LUNAR (A Harry Potter Universe Fanfiction)

Twenty Six. Game Night.

Caiti hadn't expected to feel nervous about meeting with Professor Pym, but as she headed inside from the greenhouses on Monday afternoon, she started to panic. This was a stupid idea. Who was she kidding, entering something like this?

Perhaps it wasn't too late to back out. It wasn't as though she had submitted the application yet. She had only told Professor Pym she was planning to enter. She could change her mind. She could say that she was afraid it would jeopardize her N.E.W.T. scores to be that focused on anything but schoolwork, even though she had been significantly more focused on her research than schoolwork all that year and had been doing fine so far. It was all she thought about.

She'd gone out to check on her plant just now, the first time she'd seen it since leaving for break, and it had grown several inches. A bud was forming from the largest stem already. Caiti wanted more than anything to pluck it's petals right off and put them to use, but she couldn't do that yet.

She needed to study it first, learn about it. Wait and let it bloom more fully so she could propagate it. If she started testing ingredients with it too soon, she would waste the only sample she had.

Professor Pym came out of the potions classroom just as Caiti rounded the corner of the stars into the dungeons. "Go on in," she told her. "I'll be back in just a minute."

So Caiti, her nerves spiking again, sat down in Professor Pym's office and counted the bottles on the walls to calm herself down.

She had made it all the way to two hundred sixty three before Professor Pym came back.

"Sorry about that," she said, shutting the door behind her. "One of my third years ended up in the hospital wing earlier, because he decided to dip his finger in his potion. I went to go check on him."

"Oh," Caiti said. She couldn't even find it in herself to smile at this very appropriately thirteen-year old boy behavior. "That's okay."

Professor Pym took a seat on the other side of her desk and rifled through some things behind her, eventually pulling out the application which she slid across the table to Caiti.

"I'm so glad you decided to do this," she said. "I really think you'll be glad you did, no matter what happens. This is going to get your name out there and whether you win or not, people are going to take notice of you. I guarantee it."

Caiti just nodded, swallowing hard, because the panic was starting to fill up her throat and she couldn't speak.

"The first page or two is just personal information, contact information... that sort of thing... It's the back section we want to look at." She flipped to the third page so Caiti could see. "They've spelled out all the criteria for you here, but the gist of it is that you're writing a proposal. They aren't looking for completed research yet. They want something that can be developed, so you're in a really good place. You have a clear idea, you have some lines of inquiry to follow, you have a methodology... and all of that is going to go into this paper. There are seven different sections you'll write, starting with what the goal of the project is, moving into what you've been doing and are currently doing, and finishing up with how you would move forward with your research given this opportunity. So you'll need to think about how a mentorship and the money would help to facilitate your work. You want good, clear examples."

"Right," said Caiti. She stared at the words on the page in front of her but she could barely take anything in.

"I figured today we would start to brainstorm, get some ideas down to get you going, and then we'll come up with a tentative schedule for you. You can focus on one section at a time for a few days each until we've got a full draft. I want you to do as much as you can without me so it's really your proposal, but I'll help you revise it and you can always stop by and bounce ideas off me if you need something to talk to about it. How does that sound?"