Days After Death

Ginny triple-checks the address and steels herself. Then she knocks.

She counts down the seconds until she can see sluggish, shuffling movement behind the foggy glass of the sidelights, and she stands a little straighter, clenching the bag slung over her shoulder in one hand, and the letter in the other.

The figure draws closer. Ginny can make out her long curly hair.

Should she smile? Should she greet her like an old friend? Would that come off as rude or ignorant of where they had left off?

The door opens.

“Ginny!” Luna smiles at her, bright and genuine.

She’s aged a lot, with deep smile lines and saggy skin under her eyes. Her hair seems a little more discoloured than it used to be in their youth, and she has an almost scary resemblance to how Ginny remembers her dad. But, despite it all, she’s still very much Luna, with her long curly hair half up into a messy bun, round, chunky, ladybug-patterned glasses sitting on the v-line of her multi-coloured sundress, feet bare on the floorboards of her house, her toes painted in various shades of pink. Her voice is airy, she still speaks like she’s singing a song, and her smile transports Ginny back decades.

She throws her arms open as if she wants to hug her, but then hesitates as she crosses the threshold of the door. Ginny receives it anyway, albeit awkwardly. She’s afraid Luna will be able to pick up on her stiffness, but it’s like the other woman just melts into her, and Ginny feels strangely emotional about it all. How could she not realise how much Luna’s absence was weighing on her until she was standing right in front of her?

“Do you want to come inside?” Luna asks her, sounding equally meek and excited.

“Oh, yes.”

Luna shows her around the house. It’s the same house she raised her sons in. She hasn’t been here in quite some while, but she glimpses things she’s still familiar with. The tea stain on the plastered arch between the living room and the foyer from when Lorcan spilled his cup from running too fast. The frames hanging up on the wall across the stairs. The stickers making up a great black oak tree on the white wall behind the grandmaster clock. But there are also changes– Luna has replaced her carpeted floor with wooden boards, she has different lights installed, and the backyard seems more alive and healthy than it used to.

“You got into gardening?” Ginny appraises, eyeing the blossoming gardenias lined in a row on her back porch.

Luna smiles nervously.

“Oh, yes!” she waves her hand. “Rolf got me into it. Said it could help me take my mind off…” She doesn’t finish the sentence, and she doesn’t need to. “Tea?”

Ginny nods her assent, more for Luna’s sake than her desire to drink. She walks over to sit on the couch, thinking that sitting at the counter on one of the cushioned stools is probably too intimate as of right now. The atmosphere is awkward enough as it is, there’s an elephant standing in the room with them that Ginny doesn’t want to look in the eye directly. She’d like not to get hexed out of the house before she can have a proper shot at this.

But she still thinks about Fred, and a part of her effort to rebuild what was stutters every time, despite what she now knows and what she has always known.

Luna glides into the kitchen, an organised mess of baking ingredients and pizza boxes, and fishes out a ceramic mug from one of the cabinets. Ginny watches with a distant interest, like there's a screen that separates the two of them, like they don’t exist within the same scene.

Which is stupid.

“You’re still close with Rolf, then?” Ginny asks nonchalantly, and when Luna freezes for a moment, Ginny wants to slap herself for such a stupid question. She could’ve just asked how her day was, like a normal person. But she’s always struggled with small talk.

“Ah, so you know we’ve…” Luna makes a complicated gesture with her hands and Ginny raises her brows.

“Divorced?”

“Yes.”

“Yes. To your question.”

“Did Neville tell you?”

At least Ginny has the decency to hesitate.

“Yes,” she says at last, wondering why she feels so guilty. It’s not like she was gossiping with Neville. She only hounded him for updates on Luna’s life about twice a year, to which he would tentatively share the blandest of details. Ginny knows Luna and Rolf had split, but she doesn’t know anything else besides. “He was cagey about the details, so I didn’t press him.” A lie, but whatever.

“It was about six or so years ago,” Luna says, scratching her cheek. She doesn’t seem so bothered by it, until she says, “He just couldn’t handle it anymore. Neither could the boys. So he had to leave with them. I don’t blame him for it. Especially when it comes down to my sons, well, he’s probably the reason I still have a relationship with them.”

Ginny shuffles awkwardly, the velvet of the couch ruffling loudly. She didn’t think they’d get into this conversation so early on. It was bound to come up eventually, but the elephant’s expanding to concerning degrees, and Ginny isn’t so sure she can talk about it as freely as Luna is. Which is stupid, of course, because Ginny hadn’t been the one experiencing it.

“Anyway,” Luna waves her hand again, as if to clear the bad mojo, “Rolf and I are still family. He helped me when I said I wanted to get better, and he helps me now with rebuilding. I don’t think I can ever be as close with someone as I am with him.”

Ginny doesn’t know what to say about that, so she stares at the gardenias outside and contemplates whether Luna just says this to save face. What kind of husband leaves his wife at the most vulnerable time of her life, only to crawl back in support once she shows signs of getting better?

But that’s exactly what I’m doing.

“Your tea,” Luna holds out a steaming dark concoction, and Ginny flinches from the startle. “Your favourite still oolong?”

“Yes,” she says, blushing a little as she takes it.

Luna skips around the couch and plants herself beside Ginny, tentatively sipping the drink. It’s not too hot though– perfect temperature, actually– and the taste isn’t so overpowering. Luna crosses her legs beside Ginny, watching her drink her tea.

“I wondered how you’ve been,” Luna says. “I would ask Neville and he would tell me some stuff.”

It touches Ginny to know they’ve been doing the same thing– asking about each other– for years without the other one knowing, but it also makes her very sad.

“I don’t think I’ve been so good,” she admits, hating the instant rise in emotion that almost washes her out completely. And all she’s done is admit it aloud.

Luna smiles at her kindly, tipping her head to the side.

“I kind of got that,” she says softly. “I don’t know why else you would want to visit me.”

The feeling of overwhelming vulnerability is replaced with humiliation. Yes, Luna is right. Why did she come here? A desperate attempt to patch things up and go back to the way things were before her life spiralled out of her hands? Back when she had a life she could call her own removed from the cage she feels trapped in now?

“Sorry, it wasn’t just about unloading on you,” Ginny says curtly.

“You can unload on me.” Luna’s voice is breezy and unbothered in return. And she’s genuine too, because Luna hasn’t ever done something that wasn’t genuine.

“No, really. It’s fine.”

Luna hesitates, but then says, “Okay.”

A beat. Then:

“Did you want to come over to talk about all that’s happened between us then?” Luna asks. There’s a tremor of fear that Ginny decides to ignore for her sake.

“We don’t have to.”

“Are you sure?”

No, but she can’t bring herself to say it. It’s selfish of her, she thinks.

“I don’t mind, it’s over now. I swear,” Luna says quickly. “I actually want to, um, speak about it with you. I want to apologise. To both you and Harry but definitely mostly you.”

“It’s okay–”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“You didn’t know what you were doing. You didn’t do it to be malicious.”

“It still doesn’t make it okay.”

Ginny doesn’t say anything, she can’t even look at her now. Her mind is always a mess when she thinks about all that’s happened with Luna. Her memories start to overlap– Luna and her when they were sixteen, Luna and her when they were twenty-six, Luna and her when they were forty-one. And then that was it.

“I feel like we abandoned you,” Ginny says, her hands shaking around the mug she holds. “Do you hate me?”

Luna looks horrified at the thought.

“No!” she says quickly. “I don’t hate you. Or Harry. You’re both still my friends in my heart.” She pauses, licking her lips. “Do you hate me for what I did?”

Ginny wants to lie to her. If she could, maybe there still could be something to salvage out of all this mess.

“I can’t help it,” she confesses, apologetically, “I don’t want to. I really don’t want to. I know none of it was about me but it felt like a betrayal.”

“Of course it did.”

Oh, she wishes Luna would just snap at her to get out of the house, instead of being so open and understanding. In some sort of paradoxical way Ginny can’t understand, it’s making her more angry to see how kind she is.

She thinks about that night. Fred’s anniversary was what Ginny had always called it, even though it hadn’t just been about Fred– it was about The Battle. Fred hadn’t been the only victim. She hates how wizarding society turned the commemoration of the fallen into an event, but she guesses it’s expected of a heavily traumatised population with lots of dead loved ones, mostly children. Still, it almost takes the sacredness out of it– all the business surrounding the memorial site.

It’s why the Weasleys always have a little service for him at the Burrow before they make their way to the public site. It’s something a little more personal before all the affair and the surmounting air of grief. For the first few years after The Battle, journalists would post themselves in front of the site and badger Ginny and her family over how they were feeling, what gifts they brought to commemorate the fallen and if Harry had planned any speeches for them. But Ron would always threaten to arrest the lot of them, and as every year was the same, the number of paparazzi had dwindled to a select few who disguised themselves as mourners to peek at the group of them.

Luna had stopped going after the twenty-fourth year. Harry had told her to stop coming back, and she stayed away, even now. It seems she understood that getting high on a hallucinatory drug that messed with one’s sense of memory, consequently provoking her to steal all of her best friend’s dead brother’s gifts was not something one could particularly come back from.

But it wasn’t just about Fred, and it hadn’t ever been just about him. Harry likes to take the moral high ground and talk about that incident like he cared for Fred’s memory and how it hurt everyone else in the family, but she can see it in him too. Luna had disappeared that day, and she had been slowly disappearing for months before that.

“Why did you do it?” Ginny blurts, turning around to face Luna, the tea sloshing in her cup, going cold. “You’re so smart, Luna. I keep replaying everything in my mind and I still don’t get why you decided to try ethromorphis. And keep trying it. I know you were struggling after the war, we all were, but then life calmed down, you settled down with a husband and some kids, and then? You just up and let yourself rot away to some drug instead of telling people about whatever problems you had. I couldn’t even talk to you about it because you would forget who I was!”

It’s all rushing out of her like some broken dam, and it doesn’t make sense. Again, her feelings are overcomplicating themselves and mashing together into an indistinguishable mass of emotion. And she’s never been good at putting that into words, which is embarrassing considering how old she is.

“I– I know it looks that way,” Luna says, then quickly corrects herself, “It feels that way for you, and it’s valid. Of course it is, but– and I don’t want it to seem like I’m making excuses–”

Ginny waves a hand dismissively.

“I know you wouldn’t.”

“Okay. Okay, well. You know the war took a massive mental toll on my dad.”

Ginny pauses.

“This is the reason,” Luna explains, in a small voice.

“Right.” Ginny wasn’t expecting that. “Okay.”

“He wasn’t much better when he was released from Azkaban, but you know this.”

Ginny nods. Luna had confided in her a lot, even having extended days at The Burrow some nights just for a break. But she would always have to come back. Xenophilius was doubly protective over her after her kidnapping and was experiencing fits of paranoia and waking nightmares in which he would suspect everything. He was still Luna’s lovingly odd father when he was sound, but was downright delusional during the worst of times. Ginny remembers Luna passively retelling nights where he would interrogate her, just to discern whether she was the real Luna or a fake the Death Eaters had materialised to trick him. It was horrible, for both of them, and he hadn’t gotten much better before he passed away.

Then, a horrifying thought occurs to Ginny.

“Oh my god,” she says, “was your dad using?”

“No! Merlin, no!” Luna says quickly. “It’s not that– I guess you could say it’s a bit more, um. Uncool.” She stares off blankly, and Ginny tries to read if this is Luna's normal disassociation or if she should be concerned. “I started after dad died, because, um. I didn’t know what else to do. My mum died but I was too young to remember grieving her beyond mourning how my dad could’ve been if she hadn’t died. And then my friends died and I didn’t have time to grieve that because my dad had changed so much. And then Dad dies and it’s just… I didn’t know what to do with everything I was feeling.”

“You had people you could have talked to,” Ginny says sadly.

“Rolf was in Romania. The boys were at school. I didn’t have a proper job, never wanted one. So I had nothing to do.”

“You could’ve come over.”

Luna shifts, twiddling her fingers together. The action makes Ginny’s heart lurch to her throat. It’s what Luna used to do at school when the other girls would pick on her.

“I know,” Luna says despairingly, the regret in her voice is painful. The regret Ginny feels for the both of them is painful too. “I should’ve. I didn’t want to be a burden, or cause any more mess when you had so much going on with you transitioning out of playing for good–”

“That wouldn’t have mattered!” Ginny exclaims, though she knows deep in her heart of hearts, it would have. She was devastated when she had to quit playing for the Harpies fully, but she had dragged her spot on the team for years, and life’s requirements had gotten in the way of attending practises and matches, which left her an old, rusty, untalented athlete. Not good for a national team.

But she would’ve concentrated on Luna if she had come to her, no matter if she was messy. Especially if she was messy.

“And I should’ve reached out to apologise after ruining Fred’s service,” her voice has grown wobbly, and there’s a silvery film of unshed tears glossing her eyes. “But I– I couldn’t remember anything. I couldn’t remember what I did, or who I did it to, until a week later. I didn’t know how bad it could get in a week. I really didn’t.”

“How did you even get your hands on that shit, Luna?” Ginny blurts. It’s like every question she has repressed for the past decade or so comes bursting from her, every grievance, every barely covered wound the friendship had imprinted on her. She may be forty-seven now, but she will forever be a teenage girl when she’s with Luna. And that young girl in her will always mourn the loss of her friend, and be outraged at the lack of answers– at how everything had gone so shit in these past few years.

“It’s frighteningly easy to access the market. The most common way is up Knockturn.”

“You went looking for it?”

“No! I was just looking for a pub where there wouldn’t be so many fucking journalists up in my face about my dead dad!” she bursts. “Then the next thing I know, there’s this man with this owl brand on his hand, and he’s in my ear about the easiest fixes in Knockturn. I end up in that bar, he comes back with some product he wants to sell me, and I really should’ve left it there, I should’ve–”

“What’s his name?”

“What?”

“Your dealer,” she growls. “He knew it was you, Luna, he had to have. Everyone knows us now. He had to know you were vulnerable, he wanted to profit off of–”

“Ginny, please,” Luna says, touching her knee gently. “I never asked, okay? I never wanted to know, I didn’t want to get caught in it any more than I already was, and I still don’t. I’ve missed out on so much here, and I want that chapter of my life shut and closed. So it doesn’t matter what his intentions were. I should’ve been smarter.”

Ginny can’t exactly argue with that, though she wants to.

Still, what had been a fist around her heart seems to have relaxed now. She had gotten so used to the feeling through the years when it came to Luna, but the relief is so potent now she has to sit her mug down on the coffee table, for fear of her shaky hands spilling it. Immediately, Luna reaches out and takes them.

There’s a beat of silence, as Ginny listens to the tick of the grandmaster clock, the brush of the wind against the gardenias outside.

“I’ve missed you so much,” she confesses gently, like if she’s quiet enough, Luna might not hear. But she does hear, because Luna always listens, and can pick out any words that fall through under mumbled breath.

“I missed you,” she says, squeezing her hands lightly. “Things haven’t been the same.”

Even now, Ginny knows there’s a lot Luna isn’t telling her, and probably won’t. No one struggles through years of drug addiction and comes out completely unchanged on the other end. Ginny spots the changes in the house itself– she hasn’t seen Luna so orderly before. Maybe it’s a trait she’s needed to pick up to get clean. She also wonders about the twins, but she doesn’t ask either. She knows it’s probably hard enough trying to rebuild that, if Luna is struggling with this.

Still, she can tell her friend carries some treacherous stories. Maybe they’ll come out in their own time, maybe she won’t ever want to repeat and relive them again.

Suddenly, Ginny feels the horrifying swell of tears in her eyes. It’s unbidden and nonconsensual, and she quickly snatches a hand from where Luna holds them and wipes at her face.

“Sorry,” she mutters quickly.

“It’s okay. I feel like crying too.”

“Why aren’t you then?”

“I’m too happy. But I’m also sad. And it’s confusing me too much.” Luna pauses, mulling over her words. “I will probably cry lots later. After you leave.”

It startles a laugh out of Ginny, and Luna grins.

Just then, Ginny hears the fireplace roar to life as someone steps out of it. A boy with a long nose and dark golden hair that curls around his ears, dressed in hospital uniform. Ginny hasn’t seen him since he was very young, she would’ve thought he was Lorcan if it wasn’t for the uniform giving him away.

The boy’s eyes snap to Ginny, and it’s hard to place what he’s thinking.

“Ginny,” Luna says, quickly standing up and ushering her son inside, “you remember Lysander, yes?”

Lysander.

When Ginny recalls Lily telling her something along the lines of a gender transition with Luna’s daughter, Ginny vocally discarded the information. Why was it her business to know what was happening in her estranged friend’s child’s life? And yet, she had remembered the name for years afterwards, like if she knew as much as she could about Luna’s life, then she wouldn’t miss out on much. How silly that logic seems now.

Lysander is looking at her with preconceived doubt, as if gearing for a snide comment or overly floral commemoration, and she’s reminded of when Albus was accidentally outed to her by his cousin, and how he looked at her then.

“That’s right,” she says. “Lysander, you were the one in Ravenclaw, right?”

“Yes,” he says, not hiding his hesitation as he looks between her and his mum. “Everything alright?”

“More than alright!” Luna chirps happily, “Ginny came over!”

She gestures at her excitedly, and Ginny gives him a stupid wave.

“Yes, I can see that,” Lysander says dryly. “Hello, Ginny. How is everything?”

“Um, good,” she nods, trying to place the dynamic between this playful mother and her serious son.

Luna brings a hand over to straighten his collar before he can question her more. It’s such a particularly maternal action– to be fussing over one’s children– that Ginny is, but for a moment, perplexed. Everything is a small reminder of how much time has passed, but it stings less to think about, now that she’s here fixing it.

“You get off early for work?” Luna asks him.

“Yeah,” Lysander breathes, his mouth curling a little at one side. “Rare occurrence.”

Luna beams, turning to Ginny.

“Would you like to stay for dinner?” she asks. “I was just going to order something back since Sander usually works past dinner, but I don’t mind cooking for the three of us.”

Ginny raises her brows.

“Cooking?” she laughs.

“Cooking,” Lysander repeats with air quotations. Ginny snorts when Luna lightly smacks his arm.

“I am getting better,” she says. “Last week I made beef ragu.”

“If you can call it that,” Lysander says.

“Shush!” Luna turns to Ginny with wide, hopeful blue eyes. “You’ll stay?” Her smile wavers just a little. “You don’t have to if you’re too busy, or if you don’t want to and this is going too fast–”

“No, no,” Ginny says quickly. “I’ll stay. I just need to write a letter to Harry to let him know I’ll be out late.”

She’d been purposefully vague with Harry, not telling him where she was going tonight, nor for how long she’d be out, so it’s not like she really needed to let him know. She contemplates not telling him anything, but then what? Would she carry out a secret friendship with Luna? How ridiculous, even she has the foresight to see how that would only lead to more pain.

Luna’s smile dulls a bit at the mention of his name.

“Is it okay if I use one of your owls?” Ginny asks.

“Yes, of course,” Luna says softly. She turns to Lysander. “There’s some fish in the fridge. Defrost it for me, will you, whilst I show Ginny where Carrie is?”

“Sure.”

Lysander watches them warily as Luna steers Ginny past the corridor and up the stairs. Ginny guesses he’s caught off-guard by the whole thing too. Maybe Luna didn’t actually expect Ginny to show up.

When they reach upstairs, Ginny says, “I’m not sure your son likes me.”

“Oh, no, don’t take it personally, please,” Luna assures. “Lysander’s just cautious. I mean, he grew up with me, so…”

It makes sense, is what she doesn’t say. Ginny feels an overwhelming sorrow for Luna– it’s never easy dealing with the belief that one’s failed their children in some way. Ginny feels that way towards all three of hers to some extent. She suspects the feeling is worse for Luna.

“Where’s Lorcan?” Ginny asks instead, hoping to change the subject.

“He’s staying with Rolf,” Luna says. “But he visits.”

“Ah.”

“He’s placing down a loan for this property in Yorkshire.”

“Yorkshire? Really?”

“Yes, his first property. It’s not that close, but it’s not Romania. So.”

Ginny nods awkwardly, although Luna, who walks in front of her, can’t see. She leads her into the master bedroom, where a beautiful grey owl sits on her open perch, the shutters pulled up and the windows unlatched for her.

“Oh good, Carrie’s here,” Luna says, turning to the bedside table’s drawer and fetching a treat from out of it to feed her. “Sometimes she likes to fly out and do her own hunting.”

Carrie’s yellow eyes turn themselves onto Ginny, watching her unblinkingly. She does that weird thing where her whole head is turned to the opposite side of where her body faces. Ginny could never really get past that with owls.

Luna fishes some parchment and conjures an inkwell, placing them clumsily on the small table by the window where the natural light seeps in.

“This is your room,” Ginny was supposed to ask it like a question, but it comes out as a statement.

Of course it’s Luna’s room. It’s all white draping canopy bed curtains, embroidered creatures the likes of which Ginny has never seen before stuffed into drawers, newspaper clippings of the Quibbler, now discontinued, captured in a black frame next to a smiling portrait of Luna and her father during her teenage years– before the war, where everything didn’t start to go wrong, but surely worse.

Ginny spies another photograph, unframed, beneath the dusty purple candles and conspiracy cut-outs. It’s the red hair that Ginny catches first, her hand already stretching out to reach for it before her mind can properly process it.

It was her. And Luna. Dressed in their Hogwarts gear, grinning at the camera, Luna was hanging onto Ginny’s arm, smiling sweetly whilst Ginny was yelling something to whoever was taking the photo. She gestured with her free hand wildly, sometimes crudely, but this was interspersed with fits of such uproarious laughter, that Ginny is sure she wouldn’t be able to recreate such unbridled joy.

“Neville took that photo of us,” Luna says, causing Ginny to look away. “Do you remember? It was right before Potions class, you were in a fit about not being in the mood to deal with Snape, and Neville had just got out of Herbology. You know how he was always Professor Sprout’s star pupil? She entrusted him with her camera for an assignment or rather– no one else was given one, they had to bring their own. But you know how Neville was–”

“Always forgetting everything.”

“Yes. And then you convinced me to stay outside and take pictures with Neville’s camera, which took a while enough trying to get him to go against Sprout, so we only took a few.”

“And when we arrived at Potions late, Snape made us stand outside in the corridor and count the stones in the walls,” Ginny smiled. She casts a glance at the picture again. “I mean, clearly it was worth it. My skin looks fantastic here.”

“That’s because you’re an old lady now,” Luna snarks in that light, musical tone that would make anyone else think she’s serious. Ginny’s glad her ability to translate her was only rusty, not gone.

Luna points to the parchment and the ink set up for her, and Ginny nods her thanks as she sits down to write.

“I’ll go check on that fish now,” Luna says, and before Ginny can think to say anything, Luna’s gone.

Her letter is short, succinct, and economical in her wording. It’s not her intention to be cold– though Harry will probably see it as a betrayal of some sort. She can’t see why that is, can’t see the hoops he’s going to have to construct in his mind to jump to any conclusion that suspects ill will on her part, only she knows that’s how he’ll feel. But she’ll deal with it later.

She folds the letter up and approaches Carrie. That creepy owl is still watching her.

“Her eyes glow in the dark.”

Ginny turns to find Lysander, leaning against the doorframe.

“But it’s okay,” he says, “she doesn’t bite. Only looks like she does.”

“Right. Thanks.”

Ginny ties the letter to the owl’s leg and it flies off through the window, efficiently and quickly. Maybe she could grow to like her one day. If she fixes her staring problem.

Now she has another owl on her back, watching her.

She turns to Lysander, whose head is tilted, mouth set into a small frown. His hands are crossed firmly over his chest. Ginny is the youngest of seven– she knows the stance of someone about to deliver her a lecture. It’s only somewhat humorous seeing as Lysander is half her age.

Ginny throws her hands up in surrender.

“What is it?” she asks, tired.

“What’s your intentions with my mum?”

“Relax, I’m married. Not trying to shack up with–”

“Please, can you answer normally?” He shifts his body a bit, dropping his hands so he seems… a little more vulnerable. “No one was there for her when she was in the thick of it. Nobody except my dad. Even Neville was distant, but he was better than you.” Ginny’s heart drops at that. “She misses both of you, or she misses just having friends in general. I know it doesn’t seem like it now, but she’s still super fragile. Cravings don’t just disappear into thin air once the withdrawal period stops. She’s so attached to the friendship she used to share with you, that she might get carried away with what’s happening here. So you can’t just reintroduce yourself into my mum's life and waltz back out again when it’s inconvenient for you, okay?” Lysander’s voice is soft, not snappish. Ginny isn’t sure if he knows of the incident that made them go their separate ways, but even if he doesn’t, it looks like he’s catching on. “I don’t want her getting hurt any more. And I don’t want to see her lose more people she cares about. She was really excited when she was with you. Usually, she’s more, I don’t know, tired.”

It plucks at Ginny’s heart again, so much so that she can feel the pinpricks of tears burning behind her eyes. There's a side she never wanted emerging from all of this, a side that Lysander could see as soon as he Flooed into the house.

What kind of friend would cut off their best friend at the peak of such a debilitating addiction? Why would she do that?

Her stupid pride and insecurities, when it all came down to it. The belief that Luna would change and hate her for trying to interfere. Like everyone else.

“I don’t want her to get hurt either,” Ginny says, her voice cracking pitifully. She clears her throat and starts again. “I’m not planning on going anywhere. I’m tired too.”

Nothing, and then Lysander gives her a curt nod. Then he sniffs the air once. It’s so odd that Ginny can finally see the invisible link that connects both him and Luna.

“Salmon and potato mash for dinner,” he says. “Hopefully she doesn’t accidentally poison us.”