Author's note: Sorry if the last chapter was obscure. The letters do work, (the ones with slashes are either/or, and, as Hermione says, the 'I' of SIRIUS is missing), but , hey, you try finding a phrase that incorporates the word Sirius, but is actually a set of esoteric code words intelligible only to Harry... x brain explodes x
The phrase 'Si tu savais' was significant in Snape's Confession. It merely means 'if only you knew...'. It's from a very sad poem by Robert Desnos, which I will quote right at the end of the story (for anyone who's interested). For me it encapsulates (my version of) the whole Snape/Lily relationship.
LOST PERSPECTIVE III : REPERCUSSIONS
By Bellegeste
CHAPTER 13 : LUNA AND THE SWEDISH SHAMAN
"You're sure you want to do it? Positively? Cross your heart and hope to die?" She brayed a loud, exaggerated laugh.
"Luna! That's not funny." Harry didn't think it was a joking matter. "I've got to do it. I have to find out what she was trying to tell me. I'm not doing another seance. If this is the only other way of making contact with Sirius and my mother, then I'll do it. I'll go to meet them."
They had finished packing away in the Tower Room. Harry had helped by using his Shrinking Spell - the one he had practised so diligently when he was planning to miniaturise the Portkey - to reduce the table and chairs to the size of a cigarette packet and seven match boxes. They shoved these into the cardboard box along with the candles, and then Harry shrank the whole lot and put it all in his pocket. It was a shame to let all that studying go to waste. Luna was vastly impressed.
The Gryffindor Common Room was deserted - everyone was still at the Halloween Ball. The Fat Lady gave them a saucy wink as she let them through.
"Now then, dearies - no hanky-panky!" she warned, with a fruity chuckle.
Harry felt a bit bad about keeping Luna away from the party, especially when she had put such a lot of effort into her outfit, but she didn't seem to mind.
"This is more fun," she said. "Besides, they all think I'm barmy."
And they could well be right!
"Well, you're a little - unorthodox," he said, trying to be polite.
Luna waited by the fire while Harry sped up to his dormitory to fetch his mother's poetry book from his trunk. He was convinced he had the key to the mystery at his fingertips. Those 'knocks' had to mean something... But when he fumblingly turned to page 214, it was totally blank. It was one of those empty, extra pages at the back of the book. Bother! He tried all the Invisible Ink, Reveal Secrets and Hidden Code spells that he knew, but nothing appeared on the page. He quilled his name as he had done in Tom Riddle's diary, but here was no answering message. So he hastily 'disappeared' his writing in case it fouled-up the magic. He even tried the Marauders' Map code, 'I solemnly swear that I am up to no good', - well, Lily had been married to one of them! - but it made no difference.
"Perhaps the message wasn't meant for you," Luna mused. "Would she have been expecting you to have the book?"
That made Harry stop and think. His mother had given the book to Snape. Yet, if the message was for the professor, why hadn't she contacted him directly?
"Well, he's hardly the type to attend a séance, is he?" said Luna, sensibly for a change.
Harry wasn't sure what 'type' Snape was any more.
"Why don't you just go and ask him now - take him the book and see. He won't be going to the party, will he?" she asked in all innocence.
Harry had to explain about the arrest. Luna's reaction was hardly what he expected.
"Well, that's good and bad," she commented. "Bad for Professor Snape, of course, because it can't be very nice in detention. Ha! Professor Snape's been given a detention!!!" She broke into her donkey-bray laugh again. "But it's good for you..."
"How? Why?" Harry didn't follow. Nor did he like Luna laughing at his father.
"Harry, how much do you know about the World Navel?"
X X X
An hour or so later, Harry still wasn't much the wiser, except that he was now convinced that Luna was completely bonkers.
"It's an idea that crops up in loads of different cultures: that there's a symbolic centre of the world. Some people call it the 'Axis Mundi'. The old Norse people had a name for it too - Yggdrasil. You know how ancient civilisations used to see things in physical terms? They weren't too hot on abstracts, so everything became a sacred object? Well, they visualised Yggdrasil as a kind of giant tree," Luna explained. "They believed it was a link between three worlds: the branches stretched up into heaven, the trunk was here on earth and its roots went down into the underworld. It seems a bit strange, but modern day Lapps still present offerings to their tent poles - they kind of symbolise the tree."
Harry had been wondering when the damn Lapps would make an appearance.
"Is that before or after they eat the snow?" he asked scathingly.
"Remember the drum I showed you? That's made of one of the sacred branches. It has spiritual properties." She ignored him.
"Can't be much of the tree left, then, if its timber is supporting the entire Scandinavian tourist souvenir industry," said Harry, intentionally snide, only to realise that Luna was giving him a pitying smile.
"It's branches are eternally self-renewing," she said, her faith unshaken. "Now then. The legend of Father Christmas..."
Hermione had warned him. What had she said? Luna is a crackpot; Luna is batty; Luna's a whacko. And had he listened? No. He should have known Hermione was right. Hermione was always right.
"Luna, did somebody brainwash you in Lapland? Does it ever occur to you that you are a bit one-track minded?"
"Yes, it's all frightfully interesting, isn't it? Now, as I was saying, the legend incorporates several Siberian pre-Christian beliefs. You'll have to read my Dad's article when it comes out. Quibbler Christmas issue, did I tell you that? I could ask him to send you a copy.
"The magic flight of Santa recalls the out-of-body experience of the spirit. They have these fantastic hallucinogenic red and white mushrooms, and when you eat them you get this amazing out-of-body experience. Or so I've heard... Wouldn't it be nice to try? That's where we get the idea of Santa being able to fly."
"Do the reindeer eat the mushrooms too? Why don't they wear read and white robes?" Harry teased. Luna for once seemed deflated.
"Harry, you're not taking this seriously. If you're not interested, it makes no difference to me whether you talk to your dog-man or not."
"I'm listening!" he protested.
"It all links up with the idea of the ecstatic, trance-like state in which a Shaman would undertake his spiritual quest to the underworld! Ta-da!!"
She spread her arms in a gesture of QED triumph, but, seeing that Harry was still blundering about in the snow with the reindeer, she continued:
"Duh! Harry... ! In Norse mythology - well, you get it all over the world, same thing really, in lots of ancient cultures - American Indians, Aztecs, African tribes - they believed that these Shaman guys had special powers. They thought they could separate their souls from their bodies and journey to meet the spirits in the afterlife.
"Yggdrasil was like a ladder or a lift or a corridor that went both ways, up and down, and the Shamans would get onto it through a portal and travel along it. Of course, it helps a lot if you're in a psychotropic trance..."
"Yes, it would," Harry agreed.
"You see? It all fits! And, naturally, the Christmas Tree is our modern symbolic version of Yggdrasil..."
"That's the big tree, right?" Harry was still several mental leaps behind Luna.
"Are you listening, or not? It's an Ash tree. Its roots are guarded by a Giant Snake - it's called something like... wait, I'll remember in a sec... It's called Nidhögg - great name, isn't it? Just think, Harry, you could even talk to it - the World Serpent!"
She was almost ecstatic already, with not a mushroom in sight.
"Luna - are you making all this up? And, if you don't mind my asking, what the hell has it got to do with contacting Sirius?"
It was too much to expect a straight answer.
"Snape's house elf, Twig..."
"Quig. What about him?"
"Quig, then. He's a bit of a mushroom whiz..."
Oh no! Harry didn't like the way this was going.
"Luna, he doesn't grow psychedelic mushrooms!"
"I bet you he does. Didn't you say he was always trying to poison you, and Snape made you brew an antidote? What was all that about? Probably too high to tell the difference between a Field Mushroom and a Death Cap. And he's Australian! What do you think the Aboriginal elves do on the top of Ularu - drink kangaroo milk? Anyway, he's a Snape house elf: you're a Snape - he's got to do what you tell him."
Harry had never thought of Quig in those terms. Luna went on:
"It's excellent that Snape's away for a bit. You can Floo to his cottage from his office without anybody catching you, and sweet-sign Quig into giving you some mushrooms - Fly Agaric is what we need, but you could ask him for Psilocybin too; and while you're about it, see if he's got any Henbane or Jimson weed..."
"You've got this all worked out, haven't you?" Harry said slowly.
If the complexity of the plan perturbed him, Luna's earnest enthusiasm left him terrified. She had seriously thought this through; it was all so premeditated.
"When's Professor Snape due back? When will they have to release him? Assuming they don't charge him, of course. No, they wouldn't do that. Monday night? Doesn't leave us much time. Tonight would have been the best, with it being Halloween - the threshold to the Underworld is pretty much wide open – but tomorrow will do. Yes, you'll have to do it tomorrow."
"Just supposing I get these fungi? What would happen next? Hypothetically?" Harry asked cautiously.
Luna beamed at him.
"Well, first you'd have to Floo to the Portal..."
"The Portal? Where's that? Can't I do it from here?"
"If you'd arranged to meet somebody at a Quidditch tournament where there were thousands of people, you'd find them in the stadium a lot quicker if you both used the same entrance, wouldn't you?" she explained patiently. "So, if you want to meet this guy, it makes sense to go to the Underworld the same way he did..."
"Are you talking about the stone Archway...?" Harry had only bad images of that place. "That's where Sirius died. I don't want to go back there. Every time I think of him going through that arch I feel awful. I have nightmares about it. It's as if a part of me went with him, died with him..."
Luna met his gaze and held it.
"That's the reason it has to be at that place, Harry. You lost something there last summer, and you've not been the same since. You have to go back. It's the only way you're ever going to get over Sirius' death, to get beyond it, and find yourself again."
Harry clasped his hands and stared into the flames. For once he wanted to remember that day in the Department of Mysteries - the day he had spent months trying to forget. He could see the Archway on the crumbling dais, and the tattered, fluttering black curtain. He could hear the whispering voices calling... He had felt it then - they had been asking him to go through the Arch. All this time he had thought it had been Sirius, daring to join him on the ultimate adventure; now, he wasn't so sure. Perhaps it was someone else...
"OK," he said, "I'll do it."
"There shouldn't be a problem about getting there," Luna said, relieved, getting back to practicalities. "People are Floo-ing in and out of the Ministry all the time. With your Invisibility Cloak you'll be fine. So, you eat the stuff, go into your Shamanistic trance, your soul leaves your body and drops in for a chat with Stubby... And afterwards, you Floo back here, and Bob's your Uncle!
She made it sound so easy!
END OF CHAPTER. Next (penultimate) chapter: THE FIREWHISKY TALKING. It's finally all too much for poor Snape...
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