Luna Lovegood Is the Patron Saint of Weird Girls
Do you remember the first time you met Luna Lovegood? She was reading The Quibbler upside-down onboard the Hogwarts Express, and Harry Potter, our selfless boy wonder, was embarrassed to be seen with her. But, in one of J.K. Rowling’s effortless sleights of hand, we are meant to understand that what Harry feels about Luna and what we feel for her do not have to perfectly agree. When I met Luna, in that first, hot-off-the-presses race through Order of the Phoenix, what I remember feeling was relief. I was absolutely flooded with relief because the existence of Luna meant that I no longer had to identify as Hermione.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Hermione, and she and I certainly have the brainy, know-it-all thing in common. But I lacked the unflagging energy and ruler-straight bearing of our girl in Gryffindor. I was weirder than that, and the second I read about a girl with Butterbeer corks strung around her neck, I knew that there was finally someone in my favorite universe as weird as me.
What Luna represents—and what we’re all finally ready to understand when we’re about fifth year age—is the existence of people with thoughts and feelings outside our immediate range of vision. Luna is the first seriously important student who isn’t a Gryffindor (or the Slytherins who exist to oppose and reflect the Gryffindors), and she comes with plenty of stories that are all her own. She’s rich in quirks, obviously, but also in the tragedy of a deceased mother and a social ostracism that even Neville can’t compete with (because Neville has Harry to keep his chin up).
More than once throughout the series, Harry pauses in his journey and steps outside his angst to reflect on what Luna might be feeling. The first time is after Sirius’ death, when he finds her roaming the halls, in search of the possessions that other students (members of her own house!) have hidden from her. (That casual cruelty foreshadows Sirius and James in Half-Blood Prince.) And seeing Luna, matter-of-factly searching for her things, is what finally rouses Harry from his misery.
What people most often associate with Luna are the impossible things she believes; she subscribes to a magic even beyond magic of the books. But what the weird girls who love and need her will remember is her optimism and guileless honesty. I recently read a description of Luna that talked about how she didn’t seem to care about the opinions of others, and I very nearly left quite a nasty comment in response. Because Luna cares very much. She wears a lion on her head roaring out how much she cares, she paints a mural on her bedroom wall of people who very probably do not care nearly as much about her. She cares honestly, forthrightly, without expectation of winning any points or popularity contests for it.
And like many weird girls (like me), Luna isn’t understood or appreciated until after adolescence, when she becomes a celebrated naturalist, and proves that plenty of the creatures she believed in (though sadly not the Crumple-Horned Snorkack) were real all along. She even marries a man who presumably looks not unlike Eddie Redmayne. (Sorry Neville, but two lefts don’t make a right.)
So (if you can’t be a Hermione) be a Luna. Care without the insulating blanket of sarcasm, believe in the things only you can see, and always be on the lookout for Nargles.
What’s your favorite Luna moment/accessory?
