“Hello Sir or Miss, have you any room for a servant in your household?”
The fifth door Barmy knocked upon was the first not to be slammed in his face. The young house elf was rather taken aback; would finding a new family to serve really be this easy? Putting on his most winning smile, Barmy looked up at his possible mistress-to-be.
What he saw took his breath away. Barmy was staring up at the most gorgeous human he had ever seen.
Her hair was a beautiful mix of gold and brown; long and rather scraggly, not unnaturally sleek like most humans. Her skin was pale and creamy like milk--but the eyes! Large and luminous, glowing blue orbs almost as big as his own. To Barmy, it was love at first sight.
“Oh, hello little Sir,” said the girl sweetly in a lovely ethereal voice. It had taken her a moment to locate him; she had been looking around at her own head level. With a serene smile on her face, the girl knelt down and offered Barmy her hand. “Pleasure to meet you,” she said dreamily, surveying the elf with mild interest.
Barmy was suddenly and acutely aware of his every flaw. Of his wrinkly face, his crooked nose... At least his ears were large and hairy enough to make any self-respecting elf jealous...
“Pleasure’s mine,” squeaked Barmy breathlessly, a goofy smile plastered across his face as he shook hands with the girl. “I--I is Barmy the house elf, and I is looking for a new family to serve, Miss...” He broke off, looking at the girl with an expression of polite interest.
“Lovegood, Miss Lovegood,” the girl replied dreamily. “But you can call me Luna--you can call me anything, actually, anything but Loony.” She gave a sad sort of smile. “I don’t like being called Loony one bit.”
Peculiar. The girl seemed to have forgotten that Barmy was there. But it all seemed rather appealing to the house elf; he immediately stamped upon his own toes to clear his mind of the strange, foreign thoughts drifting across it.
“Well, Miss Luna,” said Barmy, stressing the “a” sound in her name. “Barmy is wondering if you is having the need of a servant in your home. I is looking for work, you see, because my last family is kicking me out.” Barmy’s ears drooped in shame as he looked up at the girl, sure that she would ask why he was dismissed. He was wrong.
“I see,” she simply stated serenely. “Father is always talking about how we need a servant, but I am rather against elf-enslavement. Hermione Granger is, too--you should meet her sometime.”
Poor Barmy could not help but drop open his mouth in shock. Against house elf enslavement? It was unheard of. But here she was, the loveliest girl Barmy had ever seen, with a blissfully sincere expression on her face.
“Well, you’d might as well come in,” Luna smiled, throwing open the door. Before Barmy could think, the beautiful girl and grabbed his hand and was leading her into ther abode.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Luna Lovegood’s house was by far the most unique he had ever seen. It was very small and very old, with dusty windows and faded furniture that seemed to have come from another century. But what shocked Barmy was the walls.
Every available inch of wallspace in the Lovegood household was plastered with paper: old yellowed newspaper clippings depicting ambiguous photographs of fearsome monsters; magazine articles cut in all shapes and sizes. Full-color moving images of the Crumple-horned Snorcacks and Heliopaths, exerpts of books and encyclopedias of mythical creatures. Wrinkling his overlong nose at the smell of must and rotting, Barmy looked up to see garlic, gurdyroots, and an odd assortment of trinkets and vegetables hanging from the ceiling.
“It’s to keep out vampires,” said Luna matter-of-factly as her companion turned his head away from a particularly pungent clove. “You get used to it after a while,” she added in a musing sort of voice. “Well, come on, little friend.”
Barmy followed Luna down the narrow, darkly lit hallway, weaving carefully about the teetering piles of magazines that lined the way. Each and every magazine was a different issue of The Quibbler; it seemed that this hallway served as a sort of unofficial archive. Seeing the look of befuddlement on Barmy’s face, Luna explained.
“Daddy is the editor of The Quibbler,” Luna said proudly. “We’ve been meaning to move into a house with a real library for quite some time, but we’ve just never gotten around to it. Ahh, here we are!”
Brushing dirty-blonde hair out of her eyes, Luna opened the creaky wooden door and ushered Barmy into her room. “It isn’t much,” she said apologetically, giving the house elf a sideways glance. “But it’s home to me.”
Barmy noted with relief that Miss Lovegood’s bedroom was much cleaner than the rest of the house. A pale blue rug covered the hardwood floor, and sunlight streamed through the windows past colorful floral curtains. Luna also had a curio cabinet containing some of the strangest items, but what really caught Barmy’s eye was the photograph on the bedside table.
Framed in ornate silver, the picture was obviously much-loved. The glass was blurred with marks from where it had been loving caressed by Luna’s delicate fingers. But behind it, clear as day, smiled a plump and happy-looking woman with a little girl perched upon her knee.
“That’s Mum,” said Luna dreamily, lifting the picture frame from the table and pressing her fingertips against the glass. “She died when I was little, you know.” She sniffed, almost inaudibly. “I still miss her a lot.”
Initially, Barmy had been embarrassed to be caught scrutinizing the girl’s belongings so closely. However, the feeling was quickly overwhelmed by a surge of pity as he watched Luna smile sadly at the picture. The little house elf was suddenly filled with a strange, inexplicable urge to comfort Luna. Closing his big, tennis ball eyes, Barmy tugged viciously on his ears to rid himself of this strange feeling.
When he opened them up again, Barmy reeled backwards in shock.
“Miss Luna!” he cried, his saucerlike green eyes now the size of baseballs. “What is that?”
Barmy With Love by FenrirG
Chapter Notes:
This was originally supposed to be a one-shot, but I now think that it will extend to two or three chapters. It's my first attempt at humor, so I'd love to hear what you think about it! (I haven't hit the funniest parts yet, so don't worry!
Also, as difficult as it is to believe, I am not JK Rowling. JK Rowling, a woman I have never met and has very likely never met me, owns Luna Lovegood, house-elves (as long as she doesn't give them clothes), and the magical world my story is set in. But the plot, happily, is my own. (So is Barmy, but he doesn't like to think that way).