‘Harry,’ she had said in that ethereal singsong voice, he loved so much.
‘Harry Love, I haven’t heard from my grandmother in quite a while and I am getting a bit worried about her. She used to write to me at least once every few weeks, but it has been months now, since I have heard from her. What if something happened to her? What if she is sick? What if…’ and she let her voice trail off, a look of anguish on her face.
‘No more What ifs,’ Harry said kindly, putting a reassuring hand on her shoulder, before enveloping her in a hug.
‘You know the doctors have said that all this worrying is not good for you.’
‘But I can’t help it. She is the only family I have left and she wouldn’t just suddenly disappear. Not without letting me know, at least. I can’t just sit here doing nothing. What if something bad has happened to her? What if she is sick, without anyone there to look after her? ‘
The desperation in her voice nearly killed him.
She had been through so much already.
The war had been tough on them all, but the extent of Luna’s trauma, as a result of her imprisonment in Malfoy Manor, had only manifested itself years later, when she had been the victim of a hurricane, while assisting her husband with botanical research on a small island off the coast of Costa Rica. They had been trapped among the debris for a week, without access to food and water before they were found. When Luna was eventually discovered by aid workers, they reportedly had found her keening softly, while cradling the trapped lifeless body of her husband, Neville Longbottom.
Repatriated to the UK, she ended up on the trauma ward of St Mungo’s.
It had been a shock to Harry to learn of Neville’s death, but not as big a shock as seeing his friend Luna, when he went to visit her.
Harry barely recognised the frail creature.
When she arrived in St Mungo’s she wasn’t allowed visitors, but they made an exception for Harry. Not because he was a war hero, formerly known as the Boy Who Lived, nor because he was a friend, but simply because he worked at the hospital.
After the war, things had been a bit crazy. After the initial reunions with friends and family, Harry had been offered a job as an Auror in the Ministry of Magic. He had married his childhood sweetheart Ginny Weasley, while her brother and his best friend, Ron, married his other best friend Hermione ‘The Brain’ Granger, in a double wedding ceremony. It had made sense at the time. Neither himself nor Hermione had any family to speak of, since Hermione had obliviated her parents, and given the destruction after the war, it made sense to pool their resources. They all had mutual friends anyway, so why not have just one big party.
The wedding had been wonderful, the marriage less so.
Post-war Harry, wanted to be Just Harry, more than anything. He never cared for the lime light, but after the war he craved anonymity more than anything. He just wanted a quiet boring life with his wife and a dog or two and maybe, eventually, a kid. Ginny, however, loved the status she had as the wife of the Boy who Lived and being a war hero in her own right. It certainly didn’t hurt her career in fashion and the more famous she became, the less satisfied Harry was in their marriage. The fact that he was constantly dragged in front of the camera as the Ministry’s poster boy also did not help. So, when Ginny’s career as a fashion designer necessitated a move to Los Angeles, they parted ways and Harry quit his job at the Ministry. All in one fell swoop.
Harry retrained as a trauma counsellor and took a job at ‘St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries’. He bought a small cottage, not too far from London, in Southend-on-Sea overlooking the sea. It reminded him of Shell Cottage and he felt at peace there with his two dogs, Padfoot, a hyperactive black Labrador, and Moony, a very sweet tempered Alsation. He would have been happy to live out his days there by himself, until he met his friend Luna at the hospital.
Of course, he should never have been assigned as her trauma counsellor, but as soon as she saw him, she clung to him for dear life, and it wasn’t as if there was an oversupply of counsellors in the first place.
It was months before Luna was able to utter a single word. She spent most of her days humming softly to herself, staring into the distance, not unlike her mother-in-law, a long term resident of the same facility. Harry often spent time with Alice and Frank Longbottom. Not that they required a trauma counsellor, but now that their son was dead, they had no-one else to visit them, as their only other relative, Frank's mum and Neville’s gran had died a few years before. Harry was glad that Augusta Longbottom had been spared the news of her grandson’s death. She had been the proudest family member at Neville and Luna’s wedding and would tell everyone who cared to listen, what a wonderful grandson Neville was and how proud she was to be his grandmother. Neville and Luna had visited Neville’s parents in St Mungo’s after the wedding and Luna’s bridal bouquet, gifted to her mother-in-law on the day, still took pride and place in Alice’s bedroom. Neville had placed a special charm on the bouquet to ensure that the flowers never wilted. The bouquet was assembled by Neville himself and consisted of a selection of flowers in shades of purples and whites, grown and cultivated by himself as a tribute to his wife.
To Harry, the bouquet was a constant reminder of the loss of a wonderful friend and gifted botanist.
As part of the trauma sessions, Harry became aware of the true nature of Luna’s trauma at the hands of the Malfoys and in particular at the hands of Bellatrix Lestrange.
It never ceased to amaze Harry how much damage one individual could do. When it came to pure evil, Bellatrix was nearly on the same level as Lord Voldemort himself.
Luna’s daily interactions with Draco during captivity, those few moments of normality and attempts at, if not exactly kindness then at least humanity, may have been the only reason why Luna did not end up in the same state as her parents-in-law.
As part of the trauma counselling, Harry taught his patients a small old folklore mantra to dispel the hold Tom Riddle still had over them years after the war.
‘Riddle me this, riddle me that, guess me this riddle and perhaps not.’
It seemed to help some of his patients to dispel the myth that was the Dark Lord, similar to the use of the 'Riddikulus' charm against a Boggart, but far less instantaneous.
To have suffered the loss of her husband and best friend in such tragic circumstances on top of all her previous trauma, not forgetting the loss of her mother at a young age and the loss of her father and the family home at the hands of Death Eaters, it was a miracle Luna eventually started to respond to the medical treatments and counselling in St Mungo’s.
It had taken the best part of three years to get a semblance of the old Luna back, but traumatised Luna was never too far away. She was lurking beneath the surface and could rise her pretty head at any time.
It was therefore no surprise that Harry would do anything to stop his wife of two months from worrying about a grandmother he had never met.
The medical staff at St Mungo’s had advised against marrying so soon after Luna was released from hospital, but at Luna’s insistence they were wed in a small country chapel before she moved into his cottage at the sea.
The dogs immediately switched their allegiances to Luna, when she joined their little pack. So much for loyalty, but seeing the dogs so devoted to Luna made up for it. The small cottage had the same calming effect on Luna, as it had on Harry and the proximity to the sea seemed to have had a wonderfully calming effect on her, until now.
‘Why don’t we pay your grandma a visit, to see how she is doing,’ Harry said to his beautiful wife to stop her from worrying any further.
‘Could we, Harry? Oh, that would be wonderful?’ and with that his fate was sealed.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
‘Serves you right, Harry’, had been the less than sympathetic reply from his friend Hermione, when he told her his dilemma. ‘For a therapist, you are a shockingly bad listener.’
‘Trauma counsellor, actually,’ Harry had replied morosely.
‘What do I do now?’
‘Well, one thing you don’t do is renege on your promise to your wife,’ Hermione had replied in her usual stern voice, hands placed firmly on her now broad hips.
She reminded him a bit of her mother-in-law, Molly, and he pitied Ron, if both women would ever turn on him simultaneously.
‘I know, I know,’ he said, holding up his hands placatingly.
‘How was I to know that her grandmother was an intergalactic smuggler of potions ingredients,’ Harry exclaimed.
‘Everyone knows about Serenity Reynolds, Harry. How have you never heard of the most famous potions smuggler of all time. Neville used to talk about her all the time.
He used to say ‘If his grandmother and Luna’s grandmother went into business together they would run an empire in no time.’
‘Shit, THAT grandmother.’
‘Yes, you brainless dipstick. THAT grandmother. So now what are you going to do.’
‘It would have been easier to track her down, if she wasn’t a Merlin forsaken intergalactic smuggler and used regular travel channels. I will need the help of someone outside of the Ministry, or at least someone who has close contacts with the darker underbelly and does not set the entire Auror network on her, when we do happen to locate her.’
‘I suppose you could start with Malfoy and Zabini?’
‘Draco and Blaise?’ Harry asked incredulously.
‘Yes. Where did you think that M&Z Salacious Solutions were sourcing their ingredients from?’
‘Not Grandma Serenity?’
‘Exactly Grandma Serenity. They initially wanted to call their business Serenity’s Salacious Solutions and have three intertwining snakes, as their logo, but Grandma vetoed it, as it would make flying under the radar a lot harder.’
‘How do you know all this?’ Harry asked his friend.
‘Partly Neville, partly the Salacious Duo, partly gossip.’
Harry stared at his friend open mouthed, as if seeing her for the first time.
‘Gossip? Who are you and what have you done with Hermione Granger?’
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
His visit to M&Z Salacious Solutions had not started out too well.
Neither Blaise nor Draco had been overly happy to see him and when he started questioning them about Serenity, they had both clamped up completely.
‘I am no longer working for the Ministry,’ he said, ‘I am no longer an Auror.’
‘How do we know you are not a spy?’ Zabini had asked.
‘I am not Snape,’ Harry had replied, which had landed him on his ass, as Draco had cast a silent ‘Stupefy’ spell.
‘Don’t you dare talk about my godfaaaaather that way,’ he snarled at Harry.
‘Listen,’ Harry said. ‘I am desperate.’
‘You must be, if you dare to show your face here,’ Zabini snorted.
‘I am only doing this for Luna. She is worried about her grandmother and in her current mental state, worrying is not good for her. Luna hasn’t heard from her grandmother for some time and I have promised that I would find her.’
He did not add that he had promised Luna that they would visit her grandmother, as it was embarrassing enough to have to ask the Salacious Duo, as Hermione had called them, for help.
He looked directly at Draco, as he said: ‘I don’t expect you to do anything for me, but you owe Luna.’
Draco paled slightly at these words and looked at Blaise and then back at Harry.
‘We haven’t heard from her for a while ourselves,’ Draco said, ‘and we were also starting to worry. We are beginning to run low on some of our ingredients and we would have expected to see Serenity a few weeks ago. You can try to get in touch with Joshua Sparrow, he runs an intergalactic shuttle service from Canary Wharf.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
‘Are you Joshua Sparrow?’ Harry asked a handsome man in a long green leather coat.
‘Who’s asking?’
‘Serenity’s grandson-in-law. Her granddaughter Luna is worried about her.’
‘No need to worry about Serenity. That witch is more resourceful than the entire Ministry put together.’
That is not that difficult, Harry thought, but did not make any comment on the statement.
‘Do you know where she is? When did you last see her?’
Harry tried not to sound too desperate, but without much success.
‘I dropped her to an outer atmosphere waiting station about two and a half months ago, she was going to catch a transport to one of the smaller outposts, where she had agreed to meet a colleague of hers.’
‘Her granddaughter needs to see her,’ Harry said with more desperation than he wanted to share with this stranger.
‘I see what I can find out. Serenity often talked about her granddaughter on our shuttle journeys. I am sure she would love to see her. Come back in a few days and I will see what I can find out.’
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
A week later Harry and Luna were back at Canary Wharf and were strapped into what Sparrow had called his Station Hopper, for one of his regular shuttle services to the nearest Space Station, from where a colleague of his would take them to an outpost where he believed Serenity was currently residing.’
Harry knew very little about space travel and what he knew was from old Sci-fi series he would have watched on the Dursley’s television a life time ago.
He had hoped there would be some sort of transportation device and that he would only have to say ‘Beam me up, Scotty’ to be transported to this space station.
According to Sparrow, their technology had not advance quite enough to apparate between space stations, but the magical advances to the muggle shuttles and spaceships had vastly improved travel times and had significantly reduced the risks.
It's like hopping on a muggle bus, he said, which wasn’t at all reassuring, in Harry's opinion.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Harry looked at Luna as she stared out of the window of the small craft.
'I had always imagined that space was just dark nothingness,' she said in wonder, 'but the darkness is nothing like I had imagined. Look at all those shades of dark colours, midnight blue, deep purple and there are so many shades of black.' Harry joined her at the window and had to admit that the view of the nebulae was spectacular, who would ever have thought that clouds of dust could be so beautiful.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
When they arrived at the space station, a young man with dark blue spiky hair came up to them.
‘You must be Luna,’ he said, ‘My name is Peter, we best get going, your grandmother is waiting for you.’
The words Blue Peter, came unbidden into Harry’s head. Keep it together, Harry, he thought to himself.
Before either Harry or Luna had the chance to argue, or ask any questions, they were strapped into another vessel and were off again.
‘Your grandmother is not well,’ the young man informed Luna, once they were underway.
‘In that case, maybe you could fly a bit faster?’ Luna said in her usual serene voice. She stared in the distance and muttered softly to herself, ‘Faster, faster, faster would be better.’
Harry looked at her, worried for her safety and worried for her sanity. A sick grandmother was the last thing Luna needed. How old was Luna’s grandmother anyway? Probably the same age as Neville’s gran had been? So it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibilities that the old lady would die. What effect would that have on Luna’s fragile state? The thoughts in Harry’s mind were going around nearly as fast as this transport vessel was hurtling through space.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
‘Grandma!’, Luna shouted as soon as she set eyes on the old woman, tucked in under white sheets in the sterile looking bed. Everything about this room was sterile and industrial looking. Minimalistic would be an understatement. Functional in the extreme, without any room for comfort, Harry thought.
Grandma Serenity did not look uncomfortable, though, and her face lit up at the sight of her granddaughter.
‘Lunakins, what on earth are you doing here?’ the old woman asked in total surprise.
‘I had not heard from you in a while, Grandma, and then I started worrying, and the doctors said that worrying is not good for me, so Harry said we could go and visit you.’ Luna said, making it sound as if that had been the most natural thing in the world.
‘There is nothing to worry about, My Dear. I only got a bad dose of food poisoning. They thought it was space sickness first and then they thought it might have been some type of flu, but it turned out that one of the batches of potion ingredients must have been off. I am over the worst of it now and I should be able to go back home in a few days. It is lovely to see you, Dear,’ she said, as Luna gave her a big hug.
Serenity’s probing eyes then turned to Harry.
Nothing fucking serene about that woman, Harry thought to himself, not enjoying the scrutinising look she gave him.
‘Harry Potter, I presume,’ Luna’s grandmother finally said.
‘Are you and your Ministry minions here to take me in?’
At this Harry laughed wholeheartedly.
‘No, not at all, I am not an Auror. I am just here to escort my wife on a visit to her grandmother in outer space and no-one on Earth will be any the wiser.’
At the words, my wife, Grandma Serenity turned her attention back to Luna.
‘Dear Sweet Merlin, how long have I been stuck up here? Tell me all your good news. And when I get back, we must have one of those ‘Afternoon Teas’, you are so fond off.’
The two women chatted happily, until it was time for their transport back to Earth.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Safely back in Sparrow’s Station Hopper, Luna rested her head against Harry’s shoulder. ‘Thank You,’ she whispered, before she fell asleep.
Harry grinned at the sight of this beautiful creature, as she snored lightly.
Never a dull moment, he thought, but maybe they had experienced more than enough adventures to last them a lifetime.
He was happy to leave space behind and was looking forward to getting back to their cottage and their dogs.