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femgenficathonTitle: This Is Not A War Story
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
magentabear
Fandom: Harry Potter
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Nope
Prompt: 142. The facts are always less than what really happened. -- Nadine Gordimer (born November 1923), South African author, anti-apartheid and anti-censorship activist, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (1991).
Summary: This is not a story of death or killing or blood or horror. These things happened, and they happened in a fight that was called a war, but they don't come together to make a war story. At least, not the way Luna Lovegood tells it.
Author's Notes: Many thanks toslam_girl for helping me with this fic. She is, as always, a most excellent friend. Along with my given prompt, I was influenced by Tim O'Brien's wonderful book The Things They Carried so with that in mind I'd like to dedicate my story to all the women soldier out there, who do not, I fear, always get the respect they deserve.
-
-
Luna Lovegood is writing the story of the second war against Voldemort. She sits cross-legged on the floor, back ramrod straight against the bare white wall, and remembers.
They rushed through the walls of Hogwarts, everyone trying to be first in line to kill or be killed. Darwin was right, she thought to herself. It really is all a fight to stay on top. Funny it was so simple in that moment and funny it took her so long to figure it out. Luna hummed to herself as she fought her way to the top and when she made it there she recited facts about a science experiment her mother had explained so long ago.
She doesn't write that down. Darwin doesn't belong in this story. He was in the articles she wrote, in the reports she filled out for the ministry and of course in the journal she started when the dreams got too bad, but he doesn't belong here in her book. It's not his story.
When Harry popped back into being on the green grass in front of Hogwarts Luna gasped in surprise. Few things surprised her—the death of one's mother has that effect—but this was shocking. She had seen the body, after all.
She doesn't know how to write this down. She tries anyway. She shoves her hair out of her eyes and pokes her tongue through her teeth and she writes.
It wasn't the sudden appearance that surprised her. The magical world is full of those and Luna was nothing if not a product of her environment. It was his breath. His heart, his moving eyes, his very aliveness that stunned her. Her mother didn't come back but Harry did. The core of her understanding recoiled against this fact.
Luna has never seen reason to admit that she always thought Harry Potter would have to sacrifice himself to beat Voldemort. Putting that in writing now would just stir up trouble. She scratches out the beginning of a sentence and remembers it a different way.
Harry appeared on the green grass and she gasped and no one heard her because Harry was alive and fighting and winning. They were winning. That was difference everyone felt, the little buzz of adrenaline that kept them going during the final stretch. They were winning and maybe all the sacrifices could end soon, and maybe someone would even be able to say the sacrifices meant something. Luna wasn't actively thinking of this but the buzz running through the mass of pulsing bodies told her something was changing and they were winning and soon they would stop dying.
Even now she cries at the memory of it.
She closes the notebook and sits very quietly. She wonders why she must write it down. So many articles, so many books, so many essays have already been done. Why must she join the fray?
But she knows the answer. Her story isn't their story and her story isn't a war story, anyway. Not really. It's her mother's story and there's always room in this world for a story of a mother's life and a mother's love.
-
Her mother's story is her story is her father's story.
She thought he would crush her into his chest when they finally found each other. She didn't care. Her daddy's chest was safer, warmer, better than a world where Hogwarts could fall down down. She burrowed into him and when he asked forgiveness she gave it without asking why.
When she cried at her mother's funeral her dad pulled her close and said don't ever forget your mother and don't ever forget this grief. He told her it was her strength and her shield and her reminder. She was only nine years old and the words were nothing but little pricks of distraction against the crushing weight of her mother's absence but Luna stole her mother's favorite photo album that very night and after she'd torn out all the pictures and hidden them under her pillow, she sat down and copied out her father's words.
The pictures didn't stay there very long. She couldn't bear to crumple them. Her father couldn't bear to look at them, though, and Luna refused to give up her photo album-turned-journal so Daddy took them to their vault in Gringotts and together they visited every few months.
Her father learned to be happy without her and soon Luna did, too. They smiled at each other and told each other how wonderful the day was and one day they weren't lying anymore. So Daddy asked her if she wanted to go pick up her mother and bring her home again but Luna shook her head.
"Mum is with us already. Can't you feel it?"
And he could. They left the pictures where they were.
That is what saved them from the Crumple Horned Snorckack mishap.
-
She still writes in photo albums. She creates pictures in her mind and puts them on paper and then shares them with the world.
She publishes her book on the five year anniversary of the end of the war. The anniversary is always a bad day, but this year she buys a bottle of expensive champagne and visits Dobby's grave to toast to the end of it all. His grave has become her personal memorial to the war, her own link to the horror he helped her escape. The salty sweet scent of the ocean reminds her of the peace they all worked so hard to find. Bill and Fleur still live at Shell Cottage but they are used to her occasional appearances and pay her no mind. She thanks them for this by painting a yearly portrait of their growing family.
Sometimes Luna likes to share in pictures instead of words.
But not her mother's story. She could never paint that. She could paint the way her mother smiled—that would be easy—but she could show how that smile kept her warm in the cold dungeon, not without resorting to cheap tricks and cartoonish fantasy. And she would never do that. Her mother's story is not a cartoon. It's a story of life after death and connections that never weaken.
Luna has a party to go to tonight. Half memorial, half celebration. Rather similar to her life, she muses as she picks out bracelets.
George greets her at the door and shoves some of his newest products into her hands. She laughs and holds them away from her face, just in case. George doesn't mind. He's already spinning off to the next guest, products in hand and grin in place.
She knows he is another one who lives a life of half memorial, half celebration.
She answers questions about her book and reminisces with her friends and sips punch she is pretty sure someone has spiked. They have a moment of silence for everyone they lost and Luna holds her silence for one beat longer than the rest. Tomorrow she will go back to the vault in Gringotts and retrieve her mother's pictures. Perhaps it is time.
She doesn't know if anyone will realize that her story of the war is so much more than that. She wonders if Harry Potter will. She thinks not. He may have lost his mother but he lost her to the war and came to peace with that loss when he finished the war. He was the war. His life was—still is, frankly—defined by it.
Luna's life is defined by her mother. For better or worse, her personality was carved and her life mapped out the day her mother's spell went wrong and Luna picked up her mother's wand to finish the experiment without her.
She likes to think it was for the better.
How else could she be such good friends with Neville? They understand each other in a way no one else can. They used to bicker about who had it worse when they were very cranky or very tired or very scared. He would say she at least had the memories and she would say he still got to see them and within moments they would be glaring at each other.
The glare never lasted longer than a moment. Their friendship wasn't made for fights.
Neville is at the party. His gaggle of followers may be smaller than Harry's but what they lack in numbers they make up in intensity. She watches him out of the corner of her eye and when he starts to look a bit panicked she sweeps in to rescue him.
They stand quietly in the corner and watch the festivities.
"It's a very good book," Neville says eventually.
She nods.
"Is your father proud?"
"He hasn't read it. Doesn't need to, really."
Neville pauses and Luna can almost feel him puzzling this out. She leans into him briefly and thanks him for coming before stealing his drink and drifting back into the throng of revelers.
-
Luna isn't sure she wants to be a mother. Maybe yes, maybe no. But she knows she loves being a daughter.
When the bullies at school tried to steal her essays she closed her eyes and played in the field with her mother. When the Death Eaters yelled at her and tried to make her feel worthless and small and ugly, she recited snatches of long ago fairy tales. When she kissed a boy and he didn't kiss her back, she shrugged her shoulders and followed her mother's advice. She picked up a book.
The walls crashed down around her. The ceiling rained upon her head and she imagined she could see the stars. She knew they weren't stars—stars were never that sickly green color and they never caused such horrible thumps—but she told herself they were shooting stars and made wishes that couldn't come true. Nothing could guarantee her friends' safety, not in this final battle of the war that must be finished.
There were losses that night. So many dead, so many families broken, so many connections severed. Or so they thought.
Luna stood in the Great Hall and watched families sob over bodies. They didn't understand. They thought this was the end, that nothing would ever be right again. George was a little lost boy and Professor McGonagall couldn't stop staring at Professor Lupin and an injured woman with black hair was positively wailing over a boy with hair just as black.
Luna looked at the families and realized she knew something they didn't. This wasn't the end. This was only a change. This was a change they would learn to live with and learn to thrive with.
One day, she vowed to herself, she would help them understand.
And five years later she does exactly that.
-
-
Author:
magentabearFandom: Harry Potter
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Nope
Prompt: 142. The facts are always less than what really happened. -- Nadine Gordimer (born November 1923), South African author, anti-apartheid and anti-censorship activist, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (1991).
Summary: This is not a story of death or killing or blood or horror. These things happened, and they happened in a fight that was called a war, but they don't come together to make a war story. At least, not the way Luna Lovegood tells it.
Author's Notes: Many thanks to
slam_girl for helping me with this fic. She is, as always, a most excellent friend. Along with my given prompt, I was influenced by Tim O'Brien's wonderful book The Things They Carried so with that in mind I'd like to dedicate my story to all the women soldier out there, who do not, I fear, always get the respect they deserve.-
-
Luna Lovegood is writing the story of the second war against Voldemort. She sits cross-legged on the floor, back ramrod straight against the bare white wall, and remembers.
They rushed through the walls of Hogwarts, everyone trying to be first in line to kill or be killed. Darwin was right, she thought to herself. It really is all a fight to stay on top. Funny it was so simple in that moment and funny it took her so long to figure it out. Luna hummed to herself as she fought her way to the top and when she made it there she recited facts about a science experiment her mother had explained so long ago.
She doesn't write that down. Darwin doesn't belong in this story. He was in the articles she wrote, in the reports she filled out for the ministry and of course in the journal she started when the dreams got too bad, but he doesn't belong here in her book. It's not his story.
When Harry popped back into being on the green grass in front of Hogwarts Luna gasped in surprise. Few things surprised her—the death of one's mother has that effect—but this was shocking. She had seen the body, after all.
She doesn't know how to write this down. She tries anyway. She shoves her hair out of her eyes and pokes her tongue through her teeth and she writes.
It wasn't the sudden appearance that surprised her. The magical world is full of those and Luna was nothing if not a product of her environment. It was his breath. His heart, his moving eyes, his very aliveness that stunned her. Her mother didn't come back but Harry did. The core of her understanding recoiled against this fact.
Luna has never seen reason to admit that she always thought Harry Potter would have to sacrifice himself to beat Voldemort. Putting that in writing now would just stir up trouble. She scratches out the beginning of a sentence and remembers it a different way.
Harry appeared on the green grass and she gasped and no one heard her because Harry was alive and fighting and winning. They were winning. That was difference everyone felt, the little buzz of adrenaline that kept them going during the final stretch. They were winning and maybe all the sacrifices could end soon, and maybe someone would even be able to say the sacrifices meant something. Luna wasn't actively thinking of this but the buzz running through the mass of pulsing bodies told her something was changing and they were winning and soon they would stop dying.
Even now she cries at the memory of it.
She closes the notebook and sits very quietly. She wonders why she must write it down. So many articles, so many books, so many essays have already been done. Why must she join the fray?
But she knows the answer. Her story isn't their story and her story isn't a war story, anyway. Not really. It's her mother's story and there's always room in this world for a story of a mother's life and a mother's love.
-
Her mother's story is her story is her father's story.
She thought he would crush her into his chest when they finally found each other. She didn't care. Her daddy's chest was safer, warmer, better than a world where Hogwarts could fall down down. She burrowed into him and when he asked forgiveness she gave it without asking why.
When she cried at her mother's funeral her dad pulled her close and said don't ever forget your mother and don't ever forget this grief. He told her it was her strength and her shield and her reminder. She was only nine years old and the words were nothing but little pricks of distraction against the crushing weight of her mother's absence but Luna stole her mother's favorite photo album that very night and after she'd torn out all the pictures and hidden them under her pillow, she sat down and copied out her father's words.
The pictures didn't stay there very long. She couldn't bear to crumple them. Her father couldn't bear to look at them, though, and Luna refused to give up her photo album-turned-journal so Daddy took them to their vault in Gringotts and together they visited every few months.
Her father learned to be happy without her and soon Luna did, too. They smiled at each other and told each other how wonderful the day was and one day they weren't lying anymore. So Daddy asked her if she wanted to go pick up her mother and bring her home again but Luna shook her head.
"Mum is with us already. Can't you feel it?"
And he could. They left the pictures where they were.
That is what saved them from the Crumple Horned Snorckack mishap.
-
She still writes in photo albums. She creates pictures in her mind and puts them on paper and then shares them with the world.
She publishes her book on the five year anniversary of the end of the war. The anniversary is always a bad day, but this year she buys a bottle of expensive champagne and visits Dobby's grave to toast to the end of it all. His grave has become her personal memorial to the war, her own link to the horror he helped her escape. The salty sweet scent of the ocean reminds her of the peace they all worked so hard to find. Bill and Fleur still live at Shell Cottage but they are used to her occasional appearances and pay her no mind. She thanks them for this by painting a yearly portrait of their growing family.
Sometimes Luna likes to share in pictures instead of words.
But not her mother's story. She could never paint that. She could paint the way her mother smiled—that would be easy—but she could show how that smile kept her warm in the cold dungeon, not without resorting to cheap tricks and cartoonish fantasy. And she would never do that. Her mother's story is not a cartoon. It's a story of life after death and connections that never weaken.
Luna has a party to go to tonight. Half memorial, half celebration. Rather similar to her life, she muses as she picks out bracelets.
George greets her at the door and shoves some of his newest products into her hands. She laughs and holds them away from her face, just in case. George doesn't mind. He's already spinning off to the next guest, products in hand and grin in place.
She knows he is another one who lives a life of half memorial, half celebration.
She answers questions about her book and reminisces with her friends and sips punch she is pretty sure someone has spiked. They have a moment of silence for everyone they lost and Luna holds her silence for one beat longer than the rest. Tomorrow she will go back to the vault in Gringotts and retrieve her mother's pictures. Perhaps it is time.
She doesn't know if anyone will realize that her story of the war is so much more than that. She wonders if Harry Potter will. She thinks not. He may have lost his mother but he lost her to the war and came to peace with that loss when he finished the war. He was the war. His life was—still is, frankly—defined by it.
Luna's life is defined by her mother. For better or worse, her personality was carved and her life mapped out the day her mother's spell went wrong and Luna picked up her mother's wand to finish the experiment without her.
She likes to think it was for the better.
How else could she be such good friends with Neville? They understand each other in a way no one else can. They used to bicker about who had it worse when they were very cranky or very tired or very scared. He would say she at least had the memories and she would say he still got to see them and within moments they would be glaring at each other.
The glare never lasted longer than a moment. Their friendship wasn't made for fights.
Neville is at the party. His gaggle of followers may be smaller than Harry's but what they lack in numbers they make up in intensity. She watches him out of the corner of her eye and when he starts to look a bit panicked she sweeps in to rescue him.
They stand quietly in the corner and watch the festivities.
"It's a very good book," Neville says eventually.
She nods.
"Is your father proud?"
"He hasn't read it. Doesn't need to, really."
Neville pauses and Luna can almost feel him puzzling this out. She leans into him briefly and thanks him for coming before stealing his drink and drifting back into the throng of revelers.
-
Luna isn't sure she wants to be a mother. Maybe yes, maybe no. But she knows she loves being a daughter.
When the bullies at school tried to steal her essays she closed her eyes and played in the field with her mother. When the Death Eaters yelled at her and tried to make her feel worthless and small and ugly, she recited snatches of long ago fairy tales. When she kissed a boy and he didn't kiss her back, she shrugged her shoulders and followed her mother's advice. She picked up a book.
The walls crashed down around her. The ceiling rained upon her head and she imagined she could see the stars. She knew they weren't stars—stars were never that sickly green color and they never caused such horrible thumps—but she told herself they were shooting stars and made wishes that couldn't come true. Nothing could guarantee her friends' safety, not in this final battle of the war that must be finished.
There were losses that night. So many dead, so many families broken, so many connections severed. Or so they thought.
Luna stood in the Great Hall and watched families sob over bodies. They didn't understand. They thought this was the end, that nothing would ever be right again. George was a little lost boy and Professor McGonagall couldn't stop staring at Professor Lupin and an injured woman with black hair was positively wailing over a boy with hair just as black.
Luna looked at the families and realized she knew something they didn't. This wasn't the end. This was only a change. This was a change they would learn to live with and learn to thrive with.
One day, she vowed to herself, she would help them understand.
And five years later she does exactly that.
-
-
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