Chapter 2
That Sirius moved in with them wasn’t a large surprise. Neither was the fact that he finally managed to convince Remus to join them all in Potter Manor. Harry and Aunt Andy had been trying to do that already, and there were long periods of time where Remus did stay, but for the most part he was out of the house and looking for work. Sirius changed that.
Remus moved in and began to tutor Harry more in the basics of most subjects that he could learn without a wand. Remus taught him runes, which were used in rituals, like the one Harry’s mum used to save him. It was mostly for this reason that Harry found any interest at all in runes, though there were some Harry could just innately understand. While Remus had first theorized that it had something to do with being a necromancer, some of the runes didn’t relate to death like the first ones had and the theory was soon discarded. Remus also began to teach Harry math, which when Harry thought of it kinda as an art - he could manipulate the medium, numbers, however he wanted - with set rules he found it fun. What was less fun was learning how to write essays, though they were all rather short - only a foot of parchment each.
What was most interesting was potions. Harry had already gotten an inconsistent and erratic tutelage in potions from not only his mum and dad and Aunt Andy, but also the house elves. And since the house elves were Harry’s first teachers he often stuck to their methods and found Remus’s and his mum’s process of memorizing a recipe difficult. The house elves, after all, took a more Chinese approach to cooking and potions where Harry learned the taste or use of every ingredient and then learned the basics of how they reacted to other factors and then went with well honed instinct that came from practice. It was a rather unorthodox method that reminded Aunt Andy and Remus of junkies who also went with freestyle potions to get a better high. However, Harry’s dad admitted to using a similar method as Harry’s grandfather taught him what went best - like crushing Sopophorous beans with the flat side of dagger better released juices than cutting them - and so Harry usually learned from him and the house elves with an adult who had a physical body supervising.
Sirius taught Harry astronomy; apparently all Blacks could recite each and every star in the sky by six. Sirius had a way with teaching that made the stars sparkle brighter as Sirius told their stories. He told Harry about Pollux and Castor, and how one was dead and the other alive and each day they switched places and the other lived and the other died. Harry looked up at night sky and saw each star glitter and shine, but sometimes he saw multiple skies. He saw a million galaxies each pressing closer than the last, pushing against his skin and eyes and fingertips as he spread his hands towards a million different skies, each overlapping to form a rainbow of glittering lights before dispersing in a second.
When Harry grabbed Sirius’s hand, Sirius could sometimes see the skies that Harry did. So Harry often held Sirius’s hand late at night when they walked together on the manor’s grounds and stargazed.
It was during one of these excursions that Harry met Luna. They were in one of the in between places where Harry could feel both glass sand and wet grass between his toes as he walked. They were an odd sort of place to be, where time flowed in a blink slow as molasses.
Luna, as always, had a dreamy sort of placement in the world. She managed to be both the unstoppable force - always moving forward and heralding new ideas and change - and the immovable object - never letting anything change her. Luna was, quite simple, just there. She didn’t seem to have a past or future, just a present and perhaps that was the reason she existed so easily in liminal spaces.
“Hello Harry Potter,” she said, not looking up from a glass flower. Mulch stained her feet brown.
“Who are you?” Harry asked, head tilted in curiosity. Luna’s magic was a curiosity, all sparkling silver and a streak of shining gold which didn’t belong to her, but that covered her like tinsel, snaking in and out of her own magic.
“I’m Luna, Luna Lovegood,” Luna replied. “And you’re with Stubby Boardman. It is ever so nice to meet you, Mr. Boardman. Do you think you think you could do an interview for the Quibbler? It would please father.”
Sirius looked at the girl for a minute, dizzy with the weight of being in a place neither here nor there, before he blurted out, “Why are your eyes red?”
“Oh,” said Luna, raising a hand to her eye. “I suppose it is because I was crying.” There was pregnant pause of awkward silence.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Harry asked. It was what Aunt Andy asked Tonks and him when they had cried.
Luna gave a small nod. “May I?”
“Of course,” Sirius said.
“Well,” Luna said taking in a breath, “my mother just died. It was an accident, you see, she was trying to create a spell for me. To keep the nargles away. They’re always bothering me and my butterbeer cork necklace hasn’t been working all that well so she wanted to find a way to repel them. The runes smudged; the ink was still too wet. Her magic got sucked into the spell circle and everything imploded right before it exploded.”
“Oh,” Sirius said weakly. Luna nodded solemnly. Harry wanted to ask her if the gold magic was here mum’s, because it seemed to protect her the same way his mum’s did. Though, his mum’s magic was less ribbon-like than the gold magic, it was more of a blanket. He didn’t though. Harry hadn’t like it all that much when Ron asked him if he could remember the night he got his scar even though he couldn't. But it made his mother shudder and reminded Harry that his parents were dead. He doubted Luna would like being asked something like that when she could remember her mother’s death so he didn’t pry.
“I could call her back for you,” Harry said. While Luna’s mum’s spirit wasn’t here - the dead couldn’t exist long in liminal spaces - he was sure he could find Luna somewhere else.
Luna looked up at the skies that were pressing ever closer, at moons whirling around their planets and planets dancing around their suns and the clockwork perfection of everything. “My,” she said, “it has gotten rather late. I need to be heading home now, but I think I’ll see you at the Weasley’s Sunday dinner? Could you please do it then?"
“Well, yes,” Harry replied. “But I don’t think we’ve been invited.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Luna replied in her off hand way. “You will be and I’m always there for them.”
“You are?” Harry asked. He had only been to a few, they tended to be family only, but he didn’t remember seeing Luna.
“Yes,” Luna said nodding sagely. “Ginny invites me.”
“Well, we’ll see you then,” Sirius said as the glass sand fused together and the flowers melted.
“Yes,” Luna replied as her voice become disembodied and echoed in their skulls. “I suppose you will.”
Harry and Sirius woke up the next day at the dining room table with Errol giving them their invitation.
They all went to the dinner. Luna and her dad, Xenophilius Lovegood, saw Pandora Lovegood. Luna cried and Ginny and Harry comforted her. After the connection broke Harry said he would call back Pandora whenever they wanted, but he had run out of magic to keep her, while not tangible, visible. After that Harry and Luna bonded a bit closer together and the Weasley family let them know they were welcome anytime.
Luna started to show up with Harry, necklaces piled around her neck, glass beads braided into her hair, and leather bracelets and bangles that went past her elbows. She wore long dresses and sleeveless robes and drew runes on her arm and Harry’s in sharpie. The two grew to be somewhere between friends and sibling, somewhere where Luna would just come over and braid her glass beads into his hair and Harry would ruffle her hair before running off but where neither of them felt like aggravating or playing tricks on the other.
As Harry spent more time with Luna he spent more time with the Weasleys. Ginny got over her crush and trashed the boys at Quidditch. It made no difference that Harry was the best flyer, he was a Seeker and no matter how many points the snitch gave him, they were already too far behind from all of Ginny’s goals. Though, of course, Harry still beat Ginny in the reckless stunt category.
Ron came to view Harry as not another brother but as his best friend who he could beat at chess and go on crazy adventures and get back at the twins with. Ron came to Harry’s potions lessons with Neville as potions were the only sort of magic they could use to the full extent without wands. Neville found Harry’s lessons with the house elves to be more helpful as he already knew what the plants did and Ron learned to memorize recipes the way he memorized chess strategies. The boys grew and changed; Neville thrived and learned how to use his backbone to stand up straight and fight, Ron began to use his overlooked position as the youngest Weasley to treat people as chess pieces.
Harry was most likely the reason for this change, he acted as a bad influence on the two of them as the chaos he so loved to sow sunk under their skin. There were so many different influences, however, that it is hard to say any one thing for certain. The children - even the ones who were at Hogwarts and only came back for the summers - all grew up with adults that plotted to keep children out of the next war, adults who stopped mindlessly believing and began challenging everything. They all grew up in a very different environment, one where they were loved and supported and challenged. But they were also raised on the brink of war with adults who spent too much time trying everything to divert it away. And perhaps when children grow mature in some places but not the rest, when children learn that they have stardust dancing in their veins and the potential to make mountains bends they grow into people who are a little too dangerous because they are a little too clever and not nearly experienced enough to know when to leave well enough alone.