Tik tok went the big, ancient clock on the Department of Mysteries. Luna - at the height of age nine and still with blood splatters that had been her mother on her face - kicked the air, sitting on the stiff too tall chair that had been offered to her. She looked around, brains gently floating in aquariums around her.
Her mother's brain had looked like that while inside the skull. Luna blinked her pale eyes and waited. The blood was congealing on her hair, dying it a garish shade of brown, bit and pieces of viscera awful hair decorations. She wasn't sure if her house was still intact; the explosion had been quite severe.
One of the Unspeakables approached Luna, poking her with their wand. It tickled her, but no laugh came forth. It was met with some resistance, like a second skin that clung to her, familiar and smelling like her mother.
"Curious." Was all they said, voice muffled and unrecognizable. Her father - pale, too pale, eyes red and hands trembling approached, too, coming out of the shadows. Luna looked around: adultspeak wasn't something she enjoyed, distracting herself by watching the brains bob up and down. "We can do a spell to reduce the severity of the memory, but the side effects that may be caused by mother's love..."
She did not listen, the eyes still connected to a brain staring at her. They were the same color as Luna's mother's eyes. Maybe they were hers. She hadn't seen what they had done with the previous little that had survived the blast, after all.
Her father spoke something that came out garbled, and then light blinded her. Was she going to die, just like her mother had, in an explosion of light, using her own body to shield the core of magic to explode all over, instead just killing her?
Luna woke up in bed. Her hair wasn't congealed and her room stood intact.
A creature looked at her. Luna stared back at its silver eyes, so much like her mother's, and then, disappeared. She scratched her skin absently, two layers of magic clinging to her, thinking about the mysterious animal.
She had seen it before - a drawing her father had made to her mother in a scrap of parchment, laugh and joy - and nodded. A nargle finally visited her. With a smile, she skipped down to tell her father the good news.
