Canto I
Gazing out the window of the place, away from the horror of the moment, he could not distinguish where the green of the trees and the brown forest floor became separate; nor where the juniper-branches and other conifer-boughs melted into the oblivion of the sky.
All was dark and silent, in the mezzo del cammin of Severus Snape's life, though he thought it a welcome respite from the cacophonous eons of yesteryear, which he spent as a lone doctor dwelling in a land of plague.
The sight of his mortal shell on the floor of that hellish building known as the Shrieking Shack made him recoil; the amount of blood he'd left made him feel the woe of seeing his miserable life's pathetic magnum opus.
He felt guilt, too, for feeling that he looked like a martyr, for feeling that he looked like Christ.
But further reflection left him transformed; he was still present, and thus it seemed that his personal myth was unended. He thought it was because he was Sisyphus, and the inevitable sob of not wanting to start again rose in his throat.
Thereupon it was that he realized that if the boulder was to be pressed into his hands once more, at least for the starting climb he was not alone-the disenfranchised shadow side of Ravenclaw's wisdom, the delicate, loving, and good dove of naivete, was at the window of the shack, her fragile hands and ethereal tresses shining in the moonlight, as white and indefatigably elegant as a patronus.
She motioned for him to come forth from his retreat of happenstance, and Snape, with meekness born of shock, bent to her authority.
"How long have you been here?" Luna Lovegood asked of him, as unfazed by his presence in the garb of a ghost as she was unfazed by Thestrals, "And are you all right?"
"I can't answer either of your questions," he said, his voice stifled by the lacerations of Nagini's fangs that he still felt in his neck. "I'm just tired."
"I'm not surprised," she said with the empathy for which she was begrudgingly admired by him, "you have been running for so long on so little."
"You don't know me," he said with some bitterness, lacking the energy to snarl because she was so right. "I'd prefer you kept about your own business. Go fight for your life. Leave mine be."
"It's all over," she said, with an air of disinterest, "now we are looking for the lost."
He realized then that there were bodies in the vicinity, neatly laid to rest with their eyes closed (if their faces were intact) and their hands over their hearts.
A burning feeling of dreadful anxiety began to worm in his abdomen.
"That is to say, wehave won?" he asked, unsure whether to align himself with the joy of victory or the woe of having his ego disassembled. Had he been so transparent as to show his true loyalties, in moments of unwatchfulness with his students?
"I always knew you were on our side," said Luna, and her radiant, cold eyes made confident contact with his. A surreptitious glance at the surface of her mind-the inveterate Occulmens' habit-revealed nothing. She was a blank slate.
"You do say," he replied, as sarcastic as he could manage when in the situation of feeling his needles sink into a nonresistant, unharmable sponge.
"Yes," she said, and paused to chant a gentle blessing over the body of an acromantula, which caused it to shrink into dust. "So," she said when she finished, "what do you want to do now?"
"Does 'now' matter?" asked Severus, falling into the role of the fatalist because he knew she could bolster him up again. "Isn't my life over? There's nothing else I can do on this green earth."
He thought it ironic that the earth was so green, Slytherin green, and he'd never felt like he fit into his house, much less the world at large.
"There's at least one thing you can do," she said, not looking at him.
"And what is that, pray tell?" he answered, hostile but only because he was frightened.
"Find peace," she said, pausing to adjust her sandal.