I'm back early and very bored.

LEAVE COMMENTS!

Grimmauld Place, Number 12; London.

November 23rd, 1979.

Dearest love of my life,

Oh, my only love... What have you done?

It pains my heart to hear your name being spoken amongst my circle of colleagues, especially with the level of interest they took in your work. They baptised your variation of the Lukas Potion as 'Lupin's Variation', per your request of not using your first name on it, and now people cannot stop speaking of you.

As expected, Snape and Avery overheard your professor bragging about your abilities to the others and they brought the information to my superiors. Evan was not surprised, even went as far as complimenting you in front of everybody for your incredible understanding of Potions and Alchemy. Snape wasn't happy. The Dark Lord asked me questions about you and, again, I had to lie and pretend that I did not know every single detail of your life. Unfortunately, due to the new wave of interest on you, they have found out that you no longer live with your mother. Fortunately, we were already apart when you moved, so I had a reasonable explanation for not knowing your whereabouts, but please be very careful to not be followed on your way home from the Academy. It's my understanding that you have more eyes on your there than you expect.

Understand, I do not mean to frighten you, my dear, but my overprotection does not seem to be exaggerated this time around.

Pandora has written to me to go to a dinner party with her brother tomorrow, and once more it pains me to lie to her. She's every so worried about you and even talks about your letters sometimes, though she does not go into details, probably in respect to my own heartache. She's confused to which side stay. She loves me, I'm aware since the day we became friends even though we were already cousins; but she's yours fully, my dear, I never had a change to fight for her favour in this, I assure you. I wonder if she will be happy when it is safe again and we tell her that we never let go of each other's hands. By what she said to me in letters, she might find a way to visit you soon as well, so be warned and make sure she knows you're being watched and to keep your whereabouts secret.

As to your complaint, I found a solution, though you won't like it.

I'm aware that the boys in your class are now appearing with more theories. I know you hate being 'left behind', even though you're not (you're still the best in class, don't worry). Contrary to your classmates, you cannot afford to build your own laboratory in your house or pay for weekend passes in the laboratories in school. Therefore, my solution was simple: build one in your stead.

Don't start about the money! It is my duty to provide for you, and I shall for as long as you'll have me.

The problem I seem to have found is the location we could use for it. It did get me thinking for many hours. I cannot build an Alchemy laboratory for you in your muggle residence, and there are few places that can provide you the safety that a wizarding home should provide. I even thought about getting in contact with the Potters for your sake, but I decided against it since you did complain about James Potter's reaction to your constant present in the house after asking for lessons; I didn't want to make you uncomfortable. My solution for that part of the problem did make me break one of our rules. I shared our secret to someone that I know for certain that would not harm you or I for any possible reason.

Uncle Alphard's flat is big enough and close enough to your muggle residence. You can Apparate directly inside once you are accepted into the wards, which makes it a lot safer for you as well. He works quietly most of the time and does not notice he had company when engrossed in his work, much like you – I thought it would work splendidly. Besides, he has accepted it already, waiting for your communication. In general, you can be sure he'll welcome you into his home in the weekends.

Oh, how wonderfully happy he was when he found out of our secret. I'm close to believing he loves you more than he loves me, perhaps you are his favourite niece. He's been talking my ear off about how glad he is that my melancholy is merely because I cannot love you loudly, because he can understand this pain a lot better than the pain of loving while being apart, and I explained that I do not know how to love you without being loud about it (which caused a few jokes, ones that I could not deny or be angry about, unfortunately, since I'm far too aware of how vocal I become once I'm with you).

How come when I start writing, I can't seem to stop? I got nothing else to say, but I have been staring at this letter for long minutes to try and find one more thing to write, one more thing to say, as if I'm prolonging a conversation with you. I miss your voice. I miss your eyes. I miss touching you.

I won't be present in your life physically for a bit longer, my Guiding Star. I will travel soon, but I plan on seeing you before leaving.

I will let you go now, dear.

With all my love,

R. A. B.

Luna tried to think of the letter as she stared at the bubbling potion in front of her, ignoring the noise of Alphard moving several feet away from her, sitting and staring at his painting in dissatisfaction.

Early December made the outside of Alphard's flat cold and windy, but she felt safe and warm in there. Alphard had served her orange slices and left her to her work, going to his own work of putting more details in the portrait of a young lady in Lithuania from a very rich family – he had complained a few times that she wasn't pretty enough, nor smart enough to get a husband on her own, so her family insisted on him exaggerating her beauty before finishing the painting.

"I think I'm done for the day," Alphard complained, looking over his shoulder to look at her. He pressed his lips together, watching her watch the potion in boredom. "How long does it have to stay untouched?"

"Another two hours, but I can always put in stasis if you need me to go, Mister Black," she said.

"Not what I meant, Miss Lupin. I was about to offer you tea," he said, rising from his seat and walking towards her. He peeked over her shoulder. "I don't recognise the smell. What are you making?"

Luna thought for a second, unsure of how to respond since she had no name for it yet. Waiting for it, however, Alphard moved his wand, making the tea prepare itself, though doing that often made the tea taste too sweet for his opinion. He didn't want to lose his focus from her answer.

"I'm reverse engineering a potion Lukas' Potion but using the ingredients from Lupin's Variation to attempt a cure or medicine," she explained. She blushed. "Merlin's Beard, it's so odd to say 'Lupin's Variation' and know that I had something to do with it. I can't believe my professor allowed them to name it after me even after I told them not to use my name."

Alphard chuckled, pulling his wooden painting chair closer to her working station and sitting a bit far from her to give her space.

"Well, I happen to believe you deserve it, Miss Lupin. It's not easy to do what you did so early in one's academic career," he said with a casual shrug. She glanced at him by the corner of her eyes; it was that one reaction that made Alphard think again. "But... Lukas' Potion already is a cure to poisoning. Reverse engineering could create a poison based on wolfsbane."

Luna bit the inside of her cheek. "Yes."

"So how can it be a cure? A cure for what?" he asked.

She crossed her arms.

"I believe I can make it non-toxic. Wolfsbane, if prepared correctly, can be used for medicine and a werewolf repellent. If I prepare it well enough, I can neutralise the poison in it while making something that can lower symptoms of people afflicted by the illness, either they be werewolves or not," she explained.

"How can one be afflicted by the illness and not be a werewolf?" he asked, curiously.

Luna raised her eyebrows, thinking of how to answer that, stringing words together to form a good enough sentence without explaining too much.

"When one is attacked by an unmatured werewolf, being it by birth or becoming, or by being attacked when in animagus form. Some also shared some symptoms without transformation after a blood transfusion, but there was only one case of it in England," she explained. She leaned back in the chair. "I want to do a few tests."

"Sounds dangerous," Alphard mused.

She nodded once, solemn.

"It is," she answered.

Alphard frowned, watching the severity of Luna's thoughts appear on her facial expression, even though she controlled it well enough. An untrained person wouldn't have caught the hesitation, let alone the fear behind those green eyes.

"And on whom do you expect to test that potion on once it's ready?" he asked.

It was the correct question. Luna's shoulders tensed and her eyes narrowed in suspicion, almost asking how he knew something that she hadn't been willing to tell him. That was how Alphard knew that he had caught it.

"Someone I know," she whispered.

"Someone you see every day?" he asked. She didn't answer. "In the mirror?" he drilled in the question.

"I'm unsure how one can answer that question without making trouble," she admitted.

"With the truth," he said. "The truth won't come out of my mouth."

Luna smiled at him a sad, quiet smile. Her extended silence was answer enough, but Alphard waited even so, unwilling to just accept the unsaid truth.

"Yes," she mumbled so low that he barely heard it. Her hand touched her own chest, translating the scars into light touching. "An unmatured werewolf attacked me when I was a toddler. I do not transform, but it lodged in my heart and in part of my brain. The symptoms were supposed to get better once I grew since my body was supposed to be stronger now, but the stress is making it worse. I need to get rid of them or at least soften them enough to... survive."

"Is there a chance you won't?"

As an uncle, his first thought was of Regulus. The boy was wasting away at the mere impossibility of not seeing his girlfriend so often anymore, he could not imagine for one moment the reaction if they were to say that Miss Lupin had passed away. However, logically, he knew that Regulus knew everything that there was to know about Luna and her condition given desperate, but prepared reaction to her seizure.

"Survive, you mean?"

"Yes."

"Isn't there always a chance one will not? There's a war –"

"Not what I asked, Miss Lupin," he said, firmly.

She sighed, aware she had no way out.

"I don't know," she admitted. "There's always a possibility whenever I have an attack or when my heart is overworked. I just want to try to get the worst out of the way."

Alphard shook his head. "And you plan on testing it on yourself?! Miss Lupin, that's a horrible idea! It might be poisonous!" he exclaimed.

Her mouth opened and closed a few times.

"What am I to do? Who else am I supposed to test this on?" she asked.

"You might die poisoned before you can even help yourself!" he said.

"I'm making Lukas' Potion in the Academy just in case, it'll be ready in three days. My potion will be ready tomorrow. In any case, if it doesn't work, I'll have an antidote in just two days difference," she said.

"But you don't know the bloody reaction you'll have to it. You don't now if you'll have the time to wait for it to be ready, Miss Lupin!" complained Alphard.

Luna nodded, understanding what the man was seeing as a possibility in her experiment, but she knew that there was nothing to be done. That was Alchemy, that was the price of what she chose for her life.

"I cannot play with someone else's life but my own," she explained.

"Playing with your life is playing with the lives of everybody around you. Miss Lupin, you are too loved to be so inconsequential," Alphard insisted. He leaned forward, trying to appear as genuine as he felt. He frowned. "Can you not understand it? Can you not see how heartbroken all these people would be? I included, Miss Lupin."

"Mister –"

"Please, losing you will do us no good," he said, cutting her off. "I need you to be safe about it."

"Mister Black, I need to do it. The compromise I can get to for this subject is to promise to wait and have the antidote in hand when I first test it," she said.

Alphard was still dissatisfied, even with the compromise Luna offered, but he was mollified at the obvious desperation in her eyes. He didn't need to know the secret efforts she was doing for the war, he knew those eyes – the hunger for live, for survival. He saw those eyes before when Magnus was still alive, talking with hopes and dreams of going to the Netherlands; that glim died when his love did. He couldn't refuse her the happiness she deserved by being, for once in her life, healthy enough to be normal.

"Will you notify me if anything goes wrong?" he asked.

"If you so desire," she answered, hesitant.

"I mean it, Miss Lupin. Your parents will be worried and refuse to let you work again in your experiments, but the Potters will certainly keep an eye on you. If anything goes wrong, tell them... and tell me as well," he said. "I might not be able to do much for you, but I do care. I want you to be successful and healthy, not one for the cost of the other."

"I'm grateful for your friendship, Mister Black, really, I am," Luna said, smiling at him. "I just fear I cannot stop. I need to do this."

Unfortunately, Mister Alphard was correct in his concern for Luna.

One moment she was in class, one day after drinking her first attempt of the potion, and in the next she was in a hospital bed. Her head ached, her teeth hurt and her tongue was cut, she could taste the blood even though she couldn't manage to spit it out, either because her lips seemed half-asleep.

She took a moment to understand what she was feeling. Besides her head and teeth, her chest hurt, not in the way it usually did by squeezing and making it painful to breathe, but an actual sharp pain that made her stay completely still for a long while. Quietly, she looked around, trying not to move too much, not wanting to make her head hurt more than it was already hurting. She could see people moving around, only taking one moment to understand she was at the hospital, in a room with Professor Soo looking absolutely terrified as he spoke to Lord Potter a few feet beside her bed.

"...simply will not do!" Lord Potter was saying, arms crossed in front of his chest, eyebrows scrunched together in quiet anger. "She is my ward! It took hours for any of you to call for me!"

"I was accompanying her, I made sure that the Healers and Mediwizards were aware of her identity, but they told me to step away since I wasn't family, so I tried to get in contact with her father, but I found no –"

"You get in contact with me. She's my ward!" Lord Potter said firmly, glaring at the professor. "Her father is a very busy man, and he has been in recovery after a health crisis, he's just staring to work again in the Ministry, he cannot step away from his job, but I can, therefore my contact information was left in her possession and in the possession of the Academy. All you had to do was follow protocol." He stepped away, going to sit down on the chair near her bed, unaware she was awake. "My wife will not be happy to find out our Luna has been in hospital alone for over three hours."

Professor Soo looked down, seemingly ashamed.

Luna slowly blinked, opening her mouth to say something, but her voice failed her. What came out was a croaking sound, very much like an annoyed frog. Still the awful sound made both men turn to look at her.

"Miss Lupin!" Professor Soo exclaimed, tone so relieved that Luna pitied him.

"Luna," Fleatmont whispered, leaning towards her to look at her face well.

"What happened?" she managed to choke out, her voice was awful.

Fleatmont turned to Professor, waiting for his answer.

"You had a seizure in class, Professor Crooks called for me while Mister Snape waited with you. Apparently, he knew what to do," the professor answered. He put his hands behind his back. "I brought you to St Mungus. They said..." he trailed off.

Professor Soo seemed unwilling to say anything.

Lord Potter looked down and took a long breath.

"Your heart stopped after the seizure. Had it not been for Mister Snape notice it, and deal with it, you would've been dead," Fleatmont continued.

Luna blinked.

"I died?"

"For a little while, yes," Fleatmont said. "We followed you request to not warn your father or mother unless you decided to. Euphemia was busy with her brothers visiting, she did not see the letter arriving, and I didn't want to make things mor complicated, so I came instead."

She didn't care that he had been the one to come, she was grateful that it wasn't her parents. She couldn't imagine how it would feel to see Hope on her knees, crying beside her bed, or Lyall signing paper after paper, begging for treatments that they couldn't afford. And worst, she couldn't think of Remus sitting in the corner, feeling too guilty to look into her eyes when she woke up.

"Did they give you a reason for my attack?" she asked, looking between the men.

Professor Soo looked at Fleatmont, letting him answer this time.

"They said that the illness... moved. Its particles moved," Lord Potter answered. "Some left your brain, causing the seizure, and followed through your bloodstream, overworking your heart and making it stop."

Luna rolled her shoulders, hating the tensions climbing up her neck. Slowly, she pushed herself to sit up, clutching the covers to her chest. She found herself wearing the familiar hospital gown.

"What treatments did they give me?" she asked.

"Just the potions they usually give you, the ones in your chart, and two doses of silver extract," Fleatmont said. He took the chart from the foot of the bed and gave it to her, she read through them. "They asked your blood type; it wasn't written anywhere."

"A+"

"They took it to tests, but they said they'd have to find someone with similar blood type... untainted," he said. "I was waiting for you to wake up to ask you if you were willing to call your father. They want to do an experiment, and they need magical blood, but the magic needs to be familiar –"

"My dad is O-" she answered, cutting him off. "I know what they are intending to do. I've read about it."

It was a blood transfusion for the sake of the magic in the blood to heal the body. It was the theory behind the reason as to why wizarding folk survived for so long without the need of often magical intervention. However, Luna's magic would only respond to other magical familial blood, such her father (whose blood type did not match hers) and her grandmother (whose blood type also didn't match hers, and had stopped her cancer treatment less than two years before). While it could work, it wouldn't work on Luna.

... Though...

Blood...

"Professor, thank you very much for the help," Luna said, avoiding his eyes.

Feeling dismissed, the professor quickly made his way out of the room, mumbling about going back to work.

Luna turned to Fleatmont once more.

"Uncle, thank you as well. Would you do me a favour? I believe there's one person that can provide me with information that might work with a theory of mine," she said.

"Who?"

"Mister Alphard Black. If there's one thing I learnt is that the Black Family has an extensive library on blood magic, and he can get it for me," she said. She gave a little smile to the man beside her. "And he won't ask questions."

And right she was.

The day after her hospital stay started, while Euphemia brushed and plaited her hair, an owl came through with a thick book and a thick letter.

Dear Miss Luna Lupin,

I write this letter with a heavy heart. Though I told you to call for me if anything went wrong, I was unable to go to you to help for the reasons of my father being at my apartment when Lord Potter's letter found me. Though he did not recognise the handwriting and did not see the content, he did not like the fact that I was being summoned by an unnamed person to the hospital. I stayed to placate him.

However, I'd like to start this letter truly by saying that I did warn you that it was a dangerous idea, and yet you insisted on it. I'll not write 'I told you so', though my heart does it time and time again. My dear young miss, I do not understand the necessity of doing those things alone; you could've at least talk to your professor for guiding, but I see that you'd rather not.

The book now in your possession was a favourite of my sister's when she was a young schoolgirl, planning on going for Advanced Potions once she was older. She no longer reads it, so she won't notice its absence, it's called 'Magical Blood and its Study by Erin Yikimir', you cannot see it because the title has faded with time. It's my understanding that it was my father's book before being hers. Once you are done with it, I'll request it back, for safety rather than for emotional attachment.

Also, I'd like to tell you that your health condition did slip out, though not through any fault of mine.

It's my understanding that someone that was present during your episode made a comment about it in the Ministry and, during the dinner I was in Grimmauld Place (to collect the book in your hands), my brother-in-law made a comment of it, creating quite the ruckus. My sister was surprisingly concerned for your condition and even Orion's father was asking questions after you, but since Orion was unable to answer any of them, I felt in the need to say that you were alright. I told them that you were alive and under observation in St. Mungus, per what Lady Euphemia Potter – a known client of mine – had said; it was for Regulus' sake, as you can imagine. He was keen on trying to pretend some form of nonchalance, but even through Occlumency, one could see his fear. Not even my own father made a comment on it, though he did make a few mean comments about the Potter Family (not about you, for his own safety).

Not something worth mentioning, of course, but I wanted to make sure that you knew I had nothing to do with the information of your episode slipping out of the Academy and the hospital.

My flat is always open for you, my friend, as I'm certain you are aware, regardless of your intentions of hurting yourself with another potion or just to get good conversation over tea. I'm willing to be the one to take you the hospital and the one to talk of colour-theory over a good tea.

I'm always waiting for you, my dear niece.

Yours,

Uncle Alphard