Luna Lovegood
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| Harry Potter character | |
| Image:Luna177.jpg A fan drawing of Luna Lovegood | |
| Luna Lovegood | |
|---|---|
| Gender | Unknown}}} |
| Hair colour | Unknown}}} |
| Eye colour | Unknown}}} |
| House | Unknown}}} |
| Parentage | Unknown}}} |
| Allegiance | {{{allegiance|Unknown}}}}}} |
| Film portrayer | None}}} |
| First appearance | Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, although her family is mentioned in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. |
Luna "Loony" Lovegood (born c. 1981) is a fictional character from the Harry Potter series. She is described as looking like an embodiment of dottiness, with her wand tucked behind her ear for safekeeping and a necklace made of butterbeer corks. Luna's father is the editor of The Quibbler, where he prints "important stories he thinks the public needs to know." The stories are often ridiculously untrue and silly; however, Luna believes them and thus many consider her beliefs odd. Luna defends her beliefs, her father and his magazine against insults from other characters, most notably from Hermione Granger. The character will be portrayed by Evanna Lynch in the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (on her website, Rowling has described the actress as "perfect" for the role).
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J.K. Rowling's description of Luna Lovegood
J.K. Rowling has said that Luna is like an "anti-Hermione," as Luna believes things on faith alone and Hermione grounds her beliefs on facts and logic. Hermione repeatedly tries to convince Luna that her beliefs are nonsense, to no avail. Hermione sees Luna as very gullible and Luna sees Hermione as very narrow-minded. By the end of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Hermione seems to have realised that Luna would not falter in her beliefs. Despite Luna's dottiness, she can be very perceptive about human nature, and Harry often notes her perceptiveness and knack for blunt honesty.
Biography
Luna is a Ravenclaw one year behind Harry Potter (being in the same year as Ginny Weasley). Luna is first introduced in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, on the Hogwarts Express. When there is no other compartment for Harry, Ginny and Neville to sit in, Ginny convinces them to sit in that compartment.
Luna has straggly, waist-length dirty-blond hair and is described as having a dazed look on her face. Her eyes are described as "silvery" and "misty", which suggests they may be pale grey. They are also described as "protuberant", which adds to the peculiarity of her appearance. A common speculation is that the largeness of her eyes is not merely a comedic exaggeration, but as in many classical artworks, is symbolic of a keen sense of awareness, insight, or profound spirituality.
She is somehow separate from other students at Hogwarts and is often dazing or staring at people. She wears a necklace of Butterbeer corks and doesn't appear to care about what people call her.
She is called "Loony Lovegood" behind her back, although she is aware of this and doesn't seem to mind. Some of her classmates regularly steal her possessions and hide them for the fun of it. When she tells Harry this in an offhanded conversation, she unintentionally wins his sympathy. Harry is angry when he hears that people steal Luna's things and offers to help her find her lost things, but she refuses, saying that her things always turn up in the end. Luna believes Harry's story about his escape from Lord Voldemort, and defends it in front of a group of skeptical students.
During Luna's fourth year she joins Dumbledore's Army (The D.A.), and later participates in the desperate struggle for survival that ensues when Harry leads her, Hermione, Ginny, Ron and Neville into the Department of Mysteries, where they are ambushed by numerous Death Eaters.
While in the Department of Mysteries, Luna claims to be able to hear voices behind a mysterious veil (referred to in some fanfictions as the "Veil of Death" or the "Black Veil", though it is never named in the book itself) in the Death Chamber. Harry could also hear these voices and Luna appears to believe that dead people, including her mother and Sirius Black, are behind the veil.
When she explains this to Harry, who is having trouble getting over Sirius's death, he does not know what to make of it -- another unusual belief of Luna's, or perhaps a comforting metaphor? It is worth noting that Harry feels better after discussing Sirius' death with Luna, but he does not feel comfortable talking about it with anyone else, even his best friends. Many fans believe this is because Harry and Luna share horrible tragedies in their pasts and that they have both been considered to be mentally unbalanced by others and thus can relate to each other. Luna lost her mother in a traumatic accident when she was much younger, and Harry feels calmer after she speaks to him about her mother and his godfather.
Despite her eccentricity and somewhat bizarre beliefs, Luna seems to be perfectly sane, and the fact that she is in Ravenclaw house suggests that she is also quite intelligent.
In her fifth year, Luna is invited by Harry to attend Professor Slughorn's Christmas party with him - an invitation that makes many girls jealous of her. Harry, however, makes it perfectly clear to Luna that he is inviting her as a friend, and she is immensely excited as she is never invited to parties. For Slughorn's party, she removes her usual accessories (such as her radish earrings and bottle-cork necklace) and dresses in spangled silver dress robes, in which Harry notes that she looks quite nice. During this particular scene, she also says that when she was at the D.A. meetings, she thought it was "like having friends".
During the same year, Professor McGonagall appoints Luna as Lee Jordan's temporary replacement as Quidditch announcer for the school. While on duty, however, she absent-mindedly gets distracted from the game and begins to discuss other topics with the crowd, such as the oddly shaped clouds above the pitch, and that she thinks Ginny Weasley is nice. Some of the spectators jeer at her, McGonagall doesn't know quite know what to do with her, and people who are fond of Luna fall about laughing. Her unusual commentary wins over Ron Weasley, who initially found her strange but started to reconsider her after her commentary. (J.K. Rowling, incidentally, commented that she loved using Luna as commentator for what would become the last Quidditch game of the series.)
When the Death Eaters attack Hogwarts at the end of book six, Luna is at hand to help defend the students. Shortly after the battle, she attends Albus Dumbledore's funeral with Neville. There, she is seen helping Neville into his chair (this does not imply a future romantic relationship, as J.K. Rowling has confirmed Neville and Luna will not become a couple).
At the funeral, Harry notes that she and Neville were the only two members of the D.A. (besides Ron, Hermione, and Ginny) to have answered the call from their coins to help fight. He notes that this is probably due to the fact that these two in particular were the most lonely, and probably checked the coins frequently.
Family background
Though her blood purity is never explicitly mentioned, both her parents are magical: her father is the editor of The Quibbler, and she marked her mother as an extraordinary witch.
Luna says her late mother was a "quite extraordinary witch" who liked "to experiment". She died when one of her spells went "rather badly wrong". Luna says calmly that the way her mother died was "rather horrible" and admits she still feels sad about it sometimes, but is relieved she still has her father. As Luna witnessed her mother's death at the age of nine, she has been able to see Thestrals since she arrived at Hogwarts.
Luna's family never appeared before Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, though in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire it is mentioned that the Lovegoods live in the area of the Burrow (the family home of the Weasleys), as do the Fawcetts and the Diggorys. The nearest village to The Burrow is Ottery St. Catchpole, and these three other wizarding families may live in or around the village. Ottery St. Catchpole is in Devon. It is never stated that this is Luna's family, but J. K. Rowling rarely throws away connections, and it can be presumed that even if the people living near the Burrow are not Luna's family, they are probably related in some way.
Name
The name "Luna" is Latin for 'moon'. This probably refers to Luna's absent-mindedness and clearly unconventional patterns of thought, since in ancient times the moon was thought to induce insanity in people (hence the word "lunatic," which is, unsurprisingly, the source of Luna's nickname, "Loony"). In western folklore, the moon also represents intuition and insight. Her name also implies that she is light of soul and good of heart, like the Roman moon goddess Diana.(The Greek version of Diana is Artemis.)
The origin of the surname "Lovegood" is more ambiguous. Obviously, it combines the English words "love" and "good", both of which have very positive connotations (as in "a fight between good and evil, love and hate.") This could refer to her kind character, or be simply an idiosyncrasy of the author. Her last name could also be a reference to Elliot Lovegood Grant Watson, who wrote numerous books attacking the insufficiencies of Darwinism after he was raised by a mother who adored Darwin. It could, therefore, be a reference to how The Quibbler attacks widely accepted beliefs.
External links
| J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series | |||
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| Philosopher's Stone | book | film | game |
| Chamber of Secrets | book | film | game |
| Prisoner of Azkaban | book | film | game |
| Goblet of Fire | book | film | game |
| Order of the Phoenix | book | (film) | |
| Half-Blood Prince | book | (film) | |
| Unnamed Seventh Book | (book) | ||
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| Other books | Other games | ||
| Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them | Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup | ||
| Quidditch Through the Ages | |||
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| Plot – Characters – Places – Translations – Wizarding world - Related articles | |||
fr:Luna Lovegood it:Luna Lovegood he:לונה לאבגוד nl:Loena Leeflang ja:ルナ・ラブグッド pt:Luna Lovegood no:Lulla Lunekjær zh:卢娜·洛夫古德