Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. Just playing in this sandbox.

Sorry if any of this is repetitive, I write these notes assuming that anyone reading this is reading it for the first time. I can't assume people just came from the previous story.

A/N: Wow, this story is over TWELVE years in the making. I originally came up with this story idea in January 2008. I started writing it back then but eventually ran into writer's block on how to properly bring Luna into the 3-way relationship with Harry and Hermione in the way that I knew I wanted. At the time, I was only publishing on Portkey anyway, so I realized it was probably better to set aside the Trio version and re-write it to make it Portkey compliant. In doing so I eliminated the trio elements and added a bunch of new content, greatly expanding into Ron/Luna and Neville/Ginny aspects, which are not present in this story. That version ended up getting posted on Portkey in May 2008.

The irony is that when I returned to the writer's keyboard a few months ago, I THOUGHT I had completely lost the original Portkey files, and all I could find were the abandoned Trio files. So I started to work on finishing it... THIS story. But shockingly right as I was finishing the Trio story, I FOUND the files for old missing Portkey version. There was so much new, different stuff in the Portkey story that wasn't in the Trio story that I didn't want to leave it lost in digital oblivion. But it was all so focused primarily on Ron that there was no way to incorporate it into the trio story without it feeling like a completely optional side-quest to a casino planet to free space horses.

So, what to do? After some discussion with my friend and beta, it hit me! Although the two versions started very similarly, they had very different endings. As a child of the '80s, it instantly reminded me of the 1985 movie "Clue." So as a result, I will be posting BOTH versions of this story: first, the old Portkey version, which I have subtitled "That's How It Could Have Happened." If you have not yet read that story, I strongly encourage you to stop and go read that first, since that was the only thing ever published back in 2008.

Now that the old alternate version is now published, I can FINALLY post this "true" version, which is what I had originally intended twelve years ago but was unable to figure out how to make work. This version is subtitled, "But Here's What Really Happened." If you've seen "Clue" and its multiple endings, you'll understand the source of those two phrases.

Because this is the true, intended version, it starts out very similar but changes drastically soon thereafter. Even if you just finished reading the old Portkey version, I encourage you to re-read these first chapters again. The first two chapters of Portkey story were the old chapters from twelve years ago, with only a couple minor edits and grammar fixes, done over a few days. Since I came back into THIS story with new eyes, I allowed myself to drastically refresh the entire story from top to bottom and spent about six weeks working on this. So although much of the first two chapters is ALMOST the same as the old Portkey version, there are also are a lot of subtle changes too as the result of changes to my writing style and grammar over the past decade, as well as adding many new elements, big and small, to the beginning to help support the completely new content later in the story. So if you skip the beginning thinking you already read this a couple of days ago, you WILL miss new stuff. ;-)

Special thanks:

To HornDog Smith, for that first, initial email back in October that brought me back to "Luna Lovegood and the Trouser Snake," which in turn brought me back to writing PERIOD. This new story is dedicated to you!

To MapleMountain, my long-time friend and beta. Well, it took twelve years, but this is FINALLY done, and it's even better than I imagined it could have ever been all those years ago!

Summary: What happens when Luna Lovegood hears about a most unusual magical creature? Lunar Harmony story, H/Hr/L. Set in an alternate seventh year that is inspired heavily from the 7 books but without so much death and drama. And certainly no Griswold Camping Vacation From Hell!

LUNA LOVEGOOD and the TROUSER SNAKE

(But Here's What Really Happened)

CHAPTER ONE

IMAGINARY CREATURES

Luna Lovegood sat on a quiet shoreline on the edge of the lake near Hogwarts. She came out here sometimes when she wanted to escape all of the noise and activity of the castle… when she wanted to draw.

Recently, she'd discovered she had the ability to "See" things remotely. She wasn't sure exactly when this ability developed, but if she had asked Madame Pomfrey, the school nurse probably would have suggested it was triggered by the Sixth Year Ravenclaw having recently completed puberty: her body (and thus magic) was now sexually mature… and fully fertile.

But Luna hadn't asked, so all she did know was that it might have been related to the fact her maternal grandmother was a Seer. At first, that worried her because although her mother was not a Seer, she did on occasion have 'inspirations.' And it was one of those inspirations that gave her mother the idea for that last, most unfortunate experiment.

But Luna soon realized that it might not be such a bad thing because her interests lay in a different direction than her mother's. There were so many wonderful creatures that she knew existed—despite what books (and most everyone else) said—but she had never seen them. This might prove to be the answer to everything.

Luna didn't care what people thought or said about her, but she did want to prove that these animals were real. It wasn't about proving other people wrong, but rather to simply be able to add to the sum of knowledge of the natural world.

But she quickly ran into a problem. Her visions were so weak and so limited that once they ended, she could no longer recall what the object of her vision looked like. Her Ravenclaw cleverness was able to discern a pattern and propose a theory: she could remember active details: how something moved or acted, things that could be described by verbs and adverbs. But despite every memory trick she tried, she could not remember passive details: color, shape, location… nouns and adjectives.

What was the point of seeing a Nargle if she couldn't remember what it looked like? Of course, knowing that it floated—not flew—was significant, she supposed.

And then one day after many failed tests and experiments, quite by accident she discovered that if while still in the vision she tried to draw what she saw, the end result was nearly photographic in quality.

This surprised her more than anyone else, as she had grown up believing she wasn't a good artist at all. The last time she drew for fun, it took five minutes to convince her ever-believing father that, yes, THAT was a tree. In the end, he finally understood it once she explained that the tree was blue simply because she thought it would be fun to draw it blue since she had never seen a blue tree before.

Then again, in all fairness, when she thought about it some more, she did remember that she was only four at the time, so perhaps it wasn't good to base her future on what had happened so long ago. Indeed, late last year, she had taken up painting—painting pictures of her friends on the ceiling of her bedroom.

But that had been last year, months before discovering this new ability, and was completely unlike the near photo-realism of her "remote drawing". With more experimentation, she further learned that the only limiting factors in the quality of her drawings were the amount of time she spent inside the vision and the types and sizes of drawing materials themselves. It didn't take her long to realize that there was an inherent limit to the quality she could achieve with quills, ink, and parchment. Owling away for some proper drawing paper and art pencils dramatically improved the quality of her work literally overnight.

No matter how long she spent inside a vision, she still could never recall what her subject looked like. But now, with a good graphite pencil and a half-hour of solitude or more, she could at least depart the vision with what was tantamount to a black and white photograph. She, of course, saw in color, but trying to draw in color whilst in a vision always ended up really weird.

And so it was that today found Luna Lovegood sitting on the shore of the lake, leaning back against a tree, hoping to get for the first time actual proof that Crumple-Horned Snorkacks were real. First, she'd drawn several images of various items back at home that she'd asked her daddy to use as test objects. Then, once convinced it was actually working, she'd started with Nargles and Blibbering Humdingers. While it seemed to be working, the creatures were far too small to draw very well.

Thus, now she was trying for a Snorkack since she was certain they were much larger.

Forty-five minutes into her planned hour-long vision, Luna found herself being torn away by the sounds of approaching voices. While in her trance-like state, her other senses seemed to become heightened to compensate for being so distracted.

"… how much more backed up my balls can get! Has Pansy said anything to you why Millie won't put out?"

"I guarantee the last thing either of us wants to talk about is your non-existent sex life, Goyle, or your non-existent dick."

"But you're no bigger than I am. How did you get Pansy to spread her legs for you? — She is, isn't she? — Is she, Drake?"

"Shut up, Goyle! I don't have to explain myself to you. If my father hears that you — Wait! Shh! Shut up! There's someone over there on the other side of the lake! Up against the tree."

"Let's go see who it is and bug them."

"Heh heh heh… you said 'bug.'"

"Shut up, Crabbe!"

"Shut up, Crabbe!"

Luna opened her eyes and the voices faded away into the distance as her hearing returned to normal. She looked down at the drawing in her lap. She never remembered the details of her vision, so she was always surprised by what she drew, even when she already knew what it was going to be. But this time she was doubly surprised. This was nothing like what she expected!

For some reason, she'd expected, assumed, that the Snorkack was a purple creature with a cow-like face about the size of a large dog, a large hump on its back and two horns on its head, one above the other. The top one was shorter and straight like a unicorn horn, while the bottom one was longer and curved upwards and over the top horn. At least that was what the large stuffed toy looked like that her mum had made for her when she was three years old.

But looking at the paper in front of her, what she drew, although obviously incomplete, was much smaller… more kitten-sized than a dog.

As it turned out, that was good because if it had been the size of her stuffed toy version, it wouldn't have even fit onto the sketchbook that she had brought with her today. Because they were drawn whilst in her visions, Luna's drawings were always exactly full-scale true-to-life. For that reason, she had bought several sizes of sketchbooks to cover a wide variety of possible sizes.

Looking closely at the kitten-like creature, she noticed that instead of fur, it had fine feathers, almost down-like, even down to the bottom of its four legs. Most noticeably, large prominent feathers, much like those of a Great Horned Owl, lined the ears. The way they flattened out to the sides gave them the appearance of being, well, crumpled.

The owners of the earlier voices were now crashing through the forest undergrowth to intrude upon Luna's solitude; she shook her head to clear the last remaining wisps of mental fog created by her visions. She took one last look at her proof that the Snorkack was real.

It was absolutely nothing like what she had imagined or expected, but nonetheless, Luna was very happy.

But not for very long.

"Well, well, well. Look at who we have here. Loony Lovegood!" Draco Malfoy drawled in a voice that dripped with undeserved self-confidence. His ever-present gaggle of goons guffawed giddily.

Knowing it was best to simply ignore the Slytherin, Luna moved to put away her sketchbook. Unfortunately, she was not fast enough, as Malfoy had magicked it out of her hands with a quick Summoning charm.

"What do we have here?" he cooed happily. "Widdle Woony's been dwawing!" he mocked.

His voice wasn't so amused after a moment of silence.

"What the hell is this?" he asked in irritated confusion. It was hard for him to ridicule it if he didn't know what he was looking at.

"It's a Crumple-Horned Snorkack," Luna said, finally speaking. "Even you should be able to recognize that."

Any retort Malfoy might've had for what he thought was sarcasm was instantly drowned by laughter when he realized she was serious.

"Oh, for the love of Merlin, you're serious! Loony's imaginary creatures!" Malfoy choked out as he struggled to regain his breath. "She- she's serious!" he repeated to Crabbe and Goyle, which set them laughing again.

"Oh, oh, wait-wait-wait-wait!" he wheezed, trying to catch his breath and quiet the other two. "I know. I know." He started laughing again. "I'll give you something to draw. You've been hanging around Scarhead and his Mudblood lately, right? You want something imaginary to draw, why don't you draw Potter's Trouser Snake?"

Crabbe and Goyle burst out laughing.

"If you're going to draw things that don't exist, start with that!"

As Malfoy succumbed to his laughter again, he threw Luna's sketchbook into the lake as far as he could. (It didn't go very far. He could have banished it but he felt more empowered by throwing it with his bare hands. Whatever magical prowess he may or may not have had, it accompanied a marked lack of upper body strength.) The three Slytherins then starting walking back towards the castle, laughing so hard they began wheezing again.

Once they were gone, Luna summoned her sketchbook back to her. A couple of quick spells and it was dry and as good as new… another reason why pencil was better than ink. Looking at her partial Snorkack drawing again, she let out a tiny sigh of disappointment. She would have start over; she couldn't resume drawing in the middle of a vision.

Luna flipped to the next blank page and stared blankly at the drawing paper's finely textured surface.

"That's a brilliant idea!" she suddenly exclaimed aloud. Why didn't I think of it sooner?

She'd never seen Harry's Trouser Snake before. Of course, she'd never seen any Trouser Snake before, neither in person nor in any of the books that were in her house.

With a happy smile, Luna got herself comfortable again and leaned up against the tree. Pencil in hand, she allowed her mind to go blank and closed her eyes. As was habit by now, her grip tightened slightly as the whirlwind of images slowly began to clear and focus into one.

A/N: If you want to see what the Snorkack that Luna expected to see looked like (the stuffed toy version that her mother made for her), just do a google image search for "Crumple Horned Snorkack" and it should appear in the first few image results. Luna's stuffed animal version is the one currently on display at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios. However, since JKR has never confirmed or denied whether Snorkacks are real (thankfully... since I really didn't need to know that wizards used to just relieve themselves anywhere, anytime), I simply have made it my story that Luna's stuffed animal was just a fanciful toy that a loving mother had sewn together for her three-year-old daughter.