Luna's sleep the night after the visitor came was restless and left her tossing and turning and wishing the moon was more than just a sliver in the sky. Of course, she thought a bit bitterly, Sam was probably delighted that the moon was thin and quiet tonight. He hated when it moved towards full. But Sam was also sleeping. And Luna wanted someone to talk to. More than that, she wanted someone to talk to without Sam listening. And Sam never listened to her conversations with the moon.

She would have thought it was a kindness born of respect for her privacy, but she knew it wasn't. It was a selfishness. Sam didn't like the moon, not unless it was nearly new and the sky was dark and empty. Sam liked the stars in a cloudless, moonless sky. Why, Luna didn't know, but she had long ago learned to stop asking and accept this unintended gift.

It wasn't that she didn't like talking to Sam and it wasn't that she didn't want to confide in him. For most things, she did. It was just that tonight, she wanted to talk about him. She wanted to talk about what it meant that they were going to school. About the look on her mother's face when she'd asked if Sam would be magic too. About whether or not she was a fool to think she might find someone there who could see him too.

Sam couldn't answer those questions and would probably have been offended by half of them anyway. And if Luna asked any of them of her mother, she knew she'd only make her worry. And her mother worried a lot. And not just about Luna.

Because of course, Luna knew what it meant that they never ate seconds at dinner. That sometimes, breakfast and lunch were both just a slice of bread. She knew what it meant that her clothes were always old and worn, no matter how much magic her mother used to keep them together and that her mother always took extra shifts whenever they were offered. She knew what it meant that Christmas was only marked by a cup of hot cocoa and birthdays just meant blowing out the same stubby little candle year after year and wishing for things that never came true.

Luna had never spoken any of these truths out loud and her mother didn't mention it either. Really, her mother tried so hard to keep Luna from the realities of their life that Luna never dared bring up that she already knew. That the children at school spoke the words even if she didn't. That her teachers always asked her about lunch with concern in their eyes. That she saw the stressed looks and tired sighs her mother tried to hide. Because of course, Luna knowing would have broken her mother's heart. And Luna did that often enough as it was.

It wasn't that her mother said it. Or even suggested it. No, Luna's mother was always full of love and light and assurances for her daughter. It was just that the rest of the world said it. The rest of the world shouted it, really. And it was hard to listen to just that one voice. Especially when sometimes, that one voice sounded so worn out. So beat down. So dead tired.

That tired in her eyes was another thing Luna knew the meaning of. And it was another thing her mother never mentioned. But she didn't need to. The children at the muggle school never failed to remind her of it. And though Luna had once dismissed these taunts with all the others, as she'd gotten older, she'd started seeing how right they were. She'd learned to recognize that certain type of sigh that was exhausted in a way that went bone deep. She'd learned to catch the fall in her mother's face when she thought Luna wasn't looking. She'd learned to read the little flicker of something like pain every time Luna mentioned Sam.

So she mentioned him less. She mentioned the children and their cruel words less. She tried her hardest to be the good, normal girl she was certain her mother wanted. A girl Luna knew she was not.

Now Luna huffed a breath and rolled onto her back, staring up at the ceiling and trying to push her thoughts elsewhere.

This was difficult because the only other place her thoughts seemed to want to settle was on the prospect of Hogwarts. And that kept leading her back in circles to the same place she'd ended up moments ago.

Because she would be going to Hogwarts. Her mother had said it would be good for her. She would meet new people who would be kinder and better than those muggle children. She would meet people like her. People with magic.

And that was exciting, of course. But it was also terrifying. Because what if the children there, for all that they too had magic, weren't kinder? What if she slipped and mentioned Sam and it all just ended up the same. What if she wasn't any good at the magic because she'd been so careful with it before? What if what if what if.

And Luna didn't have any answers. No one did.

Her only consolation, really, was that even if it all went horribly wrong, at least Sam would be there. Because when she'd asked her mother if Sam was magic too, her mother's face had gone tight the way it always did when Sam came up and then relaxed the way it always did when she realized she was showing it. And then she'd smiled and said of course he was magic. And of course he could go with her if he wanted. All magical children were welcome at Hogwarts.

Which had made Luna frown.

"If he's magic and all magic kids go to Hogwarts when they're eleven like you said before, how come he didn't go when he turned eleven?" she'd asked. Which to her seemed a fair question. Sam was thirteen.

And then she'd thought about it for a moment and realized that if no one else could see Sam, then probably no one would have known to send him a letter. Which was rather rude of them, of course, but made sense at least.

In her usual fashion, however, Luna's mother had just smiled and tucked a bit of hair behind Luna's ear. "Maybe he was waiting for you," she suggested.

Which was a nice answer, of course. But not a logical one. Not that Luna had said it. She knew her mother only wanted to be kind. To protect her. So, as she often did, Luna let her mother think that she believed her.

Which left her back in the place she'd been trying to avoid: thinking about the little ways Luna lied to her mother. And all the little ways Luna's mother lied back.

The thing was that now, faced with being away from her, Luna knew she would miss those lies. She would miss having someone to run to and a shoulder to cry on and a whisper of 'you're not crazy' that she could count on. She would miss the safety of those little deceptions. She would miss having someone who could sometimes almost convince her they were true.

And Luna so desperately wanted them to be true.

Groaning slightly, Luna rolled over again, looking back out at the window and the sliver of sky she could make out through it. She wished she could just fall asleep. She wished her head would shut up and she could get the rest she needed and avoid thinking about these foolish things she couldn't change.

But she couldn't. All she could do, it seemed, was watch the moon through the window and hope.

And that was what she did. Through the night and into the wee hours of the morning, she hoped. As she pretended to sleep when she heard her mother's footsteps, she hoped behind closed eyes. While they squeezed through the crush of apparition, she hoped into that strange void between places. And when they walked through the archway that separated the muggle world from Diagon Alley, she hoped a little more, just for luck. Luck she realized she might need more than she'd realized as they stepped into the bustling world beyond the brick wall.

Luna had never been to Diagon Alley before. Her mother usually went alone when she went at all. Which wasn't often. They only ever went shopping for necessities and more often than not, the muggle alternative was simply cheaper. And besides, there were more second hand muggle shops anyway. But there were some things that simply couldn't be bought second hand and others that definitely couldn't be bought in muggle London. A wand was one of those things that fit both descriptions and which Luna apparently had to be present for.

So here they were, walking down the street with Luna clutching her mother's arm and trying not to notice the empty space next to her where Sam should have been.

She had hoped, when her mother had told her what they were doing, that Sam might be able to come so they could both get their wands together, but her mother had said that they would get Luna's first and then, if he wanted, she would take Sam to get his own later.

It had been one of those awkward moments that sometimes happened when Luna managed to forget that even her mother didn't entirely believe her when she insisted that Sam was real. Because those words and that plan... it was all designed to avoid embarrassment. To prevent anyone from ever knowing that she was crazy. It was designed to skirt around awkward questions and pretend Luna's mother believed her when in that moment, they both knew she didn't.

But Luna had shoved the hurt deep deep deep down and played along because she knew she needed a wand. She'd apologized to Sam a million times over and would do it again, but... well. She supposed if need be, he could always use hers.

So now she was in a strange place filled with strange people trying to pretend she didn't already miss her best friend. And though Luna would have generally considered herself rather good at pretending, right now, she knew she was failing.

Thankfully, the wand shop was a fascinating enough place to provide at least a momentary distraction. The room they stepped into was cluttered with paper and bits of wood, boxes stacked high and labelled with little curly bits of shorthand Luna couldn't read but very much wanted to try to decipher. It was an intriguing place and unlike anything Luna had ever seen and the man who ran it was, it seemed, precisely as odd as his shop.

He'd seemed to pop up from nowhere at all at the sound of the little bell over the door and had smiled with an excitement that left Luna stuck between her own enthusiasm and a hint of something like fear at the strange intensity of his stare.

"Ah..." he'd murmured, looking down at her in a way that reminded her rather sharply of yesterday's visitor, minus the moonlight beard and with eyes that were strangely silver. It felt, like it had yesterday, as though someone was looking through her. Looking into her.

"This will be fun," the wandmaker said to no one in particular, and then, with no explanation whatsoever about what that was supposed to mean, he'd disappeared into the shelves stacked with little rectangular boxes that Luna supposed must be wands, leaving Luna to hold still tighter to her mother's arm and resist looking at that spot by the window where she knew Sam would be standing if he was here.

It wasn't long, thankfully, before the wandmaker returned and when he did, he came with stacks of those little boxes in his arms which he unloaded on an already very cluttered table. "Try this one," he suggested, pulling a wand from a box at the top of his little pile and handing it to her. Luna took it. And then she waited, not really knowing what, exactly 'try this' meant in such a situation.

"Give it a wave," the man prompted, imitating the gesture with his own hand.

Luna waved it. Nothing happened.

She heard one of those long tired sighs from behind her and tried to keep her face still as something cold and slimy and disappointed shoved its way into her throat. "You've got to use magic, Luna," her mother said oh so patiently.

Luna swallowed the slimy thing and tried not to wince as it twisted down her throat and into her belly where it seemed to burst into a billion little creatures with wings. But she ignored that. She ignored the panic inching up her spine and she waved the wand again, trying to let go of that tight hold she always kept on her magic.

A lamp exploded.

Luna ducked, the panic in her spine springing up to wrap around her head and make it fuzzy as those creatures in her stomach died all at once and made her sick. "I'm sorry!" she squealed, pressing back against her mother and the relative safety she provided. "I'm sorry!"

A hand landed on her shoulder and Luna looked up to find her mother... smiling. Luna blinked, turning back to the wandkeeper. Who was also smiling.

"No worries, no worries. A bad fit, that's all," he informed her with a calm indifference Luna couldn't begin to understand. "Let's try a different one," he added, frowning at the little labels on his stack of boxes. "Perhaps... mmm... this one."

He offered a new wand, holding his empty hand to take the one Luna was still clutching with white knuckles she hadn't noticed.

Luna stared at him. He was mad. He had to be. Perhaps even more mad than she was.

But Luna's mother just squeezed her shoulder and said gently, "Everyone blows something up when trying out wands. I'd be surprised if you didn't."

This seemed ridiculous, of course, and like one of those sweet, untrue things Luna knew her mother sometimes said. Habitually, she glanced to the side, wondering what Sam thought of all this. Because Sam was usually far better at thinking reasonably when Luna was busy panicking.

But of course, Sam wasn't there.

Luna looked back at the wandmaker, thinking for a moment before she sighed and bit her lip, taking the offered wand and handing the old one back. By her best reasoning, which she wasn't sure was very good reasoning at all, there was no good reason why the wandkeeper would lie. So he might be telling the truth, however insane that sounded.

This second wand, however, made the papers on the desk start flying around and Luna became a little less sure of the whole thing and little more desperate in her wishes that Sam was there to tell her if she should have stopped. But since he wasn't, Luna saw no better course than to keep going, trying not to lose faith with ever little disaster she caused. And there were several.

The next wand she tried made the little globe on the desk start ballooning alarmingly. The fourth she did nothing at all and the fifth started emitting angry red sparks and hissing rather threateningly.

The wandmakers snatched that one away rather quickly, shaking his head. "Not at all," he informed her with a shake of his head. "But no worries, no worries... let me see... Try this."

Luna took the newly offered wand as she had the others, which was to say, without much hope at all and with a whole lot of anxiety that she tried very hard not to show. This time, however, the anxiety was finally unnecessary because when she waved the wand, the lamp she'd burst earlier put itself back together again.

The wandmaker looked at it appreciatively, then back at her with that gaze like her could read her. "Intriguing," he informed them, adding a little smile Luna thought was perhaps supposed to be comforting but very much wasn't.

"What's intriguing," Luna's mother asked carefully, a hint of apprehension in the words. Luna didn't like that even as she held tight to this wand that had finally done something non-destructive.

"That wand," the man said, moving around to their side of the table with a box in hand and sounding utterly unconcerned by the quiet concern in his client's voice. "It's an interesting combination. Willow tends to be best paired with dragon heartstring or phoenix feathers, which compensate for its... ah... specialization. Unicorn hair tends to be specialized itself and that both wood and core are exceptionally loyal...." He stared off at nothing at all for a long moment and Luna got the distinct impression that he was finishing the thought inside his own head. "It's seven galleons," he added suddenly, looking at them once more with that unnerving stare.

Luna's mother frowned for a moment before opening her purse and pulling out the seven required galleons with a tightness on her face Luna didn't think was just because the old man was being odd. But then, she thought, maybe it was partly that, because the next thing the wandmaker did was lean down with his gaze unnervingly focussed on hers, and hold out the box to her. She placed the wand carefully in it, trying hard not to look at that strange silver stare.

"Here you go," the wandmaker said, holding the now closed box out for her, "Willow and unicorn hair. Ten and a quarter inches." And then with his eyes still glued to hers and his voice taking on a tone Luna didn't at all like, added, "Brittle."

Luna stared at him, transfixed by his odd, clear gaze. By his strange candy floss hair. By the something like warning, or perhaps just accusation, in his voice as he spoke that last word.

"Let's go, Luna," her mother said suddenly, her hand pulling slightly on Luna's arm. "I want to drop you back home before I finish the shopping."

Lunna nodded but took the hand her mother offered and let her pull her out of the shop, her eyes still watching the strange man as he turned back to his pile of boxes like nothing much of note had just happened.

Back at home, Luna nearly ran through the door, tripping her way across the threshold and flopping down on the couch next to Sam, her concern over the wandmaker's strangeness utterly replaced by the relief of being back in a familiar place with familiar people. From here, with Sam by her side, some part of the world that had been jangling free in the strange streets of Diagon Alley and under the strange stare of the wandmaker, slipped back into place.

She took a deep breath and turned to look at Sam, ready to fulfill the promise of information she'd offered him before they'd left. "It was so weird," she told him without preamble. "There were so many people all over the place and all moving in all sorts of directions. Like in school, but with adults. I suppose you wouldn't have liked that, really. I didn't much either. But there were sweet shops and an ice cream parlor. We didn't go, but it all looked so good. And the book shop had books out in front of it too and they were all so shiny and new and I wish you could have come."

Sam snorted, a predictable response to those rare moments when Luna forgot she had to breathe and strung sentences together willy nilly. "I wish I could have come too," he agreed. "But come on, give me more. What was in the sweet shops? Were there weird magical things anywhere? Stuff you can't get here?"

"There was -"

"Luna?" came a polite but firm interruption and Luna looked away from Sam to her mother, who was still standing in the door, ready to return to her errands. "I'm going back out alright? I'll be home in an hour or so."

Something about the words caught on the edges of Luna's mind. Something about the look on her mother's face as she watched Luna, that tight thing that came from Sam and a tired thing Luna was used to and a scared thing that was new. Luna's heart stumbled over it and she resisted the urge to look at Sam to see if he saw it too. Because that would just make the tight and the tired things even worse.

"Okay," Luna answered slowly, not sure why this felt so strange all of the sudden.

Luna's mother nodded and smiled a smile that wasn't happy at all. And then she sighed again and, as she turned away, Luna caught that falling down of her face that made her stumbling heart trip and collide with walls she hadn't known were there.

Unbidden, that word the wandmaker had spoken ricocheted into Luna's head.

Brittle.

Luna pushed it aside and turned back to Sam, trying to ignore the way her heart and her joy and her everything did indeed feel rather brittle just then.

A/N: It's a long one (yay!). Hopefully you enjoy that bc I'm not sure how much time I'll have to write in the next few week. This week is the last one of classes and then I have finals so... other things will be happening. I would love to be able to continue this weekly update thing, but I'm not entirely sure how realistic that is. An attempt will be made. 

In other news, I had to renew my driver's license the other day bc ya girl turned 21 this past week so I need a new one and... it costs money? Like, okay, I was expecting a fee, but like, a $5-10 processing fee. And it's $30 literally to fill out a form so they can print and mail me a new license. Which is insane, frankly and I'm kinda mad about it bc what? What am I even paying for? Like, okay, printing, which is fairly cheap. Mailing, which is very cheap and labor I guess, but like, it's online so presumably the data I filled in goes straight into their database and then someone has to click print. Which really shouldn't be $30. And that entire rant basically boils down to I'm a poor college student and don't like spending money lol.

Anyway, as usual, I hope y'all enjoyed and I'll be back again soon!