Luna(tic) (Marauders Era)

57. Stains on the Floor of a Haunted House

The rest of the summer was a cliff edge Luna walked carefully. She was, after all, no stranger to balancing acts. And this one was easier in many ways because at least there was one safe way to fall. Luna wasn't quite sure what to do with that. She'd never walked her tightrope with a net before and it was making the fall something like tempting.

But of course, that was only one of the ways to fall. And the other way... well. She didn't want to think about it. About what Remus had said. About the way those eyes in her dreams the next full moon had looked... familiar. About the way it had struck something when he'd said the words. Something so deep down she didn't have a name for it. Something buried beneath years and a haze she couldn't puncture. Not that she tried very hard. Or at all.

She saw Remus and the others only once more during the remainder of the summer, short as it was, and she and Remus didn't talk about what had happened the last time they'd met. About what they'd said. And hadn't said. There had been only a moment of eye contact, one of the ones that conveyed more than the hello it might have been mistaken for, and that was all.

This too Luna wasn't entirely sure what to do with. On the one hand, she didn't want to talk about it. Didn't want to explain it. It was too close to too many questions Luna wasn't willing to answer. And on the other hand... it was strange, the way they almost seemed to pretend it hadn't happened. Because his soul had been laid bare and she'd opened half of hers in return and it felt like that should have changed more than it had. Like seeing the ugly insides of someone's fear should have mattered more.

In the end, Luna simply made her peace with it. Let herself settle in the midst of those new threads tying her and Remus together and did her best to keep them from getting tangled up in the million other strings linking her to people and moments and ghosts. It was, she decided, just a new spider web. Nothing more and nothing less. And little though she liked it, Luna's life had been covered in cobwebs for as long as she could remember.

Of course, these days, it didn't feel like it as much as it used to. Luna was aware of the strings, and her steps never stopped being careful, but there were more and more moments when she forgot she was a haunted house made of flesh and bone instead of wood and stone.

Standing on the platform, saying goodbye was not one of those moments, but not for the usual reasons. Sure, Sam was there, and sure, the way the rest of the world walked through him always made her bones feel older than they were, but that wasn't where the haunted came from. That came from leaving things behind. Goodbyes, after all, were always full of ghosts and Luna didn't think leaving her mother's arms was ever going to get easier.

It was a fleeting thing though, that form of haunting. And the train was fast and the compartment crowded with laughter and light and ghosts were easy to leave behind in moments like that. In fact, for the past while, Luna's returns to Hogwarts had all been moments of forgetting. Of leaving ghosts behind. She tried not to think about it. About what it meant for her. For her mother. For her life in the ways she had always known it.

The thought occurred to her twice on that train ride. Once as they were pulling out of the station and Luna looked out the window to find her mother's face looking a little more lost than usual. And once as they pulled into Hogsmeade and the crush of people in the train and on the platform contained just one too many sideways glances from people who had never quite forgotten what Severus had said last term. It made her want to run home. Made her want her mothers arms. Made her remember how haunted she was.

She brushed the thought aside as best she could. Home was home. Would always be home. But Hogwarts... Hogwarts was something home had never been. Hogwarts was a place Luna was normal. Or at least, a place where people thought she was normal. A place where the madness hadn't quite bled through yet. And Luna knew, the way only the mad could, that madness stained. Worse than wine or berries or blood. Once madness touched a thing, it was never quite the same. And home was drenched in it.