Skill and Seclusion [2] || Harry Potter x OC x Draco Malfoy

169. New Normal

DISCLAIMER

I do not own Harry Potter ... but Luna Lovegood you are so dear to me

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Considering this was their fifth year at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, the last thing Bel thought she would be doing was making introductions.

And yet, she found herself making two on the carriage ride from the platform to the school grounds.

The first introduction she made was far, far worse than the second.

Harry was introduced to the Thestrals.

Bel herself had first been introduced to them in her first year, when she joined Hagrid on his duties in the forbidden forest.

The winged horse-like creatures with pronounced bones poking through leathery black skin were difficult to miss and, in Bel's opinion, not be fascinated by.

When she had initially asked Hagrid about them, he had been rather illusive. Telling her to wait until she started her Care of Magical Creatures lessons and that he 'didn't want to spoil everything' for her.

But when Bel had actually come to the point in her curriculum that taught her what the creatures were, she realized that Hagrid had actually diverted a very upsetting and difficult conversation.

Only those who had witnessed death could see Thestrals.

Bel would have had no clue what death she had witnessed if he had told her such a thing in her first year, but after her third year heralded the information that her father had killed her mother when she was a baby, she finally understood.

After last year, she also knew her father had been killed shortly after. Thus meaning her parents deaths were her personal key to witnessing such extraordinary creatures.

Bel might have hated them with that knowledge. A reminder of what she, as an innocent baby, had been forced to see. A reminder of their tragic deaths, and the tragic life of their daughter that followed.

But she couldn't bring herself to hate any form of creature. Not really.

In fact, Bel decided there was a certain beauty to it. A tiny fraction of apology from the world to those who had seen such tragedy, now being allowed to see a secret beauty.

A secret that Harry was now let in on.

The poor boy had looked near faint when he first took in the sight of the two Thestrals assigned to the carriage they were going to take.

After that, Bel quickly intervened to assure him that he wasn't going mad. She could see them, too.

She did, however, refrain from telling him just why only the two of them could see the creatures. Whilst she was able to find a beauty in it through her love of all beasts and creatures, Harry did not share that mindset.

But he was intelligent enough to put two and two together, narrowing down the things that only he and Bel had in common until landing on the right answer.

That was when the second introduction came in handy.

Luna Lovegood was a girl Bel wouldn't necessarily call a 'friend' but most certainly wished to.

They had first met in the forbidden forest a few years ago when Bel was heading out to her clearing.

Luna had been out there collecting some sort of rare plant to fend off some sort of odd creature. Bel had joined her.