Luna Lovegood's Arc

Chapter 2 of 19

The gentle net worked. Now Luna needed the real creature to walk into it. But she still had no idea what a Snorkack would eat. No one had ever confirmed one existed, let alone fed one. She sat in her father's cluttered study, the finished net across her lap, and stared at the shelves of jars and papers. If anyone knew, it was him. Xenophilius Lovegood shuffled in wearing his purple cardigan, glasses sliding down his nose. He believed in Snorkacks more than anyone alive. He was the one who first told Luna they were real, back when she was small. He set down a chipped teacup and peered at her. "You've got that look," he said. "The one your mother had before she solved something." "I built a trap that won't hurt it," Luna said. "But it won't come out for an empty net. I need bait. What do they like?" Her father's smile faded. He pulled off his glasses and rubbed them slowly. "I never learned that," he admitted. "I chased them for thirty years. I saw prints. I heard calls at night. I never got one to come close." Luna's stomach dropped. If he didn't know, no book would tell her. But he crossed to a locked drawer and dug out a bundle of yellowed notes. "These are my old field journals," he said. "Read them. Maybe you'll see what I missed." Luna read for hours. Most pages held dead ends. Then one entry stopped her. Her father had written that every clearing with prints also held gurdyroot plants, chewed down to stubs. He had thought it a coincidence. Luna did not. "They eat gurdyroot," she whispered. "You wrote it yourself and never noticed." Her father leaned over the page. His eyes went wide. "By the stars. All those years." Gurdyroot grew sour and tough. A hungry creature might pass it by. Luna thought hard, then remembered the sweets jar in the kitchen. She fetched sugar and a fat gurdyroot. She boiled it, rolled it, and coated it in crackling sugar crystals until it sparkled. A treat no shy animal could resist. She held up the finished bait. It glittered in the lamplight. Her father clapped his hands like a boy. "That," he said, "is the smartest thing anyone in this family has done." Luna knew where to place it. Her father's notes pointed to one spot again and again. Deep in the tangled woods, past the shadowed trunks, where prints gathered thickest. The old forest was dark and easy to lose yourself in. But that was where the Snorkack hid. She wrapped the sugared root in cloth and tucked it beside the net. She had a trap that held gently. Now she had bait that tempted. The last thing she needed was to carry both into the deep forest and set them without getting lost.