Chapter Eight continued– The Healing Chant

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He found Luna bound and gagged bent double over a wooden desk, tears streaming down her face as Amycus Carrow, pants around his knees, positioned himself behind her. Her homespun lavender dress was rucked up past her hips, her haunches bared for all to see. With two flicks of his wand, both Carrows were disarmed, and Luna was released from her binds. With a small cry, she quickly moved away and lowered her skirts, putting her back to the wall to watch them all.

With a wave of his wand, the door behind them was closed, locked, warded, and silenced, and Severus had Amycus Carrow dragged before him. Another flick and a mumbled incantation, and the younger man screamed in agony as Severus gelded him—but slowly, gritting his teeth in hatred as he performed the severing charm. Once completed, he spat in the younger man's face, "This is the punishment the Dark Lord metes out for those that would seek to defile pureblooded children in such a manner. I find this behavior repugnant, and I happen to know our lord would find it unpleasant as well." The man's pain-filled cries turned to howls of agony.

His sister Alecto cried over her brother's screams. "But she was writing horrid things about our lord, and they told us to kidnap her and take her to the manor-like." With another flick of his wand, Alecto's face swiveled widely and grew red from the phantom slaps Severus had delivered each of her cheeks. He administered a bout of cruciatus for good measure, letting the fury and fear he felt take full reign. She fell writhing on the floor as she cried out in pain.

At length, he stated calmly, fury infusing his velvet voice, "Do not speak to me. Your fun has quite come to an end. From here on in, you will have one of the other teachers bring every student who disobeys to me personally to mete out punishment. You will no longer be allowed to give or preside over detention. You are not to be left alone with any student—pure or half-blooded for any reason whatsoever. The only—and I do mean only—action you both can commit against any of these children is the docking of house points. Do I make myself clear?" His voice had reached lethal menace.

The both of them shook their heads. "DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR?" he roared. And all assembled jumped including Luna.

"Y-yes, Sna—Headmaster Snape."

"Y-yes sir."

"Good. Alecto, get your brother to the infirmary. Tell Madam Pomfrey to give him nothing for the pain as he is to live with it as a reminder. I expect you both to attend your morning duties. Oh, and rest assured, I will be reporting this incident to our lord, and no doubt he will want to mete out further punishment. You are dismissed." Severus disabled the wards and allowed the door to open. With a cry, Alecto grabbed her brother and running, half-dragged him out the door.

Severus turned to Luna; she had not moved from her position in the corner, and he realized she was trembling. Summoning her wand to him, he walked over to her, and presented it to her slowly, wand-tip pointed towards himself.

Her eyes were downcast.

She refused to look at him as she took her wand and stowed it behind her ear. He lowered himself so he was kneeling before her. "Are you alright? Did he—?" Severus trailed off, unable to ask such a question.

She shook her head no. "Do we need to go to the infirmary, Miss Lovegood?"

Again, she shook her head in the negative, her eyes lifting and found his. She stated quietly, "He didn't…wasn't able to do… that… before you arrived, professor." Severus noticed that her lip was swollen and bleeding. Lifting his hand, he lightly touched the area and singing an incantation under his breath, watched as the skin knit back together. She flinched when his hand rested on her cheek to take away the swelling.

He felt his heart stutter in dread.

Never. Never would he, could he hurt her.

"Where else did they hurt you, Miss Lovegood?" Severus stated quietly, checking over the parts of her he could see. He lifted up the sleeves of her school robes to find places on her arms that were in the beginning stages of bruising. Putting his hands over these areas as well, he sung the incantation necessary to remove the swelling and the discoloration, leaving behind a tingling trail of warmth in its wake.

"Where else?" he stated quietly in the stillness. He watched as she licked her recently-healed lip and gestured vaguely to her hips. Tightening his lips, Severus lifted one side of the girl's skirt, careful to protect as much of her modesty as he could, and bared her on one side to the hip while keeping the front and back of her clothed.

Like many purebloods, Luna did not believe in wearing undergarments of any nature underneath her robes. The belief, an old one, stemmed from the school of thought that mounds of clothing bound and impeded a witch's or wizard's intrinsic magic. And in order to tap into their full potential, pureblooded witches and wizards wore as few clothes as possible, sometimes going skyclad if there were major workings to be done. With the advent of the Victorian era, however, this belief quickly fell out of fashion, but it did not surprise Severus in the least that the daughter of Xenophilius Lovegood chose to remain a naturalist.

He quickly saw the problem. Carrow's handprint marred her hip and lower back. Severus could not, would not think on his anger at the moment. He occluded it all, steering his thoughts instead to those of healing and love.

Turning her trembling form around to face the wall and baring her other hip to him, he saw the twin impression. The incantation he was using to heal her was old; ancient magic meant to be sung as magic transferred itself from the healer's hands to his or her beloved. The spell was for husbands to give to their wives, mothers to give to their children. It was magic of bonding, of blood. In performing the spell, Severus was gifting a bit of his magic, his health, to her and also absorbing a fraction of her pain during the process. The rest would be banished away.

He inhaled, trying to discover if she feared him. She was no longer trembling, but that didn't mean much. Fear would lessen the impact of the spell somewhat, for trust must be established between the giver and the receiver. "Do you trust me, Miss Lovegood?" Severus asked quietly to her back.

After but a moment, he saw her nod carefully, her eyes closed as she faced the wall, and Severus felt his heart clench. He placed his fingers where Amycus Carrow's hate-filled fingers had rested but a few moments before. He felt her begin to tremble beneath him, and his heart gave another clench as quietly, he began to sing.

He felt the magic flare between them as his hands tingled with gentle warmth from where he held her.

Like her other injuries, he imprinted them on himself, to a substantially lesser degree. She swayed back slightly on her heels as the full measure of the soothing chant coursed through her, warming her blood. And then she was resting against him, her slight form held still in his embrace as he finished the chant and lowered her dress once more.

Upon the spell's completion, he heard her give a small sigh; her trusting, pliant warmth a balm to his loneliness, his isolation. Closing his eyes, he inhaled deeply of her sun-drenched, cherry-blossomed scent, not daring to think what could have happened had he not followed his instincts and returned in time.

Drawing in one more soothing breath, he let it flutter out into the mound of spun gold at his cheek, and as he rose, he gently pushed her away from him.

"I would like for you to follow me, Miss Lovegood." he stated softly. Severus watched as she nodded, her blue orbs wide and a bit overwhelmed. "Do not worry. You are not in trouble. But I trust that you will never be caught out of bounds again?" Severus raised his eyebrow inquiringly, and she shook her head once in the negative. He smiled sadly, "Hogwarts is not safe, Lun—Miss Lovegood. I might not be around should something like this happen again— as it is, it could possibly mean the end of everything that I've—that we've— worked so hard to accomplish against those that would seek to subjugate and destroy. And I—" he jumped slightly as he felt her cool hand cup his cheek.

His heart thumped once painfully in his chest. Their times-old gesture of comfort and love.

Did she remember, could she remember him?! He looked into her eyes searching. He found donning understanding but no love or recognition in her gaze. His galloping heart stuttered with disappointment. "I understand, Professor Snape." she gave him a sad little smile and lowered her hand once more. "I promise it will not happen again."

Gulping, Severus nodded, and turning his back on her, led the way to the Room of Requirement asking the Room for a quiet, comfortable place that would set his mate at ease.

"I trust you are quite familiar with this Room, Miss Lovegood?" Severus looked over his shoulder as he gestured that she enter before him.

"Yes, Professor." He was pleased to observe that her coloring was a little better, no longer the pale grey it was just after her ordeal, and her eyes were returning to their natural serene state without the air of watchful wariness.

"And I also trust you to keep the knowledge that I am about to impart to yourself and no other?" The Luna-esque glaze was coming back to her, and Severus smiled slightly. One foot in this temporal plane, one foot out—that was his Luna.

She nodded as she looked around. The room had provided two comfy chairs next to a blazing hearth and a tea service complete with some kind of honey-biscuit. When Luna set her eyes on it, she made for it, fixing herself a plate and tea and proceeding to tuck in. Severus' lips twitched to see the witch recovering and nodded his approval. He fixed himself some tea, but upon sniffing it, thought better…it smelled of gurdyroot.

The Room then provided a snifter of Ogden's Best and Severus sipped carefully studying the young woman before him. After eating a few of the honeyed biscuits and drinking a full cup of the concoction, she had relaxed into the comfy chair and was curled up basking in the fire's warmth. As he watched, a blanket appeared over her, and her eyes grew heavy.

He looked at the clock. It was midnight. He would let her sleep for a few hours; the amnesiac bliss of sleep a balm necessary in order to distance herself from the experience. With a flick of his wand, he set a low-level alarm to chime and warn him of the time. He trusted the portraits to fetch him if any of the staff or students needed his attention.

Continuing to sip his whiskey, Severus pondered the young witch before him: so stoic and brave, so full of wisdom, and yet, so naïve, innocent, and filled with a quiet playfulness that could exacerbate as much as amuse.

He yawned. Where this one young woman was concerned, his cover as evil headmaster was effectively blown. As was her kidnapping.

Had this been what had happened last year? It must have been for this was around the time that she was kidnapped. She had been raped, his Luna; raped by that bastard before she had been taken to the manor and held in the dungeons until her death.

But she wouldn't be in this version of events.

No. Because he had chosen to actively listen to Mulciber and McNair instead of Lucius.

After all, he had known exactly what Lucius was going to say and had only to repeat his lines accordingly, and because of his foreknowledge, his mate had avoided being used in such a vile manner. And now, she wouldn't be held in the dungeons of Malfoy Manor.

But how to circumvent the Dark Lord's plans for her?

Like as not, the Dark Lord wanted her held prisoner at the manor; the elder Lovegood had made quite a nuisance of himself in opposition to the lies the Prophet spoke, and he wanted those inconvenient truths kept quiet.

But perhaps…perhaps he could convince the Dark Lord that hiding Luna at the school was really in everyone's best interest. His mind spun with possibilities and arguments for and against his cause.

He would have to tell her of his plan. He had been thinking of it for a while, but he had not seen the need for such extreme measures as what he would propose. He did now. As his mind continued to turn and make plans, the weariness and exhaustion of the day caught up with him, and he felt his eyes grow heavy as he looked upon the girl's slumbering form.

She was now fully asleep; her pert nose buried under the blanket, her hair a golden halo lit by firelight. His eyes closed. This was the first time since he had arrived yet again in this accursed situation that Severus felt a semblance of peace settle upon him. Having such musings, he fell into a light sleep; his mind a fitful state even as his soul rejoiced to be so near its beloved.

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