To the casual observer, Luna Lovegood appeared to drift through life, so unattached to the here and now that she might well have been a ghost. They couldn't have been more wrong. Luna was, more than anything, a realist. Oh, yes, there were the 'imaginary' creatures, and some rather revolutionary ideas, and the clothes were at best 'fanciful' and at worst, 'bizarre.'

What they didn't understand was that Luna saw life as it was, more than anything. Life was hard, and people hurt, and they died, and not all problems had solutions, let alone easy ones.

But the search for the solution, that was sometimes worthwhile for its own sake. And the eternal 'what ifs?' interested her, too. Why shouldn't there be fantastic creatures no one had discovered yet? And why did undiscovered creatures have to be in far off places, at the bottom of the ocean, or deep in the jungle? Why was it so difficult for people to entertain the idea that they might be right in front of them? After all, Muggles couldn't see ghosts, and no wizard in his right mind would deny their existence.

That wasn't to say that ghosts were an everyday occurrence even in wizarding life. Most children never encountered them before their first night at Hogwarts. To Luna, however, they were old friends. In fact, her first encounter with a ghost was in her first hour of life. Her paternal grandmother had been so determined to keep her tenuous hold on life long enough to meet her first grandchild that when her father came running down the corridor of St. Mungos shouting, "It's a girl!" she arose from her deathbed and ran out to meet him, giving him an embrace rather more frigid than he'd been expecting. As a result, Luna grew quite used to the silvery figures hanging around the edges of her vision, even from infancy.

Not that her grandmother haunted her, mind you. She merely popped around for birthdays and Christmases, occasionally even showing up in family photos. What she did the rest of the time was anyone's guess, but Luna later suspected that she was hanging around the Department of Mysteries, soaking up the secrets and whispering over the shoulders of Unspeakables who were working on a cure for the dragon pox that killed her. That or hanging around the BBC, suggesting plot lines to the Dr. Who writers. She'd refused to give up the television habit of her Muggle childhood and had always been fond of that show.

And it wasn't just her. Perhaps the ghostly kiss that she had planted on Luna's forehead in her first moments of life marked the little girl as a sort of magnet for other spectres.

They seemed drawn to her, following her through her childhood, sometimes her only friends. Sometimes they asked favours of her, and she helped whenever possible. In fact, her parents got used to her needing to dash off notes to elderly widows and grieving orphans, sometimes simply letting them know that they had been and still were loved and sometimes helping them find Gringott's keys or hidden stashes of gold or valuable objects. Once, she even dashed off a confession of infidelity and the existence of a secret daughter, which must have seemed even more confusing to the recipient given that it was written in a childish scrawl.

She'd grown used to them, and by the time she arrived at school, she found it easier to relate to them than to the living. Not that she didn't love the living, with all their passion and enthusiasm and warmth, but generally, ghosts were kinder than the living and willing to spend a few moments of their limitless time really listening to a lonely, somewhat odd, easy-to-overlook girl.

Sometimes Luna envied the ghosts. Of course, she would have missed so many things about living--sticky toffee pudding and the wind in her hair and the way it felt when her father hugged her--but the ghosts had freedom that she envied. Generally, when Luna was in a room, people talked and played and carried on as if she wasn't there, but the really interesting things, such as bits of gossip or secret habits or hidden longings were hushed up or kept concealed from the living. But with the dead... not always. Most of the time, people didn't even notice them. Or if they did, they didn't care what they inadvertently revealed.

It wasn't that she delighted in gossip or wanted to secretly observe teenage fumblings into sexuality for prurient pleasure. But she did want to know, to understand, if only to know how better to behave herself. Human interaction was lovely to witness but not always easy to imitate on demand.

This was especially the case with interactions of the sexual sort. Oh, she'd kissed Anthony Goldstein under the mistletoe and had her left breast grabbed by a large and somewhat terrifying Slytherin boy who'd cornered her in a dark corridor. But none of that had made her feel anything but disappointment.

She tried, really she did. And occasionally, a boy (or a girl) got her heart racing in her chest and her stomach fluttering, and once or twice, she even found her knickers to be suspiciously damp when someone was nice to her. Or even when a boy (in that case, Ron Weasley) who had rarely even given her a second glance but lifted her into an unexpected hug after a victorious Quidditch match. But she didn't know what to do with those sensations and emotions. It just made her feel sort of an itchy, angsty malaise that took far too long to pass. She certainly knew that Ron Weasley would not have been pleased if she walked up to him and stuck her tongue in his mouth (though apparently, if Sir Nicholas was to be believed, he hadn't minded all that much when Lavender Brown did it) nor did she think that walking over to Cho Chang in the showers and telling her she had a really beautiful body would have ended in anything but disaster.

It might have helped if her mother had been around to explain sex and sexual politics to her, for her father was rather useless when it came to such matters. Luna knew that most children would have liked to think that their parents had never had sexual intercourse in spite of evidence to the contrary, but she really would not have been surprised if her father's penis had wandered obliviously into her mother's vagina whilst looking for something else entirely, discovered it rather liked the place and decided to stay there, all snug and warm for the winter.

She'd read a book once that seemed to indicate that there was an ongoing tradition in British boarding schools in which older girls would teach younger girls about what to do with their bodies, but so far, she had seen no evidence supporting this theory. Oh, she occasionally heard sighs and moans from behind her dorm mate's curtains, but those noises were certainly made by a solitary person, and the one time she did come across a pair of girls exploring each other's bodies, it seemed rather less about instruction than it did about mutual pleasure. Not that it didn't look perfectly lovely--but it still didn't tell her how they'd managed to get to that place.

And it was there that her particular affinity toward the living-impaired really paid off. After having tossed aside a dog-eared book with a rather promising cover (a large, sweaty pirate and a mammarically gifted witch whose blouse seemed about to rip open from the strain of her apparent ecstasy) she tried, once again to understand what the big deal was. The book had described unendurable pleasure when the hero's hand reached under the heroine's bodice. Well, it certainly hadn't felt pleasurable when that seventh year had pinched her nipple. Breasts were breasts, and although at certain times of the month, they got rather painfully sensitive, for the most part, she didn't understand the obsession with them. They were just silly little lumps of fatty tissue, after all.

The book had also described waves of ecstasy as the hero thrust his engorged manhood inside the heroine's dripping centre. But, while Luna was academically curious about what an erect penis might look like, she couldn't really understand why she would want to have one inside her, nor would she know what to do with it once there. Especially if it was supposed to hurt going in, as was the general consensus. But short of sticking a cucumber up her fanny, how was she supposed to find out? She was certain the House Elves would let her borrow one if she asked nicely, but what if it got stuck? How would she explain things to Madame Pomfrey, let alone walk down twelve flights of stairs to the infirmary with a vegetable sticking out of her?

She looked around the common room and her eyes alit on an abandoned bottle of butterbeer. Not quite the girth of a cucumber, but then again, it started out small and got larger, which seemed to make sense under the circumstances. The common room was empty (the library had just got a new shipment of books donated by the widow of the late Ivor Dillonsby). If she did it under a blanket, odds were no one would know the difference, even if someone did come in. Raising her skirt, she slipped the bottle underneath, wondering how best to begin. She moved aside her knickers, wincing as one of the wiry hairs beneath got caught on the elastic and was pulled out by the root. The glass was cool against her skin, but not unpleasantly so. With a bit of wriggling, she managed to press it in about an inch or so, but her body seemed to be resisting. At any rate, there was no ecstasy to be had, at least not yet. Perhaps it needed to go deeper. Perhaps there was some sort of a switch deep inside that released it, turning her into a quivering puddle of desire. She pressed it in further but only felt a dull ache. A bit more, and the ache expanded, and there was no way anyone in their right mind could have called it fun. Frankly, she preferred a good book. Perhaps there was something wrong with her, something missing inside her.

"That is never going to work."

Luna looked up, startled. Somewhere in the back of her mind, it occurred to her that she was going to be teased mercilessly for this, but, to her profound relief, the voice addressing her was not one of her fellow students . It was the Grey Lady, the one ghost who rarely spoke to any of the castle's living residents, instead preferring to read over the shoulders of students in the library or the common room. "It's not?" she asked, if only because it seemed rude not to reply.

"Of course not," the pale woman snapped, attempting (with limited success) to blow over the page of book on the table in front of her.

"Why not?"

The Grey Lady looked up. "You're probably too dry, for one thing. And I would remove your undergarments, if I were you."

"My-"

The spectre sighed. "What is the word you are all using these days? Knickers, is it not? A stupid word, truly."

Luna smiled at the face the ghost made. She looked as though she was sucking on a lemon. "I suppose it is."

"Well, then, whatever you call them, they will only get in the way. You are far better off disposing of them."

"Oh, yes," Luna said breathlessly, complying after removing the bottle. It felt rather silly to be sitting under a blanket with her skirt bunched up at the top of her thighs and no knickers, but there was something sort of sensual about it, too, something just a little bit naughty. And why, she wondered, did that improve the experience? There was no logic to it, but apparently, the ghost knew what she was on about, didn't she?

"Now what?" she asked.

The Grey Lady looked up again, her brow furrowed. "Do what feels natural, you stupid girl. I do not recall offering to teach you how to fondle your quim. I have got far too much to do as it is."

"But it doesn't feel natural," Luna replied. "That's the trouble. It feels absurd."

"Well, of course it is absurd. Whoever said that sex was noble and sacred and beautiful was full of dragon dung. But we are animals, and we do have needs, so there you have it. You either have to find some idiot man to satisfy your cravings or you need to learn to do it yourself. Personally, I preferred the latter. Much less bother."

"But I don't know what to do." Luna protested. "How am I supposed to learn?"

The Lady rolled her eyes. "Read a book, girl. People were writing books about sex for a millennium before I was born and they don't seem ready to stop." With an irritated huff, she was on to another table, looking over another book and muttering something about her mother rolling over in her grave, with the stupid children carrying on her legacy these days.

Luna picked up the book she'd been reading, glaring down at it. "This was rubbish," she said. "It didn't tell me anything."

The Lady looked up. "Yes, that one is rubbish," she conceded. "It came in with those two insipid Gryffindors who would not recognize a proper book if it walked up and bit them on the nose. The other one---the one with all the hair--she possesses a rather beautiful copy of the Kama Sutra, but she has hidden it so well you would never find it."

Luna sighed, looking again at the bottle in her hands. She had an absurd urge to throw it into the fire. She looked up to find the ghost watching her, her face unreadable.

Apparently, what she saw changed her mind, because she glided toward Luna, her face set with something like determination. That or irritation.

Luna felt something on her hand that made the hairs on it stand up, something warm and tingly and definitely magical in origin, and she found herself dropping the bottle onto the cushion.

"You would think that they would teach you children anatomy, if anything. The bottle is cold, and you are dry. Of course it would not work. You are far better off using your hands, at least at first."

"My hands?" Luna asked and found herself reaching under the blanket again.

"Yes, your hands, surely you know what I mean.."

Luna put her hand on her thigh. Was she supposed to just stick her fingers where the bottle had been? What if she scratched herself?

"Yes, there you go, no, not like that, you have to be aroused first, have you not been listening?"

Luna felt her cheeks burning. "But I don't know how to get there, that's the point!"

The Grey Lady looked hard at her for a moment, and then frowned. Seeming to come to a yet another decision, she glided closer still, sitting next to Luna on the sofa. "Young people these days," she said, and then muttered under her breath about stupid parents sheltering their children and all the smut floating through the castle and how was it that one person could be so completely ignorant? It was embarrassing, but it wasn't the worst thing Luna had overheard about herself, and when the Lady told her to get rid the blanket, she found herself complying.

"Use your mind," she said, and her voice had softened somewhat. "Is there not someone you long for?"

"No," Luna admitted.

"So you make him-" The Lady raised a silvery eyebrow. "-or her--vague, shadowy. Just picture someone close at hand. Someone beautiful."

It wasn't that difficult, especially not with the Lady sitting next to her. It was so rare that anyone other than her father paid attention to her that any presence, even a ghostly one, was enough to get her heart beating faster.

"Picture them whispering to you-"

Luna could almost but not quite feel cold fingertips moving over the hand on her thigh. Without even thinking about doing it, she'd begun moving the same hand over her own soft skin, back and forth.. It felt warm, and soothing, and oddly exciting. "What are they saying?"

"It does not matter," The Lady snapped, but with considerably less annoyance in her voice than earlier. "They are telling you how your skin glows in the firelight, how your hair looks like water flowing under the moonlight."

"Oh, that's lovely," Luna sighed, letting her thumb circle the sensitive skin at the top of her thigh.

"They speak of how beautiful and haunting your eyes are, and how they reflect the purity of your soul."

"I'm not pure," Luna protested, feeling a little breathless at this point.

The Lady raised her hand and placed it in the middle of Luna's chest. "Here, you are. You see the good in people, even when they behave poorly toward you. Do you not know how rare, how precious that is?" Luna could feel the cold of the Lady's fingers even through three layers of clothing, but it was not an unpleasant sensation. In fact, her nipples were beginning to feel the way they always did around the seventeenth of every month. The hand on her chest moved upward until Luna felt a cool sensation against the spot where her collar ended, spreading up to caress her cheek. "They would lean down and kiss your cheek, speaking of your enigmatic smile and how your body could have been sculpted of marble."

"That sounds very cold and hard," Luna murmured, shifting a bit so that she was closer to the Lady, close enough to feel a chill along that side of her body which somehow didn't manage to dispel the warmth radiating from between her legs.

"No, not cold and hard, but warm and soft and sweet. They would touch you, and everywhere you felt their hands, your skin would heat up nearly to the point of pain, but even the pain would feel pleasurable."

"Yes," Luna said softly, because even without another's hands on her body, her skin was warming up, prickling, aching for more.

"Touch yourself here," the Lady said, raising a cold hand to Luna's breast. Luna obeyed, and found that her nipple was protruding almost painfully into her bra.

"Underneath," The Lady then demanded, watching with an almost possessive look in her eyes as Luna unbuttoned her blouse and unhooked her bra. "Yes, lovely," she whispered, her transparent fingertips stopping just short of touching Luna's bare skin. The lady licked her lips and Luna tentatively took her own breast in her hand, moaning at the pleasure/pain sensation. Every pass of her fingertips against her nipples was bliss.

"She would be unable to help herself, really, because you would smell so sweet and probably even taste better--she would run her tongue over your nipple, licking circles around it and then finally taking it between her lips, suckling you. Would you like that, pretty lass?"

"Oh, yes," Luna replied, unable to do anything more than pinch her nipple to achieve the sensation, though that felt--she was sure--nearly as good.

"And then she would slide to the floor, kneeling at your feet as if a supplicant," the Lady continued, gliding down to the floor between Luna's legs. Luna felt positively decadent (or possibly debauched) there, with her skirts only barely covering herself up. She resisted the urge to close her legs in modesty, suspecting that it would have been rather pointless, given the circumstances. "She would stroke her hands over your thighs, and you'd open your legs, just like you're doing now. Put your hands on your thighs, darling, just where mine are, and move up. You don't want cold now, you want heat."

"Yes," Luna whispered, trembling as she obeyed. It seemed that every nerve in her body was radiating toward that spot between her legs where the butterbeer bottle had been not half an hour before.

"She would kiss the inside of your thigh, right here, next to your knee-" The Lady kissed the spot, sending shivers up Luna's body. "And then she would lick her way up, tasting sweet flesh, and inhaling the musk of your skin--oh, what I would give to taste-" She reached up to brush a cold fingertip over Luna's nipple, smiling knowingly when Luna shuddered. "Use your fingers again, pretty lass, I suspect you will find it quite a bit different than before."

Luna obeyed and discovered that the flesh between her legs was wet and swollen with blood, and when her fingertips made contact, it sent fissures of pleasure through her body.

"Oh," she said softly, running her fingers back and forth over the slick flesh. "Oh."

She opened her eyes to find the Gray Lady watching the progress of her fingers avidly, leaning against one of Luna's pale thighs, her fingertips clutching as if she wanted to dig them into Luna's soft flesh until they left a mark.

"That's the way, girl, back and forth, make a circle, you will find it eventually, and-"

"Oh!" Luna cried as she reached a particularly sensitive spot, one which made her entire body shiver when she touched it.

"Gentle, darling, not too much, not yet" the Lady whispered, her smile widening and her eyes glittering. She reached up again for Luna's nipple, her cold fingertip drawing a pattern around it until Luna thought she would die from pleasure. "Dip your fingers inside." She laughed softly as Luna whimpered, astonished that the invasion of her own fingers felt so completely different than the invasion of the bottle.

"Faster." The Lady moved closer still, her eyes following the progress of Luna's fingers as they moved into a rhythm--back and forth--making circles over the bundle of nerves that seemed to be swelling under her fingertips, dipping inside of her and gathering more moisture. Luna's heart was pounding in her ears now and her chest felt as though it was going to burst open and there were sounds coming out of her mouth she would never have believed came from her. And then the Lady leaned lower and blew against Luna's heated flesh, with nowhere near the force of a living person's lungs (and rather cold, too) but somehow it was the one thing to send Luna almost completely out of her skin as she let go and gave in to the overwhelming pleasure, crying out into the empty room.

She opened her eyes to find the Lady watching her, her eyes still glittering and her smile knowing.

"Oh," was all she could think to say.

"Oh, indeed," the Lady said, and a shutter seemed to go down over her face, altering her expression. Her voice, too, was nearly back to the prim, somewhat irritated tones Luna was used to. "You are a very bright girl, and there is no need to waste your school years panting after boys when you can do that and save the bother. Try to remember that and you will do well."

She glided to her feet, adjusting her gown and smoothing her skirt. "You will do very well," she repeated, and left the room, her spine ramrod straight.

Luna rather suspected (or possibly hoped) she'd see more of the Grey Lady after their rather strange encounter but if anything, the spectre was more distant than before. Oh, there were little things, such as books that Luna had been looking for that suddenly appeared in front of her, and the fact that finding her possessions at the end of the next school year was a fair bit easier, but there were no more conversations between them, and when they passed in the halls, Luna was only gifted with a grave nod. Sometimes she swore she could feel The Lady's transparent eyes behind her as she moved through her daily life, especially during that horrible time with the Carrows, but when she turned, Luna would find only emptiness.

And once, during her one of her darkest hours in the Malfoys' dungeon, she opened her eyes to find a silvery face smiling sadly down on her, almost but not quite stroking her cheek. But that could have been a dream, too.

She saw her once during the battle, and the Lady seemed to be hovering protectively over the Ravenclaw dead while the battle carried on around them. It was at that moment that the idea occurred to her, but she had no time to think about it at the time. Years later, she visited the castle and went looking for the Lady again, but for whatever reason, the Lady was not interested in being found. However, Luna didn't mind. She left a copy of Ravenclaw's Daughter, the biography she'd written, on the Common Room table, suspecting that the Lady would rather enjoy reading it over the shoulders of the next generation of students.

The dedication simply said, "Thank you. For everything."