Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.

Perceptions
By Silver Sailor Ganymede

"Why do you let people do this too you, Miss Lovegood?" Professor Flitwick's tone was somewhere between gentle pity and exasperation, something completely different to the usual cheeriness he desplaid in front of his students. He could not help but despair somewhat for Luna Lovegood though: the girl was already near the end of her second year, and she did not seem to have made a single friend in her own House. In fact he would not have known a thing about what was going on if a seventh year Hufflepuff Prefect hadn't told him.

Luna Lovegood just sat there with a dreamy expression on her face, playing with one of the radish-like things she seemed to like to wear as earrings, and chewing on the end of a necklace made of butterbeer corks. She did not appear to have heard a word her Head of House had said.

"Miss Lovegood?" he repeated, and she looked up at him as though she'd never seen him or the room they were sitting in before.

"Sorry Professor, I thought I saw a nest of nargles behind…" Luna began, the stopped abruptly.

"Please pay attention, Miss Lovegood," Flitwick sighed. "If people ever start picking on you then you should tell someone in a position of authority and they will sort it out for you. You're an exceptionally bright girl; you should know that. It's just astonishing that the other Ravenclaws don't seem to respect you at all… in our House someone with so much wit and knowledge would usually be treated with respect at the very least; they certainly wouldn't be hiding your things like this…"

"It's better to let them think you're stupid," Luna sighed, her dreamy eyes suddenly becoming quite harsh and cold. "The less people know about you, the more you're free to do, the more you can let them think they're manipulating you when actually they're the ones being manipulated. I don't care about other people's perceptions of me; it's unimportant."

Flitwick certainly did not know what to say to that, and so he let Luna leave, her usual dreamy look back in her eyes. He had never heard his Ravenclaws saw things like that before… It sounded like something that would come out of the mouth of a Malfoy, but certainly not a Lovegood.

Later that evening his suspicions were proved correct. He spoke to the Sorting Hat, and the Hat told him something he would never had guessed before. Luna Lovegood was only a Ravenclaw because she had asked to go there. She should have been in Slytherin.