(no subject)

[radishesncorks.livejournal.com]

Date: October 25th, 1999 - Late night, near midnight
Status: Public it is, then. (Er, if you don't mind, that is, Carrie.)
Setting: Outside, on the Manor grounds
Summary: Luna is practicing her Astronomy and waiting for Saturn to rise so that she can track it and hopefully predict where and when it will rise in 60 years' time.


Luna fiddled with her telescope, finally managing to make it stay upright properly. She sighed, taking her wand from behind her ear, and peered through the telescope, trying to find the waning Moon in the telescope's viewing field. It was just rising. Mars was bright tonight, but Saturn, the planet she was interested in, would not rise for another hour or so. Pointing her wand at the parchment in her hand, she noted down the positions of the stars in the sky, paying particular attention to the relative distance between the Pleiades and Taurus. If her calculations were correct, this was the area where Saturn would appear.

She was tracking the movement of Saturn every month in order to find if she could satisfactorily predict where it would be when the time came for it to intersect with Halley's Comet, if it did intersect with Halley's Comet. It never hurt to be extra sure of things, and two sightings of Crumple-Horned Snorkacks would definitely confirm their existence.

Comments

[carrietta.livejournal.com]

Carrie swallowed her irritation at not being noticed. At least it was preferable to having the poor guy run screaming, which is what usually happened if a living person accidentally glimpsed her. She remembered how awkward it had been tracking down her surviving classmates to apologise before the Almost-Apocalypse. It had been kind of frustrating when the world hadn't ended after she'd gone to all that effort. And at least the girl could see her, and appeared to be a normal human ("normal" being a relative term).

She smiled, just in case she suddenly became visible to Newt, and said, "Hi, I'm Carrie White. Nice to meet you."

[electrictadpole.livejournal.com]

Newt whirled around, thinking someone new had entered the scene. Then he realised the voice was coming from right next to him. He cautiously squinted at the mist. "Uh, Newt Pulsifer," he said, twisting his head sideways the way you do when someone points out a cloud that looks like a gerbil. "Hey! I can kinda see you... uh, whoah. Where'd all that blood come from?"

[radishesncorks.livejournal.com]

"Nice to meet you too." said Luna, smiling back at her. "And apparently this is Newt Pulsifer? That's an odd name. I thought you said you were Newton..." said Luna, looking at Newt. Then her face brightened. "Oh, I get it! It's a kind of nickname isn't it?" She carried on, "Well, the only nickname I've ever had was Loony. I wouldn't really mind if you called me that, though it isn't a nickname I would really give myself. But then nicknames are supposed to be given to you by other people, and most people who knew me called me that anyway when they thought I wasn't listening. I suppose you could call me Loony then, if you wanted." Turning to Carrie, she said, "Do you have a nickname too?"

"Oh, there was a ghost in my school who had blood stains all over him. They were silver though, and didn't drip so much. I think he liked having blood stains on him though. It made him scarier. Even the prefects were afraid of him." commented Luna.

[carrietta.livejournal.com]

"Um, hi Luna, hi Mr Pulsifer," Carrie said. "The blood's sort of a long story, I got it dumped on me back when I was alive. And I don't have a nickname, unless you count what the kids at school used to call me, but those names weren't very nice." She looked at Luna again. "Did you get picked on too? It wasn't very nice of them to call you Loony." She did, however, think that perhaps they had been right in Luna's case. She'd only been speaking for five minutes and Carrie could already tell she was at least a little eccentric.

[radishesncorks.livejournal.com]

"Oh. So that was it." Luna said. "I was wondering too, but it's not exactly polite to ask about things like that. Of course, then you get the ones who boast about it, but generally they don't like to talk about it." Luna nodded satisfactorily. "I wasn't exactly picked on. They just didn't really like me. Except for Harry. And Ginny. And after that Neville. Hermione and Ron are still having trouble adjusting to me. As for the rest of the school, well - let's just say that they thought I was different." Luna really hadn't minded being different. She just wished that people wouldn't keep taking her things like that - it was rather inconvinient. This ghost girl was probably ostracized as well, going by what she had said, and Luna felt a brief surge of pity for her.

"Hey, that means that you were a witch too, right?" exclaimed Luna suddenly. "That's great! I never thought that I'd meet another witch here. Well, besides Draco, of course, but he doesn't count - at least, not really."

[electrictadpole.livejournal.com]

Newt blinked. Most of that conversation had gone right over his head. Witches? Draco... wasn't there someone by that name staying in the manor? Bullying. A subject he knew quite a bit about, and latched onto gratefully.

"I was picked on. Kinda. I mean, mostly I just got laughed at, really. But the really mean kids didn't tend to notice me."

[radishesncorks.livejournal.com]

"So what did you get laughed at about?" prompted Luna gently, absently pushing her wand up behind her ear from where it was threatening to fall. Newt looked like he would have made a good Ravenclaw. Or perhaps a Hufflepuff. And indeed the latter looked more likely. Luna thought that perhaps she already knew why Newt got looked down upon. In Hogwarts it was usually the Hufflepuffs who got picked on for their good nature and their loyalty. She wouldn't be surprised if it was the same way with Newt.

[electrictadpole.livejournal.com]

"Well, um. Mainly because I kept fiddling with electronic things. And breaking them."

Too late, Newt remembered that he was supposed to be the resident electrician. "Um! But that's all, totally behind me now," he gabbled, "And uh, I'm now quite good with computers, actually!"

[radishesncorks.livejournal.com]

"Oh," said Luna, a little surprised. Hmm, perhaps her judgement was a tad off. Then she smiled brightly again. "Elek-tronic. That's Muggle right? I've never really gotten the hang of that either - it's always much easier using magic. I've always found it strange how Muggles can manage without magic, but there, I've broken one of Hermione's rules again." She paused. "I can just manage to turn on my computer, but I tend to just write out my things the regular way, and Hermione's charm translates it to the computer for me. And I'm always afraid of breaking it. I suppose if my computer did get spoilt you wouldn't mind fixing it, would you?"

Pausing a while, Luna wondered why people would pour blood on Cass-, no, it was Carrie. Then it struck her. Turning to Carrie, she said, "Was it because you were a witch that you got picked on?"

[carrietta.livejournal.com]

"Sort of. But I got picked on all the time, way before anyone knew." Carrie shrugged. "Was that why nobody liked you? Everyone thinks magic would be fun, but it wasn't for me. 'S kinda nice to know I ain't the only one."

[radishesncorks.livejournal.com]

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