The ambiance was dreary and wet outside the Hogwarts Express. The quartet of students huddled around the tupperware full of snacks Alabasandria had packed for the trip. Orange slices, cheese sticks, and sandwiches cut lovingly into triangles alongside a good portion of the snack trolley's sweets. Having spent the last two weeks at Harry's house with his mum and newly acquired serial killer uncle had been fun, educational, and bizarre - as was usual. Ron, who had been a bit peeved at the loss of his pet and the drama that discovery had brought to his family, had not initially been very excited to see Sirius Black. Under Alabasandria's instruction, the group helped Ron raise an undead trio of rats as new pets. Harry's owl Hedwig had vomited up their bones, which had honestly been the most disturbing part of the night. Now the three rats (named Snitch, Quaffle, and Bludger) were barely skeletal and very cute. Ron adored them, even if they preferred eating raw flesh over whatever it is normal rats eat.
Luna had wanted her own undead pet, but Harry had no idea where one found the corpse of a Crumple-Horned Snorkack, so they'd settled on teaching her how to communicate with the Thestrals in the Forbidden Forest. She'd already been feeding them, so domestication was well underway for her. Hermione had been content with her living cat, but currently had her nose buried in a copy of 1001 Practical Blood Curses. Being granted free access to their small library of illegal books had curbed any lingering discomfort over Harry's illicit activities. She still worried about him getting expelled, of course, and wasn't sure about performing any black magic herself, but she had been incredibly easy to bribe into complacency when books were involved. In fact, she'd been so engrossed in her reading that she'd been distant since they had met up.
"So, Hermione," Luna began, trying to draw her into conversation. It was obvious that something was bothering her, wrackspurts were buzzing around the whole compartment and had started to trigger Luna's allergies. "You never told us about France. How was your holiday?" Herself and Ron had already discussed their trips abroad in detail, but Hermione had been tight-lipped which was wildly out of character.
"Oh, it was alright," she said. Her face did not move from her book, but her eyes twitched in discomfort.
"Did you, uh… go to any museums?" Ron asked after an awkward pause.
She hummed in agreement.
"Are you alright?" Luna pressed her.
"Oh, it's just that, mum and dad were so upset about last year, that they made me take a tour of Beauxbatons." She nearly threw the book, stomping out of her seat and pacing the small length of the train compartment. "And it was a beautiful campus. I really enjoyed the tour from an educational standpoint, but then they started talking about transferring and I had to beg them not to make me leave Hogwarts. Dad refused though, and so in August Professors McGonagall and Dumbledore came by and discussed that they were doing upgrades to the security at Hogwarts. My parents were barely convinced. If anything even remotely dangerous happens at school this year, they're going to transfer me!"
"Blimey," Ron said in shock. "That's horrible. My dad mentioned that Colin Creevy's mum had threatened to sue the school. Dad wouldn't pull us out, I think. But mum and dad almost made Ginny take a gap year."
"Well you all know I was grounded most of the summer. To say that mama was upset is an understatement." Harry said, worried about their adults being overprotective and separating the friend group."Did your dad say anything, Luna? I know you didn't get hurt, but did he seem worried too?"
Luna had, in fact, not informed her father of much of her adventures.
Daddy had written to ask. He was a journalist, after all. Of course, he'd found out about the Chamber. He'd asked about the petrified students and if she'd heard any rumors about the Heir being a goblin, elaborating on a conspiracy to blackmail the Ministry into adopting communism. She'd written a long letter in return about Hermione being petrified and how Harry wasn't sleeping and how they were being chaperoned to every class and how Luna had been scared and no the petrified bodies didn't glow or excrete ectoplasm. Papa hadn't responded to that first part of her letter. He'd wanted to know more about whether any of her classmates were communist sympathizers.
(Luna loved her father's stories. Tales of majestic and rare creatures, of conspiracies that underpinned every aspect of society - all of them beautiful and enticing. But she wasn't stupid, she could be self-aware. Daddy hadn't asked about her. )
How peculiar to be jealous of a grounding, or the threat of being transferred. She didn't want to be grounded, but maybe it would be nice to be noticed.
"No, he didn't say anything to me," was all she said.
"I won't complain about having a calm year if I can manage it," Harry said. "I think it'll be interesting enough with mama here. I can't wait for her to meet Malfoy."
"Right, your mum who smuggled Sirius Black into the school. The most wanted criminal in Britain. Calm year, my arse." Ron laughed.
"Yes, that's exactly what I'm worried about! No offense Harry, but drama always finds you." Hermione said.
"Do you think your mama would let us study some necromancy with you and Sirius?" Luna asked. Hermione and Ron perked up at the thought. "If we learned some too, we could help if any more drama happens, and we would be less likely to be hurt, thus worrying your parents less." Granted, she doubted Hermione or Ron's parents would be thrilled to learn of their kids' extracurricular activities, and would hardly consider necromancy as safe.
She doubted her dad would care about any of the dark magic stuff - even if he acknowledged her, the Lovegoods had not raised her traditionally. There had been many occasions when Harry and her had come in the house looking for a snack after a long day of playing to find their mothers bent over a table discussing a variety of illegal topics. No, Pandora Lovegood had not been a Light witch, and daddy had known that. But still, even if she was doing nothing wrong, it would be nice to hear her father put up even an ounce of concern for her safety. Even as annoying as it would be for Molly Weasley to put up a fuss about Ron's undead pets, at least he would know his mother was concerned, no matter how unfounded.
"I dunno…" Harry said. "I don't really know what she and Sirius are up to, it sounded really boring, to be honest. And that would probably be at night since he has to be a dog around the students. And the stuff I'm learning would be too advanced. But I'll let her know you're interested. That is a very good point. You'll probably have to learn from the books for a while though."
"Can't you show us stuff?" Ron groaned, as Ron hated books. He remembered Harry's army of undead rats, and while it had been a very dumb idea at the time, now it was incredibly intriguing. Why stop at three rats when you could have hundreds? The undead ones barely needed to be taken care of, and they were so cute and soft. Ron wanted to lie down and be swarmed by his undead babies. And he wanted to knit little sweaters for each and every one of them. That's how much Ronald loved rats.
"Mama is pretty strict about doing anything exciting at Hogwarts. I could show you some blood magic, but we couldn't raise any dead or anything cool. Which is lame as hell."
"Blood magic is plenty exciting - oh don't give me that face, Ronald. We really should avoid any suspicion and lay low this year. The books will have to do. I can't believe I'm saying this, but why don't you two focus on Quidditch instead." Hermione huffed.
The boys launched into what was probably the sixth or seventh discussion they'd had about how cool Harry's Firebolt was. The girls had clocked out by the third time they'd done this. Hermione sighed. "I didn't mean right this second!" She was ignored.
"Can you tell me more about France?" Luna suggested. "Daddy thinks the French are lazy and smell like onions - because they're vampirephobic and so we've never been. Apparently, most of their government is made up of werewolves, who have a natural hatred for vampires, of course. There was a famous vampire king and werewolf clan leader who both fell in love with the same woman and it started a blood feud between them. Anyway, daddy says France is very prejudiced about that, and I have a third cousin who is a vampire."
That was usually the point where Hermione got a look on her face that signaled she was holding back a comment, which Luna always appreciated and pretended not to notice. But she'd been doing that less and less lately, and instead, her friend burst into fond laughter and pulled Luna into a side hug.
"You're really nice to talk to, Luna," she said. "Thanks for cheering me up. That was really funny. I didn't notice any werewolves while I was there but we did go to this wonderful museum -"
Luna forced her jealousy down and pretended that the hug had not been greatly needed. She was back on the train, surrounded by her friends and heading to her favorite place. She felt pretty cheered up too.
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