Dragonfire and Moonglow

Dragonfire and Moonglow

Soft footfalls behind him roused Charlie Weasley from his half-sleep, and he whirled around, hand reflexively grabbing for his wand.

"Who's there?" he demanded.

As the figure moved closer, light from the dying fire glinted off the snowflakes that powdered the stranger's hood and shoulders. Charlie was suddenly, absurdly reminded of his mother's sugar-dipped pastries.

"Hi, Charlie." The girl's voice was as soft as her snow-muffled tread. "Don't worry, it's only me--Luna Lovegood." She put out a slender, mittened hand for Charlie to shake, and he automatically did so.

I must still be asleep, he thought, but the hand felt solid enough.

"Luna?" Not exactly brilliant, but Charlie was too surprised and sleep-befuddled to think of anything more cogent to say. He recognized the name as belonging to a friend of his brother Ron, but he'd never met the girl. What on earth was she doing here, in the Albanian mountains, in the middle of winter? Then he remembered that Ron had referred to the Lovegood girl as "Looney." Maybe that explained everything.

The heaviest of the storm clouds had dispersed, and the moon peeked out between their scudding remnants to reveal a little smile on the girl's face. Her large, protuberant eyes shone rather eerily in the moonlight.

"Did I scare you?" Luna asked. "I was in the neighborhood, so I thought I'd look you up."

Charlie blinked. In the neighborhood? This was one of the remotest regions in the nearly inaccessible mountains of Albania, yet this girl's tone suggested she'd just dropped by the Burrow from Ottery St. Catchpole.

A dozen questions crowded into his mind--"Why me?" being the main one-- but all he said was, "Better sit down, then," in an equally matter-of-fact tone. He brushed snow off the boulder he'd been occupying, near a fire that was rapidly dying into embers.

Without saying a word, Luna pulled out her wand and waved it at the stone, then Levitated several logs from a nearby pile and floated them onto the coals, where they landed neatly amid a shower of sparks. Then she took a seat beside Charlie on the boulder, which, Charlie noticed, was now comfortably warm. Luna looked around the clearing, and her eyes rested for a moment on the tent at its edge. Though she didn't ask, Charlie somehow felt he should explain why he was huddled out in the cold instead of sleeping cozily inside.

"I'm on watch tonight," he said.

"Oh," said Luna. "I thought maybe you just liked it out here. I do."

Was she kidding? Charlie was so used to roughing it that ordinary comforts had come to seem almost too cushy. He could not imagine any normal female feeling the same way; that was one reason he'd never had a serious girlfriend. Giving up his dragon research was unthinkable, but what woman would want to share the hardships it entailed? Luna could charm boulders and logs all she wanted, but it was just plain freezing out here, especially since a brisk wind had kicked up in the wake of the snowstorm.

Luna, however, looked perfectly serious. She was now peering through the darkness at the enormous fenced-in pen just down the mountainside from where they were sitting. Even with the moon's help, it was difficult to make out any details. At the moment, Charlie's beloved Albanian Longhorns resembled nothing more than a mountain-sized dark lump at the near corner of the pen.

"Is that a dragon?" Luna asked. "I never imagined one that big."

"They're not--it's a pile of dragons, actually," Charlie explained. "They're cold-blooded, you know." Luna had sounded really interested, and he found himself recovering his power of speech and wanting to tell her everything he knew about the objects of his studies.

"They usually live in caves by themselves, except for mothers rearing young--that's where we mostly try to study them, in their natural habitat. We never expected them to get along well enough to tolerate this amount of closeness. Of course, when the temperature goes up--" Charlie realized he was babbling and stopped talking. Too bad Luna couldn't see them, though, he thought.

Luna smiled. "I'm just going to imagine how they look. I'm good at imagining things."

Was the girl reading his mind now?

"I can hear them just fine, though," Luna added. "Are they snoring?"

Charlie had to laugh. The dragons' slow breathing rumbled like boulders in a landslide.

"Oh, look," Luna exclaimed. "Giant fireflies."

It took Charlie a second or two to figure out what she was talking about, then he grinned. "Yeah, they never quite stop flaming, even when they're asleep. Usually, they don't get too badly singed."

They watched in silence for a moment, then Charlie said, "Beautiful, aren't they? I mean, I know you can't really see them, but . . ." His expression was that of a mother watching over a sleeping child.

"You really like them, don't you?" Luna's tone suggested that liking dragons was the most natural thing in the world. It struck Charlie how rare her attitude was. Intellectually, his friends and family understood his affection for the objects of his study. But on some level, they never really got why a man would want to spend all his time roaming the lonely mountains or spending long days at the remote Dragon Study Center, in weather mostly ranging from cold to colder, to care for and study beasts that not only didn't return his care but attacked him whenever they got the chance.

As he was musing about this, Luna rose, conjured a teakettle, filled it with water from her wandtip, and set it on a tripod over the flames.

Charlie wanted to kick himself. Where were his manners? He should have offered his guest a hot drink as soon as she appeared. But before he completed the thought, Luna had produced a couple of mugs with a wave of her wand and dug into her pack for teabags

"It'll be ready in a minute," she said, as though she were entertaining Charlie in her own living room.

Charlie hadn't realized how cold he was until the steaming tea hit his stomach. What was wrong with him? He hadn't even asked the questions someone would naturally ask an unexpected visitor. He wasn't always this rude, was he? Maybe living out here with the dragons had impaired his social skills.

As the tea warmed his hands and his insides, though, Charlie realized that he didn't feel like interrogating Luna right then. Everything would be clear in time, and meanwhile, it was fun just to wait for the next offbeat coment.

Any other female--with the exception of Ginny and his mother, of course--would be filling the air with random chatter, or (more likely) whining about how cold she was, how far she'd had to travel, how hard their rock seat was, how hungry she was . . .

Merlin's beard! He was an idiot. "I'll be right back," he said, and he moved toward the tent. He was back in no time, juggling plates, utensils, and a pot full of stew left over from the evening's meal. He replaced the teakettle with the stew pot and returned to the boulder, which, he noticed, could use another warming spell. He pulled out his wand and performed it.

"How did you guess I was hungry?" Luna asked. "I don't remember mentioning it."

Charlie glanced at her suspiciously. Was she teasing him? She sounded perfectly serious, however.

"Just lucky, I suppose," he grinned.

"You're being modest," Luna said seriously. "I know you must be very clever. If you weren't, the dragons would probably just fly away, wouldn't they? Oh"--she sounded distressed for a moment--"I hope they're not tied up. They're not, are they?"

Charlie took a moment to dish up the stew and hand Luna a fork before responding. "Don't worry, they're not fettered. The enclosure's enchanted to attract them and make them want to stay until we've tagged them and finished whatever study we're doing here at the moment. Right now, we want to see how they cope with the stress of being in a random group --" He stopped, embarrassed at getting carried away again.

Luna just smiled. "They don't seem very stressed at the moment, do they? Maybe they just like it here. So do I. And I wasn't worried. I know you'd never do anything to hurt a dragon, even if they try to hurt you sometimes. You love them."

Charlie was grateful for the darkness; he wouldn't want this strange young woman to see him blush. He did love them, but was it that obvious? Or was Luna really reading his mind?

More time passed, as the moon slid down behind a mountaintop, plunging the clearing into deeper darkness. Charlie took charge of the fire, and Luna replaced the teakettle on the tripod to boil.

"You must be tired," Charlie said, as they finished their second cups of tea. "Really, it's okay if you'd like to sleep for a while. There's an extra cot in the tent. Cozma's still in there, but he only looks like a bear. He's a pussycat, really."

Instead of asking who Cozma might be, Luna said in a dreamy voice, "I saw several bears on my way here, and a couple of wolves, too. They seemed friendly."

Charlie struggled for an appropriate response, trying to imagine Luna among the bears and wolves.

'Umm--I'm glad you got here okay," is what he finally came up with.

"I am a bit tired," Luna admitted. "I've been walking for a few days. Ron showed me a picture of the this place, but I got a little confused. The mountains all seem to look the same, or maybe it's Wrackspurt. I suppose you can find Wrackspurt anywhere."

Charlie thought it best to let this reference slide, as he had no idea what Wrackspurt might be. The real point was, Luna had gone to a lot of trouble to find him, though he couldn't think why. Not that he minded, really. It was just that no one he knew ever came here, except his family once every couple of years. His research partner, Cozma, was decent company, but he lived in a nearby valley and could go home regularly to his wife and kids. Other researchers came and went, but he conducted a lot of his research alone.

For the first time in his life, Charlie wondered if he was lonely

Luna's soft voice startled him out of his uncharacteristic musings.

"They miss you, you know." The girl was as sparing with pronoun references as with transitions, but he knew exactly whom she meant.

Charlie stared into the fire as he replied, "I miss them too." If that was true, he thought, why did he go home so seldom and stay such a short time? Even after Fred's death, he'd returned to his beloved mountains as soon as he decently could. Suddenly, his delight in solitude seemed selfish and cold. Is that how his family thought of him? Was it true?

While Charlie brooded, Luna used a Cleansing spell on the plates and utensils and piled them neatly beside the boulder. Through the remaining wisps of cloud, a faint lightening of the sky signaled the approach of dawn.

"Cozma will be getting up soon," Charlie said. "Then we should both go in and sleep for a while."

Luna nodded. "Until I had friends, I didn't know I was lonely."

Charlie was getting used to Luna ninety-degree turns. Talking to her was a bit like trying to get into the Ravenclaw common room by solve a different riddle every time. He'd always secretly thought that if he'd been sorted into Ravenclaw, he'd have spent his entire seven years at Hogwarts sleeping on the floor outside the entrance.

Was Luna implying that he was lonely? That he didn't have friends? Figuring out Luna Lovegood might be something like figuring out a dragon. First, you had to find one--or it had to find you. Then, you had to pay close attention. Understanding dragons took time, lots of time . . .

Charlie could have said, "Well, I don't feel lonely at the moment," but that would be cheap flattery and an evasion of the questions Luna had made him start to think about, whether she meant to or not. instead, he got to his feet and offered his hand to Luna.

"Come on," he said, "Cozma's awake--I hear him banging around in the tent. We need to get some sleep, and then tomorrow I'll show you the dragons and tell you all about what we're doing here."

"Okay," Luna said cheerily as she rose to her feet and collected her pack.

"He does look like a bear," Luna whispered as Charlie's fellow researcher emerged from the tent. It was true--the man wore a bearskin coat and cap and with his long mustache and beard, only his eyes showed as he greeted Charlie and his visitor.

Ignoring Cozma's quizzical look at Luna, Charlie filled him in on the day's schedule and led Luna into the tent. He could set Cozma straight about their relationship some other time.

As the sun struggled to rise above the peaks, Luna and Charlie settled onto their cots, nestled in heavy blankets. Just before drifting off to sleep, Charlie had a sort of half-dream. He was sitting in his mother's kitchen, surrounded by red-haired people. Harry was there too, and Hermione, Fleur, and--Luna.

The vision woke him up again. Luna wouldn't be at home with her father for Christmas--of course she wouldn't. Xenophilius Lovegood was still in Azkaban for betraying Harry to the Death Eaters. Her own loyalty to Harry and the Order had never faltered. Ginny's letters had mentioned Luna's bravery during that awful last year at Hogwarts, her devotion to the D.A.--while he himself almost missed the Battle of Hogwarts, because he couldn't pull himself away from his dragons . . .

Maybe he really would ask her to come to the Burrow for Christmas. It was less than two weeks away--would she want to stick around until then? The idea didn't seem half bad. After all, you have to keep your research subjects close at hand, don't you?

"Luna? Are you asleep?"

"Not yet." Charlie heard her turn in her blankets.

"I was just wondering--why did you come here, anyway?"

There was a short pause, then Luna's soft voice came to him through the darkness.

"I just thought you could use some company," she said.

The End