"Mind you, it took me well over half a day to manage the return trip," Luna said breezily, "since the griffins were perfectly helpful but the snaggle-clawed sandworms admitted they'd sooner see interlopers dead, and the ice sliders wanted nothing at all to do with any of us."

Harry and Ron both squinted at their Ravenclaw friend, newly wind-weathered in a fashion she hadn't been at breakfast, amethyst flowers still braided haphazardly into her hair and one navy blue feather tucked securely behind one ear, but it was Hermione who asked the tentative question that was the, er, griffin in the room. "Luna, when you say you connected the two dots, you do imply that both those dots were within... this universe, don't you?"