The Day After Tomorrow

IN MY REFLECTION

14 - IN MY REFLECTION

trigger warning: vague references to self harm

NO one had spent much time worrying about Luna before the war, she knew they'd always imagined her crazy. She knew they didn't really understand why she wore a protective necklace of Butterbeer caps, or insisted on reading the Quibbler upside down or even the curious places she chose to store her wand. But she knew and that's what had always mattered.

Loony Lovegood is what they'd called her and she had never minded because she had always known back then that she hadn't been crazy or loony or even remotely strange.

Except now she couldn't seem to tell the difference, she'd never felt crazy before, she'd felt perfectly normal, perfectly Luna but now she didn't feel like herself at all.

Sometimes she couldn't tell the difference between fact and fiction, like that time when she'd walked out the library to see the deathly frail shape of Olivander, her prison mate.

He'd been slumped against the stone, moaning in pain and hunger and Luna had whipped her head back and forth up and down the corridor waiting for some other student to see him too.

Except they hadn't, they'd kept on laughing minding their own business, no one had even hinted to the idea that there could be a dying old man collapsed meters from them, no one except her.

That's when she knew she was going crazy.

It hadn't helped that she'd started seeing more people because the more that appeared, the harder it was to pretend that she wasn't seeing anyone at all.

She'd barely managed to keep herself from crawling towards the old man in the hopes of helping him or soothing his pain, and had had to stumble back into the library she'd just left to try and push the image of him out of her head.

After Olivander, had come her father, not as she had last seen him with stringy hair and gaunt cheeks but how he'd been all the other times when they'd go on adventures in the green countryside, or stayed up late drinking herbal tea and editing the Quibbler. She'd stumbled into some unknown classroom while she hunted for nargles and had stopped short when she'd seen the tall figure of her father peering out at her from across the room.

And she had ran forward, not moving fast enough towards him and had come up short when she'd seen the another figure emerge from behind her father. It wasn't hard to guess who it was. Hair the colour of corn silk and loose over her shoulders, almost reaching her waist, and eyes a deep earthy colour and skin as pale as milk.

It was her mother, not quite as she'd been in the few images at home, but more animated and more alive. There was colour in her cheeks and an aura of warmth that radiated out of her in waves, the kind you just wanted to go and immerse yourself in.

Luna watched, captivated and awestruck as her mother tucked a thin freckled arm under her fathers and gave him an adoring look filled with love.

She'd reached out her hand ready to join their embrace, heart in her throat and her hand had hit glass.

Luna had stood stock still as if electrocuted for a solid moment, too confused to realise that the figures of her parents had been captured in the gilded gold frame of an ornate mirror.

Salty tears were streaming down her cheeks before she could suppress them and through bleary eyes she was reading the latin inscription, inscribed among the detail: Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi.

She didn't know what it meant, only that it had captured something her imagination had always been too scared to conjure up and before she could help herself she was scrambling at the glass, trying desperately to reach the smiling faces of her parents. All she wanted was one hug, one kiss just one moment with all three of them together as a family.