[ There is going to be so much gossip after tonight, buzzing through both of the work-social groups like wildfire. But having been one of Harry Potter's closest friends, weathering the barbs of Rita Skeeter's gossip about everyone in Dumbledore's Army over the years, even when she was too young and shouldn't have been in the cross-hairs — well, it took the sting out of regular gossip, which Luna had never paid much mind to begin with. War, too, had a way of rewiring your priorities. So as long as Charlie himself didn't mind, then as far as she was concerned, there's no problem. And she drifts along in their conversation, picking up their earlier thread as if the brief distraction had never happened: ]

Twelve years. I'm obviously much earlier on, just getting started, but I'd been thinking about going into magizoology for a while. All this. I like this.

[ A vague and dreamy gesture of her hand at everything around them: the bar, the people, but it's more than that. ]

Dad was always telling me about all these different creatures and animals, and I want to prove that they exist. Just because no one's seen a Snorkack yet doesn't mean they're not out there.

[ The years to come would slowly start to winnow the wheat from the chaff, and she'd start to untangle which of her fathers' conspiracy theories were fake vs which ones had some grain of truth to them — but that was the whole point of it. The discovery. ]

Not quite the same as what you do. But the same field, ish. Why dragons? Out of all of the creatures?