Luna(tic) (Marauders Era)

35. Chamomile, Pine Cones and Zinnias

For the third time since they had met, Pandora stayed awake late into the night. Waiting for Luna.

The first time had been in October, when Pandora had left Luna in the common room doing homework sometime around 11pm and gone to prepare for bed. She hadn't intended to stay up late, she'd just decided she'd wait up for Luna. Just until her new roommate came upstairs to bed. Except Luna hadn't come upstairs. Hours had passed until Pandora had slipped back down the stairs to check on her new friend and found her sitting cross legged on one of the couches, chin resting on her folded hands on the back of the seat, bathed in the light of the full moon as she stared out the window.

Pandora hadn't said anything. Not that night or the next morning. Instead, she'd just gone back to bed. She'd known the other girl only a month after all and besides, a month had been long enough to tell that Luna was shy. And private. Pressing her had seemed both rude and rather counter productive.

The second time had been only a month or so later, in November, and it had been less pleasant because despite a similar start to the night, checking the common room had yielded nothing. Luna had simply never come back to Ravenclaw tower, at least, not during those long hours Pandora had spent awake, waiting. But Luna had been waiting for them the next morning in the Great Hall, plate filled with breakfast food, and she'd smiled and seemed normal and Pandora had let it go.

She'd let it go every time afterwards too. She'd stopped staying up when Luna wasn't back before a reasonable bed time. And she'd tried to stop worrying. There were, she had learned, some nights when Luna simply didn't come up to the dormitory. Nights when she didn't sleep in her own bed. Nights when she seemed to vanish. But every time, she showed up at breakfast the next day seeming just the same as she had been before. Except once, when she'd gotten sick. But that had been a cold and a coincidence as far as Pandora could tell and in the end, it was easier not to push it. Luna didn't seem like the type who needed or wanted to be pushed, after all.

Actually, when people - usually James or Sirius - pushed Luna, she seemed to somehow... get smaller. Like instead of squeezing something out of her they were simply pressing her into a corner. Like her secrets, or perhaps just her entire self, were sealed so tight she'd let herself be crushed before she let them out to keep the pressure from breaking her.

It was a strange thing, a worrying thing, really, but it wasn't Pandora's place to play therapist to a friend who didn't want it. So she simply didn't press. But she also had limits.

When Luna had disappeared that day at the end of winter break when James had been a proper arse - not that he wasn't often - Pandora had tracked her friend down. And still, she hadn't asked what had made Luna run. Hadn't asked why it had affected her so much. She had her guesses of course, but she had spoken none of them. If she was right, after all, if that shyness was the kind that had been learned, if her fear had been taught, if she had run because James that day had reminded her of her life before Hogwarts, then bringing it up seemed just plain cruel. Hogwarts, was afterall, a school of magic. And if someone wanted to start over there, no matter how young they were to need such a thing, Pandora most certainly wasn't going to get in the way.

So instead of asking, instead of pressing, she'd simply asked Luna to remember that her friends worried. That if she was going to disappear, they needed some way to know she was okay. That people cared if she was okay.

And Luna had found a way to tell them. She didn't disappear often but when she did, ever since that conversation, it had been with a quick double tap of her finger somewhere on Pandora's arm. A tiny little gesture that promised that she was fine. And true, she could have been lying. Pandora knew that. But if her friend wanted to lie to her, then Pandora wasn't going to make her stop. Pandora had never really understood why, but people liked lying, for some reason. It made them feel comfortable. And eventually, Pandora had decided it wasn't her job to call them all out on it. It was far too much work anyway. So it was on Luna to tell the truth. And Pandora would work with what she was told. And what she guessed.