Prologue
The Present:
On the last day of her life, Luna Lovegood apparated onto the grounds of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry with a loud crack.
Three years ago, she never would have managed it. The millennia-old anti-apparition wards would have bounced her off with contemptuous ease. She would have been splinted into oblivion like a bug on a muggle windshield just for having the audacity to try.
But that was then, and this was now.
Now, there were no such wards to keep her out, for there was no Hogwarts left to protect.
The ancient school had stood for over a thousand years and more besides, but there was not one trace of it left to tell the tale. The glimmering castle that had been built to last the test of time was gone, stripped from the land as if it never were. Its surroundings were not spared the destruction. The sloping lawns, flowerbeds, vegetable patches, the greenhouses that dotted the paths where students once traced to learn and laugh and live - all of it gone.
There remained nothing besides blackened earth, and a seething, putrid miasma of dark magic that lingered on the ash-drowned land and even the air itself.
Death was in the air - death and cruelty and tragedy most of all.
It was a tangible, ever-lasting taint. There would be no purging it, no restoration. It was all poisoned for good - Hogwarts would never come again. The school would never be rebuilt, and no home or hearth would ever be raised in its place, not ever again.
A part of her found that fitting.
It was an epilogue, of sorts. A final, vile testament to the evil that had devastated a nation and brought it to the brink of ruin twice. The same evil that had destroyed everything she'd ever loved in one fell swoop.
In two words, even.
Not even ghosts linger on here, tied as they once were to a home that had been obliterated completely.
No one would forget this. No one could, and the amount of blood, pure or mud or anything in between would be able to detract from it. To justify it as anything less than the utterly preventable atrocity it was.
A part of her curled in something akin to satisfaction - it's a pale imitation of the real thing and so very, very bitter, but Luna'd gone without feeling for so long that it was near overwhelming in the few seconds she had to savor it before it too flickers out and vanishes into the ether.
For a long moment, she observed the desolation with detached apathy, the light of the full moon above painting everything in her line of sight with soft, silver-white carcasses and a radiance this husk of a long-gone memory did not deserve, and then she turned away.
There was nothing for her here. There was nothing for her anywhere.
Slowly, steadily, she began to march down the dirt path to the Forbidden Forest.
...
The Past:
It is the false victory that hurts worse than any defeat - To taste the hope and joy of winning, of living to see a new dawn, only to have it taken away?
There is nothing crueler.
Luna remembered the final duel between Harry and Voldemort, the two wizards standing in the middle of a crowd of death eaters and defenders alike and still deaf to them all.
The Dark Lord against the chosen one, the hero against the monster. A clash of ideals straight out of children's storybooks and no less epic for it.
She remembered how the bang of their spells connecting was like a cannon blast, and the golden flames that erupted between them, at the dead center of the circle they had been treading marking the point where the spells collided.
And in the end, how Voldemort's spell rebounded, his wan slipping loose
And Harry, with the unerring skill of a Seeker, caught the wand in his free hand as Voldemort fell backward, arms splayed, the slit pupils of the scarlet eyes rolling upward in death.
She was among the first to run to him, her hand one of a hundred who were seizing him, pulling him, trying to hug some part of him, all of them pressing in, all of them determined to touch the Boy Who Lived, the reason it was over at last.
Maybe that was why they missed the warning signs. The joy, the heady feeling of freedom and hope that cried 'This is it, this is the end."
In another world, it just might have been.
But not in this one.
Later, when they sat in the Great Hall, cheering and celebrating, mourning and weeping in equal measure, she was the first to see the figure who slipped into the great hall.
Everyone else was too lost in the moment, too disconnected, drowned out by relief and glee and a thousand other things more to notice.
But Luna saw.
That was her greatest gift, and her greatest fault. Luna always saw, because that's what she did. She saw things people couldn't see, wouldn't see, or didn't want to see, and she always did, even when they called her loony for it and despised her all the more for doing it anyway.
'Just because they can not see', her mother had once said, 'does not mean you have to close your eyes too. Never by anyone's choice but your own.'
They were beautiful words. They were all Luna had left of her
But at that moment, for just that once, she wished she couldn't see.
She wished she couldn't see the Death Eater limping into the great hall, black robes battered and near ruined, yet holding all the same.
Wished she couldn't see the gleam of crimson splashed across his mask (blood, blood, blood - why was it always blood?), wished she couldn't see him raise his wand and seal the doors shut, before rounding back on the hall with a finality that froze her blood in her veins.
(More than anything, though, Luna wished she had been faster - faster to call out, faster to raise her wand, faster to do anything but watch in true, helpless terror as the tip of his wand lit up with a baleful orange glow and listen as his voice thundered over the din of gathered friends and family with a final, hateful roar.)
"Ignus Infernum!"
By the time Luna's wand was in her hand, the Fiendfyre had already swallowed half the Great Hall and everyone in it.
...
The Present:
When Luna crossed over the edge of the forest, she expected to feel something more - Nostalgia perhaps, a melancholy remembrance.
A lifetime ago, she'd found this den of dangerous magical beasts - of fangs and pincers and skittering shadows - more comforting than her own dorm room. She used to come here and walk among the thestral herds, or search among the brambles for Moon Frogs, or Blibbering Humdingers.
Most of all, she'd loved climbing the sturdiest trees she could find and nestling among the branches. There wasn't ever a better place for a nap.
The forest had been her refuge, in the early years before she'd made friends who could accept her. Who understood that seeing the world differently didn't mean she was any less deserving of a place in it, of a place amongst them.
Now though, treading between the oak and pine trees, feet drifting over a path of knotgrass and thorns, she found no comfort at all. The scent of wet grass and clean, crisp air was familiar, but that familiarity brought her no warmth.
It wasn't a surprise. It wasn't even a disappointment. She'd lost her taste for warmth amidst curse flame years ago.
She hastened her steps, her footsteps growing deft and swift as she forged forward, blindly following the pull in her gut, the unyielding pull she'd ignored for as long as she was able before the call grew too deafening and her own feeble resistance crumbled against it.
I await you.
The words were not words, but they were whispered in her mind (to her soul) and she heard them all the same.
Her surroundings blurred as marched forward, quickly forgotten. No creatures disturbed her, not even the half-dozen Acromuntala that flickered past her, on the hunt for lesser prey. Perhaps a shrewder predator could have followed her trail, but not even the keenest eyes or the sharpest senses would have discovered her as she was, with the Cloak of Invisibility wrapped around her body and the hood lowered over her head.
It was the first time in three years that she'd worn it - the first time in three years it had graced her form, for she had never managed to overcome her visceral loathing for the most subtle of the Deathly Hallows.
Even now, she wore it only because she had to. Because it completed the set.
All the same, hated it still, despised it just the same as he had since the day it was gifted to her.
Since the day she lost everything
...
The Past:
"LUNA!" Harry bellowed, the wand held in his grasp - The Elder Wand, the only reason the two of them weren't dead yet. "LUNA!"
She could barely look at him, and he was right beside her. Her own wand was in her hand, held aloft as she cast a desperate finite to counter the flames, but she knew it wouldn't be enough.
The Great Hall was gone, consumed by a swirling chimeric firestorm of red and orange.
She didn't understand how it happened (she didn't want to, please no-) - she didn't understand how everyone was just gone, how it was just her and Harry shielded in a dome of flickering white-blue light, wands held aloft as they tried to stop the inevitable.
Everyone was gone, gone, gone, gone-
A hand latched onto her shoulder and wrenched her around, and her spell failed. Not that it mattered, it was never her keeping them alive.
Harry's green eyes met hers, and if the sweltering heat hadn't already stolen her breath and driven her to her knees, she thought the mad, mad grief and rage and resolve burning in them would have done it just as well.
"Luna, you have to live!" He roared, eyes mad and monstrous in their intensity, and already half gone. "No matter what, you live! Be happy, be free - do whatever the bloody hell you want to do Luna, but live. Live, Luna, Live!"
There were so many things she could have said to that - so many things she should have said to that.
She never had the chance.
Harry's free hand was suddenly pointed at her, and a silver cloth suddenly draped over her shoulder. The invisibility cloak wrapped around her, the hood lowering on its own accord, tightening until it was almost bruising, until no part of her was left exposed.
Only then, at the very end, did Harry smile.
Rife with grief, loss, madness, and peace (and that's what broke her heart for the final time. He looked almost content.)
He closed his eyes before the end.
"I hope you find the crumple-horned Snorkack. Tell us all about it when we see you again, yeah?"
Luna screamed when his arm dropped, the dome with it, and the Fiendfyre swallowed
Luna screamed and screamed until her throat was hoarse and bloody, but she didn't burn.
Not when the Fienfyre washed over her cloaked form, not when it rampaged past the hall and into the castle proper, and not even when it consumed everything within Hogwarts's ward line before it was snuffed out by their collapse.
Somehow, be it by having mastered all three Hallows or by the price of final sacrifice, Harry Potter had given his cloak the power to protect her. The cloak of invisibility imbued with a power no one could ever understand, a power just mighty enough to shield her from annihilation.
Bravery beyond all measure. A Gryffindor to the end.
And when Luna was done howling in frenzied, soul-crushing despair when she'd given up on peeling the cloak off her (a cloak that would not obey until its former master's final command had been carried through), she stood.
By then, the flames had been snuffed out. Ash and dust clogged the air above her, and hid the golden sun they'd all been celebrating under.
It clogged her throat, too, and made every pull of air hurt. She was almost grateful for that. Perhaps it could have snuffed it out entirely, so she would wake up from this nightmare and find her friends and her father and everyone waiting for her, as they should be.
(Luna didn't wake up)
The cloak poured off her like water, pooling at her feet almost almost inconspicuously. As though it hadn't damned her to the worst of all hells
(Live? What is living in a world without any of you?
Nothing, that's what.)
And when she went to pick it up, to rip it to shreds or cast it to the wind or maybe to weep into it for everything she'd lost forever, she noticed a spark.
A few feet away, damningly unharmed and almost cruelly mocking in its continued existence was the Elder Wand, its tip glowing crimson and pointed unerringly at her.
Hail, mistress.
The Cloak and the Deathstick sang as one.
...
The Present
The magic behind it was esoteric, and born of intent more than any action.
Harry Potter had mastered the Deathly Hallows. Harry Potter had died for her and willed everything he had to protect her.
And somehow, somewhere along the lines, he willed mastery of the three treasures of a bygone era to her control.
The three years that followed were nothing but grey.
Devoid of life. Color. Soul.
For three years, Luna Lovegood existed and tried to deafen herself to the one hallow out of her reach. The wand remained in a cupboard she'd locked it in, the cloak in a chest in her father's attic.
(Not her attic, never her attic, it was their house and with just her alone-)
Two were bound to her by blood and misery in such a manner that she could never let them go. In the sickest, most twisted of ways, they were all she had left.
But the Resurrection Stone was a jealous, jealous thing, and the final hallow would not so easily be deterred.
Three must be as one. Come, Mistress.
Over and over, every day, until at last Luna couldn't stand it any longer.
She knew what was going to happen when she picked the stone up - it would give her everything she wanted, and everything she couldn't have, and twist the blade of misery in her heart past the point of no return.
She knew that if she walked into the forest and picked up the resurrection stone, one way or the other she'd never leave it again.
And she. Didn't. Care.
So she walked, and she walked, and she walked. Past the shadow of the tallest trees and the lairs of the fiercest beasts, past sights familiar and unfamiliar, until she at last came to an abrupt spot, completely unremarkable in every way.
Hail, Mistress.
The Resurrection stone seemed to glimmer from atop the earthy soil and dirt, but Luna knew that anyone else would have missed the insidious little pebble. That she had found it in this unassuming patch of nothingness simply because it had never left her alone from the moment Harry passed dominion over it to her.
(She cursed him for it, sometimes. Cursed him well and proper, and hated herself all the more for it afterward)
Harry didn't know what the Hallows were. He'd mastered them and survived them simply by being too good to want them, the ultimate paradox.
Luna would not be so lucky. She knew that.
She still bent down to pick up the stone regardless.
It was cold in her hand, and her thumb idly traced the jagged crack running its surface, bisecting the symbol of the Hallows etched onto its most prominent facet. She could feel the power of the stone, worming its way up her fingertips, burrowing beneath her flash and wrapping around her soul.
Anyone else would have missed it, but not Luna.
She'd always been good with esoteric magic - maybe not casting it, but feeling it? Getting a sense of it?
As easy as breathing.
Across her shoulders, the Cloak rejoiced. In the holster strapped to her arms, the Wand crowed in triumphant satisfaction. And held in her palm, the stone hummed, graceful in its apparent victory.
Their singing melds into one sibilant cacophony
Hail, the Mistress of Death.
Hail, the Mistress of Death.
Hail, the Mistress of Death.
It's a mantra that the Hallows repeat as if Luna was meant to be happy about it. About any of it.
(About anything in this cruel, empty world.)
"What do you want?" She whispered to none and all three of them at the same time.
Conquer, the Wand suggested, for even now it was only a weapon. The ultimate wizarding weapon, but a weapon all the same.
(Conquer what? There wasn't anything the Wand could give her that she wanted)
Raise, the Stone offered, and here Luna almost choked on a sudden sob, the burst of emotion overcoming her violently and without warning. See them all once more.
(But they wouldn't be real, would they? Shades at best, false imitations at worst.)
Be free, the Cloak was the last to propose, do as you please and know that not even death can find you now.
(But Death was all Luna wanted now, so what good was such a cloak to her?)
"Mistress of Death." She asks at last, soft and deceptively low. "What does that mean?"
The mystery that had been asked for millennia, for as long as the legend of the three brothers had existed.
If she expected the Hallows to pause, or to deny her an answer, she was sorely mistaken.
Whatever you want it to mean.
And Luna understood the unspoken message all the same.
"You don't know either, do you?"
It strikes her then that, for all their vaunted power, the Hallows are so very limited in scope. An almighty wand that was loyal to none, A stone that raised shades both it and its user knew were but pale imitations, and a cloak that you could only ever use to hide.
Three artifacts that had shaped the world and whose true utility could only ever be discovered when you didn't want them, and even then they had no power but what you chose to give them - there was an irony there, cruel and bitter and wise indeed.
"Can you give them back to me?" She asked, and she knew the answer already - she knew. She just needed to hear it, to finally seal the last possibility and get on with what she should have done that very same night in the ruins of Hogwarts, amidst ash and ruin. "You call me Mistress of Death, but can I command Death to be undone?"
For the first time in years, the Hallows were silent.
And that was answer enough.
Luna smiled.
She smiled, and she chuckled, and laughed, loud and hauntingly hurt, and that sound tore the Forbidden Forest in the early hours of twilight and would go down in myth among its denizens for as long as the forest stood, for how could such a melody of grief and pain and finality ever be forgotten but in the face of death?
And when she was done, and her demons were set aside, Luna lowered herself to her knees and laid each of the Hallows out before her.
"The three of you," She spoke softly - and her voice was somehow still akin to the roar of thunder in the midst of world-shattering storms. "Are no more."
Magic began to shift, and the Hallows moaned in protest
Mistress-
"You owe your loyalty to me." She said, and they quietened down (for the last time) "This is the end. No more Hallows, no more masters or mistresses of death. This is the end."
The end of the Hallows.
The end of Luna Lovegood.
And the Hallows, ever and always obedient once their loyalty was secured, dis as their Mistress commanded.
The wand went first, crackling with power that shook the forest entire. In the blink of an eye, the wood splintered and shattered, and the power within surged one final time.
The stone came second, glimmering darkly one final time before it simply dissolved into shadows, a mournful cry echoing in its wake, and the power within surged one final time.
At last came the cloak the most loyal and obedient ever to the end, and before her very eyes it dissolved into motes of silver light. For a moment, Luna thought she could see a boy with messy black hair and such green eyes grinning at her, and her own filled with tears.
(I'm sorry, she wanted to say. But there's no life left for me here.)
All the while, the power within the cloak surged one final time.
The lingering remnants of the Hallows streamed, combined, and lit up the clearing with fractal patterns and eldritch light - a storm of impossibly condensing as the power of the artifacts that would have existed until the end of time had they only been allowed to continued to build up, and up, and up.
And when at last it could grow no more, Luna was the first to reach out, without hesitation.
"This," she repeated softly, and for a second, it was as if all the world paused and held its breath. "Is the end."
And then her hand touched magic in its purest, wildest, most uncontrollable form, and everything detonated.
Reality unraveled, and Luna with it, the tapestry of cosmic power and mortal memory that was her everything scattered and erased from existence as the power of the Hallows comes undone in a localized cataclysm beyond all ken.
A death so complete, so magnificent, that even gods would have stopped to watch in awe.
And when the light flickered out, and the clearing settled, Luna Lovegood was gone, and not even dust remained.
...
In another world, there was a Pit.
This pit was not merely a location, but an entity. The dark and foul underbelly of creation, where all that was vile and unwanted fell, with only the strongest most savage of beasts, of concepts, of immortals managed to crawl their way back into the world above.
Tartarus was the Pit.
But Tartarus was also a dome, for beneath this land and god of unspeakable horror lay a force far, far greater than even the mighty primordial dared assume it could be.
The Chaos, or Khaos, or Gap, or any of a thousand arbitrary titles, each as meaningless as the last and all linked to the same almighty concept.
The wellspring of life, the original existence from where the universe and all within it first sprung.
Such was the way of this wellspring that it consistently birthed and gave way to new and impossible life - and such was the way of Tartarus that the Foul One destroyed it, strangled it in its cradle simply by existing, for was that not the Pits's nature and prerogative?
Only the strongest, the cruelest, the ghastliest survived Tartarus, and only because Tartarus himself cared not for the insects and maggots that crawled across his ever-slumbering form.
It was a monstrous place, ruled by monsters of the worst sort.
Certainly no place for a child (or half of one.)
Yet, by some odd quirk of fate (or Fates), a day came when a cry rang out across the Pit. A child's cry, seemingly mortal, and coming from one that has arisen from the Great Chaos itself.
Were this any other day, this story would have ended in cruelty that was the norm for Tartrus and its denizens. The child would have been an oddity, a hilarious one, and then it would have died. Killed, its life forever silenced as an infinity more before it had been, and no one would have been the wiser.
Yet, it just so happens that a god heard that cry, for the Underworld was the closest of realms to Tartarus, and for whatever reason, that same god decided to indulge his curiosity and see what all the fuss was about.
That's why instead of being shredded alive by the hoards of empousa who'd tracked down its cries, the child was rescued. The god incinerated the uppity beasts without a second thought, and picked up a mortal infant that by all rights should not be alive, for how could something so fragile survive in the Pit.
Cradling the child a girl to his chest, the god hummed thoughtfully.
"Just when I think I've seen it all." He smiled in thought, his gold eyes shining, and his black wings flared, dark as death. "Now, what to do with you?"
...
Thirteen years later - Westover Hall:
Grover hurried them to a door that had GYM written on the glass. Even with the dyslexia innate to half-bloods, it was easy to read that much.
"That was close!" Grover sighed. "Thank the gods you got here!"
Annabeth and Thalia both hugged Grover. Percy gave him a big high-five.
Percy was happy to see him again after so many months. He'd gotten a little taller and had sprouted a few more whiskers, but otherwise he looked just the same as always did when he passed for human — a red cap on his curly brown hair to hide his goat horns, baggy jeans and sneakers with fake feet to hide his furry legs and hooves. He was wearing a black T-shirt that had WESTOVER HALL: GRUNT written on it. Percy wasn't sure whether that was, like, Grover's rank or maybe just the school motto.
"So, what's the emergency?" Percu asked
Grover took a deep breath bracingly.
"I found three," he exhaled, awe and excitement brimming in his voice.
"Three half-bloods?" Thalia asked, amazed, leaning in. "Here?"
Grover nodded.
"How is that even possible?" said Annabeth, disbelief coloring her tone. Percy understood why.
Finding one half-blood was rare enough. This year, Chiron had put the satyrs on emergency overtime and sent them all over the country, scouring schools from fourth grade through high school for possible recruits. These were desperate times. They were losing campers. They needed all the new fighters they could find. The problem was, there just weren't that many demigods out there.
"A brother and sister pair and another girl," said Grover. "The siblings are ten and twelve, and the other girl is maybe fourteen I don't know their parentage, but they're powerful. I have no clue how no one's come across them before. We're running out of time, though. I need help."
"Monsters?" asked Annabeth.
"One," Grover said nervously, looking them over desperately. "He suspects. I don't think he's positive yet, but this is the last day of term. I'm sure he won't let them leave campus without finding out. It may be our last chance! Every time I try to get close to them, he's always there, blocking me. I don't know what to do!"
"Right," said Thalia, tapping her chin. "These half-bloods are at the dance?"
Grover nodded.
"Then let's dance," Thalia declared with a nod. "Who's the monster?"
"Oh," Grover said, and glanced around shiftily. "You just met him — it's the vice principal, Dr.Thorn."
...
"Weird thing about military schools: the kids go absolutely nuts when there's a special event and they get to be out of uniform. Percy guessed it was because everything was so strict the rest of the time, they feel like they've got to overcompensate or something.
There were black and red balloons all over the gym floor, and guys were kicking them in each others faces, or trying to strangle each other with the crepe-paper streamers taped to the walls. Girls moved around in football huddles, the way they always do, wearing lots of makeup and spaghetti-strap tops and brightly colored pants and shoes that looked like torture devices. Every once in a while they'd surround some poor guy like a pack of piranhas, shrieking and giggling, and when they finally moved on, the guy would have ribbons in his hair and a bunch of lipstick graffiti all over his face. Some of the older guys looked more like Percy —uncomfortable, hanging out at the edges of the gym and trying to hide, like any minute they might have to fight for their lives. Of course, in Percy's case, it was true…
"There's the brother and sister." Grover nodded toward a couple of younger kids arguing in the bleachers. "Bianca and Nico di Angelo."
The girl wore a floppy green cap, like she was trying to hide her face; Percy couldn't really get a good look at her. The boy was obviously her little brother. They both had dark silky hair and olive skin, and they used their hands a lot as they talked. The boy was shuffling some kind of trading cards. His sister seemed to be scolding him about something. She kept looking around like she sensed something was wrong.
"The other girl is over there," said Grover, tilting his head towards the pack of roaming girls who were on another hapless boy again. "The short one sitting on her own."
Said girl was sitting alone, huddled near the bleachers away from all the action. Percy blinked at the sight of her.
"The heck?" Thalia blurted out, and Percy was kinda with her there.
The girl had maybe the oddest getup he'd seen in a while, and he'd been to friggin Olympus. Dark jeans, with a bright yellow t-shirt and a pink vest over it that was covered in bright blue and silver sparks. She had a necklace made up of corkscrews and bottle cops of all things wrapped around her neck, and a pair of bright gold and silver-blue sunglasses with star frames that absolutely dwarfed her face.
Percy looked at Grover. "Dude."
Grover grimaced. "It's not that bad."
No, it was worse. Percy was almost sure the girl would never survive her first day back at camp. The Aphrodite cabin would either mob her for a makeover or kill her on the spot for that getup.
"I'm serious, Percy. Don't underestimate her, she's a lot more perceptive than you'd think. Her name's Luna Lovegood," Grover went on, hands fidgeting nervously "but everyone calls her Loony."
And as if they'd summoned her attention just by bringing her up (which was an actual thing, because demigod lives clearly weren't hard enough), the girl suddenly leaned forward, pulled off her shades and turned to stare dead at them, cloudy-grey eyes roving over them with unnatural precision.
And then she smiled.
...
Just an idea my cousin kept begging me to write, so I may or may not continue it depending on the reception it gets.
As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.