Pretty Good Year

Part Two

6.

"What are you doing?"

A glass vial--she'd waited to speak until he was handling an empty one--slips from Snape's fingers, and shatters on the stone floor of the potions classroom.

Luna smiles, politely, as he sees her and bares his teeth, converting the expression at the last second to an unpleasant smile.

"Miss Lovegood." He repairs the vial and takes his time filling it with thick black liquid before he speaks again. "I believe you are already in violation of the promise you made the Headmaster just this morning."

"Oh no. I only promised Professor Dumbledore that I wouldn't wander where it wasn't safe."

"You think yourself safe here?"

"Well." She's not sure how he wants her to reply to that--anything she says will sound like an insult. "Rescuing me last night was a lot of hard work. If you wanted to kill me I expect you would have done it before now."

Snape's thin lips stretch into a smile, but his eyes remain on his cauldron. "Ah, but death is not the only danger facing you. It is merely the final one."

Luna smiles to herself in turn, because she is always delighted by a neatly phrased truth. She doesn't actually laugh, though. Her laughter makes people uncomfortable. It took her years to realize this.

She walks closer to Snape's work bench, where three small cauldrons are perched over boxes of Portable Flame. The air on this side of the classroom is thick with steam and the scent of boiling fennel. Snape is slicing fangorn weed into strips with a silver knife, then gathering them up with the long, pale fingers of his left hand and throwing them into the cauldron closest by.

"I'm left-handed, too," Luna says, watching his hands and thinking of her father trimming news parchment to proper magazine size with his long-handled paper knife.

"I am not left handed. I am ambidextrous." Snape says it carelessly, as though parting with the information costs him nothing. "Many potions, such as this one, require certain herbs to be cut by the left hand, and others by the right. It is a skill all potions-masters learn of necessity."

"Oh." She studies the scarred surface of his work bench, and the reflection of her face in a patch of smooth, polished wood. "You haven't answered my question, you know."

"What I am doing, Miss Lovegood, is brewing a potion. I realize your skills in that area are mediocre at best, but I would expect you to at least recognize the process when you saw it."

She blinks, and several different replies come to the tip of her tongue. She isn't angry. She knows he doesn't know any better. But she wants to correct him, all the same.

"The potion you're brewing is called Tears of Lethe. It's a restricted potion, and brewing it without Ministry dispensation is an offense punishable by six months in Azkaban."

Snape's knife-hand becomes motionless. His head comes up, sharply, and he watches her for a moment before his face relaxes again, and he returns his attention to the herbs he is shredding.

"Well spotted, Miss Lovegood. Obviously you possess a potions expertise which you never chose to demonstrate in my classroom."

"I know quite a lot about poisons."

This earns her another glance, shorter this time, but keener. "Tears of Lethe is not a poison."

"It's an antidote to memory-modification curses. I've always considered them poisonous."

She can see his eyebrows arch, and his lips twist in another small smile. "I would not disagree with that assessment."

She watches him measure a careful spoonful of clear liquid--harvested tears--and add it to the cauldron. She counts the number of times he stirs the mixture, clockwise, into the potion: forty two. If they talked like this for the entire morning, Luna suspects the rhythm of their conversation would continue to match the rhythm of his chopping, measuring, and stirring. Ever since she came into the room, she has been timing her comments to actions of his hands.

"Do you have Ministry dispensation?" she says into nearly a minute of silence.

Snape laughs, and the sound is frightening. She wonders why she should feel that way, when she is certain she has never heard him laugh before. Then she remembers listening as Death Eaters overcame her father with their curses, how the high, wild sound of their laughter had drifted up the stairs to find her in her hiding place.

Snape is speaking, so she forces her attention outward again. "Cornelius Fudge's Ministry would not, at the present time, grant me dispensation to breathe the free air if I required it."

She does not miss the fact that he has not precisely answered the question. "For whom are you brewing it?"

"That is none of your concern."

"You can tell me anyway." She sits on the top of a nearby desk. "I already know your most important secrets, after all."

"Indeed, Miss Lovegood?" He isn't smiling anymore. "Much good may they do you."

"Well, I only wanted you to know that you can trust me with them."

He doesn't miss a beat. "I do not require your trust."

Luna blinks, and sits up straighter by an inch. She'd prepared herself, before she came, not to be put off by his manner. But he has changed in the few hours that have passed since they were in Grimmauld Place together, when he seemed at every moment to be struggling with a sympathy he did not want to reveal.

She only knows one way to respond when she is out of sorts, and that is to take refuge in a degree of frankness that repels more often than it attracts. She knows that it will not improve matters, but she finds that all she cares about now is disturbing him. Forcing him to look at her.

"I wish you would stop disliking me." He freezes, and she hurries on. "You saved me from those Death Eaters, and now I owe you a life-debt." I can feel it already, she thinks to herself, glowing in my mind like a giant Remembrall, with your head looming up inside it, all distorted by the concave lense. "It's a very uncomfortable feeling, knowing I repulse you."

Snape is looking at her now, and his face is unusually white. He takes a deep breath before turning his stare deliberately back to his cauldron.

Luna counts under her breath. Exactly twenty seconds later, he lifts the cauldron from the fire, and places it on a slab of marble at the far end of the counter. When the cauldron's lid is firmly in place, he walks around the end of the workbench. Before Luna quite realizes he is moving in her direction, he has seized her arm, pulled her from the desk, and begun marching her toward the door of the classroom.

"I have no interest," he says, "in fulfilling whatever romantic or heroic fantasy you have conjured for me." His long fingers are digging painfully into the flesh of Luna's arm. "I took you out of that house last night because it suited my purposes. Had circumstances been any different, I would have left you to die with as little regret as I left your father."

Now Luna tries to free herself, but his grip is inflexible, and his voice, soft and low when he first began speaking, grows in volume and intensity. "I know your penchant for theatrical displays, but I do not share it. I am sincere in the distaste I have always shown for you, and nothing which has happened in the last twelve hours has altered it. You will leave now, and you will not disturb me again, or so help me, I will demonstrate how little safety you may enjoy in my presence."

He shoves Luna through the door and releases her in the same motion, so that she stumbles over the threshold. She throws one hand out to catch the door frame, and uses the leverage to spin around and face Snape, who remains standing in the doorway, staring down at her, his features arranged in stone.

Luna lifts her chin, so that she is nearly looking him in the eye. She can feel the skin above her elbow throbbing in long streaks the shape of his fingers.

"You wouldn't be standing there still if you weren't waiting for something," she says.

His lip curls, and the dungeon door shuts in her face with the saturated thud of wood meeting stone.

She turns and stumbles down the dungeon corridor, in the opposite direction of the stairs leading back to the ground floor of the castle and the company of other people.

She is shaken, no doubt. But all in all, the encounter had gone rather better than she anticipated.

Then she hears her name, shouted from somewhere behind her. Because the voice is feminine, familiar, and patently not Snape, she stops and turns.

Hermione Granger is striding toward her, robes billowing, tendrils of hair straying rebelliously from a bun at the nape of her neck. At the sight of her, relief spreads through Luna's body from head to toe.

"Luna." Hermione stops, breathless, in front of her, mere inches before they would have collided. "I've been looking all over for you. Why are you down here?"

They are standing so close together that when Hermione waves a hand to waft the loose hair from her eyes, Luna can feel the air brushing her cheek, and she is reminded suddenly of her mother.

"I didn't feel like staying in Ravenclaw Tower," she says in answer, because she had promised Snape that she would keep his secrets.

"No, of course you didn't." Hermione falls to studying her, the corners of her mouth puckering in a very McGonagall-esque way. She reaches forward rather hesitantly, but there is strength and firmness in the grip of her hand. "Why don't you come up to the kitchens with me? Remus and I are having some tea before we head out again, we've neither of us had anything in ages, and I'm sure you haven't either. Do come, I'm sure you'll feel much better for eating something."

Luna doesn't reply, but neither does she resist when Hermione begins pulling her in the direction of the nearest staircase. Her head is beginning to feel swimmy, and she realizes, in a detached way, that it has been a long night.

And suddenly she finds that there is an unexpected pleasure in being taken up by someone like Hermione, in relaxing into the guiding hand of her gentle bossiness. If Hermione had not come looking for her, Luna would probably have sunk to the stone floor of the dungeon and fallen quietly asleep. She is patient by nature, but it is hard to keep going forward when with every step she takes she feels more and more as if she is moving under water.

"Did you get the owls I sent you?" she asks Hermione after a moment. "I asked my father to give you a complimentary Quibbler subscription, after you canceled the Prophet."

"Oh! Yes, I did. I'm so sorry I didn't owl you back, I was really very grateful, but things were so hectic." She is blushing. Luna can hardly remember the last time anyone paid so much attention to her feelings, though logically she knows that she was with her father mere hours ago. "Are you--I mean--do you think you'll keep the paper going?"

"I suppose I'll try, if the Death Eaters haven't burned the house and the presses down."

A moment of stricken silence falls between them, in which Hermione's cheeks flush an even deeper red. She seems to be on the point of an apology Luna would rather not hear, but she only says, "Oh." Then, "Yes, of course."

They are nearing the end of corridor, and the staircase leading to the kitchens. Hermione's steps quicken, but in the next moment Luna stops and pulls away from her.

"Luna." She cannot see Hermione's face, but she can hear guilt and worry in her voice. "I'm really very sorry--"

"What is this room?"

Hermione frowns, then follows the track of Luna's gaze to a semi-circular chamber hewn into the unbroken stone wall. Five iron doors are set in the curving aperture, all with narrow slits for windows. They stand just above Luna's eye level, and she can see nothing through them.

"Oh." Hermione's voice is suddenly brisk, and Luna feels for a moment that she has gone back in time, that Hermione-the-Head-Girl is standing beside her. "Those are nothing. Just some old closets. Come on, I'm about to faint dead from hunger."

She takes hold of Luna's arm again, and again Luna lets herself be led. But as she looks back over her shoulder at the rooms in the round chamber, her eyes settle briefly on the door in the middle. Through the small window she can see the cheerful red light of a large fire, and the flickering black shadow of movement inside.

*

Professor Lupin is drinking tea as he waits for them. Luna doesn't spot him just at first--she's never seen the Hogwarts kitchens before, and they are far larger than she expected--but Hermione knows where she is going, and Lupin gets to his feet as they approach.

"Luna, it's good to see you again." Lupin steps around the edge of the table and grips her hand briefly. Luna doesn't resent this, but she is beginning to think that she has been touched and grabbed by more people in the last twelve hours than ever before in her life. "Sit down, please, I believe the house-elves are--yes, here they come now."

Lupin takes his seat again, mostly to make room for the enormous platter zooming toward, supported invisibly by four diminutive bodies. Hermione, faced with the need for a quick decision, looks from Luna to Lupin, then slides onto the bench opposite Lupin and indicates Luna should join her there.

"Here is your tea, misses and master," says a voice from beneath the platter, as a large silver teapot, a plate of bread and cheese, and a large cake glide smoothly toward the table, followed by cups and dishes and silverware.

"Thank you very much," Hermione says, beaming. "What is your name?"

"I is called Dilly, miss," the lead house-elf replies.

"I'm very pleased to meet you, Dilly." She extends her hand. "My name is Hermione. Would you join us for a cup of tea?"

Dilly's eyes grow very wide, and she take a step backward. "Oh, no miss. I thanks you, miss, for asking, but there is work that is needing to be done. Thank you, miss, goodbye!"

Hermione watches the four house-elves beat a hasty retreat in the direction of the ovens, and sighs. "Well, it's an improvement, anyway. Last year they all hid every time I came near the kitchens."

Professor Lupin reaches somewhat hastily for his tea and takes a long, noisy sip.

For the next several minutes they eat and do not talk. Luna does not feel any interest in the food initially, but after she takes her first sip of tea she becomes aware of a gnawing hunger, as though the searing liquid had awakened her stomach to long-dead sensation. She makes a sandwich of two enormous slices of bread and a huge wedge of cheese, tearing bite-sized pieces away with her teeth and avoiding eye-contact with either of her companions. They are equally hungry--or perhaps they are just polite. Either way, Luna feels herself relaxing for the first time in what seems an eternity.

When at last she is full to bursting, and just on the point of excusing herself to find a bed, Lupin speaks.

"I assume you'll be staying here at the castle, Luna? Or do you have family elsewhere?"

Luna blinks. Feels the grip of her father's hand around her elbow, shoving her up the staircase, while the front door of their house shivers under the weight of a Death Eater's fist. "I have no other family."

Lupin nods in that grave manner which seems always calculated to avoid any possible offense. "I only ask because Moody will want to know how to contact you once we have news of your father."

"What news can he have? My father is dead."

Hermione's forehead puckers and she stares into the bottom of her teacup.

"Of course. But he thought you would like to know...if we find his body..."

"He can burn the body. I have no need of it."

"Luna." Hermione looks sideways at Lupin, then shifts her gaze across the table toward Luna. "I know things have been happening rather quickly for you. Would you--like to talk about what happened?"

Luna shrugs, and her shoulders feel heavy. "There's little to tell. When we realized the house wards were being attacked, my father made me go upstairs to hide. I had just put on the invisibility cloak when they came in, and then Professor Snape was there. That's all."

Lupin shifts forward slightly. "Your father put himself between you and the Death Eaters."

"Yes." Luna studies the seams between the wooden planks of the table. "We knew they would be coming soon. We--I--was working on an experiment that would have let us escape together. But I didn't have time to finish it."

"I'm so sorry Luna." Hermione's eyes are bright.

Luna nods. "I know you are. But you needn't be. It's not as if we didn't know it was coming."

There is precisely enough time for Hermione and Lupin to trade one more quick, worried glance before the kitchens are swamped in darkness, and the air around them explodes into thunder. The four walls of the kitchen shudder violently, as though caught in a sudden cold wind, and in the next moment Luna realizes that she is lying on the floor, fallen beside her overturned chair.

The air is thick, filled with meaningless noises, and her ears are ringing. She is surrounded by the fluttering movement of the house-elves, their shrieks contrasting horribly with the leaden echoes that have filled the kitchen. She claps her hands over her ears to block the sound, but she can still feel them, needling, under her skin.

She is aware of the chaos around her, and she knows she ought to be worried about what has just happened. But somehow the floor beneath her feels soft as any bed, and the desire to sleep is incredibly strong; she hasn't felt so warm and safe since the battle of Hogwarts six months ago, when Madam Hooch carried her away from the fighting, and Madam Pomfrey tucked her into bed and gave her Dreamless Sleep potion. She feels as though is lying in the berth of a boat at sea, the water rocking her into oblivion.

She has no sooner than closed her eyes, however, when a hand grips her arms and jerks her upright, though she has become little more than dead weight. She hears Lupin's voice, whispering "Ennervate," and though there is nothing to see when she opens her eyes she can feel the artificial energy of the reviving spell tingling in her arms and legs. She gets to her feet, unsteady in the darkness.

Lupin does not release her arm. If anything, he is gripping it more tightly, and she can feel the heat and the shock of his breath against the side of her neck when he speaks. "Luna, listen to me. The wards have been compromised. You must get out of the castle, the Death Eaters will kill everyone they catch."

Luna's mouth is dry, and her head is strangely light on her shoulders. She stares in the direction of his voice, trying to find his eyes. "I'm not going to leave you here."

There is a low groan close to them; the voice is Hermione's, but Lupin ignores it, his voice pitched low. "Do you know the statue of the one-eyed witch?"

"Yes?"

"Tap it with your wand and say 'dissendium.' There is a hidden passage inside that will take you into Hogsmeade. You can Apparate from there."

She can hear distant wails, the thuds and crashes of dozens of bodies trying to navigate a maze of overturned tables and chairs. Panic begins to lance through the dim fog in her mind. She wrenches her arm from Lupin's grip and takes a step back. "What's wrong with Hermione?"

"She's injured. I'll stay with her, we'll both be right behind you."

"No." Tears begin to knot at the base of her throat. "I'm not leaving you here. I can help you with Hermione." She swallows hard. "Do you understand me, I'm not leaving anyone else behind."

Her eyes are beginning to adjust to the darkness now, and she can the outline of Lupin, standing in front of her. Then she is blinded again, as the end of his wand ignites between them. She throws a hand up to shield her eyes, and begins fumbling in her robes for her own wand.

"Luna, please listen." Lupin's voice is hoarse. "The upper floors of the castle are breached right now, but those of us in the dungeons and cellars have a chance to escape. Listen to me!" he says, as she opens her mouth to protest. "Snape is down here too, but he doesn't know about the passageway. You have to lead him there. You know why the Death Eaters cannot take him."

Luna looks at him in the dim light. "I'll tell him and come back for you."

"There's no time." Lupin's eyes are wild. "You have to do this, Luna. You owe him your life."

She can now see Hermione, still and pale, leaning into Lupin's arm. Blood is trickling down the side of her face. Luna cannot tell if she is breathing.

She looks at Lupin again. Then she turns, stretches her wand before her, and begins to run.