Luna Lovegood and the Music Box {ON HOLD}

Homeward Bound

            “Just a moment, Daddy!” Luna responded to her father’s call.  She was in her room putting her last few robes and books into her trunk.  Closing the heavy lid and latching the lock, Luna sat in the middle of the floor and looked around.  This was the last time she’d be in her own room until Christmas break.  Her fingers gripped the plush rug that used to be in her mum’s lab.  Pressing her nose to it, she could almost still smell the lingering scent of smoke and ash.  A picture of Luna and her Mum embracing one another sat on her nightstand.  She picked it up and placed it in her bag.

            To her left was her closet, mostly empty now, and a chair that she’d read many a good book in.  On her right were shelves upon shelves of novels, textbooks and more.  There were three whole shelves dedicated to months’ worth of Quibbler magazines.  Standing, she went over to them and ran her finger over their spines.  She had the latest edition (hot off the press not two days before) stowed in her carry-on, currently slung over her pink shoulder.  Luna was dressed in her favorite Muggle clothes: pink jacket, blue leggings and embroidered skirt.  She had bought the skirt at a Muggle department store, but then transformed the little pink and yellow stars and hearts into dancing Crumple-Horned Snorkacks.

            Her favorite part of her room, though, was something that Luna had been working on all summer: portraits her new friends.  The faces of Harry Potter, Ronald Weasley, Hermione Granger, Ginny Weasley and Neville Longbottom smiled down at her from the ceiling.  Written in gold, shinning letters, the words “friends…friends…friends” connected the pictures together as if in a chain.

            As she Luna picked up her belongings and proceeded to descend down the stairs, the summer nostalgia hit her before she even hit the bottom step.  The summer would be over as soon as they apparated into King’s Cross Station and she boarded the Hogwarts Express, leaving her daddy behind.  The summer had been her best in a long time.  Ronald and Ginny didn’t live too far away—just down the road a little ways—and Luna was able to visit them an ample amount of times.  Midway through the summer, Luna had gone over for a sleepover with Ginny to find Harry there as well.  He said it was by order of Dumbledore that he spend the rest of his summer in a protected wizard home, seeing as You-Know-Who was even starting to catch the attention of Muggles, with all of his ravaging and pillaging and murdering and such.  Around a week before they were to go to King’s Cross, Hermione showed up at the Burrow, there so she could go with the Weasleys to Diagon Alley and then the Station.  It had been a joyful reunion.

            The only one missing from their Ministry crew was Neville.  Luna exchanged letters by owl with Neville every other day, practically, seeing as his Gran wasn’t able to take him anywhere and Luna’s father was generally busy with his printing press and they couldn’t see each other.  She looked forward to seeing him on the train as soon as possible.

            “Ready, Loon?” Daddy asked, taking her heavy trunk from her hand as she reached the bottom of the stair.  She nodded after taking one last look around at the crooked window panes, the dish-filled sink, the smell of tea in the air.  This was her home.  She would miss it, but she was excited to go back to her other home: Hogwarts. 

            With their free hands, they locked palms and in a gut-wrenching moment, they had spun to oblivion and back, landing at the entrance to King’s Cross, the regal arches and majestic pillars rising before them.  Luna had never been a fan of apparition, but it was effective so she tolerated it.  She had learned to hold back the bile rising in her throat.

            Still hand-in-hand with her father, they began making their way to platform 9 ¾, his green robes billowing out behind them like tails.  She had also learned to ignore the stares of the Muggles.