se nu hur alla dina minnen formas till en magnum 357...

Author's notes: This story is going to get very, very dark. I'll let your imaginations come up with the warnings. All the chapters were written beforehand.

FRIENDS

September (Part I)

In a compartment on the Hogwarts Express, which is still at King's Cross Station, Luna Lovegood has decided that she's going to pass her time by doing crossword puzzles in her father's magazine. She really wants to learn the spell to turn peoples' ears into kumquats, so she can use it on Allison Anders, who's a bully of the worst kind.

Later, Luna plans to do arts and crafts, if she has time. She's already been making small paper chains that consist of the letters F-R-I-E-N-D-S strung together with string. When she was in Diagon Alley, she bought some shiny gold paper which is now sitting in her trunk, ready to be used to for her FRIENDS paper chains. Luna is going to use them for decorations, because they're very pretty. The word FRIENDS is a very nice word, she thinks as she fills in another series of boxes on her crossword puzzle. It's her favorite word in the whole world.

Luna likes having friends. She has a friend, actually. She has one friend. Her friend's name is Ginevra Weasley. Ginevra likes to be called Ginny, but Luna always calls her Ginevra anyway. It's a nice name, Ginevra. Ginevra is nice to Luna, too, and always calls her Luna instead of Loony. She says she'll always call her Luna, and that makes Luna feel very warm inside.

The compartment door opens. Luna doesn't pay it much mind, as she's too absorbed in her crossword puzzle to look up. Unfortunately, her visitor turns out to be someone not so nice.

"'Lo there, Loona," says Anders as she slides into Luna's compartment. At first glance, Anders might strike just about anyone as the kind of person who'd hide in the back of a crowd and try not to be noticed: she's a small girl with short, dark hair, and blue eyes that peer through a pair of enormous glasses. "Can I read your daddy's magazine?"

"I'd rather you didn't," Luna replies. "I've discovered that my possessions tend to wind up badly damaged when I give them to you."

"'How Far Will Fudge Go To Gain Gringotts?'" Anders reads. She's turned her head sideways to see the article titles on the upside-down cover. "'Sirius – Black As He's Painted?' That sounds fascinating, Loona. Listen, you wouldn't mind if I brought some people in here, would you? Good. Because I already invited Rebecca Tanneth, and Ginny Weasley, and some other people I met in the hallway that I don't really know at all."

She grins toothily.

"Oh," says Luna. At least Ginevra is coming.

A round-faced boy with a toad pokes his head in, and Anders greets him very loudly. He looks mortified and ducks out as fast as he can; Anders snickers, as does her friend Rebecca, who comes in seconds later. Rebecca looks to be considerably more of a socialite than Anders, with blond glamours on her hair and a great deal of makeup on her face. Anders quickly scoots over to let her sit down.

"What's the Black one about?" asks Anders, tilting her head again to read the cover of the Quibbler. "I mean, it was really scary, having him lurking around the grounds back in our second year. I saw a Mind Healer afterward, and he said it's traumatized me severely. I guess now I just have to know all I can about him so I can move on."

"Anders..." Rebecca makes an odd sound, like she's choked on something.

"What's your dad think about Black?" Anders inquires, sounding very intrigued. "I mean, he wrote the article, didn't he?"

"No... No, it was a write-in... The article says Sirius Black is – Sirius Black is a false name," Luna explains hesitantly, twisting a lock of her hair around her finger and looking past her magazine at the space between Anders and Rebecca as she speaks. "He's actually – S-Stubby Boardman..."

"From – From The Hobgoblins?" Rebecca says in a strangled voice. "That Stubby Boardman?"

Anders' eyes have widened considerably. "My god," she declares. "I'll never be able to look at that poster of him the same way again." Then her eyes widen even more. "Wait, Loona, does this mean that... Sirius Black is innocent?" she exclaims with a gasp, clapping her hands against her cheeks in an exaggerated, theatrical manner.

"That's w-what it s-says in the – in the – the article," mumbles Luna, her voice cracking a little when Rebecca puts her face in her hands and begins shaking.

"She's just upset," says Anders, throwing Rebecca a sympathetic look. "She has a huge crush on Stubby Boardman."

"I do not, Anders!" Rebecca shoots back, sounding deeply offended. "You're the one who has a huge poster of him hanging over your bed."

"Where the hell are Cormac and Kevin?" Anders suddenly changes the topic, looking quite annoyed indeed. "They said they'd come sit with us!" She throws her hands up in another theatrical gesture.

"Yes, Anders, I know. I was there."

"Well, where are they?"

Rebecca scoffs. "As if they'd want to sit anywhere near Loony Lovegood."

"Kevin thinks she's really funny," the other girl huffs. "Please, can we go find them and make them come?"

"Why are you so set on having them here? Are you going to flash them or something? You haven't got nearly enough cleavage for anyone to care."

A dull flush crosses Anders's face. "No!"

"Fine, Anders," Rebecca suddenly snaps, exasperated. "Loony, make sure nobody takes our seats, got it?"

Luna breathes a silent sigh of relief as the two girls get up and leave, and goes back to her crossword puzzle. She really hopes Ginevra gets here and sits down next to her before Anders and Rebecca come back with their friends. Luna really wants to see her friend before she goes and sits with all the people that don't really get along with her (she wishes they did, but her mother once told her that you can't have everybody like you, just some people). She and Ginevra haven't seen each other for almost a week, and that's a very long time for friends not to see each other.

So, even though Luna would really like to leave and not have to sit with Anders and Rebecca and their friends, Luna knows Ginevra is coming here, so she can't leave or else Ginevra won't be able to sit with her, and that would be very bad of her because she's Ginevra's friend and friends are supposed to stick together.

Ginevra probably misses her a lot, too.

Voices drift in through the door Anders hasn't bothered to close after a while:

"Hi, Harry... Hi Ginny... Everywhere's full... I can't find a seat..."

"What are you talking about?"

Luna almost sighs with relief again when she hears Ginevra's voice. Ginevra comes into view, and peers into the compartment very briefly, an even briefer smile crossing her face when she sees Luna. Luna herself breaks out into the biggest smile she's smiled in almost a week, which she hides behind her Quibbler magazine because everyone says her smiles are creepy and she doesn't want to scare Ginevra away.

Then she hears:

"There's room in this one, there's only Loony Lovegood in here –"

and she stiffens a little, momentarily forgetting where she is and what's going on around her after that.

There's more talking, but Luna doesn't really take any of it in. Her brain seems to have ground to a halt, completely gummed up by the six words she's trying to process: 'There's only Loony Lovegood in here...'

Ginevra has never called her that before. Ginevra said she would never call her that.

Why did she call her Loony Lovegood? She said she would never...

Luna actually feels ill. Ginevra is the only person she knows who doesn't call her that horrible name – or knew, at least, until now. It's burning something painful into her chest and up her throat, making her lip tremble, and making her eyes wet...

"What's the matter, Luna?" Ginevra asks. She's standing in the doorway with her trunk, Harry Potter, and the boy with the toad, looking concerned.

"You called me Loony," says Luna quietly.

An expression of realization spreads quickly across Ginevra's face. "I didn't mean it like – Luna, listen, I'm not making fun of you –"

"But you promised," Luna mumbles. "You made a friend promise..."

Ginevra opens and closes her mouth a couple of times. "Luna, I didn't mean it that way, I was only joking!"

"You promised."

"Er... Am I missing somethi–" Harry Potter begins, but Anders's voice interrupts him.

"Hey! We were there first! You dicks get out of there."

She and Rebecca have returned empty-handed. Rebecca looks delighted at the scene unfolding before them, and Anders herself displays a conflicting mixture of dejection and dark amusement. When Ginevra sees them, her upset turns to annoyance.

"Luna, do you want to come sit with us somewhere el–"

"No, thank you, Ginevra," Luna chokes. "I'll stay here."

"Get out of here!" Rebecca commands Ginevra. She's barely containing her glee. "You've already made her cry, Weasley. Why don't you go be a cunt somewhere else?"

Harry Potter, who looks very angry at Rebecca's very unkind words, orders Rebecca to apologize for saying those things to his friend (Luna thinks Ginevra is lucky to have friends who'll defend her like that). When Rebecca lazily says she hasn't done anything wrong, he moves to do something, maybe to defend Ginevra's honour by hexing the offending party, but Ginevra stops him and tells him it's not worth it. Then she corrects herself and says Rebecca isn't worth it. She says they just like to make people angry for no reason.

Anders, who until now hasn't said anything nasty for the entire fifteen or twenty seconds she's been there, lights up like a Christmas tree and says, "Yes, Potter, kind of like your girlfriend. Your girlfriend just ripped Loona's world apart for no reason. Now, go away." She and Rebecca make a point of snickering loudly at the redhead as they slide into the compartment.

"Er... Can we do that, Harry?" the boy with the toad suggests awkwardly, and he tugs on Harry Potter's arm. "I don't want to get in a fight with anybody..." To his obvious relief, Harry Potter nods, though he's glowering at Anders now.

Ginevra also aims a glare at Anders before leaving. "God, you're a bitch," she says, and disappears.

Anders blows up upon hearing this and follows Ginevra back out into the hall, screaming: "Hey, Weasley – when you sucked that diary guy's dick, did ink come out?"

In the ensuing argument, Rebecca also leaves, and Luna is completely forgotten. She stays in her seat in the compartment, hugging her Quibbler magazine to her chest and crying softly. Her crossword puzzle goes unfinished; instead, she just stares blankly out the window for the rest of the train ride. It's like watching a funeral procession, she thinks as it grows dark and the landscape's features become indistinct, ominous dark shapes, blurred slightly by her tears.

One is expected to mourn the lost at funerals, so Luna mourns the loss of her first and only friend.

I would like to know what you think of Luna, her idea of friendship, the way Ginny treats her, the way Anders treats her, the way Rebecca treats her (she's different from Anders, isn't she), her reaction to Ginny's comment, and so on. I put a lot of work into this story, and I want to know how you felt when reading it. Ginny is a little OOC, but she's a normal teenager here, not a perfect virgin princess who exists solely for Harry to save her.

As always, my beta-reader is the great and awesome TuesdayNovember.