She's drowning.
She thrashes, water gushing into her throat and engulfing her lungs, her head firmly held down under the ice-cold water. Her eyes fixated still on onyx black. Only when she looks away does it subside, a crash of grey on black and then - nothing.
Her hands reach out, but it's too late. He's gone.
If she'd describe it in one way, it would be exhausting. When her mother had found out, a frown had slowly inked onto the edges of her face. "You must be...a seer. How...marvellous, darling."
However, the false cheer injected into her voice had not gone unnoticed. "A...seer?" Pandora had asked dubiously.
The confusion on her face must have evidently shown, since her mother had given a bitter laugh. "There are different types - the Inner Eye is notoriously rare to inherit, but specific genes can be passed down." At this, her mother had pulled her closer and stooped down until they were almost at the same height. "Pandora, darling, listen to me - you should never tell anyone about this, you know. Fate always runs true. They might...well, they could try to prevent their deaths, and you know how that would go."
"Deaths," Pandora had echoed hollowly.
Her mother had nodded once more, the faint resemblance of tears glistening on the sides of her eyes. "Not everyone knows; not everyone has it. A blessing and a curse. Just like how we're able to see these Nargles, wouldn't you think?"
A blessing and a curse. The words now echo through her head, and then the voices fade away into another childhood memory.
She'd never looked into a mirror after that. The first time her eyes met the other pair, both sets brilliantly grey, her world had gone dark. A splash of pain in not a split-second; fleeting from her grasp. There was only a single word, and she'd clung to it like a woman starved. Luna.
Her last word. Fitting, that it should be her last word, just so...fitting. She knows it fits her down to the bone, silky white tresses glistening at every shake of her head. It haunts her every night and slips under the cracks of dawn, just so that she can never truly escape.
What is Luna? Or rather, who...is Luna?
There is nothing for it. She cannot stop this curse, just as she cannot stop this blessing of knowing that her parents will die with smiles on their faces, quick and yet...not. A small semblance of somewhat shaky relief.
And now, waiting in the high, arched hallways of Hogwarts for her Sorting, she wonders what this...power is after all.
Pandora doesn't look at him again.
"Ravenclaw!" the hat calls, after a minute of deliberating whether it should put her somewhere else solely because she's a seer, and not for any other qualities she may possess. Apparently not.
A flash of dark hair at her right. Pandora's eyes glint steely grey, watching for the boy, her head spinning with curious denial. He's not there.
Only later does she find out, as she tucks in to a heavy helping of pudding, that he's already at the opposite table, staring at her in his black-and-green robes. She gives a simple, sardonic laugh, almost as if to say you got there first.
He's still staring. Their eyes meet.
"Black, Regulus!"
"Ravenclaw!" the hat calls, after a minute of deliberating whether it should put her somewhere else solely because she's a seer, and not for any other qualities she may possess. Apparently not.
A flash of dark hair at her right. Pandora's eyes glint steely grey, watching for the boy, her head spinning with curious denial. He's not there.
Her ears bleed with the pressure; she can feel pushing and pushing until she can't breathe...Again, she's drowning.