sees_them_too (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sees_them_too) wrote2012-08-07 05:45 pm
sees_them_too) wrote2012-08-07 05:45 pm
Special Delivery
It’s not easy to get into the Forbidden Forest these days, what with Professor Umbridge skulking about. But it’s far from impossible. And Luna has particular reason to visit today.
The March issue of The Quibbler, featuring Harry Potter’s front page interview, had come out yesterday, and been banned by Umbridge herself in a matter of hours. Naturally, this meant that the whole school was foaming at the mouth to read it. The Quibbler didn’t have many regular subscribers among the student body, but Luna had anticipated this reaction (both Umbridge’s and the students’) and she and Dad had made arrangements accordingly.
Which is why, with dusk closing in, Luna is picking her way carefully along a trail in the forest, heading for the large clearing where the thestrals like to gather.
As planned, when Luna reaches the clearing, she sees Ursula, the Lovegood’s owl, perched on a fallen log. A large stack of Quibbler issues, bound up in twine, are sitting on the loamy forest floor below her.
“Good girl, Ursula,” Luna says, fishing a handful of bacon rinds out of her pocket for the owl, who happily scarfs them down. “Give my love to Dad, won’t you?” she adds, petting the owl’s smooth head.
Ursula makes a contented clicking noise with her beak, blinks round yellow eyes at Luna, then shakes herself and takes off again, heading back south to Ottery St. Catchpole and Mr. Lovegood.
Luna hefts the bundle of magazines and starts back toward Hogwarts.
Getting into the Forbidden Forest had been one thing. Getting back into the castle with banned goods is going to be the tricky part.
Fortunately, she has some help waiting.
It was funny, Luna thought. When she’d gotten back to Ravenclaw Tower after classes yesterday, she’d been all but swamped by her housemates. It was a new an unusual experience. But everyone knew, of course, that her father edited The Quibbler.
For something that had, until a day ago, made her a subject of some derision, it now seemed to be the thing that provided the key to her popularity.
Luna had been happy to let people read her copy of the magazine, of course, but when she’d mentioned that her father was sending additional gratis copies—if they could be smuggled into the castle—she’d had no dearth of volunteers offering to help. Even people who weren’t in Dumbledore’s Army.
But in this case, Luna had thought it safer to leave things to the professionals. Or, at least, the experienced amateurs.
Luna reaches the west wall of the castle, a little out of breath from running, hunched over behind the shrubbery while lugging several pounds worth of subversive materials. Ravenclaw Tower rears into the sky high above, and the setting sun glints orangey red off the windows set into the castle’s stone wall.
Luna does a quick count and aims her wand at a window on the second floor. There’s a tiny burst of green light, and then a sound like a pebble bouncing off the glass. The window promptly opens and Terry Boot sticks his head out.
In a ragged row above him, floor after floor, other windows open. Anthony Goldstein, Michael Corner, Padma Patil, and, so high above that she is difficult to make out, at the window the Ravenclaw House common room, Cho Chang.
Luna sets the bundle of magazines on the ground and flicks her wand above it. ”Wingardium Leviosa.”
The simple charm only has so much power, but it’s enough to lift the bundle up to Anthony, who lifts it on up to Michael, and so on. Luna waits until she sees Cho (who she thinks is being flanked by Sylvia and Enid) catch the bundle and pull it safely inside before she makes her way around to a small side entrance near the kitchens.
From there it’s an easy enough matter to work her way back up to Ravenclaw Tower. Though Luna does get stopped on the third floor by the Grey Lady, who hastily motions her to a side corridor.
“Professor Umbridge is down the way you were going,” the ghost explains as she accompanies Luna down the narrow, little used passage. “You’ll want to watch your step around her. She’s not at all happy with you.”
“No,” Luna says. “I didn’t imagine she would be.”
There was never any doubt that Professor Umbridge would be apoplectic about the contents of The Quibbler. And Luna’s connection with that publication has never been any secret. Umbridge may never be able to prove that Luna had anything directly to do with the interview’s publication, but the High Inquisitor doesn’t seem to require much proof.
Or need many excuses to exercise her power.
“Be careful,” the Grey Lady warns as the reach a tight spiral of stone stairs that let out on the fifth floor. The Ravenclaw ghost seems to be thinking along the same lines as Luna. “She’ll make life difficult for you if she can. Don’t make it easy for her. Certainly don’t let her catch you out of bounds.”
“I won’t. Thank you, Grey Lady.”
The ghost nods and slips away through the wall. Luna quietly skips up the stairs, two at a time, very much ready to be back in the comfort of her house tower.
It’s never felt more like a safe haven than now.
The March issue of The Quibbler, featuring Harry Potter’s front page interview, had come out yesterday, and been banned by Umbridge herself in a matter of hours. Naturally, this meant that the whole school was foaming at the mouth to read it. The Quibbler didn’t have many regular subscribers among the student body, but Luna had anticipated this reaction (both Umbridge’s and the students’) and she and Dad had made arrangements accordingly.
Which is why, with dusk closing in, Luna is picking her way carefully along a trail in the forest, heading for the large clearing where the thestrals like to gather.
As planned, when Luna reaches the clearing, she sees Ursula, the Lovegood’s owl, perched on a fallen log. A large stack of Quibbler issues, bound up in twine, are sitting on the loamy forest floor below her.
“Good girl, Ursula,” Luna says, fishing a handful of bacon rinds out of her pocket for the owl, who happily scarfs them down. “Give my love to Dad, won’t you?” she adds, petting the owl’s smooth head.
Ursula makes a contented clicking noise with her beak, blinks round yellow eyes at Luna, then shakes herself and takes off again, heading back south to Ottery St. Catchpole and Mr. Lovegood.
Luna hefts the bundle of magazines and starts back toward Hogwarts.
Getting into the Forbidden Forest had been one thing. Getting back into the castle with banned goods is going to be the tricky part.
Fortunately, she has some help waiting.
It was funny, Luna thought. When she’d gotten back to Ravenclaw Tower after classes yesterday, she’d been all but swamped by her housemates. It was a new an unusual experience. But everyone knew, of course, that her father edited The Quibbler.
For something that had, until a day ago, made her a subject of some derision, it now seemed to be the thing that provided the key to her popularity.
Luna had been happy to let people read her copy of the magazine, of course, but when she’d mentioned that her father was sending additional gratis copies—if they could be smuggled into the castle—she’d had no dearth of volunteers offering to help. Even people who weren’t in Dumbledore’s Army.
But in this case, Luna had thought it safer to leave things to the professionals. Or, at least, the experienced amateurs.
Luna reaches the west wall of the castle, a little out of breath from running, hunched over behind the shrubbery while lugging several pounds worth of subversive materials. Ravenclaw Tower rears into the sky high above, and the setting sun glints orangey red off the windows set into the castle’s stone wall.
Luna does a quick count and aims her wand at a window on the second floor. There’s a tiny burst of green light, and then a sound like a pebble bouncing off the glass. The window promptly opens and Terry Boot sticks his head out.
In a ragged row above him, floor after floor, other windows open. Anthony Goldstein, Michael Corner, Padma Patil, and, so high above that she is difficult to make out, at the window the Ravenclaw House common room, Cho Chang.
Luna sets the bundle of magazines on the ground and flicks her wand above it. ”Wingardium Leviosa.”
The simple charm only has so much power, but it’s enough to lift the bundle up to Anthony, who lifts it on up to Michael, and so on. Luna waits until she sees Cho (who she thinks is being flanked by Sylvia and Enid) catch the bundle and pull it safely inside before she makes her way around to a small side entrance near the kitchens.
From there it’s an easy enough matter to work her way back up to Ravenclaw Tower. Though Luna does get stopped on the third floor by the Grey Lady, who hastily motions her to a side corridor.
“Professor Umbridge is down the way you were going,” the ghost explains as she accompanies Luna down the narrow, little used passage. “You’ll want to watch your step around her. She’s not at all happy with you.”
“No,” Luna says. “I didn’t imagine she would be.”
There was never any doubt that Professor Umbridge would be apoplectic about the contents of The Quibbler. And Luna’s connection with that publication has never been any secret. Umbridge may never be able to prove that Luna had anything directly to do with the interview’s publication, but the High Inquisitor doesn’t seem to require much proof.
Or need many excuses to exercise her power.
“Be careful,” the Grey Lady warns as the reach a tight spiral of stone stairs that let out on the fifth floor. The Ravenclaw ghost seems to be thinking along the same lines as Luna. “She’ll make life difficult for you if she can. Don’t make it easy for her. Certainly don’t let her catch you out of bounds.”
“I won’t. Thank you, Grey Lady.”
The ghost nods and slips away through the wall. Luna quietly skips up the stairs, two at a time, very much ready to be back in the comfort of her house tower.
It’s never felt more like a safe haven than now.