Xenophilius was having trouble with the tent; it was stubbornly refusing to take on any kind of shape. It was laying on the forest floor in a mass of canvas, rope and pegs.
Luna sighed and took off her backpack. “Let me do it, Daddy,” she said, taking out her wand.
Xenophilius backed off. His usually pale face was pink with exertion.
“Erecto,” said Luna, pointing her wand at the jumble of fabric.
The tent blew up like a balloon filled with air. The pegs drove themselves into the ground and the ropes tightened. Within fifteen seconds, the little green tent was fully assembled.
“Very nice, Luna,” said Xenophilius, rummaging through his own backpack. “They teach you that at school?”
“No, Hermione mentioned it,” said Luna. “Did you bring canned Plimpies?”
Xenophilius pulled a clear glass jar from the backpack and smiled. “Of course.”
It was about nine o'clock and the sun was just preparing its descent. The Swedish forest was brilliantly lit up with color, which filtered through the many-shaded leaves, casting interesting patterns on the ground.
“I expect the Snorkack has already detected our odor and is moving away,” said Xenophilius, looking around as though expecting to see one of the elusive creatures behind a bush. “We will lure it back with a combination of chamber music and burning herbs.”
With this, he produced an old-fashioned phonograph and set it on a tree stump.
Luna leaned back against a tree and closed her eyes. She needed this. The dreadful battle was two months gone, but she could still hear the screams of agony and the dreams were nightly. Friends tortured, dying, the smell of freshly spilled blood, the weeping of the bereaved.
Out here in the quiet forest, there was none of that. There was only calm and solitude and the slightly exciting sensation that being in a new place brought to the pit of her stomach. Yes, it was just what she needed.
Xenophilius had selected a record and begun it. Beethoven’s Third filled the nearly-dark clearing.
“How will the Snorkack hear the music?” asked Luna. “What if it’s miles away?”
“Ah, but you’re forgetting the Snorkack’s ability to hear through the tips of its horns,” said Xenophilius. “Eyewitnesses have confirmed that the creature has incredibly sensitive hearing. It will hear this lovely Muggle music and smell my herbs, which will bring it closer, until we can eventually pet it, feed it and earn its trust.”
Luna smiled. “It sounds like a good plan. Can I have that jar of Plimpies?”
Xenophilius tossed her the jar and she fished out a Plimpy, which had been coated in breadcrumbs and fried onions.
She closed her eyes again, listening, beneath the strains of Beethoven, for the barely-discernible sounds of the forest. A twig breaking here, a bird singing there.
A loud and rather rough noise made her open her eyes. Xenophilius was trying to make a fire, but with little success. He had piled twigs within the circle of stones, but they were refusing to burn.
Luna took pity on him and helped build the fire. Within a few minutes, it was crackling merrily, a clump of herbs within it giving off a sweet scent.
Dinner was the Plimpies with a few Dirigible Plums thrown in for good measure. Luna also roasted a few marshmallows for dessert, but Xenophilius did not have a sweet tooth.
When it was dark in the forest, it was dark. By six-thirty it was so dark that Luna couldn’t see her own hand, even with the dim light of the fire.
Xenophilius hauled two lanterns out of the backpack and handed one to Luna. “I’m going to look over this new book in the tent,” he said, proffering The Unseen: A Wizard’s Guide to the Mysteries of the Unknown. “Will you sit out here a while?”
“Yes,” said Luna. “I want to watch for the Snorkack.”
Xenophilius laughed and ruffled her hair. “Don’t stay up too long, my dear. The delicate Snorkack may be frightened by your presence, even with its favorite music and scents to placate it.”
“I’ll just wait for a few more minutes,” said Luna, leaning back against a great oak.
Her father went inside the tent and closed the flap. The yellow lantern light made an orange splotch on the side of the green tent.
Luna didn’t turn her lantern on. She simply stared into the darkness, imagining two great crumpled horns emerging from the undergrowth”
And then she could see them again; the images were burned into her mind and punctuated by screams of familiar voices.
“Avada Kedavra!”
“Help me, over here!”
“Expelliarmus!”
The noise was deafening, the sounds themselves horrible. Luna ducked as a curse sailed over her head. Somebody knocked into her and she kicked whoever it was in the groin.
Her attacker rolled out of sight and she jumped up, her blood boiling, her fear immense, her senses heightened.
She dimly identified a masked Death Eater as an enemy and she shot a Jelly-Legs Jinx at him. The spell struck him in the middle of the back and he fell to the stone floor, his legs quivering.
And then a spray of blood came from the teeming mass of bodies and soaked the front of her robes and her own scream was drowned in the horror all around her”
Luna turned on the lantern and the warm white light comforted her. The terrible images began to recede, although they were still lurking, a part of her now.
Breathing deeply, she scanned the expanse of forest, looking once more for the Crumple-Horned Snorkack. He would come, attracted by the smells and sounds and he would make everything all right somehow.
She suddenly wished that she’d brought something to read, but the trip had come about unexpectedly and she’d had little time to pack. She was alone with her thoughts.
The music was playing over and over again. Despite its beauty, it was becoming repetitive and annoying. Just as Luna considered going inside the tent, she heard a rustle in the bushes.
Her heart leapt into her throat and she leaned forward, looking for a pair of great twisted horns.
The sound was coming closer. It was faint, but the Snorkack had famously light footsteps. Almost all sightings confirmed it.
And then a little red squirrel popped out from behind one tree and scampered up another, chattering to itself.
And it came to her, not slowly, but like a lightning-bolt of hot, searing, painful truth.
The Crumpled-Horn Snorkack did not exist. It had never existed. It was a ridiculous fancy, created in the minds of a few people with too much time on their hands.
How had she not seen this earlier? The creature was ridiculous, it wasn’t consistent with any other magical beasts. It didn’t make any sense and Luna had never had so much as a moment’s doubt before this.
She felt her face and was surprised to find it wet. Tears were slowly streaming down her cheeks.
This was silly, to be upset over something that had never been. She should be mature enough to handle this and move on with new knowledge.
But instead she was sitting in a dark Swedish forest crying her eyes out, not really for the Snorkack, but for her innocence, which had been so lately taken from her. The things she’d seen, the things she’d done, they’d changed her and the Snorkack was the last straw.
The follies of childhood were behind her now. She was an adult, but had perhaps not been an adult until this very moment.
This thought stopped the flow of tears and gave Luna an oddly pleased feeling. Being grown-up was not necessarily a bad thing, just a hard thing. It was a responsibility that she’d been working up to her entire life and now it was here.
She dried her tears on the sleeve of her sweatshirt and smiled to herself. There were good things coming and good things going and she just had to accept that.
When her face was clean, she picked up her lantern and ducked into the tent, leaving something behind her in the still clearing.