Title: Sometimes Luna plays with ghosts.
Author: newtypeshadow
Warnings: OotP spoiler (the veil)
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, its settings, or its characters, nor am I making money by using what belongs to J.K. Rowling and various others.

Sometimes Luna plays with ghosts. They make faces at her from the closed-off classrooms and dance with her in empty hallways. They play with toys the live children lose. They're not normal ghosts--most wizards can't see them. And they don't call her Loony.

She didn't tell Harry that she feels the veil everywhere, that it hovers over everyone and the Ministry doesn't control who falls and who doesn't just because they have one scrap of cloth. The veil takes everyone in their time. And because of Voldemort, many fell through before their time; too many vanished before they were glimmers of a parent's thought. The ghosts of unborn children ride the Hogwarts Express. They sit after the start-of-term feast begins, a ghost-Sorting Hat on their heads. They join the long tables piled high with food, and their invisible benches spread into the entrance hall. They play in the abandoned corridors and graduate with the living classes amidst cheers of the living, dead, and never-were. Their excellent teachers sit unacknowledged at the head table.

Luna watches these children sneak into the Great Hall sometimes, a dreamy smile on her face; from the head table, Dumbledore's troubled eyes follow their carefree steps.

Please tell me what you thought of it--and yes, constructive criticism is very welcome.