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Dark Matter
Chapter One: Grief

Well, I've lost it all, I'm just a silhouette.
I'm a lifeless face you'll soon forget.
And my eyes are damp from the words you left,
ringing in my head, when you broke my chest.
Setting fire to our insides for fun
to distract our hearts from ever missing them.
But I'm forever missing him.
Youth - Daughter

It will only work once, and it will only take you where you need to go.

Luna gazed down at her palm where the tiny bit of parchment and Time-Turner rested. The flames from the burning house were reflected in the metallic luster of the Time-Turner: flickering, lambent light.

She looked up towards where Voldemort had fallen and saw his crumpled body cast in shadows. The scent of burning wood filled her nose. The air in her lungs was hot. She retched without nausea, without warning, as though she needed to get the feeling out of her, like she needed to get the knowledge of all that had happened out of her. Nothing came out.

After a shuddering breath, she returned her eyes to the Time-Turner and the parchment in her hand. For a long moment, Luna felt as though her breathing, her pulse, and the rate at which the light of the fire wavered were all in sync. Then a breath of cool night breeze shivered through her hair and lifted the piece of parchment from her palm and carried it up, up, away from her. Her eyes followed it through the air, but as it began to fall towards the fire, her heart rate quickened, sputtering out of time with the beat of the flames.

She stumbled forward a heavy step, hand outstretched, reaching for the bit of parchment, that last bit of proof of his humanity in the intimate details of his handwriting -

An arm grabbed her around her waist, hauling her backward. The parchment drifted further downward. She fought, she kicked, she pried at the arm restraining her with her free hand, she hit with a fist closed around the Time-Turner with her other hand. Her face was wet and she tasted salt; she was crying and screaming, but didn't know when she had started either.

"Luna! Luna!" A voice, the owner of the arm. Another arm wrapped around her, bear-hugging her arms to her sides. The parchment alighted on a burning beam and erupted into flames. It was indistinguishable from the rest of the surrounding devastation.

"Luna!" Harry's voice. It was Harry. Luna stopped fighting, limbs softening and allowing herself to be pulled away. Then her muscles went past relaxed into limp as she lost consciousness.

Grief. She knew she was grieving, as she had done before. Her father. Tom. Even the memories of her mother's death, something she had so long ago thought she had made sense of somehow, seemed dredged up like silt from the sediment of her soul. Except now, there were invisible, implicit boundaries set on her grief. There were limits to that which was limitless.

Luna was seated cross-legged on the ground in a bedroom on the first floor of Number 12 Grimmauld Place, her back leaning against the small bed. She was sitting very still, eyes downcast at the threadbare rug in front of her. Othello the Kneazle was curled up on her lap, rumbling with a low, steady purr. His purr cut off and he lifted his head from her knee and turned towards the door, huge ears rotating back and forth. A few moments later, there was a knock at the door.

"Luna?" Hermione's voice hesitantly perturbed the heavy air of the room. "May I come in?"

"Of course." Luna felt as though her voice came from somewhere outside of herself.

Hermione opened the dark wooden door just wide enough to squeeze herself inside, as though she wanted to come in but didn't want to let anything out, then eased it shut behind her. She inspected Luna for a moment, her eyes pausing on her blonde hair, which was dull, greasy, and in some places beginning to form mats. Then, without further hesitation, she sat down on the rug in front of Luna and crossed her own legs.

Othello uncoiled himself on Luna's lap. He stepped down between the two girls and stretched his spine, spreading his front toes apart and snagging his claws on the rug. He then walked to Hermione and butted her hand with his head.

"How are you doing?" Hermione asked as she lifted her hand to pet the Kneazle.

Luna picked at a loose thread in the faded carpet and didn't raise her eyes. After a moment, she shrugged.

"Do you want to talk about it? It's been three weeks and you haven't really left this room much. You should go back to school with us for the rest of the term; Easter holidays are nearly over. We - I'm worried about you."

"I don't like that," Luna replied in a quiet voice, continuing to pull at the thread in the rug. "I know you are just trying to show you care, but I don't like feeling like I have to reassure anyone I'm all right at the moment."

Hermione scratched under Othello's chin. "I can understand that," she said after a moment.

Luna nodded at her, but didn't volunteer anything else.

"I'm so sorry about your dad, Luna," Hermione said. "I can't imagine. I know you must miss him terribly."

Traitorous, fat tears welled up along Luna's lower eyelids, blurring her vision, quivering for a split second, then spilling over and running down her cheeks. Her eyes never left the thread with which she fiddled. She nodded. "Yes," she whispered.

"I wish I could -" Hermione began.

"I miss them all," Luna interrupted. The thread in the rug finally pulled free. "I miss my mother. I miss my father. I miss Tom. And I know nobody wants to hear about that part, but it's true. I feel cursed. I feel like I'm being followed by a Jhumbie."

"Luna, that's -"

"I know! I know you don't think they are real. I don't care. I feel as though the world's been tilted sideways, and I'm scrambling for traction. I feel like the only stationary thing in the universe as everything else goes right on around me; as if nothing has happened, as if there aren't big, gaping holes where people are supposed to be." Her voice was just above a whisper and it took all the energy she had. "'It's been three weeks.' Do you think I don't know? I feel every second of every minute of every hour that goes by, because it's all I can do to make it from one moment to the next, to keep existing in this world. I feel as though I'm screaming into a pitch black, empty room for all the good it will do me. And I feel awful, I feel awful, because I know it's good Tom's dead and I hate it anyway. And I hate that my sadness about my dad is all mixed up with sadness about Tom, because one feels clean and the other doesn't. And I'm afraid I'm letting you all down."

Hermione's eyes shone with tears of their own, and she sat frozen listening to Luna speak.

"I thought we'd have more time," Luna continued. "I thought I had more time. I took it for granted that I would see him again. I thought there would be so much more time."

Hermione regained her voice. "Who are you talking about?" she said, shaking her head. She reached out and placed a hand over Luna's. "Your father would still be here if...but I know you know that. I want to be there for you, but I can't understand some of it. You know I can't."

Luna nodded. It was moments like this, when in the company of someone she loved, that her aloneness felt most acute, and her isolation in her grief felt total, threatening to eclipse her into darkness.

She allowed Hermione to pull her to her feet and lead her out of the room. Ginny was hovering in the hall nearby, holding towels and clean clothes. They escorted her into the bathroom, drew up a hot bath for her. When she finished bathing, Ginny combed the knots out of her wet hair while Hermione handed her a sandwich and encouraged her to eat it.

Luna offered a feeble smile.

They returned to school just a couple of days later and were plunged back into the thick of their academics. The mood at the school was still one of celebration and victory regarding the fall of Lord Voldemort, such that no amount of homework could hope to dampen most of the students' spirits.

"Can't believe they're making us do homework," Ron said as he shuffled through sheets of parchment in the library. Ron, along with Harry, Hermione, Ginny, Neville, and Luna, were all seated around a large table the afternoon after their first day back at class, with their books and study materials spread out in front of them. "You'd think defeating You-Know-Who would be proof enough we aren't completely stupid."

Everyone but Luna laughed, which earned a prompt shushing from Madam Pince. Luna kept her eyes on the Potions book open in front of her.

"Half the teachers have been removed anyway," Ginny added, "seeing as how they were Death Eaters and all."

"I know," Hermione said anxiously. "It makes it so much more difficult to know what will be on our exams, now that we haven't got our professors anymore. There's just no consistency!"

Ron stopped shuffling through his things to stare at her. "It was just the Carrows, not half the teachers. Their classes were rubbish anyway, and they were Death Eaters, Hermione!" He shook his head. "Honestly, you'd think she'd rather get Outstandings on her exams than have Death Eaters put away in Azkaban," he said to Harry.

This elicited another round of chuckles from the group, and Madam Pince reappeared next to their table, seeming to come out of thin air. "This is a place for quiet study," she hissed. "If you cannot do that, then I must insist you be rambunctious elsewhere!"

"Oh, fine," Ron said, slapping the parchment in his hand back on the table. "It's about time for dinner anyway."

The six of them packed up their things, Hermione with a greater level of hesitation than the others, and they went off to the Great Hall for dinner. Luna sat through dinner at the Gryffindor table, to which no one protested. Although the student body was unaware of the specifics of Luna's situation given the secrecy about her time travel, everyone knew her father had died.

"Luna, you're pale as a ghost," Ginny said, "and about as thin as a bowtruckle." She began piling food onto Luna's empty plate.

This had become a familiar routine over the past few days. Luna had no appetite, but at each meal time, one of her friends without fail would put food in front of her and wait for her to eat it.

Feeling all their eyes on her, Luna picked up her fork. "Did you know that the bowtruckles in Borneo can grow to the size of Beater's bat?" she said.

Smiles cracked on the others' faces, shoulders untensing, and they all began to eat. Luna performed the mechanical motion of eating, but didn't seem to taste much of anything. Throughout the meal, she made a point to make a comment here and there, much to the pleasure of her friends.

After dinner, they all headed upstairs, then it came time to separate for their common rooms. The five others said goodnight to Luna, and she headed to Ravenclaw Tower alone. She climbed the familiar spiral staircase, up to the wooden door with the bronze eagle knocker. She struggled for the first time at answering its question; her brain seemed so much more muddled than it used to be.

Crossing the common room, she avoided the stares of her fellow Ravenclaws, who were silent for a moment, then began whispering to each other.

"That's right," she overheard, "taken prisoner -"

"- and her father -"

Luna quickened her pace, making it to the stairs to the dormitories. She took the steps two at a time, opened the door to her dorm room to find it blissfully empty, then quickly climbed into her bed and yanked the bed curtains shut. She lay panting on her back, forehead clammy, still in her school robes and shoes.

A familiar strangling feeling made its way into her throat as she stared at canopy of her bed. The quiet of the dorm room pressed in on her ears after the pleasant chatter of her friends all afternoon. She had been longing to be alone, and yet now that she was, she felt lonely. Even Othello was off slinking through the castle.

She rolled over onto her side, then rolled to her other side. Then she fluffed her pillow, and laid on her back again. She sighed, then reached into the front of her robes, pulling out a long, thin chain with a small gold hourglass at the end. She held it dangling over her head in the bed so that it swung back and forth inches above her face.

Her arm holding the Time-Turner up had gone numb by the time she moved again. Peeking her head through the bed curtains, she pulled the drawer of her bedside table open. She held the Time-Turner over the open drawer for a moment, nodded, then laid it with care in the drawer. The chain lay coiled like a serpent around the tiny hourglass. Her eyes traced the curves in the chain.

Then she snapped the drawer shut.