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Miss Lovegood,
I hope this letter finds you well, and that it has reached you at a convenient time.
The Grey Lady has requested your presence at Hogwarts this Friday the 31st of October at four p.m. As she is not one to make requests, especially of this nature, I felt compelled to send you this owl as soon as I could.
I also feel it is my duty to warn you: The ghosts have been quite agitated as of late. You would do well to steer clear of the Bloody Baron while you visit, if you can help it. I fear the centuries may finally be getting to them both.
The Grey Lady has instructed me to pass along the message: “She’ll know where to look.” I have no doubt that you will, but do come find me if you need any assistance.
Yours Sincerely,
Minerva McGonagall
Headmistress
Luna folded the letter, placing it on the table as she absently scratched at the great school owl who attempted to nibble at a corner of the parchment. She hadn’t expected any owls today, and didn’t have any treats prepared; instead, she cut a small slice from the chicken breast she planned to prepare that night for dinner. The bird took it with a satisfied click before shooting out the window through which it had come in.
She sat, contemplating the letter. Helena wouldn’t have asked Professor McGonagall to reach out if it wasn’t important. The Grey Lady’s preference for solitude was well-noted, and she wasn’t known for speaking to anyone outside of Ravenclaw house, even when addressed directly.
But Luna had befriended the ghost during her years at Hogwarts. In the ten years since the war, and the nine since she completed her N.E.W.T.s, she made a point to visit her at least once a year, spending the whole night telling stories and exchanging riddles.
They loved each other, in the hopeless, impossible way only they could, forever separated by the veil between the living and the dead.
—
Luna ran from the Great Hall, blinded by tears of embarrassment. The Halloween feast was about to begin, her very first, and she had to weave around students still filing in excitedly as she fled. She bumped into several older girls who snickered at her before she took a sharp right down a dark and empty corridor, willing to go just about anywhere if it meant getting away from the cruel laughter and judging looks of the other students.
She had just taken a seat next to a large, intricately carved pumpkin – the perfect place for Nargles, she told herself – when three Slytherin boys from the year above her had started mocking her; for her appearance, for her behavior, or for the way she was reading her Quibbler upside down, she couldn’t tell. Their snide remarks and raucous laughter had all blurred together in her head as she realized they were talking about her.
She had been teased before, but this time, it got to her.
Her first instinct was to run, and that’s exactly what she did. She was out of breath by the time she finally slowed, sinking to the floor against the cold stone wall and wrapping her arms around her knees as she sobbed into them hopelessly.
When she finally felt like there weren’t any tears left in her whole body, she finally lifted her head, realizing she was in an unfamiliar part of the castle. The corridor was barren of any identifiable features, and she was far enough away from the Great Hall that she couldn’t hear the cacophony of the feast. Unsure of where to go, or even which direction she had come from, she tried an adjoining corridor, to find it even more unfamiliar than the last.
She had become totally and hopelessly lost. After hours of winding passages, moving staircases, and several unexpected dead ends, she had a hard time believing she would ever find Ravenclaw Tower again.
She was about to give up, resigning herself to curling up behind a suit of armor until morning, when a silvery figure appeared at the end of the corridor. When it noticed her, it got closer and closer until she realized it was in fact one of the ghosts she had heard so much about.
“Are you the Grey Lady?” she asked quietly.
“Are you lost, little Ravenclaw?”
Luna nodded. The Grey Lady smiled warmly at her.
“Come now, let’s get you to bed.”
—
Luna read the letter again. I fear the centuries may finally be getting to them both. Blinking at the page, she tried to read between the lines to discern what McGonagall had really meant. She was told at one point in the last few years that the Bloody Baron had taken to wailing in the corridors in the dead of night, a sound which, coupled with the ominous rattling of his chains, had frightened enough students that his reputation as a Hogwarts ghost had only grown.
But what caused the sudden change, and was it at all connected to the way the light behind Helena’s eyes had dimmed? Luna’s last visit over the summer had left her feeling worried about her friend. Something hadn’t quite felt right, and she feared that there was something she had missed.
She stuffed the letter back in the envelope, having half a mind to make the trip to the castle now and wait in the Ravenclaw common room for Helena to show up, or go searching around the corridors for her. This wasn’t like her at all. Friday couldn’t come soon enough.
—
Luna awoke screaming, drenched in a cold sweat and clutching her chest. Nightmares like this weren’t uncommon for her, but that never made them any easier to stomach. It had only been four years since the death of her mother, and while it hadn’t been a particularly gruesome or violent death, it still haunted her more than she cared to admit.
She wrenched back her duvet, slipped on her shoes and left the dormitory in a hurry, knowing she wouldn’t be able to fall asleep again until the image of her mother faded from her mind’s eye.
A silvery figure was seated at one of the desks in the common room, her back turned.
“Helena, is that you?” Luna asked, stifling a yawn as she shuffled down the stairs, throwing herself haphazardly onto one of the nearby couches.
“Yes, Luna, darling,” Helena’s voice came, like a chime in the wind. She turned to face her now, that same comforting smile on her face. “Did you have another nightmare?”
“I did, but it’ll fade soon,” Luna replied.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Luna considered it. Would it be inappropriate to speak to a ghost about being haunted by the death of her mother? Was it impolite to speak to the dead of such matters? She wasn’t sure she wanted to find out. Her friendship with Helena had grown over the years, and she didn’t want to sour it.
“I think I’m alright,” she said after a moment, stifling another yawn. “I’d love to talk about just about anything else, really.”
Helena rose from her chair, closing the distance between them and settling on an overstuffed armchair near Luna’s head. Instead of speaking on any number of topics – they had been particularly interested in Hogwarts legends as of late, with Helena refuting several myths with a blithe, “I would know, I was there” – she began to sing. Her voice carried across the common room, high and light with a hint of sadness, like a caged bird singing for its freedom.
It wasn’t long before Luna drifted off into a peaceful sleep, dreaming of songbirds and windchimes, feeling safe and protected under Helena’s watchful eye.
—
The morning dawned grey and chilly, autumn winds sending leaves the color of fire dancing through the air. Luna always loved this time of year, and the weather felt particularly apt given the date – Halloween – and her intended destination tonight.
She kissed her father’s cheek goodbye and skipped the familiar path through the house to the Floo hearth, tossing in a handful of powder and taking a deep breath before stepping into the green flames.
“Hogwarts, please,” she said in a firm voice, before adding, “Anywhere I’m allowed, thank you.”
Her exit point seemed to change every time she went back. The first few times, she had stepped out into the Ravenclaw common room to shocked looks from the students milling about. Another time, she came out in the middle of a Divination lesson, and Professor Trelawney had spent the rest of class telling everyone how she had predicted her arrival before finally allowing Luna to leave. The last time, she had appeared in one of the abandoned classrooms, and it took her several minutes to get through the complicated lock on the door before she could continue to her meeting with Helena.
McGonagall had given her special permissions, but she wasn’t aware just how special until she stepped out directly into the headmistress’s office itself. McGonagall looked down at her from over her spectacles from her seat at her desk.
“Miss Lovegood,” she began in a haughty tone. “I hope you don’t mind using my office this time, but given the circumstances, I should think that time is to be considered of the essence.”
“Nice to see you, professor,” she replied warmly as she brushed soot from the shoulder of her jumper. “Thank you for your help. It’s not like the Grey Lady to reach out like this.”
“Yes, well, I appreciate that your friendship with the Grey Lady through the years has provided me some insight into the general well-being of the ghost population here at Hogwarts,” McGonagall said. “I don’t wish to keep you, Miss Lovegood, but do give me some sort of update before you leave for the night.”
“I will, professor, thank you,” Luna answered.
McGonagall went back to the papers on her desk as Luna made her way through the office and out the door.
—
Luna picked her way through the rubble, carefully retracing her steps on her usual path through the castle. Everyone else that had survived the battle was in the Great Hall, tending to wounds, gathering the dead, saying their goodbyes. She couldn’t handle the grief on their faces, the sadness in their eyes. It was too much.
Even the ghosts had gone to pay their respects to the dead, to those who defended their home. All but one.
It wasn’t long before she had reached familiar empty corridors, far away from the destruction of the battle. Almost as if on cue, Helena came through a wall, gasping as she saw Luna and streaking toward her with arms outstretched, as though she was about to embrace her.
“Luna!” she cried, stopping just short so Luna wouldn’t accidentally run through her. She had said it wasn’t a sensation she much enjoyed, and Luna wasn’t about to cross that boundary on a night like this.
To her surprise, Helena reached out a hand, ghostly fingers shimmering in the moonlight. Luna took it, careful to ensure their palms barely touched.
There were no other words that needed to be said. Instead, they sat on the floor, face to face and hand in hand, and enjoyed the silence and peace of each other’s company.
—
The hallways were mercifully empty for the time of day; no doubt the students were all finishing their final classes before the feast tonight. Luna wouldn’t have minded wading through the throngs of bodies, feeling part of the school again, but she had been swept into a classroom a few years previously by a well-meaning professor who mistook her for a student, and she had become so enthralled with the lecture, she nearly stayed for the whole class. She didn’t have time for such distractions today.
She checked her watch. Quarter to four. She was a little early, but that was more than fine by her, especially given the arduous trek across the castle from McGonagall’s office to the astronomy tower, and the climb up to the very top floor.
The classes held in the tower wouldn’t begin until well after the feast, if at all due to the weather. It was empty when she arrived, much to her relief. She had a feeling Helena wouldn’t be too thrilled if any students or faculty loitered; she had always been incredibly private, choosing to spend most of her time alone.
Wind whipped through the tower as she peered over the balcony, rattling her bones and giving her the faintest sense of vertigo. She shivered as she stepped away from the ledge, wrapping her arms around herself as she stared up at the heavy grey sky above her. It smelled like rain, though the clouds were moving quickly. In the distance, she saw blue.
—
Luna stood outside the castle doors, thrown wide and welcoming, silently willing herself to just take one more step forward. This was the first time she had returned since the Battle of Hogwarts, and while the evidence of the carnage had been mostly cleared, she still saw it in places she didn’t expect. The cracks in the stone, healed by magic but never the same as before, felt like her heart.
She held her breath as she crossed the threshold, but nothing changed. The castle buzzed with activity, same as it always had. Staff and older students helped the younger ones toward the Great Hall, the throng of people pulling her along with it. But she was frozen, unable to go any further.
Every funeral she had attended, every bedside she visited over the summer, every hand she held as its owner took their final, rasping breath, culminated in the Great Hall. She wasn’t sure why that one room held so much significance for her, when the destruction had been so widespread, but she had half a mind to turn around and climb aboard a carriage to take her back to the train, and subsequently back home. No one would blame her; many students who had been there chose not to return, her friends included. How could she return to business as usual when so many lives had been lost on these very grounds?
A presence appeared at her side, silvery and translucent in the light from the sconces that lined the wall. She looked up to see Helena smiling kindly down at her, pity and sadness in her eyes.
“Together?” she asked quietly, tilting her head toward the Great Hall. She held out a hand, and Luna took it carefully.
“Together.”
—
It wasn’t long before the familiar ghostly figure ascended the stairs, catching Luna’s eyes and offering her a warm smile.
“You came,” Helena said, almost as though she couldn’t believe it.
“Of course I came,” Luna replied. “I’ll always come back for you.”
Helena’s face fell as she glided across the floor, stopping on the balcony and resting a hand on the rail. Luna placed hers next to it, and Helena moved hers on top. They couldn’t feel each other, not really, but sometimes if Luna needed it enough, she could pretend she did. Tonight, the weight of Helena’s hand was heavy, tangible, as if she was alive.
Helena looked out to the sky, getting clearer by the minute, and sighed. The sun had begun to set, staining the remaining clouds with pinks and oranges so vibrant they didn’t look real. In the distance, where heavy clouds dumped rain, there was a rainbow.
“The veil is thin,” she said, her voice cracking as she avoided Luna’s gaze. “Thinnest tonight of all nights.”
She turned to Luna now. There was a sadness in her eyes that ran deep, centuries of regret and sorrow reflected within. Her appearance hadn’t changed since the day she died, but at that moment, Luna thought she looked tired. Maybe McGonagall had been right; the years had taken their toll on her, and it showed.
“Nothing lasts forever, Luna. I just wanted one last chance to say goodbye before I go.”
—
“How do I look?”
Luna twirled, showing off the outfit she had chosen. There were at least a half dozen clashing colors and patterns in her dress, which also clashed with the neon green jacket she had worn over it. Her Spectrespects dangled from one of several long chains around her neck, and her arms were adorned with a matching set of bracelets her father had given her after she graduated from Hogwarts. Peeking out from her birds’ nest of wild blonde hair were her favorite pair of radish earrings, enchanted to spin every few minutes. For all intents and purposes, she looked as though she had thrown on every accessory she owned at once.
Helena chuckled, furrowing her brow. “Lose a few of the necklaces,” she said. “And the jacket. It’s summer, you’re going to absolutely roast in that.”
Luna did as she was told, tossing the discarded items aside and studying herself in the mirror. She had never been one to worry about her appearance, especially as she had gotten older, but tonight was different. Tonight, after leaving her yearly visit to Hogwarts, she would be going on her very first date.
“Better?” she asked.
Helena nodded in approval.
“Ravishing as always, darling,” she said, hiding her grin behind her book. “Neville won’t know what hit him.” Luna sighed, sinking into a nearby armchair with a huff.
“Why am I so nervous?” she asked, not expecting an answer. She had spent so much time with Neville over the years. How was a simple dinner, just the two of them, any different?
“Because you’re late,” Helena pointed out, motioning toward the clock on the wall as it chimed nine o’clock. Luna was indeed late, as she was expected at the restaurant fifteen minutes prior, but she knew that wasn’t it.
She rose from the chair as quickly as she had fallen into it, smoothing down the front of her dress and checking herself in the mirror one last time.
“Alright, I’m off,” she said. After a pause, she added hopefully, “Unless you need me to stay.”
Helena grumbled, rising from where she sat and shooing Luna toward the Floo hearth.
“Get out of here,” she said with a grin. “Go live your life and have fun. I’ll still be here when you’re done, and I want to hear all about it.”
—
“Where are you going?” Luna asked. “I didn’t know ghosts could leave Hogwarts.”
There was a part of her that knew what Helena had meant, but didn’t want to accept it. She hadn’t even considered the possibility that she wouldn’t be there, waiting for her between the walls, anytime she visited the castle. Whatever had transpired between her and the Bloody Baron in the recent months must have been too much for her to bear. Luna’s heart broke at the thought.
Helena didn’t speak for several seconds. Her silence said all it needed to. She was going beyond the veil, and never coming back.
“I’ll miss you,” Luna said quietly, looking down at their hands on the railing and blinking away the tears that threatened to fall.
“Say you’ll remember me, Luna,” Helena said. “But not like this.”
“How do you want to be remembered?”
She smiled, tears shining in her eyes. “Standing in a nice dress, staring at the sunset. Red lips and rosy cheeks. Say you’ll see me again, even if it’s just pretend.”
Luna nodded, swallowing the lump in her throat.
“The memory of you will follow me everywhere,” she said. “Even in my wildest dreams.”
Helena’s ghostly hand rose to cup Luna’s cheek, and she leaned into it instinctively, savoring the cool, tingling sensation on her skin as she closed her eyes. She could have stayed here with her forever, hiding away in the tower, even as an unexpected icy breeze rattled her bones.
Her eyelids fluttered open, seeing nothing but the plain stone wall ahead of her. She glanced around, finding the astronomy tower empty.
Helena was gone, and she was alone.
—
“Why do you keep coming back here, after all these years?” Helena had asked during Luna’s last visit over the summer, barely visible against the grey castle walls behind her. She had chosen the astronomy tower for their meeting that night, the pale moonlight casting an eerie silver glow around her.
“I don’t see why I wouldn’t,” Luna had replied, turning her attention away from the stars and offering the ghost a warm smile. “I do look forward to our yearly talks. I only wish they could be more frequent.”
“You can’t pause your life for someone who doesn’t have one,” Helena pointed out.
Luna shrugged. “I’m not pausing anything. Death is a part of life, just as you are a part of mine. I will be here every year whether you want me to be or not.”
“But Luna–”
“You can’t change my mind,” she interrupted. “So don’t even try. You’re stuck with me.”
Then Helena had turned her face away, floating through the telescope in the center of the room, and Luna dropped the subject. The interaction had been unnerving to say the least; Helena had always seemed so eager for their next visit. It wasn’t like her to try to dissuade Luna from spending time with her.
—
Luna woke to the sounds of songbirds outside her window, groggily rubbing her eyes to get a clearer view as they flitted past. It was too early; she still had a few more hours before she needed to be awake.
Today was a special day. It was Halloween, the day when the veil between worlds was thinnest. It had been a year since Helena had moved on, leaving her cold and broken in the astronomy tower.
It had taken months for her to accept that the ghost wouldn’t be waiting for her at Hogwarts for their yearly meeting. Throughout all the struggles and turmoil of the bulk of the last twenty years, Helena had been there for her, offering kind words and support. It was different with her; no battle, nor illness, nor injury, could take her away from Luna, until the sadness and desperation of the centuries finally did.
But Helena was well and truly gone, just like so many others, added to the ever-increasing list of those she had lost.
The Bloody Baron had moved on shortly after, wracked with grief and remorse. McGonagall had sent Luna a letter detailing the night when he had finally given up, and she had read it once before tossing it into the fire.
She was angry at first; he deserved to suffer for an eternity for what he had done to her. Over time, it faded to pity, then understanding. He had suffered long enough. Both of them had. They each deserved their peace after centuries of repentance and regret.
Luna stared up at the ceiling, her eyes following the same familiar path they always did. Portraits of her friends smiled down at her, reminding her that she wasn’t alone. Harry, Hermione, Ginny, Ron, and Neville were all there, and still only an owl or phone call away if she needed them.
But there was a sixth portrait, brighter and newer than the rest, its colors unmarred by time. In it, a beautiful woman smiled kindly, her lips painted red, her cheeks rosy. She wore one of the most beautiful dresses Luna had ever seen, painstakingly copied from a Muggle fashion magazine. The woman was looking out at a sunset over the Black Lake, a thousand different shades of orange and pink reflected in its glassy surface.
The memory of Helena had followed her everywhere. As she drifted back to sleep, they were back in the astronomy tower, hand in hand. Her hand felt real, like Helena had reached across the veil to be with her. It was like seeing her again, even if it was only in her wildest dreams.