Land of the Trembling Earth, by Tourniquette

Land of the Trembling Earth
by Tourniquette

Luna had always wondered whether swamps devoured people. There were plenty of legends about Fox Tor Mires in Dartmoor, for instance, about Jack O' Lanterns leading wandering souls to their dooms or lost horses astray to eternal stables. One particularly clever Muggle had accidentally stumbled upon an unplottable stretch of morass after following a wizard's expedition back in the nineteenth century. Even with the Fidelius Charm cast on him, it had so inspired the author that he renamed the Fox Tors the Grimpen Mire and used the locale as the setting for one of his stories. The tales didn't make human disappearances any more or less true, however. They could just be a smokescreen to hide the existence of an escaped horde of illegally transported lethifolds or acromantulas.

She wanted to know if there were valid reasons to avoid swamps, specific swamps in particular. All the lands that one could possibly identify as 'wet' in Britain were already crawling with herbologists and zoologists and every other set of -ists imaginable. So Luna chose the peat bogs and haunted marshes of Okefenokee Swamp as her final summer project. Her stipend couldn't afford to pay for anything more exotic; the Ministry was stingy with its research grants, and the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures was no exception.

She had to take a transatlantic flight in the Muggle fashion; travel by boat was cumbersome and far too inefficient. Her father heard about her plans and sent her a good luck charm: an amulet with the loop of infinity carved into it. He had purchased it at a Muggle pawn shop; the price was too good to refuse to take it off the dealer's hands.

"For safe journeys both ways," he had said to her. She had smiled and looped the chain around her neck. One more charm couldn't hurt.

Luna hid her wand in a hardened leather slipcase strapped loosely across her waist. It gave her trouble when it tangled in the metal buckle of her seat belt on the aeroplane.

A stewardess walked by at that moment. "Can I help you with that, miss?" she asked. Luna shook her head resolutely and managed to extricate the holster from the buckle.

The woman's brow furrowed in concern when she saw the slim leather pouch. "I'm sorry, miss, but I'm going to have to confiscate that. You're not allowed to carry weapons on board during flights."

"This?" Luna's hands closed around her wand protectively. "It's a piece of wood." Luna detested lying, even if it was to Muggles.

The stewardess paused. "I'll need to see it," she said finally. When Luna hesitated, she held out her hand, entreating. "Please," she insisted. "I don't think any real weapons would have made it past security, but we can't be too careful these days."

Trying not to appear as hesitant as she was at the thought of relinquishing her sole method of defence to stranger (and a Muggle one at that), even if it was only for a moment, Luna sighed and unhooked the clasp covering the handle. With what she hoped was a casual flourish, she withdrew her wand and set it in the palms of the uniformed woman leaning over her.

Thank Merlin, nothing happened. The stewardess turned it over and over in her hands, as if she thought pressing in a certain place might cause a secret blade to pop out. After several tense moments, she seemed a bit less wary. "What is this for, anyway?"

The Wizarding travel laws had tried and true responses for just this sort of question.

Luna smiled without missing a beat. "It's part of my costume. I'm going to a fantasy convention."

I hope this owl reaches you quickly; I'm busy catching up on paperwork today and I'm writing you on my lunch break. I have so many things to say, but I don't think half of them belong on a Muggle telephone. I know you said you had acquired one a couple of months ago, but Hermione Granger's one of the few people I know who has one charmed to work in the Ministry, and I didn't want to bother.

You won't believe some of the animals and plants I've seen in America. The States have simply marvellous expanses of wide-open, uninhabited space. Of course, this usually occurs in the poorer municipalities and near farmland and such, and the trend is moving towards over-development, but still! There is so much wilderness there when you escape from the clutches of the city!

My vehicle operated much like the legendary Zoolandri of New Brunswick, with transforming doors and seats and an expanding bed and a collapsing tent roof and everything. It felt like I took naps inside the belly of a slumbering beast, just like that story you used to tell me of the wooden Pistachio boy and his adventures with Nessie. The insects were pretty horrid, though, and I think the campground where I stayed had a massive imp infestation. Not to mention the gremlins who seem to enjoy hiding rural street signs when they think no one is watching.

I used this new Muggle device to record animated images just like moving pictures that we have, only the device recorded sound as well simultaneously. I recorded some snapping turtles, non-magical but most unusual and impressive armoured creatures, as well as a host of alligators and a particularly large subject of that species named Oscar. He guards a pond in Okefenokee Swamp. It is called Oscar's Pond. I think he must have won it in a wrestling match with the old alpha gator.

Here the water is so still that you can use it as a mirror when the sun is high enough. The water animals slip though the grass into the silt in one splash, and the ripples disappear so quickly that you may not see anything until they are upon you and open their jaws and it is too late.

I am glad the Muggle government posts signs to warn the tourists. You wouldn't believe how many parents let their children wander to the edges of the water and leave it to some stranger to pull the little ones back just in time.

During my explorations of Okefenokee at night, I discovered two possibly new magical species, both of which I am certain will rate at least a four in hazard levels, and one of which should definitely qualify as a five. Oh, and I eloped with a fellow researcher.

No, I'm not joking. You didn't read that incorrectly. His name is Rolf Scamander, heir of Newt Scamander. He works for the family-run biochemical company, but he's really a field researcher like me. You must think that I've been stung by an amorous chugbee or that I accidentally imbibed some enchanted elf nectar, but I can assure you, I was most careful about what I ate and drank in Georgia. Remember the insects I was telling you about?

I ~~think~~ ~~know that I~~ love him. He understands me in a way that no one else has before, that no one else ever will. I promise we'll have a formal reception if you want one; Rolf's parents are dead, so he has no family to object. All our hopes of approval rest with you. I know you trust my good judgement. Trust me on this. I will bring him to meet you as soon as you say it is convenient for you.

Fourteen hours, four chocolate frogs, two meals, a protracted layover and a customs inspection later, Luna departed from the airport in Atlanta, filled out the necessary paperwork to obtain a large 'recreational minivan,' and set off for the south-eastern edge of Georgia that bordered Florida with a series of maps and instructions spread out over the passenger's seat.

Technically, Luna had only driven once before in the States when she and Padma Patil had flown to upstate New York to study the mating habits of post-colonial vampires after their migration north from Louisiana. That misadventure had ended rather badly for the car, though in Padma's defence, lights that blinked red on and off never seemed to make up their minds to any satisfactory conclusion of either one setting or another, and that lamppost came out of nowhere...

Luna had decided that she would be prepared for the driving part of the expedition ahead of time. She had entered a Muggle library earlier that month and asked a startled assistant to help her find copies of directions from the Atlanta airport to Folkston. Apparently, Muggles consulted an electronic genie named Google who went through wires at the speed of light and tried to answer all of their questions, and millions of them asked questions all at once. Luna tried to keep quiet and learn about the portable computing machines that housed the Internet, but she was impatient to try her hand at typing and see if she could ask the Google if it knew the habitat of the Crumple-Horned Snorkack.

"Must have missed the turn," she muttered, pulling onto the shoulder of the road. She fumbled with the manual, squinting to see the pages. "Ah." A click and the headlights were on, then the emergency blinking lights followed. Now Muggles busy listening to their jukeboxes wouldn't slam into her.

The gloaming, that period when the sun is not visible but its effects cast the sky in ambient light, was deceptively pretty. French painters called it the "blue hour." But it never provided enough light to see properly, and people overestimated their occular abilities when the remains of sunset were in their eyes.

Luna tried to pay attention to road signs, but they had so many long and suspicious-sounding names that she had to check every third letter and apply a substitution cipher in her head, just in case wizards were trying to warn her about dangerous camping grounds. To have time to do this, Luna had to slow down. This caused several drivers to give her nasty looks and flip her the bird. She wondered if they drove over the posted speed zone on purpose or whether it was just a subconscious compulsion.

She looked up and frowned. A dense fog was gathering in the sunken bowl of land that created the swamp. She had to be close. Very close. Luna keyed the ignition again and clumsily pulled back onto the crumbling asphalt.

There. About twenty yards in front of her was a faded sign with chipped paint that read "Gator Getaway Campgrounds." She turned the van onto a narrow gravel path and belatedly switched her emergency lights off again.

Gator Getaway was small with about thirty parking spots, a scattering of picnic benches and utility hook-ups for recreational vehicles, and one large main building. It housed a convenience store and gift shop, a small café that served burgers, chips and a few local samplers, a Laundromat, toilets and showers, and a 'Rec Room,' a lounge-sized space outfitted with a pool table, one pinball machine and a television set.

At least Dad quizzed me on entertainment methods in the Muggle world, Luna thought, or I would never have figured out what the uses of those plastic cartridges sitting near the telly were.

She wondered again at the flawed logic of the wizarding social class system. By all rights, if anyone deserved to enjoy privilege in their world (Luna did not think anyone did), it should have been the Muggle-borns, for they as a group were more knowledgeable about the ways of Muggles and the current scientific innovations and therefore more capable of adaptation, co-habitation and improvisation in case of emergencies. They were ahead of the pure-bloods and many half-bloods. The war might have quelled their fears of persecution, but the prejudice that started it was as alive and well as ever.

Following a brief registration at the main office, Luna purchased fuel for her torch and used it to dig out the manual on how to fold down the back seats and convert the van into a quasi-tent-like apparatus. She went to the Rec Room to read, as she didn't want to waste petrol or her torch power when there was a lighted room at her disposal. Even if half the insects in the county seemed to have the same idea.

The bugs were more distracting than she would have thought them to be. Just because she loved to go exploring and interact with the flora and fauna did not mean she was used to having hundreds of tiny, buzzing parasites trying to suck her blood or nest in her hair.

While she contemplated the similarities between her multi-purpose van and the Zoolandri, mammals which were distant biological cousins of Metamorphmagi and could imitate various types of Muggle machinery, what could only be a large specimen of fly entered her mouth as she breathed.

"Ech!" Luna coughed and spat furiously, feeling nauseated. A quick look around indicated that she was alone and that there were no obvious recording or spy devices in the immediate vicinity. She cast a rudimentary bubble of space around her with a variant of the Do Not Disturb charm to keep the flying pests away temporarily. Then she decided to pay a return visit to the store.

Have you lost your mind? Do you know that without certain wards and safeguards, green gories find it ridiculously easy to curse handfasting ceremonies so that the bride's feet will catch and trip on steps, stairs, nooks, cracks and every kind of sharp edge imaginable? I cannot bear the thought of you on crutches because some rake swept you off your feet and stole your heart. I'm not implying that this Rolf is anyone of that sort, but you must exercise caution before taking such a rash action, Luna.

Fortunately, I have a friend at a private wizard investigator's office, and I have pulled some strings and asked him to take on a little extra background work in his spare time for a nominal fee. He did some light digging this weekend and has found nothing out of the ordinary about Mr. Scamander...thus far. I will ask him to keep looking and see what he can unearth. May he find nothing more than a light addiction to Play Witch or some other trivial vice (Though we both know that Play Witch regularly embeds subliminal incantations into its adverts for pillow talk when its readers are asleep! Some publishers have absolutely no dignity!).

You may bring Rolf home any day you feel like it. I am not planning another excursion out of the country for several weeks. My sources say that someone the Yankee wizards like to refer to as "Big Brother" is watching the Muggle airport. Apparently, he plants remote-detecting Sneakoscopes in the luggage that passes through there. He is the cleverest and most cunning of men. I shudder to think what Little Brother has been up to while our attentions were focused on his elder sibling.

Georgia sounds fascinating. I never would have suspected the bugs would find you that attractive, my munchkin! Those ghoul pheromone oils that we spilled when changing the garden traps must not have been diluted enough; we tested them over a month ago. A most fascinating side-effect. I will make a note of it.

Enclosed is my newest attempt at an anti-doxy quartz necklace. I hope your flat remains pest-free.

"You're lucky; we're just about to close," said the frizzy-haired woman behind the counter. Her sunburned skin looked ghastly against the white of her t-shirt, but her smile was harmless enough. "Been bathin' in perfume, honey?"

Luna frowned; here was an American custom she had definitely never heard of before. "Pardon?"

The woman's smile widened. "It attracts the swarms from miles around. Best not to wear any during the summer season unless you want a mosquito bite on every inch of your flesh."

As if killing the olfactory senses of every being within a mile radius and spending a fortune on a bathtub's worth of fragrant oils weren't strong enough deterrents. Maybe the woman simply wanted all of the local perfume supply to herself and thus discouraged others from stocking up on it. "Thanks. I'll try to keep that in mind."

Luna strolled along the aisles until she located the strongest looking insect repellent spray in stock. Unfortunately, it only came in miniature bottles. Luna picked one up and held it to the light to inspect the volume of its contents, frowning and tilting her head slightly. She gathered up two more and repeated the action with three of them. Her nose itched terribly; she wondered if it was the pollens or just the layers of accumulated dust on the cereal boxes along the back wall. Luna made a mental note to eat at the café for breakfast instead.

She worried if three would be enough for a week. What if someone else came in tomorrow morning and bought them all before she could replenish her supplies? Luna was reaching for a fourth when a low-throated chuckle emanated from somewhere in the store behind her. She spun around, clutching the bottles possessively.

He was a man about her age and a head taller. His dark brown hair made his pale, white skin contrast even more starkly with it under the bright, harsh lights overhead. He had the look of someone who had starved himself once and only recently discovered the joys of indulgence; Luna observed with curiosity the healthy planes of his cheeks and arms and the barest, tiniest hint of the beginnings of an ice-cream tummy, as she liked to think of them. The high cheekbones and the deep blue eyes that seemed to search her face were what startled her out of observance. She blushed and looked down, realizing that she had been staring unabashedly for a good ten seconds. Then she worked up the courage to take a second glance at him again.

There was a ghost of a smile on his lips, the aftermath of mirth. He had been watching her as well, then. There were no other customers in the store for his amusement; at whom else could he laugh?

The penetrating blue eyes focused and stared right back. Luna felt the overwhelming itching sensation build up to breaking point; she doubled over and sneezed violently several times, dropping the bottles in the process.

Face burning, Luna hastened to catch the rolling containers before they went under the shelves and she lost her one chance at non-magical bite protection. She looked back at the spot where the man had been. He was gone.

She turned to the checkout counter and started to walk in that direction, pulling out what she hoped would cover the total cost. Luna made another mental note to separate her galleons, sickles and knuts and her British pounds and pence from her American currency as soon as she returned to the van. It wouldn't help matters if she accidentally put the wrong coin in the slot when trying to launder her clothes and it broke the machine. Luna already broke enough things as it was without adding automated drying machines to the list.

As she rounded the aisle and saw the frizzy-haired woman who hoarded perfumes again, Luna noticed she was not alone. The dark-haired man had just finished buying a newspaper. Just as he gathered his receipt and started to walk towards the door, he turned and gave Luna what could only be described as a wink.

Men did not wink at Luna. They stared at her, made funny faces after she spoke, rolled their eyes at her or shot her sceptical looks, but they most definitely did not wink. Yet the stranger had done just that. It occurred to Luna that perhaps he planned on stealing some of her bug repellent. Her eyes narrowed, and she tightened her grip on the bottles.

"Oh, right!" Luna said, feeling more than a little sheepish. She didn't need to concern herself with other guests. This was a tourist town. There were bound to be thieves and men with eye-twitching complexes, even handsome ones.

Set-up of the van was only slightly less exasperating than constructing a regular pole tent with no experience doing so. Luna's consolation was that the women's showers were completely empty, save for the giant spiders she discovered living along the upper walls of the solar hut. She raised an eyebrow at them, daring them to drop on her bare shoulder when she reached for the shampoo bottle and end the de facto truce between them, but the arachnids simply crouched on their gossamer webs and stared back at her with beady eyes. Luna smiled. Some insects know not to mess with witches. She had never seen so many of them in her life as she had in the past ten hours.

Unaccustomed to the noise of the humid nights in the South, Luna took over an hour to fall asleep, listening for hints of stealthy creatures encroaching back on the human settlements that encroached on their land first. She thought there must be few centaurs left in the States and Mexico, considering the nosiness of Muggles in general, but as for the rest, she didn't know much about restricted creature populations. Weren't wizards and Muggles restricted as well in where they could live? Didn't that make them creatures, too?

When Luna finally slipped into a lower level of consciousness, it was to dream of rickety wooden walkways carving paths through a marsh of tall trees, flickering torches marking her path, and a dead end ringed with fog where she spun around in circles, trying to understand why the darkness was watching her.

"Rolf," Luna frowned, "we barely have any pictures of you. Over a hundred pictures, and you're only in three of them."

"Mmm," he said, rubbing her shoulders and lowering his voice at her ear. "That's because you only need one good photo to capture me."

She huffed but kissed him anyway. He didn't know she had already tried to show Hermione their photos together and his magical images had whipped out his wand and cast a fog over his side of the photograph the minute Luna handed them off.

She would just have to develop non-magical snapshots from her camcorder with his face and print them instead. What he didn't know wouldn't hurt him.

Luna elected to wake early and be one of the first to arrive at the Visitor's Centre, but events did not unfold that way. The deconstruction of the van trappings ate up almost an hour of her time. Add into that the additional shower the exercise had forced her to take and breakfast at the café - if you could call lukewarm grits and bad tea breakfast - and the sun was already high in the sky before she even took the driver's seat.

She was determined to figure out how to make the cumbersome task of unpacking and repacking her van go faster. She felt certain that she had spotted an imp messing with the clasps on the expandable tent door last night. Of course, Luna couldn't merely walk up to the caretakers and point out that they might have a magical pest infestation. She would just have to put out some cups of apple juice and hope they would distract them next time. There weren't any camping neighbours nearby to complain.

A liberal application of insect repellent and a perusal of the instruction pamphlet for her new "camcorder" later, and Luna was cantering down the walkway of the Swamp Creatures exhibit. This particular section of the Visitor's park was a cordoned-off section of land on the outskirts of the swamp with zoo-like areas of the local wildlife in natural but protected habitats.

"Hello, Mr. Gator," Luna said, and she zoomed in on the most ornery of the several specimens in that pen, unconcerned that her hair had slipped dangerously close to striking distance. The alligator hissed at her and suddenly rammed against the wooden fence below her feet. The gator repeated the action, then backed up and crawled away. What was even more odd was that the other gators seemed to follow him to the rear of the cage. They grouped together and started at her with unblinking, slated eyes. What had gotten into them? She wisely decided to retreat back a few paces in case they were merely readying to charge, and her back ran into a solid, warm mass.

It was definitely the same man from the convenience store. He was definitely handsome. Extremely handsome. And he looked less ghostly in natural lighting. "Gesundheit."

"It's quite all right," he replied. He looked amused, but no further observations were forthcoming, and Luna wasn't about to enter into a rematch of the previous evening's staring contest, so she looked away shyly and brushed past him. Her tickets for the boat tour said 11:15 a.m., and she figured if she wanted to see the rest of the animals before the boat left, she had better hurry.

Luna didn't look back, although she felt the man's eyes on her, even when she reached the opposite end of the walkway and stared at the snapping turtles. To top it off, her nose still itched terribly. I must be allergic to the pollens around here. She made a note to ask one of the guides as to which plants were in bloom during the summer.

Several minutes later, she rushed out of the loo and ran down to the dock. I am never eating grits before noon again, Luna thought irritably.

"A straggler, eh?" The tour guide said cheerfully. "There's room in the back. Hop in."

Dutifully, Luna obeyed, trying not to wince as the aroma of bug spray made a couple in front of her scrunch up their faces in obvious discomfort.

Luna never thought she'd be addicted to anything, let alone a human being. She supposed that was what happened when you married someone you knew next to nothing about and subsequently discovered you had played your cards to the perfect hand.

Ginny was always working away games with the Harpies, so there went her Tuesdays at Fortescue's. Hermione barely had a spare moment outside of the weekends. She had approached Luna the day after her return from the States. Lost between seventh heaven and cloud nine, it took Luna five minutes of a largely one-sided conversation for her to realise that Hermione was trying to drop subtle hints about Harry's motives in monopolising his wife's time and depriving Luna of Hermione's company at Flourish & Blotts on Mondays and Wednesdays.

Luna tried to be as tactful as possible in saying that yes, she understood. Harry wants to shag your brains out so that he can have progeny while he's still young. What she actually said was, "Hermione, I understand exactly how you feel."

A blush spread across the other women's cheeks. "Thanks," she said. "...Wait. You do?"

Then Luna exhaled and gave Hermione an abbreviated version, followed by half an hour of squealing, a barrage of questions (there was a reason Hermione made such an effective Auror), and promises to introduce Rolf as soon as possible.

Friday's old excursions into Muggle London with Harry and Hermione were right out until more romantic inclinations passed. Add in the fact that Susan Bones was currently in St. Mungo's recovering from a near-fatal case of dragon pox and thus couldn't go with her to visit Neville after his Herbology classes at Hogwarts were over on Thursdays, and all of Luna's weekly schedule was miraculously wide open.

She didn't mind one bit. It allowed her to fall completely and utterly for Rolf. In fact, she found herself making excuses to leave work early so that she could think of some way to surprise him.

Sometimes, it was organising her thoughts into a coherent argument as to why they should see a moving picture show, an activity in which Luna found deep satisfaction after Harry and Hermione had taken her to see The Lord of the Rings trilogy special feature. Rolf had to be in a good mood at first for her to convince him to see one. Then he had discovered that it was rather fun to see how easily he could distract her from the plot with his hands under her clothes when the audience members were all watching the screen. He always cast a Silencio first. Luna tried not to make any noise when she came, but no one was perfect.

Other times, he was barely inside the door before she pounced on him and dragged him to the bedroom. If they made it that far.

He reciprocated in kind. Luna would be preparing supper and Rolf would enter their flat silently, shutting the door so quietly that she failed to notice him until he was standing in the doorway of their kitchen, his eyes dark with need, drinking her in like she was the last glass of water on the planet and he was dying of thirst. She would barely have a moment to gasp before he descended upon her, hot and hungry, his hands running all over her and setting her skin ablaze like dry kindling. He would take her brutally and unmercifully, sometimes ripping her clothing to shreds and burying himself inside her right there on the island counter, the rest of the unpacked groceries and the copies of the Daily Prophet and the Quibbler spilling onto the linoleum, scattering everywhere as he held Luna down and her hair came out of its pins and tumbled out behind her.

Those evenings followed his bad days at work. She never asked, and he never told. Certain intentions were better left unspoken.

Most evenings, however, consisted of discussions about her work and a twilight picnic in a gated park in their neighbourhood. Rolf splurged on champagne - real champagne! - and strawberries a lot. They never ended up doing much eating, anyway, though they couldn't do much more than that, either, as it wasn't their private park. Yet, he told her. Luna swatted him before reclining into his chest and talking about her quest for the Crumple-Horned Snorkack.

"King Pellinore. Arthurian legends. Occasionally, he's the same as the Fisher King and the keeper of the grail and such or the son of the Grail King, but I like him better when he's chasing dragons and mythical monsters. You remind me of him."

Luna tried to sit up and gave Rolf a sceptical look. "I know the legends. In other words, you think I'm like a crazy old man who chases after dragon-leopard crossbreeds?"

He lifted up his hands in a gesture of innocence. "Remember, you said it, not I."

Luna turned and pounced on him, straddling his thighs and fingering the single bottle cap necklace she had made for him. "You know," she whispered in his ear, "We're in prime nargle territory. Plenty of overgrowth and hiding places for nests of them to hide."

At her insistence that he wear the chain for nargle protection, he had laughed at her concern and promised he would if she would stop pouting and worrying for his sake. Luna thought he was humouring her until she undressed him the next night and found it hanging on the hollow of his throat. It was the only time she had cried since the war, and she still didn't know why.

"I would, and I will, if you don't explain yourself right away," Luna threatened. She gave an experimental tug on the chain. Her fingers grazed his skin and felt his pulse beneath them.

Rolf played with a strand of her hair. "Well, if you insist." He cleared his throat. "You chase after a creature that only you believe exists. Others have probably poked fun at you, present company included." At this she slapped him playfully. "The knight-errant ignored the nay-sayers. In some versions of the story, Pellinore did find and slay a great dragon, though it dissolved into an acidic slime before he could bring its head home as proof."

"Isn't it though? Anyhow, he discovered that it was not the questing beast itself that represented the challenge, but his struggle to overcome his own weaknesses as a ruler. By tilting at windmills, to borrow a Muggle phrase--" Luna always winced at the way he said Muggle, for though he rarely spoke the word itself, when he did, his scorn laced through each syllable, "--Pellinore found a way to keep his mind sharp and a reason to live beyond the glory days of constant war."

Luna wasn't going to relent that easily. "I suppose the fact that he started a blood feud by killing King Lot, got himself stabbed through the groin and caused his kingdom's crops to wither until he was ruler of a wasteland, and ultimately condemned his sons to the curse of an early and violent death has no effect on your view of him."

"What a pleasant fiction you weave," Luna teased. "Too bad the threads are showing."

Rolf ignored her and held her face in his hands. "Eventually, we non-believers will be proven wrong, one way or the other, for while the creature you will find may not fit your exact definition of what a Snorkack is, you will inevitably discover one or more new species, and the one which is hardest to attain shall be your Snorkack, for only you have the knowledge and the right to name it."

The corners of her mouth turned up at him saying the name in such a serious manner. "It is a rather silly name, isn't it?"

He rolled his eyes at her dismissal of his argument. "No more than a Moke or a Billywig, I promise you."

She regarded him for several moments. "I think I will let you keep your necklace," she said finally. "For now."

He smiled. His eyes were bright with mirth. "Your humble research assistant is most grateful."

She leaned over and kissed him, and there was no speaking for a long while after that.

They were low in the water, and it made observation of the swamp easy. She filmed the dense overgrowth and spied a lazy serpent coiled precariously on a swaying branch not five feet from the boat. The roots of the cypress trees began above the waterline, stretching into the brown water like tentacles.

"Those stumps jutting out of the water over there are also cypress knees, the ends of tree roots," the guide was saying. "They help to stabilise the trees in the mud. There's a good reason for the trees to do that, too. 'Okefenokee' is a Seminole word for 'land of the ground that quakes.' In some places, the peat formations are unstable, and stomping on them can actually cause the foundations of the trees to shake and tremble."

Unconsciously, Luna raised her hand like she was still in public school. "Why do the bottoms of the trees look like half-opened umbrellas?"

"Uh..." The guide paused for an awkward length. "Good question. One for which I don't have a concrete answer, but I'd wager that it has more to do with the shifting water table than anything else. When the water levels reach their highest, many of the roots are obscured."

Luna lowered her arm and stared out of the boat, and eventually the tour guide picked up where he had left off in his script. She sighed. The rear assistant was fidgeting again. She wondered if all men under 30 had a difficult time sitting still without doing something productive.

"...The water has a reddish-brown tint because the tannic acid released from decaying vegetation is the same ingredient found in teas..."

Luna's eyes widened. How marvellous! Perhaps it would taste like tea, too. She saw another curious passenger near the front of the boat reach his hands over the side of the boat and gather some water to drink. She leaned over the side and peered into the murky depths of the swamp bed. Luna was about to do the same when a pale hand shot out of nowhere and stayed her wrist.

"Why not?" Luna said it before she saw who had grabbed her arm. The voice sounded vaguely familiar. She craned her neck, seeing over her shoulder, and she almost lost her balance and tumbled into the tea-coloured water.

"How did you--" Luna paused. She rarely felt so disconcerted, so unbalanced, so...allergic.

The handsome stranger from the store gave a little shrug. "I didn't want to wait until the next tour left, so I'm hitchhiking."

He was a wizard, too. Luna supposed it was because she had spent most of her life around witches and wizards that she assumed odd people had magical abilities until proven otherwise. But how had he Apparated without making a sound? Where was the tour guide who she felt sure had been sitting behind her only moments earlier? Weren't they forbidden from using magic within sight of Muggles?

Another fit of sneezing interrupted her thoughts. "À tes souhaites," the stranger said. Another sneeze. "À tes amours." Now he was smirking, and Luna actually felt annoyed, especially since sneezing was undignified at best and ugly at worst, and he seemed to be her trigger.

She held her face in her sleeve and waited for the itching to pass. After a few moments, it died down to a manageable level and faded into the background.

Her lips quirked up involuntarily. "Tell me, why is it that I don't want to taste the water?"

"For the same reasons you wouldn't drink from your neighbour's fishpond," the man answered, settling back into his seat. "One, it doesn't taste like anything close to tea; two, tannin is not an antiseptic. Trust me when I say that you're not missing anything."

Luna blinked and made a face. Of course he was right, whoever he was. Merlin knew how many unsavoury creatures used the swamp as both a sink and a toilet. "Oh."

They lapsed back into silence, and after a while, Luna faced forward and tried to pay attention to the guide, the one she knew hadn't disappeared because he was still talking further up at the bow.

She turned her camcorder on and caught a nest of spiders on it, as well as peculiar noises that she noted into the microphone as possible millersnaps.

The other tourists in front of her ignored her. The man sitting in the back did not.

She could feel the heat of his gaze on the back of her neck, and it was disconcerting.

They spent the rest of the summer tangled in each other's arms, never more than a hair's breadth apart except for when they each left the flat to go to work. Everything else was an extension of the two of them, an action conceived in one's mind and completed in the other.

Luna would be reading the Quibbler with her morning tea, and Rolf would sit down beside her, smelling of the shower, and he'd kiss her shoulder and murmur something against her neck, and Luna would suddenly find herself on Rolf's lap, reading him the most interesting articles as he fed her pieces of toast. She would be relating to him some new anti-werewolf legislation Harry and their friends were trying to quash and feel his cock pressed against her back and his hands cleverly finding ways around her bra. Before she could figure out what was happening, he would enter her and roll her on and off his hips until the words coming from her mouth ran together and didn't make any sense at all.

As blissful as the constant state of post-euphoric bliss was, Luna returned to the same disturbing dream every night, although the variations were many.

She ran the elevated walkways of above the stagnant water. A hissing sounded from all sides; shapes and fingers and hair caked through with mud and arms and legs bubbled up through the peat. Hundreds of people, Inferi maybe, all with the same face, but when she paused to see in whose image they were made, their faces were blurred. Sometimes she fell into the peat and drowned while the Inferi creatures laughed and stared with their green eyes. Once they had hissed at her, and Luna had been so startled that she had tripped and gone into the swamp face-first.

Usually, though, she ran the labyrinthine boardwalks through the swamp, saw a lantern in the distance and headed for it. She reached an island in the centre of the maze. The ground was bare like the Chesser homestead's back in Okefenokee, but the cottage looked like a gingerbread house with doors on many sides, each leading into darkness. No matter what door she tried, it always opened to the same disembodied voice asking the same insipid question.

To this, she had no answers. Her mouth opened, but she found she could not speak. Then the laughter started.

Luna wished she could block it out, the high-pitched, keening laughter of dust-filled throats, the cackling of dead and decaying tongues as they sought penance in her punishment, and the sentence was always the same: enter the house and never return. Her body woke her; she gasped and choked and sputtered for air, and it felt as if she had fallen from a great height only to land in bed, safe and in one piece, with her husband's arm wrapped around her possessively.

Rolf was still asleep. They were both levitating, four feet off of the bed. She disengaged herself from Rolf and promptly fell to the mattress, nearly bouncing off onto her nightstand and banging her head.

For a second, it seemed to the Luna that Rolf was awake, his eyes cold and hard, staring down at her from his limp spectre of a body, a phantom spirit floating above her, ready to descend and strike at a moment's notice. But when she blinked at looked again, he was on his side, fast asleep, his breathing deep and even.

The next day, she went to Mme. Pomfrey with Neville and asked for a large supply of Dreamless Sleep potion. Luna didn't know why she didn't want the Ministry involved, but she knew Pomfrey could order a big shipment without arousing suspicion.

It took three days to arrive. For three days, she waited until Rolf drifted off to sleep, then removed herself from the bed and curled up in an armchair, watching the man that she loved defy gravity until dawn.

It didn't help that every day that she lost sleep and walked about lethargic, Rolf had never looked better.

A half an hour later, the boat returned to the dock, and Luna disembarked, noting with consternation that the missing tour guide was milling around further down the platform, shaking his head and mumbling to himself.

Luna was reviewing some of the footage she recorded when she felt a light tap on her shoulder. By process of elimination, it could only be one person.

"Forgive me, but it completely slipped my mind to introduce myself," the man said, flashing her a devastatingly charming smile. "My name is Rolf. Rolf Scamander."

Luna flipped off the camcorder and extended her arm, shyly taking his hand in hers and shaking it once.

It was like gripping her first wand all over again. The electricity shot up her arm and spread to all extremities; she hummed with life and power, as if her soul had unlocked a great secret that only they could share. There had to be something wrong with him; he wasn't a wand!

She tried not to gasp as she pulled her hand away a little too quickly for casual propriety. He pretended not to notice. "Luna Lovegood."

Now she knew what it was that had unsettled her by the reptile cages. He had a British accent, a curious mixture of Queen's English and a bit of Southern Welsh. Like my mother did. That was why she had recognised it; subtle linguistic variations in speech patterns and styles were not Luna's forte.

Rolf Scamander gestured for her to walk with him, and they set off at a leisurely pace towards the visitor's centre.

The name sounded familiar. Her eyes widened. "Did you say Scamander? As in Newt Scamander, author of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them as well as seven other books on magical creatures?"

She couldn't believe it. "I keep a copy of Fantastic Beasts with me wherever I go," she said. Her hand pulled out a tattered miniature edition of the red and gold leather-bound volume, thumb fanning the pages repeatedly like it was a flip book. "It's not in the best condition, as you can see, but I like to keep notes in this one. I have a better copy at home just for study. It turned into a log book of sort after I checked off most of the species in here." Al the words rushed out of her in one exhalation.

He raised his eyebrows. "You've seen a demiguise? A lethifold?" He paused; his eyes narrowing ever so slightly. "A basilisk?"

"One of the three," Luna admitted. She certainly wasn't about to tell a stranger that it was, in fact, a basilisk, or that it had been a dead basilisk at the time, and that was only because she'd seen Hagrid levitating a 200-foot long serpentine corpse on the castle lawns so that Snape could remove the fangs, presumably to harvest their deadly venom. She couldn't help it if Hagrid chose to do so at the precise moment she always went outdoors to visit the thestrals. "Of course, my job accounts for a large portion of these encounters."

Rolf studied her for a moment, and Luna suddenly felt a need to meet with his approval. Surely it had everything to do with the fact that he was the descendant of Newt, her idol. It had absolutely nothing to do with the way he looked at her, like the way he was looking at her right now, or the magnetic pull that she felt whenever he was standing too close.

Luna became aware that she wasn't moving anymore. She was rooted to the spot. Was Rolf speaking to her? She had the strangest headache. Her mind was a glass tower; someone was yanking on the handles to the front doors, but they were locked and stayed shut because her mind was never in one place more than another. She was cardinal, eternally in motion, and she could not stop in transition or the doors would fly open. Instead someone waited on the outside, palms pressed against the transparent gates, slowly lifting them and bringing them back down again in a deadened heartbeat until suddenly, the hands stopped moving. But they didn't go away. Luna felt the walls of her fortress bend and flex into place, shifting but cold and immutable, as dirty fingers slid down the glass...

She was lying flat on her back, a crowd of faces in her vision. Several people were bent over her, peering at her with concerned expressions, including Rolf.

"Did she hit her head hard when she fell?" Hands went behind her head, then someone was supporting her shoulders and trying to nudge her into an upright position.

"Luna? Can you hear me?" Rolf's face came into focus in front of her, his cerulean eyes catching her fall, and then she was lifting off of the ground, and she dimly realised that he was carrying her.

"You don't have to waste your day on my account," Luna said. She was sipping a cup of water and sitting on a bench in the visitor's centre with Rolf. The tickling feeling that she was about to sneeze had died down significantly.

"I have all day to waste," Rolf smiled. "But I think we'll have to disagree on whether or not I'm wasting it."

They walked out of the centre ten minutes later. In one hand, Luna held a plush toy, a stuffed alligator that said Georgia with an orange for the 'o.' In the other hand, she held Rolf's.

Luna checked the clock. 5:54. He's not usually this late on Wednesdays. She waited a few moments, squirming on the barstool in the kitchen, then checked her watch again. Maybe it's not really Wednesday after all. He's usually held up on Tuesdays.

She backed him up against the door. "Where were you? It's Wednesday. We have a reservation at Henri's."

Rolf sighed and kissed her forehead. "You'll have to call and cancel. Something came up at the lab today, and I have to go back."

Luna put her arms down and let him dump his satchel on the floor. "Rolf, this is the third time we've cancelled on the Potters and the second on the Weasleys. I don't want to cancel at all on the Longbottoms, because I highly doubt Ginny would ever speak to me again. Can't you just--"

He said it with such finality that Luna was left without any idea of how to respond. Rolf turned around. He seemed almost contrite for a moment; then his features hardened and he headed for the bedroom without another word.

Luna slumped down on the stool again. The Muggle wireless phone sat in front of her, as did a stack of paper and a quill. She considered fetching their owl, but frankly, Luna had no energy to make excuses. Rolf's dismissal had drained it all out of her.

He was halfway out the front door when she asked quietly, "Are you ever going to meet them? They must think I'm..." Luna couldn't finish the sentence. What did friends say about other friends who kept half of their lives secret?

A few moments passed. Then Rolf was running his hands through her hair. "Soon, Luna," he promised fervently, burying his face in her golden hair. "Soon."

She'd spent the remainder of the day with Rolf Scamander, and instead of writing her of as 'Loony' (how she hated that name!), the man seemed to think that the more she said, the more interesting she was.

Maybe that had to do with his reluctance to speak about his family. Rolf's parents, it seemed, had died in a terrible auto accident a decade ago, and he had spent most of his formative years as an orphan, growing up under the tutelage of his uncle, who held his parents' estate in trust for him until he came of age. That was the sum total of what he would say about himself.

He was incredibly bright, of course; Luna didn't need to see his N.E.W.T.S. to know that. He spoke with authority on nearly every subject upon which their conversations touched.

But it was his intense desire to learn from her despite his knowledge, specifically from her theories on rare and incompletely documented magical species, that won her admiration. Listening was mere window dressing without the comprehension to go along with it.

They were in the observatory tower at the end of the long stretches of boardwalk that carved paths into the dense swamp of the Okefenokee. They were on the lookout for swimming monsters.

Rolf had pointed out a gator lazing in the sun earlier on the road, when he had driven her in his own car from the campground, but when Luna prepared to jump out of the moving vehicle and give the reptile a hug, Rolf had clicked the locks on the doors and sped up, laughing at her pout.

"You only get to cuddle with a gator once," he had said. "I'd rather it not be in front of me."

Now Luna was pointing to a thicket on the far side of the small lake basin that stretched from their tower about a quarter of a mile in diameter in front of them. "See those bumps there?"

Rolf was leaning over her shoulder to look in the viewer on her camcorder. She was acutely aware of his breath on her neck, the heat radiating off his body. As if it wasn't nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade already. I think I'm going to faint. Maybe he'll catch me?

Luna couldn't believe she was having these stupid thoughts. She had known the man for all of...what, 24 hours?

Yet he knew, knew when caution was a gift and when it was burden, knew what leaves hid the insects she sought to catalogue and how to disagree with her and not seem condescending. Most importantly, he knew when to be quiet and observe. Luna took pleasure in his company. He was like her thestrals, an observant, untamed friend.

The swamp had conjured him for her alone. Luna would enjoy him before he vanished back into the mists.

She couldn't stop herself. What was more, she found that she didn't want to. Luna found she flirted with him effortlessly: a brush against his bare arm here, a smile thrown over the shoulder there, some astute observations on the similarities between tourists and Cornish pixies, and she had him laughing and smiling at her, only for her. Sure, Neville had paid her attention like that once or twice, but she hadn't wanted him to or asked for him to do so.

She hadn't wanted to discover what Neville's lips tasted like under the noonday sun. She didn't want Neville to shove her against a wayward cypress and enjoy her like a forbidden confection.

Later, when they paused at the edge of the Chesser homestead near the old Seminole burial mounds, she sidled up to Rolf and pretended to pick a stray piece of fuzz off his shoulder. Really, it was just to slide her hands off his shoulder and down his arm, but if he knew this, he didn't say anything.

"What is?" she asked, adjusting the camcorder to take in the grounds of the last private settlement built within the swamp.

"There's no grass anywhere on the property. It's all this pale, sandy dirt." Rolf looked around at the hundreds of thin, willowy trees surrounding the yard.

Luna followed his gaze. The trees were kid of creepy; they were so straight that they resembled the totem poles she had read about when researching early American cultures. Like sentinels, she thought, keeping watch over their secrets. She shivered.

"One of the signs said that people eventually gave up trying to live far into the forests here because of the constant threat of fires." Luna thought of the Fiendfyre Hermione had described, the cursed flames from which Draco Malfoy, Gregory Goyle and the others had barely escaped. She wondered what it would be like to wake up in the early dawn with smoke in her lungs, to run out onto the front porch only to see fire in a ring around your home and livelihood. What could anyone do against a wall of flames?

"Ah, yes. Fire hazards. That's probably why they cleared away all of the brush," he said.

"Either that, or they had an uncannily accurate sense of protective measures against nargles," Luna added.

Rolf stopped walking towards the porch where the guide was speaking. He turned and gave Luna a once-over, then arched an eyebrow. "Nargles?" he echoed, the undercurrent of amusement in his voice belying the sceptical expression on his face.

Luna blinked. "Why Rolf!" she exclaimed. "Yes, nargles! I don't understand. You mean to say you've been doing field work for some time now and have never heard of them?"

Luna chortled and hastened to cover her mouth as he glared. Didn't he know it was dangerous to enter magical territories without adequate nargle counter-measures? She had a bottle cap bracelet on her wrist and one on her ankle at that very moment. "Honestly. I find it difficult to believe you consider yourself a learned herbologist or magical zoologist when you aren't the least bit prepared for hostile entities."

"Well, then," Rolf said, circling around behind her. He snatched the camcorder from her grasp and pressed the record button. "By all means, Miss Lovegood, enlighten us. You're the expert, after all."

With colour rising to her cheeks, Luna opted to delay joining to official tour for a stroll around the outlying buildings. His safety is at stake, after all.

"I know we agreed to drop the subject, Luna, but do you even know what he actually does for a living?"

Luna's mouth tightened into a line, and she set down her dessert fork. "Yes, Ginny. I told you. He works for his family's company. They have a small printing press, much like the Quibbler does, so that they can continue to print Newt Scamander's works. The main focus of the business is actually magical biochemical research and potions production. He does most of the research into the properties of new and unused substances in the hopes of finding medicinal value in them."

Ginny frowned. "Well, that doesn't tell us much there, then, does it?" she replied.

"What? I'm just saying that it's a little suspicious, what with him spending more and more time at the office with no explanations, going Merlin-knows-where to do Merlin-knows-what--"

"Luna, you don't have to answer that," Lavender said, and in a gesture unusually generous for the outgoing blonde, she took Luna's hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. "Besides," she said, throwing a withering glance at Ginny, "it's none of our bloody business. She said she's sorry, and it's hardly her fault if his social skills need polishing."

"No, you're right. It was extremely rude of Rolf to do this to me, and I have no idea what product deadline forced him back to work after hours. But I know he means well, and he was sorry he wouldn't be able to meet you, Harry, or the Longbottoms." Harry smiled at her reassuringly.

Rolf had picked Luna up from her office on occasion, and he had met Hermione once, albeit briefly (the next day, Hermione had gushed uncharacteristically about how gorgeous he was, and Luna preened for days). The couple had also stopped by Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes a week earlier to inspect some of the latest racy accessories the shop had made available. Although Rolf looked decidedly uncomfortable at the idea of shopping period, much less shopping for sex paraphernalia, Luna pointed out that there were no refunds, and wouldn't he be upset anyway if she were to buy something he found boring or insane?

Lavender had been there as well as Ron, and Luna was surprised at how easily Rolf managed to carry on an animated conversation with a member of the Weasley clan. They were diametric opposites: Ron was loud where Rolf was reticent and soft-spoken, impulsive when Rolf was all bout self-control, and a lackadaisical wizard with a Peter Pan complex, whereas Luna couldn't imagine Rolf as anything other than serious and resolved to perfectionism. Despite their incongruous realities, they ended up with far more to say to each other than Luna and Lavender did, and Luna was fairly sure that if Lavender hadn't been star-struck over Rolf, she would have left her own husband to close up shop and Flooed home after the first round of small talk. Luna really ought to thank Lavender, now that she thought of it. The jealous sex session that had followed was worth the anxiety.

"...Also, I highly doubt Neville asks you if he can read the Harpies' playbook before a match, Ginny. It's the same thing with Rolf. Proprietary secrets. He has serious business competition."

Ginny snorted, but she grudgingly nodded her head. Only she and Ron seemed persistently inclined to think the worst of Rolf.

Speaking of Ron. "E're juff twying to wook out for you, Wuna," Ron said, attempting to inhale his coconut cream pie and engage in conversation simultaneously.

"Well, I think it's time for a change of subject," Lavender said brightly. "I was thinking now that we're all together, we could make a visit to see Susan. She's out of St. Mungo's and is working on some security project for a conference the Wizengamot is having."

"That's just like her, to go back to work the second she's better," a disapproving voice said.

The group quickly agreed to visit Susan's office at the Ministry and paid their shares. Much to Luna's relief, the topic of conversation switched to dragon pox and Charlie's misdiagnosis of Susan's symptoms. Ron even brought up how their dad sent him a howler about not listening when he warned him years ago about the dangers of untreated pox infections; Abraxas Malfoy, Draco's grandfather, had died of a particularly virulent strain, and it was a scary bedtime story that Arthur hoped to pass on to his grandchildren one day.

The atrium was crowded for that time of night. Hermione commented that some foreigners were checking in with security, and that was probably the cause of the lines. They were almost to the entrance to the elevators when Luna spotted a familiar face in near one of the fireplaces.

The figure didn't respond to her but instead began to walk quickly towards a side hallway.

"I'll catch up with you in a minute. Fourth floor, right?" Without waiting for an answer from her startled friends, Luna made a beeline for the retreating figure who looked uncannily like her husband.

"Rolf! Rolf!" The man sped up, never acknowledging her shouted greetings. What's the matter with him? Is he deaf?

She was within touching distance of his cloak when the fireplace across the room exploded.

They were sneaking into the preserve, and if they were caught, the Muggle authorities would try to arrest them. Rolf didn't seem to mind. Luna had no choice; in order to check for larger magical species, she had to trespass at night, and the boardwalk trails were the best place to observe the swamp without actually stepping in it.

They ate Muggle desserts called Klondike bars as they headed out of the gate of the campground. The goal was to find somewhere out of sight of any other human beings and Apparate the relatively short distance to an observation deck along one of the offshoots of the main boardwalk.

"Tastes like snowy heaven," Luna mumbled, enjoying the shivers the cold ice cream sent down her spine. Even after the sun had set, the oppressive heat of the summer Georgia day kept the humidity and general ick-factor present well into late evening. She would have sucked on a cup of ice if the desserts hadn't been available.

"It's very good," Rolf remarked, inspecting the remainder of his bar as it melted along his fingers. "I'm not sure it's that good, though."

"Oh, yes it is. Definitely snowy heaven." Luna savoured the last bite as it dissolved in her mouth. "Good thing there aren't any jarveys around, or they'd have stolen it."

Rolf yanked her to the side of the road as a truck came barrelling down the country road at a rate well above any possible speed limit the state could set for the area. Luna nearly choked on her food as she collided with Rolf's chest. They had just escaped becoming a permanent stain on the road by mere inches.

"Whooo!" A random male yelled out of the flatbed. She couldn't be sure, Luna thought he raised a beer bottle at them and winked in a salute before the taillights of the vehicle were the only thing visible in the bluish darkness.

"Idiots!" Rolf cursed. Every muscle in his body was tense. Luna glanced up into his eyes -- and shrank back.

He looked so far beyond livid that she thought he was actually going to do something. Something rash.

She saw his arm raise up; his wand was in it. He really is going to do something. He's going to go after them. By the looks of it, he was going to do more than just hurt them. He was going to kill them.

"Rolf." Her hand on his arm stayed his wand momentarily. She couldn't help but flinch when he turned that look on her; his eyes were devoid of all feeling, pupils expanded and black as ink. She was staring down a rabid animal.

For several moments, Rolf and Luna stood there, her body half in his embrace, her hand on his wrist the only impediment to his imminent departure. Then she let go and stepped into his arms, wrapping her own around him and pressing her face to his chest, willing his heart to slow beneath her ear.

She didn't know how long she stood like that, hanging on for dear life. Eventually, his wand arm lowered. A hand came around her back. The other hovered momentarily over her head, then descended as he stroked her hair. She thought he muttered something about 'Muggle imbeciles,' but she couldn't be sure.

When Rolf no longer felt like he would fly from her touch, she loosened her grip and backed away a step, suddenly shy.

"Wait," he said, and he pulled on her hand until she was standing close to him again. At her inquiring look, he smirked, tilted up her chin, and kissed her on the lips.

It was marvellous, soft and warm, unlike the awkward fumbling in broom closets and behind bed curtains at Hogwarts. He pecked at the corners of her mouth. His lips were gentle and inviting, and when he nudged hers apart, she sighed and opened under him.

He tasted like birthday cake. Frosting and chocolate, probably from their snack not minutes before. She hummed in contentment; his tongue stroked gently at the roof of her mouth and thrust in and out in the most delightfully wicked manner. She let out a little whimper and pulled him closer, returning the kiss. His hands skimmed along her sides, skirting along the curves of her breasts only to dart away and rub the small of her back in little circles. It was a cruel sort of teasing, and she repaid him in kind, shocking her own sense of modesty as well as Rolf.

She had the good sense to pull back when she felt him harden and his erection pressed against her t-shirt. They stood apart for a minute, her face burning and her hands shaking, and she noted with satisfaction that his cheeks had a pleasant flush to them and he seemed flustered as well.

"Forgive me," he finally said, and he grinned like the last thing in the world he wanted was her forgiveness. "You had some leftover ice cream--" here he ran his thumb over her lower lip, "right there." Before she knew what was happening, he was kissing her again.

They finally released each other, though Rolf seemed reluctant to let go of her arm. She indicated that they should Apparate by drawing her wand and taking a step back.

"Hello. Mr. Scamander and Mrs. Lovegood are out at the moment. If you'd like for them to return your call, please wait until the tone and leave your name, number, and a brief message. No howlers, please."

"...Luna? It's Dad, dearest. You don't want to know what I had to do to figure out this number. I haven't heard a peep from you or Rolf since I saw you over a month ago. What happened to keeping in touch every few days? This must be the tenth time I've tried to reach you. I'm calling tonight because I received an anonymous tip from a source inside the Ministry of Magic. He or she said there was going to be an attack there tonight by some Death Eater sympathisers. I said it was rubbish and decided not to print it, as the informant could offer no proof. At least that was what I thought until I saw the Prophet this morning. The Wizengamot is scheduled to meet with representatives of other national leaders tomorrow, and I caught a name on the Albanian list of foreign dignitaries that sounded familiar. Mulciber. It turns out one of the older dark wizards had a family in Eastern Europe. They're probably not too happy about the outcome of the Second War, and you know they'd be hard pressed to walk down a street in certain cities without running into a pureblood bigot or a fourth cousin of Dragulia or Merlin knows who else. I've contacted the DMLE, but we both know how reliable they think I am, so who knows if they'll even so much as raise the alert status? Please, Luna, do not go out tonight, and if you do, at all costs, stay away from the Ministry. We'd all like to hope that these sort of things are practical jokes, stupid pranks some expelled ex-students from Hogwarts are playing for revenge, but both of us know better than to think our government has ever handled any threats in the last two centuries well. Be safe, munchkin. I love you."

"Hurry up. This is right about the time I saw them here two nights ago, and I think they were circling their territory, so they probably don't stay in one place for very long."

Normally, Luna wouldn't have cared so much about tripping and doing a faceplant on a platform in the middle of a swamp, but she happened to be on that platform with a certain dark-haired, blue-eyed Adonis, and somehow, she didn't imagine her typical clumsy theatrics would serve to convince him of her prowess at field work. A voice inside her head nagged her and pointed out that she was more concerned with kissing said Adonis than with doing her job, but she quickly flogged it into silence.

Quill behind one ear? Check. Wand behind the other? Check. Camcorder slung across body? Check. Notebook in hand? Check. There. Nobody can accuse me of enjoying myself too much if I brought work with me.

"I had some illumination when I came here Sunday evening, and they still showed themselves, so I suppose it won't do any harm."

Luna glanced up and saw Rolf wave his wand, and a string of witch lights, hazy and flickering, brightened the space around him and slowly rose into the air. He made it look so effortless, as if the concentration required to perform a complicated spell like that one was merely an afterthought, his wand just an extension of his arm, a muscle to flex when needed.

Luna realised she had been staring at him. Wordlessly, she nodded, and they ventured deeper into the swamp.

They passed the first of the gazebo-like structures that served as rest stops along the pathways.

"Where? What are you...oh. You're right, it does kind of look like a bicycle. ...Perhaps a unicycle. A very old one."

Luna rolled her eyes. "I said look behind the tree. It's definitely gone by now."

"Luna, I didn't say we were bound to find a septaped. I said I saw several creatures that looked just like what you'd expect a monster with seven human legs to look like. The lights can make you see things."

Rolf peered at the base of the sunken tree. "And what am I supposed to be looking for?"

This time, there was a splash, and Rolf jerked back off of the railing. Luna grinned smugly. "The ground was trembling. Did I imagine that splash, too?"

Despite his initial reaction to the noise, Rolf didn't seem more than mildly startled. He didn't have his wand out; it was back in its holster, like a Muggle gun with the safety still active. Luna didn't consider herself cowardly, but she never went anywhere alone with new acquaintances without her wand, and unfamiliar environments dictated that she have it out at all times. Her hand had closed around the wood from the first second of apprehension, and she forced herself to slide it back behind her ear instead of into its hip sheath. The air was tepid and thick with magic. She could feel it. But it was impossible to cast spells and film at the same time.

The whisper had her dashing several yards ahead of her as quietly as she could. "Where?"

At first there was nothing but the shadows of the flames above them, making ineffectual stabs at the night. But several of the tallest dancing shapes were moving back and forth, very slowly across the ground, then stopping, and she knew that flames did not behave that way.

The septapeds were large, if one had to hazard a guess from such a distance. Their legs, when straight, reached up to shoulder height. Their bodies were covered in something resembling a cross between red hair and porcupine spikes. They reminded Luna of sea urchins she had seen in a Muggle magazine once, except for the humanoid legs, of course. And the arms. They actually only had five legs; the other two appendages were quite capable of swinging them up and down the tree trunks...

They were everywhere: in the foliage, sitting on the tops of trees, some hanging or crouched on low-lying branches. They were waiting, waiting for something, perhaps for whatever the outcome of the gathering on the swamp floor would be. Quintapeds, another form of cursed magical creatures, were said to be extremely fast. They were also carnivorous. The Ministry had labelled them with the highest possible warning, Class Five, for a reason: they were lethal. And these things had an extra pair of hands to help them swing from tree to tree in seconds.

Wanting to back away slowly like she would from a snake coiled to strike, Luna stepped in reverse one foot at a time. She knew it would do her little good unless she went in either lateral direction, because her back was about to hit the other railing behind her.

What had she been thinking, letting him convince her that seeing a herd of monsters roaming together was a good idea? For all he knew, they could have been hunting for food and just passed over him by sheer luck. One septaped between them would be a struggle if it attacked, but most magical creatures feared discovery more than they wanted confrontations. However, if she and Rolf had made them feel they were threatened by being there on the boardwalk, then the two of them were royally screwed.

Miraculously, they didn't appear to care one whit about the meddlesome human interlopers spying their brood. The septapeds continued their nonverbal interactions with each other, completely oblivious to or purposefully ignorant of the researchers. After about a half of a minute, Luna assumed they did not see either her or Rolf as a threat. She scanned the area on the opposite side of the walkway, looking for stragglers.

Sure enough, Luna found another creature close by, but it was not a septaped. It looked like a darker version of the cypress trees, and it had no arms, only legs.

She paused, thinking the septapeds might attack at the sudden noise, but they stayed where they were, paying her no heed. She turned back to the giant object in the shallow water. It looked like it was trying to climb on a solid area of peat that stretched directly to the edge of the boardwalk. Poor thing must have had its upper trunk and branches cut off. I can't believe Rolf is missing this! She wondered how well the camera pictures would turn out with only witch lights as backlighting.

He had slipped away, most likely further down the boardwalk to get a better view. Idiot! How could he leave her alone like this when so many fast and harmful creatures were just a stone's throw away?

It was at that moment that she remembered the moving tree and looked back to see if it was going to draw attention to their area. But it wasn't an animated tree trunk with walking roots.

It was a spider. The biggest, hairiest, ugliest spider she had ever seen in her entire life. It was the size of her van and its legs were twice as long as that. It grinned at her - assuming that spiders even could grin, then that was definitely what it was doing - and walked across the peat to where she was standing.

She hit the record button before she could stop her thumb from twitching. That's right, Luna, the most important thing to do in situations like this is to turn off the recording equipment. Not like you might want to draw your wand, or run, or better yet, do both any time in the next century.

The chiming sound of the camcorder turning itself off was fairly hard to ignore, if only because the electronic sound was so aberrant to the natural background noise of the swamp. The spider did pause, however, and backed up a few feet.

Her relief was momentary. A split second later, the air filled with a deafening, high-pitched screech that went on for what seemed like forever. Luna fell backwards onto the wooden planks and covered her ears. The first cry stopped only to give way to three more in rapid succession. She curled up into a ball, willing the screams to stop; they were tearing her ears apart, piercing her mind. She was in agony; someone had to make them stop.

Dimly, Luna recognised that they had to be coming from the septapeds. The cries were unique, to say the least, and there were too many of them to make the sounds a mere coincidence.

As suddenly as they started, the screams ceased. A breeze drifted over Luna's face, smelling of rotting leaves and blood. She pulled her hands from her ears, taking her wand with them. The platform beneath her vibrated in short bursts.

There was one not three feet in front of her. Luna shrieked and scrambled backwards, only to have her hands hit nothing but air and her head hit the lower bar of the railing. Her neck kept her from falling into the swamp. She grabbed desperately at the wooden bar and hauled her torso up, trying not to panic as the monster approached her.

Its eyes were oval and obsidian in the sparse light from above. They reflected light off their surfaces like black marbles. Somehow, they were the scariest thing among the countless other scary things she had seen and heard in the past five minutes. They were polished and cold. Dead.

She couldn't breathe. The septaped's mouth opened, revealing long rows of sharp, pointed teeth. It made a hissing noise. Sweet gernumblies, it's bloody hissing at me! Why can't it go hiss at the spider? They'd make a cute couple.

Her mind cleared. Someone was speaking to her. She needed to listen. The voice was all around her, low and sibilant.

Luna couldn't tell if she was hallucinating or not. She decided not to listen. "REDUCTO!"

The septaped in front of her gave an ear-splitting shriek of surprise as the burst of red light sent it flying backwards. It careened off a nearby tree and landed in the water with a splash.

Her wand flew as fast as her arm would allow. More septapeds were dropping onto the walkway by the second, and the area was quickly becoming a mass of prickly, hairy bushes with fangs and long legs. Luna sent another spell behind her, blasting three of them at a time. They screeched in the same unbearable manner, but if she Silencio'd them, she wouldn't know if they crept up behind her again.

Another septaped hissed at her from the other direction. She whirled around just in time to see it crouch and launch itself into the air, its hands reaching for her throat.

Another pained squeal, another splash. But this time, the monster climb back out of the water within seconds, rejoining its brethren on the walkway who were slowly encircling her and closing in.

Time for a new spell. What was the one Harry had mentioned that Snape had enjoyed using so much? "Sectumsempra!"

One of the creatures trying to grab her hair on the railing made a particularly nasty croaking sound as the area Luna guessed was its face split open like a rotten melon and sprayed a dark substance all over her. The rotten smell was definitely stronger. Luna gagged.

Even though it looked the worse for wear, the injured septaped had not lost its desire to rid her head off. It tried to lunge at her again.

"Expelliarmus!" This time, all of its teeth came flying out and clattered on the wood below. The creature tilted its head and glared at Luna, as if asking whether or not she would be performing even more painful but useless exercises before it could tear her limb from limb. Technically, there was nothing to stop it from doing so, since she had not hexed any of its arms or legs off yet.

There were now at least thirty of the monsters on the boardwalk with her. It was time to stop thinking of merely self-defence and to start thinking in terms of survival.

The jet of green light hit one of them squarely between the eyes. It blinked in surprise as the force of her killing curse threw it back several yards, where it ploughed into its compatriots and knocked them down like bowling pins before it finally slid to a stop and lay still.

A hairy appendage reach around her shoulder, and Luna saw the move for what it was - a brute force attempt to knock her wand out of her hand. She had wondered how long it would take for them to think of that.

A well-placed blow smacked against her wrist, and she cursed inwardly as her wand sailed out of her hand, bouncing on one end off of the railing to her left and heading for the murky slime below. If it sank into the water, she was dead.

The command issued from her lips before she knew she was saying it. All of her willpower, all of her adrenaline and remaining strength focused on her mind's image of her wand, on commanding it to return to her.

It did. The wooden rod halted inches from the surface of the water, then made an arc and flew back to her outstretched arm like a boomerang. The handle smacked against her palm; her fingers closed around it in a death grip.

Her power was undiminished. She would not die here. I will not die here tonight.

They fell in all directions, some alone, others three at a time. She cast the Killing Curse with every new breath she took, over and over and over again, not pausing to see if she missed her targets or not, aiming for those closest to her who presented the most immediate threats, then at large groups of them because she felt certain she would hit one of them.

There were definitely more than a hundred now. It seemed like every septaped in existence was homing in on her insignificant little spot in the forest, dropping in to say hi, and maybe if it had time, trying to rip her throat open.

Luna really hated the fangs. She hated them almost as much as she hated the eyes. The situation was antithetical to her very being; she was a caretaker, a stewardess of the earth's magical creatures (even if not a fan of the non-magical, buzzing, biting and stinging ones), one who respected the balance of power between humans and the wild and tried to maintain it. Now it appeared that she was on the brink of eradicating an extremely rare species she had only just discovered and positively identified.

By virtue of the rapidly growing body count, Luna had erected a fleshly barrier around herself for approximately ten feet in both directions. Furthermore, the septapeds seemed to be conversing among themselves in softer shrieks (an oxymoron if she had ever heard one) several dozen yards back from the carcass piles. They were likely trying to regroup and figure out some way to disarm her permanently while keeping the casualties at a minimum.

A voice invaded her mind again, but this one was different, more hollow and raspy, like the sound wind made when rushing through a reed pipe.

Luna blinked. Maybe she really was going insane. If so, why was her own mind criticising her for saving her own life?

I'm not dead yet, whoever or whatever you are. That ought to count for something.

She felt a presence behind her and spun around, wand at the ready. It was the spider. Instead of grinning, it looked wary, as if it didn't know whether she and her wand were worth the trouble for a tasty meal. She felt a surge of longing for Rolf, even if he had left her in this mess, seconds away from death. He had probably been attacked and killed first, and she simply hadn't heard the ambush.

The spider (or more correctly, the acromantula, since that was what it had to be if it had the power to communicate, according to Harry) was looking at her. It wasn't attacking her. The voice also wasn't inside her head. That was confusion from the first voice, or else a figment of her imagination. But this second request was said aloud, vocalised.

Luna suddenly felt exhausted. She was so drained that she was shaking with the effort to remain upright. She thought of Rolf, and her face crumpled.

"Please," she said, and Luna didn't know if she addressed the spider, or a deity, or both.

Immediately, there was a rush of air above her, and the long legs of the arachnid scuttled around her. She screamed and ducked, but the body didn't even brush her as it passed overhead.

As it turned out, the septapeds, while ferocious and deadly enough on their own, had one major disadvantage against their eight-legged opponent: their jaws did very little damage to the spider. The acromantula's jaws, on the other hand, did a great deal of damage to them. They were fast. It was even faster.

When the spider moved off to one side to attack a group of septapeds, the monsters on her other side moved in, and Luna used Avada Kedavra again, although this time around she didn't bother to get back on her feet.

The battle was over in a minute. The septapeds scattered into the branches of the trees, swinging away like furry Tarzans into the distant shade.

"Thank you," she said to the spider. She had no idea whether she was crazy or whether it would actually understand what she said. What Luna hadn't expected was for a long, hairy leg to plant itself firmly in her path when she tried to run towards the observation deck to find Rolf.

Luna groaned inwardly. "I'm grateful for your help. Don't make me kill you, too."

The Killing Curse doesn't work on me, child. Besides, I did not do that for you. I like to enjoy my meals in private.

There. There was the panic again. Luna found she hadn't missed it that much after all.

Not to mention that leering grin the spider had given her when she first saw it for what it was had made a reappearance. She didn't know the proper spell to banish giant spiders. There weren't even supposed to be any acromantulas in North America, let alone ones that could communicate!

For the umpteenth time that week, Luna had to wonder how much of Hagrid's adventures Harry had been leaving out of his stories.

Had someone else taught the acromantula here to speak? She had really hit the pot of gold with Okefenokee. Now if only she could see it in that positive light once more...

The spider let out a pained scream and fell on its back. The command was repeated, and another jet of light shot out from the corner of Luna's vision. The acromantula stumbled, righted itself again, and started to retreat through the bushes. Again the spell hit it. A flash of squirming legs and a fading yelp of pain, and then it was gone.

Luna lifted her head and moved it to the right, in the direction of the observatory, the direction where she had last seen...

It was more of an exhalation than a cry of relief, but Luna didn't have the strength to do more.

Rolf hadn't emerged from the swamp unscathed, either. He had cuts all over his face that he hadn't had time to heal, his left arm hung limply at his side, and one of his ears looked scorched. Luna wondered how that had happened.

"Luna." He seemed remarkably unconcerned about his own welfare. If she hadn't known better, she would have said the situation...excited him. But that was ridiculous. No adventure was worth the pain he was enduring at that moment.

Somewhere between vanishing the welts on his cheeks and regenerating the tissue of his ear, Luna stopped being frightened and started to feel guilty. Sure, she was bruised and battered a bit, but here he was, in desperate need of some immediate healing charms, and he was worried about her. It made no sense. She told him so.

"Well, if you feel so guilty, maybe you can relocate my left shoulder," Rolf suggested helpfully.

Luna wasn't offended. Her mind kept insisting that she was dangerously close to being in shock. They were physically healed in less than five minutes, and Luna was just about to fall asleep against Rolf's chest when he went rigid.

They didn't give her time to draw breath to scream. In moments, all of the septapeds she hadn't killed dropped back onto the walkway. She hoped they had poisonous fangs; maybe the end would be quick and wouldn't hurt so much that way. Luna sneezed violently but covered her mouth and stifled it.

As it happened, she didn't have the chance to find out. Rolf raised his wand arm and uttered a single word.

Though she remained tucked against his chest, Luna had one eye open to witness the end, so she was able to watch with amazement as a bolt of carpet grey light travelled from Rolf's wand to the first creature, who slumped to the ground with its glassy black eyes staring into nothingness, to the second creature, who died exactly the same way, to the next creature, to the next one, and to the next, until the spell was bouncing off septapeds like a macabre pinball wizard's game and every last one of them was dead.

Luna exhaled shakily, letting out a breath she didn't know she was holding. Rolf supported her by the waist, which was fortunate because she would have slumped to the floor had he released her.

Luna attempted to start a conversation. Anything to keep the silence at bay. The exact words out of her mouth were, "I need to learn that spell."

Rolf chuckled, a deep, rumbling laugh that vibrated under her cheek. "You should probably practise the spider one first."

She didn't protest when he tucked her wand back behind her ear and nudged her forward with a hand on her lower back. Luna was too numb to pay attention, which was probably why she didn't stop to wonder why Rolf had sustained so many injuries when he could fell an army of monsters with a single curse, or that they were heading in the wrong direction.

The force of the blast toppled Luna and sent her hurling through the air to land on her back, knocking the wind out of her lungs. She hardly noticed; it was the horrible cracking sound of her head snapping backwards and ricocheting off the tile floor that took up most of her concern.

She couldn't draw breath for several moments. Around her, outside of her plane of vision, Luna knew there were more explosions. Spells criss-crossed over her head in vivid greens, reds and blues. They were brilliant, like fireworks, only no one was cheering. The atrium of the Ministry was a silent panorama of fire, dust, flying corpses and black silhouettes.

As soon as the air rushed painfully into her lungs, Luna forced herself to move. She scrambled to her knees, coughing, wiping the dust from her eyes and face, and she looked around for her wand. Please don't let it be broken.

It wasn't. She found it in seconds. Her instrument of defence had clattered out of her hand during her landing and rolled to the wall next to the blackened ruins of what had lately been a fireplace in the Floo Network.

Another series of explosions startled Luna, and she ducked into the hollowed out space to avoid the shockwaves and shrapnel. The fireplaces across the hall a few hundred yards down exploded, one after the other, and she dimly put the pieces together. No one could Apparate in or out; powerful wards prevented this. Whoever was attacking the complex obviously meant to eliminate every means of escape.

Thoughts of finding Rolf and protecting him warred with her sense of duty. She was sure it had been him. Taking a glance around, she noted that most of the bodies on the floor were further towards the main elevators. She saw no signs of Rolf.

Think, Luna. Harry was an Auror. So was Hermione. Neville, Ron and Ginny were no pushovers, either. They would still be alive. They had to be. Most of the fireplaces were too far away from the elevator queue to have killed them in the initial blasts. That left the perpetrators - ex-Death Eaters, their sympathisers, hired assassins, or other dark wizards and witches - to deal with.

Luna blinked. She hadn't noticed how angry she was until the grip of her wand started to dig into her palm.

...But first and foremost, someone had to stop the destruction of the exits, or the atrium would become their tomb.

Who or what was causing the fireplaces to explode? She needed to ward the remaining avenues of escape quickly or find the person responsible for the destruction before there were none left.

She emerged from her hiding place and cast Petrificus Totalus on a hooded figure whose wand was aimed a cowering civilian who appeared to be wand-less. The grateful wizard started to thank her.

"Don't worry about it. Retrieve his wand," Luna said calmly. Then she moved between them. "Actually, wait a second. Keep watch and warn me if someone else tries to attack us, all right?"

The wizard nodded. He had the plain-robed look of a typical Ministry bureaucrat, completely out of his element. How anyone could survive the conflict with the Dark Lord and remain unaffected was beyond her. Obviously, there were still many wizards who led sheltered lives. The man looked terrified and utterly incapable of summoning the simplest shield charm to protect himself.

Luna knelt next to the prone figure lying frozen in place on the ground. He was tall and gaunt with a nasty sneer on his face. She didn't recognise him. She cast a simple detection spell Hermione had taught her on the wand. No dark spells, then. It wouldn't do to have either of them retrieve it and burn their hand off.

"It's safe to retrieve his wand," Luna said to the bureaucrat. "Use Stupefy, Reducto, and Avada if necessary. Try to find other survivors and move to this end of the hall. I'm going to see if I can salvage a couple of the exits before they trap us in here." She took a shaky breath. "Don't know how to repair a Floo connection by any chance, do you?"

The man was still on the lookout for other attackers. His eyes darted to and fro, and Luna suspected only half of what she was saying was getting through. She repeated the question.

"Not a problem," Luna answered, saying it much more cheerfully than she felt. "Remember: Stupefy, Reducto, Petrificus and Avada if necessary. Be careful when using the last one."

His bark of laughter at her comment indicated that he'd understood her. He didn't notice that she had purposefully left the task of picking up the dark wizard's wand to him. It wouldn't do to have her dying when she was more suited to battle than he was. The observation struck her as cold and calculating. It didn't make it any less true, however.

In any case, the wand did not hurt the man. Satisfied, Luna set off down the corridor.

There were several duels raging in their area, which was good because the dark wizards had to chance to break away and hex her and bad because most of their opponents were inept Ministry officials who had obviously not performed defensive spells in a long time. She sent two more stunning spells at the nearest foes before they could turn around and notice her, but a third dispatched his opponent and immediately turned and fired at her.

"Crucio!" He probably didn't want to cast the Killing Curse and risk hitting one of his own. Her own, Luna corrected as she threw up a defensive shield in the nick of time and caught a glimpse at a female figure underneath the cloak most of them were wearing for their attack.

"Avada Kedavra." The words had left her mouth before she could register what she said. The curse hit the witch in the arm and radiated out over her chest; she died before her body hit the floor. Luna ran past the prone figure without a second glance.

Finally, Aurors were flooing in further down the hallway. Luna recognised them by the distinctive badges on their sleeves. They desperately needed reinforcements if the scenes she had witnessed were any indication.

Her relief was short-lived. Just as a third Auror materialised from the green flames of one of the active entryways, it exploded around him. His screams were particularly loud in her ears. The other two Aurors who had already entered fell back, covering their faces reflexively as pieces of brick hurtled outwards in an arc of flying debris. Then shockwaves hit her, and she couldn't hear anything.

Luna slid onto her bum and ducked a big chunk of limestone that flew past, missing her head by inches. Blood was thundering in her ears; her head was pounding. She could discern a faint ringing, like a whistle that sounded just a few pitches out of her normal hearing range. Remaining on her knees, she swung her body around in a circle, searching out the one who had caused the damage. She saw no one. Nothing.

Just as her fingers pressed onto the neck of an Auror to search for a pulse, the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.

The temperature around her seemed to drop in seconds. The resulting chill stole her breath away; she shivered uncontrollably. The cold went all the way to her bones.

Even though Luna couldn't think of any possible reason for them to be there, she knew they were there nonetheless. The Aurors on the ground must have felt the change in the air as well, for they opened their eyes and struggled to rise. They were alive.

As was wont to happen, Luna felt their presence several moments before she actually saw them. The tattered black cloaks swept from an adjacent fireplace, one of the two left she could see that weren't damaged. One, two, three, four, five Dementors, waif-like and skeletal, swooped into the hall with noiseless grace. The vice of dread around her heart clamped down, squeezing the hope from her like water from a sponge, draining away her courage drop by drop.

She didn't understand. It was supposed to be over. It was over, years ago. This couldn't be happening.

The Aurors were still too weak to run of cast shielding spells. One of the Dementors sniffed like a hound catching the scent and descended from the ceiling. The Aurors screamed. Another Dementor followed the first. They set to work, latching onto the mouths of the fallen.

Luna closed her eyes. She thought of her father, smiling as he admired her murals on the ceiling of her old bedroom. Then came the image of a triumphant Harry, the light finally settling in his eyes to stay, slipping on his invisibility cloak. The sun on her face as she found out Neville was alive and unharmed.

Then newer images flashed through her head. Watching the snapping turtles as they opened their mouths in the shallow water. Strolling across the yard of an abandoned yet preserved homestead, the sandy ground crunching under her feet as her companion teased her. The way the observation tower over the swamp lake reminded her of the cheering crowds at the Triwizard Tournament, watching the competition from their seats in the sky, so similar. A cold dessert for a walk down a lonely road on a hot, humid night. The feel of Rolf's lips as he kissed her. The tingling warmth as he held her hand. The fire he touched within her as he marked her skin, claimed her mouth, took her for the first time, their embrace under a starry sky where the politics of fear and war could not touch them, and there was only the quiet, the peace of a forgotten land, the simplicity of here and now, a promise of forever...

Her glowing hare was snarling, growing larger than she thought was possible, but she kept a hold on her wand, letting the serenity of the spell ripple through her, calm in the certainty that she would not be defeated here. She would not let anyone die. Not on her watch.

The light reached the ceiling, trapping the Dementors. They tried to retreat to the fireplace and found that it too was filled with warmth. There was nowhere for them to go. Still the light did not waver. The Dementors wailed and screamed. Luna smiled.

She wasn't sure that had happened before, but then, Luna had never felt this happy before. Her face shone with joy, and she did not lower her wand until every last trace of darkness was gone.

In a daze, she walked over to the Aurors and helped them to their feet one at a time. They must have been trying to cast Patronuses, too, for there were stars in their eyes when they turned their faces to her. Her body still felt suffused with a pleasant heat.

"Do you know how to repair or ward the fireplaces?" she asked, as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened.

She peered at one of their faces. It was Anthony Goldstein, a Ravenclaw who had been a year ahead of her. She swallowed a couple of times to see if it would help her make out his answer. Everything was still muffled, as if she were hearing through a pile of blankets.

Anthony opened and closed his mouth, but nothing came out. He was acting rather like a fish, Luna noted. Perhaps he's an unregistered Animagus, and that was what he had been trying to perform? She wondered how a magically transformed fish would fare out of water, then shook her head to clear it.

Luna repeated the question. That time, he answered. "I can't repair it, but we can sure as hell ward it to keep it active and open." He glanced at the other Auror. "Maybe put up a screening spell to keep out more of...them." She didn't have to ask what he meant.

"Excellent." Luna gestured down the hall. "People should be heading this way to evacuate. I'm going back for my friends."

The other Auror regained his voice and gave Anthony a troubled look, then frowned at her. "I'm sorry, but we can't allow a non-combatant to head straight into danger without backup at the very least--"

"Not negotiable," Luna waved her hand dismissively at him. "Mr. Goldstein, you can explain to him that Harry Potter and his friends require my assistance, can't you?" She turned away from them without waiting for an answer.

As she ran out of stunning range of the Aurors, she could hear a whispered argument between Anthony and the other man. Good enough. All she needed was a considerable distance to make pursuit of her a moot point.

The Ministry's main hall reminded her of the nearly endless airport terminals in the Muggle world, where the room stretched out for such an incredible distance that it was difficult for the human eye to discern what was happening at one end from the opposite one. Luna flew past several dozen fireplaces and doorways before she could make out bits and pieces of the action at the main end of the corridor near the atrium and the fountain. The area around her was empty; most of the remaining duels were taking place in the area where she had left her friends.

Her hearing was slowly returning by the minute. Luna passed the bureaucrat and a couple of others, most of who had minor injuries. The man smiled at her, and she nodded in grim satisfaction before heading onward.

As she moved ever closer to the flashes of light and battle cries raging in the distance, she started to pass the prone figures of the dead. The body count increased as she ran closer to the elevators. Luna forced herself not to look. She had wasted enough precious time as it was already.

Suddenly, an arm shot out of an alcove she was passing. Luna yelped in surprise as someone with a powerful grip dragged her into the shadows.

"Let go of me!" She flipped her wand in her hand and forced her arms to relax. Thinking she had ceased her struggles, her attacker loosened his grip on her waist by a fraction. Luna inhaled to shout out a Stupefy when her muscles seized up.

She sniffled. Then a spark of hope dawned on her face. Luna tried to turn around. "Rolf?" she whispered.

His arms released her, and she swivelled and jumped into his arms before she could see his face. "I thought you had developed a resistance to me by now," he muttered, grunting as she practically knocked him over.

"So did I. You haven't made me sneeze in weeks." She stepped back. "What are you doing here? Are you all right? I thought I saw you earlier, and I tried to catch up to you, and then the fireplaces exploded--"

"I know, Luna. I was running an errand. But there's no time for this. Are any of the fireplaces still working?"

"There are a couple of Aurors further down near the end of the hall, waiting for me and a few others to bring back survivors to evacuate. I have to find my friends; we were here to visit Susan Bones."

Rolf shook his head and took hold of her arm. "No time. You need to move to safety. I'm taking you out of here right now. We'll reach the Floo exit, and I'll be right after you."

"No, Rolf. I have to go back for Harry and Hermione and the rest of them. I can't just leave them here to fight it out. They could die! Now let me go."

"Damn it, Luna, would you listen to me? They're dead. They're all already dead. It's over. Whoever they are, they're going to finish everyone off, and then they're going to come back here and look for survivors." Rolf shook her, hard. "Luna! Are you listening? You need to leave. It isn't safe here." He stared into her eyes with a cool gaze, even though his words were alarmed.

"What about you?" Luna said, her voice soft. "You must be daft if you think I'm leaving you here."

He was silent. An emotion that she couldn't identify flickered across his face; then it was gone and he was cold as stone again. "You have to leave. You must leave."

She started to protest again. Clearly, Rolf had no intention of leaving. He was a botanist, for crying out loud! She had seen more battles than he ever could have. It should be she who stayed to fight, not he. Luna was about to tell him all of this when he pushed her to the edge of the alcove and gave her a meaningful shove towards the direction whence she came.

"Go, Luna," he commanded, and his voice remained softer than the face that spoke the words.

So that was how it was going to be, was it? Luna nodded and exhaled slowly, and she turned and started to walk.

She hid her wand between the sleeve of her opposing arm. She would have to cast it silently. Any noise or movement and he would dodge it. Luna allowed her shoulders to slump in defeat. She angled her wand directly behind her.

Luna rolled to her right and turned around in an instant, ready to try again if she had missed. Surviving a septaped attack had to mean he was fast.

Luna dodged the spell by flattening her body against the wall next to her. The beam of energy whizzed passed her face, whipped tendrils of her hair into her eyes. He was fast. She would have to be faster.

Feinting a dive to his left, she caused his second spell to fire off harmlessly a foot past her. Oh, but he was good. She threw up a shield spell just in time to deflect a series of stunning spells, all designed to incapacitate her. This wasn't going to work unless she managed to distract him.

"Mirabile visu!" Luna shouted. A shower of lightning bugs streamed from her wand in a rush of sparks and light. Rolf blinked. Whatever he had been expecting her to cast, that was not it. The glowing insects surrounded him. It was only a half a second's lapse in his concentration, but it was enough. "Petrificus Totalus!"

Rolf's eyes widened in shock as he froze up, teetered, and finally toppled to the floor.

Walking up to him and retrieving his wand, Luna surveyed the damage. No injuries. What had he been doing during the chaos? Only his eyes flashed at her. When he broke through the hex, he was going to kill her. She couldn't have him breaking free too quickly. "Incarcerous."

Thick ropes solidified out of nothingness and shot around Rolf's torso, wrapping him like a cocoon. "Mobilicorpus." He glared at her before his face rose out of line of sight. Luna directed his still form down the hallway. Weren't there any fireplaces nearby that still worked?

Just as the thought crossed her mind that she would have to go all the way back and use up more time, Luna saw what looked like a relatively unscathed fireplace, obscured by piles of debris piled up in front of it. She motioned Rolf forward.

It didn't look damaged. The Floo Network did not splinch people. If it wasn't an operational portal, it simply wouldn't accept him.

Luna grabbed a handful of Floo powder from the cracked remains of a jar several feet away and waved her wand, ushering Rolf's floating body forward and setting him down under the chimney. She stuck his wand into the ropes so that it would go with him and stroked his cheek, planting a feather-light kiss on his lips.

"I'm sorry, love," she whispered. "But I can't leave them to die." She stepped back, threw the powder at his feet and shouted, "Diagon Alley!"

Luna said a prayer to whatever gods were listening to take care of them both and rushed back towards the sounds of war.

Rolf patted her hair. "I think one of the gazebos is just ahead. We can rest there if you'd like."

Her feet dragged along the planks. Rolf had to support her by the shoulders. "There, there. Just a little further."

She sagged in relief at the outlines of a roof and a circular wooden bench came into view. Luna sat down and felt Rolf's hand tremble on her collarbone. While the events of the night had put her through the wringer, they seemed to have had exactly the opposite effect on him. He sat down beside her, his eyes bright, eager to comfort her as he conjured up more witch lights that flew to the corners of the pointed roof. He shifted his weight from one thigh to another, looking at her expectantly.

Luna had no idea what he wanted her to say or do. She only knew that he might leave her again if she forgot to insist that he didn't.

"Hold me," she said, and she leaned her head onto his shoulder. Only when he rubbed small circles on her back did the tears fall.

Her laugh made it sound like she was crying harder, which wasn't far from the truth. "Will we have to clean up all of those dead creatures? What if the acromantula comes back?"

"The acromantula will takes care of the bodies," Rolf said. "It doesn't want its home to attract attention any more than we want to have the local police interviewing us about our nocturnal excursion." He took a lock of her hair and twisted it around his finger. "I won't let it come back. Expecto Patronum."

Luna didn't look up to see what animal his Patronus was. She wanted to sink into Rolf, sink like the resting dead sank into the peat, and rise anew at dawn. She wanted the peace that came with surrender. She cried harder.

"Ssh, ssh," Rolf said, and they held each other there for long minutes, the only sounds around them the occasional splash of a reptile's submersion or the lonely rustle of a breeze against dried leaves.

She didn't know exactly when his caresses lingered a little too long on the curves of her hips or when his touch turned heated. She was still crying when he kissed her, and he moved from light pecks on her neck and pulse point to nibbling at her jaw to urging her lips open. The salt of her tears, mingled with sweat from staying outdoors too long, danced on their tongues as he urged her on, humming with contentment when she whimpered.

Rolf had slowly drawn her onto his lap by this time and she hadn't noticed at all. Now his hands kept stroking around her waist, almost tickling her bare skin. Luna gasped as a flush ran down her cheeks. Her neck and chest burned. Rolf skimmed him fingers down her arms and his thumbs brush lightly against her breasts. Her body's visceral reaction was immediate and noticeable though her cotton shirt, and all that heat quickly pooled and shot down to the base of her spine and settled between her legs. She moaned, and Rolf's eyes darkened. He pulled her closer.

She didn't realise she was spreading her legs until her groin pressed into his stomach and he hissed and arched forward against her. That was when Luna felt him; he was hard, pressing against her, rubbing along that spot that sent jolts through her system.

He pushed her away far enough for him to see her expression and she his. Rolf's pupils were so dilated, they were almost black. Luna shivered in delight. She was still crying and wiped at her cheeks impatiently, willing her nose not to run, because runny noses were about as sexy as blast-ended skrewts in one's knickers.

There was a moment to breathe when he picked up his wand again, and Luna caught a glimpse of the glowing ring around the gazebo. It wasn't coming from the witch lights; they were floating slowly about over their heads, casting a goldenrod colour on the arms of the wooden structure. No, this light was an aquamarine colour...the colour of a Patronus.

Luna shifted in his lap. She could make out its head over the rail. It was a giant serpent, its jaws clamped around the end of its tail, keeping watch over them.

A quick muttered charm later, and she was lying on her back on some kind of cushion transfigured from some leftover trash Muggles had shoved under the bench. Luna thought of the motto emblazoned on the blue cartons outside of the campground store. Reduce, reuse, recycle. She giggled.

"Something funny?" Rolf asked. His hands sought out her breasts and pinched her nipples.

Rolf smirked and settled his weight on her, thrusting up against her in that delicious way, sucking at her neck and leaving her breathless. His hands were everywhere, leaving a trail of fire as they pinched and squeezed and rolled her skin. He growled and yanked her shirt over her head, leaving it on her face with her arms stuck in it. "I can't see you," Luna complained.

For a moment, Luna felt nothing but the weight of his hips on hers, and although that was enjoyable, he had exposed her bra to the air, and she wiggled impatiently, unable to touch him or to touch herself if he decided to deny her. Her hips jerked up to grind into him. He rewarded her with a hiss. Her bra fastened in back; he undid the clasps and pushed it up, since her arms would not release it unless they left the confines of her shirt.

Then he was laving her areolas, circling the first one from outside to inside, spiralling into smaller and tighter rings until his teeth latched on to a bud and suckled, then repeating the action on the other breast until Luna couldn't think, couldn't breathe, could only feel as he lifted his head and gently blew on her exposed skin.

When she bucked in impatience, he finally pulled the shirt off her head and pulled her bra off after it. She was surprised to see Rolf was already shirtless, his lithe, toned body bare to his belt, his shoes kicked off to one side. Luna shifted and slid her own sandals off. The cushioning charm was a bloody brilliant idea, she thought absently when her knuckles hit the floor by accident. They would be quite uncomfortable otherwise.

She sat up, gazing at him reverently. Luna reached out her long fingers to spread them across his abdomen, feeling the tautness of his skin. He was beautifully built, she had to admit. At the touch of her fingernails grazing along his upper chest, he drew in his breath sharply and grabbed her hands, stilling them.

Luna regarded him, then slipped her hands from his and worked at unclasping his belt. She couldn't stare into his eyes for too long; his expression was too hungry, too feral. She felt she might fall in if she let his eyes lure hers in. She knew what he commanded: touch me.

She cupped her hands around his length, stroking him, doing what she had tried to do with Neville once when they were both plastered. This was not the same. The tightening in her belly knew the difference.

His hands were not idle. He guided her to her knees and made quick work of her trousers, urging her with a nudge or a tug to slide a leg out here or bend there. His hands were confident as they traced along the edge of her pants and slid beneath the elastic, stroking between her curls. Luna fell forward and let her forehead rest against his chest, stroking him lightly with one hand as he slid one, then two fingers inside of her. She was naked except for her pants and her jewellery.

His hand was gentle but insistent; he slid his fingers as far as they would go; he seemed to be feeling for something. By the triumphant look that flashed briefly across his face as her eyes fluttered and focused upwards on his countenance, he must have found it.

"Does that upset you?" Luna replied, frowning a little. She didn't want him to stop when he could make her feel so alive with a flick of his wrist. She worried he would shut down, and her fears intensified when he pulled his fingers out of her and she felt the void that they left behind.

Rolf tilted her chin up. His fingers were wet against her cheek. "No," was all he said, and Luna caught a glimpse of a secret, hitherto repressed emotion, though she could not decide on what it was. His eyes gleamed with some hidden knowledge; he would not let her have it, and this bother her. But the smile that graced the corners of his lips was one of satisfaction, and at this Luna smiled in relief. He would not abandon her. He would not leave her to empty arms and the ministrations of her own fingers.

Without warning, Rolf pulled off her last vestige of modesty in one fluid motion, tossed her onto her back again and crawled on top of her. She felt his arms slide under her thighs, grabbing her arse before yanking them up and wrapping them around his waist. Luna made to caress him, but he uttered a spell under his breath, and she found she couldn't move them from above her head. She was completely at his mercy, though the haze of lust she was drowning in prevented her from protesting.

He whispered in her ear, something about pain and pleasure being one and the same, and then he was suckling at her shoulder, murmuring words she felt fairly certain were in Greek. Rolf bit down on her shoulder unexpectedly, and Luna cried out in protest until she felt his cock nudge at her entrance and his hips start to roll against her own, sliding him inside of her.

This isn't so bad, Luna thought, and then she realised belatedly that he wasn't nearly all the way in yet. Rolf pulled back, and the second thrust sent him surging deeper, tearing through her maidenhead until he was buried to the hilt. Luna would have screamed, but all of the breath had left her lungs, and all she could do was mentally beg him not to move, to wait until the searing pain went away and she had energy enough to scream. Her eyes were stinging; the tug in her groin was tightening, as if someone had latched onto her diaphragm with a hook as was slowly pulling at her.

She could not ask for mercy because she had no voice, and she received none. He did not give her time to adjust and pulled out swiftly before plunging back into her, ramming himself as far into her as he could go. By the seventh thrust, it wasn't agonising. By the tenth, it wasn't painful at all. By the twelfth, the warmth from their friction made her hips rise up to meet his, and they were moving in tandem. The tugging at her navel felt stronger by the second, and a new sensation was building in her groin.

He kissed her brutally, stealing the air from her mouth as she struggled to cope with the multiple sensations. His tongue mimicked the plunging and pulling of his hips, and Luna thought him crueller for the sweet torture of it. She met him thrust for thrust now, though she longed to touch him and feel the movement of his shoulder blades as he pumped in and out of her.

His breathing grew erratic. Her head lolled back as he panted in her ear and she hummed in ecstasy. She was rolling uphill, towards a cliff where the edge and what lay beyond it had never caused her the bliss she felt with Rolf clenching her to him. When she fell over, the spasms and throes of liquid joy masked the sharp pain radiating outward from her stomach to his. Rolf stiffened as she clenched around him, and she felt a warm substance coat her as he buried himself with a few sharp thrusts and spilled his seed into her.

The bonds on her hands faded, and she ran her fingers through tufts of his dark hair, letting him rest, their bodies still joined. His breathing slowed and returned to normal. Luna regarded him with a sated smile. He responded by wrapping an arm around her and kissing her senseless.

By the time they came back to their senses and reached for their clothes, the Patronus was nowhere in sight. Luna wasn't concerned; if the acromantula wanted to have a second go at them, she was prepared to die happy.

His fingers never wandered far from her neck. They played with her amulet as she let her head rest in the crook of his arm.

Luna had stayed at Grimmauld Place after the attack on the Ministry of Magic. She had reached the atrium and found all of her friends still standing. All save Lavender.

Ron was prostrate with grief, sobbing with his head buried in the crook of her neck, her glassy, vacant eyes staring into eternity. His sister Ginny had held her own against three of the hooded intruders until Harry and Hermione had incapacitated or killed their relative opponents. Luna ran to join them, and Neville had shouted that some of their attackers had made it into the elevators. The other floors were compromised.

Harry had a wretched looking burn on his shoulder but was otherwise healthy. Neville had a gash down his back that had bled profusely before Ginny had managed to close the wound. Luna was proud of all of them.

They had retreated to the active Floo exit Luna had secured earlier at the other end of the hall. While Luna went home to check on Rolf, the others went to Hogsmeade to make use of Poppy Pomfrey's old haunting grounds in Hogwarts Castle. Eloise Midgen was the new Healer, and Harry felt that with Neville's position at the school, Eloise would aid them without questions more quickly than St. Mungo's. No one knew what was safe anymore, not with Auror headquarters under control of the mysterious new terrorists.

She hadn't expected Rolf to go home calmly and wait for her return, but Luna was still disappointed that he wasn't there. She paused to look at her beeping inbox, then packed an emergency suitcase, wrote Rolf a note telling him she was staying with Harry, and advised him to secure his research papers and lock down the apartment, as she didn't know if living in a plottable, Muggle-inhabited area of London while some rogue fighters were out hunting down wizards using Dementors was such a good idea. She left him half of the money they kept in the house and Apparated to Grimmauld Place.

By the time she arrived, it seemed that Harry had contacted Kreacher to let her in. She spent the night writing to her father and turning over her work papers listlessly. The others didn't arrive until dawn.

No one left 12 Grimmauld Place after that until the Weekend. The Daily Prophet screamed out the headlines ATTACK ON MINISTRY; SHACKLEBOLT MISSING and INTERNATIONAL CONFEDERATION OF WIZARDS CANCELS MEETING AFTER EX-DEATH EATER ATTACK. The most disturbing piece of news, in Luna's opinion, was the opinion column theorising about what devices or spells could have caused the fireplaces to spontaneously combust, as there were no witnesses who saw the caster who destroyed them. The author posited that only a wizard with powers equal to the Dark Lord could have used actual wand magic to perform the incantations necessary without preparation.

They had asked Hagrid to bury Lavender. Harry and Ginny had forcibly removed Ron from her corpse and stunned him so that the groundskeeper could put her in the earth that night. He was too distraught to stay and watch. They currently had him heavily sedated in one of the guest rooms.

Hermione took her to Paris via Portkeys that weekend. It was a brief, single-day excursion to check with France's wizarding government about possible Death Eater activity in the area. They finished the meeting early without any real news, so Hermione decided for them that they would see Notre-Dame in the morning and the Louvre in the afternoon.

Luna really ought to have spent the time chronicling her trip to Okefenokee Swamp, as Rolf had succeeded in distracting her from writing anything coherent during their stay there and she had yet to sit down and properly sort her notes (what had she been doing for the past month and a half?), but Hermione had worn her down over brunch after their conference.

"Acid rain and freak weather patterns have already done irreparable harm to the cathedral," she argued. "Every year, millions of people walk through the same tiny hallways and up the same steps. Who knows how long they'll continue to let ordinary citizens take tours at the expense of a vanishing history? It's never a better time to see the modern wonders of the world than the here and now."

An unspoken agreement passed between the two of them: they would not speak of the week's events any more that day.

It was magnificent, though the crowded square around the doors and the bustling city around the island made it appear smaller than she had imagined it to be until they went inside.

Hermione was able to give Luna her own personal guided tour of the alcoves and tombs. Luna wondered how many books Hermione had read on the architecture before she had come there.

The rose window wasn't as bright as it appeared in the pictures, but it suffused her limbs with warmth nonetheless. Luna wrapped her arms around her torso, heedless of the people milling past her. She wanted to stay there, basking in the morning sun forever.

"Magical glyphs," Hermione said into her ear, pulling her away gently. "Archimedes the Fourth placed them under the flagstones in the vicinity of this room. They seem to help with Muggle spiritual healing as well on the rare occasion that a Muggle picks up on the energy flux." She smiled. "Come on, it's not raining and the line to go up into the bell towers is short."

Once they had endured the wait and the shuffling of the crowds reached the balcony floor, Hermione surreptitiously whipped out her wand and muttered a Disillusionment charm and a Muffliato. It was a good thing too, because Luna's sinuses chose that very moment to rebel, and she started to sneeze uncontrollably.

"Bless you!" Hermione exclaimed, conjuring a tissue. "Merlin's beard, if I had known you'd be this affected, I would have saved you the trouble and cast an anti-umbric charm while we were still on the stairs."

For once, Luna was the one to give Hermione a look that plainly said she thought the other girl had gone off the deep end. "You think you can predict my allergies?" she sniffled, wiping her nose and casting Evanesco on the soiled cloth.

The bushy-haired Auror laughed, and Luna had a premonition of losing twenty minutes to a history lesson on obscure allergens that had nothing to do with their current environs whatsoever.

"Well, only when you have a propensity for sneezing at places of power." Hermione waved her wand and tapped on a stone in the wall of the bell tower in which they stood. "Centuries ago, Cadmus Peverell took his own life after using the Resurrection Stone to see his departed sweetheart. The grief the encounter caused him led to his suicide." A shadow passed over Hermione's face, but she blinked it away quickly. "It's sad. Love is worth fighting for, but even the greatest sacrifice doesn't guarantee a happy ending."

The tour group had moved off to another area of the outdoor battlements. No one was watching them. No one had even noticed they were gone. It was just as well; the caretakers wouldn't have been happy if they had seen what Hermione was doing.

Luna gazed at the stone. Darkened lines, scratches began to fade into view on its surface, illegible, blurry angles and shapes. As they watched, the disjointed pieces of a picture coalesced and joined, taking the form of letters. The letters, six of them, spelled out a word in a foreign alphabet -

"Actually, the Greek literally means 'fatality' or 'inevitability,' but I suspect 'fate' had a simpler, sexier ring to it." Hermione rolled her eyes, as if the thought that watering down words could be sexy was the most ridiculous thing she had ever heard. "Anyway, legend has it that a male heir, a descendant of Cadmus from the Gaunt family, discovered the Resurrection Stone, set it in a ring, and used it to speak to his ancestor. Immediately following the conversation, this great-great-grandson travelled to France and hid the Stone within both a place of power and a Muggle sanctuary."

Luna's eyes widened. "You mean that when...when it went missing for centuries, it was actually here?" She shook her head. "From what Harry said, this was an heirloom. Why on earth would he leave it in a foreign land without protection, when any number of catastrophes might have caused it to end up in Muggle hands or worse?"

Hermione raised her eyebrows. "The idea that the Stone was both the means with which he could communicate with Cadmus and the cause of his untimely death must have had a somewhat dampening effect on its value in his eyes."

"So it seems." Hermione tapped the writing, and the front face of the block shifted and groaned, opening to reveal a shoebox-sized space in the wall. It was the perfect place. "Here the Resurrection stone rested, and in time the meaning of the word on the wall was lost and only Anatkh remained...until Marvolo Gaunt's progenitor read a novel about a Muggle tragedy and its dedication, where the author stated that the inspiration for the story was the word 'Fate' in Greek letters, scratched into the side of one of the bell towers of Notre Dame."

Luna rubbed at her chin. "I've always found it hard to enjoy tragedies. While they are realistic, I can only take so much despair in fiction before I have to put the pages away and think of something happy and alive and beautiful."

"It's one of the most celebrated pieces of literature of all time," Hermione replied. She closed the compartment with another flick of the wrist. The stone ground back into place.

"Interesting. You still haven't told me why this place cause me to sneeze, though."

Hermione slapped her forehead. "Yes, of course! Stupid." She rolled her eyes, as if silently berating herself in an imaginary tête-à-tête. "Right. I don't know if 'empath' is the best word for it, per se, but that's what I would call you. I've never met one before, myself. Pretty rare condition, I think, to sense the aftermath of dark magic, which is why most empaths work as Unspeakables or Aurors--"

"Wait," Luna said sharply. Her gut tightened, and she thought she might know why, but it couldn't be for the reason she was thinking, because that made no sense. She's wrong. It's a coincidence. Hermione's not perfect; she makes mistakes all of the time. "Say that again?"

"What? That empaths sense the impression of magical energy on the environment around them?"

Yes, that part. "You mean empaths sense the impression left over from magical spells."

Luna's hand went to the amulet hanging from her throat; she twisted the chain in her hands, waiting for Hermione to contradict her own words.

Hermione crossed her arms and drummed her fingers, a sign Luna had come to know as her tell when she was trying to remember something important and didn't want anyone to rush her. "Yes. Mind you, this is hardly my area of expertise, and I've only read a few articles on it in Magicology with the past five years, so the phenomenon is incredibly neglected. Empaths can sense any kind of lingering 'footprints' left from spells in a particular place..."

"...But that's obviously not the case with you, as the glyphs underneath the area surrounding the Rose Window had absolutely no side-effects on your health. You only reacted when I brought you to the hiding place of the Stone."

Waving her wand at the writing, Hermione said, "The Gaunt who retrieved the Stone murdered two priests on this very spot. He used blood magic to force open the seal and retrieve the ring."

Her head felt light, weightless as if it wanted to detach itself from her body and float off to who knows where. Her cheeks and hands tingled with the thousands of pinpricks of nerves firing all at once, like the fuzzy, impotent feeling that her muscles took on just before she was going to vomit. It was so hard to breathe. Hermione was saying something else to her; her mouth was moving, but no sound came out. The edges of Luna's vision took on a yellowish hue; black spots swam before her eyes...

She could feel Hermione's hand on her shoulder, but she couldn't give the other woman a reassuring squeeze. She didn't have the strength in her, and even if she had, what good would empty gestures do? She could not lie and say that everything was fine when everything was decidedly not fine. In fact, she had the terrible, worming suspicion that nothing would be fine for either them, or their friends, or anyone else ever again.

Luckily for her, Hermione knew how to catch an injured Quidditch player. Otherwise, Luna noted dimly before unconsciousness took her, her knees and hip would never forgive her.

"I'm sorry, miss, but there are no records of a 'Rolf Scamander' ever working at the Wizarding Audubon Society."

The blood drained from her face. "Are you sure?" Maybe she had messed up the name when she said it to the receptionist. "It's an easy name to misspell. S - C - A - M -"

"I'm positive. I tried several variations. Believe me, if a Rolf had worked her in the past decade, I would know. I've worked with the W.A.S. in one job or another for thirty years now."

Luna's hands were on pins and needles; she had a hard time holding the phone up to her ear. "I see." Wishing it to be true will not make it so.

She hung up the phone and slumped onto the kitchen bench, holding her face in her hands for several minutes.

After a while, a hand reached up and sought out the amulet her father gave her, the one with an infinity symbol. Luna threw it onto the table as if it were poison and peered at it closely. Nothing out of the ordinary except that it was at least sixty years old.

What are the odds? Dad never made a secret of his hobbies. Luna wanted to cry.

Instead, she retrieved some paper and a quill. She traced the infinity symbol over and over again, until it became a chain and rotated sideways around the parchment. Then she drew it by itself again, sideways.

She pushed back from the table. Luna debated whether to leave the amulet there or find a container to hide it in. Eventually, she settled for picking it up and holding it at arm's length until she reached her guest bureau. It went in the bottom drawer, between her trousers and her exercise clothes.

They took their time returning from the Burrow with supplies. Kreacher dashed in to organise the food and other provisions. Luna noticed that Harry was absent.

Her tone brooked no room for evasion. It sounded harsh enough on her own ears, harder than she had ever been in her entire life. Merlin knew what the others must have thought was wrong with her.

Hermione frowned, as if she was trying to judge whether Luna needed a dose of whatever they'd been spoon-feeding Ron lately. "He's out, Luna, but he'll be back soon. Is it something very important?" Oh, brava! Give the girl a prize. "Maybe I can help."

Luna realised that Hermione thought she had some stratagem to share with the Order. Was that what they were again? The Order of the Phoenix?

She didn't have any proof. Nothing solid, anyway. Not a scrap of evidence or anything substantial beyond a string of coincidences that would convince them of either his guilt or his involvement. She didn't know if she wanted them to have evidence of his wrongdoing.

"Well, he's out right now and won't be back until much later," Ginny said, walking past her and plunking her bag onto the oak table in the dining room.

Luna pressed her eyes shut and tried not to cry. She had to know one way or the other if her intuition was simply a product of her paranoid imagination.

It took her a few moments to notice that Ginny was speaking to her. "Luna?" Then, her voice low, "What's gotten into her?"

Hermione was whispering. "She's been like this ever since she fainted in the cathedral. I don't know what's wrong. Maybe it's the side-effects from portkeying multiple times."

"I'll be right back," Luna said, ignoring the comments. She walked calmly up the stairs, down the long corridor to her room where she had been minutes earlier. She had to find the pictures.

They weren't difficult to locate. The branded envelope from the Muggle apothecary sat under some work papers in the top drawer of her desk where she had stuffed it after perusing the photographs briefly the other day.

"Hermione." Luna addressed the witch as she re-entered the dining area. She noted that the rest of the group was still milling about in the room. They shot her concerned stares. She ignored them. "Do you remember these?"

"Hermione looked at Luna and tentatively reached out to take the packet from Luna's hands. "The pictures you took in Okefenokee Swamp? We just looked at them, what, two days ago?"

"You remember how I tried to show you the magical photos and Rolf was...how shall I put it?" Luna's voice was bitter. "Camera-shy?"

Hermione smiled. "He doesn't have any reason to be. He's one of the most handsome men I've ever met in my life."

The hammer-blow of the first stake into her heart wasn't the most painful, but it still hurt like hell. "I think there's a reason for that."

"Luna, stop being so mysterious," Ginny blurted out. "What the hell is going on?"

"Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. Maybe Harry can't sense him because that part of him is destroyed."

The four of them turned to the doorway. Ron, face ashen and eyes bloodshot, was leaning against the doorframe. They hadn't heard him utter a single word in two days. He repeated himself. "Explain."

Luna didn't know any good way to say it. "I think there were eight horcruxes, not seven."

Dead silence. No one moved. The entire house was eerily quiet, as if the very walls were holding a collective breath. Luna felt like a grand inquisitor had just placed her in a cage and turned on the spotlight. If her instincts were correct, things weren't going to take a turn for the better any time soon.

It was Ron who finally broke the spell, rubbing at his eyes and sounding angrier than Luna had heard him be in years. "What?"

The warning in that single word spoke volumes. No one spoke of that time. But this was a new day with wicked surprises, and she felt no obligation to appease even him, even so shortly after Lavender had died, let alone anyone else.

"He has no need of the object any more. He's already in corporeal form, though his powers may be diminished from last time."

"Show Ginny the pictures," was all Luna said. She regarded the stunned group with dispassionate eyes, then turned on her heels and exited the room.

She waited for it to quiet down and leaned against the wall. Hermione was telling them to be quiet. Then something caught Luna's attention on the makeshift bulletin board across from her, and she froze. It was a note from Harry.

Hermione said you only brought two changes of clothes. I'm meeting up with a couple of Aurors that we managed to contact via Owl Post, and we're going to head over to your apartment to see if the attack was in any way targeting you - Neville and Ginny have been ruled out because they have so little contact with the Ministry, and I highly doubt you've made some random terrorist angry, but it's worth double-checking, and we'll pick up some more outfits for you.

Don't worry, I brought a female Auror with us. Hermione would flay me alive if she thought I had let Terry Boot rifle through your lingerie.

P.S. - He's been aching to do that for years. By him, I mean Terry, and by do that, I mean examine your knickers. Maybe with you wearing them. You really ought to talk to him and explain that you're married.

He would come for her eventually. It was inevitable. She felt a wave of nausea crest within her at the acknowledgement of her unwilling betrayal. Her dreams seeped in through the cracks in the attic of her mind, and the witch lights danced in front of her eyes. What had she done?

The dusty floor let her body rest and fall comfortably numb. Luna could hear Hermione shuffling the pictures frantically, exclaiming that he had to be in there somewhere, she'd seen him, damn it, he existed, as real in flesh or blood as Ron standing there in front of them, and Luna found this ironic because Ron wasn't really there, not anymore.

A cry of triumph sounded from the nearby room. They must have found one of the pictures, then. The ground trembled beneath her deadened limbs as her mind surrendered to the truth. Luna shuddered and knew she was slipping under, into the cool peat, but she couldn't bring herself to care. Her lungs drew one forced breath after the other, and her heart kept right on beating, broken or not.

Luna started up at the chipping paint on the ceiling and waited for the shrill echo of Ginny's scream.