Unexpected Contact

"We might have a Ravenclaw now, too," Ginny explained brightly as the study group, now swollen to six members with the addition of Hermione, Colin, and a rather nervous first-year Slytherin boy named Arcturus who seemed to be sticking very close to Peony for protection, trooped up a switchback staircase toward an unused classroom where Madam Pince would presumably not object to their conversations. "At least, when I talked to her in Herbology the other day she told me this was a good place and she's usually there."

Tom perked up. "How'd you manage that? And who?"

"Loony -- Luna Lovegood." Ginny grinned and bounced once as she walked. "She might just not have been listening when you asked; she's in her own world a lot of the time. I'm not sure she's in any of the regular Ravenclaw study groups you mentioned...."

Colin snorted. "'Off in her own world' is putting it mildly. I'm not sure she knows the rest of us have a world."

"Oh, she's all right as long as you don't expect her to disbelieve anything."

"Well, you're the expert on odd non-Gryffindor friends, I guess." Colin grinned. "On the other hand, if we have her I dunno if we'll get any other Ravenclaws."

Ginny lifted her chin a little. "Well, that's their problem then."

Tom, watching this byplay with a raised eyebrow, looked amused. "Now I'm all curious. And by now I'd consider inviting Malfoy if he'd been Sorted into Ravenclaw, and she can't be that bad."

Ginny burst out laughing. "Nothing like. Loony's fun. Just odd."

"She keeps asking me if I've taken any pictures of Crumple-Horned Snorkacks," Colin muttered. "I asked Hagrid, and even he doesn't think they exist."

"Oh, Colin. Now he'll probably try to make one."

"Well, good. I'll take its picture, and maybe Looney'll leave me alone about them."

"She is nice. Just don't take her too seriously if she sounds disappointed you haven't yet. Shh, we're almost here."

Ginny pushed open the door to the classroom; Tom did recognize Luna, though he couldn't recall ever talking to her. She was well immersed in what looked like the latest Transfiguration essay, which she was composing in glowing pink ink.

She did not, in fact, appear to notice them at all until after they had rearranged the desks and settled into a rough circle incorporating her, at which point Ginny carefully jogged the arm not occupied in stirring the luminescent inkwell and made introductions all around. As well as she could, at any rate, since Hermione had evidently mentioned something fascinating enough about runes to overcome Peony's shyness somewhere around the top of the staircase, and neither one appeared to be much use for anything but obscure puns in other alphabets at the moment.

Tom nodded at the essay. "Does Professor McGonagall mind you handing them in like that?"

Luna blinked and looked rather mystified. "Should she?"

"I don't think anyone else uses glowing ink. I suppose if it's legible enough."

"It's very legible. You could even read it in the dark."

Tom grinned. "Excellent point. Do you make it yourself?"

"I probably could if I tried." Luna regarded her inkwell with interest. "This was a present from my father."

"Well, we could look into it. I want to get into some independent work as well as helping each other with homework--did Ginny explain about the group?"

"Oh, yes. It sounds like an excellent idea." She dipped her quill again and began scribbling away.

Tom raised his eyebrows expressively at Ginny and turned to begin setting up their potions equipment. "Odd, like you said," he murmured, "but she doesn't seem at all apprehensive or curious about me, and I like that in a classmate."

"I'm sure she's read about you." Ginny frowned at a marine sponge as she laid it carefully next to a pickled toad on the desk. "I don't know what might have been said about you in the Quibbler. Something very unexpected, most likely."

"What's the Quibbler?"

"Oh! It's a magazine of... well, just about anything, really. Stories the Daily Prophet won't print. Her father's the editor."

"No Rita Skeeter? I might get a subscription."

Ginny chuckled. "Well, at least you'd be entertained."

"Nothing wrong with that. I could always use some entertainment." Tom flicked a glance around the room; Hermione and Peony were hip-deep in something extremely technical -- he suppressed a sudden impulse to join them -- Colin was coaxing a very nervous-looking Arcturus into demonstrating some Charms homework, and Luna was now humming tunelessly as she continued writing her essay. "Look--you're really sure it's going to be all right, on Friday? I mean, even if your parents don't believe that article, other people will."

"It's... probably not the article that'd worry them the most. And either way, meeting you's the best way to clear things up."

"One way or the other, eh?"

Ginny put her eyebrows up at him. "The right way."

"Look, it doesn't matter if they don't let me stay, all right? It's not going to change anything, you'll just have to come visit me at Harry's, if they'll let you."

"It matters to me."

"I just don't want you to get your hopes up too high. I don't exactly have the world's best track record impressing parents."

"You'll be fine!" Ginny pinched off a bit of sponge and threw it at him; Tom's startled duck only succeeded in letting it catch in the neck of his robes. "Honestly. They should like you."

"Yeah, well, the last time I saw somebody's parents at Hogwarts, it was Lucius Malfoy, and the time before that the parent was a professor anyway."

"Lucius Malfoy," Ginny hissed, "is NOT a 'track record' that applies to my parents!" She looked briefly around in alarm after this vehemence, but no one else was paying attention. Hermione and Peony were even on the way out the door making a list of book titles to look for in the library.

"I didn't mean it that way. Really. Sorry." Tom looked over at her worriedly. "I just... all I meant to say was, parents don't come visit the school very often. And the track record thing was about the orphanage, I probably should've actually said that right out. I know your parents are different from Malfoy's. I told Snape that."

Her shoulders dropped a bit and she took a long breath. "I didn't think of that. ...And I shouldn't have snapped. But look... it will be all right. I mean it. I'm... on edge too, but there isn't any reason for them not to like you. That article doesn't count, especially with Harry telling them different. You're nice, you're polite -- when you want to be anyway, the twins like you for the Laughing Potion, Percy probably approves of your not having done anything else -- that he knows about anyway. And you aren't like... the diary." She bit her lip. "Well. I can see... turns of speech and things like that, and so on... but not the important things."

"I don't like having even that much in common with it," he muttered. "But that is a reason for them not to like me, no matter how small of one you think it is."

"Well, it isn't a good reason, not if it doesn't bother me. You listen, and so did he, but you don't hint I shouldn't talk to other people or... anything like that. It's not the same." She carefully set down the knife she had been using on a shrivelfig and reached over to squeeze his wrist, a little too hard. "Believe me, it isn't."

Tom summoned up the ghost of a smile. "And no giant homicidal snakes. Unless you're a roll." He sighed. "Look, I'll try to relax. It's just--well, I have these reflexes about parents. They come and they look at you and maybe if you're lucky they want to talk to you, but they always pick somebody else."

"They already want to talk to you, and you're the only one I invited."

"I know. It's just reflexes, like I said."

"It'll be all right." She let go of him and went back to the shrivelfig, then looked up thoughtfully. "Of course, if you're still nervous, they'll probably try to make you feel better and then we'll have them agreeing in no time."

Tom snickered before he could stop himself. "Now, come on, I'm the Slytherin."

Ginny smiled serenely down at her shrivelfig. "But not a Malfoy-type. So I'm sure we can get past that too."

"That's right. I'm the Slytherin, you're the optimist."

"Do I have to throw another sponge at you?"

"You might."

"Well, if you insist...."

"Leave enough for the potion."

"I'll measure that part out first."

"If you two are going to fight with the sponge instead of brewing anything," Colin interjected, "could we have some help peeling loose the feather Arcturus levitated into the ceiling?"

"As long as you don't send me the same way -- you need my notes for that History of Magic essay." Tom grinned at Arcturus. "Be thankful you've got Flitwick -- my first-year Charms professor would've given me a foot on levitational theory if I'd done that in class."

"I like theory," Arcturus muttered. "At least if I'm holding the quill it behaves itself."

"Practical can be a lot more fun. Anyway, he graded essays really strictly." Tom eyed the feather in the ceiling thoughtfully, then produced another one from a robe pocket. "Try it again, would you?"

Arcturus frowned at it, then set the new feather on a desk and stepped back. He sighted along his wand at it for some reason, took a deep breath, and swish-and-flicked. "Wingardium Leviosa!"

Tom's eyes flicked up as the feather embedded itself next to its predecessor. "Right. Your pronunciation is good, and obviously you've got the concentration down, but you're flicking too hard -- and do you mind if I ask why you're being so careful about your aim? Probably isn't affecting your performance, but I'm curious."

Arcturus, rather red in the face, scowled at the ceiling. "Aiming carelessly's a bad habit. Worse the more dangerous the spell is, but...."

"Yes, but you won't always have time to aim like that." Tom frowned thoughtfully. "All you need to do to get levitation under control is ease up on the wandwork a bit--think of it like you've got an invisible string on your wand-tip attached to the feather, and all you need to do is pick it up. The aiming thing, though . . . can you do 'Lumos' so it's a beam instead of just your wand-tip lighting up?"

"Yes. Never thought the other was that much use, really."

"Well, sometimes you just want ambient light. That's good, though." Tom looked around the room. "I wonder if there's somewhere to meet where Filch won't mind us marking up the walls... well, anyway." He went over to the blackboard and drew a Galleon-sized circle on it. "See if you can light that up from across the room without looking down your wand first, all right? It'll be good practice if you want to join Dueling Club later."

"Do you think we'll have dueling club again?" Colin wondered as Arcturus shot Tom a rather dubious look and extracted himself from the rearranged desks to head for the wall at the back of the room.

Speculation on this was interrupted, however, when Arcturus's first try at "Lumos!" produced a narrow, blinding-white beam that unfortunately ended up a lot closer to Tom's eyes than to the circle.

Tom blinked away the dazzle and grinned at Arcturus. "Don't worry about it, I wasn't much better when I started out. It just takes practice, that's all." He turned back to Colin. "Again? What -- oh, that's right, it's the time difference. I wonder when they stopped having it?"

"We had one meeting last year. Before that, I don't know how long it had been."

Arcturus gave Tom a pained glance; he looked even more flushed by this point, but his next several attempts brought him successively closer to the spot on the blackboard, at which point he held the steadily brightening beam in place and turned to gesture toward it.

Ginny squinted at the circle in mild alarm. "Is the blackboard *smoking*?"

Tom blinked at the circle, waved frantically at Arcturus to cut it out, and muttered a quick Cooling Charm at the blackboard. "That's it, we definitely need somewhere to practice where messing up won't get us in trouble."

"Sorry...." Arcturus moved back through the desks to peer at the spot. "Too intense."

"Just a little." Ginny shook her head. "You could probably get really creative at dueling club. I'm afraid to ask what you do for," she glanced at Tom, "ambient light."

"Lumorbis." This produced an apple-sized sphere of light -- thankfully not nearly as searingly brilliant -- that promptly floated upward on a diagonal and half-embedded itself in the ceiling with the two feathers inside it. Arcturus stared at it. "This is not my day."

"Could be worse," Tom told him. "You're not ankle-deep in the tile in the girls' toilet."

"...I don't want to know."

"I got lost. It wasn't a big deal, the floor spat me back out after a few minutes."

"I wonder if that's what's really 'out of order' about Myrtle's. The floor doesn't work." Ginny shook her head. "Well, let's see about getting the feathers out of the ceiling so we can finish our potion."

"Accio," Luna remarked conversationally. The globe of light zoomed toward her, landed on her essay, and winked out; after a brief pause the feathers yanked themselves free and followed it, looking somewhat the worse for wear. Luna cramped her name into the tiny remaining space at the bottom of her parchment as if signing a letter, then rolled it up and buried herself serenely in a book.

Tom turned back to their cauldron and carefully diced the sea sponge. "All weirdness aside," he muttered to Ginny, "we don't officially learn summoning spells until fourth year. Know any more like her?"

Ginny chuckled and shook her head. "I'm afraid nobody's quite like Luna."

"Pity."

*****