บท 298: The Return of Luna Lovegood
Oleandra lifted the tip of her large, floppy sun hat to take a better look around King's Cross station. Her fingers were trembling and she had butterflies in her stomach— she had never been quite so nervous before. How would her friends and sisters react upon seeing her alive and well? What would people think?
She fingered her prefect's badge anxiously; she just knew she should have made her entrance with a bang, instead of walking through Platform Nine and Three-Quarters like a mouse, hiding her face under a large hat. She would have to show herself eventually, so why make it harder for herself? Now, she'd just have to play it cool— pretend like coming back from the dead was no big deal for her.
Not that she had even died to begin with.
Oleandra checked her pocket watch again, comparing it to the station's big wall clock: five minutes to eleven o'clock. She had already adjusted the time before leaving France; at this point, she was just delaying the inevitable.
There were still stragglers tearfully kissing their parents goodbye on the platform. Oleandra's parents had never done this; they'd always brought her and her sisters to the station hours in advance, and left without making too much of a fuss or too many outward displays of affection.
In any case, the Hogwarts Express would be leaving soon; surely everyone she knew had already boarded the train, right? Pulling her luggage behind her, Oleandra boarded the train and began searching for an empty compartment to hide in. Unfortunately, due to her late arrival, it appeared as though not even a single one had been left unoccupied.
Just as she was reaching the tail end of the train, on the verge of giving up and resigning herself to her fate of having to share a compartment with a stranger, she finally spotted an empty one. Oleandra quickly slid the glass-panelled door open, stepped inside, and stood on her tiptoes to place her luggage on the racks above the seats.
"Didn't your sister warn you?" a sing-song voice spoke behind her. "The most dramatic thing you can do in a story is to motivate the main character by dying. But coming back to life like that, won't that alienate the readers by cheapening the story?"
Oleandra nearly dropped her suitcase on her head in surprise upon hearing the voice. She whirled around; who else but Loony Lovegood could have spouted such nonsense? Somehow, she had managed to walk past the strange girl without seeing her. She was rather hard to miss, with her wand performing a balancing act on her carrot-earring-adorned ear, much like a Muggle would hold a pencil on their ear to free their hands. She was also holding her magazine upside-down.
What a quirky girl.
"Hello, Lovegood," said Oleandra steadily. "It's been a while, hasn't it?"
Luna Lovegood's father owned The Quibbler; a magazine that took it upon itself to publish alternative facts; in other words, complete and utter codswallop.
"Yes," she replied dreamily, "I thought it was time I introduced myself to the plot; but don't tell Harry I said that, okay? I have a feeling he wouldn't find it as funny as you and your sister would."
Oleandra wasn't especially amused, but Luna's words rang true; if ever there had been a main character in real life, then it would have been Harry. Even so, Oleandra had no idea how to reply, so an awkward silence fell upon the compartment.
"Er… right," said Oleandra, who was now completely flummoxed. Daphne hadn't told her everything about her own adventures with the Time-Turner, so she had no idea what Luna was referring to. "Mind if I sit with you?"
"No one's ever asked if they could sit with me!" said Luna brightly, before tilting her head slightly to the side and staring quizzically at her. "But shouldn't you tell your sisters that you're still alive? Astoria wrote to me all summer, and she never mentioned you coming back from the grave. Are you an Inferius, by the way? You have to tell me if you're one."
Oleandra's first reaction was to feel sorry for the poor friendless girl. But she also needed to face reality; Luna might be an extremely strange girl, but there was a wisdom to her madness. As always, she was right about this sort of thing: Oleandra would have to face Daphne, Astoria and Tracey, sooner or later.
"Is that a prefect's badge?" Luna continued, pointing at the silvery emblem pinned to Oleandra's breast pocket. "Shiny."
Oleandra suddenly remembered that prefects were supposed to gather in the wagon at the front of the train. Dumbledore had inadvertently given her an incredible advantage in her quest to amass followers by offering her authority over her fellow students. It wouldn't do to squander this opportunity by failing at her first ever task, would it?
In order to restore magic to the land, she had allied herself with the Order of the Round Table. She needed to assemble her own forces before the Dark Lord ascended to power; by then, it would already be far too late to organize a proper resistance.
Dumbledore's Order of the Phoenix, which the French had told her about, would likely not be able to hold out against Voldemort's full power, but at least they would provide cover, allowing Oleandra's own forces to flourish; but the real question was, who could she recruit?
Her followers would need to be competent enough, unaligned with Dumbledore's or Voldemort's forces, and unopposed to revealing magic to the Muggles. Convincing anyone to follow a fifteen-year-old girl might prove challenging, as well…
A problem for another day, perhaps.
"Sorry, Luna," said Oleandra slightly regretfully, to her own surprise. "I'll come back to sit with you after I've completed my prefect duties."
Luna nodded, before plunging her nose back into her upside-down magazine. Oleandra shook her head bemusedly, before leaving the carriage and walking up the corridor, as she made her way to the front of the train. The Hogwarts Express's steam whistle suddenly sounded, and Oleandra accelerated her pace. She didn't want to be caught in the crowd as the last of the stragglers boarded the train. And speak of the devil…
"Hey, Longbottom," said Oleandra as she stepped over his suitcase. "Coming through."
Neville's face turned as white as snow upon seeing her. She'd have asked him, 'what's wrong, you look as though you've seen a ghost,', but Oleandra abstained from making a comment. Most ghost-based Muggle idioms didn't really make sense to those raised in the Wizarding World, as they didn't find ghosts particularly spooky.
Oleandra quickly located the prefects' carriage and stepped lightly into the fifth years' compartment. Five other prefects had already taken their seats— and one of them, Oleandra knew very well…
"Y-you're supposed to be dead!" Draco sputtered. "Father said—"
It figured that Lord Voldemort would recall his Death Eaters to his side after his revival, Oleandra thought to herself. And Lucius Malfoy had very certainly been one of them.
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