Xenophilus Lovegood
The Rook
Ottery St. Catchpole
Sussex

Thursday 12 September 1996

Dear Xenophilius,

I have written many letters of this nature to the parents of my students over the course of my tenure as Headmaster, and after a great deal of trial and error I have come to believe that the best way to prevent unnecessary anxiety over the sort of news I must give you is to begin by wasting a moment of your time with a long-winded sentence that says very little about anything in particular. This is because I am sure you will realize that if I had anything terribly dire to relate, I should not be so unkind as to draw the experience out in such a way.

That said, I am afraid the news I have for you is, if not dire, still distressing: your daughter Luna was badly injured this evening in an altercation with some of her classmates. I am pleased to report, however, that Madam Pomfrey believes she will make a complete recovery once she has spent a few days convalescing in a restful environment. I would prefer to explain the details of the matter in person rather than attempt to do in a letter, and I believe that a visit from you would be a comfort to Luna. If you are able to come to Hogwarts, please let me know by return owl, and I will place myself at your convenience.

Regards,
Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Luna opens her eyes. It takes rather a lot of doing; they feel glued together, as though she is waking up after a very long lie-in, much longer than she's ever had while living in the girls' dormitories at Hogwarts. She sleeps erratically at home during the summers—waking after lunch, going to bed well after dawn. Sometimes when she is in bed on a hot afternoon, and the covers have tangled and twisted around her, and the sun is beating down on her through her windows, she wakes up feeling like she does now—headachey and suffocated. She's not at home, though. Nor is she in Ravenclaw Tower. The curtains around her bed are wide open. Never once in five years at Hogwarts has she gone to bed without drawing the curtains together; they are an important protective barrier against the giggles and smirks of the other girls in her House and year.

The pain is an interesting sensation. It seems to emanate from her chest and spread in a fierce ache upwards through her arms and the cords of her neck. Her head is throbbing as well, and there is a faint, ringing noise in her ears. She opens her mouth, licks her lips, and says, "Ow," because that's what people who are hurting seem to do. She must be doing it wrong, because it doesn't help the pain at all; maybe she hasn't said it loud enough. But her voice is croaky and her throat is dry and she doesn't think she could say it louder if she had to.

But then she hears a voice from somewhere to the left of here, and that is something new to think about, so she puts the pain to one side for a moment and focuses on the urgent noises the person across from her is making.

"Luna," it says. "Can you hear me? Are you awake?"

Slowly, Luna turns her head, without lifting it from the pillow. She has to blink a few times to make the other side of the room come into focus, but when it does she sees another bed, and a lumpy shape under the covers, and a familiar, dark head of hair that seems to be attached to it.

"Hi, Harry," she says. A few of the gravels in her throat seem to work loose as she talks more. "I'm glad to see you. Where are we?"

Harry pushes himself up on his elbow, which appears to cause him some pain. Luna grimaces sympathetically. Pain is very unpleasant.

"You're staying with me, in Snape's quarters," Harry says. "The infirmary's still full up with the dragonpox outbreak."

Luna feels rather foolish for not guessing before; it should have been obvious, from the bat skull on the fireplace mantle and the strange distorted figures in the painting on the wall beside it.

"How do you feel?" Harry continues, in the same urgent voice as before.

"Well," says Luna. Harry's face is swimming in and out of focus, and she's not entirely certain whether she's speaking aloud, or just thinking. "Rather unwell, actually. Was I bitten by a wrackspurt? I can't recall."

"No," says Harry. "We were attacked. In the corridor, on the way to dinner, remember? Those four Slytherins who came at us."

"Oh, of course," says Luna automatically. Now that she thinks about it, she does seem to remember something like that happening—people rushing towards them, four Slytherin boys so intent on Harry that she was able to Stupefy two of them before they even noticed her. And then, things had gone wrong...she remembers nothing but voices, blurs of noise and color, and then Professor Snape wiping the blood from her face, telling her not to be frightened...

"I hope they didn't hurt you very much," Luna says, because they must have hurt him a little bit or he wouldn't be in bed.

"Hardly at all, thanks to you," says Harry, and though he sounds rather unhappy about it he smiles at her. Luna finds that, if she concentrates, she can convince the muscles of her face to smile back. "You, though..." Harry trails off, studying her with a serious expression. "Hang on. I need to let Snape know you're up."

Luna watches as Harry pushes the blankets back and sits up in the bed. He is moving very stiffly, but he too seems to have figured out that saying "ow" really isn't as helpful as everyone seems to think it is. He puts one foot on the floor, and then another, then sits still for a moment, as though exhausted already.

"I think you shouldn't try to do that, Harry," says Luna. "You look as though you might fall over."

"Snape needs to know you're awake," Harry repeats, insistent, and pushes himself into a standing position. He sways for a moment, and Luna thinks he is about to tumble right back onto the bed, but a second later he exhales shakily and walks slowly out the open door, presumably to find Snape.

Luna has an excellent imagination, and more to the point she knows Snape rather well; she may not be able to see what is going to happen when Harry stumbles into Snape's presence, but she is fairly certain she can guess. She closes her eyes and exercises her reluctant vocal cords by counting out loud. "Five," she says, "four, three, two..."

"Potter!" Snape's shout carries through several stone walls and (if she remembers the layout of his chambers correctly) two open doors into the room where Luna is lying. "What do you think you are doing?

She doesn't hear Harry's reply, presumably because even Harry knows better than to shout back at Professor Snape, but after a moment she does hear a loud squawk that she presumes comes from Harry, if only because she has difficulty imagining Snape making such an undignified noise.

A few seconds later a stretcher floats through the open door of the bedroom, with Harry lying on top of it—in a full body bind, Luna thinks, judging from the peculiar rigidity of his limbs. Snape follows close behind it, wand raised, and levitates Harry, still lying perfectly flat, off the stretcher and onto his bed, where the covers lift up and settle around him again, as though tucked in by invisible hands.

"No sulking, Potter," says Snape, as with a third flick of his wand he ends the curse freezing Harry into immobility. "You were warned. Repeatedly."

"I thought it was necessary," says Harry, not sulkily, but with a definite undertone of grumbling.

Luna watches as Snape arches a forbidding eyebrow at Harry, then turns on his heel and stalks towards her side of the room. She sees that he is carrying a large, unlabeled brown bottle with him.

Snape comes to a stop beside her bed and extends his wand hand. The armchair on the other side of the room rises on its spindly legs and scurries across the floor towards him. Snape lowers himself into it, places the bottle on the bedside table, and reaches for Luna's hand. It is lying on the bed beside her; she would give it to him herself, but she's not sure she has the strength to lift it.

"Good morning, Miss Lovegood," says Snape, as he presses two fingers to her wrist and rests his other hand lightly against her forehead. "How do you feel?"

"I'm not sure," she says, feeling, for some reason, twice as sleepy as before, now that Snape is here. "I suppose that the pain is probably good. It would be much worse if I weren't able to feel anything." She closes her eyes, in case she isn't able to help crying. "All the same," she adds, "it makes it rather hard to think."

A moment later she opens her eyes again. Snape is frowning, first at her wrist, then at her face. He takes his hand away from her forehead and tucks her limp hand back under the blanket.

"Your pulse is weak, but that is to be expected," he says. "Can you sit up?"

Luna thinks about it for a moment. "No," she says, eventually. "I don't think I can. I'm sorry if that's an inconvenience."

A flicker of a smile passes over Snape's face. "Not at all," he says, and touches the tip of his wand to the pillow behind her head. "Engorgio," he says, and though Luna cannot see it, she can feel it growing behind her, pushing her head and shoulders up into a sitting position.

"You need to drink this," he says, handing her the bottle once she is more or less upright. "All of it. And before you ask, I'm afraid nothing can be done to improve the taste."

Luna takes the bottle from him and swirls the contents around inside. The liquid is thick and brackish looking, rather like algae coated mud. "What is it?" she says.

"Twenty drachms of Blood-Replenisher Potion," says Snape, "laced with a pain killer. You should feel much better after you've taken it."

Luna nods, consideringly, and stares at the bottle. The potion inside resembles sludge from the bottom of the pond where she goes in summer to catch marshwiggles.

"It looks like the sludge at the bottom of the pond where I go in summer to catch marshwiggles," she tells Snape.

"I'm afraid it will taste no better," he says, "but you must drink it. You can't have more than twenty drachms every four hours, and you will need at least 200 drachms in total before you are completely recovered from your injuries."

Luna thinks about this. "What sort of injuries?" she says. "Perhaps I wouldn't mind not recovering from them. If it meant losing a piece of my nose, for example. I shouldn't care about that."

"Miss Lovegood," says Snape warningly, his eyebrows contracting in a saturnine scowl.

"Yes, Professor," says Luna, sighing. Pinching her nose shut between two fingers, she drinks down as much as she can in one swallow. It takes four gulps to empty the entire bottle of its contents, and by the time Snape hands her a glass of water to wash the taste from her mouth she has begun to feel distinctly queasy.

"The nausea will pass," he tells her as she drinks. "Particularly as the pain begins to ease."

Luna is afraid to open her mouth, so she just nods her head.

"And until you have recovered your strength, you are to consider yourself as chained to that bed. I hope," he adds, shifting his stance slightly so as to include Harry in the statement, "that literal chains will not be made necessary by your inability to abide by instructions."

"No, Professor," she says, unsure why anyone would ever want to leave a bed as comfortable as this one.

"Very well," says Snape, standing. "I received a note from the Headmaster this morning, indicating that we will be receiving visitors this afternoon. Your father is expected, Miss Lovegood, along with Mr and Mrs Weasley for Mr Potter."

Luna feels a queer sensation in her chest, as though her heart had risen in her throat and then plunged down into her stomach all in one continuous motion. She doesn't have time to dwell on it, however, before Harry begins to speak.

"Mr and Mrs Weasley?" says Harry sharply. "I don't—why are they coming?"

"Visiting the sick is a custom among civilized persons, Potter," says Snape. "Perhaps you have heard rumors to this effect?"

It is a little strange, Luna thinks, that Harry should understand the Weasleys so little after all this time. But then, it is equally strange that Professor Snape should still fail to understand Harry, after everything he's seen over the last week or so. Strangest of all, maybe, is how little understanding helps you when you're feeling disappointed, or sad...

"Yes, sir," says Harry, sounding impatient, "but how did they know I was ill? Did you write to them?"

"I did not," says Snape. "I presume the Headmaster did, or perhaps one of their children." He frowns in Harry's direction. "Do you not wish to see them?"

"No, sir, it's not that," says Harry, and though he opens his mouth as if to explain further, he shuts it again a second later without saying anything else. Snape stands there, studying him, but he does not speak either. The silence in the room continues for so long that when Luna speaks again, it is largely so that she will have something else to listen to.

"Harry is afraid that someone told Mr and Mrs Weasley what his uncle did to him, and that's why they're coming," she tells Snape.

She can't see Harry's expression—as soon as she started talking, he had turned his face to the wall—but she can see the light of understanding dawning in Snape's eyes, before their expression grows blank again.

"I have no idea whether that is the case," says Snape in a neutral voice. "But did the Headmaster not promise to hold that information in confidence, Potter? And did you not extract a similar promise from Ronald Weasley?"

"Sort of," Harry mumbles. "But if the Headmaster thought—you know—that I'd be better off with them knowing..." He trails off, a little hesitantly.

"I do not believe the Headmaster would break a promise of that kind without, at least, warning you he intended to do so," says Snape, and Harry appears to relax somewhat.

"It'll be nice to see them, anyway," he says. "And your dad, Luna. I'd like to meet him."

If it were anyone other than Harry, Luna would be sure he was making fun of her. As it is Harry, she says, "Maybe you can, someday. We live quite near the Weasleys."

Harry frowns at her. "But if he's coming here today, then why—"

"Oh, I just don't think that's very likely," says Luna quickly, lightly. "He'll be much too busy—August is tinglewasp season, you know."

Harry looks confused. Snape regards her for a few seconds with a strange, closed expression. Then he clears his throat.

"I must return to my work," he says. "If some fresh disaster should befall you, call for me. Do not rise from your bed again, Potter, on pain of my extreme displeasure."

With a final, quelling glare, he turns and sweeps from the room, leaving the door open behind him. Harry and Luna are left alone with the noise of the crackling fire between them.

A moment later Harry turns his head to face Luna's side of the room and says, "Wanna play wizard's hangman?"

And Luna hears him, but so much of her brain is asleep already that he sounds as though he is speaking from a long way off—from a dream, or a distant country, where the natives speak a strange language she doesn't understand.

With the return of consciousness comes the return of pain.

"Miss Lovegood," says a voice next to her, and she opens her eyes, which is rather easier to do than it had been a few hours before. She finds Snape sitting in the chair by her bed again, leaning over her, and she smiles at him, a little vaguely, because she has the idea that he has said something to her that she hasn't understood.

"I have prepared the next dose of your potion," he says, and instead of Engorging her pillow again he cups the back of her head with a cool hand and helps tilt it upwards long enough for her to choke down the bottle full of revolting liquid.

"Thank you," she says, when she has swallowed the last of it. The pain killer, she thinks, must be stronger in this batch; she can feel the pain begin to recede immediately.

"Better?" he says, easing back in his chair.

"Professor," she says, quietly, because she thinks, somehow, it would be better not to let Harry hear this. "What happened to me?"

A dark expression crosses Snape's features, but he answers her in a calm voice. "Michael Gibson, one of my seventh years, cursed you with Sectumsempra. You...lost a great deal of blood. That is the purpose of the potion; it will encourage your body to make new."

"Oh," says Luna. "What happened to Harry?"

"You put yourself between him and the worst of the attack," says Snape, "but he over-exerted himself and exacerbated his existing injuries. He will recover, however, if he can be persuaded to remain in bed long enough to knit himself back together."

"Oh," says Luna. "I'm glad."

She is aware, even as she stares at the ceiling, that Snape is studying her. "You did very well," he tells her, after a few moments of considerate silence. "You fought courageously and ably. Many grown witches and wizards could not have done so well."

"Harry is my friend," she says quietly. Her eyelids feel heavy, and her eyes are burning.

"Go back to sleep," says Snape. Luna closes her eyes and does so.

The first thing she sees the next time she opens her eyes is Snape, standing at the end of her bed. In the shadows of the dim room, he is nearly invisible, save for the pale oval of his face.

"Professor," she says.

"Your potion," says Snape. Luna looks at her bed side table, where a tall brown bottle sits uncorked, emitting noxious fumes.

"Can I sit up?" she says.

Snape blinks. "If you feel able," he says. "The nature of Potter's injuries make it necessary for him to remain largely immobile. You, however, may exert yourself to the limits of your strength. Not beyond them, however," he adds warningly.

"I would like to try something," she says, but Snape cuts her off by levitating the potion off her table to just in front of her face. She contains and grimace and drinks it obediently.

"May I enchant a piece of your furniture?" she asks Snape, setting the empty bottle aside. "I promise to change it back afterwards."

Snape blinks at her curiously, then makes an expansive gesture with his hand that seems to indicate she has permission to try.

Luna straightens slowly in the bed and feels stiff muscles stretching for what feels like the first time in days. When she is fully upright she slips her legs out from under the covers and reaches automatically for the bedpost, where her robe would be hanging if this were her dorm room. There's nothing there, of course, which makes Luna wonder for the first time where the rest of her clothes are and how she'd gotten into the pale blue nightdress she's wearing, but when she gets to her feet Snape is standing there with a warm, fuzzy white bathrobe, holding it for her as she shrugs one arm and then the other into it.

Luna points her wand at the armchair beside her bed. A few seconds later it rises gently in the air and hovers there steadily, without dipping or bobbing. Luna takes a shaky step towards it, then lowers herself gingerly into the padded seat. The chair adjusts itself automatically so that her feet don't drag the floor. She raises her wand and points it toward Snape; the chair begins to glide in his direction, stopping when she lowers the wand again.

Snape is gazing down at her with a bemused expression. "Impressive," he says, and though it is often hard to tell she doesn't think he is mocking her.

"If you don't mind," she says, "I'd quite like to take a bath."

Snape blinks at her, surprised, but then seems to remember himself. He steps nimbly around the end of the bed and opens the door for her. Luna directs the chair to glide toward the end of the room where he is standing, and then to sail neatly through the open doorway.

She hears a long, low chuckle through the door once she has closed it behind her, but it silences itself after a moment. Luna allows the chair to come to a rest on the floor. She gets to her feet and stands in front of the mirror, a little hesitantly. The reflection that she sees...disturbs her, which is in itself a new sensation, but she'll have to analyze it later because she is, for the moment, too taken up with what she sees to consider how she feels about it.

The left side of her face is—scarred, she thinks, although that isn't the word that leaps immediately to mind. From the corner of her mouth to the corner of her eye, the skin is smooth, shiny, colored the same dull, delicate shade of pink she's seen inside sea shells. The rest of her face is paler than she has ever seen it, save for the dark, bruised looking rings beneath her eyes. Her hair is tangled and frizzy, and there is a patch of it along the left side of her face that is shorter than the rest, the ends singed and brittle.

Luna shrugs her way out of the bathrobe Professor Snape had given her and methodically begins to unfasten the buttons down the front of her nightdress. There are a great many of them and they are very small; she wonders again how she wound up wearing it in the first place. Her own nightgowns have deep necklines, because she tosses and turns in her sleep, and the ones that button around the throat get twisted up and sometimes choke her. She unbuttons the nightgown to the level of her waist, then pulls it open, and stares at the long diagonal scar that bisects the pale flesh of her torso in an angry red line. She raises a hand to touch it; the scar feels warm and fevered under her fingertips, and aches when she presses on it. The mark extends from just below the hollow of her throat to just above her navel. She hadn't realized it was possible to have taken a wound like that and still be alive.

Luna blinks at her reflection twice, then turns away from the mirror. She allows the nightgown to slide off her shoulders, as she points her wand at the bathtub, which immediately begins to fill with hot, clean water. As an afterthought she adds soap bubbles. Lowering herself into the tub is an exercise in ingenuity; twice she nearly raises her voice to ask Professor Snape for help, before she remembers what she is doing. Her head feels a little swimmy; she assumes it is due to the steam and soothing warmth of the bath water. Once she is in the tub she relaxes entirely and lets herself float to the surface. It is easier to think of nothing, this way. Snape thinks that her father is coming to visit. Why would he think that? Had someone written to him? It seems unlikely to Luna that her father would remember to open a letter addressed to him personally and not The Quibbler, much less that he would reply to it. Professor Snape must be making assumptions; natural assumptions, perhaps, for someone who had never met her father. Luna closes her eyes and sinks beneath the water so that only the tip of her nose protrudes. And Mr and Mrs Weasley are coming to visit Harry. That will be nice for him. Mrs Weasley makes Luna a little bit nervous, ever since her mother died and Mrs Weasley came by regularly for a few months then stopped altogether. She thinks that Mrs Weasley feels guilty for not keeping up with her and it makes her a little too bright and cheerful whenever they see each other now. But she cares for Harry quite a lot, Luna, is sure, so that will be nice for him.

She struggles up out of the water again a few minutes later, because she has an idea that falling asleep in the tub might be unwise. Getting to her feet is not quite as challenging as getting into the water had been, but she does it a bit too fast and is rewarded for her imprudence with greying vision. Luna steps out of the tub, performs a few drying charms, then shrugs the bathrobe back on. The greyness at the corners of her vision has not improved, and now she feels a pins-and-needles sort of tickling between her eyes. She doesn't want to pass out in the bathroom and hit her head, but she'd rather not go back into the bedroom wearing only a robe to ask for help. Luna edges back into the seat of the floating chair and starts to leans over and hang her head between her knees, but she has barely moved before an extraordinary pain lances her, like a knife to the heart, so sharp and unexpected that she cries out without meaning to. Slowly, she straightens again; the pain begins gradually to ease, but it does not go away.

There is a loud, urgent knock at the door. "Miss Lovegood?" it says. "Are you all right? Miss Lovegood, please answer."

Luna holds tight to the arm of the enchanted chair and shuts her eyes tightly. "Yes, Professor," she manages to say, in what she hopes is a normal sort of voice. "I'm quite well, only I wonder if you could ask one of the house elves to bring me a change of clothes from my room?"

The speech feels awfully long, and at the end of it she is exhausted, but she stays conscious long enough to hear Snape say he will do as she asks. Five minutes later, time Luna passes by sitting in her chair and wondering if she is about to die, her smallest suitcase pops into existence at her feet; opening it, she finds three changes of clothes neatly folded and packed inside.

She dresses as quickly as she can, which is not very quickly at all; she is beginning to think she might be having a heart attack. She doesn't even try to lift the suitcase to take back with her into the bedroom. When she opens the door again she finds Snape sitting in a new armchair by the fire, near the end of the bed where Harry is napping, looking up expectantly as she floats back to her bed.

"I think, perhaps, that was a mistake," she tells Snape, as she pushes herself upright and transfers the bulk of her weight unsteadily from chair to bed.

"You didn't harm yourself, I hope?" says Snape, rising, taking half a step towards her as she slumps back against the pillows without pausing to slip beneath the covers. The bed had been made up again in her short absence.

"Not on purpose," says Luna. "But I feel...very odd."

Snape comes to stand at the side of her bed but Luna doesn't have the energy to look up at him.

"I expect our privacy to be any moment invaded," says Snape, a kind of odd question in his voice.

Luna nods. "That's why I made the floating chair," she says. "I can slip out of the room and let Harry visit with Mr and Mrs Weasley in private."

"I can give you the use of the parlor, if you wish to see your father alone."

Luna folds her hands in her lap. "The funny thing is," she says, "my father is not the sort of person who tends to notice people even when they're there."

"Including yourself?" says Snape.

Luna smiles; just to herself, but she thinks he sees it. "It varies by occasion."

"My mother was much the same."

A knot in one of the fireplace logs bursts suddenly, with a noise like a small exploding cauldron.

Drowsiness washes over Luna like a warm breeze; she leans back into the pillow and closes her eyes.

"I will wake you again when it is time for your potion," says Snape from high above her.

"And if my father comes," she says, dreamily.

Silence settles around her snowfall; and as she fades into sleep, she hears Snape's voice. "Yes," he says, in a voice that is at once mocking, resigned, and somehow strangely kind. "If your father comes."