"How could my love for her be wrong? Sure, it was odd to some people, but it was love just the same."
Since your first day at Hogwarts, there have been rumors about that strange Lovegood girl who wears mismatched clothes and talks about creatures th...
The next day was Saturday, and I had no intention of being productive at all today. All I wanted was to lounge around and write letters to my mum, but my plans of sleeping in were shattered by the sound of someone barreling into my room.
"Y/n, are you up?" I hear Cora's voice say. Someone else comes in after her. I sit up and rub my eyes to see Luna and Cora standing in the doorway.
"I'm awake now," I mumble. "What's so bloody important that you had to wake me up?"
"Get dressed and come to the edge of the Forbidden Forest, you'll see," Luna says. She grabs Cora's hand and runs off.
"The Forbidden-? Luna, you can't do that! She's twelve!" I call after them, but they're already gone. I sigh with resignation. Well, I'm already up, might as well go on some mysterious Saturday afternoon adventure. I dug out a striped sweater, a pair of blue jeans, and grey calf socks with a pair of sneakers. It wasn't much, but it was comfortable.
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I stuck my wand in my back pocket and sneak through the kitchen's back door to get to the forbidden forest. I see Cedric, Luna, Rory, Fred-and-George, and Cora standing by what looks to be a mound of leaves. I jog up to them.
"Morning, Juliet," Fred (or George) says, but he corrects himself. "Oh, sorry. You know, you look exactly like a friend of mine who just got the leading lady in a play." He looks over at his twin. "Doesn't she?"
"Yeah. Spitting image," the other agrees. They drop the act and hug me with smiles on their faces.
"Congrats, Loesser," one of them says. I love these two. We disband and I look to the several-foot-tall mound of leaves just barely in the forest.
"So...did you wake me up so we could look at a bloody leaf pile?" I ask, staring Cora down. She just shrugs.
"I have nothing against leaf piles but this is much better," George (or Fred) says. He crouches down and pulls back a tarp full of leaves to reveal an old, almost-falling-apart car that looked like it had just driven out of an old-fashioned muggle movie.
"What's this?" Luna asked in awe.
"Something our dad was working on," one twin said. "We keep it here to drive around sometimes. Wanna go for a ride?" I look around at the rest of the group, and nobody objects. We pile in the car, with Rory and I at the window seats and Luna and Cora in between. Fred-and-George sat in front, and Cedric sat between them on the bench seat.
"Seatbelts on, kiddies. Got the keys, George?" George pops the glove box open and tosses a ring of keys across Cedric, which Fred catches. After a few minutes of trying to find the right key, the car rumbles to life and we all cheer.
"Do you know how to drive this?" Cora shouts over the engine.
"Sort of," Fred calls over his shoulder. He steps on the gas and pulls back the gear shift, and suddenly the car rockets into the sky. It feels like a rollercoaster.
"We're flying!" Rory yells incredulously. Everyone is laughing and yelling with joy. When I look out the window I can see the entire castle built into the side of the cliff, and in the sunlight it looked like something from a fairy tale. The radio still works (surprisingly) so we turn it up and listen to our favorite songs, singing horribly out of tune and dancing in our seats. We fly around for a few more minutes before the radio cuts out and the car starts sputtering.
"What's wrong?" Cora said. Fred-and-George give each other a silent, terrified look.
"Fred, answer me. What's happening?" She says again, her voice laced with panic. Cedric looks between them.
"Come on, that's not funny. Quit messing with the car, you're scaring her," he says angrily.
"I'm not doing anything, I swear!" Fred protested. The car backfired one last time and I heard the familiar chime that meant there was no more fuel in the tank, and we started to fall. Cora was screaming and Rory wrapped his arms around her, his head bowed in prayer. I heard him faintly mumbling the Our Father while Cedric and Fred-and-George were yelling at each other in a panic. I started to cry.
"We're gonna die," I whisper to nobody. "We're all gonna die." Suddenly I was filled with regret. I regretted being rude to people, I regretted not hugging my mum a little harder, I regretted not saying goodbye to Milo when I left my room this morning, I regretted never forgiving Evie for the fight we had in our room all those years ago, I regretted getting into this bloody car in the first place, but most of all I regretted keeping my secret from Luna. She was sitting right next to me staring straight ahead, oddly calm. Just do it, I tell myself. You've got nothing to lose. When she looked over at me with those huge blue eyes of hers, I kissed her.
If shooting off fireworks was a feeling, that was what I felt. All the years' worth of starvation for her that had been locked out of sight finally burst forward, like a hungry lion at the sight of meat. There was a sort of light that filled up every inch of me, and I was bursting at the seams with it. All of a sudden there was no more falling car, no more noise, no more friends, no more fear. Just her and I, and darkness. And much to my surprise, she was kissing me back. When we parted, the rest of the world came back with shattering force, and the car was still nosediving back to earth like a bomb. There was a look of understanding between us, but she looked away and it was gone. The wave of panic washed over me again as the ocean loomed below us, cold and deep and terrible. Luna took her seatbelt off and grabbed her wand that she kept stuck down her boot.
"Luna, what the hell?" I shout as she climbs across my lap and kicks the glass pane out of the window. She's halfway out when she turns around to look at me.
"Nobody's dying today," she said. "I won't let us crash." I nod my head; Okay, I trust you. She turns back around and points her wand at the roof of the car. The ocean rushed up to meet us.
"Arresto momentum!" Luna screamed just in time. The car came to a screeching halt, hanging in midair just inches above the water's surface. Everything went still, and the only noise was the sound of tiny waves lapping up against the front bumper.
It's okay. We're alive.
Dear Reader,
This is 100% my favorite chapter so far (I was shaking as I wrote it lmao) and I hope you like it just as much as I do! Also...400 READS!!! You guys are so amazing, and thank you for reading! Until next time!!!
