Luna(tic) (Marauders Era)

48. Back Turned to the Ocean

The summer passed easily, almost brightly in Luna's little corner of the world. She visited Pandora, even Remus once. She avoided letting anyone visit her. And she avoided the realization she had had. About Sam. About Remus. About herself.

She avoided even thinking about it when she could. It was a black hole. It was a bottomless pit. It was an ocean so deep and vast and full of eddies and currents and undertows that Luna knew that despite all her years of practice treading water, the moment she stepped into it, she would be pulled under. Knew that it would drown her. Even the spray from it struck her senseless sometimes.

That first full moon of the summer - a clear July day that faded into a brightly lit, warm night that might have been beautiful if Luna were someone different - had splashed her in the face. She had barely slept, too busy trying not to think, but when she had nodded off, all the usual nightmares had appeared. Except the usual nightmares had suddenly had meanings. The claws on her chest suddenly belonged to a monster she had a name for. A werewolf. The human eyes always lingering there had a meaning. Because it had been a human. A transformed one, but a human just the same. The blood and the pain of it had suddenly been more real knowing it had happened, even if she wasn't sure the nightmare really was a proper memory.

And she wasn't sure.

Because the moon still stared down at her. It was still a fixture. Still a presence. A silent one, but one she was sure could speak at any moment.

Waking up the morning after was harder and harsher than usual. Seeing Sam's still slightly see-through self had been worse than usual. Dragging herself out of bed and pretending some part of her chest wasn't aching with more than old scars had been more difficult than usual.

And yet Luna did it. She woke. She rose. She went about her day. She persisted. As she always had. And for the sake of her mother, she did it without comment. Without so much as a crease in her brow.

And as the month wore on and the moon waned to slivers, it got easier to avoid the ocean. Easier to look away from it all. Easier to do as she had always done and pretend that this new information changed nothing. Because it didn't really. It might make things fall into place, might create understandings Luna didn't want to look at, might answer questions she wasn't sure she even wanted to ask, but it changed nothing, really.

She was still a mad girl with scars and Sam was still her ghost and Remus was still her friend. It changed nothing.

Most of the time Luna found that easy to believe. Found the ocean easy to ignore once her back was turned. Other times, it was an effort. Like on the train back to Hogwarts, when, sitting in a compartment where James and Sirius and Pandora were being loud and Peter was pitching in in that timid way of his and Remus and Luna and a half see-through Sam were sitting silently. Because just then, it felt somehow like it mattered. Like sitting there in that compartment with normal people, the three of them were bound by that understanding Luna had had. Locked together by the clicking of those tumblers. Othered, somehow, by the scars they shared. Scars Luna thought only she knew the full weight of.

"You're staring," came a soft voice and Luna startled, blinking rapidly even as her eyes darted from the place they had indeed been resting.

"Sorry," she muttered, gaze fixed firmly on the floor, heartbeat load against her throat, refusing to look up at what had to be the ocean even as its spray stung her cheeks.

Remus smiled softly, an expression like the easing out of a wave that Luna only just caught in the corner of her eye. "It's okay," he said lightly. "Something on your mind?"

Luna blinked once more, could have sworn the lights in the compartment sparkled from salt spray on her lashes. "No," she lied, studying the carpet of the compartment like she could memorize the stains against its pattern. Like seeing enough proof she was on land would make that ocean in her head go away.