The library was quieter than usual.
The steady and distant ticking of an ornate brass clock above Madam Pince's desk filled the silence like a metronome guiding focus. Tall shelves of books loomed overhead. Between them, seated at one of the smaller corner tables near the back, Ethan read through the same page for the third time, trying, and failing, to concentrate.
Luna sat beside him, humming a soft, breathy tune, like a lullaby only she knew the words to. It wasn't loud enough to distract him, not really. He was growing used to it.
She didn't look over when he closed the thick brown tome titled "Applied Theory in Tracking and Investigative Magic". Her quill danced across her parchment, drawing looping curls of letters and strange little doodles in the margins. One looked suspiciously like a nargle with glasses.
Ethan leaned back in his chair, arms folded.
He needed to step up.
Something was wrong. That much was clear.
He'd seen the change in his mother, subtle though it was. The way she spoke, the lightness in her tone that didn't belong to her. The way her answers curved slightly around his questions, never quite evasive, but never quite direct either. And more than that, he felt it. Like how one feels the shift in the wind before a storm, nothing solid, nothing he could prove, just unease hanging in the air.
And so, here he was, digging through every text he could find related to detection spells, aura-reading, concealment magic. Most were far beyond his level. A second-year studying investigative theory was like handing a child a magnifying glass and asking them to solve a Ministry-level case. Still, he was someone who was always trying to punching above his academic weight.
He'd already jotted down a few spells he thought might be useful, though casting them would be another matter entirely.
One was Revelio Privata, a seemingly obscure charm that could detect magical concealment, though it required immense focus and tended to only reveal partial truths depending on the caster's intent.
Another was Sensus Vinclum, used to trace magical residue from strong enchantments and objects. It could, in theory, sense lingering connections between cursed objects and people.
He wasn't sure which, if any, would help him, but he planned to learn them anyway and try to find whatever it was which caused the shift in her.
Luna glanced at him then, breaking the spell of his concentration.
"You're studying too hard again," she said, her tone lilting, almost singsong.
"I'm always studying hard," Ethan replied, shifting his ink bottle slightly closer. "That's the point."
"You'll burn out your thoughts if you keep pressing on them like that."
He raised an eyebrow. "Burn out my thoughts?"
She nodded solemnly. "It happens. That's why my dad eats pickled mandrake root when he studies. Keeps the brain limber."
"…Right."
Before Ethan could ask what "limber" thoughts looked like, a new voice cut through the quiet, gentle but clear.
"Hello, Ethan."
He turned.
Ginny Weasley stood at the edge of the table, smiling, her ginger hair pulled back in a low ponytail. Her school bag hung from one shoulder, worn and slightly frayed, but well-kept. There was something self-assured in her posture, less like the shy, stumbling first-year she was supposed to be and more like someone used to standing up for herself. Perhaps without a Horcrux manipulating her like before, she had grown into her own person.
"Hi," he said, surprised. "Did you need something?"
She shook her head. "Just wanted to thank you. For what you did. Before the school year started."
"It was nothing," he said quickly. "I just did what anyone would've."
She gave him a look that clearly said she didn't believe that for a second. But she didn't argue.
"It meant something to me," she said instead. "So… thank you."
Then she glanced at Luna, her smile softening even further. "Hi, Luna."
Luna looked up, blinking slowly as if only just noticing her. "Oh. Hello, Ginny."
"You doing alright?"
"Mostly. I had a dream last night about dirigible plums stealing someone's shoes."
"Did they ever get them back?"
Ginny didn't look fazed, which told Ethan this was normal and not the first time they had talked.
They talked a bit more before she turned back to Ethan.
"Well," she said, adjusting her bag, "I'll let you both get back to studying. Just wanted to say thanks. You know… officially."
Then, with a small wave, she disappeared between the shelves.
Ethan watched her go, mildly stunned.
Luna tilted her head. "She's nice."
"She is."
"You don't like compliments, do you?"
He blinked. "What?"
"You looked uncomfortable when she thanked you. Like someone put a kneazle in your robe pocket."
"I-" He stopped, sighed. "I just don't think it was that big of a deal."
"You called out Lucius Malfoy in public."
"Yeah. Then my mother dealt with it. I didnt do much."
"Well it isn't nothing."
He didn't answer.
Still, something about what Ginny had said lingered in his mind. How people remembered things he had already moved past. How small moments sometimes mattered more to others than they did to him. The world had a strange way of cataloging memories. Some stuck, others faded. He wondered how much of what he was doing now, this quiet study, this slow hunt for answers, would even be remembered by the time he completed Hogwarts.
Probably some, but not all
Still, he returned to the book, flipping another page.
From the corner of his eye, Luna had returned to her own work, nose buried in a textbook too thick for its age group. Her feet were tucked up in the chair.
"By the way, how do you know about what i did?"
Luna didn't look up from her parchment. She added a swirl beside a rune she was practicing. "Ginny asked me a few days ago how she should go about thanking you. She wasn't sure how to aproach you."
Ethan's brows rose slightly.
"She told me a bit about what happened," Luna went on. "She said it was you who spoke first. That matters more than most people think."
He was quiet for a moment. His eyes lowered to the thick spine of the book in front of him.
"She's making it sound more dramatic than it was."
"Maybe," Luna said, finally looking up at him. Her silvery-blue eyes were unreadable. "But maybe it was."
Ethan didn't know how to respond to that.
To him, what he did and has been doing was selfish. Taking Lockhart down, outsing Lucius Malfoy when he tried to pass on the Horcrux to Ginny.
He hadn't set out to be noble. He was just trying to make this year of Hogwarts not a waste.
He had succeeded, but also failed. He turned the conversation instead after Luna spoke again.
"It bothers you? The attention."
Ethan didn't answer right away, thinking how to best put ilwhat he wanted to say next.
"Academic attention is fine," he said at last. "People wanting to study with me or ask questions, that's alright. It's small."
"But?"
"But when people start whispering, or making up stories, or calling you 'the kid who did that thing', it changes."
He tapped his quill against the margin of his notes.
"It stops being about who you are and becomes about what people think you are. And they're never right."
Luna was quiet for a while after that.
Then she said, "People do that with me, too."
Ethan looked up.
"They whisper. Say I'm strange. That I talk about things that don't exist. That my father's crazy."
She said it plainly, without malice or defensiveness. Just fact.
"But I don't mind it," she added. "Because I know who I am."
Ethan watched her a moment, thoughtful. She meant it. Every word. That certainty in her tone, the kind that didn't seek validation, didn't need anyone's agreement. She was untouchably herself, and she wore it like a second skin.
He envied that.
"I wish I could be that sure," he said.
"You can be."
Ethan gave her a skeptical look.
"You just have to stop trying to convince other people of who you are. They'll always get it wrong."
Luna gathered her things quietly, stuffing her parchment into a soft blue book sleeve embroidered with what looked like floating mushrooms.
"I'm going to feed the thestrals," she said offhandedly.
"…Right now?"
She nodded. "They get sad when it rains and no one visits."
He turned towards the window and yes, a storm was approaching. It would be a cold one as winter was slowly approaching.
Luna hoisted her bag over her shoulder and walked off without another word. Ethan sat back, blinking after her.
He then packed his things quickly and walked after her. He was curious about what Thestrals ate, and also wanted to try the Impervius charm. Only recently he had remembered about it and wanted to see if he could cast it without reading it's theory. This was a perfect opportunity.
~
(A/N: For the next couple of weeks my releases will be a bit unpredictable. I'm moving to my own place soon and I just have so many things to do and don't have much time to do anything else outside of work and preparing to move.)