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lomonaaerenTitle: Offer No Apologies
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Harry/Luna, mentions of canon pairings
Content Notes: Eighth year, angst, mention of past character deaths and violence, bullying
Wordcount: 4500
Summary: It seems nothing has changed at Hogwarts since the war, with House rivalries and blood prejudice still continuing, and Harry is tired. Tired enough to accept Luna’s invitation to go hunting in the Forbidden Forest.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “Songs of Summer” fics, one-shots being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August. Several people requested Harry/Luna. This story takes inspiration from falconry, which I don’t claim to be an expert in, and with several parts changed in any case for a magical setting. The title comes from the quote below.
Offer No Apologies
“Hunt hard. Kill swiftly. Waste nothing. Offer no apologies.”
--attributed to Teddy Moritz, quoted by Sy Montgomery in her book The Hawk’s Way.
Harry leaned against the trunk of the massive oak tree and sighed. From here, he could look across the grounds to Hogwarts, and down to the lake, and out towards Hagrid’s cottage. The tree still had leaves on it, more than some of the ones in the Forbidden Forest beyond, but autumn was well and truly coming. Harry adjusted the cloak around his shoulders.
He wished he didn’t feel so tired. He wished he didn’t feel so hopeless.
Yes, the Carrows were gone, and the other people who had made life so unpleasant for the students last year. The cracks in the stone walls had been repaired; the blood and the bodies had been cleared up. But the first evening Harry had been back in Hogwarts, he’d heard a Ravenclaw sneering “Mudblood” at someone else, and seen Gryffindors and Slytherins hexing each other.
What did we fight the war for?
Hermione said that he couldn’t expect people to change overnight, and Harry did acknowledge that. But he’d thought they might have a pause to catch their breath, a few months of peace, while people remembered the war and were subdued the tragedy and the loss.
No. Everything had gone back to the same pointless struggles and rivalries. Hermione, as Head Girl, had had to break up seven fights between different Houses in the first week alone.
Harry sighed again and straightened. Maybe he was more affected by the war than he’d thought, himself. Maybe everyone else had bounced back well and he was the one who should be going to a Mind-Healer or something. He didn’t know.
He did know that it had dented his hopes for the future and his determination to become an Auror later on. What was the point when he would probably deal with the same corruption in the Ministry, the same failure to admit any wrongdoing? They weren’t even trying the collaborators with Voldemort’s regime because they said that would mean also trying people who had been under the Imperius Curse, and they couldn’t sort out who really had been from who was lying. “Better to let the guilty go than to punish the innocent,” Minister Shacklebolt had said in a recent news article.
And Harry even agreed with that. He just wanted to know what the Ministry was going to do to prevent the people who had done it once from collaborating with the next Dark Lord, and no one seemed to know.
“Hello, Harry.”
Harry blinked and turned around. Luna was standing behind him, wearing a thin white dress that made her look like a ghost. At least she had shoes on, Harry was happy to note, even if she also had an odd hood around her head that seemed to be made of chains and rings linked together. And a leather glove on one hand, and—
“What is that?” Harry asked.
Standing on Luna’s glove was an odd little animal. At first Harry thought it was some kind of bird, because he could see the wings fluttering. But when he stepped closer, he realized that it was a miniature thestral. A really small one, with leather leashes from the glove looped around all four legs.
“What the hell?” Harry asked.
Luna beamed at him. “Isn’t he amazing, Harry? I forgot how many people can’t see him, so people have been looking at me strangely.”
It was on the tip of Harry’s tongue to ask how she could tell, when so many people looked at her strangely all the time, but he fought that back. He didn’t have to be cruel. “He’s awesome,” he said. “But how did you get one that small? Did you enchant it?”
“No, they come that way naturally,” Luna said, and started walking into the Forbidden Forest. Harry walked with her, still staring at the tiny thestral. It fluttered its reptilian wings at him and stretched its neck, showing off teeth that Harry wouldn’t like chewing on him. “About one in a hundred thestral births. But of course, with them being so small, they often get crushed by the dam before they can be rescued.”
“How did you find this one?”
“Hagrid found a few and said I could keep this one.”
“What do you do with him?”
Luna turned and looked up at him abruptly. Harry’s eyes widened. Maybe it was just the effect of the odd hood around her head, but her eyes seemed to glow in an eerie fashion, one that made her look like a predator herself in the forest.
“Hunt,” Luna said softly.
Harry hesitated. He’d had enough of blood and death during the war, he really had. “I—I think I’m going to stay out of this one, Luna.”
“It is an adventure that you are not ready for,” Luna said, nodding as if she was listening to someone other than Harry speaking. “When are you ready, you will be ready. The nargles are singing and the bats are coming out.” And she walked away from Harry into the Forbidden Forest, the thestral on her glove tugging and dancing restlessly.
Harry stared after her for a long time.
*
“I’m not sure I’m all that interested in becoming an Auror anymore.”
Harry had thought he might as well say that aloud and see what his best friends thought of it. He wasn’t prepared for their reaction.
Hermione started up from her book with a loud gasp of dismay, staring at him. Ron fell off the couch he’d been lying on with his arms behind his head, dreamily contemplating the fire. And of course, all the noise that made caused some of the other Gryffindors to stare in their direction with various levels of surprise, concern, and amusement.
“Harry!” At least Hermione had the sense to keep her voice down. “What do you mean?”
“What I said.” Harry licked away sweat that had begun beading near his lip unexpectedly. “I’m not sure I’m interested in being an Auror.”
“Mate, you have to be.” Ron was sitting up now, but didn’t attempt to climb back on the couch, instead staring at Harry with intense, serious eyes. “We made all the plans together, remember? We’re becoming Aurors together! That’s why I’m even in Potions this term, so we have the right NEWTS. And adhering to that study schedule Hermione put together, even though I’m going mental.”
“Thank you, Ron,” Hermione said tartly, but she was smiling at him. Harry had to look away.
“I understand feeling discouraged, Harry,” Hermione said, turning to him and smiling. “It’s hard to look around and realize that the world didn’t change overnight because of what we did. But you have to remember how long substantial change takes. You can’t make those changes if you just opt out of doing anything.”
“I wasn’t saying I would opt out of doing anything,” Harry muttered. “Just that I don’t want to do it as an Auror. Why can’t I be a Healer or something?”
Hermione shook her head. “I know it’s different in the Muggle world, Harry, but here, Healers tend to get wrapped up in whatever ward they work at in St. Mungo’s. If they do research, it’s on how to cure the effects of a particular curse or how to improve their own training. Nothing else. They don’t study widespread diseases or do lots of experiments that could help save lives. You’ll make very little change or difference as a Healer.”
“Except to the people I heal, right?”
Harry had meant it as sarcasm, but it flew over Hermione’s head. She nodded seriously. “There’s that, but you wanted to make sure that things like blood prejudice die out over the next few decades, right? You can’t do that by working as a Healer. St. Mungo’s is already open and free for whoever needs it. Maybe a specific Healer here or there would refuse to treat Muggleborns, but I’ve never heard of it. You’ll make more difference as an Auror than trying to convert a colleague here, a colleague there.”
Harry opened his mouth and realized that they didn’t want to hear the discussion he wanted to have.
He just shrugged and went back to staring at the ceiling, while Ron and Hermione bantered and kissed. He wished he could be as sure of his path as they were of theirs.
*
“Can I come with you?”
Luna looked up with her luminous eyes again as Harry crashed to an awkward halt beside her. They were already fairly deep in the Forbidden Forest. Harry had guessed wrong about when Luna might next enter it—as if she had a routine in any case—and had had to run to catch up with her.
Luna tilted her head at him. “I thought you didn’t want to join this adventure.”
“I mean—I—” Harry ran a hand through his hair. “I didn’t want to join it if gets too bloody. But my friends are driving me mental, and I can’t decide what to do with myself. At least this is something different.”
Luna smiled. “I am honored to be something different.”
Harry flushed, but Luna seemed sincere, at least as sincere as she was about anything. He nodded and fell in beside her as they kept walking into the Forest. Luna’s wand lit the way, but she kept it in a pocket, sending strange and filtered light bouncing around them, so Harry took his out and held it up, murmuring a Lumos. “What are we hunting?”
“Grief.”
Harry stopped and stared at her. Luna glanced at him. “Did you trip on something? But you are very upright for someone who tripped.”
“No, I.” Harry felt as though his tongue had grown thicker and was hard to work around his teeth. He coughed. “I just—I thought you were hunting animals of some kind. Maybe bats, because you mentioned them last time.”
Luna frowned at him. “I mentioned them because I wanted to mention them.”
Of course she did.
“But tiercel thestrals don’t hunt mortal prey.” Luna stroked the back of the thestral leashed on her glove. “They hunt the prey that people don’t know is there and mortal animals don’t know is there and can’t hunt for themselves.” She began undoing the leather leashes around the thestral’s hooves, while it stamped and flicked its head up and down.
“Tiercel?”
“It’s an old word.”
For what? But Harry found himself more caught up in watching the process of Luna unleashing the thestral. It stood still when she was done, trembling, wings working back and forth, and then Luna tossed her glove up. The thestral took flight at once, and circled overhead at a short distance, just underneath the tree canopy.
“How did you train him to wait for you like that?”
“It took a long time,” Luna said vaguely. Her head was tilted, and once again, the hood made her eyes look bright and unsettling. “What grief shall we hunt today?” She turned around and looked at Harry.
“I—what? I don’t know. I thought you would choose something of your own.”
“I hunted all my grief by myself before I trained Per,” said Luna simply. “I want to hunt other griefs. He wants to hunt other griefs. You are here. Tell us what you want us to hunt.”
Harry shivered and folded his arms. He could hear the sounds of Per’s wings above him, just a soft creak or whoosh now and then, but he couldn’t envision what he would hunt. He finally licked his lips and said, “I want to hunt my grief over Fred’s death.’
It just slipped out. He had thought he might say Remus and Tonks, who Teddy had a right to miss, or Dumbledore, who he’d helped to kill. But it was Fred. He was there behind every missing smile on George’s face, behind the silences in Ron’s voice when he stopped talking, behind the way that Ginny sat on the edge of the Astronomy Tower some evenings and stared at the sky.
“A good grief,” said Luna. She looked up at the circling thestral. “He won’t be able to hunt it if it’s not close or visible, though. Concentrate on it.”
Harry closed his eyes. He wanted to say that he didn’t know how to do that, but he did, in fact, know how to do that. His grief was so close all the time that it was a struggle to focus on his classwork sometimes. And worse since he had started thinking that he might not want to be an Auror, and so the motivation to do well in classes was slipping away.
Fred, he thought. Fred. I miss you.
Luna gave a little gasp beside him.
Harry opened his eyes and lit his wand further, and saw Per speeding after something small and smooth and dark, something that resembled a bat as far as Harry could make out its wings, but had a vague, swirling body in between them. Again and again, the thing darted in and out of trees, and again and again, Per half-folded his wings or curved them and skated after it.
Luna began to run further into the Forest. Harry paced her, resenting every time he had to take his eyes off the hunt to keep himself from tripping over a root or being smacked in the face by a branch. Now and then he could hear the furious, high-pitched bugle of the thestral, but the thing he was chasing never made any sound.
Then it did. The scream was shrill, high-pitched, and quickly ending.
Luna surged forwards. Harry followed her, his heartbeat so loud in his ears that he didn’t even hear their feet crunching on the fallen leaves.
He found Luna crouched on the ground beside Per and the remains of—whatever he had hunted. Already, it was reduced to flat and greasy ash, and Per was stamping his hooves in it and bugling. Harry saw for the first time how sharp his hooves were, like small axes. It was no wonder that Luna wore the glove.
Luan made small noises at Per and ignored the way that he spread his wings and snapped his teeth at her. Harry stared some more at the thing he’d destroyed. It might have been the remnants of a bat, after all. Harry had half-thought it might be wearing Fred’s face or the like, but it seemed the hunt wasn’t that literal.
“Harry?”
“I—yeah.” Harry glanced up and blinked at Luna. “I still feel some grief for Fred.”
“That’s natural,” Luna said. She offered her glove with what looked like a piece of meat clutched between the fingers, and Per immediately soared over to her, stepping on the leather and spreading his wings over the meat. Luna leashed his hooves again with neat movements of her fingers. “It doesn’t go away. Part of it was killed. But do you feel better?”
Harry closed his eyes and thought about it. Slowly, he realized he did. Part of the problem was that he kept going over and over old memories of Fred, and remembering that there would never be any new ones.
But now there was a new one. There was Per darting through the forest in pursuit of something that Harry seemed to have conjured from his own mind. There was the thing shrieking as it died.
“Yeah,” Harry said, and breathed out. He opened his eyes and looked at Luna, small and shining in the forest. “Can I come and hunt with you again?”
“It would be my pleasure,” Luna said. “Perhaps we can hunt hatred next time.”
*
“You look better, Harry.”
Harry smiled at Hermione as he sat down at the Gryffindor table and reached for marmalade to put on his toast. “I actually feel pretty good,” he said.
And he did. Harry had no idea whether it was just the new memory, or something different, or whether somehow embodying his grief in the dark thing had really killed part of it, but he’d slept without nightmares and woken up in the morning with a smile on his lips, remembering Fred on his broom when he and George had left in the middle of Harry’s fifth year.
Fred was gone. He wouldn’t return. But Harry could move forwards and remember him as he had been in more than the moment of his death.
“Does this mean that you’ve reconsidered being an Auror, mate?” Ron asked, dropping into his seat on Harry’s other side.
Harry wondered what they would say if he said, No, I’m considering running away with Luna to train thestrals to hunt grief.
But he still didn’t know about that, so he shrugged and said, “Maybe. I just think that I could be happier elsewhere, though. Maybe as a Healer, like I said.”
“You won’t make as much change in the world, though.”
Ron nodded along with Hermione. “And you said you wanted to do that, right? After watching people hang on to the stupid blood purity nonsense that bigots came up with?”
Harry looked up and across the Great Hall. It was as if he was looking with new eyes. Yes, there were still Slytherins at the table sneering if they looked at Hermione or Justin Finch-Fletchley or a few other people in different Houses who were Muggleborn. And Seamus was glaring at Millicent Bulstrode, who was far as Harry knew hadn’t even been here last year.
But there were a lot more people just eating their breakfasts or talking to each other or reading the Daily Prophet. People who’d stood with them, fought with them. Harry’s eyes went to Slughorn at the high table, who was laughing at something Professor McGonagall had said.
He stood with us. Maybe it’s not all bad. Maybe things are better than I thought.
“Harry?”
Harry blinked and turned back to Hermione. “Yes, I still want to make a difference,” he said.
Hermione smiled and started talking about some of the Ministry structures she’d been researching, how the Aurors interacted with the rest of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and how new laws were passed. Harry listened with half an ear, but looked at the Ravenclaw table where Luna was sitting, at the end, by herself.
She looked up and smiled when she caught sight of him. She had a necklace of what looked like glass shards from butterbeer bottles around her neck, strung together with twine.
Maybe there’s more than one way to make a difference, Harry thought.
*
“You should wear this.”
“Why?” Harry asked, staring at the hood Luna was holding out to him. It seemed to be made of chains and rings linked together like hers was, but with more rings, and it slithered in her hands like a snake. He took it, but for a moment he was remembering Nagini, and he didn’t know if he could put it on.
“It will keep the grief from hitting you in the head if it circles back.”
That made a lot more sense than it would have a day ago, and Harry nodded slowly. He slung the hood around his head, and Luna helped him fasten it at the throat with a few leather ties that looked like they were made of the same material as the leashes on her glove.
Her fingers brushed his throat, and Harry took a harsh breath.
“Is a nargle here?” Luna turned her head, frowning. “I can usually sense them better than this.”
“No,” Harry whispered. “It’s—it’s nothing.”
“You made a sound,” Luna said severely, and finished lacing up the hood. “That’s not nothing. You have to listen and be alive to the sounds of the forest when we’re hunting. Otherwise, maybe something will be hunting you.” She reached out and picked up the glove with Per attached to it, which had been slung over a tree branch. “Come on.”
Harry fell in line behind her, thinking of what they would hunt tonight.
And if he watched the way Luna’s legs rose and fell in long strides, and the way she seemed to flicker like light through the trees, that was his own private business.
*
“Loony, again.”
Harry paused. He’d been on his way to meet Luna in the entrance hall, and he’d been rushing because he thought she was probably already there. But the name and the laughter that followed it made a ferocious anger squeeze into his chest. He eased up to the corner and looked around it.
A few sixth-year Ravenclaws he didn’t know were standing around a pile of things on the floor. Harry thought he saw Luna’s hood of chain and rings among them. Luna stood not far from them, her eyes as distant as they always were, but her face unhappy.
One of the bullies drew her foot back to kick the pile of objects, and another one pointed a wand.
Harry stepped around the corner. “Enough,” he said softly.
The Ravenclaws jumped when they saw him, and further when they realized who he was. Harry’s scar wasn’t nearly as prominent as it had used to be, but people saw his face in the papers all the time still, and they knew who he was without that. “Potter?” asked the one with the wand, while the one who’d been going to kick Luna’s possessions stepped back and tried to pretend she wasn’t connected to her foot.
Harry stared at them. “You’ll leave her alone.”
“I mean—Potter. It’s just Loony.”
Harry’s chest felt tight, and there was a roaring in his ears. He was hearing a different voice say, “It’s just the freak.”
“I don’t care,” Harry said, sharply enough that the Ravenclaws all jumped. “Luna is worth a hundred of your lot. She fought in the war against Voldemort, she ran, she survived, she hid. She was there. And I didn’t see any of you in the battle last year.” He swept his gaze over them to make sure, but none of them looked familiar. “She’s important. She’s special.”
The bullies exchanged uncertain glances, but none of them were going to question him, it seemed. They mumbled half-hearted apologies and retreated. Harry glared at them until he was sure they were gone, and then turned around and took Luna’s hand. She was staring at the pile they’d made on the ground, but she looked up at him then.
“Are you all right?” Harry whispered.
After a moment, Luna nodded.
“I’m sorry,” Harry said, and bent down to pick up the hood. It slithered and clanked in his hands, but it looked like only a few rings had come detached from the edges, and he could put that right easily enough. “Reparo.”
He relaxed as the rings slid back into place, and handed the hood to Luna. The other things in the pile looked like butterbeer-cork necklaces, shoes, earrings made of silver wire, and feathers made of glass. Harry cast a general Reparo spell on them, and then wondered if he should have, if Luna would have liked him doing that. These were her things, and the bullies had messed with them. Now he was.
He looked at her, starting to say, “I’m sor—”
Luna stepped up to him and kissed him.
Harry’s heart rang in his ears. He felt as if he didn’t know which direction was up, suddenly, but he knew Luna was still in front of him. So he reached out and put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her back.
Luna skipped back a step long before Harry was ready for the kiss to end. She was smiling. “Did you like that?”
“Yes,” Harry said, his voice huskier than he’d ever heard it. Huh. He hadn’t thought the kiss was too different from some of the ones he’d had with Ginny, but it apparently affected him more.
“Good,” Luna said. “Then I can stop hunting it alone.”
Harry licked the edges of his lips, trying to bring back the memory of the kiss and hold it there. “Hunting what alone? I thought we hunted grief together.”
Luna smiled and put the hood on over her hair. “Happiness,” she said, and she reached out and wrapped a hand around Harry’s and pulled him towards the entrance hall. The small collection of her objects rose and floated behind them, although she hadn’t cast a spell that Harry had seen.
Harry smiled, and followed her to Hagrid’s hut, where they would collect Per.
*
“There’s more than one way to change the world, Hermione.”
Hermione paused in the middle of her speech to blink at Harry, looking surprised. Harry went on eating his breakfast. He had waited until she’d reached the conclusion of one argument to talk, and it seemed that meant she was more likely to listen.
Or maybe it was the quiet confidence in his voice, and the way he wasn’t edging around the subject and just pretending he wanted to be an Auror anymore.
“Of course there is,” Hermione said, slowly. “But I explained the limitations of the Healer’s path for any kind of widespread change.”
“Yeah, you did,” Harry said, and smiled at Luna as she came into the Great Hall. She turned and walked towards him, and held out her hand. Harry winked at Hermione. “But making small changes one at a time is good, too.”
“Harry—”
Harry walked around the table and kissed Luna, just a moment before she could kiss him, and a ripple of noise went around the Great Hall. Luna followed it with her eyes and seemed to notice the people around them for the first time.
“This isn’t the right place for a hunt, Harry,” she said.
“But I think it might be the right place for a quest,” Harry said. People were gaping at them more than they were talking, and could probably hear exactly what he and Luna were saying. Well, so what? Harry had been on public display for fucking years.
“Maybe,” Luna said, and she smiled at him. “We’ll need to find a Questing Beast to follow.”
Harry entwined his fingers with hers. “I think we could do that.”
And he followed her out of the Great Hall, and ignored the way that a few people called after him and others were breaking out in laughter and speculation. No one else needed to know what they meant.
They could go start quests of their own. This one was Harry and Luna’s to follow.
The End.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Harry/Luna, mentions of canon pairings
Content Notes: Eighth year, angst, mention of past character deaths and violence, bullying
Wordcount: 4500
Summary: It seems nothing has changed at Hogwarts since the war, with House rivalries and blood prejudice still continuing, and Harry is tired. Tired enough to accept Luna’s invitation to go hunting in the Forbidden Forest.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “Songs of Summer” fics, one-shots being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August. Several people requested Harry/Luna. This story takes inspiration from falconry, which I don’t claim to be an expert in, and with several parts changed in any case for a magical setting. The title comes from the quote below.
Offer No Apologies
“Hunt hard. Kill swiftly. Waste nothing. Offer no apologies.”
--attributed to Teddy Moritz, quoted by Sy Montgomery in her book The Hawk’s Way.
Harry leaned against the trunk of the massive oak tree and sighed. From here, he could look across the grounds to Hogwarts, and down to the lake, and out towards Hagrid’s cottage. The tree still had leaves on it, more than some of the ones in the Forbidden Forest beyond, but autumn was well and truly coming. Harry adjusted the cloak around his shoulders.
He wished he didn’t feel so tired. He wished he didn’t feel so hopeless.
Yes, the Carrows were gone, and the other people who had made life so unpleasant for the students last year. The cracks in the stone walls had been repaired; the blood and the bodies had been cleared up. But the first evening Harry had been back in Hogwarts, he’d heard a Ravenclaw sneering “Mudblood” at someone else, and seen Gryffindors and Slytherins hexing each other.
What did we fight the war for?
Hermione said that he couldn’t expect people to change overnight, and Harry did acknowledge that. But he’d thought they might have a pause to catch their breath, a few months of peace, while people remembered the war and were subdued the tragedy and the loss.
No. Everything had gone back to the same pointless struggles and rivalries. Hermione, as Head Girl, had had to break up seven fights between different Houses in the first week alone.
Harry sighed again and straightened. Maybe he was more affected by the war than he’d thought, himself. Maybe everyone else had bounced back well and he was the one who should be going to a Mind-Healer or something. He didn’t know.
He did know that it had dented his hopes for the future and his determination to become an Auror later on. What was the point when he would probably deal with the same corruption in the Ministry, the same failure to admit any wrongdoing? They weren’t even trying the collaborators with Voldemort’s regime because they said that would mean also trying people who had been under the Imperius Curse, and they couldn’t sort out who really had been from who was lying. “Better to let the guilty go than to punish the innocent,” Minister Shacklebolt had said in a recent news article.
And Harry even agreed with that. He just wanted to know what the Ministry was going to do to prevent the people who had done it once from collaborating with the next Dark Lord, and no one seemed to know.
“Hello, Harry.”
Harry blinked and turned around. Luna was standing behind him, wearing a thin white dress that made her look like a ghost. At least she had shoes on, Harry was happy to note, even if she also had an odd hood around her head that seemed to be made of chains and rings linked together. And a leather glove on one hand, and—
“What is that?” Harry asked.
Standing on Luna’s glove was an odd little animal. At first Harry thought it was some kind of bird, because he could see the wings fluttering. But when he stepped closer, he realized that it was a miniature thestral. A really small one, with leather leashes from the glove looped around all four legs.
“What the hell?” Harry asked.
Luna beamed at him. “Isn’t he amazing, Harry? I forgot how many people can’t see him, so people have been looking at me strangely.”
It was on the tip of Harry’s tongue to ask how she could tell, when so many people looked at her strangely all the time, but he fought that back. He didn’t have to be cruel. “He’s awesome,” he said. “But how did you get one that small? Did you enchant it?”
“No, they come that way naturally,” Luna said, and started walking into the Forbidden Forest. Harry walked with her, still staring at the tiny thestral. It fluttered its reptilian wings at him and stretched its neck, showing off teeth that Harry wouldn’t like chewing on him. “About one in a hundred thestral births. But of course, with them being so small, they often get crushed by the dam before they can be rescued.”
“How did you find this one?”
“Hagrid found a few and said I could keep this one.”
“What do you do with him?”
Luna turned and looked up at him abruptly. Harry’s eyes widened. Maybe it was just the effect of the odd hood around her head, but her eyes seemed to glow in an eerie fashion, one that made her look like a predator herself in the forest.
“Hunt,” Luna said softly.
Harry hesitated. He’d had enough of blood and death during the war, he really had. “I—I think I’m going to stay out of this one, Luna.”
“It is an adventure that you are not ready for,” Luna said, nodding as if she was listening to someone other than Harry speaking. “When are you ready, you will be ready. The nargles are singing and the bats are coming out.” And she walked away from Harry into the Forbidden Forest, the thestral on her glove tugging and dancing restlessly.
Harry stared after her for a long time.
*
“I’m not sure I’m all that interested in becoming an Auror anymore.”
Harry had thought he might as well say that aloud and see what his best friends thought of it. He wasn’t prepared for their reaction.
Hermione started up from her book with a loud gasp of dismay, staring at him. Ron fell off the couch he’d been lying on with his arms behind his head, dreamily contemplating the fire. And of course, all the noise that made caused some of the other Gryffindors to stare in their direction with various levels of surprise, concern, and amusement.
“Harry!” At least Hermione had the sense to keep her voice down. “What do you mean?”
“What I said.” Harry licked away sweat that had begun beading near his lip unexpectedly. “I’m not sure I’m interested in being an Auror.”
“Mate, you have to be.” Ron was sitting up now, but didn’t attempt to climb back on the couch, instead staring at Harry with intense, serious eyes. “We made all the plans together, remember? We’re becoming Aurors together! That’s why I’m even in Potions this term, so we have the right NEWTS. And adhering to that study schedule Hermione put together, even though I’m going mental.”
“Thank you, Ron,” Hermione said tartly, but she was smiling at him. Harry had to look away.
“I understand feeling discouraged, Harry,” Hermione said, turning to him and smiling. “It’s hard to look around and realize that the world didn’t change overnight because of what we did. But you have to remember how long substantial change takes. You can’t make those changes if you just opt out of doing anything.”
“I wasn’t saying I would opt out of doing anything,” Harry muttered. “Just that I don’t want to do it as an Auror. Why can’t I be a Healer or something?”
Hermione shook her head. “I know it’s different in the Muggle world, Harry, but here, Healers tend to get wrapped up in whatever ward they work at in St. Mungo’s. If they do research, it’s on how to cure the effects of a particular curse or how to improve their own training. Nothing else. They don’t study widespread diseases or do lots of experiments that could help save lives. You’ll make very little change or difference as a Healer.”
“Except to the people I heal, right?”
Harry had meant it as sarcasm, but it flew over Hermione’s head. She nodded seriously. “There’s that, but you wanted to make sure that things like blood prejudice die out over the next few decades, right? You can’t do that by working as a Healer. St. Mungo’s is already open and free for whoever needs it. Maybe a specific Healer here or there would refuse to treat Muggleborns, but I’ve never heard of it. You’ll make more difference as an Auror than trying to convert a colleague here, a colleague there.”
Harry opened his mouth and realized that they didn’t want to hear the discussion he wanted to have.
He just shrugged and went back to staring at the ceiling, while Ron and Hermione bantered and kissed. He wished he could be as sure of his path as they were of theirs.
*
“Can I come with you?”
Luna looked up with her luminous eyes again as Harry crashed to an awkward halt beside her. They were already fairly deep in the Forbidden Forest. Harry had guessed wrong about when Luna might next enter it—as if she had a routine in any case—and had had to run to catch up with her.
Luna tilted her head at him. “I thought you didn’t want to join this adventure.”
“I mean—I—” Harry ran a hand through his hair. “I didn’t want to join it if gets too bloody. But my friends are driving me mental, and I can’t decide what to do with myself. At least this is something different.”
Luna smiled. “I am honored to be something different.”
Harry flushed, but Luna seemed sincere, at least as sincere as she was about anything. He nodded and fell in beside her as they kept walking into the Forest. Luna’s wand lit the way, but she kept it in a pocket, sending strange and filtered light bouncing around them, so Harry took his out and held it up, murmuring a Lumos. “What are we hunting?”
“Grief.”
Harry stopped and stared at her. Luna glanced at him. “Did you trip on something? But you are very upright for someone who tripped.”
“No, I.” Harry felt as though his tongue had grown thicker and was hard to work around his teeth. He coughed. “I just—I thought you were hunting animals of some kind. Maybe bats, because you mentioned them last time.”
Luna frowned at him. “I mentioned them because I wanted to mention them.”
Of course she did.
“But tiercel thestrals don’t hunt mortal prey.” Luna stroked the back of the thestral leashed on her glove. “They hunt the prey that people don’t know is there and mortal animals don’t know is there and can’t hunt for themselves.” She began undoing the leather leashes around the thestral’s hooves, while it stamped and flicked its head up and down.
“Tiercel?”
“It’s an old word.”
For what? But Harry found himself more caught up in watching the process of Luna unleashing the thestral. It stood still when she was done, trembling, wings working back and forth, and then Luna tossed her glove up. The thestral took flight at once, and circled overhead at a short distance, just underneath the tree canopy.
“How did you train him to wait for you like that?”
“It took a long time,” Luna said vaguely. Her head was tilted, and once again, the hood made her eyes look bright and unsettling. “What grief shall we hunt today?” She turned around and looked at Harry.
“I—what? I don’t know. I thought you would choose something of your own.”
“I hunted all my grief by myself before I trained Per,” said Luna simply. “I want to hunt other griefs. He wants to hunt other griefs. You are here. Tell us what you want us to hunt.”
Harry shivered and folded his arms. He could hear the sounds of Per’s wings above him, just a soft creak or whoosh now and then, but he couldn’t envision what he would hunt. He finally licked his lips and said, “I want to hunt my grief over Fred’s death.’
It just slipped out. He had thought he might say Remus and Tonks, who Teddy had a right to miss, or Dumbledore, who he’d helped to kill. But it was Fred. He was there behind every missing smile on George’s face, behind the silences in Ron’s voice when he stopped talking, behind the way that Ginny sat on the edge of the Astronomy Tower some evenings and stared at the sky.
“A good grief,” said Luna. She looked up at the circling thestral. “He won’t be able to hunt it if it’s not close or visible, though. Concentrate on it.”
Harry closed his eyes. He wanted to say that he didn’t know how to do that, but he did, in fact, know how to do that. His grief was so close all the time that it was a struggle to focus on his classwork sometimes. And worse since he had started thinking that he might not want to be an Auror, and so the motivation to do well in classes was slipping away.
Fred, he thought. Fred. I miss you.
Luna gave a little gasp beside him.
Harry opened his eyes and lit his wand further, and saw Per speeding after something small and smooth and dark, something that resembled a bat as far as Harry could make out its wings, but had a vague, swirling body in between them. Again and again, the thing darted in and out of trees, and again and again, Per half-folded his wings or curved them and skated after it.
Luna began to run further into the Forest. Harry paced her, resenting every time he had to take his eyes off the hunt to keep himself from tripping over a root or being smacked in the face by a branch. Now and then he could hear the furious, high-pitched bugle of the thestral, but the thing he was chasing never made any sound.
Then it did. The scream was shrill, high-pitched, and quickly ending.
Luna surged forwards. Harry followed her, his heartbeat so loud in his ears that he didn’t even hear their feet crunching on the fallen leaves.
He found Luna crouched on the ground beside Per and the remains of—whatever he had hunted. Already, it was reduced to flat and greasy ash, and Per was stamping his hooves in it and bugling. Harry saw for the first time how sharp his hooves were, like small axes. It was no wonder that Luna wore the glove.
Luan made small noises at Per and ignored the way that he spread his wings and snapped his teeth at her. Harry stared some more at the thing he’d destroyed. It might have been the remnants of a bat, after all. Harry had half-thought it might be wearing Fred’s face or the like, but it seemed the hunt wasn’t that literal.
“Harry?”
“I—yeah.” Harry glanced up and blinked at Luna. “I still feel some grief for Fred.”
“That’s natural,” Luna said. She offered her glove with what looked like a piece of meat clutched between the fingers, and Per immediately soared over to her, stepping on the leather and spreading his wings over the meat. Luna leashed his hooves again with neat movements of her fingers. “It doesn’t go away. Part of it was killed. But do you feel better?”
Harry closed his eyes and thought about it. Slowly, he realized he did. Part of the problem was that he kept going over and over old memories of Fred, and remembering that there would never be any new ones.
But now there was a new one. There was Per darting through the forest in pursuit of something that Harry seemed to have conjured from his own mind. There was the thing shrieking as it died.
“Yeah,” Harry said, and breathed out. He opened his eyes and looked at Luna, small and shining in the forest. “Can I come and hunt with you again?”
“It would be my pleasure,” Luna said. “Perhaps we can hunt hatred next time.”
*
“You look better, Harry.”
Harry smiled at Hermione as he sat down at the Gryffindor table and reached for marmalade to put on his toast. “I actually feel pretty good,” he said.
And he did. Harry had no idea whether it was just the new memory, or something different, or whether somehow embodying his grief in the dark thing had really killed part of it, but he’d slept without nightmares and woken up in the morning with a smile on his lips, remembering Fred on his broom when he and George had left in the middle of Harry’s fifth year.
Fred was gone. He wouldn’t return. But Harry could move forwards and remember him as he had been in more than the moment of his death.
“Does this mean that you’ve reconsidered being an Auror, mate?” Ron asked, dropping into his seat on Harry’s other side.
Harry wondered what they would say if he said, No, I’m considering running away with Luna to train thestrals to hunt grief.
But he still didn’t know about that, so he shrugged and said, “Maybe. I just think that I could be happier elsewhere, though. Maybe as a Healer, like I said.”
“You won’t make as much change in the world, though.”
Ron nodded along with Hermione. “And you said you wanted to do that, right? After watching people hang on to the stupid blood purity nonsense that bigots came up with?”
Harry looked up and across the Great Hall. It was as if he was looking with new eyes. Yes, there were still Slytherins at the table sneering if they looked at Hermione or Justin Finch-Fletchley or a few other people in different Houses who were Muggleborn. And Seamus was glaring at Millicent Bulstrode, who was far as Harry knew hadn’t even been here last year.
But there were a lot more people just eating their breakfasts or talking to each other or reading the Daily Prophet. People who’d stood with them, fought with them. Harry’s eyes went to Slughorn at the high table, who was laughing at something Professor McGonagall had said.
He stood with us. Maybe it’s not all bad. Maybe things are better than I thought.
“Harry?”
Harry blinked and turned back to Hermione. “Yes, I still want to make a difference,” he said.
Hermione smiled and started talking about some of the Ministry structures she’d been researching, how the Aurors interacted with the rest of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and how new laws were passed. Harry listened with half an ear, but looked at the Ravenclaw table where Luna was sitting, at the end, by herself.
She looked up and smiled when she caught sight of him. She had a necklace of what looked like glass shards from butterbeer bottles around her neck, strung together with twine.
Maybe there’s more than one way to make a difference, Harry thought.
*
“You should wear this.”
“Why?” Harry asked, staring at the hood Luna was holding out to him. It seemed to be made of chains and rings linked together like hers was, but with more rings, and it slithered in her hands like a snake. He took it, but for a moment he was remembering Nagini, and he didn’t know if he could put it on.
“It will keep the grief from hitting you in the head if it circles back.”
That made a lot more sense than it would have a day ago, and Harry nodded slowly. He slung the hood around his head, and Luna helped him fasten it at the throat with a few leather ties that looked like they were made of the same material as the leashes on her glove.
Her fingers brushed his throat, and Harry took a harsh breath.
“Is a nargle here?” Luna turned her head, frowning. “I can usually sense them better than this.”
“No,” Harry whispered. “It’s—it’s nothing.”
“You made a sound,” Luna said severely, and finished lacing up the hood. “That’s not nothing. You have to listen and be alive to the sounds of the forest when we’re hunting. Otherwise, maybe something will be hunting you.” She reached out and picked up the glove with Per attached to it, which had been slung over a tree branch. “Come on.”
Harry fell in line behind her, thinking of what they would hunt tonight.
And if he watched the way Luna’s legs rose and fell in long strides, and the way she seemed to flicker like light through the trees, that was his own private business.
*
“Loony, again.”
Harry paused. He’d been on his way to meet Luna in the entrance hall, and he’d been rushing because he thought she was probably already there. But the name and the laughter that followed it made a ferocious anger squeeze into his chest. He eased up to the corner and looked around it.
A few sixth-year Ravenclaws he didn’t know were standing around a pile of things on the floor. Harry thought he saw Luna’s hood of chain and rings among them. Luna stood not far from them, her eyes as distant as they always were, but her face unhappy.
One of the bullies drew her foot back to kick the pile of objects, and another one pointed a wand.
Harry stepped around the corner. “Enough,” he said softly.
The Ravenclaws jumped when they saw him, and further when they realized who he was. Harry’s scar wasn’t nearly as prominent as it had used to be, but people saw his face in the papers all the time still, and they knew who he was without that. “Potter?” asked the one with the wand, while the one who’d been going to kick Luna’s possessions stepped back and tried to pretend she wasn’t connected to her foot.
Harry stared at them. “You’ll leave her alone.”
“I mean—Potter. It’s just Loony.”
Harry’s chest felt tight, and there was a roaring in his ears. He was hearing a different voice say, “It’s just the freak.”
“I don’t care,” Harry said, sharply enough that the Ravenclaws all jumped. “Luna is worth a hundred of your lot. She fought in the war against Voldemort, she ran, she survived, she hid. She was there. And I didn’t see any of you in the battle last year.” He swept his gaze over them to make sure, but none of them looked familiar. “She’s important. She’s special.”
The bullies exchanged uncertain glances, but none of them were going to question him, it seemed. They mumbled half-hearted apologies and retreated. Harry glared at them until he was sure they were gone, and then turned around and took Luna’s hand. She was staring at the pile they’d made on the ground, but she looked up at him then.
“Are you all right?” Harry whispered.
After a moment, Luna nodded.
“I’m sorry,” Harry said, and bent down to pick up the hood. It slithered and clanked in his hands, but it looked like only a few rings had come detached from the edges, and he could put that right easily enough. “Reparo.”
He relaxed as the rings slid back into place, and handed the hood to Luna. The other things in the pile looked like butterbeer-cork necklaces, shoes, earrings made of silver wire, and feathers made of glass. Harry cast a general Reparo spell on them, and then wondered if he should have, if Luna would have liked him doing that. These were her things, and the bullies had messed with them. Now he was.
He looked at her, starting to say, “I’m sor—”
Luna stepped up to him and kissed him.
Harry’s heart rang in his ears. He felt as if he didn’t know which direction was up, suddenly, but he knew Luna was still in front of him. So he reached out and put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her back.
Luna skipped back a step long before Harry was ready for the kiss to end. She was smiling. “Did you like that?”
“Yes,” Harry said, his voice huskier than he’d ever heard it. Huh. He hadn’t thought the kiss was too different from some of the ones he’d had with Ginny, but it apparently affected him more.
“Good,” Luna said. “Then I can stop hunting it alone.”
Harry licked the edges of his lips, trying to bring back the memory of the kiss and hold it there. “Hunting what alone? I thought we hunted grief together.”
Luna smiled and put the hood on over her hair. “Happiness,” she said, and she reached out and wrapped a hand around Harry’s and pulled him towards the entrance hall. The small collection of her objects rose and floated behind them, although she hadn’t cast a spell that Harry had seen.
Harry smiled, and followed her to Hagrid’s hut, where they would collect Per.
*
“There’s more than one way to change the world, Hermione.”
Hermione paused in the middle of her speech to blink at Harry, looking surprised. Harry went on eating his breakfast. He had waited until she’d reached the conclusion of one argument to talk, and it seemed that meant she was more likely to listen.
Or maybe it was the quiet confidence in his voice, and the way he wasn’t edging around the subject and just pretending he wanted to be an Auror anymore.
“Of course there is,” Hermione said, slowly. “But I explained the limitations of the Healer’s path for any kind of widespread change.”
“Yeah, you did,” Harry said, and smiled at Luna as she came into the Great Hall. She turned and walked towards him, and held out her hand. Harry winked at Hermione. “But making small changes one at a time is good, too.”
“Harry—”
Harry walked around the table and kissed Luna, just a moment before she could kiss him, and a ripple of noise went around the Great Hall. Luna followed it with her eyes and seemed to notice the people around them for the first time.
“This isn’t the right place for a hunt, Harry,” she said.
“But I think it might be the right place for a quest,” Harry said. People were gaping at them more than they were talking, and could probably hear exactly what he and Luna were saying. Well, so what? Harry had been on public display for fucking years.
“Maybe,” Luna said, and she smiled at him. “We’ll need to find a Questing Beast to follow.”
Harry entwined his fingers with hers. “I think we could do that.”
And he followed her out of the Great Hall, and ignored the way that a few people called after him and others were breaking out in laughter and speculation. No one else needed to know what they meant.
They could go start quests of their own. This one was Harry and Luna’s to follow.
The End.
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