Chapter 1
Everyone’s home now. Ron and Fred and George I mean. Percy and Dad are at work all the time and so’s Charlie even though this is the first time he’s been home in ages. There can’t be that much dragon stuff to do in the UK. I mean thats why he moved to Romania isn’t it? Bill finally got a place in London but I bet he gets sick of it and makes them send him back to Egypt. Theres loads more interesting things and people and food and stuff in Egypt. He was over for dinner the other night while Mum was still all smiley about having everyone home again. I forgot how loud it gets when everyones home. Mostly Fred and George. They already blew up their room last night. I bet even you heard it. I thought Mum was going to strangle them. They snuck off to Lee’s place this morning while she wasn’t looking and she went right mental so I came out here and I guess I’m not going to class but I can’t really be bothered. No one really goes in summer anyways. Rons gone and locked himself in his room. Git. He’s a git I mean. I know he’s just reading comics or something. So she would have gone after me if I’d
Are you listening? Sorry. Its got to be really boring listening to me whine all the time but nothing interesting ever
Have I told you about Ron’s friend H
1.
Summer’s come lazily to Ottery St Catchpole this year, spotty clouds drifting across the sky like threadbare patches worn in old blue jeans. The grass in the overgrown orchard up on the hill is thick and green, blades bending, fluttering, rustling in the slightest breeze. It’s tall enough to lay down in the sun-dappled shade and disappear. Ginny’s bare feet and freckled calves stick up like eager saplings, swaying as she crosses and uncrosses her ankles. Submerged below, head bowed and ginger hair pooling on the yellowed pages, she scratches words into the diary with a bent quill and watery ink. Steady lines of grey dry and fade from sight.
She writes without urgency, today, pausing to draw the end of the quill across her lips in absent thought, lethargic in the gentle heat. But she is absorbed entirely in the book, in sharing her mind, not even noticing when a butterfly lands on her sunburnt shoulder, rests a spell, and, having regained its strength, alights once more.
Nor does she notice anyone else in the orchard until a shadow falls across the diary.
“I didn’t know you like to write.”
“Merlin’s tits! Er, I, uhm,” Ginny splutters, sitting up so fast she nearly topples the other way, the world spinning as the slams the diary to her chest. “Luna,” she realizes after several frantic heartbeats, blood flushing across her whole body. “You… um. How long have you been there?”
“Only a moment.” Luna’s voice is like running water: melodious and persistent, staccato and fluid. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Luna Lovegood is fourteen, the same as Ginny but about as different as they come. She’s willowy and fair, white-blond and pale as her namesake, skin never seeming to turn no matter how long she spends out in the sun, gentle in speech and dreamy in disposition, rare to rise in voice or temper. She lives down at the base of the shady side of the hill in a particular house that doubles as the editorial office, printing press, and distribution center for her father’s off-beat magazine, the Quibbler. Xenophilius Lovegood is even stranger than Ginny’s father, and Ginny’s father has a collection of spark plugs in a garage full of muggle junk, so exceeding him really is quite the achievement. Xenophilius takes Luna out on trips searching for imaginary—probably imaginary—creatures and prints articles that are stranger than the strangest books Ginny has ever seen. Luna makes a good deal more sense once you have met Xenophilius, though of course Ginny would never say anything like that.
Luna is also about the most beautiful person Ginny believes anyone could ever meet, even when she dresses in eclectically repurposed adult clothing and handmade jewelry. Today it’s a dress that might have once been a grown man’s white tunic cinched down under a patchwork vest, a blue and gold pashmina shawl tied as a sash around her waist, and a crown of clovers chained like daisies in the waves of her long hair. Unlike Ginny, she had the sense to put on shoes: sturdy leather hiking boots, the toes worn but otherwise well-maintained. Even assembled like a child who had raided a parent’s closet before a game of make-believe, to Ginny she looks elegant and serene.
And then there’s Ginny, in her grass-stained cut-off jeans and a faded blue tee-shirt, looking like she rolled out of one of her brothers’ bins. “I thought you were in Ireland,” she says.
“Oh, yes.” There’s a bit of unabashed accent to her voice, as there often is when she returns from travel. “But there was a sighting of Stubby Boardman in Sweden. Daddy’s gone to get photo evidence, since he is really Sirius Black in disguise.”
It isn’t exactly uncommon for Xenophilius to go skipping off in a different direction at a moment’s notice. Because he is such a devoted journalist, Luna’s said. Luna says she doesn’t mind, because she gets to read all about whatever happened in the Quibbler after, and she doesn’t have to deal with the tedium that is last-minute international travel. Luna says it can take hours to get through if they haven’t planned well enough in advance, even if it is just her and her father, but Ginny has only left England once, to visit Bill in Egypt. And the portkey had taken so much out of her she’d slept through customs, so she doesn’t even really remember.
“My brothers are back,” Ginny says after too many beats of unsteady silence.
“They are,” Luna agrees. “Your mum told me. She called to ask if I’d seen you while I was making elevenses. You’ve got a lot of explaining to do, she told me to tell you. On account of your marks arriving.”
Oh, that had been today? Bollocks. If she had gone to class, she’d have been able to hold out for at least a week. More if Fred and George were in top form. “She never listens,” Ginny mutters. “You’re lucky your dad doesn’t work for the Ministry. It’s an absolute ghast. And everyone knows your grades are just how much your teachers want to suck up to your parents.”
“Daddy says children shouldn’t be locked away inside all day, you know. We’re like plants. We need sunlight and rain to grow, or we get brittle and bent out of shape.” She peers down at Ginny, though she doesn’t seem to be looking quite at her. “You do look pale.”
“Not as pale as you,” Ginny challenges, wondering if pale is supposed to be a bad thing. She scratches her shoulder, where the first burn of the year is peeling away her freckles.
“I suppose.” Luna turns her face away, closing her eyes to the breeze for a moment, lost in a train of unguessable thoughts. “Do you want to go into the woods with me?” she finally asks. “There’s will-o’-wisps at night, and if we are distracted enough, we might run across the night fairies sleeping.”
Ginny’s hands tighten on the black leather cover of her book, but for a moment: she doubts. It is her secret, no, her responsibility, and she would write every hour of every day if it would help Tom feel less alone, but he hadn’t responded. Perhaps she has bored him, with all her petty complaints, the unaccountable anger at her mother that bubbles up every time she thinks too long about home. It is unlikely there are any fairies in the Diggorys’ muddy woods, but maybe there are, or maybe they will come across something else, and that might give her something interesting to write. Something new, that he hadn’t experienced in his brief time under the sun.
“Alright,” Ginny says, tucking the bent quill between the blank pages and the nearly-empty vial of watery ink in her pocket. Luna offers a hand to pull her to her feet, the world dancing with dark spots as Ginny blinks against the brighter light splashing across her face. And Luna meets her eyes and smiles as the world seems to tilt, and her hand shifts, but she doesn’t let go as she turns to walk towards the woods that stretch between their two houses.
“I know how easy it is to get caught up in paper and ink, writing stories and dreaming things,” Luna says as she leads Ginny along. “But don’t forget the forests and the trees.”