What was even more outrageous was that these wild stories were actually highly credible. Many of them later appeared in the books or were confirmed in one way or another.
He flipped through a few more pages and saw a title: The Latest Discovery About Crumple-Horned Snorkacks: They Can Actually Fly.
Leon looked up and found Luna staring at him with expectation in her eyes.
"What do you think?" Luna asked.
Leon closed the magazine and said seriously, "It's interesting. I've never seen anything like this before."
Luna's eyes lit up.
It only lasted for a moment, but Leon caught it.
"Crumple-Horned Snorkacks are real," she said suddenly. "Most people don't believe it, but I've seen one of their horns. There's a complete one in my father's study. If there's a chance later, I can show it to you."
"Sure." Leon nodded. "I'm curious."
Luna looked at him as if trying to judge whether he was lying.
A few seconds later, she relaxed and leaned back against the window again.
"You're a good person," she said. "You weren't lying."
Leon froze.
"Most people laugh when they see this magazine." Luna's voice was still light and dreamy, but Leon could hear a trace of loneliness in it. "They laugh at me, laugh at my father, laugh at our magazine. They call us lunatics."
Outside the window, fields and villages flashed by. Sunlight streamed through the glass into the compartment, scattering broken patches of light across the seats.
Leon was silent for a while before speaking.
"I come from a completely different place. There's no magic there, no Hogwarts, no moving pictures. To me, everything right now feels like a dream. So if people call you crazy, maybe it's only because they can see too little."
Luna turned her head, those silvery-blue eyes looking at him with complete seriousness.
"You're right," she said softly. "Most people always fail to see the things they should see."
To be honest, when Luna said that, it felt a little like a humble brag.
There were people in this world born with extraordinary talents. Tom Riddle, for example, had Parseltongue from birth and could speak to and control snakes. Nymphadora Tonks was a natural Metamorphmagus who could freely change her appearance and hair color.
Luna, on the other hand, was probably a born master of Legilimency.
In the magical world, Legilimency was an extremely advanced branch of magic that required considerable magical power to master. Normally, the process involved a wizard pointing a wand at the target, focusing their mind, and speaking the incantation before they could enter the other person's thoughts.
But a natural Legilimens was different. Their mind was like a radio that was always on and could never be switched off, constantly receiving the thought-waves of everyone around them.
In the Fantastic Beasts series, Queenie Goldstein was the classic example of this.
She didn't need a wand, nor did she need to cast a spell. She could hear people's inner voices directly.
To her, other people's thoughts weren't abstract language but vivid images. When someone was thinking, it was like she was watching a film.
That ability caused her a great deal of trouble. Because she couldn't switch it off, she was forced to hear everyone's truest, darkest, and noisiest thoughts. That was also why she always seemed a little absent-minded or overly sensitive—she was processing an overwhelming amount of information all the time.
The difference between Luna and Queenie was that Luna was a witch, so she could subconsciously guide that ability in a different direction.
Queenie was like a mental radar, always receiving signals sent out by the people around her. Luna was more like a spiritual antenna, tuned to the hidden frequencies of this world—the signals of ancient magic, mysterious creatures, and vague premonitions.
Luna's calm came from the fact that she simply didn't care what other people thought. Her classmates called her "Loony" and hid her things, yet she would only say lightly that if they were throwing Dungbombs behind your back, it only meant they were bored. It wasn't that she failed to understand their malice. It was that her spirituality placed her on a higher level, making all those petty worldly cruelties seem too small to be worth caring about.
Thinking about it that way, perhaps Luna couldn't really be described as a traditional natural Legilimens. Legilimency belonged to a highly rational branch of magic that required immense willpower, and it was closer to the opposite of Occlumency—falling more into the realm of magical psychology.
Luna's gift was more like hearing the voice of all things. Her consciousness was transparent. Most people's minds were like walls, reflecting away all information that didn't fit common sense. Luna's mind was more like glass, or the surface of a lake, allowing the mysterious and unfathomable aspects of magic to pass through her and be sensed.
For the next stretch of the journey, they talked on and off.
Luna told Leon that her home was a black tower-like house near the village of Ottery St Catchpole. Her mother had died in an accident during a spell experiment when Luna was nine, and her father had raised her alone ever since.
Leon, in turn, told her a few things about his old world. No magic, skyscrapers, mobile phones, and cars.
Luna showed enormous interest in the concept of a mobile phone.
"So it's a special kind of Floo Network? And it isn't expensive?" she asked eagerly.
"Yeah... I guess so? Just not as advanced as the Floo Network," Leon said with some hesitation.
The Floo Network really was absurd.
It could be used as a means of transportation and also as a method of face-to-face communication. Its functionality was so ridiculous that even in 1995, Muggle technology couldn't begin to compare to magic in the field of communication.
Luna nodded thoughtfully.
"Muggle things are always interesting. They use those things instead of magic, and they still live quite well."
The train continued north, and the scenery outside gradually became more desolate. Mountains rose and fell in the distance, mist curled through the air, and the sky slowly darkened.
At teatime, a plump witch came by pushing a trolley. Leon spent a little over a dozen Sickles and bought a large pile of snacks: Cauldron Cakes, Pumpkin Pasties, Chocolate Frogs, and Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans. He piled everything onto the small table and shared them with Luna.
Luna picked up a red bean, looked at it, and put it into her mouth.
"Chili pepper flavor," she said calmly. Then she pushed the rest of the pack back toward Leon. "Not bad luck."
"I'm not too fond of gambling." Leon shook his head and refused.
To Leon, Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans were pure evil.
Apparently there were flavors like earwax and booger.
For a snack, that was completely insane.
Leon opened a pack of Chocolate Frogs. One frog jumped out, but he snatched it midair and devoured it on the spot.
When he turned over the card inside, he found Dumbledore's portrait on it.
The old man with the white beard was winking at him.
<><><><><><><><><><><>
Good Reviews/Ratings are greatly appreciated
Drop some POWERSTONES to push the story forward!