milliways_bar | (no subject)

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luna lovegood

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Luna is sitting at a table, sketching away in her journal. It’s a very normal scene.

With the exception of the fact that the bottom ten inches of her hair are a brilliant shade of magenta.

This is what happens when you aren’t mindful of your braid in Potions class. It had fallen into her cauldron when she’d gone to reach for more beetle eyes. Professor Snape had testily informed her that it would be back to normal in a few days and to pay better attention next time.

Luna doesn’t mind. The color is pretty.

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Forgive Pavel for staring at the bright magenta color in her hair. He has to ask.

"Vhat happened to your hair?"

Luna blinks up dreamily.

"It fell in my Shrinking Solution," she explains.

It does tend to stain.

"And it is alvays zis color, your solutions?"

He has to say it's a fairly shocking color for hair, at least that he's seen. He gestures to the original color with a black and gold striped candle--that still has icing clinging to it--that he's been twirling between his fingers. "It is wery pretty viz your original color, at least?"

Pavel's hair is, in his opinion, too short to dye. This is intentional.

Maybe with conventional dye. But Luna has a wand. She could help if he wanted to experiment.

Luna pulls a lock of her own long hair over her shoulder to examine it.

"Oh, no. I'm quite lucky we weren't working on a Forgetfulness Potion. It's black, and it smells rather like rotten radishes."

That would be unpleasant. Her roommates would not be happy waiting for that one to wear off.

"Happy Birthday," she adds.

"Zank you," he says with a small smile. "Ze bar gawe me something for it, ewen if I am late in arriving for it."

Luna smiles.

"She did the same for me on my birthday, a few weeks ago. A cupcake, and a crown with feathers."

For an item of furniture, Bar is very kind.

"You talk like a Durmstrang student."

Behind her dreamy demeanor, Luna's mind functions like a highly caffeinated hummingbird. It tends to show up in conversation.

But he really does sound a good deal like some the the exchange students currently at Hogwarts.

"I am from Russia," he says. "I liwe in San Francisco now, but my accent...tch, is difficult to lose."

"That's all right. It's pleasant."

Luna herself has a bit more Irish in her speech than most of her schoolmates, thanks to some years spent living close to her mother's family.

"I know some of the Durmstrang students come from Bulgaria. We don't know where the school is actually located, of course. Just that it's someplace far to the north."

In the wizarding world, the location of such places is a carefully guarded secret.

"I've heard of San Francisco. There's a very large bridge there, I believe."

"Da, there is. Ze Golden Gate, though it is painted orange," he says, still somewhat confused by the naming concept. "My name is Pavel," he introduces, holding a long-fingered hand out.

"Strange. I wonder then why they don't call it the Orange Gate?"

Muggles. Lovely people, but the don't make much sense most of the time.

"I'm Luna." She shakes his hand politely. "It's nice to meet you."

"Which birthday was it that you just had?"

"Sixteen," he says. "I do not know vhy it is named so strangely, but much is in America. And it is nice to meet you as well."

Pavel should see some of the names in the wizarding world. Naming things is something that witches and wizards seem to delight in.

"What are you doing in America?" she asks.

Perhaps he is an exchange student of sorts, too.

"I am in Academy," he explains, "For Starfleet. I am studying to be a nawigation officer for a spaceship."

Luna has some concept of space-going vehicles, thanks to the occasional Muggle book or movie she has seen on the subject. But she still can't quite help but picture the Durmstrang ship sailing through outer space.

"That sounds very impressive."

"I go to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. And I'm not studying to be anything in particular just yet."

She has ideas, but as a fourth year, she hasn't settled firmly on a career path yet.

"Really?" he asks. "Witchcraft?"

He looks fascinated; as a rule he doesn't believe in magic, but since coming here Pavel has learned to accept it from other universes.

"And Wizardry," Luna adds, with a slight smile.

"Sometimes I think I'd like to be a naturalist. There are ever so many magical creatures in the world to be studied. Other times I think it would be nice to be a writer, like Dad."

"But I might wind up being something else altogether."

"I hawe...alvays wanted to deal viz stars. Ewen vhen I was a little boy," he says. "I am told I stayed outside to see zem fr too many times."

"I take Astronomy." It's a core class at Hogwarts. "I like the stars very much. But I think I like what goes on on the ground more."

It's closer. And there seems to be more variation.

"I'm glad you live in a world where you can travel to stars though. As you like them so much."

It's nice when things work out like that.

"What do you do once you get there, though?"

"Ve are a peacekeeping force," he says thoughtfully. "And ve lend humanitarian aid vhen we can. We are military as vell. So....many zings, depending on ze situation of ze planet."

"Are there people on all of them?"

She's never given overly much thought to people on other planets. There are plenty of people on Earth to keep up with.

"Not ewery planet, but many of zem, da. And there are of course colonies on many moons, and other already inhabited planets." There are so many species that he couldn't list them all, even speaking with the rapidity of his native tongue.

"There must be a lot of people in your world." She pauses before amending, "Worlds."

"I've never seen a person at home who wasn't from Earth." But she would be more than happy to believe that there are other people out there somewhere happily living their lives underneath other stars.

"But Dad ran a story a few years ago about a wizard who made it all the way to the moon on a specially modified broomstick."

"On a...broomstick."

Oh, yes, that's right. Westerners have the idea that witches fly on broomsticks--this was one of the first fairytale corrections Pavel got.

Luna nods.

"A Cleansweep Six."

It would be quite a boon for the manufacturing company, if people weren't so narrow-minded.

He blinks. "I do not know vhat zis means, precisely. It is a brand of broom?"

"Oh, yes," Luna says.

"Cleansweeps were all the rage until the Nimbus series came out. Dad has an old Cleansweep Five, and my old Comet is at home, but we usually wind up getting around other ways, so we've never upgraded."

"But the Nimbus series is quite good. And of course, the Firebolt is the top of the line."

"I hawe newer heard of zese things," he says.

"Well, that's not surprising," Luna says, reasonably.

"You're a Muggle, aren't you?"

Muggles don't travel by broom.

"Both the Irish and the Bulgarian teams flew on Firebolts at the Quidditch World Cup. They're so fast almost all you could see were blurs."

"Muggle," he says, "Vhat does zis word mean?"

"It means someone without magic. Someone who's not a witch or wizard."

He chuckles. "Then da, I am one of those. I cannot do magic--it does not exist vhere I am from, I think. No one can do these things."

"That seems strange."

Luna's head tilts to the side as she thinks.

"There are every so many Muggles at home, of course. And one of my family's good friends is a Squib; that's someone who is born in a wizarding family, but has no magic."

"But living without any magic at all? It must be very strange."

"On the other hand, Muggles can do a good many interesting things."

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