"Someone's coming!" a boy hissed, and Luna heard the scuffling sound of books behind hastily hidden under scrolls of parchment on the other side of the bookshelf.

Now I wonder what would be the right thing to do here? Luna stood where she was, idly toying with one of the forks wound into her necklace as she considered it. They're obviously hiding what they're up to, which probably means they shouldn't be doing it. But then, some things that people shouldn't be doing are actually things they need to be doing, aren't they?

Telling the difference, that's the trick.

She stepped around the end of the bookshelf and gave the three students there a friendly smile. "Hello there. Colin, isn't it? And Mike and … Maisie?"

They nodded. "Hello, Professor Lovegood," Maisie said.

"I'm not a Professor," Luna said. "So you don't need to call me that. What's that you're reading?"

Maisie looked down at her parchment. "A History of the Wizarding Economy: From Soap to Strike."

"I remember that! It was one of my favourites." Luna sat down at the end of the table. "Completely wrong, of course. The blizzard was actually in 1373, and it was soup, not soap. But I meant, what are you actually reading, not what are you pretending to be reading."

"It's not from the Restricted Section," Colin said quickly.

"Then why are you hiding it?" Luna asked. "If it's a catalogue from Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, I should warn you, everything in there is strictly forbidden on school grounds."

"It isn't anything to do with practical jokes," Maisie said. She glanced at the other two children, gave a small shrug, and drew a book out from under her homework. "It's about broom care, that's all."

Luna took the book. She flipped through it to be sure it wasn't one book wearing the cover of another, but all the illustrations were of brooms, all right. "It's very commendable of you to want to take good care of your brooms," she said, "but I'm still puzzled about why you need to keep it secret.'

"Not secret," Colin said. "Just private." He gave her a pleading look, eyes almost welling with tears.

"That's very good," Luna said approvingly. "I don't recommend trying it on the Headmistress, though." She paused, thinking. "Or me, for that matter. I suppose you're all trying to impress Ginny with how much you know?" Ducked heads and blushes told her she was on the right track. "Well, I'll be just down there." She pointed to the newspaper section. "If you have any questions. And don't pay any attention to anything written by Amortensia Eaglewick. Never take broom care advice from someone who blew up midair."

"I thought …" Mike said, "that she only died three years ago. And she was ancient."

"Oh, no, she blew up quite a long time ago," Luna assured him. "All they found was her hat and a few bristles. You're thinking of her twin sister, who was also called Amortensia." She paused. "Which must have been quite confusing for their parents, when you think about it."

She left them contemplating that, and settled herself at the big reading table by the shelves of back-issues of The Prophet and The Quibbler. Although The Prophet was full of rubbish, of course, a practised eye like Luna's could often discern the truth beneath the cover-ups, and there were always odd bits of information that crept in because the paper's publishers didn't understand their meaning.

Like this one. Luna studied the story from July four years ago. Minerva McGonagall in Ministry Melee! the headline screamed, above a picture of the Hogwarts Headmistress sweeping through the Ministry of Magic's main entrance. Called on the carpet by Kingsley was the caption, and all the way down in the second-last paragraph, the author admitted that the Ministry had announced that Professor McGonagall had been there to finalise her certification as a Quidditch referee for matches played at Hogwarts.

Quite a clever cover story. Of course, it wasn't true. Luna could clearly see, in the corner of the frame, the distinctive profile of Percy Weasley. The Department of Magical Transportation. It was completely obvious to any intelligent reader that Professor McGonagall had been at the Ministry to consult with them on the Tutshill Tornadoes' use of bewitched brooms.

Which is interesting, but probably not anything to do with Professor Snape. She reached for the next edition.

Snape's Secret Son? this one asked in font that took up almost the whole front page, with a photograph of Severus Snape that looked very much as if it had been taken at a Hogwarts Quidditch match. And one that was held quite some years ago, from the looks of him. The picture had been cropped so tightly that the people around him couldn't be seen, just Snape staring haughtily off into the distance. He turned slightly, shoulder jostling the frame, said something inaudible —

That was all there was on the loop. Luna turned to page five and found the story, which was far shorter than the headline seemed to indicate it should be, and illustrated with another copy of the same picture used on the front page. Severus Snape, the spy whose loyalties have never been satisfactorily determined, may have one more secret than anyone knew. In a small house only fifty miles from his home in Spinner's End, a young Muggle woman has a strange story. 'I don't know who he was, or what exactly happened …'

Luna read to the end, snorting to herself occasionally. As if Professor Snape had time, in between being Headmaster of Hogwarts, Voldemort's supposed right-hand man, and a double agent, to build a flying saucer and abduct women. There was a blurry photo of what was claimed to be 'the love child of the Wizarding world's most famous love-lorn spy' but to Luna, the baby looked more like the love child of Cornelius Fudge.

"Excuse me?" a small voice said from behind her.

Luna closed the newspaper and turned to see Colin, clutching a book. "Hello again," she said with a friendly smile.

"I wanted to ask — in this book there's a recipe —"

"That sounds like a Hermione sort of question," Luna said, and when he looked blank, "Professor Granger. You know? She teaches you Potions?"

"I wondered if it really was a potion, that's all." Colin opened the book and put it down on the table. "See, it says 'every dedicated flyer should whip up a batch for their broom-shed'. So I wondered, is it really a potion if everyone can brew it? I'd hate to bother Professor Granger with something small like that."

Reflecting that Hermione certainly had enough on her hands, what with pretending to update Hogwarts: A History — and being Hermione, she'd been unable to just pretend and was now frantically drafting a new chapter — as well as her teaching and spending hours brewing something-or-other in her laboratory, Luna studied the page Colin indicated. "Rat tails and dragonfly thoraxes … those are potion ingredients. But it says here it's an infusion, and there's no heat, which isn't like a potion at all." She turned her attention back to Colin. "Are you planning to make this? Is that why you want to know?"

"It would be against the rules to brew a potion outside class," Colin said.

"So, yes, you mean," Luna said. She studied the recipe again. It's almost the same as Hair Raising Tonic, but without heat, it won't reach the activation stage … "I don't think it will work, you know, but I don't see any problem with you trying it. Make sure you get permission from your parents to order the ingredients, though, or they'll be confiscated before they reach you."

"Thank you!" Colin said breathlessly, and snatched the book back. As he did so, his gaze fell on the newspaper in front of Luna, and his mouth dropped open. "Is that true?"

Luna looked back at the headline. "I highly doubt it," she said mildly. "You mustn't believe what you read in the newspapers, Colin — unless it's in The Quibbler, of course."

He was still gazing at the front page. "Is that Severus Snape? You knew him, right? You were here when he was?"

"It is Professor Snape," Luna said. "And yes, I was here when he was, but I didn't know him, really. He was my teacher."

"I thought he was older," Colin said, pouring over the picture. "He looks like he could be a student." He paused. "A not-very-nice student."

"I don't think anybody ever described Professor Snape as 'nice'," Luna said. "But nice is overrated, you know. I mean, you should try to be a nice person of course. That's important. But people can do good things even if they're not very likable. And some people can't help not being very likable."

"Was Professor Snape not very likable?"

"He probably saved my life, so I like him quite a lot," Luna said. She looked back at the picture, tapping it with one finger to see if she could get the person sitting next to Snape to lean into frame. "He does look very young, doesn't he? He started teaching here a long time ago, you know. This picture was probably taken then." She remembered that Colin had only been at Hogwarts a matter of days. "It's a Quidditch match, I think. You can't see much of the background, but there, behind him, it looks very much like the stands the staff sit in."

"Who is he talking to?"

"I don't know," Luna said. "One of the other teachers, probably. Or a member of the Board of Governors, they sit in the same stands."

"I wish we could hear the joke," Colin said.

Luna turned to look at him. "The joke?"

He nodded. "I'd like to know what sort of jokes war-heroes make, even ones that aren't very nice."

Luna looked back at the picture. Professor Snape looked into the distance, his expression so supercilious it could have been a parody of himself. The shoulder of the person next to him was briefly visible, nudging him, and he turned, said something —

"I suppose it might be a joke, at that," Luna said thoughtfully. "I'll tell you what, Colin, if I ever find out, I'll let you know."

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Author's note: Luna's theory about the Tutshill Tornadoes is canon; her other conspiracy theories in this chapter are made up by me out of whole cloth.

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