It was dark.  A man was sitting quietly on the wrought-iron steps in the center of his daughter’s room.  As he listened to her plaintive cries of “Mummy,” tears streamed down his face.  He knew what moment she was reliving in her dreams.  It had been nearly two years since his wife had died.  Since then, his daughter had woken him dozens of times with that same nightmare.  It happened less often now, but it still happened.

Xenophilius Lovegood knew that their lives, his and his daughter Luna’s, would always contain a break, a chasm, a Great Divide.  They could look back across it with the eyes of memory whenever they wished.  They could see, in brilliant color, what life was like on that Other Side.  That was the Side where his wife Venus was with them.  The problem was, they were on This Side, the Side Without Venus.  They would always be on This Side, and Venus would always be on that other.  Apart from them.  Distant.⁵