Sixteen Months Later: Titan Arum
Title: Sixteen Months Later: Titan Arum
Author: kanedax
Spoilers: Deathly Hallows
Rating: PG13 for minor language and content
Characters/Pairings:
Harry/Ginny, Hermione, Luna, Neville, Seamus. Discussions of Ron/Hermione, Luna/Neville, Luna/Dean, and Luna/Seamus
Summary: The World Tour makes a stop in the Pacific
Notes: For those of you who have been coming to my stories through some of the more specific fandom communities, you should be made aware that not every chapter is being posted in every community. Characters and content of some chapters restrict me from posting in OTP- or gen-specific areas. If you wish to keep track of the entire story, your best bet would be to friend my regular journal, as
kanedaxand
hp_fanfictionare really the only two areas where EVERY chapter will show up.
For those who haven’t seen my name in a while, you should know that I’ve written and posted two stories since How To Survive When No One Wants You Dead in a few select communities:
The first, Eleven Months Later: Scrubbing Bubbles, is an in-continuity story that takes place two months previous to How To Survive, and is a hard R-rated story that deals with Harry, Ginny, and the prefect bathroom hinted at in How To Survive. It was not posted on the R/Hr or genfic sites, and should not be read by anyone under the age of 18.
Ditto with The Thought That Counts, which was an out-of-continuity commission piece that I wrote for a friend who liked Scrubbing Bubbles but thought it could be, um, sexier. It’s NC-17, and contains hetslash, femslash, and threesomes.
I don't own any of these people! They're not mine!
Okay, now that that’s out of the way, enjoy!
Thirteen Months Later: How To Survive / Previous After The Flaw Chapters / Seventeen Months Later: The Last Straw
The book Magical Herbs of the South Pacific by Vanuatu Vila describes the Gunung Leuser National Park as a Muggle-created nature preserve that houses hundreds upon hundreds of unique plants and herbs, many of which carry incredible potential in both potion making and Herbology, provided you’re crazy enough to go find them.
On the island of Sumatra, housed within the fourth-largest rainforest in the world, the GLNP is also the home of Bukit Lawang, a refuge/rehabilitation center for Sumatran Orangutans. Vila recommends (and his suggestion is confirmed by Newt Scamander himself in Primal Primates and their Pelts) that you do not attempt to steal any of the hair from the backs of these creatures. Despite their numerous uses in the areas of dexterity enhancement and creation of full red beards, Muggles really don’t like anyone touching their monkeys.
There are a few roads in and out of the National Park, with buses that will transfer you from the towns of Medan, Kutacane, and Ketambe into the area. Campsites are relatively plentiful, although it is suggested, as in most Muggle-inhabited areas, to keep a relatively low magical profile. Tour guides are also available if you wish to trek into the rainforest itself for a one- or two-day adventure. However, due to the relative lack of magical settlements in the area, most wizard tour guides will charge a hefty fee for their services. Muggle guides are more plentiful. However, they do have many disadvantages, primary among them being that whole “Performing Magic In Front Of A Muggle Can Get You In Soooo Much Trouble” thing.
Also, the conversion rate between Galleons and the Indonesian Rupiah is just outlandish. Far too much for the average young witch or wizard to pay for even the most inexperienced guide.
No, if they wish to advance into the rainforests of Sumatra, the Isle of Gold (Gold Not Guaranteed), they’ll most likely have to slog it out on their own.
"Stupid bugs," Seamus Finnegan muttered as he swatted his arm. "Stupid bugs, stupid weeds, stupid humidity."
"Keep it down, would you, Seamus?" Hermione Granger asked from in front of him, adjusting the pack on her shoulder. "I'm trying to take notes, and you keep scaring all my subjects away."
"Subjects like big scary animals?" asked Seamus, clenching his wand defensively. "Notice my lack of tears. One less alligator to chew my leg off."
"Nothing's going to hurt you," Neville Longbottom called from the front of the line. "Besides, there aren't any alligators in here. Just crocodiles."
"Comforting thought," said Ginny Weasley, and took Harry Potter's offered hand as he reached back to her, squeezing it gently.
"I didn't sign up for this," Seamus grumbled.
"You signed up for a trip where we're going around the world looking for plants," said Hermione. "That's what this is, isn't it?"
"Hey, don't get me wrong," Seamus said, throwing up his hands and barely avoiding smacking Hermione's textbook-thick journal, which floated between the two of them, Quick-Quotes Quill scribbling away faster than she could write by hand. "Up to this point, it's been a blast. Europe, great. Egypt, smashing. Russia, China, bloody brilliant. But I wasn't expecting to play Steve Irwin."
"Who?" Luna Lovegood asked from the back of the line.
"Muggle," said Harry.
"Ah..."
"I guess I was expecting a little more civilization, is all," said Seamus. "Either way, remind me to kick some skinny black arse when I get back to camp."
"You can always go back with Dean and Ron," said Ginny. "No one's stopping you from Apparating back to camp."
Seamus hesitated. "Nah," he said, looking back at Luna with a small smile. "Protection's probably a good thing if one of those crocodiles attack. Don't want any of the ladies to get hurt."
Ginny snorted, whether in laughter or irritation Harry couldn't tell, and Hermione decided to take a sudden interest in the tree closest to her. Harry shook his head. From the start of the trip back in August, Luna Lovegood, as the only unattached female in the group of eight former students, had become the subject of frequent flirtations, chauvinisms, and overall shows of manliness by the three single men accompanying her. Watching it all from a distance, Harry couldn't help but wonder if he had ever acted this way when he had been trying to get the attention of Cho and Ginny.
"God, I hope not," he had said to Ron one night after most of their friends had gone to bed.
Ron, whose relationship history involved an awkwardly loud date proposal to the woman who was now his sister-in-law and multiple vengeful snog sessions in front of his current girlfriend, kept silent on the matter of how stupid men can act around women, and instead deciding to poke around the dwindling campfire with a stick.
Dean Thomas, who had spent three or four months living with Luna at the Weasleys cottage last year, was proving that he had learned nothing from the mistakes made in his previous relationship with Ginny. He was going out of his way to be a perfect gentleman around Luna. Always offering her a plate at dinner before him. Always offering her the last piece of pie or roast or whatever, regardless of who else wanted to take a crack at it. Always holding the tent flap open. Always offering her his seat by the fire. Always offering to take her position guarding the campsite in case she'd rather go out and sightsee. Always offering her his lookout position in case she'd rather stay back and rest.
Seamus Finnegan, on the other hand, was taking a completely opposite tact, one that Harry referred to as "The Dudley Route."
Before he had received his invitation to Hogwarts, and during every summer vacation since then, his cousin would take every opportunity to show his machismo. With Dudley it was beating up small children. Thankfully, Seamus didn't go in quite that direction. Instead, he would do anything in his power to show off whenever Luna happened to be around. When they chopped firewood, he would put down his wand and use an axe if she was within sight, grunting dramatically with each swing. When they were setting up the tents, he would volunteer to do one by himself, by hand, usually struggling for ten or fifteen minutes before Hermione would sigh in frustration and cast an Erecto spell to save him from total embarrassment or dismemberment.
Plus he always seemed to find an opportunity to take his shirt off when Luna showed up. Harry figured the scars on his back from his time with the Carrows might be used to his advantage. Beyond that, though, Seamus was far from an Adonis, and Harry, Ron, and Ginny always shared a laugh when Seamus attempted to flex his hairy biceps, slightly flabby from years of heavy meals at home in Ireland and from Hogwarts feasts, where Seamus never turned down seconds on the treacle tart.
To her credit, Luna seemed to be taking it all very well. Of course, this is Luna we’re talking about, Harry thought as he worked his way through the scrub. She could be enjoying the new attention being lavished on her by the men. She could be irritated. She might not even notice it’s happening. She treated both Dean and Seamus with the same respect and affection that she gave to Harry, Hermione, and the Weasleys.
“That’s Luna,” Ginny had said to him one night while the group was camping in Italy. “An open book that no one can read.”
“Luna!” Harry heard Seamus call, and turned around to see that Luna had, in fact, stopped about ten or twenty feet behind the group, as she had been prone to do on all of their expeditions. If she sees something interesting, it draws her full attention. At this moment, she was busy staring up into the treetops as Seamus walked back to her, hacking through the shrubs with his wand.
“What do you see?” Seamus asked as the rest of the group stopped.
“I saw a flying snake,” said Luna. “It was pretty.”
“A flying snake?”
Luna nodded serenely. “It flew from tree to tree.”
“There’s no such thing as flying snakes, Luna,” Seamus said patiently.
“Actually, there are,” Neville said from the front. “They’re fairly common in this area.”
Seamus stopped dead. “There are?”
“Chrysopelea ornata,” Hermione interjected. “They don’t fly, though. They glide, like flying squirrels.”
Seamus’ jaw dropped.
“They won’t hurt you,” said Neville. “Their venom’s not deadly to humans.”
“God, I hate this place,” Seamus grumbled, tossing a Diffindo at the nearest fern before taking Luna’s arm and ushering her back to the group.
“Thank you, Seamus,” Luna said, and Harry couldn’t help but see a blush come across Finnegan’s face through the sweat and dirt.
“Keep the hacking to a minimum, would you, Seamus?” Neville said. “There’s a lot of plants around this area that are very rare and important. Don’t hurt anything you don’t have to.”
“So, let me get this straight,” Seamus said. “We’re not supposed to hurt the weeds…”
“Not if you can help it,” said Neville.
“And we’re not in danger from any animals…”
“Not if we don’t poke them, no.”
“Then why are you carrying the big fucking sword?”
Neville turned away and started continuing down the path. “Because I can,” he said with a small smile, his hand resting on the Sword of Gryffindor that hung by his side. “Come on, we’re almost there.”
If there was anyone that seemed to be cracking through to Luna’s affections, it was good old Neville Longbottom. And he was doing it the best way he knew how: Neville was simply being Neville.
“It amazes me sometimes how those two never got together,” Ginny had whispered that same night as the two lay next to each other in bed. While the boys were fairly uncomfortable having the women sleep in their tent, Hermione and Luna didn’t have much problem if Harry slept in Ginny’s bed occasionally, and Ginny, having had to live with Ron for almost two decades, was fine with him crashing with Hermione every now and then. Just so long as things stayed on a purely PG basis while there were others in listening range, of course.
“Well, it’s difficult enough dating between Houses,” Harry had said. “Remember Percy and Penelope? It has to be even harder dating between Houses and Years. They didn’t even share any classes together.” He deftly avoided bringing up his attempted relationship with Cho Chang, which at the time was between a Gryffindor and Ravenclaw, a fifth year and sixth year. If Ginny was thinking along the same lines (after her failed fling with Michael Corner) she didn’t say anything.
From what he had gathered, the two had been able to see even less of each other the year that Snape was in charge of Hogwarts. They performed their DA functions, but Ginny or Ernie or who knows else was always there to keep them from being alone. When the two had seen each other at the Burrow as the group was preparing to leave, it had been the first time they had set eyes on each other since the Battle of Hogwarts over a year previous.
That moment as much as any made Harry and the others realize that Neville had the upper hand, and would have it no matter how hard Dean and Seamus tried. When she saw Neville, Luna hugged him. Considering this wasn’t the touchiest woman in the world, it was a big sign. And, judging from the red radiating off Neville’s face as she let go of him, Harry thought he recognized it, too.
Plus the birthday present she had given him didn’t hurt. Dumbledore had willed the Sword of Gryffindor to Harry. But, after Ron pulled it from the lake and Neville used it to kill Nagini, Harry decided that maybe it didn’t belong to him after all. Neville was holding it at the victory celebration, and Harry told him that he could keep it, making him promise not to cut himself or anyone else with the basilisk-imbued blade.
Luna took it one step further. During the school year, she had made Neville a leather scabbard to hold and protect the sword. Decorated with dark rubies (real or fake, Harry couldn’t tell) and gold trim, it was fortified with enough enchantments where it the sword could never be drawn by anyone but the owner or, if there was danger, someone who the owner trusted with their life.
Needless to say, Neville thought it was a fantastic gift. He kept the sword at his side at all times, and drew it nightly before going to bed, just to stare at it. Harry thought that it was to remind him of what he had accomplished. But considering Neville spent more time looking at the scabbard than the sword lately, similar to the lingering looks that Neville gave Luna (probably similar to the ones he, Harry, had given Ginny at one point), Harry figured there might be other reasons for this evening ritual.
So lost in thought was Harry that he almost ran into Neville, who had stopped dead in his tracks in front of him.
"There it is," Neville gasped, jogging forward, nimbly leaping over a fallen tree trunk.
"There is what?" asked Ginny as the rest struggled to keep up.
It didn't take Harry or any of the others to figure out what it Neville was specifically referring to. A gigantic plant, which Neville was now circling on his hands and knees, stood five feet away from them. Looking like a cross between a corncob and a loaf of French bread, the towering green structure stood well over Harry's head.
"What is it?"
"Amorphophallus titanum," said Neville, with a grin on his face that Harry had rarely seen before. "Titan Arum. The largest unbranched inflorescence in the world."
Seamus whistled. "Phallus is right," he chuckled. "Ever take Grawp's pants off, that's what--"
"I thought we already saw the largest in-flour-whatsis already," Ginny quickly interrupted. Harry, who had his turn in camp with Seamus that day, had only heard them talk about a huge red flower that the group had discovered on their journey.
"That was Rafflesia arnoldii," said Hermione, who had always been able to find someone to take her turn, allowing her to go out more often than even Neville. "The largest flower that grows off of another plant, like a tree or a vine. This is the largest independent flower in the world."
"You promise this one's not going to smell as bad as that one, right?" asked Ginny, but Neville just smiled and said,
"I make no promises," as he took one more lap around the gigantic structure, this time waving his wand and chanting incantations under his breath. Harry felt a wave of energy pass around him, like a static charge.
“What was that that you just did?” he asked.
“This plant rarely flowers,” explained Neville. “When it does, it obviously happens when it’s the right time to pollinate. I don’t want to disrupt the ecosystem, so I cast a spell that keeps the pollen in and the bugs out.”
“Smart idea,” said Hermione, pulling her journal and quill from the air. Apparently she decided that whatever happened next was too interesting or important to leave the notes to mere magic.
“Oh, and I probably should have warned you earlier,” said Neville. “Now that you’re all inside my circle, you can’t leave until I break it.” He pulled out his wand.
“Wait, what?” Seamus said quickly. “That sounded a little too much like ‘Danger, Will Robinson!’ than I’m comfortable with.”
Neville either didn’t hear him, or decided it wasn’t worth responding to. Harry, Ginny, and Seamus tensed up, preparing for an explosion as Neville tapped the tip of his wand to the flower. The green outside split open, spreading out and down from the increasingly pink and purple middle, until the Titan Arum looked like an enormous chalice, lined with red and purple.
“Amazing,” breathed Neville, stepping forward. “Take a look at that spadix. It’s perfect.”
“It is rather pretty,” said Luna, walking up to stand next to Neville.
“The spadix, that’s the thing in the middle, right?” Seamus said. Hermione stood next to him, furiously scribbling notes and attempting to make some semblance of a diagram in her journal. When Neville nodded, Seamus puffed up proudly. “See, I knew I wasn’t a complete waste in Herbology.”
“Luna’s right, though,” Ginny said, walking around the other side. Harry followed right beside her, their hands entwined. “It’s quite… Oh, God…”
Harry quickly turned to Ginny to see what she was reacting to. She was still staring at the plant, but she was making a face that reminded him of Ron after he had made a particularly foul concoction in Potions.
And then it struck him, and he reeled backwards from the plant, his hand flying to his nose and mouth. An odor was emanating from the Titan Arum that reminded him of ground beef that had been sitting out of the icebox for too long, or of that blood-and-sweat smell that Fenrir Greyback had been infamous for.
“Good Lord, what is that?” he groaned, and saw from Seamus’s reaction that he had smelled it, as well. Only Hermione, who appeared too engrossed in her notes to notice anything else, and Luna, who continued to stare passively at the plant, seemed unaffected.
Neville’s mouth was open in a grin of awe, but eyes were watering. Harry couldn’t tell if they were tears of joy or just the body’s reaction to standing so close to the source of the stench.
“Neville!” Harry yelled through his hand. “Hurry up, would you? Do what you have to do, then close the bastard.”
That seemed to shake Neville from his reverie. “Sorry about that,” he said, raising his wand. “It is a bit strong, isn’t it?”
“Strong?” said Ginny. “More like stomach churning.” She turned to Harry. “I’m regretting that second helping of bangers this morning.”
Harry nodded, but decided opening his mouth to respond was just inviting trouble. His own breakfast was rolling in his stomach, as well.
“Well, there’s a reason it’s called the Corpse Plant,” Neville said as he pulled a few small bottles from his robe.
“Charming,” said Seamus dryly. “Really charming name. It’s a wonder it’s not used in more wedding receptions.”
“It’s all for pollination,” Neville explained as he ran the tip of his wand along the spadix, collecting the dust into one of the beakers. “The smell attracts carrion-eating bugs and beetles. It’s quite fascinating, really, how much the plant is made to fool the bugs into thinking that it’s a dead animal.”
“Oh, yeah, I could barely tell the difference,” said Ginny, who had pulled the up the neck of her t-shirt to cover her nose and mouth. Harry saw a bit of pale, freckled skin showing around her belly, and felt a momentary twang of arousal before his stomach decided that he was a little too nauseous to even consider doing anything about it.
“Well, bugs are stupid enough,” said Neville. “The smell makes it seem like it’s a dead animal. The inside of the spathe, the flower part, is colored to look like meat. Even the interior temperature is a little over 36 degrees Celsius, which is about average body temperature for a mammal.”
“Wow, that’s… That’s amazing, Neville,” said Harry, trying desperately hard to keep his spirits up and his oatmeal down.
“Isn’t it, though? Diffindo,” Neville said happily, taking off a small portion of the flower and putting it in another bottle. “It’s right useful, too. Mix some of the pollen with Bubotuber puss, and you have an antivenom that neutralizes any poison. And the leaf can heal any burn in five minutes if applied with the right charms. Hold these, would you Luna?” He handed the two bottles to Luna, preparing two more for more samples.
“Less talky, more slicey,” said Ginny, her voice muffled by her shirt. “It smells like week-old Snorkack.”
“Actually,” said Luna, continuing to examine the plant as if there was nothing wrong. “Dead Snorcack smells quite different than this. Sweeter, with a little more of that wet hair odor…”
Hermione looked up sharply from her notes. “I thought you’ve never seen a Snorcack.”
“Not a live one, no,” said Luna. “But father and I saw a dead one when we were in Africa. It was quite beaten up, and someone had already taken its horn, but we were sure that that was what it was.”
“There are no such things as Snorcacks,” said Hermione. “I thought you would have figured that out by now.”
“Oh, no, it was a Snorcack,” Luna insisted.
“But you said Snorcacks lived in Sweden.”
“Well, we thought they did, as well,” said Luna. “But one of our readers said that there was quite a large amount of them in Africa. No, it was definitely a Snorcack. We could see where the horn was removed from its nose.”
“You probably just saw a dead Erumpent,” pressed Hermione. “They’re African.”
“No, it was gray, and had a thick hide and a long tail, just like the Snorcack.”
“So do Erumpents…”
“Erumpents and Snorcacks share many similar features,” said Luna.
“Why do you continue to insist that they exist?” Hermione said, her temper rising.
“Why do you continue to insist that they don’t?” Luna replied.
“So what are you going to do with these samples, anyway, Neville?” Harry jumped in quickly, trying to avoid an argument that he could see Hermione was keen to continue.
“Grow my own,” said Neville. “It’ll take a lot of work to get one going, and their magical properties aren’t quite as potent when they’re domesticated. But it will be quite useful to have around either way.”
“Where are you going to grow it?” asked Ginny. “Your neighbors probably wouldn’t appreciate this thing in their back yard.”
“Yeah, I know,” said Neville, disappointment in his voice. “They just don’t understand it, is all. No, Pomona said that she would let me use one of the school greenhouses until I have enough money to build one of my own.”
“Pomona?” asked Seamus.
“Professor Sprout,” said Ginny.
“Wow,” said Seamus. “I didn’t know she had a first name.”
“Funny how that works, isn’t it?”
“That should do it,” Neville said, tapping his wand to the flower, which instantly closed back to its original state. That accomplished, he waved his wand around in the air. “Scourgifying the area to make sure that all the inflorescence is pulled out of the air,” he explained to Harry. “Then I should be able to pull back the barrier.”
“Do we want to Apparate back to camp, or walk?” asked Ginny as Harry felt the barrier lift around them.
“Walking’s probably safer,” said Harry. “I’m only comfortable Apparating one or two people, three at most. We don’t want to Apparate into areas where Muggles can see us, and we can only fit a few people under the Cloak.”
Seamus opened his mouth, probably ready to volunteer to use the Cloak, but then he saw that Luna was following Neville and the others back up the trail, and quickly decided that he didn’t want to look like the wimp of the group.
The minutes passed in silence as the six students walked down the path. Neville walked in front, chuckling happily as he looked into his vials, newly filled with the pollen and petals of the Titan Arum. Harry and Ginny walked side-by-side behind him, hands comfortably nestled inside one another. Hermione’s journal floated behind them, Quick-Quotes Quill scratching away as Hermione took in as many sights as she could, knowing that the group would be leaving tomorrow morning for New Zealand. Luna behind her, studying the back of Hermione’s hair as if it were some interesting new specimen; and Seamus taking up the rear, slapping at bugs, but keeping the grumbling to a minimum. Luna was right in front of him now; he didn’t want to put up a bad showing.
“Do you believe I’m unintelligent?” Luna asked suddenly, and Hermione took a few moments to realize that she was being spoken to.
“What?” she asked, and Harry tried desperately hard not to turn around and watch the proceedings. From the tightening of Ginny’s hand, he knew that she was trying to do the same thing.
“Do you believe I’m unintelligent?” Luna repeated.
“Of course I don’t,” said Hermione. “There’s a reason you were put into Ravenclaw, wasn’t there?”
“I know that you’re lying to make me feel better,” said Luna, her eyes never leaving the back of Hermione’s head. “You don’t believe that House placement has much value, or else you would have been in Ravenclaw, Professor Snape would have been in Gryffindor, and Mr. Pettigrew would have been in Slytherin. But it’s all right. People lie around me frequently, because they don’t want me to feel bad.”
“I… it’s not that,” Hermione stammered, and slowed down enough to be able to walk next to Luna. “It’s just that some of your theories don’t have much merit, do they?”
“You’re speaking of the Snorcack, am I correct?” asked Luna. “Why do you think that they don’t exist?”
“Well, no one’s ever seen one,” said Hermione, as though stating the obvious. “There aren’t any pictures, nothing in any books about them. There’s no proof.”
“Just because there are no pictures does not mean that they haven’t been seen,” said Luna. “And maybe the authors of the books haven’t seen them, either. There are books that discuss them.”
“Yes, but those are written by…” Hermione cut herself off.
“By crackpots?” finished Luna. “Like my father?”
“I wasn’t going to say that.”
“It’s alright,” Luna said, apparently not insulted (but with Luna you can never tell, Harry thought). “We do get the occasional piece of hate mail, and that’s not the strongest word people have used about our beliefs.
“Do you have any proof that they do not exist, Hermione Granger?”
“Well, I’ve already given it, haven’t I?” said Hermione. “No pictures, no scientific evidence…”
“No, that is only the lack of proof of the Snorcack’s existence,” countered Luna. “Do you have any tangible evidence of its non-existence?”
Hermione’s mouth opened, and then she stopped to think. “No, I don’t,” she conceded.
Luna reached around behind her and pulled her daypack around. Unzipping it, she pulled out the remnants of her lunch, and then removed one single item from the paper bag.
“What is this?” she asked Hermione, holding it up.
“It’s a peanut.”
“No, it’s a peanut shell,” said Luna. “Now, what is inside of the peanut shell?”
“The peanut?” Hermione said.
“How do you know?”
“Well, it’s because it’s a peanut, isn’t it?”
“But how do you know?” Luna repeated. “All you see is the peanut shell. No one has ever opened this particular peanut shell before. Can you prove to me that the peanut inside exists?”
“Well, yes, I can,” said Hermione patronizingly. “It’s a peanut shell. Peanuts grow inside peanut shells.”
“How do you know that it’s not an almond?” said Luna. “Or a bogey-flavored Bertie Bott’s Bean? Or a Crumple-Horned Snorcack?”
“But it’s not,” Hermione insisted. “Luna, it’s a peanut. It hasn’t been opened, it hasn’t grown to an enormous size, it’s a bloody peanut!”
“Taking an awful lot on faith, aren’t you, Hermione?” said Seamus from the back.
“Finnegan, don’t you start,” Hermione snapped. “It can’t be anything but…”
“Most people would say that that purse you have isn’t anything but a purse,” said Seamus. “There’s no way that anyone could fit a library of books in that little thing.”
“But this is different, it’s…”
Luna squeezed the shell in her fingers, cracking it open. She poured the contents onto the palm of her hand. Two peanuts.
“Well,” she said, putting one into her mouth. “Now we have proof that they exist. Want one?”
Hermione took the remaining peanut from Luna’s hand and swallowed it.
“Up until the point that I opened it,” said Luna. “You could not prove to me that the peanut existed, no more than I could prove that it didn't. We were both equal in our beliefs. It is much easier to prove that something exists than to prove that it does not. To prove that this peanut shell contained a peanut, we simply had to crack it open and look inside.”
“Easy enough,” said Hermione.
“But now that evidence is gone,” said Luna. “Unless someone cuts us open, or at least until we have a bowel movement later.”
Blunt honesty, Harry thought, chuckling.
“But proof is fleeting,” Luna continued. “Proof is fragile. We only have our belief that this peanut shell once contained the peanut. We have no proof that it once existed, or that any peanut residue in our stool comes from this particular shell. We have just as little proof as that the next peanut might have a Crumple-Horned Snorcack. And as long as no one can prove to me that the next peanut in the bag has a peanut in it, I’ll continue to believe that it’s possible for the Crumple-Horned Snorcack to exist.”
“But…” Hermione stumbled. “But that’s stupid. That’s not the right way to go about things at all! Using that theory, that something might exist as long as we can’t prove that it doesn’t… I mean, you could use that same argument about extraterrestrials or the ancient Greek myths, or anything…”
“Now you’re catching on,” said Luna, as Hermione huffed, exasperated. “Before you learned you were a witch, before you came to Hogwarts, did you believe that unicorns existed? Or giants? Or ghosts? Or magic of any kind?”
“Well, I had an idea that magic existed, because I accidentally blew up the slow cooker when I was five. And when I was ten I set the hamster on fire after my Mum bought me this really horrid dress…”
“But you couldn’t prove that magic existed until you received the letter,” said Luna. “The slow cooker could have blown up due to a mechanical failure. The hamster could have been too close to a heat source, or could have spontaneously combusted. Or you could have been telekinetic, pyrokinetic, something along those lines. And the others? Any proof of unicorns, or…?”
“No, I didn’t think they existed,” Hermione said.
“But they did,” said Luna. “Even if you didn’t have proof.
“Do you believe in God?”
“Well…” Hermione stammered, being thrown by the turn. “That’s a difficult question… I mean, I believe in a god, or goddess, or some kind of higher power, but I don’t think that that’s anything to discuss …”
“I understand,” said Luna. “I apologize for bringing it up. I know many people have difficulty speaking about whoever or whatever created us. But you believe in something, Hermione. Something without evidence. Which means there’s hope for you yet.”
Hermione stopped in her tracks, Seamus barely avoiding her as he walked past.
“You’re a strange one, you know that, Luna?” Hermione said, hurrying to catch up.
Luna just smiled her smile. “That’s what everyone keeps telling me,” she said, continuing her serene walk through the Sumatran rainforest. “But it can be difficult to believe.”
Thirteen Months Later: How To Survive / Previous After The Flaw Chapters / Seventeen Months Later: The Last Straw