[ttd] nature always sides with the hidden flaw [luna]

“The baby doing well, then?”

Dean and Harry were friends, as were Dean and Ginny, but not close enough on either side to feel comfortable joining the James Sirius viewing tour. He’d always thought it weird when his mum’s vague acquaintances turned up, anyway. And the Potters had so many vague acquaintances. Surely they would rather take a nap than see him. Luna was a different level of friend, though. He remembered her and Ginny being quite close—and if he were being honest, he’d be interested in hearing what she had to say about the situation if it were him with a new baby.

Luna was simply interesting in a way he wasn’t, though Dean tried to play down his enjoyment of it in case she didn’t like to feel like a curiosity. But the fact remained, tea at his flat would hardly be worth going to. The Lovegoods’ house was profoundly odd and full of all manner of interesting nonsense. It was different every time he was there. And there was always some bizarre magical chore he was only too happy to help out with.

“Another one,” he said brightly. He dumped his fifth plimpy into Luna’s bucket. He’d fished before, for his survival in woodland streams, but they’d always just used magic to pull the fish out. This net business was new to him. Dean was doing quite well, he thought. A hand/eye coordination thing, perhaps—he thought that was what had made his short flying history enough for the quidditch team.

“How many is enough, do you think?” he asked, though he was enjoying the fishing too much to be keen to start cooking. “Oh! Shit—” His latest plimpy had been close enough to the top of the bucket to stage an escape: it plopped along the dock on its spindly legs despite Dean’s lunge to grab it.

@Luna Lovegood

Luna looked up from the stream, her big eyes focusing on Dean as he asked her about little James Sirius. A vague smile spread across her face before she answered.

“Oh yes,” she said softly, “he’s doing fine. He’s such a precious baby.” For a moment her eyes seemed to drift off focus as she thought about her visit at the Potters’ place. It was so nice that her friends had a baby now and James Sirius would surely grow up to be a wonderful person and a powerful wizard - just like his parents. Luna felt so incredibly honoured that she could count Harry and Ginny to her friends.

Another friend was here with her now, though. Slowly Luna’s thoughts returned to the present time and she looked at Dean as he fished another plimpy out of the stream. “You have an outstanding talent for plimpy fishing,” she said very seriously as though this skill was something he might get an award for.

“I think we have enough already,” Luna said, tilting her head a little and looking at the bucket. “That should already make a nice plimpy soup,” she added, smiling a little. “I’m sure dad will be delighted. He says there’s nothing better than a plimpy soup. People always request the recipe for it.” Her voice trailed off as she thought of all the visitors to their home who had been served a freshwater plimpy soup. Surely Dean would enjoy it, too.

“We should go back inside,” she said quietly and got to her feet again. She let Dean carry the bucket and, when they reached the Lovegood’s home, she held the door open for him and guided her friend into Xenophilius’s kitchen.

He chuckled. “Maybe to you.” Babies had their moments, but Dean was convinced there was no such thing as a precious one. His joy that all his sisters were old enough now to carry on a conversation was matched only by the joy he’d felt once they’d all been old enough to use the toilet.

The escaped plimpy was quicker than he’d expected something so oddly-proportioned to be, but Dean was still quicker. He whipped his net against the dock after it had escaped his reach. Luna paid this undignified scuffle no mind. He reeled the wriggling fish (was it a fish?) in, feeling stupid more privately than he would in any other company.

She’d chosen to compliment him instead. “Thanks,” he said, grinning up at her once he’d knotted the plimpy’s legs together. “This stuff is fun, y’know, the—” He mimed jabbing his net into the water. “More fun than any other kind of fishing, anyway.” He’d never actually been fishing fishing, out on a lake with a pole at four in the morning, but it had always sounded torturous. Dean wasn’t excellent at waiting and seeing.

He stood and brushed off the seat of his jeans. “Do they?” he asked, doing his best to sound open-minded. A lot of magical food sounded dubious to him inherently. Surely plimpy soup could be normal enough, though? The Lovegoods’ food could definitely be hit or miss—but in his experience, so could most families’. His next-door neighbors had been raised on some shit Dean could never eat either.

“What else is in it?” he asked as he set down the bucket of plimpies on the tiled counter. (Would they just die from being out of the water or would they need to be boiled like lobsters? Care of Magical Creatures hadn’t covered soup preparation.) “I can chop vegetables or anything," he said. Dean wasn't as skilled at cooking as he was at plimpy fishing, but helping out was something he could do.

The house was whirring with activity like many wizard homes, but none of it seemed to be from Mr. Lovegood. “Is your dad home?” Dean asked.

“I know,” Luna said, a genuine smile spreading across her face. She enjoyed plimpy fishing far more than making the soup. Truth be told, usually Xenophilius did the cooking at the Lovegood’s house. It was definitely arguable if her father was a good chef per se but he enjoyed his work in the kitchen and Luna appreciated this. She’d like whatever her father served her because he had taken the time to make it for her.

“Oh yes,” Luna nodded. “My dad usually serves it to our guests and it’s really well received.”

Dean asked what else belonged in the soup and Luna tilted her head a little as she thought about his question. “Well,” she said, “my dad uses a celery root and some herbs and spices. Sometimes even noodles to make it more nutritious.”

As they were talking, Xenophilius came in and gave them a wary look. Luna immediately noticed it and looked at him, “what is it, dad?” she asked. “We’ve brought plimpies. Dean would like to know how you make your famous plimpy soup.”

Xenophilius seemed hesitant at first. Asked them if they didn’t want something else to eat and then put a kettle with water on. ’Oh look, a six-winged cackling butterfly!’ he exclaimed, pointing out of the window. Then Xenophilius quickly poured the content of a soup tin into the kettle.

When her father pointed out the rare magical butterfly, Luna had immediately looked out of the window and was a little disappointed when she saw nothing. Her father’s voice quickly brought her back to the situation in the kitchen, though.

’Dean, you could chop the celery root into small pieces. Luna, my dear, please, wash off the plimpies and hand them to me.’

Luna did as she was told and then looked at Dean with a vague smile. “I’m sure you’ll love the soup.” she said dreamily.

Dean realized too late that he didn’t know enough about cooking to make the question worth asking. What effect celery root might have on a soup was beyond him. He nodded politely. “I do like noodles—"

Mr. Lovegood appeared then, looking on edge. Dean couldn’t tell whether he looked more so than usual. “Hi, Mr. Lovegood,” he said, and then Luna cheerfully, obliviously tossed him under the bus. He gave her father an awkward shrug—he’d always hated friends telling their parents he wanted something, no matter how innocuous. Dean’s hungry! he could hear Seamus shouting to his mother during a long-gone summer.

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Dean started. “I just wanted to know if I could help…” But he trailed off. Mr. Lovegood seemed far more uncomfortable than he was. He was hemming and hawing, and then he pointed behind them with a dramatic gasp.

For all Dean knew there could really be something called a Six-Winged Cackling Butterfly around here, but he probably would have looked even if not. He wasn’t thinking about it. He and Luna turned in unison to stare out the window. Nothing out there looked butterflyish to him. Or to her, apparently: she turned back to the kitchen with a disappointed expression on her face.

The kettle was boiling now, and smelled pretty good. Dean looked to Luna suspiciously. “Er—that was fast?” But he didn’t know enough about magical cooking to make a big thing of it. Soup spells didn’t seem unreasonable. So he picked a knife out of the Lovegoods' purple knife block and inspected the celery root Luna's father had handed him. “Dices?”

[out]

“Yes, noodles and plimpies are very nice together,” Luna said as she washed dirt off the plimpies.

Still disappointed that she had missed the six-winged cackling butterfly, Luna saw the empty soup tin but didn’t make the connection yet. Her father had told her about this butterfly species before and while she could easily believe the six wings, Luna struggled to imagine a cackling butterfly. She definitely had to ask her father about it at some point.

Xenophilius ignored Dean’s comment that the soup was already boiling and there was a nice scent of food in the air already. He merely nodded as Dean asked if he should dice the celery and then quickly pulled out his wand to vanish the tin which, clearly, he hoped neither Luna nor Dean had seen.

Luna cut some herbs while Dean was dealing with the last celery dices and once all the ingredients were in the kettle, Xenophilius stirred the soup for a while before announcing that it was done now.

Luna quickly summoned soup plates and made them hover next to the kettle so her father could fill them with the plimpy soup. Once that was done she handed one to Dean, smiling.

“I hope you enjoy it,” she said dreamily as she walked over to the table.

[out]