Disclaimer: Nope, still don´t own anything. They´re all J.K Rowlings characters, I'm just playing with them.

Rating: PG, just to be on the safe side.

Warnings and notes: This is my first ever attempt at writing fanfiction and english is not my first language. Unbetaed, but all chapters after this have been betaed. This chapter was written before DH and I kept my description of Lunas father. There´s also disgusting!snorkacks here.

Remember that reviews are love and that they give my sometimes sleeping muse a good kick in the butt!

The first thing Hermione noticed when she dared to open her eyes again after the short side-along apparition was a narrow staircase. The two women were standing in an apartment building entrance. It was rather luxurious with marble floors and a special tube for the mail owls leading upwards to the left side of the room, above the staircase. To the right were a small waterfall and three golden coloured lifts awaiting passengers. The high above ceiling contained paintings of all sorts of witches, wizards and magical creatures. Hermione spotted kneazles, grindylows and Cornish pixies, but no crumpelhorned snorkacks.

"There's no need to be too impressed, Luna said. The flat here has been handed down in my mother's family for generations. Apparently, they made a couple of very monetary rewarding trips across the Atlantic Ocean during the early colonial years and enjoyed showing off their immense wealth. I would never have been able to afford it myself; dad thinks being family enables lesser salaries."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Hermione answered.

"Don´t be, the salary is low, surely but he pays all expenses on the business trips. We do them together most of the time though, but still"

"I see. Maybe you could let go of my arm now"?

Luna had had a firm grip of Hermione's left arm, ever since the beginning of the apparition.

"Oh, off course. I'm so sorry. It slipped my mind Luna answered with a tint of pink to her cheeks. Let's take the lift, shall we?"

And she led the way towards the lift in the middle. It was a tiny old fashioned one where you have to pull the bars across the front before being able to go, and Luna did just that before standing herself close to Hermione and saying:

"Third floor please" with a slow and very precisely pronounced voice.

"Certainly, Miss Lovegood, welcome home", a slightly mechanical but very grandmotherly voice said.

"Thank you Rose."

"Rose?"

"Yes, well. She's got to be called something, doesn't she? Saying thank you lift just seems so silly to me, and she reminds me a bit of my grandmother so I call her by her name. She was almost deaf to by the end. Refused all sorts of ear healing or charms because she seemed to think that if she couldn't fix it herself, it couldn't be fixed. She worked at St: Mungos as a mediwitch for most of her life see and the concept of magical healing and charm actually developing through the years was nothing she cared to grasp. I miss that old hag"...

Hermione smirked disapprovingly at the last bit, you are supposed to respect your elders even if they are eccentric after all, but did not respond. Luna sure was talking a lot, but Hermione found that she didn't mind that much,

The lift smelled of soap and the bronze walls glistered. The management sure seems to be doing their job, Hermione thought. Luna stood with her left arm pressing against Hermione's right and swayed a little when the upwards ascent started.

Hermione took in her slight smile, pinkish cheeks and just a tad glazed eyes and noticed for the first time that Luna most likely was a tiny bit on the drunk side of sober this evening.

She eyed herself in the mirror. The drinks she had had with Ron when still at the party were not showing, the hair just a little bit frizzy, nothing out of the ordinary there, and make up still in place. The lift came to a halt. Our heroines got out and Luna took a right turn with Hermione in tow. Through a corridor with oak doors on either side and the occasional oil painting here and there they went, past a staircase and on and on. The inhabitants of the paintings looked at them but said nothing.

Hermione thought she had enough exercise for the week when Luna finally stopped in front of an oak door which only difference from the others was that the golden name plaque bore the name "Lovegood". Luna fumbled for a while in her vast skirt pocket before fishing up her wand and muttering a few incantations. The door clicked and swung open.

"Entre vous, mademoiselle," she said and jokingly put up her arm as invitation.

Hermione stepped inside and came to an instant halt. A chaotic clutter was the only way to describe it. Book shelves, display cases, framed front pages of "The Quibbler," and other things covered every wall she could see, apart from a tiny space just by the door where a coat rack and a shoe stand had been allowed to stand.Even a small door to the left in the hall was covered by shelves.

She removed her shoes and took a few steps further into the clutter, almost tripping over a carton on the floor. Luna kept her shoes on and went ahead of her. When Hermione regained her composure she noticed a large display case to her left. Not a single shelf was empty and looking at the various things being shown made her feel like she somehow had stepped into a shop in Knockturn alley. Most of the strange artefacts in the case seemed to be different parts of dead animals. There were tiny skeletons, multicoloured feathers, stuffed small rodents, preferably deformed, a couple of skulls, jars with formaldehyde preserved intestines and whole animals, bottles filled with bile or blood. Hermione looked questionly at Luna.

"Grandfathers collection. He was into that sort of thing she said with a shrug. You should see his books. I usually look into them the months I can't seem to find any news to report in "the Quibbler". They´re great information for exposes over all sorts of beasts and deformities. Not that we write about that sort of thing often. We're a serious news paper after all".

"Mm. Your family seems..interesting."

"Thank you she said with a wide smile. Why don´t you have a seat in the living room?"

The hallway led right into said room and the couch was a large red satin one that had obviously seen its best days. In front of it stood a likewise ragged table littered with all kinds of magazines. Across the table was the fireplace and book shelves covered the rest of the walls, apart from two doors on either side of the room.

Hermione seated herself, secretly hoping nothing would fall down on top of her head. Luna went away through the door to the left. To get the photos, Hermione presumed. Her love of the written word made it impossible for her not to start looking through the magazines. Back issues of "The Quibbler", "Transfiguration today", "Witch Weekly", "The Daily Prophet", "The Weekly Wicked", "Science report". She chose the latter and started grasping through it. Luna returned shortly, carrying a large photo album as expected.

"Here we are. I had left it under my bed for some reason".

She sat down close to Hermione, lay the album down under the table and opened it. The first photo was of Luna and a man that could only be her father. He looked very young to have a 21 year old daughter but the similarities between them were striking. Same kind of watery eyes, blond hair and noses even though his nose were bigger. He had his arm around Luna's shoulder and they were standing in front of a large number of pine trees, both smiling broadly and blinking in the sharp sunlight.

"This is just before we went into the forest."

More and similar photos followed. Luna and her father by the Swedish port key central, by some hoof prints in a marsh, Luna's father sitting on a tree stump drinking tea. Luna went on describing the photographs in her slow, dreamy voice

"And this was taken about half way through the glen with the big rock and I thought I saw a snorkack there but it was just an elk, that's on this picture, see?"

On and on she went and this far there hasn't even been a blurry image of anything resembling a snorkack. Hermione began to wonder if those photos, if they existed at all, maybe were the last ones in the thick album. She began to feel drowsy. Finally Luna inched closer to Hermione and lifted the album up and laid it out across their knees as she declared:

"And now it gets interesting for you."

Hermione blushed, but remained silent. Her parents hadn't raised any liars.

"Here's a crumpelhorned snorkack horn. They shed them each fall see, and my father managed to find one in a clearing. Look!"

The excitement was evident in her voice and Hermione looked. The photograph indeed showed a crumpled greyish brown horn piled up on a mossy rock beside Luna's hand to show its size Hermione figured. The horn was about four times the size of Luna's hand. Luna laid said hand upon Hermione's.

"Isn't it fascinating? I've did my reindeer research. No other reindeer breed in the world, not even in Canada, grows horns this big, and no other reindeer horns resemble these at all! She gently squeezed Hermione's hand and gazed into her eyes with a maniacal gleam.

"And we still don´t know what they eat!"

Hermione concluded that Luna was in top weird form today, but blamed it on drinking and the late hour. She leaned closer to take look more closely at the picture. It looked like a common reindeer horn, but deformed. Each "branch" was about as big as Luna's hand and the root was about as big as her thigh. This was still pressing against Hermione's own, to hold the the album up properly off course.

"Ready?" Luna gave a lopsided grin. Hermione nodded and Luna turned the page.

Even on a photograph, the snorkack was illusive. Hermione found herself looking dumbly at a picture of a dark pine forest with a rock to the side. Suddenly a greyish brown shape started to appear slowly from the left. Soon the entire creature was standing in the glen, sniffing at the moss on the rock with huge flapping nostrils. The crumple horned snorkack was huge and hideous. Its greyish brown fur was matted and striped. A massive drooping neck supported a large elk-like head with round yellow eyes that oozed some kind of liquid down it's hallow cheeks. Several big blisters covered the six-legged body and they seemed to shift in size as if they were about to burst at any moment. It was downright creepy. The snorkack stood sniffing for a while and then turned, facing the camera, froze and stared with an eerie intelligent look in its oozing eyes and ran away, the two tails between its legs.

"Is it supposed to look like that?" Hermione asked. "I mean the oozing and those blisters. It must be sick, right? And what are those blisters?"

"We don´t know yet. And yes, we think it's healthy. All the snorkacks we saw looked like that, apart from the calves, they had no blisters. Acne is one theory about them, eggs another. We´re not exactly sure that they´re mammals and the breeding pattern is also unknown. We just don´t know what the oozing is about, but we think it's normal for them".

It was a weird feeling to be the one without the answers Hermione thought. Weird but not unpleasant. Seeing and learning what little there was to know about the snorkacks felt a bit like opening up a new and exciting school book, and it been too long since she last was able to do that.

More snorkack pictures followed, all taken in pine forest glens and most featuring a single snorkack. The snorkacks had few differences except the shade of the greyishbrown fur and the size and width of the stripes. All of them, including the calves were hideously ugly and the blisters made them look like they suffered from the bubonic plague.

Hermione closed the album.

"Thank you for showing me these. They were really fascinating."

"You're welcome. I was eager to share anyway. I don´t know many people who I think might be able to grasp the allure of the snorkacks, but I was sure that you would".

"I'm touched Luna. Really."

"So, do you want to go back to the party? Or have a drink here maybe? I make an excellent San Francisco."

"Just one drink then. I don´t want to worry Ron"

Luna looked a bit annoyed at that but went out into the kitchen and returned swiftly with two glasses with the juice/vodka blend and a smile.

"Here we are" she said and put them down on the table.

"Thanks".

They sipped their drinks slowly and silently. Hermione relaxed into the couch, for once not feeling any need to speak. Luna's presence was somehow soothing and the drink strong but delicious. Why didn't she always drink San Francisco's at parties she wondered as she started to feel drowsy again. Her head lolled back, the glass fell into her knee and Hermione was fast asleep. Luna looked at her with a predatory smile.