On the Wings of Dragons
Chapter 2 - On the Wings of Dragons
Luna didn't know what to do as the dragon stepped from its cage, and stretched its mighty wings, letting out a champion's roar.
In the process, setting off every single ward on the reservation.
The dragon lowered its great head offering its neck to her. The sound of wizards apparating in had her scrambling onto the dragon's neck above the joints over its shoulders.
Her fate was sealed, the penalty for purposely releasing a man-eating dragon was a life sentence in Azkaban.
Luna couldn't survive that, she would rather die than face another dementor. Without her magic abandoning her, she couldn't even call a patronus.
Not that it mattered, her wand was in her apartment.
She hoped Harry would take care of her plants.
"Fly," she urged her ally. " Fly!"
The dragon let out another roar and beat its wings. The wind created from the movement knocked the assembling dragon tamers clean off their feet.
Faster than Luna could believe possible they were airborne, and then?
She had flown on thestrals and hippogryphs before, on winged horses and even lesser dragonkin, but this was…
This was elemental. They weren't just flying, they were the clouds and the wind, they were a power made into storm. Muscle and wing cutting through and gliding along currents that were as vast as the ocean’s.
Luna tucked Hedwig in her coat, the owl letting out an indignant series of hoots at the wind that was whipping Luna's hair out from its braided confines.
Luna didn't look back for an instant, she could not believe there existed a force in this world that could stop them now.
They flew East, soared toward the mountains, racing the sun to its crests. The dragon beat her wings as if Death itself were chasing. When the sun broke the horizon, they were engulfed in light.
Light that had shaped the shadows, Light that had sung the coming and falling of the dawn and the dusk, that upheld the Earth and its moon, who tossed stars into the night.
Luna met her gods and their angels.
She met the Makers and she saw in the way of dreams half-remembered yet never fully forgotten, a reason for her exile, in a land where magic had grown as corrupted as the hearts of men.
Greed and fear, the unmaking of the world.
A woman of light embraced her, weeping for forgiveness and singing a name, Linaewen.
It tore Luna apart, even as she knew all she had to do was give into the light and she could live here in bliss and never know pain or hurt or loss again.
But she was not ready for her journey to end, not here, not for light or a love that had cast her aside.
Luna would rather die in darkness in pursuit of a real life to be lived as it should have been. She wanted to fight for it, now that she knew there was some belonging for her beyond her dreams. She could not subside into this peaceful place that was beginning and end irrelevant to her actions.
She wanted to live. She wanted to see what world existed beyond the Valar and her Exile.
The female, her birth mother, kissed Luna's cheek and spoke a blessing in a language that Luna could not translate yet felt like magic in her bones.
The dragon who had brought her here exclaimed with a cry that was the height of joy and inexplicable sorrow as they broke from the Light, falling forward into the sea.
oOo
Harry was smiling as he sat in his window seat looking down at the cobblestoned streat of Wizarding-London, sipping tea surrounded by a forest of his newly acquired houseplants.
"Quit smiling!" Hermione yelled at him. Her long brown hair had turned completely silver, but now she allowed it to halo freely around her face. Her brown eyes were as fierce as ever.
"Luna is fine," he assured her.
"She stole a dragon!" Hermione exclaimed. "She is most assuredly not fine!"
"The dragon isn't going to eat her, if that's what you are so worried about."
"You can't know that, Harry," Hermione chided.
"Oh, but I do, she's gone on an adventure."
"Harry when they find her, she will be thrown in prison and I don't know what I could do to stop that from happening," Hermione said, pleading for him to show concern that he did not feel.
"They won't find her, Hermione, she is beyond our reach now."
"If you knew she was going to do this," she began. "Why didn't you go with her?"
Harry looked back to the streets, at the people moving to and through, and he sipped his tea.
"Because I found my home, and I've had my adventures. I am content."
Hermione frowned, "Really?"
She gestured to the apartment around them that housed only him and the newly adopted plants.
"Is this everything you thought your life would be? Does this make you happy? Really? This is it?"
Harry smiled at her sadly, "Life is rarely everything we expect it to be, and perhaps it is better for it. But yes, I am happy. I have a family, children and grandchildren and even a great-grandbaby on the way. My family smiles when I walk through the door. They count on me to be there for birthdays and holidays.
“I have students who struggle like we did and I can help them. I have coworkers who need reminding that they were once children too. I have my place and my people. It is a good life, Hermione, and I would change nothing about it."
Tears spilled down Hermione's cheeks. "But you loved her."
Harry took another sip of his tea, fearing it would go cold before this conversation was over. "I love Luna more than my ex-wife, this is true. But she was never my lover, Mione, nor have I ever wanted her to be."
Hermione had taken Ginny's side in the divorce, it had put a wedge between them in a way that Harry would never have believed possible.
"And yet you are content with your best friend–who you love–leaving you behind? Forever?"
Harry met Hermione's gaze.
He saw anger there.
Rage even.
It had been eating away at her since the end of the war, that anger. It was only her iron will and sense of morality that didn't push her over the edge into something vengeful and spiteful.
Yet over the long years, the bitterness had chewed away the friendship between them.
So he knew the words he spoke next would hit old wounds, burst apart healing scars.
But unspoken, they would only continue to fester.
"I would rather Luna find happiness without me, than keep her from living for fear of saying goodbye."
Hermione wiped the tears from her face and cursed him, "You bastard."
She turned on her heel and slammed the door behind her so hard the frames on the wall shook.
Harry finished his tea before leaning back and summoning a book to his hands. A book about mad old wizards and the little folk whose goodness outlasted all the evil in the world. He set to reading, enjoying the world passing by beneath from the comfortable vantage point of his window seat, surrounded by the plants that sang a quiet song Luna’s love had taught them.
oOo
When the dragon rose back from the sea, Luna was freezing. The journey to the Eastern shore was not half so pleasant as leaving Exile.
Hedwig nuzzled close, trying to find warmth in her coat. Luna was soaked through, making the wind that blew through her that much colder.
The stars glittered above the waves and Luna set her jaw against the frigid temperatures.
This was her choice now, truly her choice. She could have stayed with the Valar, with her mother who still breathed and lived.
But her mother was not the woman who had raised her. She was not Pandora Lovegood whose death had reshaped Luna's world.
The mother she had met in the Light, was hers, but she was permanent, and would always be waiting. Luna wanted to live first, wanted to see her homeworld even if it meant living in ignorance about her mother's origins or name or the reasons her own mother had for exiling her.
Luna knew only that it had not been done out of malice, and therefore, Luna knew it was an offence she could forgive.
She dwelled on these thoughts to distract her mind from remarking on how very, very, cold she was.
Hedwig might have been in trouble, but as her familiar, Hedwig shared Luna's life, and somehow, Luna knew in this world, no natural cause would take Hedwig from her.
Even if she felt so cold that hugging the dragon's neck felt like cuddling a glacier.
"What's your name?" Luna shouted into the wind.
“I have none, for you are the first I have ever spoken with that such a thing might be necessary.”
"What would you like your name to be?" she asked, the sun setting behind them, the surface of the blue waters turning shades of pink, red, and orange as they raced between the great sky and the great sea.
“That was your mother who stopped us, was it not?”
"Yes, but she was a stranger to me."
“The humans called you Luna, this is not what you were named.”
Linaewen.
Linaewen, that was the name her mother had used, but it didn't feel as if it belonged to her, she was still too much a Lovegood to accept it. Pandora had named her Luna.
"Yet Luna Lovegood is my name," she answered.
The dragon huffed before asking, “What does it mean, 'Luna'?”
"Moon," she replied. “My name means moon."
The dragon bobbed its head, causing them to make a wave in their flight pattern. “Then that shall be the meaning of my name also; I am Ithilwen.”
"That is a beautiful name," she said as the stars awoke above them in a sky velvety shade of darkest blue.
Ithilwen laughed in that way of hers that was more roar than chuckle. “See the beauty? See the grace that occupies these lands? We are free here. Free to fly, free to roam.”
Luna curled her arm evermore securely around Hedwig. "You seem to know more about me than I do."
“You must go East to find your living kin, this much I know. Follow the East Road, and you will find your kin.”
"How will I know them?"
“You are not human, Child Blessed by the Valar. The changes you find in yourself will answer all questions.”
"I doubt that," Luna disagreed with a smile. She was not angry, answers, true answers at least were cheap things. But understanding the truth? Well, that was another matter entirely.
"You said there are wizards in this world. Are they only men?"
“No, not men, angel-kin, lesser angels sent by the Valar to Middle Earth. Claim yourself to be one you could, claim to be human you might, but never claim, Child of the Moon, to be a witch. Female or male, it makes no difference, but witchcraft is evil. It means to twist what is natural.”
Luna nodded and then her hopes soared as the land grew ever closer. But the dragon dove upwards into the clouds and again, Luna found herself once more soaked.
Hedwig let out a mournful hoot.
"What are you doing?" Luna asked.
But the dragon did not answer as they flew with only the sound of Ithilwen's wings and the gossip of the winds in speech around them.
An hour or so later, Ithilwen dived straight down and Hedwig let out a screech. However, Ithilwen's great mass landed on the ground as gently as a feather.
Luna fell off more than got off as she had been riding for over a day.
She was so cold.
Ithilwen turned its massive head and exhaled a breath through her nostrils, that worked as a hair drier.
Hedwig found her perch on Luna's shoulder and glared at them both with reproachful amber eyes.
Ithilwen twisted her head and Luna found herself staring into the single opaline eye as the dragon spoke.
“I have brought you to the Shire. No trouble could you find here, and you can trust the halflings. Not man or warrior are they.”
"Halfings?" Luna repeated.
“They are not men, they are what men could have been. Stay with the halflings,” Ithilwen warned.
Luna nodded and looked around the wood they were concealed in, it wasn't overly dense and reminded her not at all of the Forbidden Forest where she had spent most of her school days.
The dragon huffed, “I see adventure in your eyes, Child of the Woodland Stars, if birthright you wish to find then East you must go. But the Shire is safe, here you could live a good and happy life.”
"Are the halflings like me, or do they age?"
“Yes, they age but murder and war are not among them. If you wish to be among your kin then you must accept who and what you are. Only then will the Valar's glamour fall away.”
"Glamour? What do you mean?"
“In exile, you had magic like the other humans, but when you failed to age as they do, you saw yourself apart so your true nature began to reveal itself.”
"And what is my true nature?" she asked again even though she knew better.
“That is for you to discover. My words will mean nothing to you until you learn your place in this world. Good luck, Moonchild, may the winds remain beneath your wings.”
Hedwig hooted and Luna leaned forward to the hug side of the dragon's face, "Thank you, Ithilwen, for everything."
The dragon laughed, pulling back, “Fair winds, fair winds, moonchild.”
Luna watched the Ithilwen spring upward climbing into the clouds and in moments, her friend was gone.
Luna shut her eyes, and listened to this new world, this Middle Earth she found herself in.
The night was warm, the breeze gentle, and she smelled the distant scent of food cooking.
Finding her way out of this wood was a simple matter.
And when she emerged she found rolling hills blanketed by thick grass and moonlight from a half-moon.
The darkness in this place was soft and she found her footing easily across the well worn paths. Warm light spilled from little windows peeking from holes as if the homes had been folded under blankets of earth and greener things. Never had she seen a land so friendly and welcoming. She could not wait to see it beneath the sun.
She searched these quiet places with rich smells spilling from chimnies but could find nowhere that was not residential or anyone outside who was out enjoying the night.
Until she came across one dark figure approaching a rounded door.
She broke into a run, "Sir! Excuse me, Sir!"
She almost didn't stop in time as the stout man with long hair. He pulled a wicked blade that he pointed to her neck.
"Who are you?" he demanded.
She blinked at him, "Luna Lovegood. Who are you?"
"I am Thorin Oakenshield King Under the Mountain. What is your purpose at this doorstep?" he asked with a narrowed gaze.
She arched a brow at him, "A king? A king of what, bad tempers?"
He scowled at her, "I am a dwarf, as you can clearly see. Tell me your purpose."
Dwarves? Though looking at him, she could see that his build wasn’t quite right for a human.
"My purpose is to find a place-" the door opened behind the dwarf revealing a shabbier grayer version of Dumbledore and a small man with pointed ears.
She continued speaking to the dwarf, “Where I might stay the night and you are the only one I have seen outside their homes this night. I do not wish to disturb anyone readying for bed."
The dwarf stared at her, weighed her against her words but it was the small man with pointy ears who asserted himself.
"Now, I don't know who you think you are, but you cannot, may not, threaten guests at my door."
The dwarf looked down at the smaller male, and frowned.
Luna realised the pointy eared fellow had bare, rather hairy feet.
She liked him instantly and liked him more when he glared up at the dwarf before turning to look up at her.
"The nearest inn is quite far from here. You won't make it to Bree before sun up, not unless you have a very fine horse."
She shook her head, "I have nothing."
The dwarf turned that scowled at her, though she noted this king had very vivid blue eyes that reminded her of Harry somehow, "You cannot have nothing, how have you come to be here?"
Luna held out her arms, "I have nothing, I came here from the West and I am told that I have kin in the East. That is where I mean to go."
"You came from the West?" the grey man asked. "How far West? From the Gulf of Lune?"
She shook her head, "From across the sea, though I would ask that you not ask for a description, I do not have the words for the things I've seen."
The wizards blue eyes had gone very wide and he muttered in a language she did not know.
"Well, come in, come in," the barefoot man said. "You look as if you could use a chair by the fire. I am Bilbo Baggins, at your service, and you are in the Shire, where we hobbits dwell."
She smiled, stepping into the warm inviting space of the wooden room. It was far nicer than she expected a hole in the ground might ever be.
"I am Luna Lovegood, and I thank you for your kindness. Are hobbits the same as halflings?"
Bilbo smiled at her, "That we are. Though hobbit is preferable, as we are half nothing.”
When she stepped a bit further toward the fire she froze as she saw twelve more dwarves staring at her.
She waved to them, "Hello."
Hedwig flew off her shoulder to take up a perch on the chair by the fire. She shook out her fledgling feathers and, for lack of a better description, puffed out and settled in for a dignified pout.
The grey man cleared his throat, "My dear, this is Fili, Kili, Dwalin, Balin, Oin, Gloin, Dori, Nori, Ori, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, and I am Gandalf the Grey, at your service."
"At your service, Lass," the others chorused.
Luna curtsied as it seemed the thing to do then replied, "I am Luna Lovegood, and that is Hedwig, my snowy owl."
"And Bilbo, this is Thorin Oakenshield, son of Thrain, Son of Thror, leader of the company. Thorin, this is Bilbo Baggins, our burglar."
Luna raised her brows at the hobbit, "You're a burglar?"
The hobbit flushed, "I most certainly am not! I have never stolen a thing in my life."
"Gandalf, " Thorin intoned.
"Where are the others?" one of the other dwarves asked their King.
Bilbo directed Luna toward the chair by the fire.
She began to pull her hair over a shoulder, running her hand, pulling out the braids, the jade pin Harry gave her having survived the journey somehow. It would probably need a brush in order to bring it into something more presentable. Strangely, as she aged her hair became easier to manage.
It was quite remarkable actually that she was able to run her fingers through it at all after the salt water, wind, and clouds they had flown through.
"They would not come," Thorin answered.
Hedwig bit her ear and Luna bit back a yelp as she turned her focus to the owl only half listening to the dwarves conversing with Bilbo and Gandalf the Grey.
One of the dwarves was saying, "Aye, the wild is no place for gentlefolk who can neither fight nor fend for themselves."
Which is when the room turned dark and Gandolf the Grey did the thing Harry did when he got really angry.
Gandalf seemed to fill up the room, his voice full of power as he said, "Enough! If I say Bilbo Baggins is a burglar, then a burglar he is."
"You're a wizard!" Luna exclaimed happily.
Which seemed to ruin the moment as everyone turned on her where she had been otherwise forgotten.
She flushed, "Sorry."
Gandalf smiled, "It is quite alright, my dear, I am indeed a wizard."
She decided to not claim to be one herself, let them think what they would about her. Ithilwen hadn't seemed to think she was human or a wizard/witch.
"So, if I am to understand, you are all going on a quest to win your mountain back from a dragon?" she asked.
"No," the dwarf, whose name she thought might be Balin, said. “We need to find a way into the mountain and regain enough of our wealth to rebuild our kingdom elsewhere. The dwarves are scattered throughout Middle Earth finding odd jobs, there are few places that remain that we can claim as our own."
"What kind of dragon is it?" she asked.
They all stared at her, and finally, one of the younger dwarves said, "It's… a dragon."
She gave the blonde dwarf with as short a beard as Thorin an exasperated look. "How many legs does it have? If it's in a mountain I'll assume it isn't a water dragon. What colour is it? How big is it? What does it eat? How active is it?"
Thorin looked at her in disbelief. "You… what does it matter what kind of dragon it is?"
She met his gaze directly, "Because some dragons can be appeased by goats or sheep, which would make sneaking in rather easy. Other species of dragon can spew fire for meters at length."
Thorin shook his head, "Then it is one of the latter, slaughtered my people, it set fire to the human city, it–"
He stopped as her hand to her mouth to restrain a gasp.
"Why does that surprise you, girl?" he demanded.
She shook her head, "Because it means it is sick. Some dragons will eat people, especially in their territory. They are known to kill anything that crosses their threshold, but– but what you are describing shouldn't be. Dragons hate people, they want nothing to do with us. They hardly enjoy each other's company. I can think of nothing that would prompt it to leave its home to take another occupied settlement, not unless you were living somewhere that dragons migrate to find a mate."
The dwarves stared at her in absolute silence.
Gandalf was staring at her as if he was trying to read the inside of her brain.
It was Bilbo who asked, "How come you know so much about dragons?"
She smiled at him, "I was living in Exile in the West, there are many humans there, too many. Dragons were being hunted to extinction."
"With good cause!" one of the dwarves exclaimed.
She glared at him, "I worked on a dragon reservation, I was helping to raise them, and allow their numbers to rejuvenate."
"Why–" Thorin demanded, "–would you ever wish there to be more dragons?"
Luna looked at him, "Because it was once their world before it was ours. Besides, I doubt you've ever met a hatchling. Even the most fearsome of dragons craves comfort and community as a hatchling."
It was the thing that made losing her magic so horrid, without being able to perform a basic shield charm, she hadn't been allowed to work with the mothers and their hatchlings.
"Smaug has dragon-sickness," Gandalf said.
Luna froze, and asked numbly, "A sickness of gold craving?"
"Yes," Gandalf asked. "Would you know how to cure it?"
She hugged herself, "I know of only one dragon that succumbed to that, and itss fate… I would rather you kill this Smaug than do what was done to the one I know."
"What was done to it?" the dark-haired dwarf who looked like a younger Thorin said.
"Its eyes were blinded," Luna answered. "And it was chained to the place it had fallen sick in, then over the centuries it was tortured by an unknown many and starved."
A hush fell over the room, "When it was set free, by my friend, it flew straight up and then as far from people as it could get. It has been so long starved, so long accustomed to eating dead meat, that it hardly eats anymore, it is broken, docile. Its days are spent by a stream fed lake, sipping water."
She looked up into Thorin's eyes, "That is the cruellest thing you can do to any living creature, you know, to deny it water. I am not sure how it survived. It was not a species that bromates. I was told that it was a better fate than the dragon sickness, but death would have been kinder. It lives only a half-life now."
Again, silence followed her proclamation.
"What would you suggest we do?" Gandalf asked.
She looked at him, "If it bromates, hibernate for reptiles, don't wake it, eventually it will be found by its own kin and slain for its-" she waffled her hand. "Dragons crave gold and riches because they themselves are jewels. Their scales… It's like a confused mating signal; to crave earthly wealth over a fellow dragon is perverse. It is the only instance where dragons of a single species will gang up on their own."
"Your suggestion is to find more dragons to kill the other dragon?" Thorin asked.
Luna laughed, "No, if you seek out a wild dragon it will kill you, no matter your purpose. But eventually, your Smaug will be slain by its own kind if he truly has dragon sickness."
"That doesn't help us at all," the blonde dwarf said.
She shrugged, "I'm sorry, I don't know what else to tell you. Dragon sickness, as you call it, is quite rare."
"Do you know how to kill a dragon?" a dwarf named Balin asked. “How did your people manage to catch them to begin with?”
She shuttered but nodded. "I know many ways of killing dragons, but depending on the kind it is… I would have to know what kind it is, and regardless, you would need a great deal of magic or special steel to do it."
Everyone looked at Gandalf, who smiled with a twinkle in his eye. "I propose, Miss Lovegood come with us. A burglar and a dragon expert, I can think of no finer additions."
"We cannot take a Daughter of Man with us," Thorin said.
Bilbo crossed his arms, "If she cannot come then neither will I."
Luna smiled at the hobbit, wondering if he considered her a friend so soon. Ithilwen said she could trust the halflings.
So she would, despite the fact that she had mistrusted almost all others for most of her life.
Thorin gestured with his hand and Balin handed him a piece of the paper, and handed it to Bilbo. "Consider the contract first."
Bilbo began to read out loud, "Terms: Cash on delivery, up to but not exceeding one-fourteenth of total profit, if any. Seems fair. Eh, Present company shall not be liable for injuries inflicted by or sustained as a consequence thereof including but not limited to lacerations ... evisceration … incineration?"
"All pretty standard," Luna assured him. "I had to sign one of these too when I started my job."
"But incineration?" Bilbo asked, looking awfully pale.
A dwarf with a fun hat said, "Oh, aye, he'll melt the flesh off your bones in the blink of an eye. Think furnace with wings."
Bilbo bent forward a bit, "Air, I-I-I need air."
"Flash of light, searing pain, then Poof! you're nothing more than a pile of ash," the dwarf continued to tease.
As Bilbo tried to compose himself, she put a hand to his back as he said, "Hmmm. Nope."
Luna caught Bilbo before he hit the floor, she knelt with him on the floor and glared up at the dwarf. "Ha ha, very funny. You didn't have to be so cruel to him."
Abashed, the dwarf took off his hat, "Aye, sorry Lassie, couldn't help myself."
She rolled her eyes and brushed back Bilbo's hair, his forehead damp with sweat. "What do you think he can do for you that you can't do for yourselves?"
"Hobbits are quite light on their feet and invisible when they wish to be," Gandalf said. "And they, unlike the other races, are so rarely moved by greed. I trust him not to lose sight of what is truly important, and that above all else, is what this company needs."
She looked up at him, "Where is the Lonely Mountain? I heard you speaking… it's in the East, correct?"
He nodded, "It is."
"I was told that my people are from the East. I was not lying when I said I have nothing. No friends or means to care for myself. If you grant me passage with you to the East, I will help you how I can in getting by the dragon."
"You don't want a portion of the reward?" Thorin asked.
"No," she said. "I didn't come to Middle Earth for riches, I came here to find where I belong."
Thorin's expression softened a tad, "Aye, lass, that is what matters in the end, and I don't suppose it could hurt having a dragon expert on our side."
Luna smiled, wondering if Ithilwen could have imagined the trouble she had managed to discover in the Shire.
Perhaps, after all these years, Harry's luck had rubbed off on her.
oOo
Gandalf watched Luna Lovegood closely that night.
He watched the emotions on her face as the dwarves sang of their lost home and fallen kin. He watched the way she and Bilbo seemed to immediately find comfort in one another.
Miss Lovegood was a gentle soul, so by the life of him, Gandalf could not think of such a one who came to live in Exile beyond the West. There were so few tales of that place that Gandalf did not know how to judge.
He could only wonder at such a fate having been known as a punishment. He knew not how such a fair child–a young girl not even in her twenties–could have come to deserve such a fate.
That she had spent her young life tending to dragons in a land overpopulated with humans was just another layer of mystery.
But one he could live with, Gandalf the Grey had too much to do in Middle East before he could wish to turn his thoughts West, across the sea.
oOo
AN: Reviews, please, or hatchlings? I would very much appreciate any feedback you could give about this story moving forward :)