Harry Potter and the Prince of Slytherin

Chapter 18: The Persistence of Memory

4 September 1993
4:15 a.m.
Hogwarts

Luna Lovegood was completely silent as she made her way through the empty darkened hallways of Hogwarts. This was true even through she made no efforts towards stealth and even casually talked aloud to herself as she explored the castle in her own unique way: as part of a dream. She smiled as she considered the paradox.

"Am I truly soundless?" she asked herself as she floated past the doors leading to the Great Hall. "Simply because no one else can hear me while I'm dreaming? If an astral tree falls in an astral wood, does it make no sound just because no one around can hear it?" She shrugged and floated along.

To her, every night seemed a new adventure as she surveyed the castle in her dreaming form. Literally so, for she rarely remembered anything but the most important details from night to night and virtually nothing by day, despite her recent efforts to master lucid dreaming from the book Hermione had gotten her over the summer. Each night, as her dream body– her heliopathic self, she suspected – roamed the castle, she experienced a near-continuous state of deja vu.

"Or maybe it's the opposite of that," she said thoughtfully. "What's the opposite of deja vu again? Jamais vu? The feeling that something is unfamiliar even though you've seen it many times? I wonder how many times I've explored the castle from top to bottom and forgotten it all when I woke up the next morning."

She shrugged again in response to the question she'd posed to herself and continued her explorations. Tonight's journey took her near the office and rooms of the new caretaker Mr. Sturgeon. Now there was an interesting specimen, so interesting that she had to fight down the impulse to pass through the door into his room (for no physical barrier in Hogwarts had barred her so far ... that she recalled anyway) and see what his nargles and wrackspurts looked when he was unguarded in his sleep.

"No," she lectured herself sternly. "It would be improper if not indecent to spy on one of the staff in their sleep. Why, he might not even be wearing clothes!"

She giggled for a second but then schooled herself into a more dignified expression. Having come to grips with the fact that she was not, in fact, delusional (a fear that had plagued her for many years), the young heliopath now endeavored to appear less odd to others. She only talked about fury-flies and wrackspurts and the like to people who truly understood what she meant, but she was still working to break bad habits like reading books upside down just provoke bafflement in others because she found the nargles produced by such harmless confusions to be remarkably pretty. She assumed giggling aloud over things that only she could perceive was another such bad habit.

In any case, she knew she had nothing to fear from Malachi Sturgeon, no matter how grumpy and surly he pretended to be. She was still learning the rules for what heliopathy could tell her about the people of the physical world, but she knew perfectly well when someone was faking ill-temper. Fury-flies were, understandably, the first astral creature she learned to identify if not fully comprehend as they were the ones most dangerous to ignore. But there was no true anger in Mr. Sturgeon's snarling, only a quiet amusement and beneath that a strange persistent sadness. Oh, he had his secrets and kept them well (and Luna suspected he kept some secrets so well, he didn't even know them himself), but she was certain there was no malice in him. If nothing else, it was clear that Sturgeon and Jim Potter had a genuine fondness for one another though they sought to conceal it from everyone else for whatever reason they thought important.

Luna continued on her nightly trek through the castle's corridors until she eventually came to the staircase that led down to the Slytherin dungeons. She froze and gave out a soft gasp. For suddenly, her sense of deja vu (or jamai vu, perhaps?) was tinged with a sensation not just of familiarity but dread. Carefully, she edged forward and made her way down into the dungeons.