A/N: So . . . this is part II of an unknown number. But, since I'm designating them "Parts" and not "Chapters" it won't be terribly long . . .
Title is borrowed from a Byron poem. The poem Luna is reading is also Byron, "Prometheus". I do not own either Lord Byron, or Harry Potter.
Part II: "The Night Hath Been To Me A More Familiar Face"
By Madame Pomfrey's estimate, it would take him at least another two weeks of recovery in the sanctum (or prison, as he preferred to think of it) of the infirmary before he would be well enough to become an outpatient. Naturally, he countered her assessment with a furious and well-thought-out argument; however, much to his irritation, she refused to hear him out, tutting at him and fussing around him while he tried in vain to explain that he was "bloody fantastic" and did not need to be "coddled and cossetted like a ninnyhammer first-year".
He could not say he was surprised at her disregard of his self-diagnosis. In the back of his mind, he knew that whatever he said to her would be utterly unhelpful in springing him loose; and, truthfully, he did it more to rile himself up than because he thought it might aid his case any. Either way, he was going to be confined to this fucking ward for another fortnight or so; the least he could do was make it mildly interesting for himself.
And, whilst unable to leave his room (technically, he could go out and walk around the rest of the ward, but he didn't fancy the stares he might receive from other patients), sources of interest were exceedingly hard to come by. The first day, he'd had a house elf bring him some books from the Headmaster's office; he'd succeeded in occupying himself for a few hours with the tomes before a searing headache attacked him, and he left them to his bedside table. For the rest of the day, he lay there, with his eyes closed, willing the pain into a dull ache; when Madame Pomfrey came in around seven with his supper (which looked mildly appealing, to his surprise) and evening medication, he had managed to put enough of a reign on it to sit up in bed and begin reading again.
It was annoying, eating with her sitting right next to him. She did not watch him intensely, but merely sat at his side, reading her weekly MediWitch journal, glancing up occasionally. Though the meal had at first looked appeasing, and tasted far less bland than normal infirmary food, he found after a few bites that he had no appetite.
When he pushed his plate away after clearing (with difficulty) half of its contents, Madame Pomfrey looked up. Her expression was unreadable, and she said nothing as she took it from him, trading his half-finished meal for several vials of potion and a glass of water to chase them down.
After making sure that he had swallowed all of the required medication, Madame Pomfrey dimmed the lights and let him be. Almost immediately, drowsiness began to settle in on him. The potions she had administered were the same from yesterday, only more powerful now that his faculties were more well-adjusted to a non-coma state. The potion to regrow and repair damaged tissue taste even more vile this time; he was only consoled by the immediate sedative side effects which would, he knew, quickly lead him to sleep.
Less well known fact was that this drug-slumber was not simply peace and blackness.
He tried not to feel the creep of dread as sleep slowly consumed his body, tried to fight away the nigglings of panic that touched his mind like icy pinpricks. But even as he fell into the deep abyss of sleep, a part of him, mad and frantic, tried to claw its way back out, tried to avoid. . . .
Screaming.
All around him. ambient, like the sound of howling wind. Piercing his eardrums, making them bleed.
He looked down at the ground, saw his feet poking out from beneath his robes. Heavy robes. Deatheater robes. His arm burned, the mark stinging like a fresh tattoo, but he dared not pull back his sleeve to look at it. No. must not. Must not. . . .
He stepped forward, not in control, lethargic steps that left his head spinning. Where was he going? He was walking without moving: rather, the ground was moving underneath him, bringing him closer and closer to what seemed to be a large, gaping hole in the earth, closer, closer. He blinked past the blinding flashes of light in his eyes, strained his neck to see. . . .
And there, in the mouth of the earth, lay bodies.
Naked, white as the bellies of fish, of amphibians. Nude and unprotected and soft and cold. Children.
As he looked down at the mass of dead young flesh, one of them stirred.
Lying under the painfully supine body of a young, scrawny, black-haired boy, a little girl, six, seven maybe, with silver-blonde hair opened her eyes. She blinked once, her hematite black orbs glinting. She had no irises nor pupils, he couldn't tell where or what she was looking at. But when she tilted her head up and angled it at him, he knew. She was looking up at him.
Her eyes bulged. Her jaw snapped open—
No.
No . . .
NO!
"Professor?"
He jerked back to life, body spasming as he gasped for air he wasn't lacking. He could hear his blood pounding in his ears, temporarily blocking out all other sound save for his own withered gasping. His chest was tight and painful, and his entire body seemed to sing unpleasantly as if all his muscles had fallen asleep—
Gently, something—or someone—nudged his right shoulder.
"Pruh . . ssers n . . p."
Though the pounding in his ears obscured most of the syllables, something in him perked up, recognizing the sound.
He knew that phrase. It was his.
With a determination that he could smell, the figure beside him spoke again:—
"Pruhf. . . er . . . ssev rus."
The voice . . . sounded soft and familiar and close. But . . . Why couldn't he see them?
Suddenly, some part of him that still new how to control his body realized that he had his eyes screwed shut.
Before he could pause to consider the possible consequences of doing so, he opened his eyes.
For a moment, he thought he was dreaming again: all around him was almost lost in utter darkness—save for the floating set of candles to his immediate right.
Turning his head slowly, his tired eyes rounded on what was becoming of late a welcome and familiar sight.
Luna Lovegood sat up straight and smiled at him. She was dressed in muggle clothes, faded jeans and a colorful jumper. The candlelight glowed in the high planes of her delicate cheeks and her smooth, pale forehead; it glinted in her eyes and seemed to dance, though he'd learned that this illusion had little to do with the quivering flames.
Despite her soft, eternally-contented smile, she looked tired, and it was with some fatigue that she removed her left hand from his shoulder and used both to move the heavy textbook from her lap to the floor.
Severus watched her closely. This was the fourth night in a row that he had awoken to find the strange little Ravenclaw at his bedside; some nagging part of him wanted to shoo her away, curse at her, get up and throw her damn book across the room, bellow at her until her ears were ringing. Grudging as he was to admit it, though, that notion was easily overridden by the overwhelming relief he felt when he jerked awake and found her sitting placidly next to him.
As always, he found his tattered voice and addressed her softly:
"Lovegood."
Her smile broadened by a fraction, producing faint dimples.
He paused, taking her in. She smelt, as always, dulcet and earthy. Like rich soil and pine trees and some unnamable flower.
"I still can . . . not discern how . . . you manage to get—get in here." His voice came forth staggering, unhealthy, his throat still raw and unhealed.
She blinked at him sweetly. "Can't you?"
"Not even . . . Min-McGonagall could break the w—the wards if she . . . didn't have a keyword."
"I don't have a keyword."
"No. You do not."
"Og lets me in."
He refrained from shaking his head in confusion; bodily memory told him that moving his head in any uncareful manner was not a good idea. "Og?"
"Your gargoyle. Ognyum. They brought him down from the fourth floor, west wing. He's Bulgarian."
He felt an eyebrow raise as he took a moment to consider. So. Not only was he awaking in the middle of the night in the company of the school's resident nutcase, but she was also in cahoots with his gargoyle. His Bulgarian gargoyle. Named Ognyum. Fascinating.
"And why . . . would he let you in?" he tried his best to sneer and failed miserably.
The smile had dropped from her face a few moments ago, but her face was still a picture of serenity. "Oh, I don't know. Maybe he thinks you need the company. They're very intuitive, gargoyles, even if they are made of stone. Very compassionate."
He didn't know whether she purposely inserted double meaning in those words, but he narrowed his eyes at her in any case. "Ongy . . . Og thinks I need your company?" The words were not mean-sounding, though he wished they were. The truth of the matter was that, despite how much he desired (at least on the surface) for Luna Lovegood to disappear and leave him to his miserable tossing and turning, he felt an undeniable calm when in her presence. It was as if her aura of serenity was sloughing off on him; her presence made him feel strangely . . . well, safe.
And he hated himself for it.
Folding her slender legs so that she was sitting Indian style in her chair, she rested her hands on her crossed ankles and shrugged. Looking him straight in the eye, she asked simply:
"Do you?"
He stared back at her, tried his utmost to glare. He remembered a time when a single glance from him could make any first year, Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, or Slytherin wet themselves and scurry off to find shelter from his gaze. He wanted to resurrect that man now. Except his eyes were too preoccupied with the way her hair seemed to halo her head, and he sounded and felt, not fearsome, but rather breathless.
"No."
Anything mean or stern that had made its way into his tone was completely lost on her, he could tell. She just continued to regard him with that unflinching, nonjudgmental, sharp-skyblue stare.
"If you want me to leave, I can."
Funnily enough, he did not ask her to leave. Not that night, nor the night after that, nor the one after that. Every night, in the middle of every gruesome nightmare, there she was: her feathery voice, her semi-corporeal touch. She was there to wake him, and she stayed, chatting away or reading in silence, or reading aloud to him, biding the time until finally he drifted back off to sleep.
By his ninth night in the infirmary, waking up to see Lovegood had become ritual. Now, all it took was the lightest of her touches or even the sound of her voice to rouse him from whatever horrid fantasy his brain had concocted; it was as if his mind were unconsciously anticipating it. Lovegood herself had certainly made it part of her routine: she had taken to bringing her schoolwork with her, plopping her bag down by the side of her chair, conjuring up a small desk for her to write on. Sometimes, when he was feeling more aware, he guided her through problems or told her interesting anecdotes about spells she was learning. Quite often, he was lulled to sleep by the scratching of her quill, or her dreamy voice as she read to him from her history textbook.
To his utter (if belated) dismay, their topics of conversation would stray from school and they would actually . . . talk.
"Harry has been talking about you," she told him once. On anyone else, it would have been an off-handed, maybe sly comment. Coming from her, it was just what it sounded like: a statement, no string attached.
Severus really did sneer this time (he'd been playing a game with himself, testing himself, seeing if he could bring back the old venom in the presence of this waif-girl; somehow, it was fitting that the one time he managed to be even mildly nasty, it had nothing to do with her).
"I am certain he has."
Luna hadn't been looking at him when she'd first spoken, her gaze skimming over the contents of her Analytical Potions Exam I study guide; he'd been helping her make notes and corrections, quizzing her, making her work through problems. Now, she was giving it a final read-through (which was, he knew, utterly pointless; he had already made sure that she'd pass with flying colors). When he spoke in a tone that was more snarky than he'd ever achieved before in her vicinity, she still didn't look up. "He wants to apologize," she said mildly, turning a page.
Sitting up in his bed, Severus quietly seethed. Fucking Potter. Always doing the chivalrous thing. Always playing the moralistic hero. "I do not need charity from Harry bloody Potter," he growled, and the action made his throat constrict painfully.
At the low, irate utterance from deep within his throat, Luna finally did look up. Her crystalline eyes were as calm and unreadable as ever.
"He is genuinely sorry, Professor."
He laughed then, a bitter, barking laugh, a rare and lethal weapon he used only to make the supposedly thick skins of seventh years and opponents crawl. It was harsh and eerie and let his throat be damned. It was worth it just to see the little blonde chit raise a pale eyebrow, her petal-like mouth parting in surprise.
He drank in the sight, unbearably pleased with himself. "Sorry?" he spat. "Sorry for what, precisely? For calling me a coward? For leaving me to die? For not making sure I was dead? For not killing me when he got the chance? What does he mean by it? Does he regret not having the generosity to give me the only peace I might ever know? Tell me, please do, I am dying and utterly desperate to know how bloody sorry the boy is."
It was difficult to tell what crossed her face then. It was a brief, kaleidoscope flurry of emotions, but he caught the fact that most of them were not all that pleasant. There was, in fact, something almost sinister that darted around the usually star-lit corners of her eyes.
After a long, chilly pause, she finally murmured:—
"It's my fault you're alive. Not Harry's."
If you are going to hate someone, hate me.
She didn't say that. Her lips hadn't moved.
But he heard it, clear as day. And there it hung in the air.
And Severus, for all the ice and poisonous thorns that surrounded the shriveled, blackened organ that was supposed to be his heart, found that he couldn't do it.
He couldn't bring himself to hate her.
He rolled over, unable to look at her. He shut his eyes and willed himself not to think.
After a few minutes, Lovegood began to hum.
He felt ashamed for nights after that.
He was accustomed to shame, or so he thought. He'd experienced plenty of it in his time: shame for not being pure of blood, for being bullied by classmates; for not being the perfect son his mother wanted, for letting his muggle father abuse him; shame for betraying Lily's generous friendship and for not betraying Albus's; shame for the way he lived. For living at all.
Somehow, this was different. He couldn't pinpoint it. But it was.
Perhaps it was due to the fact that, around Ms. Lovegood, he felt no shame.
He wasn't abashed or angry or embarrassed.
She made him feel . . . oddly at ease.
So he was careful after that. Careful with his words, with his temper. He no longer tried to make himself vile, or to make her dislike him. Perhaps because he realized he was still all too capable.
And, for some unfathomable, flabbergasting reason, he wanted her to like him.
Or at least to tolerate him.
The nightmares were lessening. Sometimes, they were nothing more than shadows with emotional charge, not actual night terrors but murky waters in his mind. All of this was comforting.
Not so comforting was that, more and more these days, he could not imagine waking up without having that mad flower child sitting at his side.
The next time he broached the subject, it was subtle, even artful. Right down to the last second before he spoke, he knew there was no way he could inject any amount of ire into his voice. His tone was calm, collected, even mild—well, mild for him.
"You did me a great disservice, you know."
It was amazing, how she knew immediately what he was getting at; even more amazing was the utter serenity with which she replied: "Did I?"
"Yes," he replied neutrally. Then, unable to hold it back, he gave a small sigh. "Surviving was never something I calculated into my plans, Ms. Lovegood."
"Oh? Why's that, Professor?"
"I . . . the statistical probability was never in my favor."
"Oh. Do you believe in fate, professor?"
He looked at her quizzically, venturing, "Not particularly . . . especially not after listening to Sybill rant endlessly under her breath at staff meetings."
At this, the corners of Luna's eyes crinkled with unreleased laughter. "I understand," she said. There was a pause as she looked down at the nearly forgotten Quibbler in her lap, not turning her attention back to it, but merely collecting her thoughts.
"I believe in fate," she affirmed at last. Bringing her eyes up, she looked at him with one of those damnably unreadable expressions. He still wasn't accustomed enough to her oddity that this particular gaze did not perturb him at least somewhat.
"However," she continued, "I also believe that a lot of things are left up to chance."
At this, her gaze slunk down his face, his neck, to his torso. His bandaged, battered, bruised, but otherwise bare torso. Suddenly, the temperature in the room dropped ten solid degrees, and he wished he had accepted the flimsy, irritating hospital shirt that Poppy had offered him earlier, abruptly aware and somewhat self-conscious of his nakedness. To be true, there were enough bandages over his chest, shoulders, neck, and arms to suffice as a shirt, albeit a skin-tight one; and, because Lovegood was always looking at him square in the eyes if at all, his apparent shirtlessness hadn't previously been an issue.
But something about the way she was staring made him cringe ever so slightly inside. He felt the weight of her eyes as they lingered over ever cover of white gauze, every clay-red stain. She scoured his mangled form, watching his muscles tighten apprehensively beneath the bandages and skin.
Of its own accord, his flesh nearly flung itself from his bones when she laid a small, pale hand on the large bandage taped across his chest. He dared not
"I think it's very lucky that you survived that snake," she said softly. "But I don't think it was quite coincidence."
His breath came out shallow; he was torn between letting her hand keep resting as it was, it's comfortable feather-lightness upon his breast, or giving into his self-damning horror and swatting it away, possibly sending her sprawling to the floor.
"Harry Potter's entire existence was about fate," she mused, staring intently at the space her small hand was occupying, as if he didn't have a face. "There were so many times when he could have died—when he was supposed to die—but fate had to save his death for just the right moment. I say you are very lucky, Professor—too lucky."
She smiled at him kindly, tapping his chest lightly with one finger and then retracting her hand from him completely. He tried to lessen the obvious signs of relief, letting his breath out slowly, unclenching his tightened muscles as laggardly as possible.
She sat beside him in silence after that. She let him stew in his thoughts and listen to the sound of her breathing while she turned the pages of her (curiously upsidedown) magazine. When he finally fell back to sleep, it was to the faint, nearly inaudible tinkle of her chuckling.
They kept the topics of conversation fairly light after that. After those two brief and uncomfortable forays into deep, meaningful discussion, he didn't feel quite like delving into personal matters with the girl—particularly as she was so perceptive and uncannily insightful. It was disturbing, to be examined and deduced so expertly by such a young, waifish girl-thing.
For a few nights there, he had absolutely no nightmares. He did not wake up in a cold sweat to the caw of his own screams, but to the soft, soothing sound of Lovegood humming quietly.
When she saw that he'd awoken, she'd greet him with conversational, if odd questions. She did not, to his relief, ever ask about his dreams; nor did she ask him to talk about the war, his part in it, to explain the great mystery that was Severus Snape. He knew that when he was released, there would be countless of people clamoring at him for answers. McGonagall had been by several times during the day to check on him, try to pry information from him. He told her only what he thought she needed to know and it frustrated her, but she eventually let him be. Potter, apparently, had also been trying to visit, though he gave explicit orders to Poppy that the boy was not to set one foot in his room less she wanted to be scraping Potter goo off the walls.
That was one of the questions Minerva had pestered him with; she (and the entire bloody world) now knew that the last twenty years of Severus' life had been devoted to protecting the child of Lily Evans. Yet, now that the war was over, her spawn was the absolute last thing he wanted to see.
Collectively, Minerva spent a good hour asking about that particular issue from every angle her agile mind could manage. But he remained stalwart and silent.
Lovegood, for her part, asked none of the questions that so bewildered and piqued everyone else. In reality, she seemed fairly uninterested in the entirety of it. She took much more delight in asking him what his favorite kind of cuisine was, what scent he found the most appealing, what, in his opinion, was the best way to deal with a troublesome bunch of marlingduroughs. A lot of the questions she asked him he could only gape cluelessly at (such as the query about marlingduroughs; apparently, they were domestic pests, though he had some doubts about the credulity of their existence). Sometimes, when not asking him questions or having him check her schoolwork, she told him stories; a few of them were stories from her childhood, but most were tales and myths told to her by her father.
And sometimes, for no reason at all, she would forgo the latter past-times completely, and read him poetry.
". . . 'And Man in portions can foresee
His own funereal destiny;
His wretchedness, and his resistance,
and his sad unallied existence'. . ."
He listened to her voice chant in the darkness. Honestly, he had never cared much for poetry; a lot of sappy lovelorn fools seemed the lot of poets to him. But listening to her read to him began to make him wonder if he had been too rash. That maybe he hadn't had enough exposure to make a proper judgment of all written, poetic word. Whenever she read to him, she rarely selected pieces about love or passion.
No. the poetry Lovegood selected for him was serious. Gritty, perhaps sometimes romantic; but never naïve.
But that was Lovegood all over.
How paradoxical was she. So doe-like, yet so shiny and sharp underneath.
"to which his Spirit may oppose
Itself—and equal to all woes,
And a firm will, and a deep sense
Which even in torture can descry
Its own concenter'd recompense
Triumphant where it dares defy,
And making Death a Victory.'"
"Lovegood."
She looked up, tucking a stray strand of pale blonde hair behind her left ear. Her earring, a myriad design of interlocking triangles tinkled airily. She only had on the one, he knew; a few nights ago, when moving her massive hair around her neck, he caught sight of her right ear, only to see that the bottom part of the lobe had been ripped off. When he asked her about it (somewhat tentatively), she explained that it had been Alecto Carrow's work during a detention. Madame Pomfrey had offered to regrow the severed lobe, but she'd refused.
"Yes?"
He glanced again at the antique circular analog clock above the door on the other side of the room. It read 7:39. "You do know that it is nearing eight."
She blinked at him, like a particularly slow child. Lethargically, she turned her head and swiveled the rest of her body, craning around to see.
"Oh," he heard her say softly. Perhaps there was some disappointment in her voice. He couldn't tell.
Regardless, she swiveled back, bent down, and began shuffling with her bag, putting back her quills and textbooks and the book of collected Byron she'd been reading from. "I suppose I'll have to get to class soon."
He frowned, trying to get her attention. "Ms. Lovegood . . ."
"I was going to go back to the dorms and have a quick shower—but I suppose there's time if I skip breakfast—"
"Lovegood—"
"—but I don't want my stomach to growl during class. Hm . . . Oh! I could use a cleaning charm—"
"Luna."
At the sound of her name, she immediately stopped her shuffling, turning her face up to look at him. At that same moment, the spelled lights in the private ward glowed to life, illuminating her face properly.
As soon as his eyes adjusted to the new brightness, he felt his stomach twist unpleasantly. Lovegood's face was pale, nearly pale as his starched sheets; under her eyes, however, there were rings of dark purple.
More disturbing, however, were her eyes themselves. Looking into them was like watching an injured dancer attempting to perform: they still rolicked with their customary jovial light, but it looked strained somehow. Washed out.
Only then did it occur to him that, while he could sleep off the hours during the day that he missed at night, Luna Lovegood probably did not have the same luxury. Mentally, he kicked himself. Merlin. He was such a bloody selfish idiot.
"Lovegood," he reverted to her surname, uncomfortable with the familiarity of her first. "When was the last time you slept?"
She tilted her head, suddenly looking very lost. "Hm?"
He narrowed his eyes at her, suddenly irritated. "Don't play dumb with me, girl. How long have you been awake?"
Despite (or perhaps because of) his slightly menacing tone, her bright blue eyes softened. She gave him a weak smile and a half-shrug of her small shoulders.
"I'm not sure, professor," she replied. Glancing down, she tucked a flyaway strand of blonde hair behind her left ear. the volume of her voice dropped lower with every syllable, and he strained to hear. "I don't really . . . remember . . ."
His lips pursed in what he hoped wasn't a very McGonagall-like way. "Try."
She met his eyes briefly, but dropped her attention to her knees almost instantly. Lips barely moving, she mumbled:—
"Since your last nightmare, I think. . ."
He couldn't help it. He stared at her.
"Four days?"
"Please don't be angry, Professor. I heard Madame Pomfrey saying that getting you riled up might exacerbate your condition—"
"Damn by bleeding condition," he hissed, sitting up straight, black eyes boring into her. Merlin. Why did he feel so angry? "You require sleep, Ms. Lovegood— what in the name of Salazar is wrong with—"
The look on her heart-shaped face made the words shrivel up in his mouth; his irritation, as soon as it had entered him, fled his bloodstream just as quickly. He breathed out slowly, his body slowly unconstricting from the tension it had so deftly built up.
Seeing that she was still looking at the worn, frayed knees of her jeans (did the girl own any pants without holes in them?), he let out a long, low sigh. Once he thought his temper and voice were in check, he tried again:
"Ms. Lovegood . . . as . . . grateful," (the word was ridiculously painful to say), "as I am for . . . your company, you cannot . . . this is not healthy for you. . . ."
Still not looking up, she nodded silently. Her hands twisted themselves in knots in her lap.
A pregnant and unsettling pause followed that, and Severus racked his brain, trying to think of something else to say. He couldn't do this. He didn't know how to properly scold and console a teenage girl simultaneously. Oh, Merlin's balls. This was ludicrous.
While they both sat there in their first genuinely awkward silence, there was a small knock at the door.
And that got both of their attentions. Lovegood whipped her head up and looked at the door like a cornered animal while Severus' eyes bulged in alarm, his hair standing on end. Fuck. Not good. Though they weren't technically breaking any rules, if Poppy—or anyone—saw . . . he was still only in his gauze dressings, and, Merlin, that would be just bloody awkward, nevermind suspicious—
Kill me now, he thought as the door creaked open.
Beside him, he heard Lovegood take in a sharp breath.
Tentatively, a small, long-eared house elf shuffled into the room. Its gargantuan green eyes roved from Severus to Luna, looking slightly worried and mostly horrified.
"Gu—Gudy is sorry to bother!" the elf squeaked, eyes darted so fast between the two now that Severus was going to be sick if he continued watching their progress. The elf bowed its large head and lifted the tray it had been carrying high, as if in offering. "Gudy brings Master Snape his breakfast!"
The elf stood there like that, trembling. Severus was too busy trying to regather his wits and slow his breathing (because, obviously, they were not in danger); Lovegood, for her part, rose from her little chair and approached the house-elf with warm, light footsteps.
"Thank you very much, Gudy," she said, and Severus could hear the genuine smile in her voice. "I can take the tray for you, if you like."
The tray exchanged hands and, after several more blubbering apologies, there was a loud crack as the house elf disapparated back to the kitchens.
As soon as the little creature was gone, Severus let out the breath he'd been holding, bringing on hand up and resting it on his chest. His heart was still beating swiftly, he could even feel it beneath the thick gauze. Brow furrowing, he closed his eyes, only reopening them when he felt something being set on his bed and heard Lovegood alighting back onto her chair.
"They certainly take pains to make it appealing for you," Lovegood remarked, and he followed her gaze to the tray. It had been laden down with a bowl of oatmeal, a mug and pot of steaming tea, two muffins, eggs, a banana, and a tall glass of milk. If he were one to appreciate such things, he would have agreed with her: it probably was a scrumptious meal.
However, being Severus Snape, resident impossible bastard, he bypassed the food and went straight for the mug of tea. Lifting it from the tray, he let the rising steam waft towards him. Chai . At least the house elves were picking up on some things.
Sliding the Prophet out from under the plate on which the muffins and eggs were seated, he propped it up in front of him, scanning the headlines. Bullocks, as per usual. Tracking down missing Deatheaters. Potter attends another Ministry gala with the female Weasley clutching his arm possessively. He sneered at the boy in the pictures, his young face voicing his discomfort clearly while cameras flashed at him from every angle. Bloody pomp and circumstance. As if the wizarding world hadn't already asked too much of the boy; now they had him performing like a trained monkey. Peachy. He was about to raise the mug to his mouth when he noted the girl watching his tray with a restrained sort of interest. He raised his tea to his lips, using the mug to hide the small smirk that had formed there.
"Stop gawking and take anything you like," he deadpanned as nonchalantly as possible. "The more Poppy thinks I've eaten, the better mood she will be in when she decides to have a prod at my injuries."
Luna lifted her head: the smile she shone on him was positively dazzling, so much that it nearly hurt his eyes to look back.
He didn't return the smile, but she continued to beam at him anyway as she helped herself to a banana nut muffin and his glass of milk. Deliberately, he pulled his eyes away from her, using a little bit of wandless magic to suspend the paper before him and flip it casually with a wave of one long, elegant finger.
They sat in companionable silence, Severus skimming the newspaper, Luna working through part of his breakfast. He tried not to think about how utterly farcical the entire thing was: here he sat, Severus Snape, formerly (and possibly still) the most hated teacher in all of Hogwarts, reading the newspaper and drinking tea while a skinny, slip of a daisy-girl munched away at his breakfast. And he was still trying not to smirk.
Why? he wondered, looking over the business section of the Prophet. There was nothing particularly comical about the situation. It had been so long since he'd genuinely smiled he wouldn't have been surprised if he had forgotten how. Nonetheless, he could feel it, tugging at the edges of his stern mouth. . . .
About seven minutes before eight o'clock, Lovegood stood, brushing crumbs off of her jeans as she did so. "Thanks for the breakfast, sir," she said brightly, stooping to pick up her bag. She slung it over her shoulder, and whipped out her wand. Pointing it at herself, she muttered a quick "Scourgify".
"There," she said approvingly, looking down at herself. "Clean as a whistle. Not quite as satisfying as a shower, but it'll do in a pinch, I suppose." Shaking out her mass of blonde, scraggly hair, she gave him another smile and a cheery, "Good day!" and started on her way out towards the door.
From his bed, he called out:
"Ms. Lovegood."
She halted, pivoting gracefully to looked back at him.
"I do not want you to come back here." He locuted his words slowly deliberately, giving her a level and weighty black gaze. "Is that understood?"
She caught his look full on. Damn her. Why was her demeanor so completely obtuse? As a spy, he had often bet his life on his own judgment of the subtlest expressions of others. Even without Occlumency, he was immensely adept at reading people. But this insufferable girl-child . . . there was definitely something brewing behind those crystalline blue irises, some flicker of shadow, but it was gone before he had time to categorize it. Blast.
But before his discomfort and irritation could materialize, she nodded her head once, and gave him a smile that, to him, didn't seem quite natural.
"Yes, Professor Snape. I understand."
True to her word, Lovegood did not return that night.
He woke with a start, gasping and gripping at his sheets, his chest pounding painfully. Habitually, he jerked his head to the right, eyes moving to the spot where she usually sat, patient and waiting for him.
But there was no one there.
The empty space where she should have been greeted him, a stretching black chasm.
It took him about an hour to calm down to where his heart wasn't trying to escape his ribcage, and another thirty minutes before he could relax enough to try and close his eyes. Eventually, sometime around four A.M. he suspected, he did manage to fall asleep.
Three nights passed and Luna Lovegood did not reappear. On the morning of the fourth day, Madame Pomfrey took longer than usual with her morning check-up. She undressed his wounds, nearly all of them pink and raw but healing nonetheless, scar tissue taking form to replace the jagged cuts and burns and whathaveyou. She gave them a long critical look, every once and a while sneaking a glance up at his face. After a good twenty minutes, she clucked her tongue, redressed him, notably less liberally, and gave him the news that he had been longing and dreading to hear.
He was free to go.
By ten o'clock, he was dressed in his normal clothes, the black robes feeling heavy but welcoming back on his slender frame. He looked around the private ward; all of his books and potion journals had been taken back to his rooms by house elves. There was nothing left here that was his.
His black eyes lit on his bedside table.
There, by the base of his lamp, where it had stood watch over him nearly every hour, was the black chess piece Lovegood had left him.
Before he could chide himself on the sentimentality of it, he plucked the black knight from its perch, and pocketed it.
Post script:
Locute – not an actual word. This is me turning the noun "locution" into a verb for my own purposes.
Rolicked – past tense of "rolic" which is an old/archaic form of "frolic"