Disclaimer: I take credit for this plot and my own characters, but everything else belongs to J.K. Rowling.
Note: I see a couple of you have picked up on the Muggle devices in Hogwarts discrepancy. Just for kicks, I threw in some Muggle devices to the whole magic world. As I mentioned in some of my earlier chapters, ARMED protects Muggles as well as witches and wizards, so I just blended our electronics with their magic. I know I didn't write anything about that...I didn't feel I had to elaborate it.
Warning: This chapter contains graphic scenes that some readers may find vulgar or offensive. Please skip to the next chapter if you do not wish to subject yourself to what may be written.
Chapter Eight
Winds of Destiny
"This is your destiny, Luna," the Sages whispered in her ear, their three combined voices echoing softly in her mind. "This is what you were born to do. This is your fate. Will you accept it?"
"Do I have a choice?" She could feel her voice begin to waver, and she bit the inside of her cheek to make the fear subside . "Would you let me forge my own destiny if that was what I wished?"
"This is your--" Whispered the first Sage.
"This is your des--" Echoed the second Sage.
"This is your destiny," Finished the third Sage. "Do you accept it?"
"What is it you ask of me?" she wanted to know. When they told her, her eyes filled. "How can that possibly be my destiny?" She demanded as her tears ran warm rivulets down her cheeks. "Why has this burden been placed on my shoulders?"
"Why is it the sun's burden to rise and set every day?"
"Why is it the fire's burden to be both beautiful and fatal?"
"Why is it man's burden to have shoulders on which to rest burdens?"
Luna hung her head and, no longer in control of her quivering voice, gave in to the Will of the Sages. She had known for a while the choice she would have to make, and knew the words by heart. "I...accept the gift you bestow upon me. I will use it to...to..." Her words caught in her throat, but with a swallow, she was able to speak again. "I will use it to fulfill the destiny laid out at my feet. I will walk the path straight and true until death relieves it of me. This I swear."
Silence. Luna was left in the dark and the silence. And then, all at once, she was hit headlong by a blast of wind. Her feet were swept out from under her and she fell hard on her back. As the wind relentlessly pounded her, stripping her of the right to breathe, Luna felt consciousness slipping slowly from her grasp.
"Fear not, child," She heard the Sages whispering, their voices once again merged to make a single one. "Fear not, for you will be protected by the Strong One, the Stealthy One, the Magical One, and the Loyal One. There is much of your story that you must weave with your own hands. Do not lose faith. Do not lose hope."
"We are always with you," the first Sage assured her.
"We are always wit--" the second Sage repeated.
"We are alw--" the third Sage trailed off, and Luna slipped into unconsciousness.
~*~*~*~*~
Ron awoke several hours later. Something in his arms was moving. He looked down at Luna as she stirred in her sleep. When the jet had touched down, Ron had had no choice but to carry her slender frame aboard the aircraft. Exhausted, he had passed out as soon as he had sat down, Luna still cradled in his arms.
Gently, he shifted her to her own side of the plush built-in-couch they were sitting on. Then, he turned to look out the window. The sun was beginning to crest the clouds their plane was riding, and everything had a warm, golden glow. It comforted Ron, but also scared him. The silence that had befallen the battlefield was making him uncomfortable. In all the years of the war, he had never known things to be this silent, this peaceful. Something was wrong, and it was more than a missing spy.
"Why do you think they attacked us?"
Ron turned to find Luna gazing at him, fully alert and awake. He silently admitted it was nice to have her as company on this mission.
"Any number of reasons. We are still at war with the Death Eaters. Maybe it was an attack. Maybe they were after us individually. That's the worst case scenario, anyway," he said wearily.
"Why would that be the worst case?"
"Because they know we're coming for Draco, and they'll stop at nothing to intercept us before we succeed. It's only a matter of time before whoever sent them realizes the plan was failed. And since we defeated them, their efforts to find us this time will be greater."
Luna nodded and turned to look out of her own window. "I just hope they don't discover the castle." Ron heard her whisper.
"They won't," He assured her. "The security spells are the best in the world, designed by the Spell Caster, meaning the Spell Caster is the only one who knows how to counter them. And the Spell Caster is working for us, not the Death Eaters. No one outside of the Few knows the exact location of their castle. Everyone under the protection of ARMED knows they live in the castles, but they wouldn't know how to find the castles if they left the area. And civilians aren't allowed to leave their bases anyway."
"How are we sure the Spell Caster is working for us?" Luna asked him.
"How are we sure we can trust that you aren't leading me into a trap?" Ron countered.
Luna shrugged. "I never asked for trust. I gave information, and I offered to help you on a search and rescue mission. Trust doesn't have to be involved."
Ron laughed. "In war, Luna, trust is everything."
"In war, you can't trust anyone," she said smoothly.
"Exactly. All the more reason for you to value it when it's offered to you. The enemy has none of our weapons, and they aren't giving reason for us to think they'll be getting them. They don't have different models, and they don't know how to counter ours. The Spell Caster is for us. We trust him...or her. No one knows."
"Do you trust me?"
Ron shrugged. "You've given me plenty of reasons not to, and yet here I am on a secret mission with you, and the chances of you getting to see every trick in our book are pretty high. Have you given me any reason to trust you? No, not really. But I do anyway."
Luna sighed and hung her head, knowing full well that he wanted to know what had happened back at the train. There was so much to tell him, and how much time did they have? There was everything in the past, the Sages, the Gift...for all of it to make sense, she would have to take him back to the beginning, back to the shadows of her life that she had long sice buried...
Ron saw the tortured look on Luna's face even though she had tried to turn from him. He knew she'd tell him. Their mission was over at that moment if she decided to keep this secret from him, they both knew that. But at the same time, he could see it was paining her to admit this to him, and he didn't want to push her any more than he had to. Hesitantly, he reached across the seat and touched Luna's hand. She turned her face back to his, looked at his hand covering hers, and smiled. Slowly, with her other hand, she extended her fingers toward Ron's face. Confused, he watched as her hand came nearer, as if to carress his cheek.
Instead, she touched her fingertips to his temple and closed her eyes. Suddenly, Ron's world went black.
~*~*~*~*~
Luna dropped her trunk heavily next to her when she stopped in front of the door. Every summer she came back to this place, and never knew why. Every year, she went to school and bit her tongue when Dumbledore questioned her, told him everything was fine. She would rather be back at Hogwarts, where her peers called her Loony Lovegood and at least acknowledged her awkward presence without punishing her for still being alive. And with each passing year, she grew more and more into a beautiful personification of her mother, a walking reminder of her death, and for that, she was punished even worse. Punished, punished, punished, no matter what, she suffered the consequences of actions she couldn't even control.
If only she would tell someone. Ginny was her friend, she could tell Ginny everything and ask Ginny if she could stay with her while things were worked out. Ginny would be more than happy to oblige. Luna knew that, thanks to Ginny's countless invitations to sleep over. But Ginny's brothers, the ones Luna knew from school, Fred and George and Ron, would stay away from her because they thought she was insane. The teachers...in the end, what authority did they have? What proof did she have to show them? She had none. So every year, she came back.
With a ragged breath, Luna blinked back her tears, lifted her trunk, and walked through her front door. The lighting was dim. It always was. Her father never bothered to change the dead lightbulbs, so Luna did when she came home for the summer, but most of them were out by June.
She saw her father passed out in his recliner. Clothes, papers, plates, food wrappers, and beer cans littered the living room floor. For a moment, she was hopeful. Maybe he had drank himself to death. But no, his chest was rising and falling in the slow rhythm of sleep. Quietly, so as to leave the monster asleep as long as she could, Luna walked up the stairs to her room. She set the trunk down on the floor. When she straightened, her eyes instantly landed on her picture on her desk. Her eyes began to fill again as she picked it up and sat down on her bed. Her father had broken the glass that covered it, so she undid the frame and pulled the picture out.
Every year, the three people in the picture became more unrecognizable to her. The tall, clean shaven, handsome man was Eric Lovegood, her father. The beautiful woman next to him was her late mother, Celeste. And between them was Luna herself, a happy little baby cradled in Celeste's arms, Eric's own arm protectively around his wife and daughter. Luna felt a tear slide down her cheek. What she would give to have that family again, again and forever.
There was a noise in her doorway. Luna's head snapped up, and her eyes landed on her father. Eric was leaning drunkenly against the door frame, staring at her in wonder. He was anything but the man in the picture. The thick black hair on his head was thinning and falling out, his eyes were saggy, lonely and tortured by his insane mental conditions. Rough black stubble covered his chin and cheeks, and his beer belly hung over the waistband of his jeans. Luna's breath caught in her throat at the sight of him awake.
"Celeste," he said quietly, taking a step inside the room. "Celeste...you've come back...I've missed you. Where did you go?" He stumbled his way towards her, and Luna began to shake, the tears rolling freely down her cheeks now.
"Daddy, no," she whispered in vain, knowing he wouldn't hear or understand her. "Daddy, it's me, it's Luna."
Suddenly, Eric stopped and took a good long look at his daughter. 'Maybe he does recognize me?' Luna dared to hope. But the empty look in her father's eyes suddenly filled with a rage she knew all too well. She let out a sob when he grabbed her roughly by the shoulders and lifted her bodily off the bed. The picture in her hands floated to the floor.
"You left me!" He screamed at, shaking her. "You left me, just like your mother did!" Luna flinched as he screamed, and he backhanded her across her face, hard. "You're weak," he spat. "Weak just like she was."
Roughly, he let Luna go. She scrambled away from him, running towards the door.
"Oh no...you're not getting away that easily," Eric said softly, coming after her again. He lunged and landed on her, hard, raising his hand above her head.
"Daddy, no!!!" She cried, and then everything went black.
~*~*~*~*~
After that, the Sages visited her in her dreams every night. They told her old and ancient tales of magical heroes, and also told her of the war that would begin back at Hogwarts. They told her of the part she was to play, and bestowed upon her the elemental power that was hers by birthright. She would be able to literally shift the winds in the war, and they would serve her and tell her of information only they knew. But first, she had to prove herself...
One hot August night, only a few weeks before school, Luna's father came to her again in a drunken rage. She was fast asleep when he tore her body from the bed. He hit her with all of his strength, sending her sprawling across the floor. Luna's hand faltered to her face, her fingers coming in contact with the warm blood he had shed. Eric swooped down on her for more.
'No...no more of this,' she thought as she looked up at him. Her eyebrows came together in a glare. Eric saw it and stopped, wondering what she would do. Luna had never before fought back.
"NO MORE!" She screamed at him, flinging her arms towards him, palms outstretched. The air began to howl, and the windows in the room shattered into pieces, unable to keep out the wind that was begging to obey Luna's every command. Eric backed up and stared at the windows in shock and fear, but Luna wanted more than to scare this man who used to be her father. She beckoned the wind, and it came to her readily, swirling around and through her fingers. With a scream of rage, she hurled it all at Eric.
Eric's body was flung against the nearest wall. Slowly, Luna got to her feet and stepped closer and closer to him. She could feel the weight of the wind as it pummeled the man before her, and she summoned more and more, increasing her power until she wasn't sure what would happen if she tried to control any more. She pressed it all at Eric. His body, unable to withstand the pressure, crumpled to the floor, and Luna towered over him, pouring all of her power and anger into the torrent she was controlling. The swirling, howling wind pounded him, and he began to gasp when he realized it was coming in quantities too fast and too large for him to take in. Luna was suffocating him.
She watched as his body squirmed and, out of instinct, he tried to clutch at his throat. It was over before he could. His face was begninning to turn blue when his body finally went limp and his eyes rolled up into his head. Instantly, Luna realized what she had done.
The wind stopped abrubtly as soon as Luna put her hands down. Shaking, she fell to her knees, unable to peel her eyes from her father's dead body. She had killed the man who had tried to kill her. Why hadn't she realized what she was doing? Why had she allowed herself to go so far? Did this suddenly make her a killer? And why, oh why, did she feel no remorse or guilt?
She would've knelt there forever if the world suddenly hadn't gone black. She looked around, saw nothing. A gentle wisp of wind blew past her ears.
"This is your destiny, Luna," the Sages whispered in her ear, their three combined voices echoing softly in her mind. "This is what you were born to do. This is your fate. Will you accept it?"
"Do I have a choice?" She could feel her voice begin to waver, and she bit the inside of her cheek to make the fear subside . "Would you let me forge my own destiny if that was what I wished?"
"This is your--" Whispered the first Sage.
"This is your des--" Echoed the second Sage.
"This is your destiny," Finished the third Sage. "Do you accept it?"
"What is it you ask of me?" She wanted to know.
"You will aide the cause," They told her in unison. "It is your destiny to awaken the warrior Sun from his slumber. Together, you will fight. Luna, daughter of the Moon, yours is an ancient story of passion and power. For centuries, the Sun and the Moon have formed the mightiest of alliances. Continue the story, Luna, and by doing so, you will fulfill your destiny, and you will save the lives of millions of others.
"Are you willing to do anything for your people?" They asked her, their voices suddenly hushed. "Are you willing to give your life and the lives of others to make sure you succeed?"
"It is your destiny to die for the cause," One of the Sages whispered to her, and Luna felt her eyes water.
"Why has this burden been placed on my shoulders?" She demanded.
"Why is it the sun's burden to rise and set every day?"
"Why is it the fire's burden to be both beautiful and fatal?"
"Why is it man's burden to have shoulders on which to rest burdens?"
Luna hung her head and, no longer in control of her quivering voice, gave in to the Will of the Sages. She had known for a while the choice she would have to make, and knew the words by heart. "I...accept the gift you bless unto me. I will use it to...to..." Her words caught in her throat, but with a swallow, she was able to speak again. "I will use it to fulfill the destiny laid out at my feet. I will walk the path straight and true until death relieves it of me. This I swear."
Silence. Luna was left in the dark and the silence. And then, all at once, she was hit headlong by a blast of wind. Her feet were swept out from under her and she fell hard on her back. As the wind relentlessly pounded her, stripping her of the right to breathe, Luna felt consciousness slipping slowly from her grasp.
"Fear not, child," She heard the Sages whispering, their voices once again merged to make a single, echoing voice. "Fear not, for you will be protected by the Strong One, the Stealthy One, the Magical One, and the Loyal One. There is much of your story that you must weave with your own hands. Do not lose faith. Do not lose hope."
"We are always with you," the first Sage assured her.
"We are always wit--" the second Sage repeated.
"We are alw--" the third Sage trailed off, and Luna slipped into unconsciousness.
~*~*~*~*~
Color slowly bled back into Ron's vision. He saw Luna taking her hand away from his temple, a look of misery on her beautiful face. There was more she had to tell him, but hers was a story that needed to be digested in portions, and she felt she had already given Ron a bit too much to swallow.
He stared at her in shocked silence. What was there for him to say? He wanted to know why she had told no one her father had been abusive, wondered if her first kill ever stole sleep from her on some nights, the way it did for him, wanted to ask her so much, and yet had no way to speak. Luna broke the silence, speaking to him, but staring out of her window.
"They keep the knowledge of what I've done and what I have yet to do from me," she whispered slowly. "I am constantly aware that it happened, and that it will happen again, and that very soon, it will all end for me. But they keep my mind at peace, especially during the night, when I am vulnerable through my dreams." She turned her face back to Ron, and he finally saw the heaviness in her eyes, and his heart went out for her. He knew his own eyes looked similar to hers. "I know you have questions, Ron. All I ask is for you to not bring them up right now. Believe me when I say they will be answered before all of this is over."
Ron nodded, but didn't look away from her. Their eyes locked just as they had that morning on the Quidditch stands and when they had been dueling. Ron hoped that she was able to see the understanding and empathy for her in his eyes. He wanted her to know he'd be there for her, no matter what. For a fleeting moment, he was breaking his rule about emotions, but as Luna's eyes filled with tears, he forgot all about it.
"Oh, Ron," she gasped, and flung herself at him. Ron was there in an instant, taking her in his arms as she buried her face in his neck and wept uncontrollably. He smoothed her hair and leaned his cheek against her head, whispering small words of comfort to her as she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and clung to him desperately.
"What am I?" He heard her whisper into his shirt. "What kind of monster am I, to kill my own father? Who else will fall victim to my anger and this...this...power?" She shuddered against him, and Ron held her a bit tighter. Without really knowing why, he pressed his lips against her head, closing his eyes and allowing himself to be enveloped in the smell of her hair. Eventually, Luna's sobs slowed to soft hiccups. Ron shifted so he could look at her. Her eyes were red and puffy, her face streaky from tears, but she had fallen into a ragged sleep against him.
Ron made himself comfortable in the corner that was formed between the wall and the couch, and closed his own eyes. He still cradled Luna in his arms, wanting her to stay there as long as it took for her to recover from the torment of her past. His closed his eyes, and willing himself to go to sleep, tried to match his breathing to hers. But that just made him think about all the places their bodies were connecting, and that made him both excited and uncomfortable at the same time. Sleeping, he knew, would be impossible.