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Today's prompt: "Who does your character trust?" I tried to take this in a direction that doesn't seem obvious at first glance so, enter Luna!
This is the first time I've ever devoted any serious effort into writing Luna, and she's very difficult. The direction I'm taking her in this is inspired by something John Cleese said once, that "extraordinarily intelligent people are not literal-minded." So I took her in that vein, and I hope it translates well. Enjoy!
"Bloody buggering blistering bollocks."
"Are you playing a game?"
Hermione looked up from her seat, the place in some remote corner of the castle where she had fled after witnessing - after witnessing - to see the odd blonde Ravenclaw known by some as Loony Lovegood regarding her curiously. At least, Hermione imagined her to be curious; though Luna's expression had never changed from her usual half-vacant stare, the sight she had stumbled upon, that of Hermione Granger sitting alone in some dark corner trying desperately not to cry, was not what anyone in Hogwarts would have considered typical.
"Excuse me?"
"Are you playing a game?" The younger girl repeated.
"What makes you think I'm playing a game?"
"Your alliteration." She answered. "And you're sitting all by yourself. I wondered if maybe you were amusing yourself with a word game. It's okay if you are; I do it all the time."
"No, Luna, I'm not playing a game."
"Oh." There was a beat. Hermione hoped, for one precious moment, that Luna would leave her in peace. No such luck. "What are you doing?"
"I'm sitting, on my own, and thinking." All of that was true, incidentally, but the specifics of why she was sitting in that particular spot, why she had chosen to be alone, and what she was thinking about were not things she was particularly inclined to share with anyone, let alone the bizarre and possibly deranged Ravenclaw.
"Oh." Another beat. "You don't look like you're having much fun."
Hermione choked out a laugh, despite herself. "No, I'm not."
"You should be."
"Why?" Hermione asked, startled by the emphasis Luna had placed on that sentence.
The blonde's head cocked slightly to one side. "Because Gryffindor won the Quidditch cup, of course."
Hermione slumped. If there was one thing in the world that she hadn't wanted to be reminded of, it was that. She had been happy for the team, and most of all for Harry, but that happiness had been initially tempered by her own apprehensions about what she had planned to do after the match, and then it had been completely squashed by what she had seen happen after the match.
"Aren't you happy for Harry?" The Ravenclaw asked, and for the first time her airy disposition was tinged with something, something very faintly resembling curiosity.
"Of course I am." Hermione answered sharply, but the words fell flat even to her ears. She wanted to be happy for him, that much was true, but her selflessness had to stop somewhere, and it seemed as though she had finally found out where.
"Then why…OHH." Hermione looked up sharply, and Luna's eyes had gone as wide as saucers. Hermione could almost see the light bulb flicking on in the younger girl's brain. "Harry's with Ginny, isn't he?"
"Wh- How on Earth did you know that?" Hermione sputtered. It was impossible - Harry and Ginny had kissed only five minutes before, in the very private Gryffindor Common Room no less (at least, private to inquisitive Ravenclaws). "How could you possibly have known that?"
"Oh, a kirlywig told me." She replied indistinctly.
"A kirlywig?"
"Oh yes. They feed on people's secrets. There's quite a lot of them in Hogwarts, now that I think about it."
The lunacy of such a race existing passed through Hermione's mind; the impossibility of a species existing that could survive purely on the interaction of neurons in the brains of other creatures. It briefly occurred to her to tell this to Luna, to admonish her for believing in such a silly thing, but then she thought of Lavender and Parvati, and the many other girls of Hogwarts who gossiped for what seemed to be every waking minute of their lives. It seemed to Hermione, after that thought, that she was aware of a few kirlywigs herself. "Yes, Harry and Ginny are together. He just kissed her in the Common Room." She answered, the dull ache of her reality spreading through her chest at the admission. "Everybody's thrilled."
"You're not."
"No." She replied, taken aback by the blonde's frank tone. "I'm not."
"Why?"
Hermione didn't want to tell Luna. She had kept her secret for quite a long time, and she thought she was happy to keep them that way. But, it seemed, her heart knew something that her head hadn't figured out, so Hermione found herself spilling her sad story to, of all people, Luna Lovegood. "I'm jealous," She began. "I've been with Harry from day one. He's saved my life, I've saved his, neither of us would be where we are if it weren't for the other. We need each other. Or," Hermione held her head in her hands, "I need him. I…I love him."
She expected Luna to laugh. This was a reasonable assumption, as far as Hermione was concerned. Luna was from the house of logicians after all, and it was logically contradictory to suggest that she and Harry could ever be a couple; he was Harry Potter, the attractive and talented hero, and she was Hermione Granger, the ugly duckling. It was a sad, girlish fantasy, the sort of things eight-year-olds would write about David Beckham in their diaries.
But Luna was unique among all the students of Hogwarts for more reason than one, and she did not laugh. She didn't even snicker, or snort with even the mildest hint of derision. In fact, she reacted to this revelation - a startling and juicy piece of gossip to any other female resident of the castle - as though Hermione had said nothing more controversial than commenting on the weather. All she said in response, which seemed to Hermione to be rather strange, was: "I lost my shoes again."
Despite herself, Hermione looked down and saw that Luna was, indeed, barefoot. "The cold can't be good for your feet," She comment, trying to mask the way her voice threatened to crack with tears, and thankful for the distraction from her own problems. "You should try to get them back."
Luna's eyes went wide, and she shook her head violently. "Oh no. They keep getting lost when I do that. They have to find their way back to me, if I'm to hold onto them."
"What if they don't?"
Luna cocked her head to the side, and seemed to consider the possibility. "They will." She replied, finally. "I have a good feeling about those shoes. Like we belong together." For once, her eyes were fixed directly on Hermione, and Hermione saw something in them that was as not-Luna-like as she had ever seen.
It seemed, in that moment, that Hermione understood Luna a whole lot better than she ever had before. In that moment, she felt much better about her whole situation, as terrible as it was; she had a Good Feeling. "Thank you, Luna." She said, her voice much stronger.
"For what?" Luna asked, but the look in her eye told Hermione that she was welcome.
"Would you like me to transfigure you some slippers?"
"That would be nice; the castle is quite cold at night."