and Bill would curse me sideways, but I wrote back and oh, it's been so wonderful having him to talk to, he is just so sweet and he actually listens to me Luna! I mean, really listens. And doesn't treat me like a child!"
Ginny had ended with her arms crossing and lip pouting like the child she said she wasn't and Luna had felt a memory pop forward to rest in the forefront of her brain.
Of a story her mother had relayed, about a boy with the ability to charm books to do his bidding. The story about a handsome boy, with abilities and skill that rumored to rival Dumbledore.
Tales told to Pandora by her uncle before his untimely death, an uncle who'd been schoolmates with the boy.
Tales of power.
Tales Luna had cut her teeth on at bedtime.
Another memory had surfaced, of a fight in a bookstore over the summer, of a flash of platinum hair and haughty glare and tumbled books.
"What was the name?" Luna had asked, eyes bright with intrigue.
Her fingers had traced the name on her knee, eliciting goosebumps of anticipation as Ginny had whispered reverently,
"Tom Riddle."