Luna(tic) (Marauders Era)

32. The Girl at the Bottom of a Storm Tossed Sea

James and Sirius appeared harmlessly enough in Luna's day. Or at least, as harmlessly as anyone could appear in a day like this. Which wasn't very harmless at all. Even Pandora's waking in the morning had left Luna scattered and shaking and desperate to control herself. To hold it together. To keep the pieces of herself from falling apart.

James and Sirius's appearance on the way to the library was no better. But it was also no worse. What was worse was that they came with Remus. And the sight of Remus was less a fraying at the seams and more a yank on the stray thread Luna had been painstakingly weaving back into the tapestry all day long.

It was hard for Luna to say, in that moment, why the sight of him was terrifying. All she knew was that it was. All she knew was that just like that full moon day at the beginning of term, Remus's scars were a shiny pink against skin that was the sort of pale only sickness could bring. All she knew was that he had seen her once before when the edges were fraying and though he had been kind and strangely so, he, more than any of the others, had reason to be suspicious. Because he had seen her struggle to hold herself in these fragile fragments. Had seen her balancing on the edge. He had not seen her fall, of course. But that had only been because Sam had been there. And now Sam wasn't. And Remus, because he had seen it before, might recognize it again. Might know to look where the others didn't. Might catch those tell tale signs of a girl halfway to unravelling.

Which meant Luna needed to be careful. Be perfect. Be a porcelain doll without a crack in sight when it felt like she might already be in pieces on the floor.

She failed immediately. Because porcelain dolls didn't squeak and hide behind their friends at the sight of approaching acquaintances. Porcelain dolls didn't start running fingers over their scars and wishing for questions they knew they weren't allowed to ask. Porcelain dolls stood still and straight and they smiled the whole day through.

Luna had never made a very good porcelain doll. At least, not until she was a breaking one. And then her skin was perfect china, her bones the fine dust of broken pottery and her face the fractured smile of a dropped figurine.

So perhaps, Luna though vaguely, it was a good thing that she wasn't managing to be a doll just now. Because it meant she wasn't quite broken yet.

It also meant, however, that she had just jumped and hidden at the sight of four boys she should not have been so very afraid of.

Thankfully, this was not as much of a problem as it might have been, because Pandora was, as ever, an angel in standard issue robes and over-large leaf earrings and though she sighed and though there was resignation in the face she did not turn to look at Luna, she also didn't comment. She simply reached out a hand and wrapped it around Luna's and, when those four boys drew level with them and turned around to trace the steps to the library with them, she acted as though Luna had done nothing at all odd, her flat stare in response to James's questioning look warning enough to keep them from asking about her reaction.

But it did not keep them from asking about other things.

Luna barely heard the hellos, the greetings, the complaints about the essays they'd been set and the insanity that was their upcoming Defense Against the Dark Arts exam. She hardly registered the conversation turning inevitably to Transfiguration because she didn't care very much what they were talking about. What she cared about was staying silent. Was knitting that stray thread back into herself so she would not trip over it. So she would not unravel. So she could keep this knit barrier between her fragile porcelain self and the breaking that came when she was exposed. What she cared about was being as thoroughly invisible as Sam usually was. As thoroughly normal as anyone had ever wished she could be.

And for those first fast minutes of conversations, Luna felt like she was succeeding. Like she was winning this silent battle no one else even knew she was fighting.