Pansy was alone for what felt like hours. Alone, and silent. It was as if she were a child again, small enough to slip below the waterline of the bath and stare up at the rippling world above her, everything so quiet except the sound of her own heartbeat. She knew she should be trying to accomplish something, but all she could do was float. Venturing ahead—the only direction there was in a maze like this, especially one she had not yet begun—would have been a helpful way to spend this idle time. She could pick her way through the maze, and when Draco and Loony appeared again—she had to believe they would—she would be able to direct them to her, to the way out, and no time would be lost, and maybe, even, they would be almost home. Instead, she was afraid again. She hated being alone, and thought she’d had done with the experience when Loony had turned up. What if she surged forward alone, and she reached some sort of invisible barrier like the gateway into the maze? What if she disappeared, and she could never find her way back, just as Draco and Loony would never find their way back to her? What if Draco looked for her, and became even more lost? What if he was separated from Loony?
What if Loony got lost, too?
Pansy swallowed. She knew she could be useful if she tried, she knew she could be brazen with reinforcements, but she was alone, and that paralyzed her.
And so she waited, and did nothing.
Finally, finally, Draco and Loony emerged into view. Pansy leapt up. Surrendering all sense of decorum, she had sat herself in the dirt, arranging the odd, smooth rocks that were scattered here and there across the ground into rings that sometimes connected, and sometimes stayed apart. She did not bother to dust herself off this time—and only partly because, if she gave into her relief and embraced Draco as she wanted to, she would cover his sorry self with dirt, too.
He certainly looked as if he needed to be held. His shoulders were slumped tiredly, and his eyes were rimmed with red. His hair, so smooth and perfect on a normal day, was even more mussed than it had been when she had left him. When he swiped at his eyes once with the back of his hand, it left a streak of dirt across his face that he did not bother to rub away. Yet in spite of this, he seemed so much less defeated than he had been. His shoulders, she realized, were not slack with resignation; he had finally, simply relaxed, and there was a kind of victory in that calm. Instead of looking to be on the brink of breaking, he looked as if he had already been broken, and had begun to be put back together again, piece by piece.
Loony was holding his hand. As Pansy stared at it, Loony gave it a squeeze, and then released it, fluid and unselfconscious.
Draco stepped toward Pansy, and then stopped a few feet short of her, hesitant.
“What—?” she began, momentarily forgetting that she was angry with him. Loony had worked some sort of magic—she had to have done. What had she said?
His lips parted, unsure. “Lovegood...” He shook his head, and his eyes darted back and forth, as if he were searching for something.
“Please,” Loony interrupted. “If you don’t mind, I’d like it if you called me Luna.” Her round eyes flicked to Pansy. “I know what you call me, you see,” she continued, and Pansy looked down at her feet. Hers and Loo—una’s, barely in the same field of vision, and so very different—Luna’s were still bare, and so impossibly dirty that they were probably stained. Pansy’s were always covered. “I don’t mean to be ungrateful for a nickname, as I’ve never had one before, but it might get confusing, since I’m not used to it. As for my surname,” she added, returning her gaze to Draco, “I’m still not quite used to people calling me that, either.”
Pansy started, her own feet shifting a little as Luna’s remained perfectly rooted. This was the closest to a lie she’d ever caught Luna telling—not that it was easy to tell anything about Luna, with her placid, owlish face and unwavering sense of self. For it had to be a lie, hadn’t it? Luna had to mind what people called her—and she had to be accustomed to it, too. Yet there was the calm smile that always seemed to be lingering at the corners of her lips, ready to placate, ready to be released into the open like a wonderful, wild, magical thing. How much of that was fixed into place by weeks of practice? Pansy couldn’t reconcile the idea with her own image of Luna, which was unwaveringly honest to a fault.
Perhaps she was simply brave. After all, she seemed to be everything that Pansy was not.
Noticing Pansy’s stare, Luna blinked back at her, and slowly tucked a bit of hair behind her ear that had been tickling her face like a thin bolt of lightning. It was a brief flash of self-consciousness, and it made Pansy want to echo it. She stilled her fingers to keep them away from her hair, and they fought to flutter at her sides.
“Okay.” Draco nodded. Something seemed to have stolen his words, but it hadn’t left him bereft. Even with two syllables, he sounded sure of himself again. Pansy still had to struggle to remember what, precisely, he ought to be sure of at that moment, however; puzzling over Luna had distracted her completely.
With curiosity more than anything else this time, she watched as Draco offered his hand to Luna, who slipped her own lightly into his grasp in reply, and then they both turned to her. Draco hesitated a moment—he was being so careful with her now, and she wasn’t sure what to think of it, whether she was pleased—before repeating the motion with his other hand, extending it toward her with a kind of pleading in his eyes—when had that got there?—that he would never reflect upon aloud. It reminded her of when they had first arrived in this place, however many days ago that had been. The memory softened her.
His skin was cool, but hers was warm. She felt the slightest pressure against her palm, and then it was gone.
He leaned down until his face was beside hers—he wasn’t much taller than she. “Sorry,” he muttered, flushing. She almost couldn’t hear him. But she did.
Pansy smiled, just a little. She didn’t make him say it again.
The maze was easier to navigate than any of them had expected. In part, this was because they could see where they were going; each turn was lain out before them, each dead end plainly visible and simple to avoid. The maze itself, however, wasn’t as challenging as it had seemed. The sheer size of it had daunted them from the very start, looming ahead of them with its seeming impossibilities. Once they had begun the actual task of traversing its paths, however, they were startled to discover that the maze was defined only by the most elementary of tricks and traps, simple enough that, if it were drawn on a piece of parchment, a child might unerringly trace from its start to its finish in just over a minute.
It was not disappointing, Pansy thought, for she had never much enjoyed challenges, preferring to occupy her time with whatever came easiest to her; if she was to be done with this maze much more quickly than she had first anticipated, then she was glad of it. If anything, the simplicity of the maze was anticlimactic. But then again, that followed the nature of everything there: the fog plains, the desert, the lands they had clambered over before Luna came—everything had been so simple, but in their simplicity, they had been dangerous. Pansy, Draco, and Luna had sloughed through them as if through a mire, when often they had been faced by nothing but a particularly long walk, when it came down to it. The seeming lack of peril had her unconsciously but periodically holding her breath, waiting for the moment when they realized that they were immersed in something from which they could not escape.
The wait did not last long.
They had walked for hours, though none of them had wearied during that time, and none had stopped for even the tiniest splash of water. It was, Pansy thought, as if the moment the idea of tiredness or thirst peeked into the corner of her mind, something chased it away once more into its hiding place. She had felt something similar before they had entered the maze, when she had tried to look behind her, but found that she could not, no matter how frequently she had thought to will herself to do so—which, admittedly, would not have been all that much, anyway. When she had asked the others about it, Draco had described an entirely different sensation, and Luna had not even thought to look behind her in the first place.
They had not spoken about much else. The silence around them felt catching; even their footfalls were deadened by the earth beneath their feet and the quiet that lingered above. Even Pansy, who was usually burdened by the need to chatter, could hardly think of more than a few sentences to express her thoughts—they seemed unnecessary. Then again, lately she hadn’t felt much like chattering at all. The only comfort in the silence was the press of their hands, still locking them into a chain that, while broken up several times, always seemed to find its way back together.
Soon, they neared the wall that Draco had inadvertently raised hours before with his thrown rock. It had not grown or changed in any way since its initial transformation, which was reassuring. Though they had managed to keep any stray fingers and toes away from the walls, they still knew near nothing about how the maze functioned. For all they were aware, the outer wall they had left behind might have begun to expand in their absence, sneaking behind them in their shadows.
Not that they had any shadows. Though hours had passed, there had been no change in the light that Pansy could detect. It still seemed to be without a source; and because there was no apparent sun above them, there was no hint of darkness cast anywhere. It was as if the world lacked a dimension, as if one more crucial element of existence had been removed with the need for sound.
Out of habit, Pansy wiped her brow. With no sun beating down upon her head, and an odd coolness to the air, she had not sweat as much as she expected.
“Should we rest?” she asked suddenly, perplexed by her own question and her need to have asked it.
“We haven’t yet,” Draco replied with a shrug that looked as uncertain as her question had been.
“It might be nice,” Luna agreed. She was swinging her and Draco’s arms absently between them like a child might; all she lacked was a small bunch of wildflowers for her other hand and a carefree tune on her lips. The image had a sweet air to the edges of it, even in Pansy’s mind. Each time Luna swung her arm, Draco’s other shoulder moved in tandem, and Pansy swayed in response, one movement rippling into another.
They were coming to a slow stop, still enjoying the sensation of their own motions, when they first smelled it. At first, Pansy thought it was the sweet scent in her thoughts manifesting themselves in reality, for there was a particular, familiar smell drifting to them. Soon, however, the smell changed; it became harsher, more defined. In the beginning, it was closer to the smell of woodsmoke burning miles away, carried across hills and fields by gentle gusts of wind. Now, Pansy could not shake the feeling that something else was burning, and close—something living, something writhing. It smelled as if all of Hogwarts was aflame with everyone trapped inside.
None of them moved—their line was utterly rigid, all ripples ceasing at once.
In their stillness, something emerged from behind the wall.
When Luna screamed, the sound made Pansy’s head spin even more. Already, she could hardly process what she saw.
The creature looked like a horse, but bigger—so much bigger; its head fell just short of the top of the wall. Something was off about it, something that made its skeletal shape different from that of other horses aside from its size, but she couldn’t see what it was, for the entirety of its body was covered in flames that seemed to bellow their wrath from the center of its being. Its eyes, when it lowered its head to regard them, were the dull grey of ash. For a brief moment, Pansy wondered if it was blind, but the fixedness of its gaze proved otherwise. Unless it had an exceptional sense of smell that could pinpoint their collective size and stance precisely.
Luna was still screaming.
“Stop it!” Pansy screamed, herself. “Stop it! Stop it!” Draco’s hand was gripping hers painfully, but she could barely feel it. The longer she looked at the creature, the more wildly her thoughts raced, the more her eyes traced the movement of the flames that wracked its blackened coat. She felt as if she were going mad. She wanted to scream and laugh and cry and destroy something, anything.
She wrenched her eyes away. “Do something!” she shrieked at Draco, who was as transfixed as she had been only a second before. “Take out your wand! You have to do something, you have to, she can’t, you’re the only one—”
“But you can’t! It’s a Heliopath!” Luna shrieked, startling Pansy again. Luna’s voice had never strayed from its usual even tone—not that Pansy had ever heard. That she was screaming and utterly losing control of herself almost frightened Pansy more than the creature—until, of course, she looked at it again, and was sucked once more into its deep abyss.
No one moved until the Heliopath snorted, spraying sparks that singed their clothes and Luna’s bare legs. Then, they ran.
For each of their five steps, the Heliopath took one, following behind them at a leisurely pace that would have been comical in contrast to their own frantic running, had they not been the ones being pursued. The wall had seemed so short before when they had seen it from afar, but running parallel to it, it seemed never-ending. Once they passed it, they might be able to see an escape, but it was as if the wall were elongating itself in a direct mockery of their terror. They were blind—blind as the creature most certainly was not. The further they went, the greater the heat at their backs became, until Pansy could feel the threads of her clothing singeing, bubbling, fraying. She ran faster. In her panic, it was as if she was alone; Draco no longer held her hand.
Suddenly, the wall ended. The change came so quickly that Draco, who was ahead, slammed into one of the invisible walls across from them. Luna and Pansy were just able to pull him back before the short sticks in the ground exploded past them. While his dazed weight sagged against them both, Pansy finally saw what the growth of the second wall had done: it had outlined a new, short passage. Beyond it, Pansy could see something dark and moving, something that seemed to wend and tumble through the ground like a river. It was not inside the maze.
It was the way out.
Half-dragging Draco, who was sluggishly beginning to recover, Pansy and Luna moved toward the exit as quickly as they could. The Heliopath gave a shriek behind them that sounded partly like the crack of a burning tree after a lightning strike, partly like an avalanche, and partly like the shriek of a hippogriff. At the cry, Draco regained himself, and they ran faster.
Pansy had hoped, in an irrational sort of way, that the Heliopath would not be able to cross the exit of the maze, trapped inside it as its savage guardian; but that hope was dashed as the Heliopath gave another screech and set one fiery hoof out of the maze after them. Its pace was still slow; it knew they could not outrun it.
Something made them all continue on, regardless. Something pressed them forward, urging them instead of driving them from behind.
The river. Pansy could see at once that that was what it was. Stones, the same as the smooth black ones they had encountered throughout the maze, the same as the one Draco had thrown, seemed to fall over each other in rushing waves, all traveling in the same direction, stretching in a winding line as far as Pansy could see. There were larger boulders that were positioned in a line across the broadest part, and each time a particularly powerful stone wave struck one, some of the stones broke apart into pebbles that crashed into the sky, and then fell back down again into the river to rejoin their fellows in the unending current. Pansy regarded it for only a moment. The ground had begun to shake at the Heliopath’s continuous approach, and she watched it, frozen.
Vaguely, she heard Draco searching for something, rooting around in his robes. When he spoke, his voice was dry and cracked, as if the Heliopath’s flames had parched his throat beyond repair. “Circle,” he croaked. It took too many seconds for Pansy to comprehend, but by the time she did, Luna had already linked her arm around Pansy’s, and Draco had his wand out, this time pointing at Pansy, whose back she had turned to the stone river at Luna’s touch.
Draco’s fingers shook. “Depulso,” he whispered, and then tried again when nothing happened, this time bellowing, “DEPULSO!”
Nothing.
Nothing.
“Nothing,” Pansy squeaked.
“The river,” Luna said quietly. Pansy’s wild eyes could barely focus upon her. Luna’s voice was less hysterical than it had been before, but nowhere near its usual calm. “I think it might be a barrier—”
“We’d be safe,” Draco agreed. After a breathless pause, he added, “If you’re right, that is.”
Draco’s newfound acceptance of Luna seemed to extend only so far. Luna’s eyes were wider than usual, round and wet and unreadable.
“Just go!” Pansy shrieked. “We’ll be dead either way if we don’t move!” She was already leaping for one of the boulders, the nearest one to her and the first in the line of seven grotesque stepping stones. Pansy Parkinson had never had a prouder moment than the one in which she grasped that boulder and clambered up to stand on its crest—the moment in which she did not, in fact, fall to her death in the black stone river. She focused on the next one, and leapt. The boulders were rough, unlike their counterparts in the river, and they were not flat. They were like tiny mountaintops, or the spines on a dragon’s back. They were easy to cling onto, but difficult to stand on to make for the next one. Pansy kept leaping, until she heard Luna scream again. Pansy whirled around, almost losing her balance in her haste and carelessness.
Luna was hunched over the top of one of the boulders. At first, Pansy could not see what was wrong, because Luna’s long hair fell to Luna’s feet like a waterfall, obscuring anything amiss from Pansy’s sight—the heat from the Heliopath must have incinerated the elastic. And then Luna shifted, and Pansy saw. There was blood on the boulder, already dripping from its edge like red ink. Luna’s bare feet had not been a hinderance to her for their entire journey—not until now, when she needed them most to flee.
Pansy looked at Draco, who looked past her to the shore which was only a few boulders away. She could nearly see it reflecting in his eyes, the madness of its closeness, the nearness of possible safety and escape beckoning to him.
“Draco Malfoy, don’t you dare!” Pansy screeched. “Just this once, don’t you dare!”
He didn’t dare. He went back for Luna.
Somehow. Pansy would never remember.
Somehow. Luna was smaller than both of them, lighter than both of them, like a willow branch.
Somehow, Draco helped her to her feet, and sent her ahead of him to Pansy, who caught Luna as she began to fall, who felt Luna for a moment press against her, soft and warm and shaking, as Pansy pulled her to safety, and even kept that stupid shoulder-bag from being lost forever.
Somehow, Luna limping, Draco breathing hard, Pansy screaming uncontrollably at the top of her lungs, they made it across.
Somehow.
“DO IT NOW!” Pansy bellowed.
Draco’s Banishing Charm was sending the three of them away before Pansy had even finished her last syllable, and the Heliopath faded away as if into nothingness as they soared.
Everything was soft. The ground, the smells, the colors. Everything was pale pink and butter yellow, like a sunset in springtime should be, but never was. The softness wasn’t bright, but it seemed to glow with gentle light and warmth.
Luna opened her eyes fully, her lashes fluttering as she adjusted to her new surroundings. On her side in the soft grass, she stretched out her hand to the white thing that seemed to be planted in the ground by her head. The light curls of her hair seemed to reach for the thing with her, as if she wanted it with the entirety of her being.
When she saw what it was, she smiled. “Hope,” she said to herself, because she knew the others could not hear her, “is the thing with feathers.”
Her fingertip just barely brushed the tip of the white feather, and she fell back into slumber, her lips still curved into a smile.
Again, Luna was the first to wake. The light had not changed, but that meant little, though she was happy to note that her shadow had returned to her. She reached out to it on the grass, and her shadow reached back in greeting.
Draco and Pansy still slept beside her, curled up in such strange ways that Luna wondered whether they always slept so oddly, or if they only lie that way because that was how they had fallen. Luna smoothed the hair from their foreheads, and carefully straightened their sleeping forms as best she could without waking them. She withdrew the checkered blanket from the picnic basket, unfolded it until it was a longer rectangle, and slipped it under their heads. Only after her companions were tended to did she look around her—really look.
And once she had looked, she kept looking. Looking, and smiling, for what she saw was more beautiful than anything she had ever seen.
There were feathers everywhere, a garden of them, planted in rows like the trees of an orchard. They grew not from bare dirt like that of the vegetable patch she and her father tended at home; instead, the feathers had been planted in the soft grass upon which she had awoken, grass the color of spring, and almost mosslike in texture, now that she peered more closely at it and rubbed some between her thumb and forefinger.
No fences protected the feathers, though there were clear divisions within the garden. Each type of feather—for there were many different types, from whites to dull browns to vibrant blues and reds—had its own organized place. Luna could see a patch of metallic blue and green peacock feathers to her left, and a growth of what looked like barn owl feathers behind them. To her left, she saw the tiniest peeps of white down, barely visible through the moss as they struggled toward the light. They grew, like any plant might; Luna even saw a large watering can off to one side, though it was the only sign that anyone tended the feathers at all.
How wonderful it would be, she thought, if quills came from feather gardens, instead of having to be plucked from poor birds who had better uses for their feathers. How curious—
Luna paused.
Ah, she thought, an idea dawning in the pink light. Hope, indeed.
When Draco and Pansy awoke, drowsily rubbing their eyes and blinking slowly, Luna was ready for them.
“Where are we?” Pansy asked, as Draco began to inspect the garden.
Luna felt a light flutter in her chest at the sight of her companions, awake, unhurt, and unafraid. It was as if wherever they were now enveloped them in feelings of safety and comfort. The skin of her own foot, so badly cut on the boulder, looked as smooth and pink as a baby’s—as if hardship were simply a collection of sounds and syllables that were still too foreign to understand. The red ring around her ankle and the bruises from the trick step had all vanished, as well. Luna wiggled her toes in the mossy grass.
“We’re in a garden of feathers,” she said contentedly, “and they’ve just told me how to get home.”
“They’ve—”
“What?” Draco interrupted. He must not have wandered far, which was a pity, Luna thought, because she had done a fair bit of exploring, herself, and knew that Draco wouldn’t care for any of it after what she had just revealed. It really was a lovely garden.
Luna nodded at him. “We’ve been able to go home all along. We just didn’t think of it.”
“Think of what?” Pansy asked. Excitement bloomed in her eyes.
“The parchment,” Luna replied. “That is, I thought about it quite a lot, but not in the way I was supposed to, I suppose.” She held the torn Potions essay out to them, and they gawked at it. “The pieces of this parchment always want to be together. It’s how we found you in the beginning, Draco. You had the nearest piece of the parchment, and so our half took us to you.”
“But you’ve got all the other pieces there,” he said, gesturing to her bag, from which one corner of her logbook protruded.
“All but one,” Luna corrected. Both Draco and Pansy stared at her. Hurriedly, excitedly, she explained to them about the last piece of parchment she had encountered: the one that still rested above the trick step at Hogwarts, because she had not had time to grab it before she had fallen.
“Would it even be there still?” Draco asked.
“Unless it fell through the step, too, it will still be in our world, I think,” Luna replied.
“And what if it’s in some rubbish heap somewhere?” Pansy questioned.
“At least we’d be in our world,” Draco murmured, half as if to himself.
“It will be much easier to get back to Hogwarts, even if we do end up in a rubbish heap,” Luna reasoned. “Rubbish heaps are awfully interesting, in any case.”
No one seemed to agree with her about that, or else they were ignoring her comment, but Luna didn’t mind. She had known she would be able to help, somehow; she just hadn’t realized it would be so simple, at the same time that it had been so difficult. But she had known, in her heart of hearts, that she hadn’t found the notes for nothing. For nothing always really meant something, if one thought about it long enough.
“Are we ready to leave, then?” Pansy asked.
“Of course!” Draco exclaimed, sounding surprised that she had even thought it necessary to ask. Luna wasn’t surprised; asking was always necessary, and she was pleased with Pansy for thinking of it.
She felt Pansy’s eyes lingering on her, unsure, and then Pansy shrugged. “Of course,” she amended. “We should go home.”
At the word, Draco shifted his weight.
“To Hogwarts,” Luna added, understanding. She touched his arm.
The parchment spell was easier this time, because she had done it once before. She hadn’t been certain, the first time, because she had only talked and read about it before. But it really was useful, and simple, as long as one had the right kind of parchment. Which she did. How lucky it was the the Malfoys were so wealthy! With any luck, Draco would never go anywhere without a piece of parchment in his pocket; that way, he would never encounter such trouble again. There would always be a way out. A way home. She hoped he wouldn’t forget that. She certainly wouldn’t.
Luna let the Potions essay sniff the scraps of parchment—the missing pieces of itself—as she had done before, and as before, the parchment began to hum with anticipation after she told it what she wanted. The parchment was very keen to return to its missing piece, and Luna didn’t want to make it wait any longer than it had to. It had been awfully patient with them, after all.
“Hold on, please,” Luna said, as she held out her hand.
“We’re going back,” Draco breathed as he took it. Pansy clutched at Draco’s arm tightly, but didn’t say anything. Everything was happening so fast, so fast that Luna hardly had time to catch her breath. It was a good thing she did.
For this time, they did not vanish with a bang.
Well. Luna later supposed it might have been a bang. Mostly, she supposed it was a splash, or maybe a disgruntled gurgle. She was certainly gurgling at the time, and very much disgruntled.
She had not expected to be underwater when surfacing from another world. Deep underwater, by the looks of things. She had certainly not expected the piece of parchment the Giant Squid had taken to be whole enough to attract the Potions essay, after all of its time in the water. It shouldn’t have been! But that was magic for you, Luna supposed.
A quartet of grindylows were eyeing them bewilderedly from behind a cluster of aquatic weeds. Luna did not pay them much mind, for she was beginning to panic again. Far above, she could see a sparkle of white light from what must have been the surface, but how were they to get to it? Her eyes had begun to ache at being in contact with the water, and her lungs had started to burn. She thrashed her arms and legs wildly, trying to make herself swim, and trying to avoid the flailing limbs of the others. If they hurt each other down there, especially after going so far together, they would never make it to the surface. Luna couldn’t bear the thought of that—though her thoughts were making less and less sense as her mind and lungs cried out for air. She couldn’t think fast enough. She gave one last kick, and her eyes began to cloud.
It was just enough. Someone—her senses were too dim then to register who—had accidentally pulled her bag from her shoulder, and her last kick had dislodged some of the contents. The picnic basket! She was too far gone to have to keep herself from crying out.
Luna waited. As if sensing her expectation, the others slowed, too, and watched as the Muggle flotation devices drifted out of the basket, took a quick glance at their surroundings, and began to expand. They grew and grew until they came into their full size, and then larger and larger—she would have to speak to them about that later, she thought dimly. Then, with the fervor of a pair of happy porpoises, the flotation devices swept around them, summarily swept them up, and rocketed toward the surface with their half-drowned charges.
The night air was even sweeter than Luna had ever imagined it could be. She gulped in lungfuls of it while the others did the same, taking no time to savor it. Thanks to her fortunately-failed picnic, there would be plenty of chances for savoring later. She did savor the sight of the stars, though, wishing she could hold out her tongue and feel their light melting onto the tip of it like snowflakes in winter. There were so many tonight that they even looked like snow, frozen in place in the sky, twinkling with ice and crystal and magic.
Someone grabbed her arm. “Look!” Pansy cried out. It took Luna a while to understand where she was meant to be looking, as, by her own account, she was looking already. But then she saw, and Pansy’s hand rested more gently on her arm once Pansy realized that Luna had found what she ought.
It was Hogwarts. Lights shining merrily, welcomingly. Hogwarts.
Home. She glanced at Draco. Or something like it, at least.
A tall figure stood on the shore, silhouetted by the bright light of the castle. Draco used his wand to transfigure the last, soggy sandwich from Luna’s picnic basket into a pair of oars, but Luna felt suddenly so exhausted that she had hardly the energy with which to grip its slightly rough—and vaguely woven-looking—handle, even to make it paddle by magic. Judging by the others’ slackening arms, they had about as much strength left in them as she
In the end, they floated. The oars trailed along, forgotten, in the holds that had sprouted up for them from the floatation devices, creating ripples along the otherwise placid surface of the lake. Luna supposed she ought to be cold, for it was October, but the sight of the castle had set her heart thrumming delightedly, and it seemed to warm her from the inside out. She moved her feet languidly in the water, the liquid rushing between her toes, and her eyes drooped as the three of them drifted along toward the waiting figure.
The last ten feet or so from shore, the figure raised its arm, and a gust of warm wind suddenly caught the flotation devices from behind and gave them a kindly push. Luna, Pansy, and Draco all gave a jolt when their feet touched the sand and the devices came to a stop, though the devices had done so with the slightest of motions. While she had been floating, Luna had thought that perhaps she might go on like that forever, sailing beneath the stars, warm and alive, and that she might not mind so much if she did, if she wasn’t alone. Perhaps the others felt the same. Their arrival on the shore had startled them, too, after all.
The figure extended its hand again, this time without the wand. Draco, who was the closest to it, reached out and took it automatically.
When the figure shifted into the light that reflected off the surface of the lake, Draco quickly released the hand and straightened himself. “Oh,” he said.
There came a chuckle. “Oh, indeed, Mr. Malfoy,” said Professor Dumbledore. “Miss Parkinson. Miss Lovegood.” He nodded at each of them in turn. “I see that you have brought yourselves safely back to us at last.”
Only then did Luna see two other figures standing just behind Professor Dumbledore, one tall and thin, the other very short. As if responding to an queue unheard by their students, Professor Flitwick and Professor Snape emerged from the shadows, both looking equally grim for the first time Luna could remember. No one had ever matched Professor Snape’s joyless expression so proficiently. Unlike Professor Snape, however, Professor Flitwick’s tiny face soon broke into a reassuring smile—even if its edges did turn down just a little, in spite of themselves. Draco and Pansy, who had both stiffened at the sight of the Headmaster, looked relieved to see their own Head of House waiting to welcome them.
How lonely, Luna thought sadly. How terrible, that they still couldn’t appreciate the welcome that others had the capacity to give. She supposed she couldn’t blame them entirely, what with the way Slytherins were routinely treated and thought about, but she had hoped...
Luna had hoped many things, really. With any luck, those hopes would become dreams, and those dreams would come to fruition. Luna was a great believer in luck.
“What happened to us?” The question came from Draco. He seemed to have gained strength from Professor Snape, who had one hand resting upon Draco’s shoulder, one hand upon Pansy’s, like the shadows they had almost lost.
Somewhere, a night bird trilled a decisive sort of note. Professor Dumbledore smiled, a little rueful, and more apologetic and worried than Luna thought he meant to come across. “I’m afraid that particular trick step which afforded you such hardship this past week has been a known maker of mischief for quite some time. With so many students and staff avoiding it—jumping over it, or even following entirely different routes simply to escape the possibility of encountering it, I believe—it tends to grow a bit offended over the years. It will, when the time is precisely wrong, kidnap a few students for its own amusement until they are able to reason their way out of its hold. Unfortunately, its magic is such that it prevents anyone from noticing any disappearances until the captive—or captives, as your case illustrates—is on the threshold of unlocking the mystery of the trick step. Otherwise, the staff and myself would have been able to provide you with more aid.”
“That trick step is a tad trickier than anyone ever thinks,” Professor Flitwick lamented with a sigh. “Never gets its fill, that one.”
“And precautions will be made in future,” Professor Snape said quietly, with a look at the Headmaster. Professor Dumbledore returned Professor Snape’s gaze steadily.
“Yes,” Professor Dumbledore agreed at length. “Though precautions are always being made, and someone is always attempting to break through them.”
“And that’s it, then?” Pansy demanded. “It just—it just got hungry, and we happened to just be there, and that’s that? That’s too bad for us?”
Professor Dumbledore didn’t waver at her tone. “It is a misfortune that you were forced to undergo such trauma, Miss Parkinson, but there is little I can do about it now. You are unharmed, though I imagine Madam Pomfrey will wish you all to visit the Hospital Wing tonight before you return to your beds. You are of course to be pardoned from any assignments in your missed lessons, and your teachers and fellow classmates will be happy to instruct you on the material you were not present to learn.”
“And,” Professor Flitwick added, prompted by the mutinous frown on Draco’s face, “twenty-five points will be rewarded to each of your respective houses.”
Professor Dumbledore turned to them again. “For now, Miss Parkinson, Miss Lovegood, Mr. Malfoy, I repeat that you are safe and unhurt, and that all anyone can do at this current time is remember that fact. I daresay, you have an eventful year ahead of you all, which I hope will compensate somewhat for what you have faced. Filius, Severus?”
The two Professors surged into motion, Professor Snape ushering Draco and Pansy toward the castle in one direction, and Professor Flitwick coaxing Luna toward another. All of them were given dry cloaks to protect them from the night air that still was not as chilling as it ought to have been.
“You’re very quiet, Miss Lovegood,” Professor Flitwick commented to her, not unkindly.
Luna looked down at him, then up at the stars, then across from her, where Draco, Pansy, and Professor Snape were still just barely visible in the dark. As if sensing her, Draco and Pansy turned their heads to look at her. Draco gave her a half-smile that ran deeper than the quirked corner of his lips, and Pansy bit her lip briefly before giving a small, peculiarly shy wave. Luna’s heart pulled after them. Even if they seemed to return to their old selves tomorrow—which Luna knew, deep down, that they would—a part of them would remember their time together. It would never forget it. And Luna would never forget her first friends, just as they would never forget her—deep down. She had only known them a short time, but she was certain of it.
“It’s been rather a quiet day, actually,” Luna said, thoughtful. “Though I find those are the best sorts of days for listening.”
Fondly, she touched the little scrap of parchment that she still clutched tightly in her fist. Just in case.
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- peskywhistpaw (
peskywhistpaw) wrote,
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