Chapter Text
Professor Mcgonagall had once told her after a particularly eventful transfiguration lesson, “Miss Lovegood, you must understand that there are things that are real, and there are things that are not.”
“Respectfully,” Luna had answered with her most diplomatic smile, “I don’t care to see the difference.”
Luna knew that the creatures she spoke of and sometimes saw were real. Real like the wind, real like magic, real like feelings, and real like life. She also knew that for some reason, other people didn’t think so. Or, didn't see them the same as she did. Still, she tried to explain, in her way.
They called her Loony for that. (That, and the glasses, and her habit of reading upside-down, and the way she dressed, and the way she spoke, and—well, a lot of things, really. She thought they were wasting a lot of time coming up with ways to prove other people were different and ostracize them for it. Time that could be spent trying to stop a war, research the Crumple-Horned Snorkack, or something else important.)
Luna didn't care. In fact, she thought they were quite silly for not even trying to understand—even if her explanation was a bit tricky. Her daddy had always understood.
So, she had noticed through her Spectrespecs that Ginny Weasley had a veritable army of wrackspurts humming in her ears, and knew that really something should be done about that, and had told Professor Flitwick. Who had laughed and patted her on the head from atop his stack of books. Luna had had to bend down to allow him to reach, and then had gone on her way, offering Ginny an amulet the next day: a lavender-sprig decorated dirigible plum on a strip of leather to ward them off. The other girl had just looked at her with a blank face—blank not like parchment, or clear sky, or bare earth, but blank like black funeral robes, like Professor Binns' voice, like her mother's eyes—and refused.
She wasn't sure what else she could do for Ginny Weasley instead, so she just wore the amulet herself and tried to stay near Ginny as a deterrent.
(After a while Ginny snapped and yelled at her to stay away. Apparently she was being more of a deterrent for friends than wrackspurts. Luna told her that she was doing a fine job of that herself, but Ginny didn’t like that very much. She was convinced wrackspurts weren't real, like most people were, and so Luna stopped trying to stay near.)
The wrackspurt problem was getting worse, though, and Luna just didn't know what to do.
That was when the Thing came.
Luna didn't quite know what the Thing was. At least at first. The Thing appeared human on the outside, and seemed comfortable being referred to as a 'he' by others. Which was odd. (Not the 'he' part, Luna knew some people and beings liked having a pronouns to attach to themselves. She herself was among that category. The human part was odd.) The Thing was definitely not a human. Sure, there were arms and legs and hair and eyes and all sorts of potential human body parts, but the Thing wasn't constrained to them in the way humans (other than metamorphmagi, animagi, and those afflicted with curses like Lycanthropy, and instinct told Luna he wasn't any of those things) were.
She only had a glimpse of the Thing around a corner on her way to the owlery at first, when he was talking to Dumbledore about something probably important. Arguing, really. Luna didn't pay too much attention to the conversation. Perhaps the higher-ups were finally addressing the Rotfang Conspiracy. Gum disease shouldn't be underestimated, and the Thing looked like he could deal with some pesky Ministry-overthrowing Aurors and an umgubular slashkilter or two in a jiffy. Perhaps he was a reader of the Quibbler. She couldn't wait to tell her Daddy about the Thing. Perhaps she should try to get a direct interview, and they could make an article about him. That would be nice. So she decided to follow them.
The Thing definitely noticed - he sent her a cheeky wink over his shoulder, and then his eyes changed colour for a little bit. Yet another sign that he wasn’t human. (Dumbledore didn't look behind him at any point after that. So the Thing's eyes changing had done something, but how?) Perhaps the eyes were the key to finding out what sort of magical creature he was.
Luna took her half-finished Transfiguration essay out of her robe pocket and a self-filling quill from her ponytail and jotted down a few notes about the Thing, just in case some blumping pickerns got into her head while she was asleep and made her forget any details. It was so frustrating when they did that.
Finally, Dumbledore and the Thing went up into Dumbledore's office, and so Luna sat in wait opposite the gargoyle, who was ignoring her. She would get an interview for her daddy. Maybe he was the last of his species, a one-of-a-kind. The Thing deserved a two-page spread already and she didn't even know anything about him yet.
They didn’t take too long in the office, only enough time for Luna to hum three lullabies to the nargles hiding in her shoes so that they’d fall asleep and not run away with them again, which they had a habit of doing—although Luna knew it wasn’t really their fault, the other girls in her dormitory incited them with their fast paces and full schedules of boring activities. Everyone should know that planning in advance makes nargles angry. Why, her daddy had written an article about it in The Quibbler just last week! Of course, Luna made sure to always do an untimetabled activity every day, like making jewellery (her daddy was completely correct, rabbit’s feet necklaces were bound to come back into fashion in a few months’ time, and she looked fabulous wearing them all the same) or gossiping with thestrals (Margaretha was due to have a foal in a few weeks, but some of her older children were kicking up a fuss at the lack of attention they were now getting) or warning people about the Minister’s goblin-eating tendencies, or something she came up with on the fly just to avoid nasty situations, but perhaps being surrounded by organised people was affecting her own creatures as well. Anyway, the Thing and Professor Dumbledore hadn’t been gone for very long before they emerged, Dumbledore looking resigned and mildly contrite with nargles in his ears and the Thing determined, a little smug, and eyes a normal human blue shade. Since she put her Spectrespecs on earlier, she could tell there wasn’t a single wrackspurt on him!
She would have been more shocked, but Luna knew some magical creatures were naturally repulsive to wrackspurts. Or it could be that he could see them without the aid of Spectrespecs and knew what to avoid. Why, that could be why the Headmaster’s beard wrackspurt population had gone through a mass reduction.
Oh, and also he was heading straight for her. Luna stood up from her cross-legged position and tilted her head sideways to see him better. It worked for robins, and Luna noticed that when she used this tactic on her housemates she saw strange expressions on their faces that hadn’t been there before, but there was no change to the Thing’s face. Perhaps her binocular vision was getting in the way. She could try to create binoculars that allowed each eye to see from different perspectives to mimic the robin, that ought to have better results.
“Hello, little witch,” the Thing said, upon drawing closer, ignoring Professor Dumbledore clearing his throat.
“Hello,” Luna replied, following his lead in ignoring the Headmaster. This was much too important a conversation to interrupt. “I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage, I do not know what you are. My name is Luna. What's yours?”
The Thing gave a laugh that sounded to Luna like birds’ wings and leaves unfurling and plimpy stew bubbling on the oven. “I'm Merlin. It's a pleasure to meet you, Luna. You seem like you have an awful lot of questions. Will you still be reachable by comfortable means in an hour?”
Luna blinked at the Thing—Merlin. A merlin, or was that his name? His hair did looked like feathers, perhaps he was part bird? Maybe that was why he was immune to the head-tilt. “I’m afraid that will entirely depend on what happens in the next hour,” she replied. “I do hope so. Daddy would love it if I got an interview with you for the Quibbler. It’s quite rare that we find such interesting creatures without having to go looking for them first.”
Merlin nodded gravely. “Of course. I am rather rare, I suppose, and it has been a while since I've received any questions without people assuming they already know the answers. But, I must go. If in an hour you are findable, I should think I will enjoy talking to you very much.” His smile was like apple-wood fires and woollen mittens.
The nargles around the headmaster appeared to be trying to burrow into his ear canals, and he coughed. Luna stared at them. He really did have rather a lot, didn’t he? Perhaps she should offer him a butterbeer cork necklace, or a rabbit foot one like her own. They were probably trying to steal his thoughts to send them to the garden gnomes in order to plan a coup against the castle. Luna thought this was rather silly of them, (the nargles, not the gnomes. The gnomes had a sensible plan. She would rather enjoy an era of garden gnome supremacy. They had such interesting governmental ideologies. Perhaps that was why the headmaster let them be) because if she was a nargle she’d steal much more exciting things, like potions ingredients or the sweets Dumbledore had in his office. Probably the sweets would be easier, Professor Snape’s cupboard had a veritable hoard of nargles at all times (not as many as her shoes and trunk, of course, but she truly was lucky with the exceptional prolificacy of the nargles around herself) and not enough research had gone into finding out if they were territorial or not. She made a note on her parchment to tell her daddy it was a potential avenue for an article.
“Yes, Albus?” said Merlin when he hadn’t spoken for a while. The headmaster just coughed again, muttered something and moved on, Merlin stepping into stride beside him after one final wink in Luna’s direction.
Luna tucked her quill into her sock for safe-keeping, and ran the rest of the way to the owlery to send a letter to her daddy.