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Chapter 10

Severus did try to keep his word to Luna; really, he did. He experimented very much with the fire in his room, and even (when McGonagall had gone out) the one in the headmistress' office, but to no avail. He simply could not make it work. But that did not stop him from corresponding with her, however.

Two weeks had passed since Severus had written the letter concerning his pseudonym, and many more epistles had passed between him and Luna. The night, like many other summer evenings, had a sweltering tinge to it even though the sun had long slid from the face of the heavens. The stench of hot earth and sweating plants still found its way down to the dungeons, no matter their methods of avoiding the heat.

Severus' mantel clock ticked noisily, and the potions master found himself comforted by the sound. The fire did burn, however, for Severus found it cheery and pleasant. He could not feel heat or cold, as a mortal did. So, with this advantage, he did not consider the temperature of his room at all, and instead went on perusing an article on prescribed potions, editing it for the Quibbler with a thick-ended red-ink correction quill.

All of a sudden, a flash of light came from his fireplace, and, coughing, Luna appeared.

"You may, for my comfort, wish to extinguish the fire," she murmured, drawing a dripping lock from her brow. Indeed, she must have reeked with sweat, but Severus could not smell her with his affliction.

"Fine," he replied, and threw a lazy Aquamenti at the blazing logs.

"So," he questioned with this task done, "This is a surprise. A special occasion?"

"Not especially," Luna replied, shaking her head candidly. "I just brought you a selection of letters for you to reply to in the editor's column. I think I need it by tomorrow, if you can make it."

"Of course," replied Severus, taking the envelopes she proffered. "All of these?"

"No, no, just choose the more interesting ones. About four or five, depending how long you make the responses. Something about one hundred to one hundred and fifty words each one."

Snape nodded, but sensed that this was not the only reason she had flooed. "That will be easily done; I'll get them to you tomorrow, no fail." He paused. "Care for some coffee? Butterbeer?"

"I'd not mind some butterbeer, if you have it on hand." Luna took his offer as an invitation to sit, and settled on the edge of Snape's bed.

"I don't normally have human visitors, but Winky shall fetch some." Saying so, he clapped twice, and the little houself appeared.

Winky had fared wonderfully since the end of the war. Without worry of punishment, she had began to work in earnest in caring for the castle and cooking. She missed Dobby terribly, though, and made no attempt to mask her grief.

"What does Master Severus wish?"

"A bottle of butterbeer and a glass for Miss Lovegood, quickly now."

"Master Severus allow it, may Winky take a second bottle to smash in remembrance of Winky's dear Dobby? Winky never got to say goodbye to her friend."

Severus frowned, but Luna consoled the little houself. "Of course you may, Winky. You should have someone show you his grave, sometime, if you like. I would, if you let me."

Winky clasped both her hands together and wrung them. "Miss Lovegood is very kind, but I do not know that Headmistress McGonagall would approve Winky's missing work to pay her respects at the grave of beloved Dobby."

"If it'll make you stop this damned bottle-smashing business, then I personally give my permission for you to go, Winky," grunted Severus in mild exasperation. "And you can tell McGonagall I let you, if she cares."

"Oh, thank you Master Severus!" Winky bowed over until her head nearly touched the floor. "I thank you so much! Now I shall fetch the butterbeer for Miss Luna, and a bottle for Dobby's rememberance!" With a snapping crack, Winky disappeared.

"If that will cure her zeal for smashing bottles," Severus spoke confidingly, "I'll be grateful. Last time she smashed one, I was nearby, and my eardrums pained me for hours afterwards."

"Sometimes they really want so little," replied Luna, smiling shyly. "But they don't always know what."

Snape had to admit that Luna had a point.

"By the way," ventured Luna, "You mentioned you knew what happened when you became partially whole again, and that you knew the cause."

Severus grimaced. "Yes, that I did say. It's not a topic for easy conversation, however."

"I did research on my own," Luna waved her hand dismissively. "I'm sorry."

"For being a resourceful young woman?" Snape snorted. "I think you should not be."

"No, I meant that I'm sorry you never . . . well . . . you know."

Something in her voice disturbed Severus. He felt as though she implied more than she simply meant by 'well . . . you know.'

"I never had the desire to, anyhow." He said this too quickly, though. The look on her face which caused him some alarm had not left.

This tense moment momentarily lifted as Winky appeared sporting two bottles of cold butterbeer.

"Here Winky has something for Miss Luna," the houself squeaked, proffering the bottle. "Now Winky shall display her gratitude and smash her bottle for Dobby here and now!"

"No, no, do it in the garden, Winky," demanded Severus, "We're trying to have a conversation, I beg of you."

Somewhat dejected, Winky nodded, "Your word is Winky's command, Master Severus."

"Some other time," comforted Luna entreatingly.

Her wizened little face brightening slightly, Winky bowed deeply and disappeared.

The ghost and the mortal faced each other, unsure of how to begin again.

"Luna, to steal an over-used phrase, are you all right? I sense that something is troubling you." Seveus had broken the silence abruptly, as though with a sledgehammer. Luna stared at her potions master, her long eyelashes blinking slowly.

"I . . . I don't think that . . ." Her voice broke off, a brief tremor inflicting it. Snape felt even more troubled at her indecision. Luna Lovegood never doubted herself or anything else; the girl always brimmed with a certain quiet self-confidence. Most people never noticed it, and Severus often had overlooked it himself in the past, but his subconscious had always observed it. Now his conscious applied the information slowly gathered by his subconscious, and Snape worried. He should have talked to her sooner than this, he had let her wallow in grief and misery without allay for three whole weeks . . . and he doubted that anyone else would bother to comfort the distraught daughter of an eccentric wheezebag like Xenophilius . . .

Then, from depths of uncertainty, the decisive and positive Luna Lovegood emerged once more.

"I actually do think you would understand. Your parents are both dead."

Severus started with surprise. She knew a lot, this one, though how he could not comprehend. "I was not aware this was common fact," he smiled grimly. "But yes, that is true. My father died of alcohol poisoning. Afterwards, my mother became convinced that she had killed him, and became so firmly set about it that I found it necessary to send her to a mental facility. But that was only when she threatened to kill herself as penance for her 'sin'. She died there of pneumonia."

He figured that opening up to Luna, sharing his own past unprovoked, would help her reveal her own feelings to him.

"Did you love them, either of them?"

Severus paused. What should he tell her? Of his parents, only his mother had ever shown any sort of affection for him. His Muggle father hated him from the moment Severus made his television blow to pieces, the infant wizard fed up with watching cheap Muggle kids' entertainment. Severus, though, could not truthfully say he cared much for either of his parents. Yet, he knew quite well the relationship between Luna and her father, and it probably would console her more if she thought he cared very deeply for at least one of his parental units. In the end, though, he opted for the truth—after so many lies after so many years, he decided he deserved to give someone the whole story.

"I did not truthfully love anyone in my youth," he began cautiously, savoring the sensation of honesty and not wanting to blemish it with an unintentional falsehood. "Except, of course, her of whom you know."

Luna nodded. Of course, she knew he meant Lily Evans.

"I had good reason not to attach myself to my parents, generally. My father compulsively drank almost daily after work, work of the lowest gauge even for a Muggle. He worked on people's plumbing." The words came from his mouth with a direct sense of distaste.

"When he did not sit in front of the tube, guzzling beer to enhance his growing paunch, or had not skipped out to the local pub to waste half his day's earnings on liquor, he habitually screamed obscenities at his wife and myself for the sole purposes that we were not quite as lowly as himself." As Luna opened her mouth to protest, Severus put up a hand to assuage her.

"I speak merely from the perspective of him and my mother, not my own. Based on what people have told me, my mother knew herself to be superior to my father, and, I suppose, married him with the idea that he would forever be the subservient, obsequious lout she knew in her youth. But Tobias Snape got sly, in the end. He realized what my mother actually thought he was: simply a bloke to serve as a buttress to her high-headedness. He took drastic actions to reverse the position, or at least force her into more often love-making. As a result, they had me. My mother was never the same after that."

He looked to see Luna's reaction. The schoolgirl's eyes had not enlarged, as he had anticipated; in fact, she seemed to have had no reaction whatsoever.

"Go on, I know I look like I'm not listening, but I am."

Snape bit his lip to prevent some nasty retort from slipping out—he certainly had no intention of losing Luna's respect just now.

"My father got more and more violent and domineering over the years, and my mother became weaker and weaker. Nine years after my birth, they had Sylvia, who turned out to be a squib, sadly." He paused. "That marks the end of my mother's sanity, I believe. The shock and stress of a second delivery unnerved her too much. She never intended to have children, I think, and always treated my sister and I likewise. To her, we were sad mementos marking where she had submitted and succumbed to please the selfish cravings of her good-for-nothing husband. We were merely reminders that she had not gotten what she herself wanted in life—a sort of Peter Pettigrew figure, to praise her glory and raise her already inflated self-esteem."

He snorted with contempt. "She was destroyed by her own dependence on other people's opinions. When her husband chastised her, she took it to heart. She came to believe that every word any other person said was true, and never could place her faith in herself any more. In the end, she was too deep in self-pity to care for either Sylvia or myself, and so it never really affected either of us when the woman died. She had never been the motherly figure children need."

A stifled sob made his head turn to look at his student and co-worker. The two oceanic blue eyes swam in saline.

"At least Harry was so kind as to light a candle for you at the funeral," Luna gasped. "No one else did. That's how I knew you had no parents alive . . . if they existed, they could not have kept away from the service. It was advertised all over the news."

"There was a funeral?" Severus' attention piqued. "When?"

"It was a mass funeral for all the Order and Hogwarts students who died during the final battle. They even honored my father among them. It was when you were asleep last week, though, so that's why you never heard about it."

"Merlin." Snape grimaced. "I managed to botch that up too. The only thing I could have done as a ghost that I could not have above," (He gestured towards the general direction of eternal paradise) "And I miss it. My own funeral. I swear, I must be cursed." He paused. "So Potter lit a candle for me. That better be all he does for my blessed memory, or . . ."

Then he remembered Luna's tears.

"But you feel guilty for not lighting a candle yourself? Child, don't be foolish."

"I only thought of my father, not you. I suppose it just . . . did not occur to me, seeing as I'd only talked to you in person days before . . ."

"Well, don't bother regretting it!" Severus' nose wrinkled, as though someone had forced something very unpleasant beneath his nostrils. "I'd prefer if you thought of me as a living person as opposed to a deceased entity. I practically feel alive, just with a few restrictions. Everyone treats me like a ghost right now, but I don't necessarily enjoy that."

"That would definitely be easier for me," decided Luna optimistically.

"I'm not conceited enough to think that this issue is all that's been troubling you lately, though," Severus rather abruptly noted. "So let us go back to where we began."

"Yes," Luna replied. Her eyes seemed to glaze over again with that same inattentiveness that graced them when Severus had related about his mother. But, he realized, perhaps this half-stoned look signified when she listened and thought most deeply.

"I had about as different a childhood from you as any two people could possibly have," Luna began in easy prelude. "My parents loved each other, and they cared a great deal about me. When my mother died—it was a potions accident, before I had turned three—my father was heartbroken. It was all he could do to take care of me and continue work in the Quibbler. But as soon as I could walk, I learned to help my father in his work, and so generally became less of a hindrance." A tear slid down her cheek. "I admired him more than any person in the world. He taught me so much, and indulged my every whim. We would go on long hikes about the country, take picnics, and all the while he would inform me about every animal, plant, and person we encountered. There was nothing that he seemed not to know about. All the while, though, I knew half of what he told me was balderdash—books did not talk of the Crumplehorned Snorkback, or the poison buncilnella, or even of the stalpis rotundum. I suppose I had inherited my mother's sensibility, and her innate practicality. Nevertheless, I was endeared to the greater eccentricities of my father, to all intents and purposes believing what he said. Sometimes I gullibly found myself lapsing into his mindset, and for the longest time blamed gnargles for taking my assignments and books. Woe the day I learned he had first heard of them from Mundugus Fletcher, who created them up for an anecdote!"

Here, Luna began to laugh giddily, but soon found herself choked by sobs once more.

"He just couldn't see the difference between a hoax, a joke, and fact. My father simply stored away every fact he ever learned, and, I believe, he made up a lot of facts on his own. He always had an amazing imagination. Told the best bedtime stories, too."

She exhaled deeply. "I assume now that he's gone, I have no one else to pretend to anymore. I don't have to blame the gnargles, in other words. What scares me, though, is that everyone has identified me by what I talk about—which always has been fairly accurate representation of what my father talked about. I should have quit it at Hogwarts, at least, but I thought it would be amusing to watch people's reactions. I didn't know it would make potential friends dismiss me as 'Loony,' at the time, but I soon came to disregard the nickname. I was always my father's daughter, I'd tell myself, and I would always be so. But I never foresaw his death. With him collapsed the highly embellished world we had both dwelled within, and I had to face cold reality. I still haven't quite woken up to it, yet."

With a despondent movement, she leaned against one of the poles of the bed, wrapping her arms around it dreamily.

"I don't know what to do, Severus. I wish I knew what to do with myself. I never felt so uncertain in my life. I always have known what was to become of me; I was to complete school with flying colors, then help my father with our magazine until . . . oh, I never even took into consideration his death ever coming!" She gasped, and clutched the pole tightly.

"I know what you mean," Severus voiced, trying not to display the emotion he felt in his heart. The poor girl! She had built up a façade to oblige her father, and now it had come down upon her in a cascade of bruising bricks. Did he know anyone who had felt this way recently? Rather.

"And I am not sure what to do about the situation. It's definitely a difficult one." He knew that whatever he said now, she would hold in great store. The necessity for choosing the right words needled him. "One thing you must not let yourself do, though," Snape declared almost vehemently, "You must not despair too much. There is a grand, long life ahead of you." He raised his arm and raised it, as though the first steps she must take to embark on her new life lay before him on the floor. "You must be who you yourself are. Do not try to hide your . . . ahem . . . lack of eccentricity any more. Recall your strongest points, do not dwell on your weakest. And never put your eggs in one basket, ever." Though she might be a bit late for that, at this point. Not that he could testify to the accuracy of the adage, either.

"I dropped my basket, already. The one with my father in it."

Severus smiled painfully, wondering if Luna knew legilimancy. "But so did I. With Lily. And now, I don't have any more chances. However, you can learn from your mistake, and my mistake. You can change your life and turn it around."

Luna nodded. "That, I can." But the way she said it did not sound as though she felt convinced of it.

Saying no more, she rose from the bed to walk towards the doused fire. The Ravenclaw never reached it. Instead, her hand flew to her eyes, and she collapsed on the floor in long restrained tears.

A cold pain filling his own heart, Severus slipped from his chair and seated himself next to her.

"You feel lost. I know it." He could sense the emotions she experienced, flying through her body at the speed of light. "As though someone had pulled a chair out from underneath you seconds before you had sat down. Anguish, desperation, and inconsolable despondency. The world had been at your feet, but now you lay prostrate before it, bludgeoned and badgered to breaking point. I know you have anger and a long for a slow revenge for the beasts that did the deed to your father, though you know not who actually dealt the fatal blow. You have indeterminable amounts of pain inside you, and no way to stop it."

Luna paused a moment between sobs to look at him.

"You know very well," she managed to say.

"But do not let these hold you back, Luna. Child, you have a great deal of potential. Use it to your best advantage."

She smiled through her tears. "That's the Slytherin in you talking."

Severus made no reply, and held her silently until she fell asleep in his arms. He eventually followed her lead.

………….

Well! I originally intended this to be two-part chapter with Severus talking to Luna for one half, and the second a discussion with . . . someone. (Cough). I guess I'm saving the next bit for Chapter 11! Please rate and review!