Luna's Coven by redhornedrhino

Luna's Coven by redhornedrhino Books » Harry Potter Rated: T, English, Hermione G., Ginny W., Luna L., Pansy P., Words: 8k+, Favs: 6, Follows: 5, Published: 8h 5 Chapter 1

Chapter One: Three Names The Great Hall was full of floating candles, and Luna Lovegood was fairly sure at least four of them were sulking. She couldn't have said how she knew. Candles didn't have faces. But four of them hung a little lower than the others, near the far end of the Ravenclaw table, and their flames leaned away from the enchanted ceiling as if they'd been told off and didn't care to discuss it. She decided she would ask someone about it later, though she suspected no one would know what she meant. "Stop looking up," Ginny Weasley whispered beside her. "You'll walk into someone." "We're standing still," Luna said. "You'll stand into someone, then." Ginny was nervous. Luna could tell because she'd been twisting the hem of her new robes since the boats, and because her freckles had gone very bright against skin that had gone very pale. They had grown up a short walk apart, on two hills in Ottery St Catchpole, and Luna knew most of Ginny's weathers by now. This was the one that came before thunderstorms. The line of first years shuffled forward. Ahead of them, on a three-legged stool, sat a hat so old and patched and frayed that it looked like it had been sat on by every student who had ever passed through Hogwarts. It had sung a song a few minutes ago, something about courage and cunning and loyalty and wit, about four friends who built a castle and the four doors they left open inside it. Luna had liked the last verse best: So sit me down and let me look, I'll find what's written in your book, Not what you wish, not what you fear, But who you'll be when you are here. She had wondered, while the hall applauded, whether a hat could be lonely. It must hear a great many secrets and keep all of them. Professor McGonagall stood beside the stool with a long scroll of parchment. She had the kind of face that looked stern until you noticed the very small crease at the corner of her mouth, which Luna thought meant she was secretly fond of every child in the line and would never admit it. "When I call your name," Professor McGonagall said, "you will come forward, sit on the stool, and I shall place the Hat upon your head." The names began. Luna watched them go: a boy who went white and shaky and was made a Hufflepuff, and then looked so relieved he nearly cried; a tall girl who was barely touched by the brim before the Hat shouted "RAVENCLAW!"; two boys in a row for Gryffindor, who ran to their table like it might leave without them. Then Professor McGonagall said, "Greengrass, Astoria." The girl who stepped out of the line had dark hair pinned back with silver clips and a face held very carefully still, the way you hold a full cup of tea when you're walking across a room. Luna had noticed her on the boats. She'd sat perfectly straight the entire crossing and hadn't trailed her fingers in the water once, even when the giant squid rolled past and everyone else shrieked and leaned over the side. Astoria sat. The Hat dropped over her eyes. At the Slytherin table, a girl in her second year leaned forward. She had the same dark hair, the same careful face, only older and sharper. A sister, Luna thought. The older girl was smiling the confident smile of someone who already knew how this would end. The Hat took its time. It took long enough that the whispers started. Long enough that the first years in line began shifting their weight, that someone at the Hufflepuff table coughed, that Professor McGonagall glanced down at the stool with one eyebrow very slightly raised. Luna watched Astoria's hands. They were folded in her lap, and the knuckles had gone white. Then the Hat's brim opened wide. "GRYFFINDOR!" For one long moment, the Great Hall said nothing at all. Then the Slytherin table began to boo. It started with a few older boys near the end, low and ugly, and spread down the table like spilled ink. Some of the students didn't join in. Luna saw a girl with a pug-shaped nose and a sharp bob sit with her arms folded, her mouth pressed thin, not booing and not clapping, just watching. And she saw a pale, pointed boy with white-blond hair lean back and smirk, and something in Luna's chest went quiet and strange, because she knew that face. She'd only ever seen it in a photograph her father kept in a drawer and never talked about. Her cousin Draco, who did not know her, and whose family did not say her father's name. But mostly, Luna watched the sister. The older Greengrass girl didn't boo. She did something worse. She turned around on the bench, deliberately, so that her back faced the stool. Then she said something to the girl beside her, and they both laughed. Astoria saw it. Luna watched her see it. Professor McGonagall said, " That will do," in a voice that cracked across the hall like a whip, and the booing died. At the Gryffindor table, a red-haired boy wearing a prefect's badge started clapping, loudly and on purpose, and the rest of the Gryffindors caught up a beat late and then all at once, cheering harder than they'd cheered for anyone, the way people do when they're trying to make up for something. Astoria lifted the Hat from her own head and handed it back to Professor McGonagall with both hands, very politely. She walked to the Gryffindor table with her chin up and her face held perfectly still. Only when she sat down did Luna see her shoulders drop, just once, the way a person lets out a breath they've been holding for a very long time. Oh, Luna thought. She's going to be ours. She didn't know what she meant by it. The thought arrived the way her thoughts sometimes did, from somewhere a little to the left of her, already finished. She'd learned not to argue with those. "That was horrible," Ginny breathed. "Yes," Luna agreed. "But she sat down very well." A few more names. Then: "Lovegood, Luna." Someone in the line giggled. Luna was used to that. Her necklace was made of butterbeer corks and her earrings were radishes, which were not radishes really but Dirigible Plums her mother had grown and shrunk especially for today, for luck. She walked up to the stool and sat, and the Hat came down over her eyes, and the Great Hall went dark and soft and smelled of very old cloth. " Well," said a voice in her ear. " Hello again." "Again?" Luna asked, inside her head. " Your mother sat here," the Hat said. " And her mother before her. I remember the Lovegood women. You all look at me the same way, as though you're checking whether I'm comfortable." "Are you?" The Hat made a sound that might have been a laugh. " Nobody has asked me that in a very long time. No. I'm a thousand years old and I've been sat on. But thank you." A pause. " You see things, don't you? Little things. Things that haven't happened yet." "Sometimes," said Luna. "Mostly small ones. Sometimes not." " Hm." The Hat was quiet for a moment, and Luna had the oddest feeling it was looking at something far away, past her, past the hall. " There's a great deal ahead of you, Luna Lovegood. More than you know. You'll need friends who think in all sorts of directions." Another pause, and then, almost gently: " But you'll start where you belong. Where the questions matter more than the answers." "RAVENCLAW!" The blue-and-bronze table applauded politely, and a little curiously, as she came down the steps. Luna smiled at them anyway and sat at the end of the bench, where the four sulking candles hung low over her head. Up close, they seemed pleased to have company. She didn't have to wait long. "Weasley, Ginevra." There was an extra stir at that name. Luna understood why. Four tables' worth of heads turned to look at the Weasley children already scattered across the hall: the prefect at Gryffindor, who'd clapped for Astoria; a pair of identical, grinning, red-haired boys in green, sprawled at the Slytherin table like they owned it; and a second-year boy at the Hufflepuff table, freckled and gangly, who looked as though he'd eaten something that disagreed with him and was now waiting for it to disagree again. Ginny walked up to the stool like she was walking into a duel. The Hat had barely touched her red hair before it called out: "RAVENCLAW!" Luna clapped first. She clapped very hard. At the Slytherin table, the twins whooped and banged their goblets, and one of them shouted, "THAT'S FOUR!" and the other shouted, "MUM'S GOING TO EXPLODE!" until a prefect told them to sit down. At Gryffindor, Percy Weasley had his face in his hands. At Hufflepuff, the gangly boy, Ron, just gaped, and then a slow, crooked grin spread over his face, and he gave his sister a double thumbs-up that nearly knocked over a pitcher of pumpkin juice. Ginny came down the steps looking stunned, saw Luna, and practically ran the last few feet. "I'm a Ravenclaw," she hissed, dropping onto the bench beside her. "Yes," said Luna. "I thought you might be." "You did not." "I did a little," Luna said. "You always read the instructions on things before you break them." Ginny opened her mouth to argue, closed it, and started laughing instead, the high, shaky laugh of someone whose thunderstorm had passed without any lightning. "Oh, hello!" A girl had slid down the bench toward them, a second year, with a great deal of bushy brown hair held back by what looked like three separate hair ties fighting for control of it. She had bright eyes and slightly large front teeth and the expression of someone who'd been waiting all evening for exactly this moment. "Hermione Granger," she said, holding out her hand. "Second year. I'm so glad there are more girls this year. Last year it was just me and Padma and a few others, and Padma's lovely but she does not want to talk about Arithmancy at breakfast. You're Ginny Weasley, aren't you? Your brother's in Hufflepuff, he's in my year, he's—well, he's fine, actually, he's quite nice once he stops talking about Quidditch. And you're Luna. Lovegood. Like The Quibbler?" "Yes," said Luna. "That's my father's." Hermione hesitated. Luna could see her deciding several things very fast. "I've read it," she said at last. "Some of the articles were—very imaginative." "Thank you," Luna said, because she was fairly sure it was meant kindly, and Hermione blinked and then smiled, a real one. "Right," Hermione said, rallying. "Well. The common room is in the west tower, and you don't need a password to get in, you have to answer a riddle. The door knocker asks you. Sometimes it takes ages. Once in my first year, half the house was stuck outside for forty minutes because nobody could work out what has roots that nobody sees, and it turned out the answer was a mountain, which I maintain is debatable. Classes are mostly fine, but avoid sitting in the back for Charms, Professor Flitwick can't see you over the desks and you'll miss things. And the library—oh, you'll love the library—" As she talked, she gestured, and her sleeves slid back from her wrists. She wore two cuffs, one on each arm. They were silver, or something like silver, worked with a pattern so fine it looked like frost on a window, and set into each was a single small stone the deep, still blue of the sky just after sunset. They were too fine to be costume jewelry and too old-looking to be new. And for just a moment, as Luna looked at them, the Great Hall went thin. It happened sometimes. The noise slid away, like stepping underwater. And in the quiet, she saw a room she didn't know, full of candlelight, and six girls sitting in a circle on the floor, surrounded by books that weren't there, books that drifted and glowed and faded like breath on glass. She saw red hair and dark hair pinned with silver clips, and a sharp black bob, and a fair, round, kind face she didn't recognize yet. And in the middle of the circle, Hermione, older, her hands raised, the cuffs blazing blue. Then the sound came back, all at once: the clatter of plates, a cheer from Hufflepuff, Hermione's voice still going. "—and I can show you the shortcut to Transfiguration, it saves eight minutes if the staircase is cooperating, which it isn't, usually, but still. Are you all right? You've gone a bit far away." "I'm quite all right," said Luna. She looked down the hall, to the Gryffindor table, where Astoria Greengrass was sitting very straight and eating very little, with an empty space on either side of her. Then she looked back at Hermione and smiled. "Those are beautiful cuffs." Hermione's hands went still. Just for a second. "Thank you," she said, and tugged her sleeves back down over them. "They're—it's a long story, actually." "I like long stories," Luna said. Hermione looked at her a little more carefully then, the way people sometimes did, as though Luna were a book written in a language they could almost read. "Maybe I'll tell you," she said slowly. "Sometime." Above them, the four sulking candles brightened, all at once, as if somebody had finally told them something good. The golden plates filled with food. Ginny groaned with happiness and reached for the roast potatoes. Hermione launched into a detailed explanation of the Ravenclaw homework schedule, and Luna listened to all of it, and ate her pudding, and every now and then looked across the hall toward a girl in Gryffindor red who sat alone and hadn't yet looked up. Soon, Luna thought. She didn't know where the thought came from. But it felt like the beginning of something.