Lunar Summer

Lunar Summer


Luna and her father had set up two tents in the clearing as their camp.  They had brought an enchanted wooden chest filled with food, enlarged butterfly nets, shovels, bags, and other Crumple-Horned Snorkack catching equipment.  
The first day was spent setting up camp and unsuccessfully checking the area for Snorkack trails.  
The next morning the two decided to take a hike into the hills overlooking the camp to look for signs of Snorkack dens.  Luna had a camera and her father had a notepad to write down the notes he’s use later to write an article for The Quibbler.  Luna practically floated down the path, slowly getting further and further away from her energetic father.  She kept her eyes to the ground looking for any signs that a Snorkack could be near in the shrubs.  
Luna heard something above her head and looked up.  The camera slowly rose in her hands and snapped a picture of a squirrel on the sun speckled branch.
She continued walking down the path listening to the birds singing and wondering what kind of den the Snorkacks built.  She had once asked Ludo Bagman this question while he was waiting in front of her father’s office for an interview, (apparently he had lost a bet with a colleague).  He had nervously shuffled his feet and muttered something about Dungbombs.  
She looked up and didn’t see her father, but it didn’t bother her.  They’d bump into each other again soon enough.
Luna saw a trail that cut through the undergrowth away from the hiking path.  She thought it might be a Snorkack trail and followed it.  
She thought as she meandered through the trees.  To a stranger the flaxen haired girl might have looked depressed, but anyone who knew her would know that she was just thinking.  
Her thoughts wandered around her head much like she wandered around the woods.  
First she thought of Gillyweed and of how Neville Longbottom had talked about it during the train ride home.  She had never seen him so talkative and knowledgeable on any subject.
She raised her handkerchief to her sweaty brow as her thoughts jumped to the strange muggle toy that she had gotten last Christmas.  She had brought it on the trip with her, although she hadn’t figured out how to play with the ‘Gameboy’ but she was sure that she could figure it out eventually.  She had found a secret compartment that had strange cylinders in it labeled ‘Energizer’ and she had also taken out a small tablet labeled ‘Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town’.  There had been a second tablet called ‘Pokemon: Crystal’ that had a cute picture on it, but she had left it too close to the cauldron fire and it had melted. ‘But she couldn’t see how inserting the ‘Energizers’ and the tablet into the compartments could be fun for Muggles.
Her mind jumped again to her dad’s work.  They had recently done an article on Barty Crouch Jr. escaping from Azkaban with help from his parents, but most of the letters The Quibbler had received said that Sirius Black was the first person to escape and that Crouch Jr. had died.  Luna’s father didn’t let it bother him, the letters never did.
She looked up and saw that her feet had indeed brought her back to the camp.  As she walked out of the brush, he father entered the campsite too.  He was quite </b>giddy</b> about the tracks that he had found on the hike and Luna was more than ready to listen.