Hope and Acceptance

"Xeno, we need to go now. No you can't see if there's a Mass Effect gate in Charon. They already have mining operations there, so it's unlikely that it exists. Luna needs us. She made a deal with the fae to save my life. Oh, now you're paying attention. She made a deal to become Tenno, but she's been pretending by sticking to the letter of the agreement. Huff, typical Xeno, at least he's forgotten he can apparate."

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"Um, hi everyone." Presented with so many people that have helped her since she got here, Luna suddenly looks like the insecure child that she is, rather than the budding Tenno that she pretends to be.

Kitty void jumps to her side and presses a half-eaten chocolate bar into her hands, "Hey Licious, are you ok?" When she just bursts into tears Kitty pulls her down into a seat and hugs her.

After she's calmed down enough to talk, Kitty asks, "What's the matter?"

"I've been pretending to be a Tenno, and you're all going to hate me."

"Luna, you haven't been pretending to be a Tenno. You are a Tenno, because all of us accept you as a Tenno."

"But I'm not a dreamer."

"Luna, what do you think a Tenno is?"

"People that use warframes, wield void powers, and have lived through the second dream."

"No, that's what we do. What we are, are survivors of an experimental flight that went wrong. Margulis, and later The Lotus took care of us as a family, and that's what we are. Often fractious, friendly as often as not, and above all else family."

Hermione kneels down in front of Luna, "Luna, you asked me last week what I was, and I said Tenno. Why did you ask me that?"

Seeing something going on with one of her students, or potential students, Minerva unobtrusively separates from Dan and Emma and perches on the edge of a seat close, but not intruding.

Luna sniffs, "I don't want to stop being a witch."

Kitty frowns, "What's one of those?"

Minerva speaks up as Professor McGonagall, "A witch is a human or near human female magic user in our culture. It would be analogous to girl or woman."

Kitty looks at Luna seriously, "Luna, just how old are you?"

"Almost 15."

"How old were you when I helped you get your wisp?"

"9"

"Void, no wonder you're screwed up. You're just a kid pretending to be a grown up." – Kitty sweeps her hand around the room – "None of us are ever going to be adults. Ever. But that's only biology. Apart from you and Hermione, the youngest Tenno I know of is Harry. And she's over 800 years old. She's also the oldest of us if you use linear time, as she was the first of us to reawaken after Space Mom hid us away. Now, what's important about being a witch. Don't say what you think adults want to hear, tell me what's important to you about being a wetch."

"They can use magic to do amazing things, like put stars on the ceiling, or make pancakes, or pick you up for a hug."

"Can men do the same thing?"

"Only if they're a wizard."

"So, what's more important doing magic or being a wutch? If you were turned into a man, but could still do magic would that be ok?"

Luna screws her eyes in concentration, "I don't think I'd like being a man, but it would be better than not being able to do magic."

"Hermione is a Tenno. Has she stopped being able to do magic?" Kitty holds her hand up as Minerva is about to say something.

"I," Luna looks confused for a moment before Hermione takes her wand and casts a lumos. Then it's like a light turns on behind her eyes, "No. Oh Merlin, I thought."

"You were an 8 year old child with a childs knowledge of the world. For whatever reason, you became Tenno. You are still a child, operating with more knowledge of the world, because of that you've assumed you understand things that take the rest of us years to understand. Now have some chocolate and think about what you want to do."

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Kitty waves over Hermione's mother, and once she's done that she wave Minerva over to one side.

"Sorry about stopping you just then. What was it you were going to say?"

"I was going to say that of course Hermione could still do magic. As that's why she's still going to Hogwarts."

"I thought so. She already knew that. I studied brain processes and child development 100 years ago or something like that. She was suffering from cognitive dissonance, but self-imposed not based on reality."

"I'm afraid to ask, what is cognitive dissonance?"

"It's the discomfort where you hold onto two contradictory things that you believe to be true. In this case she associated being able to do mag-ic with being a wetch. She as much told us that. This means that in her mind, being a Tenno and being able to do magic were contradictory. This brought her to a crisis point where she felt like she needed to give up one in order to avoid a terrible fate, and it was something she couldn't give up. Remember, Hermione wasn't here when she first arrived, and Harry hadn't started at your educational institution. I might only be a fashion designer these days, but that doesn't mean I forgot those lessons. What she needed at that point was to find a way that one of those two true things was actually false. Which means focusing her mind on what it was about being a thingy that is important. Then showing that that important thing is still true even if she accepts becoming a Tenno in truth."

"Young Lady."

"Let me stop you there, you're falling into the same trap as many of the factions in the solar system. Your eyes are telling you that I'm still young, so it's overriding your brain. I am 876 years old this year, I've been awake for 340 of those years. We don't age. That doesn't make us young."

"I..."

"It's hard, your brain builds a model of the world around it which is reenforced over the years as the assumptions it made continue to prove true. One of those assumptions is that appearance equals age."

Minerva gathers her thoughts, "Kitty, I'm sorry. You're right, you all look like teenagers. I've been teaching for 50 years."

"Oh void, I can't imagine how many fresh faces you've seen grow up to people that look my age."

"Yes, well. I have never come across anything like cognitive dissonance."

"To be honest, I'm not that surprised. Most people here don't know what it is either. The Grineer just don't have the freedom to examine their thoughts, and most of the Corpus are too worried about basic survival and not having their body parts repossessed if they're late on a payment to care. They've got a couple of doctors in Cetus that know, and there's some independent colonies amongst the outer planets that know too. I presume there lots of people that come from families that managed to avoid generational debt in Corpus that know too, as those body parts have to be going somewhere. Where was I, oh yes, anyway, I'm sure that your own doctors that deal with the mind know about it too. Thing is, you can't force a realisation that those ideas are mutually exclusive, and only one of them can be true. If you try to do that the mind rebels and just entrenches the beliefs deeper. You need to lead them to the conclusion, often by finding a way that they can get the positive aspects of the false belief with the true belief. Depths of Demios, there's been enough work going around in the wake of the Narmer cult that I've considered closing my design business for a decade or two."

Minerva shakes her head, "When you talk like that it's easy to tell how old you are. People the age you look would be talking about putting their business on hold for a year, two tops."

"I just hope that there's time for things to get back to what passed as normal. Harry and Natah located the Zariman several years ago, and I've heard some Tenno talking about exploring the place. See what's there, and if they can recover anything of their families. I can't help thinking that maybe it would be better if we let it stay lost."

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Rocky stands on top of one of the chairs, "Everyone! Harry says that Hermione needs to meet Wally." – as the various conversations die down he continues – "We're all here now, Harry's Railjack is outside, and we've got Space Mom. Why don't we all go and give her support?"

Natah tries to object over all the cheers of agreement, but finds herself being literally carried along by her children as they bounce, jump, flip, slide, and sometimes just run towards the Railjack.

Kitty comes back in with Minerva to see everyone running off, "What's going on?"

"We're taking Hermione to see Wally."

"Oh, cool." She calls her Nezha to her and bounds off a couple of times before coming back and walking over to Luna.

"Hey." She says softly, Luna sniffles and looks up, "You're Tenno, you can come too if you want."

"I don't know."

"Then stop thinking and feel. What do you want to do?"

"I want to be a little girl again, I want to go with my friends, I don't know!"

"Can you do those first two and worry about other things later?"

"I think so."

"Then I'll be your mummy for a while. Get your wisp and we'll go and join the others."

As if a switch has been flicked, Luna seems to mentally regress as she beams a brilliant smile at Kitty, "Yes mum." She says before running off.

Amelia walks over despite Minerva's disapproving stare and puts her hand on her arm, "You've done a good thing there I think."

Kitty looks in the direction Luna ran, "I think she's been taking responsibility for things she wasn't ready for, for too long. Her mother and father got too distracted in their own lives to notice, so I think this has been going on longer than she's been here. I just gave her an out, an opportunity to let someone else be responsible for a while."

"What ever it is you've been doing, keep doing it. I've never seen Hermione so carefree. Did you know that this is the first social gathering I've ever seen her at, since she learnt to read, where she hasn't opened a book or magazine? I don't know what you do when she's not here, and I have a feeling I'm not ready to know either. While she's here, one of us is going to try to be around at all times. But as far as I'm concerned you're doing a far better job than we ever did. And God does it hurt to say that."

"That's not true, Hermione thinks the world of both of you. She said that apart from you, we were the only people to ever accept her as her."

"She's an extremely gifted child, if we'd pushed she could have gone to senior school two years early."

"I don't know what school is, but we used to have classes on the Zariman for things that we needed an actual understanding of."

Amelia nods, "We don't have the ability to teach facts and figures using machines, so schools are a place where those things are taught along side the things that need actual understanding."

Luna comes bounding back in her wisp and launches into a hug, sending Kitty to the floor with her.