It was the first day of a new school year at Hogwarts, and just like every first day in the history of the school, it was steeped, marinated, and deep-fried in tradition. Luna watched from the staff table as the anxious first-years were sorted into their respective houses, and applauded at the appropriate moments. Having been shoved into the magical academy head-first, she appreciated seeing it from the beginning. The young and naïve children stared at Luna when they walked into the hall, and she continued to get the occasional sideways glance. Let them stare at me, she thought. The more apprehension, the better. She wondered what sort of horrifying rumors had been spread on the Hogwarts Express, and a malicious smile broke across her face, further terrifying the paralyzed eleven-year-olds that continued to look in her direction.
She wasn’t supposed to be at Hogwarts. She was never supposed to have been there in the first place. The first time was an accident, a missed gear in the universal clockwork; somebody up there had made a mistake. It had been repaired, everything was fine, story over, full stop. Unfortunately for the Universe, things didn’t always end the way they were supposed to. This world swallowed her whole, gave her meaning, a case of Stockholm Syndrome in the worst way.
She didn’t want to go back; she couldn’t go back. But, like a small child being dragged out of bed on a school day, the invisible hand of Destiny grabbed her and put her right back where she was supposed to be.
And from the moment she was pulled back from the beyond, she wanted to go back. If life as a princess in a castle was supposed to be glorious, she was obviously doing something wrong. It was nice to see her sister and be home after almost a year, but she was already infected. She had to go back.
It was a simple enough process, really. After procuring some gold from the practically bottomless Royal Treasury, she ventured to the lowest levels of the caverns in the dark of night, where she found it. A place where her power was doubled, where she didn’t need Celestia to perform the portal spell. An amplifier.
She stepped directly into Dumbledore’s office, but found it empty, even in the middle of the day. Time passed quickly in this universe; the six months she’d spent here was only two weeks in Equestria. When she arrived, it was a few weeks into the summer holiday. After browsing the grounds, she eventually met Hagrid, who would divulge practically anything after a few rounds at the Hog’s Head. She learned that Dumbledore had an apartment in London, a spacious loft procured for him by a gracious Hogwarts alumnus that masqueraded as a successful real estate broker.
The Headmaster was not surprised when the prodigal princess knocked on his door early on that June afternoon. He only smiled, and let her inside. Dumbledore was the type one would expect to expect anything.
“I’ve been expecting you” he said.
“I had just realized that I forgot to formally resign my position” she replied.
“Do you plan to resign?”
“No”.
After a few rounds of firewhiskey, Dumbledore eventually consented to let her stay in his massive apartment until the beginning of the term.
“It gets lonely around here” was all that he said.
The month and a half she spent with Dumbledore proved to be among the best of he life, and she’d had a pretty long life. True, many of her days were spent doing nothing while Albus worked on some official paperwork or something, but to someone that’s used to constant activity, the ability to do nothing is priceless.
The relative abundance of time gave her a unique opportunity to fully observe the culture into which she had haphazardly thrown herself. Granted, she’d already been in this world for almost a year, but a boarding school in the middle of the Scottish Highland isn’t exactly what one would necessarily call ‘culture’. London, on the other hand, was a completely different world. There were books to be read, music to be listened to, experiences to be experienced. Dumbledore’s flat had a magnificently massive library, containing the works of Cervantes to Christie to Chabon, and absolutely everything in between. The old wizard also possessed a surprisingly large record collection, including everything from Bach fugues to the Beatles. She spent hours just admiring it all; she spent weeks experiencing it all. When she somehow exhausted the Headmaster’s collection, they headed out into the city, Dumbledore in an old business suit and Luna concealed by a simple invisibility spell hovering above. There was no concern for money; the funds she’d brought with her were roughly equivalent to the annual gross national product of Finland, and the goblins of Gringotts were more than happy to make the necessary exchanges. They’d raid the music stores, the book stores, every single sanctuary of the written and spoken word in the greater London area. The sojourns out were a cultural experience of their own; for the first time she saw the ordinary, non-magical world.
They also traveled quite frequently; Dumbledore’s achievement and standing in the magical community made him a must-have for every academic conference in the wizarding world. They’d tour magical institutions around the globe, each somewhat a Hogwarts in its own right. Luna awed at the sheer variety of these schools; an ancient alhambra on a Spanish hillside, a Victorian manor in Upstate New York, a pueblo-style hamlet deep in the Australian Outback. They also sojourned quite frequently to the Ministry of Magic, the masses of magical middle-managers awed by the magnitude of their presence, the Headmaster of Hogwarts and the goddess that had vanquished He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named. She attempted to observe Albus’ various meetings, to see the inner workings of the magical community, but she eventually got bored, after which she resolved to wander about the Ministry while Dumbledore was busy.
Early one morning, a silver alarm clock began to tintinnabulate, filling the air with a shrill ringing.
‘That’s odd,’ thought Luna, ‘Albus doesn’t usually set an alarm’. And then she checked the date. September First. The first day of classes at Hogwarts. The sky resembled a van Gogh painting, pinks and blues and oranges swirling merrily in anticipation of the sun’s arrival.
“Nnnnnnnnghhhhhh...” the immortal alicorn princess mumbled as she got up to stretch her legs. Her sleeping accommodations were quite spartan, consisting only of a mattress on the floor in the apartment’s spacious den, accompanied only by a pillow and a heavy woolen blanket. Palatial, compared to sleeping on moon rock.
As she was getting up, she saw Dumbledore emerging from his chamber, already dressed in a striking ensemble of lavender and grey. He speed-walked to the kitchen area, where the antique coffee machine was already percolating.
“What time is it?” Luna asked.
“Six thirty-three” Dumbledore replied while he prepared his toast. “Mustn't be late. I trust you slept well?”
“Like a log,” she said, yawning. The area around her improvised nest was littered with various books, along with bottles, glasses, and mugs, now devoid of their liquid vivacity. With another yawn, she stood upright on the mattress, and dismounted onto the floor, pushing aside Balzac and Hemingway and Adams. Still half-asleep, she guided her hooves into the silver slippers on the floor nearby, still standing at attention where she’d taken them off the previous night. She shuffled the various volumes surrounding her bed until she found her obsidian-black tiara hiding underneath a yellowed paperback copy of Slaughterhouse-Five.
“Are you prepared to leave?” Dumbledore asked suddenly as she was replacing the crown upon her head.
“Uh, yeah, almost,” she said, a bit unprepared for the question. She looked again at her section of the room. “I just need to clean this up”.
“That will not be necessary” said Dumbledore.
As the wizard took a sip of his coffee, he raised and flicked his wand. Instantaneously, the blanket folded itself, and the pillow and mattress returned to an obscured closet of their own volition. The rubbish threw itself away, the dishes corralled themselves in the sink. The books lifted off of the ground and silently returned themselves to the bookshelf, alphabetizing themselves in an orderly fashion. While it was still in the air, Luna astutely grabbed a single novel from the airborne flock and held it close to her chest. She wasn’t finished with this one yet.
“When does the Hogwarts Express depart?” she asked her host.
“We shall not be arriving at Hogwarts by rail. The Express is reserved for students” he said, again imbibing the steaming brown-black elixir.
“Then… how?”
“You shall see. Are you prepared?”
Luna looked around. Herself, her jewelry, and a single book. All of her worldly possessions, and the book she was lending. She nodded.
Finishing his coffee, Dumbledore stepped out from behind the granite-topped island and walked patiently to where Luna was standing, in front of the place where her disorderly quarters once stood.
“I shall need you to take my hand,” said the wizard, extending a thin, bony appendage to the perplexed equine. She hesitantly met it with her own gilded hoof.
“I still don’t see exactly how we’re going to g—” she attempted to say, cut off by Dumbledore’s Apparition.
In an instant, the quaint decor of Dumbledore’s loft was replaced by the gothic towers of Hogwarts castle and the obscenely green forest of the Scottish Highland. Luna felt like she was being squeezed slowly through a thin pipe, briefly seeing the multicoloured backdrop of the universe as she was ripped from one point in space and transported along the fourth dimension until finally being replanted at another. There was a reason she didn’t teleport often.
“Please tell me when you’re going to do that,” she said as she almost fell over from nausea.
They were standing outside the school’s main gate; powerful charms prevented him from transporting them directly into the castle. Smiling, Dumbledore retrieved a golden key from his jacket, worn from age but still shining in the fresh dawn sunlight. Without a word, he placed the key in a similarly ancient lock, and gave it a turn. Invisible tumblers turned with the squealing sound of iron against iron. The gates slowly began to open, and Luna couldn’t help but smile. She was back. The magic was here. Mirificus hic incipit.