Pretty Good Year

Part Three

12.

An hour after they arrive, Hermione is still muttering about the bits of ash and charred wood she keeps finding in her hair and on her robes.

Luna rather likes traveling by Floo. It reminds her of the rides at a Muggle amusement park she once visited with her maternal grandfather, a Muggle chemist with a fondness for fresh cotton candy. He had died when she was in her second year at Hogwarts, and the last time she visited his grave she had left a Sugar Quill at the headstone for him, charmed to look like a rose to passing Muggles.

Her father's parents are long dead. He has distant family in Sweden still, and she reminds herself that someday soon she will need to write to them.

The Burrow is strangely quiet, emptier than she has ever seen it. Her house—whatever now remains of it—is quite near by, as distances between wizarding families go. She and Ginny had played together as children, mostly in the year just before they both went to Hogwarts. Luna was an only child, and accustomed to solitude, but Ginny had taken the loss of all her brothers to the grown up world of school rather hard.

Luna's most profound memories of the Burrow come from a few years earlier than that, around the time of her mother's death. Mrs Weasley had cooked for Luna and her father for what seemed like months, and whenever her father went into one of his distracted phases Luna had found herself bundled off to stay with the Weasleys for a few days, though she had tried to tell Mrs Weasley that it wasn’t just sadness, that her father had always been that way.

Luna and Ginny had drifted apart after going to Hogwarts and being sorted into different Houses. Until their fourth year, anyway, and even after that things were never quite the same. Not that they should have been, of course. They were no longer children, and in the time that had passed since they were, Ginny and Luna had become quite different people. Ginny’s life had been filled with Harry and Harry’s troubles, while Luna’s life been filled with books and her father and a love of solitude. Even after fourth year, when Harry’s troubles had become everyone’s troubles, being around him, and around Ginny, had made Luna feel like she was playing an unimportant part in what would turn out to be someone else’s story.

Luna sits at the long wooden table where the Weasley family ate—or had once eaten—their meals. The only ones at home when they arrived were Charlie, whom she had only met once or twice before, and Percy, from whose disapproving gaze she had always maintained a prudent distance. Hermione is sitting at the other end of the table, writing letters, and Snape is closeted in an upstairs room with Professor Vector, though he is shouting and it is easy enough to hear most of what he has to say. Professor Lupin is gone. Having passed along news of the attack on the school, he is now warning others. Hermione is writing to tell him of Dumbledore's death, though she has long since finished the actual process of writing and is now encoding the letter under a variety of charms breakable only by members of the Order.

Luna, as usual, has no occupation. She is watching Percy, who is staring into the fire, and wondering, in a distracted way, where outside of Hogwarts or St Mungo's, she could gain access to a decent potions laboratory. Snape might know, but she would rather not ask him. He has not snapped at her once in the last few hours, but something tells her that a question of that kind would remind him of whatever it is about her that irritates him so much.

Luna stands up, and the motion draws Hermione's attention. She looks up, tendrils of hair hanging about her face, an air of surprise about her eyebrows, as though she had forgotten Luna was there.

She stares at Luna for several moments, as though feeling the need to speak but not having any idea what she ought to say. Then she says, "Shall I make some tea?"

"No tea for me, thank you," Luna replies, with the resolve of one who has, in the last several hours, imbibed enough of it to last a lifetime. Somewhere at the back of her mind, where she maintains a list of Questions to be Investigated at Greater Leisure, she makes a subconscious note to write an inquiring article on the subject. Tea & Sympathy: Magically Linked? Some Observations on the Rituals of Beverage and Bereavement.

Then she remembers that her father is dead, and the press likely destroyed, and she turns away from the table and walks toward the parlor, where Percy sits by the fireplace.

He does not notice her until she has taken a seat in the rocking chair opposite him, and when he sees her, he jumps. He is trembling slightly, and she remembers that he has been in poor health ever since the battle of Hogwarts. His injuries had not been especially severe—Luna herself spent almost a month in the infirmary, and she remembers everyone who occupied the surrounding beds—but his nerves had been bad before that.

"Good evening, Luna," he says, much as he used to, though in tones which have been stripped of pompousness, and cling now to formality, as though to a shield.

“Hello Percy.” She looks into the fire, though the light hurts her eyes.

She is aware that Percy, like Hermione before him, is trying to think of something to say to her.

"I was very sorry to hear about your father,” he says after a moment. “He was a very kind man. I had a, a great deal of respect for him."

"You tried to force him to stop printing the paper." She doesn't want to hurt him, especially. But she has had her fill of sympathy at this point, and all that comforts her in its place is truth.

Percy looks stricken, then his pale face flushes crimson, an effect she has often witnessed in Ron and Ginny, but never before in him. He turns away from her, and he takes a long drink from a glass she hadn't realized he was holding—Firewhiskey, by the smell of it. "That was a long time ago."

She nods, because that is true as well. "Should you be drinking that, if you're ill?"

He smiles without looking at her, and sets the mostly empty glass down on the brick hearth. "For my sort of illness, there is no better cure."

"Your mother wouldn't like it."

"I'm afraid that's rather the point." A small wool blanket, knit from purple yarn, hangs slackly around his shoulders, and he pulls it closer to his body. He is still shivering.

Luna wonders if he wants to be left alone, but she keeps her seat. Whatever he may prefer, he had looked appallingly lonely from the kitchen table, and he looks even worse close up.

"How long ago did you leave the Ministry?" she asks, having decided that, if he takes offense at the question, it will be a sign that she should leave.

And he flushes again; but after a long moment of silence, and consumption of the remaining Firewhiskey, he answers. "A little more than six months ago."

"Before or after the battle?"

"Just before." He laughs. "I doubt I would have been there, otherwise."

"Not on our side, at least."

"That’s not how it was." Percy's voice is suddenly louder, higher pitched than before. Charlie is outside, bolstering the wards and alarming charms around the perimeter of the property, but Hermione is still sitting at the table a few feet away, and she looks at them over her shoulder, startled.

Percy, looking disturbed by his own outburst, is hunched over; he looks small and miserable. At first Luna thinks he isn't going to talk to her anymore, but after a moment he mutters in the direction of the fireplace, "I don't know why everyone seems to have the impression that I was one step away from becoming a Death Eater. It was never like that."

"Then what was it like?" Luna sits up marginally straighter and keeps her eyes trained on the side of his face.

"I suppose you actually care," he said, with more petulance than venom.

Luna looks at the pale features of his face, their gauntness highlighted in profile. "I do, actually."

He seems to believe her, or perhaps he is just too lonely to pass up the chance for conversation. "It was Ron." Percy says his brother's name as though it pains him, but his convulsive shuddering calms for a moment. "He came for me one night. Snape was with him. I hadn't seen any of my family in more than a year. Penelope left me. I was out of favor at the Ministry, I couldn't understand why Fudge was still unwilling to cooperate with Dumbledore when we’d all seen You Know Who with our own eyes..."

Percy looks down at his glass as though he would like to take another drink, but it is empty. "I hadn't seen Ron since he was fifteen. He was so different. He didn't lecture me or tell me how much pain I was causing the family—that was Ginny's job, she owled me at least once a fortnight. Ron just...asked me to come home.” He stopped and swallowed. “And then he left, before I could answer."

"And Professor Snape?" She has a suspicion what the answer will be, but she is curious to hear how Percy will tell it.

Percy twitches, as though something she said had reminded his body that, a few moments before, he was trembling. "He stayed after Ron had left. He said that my loyalty to the Ministry had 'ceased to be an amusing joke’. He said...” Percy stopped and shook his head, as though to keep himself from falling too deeply into the memory. “He said that the rest of the Order had ignored me, out of respect for my parents. But that he knew a lost cause when he saw one.”

Luna flinches. It was too easy to imagine that high, irritable voice pronouncing those very words.

"He looked like a bloody ghoul, sneering at me in the moonlight."

“What did you do then?”

“After he left? I drank a pint of Firewhiskey and owled my letter of resignation to the Ministry. I’d had it written for months, you see. But mailing it was something else altogether. Then I came home and drank Veritaserum, so no one would have to ask me to.”

“That was...considerate of you.”

“It was more dignified than having Snape pour it down my throat at wandpoint.” His gaze grows distinct. “And less cruel than forcing my parents to admit they didn’t trust me.”

There is no possible response to this, but Percy does not wait for her to make one. He stands up, letting the blanket fall back onto the chair, and crosses the room to the keyless liquor cabinet.

“Was it really Snape who rescued you from the Death Eaters, by the way?” He removes his wand from his sleeve and mutters the unlocking charm, then removes a bottle of amber liquid from the shelf.

“Yes.”

“That must have been strange. I’m not sure that I wouldn’t have preferred to take my chances with the Death Eaters.”

“For some reason,” Luna said, “that option never crossed my mind.”

Percy shakes his head. "Wouldn't like to be whoever he's closeted himself with now."

"He is strangely audible, to be so far away,” she agrees. She had not heard anything while she was in the kitchen, but now that she is sitting in the parlor, mere feet from the staircase, she can hear fragments of Snape’s end of the conversation upstairs. In her admittedly limited experience, Snape grows quieter as he becomes angrier. She does not like to think what excess of rage could bring him to shouting.

A thought strikes her. “Where is Professor Vector?”

“Upstairs with Snape. But that’s not—Merlin. You don’t suppose that’s her he’s yelling at?” His eyes are wide, as though the thought of two Hogwarts professors quarreling in raised voices was a profound upset to the ordering of his universe.

“Well,” says, “I’m quite certain Professor Vector is capable of yelling back, if she wants to. She’s all the time shouting Hufflepuffs out of the Astronomy Tower at night. I’ve heard her, she’s very impressive.”

Percy doesn’t quite seem to be listening to her anymore though. He leans forward, cradling the Firewhiskey in his hands, and stares into the fireplace, as though he is any moment expecting a face to appear there.

When one does, both Percy and Luna yelp and jump up from their chairs. Luna recovers first, moving to the side and watching with mild interest. Percy, who has knocked the rocking chair over, flattens himself to the wall and closes his eyes, concentrating on catching his breath.

Three figures appear in succession: Alastor Moody, whom Luna has never met in his own person, followed by a tall, muscular woman with short black hair, tanned skin, and a hooked nose. She wears red robes over black trousers and tunic, and she holds her wand at her side in what Luna thinks is most likely a deceptively loose grip. She scans the room with dark, glittering eyes, then her gaze comes to settle, first on Percy, and then on Luna, where it lingers.

The force of that gaze is such that when Harry comes tumbling across the hearth a few seconds later, Luna doesn’t even notice him at first, until he comes to stand by her side, dusting himself off and coughing up ash.

“Luna.” He looks at her, surprised, once he has recovered. “I didn’t know you were here. How are you?”

“Hello, Harry.” She looks at him. “I’m well enough, considering my father was killed by Death Eaters last night.”

“Oh.” He looks at her, slightly stunned.

“Hermione’s in the kitchen,” she continues.

“Oh.” He brightens. “Um, right.” He hesitates, then turns in that direction. Luna follows him with her eyes and watches as Hermione, drawn by the sound of their voices, meets him halfway. Something about the fierce joy with which they embrace makes her throat feel tight and dry.

“You, lass,” says Moody.

She turns away from the scene of their reunion gratefully. Moody’s magical eye seems to look right through her—which it probably is, considering that it’s a magical eye.

“You’re Leopold Lovegood’s daughter?”

“That’s right,” she says.

“My condolences.”

“Thank you.”

Moody thumps his walking stick against the floor. “Happen to know where Snape’s at?”

“Upstairs, I believe. Professor Vector’s with him.”

“How long has she been here?” This from the woman in the red robes. Her face is strangely expressionless.

“A few hours,” says Luna.

The woman trades glances with Moody, then turns without another word and proceeds up the staircase. Moody’s magical eye follows her.

“Not to be rude, Miss Lovegood,” he says, still looking through the back of his own head, “but I have some business calls I need to make through the Floo, if I might claim the use of the fire for a bit.”

Luna is suddenly aware that the shouting upstairs has stopped. The only sound she can hear in the house now is the crackling at the hearth and the low, intense murmurs of Harry and Hermione, talking in the kitchen.

She doesn’t dare interrupt Snape, and the thought of sitting in the kitchen while Harry and Hermione exchange significant glances and wish her gone makes her stomach twist uncomfortably. She nods to Moody, and walks the short distance from the parlor to the front door, pausing at the hat stand to take a cloak. Judging by the smell, it belongs to Snape, but she hasn’t got one of her own and she suspects that he will be too busy to notice its absence for some time.

Outside, the weather is cold, but the sunset is vivid, golden yellow and purple. Luna finds a bench in a warm patch of dwindling sunlight and takes a seat, gazing out past the hedge row. A startled gnome scurries past her feet into the bushes behind her, but she takes no notice.

She can still hear Harry and Hermione through the open kitchen window. She listens to the incomprehensible hum for a moment, then stands up again and begins to make a circuit of the grounds.

Outside the broom shed she meets Charlie Weasley, standing with his arms crossed over his chest. He nods to her.

“You’re strengthening the wards?” she says, stopping.

“Just about finished with that,” he says. “Trying something a bit fancier now.” He looks at her, speculative. “You any good with Shielding Charms then, Luna?”

“Charms was my best subject. I don’t know anything special about Shielding Charms, though.”

“Nothing special to it. I want to make sure that anyone casting an Anti-Disapparation Jinx on the house gives us plenty of warning first, before night comes on. I’ve got a good firm layer of hexes down now, but if you wouldn’t mind giving us a hand with the firewall...?”

They make three trips around the house before Charlie is satisfied. He gives a final nod, compliments her on her handiwork, and walks back inside the house. Luna finds herself standing near the bench again, but the sunlight has moved on and the stone is cold to the touch.

A breeze whips her hair across her face, and she closes her eyes. Snape’s cloak flaps loosely around her body, and she can smell the scent of him, a strange blend of incense and harsh potions, even more strongly than before.

She realizes suddenly how tired she is. The last eighteen hours of her life seem to stretch behind her like days or weeks of frantic activity and numbness of spirit. Fatigue lies like a blanket of wet wool over her mind. It is better, she thinks suddenly, that she hasn’t slept; if her mind was clear, she probably wouldn’t be able to avoid thinking about her father. It isn’t as though she has any work to distract herself with, after all. Whether out of sensitivity to her feelings or through simple befuddlement as to what she might be suited for, no one has suggested that there is anything she can do to help the Order. So far everyone has been unfailingly generous and polite, but she suspects that before long her presence is likely to become a nuisance.

But why should she let that happen? If she told them that she was leaving they would feel obliged to stop her, but she needn’t announce her departure. It would suffice to leave a note. It is a tempting thought: she could conjure quill and parchment now, place the note on the bench and weigh it down with a petrified garden gnome. No one would notice her absence for hours, and by then she could be long gone—back to her father’s house, to pick over the rubble of whatever the Death Eaters left behind them. Or to London, to Gringott’s, and then to Sweden, or Greece. She is a fully qualified witch with eight O.W.L.’s and five N.E.W.T.’s to her credit. She could go anywhere, do anything.

She could renounce her half-blood father and join the Death Eaters—just long enough to get close to Voldemort. Then she could blow them both up with an incendiary potion. Snape could probably help her find one.

She hears a strange sound and only a few moments of confusion does she realize that it’s her, that she’s laughing, and then she’s crying, with hardly a pause for breath in between. Don’t be silly, she thinks to herself as a tear drips off the end of her nose. Blowing up Voldemort is Harry’s job.

“Luna?” The voice behind her is quiet, almost timid.

She turns without bothering to dry her eyes, to find Harry standing awkwardly behind her, hands in the pockets of his blue Muggle trousers. He shifts his weight from foot to foot, as though contemplating taking a step forward then changing his mind.

“I saw you through the window,” he says, sounding uncertain. “Looked like a nice sunset.”

“It is,” she agrees, “but it’s hard to keep up with the light.”

He takes a few steps forward and sits down on the garden bench. Luna hesitates a moment, then sits down beside him.

“Hermione told me about your dad,” he says. “The details, I mean. I’m really sorry.”

There is something about the careful way he avoids looking anywhere his gaze might cross hers that reminds Luna of Snape, but she knows better than to say this out loud.

“You think it’s your fault,” she says slowly. “Every time the Death Eaters kill someone, you think it’s your fault for not having stopped Voldemort yet.”

His head jerks around and he looks at her, his eyes wide.

“I feel the same way,” she says, “and no one made a prophecy about me.”

He continues to look at her for a long moment, though he seems to relax a little bit. She goes on.

“Logically speaking, you know, it doesn’t make any sense. There are so many people in the world, and only a tiny hand full of them are on his side. Sometimes I wonder why lots and lots of people don’t just walk out and sweep over him, like the waves of the ocean, and swallow him up.” Her mouth is very dry. “Sometimes I think that’s the worst part. It should be so easy to stop bad people from doing bad things, because most people are good.”

“Are they?” says Harry, his voice strangely expressionless. “Maybe. But they’re also afraid. More afraid than they are good.”

“But if everyone worked together, no one would have to be afraid, because there’s no way they could lose.”

“They don’t trust the other people to stand up with them.” Harry is looking at her with a vague sort of pitying expression. “I’m afraid it’s just not that simple.”

“Oh, I know that.” Luna shrugs. “But it ought to be.”

Harry smiles at her, and not until then does she realize how somber he had looked before.

“You would think that way,” he says. “I don’t think you’ve ever been afraid of anything. You’re always going to be one of the ones who stand up.”

For some reason this brings the knot back to Luna’s throat, and she looks away, back towards the privet hedge so the tears won’t drip onto his sleeve.

They sit together for a few minutes in a silence that is pleasantly free of any awkwardness at all. Then Luna notices that Harry is frowning at her.

“Is that Snape’s cloak you’re wearing?” he says.

“Yes.” She tugs it closer around her shoulders. “He’s been upstairs shouting at Professor Vector ever since we got here, so I don’t think he’ll miss it.”

“Ever since—” His frown deepens. “Who is ‘we’?”

“Me. And Professor Snape. And Professor Vector. We couldn’t stay at Grimmauld Place, because all the wards unraveled when Professor Dumbledore died.”

Harry is looking at her with an expression of mingled alarm and horrified concern. “You mean you’ve been with Snape all this time?”

“Well.” Luna thinks back. “Not with him, precisely, but we have been somewhat thrown together.” She brightened. “We rode a flying carpet to Hogwarts.”

“Oh.” Harry blinks.

“He’s been very nice, really. Well, no, not nice. But he’s hardly shouted at me at all.” Her arm twinges in the shape of his fingers as she speaks, and she amends, “He has been a bit testy now and then, but we’ve been attacked by Death Eaters twice since last night, so it’s quite understandable.”

Harry looks away, though she can see that his eyebrows are still baffled. “I see.”

They sit in silence for another moment, Harry staring distractedly at the ground, Luna gazing out into the middle distance. At first, she sees nothing but the sunset.

Then a blot appears on the horizon.

Luna can feel her entire body grow still, as her mind races ahead of itself, trying to catalogue what she is seeing. The shape is too far away to know whether or not it is human, but Luna thinks it is moving rather too fast for that.

She opens her mouth to say something to Harry, only to find that he is already looking at her, as though he has sensed her tension. “What’s wrong?” he says.

“There,” she says, pointing.

Harry follows her gaze. A moment later he is on his feet, his wand in his hand, his back and shoulders rigid.

They wait, Luna hardly breathing. The shape grows nearer and nearer, but no more distinct, at least not to Luna’s vision.

Then suddenly Harry relaxes, and gives a small laugh. “It’s nothing,” he says, not turning around. “It’s Lupin.”

“Lupin?”

“His Patronus. To let us know he’s coming.” Harry turns then, and smiles at her. “It’s how members of the Order communicate with each other. He wanted to let us know in advance that he was on his way, so he doesn’t get fried by the wards.”

“Oh, I see.” Luna nods. “That’s very clever.”

“I should wait here and see if there’s a message. Would you go inside and let the others know?”

“Who should I tell?”

“Moody, if he’s finished with the Floo. Or Snape.” His nose wrinkles. “Unless you’d rather not.”

“I don’t mind,” says Luna.

She turns for the house with a strange mixture of anticipation and foreboding.

Inside, she finds Moody shouting at the fireplace at a volume that makes her think better of interrupting him. She looks to the side and sees Hermione sitting at the table with Percy, books open between them. They are having an argument in low, intense voices, and suddenly Luna wonders why Harry hadn’t thought Hermione would want to know Lupin was coming. Did he not know about them? It is strange, to think that so much distance could have grown between them, and suddenly Luna wonders where Harry has been for the last six months, and why only Ron and Ginny had been with him.

She turns and mounts the stairs, remembering only at the last minute to stop and hang Snape’s cloak back on the hat rack. To most people the loan of clothing might seem like a small favor to grant a person whose life you have saved, and who has saved your life in turn. But this is Snape, and Luna has already figured out that most of the ordinary rules do not apply to him.