Breaking Imperius

The first time that Luna Lovegood cast the Imperius Curse, she only did it to see if she could. Alyssa Astaire had walked into the dorm room, and Luna looked up from her DADA textbook impulsively and whispered Imperio. Alyssa twitched, less a movement than a sudden stillness, and Luna whispered "Touch your toes, Alyssa." The plump blonde girl reached halfway down before she shook herself, jerked up, and glanced around the room.

"Oh. Luna. I didn't notice you there."

"It's all right," Luna smiled. "Most people don't."

---

Alyssa Astaire has a gold-and-white hamster named Butterscotch. When Luna has the room to herself, she practices the Imperius Curse on Butterscotch. None of the Unforgiveables are in NEWTs exams, but Luna studies what she finds interesting, and the Imperius Curse is interesting. Luna wonders, as she watches Butterscotch nibble on sunflower seeds afterward, whether he is happy under the curse. She remembers hearing that the fourth-years got to practice breaking Imperius; supposedly Harry Potter almost broke free the first time.

Luna thinks about the word break, and how most things are more pleasant before you break them. During her second week of practice, she had tried to make Butterscotch clap his hands, and one of his arms broke. He only started twitching after she took off the Imperius, so she put it back on until Alyssa came in.

Madam Pomfrey healed Butterscotch that evening, but Luna waited a week until she tried Imperius again.

---

Luna doesn't want to change things. She thinks that Harry Potter is a very nice boy and that Voldemort is terribly evil and must be stopped, but Death Eaters, as a whole, are fairly unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Before she visited the Ministry of Magic with Harry, Death Eaters had worried her, in the same way that the thought of losing her virginity worries her: as an unknown, it could have been frightening. That day, underlying all the chaos and adrenaline, Luna felt a pleasant calmness when she knew that it wasn't.

Death Eaters do not frighten Luna, because hurting and dying do not frighten Luna. Pain, she has felt: call it curiosity, if you like, but nobody calls it that because nobody knows when Luna presses her fingers to her cauldron in Potions until the flesh is white with burns. Twice she did that, enough to convince herself that she could, and after that it wasn't worth troubling with patience and healing spells. As for death: death, in Luna's opinion, could not be much different from lying on the grassy hill overlooking the lake during a rainstorm, smothered by damp pressure and smelling a vague, rich sweetness. When she reflects on death, the only thing that bothers her is the people who might be hurt at being left behind.

When Luna thinks about what happiness is, she thinks of those rainstorms and the plain, steady gray of the falling water. She told Ginny once, but Ginny only smiled nervously. "So what you're saying is that everybody would be happiest if we were all dead?"

"Yes, I think so," Luna nodded. Ginny didn't understand, of course, but Luna decided that she could compromise and wish for, not death, but soft, simple emptiness. Imperius is very rarely necessary for maintaining gray.

---

Harry Potter graduated a year ago; once, last spring, he took her arm as they passed in the library and pulled her to face him. His fingers hurt, and his eyes preemptively pleaded I'm sorry, and what Luna meant as a smile emerged as a nod. They walked around the lake, long past nightfall, and Harry told her everything: his classes, his fears, his hopes, his friends. He told her about dreaming of Sirius coming back, about feeling Voldemort's icy hand on his skin, and about the Cross-Eyed Curse he'd tested on Malfoy. Luna nodded and watched; Harry's sweaty hand slipped back and forth in her fingers.

At the end, before they came back in sight of the castle, Harry turned toward her with his thin lips slightly parted and a curiously sad look in his eyes. "You don't have to kiss me, you know," Luna said.

"I know," Harry said quickly, but his lips closed, and his eyes no longer met hers. "I guess I'll talk to you again some time, then."

"Perhaps we will," Luna said, knowing they wouldn't. "Harry. Could you choose not to resist the Imperius Curse, if you wanted to?"

Harry didn't look surprised, but then he rarely did, by then. "Probably not, if it was telling me to do something really wrong. I mean, I can't not care. Why would I want to, anyway?"

Luna shrugged. "Sometimes I find that choosing not to care is all I can do. Of course, you're a Gryffindor. Anyway, my question doesn't matter."

Harry can't help but break things, she thought to herself as she climbed up Ravenclaw Tower that evening. That is why I mustn't let myself become solid enough to be broken.

---

Halfway through Luna's seventh year, Harry finally kills Voldemort. The day after the battle, Luna finds Ginny sobbing for Ron and Charlie under a staircase, and although she does not know what to say, she pats Ginny's back and feels her tears soak onto her shoulder. Thinking too much about Ron and his quirky smile is painful, so Luna doesn't. He must be happy now, anyway, she thinks, so it's quite silly to be sad.

When all of Hogwarts goes to the ceremony that weekend, though, where Harry receives highest honors from the Queen herself, Luna can see Harry's face. The speakers talk about how only Harry could kill Voldemort because the two were magically connected, but Luna can see another connection: Voldemort can break things, just like Harry, and before he died, he broke Harry.

Too many people surround Harry for Luna to say hello. That night, all of Hogwarts celebrates with sweets and drinks and parties, and the students celebrate even more when Dumbledore announces that final examinations have been cancelled. In the Ravenclaw seventh year girls' dorm, Luna sits on her bed and runs through her remaining obligations in her head, making sure that nobody will be terribly disappointed if she breaks them. Once she has finished - at least, as well as she can remember - she walks to the girls' bathroom, looks in the mirror, and whispers Imperio.

finis.