"Harry, there's an evil aura on you!"
Harry was standing in a corner of the Great Hall, staring absently at Ron as he practiced spells on a training dummy. Suddenly, an ethereal, somewhat familiar voice sounded beside his ear.
Harry turned toward the voice, and the first thing he saw was a pair of gray eyes brimming with life.
"Your name is... Luna, right?" Harry looked at the little girl before him in some surprise.
Ever since he had happened to run into Luna in the Castle at the beginning of the first term, Harry had had no further contact with her.
Harry had even tried looking for the little girl twice to ask her about those mysterious and powerful beings.
But the little girl's whereabouts had always been so elusive that Harry had missed her both times. Besides, he had obtained some information from Padma and Sally Turpin at the time, so he had not gone looking for her again.
He had not expected the little girl to turn up again today.
"Yes, my name is Luna Lovegood." Luna nodded very seriously, then repeated what she had said before. "There's an evil aura on you."
"What does that mean?" Harry was a little bewildered. He did not understand what Luna meant by that term.
But Luna had previously been able to sense the Basilisk's presence, and she seemed to know something about those terrifying, unfathomable beings, so Harry did not dare dismiss her words entirely.
Even though he had already learned from Hermione, Padma, and the others that the little girl had the nickname Loony.
"There's an evil aura on you, a very evil sort of presence," Luna said again. Apparently feeling that his failure to understand after three repetitions meant she had not expressed herself precisely enough, she