Disclaimer: disclaimed. Chapter clunks, so suggest. It's galling, but both Luna and Snape are OOC. (And just when I figured out where I'm going with this.) Galling, I say. What do you say?
AmZ: I have no idea who or what Cristobal Hunta and Niichevo might be, so no, it was not a nod to them. (Feel free to take it as one, however.) Luna's records will reappear-- and hopefully become audible-- later on.
Balthazar: Nora & Charles were random choices as names, so I'm curious as to what I've unwittingly referenced. Other than Cristobal Hunta of Niichevo, that is. Hrm... the fic seems to have taken a decidedly Rorsharch-esque turn.
Snape had been to the offices of the Quibbler only once and many years earlier; he had put off that trip for so long it had threatened to become an existential crisis. In general his feelings about procrastination bore much resemblance to his feelings for theatrical wand-waving: both were for weak people, and both led to missed opportunities. He did things, therefore, when they had to be done. He wielded his wand, therefore, with a surgeon's precision. But the very thought of the other Lovegood, the father, made every first-year essay a far better use of his time.
This Lovegood, however, was smiling at him-- or, rather, at the air an inch in front of him-- and Snape realised with a shudder that he would have preferred to have been dealing with her dad just this once.
At least he didn't smile like that.
Snape knew exactly what Dumbledore would advise him to do about Luna. He would advise him to serve Luna tea. He would advise him further to serve Luna poppyseed cake with the tea as a sweetener. He would then advise Snape about the relative merits of putting lemon rinds and vanilla in said cake, and would say (in a serious tone) that tea and poppyseed cake are the best means of convincing someone that they need not repeat what they'd seen. But something needed to be done about Luna and Snape was out of legal ideas, so he braced himself for a talk with the Headmaster. Tea and cake. He hoped for a miracle: it was rare, but sometimes Dumbledore surprised even him.
He locked up the vivisection room-- a process that took several minutes and seven languages (dead)-- and made his way to his desk. In passing he noted Luna's necklace of butterbeer caps and docked her five points for its presence. "Because it is a poor habit to bring things that might choke you into a laboratory, Miss Lovegood. Sit."
She sat. "But Professor--"
"You are in more trouble, Miss Lovegood, than either of us should care to imagine. Are you acquainted with chapter seventeen, section three, paragraph 1.2 of the Hogwarts Code of Conduct?"
"They're my records," Luna explained. "And you see, Professor--"
"Let me acquaint you with it," said Snape, shaking.
An old, very worn, very old and very worn copy of said Code appeared in the air a foot from Luna's face. The relevant passage was underlined, and featured words like "research facilities" and "trespassing" and "crime", and even-- in paragraph 1.2.66-- "Azkaban".
"People take my things, and I usually don't mind at all but since these were my Mum's--"
Spidery threads extended themselves from each letter and stretched toward Luna's eyes like thin fingers.
"And I'd be really sad if I lost them, not because they're my things, see, but because they were ooooowwwww!"
The spidery threads had attached themselves to the rim of Luna's pupils and had started worming their way inside. Snape let her howl for a delicious moment or so and then flicked his wand like a scalpel. The book fluttered drily away, and the threads, severed in two, dripped one by one down her face. They writhed a bit on the desk before vanishing.
"Did that get the point across, Miss Lovegood?"
It was odd to see the fishbowl eyes swollen and liquid and red, because-- come to think of it-- Snape had never seen Luna cry. But she nodded and even produced a counterintuitive smile between the many pained blinks. Remarkable, he thought. She can blink.
"Yes, Professor."
"Good." He filled two small shallow dishes with the cold tea he kept within easy reach throughout the room. "For your eyes. Keep them open."
This proved difficult, and loud, but presently she convinced her eyelids to stay open as she dipped her eyes in the tea. When she lifted her head-- droplets hanging from her invisible lashes, disconcertingly-- and told him that her mother too had used tea and poppy juice in her eyes when she'd had an accident once, and that it was so cold and nice, and that she felt very much better, thanks, her eyes looked almost normal again. Meanwhile Snape had taken a flask from the cabinet at the sink and poured out a gobletful of its contents.
"Yes, Miss Lovegood, the tea is cold, and it makes your eyes better, and you remain in a great deal of trouble. About this I must see the Headmaster at once."
She nodded.
"You are to stay here."
She nodded.
"You are not to touch anything."
She nodded, looking around as if happily reminded that there were things around her to touch. Snape moved her gaze back to his with a slight twitch of his finger.
"You are also in no way to attempt to gain entry to the back room. Regardless of what sounds you might hear coming from it."
She nodded again, now dutifully sombre-- in the way children are when they're quite enjoying themselves. For a moment she looked so pleased, in fact, that Snape wondered if she'd heard something completely different-- say, with the help of a Radio Yerevan charm.
"And if you touch anything, and if you tamper with anything at all, I will know. And the trouble in which you will be will make the trouble in which you are seem like a trip to Honeydukes'. Is this clear?"
"Yes, Professor."
He studied her for a moment, then, satisfied, handed her the goblet.
"Drink."
She did so, prompting Snape once again to alter the Ravenclaw score in exasperation.
"Have I taught you nothing? As orthogonal as you and reality might be, Miss Lovegood, in this world-- and in many others-- it is a poor idea to drink every goblet you're given. Poor, and often fatal. Even though you have a bottomless void for a mind, you ought to be able to grasp--"
"But I know it, Professor. It tastes purple."
Snape-- as if infected by her curious brand of logic-- found himself wondering whether he looked more or less purple than the potion tasted to her. Then the full weight of what she'd said hit him so hard he had to close his eyes for the length of a breath to steady himself.
"Mum would give it to me when I was little, when she couldn't actually watch me."
"Your mum."
"So she'd know what I'd been up to. I was always getting into her things, see, and I'd sometimes forget which ones she told me not to touch, and I'd always be getting sick because I ate something I shouldn't have, and so she needed to know what it was. So she could fix it," Luna explained helpfully. "Only she put mango juice in it, but it was still pretty purple."
"I see," Snape said, his body managing to move itself to the sink without any input from him. "Your mum."
Luna watched him grip the sink with the mildest of curiosities.
"I hardly need explain what it does, then," said Snape, after summoning enough bitterness to make his eyes glitter a bit. "Touch nothing."
And then he climbed into the sink.
When he liquefied himself into the drain he dimly heard Luna applauding. When he approached the first fork in the pipes he let himself be carried on past it, joining a startling amout of lavender-water (with which the Headmaster had just washed his hands) and the rest of the sewage of Hogwarts. Several hours later he emerged in the Quibbler's office in London.