Someone Else's Angel

He slowly trudged up the main path to Hogwarts, gingerly holding his bruised torso with his bleeding arms. He managed to hobble as far as several feet before he collapsed on the ground, wheezing harshly.

As he lay there, bleeding slightly, his thoughts bent, unwillingly, to the events of the last few hours. It had been another night full of dark revels, with the random torturing of the Muggles and the rape and death of the innocent. Severus Snape wanted to vomit up every meal he had ever eaten, and then wash in pure butober pus. Maybe that would remove the stench of death from him.

He began to drag himself over the frozen ground, the cold blades of grass digging harshly into his exposed skin. In a way, it was his penance for the evil he had committed earlier in the evening. The damnation he had sealed his soul to in order to further a good cause.

These things we do that others may live

He could hardly breathe; the frost of the ground was making his chest seize up. With his last ounce of strength, he gripped a large, flat rock and pulled himself up onto it. As he lay there, eyes closed and panting, the rock seemed to warm beneath him, as if a cozy fire had been started right under it. His muscles relaxed slightly.

"You really shouldn't stay out here, Professor," came a small, soft voice from somewhere in front of his face. Severus opened one bleary, bruised eye. A small, white face with luminous silver eyes and long silver hair swam in his vision.

"Miss Lovegood," he groaned out, pulling himself up and trying to be threatening, "it's an ungodly hour on a school night. What are you doing up?"

"Sit down, Professor," she said patiently, pushing him on his hips and forcing him to sit back down on the rock. He realized that the child must have cast a heating charm on it, for it was still quite toasty.

"You're going to injure yourself more, sir, if you keep moving like that," she said patiently. "And as for what I was doing out here; well the same thing you were, sir."

Snape sneered through the dried, clotted blood on his face. "I highly doubt," he said acidly, "that you even have the slightest idea of what I've been doing, or what I've been going through. In fact, I -"

"You've been looking in on the Dark Revels with your fellow Death Eaters," interjected Luna breezily, as if it were the most common thing in the world. "Voldemort must have not been happy, though. You're almost never this beat up." She commenced to begin cleaning his wounds as best she could, in the dark with one handkerchief.

To the last man

Snape choked as Luna began to vigorously clean a nasty scrape he had on his knees. He stared down at this small wisp of a child, who, on her hands and knees, was cleaning him from head to toe with as much compassion as one human could ever hope to hold. Unable to think coherently enough to cover his tracks, he merely spluttered a "How-how-how could y-y-you -"

"It wasn't that hard to figure out," Luna said serenely. She pulled his left leg out, planted his foot in her lap, and began to clean the grime and blood from his calf. He gritted his teeth as she pulled out brambles that were hooked beneath the skin. "You'd appear battered, and I can see through visual charms fairly well. You were always bruised, so I stayed outside one night and watched you leave. I guessed that you were working on it for a long time, even before Harry came back with Cedric Diggory's body."

Snape shuddered at the memory of pain and defeat in Harry's eyes that night. He had been at that revel, and it disgusted him that some small part of his soul still enjoyed the excitement and power of a night out.

"It's normal, you know," Luna said suddenly, moving up to clean Snape's arm. "The enjoyment of power, I mean. I know it still makes you feel funny inside, but you should know that it doesn't make you bad."

Snape was speechless. And angry. Who was this girl to simply run into him, while he was bleeding, and then try to console him and lecture him? Who did the little bitch think she was, anyways? He'd show her. He'd put her into detention until the end of time if he had to. He'd make her disembowel every flaming animal in the Forbidden Forest.

"Really, Professor," said Luna is a sharper voice than he thought possible. "You should stop wallowing in your self-misery. It does no one any good, especially you."

Snape lost control. He stood up so fast that he bowled Luna over, causing her to roll into the mud. "How dare you, girl?!" he bellowed, shaking his fist into the night sky. "You waddle in with your arrogance and misperception, thinking to pacify your betters? 200 points from Ravenclaw! A month's worth of detentions with Filch! I will have your Hogsmeade privileges revoked!"

Snape continued to rant and rave for several minutes, letting his self-hatred and anger pour itself out of his mouth and onto Luna. She lay, sprawled in the foul-smelling mud, as Snape verbally tore her apart, picking away at her very being as he sought to release all the pent-up dark anger out of his own system in the only way he knew.

When he was finished, he smirked to himself. He had justified his own self-loathing, and in a sick, twisted way, it made him feel better about this double-life, a life spent running from two enemies while trying to serve them. And then he looked down at Luna.

Her eyes flickered with some unseen emotion. Automatically, Snape tried to probe into her mind. He took a step back as he penetrated her brain.

It was a swirling mass of color and noise. He could hear voices taunting her, and a lone, soft female voice encouraging her. It was unlike anything he had ever experienced before. He fell back as he was pushed out of her mind.

"My mind," she said quietly, "is my own. You will never attempt that again."

Snape was at a loss. For years, he had been the only person he knew like him; abused, tormented. Alone, a prisoner of circumstance and society. And yet, sprawled in the mud, lay a tiny child who knew exactly how he felt. How he had felt. She had been pushed, pulled, and punched, and yet she never once accepted the destiny that her schoolmates, the James and Sirius' of her time, had arranged for her. No, she simply moved along, ignoring the diatribes and continuing to live her life how she damn well pleased.

Luna sat up, and without a word, began to clean Snape off again. Snape was motionless as she gently scraped away the scabs and dead skins, using the frost from the grass blades to clean the wounds.

Never Broken by Hardship or Battle

That's the best I can do," she said dreamily, pushing her hair back with bloody, muddy hands. She stood up and smoothed out the edges of her dress, attempted to brush off as much muck as she could from her arms, and began to sing to herself as she walked towards the castle.

"Miss Lovegood," croaked out Snape. Perhaps it was the adrenaline from earlier on, or from the substantial amount of blood he had lost, but he suddenly no longer had it in him to be cruel to the ghost child. She turned around and faced him, her long hair blowing in the crisp night air. Her eyes glowed with a gentle intensity.

"I told you, Professor," she explained mistily, "I was doing what you do. I was watching, and waiting, and just doing my job." She shrugged and smiled simply, apparently ignoring the cold wind that whipped her hair and nightgown around.

"What is my job?" he asked, lost and wondering what on earth a young girl would think of his job as a spy and a double-crosser.

" Tant que je puis," she replied. Snape considered her for a moment, small beetle eyes poring over Luna. "As much as I can," he translated. Luna nodded.

"And then what," began Snape, "would your job be? Do you heal the broken? Mend the wounded? Or does your entire lifestyle revolve around trying to be helpful and digging your nose into other's business?" he asked, with more malice then he intended.

It was Luna's turn to stare at Snape. She looked him over, then turned around and walked away.

"Answer the question, girl!" bellowed Snape in indignation. In spite of his injuries, he crossed the gap between them quickly, grabbing her shoulder. She turned her head up to look at him, and Snape looked down at her just as intently.

"Servabo Fidem," she said quietly. She looked straight ahead. "I will keep faith."

"And who will keep faith for me?" asked Snape quietly, every ounce of bitter defiance drained from him.

Luna continued to walk and talk at the same time, her bare feet drenched and frozen. "Everyone," she whispered, "is someone else's angel. I have faith in you, Severus of House Snape. You have been Harry's angel for years now. Let someone shine a little light for you, too."

She walked off, singing. Snape stood, rooted to his spot in the ground. Had that all just happened? Did a nutter Ravenclaw come out and comfort him? Did she just call him an angel?

Snape stayed there for the rest of the night, only crawling to his rooms as the first light of dawn came crashing over the hills. As he dragged himself into his cool bed, he swore he could hear Luna's voice singing to him as he drifted off.

And when your back's against the wall
Just turn around and you, you will see
I will catch your, I will catch your fall
Just Have a little faith in me