Chapter 8: The First Steps Toward Hogwarts
The days blurred together like watercolor dreams, each one kissed by summer winds and the shimmer of magic. Luna was now eleven. Her golden hair had grown longer, often braided in loose waves by her mother, while her silvery-blue eyes held a kind of clarity that unsettled the mundane and intrigued the mystic.
In the quiet village of Ottery St. Catchpole, she was just a curious girl with odd questions. But inside her cottage—within enchanted walls shielded from even the most prying magical eyes—she was more.
Her mother had crafted for her a magical regimen, nothing too flashy—incantation control, elemental affinity, the shaping of soft magical fields. Luna preferred to do it with the window open, often catching the wind in her hands as if cradling whispers.
The System had stabilized further. Though still partially locked, it could now synchronize with her ambient magic, offering structured guidance.
System Sync Level: 52.3%
Core Status Interface unlocked.
Time-Space Sensitivity: Active
Dream Stability Protocol: Initiated
Cognitive Shielding: Moderate
This allowed her to prevent dream injury and accidental leakage of subconscious projections, something that had once caused her to whisper truths in her sleep.
She dreamed not only of the past—but of crossroads. A circle of white stones beneath a sky with two moons. A place of waiting. A presence watching her not with malice, but with curiosity.
She never spoke of that dream.
Her powers were growing at a deliberate pace. Rather than raw spells, she crafted magical tools—dreamcatchers that could store memories, ink that shimmered when written with intention, even a protective cloak laced with stardust thread harvested under a meteor shower.
Her father encouraged her creativity. Her mother warned her of the risks. Luna walked the tightrope between both, learning to disguise innovation as innocent play. Ravenclaw traits bloomed early in her—intellect woven with oddity.
One morning in July, as the cicadas hummed and her dream journal lay unfinished, a soft magical pulse alerted her.
Her system flickered.
Incoming Magical Delivery...
Magical Authentication Seal Confirmed: Ministry of Magic, Hogwarts Branch
The summer air over Ottery St. Catchpole shimmered with lazy golden heat, bees hummed drowsily near the hedgerows, and in the quiet clearing behind the Lovegood home, Luna sat cross-legged in the grass. A ring of white stones surrounded her, etched with softly glowing runes of her own design—experimental, slightly unstable, and lovingly crafted. Her long, almost silvery-blonde hair shimmered faintly under the sunlight, drifting as if caught in a breeze that wasn't there.
Her fingers fluttered in the air like dancers. The spell circles responded. A soft, silvery pulse radiated from the runes, adjusting minutely with each shift of her intent. Her eyes—misty but sharp underneath the surface—tracked the flow of invisible energy. For anyone else, it would be chaos. For her, it was symmetry.
It wasn't magic from a textbook. It was instinct, memory, and improvisation. Some of it born from dreams. Some from pain.
System synchronization: 50.3%New feature unlocked: Temporal Thread Sense (Passive)Warning: Prolonged use may disrupt emotional stability. Regulation protocol active.
Luna blinked at the familiar flicker in her vision—hovering, half-transparent, half-intimate. "You're awake again," she whispered, the edges of a smile dancing on her lips. "Welcome back, little ghost."
The system didn't respond in words. It never had a voice, not since the rift broke it. But she felt its acknowledgment, like a warm hum behind her ribs.