The evening had deepened into a sharp, starlit chill by the time Orion Malfoy reached the periphery of the Forbidden Forest. He had intended to return straight to the Slytherin dungeons, his mind already categorizing the subtle inflections of Hagrid's voice and the implications of the dead roosters.
But the scene unfolding in the shadows of the ancient oaks arrested his steps.
The Thestral, its skeletal head lowered to accept the bright red apple, suddenly paused mid-chew. Its leathery, bat-like ears swiveled backward, picking up a sound the human ear missed. It let out a soft, rattling snort, its blank white eyes fixing on the darkness where Orion stood.
"Another one," the Thestral huffed, a sound that translated perfectly in Orion's mind. "The one that talks. Smells like the damp earth."
Orion didn't reach for his wand. He simply stepped out from the concealment of the brush, the moonlight catching the silver trim of his cloak. He moved slowly, projecting an aura of absolute calm, his hands visible.
The girl didn't startle. She turned her head, her long, dirty-blonde hair catching the faint light like spun moonlight. She wore a pair of oversized, mismatched earrings that looked like radishes, and her Ravenclaw robes were hanging loosely off her thin frame. But it was her feet that caught Orion's attention first—they were entirely bare against the freezing, frost-tipped grass.
She looked at him with large, protuberant, silvery eyes that seemed to possess an unnatural, slightly unnerving serenity.
"Hello," she said, her voice breathy and musical, completely unbothered by the fact that a Slytherin had just materialized from the forbidden woods. "You must be Orion Malfoy."
"I am," Orion inclined his head in a polite, shallow bow. "And you are Luna Lovegood. A pleasure."
Luna turned her attention back to the Thestral, gently stroking its bony, reptilian snout. The beast nuzzled her hand, its leathery skin cold but pliable.
"They are very misunderstood, you know," Luna murmured, her gaze drifting over the creature's massive, folded wings. "People think they bring bad luck. But they don't. They just carry the weight of memory. They are quite gentle, really."
Orion stepped closer, though he kept a respectful distance from the skittish beast. "They require a specific kind of vision to appreciate," he noted quietly.
Luna looked back at him, her silvery eyes seeming to look straight through his skull.
"Yes," she agreed softly. "You have to have seen death. Real death. The kind that takes a piece of you with it."
She didn't sound sad or dramatic. She stated it as a simple, irrefutable fact of nature, like acknowledging the color of the sky.
"My mother," Luna said, patting the Thestral one last time before stepping back. "I was nine. She was a very brilliant witch. She liked to experiment with spells. One of them went badly wrong one day. It was very sudden."
Orion stood silent for a moment, absorbing the profound, terrible simplicity of her loss. He understood the concept intimately, though his own experience was a complete severing of a past life rather than the loss of a parent.
"It is a heavy vision to carry, Miss Lovegood," Orion offered gently. He looked down at her bare feet, shivering slightly himself despite his thick cloak. "But speaking of heavy things... it is well past curfew. The castle is not safe right now. You should be in your dormitory, wrapped in blankets."
Luna sighed, a soft, airy sound, and looked toward the looming towers of Hogwarts.
"I tried," she confessed, her voice lacking any frustration. "I went up the stairs. But the knocker wouldn't let me in."
"The knocker?" Orion frowned. The Ravenclaw entrance was famously guarded by an eagle-shaped knocker that demanded the answer to a riddle rather than a password.
"It wouldn't ask a question," Luna explained, her eyes wide and innocent. "It just muttered something garbled and refused to open its beak. I think the Nargles must have gotten into its hinges. They are very mischievous this time of year."
Orion bit the inside of his cheek to stop a sigh from escaping. He knew what "Nargles" were code for in the Lovegood lexicon. It wasn't a magical infestation; it was bullying. Her own housemates had likely jammed or silenced the knocker to lock her out of the tower.
"I see," Orion said smoothly. "So you decided a midnight stroll in the freezing forest was the next logical step?"
"Oh, no," Luna smiled brightly. "I went to the kitchens first. The house-elves are very kind. They gave me a whole basket of apples. So I thought, since I couldn't sleep in my bed, I would bring a snack to my friends here."
She held up the half-empty basket, shivering slightly as a gust of wind caught her thin robes.
Orion looked at her. He looked at her bare feet, blue with cold. He looked at the vast, dangerous castle behind them, where a giant serpent was currently playing hide-and-seek in the plumbing.
He let out a long, slow breath.
"Right," Orion muttered. He bent down and quickly unlaced his heavy, dragon-hide boots. He slipped them off, standing in his thick wool socks on the freezing grass.
He picked up the boots and placed them on the ground in front of Luna.
"Put those on," Orion commanded softly. "Before you lose a toe to frostbite."
Luna blinked, looking down at the massive, expensive black boots, then up at Orion. "But won't your feet get cold?"
"My feet have excellent circulation," Orion lied smoothly. "And I refuse to walk back to the castle with a popsicle. Put them on, Luna."
Luna stepped into the oversized boots. She looked ridiculous, like a child wearing their father's shoes, but the shivering lessened almost immediately.
"Thank you," she beamed, her silvery eyes crinkling. "They are very warm. Must be the dragon-hide."
"Come," Orion said, turning toward the castle. "Let us go check on this... confused knocker."
They walked back across the grounds in silence. Orion reached into his pocket, his fingers wrapping around the suddenly materialized parchment of the Marauder's Map. He pulled it out immediately.
"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," he spoke softly. The map bloomed with ink.
He scanned the corridors. Filch was on the third floor. Snape was in the dungeons. McGonagall was in her office. The route to the Ravenclaw Tower was clear.
He didn't bother hiding the map from Luna. He knew, instinctively, that she wouldn't ask questions. He liked her character—far more than Granger's rigid adherence to rules or Draco's desperate need for validation. Luna observed the world without judgment, accepting anomalies as simply part of the tapestry.
They navigated the shifting staircases and quiet corridors, Orion leading the way with a subtle Lumos floating near him.
They reached the top of the Ravenclaw Tower. The heavy, arched wooden door stood closed, the bronze eagle knocker resting silently against the wood.
Orion stepped forward. He examined the knocker.
It wasn't jammed with magic. It had been physically jammed. Someone had wedged a thick wad of hardened chewing gum directly into the beak's hinge, preventing it from opening to ask its riddle.
Orion let out a sharp, disgusted sigh. "Stupid Nargles," he muttered.
He drew his Hawthorn wand, pointing it at the gum.
"Evanesco."
The gum vanished instantly.
Orion stepped back and gestured for Luna to approach. "Try it now."
Luna stepped forward in the oversized boots and lifted the heavy bronze eagle, letting it fall against the wood with a loud clack.
Instantly, the eagle opened its beak. A soft, musical voice emanated from the bronze.
"I have cities, but no houses. I have mountains, but no trees. I have water, but no fish. What am I?"
Luna smiled. "A map," she answered simply.
"Well reasoned," the knocker replied, and the heavy wooden door swung open, revealing the starlit, airy expanse of the Ravenclaw common room beyond.
Orion didn't step inside. He stayed on the landing, the cold stone biting through his socks.
He looked at Luna as she turned back to him, handing him his boots.
"Why, Luna?" Orion asked quietly, his blue eyes intense in the dim light. "Why didn't you go to Professor Flitwick? Or any other teacher? It is freezing out here, and there is a monster petrifying students in the corridors. You could have been killed because you were locked out of your own home."
Luna looked down at the boots, then back up at him. Her expression was perfectly serene, devoid of any anger or resentment toward the people who had done this to her.
"You cannot control what the Nargles do, Orion," Luna said, her voice breathy and calm. "They are attracted to things that are different. They swarm around you, and they whisper, and they hide your things."
She tilted her head, her radish earrings swaying gently.
"If you try to swat them away, or if you complain to someone... it just agitates them. You try to remove one, and more will come. They will continue to buzz around you, louder and louder, because they feed on the reaction."
She offered a small, knowing smile.
"The best thing to do is to ignore them. Because eventually, they get bored. They realize you aren't fun to torment anymore. They drift away, and they find other things to do. And in the meantime... you learn to find the beautiful things they can't see."
She gestured vaguely toward the window, where the Forbidden Forest lay in darkness.
"Like the Thestrals."
Orion stood on the landing, listening to the quiet, unshakable justification of a twelve-year-old girl who had decided that enduring cruelty was easier than fighting a war she couldn't win.